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avelera · 4 years

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I have a history question- if it was so important to keep bishops from having sons and passing their titles to said sons and creating a dynastic church, why was the rule "bishops can't get married" rather than "bishops can get married, their sons just can't inherit the father's office"?

Let me start, somewhat facetiously but also not facetiously, by saying holy shit would that not work in the days before paternity tests. But from there, let me go into a longer explanation of why priestly “celibacy” needed to focus on the priests, not their offspring. (Plus, birth rates being what they were, it’s MUCH easier to say one guy can’t have sex but IF he has kids and they enter the Church, eh, we’ll just look the other way vs. saying his TWELVE KIDS are now part of an entire growing class of dudes from rich, powerful, and connected families who CAN’T be priests.)

So it’s probably an oversimplification to say “preventing a clerical blood aristocracy was the only reason for requiring marital celibacy of priests.” Much like the Catholic Church itself, there are many interdisciplinary aspects for every decision, in this case it’s not just an economic or sociological choice, but also a spiritual and doctrinal one.

Catholicism and Christianity in general grew partially out of a Jewish tradition known as “Ascetic Judaism” - one such famous figure of this movement is John “the Baptist” (to such an extent that one reason you have all these “passing of the torch” stories about JtB anointing Jesus as the real Messiah is because he was a much more popular and famous figure in his day within the same movement, so the Jesus Cult was trying to steal a bit of that sparkle and claim it as their own by saying John, who probably never met Jesus, totally knew about him and knew HE’S THE MESSIAH, ANYWAY).

Asceticism is marked by things we expect of priests today like practicing self denial in terms of worldly pleasures like sex. Or food. Or talking. Ascetic Christian hermits as a phenomenon grew out of this tradition, people who went out into the desert and lived for years without speaking to anyone, barely eating, just praying and contemplating God etc etc and THAT is the origin of a lifestyle that eventually turned into monasteries, because living alone in a cave can be pretty dangerous so if you want to have safety in numbers while living alone, barely talking, fasting and praying, it’s nice to be in a larger group of people doing the same thing.

Which is a roundabout way of saying - sexual self-denial was ALREADY seen as a virtue in the Church and considered “Christ-like” behavior going back to Christ being part of the Ascetic Jewish movement in the 1st c CE. Now they were just asking their priests to be more Christ-like. This had the dual benefit of cutting down on a form of corruption like nepotism.

Now, for the record, saying priests couldn’t have sons to inherit their position didn’t exactly work. For example, Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, two of the most famous and powerful people of the Renaissance, were the known children of Pope Alexander VI and in Italy there was basically an entire aristocracy around the children, nieces, nephews, extended family, etc. of powerful clergy members. BUT this was viewed throughout as a form of open corruption, enough so that it is part of why Martin Luther was so outraged by the clerical corruption he saw in Rome, that he started the reform movement that eventually became Protestantism.

Going back to the paternity tests: look, there’s very few organizations in history that go out of their way to deny power to powerful men. Taking an entire caste of priestly children, keeping in mind that priests are powerful figures in their community, and saying these kids can’t be in the Church would just... not work. On any level. It would be overridden overnight (as the open-secret version of priestly kids was), in part because you don’t want to lose out on your pool of potential recruits, and in part because it’s so easy to get around by just being like “Oh yeah, this is my nephew, totally not my son” and finally because guys kinda hate denying their paternity for deep biological reasons or whatever and having their legacy require that they pretend this kid isn’t theirs so the kid can rise to power is just super counterintuitive to every way we’ve seen men operate in power across history. Basically, it’s way too easy to get around AND you destroy your own recruitment field. Much easier to prevent one guy from having a dozen kids than saying a dozen kids can’t enter the Church.

(I mean, holy shit, just imagine the SPREADSHEETS you’d need to keep track of all those kids in the days before databases. We can’t contact trace Coronavirus in most countries, how is a Medieval society supposed to keep track of which kids belong to WHICH PRIEST and DENY those kids from entering the clergy in any systemic manner??)

And finally, one more economic reason: you put your sons in the Church so you didn’t have to divide your assets further when they inherited. There were societal and economic reasons to cull reproduction rates in a way that benefited society. To say priests can have kids but those kids can’t enter the clergy destroys the value of having sons of the wealthy be able to enter positions of power without further subdividing the lands and fortunes of their families WHILE also creating very quickly a huge pool of wealthy, powerful sons who CAN’T enter the clergy.

So I guess the answer is... it’s complicated? And I’m probably explaining some of this poorly because there’s a lot of ins and outs of this, some of it is based on tradition and dogma for the Church and some of it is about dealing with practicalities, and those things are talked about or not talked about independently, and have tons of intended and unintended consequences over the years, so I’m maybe adding some stuff and not mentioning other stuff for reasons that I don’t know about them (for example, there’s also the whole tradition where the CHURCH says it’s so the guy who becomes a priest treats all members of his congregation as his children instead of just, well, his actual children, which is very nice and aspirational but also lol not true for huge swathes of Church history). ANYWAY, hope that helps!

#maggie rambles #rosy-avenger

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Thursday, May 6, 2021

Nearly 20 million more people hit by food crises last year (Reuters) Nearly 20 million more people faced food crises last year amid armed conflict, the COVID-19 pandemic and weather extremes, and the outlook for this year is again grim, according to a report by the Global Network Against Food Crises. The humanitarian agency, set up in 2016 by the European Union and United Nations, also warned that acute food insecurity has continued to worsen since 2017, the first year of its annual report into food crises. “We must do everything we can to end this vicious cycle. There is no place for famine and starvation in the 21st century,” said U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres. He added that conflict and hunger need to be tackled jointly, as they reinforce one another. Defined as any lack of food that threatens lives, livelihoods or both, acute food insecurity at crisis levels or worse impacted at least 155 million people last year, the highest number in the report’s five-year existence.

America’s new normal: A degree hotter than two decades ago (AP) America’s new normal temperature is a degree hotter than it was just two decades ago. Scientists have long talked about climate change—hotter temperatures, changes in rain and snowfall and more extreme weather—being the “new normal.” Data released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration put hard figures on the cliché. The new United States normal is not just hotter, but wetter in the eastern and central parts of the nation and considerably drier in the West than just a decade earlier. “Almost every place in the U.S. has warmed from the 1981 to 2010 normal to the 1991 to 2020 normal,” said Michael Palecki, NOAA’s normals project manager.

Nature at its craziest: Trillions of cicadas about to emerge (AP) Sifting through a shovel load of dirt in a suburban backyard, Michael Raupp and Paula Shrewsbury find their quarry: a cicada nymph. And then another. And another. And four more. In maybe a third of a square foot of dirt, the University of Maryland entomologists find at least seven cicadas—a rate just shy of a million per acre. A nearby yard yielded a rate closer to 1.5 million. And there’s much more afoot. Trillions of the red-eyed black bugs are coming, scientists say. Within days, a couple weeks at most, the cicadas of Brood X (the X is the Roman numeral for 10) will emerge after 17 years underground. There are many broods of periodic cicadas that appear on rigid schedules in different years, but this is one of the largest and most noticeable. They’ll be in 15 states from Indiana to Georgia to New York; they’re coming out now in mass numbers in Tennessee and North Carolina. When the entire brood emerges, backyards can look like undulating waves, and the bug chorus is lawnmower loud.

Reuniting refugee families (Washington Post) President Biden began fulfilling a campaign promise Tuesday as U.S. authorities started to help to reunite a number of migrant families forcibly separated by the previous administration. President Donald Trump imposed a “zero tolerance” policy on those crossing the U.S. border illegally that led to myriad unauthorized migrants being rushed through criminal proceedings and deported while their children who had accompanied them remained in the United States. It was easier to track the children than their parents. In some instances, advocates had to post radio advertisements in Mexico and Central America. The reunions Tuesday would mark, Kevin Sieff wrote, “the start of a massive relocation of parents deported by one U.S. president and returned by another. In total, more than 1,000 families are expected to be reunited.”

The Little Nation That Could (Guardian) The island of Cuba is dealing with a pandemic while suffering its worst economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US trade embargo restricts the medical equipment the island can import; even so, of the 27 coronavirus vaccines in final stage testing around the world, two are Cuban. The UN has called on the US to lift sanctions on the island during the pandemic, but the embargo has actually toughened since the outgoing Trump administration put Cuba on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism. “The US is trying to starve Cuba into submission,” said one of the doctors on the coronavirus taskforce. “It’s not only that it’s difficult to buy things directly from the US. It’s also that all these sanctions that the Trump administration put in place have dried up many sources of revenue.” Nevertheless, Cuban scientists are confident that widespread vaccination will be attained this year. “When you have everything, you don’t have to think so much.” said another scientist. “But when you have difficulties, you have to think up new ways to innovate.”

Years of Unheeded Warnings. Then the Subway Crash Mexico City Had Feared. (NYT) The capital had been bracing for the disaster for years. Ever since it opened nearly a decade ago, the newest Mexico City subway line—a heralded expansion of the second largest subway system in the Americas—had been plagued with structural weaknesses that led engineers to warn of potential accidents. Yet other than a brief, partial shutdown of the line in 2014, the warnings went unheeded by successive governments. On Monday night, the mounting problems turned fatal: A subway train on the Golden Line plunged about 50 feet after an overpass collapsed underneath it, killing at least 24 people and injuring dozens more. The accident—and the government’s failure to act sooner to fix known problems with the line—immediately set off a political firestorm for three of the most powerful people in Mexico: the president and the two people widely believed to be front-runners to succeed him as leaders of the governing party and possibly, the country.

Brexit problems (Foreign Policy) France has threatened “retaliatory measures”—including cutting power to Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands—as tensions rise over fishing rights between Britain and France. Since the post-Brexit trade deal, French fishermen have been angered by delays in newly required licenses that have prevented them from accessing British waters—an area they say is necessary for their livelihoods.

Scottish independence 'front and center' in May 6 election (Washington Post) Scotland goes to the polls Thursday in a vote that could eventually lead to a truly historic event: the crackup of the United Kingdom. The independence movement has gained momentum in the wake of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit. And the pandemic has further encouraged the idea that Scotland might be better off going its own way, with policies determined in Edinburgh viewed more favorably by Scots than those pronounced at Westminster. As a result, the Scottish National Party, led by the popular First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, 50, is expected to perform well in Thursday’s vote for seats in the regional Parliament, with pro-independence parties winning a solid majority of the 129 seats in Holyrood. The talk shows, political magazines and news columns in Britain are full of speculation about a looming breakup. Since 2014, Scotland has voted overwhelmingly against Brexit, 62 percent to 38 percent. Many Scots then saw Johnson’s hard-split version of Brexit as an unnecessary affront. And since Britain left the European Union, Scotland has tallied more harms than benefits. The Scottish fishermen, for instance, say their industry is in crisis.

Belgian cyberattack (1440) Belgium was hit with a sweeping cyberattack yesterday, leaving its parliament, government agencies, universities, and other organizations without internet service for hours. The effort knocked out both websites and internal systems, including the country’s coronavirus vaccine registration portal. Hackers targeted the government’s service provider with a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack—a strategy that overwhelms networks with massive amounts of artificial internet traffic. Experts say such attacks are often meant to knock systems offline rather than steal information. It was unclear who was behind the attack. The incident highlights the growing ability of cybercriminals, either independent or state-affiliated, to strike unprepared governments and companies—some estimate cyberattacks will cost the global economy $6T in losses in 2021.

EU seeks rapid response military force, two decades after first try (Reuters) Fourteen European Union countries including Germany and France have proposed a rapid military response force that could intervene early in international crises, a senior EU official said on Wednesday, two decades after a previous attempt. The countries say the EU should create a brigade of 5,000 soldiers, possibly with ships and aircraft, to help democratic foreign governments needing urgent help, the official said. First discussed in 1999, the EU in 2007 set up a combat-ready system of battlegroups of 1,500 personnel to respond to crises, but they have never been used. Those battle groups could now form the basis of a so-called First Entry Force, part of a new momentum towards more EU defence capabilities. From this year, the bloc has a joint budget to develop weaponry together, is drawing up a military doctrine for 2022 and detailed its military weakness last year for the first time.

Staunch anti-India Kashmir politician dies in police custody (AP) A prominent politician in Kashmir who challenged India’s rule over the disputed region for decades died Wednesday while in police custody. Mohammed Ashraf Sehrai was 78. Sehrai’s son, Mujahid Sehrai, said his father was denied proper medical care while in jail. Sehrai was arrested last July under the Public Safety Act, which allows authorities in Indian-controlled Kashmir to imprison anyone for up to two years without trial. All Parties Hurriyat Conference, the main separatist grouping in Kashmir, said authorities had left Sehrai unattended in jail until his condition worsened. In a statement, it said it “deeply regrets this inhuman attitude of the authorities and is pained by it.” It also expressed concern about the health of hundreds of other Kashmiri political detainees as India faces a massive health crisis because of an explosion of coronavirus cases. Last week, the grouping said the prisoners were being denied “even basic amenities,” leading to “serious health problems among the prisoners.”

India’s COVID-19 surge spreads to Nepal (Reuters) Nepal is being overwhelmed by a COVID-19 surge as India’s outbreak spreads across South Asia, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Wednesday. Nepal is now recording 57 times as many cases as a month ago, with 44% of tests now coming back positive. Nepalese towns near the Indian border could not cope with the growing number of people needing treatment, while only 1% of the country’s population was fully vaccinated.

Myanmar’s military disappearing young men to crush uprising (AP) Myanmar’s security forces moved in and the street lamps went black. In house after house, people shut off their lights. Darkness swallowed the block. When the military’s trucks finally rolled away, Shwe’s 15-year-old brother was missing. Across the country, Myanmar’s security forces are arresting and forcibly disappearing thousands of people, especially boys and young men, in a sweeping bid to break the back of a three-month uprising against a military takeover. In most cases, the families of those taken do not know where they are, according to an Associated Press analysis of more than 3,500 arrests since February. It is a technique the military has long used to instill fear and to crush pro-democracy movements. The boys and young men are taken from homes, businesses and streets, under the cover of night and sometimes in the brightness of day. Some end up dead. Many are imprisoned and sometimes tortured. Many more are missing.

Turkey and Egypt on the mend (Foreign Policy) Representatives from Turkey and Egypt meet in Cairo today for “exploratory” discussions “on the necessary steps that may lead towards the normalization of relations” according to a joint statement. Relations between the two countries have frayed due to maritime border disputes, Libya’s civil war, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s opposition to the 2013 coup which brought Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to power. There were some signs of rapprochement in March, when the Turkish government directed Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated media channels in the country to refrain from criticizing the Egyptian president.

Why Nearsightedness Is on the Rise in Children (NYT) Look and you shall see: A generation of the real-life nearsighted Mr. Magoos is growing up before your eyes. A largely unrecognized epidemic of nearsightedness, or myopia, is afflicting the eyes of children. People with myopia can see close-up objects clearly, like the words on a page. But their distance vision is blurry, and correction with glasses or contact lenses is likely to be needed for activities like seeing the blackboard clearly, cycling, driving or recognizing faces down the block. The growing incidence of myopia is related to changes in children’s behavior, especially how little time they spend outdoors, often staring at screens indoors instead of enjoying activities illuminated by daylight. Gone are the days when most children played outside between the end of the school day and suppertime. And the devastating pandemic of the past year may be making matters worse. The prevalence of myopia in the United States increased from 25 percent in the early 1970s to nearly 42 percent just three decades later. And the rise in myopia is not limited to highly developed countries. The World Health Organization estimates that half the world’s population may be myopic by 2050.

#headlines #news

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quakerjoe · 4 years

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American conservatism—the so-called “culture of life”—worships annihilation.

A decade ago, in my first public writing since leaving Capitol Hill, I warned that the Republican Party, in its evolution towards an extremist conservative movement allied with extremist Christian fundamentalism, was becoming like “one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe.” After Donald Trump’s enthronement as the decider of our fate, I analyzed the GOP’s descent into a nihilism that belied every one of its supposed “values.” They value only absolute power or ruin.

It is now long past time to cast off highfalutin’ Latinisms and simply call the Republicans and their religious and secular conservative allies what they are, and in unadorned English: a death cult. As the country reels from the coronavirus pandemic, our national government might just as well be run by the infamous People’s Temple of Jonestown.

By now we are benumbed by the all-pervasive arguments over relaxing workplace shutdowns and stay-at-home orders due to coronavirus. In any sane society, the issue would be how to institute the most efficient measures to defeat the pandemic in the shortest time and with the lowest loss of life. Instead, Trump and his merry band of lunatics have hijacked the national debate into a faux-serious discussion of when, oh, please, how soon, can we “reopen the economy?” Naturally, the media gamely continue to play along with this calculated bit of dezinformatsiya.

This has led to extreme callousness, like that shown by Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, who opined that grams and gramps should be eager to shuffle off this mortal coil for the sake of their grandchildren.

There is abundant empirical evidence against this notion: voters in Florida, known as “God’s waiting room” for its geriatric population, are notoriously averse to paying one cent in state income tax to fund education or child health, let alone lay down their lives. In any case, the 69-year-old Patrick, who claims he’s willing to die for his proposition, did not relinquish the burdens of his office to volunteer as an emergency room orderly.

The whole extremely well-funded edifice of “economic conservatism” is equally a death cult, worshiping Mammon so fervently that it is eager to make human sacrifice upon its altar, just like the Mayans and Carthaginians.

There’s also Congressman Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana, who put a patriotic gloss on his Malthusianism, decreeing that “it is always the American government’s position to say, in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life, of American lives, we have to always choose the latter.”

Then, striking the pose of the Serious Adult in the Room correcting mischievous children, he intoned: “It is policymakers’ decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say it is the lesser of these two evils.” This encapsulates the stereotype of the economic conservative: Dickens’s Thomas Gradgrind, the rigid, condescending, and heartless pedagogue.

But some pronouncements from the Trump coalition offer more ethereal rationalizations than the mere pursuit of lucre. The news is replete with stories about evangelical ministers packing their megachurches like sardine cans in defiance of state orders for social distancing, as well as contempt for common sense.

We all know about that harebrained medicine man in Louisiana, Tony Spell, already arrested for violating the state’s prohibition of large gatherings, who continues his antics nonstop. Spell, who sounds as socially responsible as a blood tick, is proclaiming his parishioners ought to choose death: “Like any revolutionary, or like any zealot, or like any pure religious person, death looks to them like a welcome friend. True Christians do not mind dying. They fear living in fear.”

So much for fundamentalists’ vaunted “culture of life,” a slogan which the prestige media never presume to critique.

For a more socially upscale version of this sentiment, let us turn to First Things, a pretentious journal of alleged theology that dresses up its non-stop shilling for the GOP with high-toned words like “numinous” and references to the philosopher Erasmus.

Last month, its editor, R.R. Reno, wrote a piece called, “Say No to Death’s Dominion.” It is an extraordinary performance. Contrary to the title, he actually argues that death should be embraced. He does this by weaving an imbecilic theology that includes falsifying the history of the 1918 flu epidemic to make his basic point:

“In our simple-minded picture of things, we imagine a powerful fear of death arises because of the brutal deeds of cruel dictators and bloodthirsty executioners. But in truth, Satan prefers sentimental humanists. We resent the hard boot of oppression on our necks, and given a chance, most will resist. How much better, therefore, to spread fear of death under moralistic pretexts.”

Oh, I get it! So Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day were more depraved than Josef Stalin! Reno ends with this:

“Fear of death and causing death is pervasive—stoked by a materialistic view of survival at any price and unchecked by Christian leaders who in all likelihood secretly accept the materialist assumptions of our age. “

This insane rant against materialism would seem to contradict the crassly materialistic assumptions underlying economic conservatives’ advocacy for letting a deadly virus “wash over” the population, as Trump would say. But these views, at first sight blatantly opposed, can be reconciled.

And who better to reconcile God and Mammon than a grifter like Jerry Falwell, Jr., ringmaster of Liberty University and testifier to Donald Trump’s status as an emissary of the Almighty? Not only has Falwell continued the school year, virtually alone among American universities, and despite pleading from students and parents to close, he has now been sued for failing to refund fees for student activities that have been suspended.

Fundamentalist preachers’ love of money is no secret: it is only by packing churches that the collection plate will yield a bounteous harvest so that their missionary work can continue – perhaps logistically aided by the purchase of a $65-million Gulfstream executive jet. And why not? It would upstage Pat Robertson, who had a mere Learjet, and a rental at that.

Political observers often wonder about the bizarre conservative coalition of plutocrats and theocrats, believing it to be unstable. But the intersection of the heartless pecuniary motives of religious and economic conservatives is no coincidence. And beneath the Ebenezer Scrooge façade of economic conservatives is the same kind of perverted idealism that we see in Tony Spell or R.R. Reno.

The most cost-efficient industrial process is one that wastes the fewest resource inputs. Likewise, internal combustion engines have evolved to get better mileage even as they pollute less. And electric motors are even more fuel efficient and less polluting.

So how do we explain conservatives’ perverse hatred of the environment, even when there are no profits at stake, as well as their tenacious denial of climate change in the face of irrefutable data? Is it not much the same as the Bible thumper who bitterly condemns stewardship of the environment as Gaia worship?

There are other similarities. Since the 1970s oil shocks (and coincident with the rise of the New Right), an abiding feature on the American scene has been the survivalist, hoping for the national Götterdämmerung that will vindicate his having stockpiled 10,000 rounds of ammunition and a horde of Krugerrands. This dovetails with fundamentalists’ weird enthusiasm for the prospect of world annihilation that animates belief in the Rapture, the only difference being the technique by which the elect avoid the mass slaughter.

Firearms fetishism and a fascination with violence, war, and armed insurrection are also mainstays of right-wing ideology, hardly distinguishable from Jerry Falwell Sr.’s, proclamation that God is Pro-War. And how about the Ultimate Fighting Jesus? The NRA neatly intersects with “muscular Christianity,” revealing both ideological kinship and some very embarrassing gender insecurities that frequently irrupt in misogyny and homosexual panic.

There is no longer the slightest doubt in any sane person’s mind that not only are the GOP’s fundamentalist-extremist religious allies a death cult disguised as 501(c)3 tax-exempt charitable organizations. The whole extremely well-funded edifice of “economic conservatism” is equally a death cult, worshiping Mammon so fervently that it is eager to make human sacrifice upon its altar, just like the Mayans and Carthaginians.

“¡Viva la Muerte!”

“Long live death!” That was the defiant cry of José Millán-Astray y Terreros, a general in Francisco Franco’s fascist army during the Spanish civil war. It could just as well suit Trump’s foot soldiers.

- Mike Lofgren is a former congressional staff member who served on both the House and Senate budget committees. His books include: “The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government“ and “The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted.”

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omfgtrump · 3 years

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The Don Gets The Boot

FUCK YEAH!!!

ABOUT TIME!!!

Americans have voted in the first female Vice President. A mixed race Black Indian whose mother was an immigrant. Now that’s the idea of America!!!

Yes, The Don gets the boot, but how many Republicans will remain boot-lickers? Seems like Lindsey Graham has his tongue stuck to the bottom of The Don’s shoe. Congratulations Lindsey, in a unanimous vote, you win the “Sycophant of the Decade Award.”

Mittens Romney, whose occasional expression of dismay over The Don’s actions, took off the Mittens and took The Don to task. But honestly, I’m tired of hearing that Mittens shows courage and independence. Crawling out of your bunker every few months to venture your dissent only to slink back in to hiding leaves me cold. Where is your voice on The Don’s atrocious handling of the pandemic? Umm, thought so. I guess that makes sense, as you are the one who thought it was okay to tie your dog, like a piece of luggage, to the top of the car, and believed he was having fun. That takes a lot of denial and wishful thinking.

Many are shocked that The Don decided to tell the American people that he won before all the votes were counted. Really?

Let’s examine the reasons why he thought won.

It was unfair that pollsters were counting votes after election day, even though the ballots were cast before or on election day.

He didn’t understand that you can’t choose which states to count votes.

He didn’t think it was legal for people from rat-infested cities like Baltimore to vote. So unfair, so unfair.

There are so many more Red states then Blue ones. If he has more Red M&M’s than blue ones, red wins, right?

Millions of people dressed up as other people and voted twice. The Don said: We have evidence of this. A detailed report will be coming out soon. QAnon is working on it as I speak.

Putin promised me that I would win.

There is evidence that at least 5 million dead people voted, and since Joe Biden is practically dead, they felt closer to him and voted for him. You’ve seen the “Walking Dead,” that stuff is real.

Most importantly: I never lose, so this is all fake news.

Frankly, anyone who understands The Don’s pathology, his malignant narcissism, could have written his ludicrous rant. Translated, it goes: I am The Don, I control the world; if it doesn’t go the way I render it, there is something wrong with the world as there is never anything wrong with me. That’s why I win, win, win; and never lose.

His response to the results of the election are identical to his response to the pandemic. “This can’t be happening because I didn’t deem it to be.” Once again we witness The Don’s delusional process at work, hoping if he repeats over and over that the election is illegal, rigged, a fraud, a conspiracy against the greatest president who ever lived; and that it is he, who is democracy greatest defender.

The next 74 days will be like no other transition of power in this country. Anyone believing The Don will go lightly into the night is living in their own alternative reality. Everything he has done and said before tells us that he will do whatever he can to burn the house down. The chances that he can accept defeat graciously are zero! It is not in his DNA. The Don’s entire life is predicated on destroying others in order to avoid losing: losing exposes his underlying smallness and the humiliation it brings is intolerable. He will do anything and say anything to twist reality so he doesn’t have to experience this. Up until this point in his life, he has miraculously escaped every situation that could have confronted him with his true self. He will never accept defeat and when he eventually leaves the White House (willingly?) to start Trump TV, he will turn his rage toward Joe Biden, just like he did to Barack Obama. He will continue to be a force in politics and continue to stoke fear and resentment and seek revenge on those who have usurped his power because that is the only way he can protect himself from connecting to his smallness. The good news is that those of us who do not want to ever hear from him again won’t have to because he no longer will be president. However, his desire to remain relevant to his supporters will make him a real force in Republican politics and he will have no qualms inciting people to violence. Maybe his first guest will be Steve Bannon, who recently called for the beheading of Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Yes, The Don has lost; and the country, for a few moments, can exhale. Millions took to the streets in celebration. Church bells rang out in Paris like they did after the Germans surrendered; in London, there were fireworks. The perpetual state of anxiety that many Americans were thrust into for four years has been mitigated, though pharmaceutical companies are probably upset as profits may decline because fewer people will renew their prescriptions for anti-depressants and Xanax.

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The Don made democracy fray at its seams, but the people pushed back. Democracy prevailed. Enough of us felt that another four years would catapult us into an autocracy. It is remarkable that nearly 150 million people voted during a pandemic.

It is also remarkable that 70 million people voted for a man who separated children from their parents, supported White Supremacists, banned Muslims, called Mexicans rapists, is a vowed sexual predator (Access Hollywood tape), was impeached (remember that), is in Putin’s pocket and did nothing when he was given high level intelligence information that Russia paid bounties to the Taliban to kill Americans, paid no taxes, covered for the Saudi Prince who murdered a Washington Post reporter and attacked science promulgating an alternative reality (with the heinous silence and collusion of Republicans) that the coronavirus is about to take a hike, when we are being ravaged and setting records for infections with 1,000 people dying every day.

Experts are saying that by the time Biden takes the reigns that there could more than 200,000 cases a day and increasing death tolls. It didn’t have to be that way, and the task before Biden and Kamala is enormous. Long after The Don is gone, our country will be paying the price for his incompetence, indecency, and heinous disregard for human life. Rather than being closer to a point where would are containing the spread, we are heading in to a very dark winter that will take a much longer time to come out of. The economic costs will be graver than necessary and tens of millions of people will continue to struggle with existential issues of food and housing insecurity. As for The Don, he will seek refuge cheating at golf and not give one iota of thought to the suffering of the American people.

For people of color, members of the LGBQT community, Muslims, immigrants and other marginalized groups, there is relief that his malignant man has been banished and hope that Biden and Kamala Harris’s policies will embrace, protect and uplift them. But these communities also see the numbers of Americans who voted for a vengeful, carnival barker who has deceived them into believing he is speaking for them, that he cares about them. Despite all they have seen and heard, his capacity to stoke fear, resentment and divisiveness allowed them to cast their ballot for a White Supremacist, a man totally void of empathy and morality. What message does this communicate to these communities? What does this say about America and its capacity to move forward and embrace equity and inclusion?

It galls me when I hear pundits create moral equivalents between the Right and the Left’s extremism and the need for people to come together. I am all for coming together; this country will have a hard time surviving if we don’t. But the Right in this country (which at this point is the Republican Party) has been stoking racial animus, creating obstacles to voting, promulgating abhorrent and dangerous conspiracy theories, stoking violence by White Supremacists groups, and working against equity and inclusion for years. The violence at Charlottesville did not have good people on both sides. Torch-bearing White Supremacist and Nazi groups chanting anti-Semitic tropes are not the same as people fighting for racial and social justice. The oppressed fighting back is not the same as the oppressor asserting itself. Fighting for social justice shouldn’t even be a movement: it should just be. But as sobering as it is, this is America.

But America is also the place where a Black Indian Woman with an immigrant mother can become vice president. Let’s hope that that the part of us that could make that happen is the part that moves us forward during these challenging times.

P.S

I had planned to end this blog with the defeat of The Don, but given the way this transition is going to go down, I thought I would stick around and wait until he actually leaves the oval office and Biden is sworn in. Hold on to your seats!

from WordPress https://ift.tt/32qEmw5 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress #trump #politics #potus #capital hill #washington dc #white house #america #usa

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a-spam-oeuvre · 4 years

Text

Since some of y'all don't know yet here are some examples of things that are ok to disagree about and some that aren't

Topic 1: Coronavirus

Agree to disagree:

Side a: My father thinks that a longer lockdown hurts more people than opening would, pointing to lost jobs and increase in depression, anxiety, and suicides. He thinks opening up with some restrictions is the right move

Side b: I think that the state and national government's failure to take the pandemic seriously has cost too many lives and that they rushed to open up with the wrong priorities. I believe that the government should focus on creating protections for people effected by restrictions instead of prematurely lifting those restrictions.

Why is it ok to disagree? Both of us have the interest of the people in mind and are utilizing true and proven facts to build our opinion. Our disagreement lies in which path we predict will be better for the general welfare.

A toxic disagreement:

Side a: someone on instagram believes that young people are unaffected by the virus and therefore refuses to wear a mask and continues to attend large gatherings without social distancing, all while attending a large public school.

side b: Has an autoimmune disorder and due to family situations has to attend school in person. Her risk of getting it is high and her risk of dying from it is even higher. When she asks her classmate (side a) to wear a mask, she refuses and coughs on side b.

This is not agree to disagree. This is deliberately and avoidably endangering lives due to self interests.

Topic 2: LGBTQIA+ RIGHTS

Agree to Disagree

Side a: My friend believes that homosexuality is not allowed under his religion, but accepts that his religious beliefs are not shared by the entire country, and respects/accepts his queer friends and the queer community. However, he also believes that private business owners have the right to turn away gay customers on the basis of religious freedom.

Side b: I believe that precedents set in the 1960s civil rights movement give congress the authority to prevent customer discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, gender, national origin, or sexual orientation for businesses engaging in interstate commerce. Just as lunch counters can't have "whites only" signs, businesses should not have "cis, straight" only policies.

Why is it ok to disagree? Neither of us are basing our opinions on a bias for or against a group, but instead on which policy would best protect civil liberties.

A Toxic Disagreement:

Side a: My former teammate repeatedly used the f-slur and frequently said extremely homophobic things that are not worth repeating.

Side b: exists as a queer person

This is not agree to disagree. This is a hateful display of intolerance and deliberate denial of humanity.

Conclusion: You can disagree about pizza toppings, not human rights.

#respect existence or expect resistance #essay ideas #reference #politics #tw: homophia mention #void nonsense #this isn't a full argument i just wanted to get some thoughts down #i have a few of these types of things in my draft i can't wait for the days when i can just write essays for fun #i have one on the nuances of identity labels and it's really interesting to me #this is an open response to people that says politics shouldn't ruin friendship #like yes you should have friends and aquaintances of other parties but not ones that disrespect entire people groups #like the former teamate had a friend who is also republican and i'm friends with the other one still because he isn't hateful #he told our out wlw friend that we all were there for her and support her when she mentioned that her gf's parents were lowkey homophobic #and i was so proud of him like that is GROWTH right there #when i first met him someone told him i was liberal and he asked me about it in a bad way but now he texts me about how disappointed he #is really disappointed in trump and (if he could vote) is starting to lean more towards Biden #i'd like to say it was my influence that brought him left but our entire team is way more liberal this year now that most of the #conservatives graduated or quit and i think having that less toxic atmosphere helped him a lot #i should be doing physics right now

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azspot · 4 years

Quote

He’s described the illness as a “little flu,” a trifling “cold.” He’s accused the media of manufacturing “hysteria”—even as confirmed cases of the coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, soar to well over half a million and deaths to roughly 25,000 worldwide. The coronavirus-denial movement officially has a leader, and it’s Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro Leads the Coronavirus-Denial Movement

#brazil #bolsonaro

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phroyd · 4 years

Link

A study by the University of Southampton examining non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in response to the new coronavirus (COVID-19) in China shows that a range of early, coordinated and targeted measures are needed to help significantly reduce its spread.

Researchers in the population mapping group WorldPop ran complex modelling, using anonymised data on both human movement and illness onset, to help simulate different outbreak scenarios for cities in mainland China. This allowed them to understand how variations in the timing, level and combinations of interventions affect speed and transmission of the disease. Findings are available in a preprint paper on medRxiv website.1 The study estimates that by the end of February 2020 there was a total of 114, 325 COVID-19 cases in China. It shows that without non-pharmaceutical interventions – such as early detection, isolation of cases, travel restrictions and cordon sanitaire – the number of infected people would have been 67 times larger than that which actually occurred. The research also found that if interventions in the country could have been conducted one week, two weeks, or three weeks earlier, cases could have been reduced by 66 percent, 86 percent and 95 percent respectively – significantly limiting the geographical spread of the disease. However, if NPIs were conducted one week, two weeks, or three weeks later than they were, the number of cases may have shown a 3-fold, 7-fold, or 18-fold increase, respectively. Study author Dr Shengjie Lai, of the University of Southampton, comments: “Our study demonstrates how important it is for countries which are facing an imminent outbreak to proactively plan a coordinated response which swiftly tackles the spread of the disease on a number of fronts. We also show that China’s comprehensive response, in a relatively short period, greatly reduced the potential health impact of the outbreak.” The research also found that improved disease detection, isolation of cases and social distancing (for example, the cancelling of large public events, working from home and school closures) are likely to have had a far greater positive impact on containment than travel restrictions. The authors suggest social distancing should be continued for the next few months in China to prevent case numbers increasing again after the lifting of travel restrictions in late February. Director of the University of Southampton’s WorldPop group, Professor Andy Tatem, says: “We have a narrow window of opportunity globally to respond to this disease and given effective drugs and vaccines are not expected for months, we need to be smart about how we target it using non-drug-related interventions. Our findings significantly contribute to an improved understanding of how best to implement measures and tailor them to conditions in different regions of the world. “We are now focussed on adapting this work to new settings beyond China to support response efforts. Different countries may need different approaches, but we aim to help them make informed decisions on how best to put interventions in place.” Population mapping work by WorldPop, funded primarily by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is helping to inform the World Health Organisation and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about the potential spread of COVID-19 and provides valuable information about how best to effectively target interventions in countries globally.

It also speaks to President Moron’s 8 week denial of the problem that was brought to his attention by both our INtelligence Services and the WHO. Here’s a link to the reddit page for discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/fkz25v/a_study_has_indicated_that_if_chinese_authorities/

Phroyd

#china #sars-cov-2

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gravity-rainbow · 4 years

Link

The Fourth of July has always been a holiday filled with bombast and pomp and circumstance. Now, in an age of plague and silence, Americans need to reflect on our ugly history, how we got to this crisis, and move past our simplified, heroic mythology.

Sadly, America has been under a spell that is equal parts religious, nationalistic, and racist, creating a bizarre hybrid mythology. This white supremacist, Neo-Confederate, nationalistic myth has infected the country after a tireless campaign to politicize an alternate reality wherein our leaders are infallible and Christ-like and our founding as perfect and incorruptible as an immaculate conception.

The “Make America Great Again” message of Trumpism is an angry defense of this worldview, a weaponized nostalgia hellbent on silencing critics who only wish to discuss the actual history and nature of the United States. President Donald Trump’s ascent to power was paved on this deliberate denial and his movement predicated on willful abdication of responsibility. What we have seen as of late, with both the rise of social media and now the Black Lives Matter protests, is an attempt by the majority of the country to confront the angry minority who live in this alternate reality and those radicalized white Americans who are ready to dole out murderous violence lest they be awoken from their slumber.

It is altogether appropriate that the Fourth of July in 2020, the lost year of the coronavirus plague, that this confrontation looms large as more and more and more Americans fall prey to an altogether preventable illness. Our myth of exceptionalism has been exposed as a blistering lie. In the face of a generational disaster, we have not only blinked but have just simply…given up. The government has ceased functioning and all but admitted it has no interest in protecting the people or even attempting to make a deadly situation better. Our economy continues to hum to the tune of the advantaged and powerful while millions are unemployed and terrified.

#jared yates sexton #fourth of july #reflection #crticism #trumpism #coronavirus #plague #bizarre hybrid mythology

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 4 years

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The Coronavirus-Denial Movement Now Has a Leader

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has lashed out against local officials who have implemented severe lockdowns, accusing them of destroying the country.

Nicknamed the “Trump of the Tropics,” Bolsonaro has sought to emulate the American president’s right-wing populist-nationalism since launching his bid for the presidency in 2018. But compared with Bolsonaro’s position on the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump’s approach looks sober and scientifically grounded.

If there’s one lesson from the global responses to COVID-19, it’s this: The countries that have had the most success “flattening the curve” acted quickly and aggressively to contain the virus, rather than downplaying the threat it posed. Bolsonaro has had months to absorb this lesson, yet has chosen to take the opposite tack.

Bolsonaro, who leads one of the world’s most populous and economically dynamic countries, has described COVID-19 as a symptom-free nuisance for “90 percent” of infected Brazilians. He’s argued that while he may be 65, he wouldn’t be at serious risk even if he were to become infected, because of his “history as an athlete.” (The athletes who have contracted COVID-19 might be surprised to learn that their talents grant them special powers against the virus.) He has proposed isolating only the elderly and those with underlying health conditions. As recently as yesterday, Bolsonaro asserted that Brazilians “never catch anything,” even when they dive into “sewage,” and that they may have already developed the “antibodies” to stop the virus’s spread.

He has, moreover, railed against lockdowns; closures of businesses, schools, and public transport; anything that strays far from normalcy. He has lashed out at governors and mayors who have implemented these policies, alleging that they’re committing crimes and “destroying Brazil,” and actively sought to block some of these measures.

Bolsonaro’s stance has emboldened some of his advisers and prominent supporters to engage in the same denialism, but it has also left him isolated and besieged. Local officials, along with many pot-and-pan-banging, self-quarantining protesters, have condemned him for not supporting emergency actions. One former supporter, the governor of Rio de Janeiro, just won a court battle against Bolsonaro that will allow him to proceed with shutting airports and interstate roads. The governor of São Paulo, another ex-ally, has threatened to sue the federal government if it obstructs his efforts to contain the virus.

Bolsonaro has done all this even as top officials around him, including cabinet ministers, have fallen ill with COVID-19. On the evening of March 7, in a scene that now seems from a bygone era, Trump met Bolsonaro at his Mar-a-Lago resort, warmly shook his hand, and dismissed a reporter’s question about whether he was concerned that the virus was “getting closer to the White House.” In the three weeks since, more than 20 members of Bolsonaro’s U.S. delegation have tested positive for the coronavirus. (Bolsonaro and Trump both say they’ve tested negative.) Bolsonaro ignored his own health ministry’s advice to self-isolate for a couple of weeks and to discourage large gatherings. He made a defiant show of shaking hands and taking selfies at a rally that attracted hundreds of his supporters.

“We could be sitting on a time bomb here,” especially for the country’s most vulnerable citizens, Paulo Sotero, an expert on Brazil at the Wilson Center, told me. “It is amazing that [Bolsonaro is maintaining] this ignorant attitude toward a public-health emergency … It is lunacy what this man is doing.” The president “is a bomb thrower” by nature, Sotero argued, when what the nation needs right now is a bomb defuser.

Brought by @hexmaniacmareen. Thanks!!

#brazil #brazilian politics #science #coronavirus #politics #jair bolsonaro #sent by followers #hexmaniacmareen #mod nise da silveira #covid 19

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

Text

Pluralist, your daily link-dose: 24 Feb 2020

Today’s links

How “Authoritarian Blindness” kept Xi from dealing with coronavirus: Zeynep Tufekci in outstanding form.

The Snowden Archive: every publicly available Snowden doc, collected and annotated.

Key computer vision researcher quits: facial recognition is a moral quagmire.

My interview on adversarial interoperability: you can’t shop your way out of late-stage capitalism.

81 Fortune 100 companies demand binding arbitration: monopoly and its justice system.

I’m coming to Kelowna! Canada Reads is bringing me to the BC interior, March 5.

A flat earther commits suicide by conspiracy theory: conspiracies are comorbid with corruption.

This day in history: 2019, 2015, 2010, 2005

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

How “Authoritarian Blindness” kept Xi from dealing with coronavirus (permalink)

Xi Jinping’s refashioning of the Chinese internet to ratchet up surveillance and censorship made it all but impossible for the Chinese state to use the internet to detect and contain Corona Virus, writes Zeynep Tufekci in The Atlantic. Tufekci talks about “authoritarian blindness,” where people too scared to tell the autocrat the hard truths makes it impossible for the autocrat to set policy that reflects reality.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coronavirus-and-blindness-authoritarianism/606922/

(Cue Mao telling China to “eat 5 meals a day” because his apparats were too scared to warn him of impending famine, then selling off the nation’s food reserves for foreign currency because he thought it was surplus. Food production collapsed.)

Before Xi, a certain amount of online dissidence was tolerated because it helped root out dangerously corrupt local leaders before they could do real damage. It’s always hard to make autocracies sustainable because corruption and looting leaves them hollow and brittle.

When Xi took power in 2012, he restored “one man rule” and began a series of maneuvers, including purges, to consolidate power for himself. The rise and rise of China’s mobile internet made this far more effective than at any time in history.

“Authoritarian blindness” kicked off the Hong Kong protests because the state so badly misjudged the cause and severity of the grievances there. The same thing happened in Wuhan when doctors and netizens faced retaliation for describing early virus outbreaks.

The reality-debt built up by official denial always results in reality bankruptcy, eventually – so finally, the reports of the virus were so widespread and alarming they could no longer be suppressed. But by then, the virus had proliferated. This is an important point: “the killer digital app for authoritarianism isn’t listening in on people through increased surveillance, but listening to them as they express their honest opinions, especially complaints.”

That’s how you stabilize the unstable: by using digital authoritarianism to fine tune the minimum viable amount of good governance to diffuse public anger. It’s how you maximize your looting without getting strung up by your ankles.

The Snowden Archive (permalink)

The Snowden Surveillance Archive collects “all documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have subsequently been published by news media.”

https://snowdenarchive.cjfe.org/greenstone/cgi-bin/library.cgi

It’s indexed and searchable, created by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression and the Politics of Surveillance Project at the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. (Canada is a “Five Eyes” country that partners with the NSA on global mass surveillance)

There’s a “Portable Archive” version – a tarball with all the docs so you can create your own mirror:

https://snowdenarchive.cjfe.org/greenstone/collect/snowden1/portablearchive.html

They provide instructions for turning this into a kiosk they call a “Snowden Archive-in-a-Box.” Costs about CAD120.00

Key computer vision researcher quits (permalink)

Joseph Redmon is the creator of YOLO (You Only Look Once), a key Computer Vision technology. He’s just announced his resignation from computer vision work, citing ethical concerns with Facial Recognition.

https://twitter.com/pjreddie/status/1230523827446091776

His thread is really important, calling out the gap between what ML researchers SAY they want to do about ethics and how they actually deal with ethical issues: “basically all facial recognition work would not get published if we took Broader Impacts sections seriously.”

“There is almost no upside and enormous downside risk.” That’s some serious Oppenheimer stuff right there. The kicker? “For most of grad school I bought in to the myth that science is apolitical and research is objectively moral and good no matter what the subject is.”

My interview on adversarial interoperability (permalink)

The Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons podcast (which offers information security advice and analysis for non-technical people) just posted part 2 of our interview on Adversarial Interoperability, Right To Repair, and technological fairness.

http://podcast.firewallsdontstopdragons.com/2020/02/24/adversarial-interoperability-part-2/

Part one went live last week:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1229842619380858885

In this one, I try to explain how John Deere’s war on farm-based repairs is connected to Apple’s war on independent repair, and how consumer choices can’t solve either problem — but collective action can!

It’ll take a movement, not individual action. Thankfully, such a movement exists. EFF’s Electronic Frontier Alliance, a network of groups nationwide working on local issues with national coordination. It’s the antidote to individual powerlessness.

https://www.eff.org/electronic-frontier-alliance/allies

81 Fortune 100 companies demand binding arbitration (permalink)

Binding arbitration was originally created as a way for giant corporations to resolve their disputes with each other without decades-long court battles costing tens of millions of dollars. SCOTUS ratified the principal in 1925: firms of similar size and power could use binding arbitration as an alternative to litigation.

http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/we-now-have-a-justice-system-just-for-corporations

In the century since, corporations have eroded the idea of arbitration as something reserved for co-equals and have turned it into a condition of employment and of being a customer.

In an era of both monopoly and monoposony, it can be hard to find a single employer OR vendor who will conduct business with you unless you first surrender the rights your elected lawmakers decided that you are entitled to.

Today, the largest corporations in the world require you to “agree” to binding arbitration before you can conduct business with them: your monopolistic ISP or cable operator probably does.

As do Walmart, Uber, and Amazon (and not coincidentally, all three have crowded out all the competitors you might choose to take your business to if this strikes you as unfair).

In 2019, SCOTUS ratified the practice.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/13/business/binding-arbitration-consumers/index.html

81 out of the Fortune 100 non-negotiably require binding arbitration if you want to conduct business with them. “Arbitration is often confidential and the outcome doesn’t enter the public record” – if you get screwed you won’t know if it’s a one-off or a pattern.

This is especially pernicious in the realm of US health care. There is ONE pain specialist in all of Southern California that my insurer covers who doesn’t require binding arbitration. When I took my daughter to the ER with a broken bone, they threatened not to treat her unless we signed an arbitration waiver – and that ER is now owned by a PE firm that bought every medical practice in a 10mi radius and now they all do it.

We are literally replacing public courts with private corporate justice, where the “judge” is paid by the company that maimed you, or ripped you off, or killed you.

I’m coming to Kelowna! (permalink)

I’ve never been to Kelwona, BC or anywhere in BC apart from Victoria and Vancouver, so I am SO TOTALLY EXCITED to be appearing in Kelowna for Canada Reads on Mar 5. Please come and say hello! (it’s free!)

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

The event is a collaboration between the Kelowna Public Library and CBC Books, and I’m being emceed and interviewed by Sarah Penton. It’s going to be recorded for airing later as well (I’ll be sure to fold it into my podcast, which you can get here: http://craphound.com/podcast/)

A flat earther commits suicide by conspiracy theory (permalink)

A(nother) flat-earther has tried to prove that the Earth is disc-shaped by launching a homemade rocket. This one (“Mad” Mike Hughes) killed himself by pancaking into the desert.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/daredevil-mad-mike-hughes-dies-homemade-rocket-launch-filmed-tv-n1141286

This is awful. Jokes about “Darwin Awards” don’t change that.

When you scratch a conspiracist, you generally find two things:

Someone who knows chapter-&-verse about real conspiracies (e.g. “If you think antivax is so outlandish, let me tell you about the Sackler family”)

Someone who has been traumatized by conspiracies (belief that the levees were dynamited during Katrina to drown Black neighborhoods are often embraced by people whose family were flooded out in 58 when the levees in Tupelo were dynamited to drown Black neighborhoods).

A belief that the aerospace industry engages in coverups and conspiracies is not, in and of itself, irrational. Aerospace is the land of conspiracies and coverups. Look at the Boeing 737 Max!

Conspiracies are an epiphenomenon of market concentration. “Two may keep a secret if one of them is dead”: the ability to conspire is a collective action problem, wherein linear increases in the number of conspirators yield geometric increases in the likelihood of defections. When an industry is reduced to 3-5 giants, the likelihood is that every top exec at each company worked as a top exec at one or more of the others (to say nothing of the likelihood of intercompany friendships, marriages, etc). Moreover, an industry that concentrated will almost certainly be regulated by its own former execs, as they are likely the only ones qualified to understand its workings.

Many of us were appalled by the sight of the nation’s tech leaders gathered around a table at Trump Tower after the inauguration.

But we should have been even more alarmed by the realization that all the leaders of the tech industry fit around a single table.

We are living in both a golden age of conspiratorial thinking and of actual conspiracies. The conspiracy theories don’t necessarily refer to the actual conspiracies, but “conspiracy” is a plausible idea with a lot of explanatory power in 2020.

We spend a lot of time wondering about how we can fix the false beliefs that people have, but some of our focus needs to be on reducing the plausibility of conspiracy itself. Make industries more competitive and diverse, make regulators more accountable.

Put out the fires, sure, but clear away the brush so that they don’t keep reigniting.

I strongly recommend Anna Merlan’s REPUBLIC OF LIES for more.

https://boingboing.net/2019/09/21/from-opioids-to-antivax.html

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago: Labour MP Brian Sedgemore excoriates his own government’s terror laws in the speech of his lifetime: https://web.archive.org/web/20050227035611/http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmhansrd/cm050223/debtext/50223-21.htm

#10yrsago: How ducks, Nazis and themeparks gave America its color TV transition: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/feb/23/digital-switchover-bbc-spectrum

#5yrsago: Alex Stamos, then CSO of Yahoo, publicly calls out then-NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers on crypto backdoors: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/yahoo-exec-goes-mano-a-mano-with-nsa-director-over-crypo-backdoors/

#5yrsago: A chronology of the Canadian Conservative Party’s war on science under PM Stephen Harper: https://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2013/05/20/the-canadian-war-on-science-a-long-unexaggerated-devastating-chronological-indictment

#5yrsago: Citizenfour, Laura Poitras’s movie about Edward Snowden, wins the Academy Award for best documentary: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/edward-snowden-congratulates-laura-poitras-winning-best-documentary-oscar-citizenfour

#1yrago: Every AOC staffer will earn a living wage: https://www.rollcall.com/2019/02/22/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-call-for-a-living-wage-starts-in-her-office/

#1yrago: Richard Sackler’s “verbal gymnastics” in defending his family’s role in killing 200,000 Americans with opiods: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/02/sackler-behind-oxycontin-fraud-offered-twisted-mind-boggling-defense/

#1yrago: German neo-Nazis use Qanon memes to signal-boost their messages: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-fringe-groups-are-using-qanon-to-amplify-their-wild-messages

#1yrago: French courts fine UBS €3.7b for helping French plutes dodge their taxes: https://www.thelocal.fr/20190220/breaking-french-court-hits-swiss-bank-ubs-with-37-billion-fine-in-french-tax-fraud-case

#1yrago: Apple to close down its east Texas stores to avoid having any nexus with America’s worst patent court: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/22/apple-closing-stores-in-eastern-district-texas/

#1yrago: Small business cancels its unusably slow Frontier internet service, Frontier sticks them with a $4,300 cancellation fee: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/frontier-demands-4300-cancellation-fee-despite-horribly-slow-internet/

#1yrago: Fast food millionaire complains that social media makes kids feel so entitled that they are no longer willing to work for free: https://amp.news.com.au/finance/work/careers/muffin-break-boss-fury-over-youth-who-wont-work-unpaid/news-story/57607ea9a1bbe52ba7746cff031306f2

#1yrago: Apps built with Facebook’s SDK shovel incredible quantities of incredibly sensitive data into Facebook’s gaping maw: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/22/facebook-receives-personal-health-data-from-apps-wsj.html

#1yrago: Super-high end prop horror-movie eyeballs, including kits to make your own: https://fourthsealstudios.com/

#1yrago: EU advances its catastrophic Copyright Directive without fixing any of its most dangerous flaws: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/02/european-governments-approve-controversial-new-copyright-law/

Colophon (permalink)

Today’s top sources: Four Short Links (https://www.oreilly.com/feed/four-short-links), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/”).

Hugo nominators! My story “Unauthorized Bread” is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis Street, with CBC’s Sarah Penton https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, “The Canadian Miracle,” for MIT Tech Review. It’s a story set in the world of my next novel, “The Lost Cause,” a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I’m getting geared up to start work on the novel now, though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I’ve been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world’s prehistory.

Currently reading: I finished Andrea Bernstein’s “American Oligarchs” this week; it’s a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I’m getting really into Anna Weiner’s memoir about tech, “Uncanny Valley.” I just loaded Matt Stoller’s “Goliath” onto my underwater MP3 player and I’m listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/02/10/persuasion-adaptation-and-the-arms-race-for-your-attention/

Upcoming books: “Poesy the Monster Slayer” (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we’re having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

“Attack Surface”: The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

“Little Brother/Homeland”: A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

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adriennemareebrown · 4 years

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what do we do with unthinkable thoughts?

who are we in our unthinkable thinking moments?

how do we adapt together if the clues to our next pivot are unthinkable?

maybe sharing these unthinkable thoughts will help?

i’ll start with the scariest unthinkable thought for me, which is that maybe we are in a state of collective suicidal ideation – the state of thinking about, even planning, the end of us. i have thought this thought many times, for years.

i have ideated suicide in the past, thought it didn’t much matter if i was here or not, and so it didn’t much matter how i treated myself or others. when i was in that phase of ambiguous commitment to life, i took risks with my mind and body that i couldn’t imagine taking now. i practiced cynicism and hopelessness, as if they were the measures of humor, of intelligence. it was a brief phase of my life, but during that time i believed in nothing.

i tried to exit.

i then had to choose life from deep within me. that’s why i’m still here. i want to live. i want to want to live. i think everyone chooses to move towards life or away from it, though some don’t realize that they are making the choice. capitalism makes it hard to see your own direction.

as i have watched the world respond to the pandemic, the borders between nations shift meaning in my mind. i can see which countries choose life, and which don’t. which countries have a majority life-minded citizenship, which countries/regions elect leaders who care for them. which countries pivot at the highest governmental level to protect their people, to guide their people to protect themselves – places with a variety of economies and exposure have found ways to move towards life.

i wonder about the movements in those countries, what it might feel like to live and organize in a place that chooses life.

choosing life means being able to admit we are wrong when new information presents itself about the dangers around and amongst us.

choosing life means committing to the adaptations to stay alive, rather than the stubbornness to stay the same.

the u.s., as a nation, does not choose, or love, life. not yet, and possibly never before now.

other nations, many amongst the most developed in the world, initially shrugged at COVID-19. then they adapted.

the u.s. response has been more egregious than a shrug; it’s been a flagrant disregard, running towards a category five pandemic tornado. it’s meant that those of us who want to live are watching in horror as the mutating coronavirus fills in the pre-existing grooves of collective suicidal ideation and the resistance of those who love life – with climate deniers and corporate polluters on one side, environmental and climate justice movements on the other. white supremacists and patriarchs on one side, solidarity movements in race, ethnicity, class, gender, ability and sexuality arenas on the other.

we are a nation not divided but torn – pulled towards life and pulled towards death.

when i get that torn feeling within, which in recent years comes very rarely, in twinges and whisps, i now recognize it as the suicidal tendency in me. it’s not the truth, not the only truth, not my truth, not the choice i want to make. but the tendency is wiley, using the voices of people i love to make itself heard. i have to be vigilant, listen between the lines, ask: who would benefit from my absence? who benefits from my self-doubt?

our nation has a tendency towards its own destruction, a doubt of its right to exist, that is rooted in our foundation.

i think our movements struggle inside this larger national suicidal tendency – we want to grow, but at the same time some of us don’t believe we will all get there, or get anywhere better, in time. that we can’t, and won’t, put forth the effort.

maybe the idea of our future generations experiencing peace and abundance is not enough to keep us going.

maybe we just need some more immediate signs of life.

maybe we are terrified.

i, we, have to be able to discern what is me/us, and what is fear.

which leads to my next unthinkable thought: do i really know the difference between my discernment and my fear?

my dear friend Malkia teaches me that there is the fear intended to save your life, vs fear intended to end it. what i mean by discernment is the set of noticings, fears, wisdoms, deductions, and gut tremblings that want to save, or even just improve, my life, versus the fear that makes me unable to do anything, which makes me unable to draw on my life force to take action.

do i think i am being discerning when i am actually frozen in place, scared to change?

am i too scared of standing out from the crowd to pause and discern right action?

am i acting from terror?

am i able to discern a decision or action that makes sense?

i was in italy when the pandemic really became clear as a threat to my well-being. i went to one of the places i felt at home. and once i got there, i again found myself freezing, in denial of next moves, as everyone asked me where i was and when i was going home-home or elsewhere.

in my frozen state i would hear just a bit of the news, the new numbers of crisis, and shake my head at the idiots in office, and then numb back out. having quickly identified who i blamed, i was even less able to feel any agency in me. i froze and delayed and froze until i was overwhelmed by the inquiries.

then i had an excellent therapy session where i noticed:

oh. i am afraid. i am afraid that the pandemic is on the rise everywhere and i am going to leave safety for a dangerous unknown. oh! i don’t know what to do!

as soon as i acknowledged i was afraid i was able to move into discernment. my fear became data – i am afraid because the numbers are clear that i am in a safer place than any of the locations i am considering going to. i should stay put, not because i am afraid, but because, as my fear is actually screaming on behalf of my informed intuition, this is the best place to be in this moment.

my fear made me freeze until i had to move. therapy helped me notice i was afraid, deepen my breath, and return to discernment.

i see the same vacillation between fear and discernment in our movements right now, with no therapist in sight.

we are afraid of being hurt, afraid because we have been hurt, afraid because we have caused hurt, afraid because we live in a world that wants to hurt us whether we have hurt others or not, just based on who we are, on any otherness from some long-ago determined norm. supremacy is our ongoing pandemic. it partners with every other sickness to tear us from life, or from lives worth living.

so we stay put and scream into the void, moving our rage across the internet like a tornado that, without discernment, sucks up all in its path for destruction.

our emotions and need for control are heightened during this pandemic – we are stuck in our houses or endangering ourselves to go out and work, terrified and angry at the loss of our plans and normalcy, terrified and angry at living under the oppressive rule of an administration that does not love us and that is racist and ignorant and violent. grieving our unnecessary dead, many of whom are dying alone, unheld by us. we are full of justified rage. and we want to release that rage. and one really fast and easy way to do this is what i experience as a salem witch trial, a false bid for justice, or the even faster method of lynching.

before i move on, i need to acknowledge that these are extreme terms, terms that refer to systems of death. i know that i am speaking of a social destruction, a significantly less extreme consequence – and i am trying to place my finger on a feeling of punitive justice unleashed in our movements.

in our movements, this feeling of punitive justice comes in the wake of call outs of leaders or those with some increased exposure or access. in the past week i have seen people called out for embodying white supremacy in the workplace, for causing repeated or one-time sexual harm, for physical, emotional or digital abuse, for appropriation of ideas and images, for patriarchy, for ableism, for being dishonest, for saying harmful things a decade ago, for doing things that were later understood as harm – for embodying all of the pain that supremacy holds. the call outs generally share one side of what’s happened and then call for immediate consequences. and within a day, the call out is everywhere, the cycle of blame and shame activated, and whoever was called out has begun being punished.

we are afraid, and we think it will assuage our fears and make us safer if we can clarify an enemy, a someone outside of ourselves who is to blame, who is guilty, who is the origin of harm. we can get spun into such frenzy in our fear that we don’t even realize we are deploying the master’s tools.

ah, audre, come in.

we’ve always known lynch mobs are a master’s tool. meaning: moving as an angry mob, sparked by fear (often unfounded or misguided) with the power to issue instant judgment and instant punishment. these are master’s tools.

we in movements for justice didn’t create lynch mobs. we didn’t create witch trials. we didn’t create this punitive system of justice. we didn’t create the state, we didn’t choose to be socialized within it. we want to dismantle these systems of mass harm, and i know that most of us have no intention of ever mimicking state processes of navigating justice.

the master’s tools feel good to use, groove in the hand easily from repeated use and training. but they are often blunt and senseless.

unless we have a true analysis of abolition and dismantling systems of oppression, we will not realize what’s in our hands, we will never put the master’s tools down and figure out what our tools are and can be.

oh – but you can’t say it’s a salem witch trial if it’s all Black and Brown and queer and trans people doing it…

oh – you can’t call it a lynching, because of the power dynamics! it’s a move against someone with more power.

but then – my third unthinkable thought – why does it feel like that? why do our movements more and more often feel like angry mobs moving against ourselves? and what is at stake because of it? why does it feel like someone pointing at someone else and saying: that person is harmful! and with no questions or process or time or breath, we are collectively punishing them?

sometimes we even do it with the language of transformative justice: claiming that we are going to give them room to grow. they need to disappear completely to be accountable. we are publicly shaming them so that they will learn to be better.

underneath this logic i hear: we are dunking her in the water to see if she drowns, because if she drowns then we know she wasn’t a witch. we are hanging him from the tree because then we can pretend we have exorcised ‘bad’ from our town. we are lynching to affirm our rightness.

which isn’t to say that some of the accused aren’t raging white supremacists in movement clothing. or abusers who have slipped through the fingers of accountability. or shady in some other way.

which isn’t to say that a public accounting of harm, and consequences, aren’t necessarily the correct move.

which isn’t to say we don’t believe survivors. because we must.

but how do we believe survivors and still be abolitionist? and still practice transformative justice?

to start with, i have been trying to discern when a call out feels powerful, like the necessary move, versus when it feels like the witch trial/lynch mob energy is leading.

it feels powerful when there have been private efforts for accountability. it feels powerful when survivors are being supported. it feels necessary when the accused has avoided accountability, particularly (but not exclusively) if they have continued to cause harm. it feels necessary when the accused person has significantly more power than the accuser(s) and is using that power to avoid accountability. it feels powerful when the demand is process and consequence based.

it feels like a lynch mob when there are no questions asked. when the survivor’s healing takes a back seat. when there is no attempt to have a private process. when there is no time between accusation and the call for consequences. and when the only consequence is for the accused to cease to exist. when the accused is from one or more oppressed identities. when it feels performative. when the person accused of causing harm does what the survivor/crowd demands, but we keep pulling up the rope.

no inquiry, no questions, no acceptance of accountability, no jury, no time for the learning and unlearning necessary for authentic change…just instant and often unsatisfactory consequences.

a moment on this: one of the main demands i see in call outs is for a public apology. to expect a coherent authentic apology from someone who has been forcibly removed from power or credibility feels like a set up. usually they issue some pr sounding thing and we use that paper as more fuel for the fire at their feet.

i have seen the convoluted denial-accountability-nonapology message from many an accused harm doer, especially when physical or sexual harm is involved. sometimes they are claiming innocence, sometimes they are admitting to some harm, rarely at the level of the accusation. sometimes they say they tried to have a process but it didn’t work, or they were denied. who knows what they mean by process, who knows if the accuser was ready for a process, who knows what actually happened between them, the relational context of the instance or pattern of harm, who knows?

the truth about sexual assault and rape and patriarchy and white supremacy and other abuses of power is that we are swimming in them, in a society that has long normalized them, and that they often play out intimately.

the truth is, sometimes it takes a long time for us to realize the harm that has happened to us.

and longer to realize we have caused harm to others.

the truth is, it isn’t unusual to only realize harm happened in hindsight, with more perspective and politicization.

but there’s more truth, too.

the additional truth is, right now we have the time.

the additional truth is, even though we want to help the survivor, we love obsessing over and punishing ‘villains’. we end up putting more of our collective attention on punishing those accused of causing harm than supporting and centering the healing of survivors.

the additional truth is, we want to distance ourselves from those who cause harm, and we are steeped in a punitive culture which, right now, is normalizing a methodology of ‘punish first, ask questions later’, which is a witch trial, lynching, master’s tool methodology. which, because we are in the age of social media, we now have a way to practice very publicly.

supremacy is the original pandemic, an infectious disease that quietly roots into each of us. we might have supremacy due to race, citizenship, gender, class, ableism, age, access, fame, or other areas where we feel justified to cause harm without consequence, sometimes without even realizing we’ve caused harm, because supremacy is a numbing and narrowing disease.

i want us to let go of the narrowness of innocence, widen our understanding of how harm moves through us. i want us to see individual acts of harm as symptoms of systemic harm, and to do what we can to dismantle the systems and get as many of us free as possible.

often a call out comes because the disease has reached an acute state in someone, is festering in hiding, is actively causing harm. i want us to see the difference between the human and the disease, to see what we are afraid of, in others and in ourselves, and discern a path that actually addresses the root of our justified fears.

this is not a case against call outs – there is absolutely a need for certain call outs – when power is greatly imbalanced and multiple efforts have been made to stop ongoing harm, when someone accused of harm won’t participate in community accountability processes, the call out is a way of pulling an emergency brake.

but it should be a last option. the consequences of being called out at this point are extremely dire and imprecise. the presence of infiltration in our movements is so documented and prevalent. call outs are an incredible modern tool for those who are not committed to movements to use against those having impact.

right now calling someone out online seems like first/only option for a lot of people.

i can’t help but wonder who benefits from movements that engage in public infighting, blame, shame and knee jerk call outs? i can’t help but see the state grinning, gathering all the data it needs, watching us weaken ourselves. meanwhile, the harm continues.

i don’t find it satisfying, and i don’t think it is transformative to publicly call people out for instant consequences with no attempt at a conversation, mediation, boundary setting or a community accountability process with a limited number of known participants.

it doesn’t make sense to say ‘believe all survivors’ if we don’t also remember that most of us are survivors, which includes most people who cause harm. what we mean is we are tired of being silenced, dismissed, powerless in our pain, hurt over and over. yes. but being loud is different from being whole, or even being heard, being cared for, being comforted, being healed. being loud is different from being just. being able to destroy is different from being able to generate a future where harm isn’t happening all around us.

we are terrified of how widespread and active harm is, and it makes us want to point the finger and quickly remove those we can identify as bad. we want to protect each other from those who cause harm.

many of us seem to worry that if we don’t immediately jump on whatever mob wagon has pulled up in our dms, that we will be next to be called out, or called a rape apologist or a white person whisperer or an internalized misogynist, or just disposed of for refusing to group think and then group act. online, we perform solidarity for strangers rather than engaging in hard conversations with comrades.

we are fearful of taking the time to be discerning, because then we may have to recognize that any of us could be seen as harmdoers. and when we are discerning, when we do step up to say wait, let’s get understanding here, we risk becoming the new target, viewed as another accomplice to harm instead of understood as a comrade in ending harm.

perhaps, most dangerously, we are, all together now, teetering on the edge of hopelessness. collective suicidal ideation, pandemic burnout, 45-in-office burnout, climate catastrophe burnout and other exhaustions have us spent and flailing, especially if we are caught in reactive loops (which include the culture of multiple daily call outs) instead of purposeful adaptations. some of us are losing hope, tossed by the tornado, ungrounded and uprooted by the pace of change, seeking something tangible we can do, control, hold, throw away.

the kind of callouts we are currently engaging in do not necessarily think about movements’ needs as a whole. movements need to grow and deepen, we need to ‘transform ourselves to transform the world’*, to ‘be transformed in the service of the work’**. movements need to become the practice ground for what we are healing towards, co-creating. movements are responsible for embodying what we are inviting our people into. we need the people within our movements, all socialized into and by unjust systems, to be on liberation paths. not already free, but practicing freedom every day. not already beyond harm, but accountable for doing our individual and internal work to end harm, which includes actively working to gain awareness of the ways we can and have harmed each other, and ending those cycles in ourselves and our communities.

knee jerk call outs say: those who cause harm cannot change. they must be eradicated. the bad things in the world cannot change, we must disappear the bad until there is only good left.

but one layer under that, what i hear is:

we cannot change.

we do not believe we can create compelling pathways from being harm doers to being healed, to growing.

we do not believe we can hold the complexity of a gray situation.

we do not believe in our own complexity.

we can only handle binary thinking: good/bad, innocent/guilty, angel/abuser, black/white, etc.

it is a different kind of suicide, to attack one part of ourselves at a time. cancer does this, i have seen it – oh it’s in the throat, now it’s in the lungs, now it’s in the bones. when we engage in knee jerk call outs and instant consequences with no process, we become a cancer unto ourselves, unto movements and communities. we become the toxicity we long to heal. we become a tool of harm when we are trying to be, and i think meant to be, a balm.

oh unthinkable thoughts. now that i have thought you, it becomes clear to me that all of you are rooted in a singular longing: i want us to want to live.

i want us to want to live in this world, in this time, together.

i want us to love this planet and this species, at this time.

i want us to see ourselves as larger than just individuals randomly pinging around in a world that will never care for us.

i want us to see ourselves as a murmuration of creatures who are, as far as we know right now, unique in all the universe. each cell, each individual body, itself a unique part of this unique complexity.

i want us not to waste the time we have together.

i want us to look at each other with the eyes of interdependence, such that when someone causes harm, we find the gentle parent inside of us who can use a voice of accountability, while also bringing curiosity – ‘why did you cause harm? do you know? do you know other options? apologize.’ that we can set boundaries that don’t require the disappearance of other survivors. that we can act towards accountability with the touch of love. that when someone falls behind, we can use a parent’s voice of discipline while also picking them up and carrying them for a while if needed.

i want us to adapt from systems of oppression and punishment to systems of uplifting and transforming.

i want us to notice that this is a moment when we need to choose life, not surrender to the incompetence and hopelessness of our national leadership.

i want us to be discerning.

i want our movement to feel like a vibrant, accountable space where causing harm does not mean you are excluded immediately and eternally from healing, justice, community or belonging.

i want us to grow lots and lots of skill at holding the processes by which we mend the wounds in our communities and ourselves.

i want satisfying consequences that actually end cycles of harm, generate safety and deepen movement.

i want us to hold Black humanity to the highest degree of protection, even when we have caused harm. i want us to see each other’s trauma-induced behavior as ancestral and impermanent, even as we hold each other accountable.

i want us to be particularly rigorous about holding complexity and accountability well for Black people in our movement communities who are already struggling to keep our heads above water and build trust and move towards life under the intersecting weights of white supremacy, racialized capitalism, police brutality, philanthropic competition culture, and lack of healing support.

i never want to see us initiate processes for Black accountability where those who are not invested in Black life can see it, store it, weaponize it. replace Black in that sentence with any other oppressed peoples and i still feel the same way. it is not strategic, and, again, it is rarely satisfying.

i want us to ask who benefits from our hopelessness, and to deny our oppressors the satisfaction of getting to see our pain. i want them to wonder how we foment such consistent and deep solidarity and unlearning. i want our infiltrators to be astounded into their own transformations, having failed to tear us apart.

i want us to acknowledge that the supremacy and suicidal ideation and hopelessness and harm are everywhere, and make moves that truly allow us to heal into wholeness.

because against all odds in space and time? we. are. winning.

we are winning in spite of the tsunami of pressures against us. we are moving towards life in spite of everything that wants us to give up.

we in movement must learn to choose life even in conflict, composting the bad behaviors while holding the beating hearts.

choosing life includes asking: do i have the necessary information to form an opinion? do i have the time to seek understanding? what does the survivor need? did a conversation/process already happen? is a conversation/process possible? how do we be abolitionist while gaining accountability here? who benefits from me doubting that movement can hold this? who could hold this well? what will end the cycle of harm here?

we must learn to do this before there is no one left to call out, or call we, or call us.

….

thank you deeply to shira hassan and malkia devich cyril for loving feedback on this piece.

* grace lee Boggs ** mary hooks

#IFTTT #WordPress

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