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pricklypear1997 · 1 year

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Radical/evangelical Christians as well as the (radical) LGBT community have one thing in common. They treat their “beliefs” as a personality trait and force it on everyone else…. I’ve noticed how much These 2 have in common and the way they treat everyone that tries to bring up legitimate criticisms against them.

Let’s not forget to mention how gender is being treated more like theology than factually based science. They’re even arguing against science! While I’ll argue that god cannot be disproven by science, science literally proves (through biology) what gender/sex is. Also, they try very hard to change the meaning of words all the time. Gender used to be a synonym for sex, but not anymore I guess… they’re trying so hard to manipulate the meaning of womanhood too. They treat it as something that can be interpreted by every individual, as something different. Like womanhood is some pseudo magical thing that can morph and change… um excuse me??? Why don’t they ever talk about manhood this way hmmm?? If that’s your personal opinion fine, but you cannot force that on the public, just like religion cannot be forced onto anyone.

The other thing revolves around race… y’all may not want to hear this, but the evangelists have these super mega churches full of people of many different races. Now while they accept anyone of any skin color on the surface, they’d never accept them unless they have Christian and “American” values… they want to assimilate everyone and make them the same. “Color blindness” is a term that people use to describe this.

It’s ironic because the lgbt community low key does this too. To other countries especially! They’re so big on foreign policy and inserting their AMERICAN centered beliefs on the rest of us and will find any reason to find us racist and homophobic… they don’t respect the individuality of other countries and people in said countries, just like the churches don’t respect the individuality of their members. They (the LGBT/Leftists) don’t respect other countries for their uniqueness because they’re homogenous and because their culture might be more based on a heterosexual normative, but do you forget that heterosexual is the majority? Heterosexuality isn’t what’s attacking you. As a bisexual woman who’s also orthodox Christian, and 1/4th biracial, I still love my country, nor do I feel “attacked” by it… people choose to feel victimized. I am Bulgarian, and my people accept me as such. Yes, I’m also 1/4 th Asian, but the difference is that I know that Bulgaria is inherently Bulgarian, and for me to try to force my country to be more “diverse” would be blatantly racist on my part. To force my culture to just be more “gay” is also equally dumb, because the majority are not gay, nor trans, nor anything else. Why must I force my own identity onto them if I supposedly love them? No, I accept my country and it’s people, as it is. I wouldn’t want to change it for anything. That is what it means to truly love and accept others. By not changing them. (The only legitimate reason to criticize or to change and reform an aspect of a country, it’s culture and people is if there’s something fundamentally wrong with it such as, female genital mutilation, which is something that some countries have because it’s imbedded in their culture. Now it’s NOT something for outsiders to force them to change, it must be the country’s own people to stand up, address the issue and change it).

I shouldn’t forget that the evangelical radical Christians, like the lgbt also infiltrate foreign governments as well. It’s not just within the church. Look at the American government and how it’s purely influenced by these radical Christians AND the LGBT. Both the capitalist right and the democratic “socialist” left. They’re views overlap and the techniques they use to instill fear into others (especially foreign nations) is no different.

I love to see other people enriched in their own culture, and in LOVE and proud of their natural essence existing in reality, not fantasy. Not hurting others, nor self projecting and not forcing their life decisions on others. Europe is beautiful without all the foreign policy and invasive radicalization coming from the US. Africa would be flourishing if it weren’t for the US and Western Europe’s constant harm and meddling. Asia, is striding somewhere in the middle. Parts of it are flourishing, other parts are being taken advantage of by foreign policy and people constantly trying to insert their foreign politics into it. Even Eastern Europe is struggling with something very similar…

When it comes to religion, race, ethnicity, sexuality, all those things are sacred. They must be protected. And people have got to stop forcing their ideologies on others. Right now, it’s the US and some of its very powerful Allies through their religion, gender, sexuality and through racial/ ethnic identity (or lack of it) have become extremely radical on both sides ( left and right) and are constantly pushing it on everyone else. I will not be guilted nor shamed into thinking I’m wrong, which is what both sides try to do constantly by using the words “sin” and “bigotry”.

I should add that an individual choosing to identify as something other than their own birth sex does not affect me unless I let it. The problem is (like religion) when they start to force their ideology/personal opinions on me and the rest of the world. THAT is what I have a problem with. It’s no different then taking issue with evangelicals or any other religion preaching and forcing their religions on others. I take issue with people trying to erase womanhood. I have a problem with people telling little girls and boys that they’re a different gender because they like things that aren’t stereotypically liked by their own sex. That is beyond sexist… it’s no different than going to another (homogenous) country and telling them to change and take your religion OR ELSE… that’s beyond racist. Also, gender dysphoria is a serious mental illness. Not something you can force and change other people into. Same for sexual orientation… you can’t force people to change it. Race, ethnicity, religion, etc. you cannot force people to change.

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kevincauthorportfolio · 2 years

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Writing Tip: You're History!

Today, we're going to have a little History lesson; your history, that is. This post is about creating backstory for your pieces, and how to do so in an effective way that doesn't annoy readers. Backstory is the series of events that happen before your piece starts; it can be anything from a history of the world or planet you created to why your characters like to wear tribal headdresses. Backstory can be done in a few different ways. Some books I've seen have entire prologues or even prequels to explain what happened before the main event; others just sort of "drop" backstory in using their setting and characters.

So, if you're like me and want to "drop" backstory throughout your book, how do you do it? For one thing, you don't want to annoy or bore your readers by just giving them a long list that reads like a history lesson; spice it up! Maybe your character can comment on how dangerous those new creatures you made up are, or discuss an event that happened in the past. Your average reader is pretty sharp, and they can usually catch on without you having to write pages and pages of explanation (and in doing so, you would probably alienate your reader and insult their intelligence, anyway). Authors have thought up all sorts of creative ways to insert backstory without pandering or being annoying. In George Orwell's novel 1984, for instance, the main character Winston Smith lives in a Dystopian, Socialist England set in the near future (despite the name, the novel was written in the 1950's). However, Orwell doesn't simply say "Here is a Dystopian Socialist country." Instead, Winston writes in a journal that discusses the various lies and corrupt policies pursued by the government; we don't need Orwell to say it's a bad environment because he does so through his protagonist.

In addition to being more interesting to the reader, inserting backstory like this helps keep the author out of their own piece, so to speak. What this means is that the narration doesn't interfere with the story in a way that would seem unrealistic; that would take the reader out of your world and disengage them. Instead, you can have characters report facts about their world. It's a fun challenge to try and see how creative you can get with inserting information and history into your stories.

Another example of a book that gives relevant background information (and also happens to be one of my favorite novels) is The Da Vinci Code. For those who aren't familiar, The Da Vinci Code revolves around a Harvard Professor who must solve a murder at the Louvre and in doing so, discovers a series of codes and ciphers hidden in the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci.

Long story short, there is a lot of (arguably true) history surrounding the novel, including tales about the Knights Templar and the Holy Grail. Rather than dump all this information on the reader, Brown gives his character convenient knowledge of the Templars and the various symbols related to their secret, and then allows Langdon to give lectures about any information relevant to the story's plot.

So, now that we know all about backstory and what not to do with it, how do we go about constructing it? Like many things in your work, that's all up to you, but I can offer some helpful ideas in case you want to use them or adapt them for yourself. One thing I find helpful is outlining, which can also come in many forms. It's up to you whether you want to outline every scene of every chapter, or just create a rough skeleton and develop it later. One good way to do this is through real (or virtual) notecards, which can be re-arranged as you choose to fit your changes. A Chapter-By-Chapter outline can also help. In my case, I've been constructing the outline by writing a heading for each chapter and then filling in a brief summary of what happens in that chapter. You can always go back and change the outline or pieces of it later on, so don't stress if it isn't perfect when you create it. Chronological outlines are also good for organizing dates and times so you don't get confused (remember, the timeline needs to be consistent to be believable). There are probably as many ways to create a backstory as there are writers out there. Like outlining or anything else, you should experiment to find the type of planning (if any) that works best for you. If you feel you're better off shooting from the hip and just writing, then go for it. If you want to plan every move your characters make, also go for it.

Consider this a collection of (hopefully) helpful tips rather than hard-and-fast rules for writing. In my experience, really talented writers can make just about anything seem believable, so it may be wise to read books in genres you want to write and learn from authors who are already established in their fields. Best of luck with these tips, and please feel free to add your own input or ask questions via the comments below.

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realhankmccoy · 2 years

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Q: Hank, if Millenbot were fixable what would you recommend A: I would say it needs to revert to the maturation and sense of meaning in the 50s 60s and 70s -- three VERY different flavours of uptight 50s vs. fully decadent 70s, and all work for me -- minus all the racism homophobia and lack of inclusion, plus those days were better for fiscal equality and power to the people than they are now

it needs to unplug from movies and video games and stop acting like these are very serious things. i just watched most of the New York Times' 'best 50 films on Netflix' and got very little out of it, personally. some films were excellent, yes, such as Crip Camp. i liked all the black and female directors and observing the differences in sensibility between those and the white ones. otherwise, we're mostly in the 4th grade conflict mode of language and drama.

What else should Millenbot do? Absolutely be nice to others and kind to others even if it still is powerhungry enough that it fails to control itself around the peasantry and minorities. It can work on that, just ending it's VSP very serious person who's trouncing those from lower class backgrounds and those who are, like, literally the proletariat.

It should stop using like and literally, which fry the brain cells as much as blowing bubble gum during a symphony orchestra performance does. There is also learning not from the past but from the present and the future... why are we not trilinguals and quadrilinguals here, why do we not learn from other countries that have shown us the way, why are we not more sexually expressive and loving, it's information superhighway and what the fuck do we do with it other than reblog memes on stupid fucking Facebook, selfies on stupid fucking Instagram, and make a series of multiple posts (1 of 12!) on stupid fucking Twitter, a platform designed for twits who then go on to be further twits by not using it as intended and numbering all their posts when... if everyone was not out for TrumpPower TwitterGeniusPower VSP there are any number of places on the web that let you write as many characters as you want.

A stupid American would be excited that some spoiled brat like Ezra Miller formed a non-cult but called it a cult in Iceland. A socialist in Iceland would just be disgusted by some American ritzy brat bringing the pointless Waco Wannabe / insert any number of right or left Boomer-derivative 'cults' 'something dramatic happen' capitalistic trash mode into Iceland. Pretty obvious difference between what is truly socialistic, progressive and working class here and what is just some kid from money farting around with pronouns and playing pagan edgelord while drunk and high A stupid American would be excited that Musk pwned the woke crew A stupid American would a lot of things that a dirt poor Turk wouldn't be into. The stupid American would believe the Turk too poor and primative to get it. But that's not it at all. People with affluenza always think the poor 'don't get it' or aren't advanced enough to be edgelord affluenza baby geniuses. The truth is of course that many of the poor do get it and are disgusted by it. Others buy the product. Sometimes it's a bit of both.

trashing the world for your giggles is what the Boomers rolled on in so stop being a derivative of that

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ledxlaw · 2 years

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42nd Amendment of the Indian Constitution (Mini Constitution)

For every law professional, law student and all those persons who are appearing for the government exams, it is necessary to know all amendments happened in the constitution, especially the one which has brought some drastic changes in India and Indian Judicial System. One such amendment is the 42nd amendment of the Indian Constitution, this amendment is also known as the “Mini Constitution”, in this Blog we will find out why and why this amendment holds such importance. But in the history of Constitutional amendments, this one is the most debatable as well as a controversial amendment, also the father of the Indian Constitution Mr B.R. Ambedkar opposed the amendment in the constituent assembly. Any institution which is offering online law certification courses in India on constitutional law teaches their learner about this mini-constitution.

History of the Amendment:

The history behind this amendment is quite interesting, as it is related to one of the most tragic times in India and also includes abuse of power and authority. After winning the election in 1971 and becoming prime minister of India, Smt. Indira Gandhi was accused by her opponent Mr Raj Narayan, of election fraud, and using her power to manipulate the voters, by either threatening them or giving them money. For the first time in Indian history a prime minister of India was summoned to the court, and the case was filed in Allahabad High Court. The Allahabad HC, in 1975 delivered the judgement in which Indira Gandhi was found guilty, her government was announced null and void, and she was banned from participating in the elections for the next 6 years. After the judgement was passed, the case was appealed to the supreme court, but the result was the same. Although she was permitted to be working as Prime minister till the next election happens. But this decision caused chaos in the whole country, also the opposition protested against this and started showing their aggression due to which Indira Gandhi with the permission of the President imposed an emergency in India.

During the emergency, many fundamental rights were violated and many amendments were made to the constitution i.e, 38th amendment, 39th amendment, 40th amendment, 41st amendment and 42nd amendment. In all these amendments, the 42nd Amendments bring changes to most parts of the constitution and it has also introduced duties in the constitution for all citizens. To learn more about the amendments law learners opt for online legal certification courses.

Mini Constitution:

The reason behind calling this amendment the Mini constitution of India is that, this amendment aims to change the whole basic structure of the Indian constitution. This amendment also tried to overturn the supreme court decision on Keshvanda Barti vs State of Kerela. The extension of the Lok sabha period from 5 to 6 years happened due to this amendment. The judicial review power was also limited by this amendment. This amendment affects the article; 31, 31C, 39, 55, 74, 77, 81, 82, 83, 100, 102, 103, and many other articles, also inserted many articles in the constitutions, and amend the schedule 7.

Provision added by the 42nd Amendment:

There were many provisions which were added to the constitution through this amendment which affected many aspects of the Indian judiciary and administrative system, below are mentioned some of them:

Preamble:

This amendment affects the introductory statement of the Indian Constitution, Few new words were added to the preamble. This can be divided into two-part. Firstly, the representation that was originally India as a” Sovereign Democratic Republic” through this amendment became India's” Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic”. Then Secondly, “Unity of the nation” was replaced by “Unity and Integrity of the Nation”.

The changes in the preamble were heavily criticized, The head of the Drafting committee Dr B.R Ambedkar, opposed the addition of the word Secular and Socialist as these words represents different meaning across the world.

Fundamental Duties:

42nd amendment introduced Article 51 A in Part IV(A) of the Indian Constitution on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Mehta Committee. Before the amendment, the “Fundamental Rights and Directive Principle of State Policy” already existed in the constitution, but the government believed that there should be certain duties imposed on citizens of India. But these duties are not law enforceable. At the time of the amendment there was a total of Ten Fundamental duties introduced, but through the 72nd amendment Eleventh Fundamental duty was introduced, so at present, there is a total of 11 Fundamental duties. The introduction of Fundamental duties in the constitution was not criticized as their main objective of them is in favour of the public interest.

7th Schedule:

This amendment transferred 5 subjects from the State list to the concurrent list, the following are the subjects; Education, Forests, Weights & Measures, Protection of Wild Animals and Birds, and Administration of Justice.

Parliament:

Through this amendment there were certain changes in the parliament of India, some of them are mentioned below. i,e.

The president was bound to follow the advice of the cabinet.

Speaker of Lok Sabha and Prime mister were given discretionary powers.

Allowed the Centre to position forces in the state to restore law and order during any conflicts.

The Directive Principles should outweigh fundamental rights and any legislation enacted by Parliament to this effect was kept beyond the court’s judicial review.

Judicial Power of High Court:

This amendment curtailed the judicial review power of the High Court was curtailed.

Addition of Articles:

Article 323 A and 323 B, and Part XIV, i.e, “Tribunals for Administrative Matters” and “Tribunals for Other Matters”, were added to the Constitution.

Directive Principles of State Policy:

Three new DPSPs were introduced to the existing list of DPSPs in Part IV and one DPSP was changed. They are as follows;

Article 39; To provide an opportunity for Children’s growth.

Article 39A; To promote fair justice and to provide poor people proper free legal assistance.

Article 43 A; Take measures to ensure that workers are involved in the management of industries.

Article 48A; To safeguard forests and wildlife, and to protect and improve the environment.

Conclusion:

Law is an extensive branch of study, Indian Constitution which is the base of the Law in India is an important document that every law aspirant must know completely. Every amendment in Indian Constitution is equally important to learn and understand the need behind it and also know the consequences of it. Compared to them, the 42nd Amendment is a little more important due to its interference in most parts of the constitution and its consequences as well as the criticism. Many legal learning institutions providing online law certification courses teach this topic at least once, as it has vital importance in Indian Constitutional history.

#onlinelawcertifcations

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commiedervish · 3 years

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“North Korea has a cult of personality”

#or [insert any other socialist country]#usa #biden #pelosi #kamala harris #cult of personality #twitter #screenshot #bootlicker

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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Re: the post you reblogged about Bush. I'm 21 and tbh feel like I can only vote for Bernie, can you explain if/why I shouldn't? Thanks and sorry if this is dumb or anything.

Oh boy. Okay, I’ll do my best here. Note that a) this will get long, and b) I’m old, Tired, and I‘m pretty sure my brain tried to kill me last night. Since by nature I am sure I will say something Controversial ™, if anyone reads this and feels a deep urge to inform me that I am Wrong, just… mark it down as me being Wrong and move on with your life. But also, really, you should read this and hopefully think about it. Because while I’m glad you asked this question, it feels like there’s a lot in your cohort who won’t, and that worries me. A lot.

First, not to sound utterly old-woman-in-a-rocking-chair ancient, people who came of age/are only old enough to have Obama be the first president that they really remember have no idea how good they had it. The world was falling the fuck apart in 2008 (not coincidentally, after 8 years of Bush). We came within a flicker of the permanent collapse of the global economy. The War on Terror was in full roar, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at their height, we had Dick Cheney as the cartoon supervillain before we had any of Trump’s cohort, and this was before Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden had exposed the extent of NSA/CIA intelligence-gathering/American excesses or there was any kind of public debate around the fact that we were all surveilled all the time. And the fact that a brown guy named Barack Hussein Obama was elected in this climate seems, and still seems tbh, kind of amazing. And Obama was certainly not a Perfect President ™. He had to scale back a lot of planned initiatives, he is notorious for expanding the drone strike/extrajudicial assassination program, he still subscribed to the overall principles of neoliberalism and American exceptionalism, etc etc. There is valid criticism to be made as to how the hopey-changey optimistic rhetoric stacked up against the hard realities of political office. And yet…. at this point, given what we’re seeing from the White House on a daily basis, the depth of the parallel universe/double standards is absurd.

Because here’s the thing. Obama, his entire family, and his entire administration had to be personally/ethically flawless the whole time (and they managed that – not one scandal or arrest in eight years, against the legions of Trumpistas now being convicted) because of the absolute frothing depths of Republican hatred, racial conspiracy theories, and obstruction against him. (Remember Merrick Garland and how Mitch McConnell got away with that, and now we have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court? Because I remember that). If Obama had pulled one-tenth of the shit, one-twentieth of the shit that the Trump administration does every day, he would be gone. It also meant that people who only remember Obama think he was typical for an American president, and he wasn’t. Since about… Jimmy Carter, and definitely since Ronald Reagan, the American people have gone for the Trump model a lot more than the Obama model. Whatever your opinion on his politics or character, Obama was a constitutional law professor, a community activist, a neighborhood organizer and brilliant Ivy League intellectual who used to randomly lie awake at night thinking about income inequality. Americans don’t value intellectualism in their politicians; they just don’t. They don’t like thinking that “the elites” are smarter than them. They like the folksy populist who seems fun to have a beer with, and Reagan/Bush Senior/Clinton/Bush Junior sold this persona as hard as they possibly could. As noted in said post, Bush Junior (or Shrub as the late, great Molly Ivins memorably dubbed him) was Trump Lite but from a long-established political family who could operate like an outwardly civilized human.

The point is: when you think Obama was relatively normal (which, again, he wasn’t, for any number of reasons) and not the outlier in a much larger pattern of catastrophic damage that has been accelerated since, again, the 1980s (oh Ronnie Raygun, how you lastingly fucked us!), you miss the overall context in which this, and which Trump, happened. Like most left-wingers, I don’t agree with Obama’s recent and baffling decision to insert himself into the 2020 race and warn the Democratic candidates against being too progressive or whatever he was on about. I think he was giving into the same fear that appears to be motivating the remaining chunk of Joe Biden’s support: that middle/working-class white America won’t go for anything too wild or that might sniff of Socialism, and that Uncle Joe, recalled fondly as said folksy populist and the internet’s favorite meme grandfather from his time as VP, could pick up the votes that went to Trump last time. And that by nature, no one else can.

The underlying belief is that these white voters just can’t support anything too “un-American,” and that by pushing too hard left, Democratic candidates risk handing Trump a second term. Again: I don’t agree and I think he was mistaken in saying it. But I also can’t say that Obama of all people doesn’t know exactly the strength of the political machine operating against the Democratic Party and the progressive agenda as a whole, because he ran headfirst into it for eight years. The fact that he managed to pass any of his legislative agenda, usually before the Tea Party became a thing in 2010, is because Democrats controlled the House and Senate for the first two years of his first term. He was not perfect, but it was clear that he really did care (just look up the pictures of him with kids). He installed smart, efficient, and scandal-free people to do jobs they were qualified for. He gave us Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to join RBG on the Supreme Court. All of this seems… like a dream.

That said: here we are in a place where Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren are the front-runners for the Democratic nomination (and apparently Pete Buttigieg is getting some airplay as a dark horse candidate, which… whatever). The appeal of Biden is discussed above, and he sure as hell is not my favored candidate (frankly, I wish he’d just quit). But Sanders and Warren are 85% - 95% similar in their policy platforms. The fact that Michael “50 Billion Dollar Fortune” Bloomberg started rattling his chains about running for president is because either a Sanders or Warren presidency terrifies the outrageously exploitative billionaire capitalist oligarchy that runs this country and has been allowed to proceed essentially however the fuck they like since… you guessed it, the 1980s, the era of voodoo economics, deregulation, and the free market above all. Warren just happens to be ten years younger than Sanders and female, and Sanders’ age is not insignificant. He’s 80 years old and just had a heart attack, and there’s still a year to go to the election. It’s also more than a little eye-rolling to describe him as the only progressive candidate in the race, when he’s an old white man (however much we like and approve of his policy positions). And here’s the thing, which I think is a big part of the reason why this polarized ideological purity internet leftist culture mistrusts Warren:

She may have changed her mind on things in the past.

Scary, right? I sound like I’m being facetious, but I’m not. An argument I had to read with my own two eyes on this godforsaken hellsite was that since Warren became a Democrat around the time Clinton signed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, she sekritly hated gay people and might still be a corporate sellout, so on and etcetera. (And don’t even get me STARTED on the fact that DADT, coming a few years after the height of the AIDS crisis which was considered God’s Judgment of the Icky Gays, was the best Clinton could realistically hope to achieve, but this smacks of White Gay Syndrome anyway and that is a whole other kettle of fish.) Bernie has always demonstrably been a democratic socialist, and: good for him. I’m serious. But because there’s the chance that Warren might not have thought exactly as she does now at any point in her life, the hysterical and paranoid left-wing elements don’t trust that she might not still secretly do so. (Zomgz!) It’s the same element that’s feeding cancel culture and “wokeness.” Nobody can be allowed to have shifted or grown in their opinions or, like a functional, thoughtful, non-insane adult, changed their beliefs when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. To the ideological hordes, any hint of uncertainty or past failure to completely toe the line is tantamount to heresy. Any evidence of any other belief except The Correct One means that this person is functionally as bad as Trump. And frankly, it’s only the Sanders supporters who, just as in 2016, are threatening to withhold their vote in the general election if their preferred candidate doesn’t win the primary, and indeed seem weirdly proud about it.

OK, boomer Bernie or Buster.

Here’s the thing, the thing, the thing: there is never going to be an American president free of the deeply toxic elements of American ideology. There just won’t be. This country has been built how it has for 250 years, and it’s not gonna change. You are never going to have, at least not in the current system, some dream candidate who gets up there and parrots the left-wing talking points and attacks American imperialism, exceptionalism, ravaging global capitalism, military and oil addiction, etc. They want to be elected as leader of a country that has deeply internalized and taken these things to heart for its entire existence, and most of them believe it to some degree themselves. So this groupthink white liberal mentality where the only acceptable candidate is this Perfect Non-Problematic robot who has only ever had one belief their entire lives and has never ever wavered in their devotion to doctrine has really gotten bad. The Democratic Party would be considered… maybe center/mild left in most other developed countries. It’s not even really left-wing by general standards, and Sanders and Warren are the only two candidates for the nomination who are even willing to go there and explicitly put out policy proposals that challenge the systematic structure of power, oppression, and exploitation of the late-stage capitalist 21st century. Warren has the billionaires fussed, and instead of backing down, she’s doubling down. That’s part of why they’re so scared of her. (And also misogyny, because the world is depressing like that.) She is going head-on after picking a fight with some of the worst people on the planet, who are actively killing the rest of us, and I don’t know about you, but I like that.

Of course: none of this will mean squat if she (or the eventual Democratic winner, who I will vote for regardless of who it is, but as you can probably tell, she’s my ride or die) don’t a) win the White House and then do as they promised on the campaign trail, and b) don’t have a Democratic House and Senate willing to have a backbone and pass the laws. Even Nancy Pelosi, much as she’s otherwise a badass, held off on opening a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump for months out of fear it would benefit him, until the Ukraine thing fell into everyone’s laps. The Democrats are really horrible at sticking together and voting the party line the way Republicans do consistently, because Democrats are big-tent people who like to think of themselves as accepting and tolerant of other views and unwilling to force their members’ hands. The Republicans have no such qualms (and indeed, judging by their enabling of Trump, have no qualms at all).

The modern American Republican party has become a vehicle for no-holds-barred power for rich white men at the expense of absolutely everything and everyone else, and if your rationale is that you can’t vote for the person opposing Donald Goddamn Trump is that you’re just not vibing with them on the language of that one policy proposal… well, I’m glad that you, White Middle Class Liberal, feel relatively safe that the consequences of that decision won’t affect you personally. Even if we’re due to be out of the Paris Climate Accords one day after the 2020 election, and the issue of climate change now has the most visibility it’s ever had after years of big-business, Republican-led efforts to deny and discredit the science, hey, Secret Corporate Shill, am I right? Can’t trust ‘er. Let’s go have a craft beer.

As has been said before: vote as far left as you want in the primary. Vote your ideology, vote whatever candidate you want, because the only way to make actual, real-world change is to do that. The huge, embedded, all-consuming and horrible system in which we operate is not just going to suddenly be run by fairy dust and happy thoughts overnight. Select candidates that reflect your values exactly, be as picky and ideologically militant as you want. That’s the time to do that! Then when it comes to the general election:

America is a two-party system. It sucks, but that’s the case. Third-party votes, or refraining from voting because “it doesn’t matter” are functionally useless at best and actively harmful at worst.

Either the Democratic candidate or Donald Trump will win the 2020 election.

There is absolutely no length that the Republican/GOP machine, and its malevolent allies elsewhere, will not go to in order to secure a Trump victory. None.

Any talk whatsoever about “progressive values” or any kind of liberal activism, coupled with a course of action that increases the possibility of a Trump victory, is hypocritical at best and actively malicious at worst.

This is why I found the Democratic response to Obama’s “don’t go too wild” comments interesting. Bernie doubled down on the fact that his plans have widespread public support, and he’s right. (Frankly, the fact that Sanders and Warren are polling at the top, and the fact that they’re politicians and would not be crafting these campaign messages if they didn’t know that they were being positively received, says plenty on its own). Warren cleverly highlighted and praised Obama’s accomplishments in office (i.e. the Affordable Care Act) and didn’t say squat about whether she agreed or disagreed with him, then went right back to campaigning about why billionaires suck. And some guy named Julian Castro basically blew Obama off and claimed that “any Democrat” could beat Trump in 2020, just by nature of existing and being non-insane.

This is very dangerous! Do not be Julian Castro!

As I said in my tags on the Bush post: everyone assumed that sensible people would vote for Kerry in 2004. Guess what happened? Yeah, he got Swift Boated. The race between Obama and McCain in 2008, even after those said nightmare years of Bush, was very close until the global crash broke it open in Obama’s favor, and Sarah Palin was an actual disqualifier for a politician being brazenly incompetent and unprepared. (Then again, she was a woman from a remote backwater state, not a billionaire businessman.) In 2012, we thought Corporate MormonBot Mitt Fuggin’ Romney was somehow the worst and most dangerous candidate the Republicans could offer. In 2016, up until Election Day itself, everyone assumed that HRC was a badly flawed candidate but would win anyway. And… we saw how that worked out. Complacency is literally deadly.

I was born when Reagan was still president. I’m just old enough to remember the efforts to impeach Clinton over forcing an intern to give him a BJ in the Oval Office (This led by the same Republicans making Donald Trump into a darling of the evangelical Christian right wing.) I’m definitely old enough to remember 9/11 and how America lost its mind after that, and I remember the Bush years. And, obviously, the contrast with Obama, the swing back toward Trump, and everything that has happened since. We can’t afford to do this again. We’re hanging by a thread as it is, and not just America, but the entire planet.

So yes. By all means, vote for Sanders in the primary. Then when November 3, 2020 rolls around, if you care about literally any of this at all, hold your nose if necessary and vote straight-ticket Democrat, from the president, to the House and Senate, to the state and local offices. I cannot put it more strongly than that.

#politics for ts #long post #anonymous #ask

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marisol993 · 3 years

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For some time now I've seen, over and over again, that the Qunari in the Dragon Age Universe are apparently some kind of racist caricature of black people, muslims and other types of poc's, bipoc's, minorities, ....

From a personal perspective I never saw them as such, but since a personal view of things isn't very objective and can be skewed by ones life-experiances I was completely willing to admit, that I might have been wrong about that and had an opportunity to learn something new here.

The more I thought about it and critically examined this statement though, the less I agreed with any of it. Especially since a lot of arguments in favor of this view seemed to boil down to "this person of [insert relevant minority here] said so". I.e. another "personal viewpoint".

So let's get into a critical analysis of the Qunari and why I think that they are so very far removed from any kind of "minorty" (from a western point of view) coding that you couldn't even see it with the power of the Hubble and James Webb space-telescopes combined:

First of all, who are the Qunari? The Qunari are tall, medium to heavily built, horned (or unhorned, if you only played Origins) humanoids, that come in varying shades of grey skin, with whiteish hair. They are more intensly sexually dimorphic than the Dwarves, Elves and Humans of Thedas, with the males being sometimes nearly twice as wide (especially in the shoulders) and much more muscled than the females. They call themselves the Qunari as they are followers of the Qun (their guide to life and society), though the word is more of an umbrella-term, since anybody of any race is called a Qunari if they "convert" to the teachings of the Qun.

Here's a picture:

At this point some people might already remark, that the Qunari are very obviously "black-coded" since apparently nowadays any deviation from natural, real-life human skintones automatically has to mean, that the fantasy-race in question is meant to reflect black or brown people (even if they are green or bright purple), unless you literally give them a complete and utterly snow-white skintone. If that is the argument you want to go with, I would like to redirect your eyes to the picture above, as it already disproves this. As it is shown there (and in the DA:I Character-Creator), the Qunari can come in a complete spectrum of skintones (from very light grey to nearly ebony), just like all the different races of Thedas (even the dwarves for some reason, which doesn't make much sense for a race that lived underground for most of their history, but what can you do..). This basically means, that yes there are dark-skinned (or "black") Qunari, but there are also those that could be better described as "light-skinned", so the coding-qualifier goes away.

Then there are the people, who might want to say, that because they are tall and "burly", together with the unnatural skintone makes them "black-coded" which is something I never really understood, since the tallest people in the world by ethnicity are the Dutch and if you look at heights in correlation with body-weight the Russians take first place. Both countries not really know for their large populations of darkskinned-humanoids. Another coding-qualifier that goes away.

And then there are the people (who I would seriously suggest should maybe review their own "racial" views, if "black and brown people" is the first thing they think about when it comes to this), who say, that they are a stereotype of the "savages and natives", which is something that is actively contradicted in canon. One of the most prominent traits of the Qunari is that they are efficiant to a T, use every resorce at the disposal to it's maximum (including their people) and that they are more technically and scientifically advanced than many other race in Thedas (except maybe the dwarves) . This is shown through their mastery of gunpowder (which they call gaatlok) and the fact that they can use chemicals and drugs to literally warp the mind of people without needing magic. They are in no way presented as "savage" and if they are named such, it's usually by people who they are actively at war with, who want to insult them. They are also not "natives" of Thedas. Even their so called "homeland" in Thedas, which is called Par Vollen, was colonised by them, when they landed at it's shores in 6:30 Steel-Age and started converting the original population of Tevinter humans and elves, with whom they have been at war with ever since. Let me say that again: The Qunari are active colonisers and at war with the Tevinter-Imperium, who's people are the original population of the land. Not exactly a typical "native or black" stereotype in western media.

So who do I think the Qunari are actually modeled after?

Well let's summarise:

The Qunari came from across the ocean in their ships filled with cannons and guns, to colonise the land and convert the native population towards their beliefs. They are currently fighting a war against the Tevinter-Imperium, an old and powerful empire, that engages in widespread slavery and practices blood-magic by sacrificing said slaves, sometimes also to one of their many gods.

(If you can't guess who I think they are supposed to be modeled after by now, I would recommend to maybe picking up a 7th-grade history textbook again)

Yes, you can make a very strong case for the Qunari actually being these guys:

The Conquistadors (heck, if you cross out a few letters you can even anagram the word "Qunari" out of the word Conquistador). Who also came from across the sea with ships, cannons and guns to colonise the land (south- and middle-america) and convert the native population (to christianity) and fought an ancient and powerful empire with slaves and blood-sacrifices (the Aztec-Kingdoms).

So after pissing of one half of tumblr with that, let's start with the other half by talking about the apparent "muslim-coding" and how I disagree with that too.

Let's start with a rough definition of what a muslim is and how I think that that alone shows how the Qunari are in no way coded to be them:

I would define a muslim as somebody who is an active member of the religion of Islam. Islam is defined by it's holybook (the Qur'An), which was revealed to the prophet Muhammad by an all-knowing and omnipresent abrahamic god.

This in and of itself basically already disqualifies the Qunari from being "muslim-coded" since first and foremost the Qunari are not a religion. They do not have a god and they don't pray to any, the Qun is not a "holy-book" and Ashkaari Koslun (the guy who wrote it) was not a prophet, who wrote down the word of god, but a philosopher who basically crafted a "guide to life and society" with his works.

If you really wanted to find something that is slightly "muslim-coded" in the world of Thedas, you might actually have more luck with the chantry-stuff, since they do have a prophet (Andraste) who could talk to god (the Maker), they have a holy book based of her teachings (the Chant of Light) and they believe that the whole world should follow those teachings, so god will return to them (singing the Chant from all four corners of the world). They even have their own flavour of jihadist religious warfare with the Exhalted Marches (though all in all I do think that the Chantry can be better viewed as a take on christian religions since the split between the Imperial Chantry and the original one is similar to the split of the (western) christian church into catholics and protestants).

So what do I think is a better representation for the Qun in the real world?

Well lets look at it in the simplest way possible that the canon gives us:

The Qun is a guide for the life of the Qunari (the people of the Qun) that ecompasses everything from laws, legislative guides, too how society should be struktured and how everyone has to fit into and function in that society, from the most mundane and simplest tasks and jobs to it's highest administrative bodies. Everyone in this society is evaluated, so that they can be put into a position that is best suited to them and their skill-sets. There they will then each work according to their abilities and each be provided for according to their needs (see what I did there). Yes, the Qun can in my opinion be best described as a take on an authoritarian-socialist guide to life, written by somebody with a similar philosophie as Karl Marx.

So all in all, I don't think that the Qunari are in any way black-, brown-, bipoc- or muslim-coded, but a fantasy take on the Conquistadors, if instead of a bible they had all carried around "A Guide to Life, Luck and Community, written by Karl Marx (during one of his more productive weekends)", visually represented by giant Minotaur-People of many colours.

Also I find this obsession with finding every and any kind of reflexion of our real world in some random fantasy setting, by people who are most of the time actively looking to get offended by at least something and mostly every- and anything, quite contrived most of the time and that the day people on tumblr learned the word "codeing" a significant part of the internets critical-thinking skills and will just shrivelled up and died.

Thank you for coming to my TED-talk.

#dragon age #dragon age origins #dragon age 2 #dragon age inquisition #qunari #the qun #thedas #tevinter imperium

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antihumanism · 3 years

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When I type everything out as a single run-on sentence I want you to imagine me cornering you off-guard in a crowded room, my empty brown cow eyes staring straight at you and reflecting you--nopony home here, she checked out and hopped away forever ago on the toxic chemical trains and clacking cattle cars years ago--and just, for no reason, I’m here and you’re there pocketed in the corner of a crowded room, and I’m channeling my alternate history past-self who was a preacher that got kicked out of the church for delivering sermons about the impossibility of sin and just ran off to Point Sur with my harem of distractions since I could never stop blessing my congregation saying “Go forth and know that you cannot sin, in the beautiful eyes of God and in my beautiful eyes there can be no wrong or evil” which backfired on me when they started setting fires and it all went to Hell, but I’ve won out over them because the world honored my wishes when I sighed “I should like to start again,” and so I’m here with you and you’re hear with me and I’m saying some insane shit like: “Looking back on Emily’s early works it is easy to see where her later reactionary turn comes from, because, from the start, Alfred Alfer was a story about the fear of castration, I mean, the first video was literally about Alfred getting neutered and escaping into a violent fantasy where he is loved and praised for his violence and the ‘punchline’ establishes the general theme of ‘reality by despair,’ which is to say that Alfred’s clearly dissociative episode is ‘verified’ by his destruction and it is this self-destruction that establishes ‘reality,’ like ‘pinch me i might be dreaming,’ but the pinch is violent and unfair self-destruction as hope is still ripped away, but hope remains, because it is a hope to die rather than be changed by the world, and this theme remains throughout her most famous work (the Alfred’s Playhouse trilogy which cements in canon the jokes of her previous Rise of Alfred cartoon) where Alfred is possessed by the spirits of Stalin and Hitler--a false equivalency made by the authoritarians that have passed for liberals for years--in Rise of Alfred, one would be remiss not to mention the phallic imagery in both the title and the video itself, Alfred is cut loose upon the world by the absence of a Near God or little other by the orders of a Distant God or big Other (in this video played by a droning and irrelevant corporate figure that can offer nothing more than a wall without lead paint that one can lick), and this is the essence of reactionary thought, the idea of a big Other who is totally incompetent yet all powerful and somehow worth respecting and suffering for (King Henry II saying ‘will no one rid me of this troublesome priest’ or the departed Daiymo of the 47 Ronin), the reactionary sees the big Other as a master who can only set the dogs off the chain, the police chief who needs to get out of the way so McBain or Dirty Harry or Paul Kersey (especially in Death Wish III) can do what needs to be done and purge away all the filth and make the world right again (no different than Rambo--even the first movie, which for all of it’s goods part still is reactionary propaganda bullshit pushing the fascist lies about a ‘fifth column’ that was rude to poor little meow meow war criminals--or modern day fantasies about nuking all of MENA until it glows green (fantasies delivered to raucous applause at Republican presidential conventions); the reactionary is perpetually trapped in this fantasy of destroying the world and escaping into the void of space, freed of the ground where the riff-raff are so they don’t have to negotiate life with their neighbors, and this is true, yes, even of people who spout bullshit about Fully Automated Luxury Communism who only want the right to consume as much as possible free of guilt--a condition they think is inflicting upon them by the big Other--as the Champagne of Shame Socialists of the 60s), and the righting of the world for the reactionary is just that, that the world must be Righted and the reactionary must be loved for all of their violence and because of their violence, for the reactionary finds themselves ever needing new excuses as they open new fronts in their fake, phony Culture War, and that is all they need (excuses), which is why Emily is so obsessed with justifying her edgy shit based on some Trauma (which is handy excuse to do Anything, even Things that Cannot Be Excused like war or self-harm or wanting to be seen), and so here you should already be able to hear so much madness, so many plaintive cries, all aligning around the same point (the trannies in the ‘wrong’ bathroom, the refugees in the ‘wrong’ country, the people in the ‘wrong’ neighborhood, the Jewish Question, etc), and, anyway, so in Rise of Alfred, Emily’s OC directly addresses the audience and tells them that they must love him/her--the castrated bitch desperate to be let off the leash--and in Alfred’s Playhouse she/he simultaneously affirms and denies the nature of a trauma that justifies everything (one is constantly reminded of The Act of Killing where one of the mass murderers imagines how, depending on the editing of the final film, he could be either a woobie or a war criminal) as the Trauma is simultaneously a joke--’sodomized with a popsicle!’--and the alleged real event that motivates her self-mutilation as we’re expected to believe Emily is processing something, but what is she is processing, hmmmm, isn’t that the true spice,” I rail and rave against your poor ear drums as my empty, dead cow’s eyes capture your entire body and reflect it back at you and the ice cubes in my drink pop and shatter and dissolve and as my fist clenches tighter and tighter around the glass containing them and I continue: she’s processing a fear of castration, which is shown clearly in Alfred’s Playhouse where Alfred’s “sodomy” is demonstrated by the sight of his crotch covered in blood (a scene that will be repeated in The Alfred Alfer Movie) but “what is castration,” one might ask, and one can respond “it is the removal of power by the Father,” and this is how we wrap back around to our root in the nature of Emily the Reactionary who believes herself to be deprived of the power she holds by The Bolshevik Jew that has inserted itself between her and the Father and this is the cause of the big Other’s ineffectiveness, and this is also the core of the reactionary as a whole, the reactionary doesn’t want a daddy to control them, but a Master to set them off the chain because they hate the Father who has castrated them, this is the nature of the mumbling corporate manager in Rise of Alfred, but it is also the nature of Alfred herself--and now you may ask if Emily is trans and the answer is I literally couldn’t fucking care less about any question left forever unanswered on God’s Green Earth and you shouldn’t care either--but Alfred the Castrated is also the Father/Mother of Alfred the Dictator, the murderous inner-self that is immune to consequences of the onrushing future (The Alfred Alfer Movie) but not immune to the justifications of the imagined past (Alfred’s Playhouse trilogy), and therefore free to inflict whatever violence that Emily the Reactionary desires, and it is in pursuit of this freedom that the reactionaries set off in the name of New Sincerity (two things to be noted here: (1) the Death of Irony was proclaimed at the birth of the 21st century police state and the new Forever War with all of its genocidal objectives, that is to say, 9/11, and (2) the broken necked coward who complained of American Psycho that it’s author provided no easy outs for easy survival was the one who offed himself while Bateman’s father still lives) and the Talking Cure (i miss who we used to be), and at this you should see me slugging back the whole lukewarm glass in between two syllables and continuing on without pause (as if this dog still has legs on which to receive them in any case), “Emily, like Alex Jones, is so desperate for an excuse because neither of them can accept that they have to be the one that pulls the trigger, like all liars they don’t understand that they have to define reality by action, the answer to what one might do is found in the difference between the types of irony, one type is constantly desperate for excuses (such as the broken necked coward found one day) for violence, and the other irony, the true spice, is the irony that releases from excuses into violence and energy, one must seek not to know or endure but to inflict, knowing that this inflicting was always inevitable, no searching for justifications, instead the answer is to realize that there was never a chain there connecting you to the Master or the present to the past, and the Father/Mother never had the power of castration (the past, after all, is a foreign country bombed and blasted to ruins already and better forgotten), and you can just be fucked up and terrible and do whatever amuses you right now without needing an excuse, and to the extent that anyone should, one should, because that is what fascism needs, fascism needs the need for an excuse and that is the irony of fascism--where the falling angel (the superego) meets the rising ape (the id) in an ego of ultimate violence which seeks only release from both of its creations in an instinctually and totally misunderstood caricature of dialectics--which opposes its opposite irony (the irony without fascism which is the id’s violence against purpose and reason rising free of anything else to obstruct it), and if you let go of that, if you just, ya know, if you just, you just have to cut loose and go and no one can stop you until it is too late, because there’s no Jew sitting over your shoulder to justify everything in terms of opposition or support, not even The Nazarene is real, but do you understand that you’ve always been free to just go? You’re free to go. You’ve been free to go all this time. You never needed permission for this or anything else. You’ve been free to go all this time. You’re free to go. A whole day off. Just mind the mo(u)rning and get on with it.”

#emily youcis #Alles ist wahr Nichts ist erlaubt #let's live now before we're back below

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disasterghaster · 2 years

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Politic Rambling

Though Derkopolis has a lot of class based stratification, the driving force behind it is often based on Native versus Non-Native status.

Religious lore says that the world was created with a lot of ‘holes’ and ‘thin dimensional walls’ as a place for those ‘cast and driven out’ by their places of origin as a sanctuary to all--but reality, at least in modern times, has been different.

The political landscape of Cinis is complicated. Which is expected. A completely or relatively homogenous world would have very little to create real and perceived conflict about to incite wars. So, what I mean by ‘complicated’ is that it’s immensely unstable and diverse. The best established governments are often only that way by two factors; Longevity and military might.

Even that isn’t a guarantee.

Military might is an obvious factor.

Longevity is often mostly to do with how few generations there really are in any given dynasty. Natives live exceptionally long lives provided they survive. Ezko, an example I will reach for often, monarchy is only 3 patriarchs deep. But has been around for access of millenniums (barring a relatively short couple centuries during which time the kingdom was temporarily collapsed).

I bring this up because Middle Region, in particular, is an inter-political shitstorm. Each pocket of lived in ground is often ruled by completely independent forms of government. More than half of which springs up over night and disappears the same day. Often briefly coalescing civilizations that are destroyed or are never formally recognized by larger, more salient, governments around them. Immigrants from other dimensions will often bring their cultures with them and cultures are dictated largely by religion, political structure, and food.

In a brand new place, religion struggles, food struggles, and political structure often collapses. Or is held onto only in spirit as a very small inner governing system with little to no impact on the larger systems at work.

Due to this, however, most governing bodies are often feudal and caste based with different flavorings.

Democracy systems are largely centered in highly populated cities, but even those places could be reasonably called a democratic-insert your flavor here rather than anything resembling a democratic socialist system or the like.

Caste and class are mostly non-negotiable and is only mitigated through a meritocracy angle. Which is, in itself, a bit shit--if you don’t have the money, connections, or willingness to die in battle required to do Something Above Your Current Class Level then you’re stuck where you’re at. The only way to avoid that is to stay a very small tribal/clan group deep in the country and hope two armies don’t wander in and wreck your settlements. There is no legal recourse if you do.

As things stand, the most influential military-political powers of Cinis are;

Ares Corporation; The largest and most powerful industrial military complex on the planet that oversees continental warfare to keep the planet from blowing itself up. (And buffering North and South.)

The Northern Empire; Their entire region and society is nearly as industrious about their militaries as Ares Corp. is as a pan-regional company.

And that’s basically it. There are lesser groups such as South’s warrior clans, Rose Kingdom, and the like, but none quite matches the unmitigated might of the above.

#ooc #dekropolis

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dwestfieldblog · 3 years

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A VERY REMOTE ENGLISH TEACHER

Where meditations, rants, reverie and absent seizures cross over... closer to one gun with one bullet, the rose of ruby and the cross of gold...uff, and MENTACIDE IN THE TIME OF MASQUES. Although I have never suffered from the guilty masochistic torture of ‘pleasure anxiety’, Bacchus hath indeed drowned more men than Neptune. So I stopped drinking for 18 days to fool myself I was doing something positive and threw away enough things to be minimalist again. Arf. Beauty and/or function uber alles.

Been treading water for three years and trying not to drown...big round of one hand clapping for the former poet. Meanwhile, in this temporary world and perception I have created of it, I am looking at a very possible exile one way or the other...my ‘plan’...a long phased withdrawal or hasty retreat. My wish is to stay, but once I leave, it might well be very hard to return. Read as many metaphors as you want into that but in spite of my dislike of the conservatively minded Aristotle’s ‘either/or’ nonsense, there do indeed appear to be only two this time. And appear is the operative word. Appearances can be deceptive and emotions (unless raised and focused) cloud over what should be clear. Pain has a tendency to breed worry and fear too but let’s draw a veil over that for now eh? Suppress, suppress, release comes later...breathe deep and try not to cough, onward we go where the game gets rough...Just like Tom Thumbs Blues 65.

Remember Roman Protasevich...As Lukasenko himself said...‘Belarus stood at the edge of an abyss and I helped it take a step forward’. Look good on your tombstone that will Al. Fecking outrageous the Indian PM only admitted in May that covid was transmitted in the air. He needs removing... as do two thirds of all the other world leaders East and West. Hello Bollsanaro. People are very easy to manipulate when they’re are scared or angry...and right now the world majority are both. But, ‘there is a crack in everything... that’s how the light gets in’... and ‘things could change’, doesn’t have to be for the worse. It can take decades to realise this as actual truth, but still nice to read and try internalise the following last week.’The odds actually favour the optimists, since dissipate structures are more likely to evolve into more information rich (intelligent?) forms than into primitive or chaotic forms.’ All my friends bar my best one are optimists..Hello you:-)

Ever onward deeper downward with Orban in Hungary and his mission of ‘Christian values’, which involves a familiar routine of arresting, beating and disappearing dissenters in the name of Christ and taking over the universities to replace professors with those who understand on which side their bread is buttered. Decent judges long gone. Nice fascist communism...and ex soldiers in France and the Czech republic warning of civil war...

And now spiraling we go into the black hole vortex of Disaster capitalism, ‘Let the bodies pile high’. There’s gold in them thar ills....ISLAND PARANOIA and PERFIDIOUS ALBION! A country which demands a contract, agrees, signs to it and then refuses to honour it. We look worse than ridiculous, we look deceitful. Gentlemen, your places please. Boris Johnson is a clumsy, inept, disgraceful charlatan, con merchant and LIAR. A blustering master bullshit artist, the only decent thing about his recent secret wedding is that now he legally has one less bastard child.

Recently I read that British people are displaying signs of Stockholm syndrome...in that they dislike those who hold power over them and make the rules but during the time of pandemic, they are the ones who will release the saviour vaccine and get everything moving again. So rather than rocking the boat and daring to express dissent at the DIABOLICAL handling of the last 18 months, they have mostly kept quiet and voted for the same endlessly failing, corrupt and venal politicians who made a bad situation far worse. (That said, it bears repeating that there are a few million in the UK who didn’t quite understand that that the spread of a highly contagious airborne virus can be slowed by the wearing of masks/applying basic hygiene and even took offence at being told what should have made sense to any adult homo SAPIENS half capable of cogitating for themselves. Morons and scum. Same where you are?

By the way BBC...the colossal dearth of stories about the endless government failures in relation to Covid, death, corruption and the NHS...ever since they blackmailed you with threats of revoking the TV licence fee and got you to change Directors has been noted. Long may Have I Got News For You continue the satire and balance needed in a DEMOCRACY. Obey your public servants? Why, when they do not serve few but themselves? Power OF the people? Which ones...the mob? The same bleating pricks who follow populists?

Four eyed beanpole fop Rees Mogg, with his wonderful line that the benefits of Brexit will be seen ‘over the next fifty years’...well yes, that is why most people vote in democratic elections eh?...So they will be dead or ancient before the change they hoped for comes...and the politicians who lead them now, will have all long moved on to revolving door chairman of the board offshore limited liability company paradise. Bread today jam tomorrow fairytales. What I tell you three times is true.

O, but the English do so love to be told what to do by dumb posh boys who treat them like dirt. Some are forelock tugging and some are self flagellating middle class upper class wannabes who will never get there but still feel proud they are not street level proles. Doby the house elf alien hamster Michael Gove found guilty of breaking the law. Nothing. Internal inquiries run by those connected to the money changing hands find nothing illegal. Corruption for all to see...and ignore. ‘Well, what can we do?’ The uselessly inept serial failure Dido Harding to be in charge of the National Health Service? (she of the collapsed Woolworths, Talk Talk and the 22 BILLION pound loss of the Covid Track and Trace program where non working consultants/insultants, were paid 1000 pounds a day). American style privatisation is coming where only the wealthy or criminal can afford to be repaired and well. Sick.

Meanwhile, All our imported nurses out, and all the lobster red fat Spanish costa de la sol criminals back in. Great exchange, fair trade and forward thinking. The Kremlin are manipulating/supporting Scottish independence... I read years ago about their base in Edinburgh for Russia Today (the foul insert in The Daily Telegraph) and they were already encouraging it. Rees Smug has accelerated and supported their freedom with his snobbish utterances on countries in the UK other than England and their ‘foreign languages’. With every patronising, arrogant pronouncement, the Eton trifles fuel the fire in Scotland which has a long bitter history of being tortured, murdered and subjugated by their southern masters. Perhaps the chumocracy in Downing Street believe the Celts to be as easily cowed as the middle and working classes down south. Here’s hoping not. ‘Rebellious Scots to crush’? Not this time pal.

As for the future of Britain? A dystopian open prison where the lower social classes toil only at the pleasure of their masters. The higher caste getting richer and all others cast into a living Hell of debt, crime, and sickness. Serve until you die and be thankful we allow you to exist. Increasing in utter irrelevance to the world, other than as an example of how wrong a former democracy can go. This future started decades ago...its baobab roots truly deep now. Better education and critical thinking for the masses in the UK (or anywhere else) is highly unlikely now. Optimism huh? As long as I am not in England, I will still be able to tap into it, but once enclosed long term in the group mind there...trapped in a grey quagmire. Keep smiling...

Several weeks ago, I watched a video on YT of apparently English protestors running after the police in London, some attacking and throwing things, one pulling off the pandemic mask of an officer and all shouting abuse at the outnumbered cops who had to keep pulling back. As always, to get my caffeine rush of fury going, I read the comments and was surprised to see two or three from Chinese names. Almost all comments were against the government (fair enough) and dumb against the lock down, masks, vaccinations etc. Checking again, I saw the video had been posted by CGTN...a media company owned and run by the communist party in Beijing...and not one author of diatribes had mentioned this, nor speculated with a critical thought as to why such an organisation might enjoy turning people against their own democratically elected government (however mind rippingly foul and corrupt they are).

I copy pasted the Wikipedia paragraph about the company onto the page and hoped someone else would make the connection. I wouldn’t mind so much IF there were a credible and decent alternative other than the diseased populist poison for which the demonstrating goons chant. China really cares about the standard of democracy in Britain eh? Persuade your enemies to weaken themselves. Destroying countries by encouraging their ‘patriots’.

(That was written on the anniversary of Tienanmen Square...a few days later Xi Jinping gave a speech saying ‘...a lovable and respectable’ China must be presented to the world and must ‘expand its circle of friends’. Tell that to your teenage ‘dissidents’, Muslims, Falun Gong and Tibetans being tortured and brainwashed in prisons or being used for organ harvesting. Tell it to Hong Kong and Taiwan.)

Unholy America...against abortion and the pill, sex education’s not Gods will and in the Name of Christ they kill...if truth be known, we’ve failed the test...but Jesus was a Socialist and Republican conservatives hate them. The founding fathers of America were Very clear about separation of church and state with damn good Reason. Another part time Christian, Mike Pompeo wants to be president. Q Onan deepstorm morons/Kremlin stool pigeons aka POLEZNYYE IDIOTY continue to push for Trump and his Big Lie...He with the brain where ‘In the left, nothing is right and in the right, nothing’s left.’ Arf.

Over the last two decades, the dumb have been finding their voice and are now louder and prouder of their dumbass ignorance. 74 million in the US alone, their egos unable to retreat in the face of endless evidence to the contrary, they all double down. Like children sticking their fingers in their grimy ears sing songing ‘la la la can’t hear you’. 74 million versions of Eric Cartman, loud, proud and wrong. And uuff, Megan Markle, Majorie Taylor Greene, walking Picasso collage (bad car driver) Caitlin Jenner and Ivana Trump in politics...not exactly holding a proud lantern for women eh? I’d like to buy them for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they are worth. Not very PC?

That was the point. Could easily been written about all of the men written about here too. Next examples follow...

Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones compete for who can be as mentally ill as trump. The Miami school where the husband and wife directors told teachers not to return if they had HAD their vaccine shots because their proximity to students was interfering with menstrual cycles and uuuufff...The sickness of utter mind buggering stupidity. I had my first shot, now waiting to turn reptilian when the 5G masts triangulate my position. Fnord. Covid appears to be killing more overweight meat eating males than females...perhaps testosterone is not useful for the coming Race of non binary mutant hermaphrodites...and look out for the end of the Y chromosome, coming to a temporary universe near you...in 4.6 million years. Yes, really.

Glad Netanyahu is out at last, smug corruption is never a good look unless one is a rich criminal. Ha. The Promised land of Israel...If I was in court for serial murder, breaking, entering and stealing and then defended my actions by saying that God had told me to do it, would the Judge; A. Call for a psychiatric report, B. Disregard the statement as unprovable and pass the appropriate sentence, C, say Ok mate, you’re free to go, good luck to you. ? Moses had a good schtick.

The law is only to punish the poor, do you feel as if you suffer from empathy? Once you know, you no longer need to believe. What does ‘reality’ seem to be? The more certain you are, the stupider you get and belief is the death of intelligence. The machine is running the engineers. What is the definition of rationality...the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic.

Nothing is, but thinking makes it so. Epicurus.

EVERYTHING NOT COMPULSORY IS FORBIDDEN.

The glamour illusion of the mass of pointless hot influencers needs a constant renewing of the Banishing Ritual as much as all the pigslop bile coming from Fox News and Sky. Bloody long haired commie liberal faggot they cry against any not identical to them. Some days I have only flamethrowers of hatred for these idiots. Other days...not exactly self doubt, just questions...most of us seem to believe our opinions are more valid when there are emotions connected to them. Including me. Again, this seems like a very weak version of ‘truth’, unless disciplined, channeled and focused to a certain end.

Life appears to exist in order to become via chaos.

Most of us are working only not to be homeless, some because of the joy in our chosen work regardless of finances. Until ‘reality’ kicks in the door...the bondage gets tighter when you struggle. How much hardship is the individual willing to endure these days by choice? Surrounded by a universe of distraction and destruction, Maya mewling for our attention. Five years of Trump, rampant populism and Brexit doing a Hexagram 23 on democracy, compounded by the pandemic...all on top of ‘normal’ daily life. The ego feeds and the immune system breaks down. Hard to ignore without being on a mountain or in a parallel dimension and emotion free other than compassion. But BY GODDESS IT CAN AND WILL BE DONE. Ladies of Life Nin Khursag, Isis, Kali, Aradia...Love one, Love ALL. At very least have respect for thyself but be not thou proud of thine arrogance nor thy suffering.

Or just Remember where you came from, what you were, seem to be and will become.

Heal, heal, more work to do, more love to give, more love to feel, Heal. Stay in drugs, eat your school and don’t do vegetables. Impose your own reality upon and through yourself, breathe, exhale, repeat, and continue, LOVE UNDER WILL. Experience and absorb but ‘It’s a house of tricks, ignore the world’’.

Stay well, be seeing you:-)

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transrightsjimin · 3 years

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im behind on my administration nd freaking out abt medical bills nd just, the privatization of healthcar!! if anyone told you the netherlands has super socialized systems, they’re either a time traveller from the previous century or lying or like... think anything tht isn’t the US is socialist. it’s not. this country is capitalistic nd social programs have been deteriorating for decades bc of this dominant neoliberal as well as fascist mentality in politics, which enforces budget cuts that hurt the working class nd then punishes them for being poor or sick. yes there is insurance, but insurance companies (that you’re required to by law to make use of even if you can’t afford it fully) are a competitive market that keep increasing its prices every year, less and less is insured bc of the privatization of health, this country is a tax haven for multinationals who pay fucking zero or even get donations from the government and ex-students are stuck with loan debt of ten thousands of euros bc of student benefits being turned into loans by liberal parties in the chamber. if i have to see ppl from other countries share these fucking posts praising the NL for being so progressive for legized weed (it rly isn’t??? there are shops where it can be bought w a license but ppl can be stopped on the street for smoking it bc of racial profiling, and owning one weed plant is legal but not using it or cultivating more than one. like cops in helicopters looking for houses tht cultivate weed bc they got dragged in a scheme is everyday reality you know??).

like yes, this is by far not the worst place on earth, even the working class, esp white, are still far more privileged than the working class in other countries, e.g. not needing to fear for war and having access to water or healthcare at least somewhere. and the petit bourgeouis is quite large in this country which is why there might be a disconnect in ppl’s minds when not being able to apply class theory to a local context. but it is this romanticization of a country tht breaks down its social systems, copies a lot of pseudo-science and ‘free market‘ shit from the US, and deals w its own tradition of denying its colonial / racist past and PRESENT (it still has colonies but it isn’t addressed as such??) that gets to people’s heads and justifies any bad processes bc ‘hey, it at least isn’t [insert other country]!!‘.

more personal rants abt bureacuracy bs and healthcare bills under the readmore. im stressed

FUCKING HELL i just found out that the ‘eigen bijdrage‘ (own financial contribution) that comes with this new ADHD medicine (lisdexfetamine) isn’t around €20-25 like the person who prescribed it stated it was (which already is a lot to me considering the first medicine is fully insured) but €105,37 of which i would need to pay €76,80 (i think bc the previous medication of methylfenidaat was affirmed as not effective) for just 30 MEDICINES so ONE MONTH??

the pharmacist i spoke to, sounded like they too found it an absurdly high price nd i asked if the amount would eventually not be needed to be paid anymore after a certain amount of times (which was for example the case with antacids i picked up for my mom nd myself) and they said it didn’t. i was adviced to seek contact with my insurance company so i did and they said p much the same thing about fees being constant, maybe at the most fluctuating a little bit to lower fees in some months but not much. the only good thing is that eigen bijdrage fees can “only” run up to €250 per year bc anything above that is covered by insurance (which is already so?? to me bc you also have eigen risico amount of €385 per year which works p much the same).

so i looked at the website of the ADHD diagnostic / therapy center i’m a patient at and there’s a page about fees for medication and it links to a web page with statement of the brand / pharmaceutical company that makes this lisdexfentamine and it turns out that you CAN send it a request to get payed back the (i think full??) amount that you paid for the medication. my fucking god the fact that the insurance company workers nor pharmacists couldn’t even access that information bc it isn’t communicated is so vile. i considered not taking this medication despite it possibly being one that actually works for me unlike methylfenidaat. i really hope i can get the full amount paid back and that it’s not actually so that there’s more to this the brand won’t tell people who need medication. i’m also just frustrated this shit isn’t covered bc

i have supposedly the best type of insurance at this company nd my parents help me pay for it and all and this medicine nd a bunch of other things STILL aren’t covered by insurance bc the pharmaceutical industry has become so privatized and the ADHD institution i am a patient at has no contract w insurance companies so that’ll be another €250 in 2021.

ALSO i still have this invoice of €91 from my orthodontist bc my splint was broken nd replaced a few months ago, and i want to send the invoice to my insurance to see if they could at least cover part of it. but for that i need a PDF and to download that, i need to enter a code which they would send to my ‘phone number‘ but that one belongs to my parents’ landline(?) phone and to change it, i need to log in but i don’t have an online account bc when i first joined that ortho center i didn’t have all that and so far that was just fine. so now i first need to find a way to make an account or change my phone number to be able to download the invoice PDF and send that to the insurance. goddd.

like i am blessed enough to have parents who keep offering to help me pay my bills but i feel guilty towards them whenever i accept that bc it’s not like they’re rich or anything nd my mom will lose 1 form of income (or already has) nd isn’t at pension age yet bc that’s 67 and she’s 65 so they’re dependant on mainly my dad who overworks on wage barely above minimum, though i do think my mom gets a little bit so that’s a bit of a relief. but urgh i rly don’t want them to pay for so much for me, nd though the municipality doesn’t check my bank account regularly, it can if it suspects fraud nd they do that for the most random reasons so i’m always afraid they will check and see my parents send money and end up witholding welfare benefits for us.

#rambles

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keyofjetwolf · 5 years

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Elisabeth: Hate

Poking around at this one is a bit off-script, and I hope @iatheia won’t mind too terribly much that I’m being self-indulgent by going here. I think the sequence for “Hate” though is intensely well done, historically honest, and tonally vital to Rudolf’s character as we enter what is, essentially, his arc in the musical. It’s entirely missing from the Takarazuka version, and I think there’s a conversation to be had in its exclusion, and what responsibilities lie in an adaptation grounded in history. But that’s a conversation not for this post, so for now I’ll simply say that while I understand the Takarazuka version shying away from going here, I think it’s the strongest single example of hollowing itself out. When I was liveblogging it, and so lacking any other version knowledge to compare it to, I found Rudolf a paper thin character whose motivations I could never really wrap myself around. Now, having added the Essen version to my experience, OF COURSE I didn’t get him, I was never given the chance.

Which isn’t to say, of course, that the Takarazuka brought us nothing.

BECAUSE OH DID IT FRIENDS

For Essen Rudolf, however, we’re shown what he sees coming, we know what he knows will happen if he does nothing, and we do it all with the perspective of knowing he was absolutely correct. His struggle and eventual suicide becomes so much more sympathetic AND infuriating, complicating our feelings toward him and making him so more complicated in the process.

So yeah, let’s take a second for a little hate, shall we?

I really love how this is staged, I have to say first up. The chorus emerges from the mist on Rudolf’s repeating echo of “HATE!” They quickly consume the stage, and yet Franz Joseph doesn’t notice them, doesn’t hear, never sees. And that’s incredibly intentional. He doesn’t hurry off stage as this portion begins, he lingers, thoughtful on Rudolf’s words, then walks away, taking the full length of the stage, walking with purpose but very calmly. This serves to contrast in a really fantastic way with Rudolf at the end of the song, so keep this in mind as I’ll touch back on it in a bit.

There is, I have no doubt, a metric fuckton of historical significance and nuance here that I’m not getting. WIKIPEDIA CAN ONLY FILL IN SO MANY GAPS. World War I is a spotty and sketchy thing for most Americans. It’s a complicated clusterfuck that’s not so easily put into “good guys” versus “bad guys”. IT’S A LOT EASIER TO KNOW YOU’RE THE GOOD GUYS WHEN YOU’RE SHOOTING NAZIS. (Though let’s stand in awe of how that’s becoming a more controversial statement every day.) (WOW I’M DEPRESSING MYSELF OKAY BACK TO THE MUSICAL)

My mother and her side are all English, so I’d heard stories about WWI in ways that it impacted my family. I did a bit of reading, because sometimes I like to know things. And I’ve tried to refresh myself and build more knowledge after having watched the Takarazuka, so I’d have more context. But still, I feel I know basically fuck all, so I’m pretty sure lots of details will fly over me. There’s a lot to get here though, even in the broad strokes.

The space left by Franz Joseph as he exits the stage is quickly filled with demonstrators calling for a stronger leader. I SEE YOU MUSICAL. It quickly gets worse.

Hate and violence to those who aren’t with us and those who spread here we will chase off!

NATIONALISM IS A HELL OF A DRUG KIDS. If you aren’t INSERT COUNTRY HERE, GTFO, and then it gets better!

With socialists and pacifists we won’t waste time anymore!

The Jewish writers and the Jewish women will be our ruin!

If you aren’t the right KIND of countryman, a “real” citizen with the “correct” thoughts and values, we’re coming for you, too. And what’s that? Ahh, the delicate fragrance of rampant antisemitism wafting on the breeze! I’M SURE THAT WON’T HAVE ANY PLAY IN FUTURE EUROPE.

I do think it’s interesting though, in like a desperately efficient and terrifying way, how they very specifically drill down that antisemitism to Jewish writers (the spread of ideas) and Jewish women (the spread of people). It encapsulates the utter blinding hatred of Jews so well that I both admire the writing skill and feel sick at the same time. Kudos? I guess??

The demonstration continues. The hate builds. More and more people join on-stage. The lighting gradually increases, the chanting grows louder. No longer whispers in the shadow, but heart-felt declarations made public.

It’s legitimizing. It’s spreading.

Now not just “demonstrators”, but government leaders, reporters informing the public, educators teaching the next generation. So that’s awesome!

Someone wanders through all this and wonders what’s going on. Lucheni joins him and answers, and I’ve spent a bit of time on why Lucheni, and why now. To this point, he’s been lingering on the fringes. As our guide and narrator, he’s outside of time, with the unique perspective of how all the pieces fit together. I think he’s coming in now as a critic, with his usual mix of irreverent anger, to very directly condemn what we see building. Which may seem like a no-brainer, but I’ll point out again how fucking relevant every second of this is to the world right now on this beautiful day in May 2019.

ANYWHO, the passerby wonders what’s going on. “A demonstration, signore,” Lucheni explains. “Nationalists, antisemites, supporters of Schönerer.”

(“Who’s Schönerer?” I innocently asked Wikipedia. “HITLER’S INSPIRATION.” Wikipedia replies. “oh.”)

“Outrageous!” the passerby says, visibly startled by this news.

“The 20th century. It’s approaching!” And with this, Lucheni walks off-stage, paying no mind as the passerby is viciously beaten with his own cane by the demonstrators.

Those demonstrators once again swarm the stage, spitting at the beaten passerby and reiterating their core mantra: “Hate and violence to those who aren’t like us! And those that spread here, we will chase off!” Question them? Express the slightest hint of disagreement? Hate and violence!

More chilling, the demonstrators are no longer just a gathering of individuals. They’re beginning to march in formation, literally falling in step together.

They’re organizing.

Lucheni takes center stage again, but this time it’s just him. The demonstrators are still present, their voices responding to him from the darkness, but otherwise, he stands alone.

AND BRINGS ELISABETH BACK INTO IT

Again, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why the show uses Lucheni here and now. Setting aside my massive ignorance YET AGAIN, I’m not finding anything that indicates Lucheni was particularly antisemitic (the “problem” with Heinrich Heine? I’LL GIVE YOU ONE GUESS.). Lucheni may well have been, but, you know, in a low-key chill sort of way. By which I mean, his deal seems to have been first and foremost about anarchy, not antisemitism or racism. So why have Lucheni be this voice? Why this protest?

And my thought is that we’re dipping for the moment into the “real” Lucheni, rather than the version who’s been taking us on this journey. Or, perhaps another way to look at it is that he represents the growing anti-imperial anarchist movement of the time. He/They may not have specifically been antisemitic, but they were more than happy to wield antisemitism as a tool for their own ends. Fan those flames, and give zero shits about who gets burned.

I think this may be the strongest indictment of Lucheni/anarchists in the musical. Throughout, I feel it mostly comes down on the side of ... if not sympathy, exactly, then of understanding. Elisabeth is complicated, and so, too, would be the feelings about her, particularly for the common people who, as a group, both adore her and suffer at her whims. But Lucheni taking voice here, whatever his motivation, is siding with and inciting those who embody hate and violence, who we know will perpetrate unthinkable atrocities in that name of that hate. The musical doesn’t turn away from the culpability that Lucheni, and those like him, have in not just allowing this but enabling it, ENCOURAGING it.

His piece said, Lucheni runs off-stage, back into the shadows as the demonstration reaches fever pitch.

They march toward the front of the stage, furious but orderly, chaos but contained. The chanting continues, but the marching changes. It becomes a goose-step. There are elaborate hand gestures, and still they all move as one. Finally, it concludes as it must.

The lights slam up, then drop, leaving only one figure on stage.

Rudolf, alone. Not walking past all this like his father, but staring at it directly, unable to look away.

This is what Rudolf sees in their future. Not just the fall of the Hapsburgs, but house after house throughout Europe, the suffering of people in the wake of those conflicts and power vacuums, setting the world stage for even more horrors to come. He KNOWS it’s coming, he can hear it, and the burden of what to do about it falls squarely on his shoulders.

“Hate” is so crucial, I feel, to understanding Rudolf’s thoughts and actions to come in the musical. Without knowing what he sees (things which we know to be true), his motivations against his father make no sense, his longing for some kind of understanding and comfort from his mother make him seem emotionally undeveloped, his desperation lacks weight, and his suicide is reduced to a plot point for Elisabeth rather than the final surrender of hope that we could avoid the inevitable.

And it’s so well done! Really, the way the whole sequence just builds and builds, before abruptly cutting off at this evocative moment, leaving Rudolf its only witness. Just fantastic, I loved it.

IT TOOK ME LIKE A MONTH TO GET MY THOUGHTS TOGETHER TO WRITE THIS POST. One that wasn’t even requested, but again, I hope no one minds too terribly much that I took us down this detour. For as much as I carried on about it, it’s just under two minutes, and if you have those two minutes to spare, I would encourage you to put them here.

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#jet wolf watches elisabeth #a novel by jet wolf

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funamblrist · 5 years

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something i find funny is how there's a clear disonnect when it comes to comparing crimes commited by socialist countries versus capitalist ones.

like for example, people will take literally anything bad done under socialism - regardless of whether it's a direct consequence of communist ideology or policies - and add that to the tally of communist crimes, because it's easy to look at ideologically motivated countries with clear motives like the USSR, and to say "oh the cheka tortured people during the civil war, and that was under the command of a communist government in a socialist state - this is proof that communism is on par with fascism."

but when it comes to capitalism, countries usually don't have any radical ideology or goals, but just flip flop between basic bitch establishment faces like liberalism, conservatism, etc. while maintaining the same mode of production and abiding by the laws of capital. it's not like socialism where you have a very clear system challenging the world that actually wants to pursue some kind of master goal, and as such anything bad it does can be pinned on said ideology.

since most of the world is capitalist, and there are many different types of governments and leaders - some more openly horrendous than others - it's easy for pro-capitalists to observe all the human rights abuses committed over the past few centuries by numerous countries, and instead of being all "oh wow the U.S. alone installed a lot of corrupt dictators, used to openly persecute minorities until the 70s/80s, had interment camps, bombed foreign countries, and constantly covers up all the bad shit they do" and coming to the realisation that a lot of these things happened purely to benefit the ruling class - that capitalism is the problem - they either outright neglect these things or are all "rip to the slaves but that was in the past, and we've progressed now!" or "wow this is just the fault of *insert meanie party* we need to vote for someone else!" they view all the bad shit through the lens of some vague concept of "the government (past or present)" or "drumpf/obamba/reagan" and not the system itself. after all, it's easy for the average first worlder to ignore the crimes of capitalism when they aren't in your face about it, unlike those horrible Soviets promoting Marxism with their KGBs and their scary parades and red flags.

anyway, it's just some capitalist governments that do bad stuff! there are so many good capitalist nations like Norway! so clearly capitalism isn't the driving factor! let's ignore the fact that Norway is in NATO, engages in economic imperialism, and still exploits the working class like all other capitalist nations! as long as you have welfare and put on a happy face, it's A-OK! hell, sometimes you don't even need to do that - the U.S. certainly doesn't, but people are fine with praising them for "freedom and democracy" and exulting their "market innovations."

it's a lot harder to pinpoint the crimes of capitalism when it's hidden away under other bullshit, and isn't a proper ideology with theories you can point to i.e socialist collectivisation, "muh authoritarian one party gommunism", removing the bourgeoisie, etc. if we actually went through and counted all the bad shit every single capitalist government has done (and continues to do,) along with the amount of suffering people face as a direct result of the market, the death toll and list of crimes would make Pol Pot blush - whatever fucked up shit happened under the circumstances of 20s/30s USSR, or the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, would pale in comparison.

#essays

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canchewread · 5 years

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Editor’s note: Originally, I was going to save this quote until Bernie Sanders declared he was running for President in 2020, but I think there’s enough evidence that he’ll eventually declare now to confidently proceed with this write up - if he chickens out, I guess I’ll just have to deal with this post being thrown in my face for a while.

Today’s quotation comes from Matt Taibbi’s 2016 US Presidential election campaign book, “Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus” - a volume that mostly consists of essays Taibbi released over the course of the entire campaign (Primaries and General Election) with some glue in the introduction and concluding portions of the book, to tie the whole thing together.

As those of you who regularly read my work here on Can’t You Read are no doubt already aware, I’m a big fan of Matt Taibbi’s writing - both in terms of style and the value of the content he provides. While nobody who can effectively work in mainstream media for over a decade should be trusted completely, I think it’s fair to say that Taibbi is, by the comparatively poor standards of his industry, an honest, rational observer of an institution (U.S. politics) that is anything but honest and rational. He is also, despite the numerous attempts to smear him, a fundamentally decent human being and that still matters a little bit in the world of American politics - although, maybe not as much as it should.

As for the book itself - Insane Clown President is ultimately a frustrating collection of writing; while two thirds of the book represents Taibbi at the absolutely height of his powers and easily ranks among his best work, the remaining third feels like a bunch of social media posts and fan mail cobbled into something resembling a narrative, then inserted into the book to fill out the page count. For example, while hashing out the rules of the GOP debate drinking game and conducting unofficial primary polls was probably a lot of fun for Taibbi’s followers on Twitter, it simply doesn’t translate into an enjoyable experience when transported onto the written page - the effect is actually quite jarring and somehow manages to detract from the rest of the extremely high-quality analysis Matt brings to the table.

The upshot here, are of course passages like the one quoted above, from a chapter appropriately and presciently titled - “June 9th, 2016: Democrats Will Learn All the Wrong Lessons from Their Brush with Bernie.” It is in moments like these that Taibbi seems to have his finger directly on the pulse of the class conflict between the voting public and the political elite (of which the mainstream media is effectively a public relations arm) in the United States. Unfortunately, despite Matt’s incisive analysis of the problems that would eventually define the entire 2016 election, the author’s (somewhat myopic) attachment to a liberalized ideal of previous editions of the Democratic Party, ultimately prevents him from drawing the obvious conclusion his own writing exposes throughout the book - that Trump is going to win, because American politics and its political media, are both fundamentally broken.

Despite these issues however, Insane Clown President’s most important contribution to understanding the current US political environment is Taibbi’s ability to recognize both swine emperor Trump and Bernie Sanders as symptoms of a populist insurgency waged not against internal factions within the normal framework of U.S. politics, but in opposition to the entire elite American ruling class and its institutions - our “establishment” if you will.

Before I go any further into what this means for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination race however, I’d like to talk a little bit about the false media narrative that the left wing populist movement behind Bernie Sanders is somehow “the same” as the revanchist, reactionary right wing movement that propelled Herr Donald to the White House in 2016 - a narrative which is, in a word, bullsh*t. While both political phenomenon are motivated to some degree by a mistrust of, alienation from and even outright loathing of the U.S. establishment and its institutions, the reasons for that mistrust, the overall end goals and the origin point of these respective insurgencies are totally different.

The far right “populist” movement that Trump was able to usurp during the 2016 Republican primaries, has its roots in Paleoconservatism and the largely AstroTurf, billionaire-funded conservative “Tea Party movement.” It is a fundamentally reactionary movement, created by the rich to blame America’s ills not on deregulated capitalism and an absurdly greedy ruling class, but instead on the proverbial “other” - brown-skinned immigrants, Muslims, the gay and transgender community, women, African Americans, the Jewish left, political correctness, big government and most of all, the dreaded “socialists, communists and liberals.” At its core, what we now call “Trumpism” is a revanchist Frankenstein’s Monster; the result of decades of weaponized and fetishistic worship of American exceptionalism, white supremacy and the absolute rule of capital - the only problem for the architects of this movement is that Trump managed to hack the code and establish his own mini-cult of personality by being more explicitly fascist and hateful than they were.

The movement propelling Sanders to the forefront of American politics by contrast is a genuine, grass roots endeavor. Although it’s easy enough to make the argument that the anti-globalization movement, Occupy Wall Street, anti-fracking activists, and the Black Lives Matter protests have all provided inspiration and ideological underpinnings for this democratic socialist wave, the fact is that there is no unseen hand at work here; no billionaire backers, no guerrilla marketing wunderkinds, and no AstroTurf corporate media campaigns can claim responsibility for the phenomenon Sanders has helped embody in American politics. I say helped, because this too represents a key difference between the DemSoc wave and Trumpism; as a policy-focused movement, this new American left isn’t just about Bernie Sanders and already we’ve seen inspiring young leaders like Lee Carter, Rashida Tlaib, and especially Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez step to the front with their own democratic socialist message.

Finally, unlike Trumpism, this Sanders-inspired DemSoc insurgency is a movement whose policy proposals match their rhetoric; striving for economic equality, environmental protections, universal health coverage, increased educational opportunities for all, a restoration of democratic rights, better jobs with improved working conditions, the right to collectively bargain, affordable housing, ending mass incarceration, women’s rights, civil rights, and yes, despite what you’ve heard in corporate media owned by rich white people - ending racism and injustice against all marginalized people. Indeed, particularly on the issues of supporting Palestinians living under Israeli apartheid and ending American imperialism abroad, the movement Sanders helped to inspire appears to be driving him further to the left on the political spectrum; although not as much as some, myself included, would like.

In short, if Trumpism is about dragging the country back to a more explicitly white supremacist era, the movement Sanders helps represent is about establishing a fairer, more compassionate and more democratic America than the world has ever known - even under FDR.

There is however, one potential analogue between these two insurgencies and this is where I think the above quote from Taibbi’s book comes in; while there are no real similarities between Trumpism and the Sanders movement, there are a great deal of similarities between the ways both established U.S. political factions and their media minions have responded to an insurgent voter’s revolt.

In 2012, and fresh off the heels of a traumatizing insurgent Tea Party revolt within the party, the Republican establishment put all its chips down on making Barrack Obama a one term president. Expending what would turn out to be the last of their political capital, the GOP establishment managed to force through the Butcher of Bain Capital, “center-right” candidate Mitt Romney during the GOP primary process - a choice distinctly divorced from the anti-elite sentiment (if not reality) of a Tea-Party base now openly indulging in Birtherism and starting to warm up to, you guessed it, Donald Trump. It was the type of calculated bet the party elite would only have been prepared to make if they were sure Romney would win the 2012 presidential election, because they were essentially gambling that deposing the hated Obama would quell the rage their reactionary base felt at being betrayed by the GOP elite, embodied in the form of Romney.

In retrospect, it seems obvious now that when (despite all of Karl Rove’s rosy projections) Romney went down in flames, the GOP establishment was fatally fractured; having demonized Obama as literally an enemy of the American people, when the Republican brain trust failed to deliver his head on a platter that morning in 2012, they effectively lost the revanchist right who’d powered their surge back to political relevance only two years before.

From the outside however, this was not immediately apparent; the Republican leadership quickly announced an election autopsy and soon enough the same people who’d failed Republican voters in 2012 were offering their prescriptions for how to win the next one in 2016. Putting their mighty heads together, these elite GOP power brokers came back with arguably the only candidate more Republican establishment than Romney, Jeb Bush.

It was as we now know, a drastic miscalculation but one that should have been recognized long before Trump won the GOP nomination. When Party leaders lacked the ability to preemptively weed a wild and opportunistic seventeen candidate Republican nomination field, including, incredibly, a credible “center-right” candidate from anointed establishment GOP champion Jeb Bush’s *own* state - the writing was already on the wall for a party leadership group that was only keeping up appearances after exiting 2012 essentially politically bankrupt and broken.

Moving the timeline forward four years, it’s extremely difficult not to see strong parallels on the Democratic side of the ledger. Here too we see a party that barely staved off a radical insurgency by expending an enormous amount of political capital to ram through a highly-unpopular candidate, all the while dismissing the growing outrage from the left wing portion of their base as irrelevant because Hillary Clinton would definitely be the next President of the United States. After losing the 2016 election, the Democratic establishment quickly conducted an autopsy, made some vague platitudes about listening to the angry left-wingers that backed Bernie Sanders and ultimately decided to keep doing the same things they’ve always done before; just like the Republican Party in 2012. Yet, as the 2020 Democratic Party race opens, it is clear that the liberal establishment no longer has enough control over the party to weed the field, and prevent more than a dozen nearly-identical centrist candidates from splitting a vote that would otherwise be united under one candidate, preordained to fight off Bernie Sanders once again.

Can a broken, politically bankrupt Democratic Party hold off Sanders a second time doing essentially the exact same things that failed to hold off Trumpism on the GOP side of aisle?

I wouldn’t bet on it - as beloved American author Samuel Clemens is often (and perhaps falsely) reputed to have said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

- nina illingworth

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qqueenofhades · 5 years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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