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the-lady-writes-what · 1 year

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Warning: Long essay below the cut

Real talk about Harry Potter for a second. As a millennial who was into HP when I was younger, I have to honest and say that I did not see the problematic shit the J.K. Rowling put in her books. For a lot of us, growing up as a white kid in the early 2000's, we were not educated enough to see the anti-Semitism, racism, and lukewarm feminism that wasn't really feminism because Rowling made fun of Hermione for it. Watching the spiral of Rowling into TERF territory and aligning herself with people who reference Hitler in their TERF speeches and literal fascism breaks my heart. HP played a huge part in my childhood, as it did for many people. Sadly there are HP adults who continue to enable Rowling to use her platform for evil. Instead of looking back and dissecting the literature that formed our current mindset, there are people who grew up to be nasty people indirectly because HP taught them that anyone who complains about the system is doing progressive social justice wrong. Harry Potter became a wizard cop for the system that helped put Voldemort in a position of power. Hitler didn't rise to power out of the blue. He worked the current system in his favor and won support. He wasn't just some manipulative well spoken mastermind, he was using rhetoric that already existed. The criticism about the politics in the HP universe came far too late. We currently have numerous adults who are now currently voting to repress Black and queer history from schools, LGBTQ+ education, and criminalize being trans and gay in several states in the USA.

Not every adult who read HP became a fascist, not every adult who is fascist read HP. I'm certainly not saying that HP is solely the reason why anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes are currently on the rise again and legislations are trying to get passed. What I am saying is that this is what happens when you don't think critically what you read. Critical analysis about what books are produced and by whom can help deter or enable the kind of ideas that Rowling associates with. Her brand of "progressiveness" is seen through the lens of an upper middle class and upper class white British woman. She largely benefits from a system that will come to be the shoulder for her to cry on when the internet "bullies" her, i.e when the internet and former fans try to hold her accountable for the inflammatory things she's said and written about trans people, women, Jews, POC, etc. I am not a saint in all of this either. My first book that I wrote which will never see the light of day again contained an Indian servant because I thought about historical "accuracy" which looking on it now was a load of shit. What I should have done in the first place was do critical research and properly acknowledge the racism and discrimination and imperialism of the British Empire. That character should not have existed and I deeply regret writing a story like that, even if my intention was not to further enable a white-washed history of the relationship between the British aristocracy and the people of India. Whether it was my intention or not, the fact that I wrote it was not okay. I am sorry for that. That book is no longer available and the remaining physical copies will stay with me. They aren't going anywhere. Moving forward, I will do better research and listen to the voices of people of color when it comes to writing characters outside of my own race.

Rowling has yet to learn that lesson towards trans people and keeps using the debunked conspiracy theory that "men dressed as women" will sexually assault someone in the ladies' room and take up female-dominated spaces. Transwomen are women. End of story. It seems that the more she is criticized for upholding anti-trans beliefs and conspiracy theories, the deeper she digs her heels in. She doesn't want to be corrected or told she's misinformed. The die hard fans of hers follow suit. Adult fans of HP have gone to assault and abuse transwomen, forgetting the soft-spoken message of the books they claim to love so much, that you should not hate people for who they are. I say soft-spoken because HP's message of anti-bigotry can hardly be called as such. It is spoken through the lens of upper class wealthy white woman's perspective of social justice and feminism. I say soft-spoken, and even limp-wristed, because its anti-bigotry message falls flat when discussing the numerous problematic and racist undertones in her writing. She wrote house elves as sentient creatures who want to be enslaved and made fun of Hermione for fighting for their freedom. She wrote the main characters to be all straight, white, and cis who later become part of the very system they fought against as children. The magical races in the Wizarding World universe are frequently looked down upon as if they're lesser than the human wizards and nothing is done for them. She did little to no research on non-European naming conventions and named the one East Asian character Cho Chang, combining a Korean and Chinese name as if the cultures are synonymous, named a black character Kingsley Shacklebolt, and allowed the Fantastic Beast franchise make Nagini (a South Asian name with cultural and religious significance) an Indonesian woman played by a South Korean actress. As if insult wasn't enough, Nagini is portrayed as a submissive Asian woman (stay classy Rowling!) who later dies at the hands of a white character to move the plot forward.

I wrote this fucking essay because Rowling is hurting so many people. Her kind of rhetoric which is a pandemic of hate towards trans people is hurting those I know. Two of my dearest friends are transwomen and I would fight tooth and nail for them. Hearing the author who wrote the books that got me interested in reading say things that accuse my friends of being men and wanting to assault women hurts them more than me and it infuriates me. She is one of the many reasons why diversity in reading is important so her mistakes don't get repeated and regurgitated. When you're a dumb white kid in the 2000's, you don't see the problematic stuff because you're not personally affected by it. Nobody can be racist against a white kid. And when authors like Rowling get praised in spite of the insensitive stereotypes and problematic shit in their books, it really is no wonder that we have a resurgence of hate crimes and rhetoric against LGBTQ+ folk and POC. The books didn't materialize out of thin air. There were so many editors who have had to go through the books and said, "Yep. That's fine" when she was writing offensive names for POC characters, anti-Semitic goblins, and having the white main characters join the system that put wizard Hitler into power.

It hurts to let something like HP go and die a slow painful death. It was a huge part of my childhood and got me into reading books. I might not be the reader I am today without those books. Because I will never be affected by the system in which people of color, trans folk, and the Jewish community are oppressed and I admit to being very privileged, I did not recognize the numerous red flags in J.K. Rowling's body of work until it was too late. For that I am sorry. The damage is done, but I'm trying to do better by listening and protecting my friends, trans or otherwise. J. K. Rowling can go fuck herself.

#i'm here once again writing an essay nobody asked for #lady writes what runs her mouth again #this blog is anti TERF #transwomen are women #end of story #harry potter discourse #HP #why i left the HP fandom for good #writing discourse #authorship discourse #another fucking essay

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kasaron · 3 years

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You're not doing anymore drunk Q&A but for as much as I genuinely loved the Crow story from the past 2 seasons and this new season has some interesting stuff, it's basically become ELIKSNI PURE INNOCENT BABIES LAKSHMI LITERALLY ORANGE TRUMP HITLER. For as much as I want to like guys like Mithraax, him trying to make Saint-14 feel bad pissed me off. Yeah, you SHOULD fear the man who was motivated into action by watching your kind eat human babies. Never forget that fear because he'll fucking do it again if he has to. As much as I'd love a Fallen/Human/Cabal alliance, the lack of any genuine remorse from either side is a major sticking point for me. This is OUR god damned planet. You came here to kill us all and caused the collapse of our planet. Either shut the fuck or get the fuck out of our solar system.

TBH Lakshmi is a bit more than Orange Hitler, cause her prediction machine shit has been a thing, as has been the whole Faction system.

It did give me a but of an eye roll, here and there, but it's a lot less on the nose than I would have expected, and it isn't "wah Eliksni innocent," they openly acknowledge that holy shit the stuff the Fallen got up to wasn't just fucked, it was Nazi levels of fucked, but not all of them did it, and there was (and is) a lot of horrible shit to go around.

It's more of a "Holy Damn the Dark Ages were BAD, People ate Fallen, Fallen ate People, war crimes everywhere," which is also in line with [REDACTED] that happens later which I hope we use as a way to say "Some shit is unforgivable, I'm coming for you, you fuckstick."

Like, that would be good writing, revenge story, retribution story, realization story, then a "Ok, I can forgive these people cause I trust them but FUCK you. Fuck you fuck you fuck you you triangle headed black hole sitting four hundred faced bitch" story.

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rue-bennett · 4 years

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Tiny rant out of the blue, feel free to ignore. What I think people don't understand about this election is that it literally determines whether progressivism will survive or not. If the turnip wins this election, he will finish stocking the courts with far right justices and that's it. They can do whatever they want and that is scary. So many people are complaining that they will vote third party or not at all because Biden is not a leftist or as liberal as Sanders or Warren and that is just

so dangerous. It's become this push and pull thing that really needs to stop. No one is willing to meet in the middle. I wanted Warren to be the nominee, I was so disappointed when she dropped out of the primaries before I got a chance to vote for her (NY holds their primaries so fecking late). So I completely understand the apprehension but it's either get the turnip and his admin out NOW or get yourselves ready for 50 years of absolute hell. It may not be so bad now but most of us are coming from a place of privilege. It will not stay 'neutral' or whatever in the next four years. We can not afford another protest vote election. And the people that say that they don't have to vote because they live in a blue state or a swing state that usually flips blue? All it takes is just a handful of those protest votes for everything to go to hell. The thing is, it's not just the turnip that goes in Nov. It's the whole administration! The whole freaky muppet show will finally be over. Gosh, I'm sorry for this long ass rant. Thank you so much for putting up with my annoying self, Kyra, lol. /End.

Hey, so I took even longer to answer this than I said, but I wanted to avoid adding to all the DNC blogging the past few days. I agree with you completely. We don’t have to put our ideals on the back burner, we aren’t giving up our progressivism...we are voting to keep it alive, as you said. Like...do you vote for, you know, a middle ground kinda guy, or fucking Hitler? It’s not something to mess around with. I think everyone knows this, I was for Bernie, but you know what? I’m voting early for Biden. Because a vote withheld or third party or write-in is a vote for Trump. Full stop.

He is already cheating the fuck outta this election, way more than the last one. He cheated to win last time. It’s not a time to take a stand by acting like Biden is just as bad, because he’s just not. He’s not ideal but you know what? He’s a saint compared to Trump. He’s what we’ve got. We have a president who is fucking saying it’s okay to murder BLM protesters. Who’s let almost 200k and counting people die from a virus that could’ve been prevented, but he continues to show himself. It’s beyond frustrating. Yup...we will only get even worse presidents than Trump after him if Biden doesn’t get in this year. This shit doesn’t go away. It’s been building up since Bush really, with the Tea Party and all. I can’t wait for this to be over and god do I hope it is in November.

Please don’t apologize, I’m glad there are other rational people out there! I understand not wanting to compromise morals or whatever, but you know fucking what? Lots of leftists are using Trump talking points against Biden. And that’s dangerous and very bad. Just...no. I wish I could stop it. This election is quite literally life or death for everyone who isn’t part of the ruling class, and especially for people of color and minorities.

#i agree with everything you said #politics #joe biden #jediorgana #asks

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badmousestuff-blog · 5 years

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The problem with Free Speech (Script)

One day I was helping out with the Free Palestine stall on Church Street. About an hour in a young dude came up to me, and gave us the usual conservative drivel.

He told me that he couldn’t support the left, because to him we were against free speech. Right below me were flyers detailing the extent of Israeli war crimes against Palestinians, and how little the world still hears about their plight. He stated that he wasn’t interested in our campaign, and bid me farewell. For, of course we must have our standards.

(Rowan Atkinson speech)

There’s never been a more unshakeable dogma in my lifetime than that of Freedom of Speech.

The real test of a country’s standards is if it allows people to criticise one another, especially the regime. The foundation of Liberty and Freedom and Friberty, is the story of free expression, after all, if you want to know who has the power, just look at which group you’re not allowed to criticise. Right?

Well no, I’m here to say that Free Speech isn’t just some base, flatline, monolith from which all societies are to be judged like an angelical truth, its a political concept, thought up by human beings, subject to critique, and frankly is in great need of one.

Let’s start with something simple.

Your concept that Free Speech is good, is only possible if your opponent also agrees with you, i.e. they’re not going to kill you if you disagree.

So therefore if your opponent doesn’t ?? and will use aggression against you, then you can’t really argue for free speech can you?

The conditions around you need to be such that nobody is going to die.

Right, whats next, oh I gotta do the Hitler bit, right…

Y’know the story, Weiner Republic, Full suffrage, large democracy, massive instability and debt caused from the prior war, enter the Nazis, and the German Communist party. Yes everyone seems to forget that the Commies were there too, headed by Ernst Thalmann, and at their peak gained 16% of the vote in 1932. Whilst Ernst was forward in his Anti-Fascism, the Social Democrats, and their newspapers, didn’t seem to understand the concept of a united front, they refused to confront the Fascists in an effective manner and simultaneously denounced the KDP as being a bunch of Muscovites, sporting the famous Iron Front symbol, The third arrow originally meant Anti-Communism, mind.

The SPD’s failure to effectively confront Fascism aided Hitler’s rise to power, sent the KDP underground, and Ernst to 11 years in the hole, followed by a firing squad.

So don’t tell me free-speech exists in vacuum, it doesn’t. In this video we’ll ask the necessary further questions.

Who dictates the media, who controls which advertisements we see, which views are more profitable? Does the removal of speech in given scenarios serve a common good? And if the enlightenment was correct why did Liberalism fail in its mission?

(Rowan Atkinson)

This clip was one of the first main intro points for me as well as many others into the realm of Super Free Speech, and it’s strange looking back just how dated it is. It’s not like we didn’t have the arguments back then, but moreso that nobody really cared, we were all swept up in the dogma, to challenge free speech would be on the same level as strangling a baby.

Anybody can go around today and talk about the joy of free speech, but it means nothing to a person who has no power with that speech, Freedom to Beg? That's not a freedom; that’s institutionalised sadism.

I’m not a believer in Maslow’s hierarchy but hypothetically, this really wouldn’t go number 2, it’d be right down at number… 27. Why do I say this? Well in the words of some philosophy guy people say I look like, “No rights matter if you’re dead”.

Food, Water, Healthcare, and Housing. These are all things you need in order to survive, in other words fulfil the other things that we consider ‘rights’ - rights that are worth struggling for. And despite the fact that the millions end up dying from the lack of these rights, even when they’re universally agreed upon, ever notice how this struggle goes very very quiet… Suspiciously quiet.

Sargon on the Socialists

I wonder…??? I wonder why the left seems to be largely committed to these causes, it’s something you find scantly addressed in the middle and right spheres with the exception of private individual charity (OSCAR WILDE), and Carl may find himself wondering why it is that these ideologies can barely create a solid solidarity towards these topics.

You might be a Liberal and say “Yeah yeah, I support that too though” but fact remains there’s no confidence here.

I see no outpouring of condemnation coming from you when Politicians like Bolsonaro press forward their restrictive measures, unlike what you have to say about this powerless Redhead. Why is that?

Count Dankula, who interestingly I had a couple scuffles with a while back without realising it, last year taught his dog to do a Hitler Salute, and he got fined £800. Now that’s probably one of the most petty excuses for a sentencing I’ll admit, but again this isn’t about whether it was justified, it’s about people’s standards.

Dankula received enormous support from, well, everyone, and he’s now more famous than he ever previously was, enough to be at the forefront of the free-speech festival later that year, and even use his fame to help push the emergence of UKIP. This is attention that people would pay top dollar for, way more than £800. He should be proud that he got a court hearing.

Frankly, me and my colleagues didn’t really care about this whole thing too much, just ask my IWW friend who I was with when this all went down. What happened around the same time that did catch some of our attention though was the plight of the J20 protesters who got arrested back during Trump’s inauguration.

Some of these people are on the butchers list to serve 60 year sentences for standing against a president who’s, a real dick, like I get the whole Liberal opposition is fucking corny but still he’s a dick, they’ve all been dicks, he’s just continuing what every dick who ever stood on centre stage ever started, this is America, you think Bernie’s going to save you? You think reforming the democrats can change the number one imperialist power?

Apologies. If you’re at all concerned that I didn’t give a toss about Dankula’s pug joke, if you’ve ever had friends like him this stuff isn’t too surprising, I know these are highly political times but a guy who votes UKIP is really not our number one concern right now.

I didn’t give a toss, but I know somebody who did, Mike Stuchbury, who you’ll remember from his childish twitter ramblings and dealings with Watson. Who proclaimed that the left needs to stand with Free Speech, A free-speech that is largely in the teat of Right-leaning discourse.

Sargon who was there with him, earlier that year got de-platformed by lefty-liberals in his debate with Muke.

The dogma is enforcing itself here, the left is all supposed to throw up our hands in swich liquor, of which vertu engendered is the flour, and decide Whether we should allow freedom of speech to our enemies, or not allow it, when the actual thing we should be doing, is taking hold of the narrative and putting forward our own ideas as the new talking point of discussion, instead of fucking Nazi Pug.

“Hey, you, what gives you the right to determine the narrative?”

Thats a good question, the hegemonic propaganda of our status quo is already setting the narrative, Noam Chomsky “I’m bored bye”

How can I make this more interesting… Ah ha…

IT’S TIME FOR FILM THEORY!!1 WOOOO

The Pursuit of Happiness.

In 2006 Will Smith told the story of Chris Gardner, a black man who struggled through poverty, separation, and fatherhood whilst living in San Francisco.

He gets an internship with a sales company and despite having to put up with a lot, by the end of the film he passes and at this point, we’re supposed to feel happy and redeemed, but to those who’ve watched it (surely I’m not alone) was it really a happy ending?

I’ll say that I walked out of the viewing feeling very uncomfortable and sour, but why is that?

Well for starters, that Internship he got was a 6 month unpaid one, in the most expensive US city might have something to do with it.

Then he’s got to deal with his wife leaving him, then he’s got to take care of his son, then he loses his source of income, then he’s got to deal with eviction, sleeping rough, not sleeping at all, by the end of the movie sure he gets his redemption but the message of ‘when life gives you lemons, just keep getting pummelled with those lemons and don’t ask why’ ultimately seems hollow.

Contrast that a more traditionally Anti-establishment film which was made by a literal Communist, where the exploiters are treated as they should be and thats what comes across on screen, with surprise horse-dick, and while Happiness doesn’t treat them like saints, they sure don’t come across as devils either.

6 months of free labour he and 19 other people who did not make the cut that they are effectively giving away for free.

What about those other 19 people, who ever tells their story?

The way his superiors always act like total dicks pushing him around and getting him to be their lobby boy, they lost nothing. And now he’s going to work for them.

Is the message here supposed to be “Well if this guy can survive the moon falling on him, what the hell are you complaining about?” Actually yeah, I think that consciously or not, this is what’s being said… Don’t worry we’re getting to the point of all this.

The extent of exploitation is naked, yet in the way the movie is presented I’m inclined to agree to this, and take it into my home, and sleep with it.

Now name me as many pieces of media that regurgitate this same old theme of rags to riches through adversity, to look at the man on centre stage, yet pay no attention to the millions locked in a cage.

Sure, say it how you will, Art is merely what you make of it and there’s not necessarily any devious agenda being pursued at any time. That’s one perspective I guess, another might be that there’s no such thing as Art for Arts sake, it all gears itself to differing political lines.

In a society based on private, individual enterprise, it's no surprise that Art would also foster themes that would support society as the normal and natural, even if they appear on the surface as radical.

Case in point, well the entire Hollywood Catalog.

On the Waterfront is literally Mccarthyism on celluloid, The People vs Larry Flynt guises pornification and billionairedom with a story of libel and freedom of speech.

And ironically enough probably the worst offender is, well I’m gonna lose some of you now, Billy Elliot, the Movie.

In which 2/3rds of the way through Billy’s dad strike breaks as a way to pay for his son to go to a prestigious arts school, y’know rather than maybe having him stay and use his skills to improve, embolden and enliven the downtrodden community, rather than leaving it to die.

Jackie’s very sympathetic in his devotion towards his son, except Striking is caring for your family, you’re fighting for a better future, together, as one, and it’s thrown away in favour of a much more individualistic get out of your circumstances, go and live your dream.

Now I’ve read Lee Hall, I know he didn’t intend for this to come through, but he is also no more aloof than any of us, we’re all susceptible to this ‘Common Culture’.

Just see the way our ‘Common Culture’ infiltrates into how Communism is talked about, in 2015’s Trumbo. The Hollywood screenwriter who was blacklisted for 2 decades for being a member of Communist Party.

Could make for some groundbreaking stuff right?...

Well no, instead we’re left with a film that focuses entirely on freedom of expression, which is ironic because if they represented him truthfully it would’ve resulted in a much more nuanced movie.

All we get is a 2 minute scene talking about Communist ethics and god its done in the most sanitised, unradical, storybook tale way possible, that doesn’t in any possible regard represent who the actual Dalton Trumbo was.

“If a book or play or film is produced which is harmful to the best interests of the working class, that work and its author should and must be attacked in the sharpest possible terms.”

I think I have a case that profit incentives are steering the way in which media is presented…

We have no problem pointing out the subtle propaganda messages in Soviet children’s cartoons (Cheburashka) but reverse that onto our society, prepare for some awkward stares.

You may argue that none of what I’ve just spoken about here has anything to do with censorship of free expression but this is the problem, our notions of censorship are stuck firmly behind the Berlin wall, and thats far too simplistic not to mention outdated.

Undoubtably Coca-cola has a far greater reach of expression than I ever will be able to ascertain, what says who can speak on a public forum, decide the content of a documentary, of a publication, of a movie, or a political campaign?

If a book is blacklisted by all publishers for political reasons, what difference does it make having 1 publishing house or 100?

If 90% of the movie market alone is controlled by just 7 companies, what kind of advice is “Just start your own business”.

If we want to talk about the free flow of expression and information, what little are these flyers (Free Palestine) when Zionism has a whole nation, and 2 continents supporting it?

This is the kind of expression we’re dealing with today, not the voices of individuals, but of multinationals. The fact that we had in any way an outpouring of sympathies towards one of these companies, Sony, for having their movie The Interview possibly censored by DPRK agents is a testament to how lost in the plot we have become.

And if by chance the media cannot direct the status quo by monopoly, it brings out its tried and tested method.

Commodify it.

I present to you Guerrillero Heroico, this photograph was allowed such free spread not simply because its bloody badass, but because there was no IP designated upon it, by Korda’s intention as a Communist himself he agreed with the free-flow of art. And what did this result in at the behest of Capitalist Corporations? The pastiche of revolution, to be bought and sold many times over.

Take any form of media, word, an expression, it will be hoisted away, slapped on a shirt, and sold back to you at a handsome price. You cannot escape this.

The moment that this (my tattoo) becomes the new Che it loses all its power, resistance is reduced to at worst LARPing, at best Nerd Fandom, and the winners are the profiteers.

If profit is the aim of the game, the speech that is supported will inevitably favour that which nurtures the economy, not destroys it, unless in farce. Speech ain’t a level base of which a country is determined by, its an apparatus held by those that dictate the game.

This is why there is a necessity for us to control the narrative, control the message, because if we don’t, they’re still going to.

Obligations:

When armies with unequal numbers go into battle, a draw is a defeat for the lesser side.

Make believe it or not Radical Centrist politics have their political leanings as well, even if just by effect.

Look I like free speech, I love it, I’m a goddamn youtuber, but I’m not stupid, I know what’s coming, I know that groups would try and silence me if they could. That’s politics.

You might go “All we’re talking about is the legal sphere”. Firstly the legal is the political, pure ideology to say otherwise, but second it’s difficult for you to call yourself a fighter for free speech when as I’ve explained there’s sooo much more to it than simply the judicial.

Many proponents will even side-step the judicial boundaries anyway when monopoly becomes involved, and if I have to explain how Monopoly is not an externality of our system but an inherent part of accumulation then… sigh.

Strange how we’re usually all skeptical of an Economic Free Market but the Free marketplace of ideas unlocks your inner Libertarian.

Its when I see stuff like this that I begin wondering if this is all just a trend that will eventually die off when people realise the complexities of their circumstances. I remember just a few years ago how many Libertarians were speaking the merits of free speech until they discovered that methodological individualism wasn’t actually achieving their goals. I count down the days when Lauren Southern finally calls for limits on speech just like her limits on borders. After all freedom is not free it must be defended right?

And btw folks usually aren’t as brave to actively advocate limits so they’ll always present justifications, such as that these views are mental disorders, or they’ll destroy civilisation, or these people are Degenerates.

This is a historic moment in political discourse, at this point ultimately we’re interested in picking sides, and you’ll do this just as much as anyone will.

On the left we like to talk a lot about Left Unity. I’m not necessarily against the idea, but a lot of the time people make a religion out of it, glossing over the fact that many aspects of various factions (???) contradict. It might not be immediately obvious, but when push comes to shove these conflicts become very apparent. There are some principles in which each side certainly doesn’t see eye to eye.

“Politics is pervasive, everything is political and the choice to remain apolitical is usually just an endorsement of the status quo”

If it wasn’t obvious, I’m a Communist, yeah yeah say what you want, I believe in the liberation of those who do all the work through armed struggle based upon material conditions. I’m going to therefore be in favour of real mass culture, the stuff that gets people focused on achieving liberating aims instead of just appealing to markets. Its for this reason that I’m not interested in defending the views of right-wing nationalists, fascists, reactionaries… my enemies in other words, the ideas largely speaking which regress the people and they’re not interested in defending me either, wouldn’t expect them to.

If all you’re talking about is the centre, you’re gonna get flanked, sorry.

You might bump in when I denounce Dankula stating “His punishment showcases the system is at fault” and I would agree. This system is at fault, its been at fault since before our constitution was written, and it’ll never stop being at fault until you solve the contradictions.

Liberalism did fail, its ideals never came to fruition and that’s the reason why Socialists bring forth the praxis to achieve it, sometimes that’ll involve using words, sometimes it’ll involve lots and lots of guns, but let me tell you, you can’t always fight a war by playing nice, sometimes you have to use a diversity of tactics to achieve it.

Maybe we need 11 of them? (Shows book)

But thats more of a material answer and I know that most you don’t give a crap about some dead Chinese guy., but getting back to the original idea about responsibilities behind our speech, well, here’s something to think about.

So… here goes nothing.

If you’re a straight white male aged 11-16 in the UK and weren’t brought up to fit into the standard male dynamic, chances are you got picked on, sometimes a lot, sometimes that’s every day, not necessarily violence but words from numerous mouths are highly unnerving.

I did not have a particularly fun time adolescence. Every day was horrible, I never had a feeling going in that this would be exciting or, this would be a day where things would be different, everyday was a total black smudge with no end in sight.

Unlike other people, I never got to have a group that I fit into, so I had no escape, nothing to take my mind off things.

Looking back I don’t know why I bothered going in, I wasn’t getting amazing grades anyway.

When I went to Drama school and other clubs on the weekends and after school, I would also get picked on, but it wasn’t in spite, it was just general, friendly teasing. But there wasn’t a difference in my mind, because when you’ve had to deal with so much constant abuse, and paranoia, and humiliation 30 hours a week, it fucks you up.

So when Id say to the weekend buds “I dont like this” theyd go “Oh come on man its just a bit of fun, its okay, dont worry about it, its just a joke, its all okay”

Back then I didn’t have the nerve, I just put up with it, but if I could go back, Id say. No, actually its not Okay, because you don’t know for the life of me how much I have had to deal with this shit, to me that doesn’t come across like you’re being funny, like your laughing with me, it comes across like you’re a psychopath who wants to get pleasure out of my misfortune.

Of course the response to this would be obvious “Well what am I supposed to do? Just talk to you like a robot. You should just get over it, leave it in the past. Your making it harder for everyone” or some other faux-victimised response.

And sometimes y’know they might be right, maybe I should’ve not made worse a bad situation, but fact remains I still bleed.

To you, this is just having fun and games, to you and your other friends its normal, but to me its a threat.

Now today you can call me what you want I don’t care, I’m out of that place now and I’m all the better for it,

But even though some 7 or 8 years since then I’ve been able to recover, I still carry a hangover of it all, and it affected my decisions later on in life sometimes to a dire extent,

Its had the effect of making me feel both distrustful of people, and also like Im a burden to be around other people,

I never feel I should hang around for too long, I never want to take chances in friendship for fear I’ll embarrass myself, I say one thing out of tempo and suddenly flashbacks and an enormous shadow of mordor conjures over me. And I think most of all its been very difficult for me to express my emotions because I used to do it a hell of a lot.

Those 5 years were the single handed worst years of my life. And if you were at any point responsible for adding to that devastation and humiliation, then a large part of me wants to lash your goddamn skull inside out.

Because as trivial and generic as my story may be, that part of my life has been stolen from me, and those 5 years I will never get back.

So what’s the point of all this?

“Ossidents are sometimes surprised that, instead of buying a dress for their wife, the colonized buy a transistor radio. They shouldn't be, the colonized are convinced their fate is in the balance. They live in a doomsday atmosphere and nothing must elude them”

I want you to place the relatively minor experiences I received as a child, and translate those into other groups, victims of domestic abuse, victims of colonialism, racism, sexism, queer phobia. Like I said I’m out of that place now, but others aren’t, for many people they still live day to day in this ever pressing struggle, trying to just tell people “Please, just don’t do this”.

It’s not okay. But maybe together you’ll help me out with solving these problems?

My conclusion to this is simple,

Free Speech is not just something you can fling around to score political points, it doesn’t materialise simply because we all decide it should. If we want free-speech we need to break a few eggs to make an omelette.

We need to be sure that the conditions in society don’t proliferate toxic ideas that might even lead to the downfall of said society.

This very Tattoo that 90 years ago would’ve been Anti-Communist as hell has become a Pan-Left symbol against Fascism. Its living proof that with the correct methods the conditions of words, symbols, ideas can be resolved.

When class struggle subsides, when our social divides have been solved, when the conflict doesn’t oppose the existence of certain folks, then maybe, we can well and truly say that we can have free speech, and we’ll stand at a comedy show and yell “Yes, lets talk about those BEEP BEEEEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP” and be met with cheering applause from all sides. But until then, Don’t be a dick.

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jbk405 · 5 years

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Discovery is just wearing me down

I’m starting to just grow tired with this series, and “Saints of Imperfection“ does not help. This episode...it actually made me honest-to-god angry. Nothing made sense, either from a critical perspective or from an internal continuity perspective.

I love Michelle Yeoh -- love her -- and she plays the Terran Emperor beautifully, but it makes no damn sense for her to be on the show as an operative of Section 31. She isn't a "dirty deeds" operative that Starfleet can work with temporarily because Desperate Times and all that, she's SPACE HITLER. We have seen her carpet bomb a planet from orbit. Execute her own adjutants just for being present when she learned secret information. Commit genocide on-screen. She literally eats people. This isn't the same as the Allies taking German scientists after WWII and putting them to work on the US Space program, this is as though they took Heinrich Himmler and put him in charge of the CIA and even renamed it to the SS. If the writers wanted her as an enemy I could buy that, they could even weave that into Burnham's plotline as she faces the consequences of her impulsive desire to save her from the Mirror Universe, but even pretending to be an ally is offensive. At least -- at least -- Burnham seems to realize that she is Capital-E Evil, but even with Starfleet's long history of truly stupid admiral's I can't buy them being this stupid.

From the same perspective, it makes no damn sense at all that Ash Tyler be here as an official member of Section 31. Even allowing that Voq's personality has been completely excised, he still has all of Voq's memories and history which makes him compromised as all hell. Starfleet should not, cannot, trust him to work in the Federation's best interest. This is Intelligence 101: You do your best to recruit as many enemy officers as possible and grow your ranks of double-agents, but you never forget that they are double-agents. No intelligence agency ever lets defectors operate with impunity, and it is ridiculous that they do so here. He should be an asset, not an agent.

For the franchise and continuity, establishing that Section 31 isn't an off-the-books black ops organization, but is actually a publicly acknowledged and sanctioned intelligence organ of the Federation makes no sense. The Federation has an intelligence organ: It's freaking called Starfleet Intelligence. It's existed in the franchise for decades, we've seen them operate against criminal threats and foreign powers and internal conspiracies. The point of Section 31 has been that they aren't official, that they aren't sanctioned, and that they do the ugly things so that the blind sheep who live in the Federation can smugly think their hands aren't bloody. If you're ignoring that and just saying that they're another branch of Starfleet Intelligence then what's the point?

The interpersonal conflicts of the episode didn't make sense either. Ash is offended that he's being shadowed by security aboard the Discovery, when he used to be a security officer and so he should know that even if he didn't deserve it (And he totally does) it'd be standard procedure anyway. Then he and Burnham march onto the bridge while Stamets is giving his briefing (And why the hell is he giving the briefing on the bridge? They have a room specifically set aside for briefings: It is literally called the Briefing Room) and seem completely unprepared for the way that Stamets reacts to seeing Ash again. Ash killed Stamets' husband, even if Stamets has accepted that Ash isn't to blame they should have fucking known it would still be a big to deal to unexpectedly see Ash walk through the door. They don't give any warning? Not even a text message?

Then there's the bizarre hostility between Pike and Leland who are apparently supposed to be old friends but act as though they hate each other. And the episode tries to say that it's because of what happened during this episode which quickly soured their relationship, but nothing did happen. At one point Pike says that if he didn't know better he'd say that Leland was threatening him, but I cannot figure out how any of what Leland said could be construed as a threat. When Ash calls in Leland's ship to help Discovery Pike angrily asks what took Leland so long and all I can think is "Because you didn't ask". Leland literally showed up five seconds after he got the distress call, what the fuck more do you want? It was completely pointless friction that is supposed to be "The squeeky-clean officers can't handle what the black ops spy has to do" and yet none of that ever came through.

Tilly and May...it was good for a bit with Tilly absolutely furious and not letting it go, and absolutely freaking out about being attacked and kidnapped and now being held hostage. May did some truly horrible things to her in the last episode and this one, and even Tilly understanding that she acted out of panic and self-preservation doesn't undo that. But then, out of nowhere, at the very end Tilly says that she's never felt this connected to another person and she almost doesn't want to save Hugh Culber because then she would lose the connection to May. What the fuck? That's beyond Stockholm Syndrome.

Even saving Hugh made no damn sense. This is something I was demanding literally as soon as they killed him last season, and this method was even the way that people were saying they could do it back then, and they still fucked it up. From purely internal perspective, even accepting all of Trek's bullshit science as true, it doesn't make sense. Stamets tries to justify if by saying that matter and energy can neither be created or destroyed, only converted into a different form. That is actually completely true. But the problem is that we saw Hugh Culber's matter and it wasn't changed into any different form at all: It lay on the deck of the Discovery as a hunk of meat. It didn't vanish in a flash of light or mysteriously transform, it was a corpse because that's what it was. To try and say that his life-energy was somehow transferred to the mycelial network but was also his actual physical body since the spores tried to attack it and he wasn't poisoned by the bark like stuff from that realm is, doesn't make any sense even by the idiotic sci-fi standards that let you ride fungus around the galaxy.

I am just....is this a team of monkey's making this show? Can’t they even make a logical, competent product when giving me exactly what I ask for?

#Star Trek #Discovery #DISCO #Saints of Imperfection #Poor writing

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paraclete0407 · 3 years

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When I was at Governor’s School after the ‘Oh! Are you a Retardican?’ thing and getting volleyball-smashed in my finger for implying something about male-female differences (I did not say ‘traditional’ since I am pro-renovation / Pope Saint John Paul II) - started practicing the piano again, ‘Claire de Lune’ and two of Chopin’s waltzes. I didn’t know any ‘sweet’ music for girls. As a kid I liked ‘Swans on the Lake.’ One of my other favorites is Liszt’s transcription of the ‘Shepherd’s Song’ or last movement of Beethoven’s fourth symphony. Weavings and ‘declamations(?’). But to some the weavings are flower-garlands or vine-stems or sth and to some they are chains; I wonder how Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli would interpret the weavings given his ‘bulletization’ of Chopin elsewhere how his fioritura are like a figure-skater using gravity-boots and wires from the ceiling.

Watched a bit of the Int. Chop. Comp just now and realized - IMO - they’re just using the wrong pianos and have for a long time. Chopin started out IIRC with sth called a fortepiano and throughout his life preferred uprights to grands; his favorite brand was Pleyel, perhaps ‘rosewood.’ Some of these heavier grands not only obviate the possibility of the miraculous or intuitive or non-personal(?) in the fioritura (chains of gracenotes), but can cause lasting nerve-damage and even dystonia(?)(a kind of paralysis). NYT of course loves to use STEM and call everything ‘small muscle athletes.’ To achieve certain ‘pellucid(?),’ singing effect the triceps sth sth I think. To me perhaps the most totally realized pianist of 20C was Uchida Mitsuko but honesty I don’t have the money to know or the time to listen to hundreds of records. I just felt as though she never threw a note away - she had no ‘personality cult’ as a pianist. The other I admire from an ethical standpoint Wilhelm Kempff. Kempff could’ve been a ‘gr8′ Headmaster.

Milstein, Furtwaengler. Heifetz as obviously gifted but IDK if I ever felt ‘wow’ or ‘oh’ listening to him. Milstein’s ‘Chaconne’ starts to rip the chains and weavings both apart; like Bach is attacking his math or rebelling against God.

I never studied conducting but surely one of the problem has to be giving the violins a ‘true voice’ which Furtwaengler is able to do in ‘Shepherd’s Song’ along with the flutes. Orchestras need many violins and only a few trumpets ad trombones and on, but even with many the violin section can lack a ‘will to live(?),’ ‘identity,’ ‘face?’ There is a ‘bright’ at the end of his ‘Shepherd’s Song’ - literal ecstasy which IDK how he was able to inspire either the violinists or to get the other sections to back off. In America there are all these jokes and during choir break they’re playing Mario-songs on the piano.

If you lose everything that was special about you at the end of your life were you ever truly doing what you enacted or acted out? What was my most specific trait? Was it ultimately snobbery?

Lately I want to punch through doors and stuff. Maybe I ought to go back to the night at the department store with person and person; downtown Milwaukee used to have a ‘certain shade of blue’ to their Christmas-lights in 2008 but today the whole city that I can tell drank warm Burger King milk before singing ‘Deck the Halls’ and it shows. Like everyone I love ‘The Carol’ and sometimes tell myself 3-gen’s ‘Hail Mary(?)’ moment was ‘Wish Tree.’

At the hagwon I was known for leaving the side-office at the right moment ater telling a joke but it’s really easy to be like that and in the land of lemmings and Ewoks that’s all some people want like 55-year-old male nurse when I criticize him for railroading me - not giving me 1 minute to make a life-crucial decision -he comes at me with my own ‘executive style’ like, ‘How you like me now oppa?’ Like DROP FUCKING DEAD. I try to make them crisp and considerate but they don’t get that procedure and style have human consequences - that they belong to an organization that impacts lives. Just banging on their drum... no ‘chain of care,’ no ‘ownership.’ Lt’s just Thatcherize all of Wisconsin! They actually kill people this way and Biden says social media is killing people. I wasn’t asking you for peanuts or a glass of OJ I am asking to be allowed to consider my own body, psyche, soul.

And it’s like all of America or the world, Jiang Zemin. TS 1989 they ask for democracy and not only can CCP not say ‘no’ but they have no process or plan; I don’t even know. It’s like your pussy bitch father finally tried to an up - a bit like ‘Anna Karenina’ where the husband starts quoting the Bible but who knows what is in his heart or whether he has any [nunchi?]; whether say he LIKES Christianity or would feel sad or disappointed if he lost it?

CCP ccream at each other in a closed session for days. I just tell myself again, ‘Oh XJP can’t quite control his own country and Mao was a blunt-force instrument and the remains of his heyday are being mitigated even still’ but in America and Europe they’ve never seen full-blown Maoism even in the times of Hitler and Stalin, that I know of. Maybe in China after TS1989 they still let the pro-youth cadre live for decades under house-arrest, Zhao Ziyang, and maybe ‘e-flowers’ on the occasion of his passing for ‘a vanished world of love’ - ‘I am thinking of my old friend, ‘zi(?).’ I was fond of Tu Fu’s ‘Thinking of Li Bai Beyond the Sky,’ ‘Demons exult in human failure’ - but I mean literal demons not fairy-tale characters from Amy Tan stories that Chinese use to seem loveable. And that too there again feeds in to ‘Op. White Summer’ / nuke Milwaukee / uke America.

David has a sense of evil like when driving to DC with TW-1 we got lost in Fredericksburg at night - never again. Outside Madison 08. Maybe bairen didn’t manage the environment here well, there is no real wilderness, everything is ’revolving in crystal’ or ‘the glass man, without external reference.’

I would look around for n/Nature more but the pervasive disbelief-engine or anti-belief-engine or whatever is happening t me with debates over the past has made it hard to drive and I lose energy quickly except with typing. I miss my gifted student whom I tried to push to write her sci-fi novel about caste societies enabled by biotechnology but she was already pulling a Catherine Chung(?) talking about children and the coming generation instead of accomplishing the proximate mission or purpose or objective. My uncle is /was really devout and resembles Saint Paul in my mind’s eye, kept his muscles in to his 90′s, and yet the transmission of his best values encountered massive interference - kids divorced, Spice Girls(?!), cultural Christianity / Christian nationalism(?), CS Lewis and Martin Luther saying it’s cool to tell sick jokes and fart, the jocular contempt of the Gingrich-era GOP for the poor and perhaps women. And how most of my family’s money seemed to come from the arms-industry like the Sidewinder missile and eve after walking away from the mil-ind complex the mentality of massive retaliation or lethal and punitive solutions to all problems - but that is a a big intuitive leap and maybe self-serving.

One of the ‘split’ moments in my life was being offered a job at Catholic University of Daegu ad I requested 3 days to decide but was woken up in the morning at UncleHammer’s house told to leave immediately and forgot to reply b/c I had like 1hr sleep. Just shouldn’t’ve been there.

This again why I say if I don’t die from coronavirus and ever work a good job again I should just talk out any problem all night or bear any burden; 10 billion people all wanna good job and ever 36-y/o male has stories and observations.

‘Heaven and Earth.’ People tried so hard to make this world a little better, some theory of r/Revolution as bringing Heaven down to Earth and maybe now Man will go out to the stars as well.

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gonemarshall · 3 years

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About the New York Song, ‘Bazooka Joe Don’t Live There Any More’ by Singer-Songwriter Gone Marshall

The New York song, ‘Bazooka Joe Don’t Live There Any More‘ (aka, ‘Bazooka Joe’), is an alternative folk & rock song I wrote as an homage to an old school New York neighborhood hero. The song was inspired by my association and friendship with long time resident of Little Italy’s MacDougal Street, Mr. Leonard Cecere, who ran a small but famous mailbox and card shop called ‘Something Special’ on the corner of Houston Street and MacDougal streets in New York City’s SOHO/Greenwich Village.

I’d first stumbled upon Lenny and his shop, ‘Something Special’ when I was in need of a mailbox at the time, as I’d just relocated back to New York City, in a self-funded effort to complete a documentary about street booksellers in New York. (*Note: That movie, ‘BookWars’, went on to have a decent art house run and international TV sales; it’s now part of the Circulating Film & Video Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC)

At the time, I had very little funds, and no real place to live, as I was in between rented rooms as a self-funded indie filmmaker. So, I needed a mailbox first and foremost.

I was living in a small rented room on Morton street in the West Village, so I went scouting around to find a mailbox in the neighborhood.

What I encountered was ‘Something Special’, an old-school, slightly dog-eared combination card, gift, trinket and mailbox shop on the corner. It was a real old time, independent establishment through and through, something that must have been standard in the village throughout the 50s, 60’s and 70s, up until New York really started to develop.

It would have been in the year 1999 or 2000 that I met Lenny and his shop. Even then, New York City was really beginning to change, with many of the dive bars and hangouts of the East Village being converted into condos, and the central village area becoming more posh and upscale – a far cry from its scrappy 1950’s/60’s roots.

Yet, here was Lenny and his shop, ‘Something Special’. His shop was like a time capsule, not deliberately so, I think, but an actual neighborhood shop and corner store which had been planted there for decades and was still going strong.

Lenny and his wife, Lucy, were long time, original residents of that corner of SoHo-Little Italy, where it just meets up with the Village, and they were beloved by all. Basically, they were neighborhood heroes, as far as I could discern…

I didn’t realize this at the time, as I was just seeking a mailbox at first… it turns out that a lot of famous people (celebrities, writers, you name it) had mailboxes at Lenny’s shop too. Other notables who didn’t have a mailbox there would stop in for a coffee, or donut, or just to shoot the breeze with Lenny. I guess celebs needed a nondescript mailbox, and folks who appreciated the ‘real, old-school New York’ would stop by Something Special just to remind themselves of the original neighborhood spirit of the city.

Sara Jessica Parker, one of many celebrities who had a mailbox at ‘Something Special’and whose headshot was on display

Actor Matthew Broderick’s framed headshot stood atop a jumbled shelf in back of the register

Lucy Lawless (Xena the Warrior Princess), whose framed publicity still also stood behind the register at ‘Something Special’. Some lyrics from the song refer to her ‘jungle dress’ and a ‘warrior princess in the mud’ 🙂

Lenny was not the time to proclaim anything, though he proudly displayed the photos that his celebrity fans would give him on the shelf behind the counter. Sarah Jessica Parker (‘Sex in the City’) had her photo in there, as did Matthew Broderick. Lucy Lawless (‘Xena the Warrior Princess’) had her photo in there; she was wearing a sort of leopard skin outfit which I refer to in the song as a ‘jungle dress’, feeding us with ‘fire and thunder’

There were a few other notables in the neighborhood too, there on the corner of MacDougal and Houston, who either had a mailbox at Lenny’s or just stopped in to say “Hi”.

Patti Smith

As I recall, Patti Smith had a house next door or nearby, for instance. I bumped into her a few times while stopping off to get a donut or coffee soda, or to pick up my mail. Nobody bothered anyone if they were visiting ‘Something Special’, as if it were an unwritten code of conduct. I mean, you could run into someone notable there and just say ‘hey’ or ‘ how’s it going?’, and then go and get your mail.

Lenny would greet everyone the same way: ‘Hi Patti’. Or to me, when I showed up once with a box of videotapes of my movie after it had finally been released:

‘Hey Rosetti!’

(My real name is Rosette, which is French actually, though Lenny converted this into Italian)

‘Hey Rosetti. When you gonna’ be famous? You got a movie now. You wrote a book too.’

‘Ah…I don’t know Lenny. I’m just doing what I can.’

(It didn’t matter to Lenny that I was still scraping to get by – literally. I even painted his storefront once in exchange for mailbox rental, I was cutting it so close)

‘You want a cup of coffee?’

‘Sure.’

Anyway, Lenny and his shop, ‘Something Special’ is at the heart of the song, ‘Bazooka Joe Don’t Live There Any More‘. I’m quite sure that any listeners who knew Lenny or his shop, or some of the folks who hung out there, would recognize a lot from the lyrics.

Actually, I should now explain how the song got its title. Lenny told me once, I think it was a winter day actually, maybe that’s how we got on the subject, how he’d served in the Army during the Battle of the Bulge, aka the Ardennes Offensive, in 1944. He mentioned that, while he was not a front line soldier (*I forget now what he told me he was doing, he could have been an engineer or support troop), the offensive took place so suddenly – per Hitler’s plan – that the US forces had no time to compose themselves properly.

So Lenny related to me how a seargent had come up to him with a Bazooka, which is a shoulder launched anti-tank weapon and told him:

“Cecere, take this Bazooka and guard that bridge. Nothing crosses that bridge. Not even if it’s one of our tanks or vehicles, ’cause the Krauts are using our stuff against us. If they try to send a tank across , you take them out with this. Aim at the ground just in front of the tank, so’s it bounces up underneath where the armor is thin” (All this is per my recollection now, from our discussion, I may have some details off but that’s essentially what Lenny told me).

Lenny took the Bazooka, without any training, and guarded that bridge. He told me nothing happened in the end, but for the few hours or a day that he was standing there, it was just Lenny with a bazooka against the Wehrmacht.

(*There’s actually an extended bridge section in the song which refers to this moment, but I had to take it out because the song was running too long. Here are the lyrics for this missing section:

EXTENDED BRIDGE (*extended version only, not present in current track)

When the battle lines bulged / I stood there at the bridge / My finger on the trigger / On the Ardennes grimy ridge

Take this rocket, son / Front line’s gone, pick up a gun / Punch it at the lip of Earth / ‘Neath the Tiger’s grey steely girth

I saw squirrels some birds / But no charging tank / Clouds broke for our Thunderbolts / I went back to my rank

Transition Back to Main Bridge C-> A -> C -> A

So, I had to put the bazooka reference in the song, and I fit it into the title. It also made a bit of sense to allude to the popular Bazooka Joe bubble gum comics which were launched in the 50’s. The Bazooka Joe sensibility kind of matches the feeling of ‘Something Special’, which was in its multi-purpose way, also a candy shop for school kids passing by on their way home from school.

Now, WHY did I write the song? Well, per the lyrics, I found myself many years later, in 2017 or so, living far, far away, starting to make more music and writing more songs. I had pivoted from filmmaking to songwriting. So, I was poking around on the internet one afternoon looking for ‘Dean Martin songs’ (per the lyrics of the song), as I wanted something with a crooner-like aspect to cover.

Then it occurred to me, as time had passed, and as life had grown busy (and sometimes frantically so, as I had been trying to make creative projects and stay afloat for a couple decades already) that I’d lost touch with Lenny over the years. He flitted into my mind though as I looked for Rat Pack music, you know, Dean Martin, Sinatra, and the like. Something about Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra reminded me of Lenny all of a sudden.

Well, I figured, that, yes, it’s possible or even likely that Lenny may have passed away – I think this was 2017 that I was looking for the Dean Martin songs – but I couldn’t know for sure until I looked.

Anyway, I did search for him online and found out that, indeed he had passed away, I think the year before.

Even though I now knew, logically, that time passes by and waits for no one, it still hit me very hard for some reason when I saw Lenny’s obituary there facing me online. Because he was a kind of neighborhood hero, along with his wife Lucy actually. Real life, everyday heroes, quite possibly saint, or at least saint-like, though I am not Catholic, I believe he and his wife Lucy were.

Not to mention that I had some great personal memories of him, his shop, the ‘real New York’ portal that it was, and all the folks who passed through and populated ‘Something Special’.

On the other hand, there’s also a wistfullness to the song, in that ‘Bazooka Joe’ does not live there any more. He (Lenny and many other old school neighborhood heroes) is physically gone. His memory is not gone, but that type of person – open, frank, character-driven – seems to be becoming scarce these days.

Passing elephant nose man from the Greenwich Village, NYC documentary, ‘BookWars’

New York City’s character, well Manhattan at least, also seems to be homogenizing somewhat as it develops and prices the ‘characters’ out of the city, bit by bit. I’m not the first to point this out, by the way – this is also one of the themes that appears in the aforementioned New York documentary I made, ‘BookWars’.

I should also say though, in fairness, that Jackson Heights and other areas in Queens and beyond still seem to have a lot of character…but in terms of Manhattan and the Village, the old school people like Lenny and places like ‘Something Special’ are disappearing, bit by bit. It would be great if a new generation of ‘old schoolers’ may somehow emerge to take their place, if that may somehow be possible.

Anyway, I don’t know why it took me a couple years to actually gather the song fragments, formulate them, and produce them into a final track. Well, I’m still emerging music artist, with limited (self) funding – that’s one reason. My creative mind and momentum was also derailed here and there for rather long stretches when financial situations demanded my full attention.

Of course, that’s not my motivation with this tune, as it’s an homage, and is beyond strict valuation.

Which is why I had to push ahead with it…it’s really something straight from the heart.

So, I chugged ahead, along with some other great session players (some working remotely) and finally completed the song. The elapsed time from recording the first scratch guitar and vocals to the final master and mix was about 5 months.

The elapsed time from reading about Lenny’s passing to releasing the final track was about 3.5 years.

Who knows, maybe the song needed a long time to sit and brew, as it’s really rather a dense and detailed clipping of a real time and place, and full of memories to handle with grace and care. I think I approached this song like a documentary to some degree, maybe because of my filmmaking background?

Anyway: I hope folks can gather something nice from the song, and that they may be moved by it in a ‘Special’ way!

Gone Marshall, Songwriter, ‘Bazooka Joe Don’t Live There Any More’

‘Bazooka Joe Don’t Live There Any More’

A Song by Gone Marshall

CREDITS

Writing, Composition, Acoustic Guitar, Main Vocals: Gone Marshall

Fingerpick Acoustic Guitar: Richard ‘RJ’ Marshall

Female Vocals: Ieva Zdram

Electric Guitar: Jake Bisognin

Percussion: Brian Petry

Bass: Alan Reynolds

Mixed by: Skyler Taylor & Jason Rosette

Produced by Jason Rosette @ CAMERADO (ASCAP)

#nyc #newyork #alternative #song #song lyrics #indie #music #musicians #nosamples #gonemarshall #rock #alt rock #neo psychedelia

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ninja8tyu · 4 years

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I was told literally 4 days ago to not make threats, and within that span of time, I’m reminded of why I gave up on rational reasoning a long time ago.

1) People don’t care about the facts.

Oh, maybe the lucky few care, but majority of people are pathetic expendable sheep who jump onto the bandwagon, regardless of where it’s headed. It doesn’t matter how many goddamn facts you slam onto the table, every single goddamn human on this planet goes “b-but... my morality and feels...”

Like fuck sakes. What am I supposed to do about that? Call the FBI or some shit and have them deal with this shit when the topic’s about something that can negatively impact, ruin, or even kill massive amounts of people? Then that really wouldn’t be any different than using force, now would it? What’re the FBI and crap gonna do? The same kind of “hey, don’t do that, here are the facts, calm down” that many others, not just me, have attempted to do but failed to succeed?

To be honest, I feel like people try too hard to copy Gandhi. He even failed in the end when his killers were executed despite his preaching of non-violence. Ironic, isn’t it, that the kindest man promoted violence with his death, despite even feeling sorry for his killers in his last moments.

So yeah. Kinda pissed. Why do I have to play a saint for a steadfast sinner? I doubt anyone tried to talk it out with Osama bin Laden and ISIS when they massacred innocents “for allah” and shit. Try Hitler.

That, and people twist the facts for their own agenda. I remember some textbook cited a study that disproved the positive correlation between violence and video games, but of course, the textbook said there was a cause between the two in the positive direction, when in reality, the study proved a negative correlation.

2) People don’t listen and aren’t open to change in the slightest.

Oh, maybe the lucky few care, but majority of people don’t listen at all. I can count the amount of “those are good points” said by someone else on my hands, and god if I had a penny for every “lol too long not gonna read” or “lol k sure” I’d pay off the US debt, fully fund everyone’s college education, pay off everyone’s student debt, and somehow still be ungodly rich by the end of it.

Thing is, you can’t change someone who isn’t willing to change. That’s on them. And sure, anyone could say “you can’t control them, so focus on what you can control,” say that to the Jews during the holocaust. CAN’T CONTROL HITLER, BUT HEY, YOU CAN CHANGE YOURSELF. Seriously, already throughout history, we’ve justified murder for stupider reasons than for justice and peace. Besides for bad reasons, stripping the rights of the Japs in America for peace and terrorism prevention? I wonder how many people died from maltreatment.

While we’re spending our time trying to talk them down, let’s let the bodies pile up from direct and indirect causes rooting from the bastard we’re trying to “civilly reason with.” I can prove with a lot of facts on several issues I argue for that there is a direct and/or indirect cause that will increase the deaths of people via suicide or shootings, but of course, I doubt anyone would care, even if I cite literally every single academic paper on Earth.

3) Might makes right in the very end.

“Huh, that makes sense. I’ll stop bullying you,” -a nonexistent bully.

Seriously, if you were a slave, try taking back to a cruel master and telling them to stop because it was wrong. Try being the wimpy kid telling the big fat son of a bitch bully that “what you’re doing is wrong and uncivil” and see if that piece of shit will go like “alright, I’ll stop.”

Every single time, a bad person was stopped because the little guy became the bigger guy, or there was a bigger guy for the little guy to turn to. Tell the little terrorist to stop executing people for allah because they’re hurting people who don’t deserve it. No no, go. Trust me, they won’t shoot you or anything. They’ll DEFINITELY stop.

The reason why bad people wouldn’t stop? Why would they listen to someone clearly weaker than them? Only when you’re on-par or stronger than them is when they’ll listen. My narcissist brother stopped trying to go for a punch after he broke his itty bitty little pinky and fingers when his wussy punch went straight across my cheek, and started listening and talking quite a bit more after that incident.

Which is, honestly, quite hypocritical of me because I don’t do any fighting. I just shout and rant like a motherfucker about issues instead of go out and actually do things.

And sure, I could get the bigger guy. They exist. The teachers, the feds, whatever. Thing is:

a) You can’t rely on others all the time. Call them over for every issue, you know. Tire them out until they can’t do anything. An organization is finite, and its finity is composed of easily tired humans. They also need time to act as well, so what to do when time is of the essence? Just keep crying for someone else?

b) More personal than general, but I’ve had a bad history with asking others for help, only to not receive. Thanks, teachers. I really sense the concern </s>.

The issues I have and want to fight against are also issues that no one can just take down with force. It’s ideas. Ideas that people act on and people give power to, which hurt people who have done nothing wrong or wasn’t born just like the others.

Well, technically, eliminate everyone with that idea and it’d be gone, but that wouldn’t work, due to several technical and ethical issues. So uh, no.

To simplify why that wouldn’t work:

case 1) successful genocide

The idea still exists within culture and creations from it, aka books n’ shit.

case 2) burn all the books

The people can still spread it. Hurr durr.

case 3) try both?

People can just reinvent it down the line of history.

case 4) omnicide?

Are you an idiot?

In summary: allowing the idea to exist and be disproven will limit/stop the harm done of the people who let said idea affect them in the future.

Thus I introduce you to my unending loop of dealing with stupid people:

Solution 1) Talk it out civilly: wouldn’t work for the reasons above.

Solution 2) Violence and force: wouldn’t work for the reasons above.

The only ways out of the loop are the following:

Escape 1) Drag the ones capable of change out, gain new perspective, possibly help bring others out as well. [Issue: more time passes, more bodies pile up]

Escape 2) Eliminates the ones causing harm and thus minimizes/stops all harm henceforth. [Issue: doesn’t solve underlying problem]

And unless someone wants to accomplish the same task (end unnecessary pain) perfectly, it’s the acceptance of one of the issues to be inevitable and unsolvable.

Personally, I cannot tell anyone who I can’t help the words “well that’s just life” if I choose to be civil, nor be the one who tells who I can’t persuade “this is for the greater good” because in either situation, it’s fucked up for its own reason. So yay, neverending internal conflict.

And finally, “why don’t you just ignore them?”

Because I’m not normal (wow, what a surprise) within societal standards, mainly due to aspergers and other mental oddities, and some of this shit I’m “fighting” (as in rant and complain about) for kinda pertains to whether or not I’m gonna die in the future.

Anyway, that’s all. A therapist sometimes interrupts my train of thought and I end up forgetting to say the stuff I did here, thus never letting me actually resolve the issue.

I still need a professional tho. Need to find and schedule one soon.

#rant #sfw

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zucca101 · 7 years

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"one can be a white supremacist without being a Nazi, and one can be a Nazi without being a white supremacist" I suppose this is why your blog is so nutty, you've jumped the shark so hard you literally ended up in another universe. Splitting hairs about people who want to exterminate everyone who isn't white only helps the people in question.

Look, little darling, your childlike naiveté has only so much charm before it starts to wear thin.

But just the same, I’ll try to clarify a few things for you... try to help you understand the shades of gray of the world, because you’ve got a serious case of bichromatic vision.

Richard Spencer is a dirtbag, to be sure. While he *is* a confirmed white supremacist, he is not a Nazi. He says that his notion of ethnocentric politics would involve ‘peaceful relocation’ of other ethnicities. What he would plan to do with people who tell him to piss off and leave them alone, we can only speculate.

A Nazi is a member of the National Socialist Party of Germany. Anyone in the party is a Nazi.

With me so far?

Okay...

So a little shocker for you... I hope you’re sitting down...

Nazis are human beings!!!!

youtube

And human beings are an amazing, diverse and incredible lot! Even within tightly cloistered demographics, you will find difference of opinion!

Saints and sinners and everyone in between dwelled in the Nazi Party. But obviously, t’was the sinners who called the shots.

If you think Hitler’s platform was ‘Squish the non-white people’ then your historical perspective is atrophied as to be effectively non-existent. Honestly, Hetalia would probably serve as a net increase in your historical knowledge at this point...

Hitler was able to rise to power because things were so shitty in Germany after The Great War and the Treaty at Versailles. People were working backbreaking hours in order to both earn a living and pay reparations.

No matter how bad you think you have it right now, you need to accept and be comfortable with the inalienable fact that you don’t know shit about shit..

Imagine working two jobs... The pay from one of those jobs goes to the the reparations bill.

... riiiiight along with half the wages of your other job. You can’t quit one job and just give two thirds of your wages from it. That wouldn’t satisfy.

That was the kind of desperation afoot.

A lot of people love to pin the monster tail on Hitler as the pulsing heart and soul of Nazi Germany, but he was surrounded by some extremely vile individuals who were just as monstrous. I won’t spoil what I hope is a trip to Wikipedia (Or better yet, a BOOK) to study them, but you have them to thank as much as Hitler for some of the atrocities catalogued.

But below the movers and shakers were Hans and Helga Average, who were part of the Nazi Party and as such, Nazis, but were not particularly interested in ethnic cleansing of any sort and were chiefly concerned with Germany’s economic well-being.

It’s easy for people to condemn others when they haven’t walked in their shoes. It’s easy for you to level judgment from your retroactive privilege and hindsight privilege (Am I saying that right? I mean, that’s how the word ‘privileged’ is being thrown around these days instead of its definition, so...) about things that happened before.

For the same reason that you suddenly pay more attention to your phone or shy away when you witness an abusive parent hit their child while waiting in line at the store, those few Germans who KNEW about the concentration camps weren’t exactly welcomed to visit.

But that ethnic cleansing we know so much about.... that got slid in later, when all the chess pieces were at an advantageous position for such an atrocity to begin.

Save Germany was the platform.

Let’s perform a little mental exercise...

Tell me honestly...

If you were a guard at a camp where people who you have come to detest because you’ve been carefully instructed to detest them (For the sake of this empathy exercise, we’ll say about fifty white, traditionalist Conservative families who you know are simply bad people because they believe in traditional definitions of marriage and gender roles and failed their re-education attempts) have been sent to, and you were told not to feed them when they wept, cried and begged for food, would you disobey your orders, knowing that your commanding officer who hates the Conservatives even more than you do, will severely punish anyone who doesn’t obey his orders?

Are those people in the camp worth disobeying that order for? If you threw them food, then you’d get in trouble and that food would probably just be taken away, and those people in there are bad people who deserve to be in there. Your media told you so and you believe it.

Would you stand on principle, knowing it would either earn you dismissal from the army (A job you really need) or maybe even being made an example of?

When your commander caught one of the prisoners, a straight, white, Christian male trying to escape with his son, he had him dragged out into the compound and tortured in front of the others.

It’s okay though, because they’re bad people. The media said so. And you believe it.

The spectacle ended with your commander shooting the attempted escapee’s son in the head.

It was scary and brutal, but come on... the kid would have grown up to be a bad person who would just continue the cycle again. Your media told you so. You trust your media.

And hey, the father’s horrible, bothersome scream of despair and hopelessness REALLY put the fear into the other prisoners, so they’re not likely to try that again!

And really, it’s their own fault for not letting the re-education change them. You didn’t force them to fail there. This isn’t your fault. You’re following orders.

Years later, people spit at your feet, tell you what a wretched and evil creature you are. Beneath human. Beneath contempt.

You don’t understand why. You were fighting against bad people! You were just following orders! Your commander, he’s to blame, really. The old bastard shot himself after the Antifa Party was crushed into dust.

So I hope that puts things into a little bit of perspective. Now, that’s an example of someone in the know, understand?

Most people weren’t aware of the evil atrocities that were going on in their country. It wasn’t like it is now, where information flowed as unto water.

Most Nazi Germans were horrified to learn what had happened in the name of the party they’d signed up with.

They thought that their Jewish neighbors just moved away when the anti-Jew sentiment crept higher and higher. You thought that the soldiers did exactly what the papers said they did, peacefully relocating them.

It’s late and I’m tired, but I hope that this helps you gain some perspective.

Not all Nazis were white supremacists.

Now, to be fair, neo-Nazis are almost always white supremacists. But it is not an absolute.

And convincing them to give up on worshiping a long-dead ideology and embracing humanity is preferable to simply punching, murdering and pissing their friends off, right?

Just... ponder the idea.

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shockcity · 7 years

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Bagginshield #12 - dancing

Rating: M Summary: for the 30 Day OTP Challenge. One dance in Paris. Alternate Universe - World War II

Note: idk why but here’s a ww2 au. Thorin and Bilbo are also secret agents because why the fuck not. And lol you guys want some music?

April began with the bright-eyed arrival of daffodils in the Palais Royal.

A stubborn chill was all that remained of winter as the hidden colors of Paris unveiled itself all at once. Vivre, thought Bilbo, standing beneath a raining magnolia tree. He listened to the susurrus of a sweet breeze and the chatter of life in the distance. It wasn’t boring. He loved this place in spring.

The gardens attracted more foreigners than Parisians, and they circled Bilbo in pairs as he waited. It was almost time, but he was impatient; he had been waiting since Rome.

To:

B. BAGGINS 00185 PIAZZALE ALDO MORO ROMA, ITALY

………………….

MAY FIRST, A BIENTÔT À PARIS. ALL MY LOVE,

- T.D.

………………….

And now here he was. Joie de vivre.

“Danser avec moi?”

Bilbo smiled at the ground. Pink magnolias stirred at his feet. He turned.

“Your French is horrible,” he said.

Thorin gazed at him fondly. “Your German is worse.”

“Let’s not talk then.”

They wasted no time at all.

There are silk sheets and apéro and champagne (Thorin lived the life of a king outside of the simple world of a Jewish soldier).

And Bilbo. English in Italy and so literally lost in translation: Professor, what is ‘I love you’ in English?

“I love you,” he whispered as Thorin moved inside of him. They are sweat-slick and breathing hard, and Bilbo is coming apart one touch at a time.

Thorin’s hands wrap around his wrists as he hitches his legs up higher, making enough noise that he would not be surprised if they heard him in the street. Thorin seemed to have the same thought because he suddenly laughed. He leaned down and kissed Bilbo deeply, not having to say aloud that the window would remain open. It was too nice a day to shut the doors.

“Do you ever grow tired of being something you’re not?” Bilbo asked him, twining his arms around Thorin’s neck. They swayed from side to side to the music on the radio.

Dis-moi pourquoi les plus beaux jours sans toi sont tristes. Pourquoi sans toi la vie n’a plus d’attrait pour moi! †

Thorin hummed thoughtfully. “Do you?” he asked.

“Whatever do you mean? I’m an academic, and nothing else at all.” Bilbo grinned up at him cheekily.

Aucun espoir. De bonheur. Quand tu me quittes j’ai peur, tout me chagrine et tout m’ennuie….

He rested his head on Thorin’s chest, shivering as a sudden wind tossed the pale blue curtains from side to side. “Do you think there’ll be a war?” he murmured.

Thorin pulled Bilbo a little closer, huffing. “We’re dancing, Bilbo.”

“Are we?” He sighed. “Let’s just do that, then.”

Dis-moi pourquoi les plus beaux jours sans toi sont tristes. Pourquoi sans toi la vie n’a plus d’attrait pour moi!

“I’m staying in Paris,” Bilbo told him, half laying on top of him with one leg tossed over his own. Bilbo stared at him intently. “Things are not good in Italy.”

“They’re not good anywhere.”

“Yes. Ha!” Bilbo tumbles onto his back, arms spread. “And look, Paris goes about its business being Paris. We can make love and drink champagne here. I’m staying.”

Thorin frowns at him, brushing his curls away from his face. “I wish you were farther away.”

“I’ll be fine. It’s Paris. Death doesn’t exist here. Only champagne, I told you. Joie de vivre!”

They sat beside the Canal Saint Martin at midnight and held hands. It was dark enough to hide them, but light enough to see by, so Thorin looked at Bilbo for a long, long time.

Bilbo looked back.

“Farewell,” Thorin told him, his hands on either side of Bilbo’s face. “Perhaps the next time we meet, the world will be a merrier place.”

He kissed Bilbo soft and slow. The day had reached its peak, and it had come and gone without a care for those it left behind.

“We’ll have more days like this, and more time to dance,” said Bilbo, kissing his hand. “I know it.”

Thorin craned his neck and pressed their foreheads together, closing his eyes tightly, before sighing and letting go. “I could never doubt you, Master Baggins. Until next year, then.”

I love you.

“A bientôt à Paris,” Bilbo whispered, watching Thorin walk away. “Farewell.”

DISPATCH

FROM: GRYH RECEIVED BY: BLETCHLEY 4

TO: CAPT. THORIN DURIN

ACTION: IMMEDIATELY PROCEED TO WARSZAWA 000277 TO AWAIT ORDERS FOR DEPLOYMENT

+ PLAC ZAMKOWY WARSZAWA, POLAND

ACKNOWLEDGED:

25 AUGUST, 1939

Notes:

^Hitler invades Poland on the 1st of September, 1939 ^Paris falls to Nazi Occupation a little over a year later on the 14th of June, 1940

†Dis-moi Pourquoi - Lys Gauty

*A bientôt à Paris means: see you in Paris

#30 day otp challenge #bagginshield #hobbit fic #umm not sure what this is #flowery probably

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confusetherighteous · 6 years

Text

Justice, Mercy, and The Plan of Salvation

The LDS church stakes their theology on the claim that Jesus had to endure infinite suffering to pay the debt of all humanity’s sins. They say he chose to do so freely, but in the story, he was coerced by an ultimatum: suffer, or all of humanity must be damned for all eternity. (No pressure, JC!) They call this the plan of salvation, and claim that it is a perfect balance of the “Laws” of Justice and Mercy.

It is neither merciful nor just.

First, it's important to define Justice and Mercy. They are both abstract ideas, so you can't hold them in your hand or measure them with precise instruments. Different cultures and individuals hold different definitions for justice and mercy, but there are common threads that are basic to most understandings.

Justice

On a basic level, I think justice is a fair distribution of consequences in return for actions by beings with moral agency (meaning justice does not apply to the law of gravity or stones or ants or even lions).

To be just:

Just consequences must be like-for-like. Punishments for misdeeds, and rewards for good deeds, never the opposite; this is pretty self-explanatory. In this way, justice is symmetrical and can go both directions on the good<-->evil spectrum.

Just consequences must affect the do-er of the deed, and them alone. Person A does something wrong. If you punish Person B instead, who is an innocent 3rd party, that would be unjust. Punishing person A along with an innocent person B would also be unjust.

Just consequences must be equivalent in scale and/or duration with the action that precipitated them. For example, if someone kills a child for $2 of lunch money, thirty hours of community service would not be an equivalent consequence, and would therefore be unjust. Likewise, if someone shoplifts a $2 candy bar, burning them at the stake would not be equivalent, and therefore it would be unjust.

In my opinion, any system which violates these three principles cannot be called just, and would be not only be devoid of justice (like the Pythagorean Theorem is), but would be actively unjust (like chattel slavery is).

Mercy

On a basic level, I think of mercy as a modifier on justice that goes in only one direction, towards the positive. Mercy is an act of love, kindness, or understanding that lessens the negative consequences or enhances the positive consequences of an action. Mercy is not the opposite of Justice; mercy can be unjust but it doesn't have to be. Mercy is often predicated on the penitence of the offender, but it doesn't have to be.

In my opinion, mercy is an act of forgiveness, not the act of extracting justice from some other source. If my son makes a bad choice and breaks the rules, I can be merciful and forgive him. If he seems penitent, and has learned his lesson, and has made restitution if need be, I can lessen or even remove his punishment. However, if I then require his sister take the punishment in his place, that is not mercy; that is unjust and immoral.

The Latter-Day Saint concept of the Atonement of Christ, as it was taught to me consistently over 26 years of faithful membership and service, completely violates every one of those concepts on multiple levels.

Mortal humans only have a finite capacity for wrong-doing. Even monsters like Hitler and Stalin caused vast, but only finite, amounts of suffering. If we are, in fact, eternal beings, then anyone should be able to advance to the next level completely on their own merits. For people who did very severe and numerous misdeeds, that might require very large amounts of penitence, suffering, learning, and restitution, but they have literally an eternity to do it.

If God imposed an infinite, eternal judgement on souls just because of their finite actions in this world (as the LDS church teaches), that would be like burning the shop-lifter alive. The consequence is vastly worse than the misdeed by definition; finite deeds vs. infinite consequences.

Likewise, releasing souls from all responsibility based on their belief in a few arbitrary doctrines and performance of a few arbitrary rituals, while requiring the infinite suffering of someone who never did anything wrong (Jesus), is as bad or even worse than releasing a murderer for doing community service, while executing an innocent bystander. It is not just devoid of justice, but is completely unjust.

They can't just wave their hands and say that mercy accounts for the discrepancy, either, because the Mormon God is not simply forgiving sins, he is requiring the punishment to be extracted from someone else, an innocent 3rd party. This is neither merciful nor just, it's unjust and immoral.

A truly merciful and just father would want us to learn and grow, mistakes and all, and accept us no matter how prodigal we were if we were willing to learn from our mistakes and make restitution for our misdeeds, no matter how long it takes.

Finally, food for thought: If this existence is a period of learning to be like God, then requiring souls to work through and pay for their own mistakes seems like the best way to assure mature, responsible future deities who can sympathize with their own eternal progeny.

Here on earth, let's say a child is goofing off and hits a baseball through the neighbor's window. If you make the child break open their piggy bank to pay for a new window, you teach responsibility more effectively than if you write a check and just make them say "sorry". Or, in Elohim's case, if you call the child's brother Jesus over and make him break his piggy bank, even though he was inside doing homework and getting his chores done on time.

#justice #mercy #mormon #theology

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booklr-16 · 6 years

Text

November TBR

Since Nanowrimo is also taking place in the month of November, and I am participating, I have italicized the books that I am definitely going to try to get to during the month of November. The books that are in plain black text are books I’ll either read in December or get to if I finish the books that I really want to read this month. For Nanowrimo, I also plan to post daily or weekly (most likely weekly) updates on my progress for writing as well as how much reading I’ve gotten done. These will mostly likely be done throughout the weekend when I’ll have time to write up my progress.

Hard Time, C.F. White - After Micky O’Neill is remanded in custody for breaching his court order, his already tempestuous relationship with Dan Peters is tested to the limits. Having to battle their way through a court case that could end with Micky in jail, social workers breaking up the family home, and the return of Micky’s deadbeat father, it seems everything is set to destroy their relationship before it even had the chance to start. With such high stakes involved, not just for Micky but for once-burned, twice-shy Dan, they both have to learn that falling in love isn’t always responsible.

The Fault in Our Stars, John Green - Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell - Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan… But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving. Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere. Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to. Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words… And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone. For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr - Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Fifty Shades Darker, E. L. James - Daunted by the singular sexual tastes and dark secrets of the beautiful, tormented young entrepreneur Christian Grey, Anastasia Steele has broken off their relationship to start a new career with a Seattle publishing house. But desire for Christian still dominates her every waking thought, and when he proposes a new arrangement, Anastasia cannot resist. They rekindle their searing sensual affair, and Anastasia learns more about the harrowing past of her damaged, driven, and demanding Fifty Shades. While Christian wrestles with his inner demons, Anastasia must confront her anger and envy of the women who came before her and make the most important decision of her life.

They Both Die at the End, Adam Silvera - On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They’re going to die today. Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they’re both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure and to live a lifetime in a single day.

The Last Star, Rick Yancey - The enemy is Other. The enemy is us. They’re down here, they’re up there, they’re nowhere. They want the Earth, they want us to have it. They came to wipe us out, they came to save us. But beneath these riddles lies one truth: Cassie has been betrayed. So has Ringer. Zombie. Nugget. And all 7.5 billion people who used to live on our planet. Betrayed first by the Others, and now by ourselves. In these last days, Earth’s remaining survivors will need to decide what’s more important: saving themselves…or saving what makes us human.

Lord of Shadows, Cassandra Clare - Emma Carstairs has learned that the love she shares with her parabatai, Julian Blackthorn, isn’t just forbidden—it could destroy them both. She knows she should run from Julian. But how can she when the Blackthorns are threatened by enemies on all sides? Their only hope is the Black Volume of the Dead, a spell book of terrible power. Everyone wants it. Only the Blackthorns can find it. Spurred on by a dark bargain with the Seelie Queen, Emma; her best friend, Cristina; and Mark and Julian Blackthorn journey into the Courts of Faerie, where glittering revels hide bloody danger and no promise can be trusted. Meanwhile, rising tension between Shadowhunters and Downworlders has produced the Cohort, an extremist group of Shadowhunters dedicated to registering Downworlders and “unsuitable” Nephilim. They’ll do anything in their power to expose Julian’s secrets and take the Los Angeles Institute for their own. When Downworlders turn against the Clave, a new threat rises in the form of the Lord of Shadows—the Unseelie King, who sends his greatest warriors to slaughter those with Blackthorn blood and seize the Black Volume. As dangers close in, Julian devises a risky scheme that depends on the cooperation of an unpredictable enemy. But success may come with a price he and Emma cannot even imagine, one that will bring with it a reckoning of blood that could have repercussions for everyone and everything they hold dear.

A Million Junes, Emily Henry - For as long as Jack “June” O’Donnell has been alive, her parents have had only one rule: stay away from the Angert family. But when June collides—quite literally—with Saul Angert, sparks fly, and everything June has known is thrown into chaos. Who exactly is this gruff, sarcastic, but seemingly harmless boy who has returned to their hometown of Five Fingers, Michigan, after three mysterious years away? And why has June—an O’Donnell to her core—never questioned her late father’s deep hatred of the Angert family? After all, the O’Donnells and the Angerts may have mythic legacies, but for all the tall tales they weave, both founding families are tight-lipped about what caused the century-old rift between them. As Saul and June’s connection grows deeper, they find that the magic, ghosts, and coywolves of Five Fingers seem to be conspiring to reveal the truth about the harrowing curse that has plagued their bloodlines for generations. Now June must question everything she knows about her family and the father she adored, and she must decide whether it’s finally time for her—and all the O’Donnells before her—to let go

Throne of Glass, Sarah J. Maas - After serving out a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, 18-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien is dragged before the Crown Prince. Prince Dorian offers her her freedom on one condition: she must act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin. Her opponents are men-thieves and assassins and warriors from across the empire, each sponsored by a member of the king’s council. If she beats her opponents in a series of eliminations, she’ll serve the kingdom for four years and then be granted her freedom. Celaena finds her training sessions with the captain of the guard, Westfall, challenging and exhilarating. But she’s bored stiff by court life. Things get a little more interesting when the prince starts to show interest in her … but it’s the gruff Captain Westfall who seems to understand her best. Then one of the other contestants turns up dead … quickly followed by another. Can Celaena figure out who the killer is before she becomes a victim? As the young assassin investigates, her search leads her to discover a greater destiny than she could possibly have imagined.

Ruin and Rising, Leigh Bardugo The Darkling rules Ravka from his shadow throne. Now the nation’s fate rests with a broken Sun Summoner, a disgraced tracker, and the shattered remnants of a once-great magical army. Deep in an ancient network of tunnels and caverns, a weakened Alina must submit to the dubious protection of the Apparat and the zealots who worship her as a Saint. Yet her plans lie elsewhere, with the hunt for the elusive firebird and the hope that an outlaw prince still survives. Alina will have to forge new alliances and put aside old rivalries as she and Mal race to find the last of Morozova’s amplifiers. But as she begins to unravel the Darkling’s secrets, she reveals a past that will forever alter her understanding of the bond they share and the power she wields. The firebird is the one thing that stands between Ravka and destruction—and claiming it could cost Alina the very future she’s fighting for.

A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, Mackenzie Lee - Henry “Monty” Montague was born and bred to be a gentleman, but he was never one to be tamed. The finest boarding schools in England and the constant disapproval of his father haven’t been able to curb any of his roguish passions—not for gambling halls, late nights spent with a bottle of spirits, or waking up in the arms of women or men. But as Monty embarks on his Grand Tour of Europe, his quest for a life filled with pleasure and vice is in danger of coming to an end. Not only does his father expect him to take over the family’s estate upon his return, but Monty is also nursing an impossible crush on his best friend and traveling companion, Percy. Still it isn’t in Monty’s nature to give up. Even with his younger sister, Felicity, in tow, he vows to make this yearlong escapade one last hedonistic hurrah and flirt with Percy from Paris to Rome. But when one of Monty’s reckless decisions turns their trip abroad into a harrowing manhunt that spans across Europe, it calls into question everything he knows, including his relationship with the boy he adores.

Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, Cassandra Clare - Simon Lewis has been a human and a vampire, and now he is becoming a Shadowhunter. But the events of City of Heavenly Fireleft him stripped of his memories, and Simon isn’t sure who he is anymore. He knows he was friends with Clary, and that he convinced the total goddess Isabelle Lightwood to go out with him…but he doesn’t know how. And when Clary and Isabelle look at him, expecting him to be a man he doesn’t remember…Simon can’t take it. So when the Shadowhunter Academy reopens, Simon throws himself into this new world of demon-hunting, determined to find himself again. His new self. Whomever this new Simon might be. But the Academy is a Shadowhunter institution, which means it has some problems. Like the fact that non-Shadowhunter students have to live in the basement. And that differences—like being a former vampire—are greatly looked down upon. At least Simon is trained in weaponry—even if it’s only from hours of playing D&D. Join Simon on his journey to become a Shadowhunter, and learn about the Academy’s illustrious history along the way, through guest lecturers such as Jace Herondale, Tessa Gray, and Magnus Bane. These ten short stories give an epilogue to the Mortal Instruments series and provide glimpses of what’s in store in the Dark Artifices

City of Ashes, Cassandra Clare - Clary Fray just wishes that her life would go back to normal. But what’s normal when you’re a demon-slaying Shadowhunter, your mother is in a magically induced coma, and you can suddenly see Downworlders like werewolves, vampires, and faeries? If Clary left the world of the Shadowhunters behind, it would mean more time with her best friend, Simon, who’s becoming more than a friend. But the Shadowhunting world isn’t ready to let her go — especially her handsome, infuriating, newfound brother, Jace. And Clary’s only chance to help her mother is to track down rogue Shadowhunter Valentine, who is probably insane, certainly evil — and also her father. To complicate matters, someone in New York City is murdering Downworlder children. Is Valentine behind the killings — and if he is, what is he trying to do? When the second of the Mortal Instruments, the Soul-Sword, is stolen, the terrifying Inquisitor arrives to investigate and zooms right in on Jace. How can Clary stop Valentine if Jace is willing to betray everything he believes in to help their father? In this breathtaking sequel to City of Bones, Cassandra Clare lures her readers back into the dark grip of New York City’s Downworld, where love is never safe and power becomes the deadliest temptation.

The Raven Cycle Series, Maggie S.

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