#i like capitols and ism

[cattclysm]

strong believer in capitolism

#capitolism #i like capitols and ism #i really don't know what to say but hiii #alex's book of bullshit

[kpchrs]

In 18 years of his life, Coriolanus never meets his soulmate, unlike Tigris and her sweetheart, Festus and Persephone, or even Pluribus and Cyrus. He doesn't mind it, though. Soulmates would just distract him from what matters the most.

That changes when he sees Lucy Gray Baird getting slapped on screen and he feels the sting on his cheek.

or

Soulmate AU of Snowbaird

Yes, so, can someone please write this? lololol

My friends and I talked about this and I can't hold it back any longer.

We think that the connected pain kind of soulmate system would be the most interesting in a world with Hunger Games.

We also think that all this time, with the classism this world has, the Capitol taught the children that soulmates only run with blood/heritage/class whatever so Capitols will only have Capitol soulmates; and District with District soulmates, but it's not rare to not have one.

But no, actually Capitols can have their soulmate somewhere out there in the Districts. They never find out because, well, Capitols never really meet/see District people. (Propaganda: the Capitol desperately wants to hide this because it will break the "balance". They need to divide the Capitol and Districts, you see.)

Coryo has the pleasure of meeting his "District/Covey" soulmate via Hunger Games and it will bend his mind and turn his beliefs/mindset upside down. It will challenge his worldview of the Capitol and District and what is safe and not.

He has the pleasure of feeling all the pain Lucy Gray gets from the Games. The hunger pangs double and somewhere in his teenage mind, he thinks that starving together is romantic. Eating comforts him, though, because then her hunger will lessen a bit. Lucy Gray feels his pain too, from the bombing burn (the moment when she realises he's her soulmate) and, depending on where you derive the source, from the stitches he pulls out to save her.

He has the pleasure of thoughts (terror, horror, dread) assaulting his mind of what will happen to him if Lucy Gray dies in the arena and he watches helplessly as that happens. Cheating suddenly has a stronger basis for Coryo, because she needs to live or he dies, figuratively.

And for the same reason, Lucy Gray has one more reason to fear death. His pain will comfort Lucy Gray ironically, because feeling his pain will feel like he's there with her in the arena. It keeps her going.

And so he cheats and what you know happens. Coryo is banished to the Districts. But the sweetness will start there.

(Coryo's "his girl"ism will be official (officially written in the stars, I mean they are literally soulmates) and he will "HIS GIRL" so hard in this AU.)

The ending? Well...it can be a happy ending. Sweet, happy, sugary. It takes a soulmate system for him to sort out his priorities, it looks like.

Or Coriolanus can fight against the stars. And what happens in the woods happens.

He kills his own soulmate. Dead. Gone. Silence. And nothing happens, it seems, this soulmate thing is such a joke. He feels stupid for worrying about it in the past, because it turns out it has no effect on him.

(When actually his heart dies.)

But in the decades and decades after, he still feels pain from invisible wounds. Phantom pain, tactile hallucination, hauntings, or real? Is this a mental thing, is this punishment from the stars, or is she alive and well?

If she's still alive, when he harms himself (poison, dying, mouth sores), does she feel it too? (Does he haunt her too?) Should he tear up the woods, to cut the loose ends and to stop the madness of this uncertainty?

Well.

We will never know.

#snowbaird #tbosas #coriolanus snow #lucy gray baird #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #soulmate au #sorry i have no time and writing coryo frightens me

[princesssarcastia]

following congressional politics in the U.S. for the past couple years has been insane. it makes you feel insane. i feel like i'm losing my mind whenever I think about it for too long or too critically.

i want to take tom cotton and kevin mccarthy and jim jordan and shake them by their shoulders so I can determine whether they remember that donald trump and the republican base tried!! to kill them!! they tried to KILL them!! they constructed a gallows on the steps of the capitol and called for politicians to be hanged—and then then broke!! into!! the capitol!! and tried to find you!!! they tried to hunt you down!!!

what do you and your colleagues imagine would have happened if they succeeded in either breaking into the house chambers while members were still present, or in happening upon congresspeople as they were evacuating, or in finding members in the undisclosed locations they were evacuated to. look me in the eyes. look me in the eyes, mr. republican congressman, and tell me what you think would have happened to you if the rioters, the insurrectionists, the trump voters, had gotten ahold of you on january 6th, 2021.

i'll tell you what would have happened: they would have killed you. you would be dead, instead of standing here being shaken vigorously by a woman you've since driven insane.

maybe telling them you were a republican would have saved you—but i doubt it. maybe trying to explain that no, you were perfectly willing to overturn the election, if you very nice people would simply let us do that, would have saved you—but i doubt that, too. i think they would have just attacked you on sight, like dogs fighting over a bone. I think that guy with the military grade zip-ties on his belt would have come for you and killed you.

but they didn't succeed, there but for the grace of god. you live, still, and in doing so, have created the exact circumstances necessary for the SAME THING TO HAPPEN AGAIN.

what do you think is going to happen in january of 2025? what do you think is going to happen, after four years of telling the republican base that the 2020 election was stolen, and elections are vulnerable to fraud, and you can't trust the results of the elections—

what do you think is going to happen after, voters and fate willing, fingers crossed, donald trump loses the presidential election in november 2024? what do you think is going to happen to YOU, mr. republican congressman?

do you think donald trump is going to concede? do you think he's going to quietly fade into obscurity?

or do you know, like I do, that he's going to try it again? one attempted insurrection already under his belt, all the kinks worked out, maybe he even publishes some maps of the capitol so the next round of rioters can find you in your little hidey-holes.

how many hundred of people who were involved in january 6th do you think are still out there? how many proud boys and other white supremacist groups are still out there? how many of them do you think will be calm and reasonable enough to spare you when the time comes?

tl:dr, tonight the republican conference nominated Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) to be their next Speaker-Elect. Johnson being one of the major architects behind the 2021 efforts to refuse to certify the results of the 2020 election in Congress. And when a reporter tried to ask him about his election denial-ism, he laughed, and the other republicans booed, and he refused to answer the question.

because it doesn't matter to them, not now. not while there's still power to grab.

I wonder if it will matter to them the next time the insurrectionists come knocking at the chamber doors.

Probably not.

#yakety sax at the house of representatives #im so angry #and tired #and i really truly feels crazy #these people are incentivizing their own murder by mob #and i guess...we're just letting them? #january 6th

[saltypiss]

I'm obviously not trying to say there should be more, but it's telling that the only """"""""murder""""""""" to republicans via police/oppressive forces has been that one stupid chick at the Capitol.

Everyone else has been...everyone else, getting murdered as usual, usually over lies and bigotry.

Republican's can't even accept their "martyr" was a mortar of a problem for the entire country had she made it through. The closest to martyr-ism she'll ever get is the fact they scattered like pussies near immedietely after.

Yeah the people that spread shit on the walls and propped their legs up on some desk like they're anything can't even take one (1) death without buckling down and claiming victim. At the very least she's a victim of the Dump Cult, but the very fact the bottom of the barrel of humanity got that far and gave up that quickly is just pathetic and telling.

They were all there TO murder, and upon their only casuality in the front-lines, they ran off. Accomplishing nothing but proving they're domestic terrorists, just not very good ones right now.

Oh wait I remember where a ton of deaths came at the hands of politicians/those above the law! Dump's Covid response! How could I forget, I mean, I didn't really feel much off it, since I was vaccinated, but boy howdy some of them really wanted to test some stupid and found the fuck out.

Maybe that counts? But everyone else isn't and wasn't injecting themselves with bleach to fight airborne viruses so...

It's truly incredible how they'll try to equate 2 dudes kissing or a dude wearing a dress with storming the capitol, kidnapping children, forcing government issued identities they HAVE to follow, banning books and american history, not understanding if the music isn't modern rap or country that the song and artist stand against everything they idiotically choose to believe.

Idunno. Maybe let people have their own identity? They're always going off about religious assaults and the war on christmas this, like...bro. Your entire identity is about corruption or personally percieved status quo, about rigid lifestyles and personalities, likes and dislikes.

The left, really just anything not considered republican, is about personal identity, and when people were literally just asking to be called different names, they broke down, cried, and now the Nazi's are back because in Republican's actual belief system, that's the normal response to someone being themself by themselves.

Could've just went on and misgendered and whatever else honestly. There's always extremists and republicans pretending to be normal people and utterly failing basic advanced biology or general fact checking. But the left and others didn't ever consider bringing nazis back just to ensure personal identity and freedom of expression is illegal.

Like, a republican does in fact know not everyone agrees with them and having policy's that enforce only government issued personalities and perspectives is genuinely retarded right? Of course not. They don't think.

That's the main issue people really need to grasp. It's absolutely disingenuousness, but it's also just simple fact: They're literally at the intellect level of a child.

And that, that is where normal people should change their messaging. Because yes. Even the fucking brat you want to beat up deserves the chance to understand nuanced situations. Even if their first reaction is to turn to the nazis. Why? Because normal people don't leave others behind, not even disturbed individuals.

Just remember if they have an idiot's opinion, you can't change their minds instantly, but you can put voices in their heads for days, even years, maybe decades, if you just approach it right.

Instead of aiming for 100%, aim for layman's terms. Explaining to a Crackhead tier stuff. Anger will result in more anger. Their response will be anger. Don't antagonize, make them feel open to what is being given.

Either way tho, some dumb mother fuckers. They feel like the default growing person's party because they've not just dumbed everything down severely, they've dumbed it down by just lying.

Twitter has shown what matters isn't context, nobody gives a shit that the reason the NASA Furry employee went off on another NASA employee on twitter was because they were harrassed constantly and daily, and the response was genuinely frustrsting given the circumstances. Nobody cares. It's easier and funnier to shit on the furry for being an asshole for absolutely no reason. Despite being a totally understandable situation they resolved regardless.

The left doesn't lie. But it need to leave information out. The hard part with conspiracy theorist republicans is that everything is a conspiracy unless it's republicans. So you have to be selective about what's left out.

You can't just link a website, you have to quote, and make that whole quote clickable. Make it something where if they ask for a source or lie one wasn't given, they look dumb, making them look dumb in a way that is entirely on them will leave them frustrated, but the voice will stick harder.

In general, you can tell there's a stark difference between the two because one instantly reacts and the other considers, at some point, we have to react smartly.

Perhaps we need to start using their own tactics against them, it won't be hard, they do the bare thought minimum with anger making them even dumber. Just gotta infiltrate more and more. Can't force anyone to change their minds, but you can make them think more than they have. And that, that's what needs to happen.

Because they don't think. They don't consider. So make them. Say the right thing. And it will make them finally consider.

#republicans

[theghostwrites]

Hot take but people need to stop saying that the hunger games trilogy is THE book series that talks about fighting against oppression when it’s not???? Unpopular opinion but it’s message about fighting against your oppressors is actually terrible. The Hunger Games trilogy’s message about freedom was that you NEED to be peaceful or else you are just as terrible as your oppressive government which is a message that has been used to EXCUSE oppressive systems. The oppressed do NOT need to be gentle when it comes to fighting for their freedom. The districts had every right to use militancy to get rid of the Capitol. Using militancy or being peaceful when you fight against your oppressors are both valid and one is not better than the other. But The Hunger Games doesn’t get that. What it does instead is frame brown people (Gale) as violent for wanting freedom and say that white characters represent peace (Peeta). The author literally writes in the book that Gale represents fire and anger and that Peeta is better because he is peaceful. That’s racism 101. She made Gale into this violent monster in the end even though he cared so much for people. The Hunger Games actually excuses oppression through its writing of Gale and the other rebels while claiming that the books are about fighting for your freedom but you guys just keep on putting Suzanne Collins on a pedestal and eating up her (shitty) opinions about freedom. THG trilogy is outdated and you guys need to accept that instead of being stuck in 2012 and constantly praising it and its (shitty) white author who clearly came from a privileged background.

I love how you became more unhinged as this went on. Same. These types of random asks are the only reason I know I didn't get a completely different book than the rest of the world. I think so much about these points, you have no idea It should have been clear for everyone that a White woman from North America should not get the final literary word on revolutions/oppression when she is among the privileged herself. Sadly that's not the case. And the reason why we can't have nuanced discussions around these books anymore, I think, it's bc they've become this idyllic example of "see?? YA is GOOD!!" to detract from haters, so it makes people defensive, and nostalgia of course. Like the stupid ass fresh-as-parchment "There's no love triangle in THG! mainstream media is like the capitol" take I have to come across every other week (the trope is there 🙄, just bc it's not the central theme, doesn't magically remove it). These points you bring up I'll never get tired of shouting to the rooftops, bc we (readers) can point fingers at SJM for the lack of LGBT+ characters in her work, or at Ken Foll*t/ GRRM/ 99.9% of male authors and acknowledge that their ingrained sexism seeps into their work, but never Suzanne. Suzanne, who meant to write a story about how war damages people on both sides and only creates death... by using a revolution as a setting and completely ripping away humanity from all her revolutionaries. And I'm not talking about Finnick or Katniss herself who have personal reasons to reluctantly participate, I'm talking about those who thought about COMMUNITY and were fervent in their support. Not a concept I expect a white lib to grasp. What finally confirmed my suspicion that she truly has no fucking clue about it was her writing that cashgrab prequel about freaking Snow, which could have been a wonderful opportunity to explore the insidious nature of privilege/ nationalism/ all of the other isms 🥴, and how they evolve through time. But that would be like asking for a vegan salad from the butcher.

Unfortunate circumstances all around. I still appreciate some things about THG so I don't start shit with fans, but you won't catch me praising them either.

#ask #anon #anti THG #Gale hawthorne #books

[c-is-for-circinate]

Thinking today about viruses, allergies, oppression, and anti culture.

(under a cut because WHOOOPS this got long)

Racism is a virus. Homophobia, transphobia, sexism, antisemitism, ableism, etc etc etc, they are all viruses--a topic that many of us have learned a great deal about in the past year. They are ideas, yes, not literal physical diseases, but the analogy holds up. They are infectious, and often spread from person to person without anyone involved realizing they have it. They can sit latent for years, never showing up because the carrier never finds themselves in a situation where the issue comes up, only to flare up and take over when you least expect it. And they mutate, just like the flu, just like the common cold; they put on a new jacket every year and slide in undetected yet again, slip past our internal sensors and bury themselves in our brains until we go in and deal with them as best as we can.

One more thing we've learned about viruses this year is how we can fight them. The viruses of oppression are a little different because they tend to hurt the people around their carriers even more than the people they've infected (although let's talk about internalized anything-ism sometime), but in a lot of ways the attack is the same. You treat the symptoms even when you don't know how to cure the disease: we invest in respirators, antiviral treatments, hospitals; we create and sponsor programs to help those who've been hurt by various oppressions, we uplift our neighbors, we try to keep people safe from violences both big and small. You work to stop the spread: we wear our goddamn masks, we stay home when we can; we train ourselves not to say racist shit that might foster a culture of hate, we stop that guy in our office from making rape jokes, we make slurs unacceptable. You pay attention to your immune system: we seek medical attention when we experience symptoms, we get COVID tests, we talk to our doctors before the symptoms get deadly; we protest and we pay attention to the people who do, we take them seriously when they tell us that something is wrong.

You vaccinate. We train ourselves and our immune systems to recognize the thing that infects us, the thing that we fear. We try to teach our children about history, bit by little bit, on fragments of dead violence the same way we train our bodies on dead virus shells, so that someday they'll recognize the live disease when they see it. We learn about slavery and Jim Crow and the Holocaust. We tell kids bedtime stories about why hitting and bullying is bad, before we ever start teaching them the specific shapes that violence so often takes. As we get older, as we get stronger, we learn about the living stuff, all the new forms that same old virus has mutated into; we educate ourselves, we listen, we read. Just like vaccines, of course, there are anti-vaxxers and denialists shouting about how racism and sexism are already dead and they don't need any propoganda besides Fox News. Hell, just like anti-maskers, there are plenty of people screaming about how political correctness is ruining the world and they demand their right to spread their virus to anyone they can. Often these are the same people.

But we try. And make no mistake, we all of us are already infected, and just like a real virus, once you've caught it once it probably won't ever go away again--but we can prepare, and we can try to lessen the severity of our cases, and we can support our immune systems of activists and protesters and our own internal sense of this is wrong, and we can work, bit by bit, if not towards eradication (not yet, not in this world, but maybe someday in another), then at least towards control.

And then there's allergies.

An allergy is what happens when a human body's own immune system freaks out over an enemy that wasn't particularly harmful in the first place. All our immune defenses--those precious immune defenses, which work so hard to protect us against all those viral, deadly ideas--go screaming into high gear. All of that fear and fury and attack power gets brought to bear all at once, against a bit of pollen or bee venom or cat dander or peanuts, and your body is left itchy and runny-nosed and gasping--sometimes literally--as it tries to keep up. Allergies are miserable. Sometimes they're life-threatening. And the biggest danger isn't the foreign agent that triggers the allergic reaction; it's the immune system trying to fight it in the first place.

Which, yes, brings us to anti culture--but not JUST anti culture. It's a good example, a little internet-centric microcosm of the same force that drives progressives to tear bloody shreds out of moderate liberal politicians. Hell, it's the same force that enables both TERFs and the Capitol rioters. It's a combination of an immune system that points in the wrong direction, flagging the wrong thing as bad, terrifying, danger, NO, and a freaked-out response that can manifest as anything from mildly irritating to absolutely deadly.

To be clear, I am not by any means equating the scale or even the source of these things, any more than hayfever is the same as anaphylactic shock. Likewise, the sources are different. Sometimes, a disease can infect an immune system and point it in the wrong direction. (Terror of the other is the absolute cornerstone of white nationalism, and when that terror gets triggered by a harmless environmental condition like, god forbid, other people asking for rights, the allergy response can be deadly.) Other times, it's the other way around. Our internal immune systems, so well trained to protect ourselves and those around us from the insidious viral ravages of prejudice and oppression, start seeing traces of it everywhere.

And they freak out. And we suffer for it.

We talk a lot of well-deserved shit about TERFs, but it's useful to remember how much their nastiness feels to them like activism. Their immune system, trained and primed and sensitized over years of exposure to misogyny and sexism, catches the tiniest whiff of something that might seem at some point to have possibly been taken for male, and freaks out, because why is that trying to get into our system. Never mind that they're wrong. An immune system that flips out over penicillin is wrong, too. It's still trying to help, and it's still doing more harm than good trying it.

So bringing this back around to anti culture, which was absolutely where I started thinking about all of this this morning: anti culture, the terror of porn and the attempt by antis to protect themselves an other people from sexual content, is an immune response. It is a trained immune response, in people who have been taught and re-taught again and again that rape culture is a dangerous insidious virus that should be fought at all costs. And, right, there's more than a bit of 'the sexism virus infected this immune system and reprogrammed it to fight itself' involved here, but look, we are all of us infected with all of the viruses at least a little bit everywhere. If we tried to direct our immune systems to rip every last shred of -ism out of every last bit of us, we'd rip ourselves apart. Which is exactly the problem.

Porn, in and of itself, is natural. As natural as environmental pollen, and living near dogs and cats, and eating wheat or nuts or citrus fruit. It's even healthy, for a whole host of reasons that belong in another essay. And citric acid and nut-based proteins and whole grains are nutritious, and pets are physically and psychologically helpful, and being exposed to lots of different environmental substances as a child can actually help train your immune system in the first place. Porn can help us figure out what we like. It can help us figure out what we don't like. And while the processes that create it are sometimes unethical and awful, we don't condemn all dogs because puppy mills and dogfighting rings exist, even if we do have dog allergies.

What we see in anti culture is often a good-faith attempt on the part of antis to attack and subdue an environmental trigger that they read as dangerous. It's a panic attack over something that is by nature harmless or mildly harmful, blown out of proportion by the very instincts that are supposed to keep us safe. It's the response of an immune system that's been taught over years and years, by everyone from parents to school systems to the activists they look up to, that negative stimulus is to be feared, avoided, and fought. Of COURSE they're going to freak out.

And of course, early exposure to controlled amounts of allergens can help prevent later allergies from developing. Of course when kids are raised with abstinence-only education, sheltered from the very concept of sex, they're going to grow up allergic to it. (Of course they're going to try to protect other kids from the same, like worried mothers who refuse to let peanuts or wheat products or dirt near their precious babies, whose kids grow up with a whole suite of allergic triggers because their bodies never learned what was okay in the first place.) And no, that doesn't mean we hand pornography to ten-year-olds any more than we should give raw honey to an infant--but of course if our culture refuses to introduce kids to the fact that sex and desire and the inside of their own brain can be messy and silly and kinky and downright weird, we're going to have a higher rate of allergic reaction to the entire concept in adults.

I wish I had a better answer for what to do with understanding that this is what's going through so many people's brains. The best I have is a prescription for allergy-sufferers, who probably haven't read this far through this wordspew of an essay in the first place--but we all get a little hayfever once in a while, and we all sometimes run into content that makes us angry. So some thoughts on how to deal with metaphorical allergic reactions, inspired by the ways we deal with literal ones?

First: we recognize that what is happening is an allergy. The thing we're reacting to might be gross, or irritating, or even unpleasant, but the danger is not and never has been the thing itself. Whether it's triggering a response because of its similarity to an actively dangerous pathogen, or our immune system just doesn't like it, our aversion to one kind of story or another universally says more about us than about it. Luckily, we have a lot more control over our social responses than our biological ones!!! If vocal activism is our sociocultural immune system firing itself up to fight an infection that may or may not exist, then we get to tell our metaphorical white blood cells to stand down. We get to decide.

Second: we get some space. The funny thing about allergies is, while early exposure to allergens can help prevent them, re-exposing yourself to dangerous allergens after you've already developed a reaction to them can make them worse. Anaphylaxis is always more likely after someone's experienced it the first time. Repeated exposure to triggers, whether biological or psychological, can make the effects worse. So stop exposing yourself.

If something makes your throat itch every time you eat it, stop eating it. If something makes you mad every time you read it, stop reading it. Obviously this can be easier said than done in a world that's a lot worse about warning labels on stories than ingredients labels on foods, but that's why fic tags exist. And: sometimes, the croissant is delicious enough that we decide we're willing to suffer through the way the almonds make us feel, just this once. Sometimes the ship or the characterization or, hell, those other kinks that we really like are tasty enough that we'll put up with the trope we hate. We're allowed to do that. But we do it knowing there will be consequences, and we don't blame the baker when they hit.

We also don't have to blame ourselves. It sucks to be allergic to shellfish when all your friends are raving about the new seafood place. But that's not our fault any more than it's theirs.

Third: sometimes, if we need one, we go to the doctor. Or a therapist. Yes, really.

Not because there's anything really wrong with an aversion or even mild breakouts of hives, annoyance, and bitching in your friends' DMs--but it sure isn't pleasant, and sometimes your doctor might have a better solution than 'avoid it and take a Benadryl' that makes you feel a little better in the long run. And sometimes, it's not a mild breakout. Sometimes it's the kind of story that lingers with you for days, makes your skin crawl; sometimes your throat swells up and it gets hard to breathe. Sometimes we get angry enough about something we've read that we can't stand down our immune system, don't want to stop ourselves from writing that angry comment, that tumblr post, that abuse report to the mods for something that didn't actually break any rules. And that's dangerous, because when our immune response can flare out of control like that, we don't always know where and when it will happen next, and the risk of what we'll do if it happens gets way, way higher.

Sometimes it really is worth getting a second opinion. Sometimes you need somebody to tell you, "actually, it is not normal to get tingly and sweaty every time you eat potatoes." There are ways to train your brain and leash your white blood cells that I sure as heck am not expert enough to address. There are, it turns out, ways to feel better. There are ways to mitigate the damage your own well-meaning defense mechanisms might do to yourself or other people along the way.

And: we can take a deep breath when someone with an allergy to something we've baked, something we've written, something we like, is lashing out trying to protect themselves and everyone around them from something they've registered as a threat. Of course they're wrong. Yes, we told them there were tree nuts in the brownies ahead of time; yes, they chose to eat them anyway. But it can be worth reminding them and ourselves that there's a difference between "this thing is toxic" and "this harmless thing has driven my own system into a defensive response that sure makes it feel like I've been poisoned." And it can be worth reminding ourselves as well as them that sometimes, that difference can be really hard to spot.

#driveby meta attack #I guess #whoops I essay'ed #this was not meant to get this long #welp #anti discourse day

[shoku-and-awe]

As listening practice for the language learners, here’s a clip from NHK’s coverage of Biden’s inaguration! This part comes about 20 seconds in. Vocab behind the cut.

世界が注目していました。 The eyes of the world were upon them. アメリカの第46代大統領に民主党のジョー・バイデン氏が就任しました。 Democrat Joe Biden has taken office as the 46th president of the United States. そのバイデン新大統領、 就任演説で「民主主義が勝利した。分断は深く現実のものだが、国民の結束に全身全霊を尽くす」と訴えました。 President Biden said in his inaugural address, “Democracy has prevailed… I know the forces that divide us are deep and they are real… [but] my whole soul is in this: uniting our nation.”* [Flourish of music] Inauguration Announcer: “Dr. Jill Biden!” [Applause] 大統領就任式は、日本時間の今日未明首都ワシントンの連邦議会議事堂の前で行われました。 The presidential inauguration was held in front of the Capitol Building in the capital Washington DC in what was early dawn today in Japan time. [news podcast continues]

I laughed. I admit, it is a little difficult to hear the difference between “Jill” and “Joe” in that clip. And you can argue that referring to Joe as “Biden-sensei” wouldn’t sound thaaaat weird in Japanese, so, to a casual listener, that would explain the use of “doctor.”

But national news should be a bit more diligent than casual listener? There should be some editing process in place. If you have just one clip, take the time make sure it’s actually saying what you think it’s saying!

Idk, after more than a decade of nodding patiently as Japanese people tell me that their attention to detail is just inherently superior, I can’t help but smile at stuff like this.

*Note: Japanese news uses quotation marks for things that are not direct quotes, which can be disorienting for English speakers. I used this transcript to splice together the parts of Biden’s speech they’re probably quoting and marked it up accordingly.

世界【せかい】 the world 注目【ちゅうもく】 attention 第～【だい～】 prefix for ordinal numbers (e.g. 1st, 2nd) 大統領【だいとうりょう】 president 民主【みんしゅ】 democracy 民主党【みんしゅとう】 Democratic Party ～氏【～し】 respectful suffix 就任【しゅうにん】 assume office, inaugurate 新～【しん～】 new ~ 演説【えんぜつ】 speech, address ～主義【～しゅぎ】 ~ism 勝利【しょうり】 win 分断【ぶんだん】 division 深い【ふかい】 deep 現実【げんじつ】 reality, actuality 国民【こくみん】 citizens 結束【けっそく】 unite 全身【ぜんじん】 whole body 全霊 【 ぜんれい】 whole soul 全身全霊【ぜんしんぜんれい】 complete devotion 尽くす【つくす】 to devote, to exhaust, to use up/run out 訴える【うったえる】 to make an appeal ～式【～しき】 ~ ceremony 日本時間【にほんじかん】 Japan Time 今日【きょう】 today 未明【みめい】 early dawn 首都【しゅと】 capital 連邦【れんぽう】 federation, federal 議会 【ぎかい】 Congress (or Assembly, Parliament, etc.) 連邦議会【れんぽうぎかい】Congress 議事堂【ぎじどう】 assembly hall 連邦議会議事堂【れんぽうかいぎぎじどう】 US Capitol Building ～の前【～のまえ】 in front of ~ 行う【おこなう】 to carry out, to take place

#are there mistakes in this post?? i bet there are!! #but i am not a national news organzation #learning japanese #japanese language

[imagitory]

Allow me to apologize. I worded that wrong. I no longer support Donald Trump after that riot on the capitol. It was bad, it was violent, and it spits in the face of everything the GOP stands for. What I mean is that prior to that riot, I did not notice anything racist/homophobic about him, and I never understood why so many ppl have those allegations.

I accept your apology, and I’m glad at least that you don’t count yourself among the members of the Republican Party who have flagrantly turned their backs on what our republic supposedly stands for.

That being said, I’m afraid Donald Trump’s racism is still pretty hard to deny, and I have to admit, I’m both stunned and dismayed that you have somehow yet to see it.

As I said in my response to your original words, Donald Trump has long been championed by white supremacists like ex-KKK Grand Wizard David Duke and the Proud Boys, and he has consistently refused to actively condemn their actions or beliefs, instead being prone to jump into “what-about-ism” and “both-sides-ing” the issue so that he equates actively racist extremists with counter-protestors and civil rights activists...or, even worse, actively encouraging those racist extremists. (“Stand back and stand by,” anyone?)

This isn’t even touching on how Trump’s travel ban actively targeted Middle-Eastern countries and how even now there are dozens of Mexican and South American people locked up on our southern border in real-life concentration camps, separated from their families in the midst of a raging pandemic, all because of the rhetoric Trump spewed about Mexicans “bringing crime and drugs” into our country and “being rapists” who would “steal jobs” from “real” Americans. Regardless of one’s stance on immigration, refugees are protected under international law, and yet we have lumped them in with people who tried to cross our southern border illegally -- and on top of that, all of those people came to our country out of desperation, and most illegal immigrants who make it across the border and integrate into American society don’t become criminals at all. If anything, it’s more logical for them to try to stay under the radar, since they don’t want to be deported back where they came from! And even if you arrested those immigrants on the border as criminals, they would still be entitled to a full criminal trial and humane conditions while imprisoned, which they most certainly are not in at present. Trump got elected largely because of his anti-immigrant (which in truth was largely anti-Mexican and anti-Muslim -- he sure as Hell didn’t mind giving his wife Melania’s parents American citizenship without much fuss) rhetoric and his promise to “protect” America with a great big wall that Mexico would pay for -- a wall that, may I point out, we Americans not only paid for, but is also a tiny, pathetic shadow of what he claimed it would be and yet he’s still boasting was a victory of his administration.

Then of course there’s Trump’s history of racism toward black people, shown in his discriminatory housing practices and the completely fabricated “birtherism” conspiracy theory he started about Barack Obama that claimed he wasn’t a real American citizen, which tapped into a lot of racist Americans’ prejudice toward our first black president. Trump’s referred to countries like Haiti as “sh*thole countries” and blames China singularly for the spread of Covid-19 by trying to call it the “China Virus” and the “Kung Flu,” completely ignoring how much his own administration’s negligence resulted in America easily surpassing every other country on Earth in Covid deaths, with over 386,000 deaths in less than a year, compared to about 405,000 deaths over the course of four years during World War II. Even Trump’s whole mantra of “America First” is a slogan associated with both the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party -- David Duke himself used that very phrase when running for office in 2016, the same year Trump was elected president. I’m truly sorry, but if all of this doesn’t make it very clear where Trump stands in regards to race, I don’t think there’s anything I could do or say to make it clearer.

As for homophobia, I’d point to Trump’s supposedly more “religious” counterpart Mike Pence as being the more actively and vocally anti-LGBT out of the two of them, considering his support for “gay conversion therapy,” his voting history against gay marriage, his vote to preserve the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, and his stance on so-called “Religious Freedom” that denies services to people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. But considering Trump selected Pence as his running mate, I think that says plenty about how unproblematic Pence’s anti-LGBT positions are to him.

Although I’m disheartened by the fact that I had to write out any of this and that you could have any doubt in your mind about the kind of person Donald Trump truly is, I’m at least encouraged that you’ve softened your words to the point that you acknowledge you don’t understand the other side’s position, as opposed to acting like other people are just being overly sensitive and confidently saying that one can’t name three instances where Trump has proven himself to be racist.

#ask me #excuse me politics coming through #donald trump #mike pence #racism #homophobia #I'm honestly kind of stunned you feel any need to defend this man at all though? #I mean even if he's despicable for more reasons than just his treason #why do you feel the urge to try to say 'well he's not as racist as people say he is?' #it kind of feels like those people who try to claim that at least hitler was a good artist #which honestly?? ehhhhh not really??

[americanredragger]

A Letter to My Mother (That I am too scared to send)

Okay. We’re having this talk now. I have been putting it off because there’s never been a way for me to keep my cool long enough to say it straight. I’ve been nice, I’ve been polite. I’ve walked away from conversations rather than address this directly because I don’t want to lose my mom.

Yesterday was unlike anything in American history. There is no both-sides-ism to be taken here. There is no even vaguely similar violence unleashed by the Left. This isn’t to say that NO violence has ever been unleashed by the left, it can and does happen. But nothing like this. This is unprecedented in both it's scope and audacity.

Unless you can point to an instance in which a Democrat president (or Senator, or Governor) whipped up a riot and unleashed those rioters on the Seat of Government of the United States of America, causing it to be breached and overrun by a hostile force for the first time in 207 years, the things don’t equate at all.

Unless you can point to a riot held by alt-right wingers in which the police cracked down on them HARD to the level of being condemned by the International Criminal Court as bordering on war crimes, the things don’t equate at all.

This was a direct assault on our government by a crowd whipped up by a sitting president. This has never happened before.

The Capitol Police removed the barricades and guided the insurrectionists in.

They chatted and took selfies with them. Exchanged fist bumps with them.

The seditionists were allowed to leave with few arrests, just… gently guided out once the barbarian hordes had their fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaPTjQZBLhQ

And yes, Trump (eventually) told them to go home, but refused to condemn what they'd done and finished his speech with "We love you. You're very special." and continued to refer to his political opponents as "evil".

This is quite literally unprecedented in American history. As in, nothing comes close. That's what "unprecedented" means.

If this had been BLM, the response would have been entirely different. DC would be on lockdown. The police would be bringing WAR to the streets. There would be helicopters, APCs, and beat cops dressed like the US Army rolling into Baghdad in 2003. The DC area hospitals would be overwhelmed with rioters suffering from horrific head and spine injuries from trigger-happy use of rubber bullets and night-sticks. Hell, Trump tear-gassed ACTUAL peaceful protesters last summer just so he could stage an awkward photo op in front of a church, which even the Clergy called him out on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzBhYhu7NYI

Don't you DARE equate the two.

I'm tired of the whataboutisms. I'm tired of ignoring the evidence right in front of you. Donald Trump is the single most corrupt, evil man America has ever elected to the presidency. He has worked hard to transform the Republican party into something that actual Holocaust survivors and experts have called "Neofascist" and even less flattering terms.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/5/17940610/trump-hitler-history-historian

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/07/16/its-not-wrong-to-compare-trumps-america-to-the-holocaust-heres-why/

https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/2020/10/25/holocaust-survivor-fears-rising-tide-ugliness-blames-trump-opinion/3740781001/

https://forward.com/scribe/455507/100-year-old-holocaust-survivor-compares-trump-to-hitler/

https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article223718330.html

Historians and victims of fascism the world over point to what Trump and his transformed Republican party have been doing as president when asked how the Weimar Republic fell and the Nazi regime rose.

The overwhelming amount of terrorist attacks in the last five years have been Trump supporters (Well over half stemming from that singular cause, with the rest divvied among a MASSIVE swathe of motives), but none more so overwhelmingly so than yesterday's.

There is no left wing equivalent for this in America until you go all the way back to the Weather Underground bombings, and even they were not goaded on by the incumbent politicians of a party.

Your party has been STOLEN from you. The Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan is no more. And now it’s stealing you from your children as we have watched you and dad drift further and further into the Hannity-Limbaugh-Carlson echo chamber.

88 years ago next month, right wing extremists set fire to the Reichstag in the Weimar Republic. Over the next few days, they seeded reports that it was actually the communists, maybe socialists, no, it was definitely anarchists… or was it trade unionists? Either way, it HAD to have been The Left who burned down the Reichstag.

This was used to expand and hold onto the power of the Chancellor, a man who need not be named. The next few years proved to be sorrowful for everyone.

That same blame-shifting is already happening again, but it's not in some far away country, it's happening here, where we all thought it couldn't.

This sort of event is unprecedented in the United States, or it was until yesterday. It is not so unprecedented elsewhere.

The only difference is that this attempt failed.

The attempt was made because Trump’s own administration found that this was the most secure election in American history, and Trump’s lawsuits to the contrary were laughed out of court by Trump-appointed judges, including his Supreme Court justices, and his exceedingly incompetent and well-documented attempts to get state officials to overturn a legitimate election all failed.

I still believe you and dad are good, honest people. Patriots who want America to do well in the world.

You can not-like Nancy Pelosi, or Obama, or Biden, or Hilary Clinton. That’s your prerogative, and we’ll agree on plenty in that regard. You’re well within your rights to believe that my preferred economics don’t work. We’ll disagree heartily, but that’s normal for families, especially between parents and their kids.

But your party has been hijacked by neofascists, malignant narcissists, and white supremacists.

I am on my knees BEGGING you to see what so many experts and victims have been warning you about for years.

The Left did not do this.

Trump did.

You have been led astray by an vain, selfish, greedy demagogue, a well documented honorless grifter who embodies everything Christ opposed, and uses people until they have nothing more to give him and discards them. He has cloaked this latest grift in the American flag and set a cross upon it, the only way Fascism ever COULD take root in America, as we saw with Joe McCarthy in the Second Red Scare.

It’s changing you. You can’t see it because it’s happening to you, but those around you can, and it’s scaring us.

Please, finally, truly see this. I want my parents back. You’re going down a path I can’t follow and it’s breaking my heart.

In 2016, I broke from the Republican Party because I saw calamity coming in the nomination of Donald Trump. Only 4 years later, and history has soberingly showed me that I was more right than I could have ever guessed, and my world view has never been the same since. I have looked back at the political opinions I wrote and posted then, and they were so selfish and hateful that it was physically painful for me to put myself through that review. I was a puppet. I couldn’t have seen it at the time because I was at the center of it, and I still live in dread of the monster I would have become if I’d kept to that path. I see that same kind of speech coming from you now - the jingoism, the recycled talking points, the Orwellian denials, and the near-unquestioning loyalty to the stars of the Republican Party and their mouthpieces at Fox, OAN, Newsmax, and the AM Radio circuit. I see the most selfish parts of who I used to be, and I know that deep down, you are not that person because I still see you constantly striving to be a good mother, a good Christian, and a model human being.

I’m imploring you to finally look at the evidence, the boundless clear and present evidence, and see what men like Gingrich, McConnell, and Trump have turned your party into. What they are turning you into, the same as they tried with me.

I know you wouldn’t be happy as a Democrat - I myself am only begrudgingly a Democrat because the system doesn’t allow for a viable alternative (and that’s a whole different issue that deserves it’s own library of articles). I’m not trying to convert you. I just need to know that you can look at the evidence with your own eyes like I did and see that you’ve been played for a sucker by men who cry wolf and distract you by having you chase shadows while they line their pockets with money and power. Please stop listening to these monsters, stop swallowing their poison. I know how easy it is to be in that world because I myself have lived in it for most of my life. I fully understand the appeal: there are easy answers for everything, you always know who the enemy is and who your supposed allies and benefactors are. But I also left that behind, and yes, it hurts. It hurts a lot, and frequently. But despite the pain, I know I am better off for having done it.

Yes, I have to question the people who claim to represent me more. I have to question EVERYTHING more because I now know that nothing is as clear cut as I thought it was - once removed from Plato’s Cave, I no longer had the luxury of a simple world. And yet I am still happier because I am so much more my own person now. Yes I falter, and worse still, some days I fall back into the old ways of thinking, but now I recognize that for what it is and it is easier to deal with.

You’ll always be a Conservative, Mom, but I see you on the path that I was on, a path that nearly robbed me of my critical thinking and objectivity, and one which would have weaponized my sense of patriotism to benefit people who are not me. You have kept that course far longer than I. Please put aside the whataboutisms, the both-sides-isms, and finally see the evil, ravenous monster that killed your party from the inside and now wears its skin to deceive you into feeding it further.

I don’t ask that you agree with my politics or economics. I AM begging you though to split from this political machine which is changing you into something I no longer recognize. I want the parents I used to have, the ones who could look at things objectively and form their own opinions instead of repeating talk show buzz lines.

Please, recognize the shadows on the wall of the cave that wicked men are showing you are NOT reality. Please, join me in the truth of the world outside.

#I very nearly sent it #but she's already having tremendous issues between her and my sister and I didn't want to compound those and split the family apart #more than it already has #at any rate #if she doesn't start cooling down by fall #well #at least I have it written down here for easy access #politics #family #trump #republicans #democrats #echo chamber #republican #mitch mcconnell #conservative #conservatives #family issues

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 601: Irkallian Oracle Grave Ekstasis

Back in 2016, SUMAC finished a tour with a show in Dallas, TX and immediately had to head back to the Pacific Northwest once we’d loaded out of the club. It was a 32-hour drive, but most of it is a blur. One of the only things I remember is waking from a nap somewhere on the Utah/Wyoming border and hearing this cavernous roar of blackened death metal blasting out of the stereo. It sounded like the aural manifestation of the Uruk-Hai storming across Middle Earth (pardon the nerd-speak, but I think I get a free pass for Tolkien-isms when we’re discussing metal). Though road weary and exhausted, the three of us all sat up and absorbed the harrowing debut full-length of some Swedish group called Irkallian Oracle. 

We got into Seattle in the early evening. I was still living in NYC at the time, so I grabbed a hotel on Capitol Hill and went out for a bite and a beer in my old neighborhood. I wound up at a bar sitting next to some drunk businessman in a suit arguing with the bartender about his three-figure tab. “You asked for a shot of the most expensive tequila we had, and that’s how much it cost,” the bartender said with a shrug. The businessman, trying to save face, turned to me and threw his credit card on the counter grumbling “what does it even matter... it’s not real money anyways.” I curled up in my hotel bed a couple hours later, wondering when my beloved old neighborhood had become a playground for the rich.

A couple of years later I’d move back to Capitol Hill. It was indeed a different place than it had been when I’d moved away five years prior---fewer familiar faces, higher rents, fewer dive bars, higher prices. The SUMAC guys surprised me with a vinyl copy of the Irkallian Oracle LP, and for those first few months back in the Northwest while all my stuff lived in a storage space, it was one of the few records I had in the apartment (coincidentally, the above photo was taken in that apartment and sat in my drafts for two years). 

This is one of those records that you throw on when you want to feel completely  bulldozed by a massive wall of sound. It’s a huge, thunderous wave of all-consuming blackness on par with stuff like Portal or Alterage. It sounds like the walls of a fortification collapsing and a city set to flames. Given the context of my initial exposure and subsequent acquisition of the album, it makes me think of exhausted surrender and the encroachment of some unconquerable force. 

Bloodshot eyes staring at the horizon. And the bastards taking over.

#irkallian oracle #everyrecordiown

[creeping-shadow-heralds-storms]

Here they were, a coalition of the willing: deadbeat dads, YouPorn enthusiasts, slow students, and MMA fans. They had heard the rebel yell, packed up their Confederate flags and Trump banners, and GPS-ed their way to Washington. After a few wrong turns, they had pulled into the swamp with bellies full of beer and Sausage McMuffins, maybe a little high on Adderall, ready to get it done. Like Rush Limbaugh before them, they were in search of their own Presidential Medals of Freedom, and like Donald Trump himself, they were ready to relieve themselves on the withering soul of the nation and the marble floors of the Capitol building. Out of darkness we were born and into darkness we were returning.

If they were animated by any idea, it was that America had somehow gone off track. It had something to do with feminism. It had something to do with Obama-ism. It had something to do with “globalism” and “Marxism.” In other words: It’s the Jews again. Didn’t Trump walk through a cloud of tear gas to hold up a Bible when it was all going down in Washington? Wasn’t he the only one holding the line against the Jews and the Blacks and the satanic pedophiles trying to take over the country?

Fired up by the Great Orator, they charged their way into the Capitol building, which turned out to be as heavily fortified as a slice of angel food cake. The proximate aim of the action was to get inside and stop the certification of the Electoral College vote so that Trump could win, the way Marty McFly went back in time to make sure his future parents fell in love so that he could be born.

Once inside, they were bent on proving themselves fierce and intimidating—and they were those things. But when they got to the National Statuary Hall, on the second floor, where velvet ropes indicate the path that tourists must take, they immediately sorted themselves into a line and walked through it. In other words, they were biddable. They were men (and, yes, some women) lost in a modern world that no longer assumed they come first. They were looking for someone to tell them what to do. Trump told them what to do. So did the velvet ropes.

It would not be hard for a tyrant to compel men like these into violence. Like the original patriots, they were ready to crack heads and convinced they were paying too much in taxes.

A man in a Viking helmet and the kind of face paint not often seen outside sporting venues held a sign reading hold the line patriots, which made you wonder if he was just a misguided New England fan. Who can make sense of the new football schedule? Inside, he ran around issuing guttural cries and climbing the furniture, like someone who had been thawed out from a 1995 Robert Bly retreat. (Bly was part of the movement that coined the term toxic manhood, the toxicity being office work and too much time around bossy women, and the antidote being a return to the original state of dude nature: roaring, beating drums.) This was not a low-T group. This was not a group that had been robbed and diminished by radical feminism. And they proved it by defecating on the floors and tracking their own filth through the hallways. They were dazed by power and limited in their conception of what to do with it.

These men had lived their lives in the ranks of a society where rules were constantly imposed upon them, and—even in the midst of the chaos they were creating—they reflexively followed a few of them. They brought items to the lost and found; they walked between the velvet ropes. They were cowed schoolboys and vicious adolescents at the same time. They were in the Capitol building because important rules had been broken. Which ones, exactly? The super-complicated, talkety-talkety ones enshrined in our beloved Constitution, of course. Unlike members of the lost generation whose minds are being poisoned by the obscenities of “critical race theory,” they had been edified and uplifted by the kind of “patriotic” education Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos were trying to deliver to all American children.

Outside, a young woman named Elizabeth was weeping and holding a blue terry-cloth towel to her eyes, while a man beside her tried to comfort her. “I made it, like, a foot inside,” she told a reporter, her voice an admixture of misery and grievance, “and they pushed me out and they maced me!” She made it sound like this had happened to her at the Air and Space Museum. When the reporter asked her where she was from, she said, “Knoxville, Tennessee,” in an especially aggrieved tone, as though this was itself part of the outrage. Maced? A person from Knoxville?

Why had she come to Washington? “We’re storming the Capitol!” she whined. “It’s a revolution!” Patty Hearst was more up to speed on the philosophy and goals of the Symbionese Liberation Army before she got out of the trunk. These people were dressed like cartoon characters, they believe that the country is under attack from pedophiles and “globalists,” and they are certain that Donald Trump won the election. In other words, the Founders’ worst fear—that a bunch of dumbasses would elect a tyrant—had come to pass.

This week the reign of Donald Trump reached its natural culmination, the activation of an army of white thugs who could be motivated by the oldest trick in the nationalist playbook: the promise that they operated in service of some grand idea—to be explained at a later date—and that it was going to take some head-cracking and bloodletting to be born. A 42-year-old Capitol Police officer named Brian Sicknick survived deployment in Iraq only to have his head fatally bashed by Americans with a fire extinguisher in the U.S. Capitol.

Please read the entire article it is biting and hilarious

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/worst-revolution-ever/617623/

#news #us news #politics #us politics #washington dc #attempted coup #trump supporters #jan 6 coup #jan 6 #domestic terrorism #terrorist attacked

[antoine-roquentin]

There’s one thing that’s missing from the world of the explainers, though: facts. Less interested in budget negotiations on Capitol Hill or the stalling of legislation — empirics of power that might tell us whether Trump is an ascendant authoritarian or a flailing conservative — the explainers like to invoke academic research that sees Trump as an American instance of the democratic backsliding across the globe. Brooding on the bloodlands of Europe, meditating on the dark night of the populist soul, anxious media professionals find academic confirmation for their sense that they are exiles in their own land.

There’s a bad synergy at work in the Historovox — as I call this complex of scholars and journalists — between the short-termism of the news cycle and the longue durée-ism of the academy. Short-term interests and partisan concerns still drive reporting and commentary. But where the day’s news once would have been narrated as a series of events, the Historovox brings together those events in a pseudo-academic frame that treats them as symptoms of deeper patterns and long-term developments. Unconstrained by the protocols of academe or journalism, but drawing on the authority of the first for the sake of the second, the Historovox skims histories of the New Deal or rifles through abstracts of meta-analysis found in JSTOR to push whatever the latest line happens to be.

When academic knowledge is on tap for the media, the result is not a fusion of the best of academia and the best of journalism but the worst of both worlds. On the one hand, we get the whiplash of superficial commentary: For two years, America was on the verge of authoritarianism; now it’s not. On the other hand, we get the determinism that haunts so much academic knowledge. When the contingencies of a day’s news cycle are overlaid with the laws of social science or whatever ancient formation is trending in the precincts of academic historiography, the political world can come to seem more static than it is. Toss in the partisan agendas of the media and academia, and the effects are as dizzying as they are deadening: a news cycle that’s said to reflect the universal laws of the political universe where the laws of the political universe change with every news cycle.

corey coming after my blog

[salavante]

that character ask thing, how about August en Zaied?? :3c

That funky, hunky elf. 

Full Name: August en Zaied

Gender and Sexuality: Male and mostly Heterosexual. I think there is the off-chance fellow that might pique his interest, but not at a frequency that I think he would self-describe himself as bisexual.

Pronouns: he/him

Ethnicity/Species: Umbran Elf. I talked about this a little bit in Ganzrig’s thing, but most people on Ismes have a different race back in their heritage at some point, and individuals will look a little more or less human depending on how many actual humans are back in their ancestry. August is on the more human-y side of the spectrum. 

Birthplace and Birthdate: I don’t tend to give birthdates to characters who do not use the same calendar systems as us. Maybe he was born in winter, ironically. August’s family formerly lived in one of the Umbran Empire’s capitol cities, and he was probably born on the family estate.

Guilty Pleasures: Not a ton. August is a very serious, dignified person and doesn’t put himself at risk of looking silly very often. He’ll smoke tobacco on occasion and likes his wine and port. He also knows how to play the accordion but just barely…which, really means that he doesn’t know how to play it at all, HAH. August also has a fondness for roses, as his mother had a garden on their old estate that she was very proud of. One thing he is guilty about is that after being exposed to and promptly rejecting most new technology…he really does prefer using an electric razor to a straight razor and no one can ever know. I think that’s his one true guilty pleasure. If someone caught him using it he’d be absolutely mortified.

Phobias: Oh wow I can actually fill this one out as god and OP intended, because August is a shipwreck survivor and now has a phobia of drowning and deep water, which is a shame because he’s a sailor by trade and formerly really loved the ocean. I do think it’s something he can work through if he tries, though.

What They Would Be Famous For: As far as August is concerned, he would prefer to not be famous for anything, ever, and that everyone would just leave him to his own business. Unfortunately, he has a moderate cult following on The Hunt for having a unique powerset and being kind of a dreamboat.  

What They Would Get Arrested For: August is fairly lawful and coolant headed, so, not a ton, but if he were doing something to ensure the safety and wellness of his family, he’d go to some pretty far lengths. There’s a perfectly serviceable AU out there where August is a mercenary, pirate or assassin.

OC You Ship Them With: August was never actually envisioned as being a ladies man, but it’s just what happened along the way. All of the ladies he has slept with in-game have been older than him, so I guess he likes mature women, HAH. I enjoy the chemistry between August and Jake’s character Elias, who is a silver tongued cannibal and a privateer, go figure. It’s kind of a classic chemistry, sailor-hero type and pirate. Many moons ago, when August was first conceived and was still a female character, his love interest was a half-orc bard named Benji, but he’s since been written out of August’s original story and has been replaced byyy….Iona Howell, August’s canon love interest. The ferocious, emotionally unstable illuminator/wizard who is trying her best to get her shit together, and August’s on and off again girlfriend.

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Pre-defection Iona was probably capable of killing August in a manic/jealous rage, though I think at the end of the day August is more powerful than her and would probably have killed her first as long as she didn’t get the drop on him. Ganzrig also threatened to slaughter and dismember him, but that’s just what Orcs do, I don’t know if she would have actually killed him.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: August is from an early/mid 1800’s level society and so movies really overstimulate to the point that he generally avoids them. He resists most new technology at first blush and is very, very stubborn, though there are a few benefits that he cannot deny. He’s not really much of a reader either, his education stopped when he was somewhere between the ages of 12-14 so he reads kind of slow and his own handwriting isn’t very good, but that still puts him at an advantage among other sailors. He probably likes poetry because a) the ladies like to be read poetry and b) it’s something that could be easily translated into song or read aloud, which is his preferred method of receiving media. Epic poems, sea shanties, etc. August would go to a play before he would go to a movie, and would be perfectly entertained by being read aloud to.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: August used to be an atheist before his world’s god, Al Fortuna, decided that he was their new favorite person. Now he just thinks Gods are assholes and generally does not like any media that presents gods as anything other than fickle and more trouble than they’re worth. And he absolutely, tremendously hates the idea of things being ordained by “fate”.

Talents and/or Powers: A couple fun ones! August is ambidextrous and can wield a pistol and sabre at the same time, and is in generally very nimble. But the most notable thing about him is that August possesses a passive ability called the Miasma of Misfortune, which is tied to Ganzrig’s Fortune’s Favor. While bad luck does not fall on August’s own head, he exudes an aura of bad luck to people in his vicinity, which gets worse the longer that he is exposed to them without reprieve. August has learned to manipulate the Miasma to a degree, and can either reel it in or dump all of its focus on a single target, usually ending with some foolish prick stabbing himself on ‘accident’. Celair has also been teaching him some cantrips. He is from a low-magic setting, so he is not very magically potent.

Why Someone Might Love Them: August is easy to become infatuated with, but not easy to be in a relationship with, and there is a string of broken hearted maidens behind him. He is dashing and courageous, with an intriguingly intense personality, and is confident, but not in a way that dips into vanity. He’s also very earnest, a reliable, straightforward man that keeps his head on straight and seldom shows his temper (though when he does, watch the fuck out). Though not an intellectual, August is very cunning, and has a dry sense of humor that some appreciate. He’s also quite chivalrous, and I think there is a very classical, romantic element to him.

Why Someone Might Hate Them: When I say that August is not easy to be in a relationship with, it’s because he’s a vault and values his privacy to a fault. He seldom wears his heart on his sleeve, and prefers to keep his stronger emotions to himself, for better or worse, and has trouble expressing his feelings even when it’d be in his interest to. He’s the most stubborn man alive, and would sooner double down on something than let someone he doesn’t like be right, making him just a little spiteful. August is resistant to too much external change, especially with technology. He’s also quite dreadfully serious and finds people who are too goofy kind of offputting (ex: he tolerates Wybjorn, but probably wouldn’t have anything to do with him if they did not have friends in common). Someone may also find his priorities shrewd at first glance - his number one concern is providing for his family, and so he is easily motivated by money. Because he is very private, he is not likely to divulge information on his personal life, leading his motivations often obscured and at times misinterpreted. He does not care very much about what other people think, and so seldom clarifies. 

How They Change: August changes a bit over the course of Godslaughter, but not very much, as he has mostly existed in an NPC capacity. The thing he will have to learn is to be emotionally candid with his family when he returns home, because they are going to have a lot of questions and he’s not going to want to answer any of them, but he HAS to. And things aren’t going to be the way he left them. Most of August’s challenges in this department are on the horizon.

Why You Love Them: August has a somewhat colorful meta history. He is my oldest character that I still use regularly (at over 5 years old) besides Calvin, and he was conceived at not a very good point in my life. I had been quietly struggling with my gender identity for many years, and had found myself pushing against my constraints in fiction, but by the time I got to the original August, I was exhausted and beaten down. The first pass at August was a very sad, somber character that was a lady crossdressing to work as a sailor. I’d hit on something important, but wasn’t really ready to open myself up to what it might mean, which, aside from being conceived during the worst year of my life, lead to Kismet collecting dust. Fastforward to 2018 when I was looking for Gods for Godslaughter, and remembered that I had always liked Al Fatima and Al Fortuna, and took another look at August by association. By now I was out as transmasc and decided it’d be a good step for myself to retool August into a character that I could be proud of - a confident, earnest person who wanted nothing more than to be the captain of his own fate and to protect and provide for the people he loves. I don’t really like talking publicly about my trans-ness, I (like August) have come to the conclusion it’s not really anyone’s business but mine, but my journey is inseparable from him. And that’s ok. August is my tiny hope that someday I can get a genre fiction story to a publisher that’s about a trans person, but is not about his transition or his coming out.

#claricehopeful

[starmotions]

soooo a bit ago @queerlyalex tagged me in that whole, pics from your phone that describe you, tag meme thing and lo, behold, i’m finally posting it !

from l:r: top:bottom:

selfies! i take em. i like the ability to control how i look in pics. the cat is kewi.

a plant i admired in public with a howdy dino aka me emoji on it 

me being a coffee professional, going to conferences, making connections wow!

the mathematical worthy ratio of neil horizon’s shoulders to his waist ayyyyyyy

i’m not always the most concise or clear person and this happens to me a lot when i use too many colloquialisms and too many di-isms in a convo

i!!!!!!!!!! made this cheesecake!!! i’ve been experimenting with baking a lot and this was a RIP ROARING success, it’s a coconut matcha no-bake with white choco topping and a sunflower&pumpkin&chia seed/almond/coconut crust

a corner i longed to live in, at the neni monkey bar in berlin. travel, my love, my dream,,,

small moon loves you is kinda a TM phrase, sorry i don’t make the rules, not sorry i’m a starry starry babe

started this #budding series on ista to kinda talk about being on the cusp of creation, the bone-aching feeling of potential i am constantly chasing. i guess i coulda called it #hope

concert blurs at the live music capitol. the best experiences are serendipitous ones you capitalize on. 

this was a v sweet fun thing, thanks for the tag alexandrite!!! i’m gonna just tag a few: @boof @gobljn @hungerpunch @johnnykaratevevo @littleclouds @nozayngel

#hi di

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to a special weekend-edition of FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, managing editor): Hey, everyone! We’ve convened here on a weekend(!) to talk about President Trump’s address to the nation on Saturday. Trump called the country together to make an offer to Democrats to try to end the partial government shutdown, now more than 28 days old.

Here’s Trump’s offer, summarized by Bloomberg News reporter Sahil Kapur:

President Trump outlines his offer:

• $800 million for “urgent humanitarian assistance”

• $805 million for drug detection technology

• 2,750 new border agents

• 75 new immigration judge teams

• $5.7 billion for a wall

• 3-year DACA protection for 700k

• 3-year TPS

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) January 19, 2019

So, the question in front of us: Is this offer likely to end the shutdown? And, more generally, is this a smart move politically by Trump, who’s seen his job approval rating erode as the shutdown has dragged on?

Let’s briefly start with that first question. What do you make of Trump’s offer? Will it bring about the end of the shutdown?

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): No.

micah: lol.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Nyet.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): It’s not at all likely to end the shutdown. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi bashed the proposal before the speech started (once reports came out with Trump’s offer). He didn’t consult Democrats before the proposal was released. It’s not clear he was even really trying to get Democrats to sign onto this.

sarahf: Yeah, what I don’t understand about the proposal is that it was negotiated without any Democratic input. It was just Vice President Mike Pence, Senior Adviser Jared Kushner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell talking with fellow Republicans.

natesilver: I mean, there are some permutations where this is the beginning of the end of the shutdown, I suppose.

Those have to involve some combination of (i) Trump offering a better deal than what he’s offering right now, and (ii) public opinion shifting to put more pressure on Democrats.

micah: So is the best way to look at this address as basically a political ploy — an attempt to change the politics of the shutdown? (I don’t mean “ploy” in a negative sense.)

perry: I think that’s the only way to look at this.

natesilver: The real audience for the speech is likely the media. Because we’re the only people sick enough to actually waste our Saturdays watching this thing.

slackbot: I’m sorry you aren’t feeling well. There is Advil, Aleve and Tylenol in the cabinet in front of Nate’s office/Vanessa’s desk.

micah: lol

natesilver: lol, slackbot

Anyway, in theory, “we’re willing to compromise and Democrats” aren’t is a perfectly decent message. It’s BS in various ways (mostly because the compromise Trump is offering isn’t too good). But it’s a fairly conventional message — to sell a not-very-great compromise as being a good deal.

sarahf: Right now, Americans overwhelmingly continue to blame Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown. Saturday’s speech seemed like an attempt on his part to try and shift some of that narrative by outlining a proposal that definitely seemed like a compromise.

perry: And I think it has as few potential good effects for Trump. First, it may help keep Republicans on Capitol Hill aligned with him. They were getting leery of his wall-only strategy. This makes it easier for the party to unify around him.

Second, Trump’s proposal allows McConnell to hold a vote and suggest he and his chamber are trying to resolve the shutdown too, just like the House is doing.

Finally, I assume, when pollsters ask people about this proposal, it will be more popular than the wall itself. My guess is it will be near 50 percent support and perhaps higher. Most people I assume aren’t totally against any money for the wall and feel like Dreamers must have a path to citizenship or else.

sarahf: And I don’t know if it’s a good look for Democratic leaders like Pelosi to immediately come out the gate saying, “nope this doesn’t work.” Then again, they weren’t consulted in the making of the deal it sounds like, so maybe she’d be better off highlighting that.

natesilver: I did think it was weird that Trump opened the address with a sort of uncharacteristically gentle paean to the virtues of legal immigration, but then careened to talking about drugs and gangs and violence and some of the other stuff that doesn’t usually pass a fact check. If you actually wanted to portray an image of bipartisanship, you could skip most of that stuff. Or you could talk about how there were extremists on both sides — call out Republicans for X and Y reason.

micah: Well …

I do wonder if this could change the politics of the shutdown in more than one way, as Perry was getting at.

It could make Democrats look like the intransigent side, as you were all saying.

But, it could also shift the narrative towards more “border crisis” and less “wall.” And that’s better political ground for Trump. Polls show more people believe there is a crisis at the border than support a wall.

sarahf: Right, last week we looked at different pollsters who asked Americans what they thought of the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. I was surprised by the number of Americans who thought it was a serious problem or a crisis. Fifty-four percent of respondents in a Quinnipiac poll said they believed there was a security crisis along the border with Mexico. And in a CBS News/YouGov poll, 55 percent said the situation was “a problem, but not a crisis.”

natesilver: It could shift things — although, again, it’s worth mentioning that the deal Trump offered isn’t really much of a deal at all.

In fact, it offers a bit less than what they floated last night.

That was my read too -& this is a crucial distinction Democrats are already seizing upon. WH officials last night said it was the Bridge Act-& confirmed that to other reporters today-but what Trump announced just now is NOT the Bridge Act, it's a more limited twist on it. https://t.co/CxX154n9As

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) January 19, 2019

The DACA part itself is a compromise, but to get that compromise, Democrats have to give up something (wall funding) that they’re firmly opposed to.

Although, it probably is fair to say that the wall is also a compromise of sorts. As Trump actually emphasized. It’s not all that much wall. It’s certainly not a big concrete wall stretching the length of the border.

sarahf: I know! OMG, what a 180 from him on that!

And, as Democrats will be quick to point out, they were already working on their own legislation that would give $1 billion in funding for border security (but not a wall – to be clear).

natesilver: Right, and Trump hasn’t really made the case as to why a wall is necessary to stop the humanitarian crisis at the border.

The other thing is that … none of this is really new. This compromise, if you want to call it that, has been around for a long time. Democrats have rejected it because it doesn’t give them enough. They rejected better versions of this compromise before the shutdown began, in fact.

And Democrats have more leverage now than then because Trump needs the shutdown to end a lot more than they do — it’s hurting him politically.

micah: I guess my point is more that the convo may change.

perry: To put this bluntly, I think this speech had two audiences the media (so they will do “both sides” coverage) and Republicans (so they will stay loyal to Trump on this issue). I assume this speech will buy him at least of few days of that. And both of those, as Micah suggests, will help with the public opinion.

sarahf: I was kind of surprised that he made no mention of the thousands of furloughed government workers.

Like some kind of nod to their hardship. But nada.

perry: They’re all Democrats.

I’m joking, but that is what he thinks.

natesilver: The question is partly: will the press run with Trump’s frame?

micah: Nate, I don’t know if the media will run with it.

Probably?

The headline in the lower-third on CNN right now is “Pelosi rejects Trump’s proposal to end shutdown.”

perry: Trump may have bought himself at least another week to sustain this shutdown. Next week will be 1. Pelosi rejected Trump’s idea before he spoke, and 2. Senate holds vote and Democrats filibuster.

You all disagree?

micah: I think that’s right, Perry.

As we’re chatting, here’s Politico’s headline: “Trump’s bid to negotiate on wall met by Democratic rejection”

The Washington Post: “Trump offers to protect ‘dreamers’ temporarily in exchange for wall funds”

Dallas Morning News: “Trump seeks border wall funding in exchange for DACA protections to end shutdown”

natesilver: There’s at least some semi-intelligent understanding on the White House’s part of how media dynamics work.

At least parts of the speech play well into the media’s “both sides-ism.”

micah: NBC News: “Trump offers new shutdown deal, Democrats expected to reject it”

Los Angeles Times: “President Trump proposes to extend protections for ‘Dreamers’ in exchange for border wall funding”

ABC News: “Trump will extend ‘Dreamers,’ TPS protection in exchange for full border wall funding”

CBS News: “Trump proposes deal on immigration, Pelosi calls shutdown offer a ‘non-starter’”

natesilver: But the thing about that NBC headline is that the “new” part is pretty misleading.

perry: Those are great headlines for Trump. Considering the reality is closer to this:

Isn't this a kind of hostage-taking squared? First end the programs. Then shut the government. Then promise to temporarily restore the programs you've ended & reopen the govt you have closed, in return for the ransom of $ for a wall that 55-60% of country consistent opposes? https://t.co/PhsMABh6VC

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) January 19, 2019

micah: Yeah, at least in the very very early going, this seems like a good move by Trump.

natesilver: Keep in mind that media might feel a little chastened this week by the mess that’s become of the BuzzFeed story.

micah: Yeah, I was thinking that.

perry: I also think that keeping the Lindsey Graham’s of the world happy is something Trump cares about. The Republicans on the Sunday shows now have something to say. So do the Will Hurd’s.

micah: Very good point.

perry: Pelosi and Democrats, I would argue, were more unified than Republicans before this speech. But I wonder if some moderate Democrats start getting nervous now.

natesilver: The path here is like:

1. Trump and Republicans maintain some degree of message discipline for a week or so; 1b. Trump and Republicans don’t face too many defections from their own base; 2. Polling and other indications show that blame for the shutdown is shifting away from Trump and toward Democrats; 2b. There aren’t any strikes or planes falling from the sky that create a crisis and force an immediate end to the shutdown; 3. Trump offers Democrats a little bit — maybe quite a bit — more.

If all of that happens, maybe he gets a deal!

And no one of those steps is *that* crazy.

perry: So the fundamentals of this issue have not changed, you are saying, Nate?

natesilver: I don’t really think it changed anything.

perry: I agree.

natesilver: Except Trump made a chess move to advance the game instead of just sitting there petulantly staring at his opponent and watching his clock run down.

micah: “It gives him some more time” is a good read, I think.

natesilver: It was an extremely standard chess move, but at least it was a move!

sarahf: Well, I mean leading up to this speech there had been some speculation he’d declare a national emergency. And he didn’t do that.

So all things considered, I think this was a much smarter political move to make.

natesilver: Oh yeah, this is definitely better than that.

sarahf: Because I do think at this point Democrats have to say something other than, “we won’t support this.”

natesilver: It was, like, almost what a normal president with a competent group of advisors would do!

sarahf: Hahaha yeah

natesilver: But it will require a lot of follow through.

perry: I think Trump is aware that declaring a national emergency is a “loss.” He doesn’t want a “loss.” I don’t know how he gets a win. I actually think, this proposal, if it was passed, would very much irritate the right.

I will be curious how the right receives this idea.

perry: Ann Coulter attacked it hard.

natesilver: Coulter attacked it … although… you could almost say that’s helpful for Trump.

perry: Good point.

It makes it seem like more of a compromise if the right hates it.

natesilver: Now, if he loses the votes from several conservative Republicans in the Senate, then he’s screwed.

Or if he himself has second thoughts because Sean Hannity calls him tonight, he could screw himself.

perry: That’s an interesting question: Can Sen. Ted Cruz vote for this?

Can it actually pass the Senate?

micah: That is interesting!

perry: Because I assume part of the play here is for Republicans in the Senate to be seen doing something about the shutdown.

Would Sens. Susan Collins and Cory Gardner support this from the left-wing of the GOP? I think yes. But would Cruz, and some of the more hard-core immigration members on the more conservative wing of the party?

I assume yes, but I’m not sure.

micah: Wouldn’t you assume he cleared this with the Cruz’s of the world before unveiling it?

perry: I would not at all assume that.

micah: LOL.

That was a soft-ball.

perry: McConnell maybe.

sarahf: Yeah, I’m not picturing mass Republican defections here in the Senate … I guess just because McConnell seems to have been so heavily involved in negotiating this.

natesilver: Right, yeah

perry: Do we think any Democrats vote for it?

Doug Jones? Joe Manchin?

I assume no, right?

natesilver: Manchin maybe.

He voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, so it’s not exactly like he’s worried about stoking the ire of the Democratic base.

sarahf: But it does make you wonder why Trump ever listened to Mark Meadows and the Freedom Caucus in the first place getting into this mess.

Wouldn’t have $1.7 billion or whatever it was and no extension for DACA, TPS, etc. have been more popular for them?

I guess none of it went to the wall. So maybe not. No way to appease anyone!

natesilver: Right, the $1.7 billion didn’t specifically include border wall funding though.

perry: Another question: I think I’m a believer in the distraction theory, so would Trump have scheduled this speech if he knew Buzzfeed’s Michael Cohen story would be so heavily criticized?

micah: He sorta stepped on a pretty good news cycle for him.

Though Buzzfeed is standing by its reporting.

natesilver: Hmm. But the fact that he had a good news cycle probably means that today will be portrayed more favorably by the press.

So that gave him more incentive to do it.

perry: So you think the media, cowed by the coverage of the Cohen story, will cover this announcement more favorably than otherwise?

natesilver: The headlines we’re seeing are not “Embattled Trump desperately proposes already-rejected compromise in meandering speech,” but rather “Trump proposes new compromise and Pelosi rejects.”

micah: And you think the former is more accurate than the latter?

natesilver: I think “Trump again proposes already-rejected compromise in competent speech; Pelosi reiterates that she won’t agree” is roughly correct.

micah: The other thing maybe worth keeping in mind: The politics of the shutdown right now are really bad for Trump. Trump is unpopular, and the wall is even more unpopular. This is from our friends at The Upshot:

micah: And this is from us:

I guess what I’m saying is that it wouldn’t be too surprising if the politics of this improved for Trump after his speech, given where they are now. There’s plenty of room to improve.

Anyway … final thoughts?

perry: We know that presidential addresses generally don’t work. But Trump is making those political scientists look really smart.

sarahf: I think the fact that Trump didn’t consult Democratic leadership is a big ding against this proposal. But the fact that Trump did put forward some kind of compromise is something. It has the potential to change the politics around the shutdown.

It’ll be interesting to see what congressional Republicans actually put forward and what Democrats choose to counter with.

natesilver: I thought it was a bit weird at the end when Trump said this was just the start of negotiations on a much bigger immigration solution.

If this is just small potatoes stuff, Pelosi might ask, why do we need to keep the government shut down, when we’re going to have a much bigger discussion about immigration anyway?

That’s ultimately the question that Trump doesn’t really have a good answer for. Why do we need to keep the government shut down to have this negotiation?

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Pelosi will need to be clear about that in their own messaging.

At the same … I wonder if they also want to float, maybe on background because it does sort of contradict the message of “no negotiations at all while there’s a shutdown,” some notion of what a real compromise would look like. e.g. the full DREAM Act.

Or my idea: Offer HR1, the Democrats’ election reform/voting rights bill, in exchange for the border wall.

perry: The one reason I have a hard time seeing any deal being cut: “the wall is a monument to racism” is a real view on the left and has real influence. That makes it much harder Democrats to sign off on any money for the wall.

natesilver: Also, Republicans would presumably never agree to HR 1. But it moves the Overton Window (sorry if that’s become an overused concept now) and frames the idea that Republicans are nowhere near offering a fair compromise.

If the wall is so important to Trump — and he’s often talked about it as his signature priority — a fair offer now that we have bipartisan control of government would be to give Democrats what’s literally their No. 1 priority (given that they named the bill HR1) as well.

(That’s Pelosi’s hypothetical argument, not me necessarily endorsing the deal as fair to Republicans.)

micah: Yeah, that kind of deal seems a looooooong ways off.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #A FiveThirtyEight Chat

[dipulb3]

Opinion: Late-night hosts weren't always so political. Here's why they changed

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/opinion-late-night-hosts-werent-always-so-political-heres-why-they-changed/

Opinion: Late-night hosts weren't always so political. Here's why they changed

Welcome to Washington, D.C.

At least since Johnny Carson made his monologue a must-see ritual, this has been the pattern: A top politician misspeaks, missteps, even misspells, and the jokes fly like flocks of pigeons, the hosts eager to put in their rightful place every exalted man (or woman) bronzed by national fame.

If you play golf and keep hitting spectators with errant tee shots (Gerald Ford); if you block two airport runways for a $200 haircut from a guy named Christophe (Bill Clinton, according to The New York Times); if you shake hands campaigning in a department store and grab the hand of a mannequin (George H.W. Bush); if you misspell potato (Dan Quayle); if you say you “took the initiative in creating the Internet” (Al Gore); if you try to escape a press conference in China and keep pulling on locked doors (George W. Bush), you can be absolutely sure that you will have made the job of late-night joke-writers delightful for days, maybe weeks.

This has become an all-but sacred tradition in American politics — and comedy. It has long been cited as a sign of what America stands for: complete independence, and the freedom to publicly mock our leaders, without fear of retribution. This act of unfettered satirizing has been nowhere more exercised than in the late-night hours on stages in New York and Los Angeles.

For most of the history of late night, this system worked well — mainly because intentions on both sides were never ugly, even if they weren’t always good.

Those were the days. But that is certainly not how the mix of politics and late-night comedy could be described now. In what will inevitably be called the Donald Trump era, the relationship between joker and target became a blood sport.

It was surely not that way during the long dominance of Johnny Carson in late night. Carson, though he navigated times at least as turbulent as today’s — with the civil rights movement, Vietnam and Watergate roiling the nation — resisted taking any kind of overt stand on the issues, big as they were. He offered a simple rationale: Why would I want to alienate half my audience?

Jay Leno, who succeeded him, adopted the same philosophy — equal opportunity joke-telling. The idea was to draw laughs, not blood. David Letterman, until later in his career, mostly followed the strategy. Conan O’Brien, whose trademark was smart silliness, was even less political.

Trump may have shaken up late-night traditions more than any individual who preceded him, but he was not the catalyst for the most significant shift in how late-night covered politicians. The true turning point was the naming of Jon Stewart as host of “The Daily Show.”

Under its first host, Craig Kilborn, “The Daily Show” was built around loony, real-life news, like the invention of diapers for birds. Stewart, after he took over the show in 1999, pushed it in what one of the then-writers, Allison Silverman, called “an editorial direction” in an interview she did for my podcast, “Behind the Desk: The Story of Late Night.”

Which is another way of saying: Stewart injected point of view. Late night has not looked back since. Stephen Colbert elevated the form to satirical ju-jitsu, offering up bombastic right-wing views to illustrate how wrong they were.

John Oliver essentially imported the tough POV approach of “The Daily Show” to his HBO series, “Last Week Tonight,” where he raised the stakes on issue-comedy. Seth Meyers adapted his own acerbic take on the news from “SNL” to NBC’s “Late Night” show. Jimmy Kimmel, because of his baby son’s health crisis, found himself thrust into the middle of the nation’s health care debate — and he spoke out forcefully.

It is not only a conservative talking point to say that Barack Obama got through eight years almost completely unscarred by late-night jokes. He was clearly helped by having views more in sync with late-night hosts (and writers). But Obama also steered clear of major scandals and didn’t offer easy caricature.

Virtually every other president has had a comic persona forced on him early and the monologue jokes flow naturally: Nixon was tricky; Ford was clumsy; Carter was a hick; Reagan took a lot of naps; the first Bush was patrician; Clinton was a hound; on and on. Obama was mainly seen as aloof, not exactly fodder for wild comedy.

Trump defied the easily characterized persona as well, because he did and said so much that smashed the scales of political comedy:

He was comically narcissistic; comically rude; comically uninformed. He bragged about his sexual prowess. His staff was sycophantic to the point of lickspittle-ism; his family was farcically outrageous; his cabinet was frequently embroiled in scandals; his own Secretary of State called him a moron; his former national security adviser said he’s not fit for office; he was accused of having an affair with a porn star; he appeared to alter a weather map; he tossed paper towels to hurricane victims; and eventually he suggested people ingest disinfectant to cure Covid. And he was impeached — twice.

Several of the current late-night hosts mentioned to me that this excess amounted to something like a comedy bacchanal — a wild party at first, with everyone having fun throwing things at Trump; then it got to be just too much. Worse, it got to be downright dangerous.

For some, the tipping point was the white supremacist march in Charlottesville (one dead). For others, it was gross negligence in handling the pandemic (more than half a million Americans dead). For all of them it was the threat to democracy in Trump’s lie that he was the rightful winner in 2020 and his instigation of the insurrection at the Capitol (five dead).

Desus Nice, the co-host with The Kid Mero of Showtime’s late-night entry, “Desus & Mero,” told me it was great for a nascent show like theirs when “Trump falls into our laps.” But there was a problem: It wasn’t funny. “It was like: It hurt people,” Desus said. “And it hurt democracy.”

Mero added, “To be tremendously trite and corny and cliché, it’s like laughing to keep from crying, you know what I mean? Like: This guy is lighting our country on fire.”

The idea that Joe Biden might bring nothing but boring “he’s old!” jokes to the nightly monologues seems a fine prospect to shows happy to be out from under the unceasingly funny but equally unsettling behavior of the Trump administration.

But the news may not cooperate. The undying loyalty to Trump among Republicans, and their commitment to backing his debunked claims of winning the election looks like it will continue to be a story.

When Facebook’s Oversight Board announced last week that its ban on Trump would continue for at least six more months, it was just like the old days: wall-to-wall Trump jokes. You could almost hear the late-night hosts’ collective lament: “Just when we thought we were out, he pulls us back in!”