#robert tear gasses him

[risingchaos]

Can we talk about the fact that Robert (originally) considered Chris to be the third best actor in the CPDS after himself and Sandra? I feel like we don't talk about that.

#because honestly #its kinda funny #and then you know #robert tear gasses him #twice #and shoots him #so clearly doesnt value him much #cornley polytechnic drama society #cornley drama society #robert grove #chris bean #the play that goes wrong #the goes wrong show

[robertreich]

A THANKSGIVING TOAST

Friends,If your family and friends are anything like mine, there will be a lot of talk today over turkey. Some of it will be gossip. Some of it, about sports or jokes or jobs or plans. 

But some of your guests (perhaps even you) will want to talk about the distressing state of the nation and the world.Your cousin Sue worries about climate change and how little was accomplished in Glasgow. Your Trumpish uncle Bob can’t keep his mouth shut about Biden’s failures in Afghanistan and at the border. Your son Jared, back from college, wants to talk about systemic racism. Your friend Sid can’t stop worrying about the pandemic, or assault weapons, or hate crimes, or near-record inequality, or the opioid epidemic, or soaring homelessness, or voter suppression. Your daughter Sarah chimes in about the continuing menace of Donald Trump and lawmakers too timid to stand up to him.

All reasons for concern (except for those of your Trumpish uncle Bob), but I’d hope someone at your table also notes that America has gone through worse times, and have in some ways emerged better.

When I graduated college in 1968, I thought America would never recover. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated, as had Robert F. Kennedy. Our cities were burning. Tens of thousands of young Americans (including several friends) were being ordered to Vietnam to fight an unwinnable and unjust war that ultimately claimed over 58,000 American lives and the lives of over 3 million Vietnamese. The nation was deeply and angrily divided. Young people were tear-gassed at the Democratic National Convention. And then in November of that year, Richard Nixon was elected president. 

But we did recover. We enacted the Environmental Protection Act. Eventually we achieved marriage equality for gays and lesbians. We elected a Black man president of the United States. We passed the Affordable Care Act. In 2018 we elected a record number of women, people of color, and LGBTQ representatives to Congress, including the first Muslim women.​ ​Eighteen states raised their minimum wages. In 2020, Trump was sent packing, and Democrats took over the Senate and the House.

COVID was a horror but Congress created a safety net that prevented millions from falling into deep poverty because of it. More than 70 percent of us are now vaccinated against it. We will soon be investing over $1 trillion repairing our crumbling roads and bridges and creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs. And it seems likely (although hardly a certainty) that American families will get help with childcare and universal pre-K, and more.

What about the future? No one can tell, but there are some reasons for optimism. For one thing, we are on our way toward becoming a nation of startling diversity. ​Most Americans under 18 are now people of color. ​In ten years, most under ​35​ will be. In thirty years, most of us. That diversity will be a huge source of strength — as our growing diversity has strengthened us since our founding.

For another, our young people are determined to make America and the world better. I've been teaching for 40 years and I've never taught a generation of students as dedicated to public service and as committed to improving the nation and the world, as the generation I'm now teaching. 

I should also point out that ​60 percent of today’s college students are women​, an astounding achievement. It portends more women in leadership positions – in science, politics, education, nonprofits, and in corporate suites. This will also be a great boon to America, and the world.

I’m no technophile but I can’t help being impressed by what science and technology are accomplishing, such as the COVID vaccines that have saved countless lives, and solar and wind energy sources that are rapidly replacing carbon fuels. With the right laws and incentives, science and technology could solve many more of the problems that plague the nation and the world.

I don't want to minimize our current plight. I’m deeply worried about climate change, systemic racism, and growing attacks on our democracy. I’m not going to tell any of my friends or relatives over dinner today that they’re wrong to feel angry or to despair. 

But I will remind them of this nation’s resilience, and the many ways the future could be bright. And when we raise our glasses for a toast, I will ask that they never give up fighting for a more just society. Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

#thanksgiving #america

[lilnasxvevo]

The best way to describe Robert Evans is that when he found a 17 year old child at the dangerous Portland protests where people were constantly getting tear gassed and whatnot he did NOT try to make the child go home but he DID take responsibility for the child to the extent that the now-adult calls him “riot dad” to this day

[yobaba30]

Stolen from Twitter

I owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology.  I’ve been critical of the Trump presidency these last four years, and am still exhausted from the experience. But to be fair, President Trump wasn’t that bad, other than when he incited an insurrection against the government, mismanaged a pandemic that killed nearly half a million Americans, separated children from their families, lost those children in the bureaucracy, tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church, tried to block all Muslims from entering the country, got impeached, got impeached again, had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history, pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden, fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia, bragged about firing the FBI director on TV, took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community, diverted military funding to build his wall, caused the longest government shutdown in US history, called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,” lied nearly 30,000 times, banned transgender people from serving in the military, ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions, vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers, refused to release his tax returns, increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion, had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history, called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers, coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist, refused to concede the 2020 election, hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House, walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl, called neo-Nazis “very fine people,” suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID, abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey, pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans, incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic, withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords, withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal, withdrew withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances, insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter, pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op, failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies, called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries, called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,” claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere, forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe, suggested the US should buy Greenland, colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges, repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,” claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases, violated the emoluments clause, thought that Nambia was a country, told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public, called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution, nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet, nominated a corrupt head the EPA, nominated a corrupt head of HHS, nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department, nominated a corrupt head of the USDA, praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies, refused to allow the presidential transition to begin, insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death, spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president, falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote, called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,” falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote, called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,” falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year, considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions, mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID, locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones, used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,” hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser, pardoned several of his shady associates, gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressman who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories, got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!), had a Secretary of State who called him a moron, forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history, botched the COVID vaccine rollout, tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him, charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties, constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate, claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear, called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,” used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise, opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling, got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers, claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US, ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings, blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining, redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle, got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,” threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution, botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them, pressured the governor and secretary of state of Part 2 cont… Georgia to “find” him votes, thought that the Virgin islands had a President, drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane, allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing, rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos, pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID, rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers held blatant campaign rallies at the White House, tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man, refused to attend his successors’ inauguration, nominated the worst Education Secretary in history threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted, attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t), allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues, struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble, called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,” threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders, went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic, claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,” seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution, demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director, praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles, completely gutted the Voice of America, placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service, claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower, suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country, suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public, overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported, reduced the number of refugees the US accepts, insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames, gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address, named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties, eliminated the White House office of pandemic respon used soldiers as campaign props, fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him, demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade, hired a shit ton of white nationalists, politicized the civil service, did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked US falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts, claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won, insulted reporters of color, insulted women reporters, insulted women reporters of color, suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs, attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him, summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election, spent countless hours every day watching Fox News, refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas, hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer, tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him, acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney, attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a women who accused him of sexual assault, held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present, didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media, stopped holding press briefings for months at a time, “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power, led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform, claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers, tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course, suggested that the government nuke hurricanes, suggested that wind turbines cause cancer, said that he had a special aptitude for science, fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure, blurted out classified information to Russian officials, tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida, fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban, hired Stephen Miller, openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them, interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel, abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war, tried to get Russia back into the G7, held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden, seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive, lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated, falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t, shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies, still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan, still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure,” forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID, told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” fucked up the Census, withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,” allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act, Part 3 continues… seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win, constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump, claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened, said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake, claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him, claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President, created a commission to whitewash American history, retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain, claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there, hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims, had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others, bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties, apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House, stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians, falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police, said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about, tried to rescind protection from DREAMers, gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic, tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax, said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states, deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented, claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln, touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all, retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile, forced through security clearances for his family, suggested that police officers should rough up suspects, suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs, tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender, suggested the US not accept COVID patients from  a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher, nominated a climate change sceptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy, retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event, hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags, accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address, claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia, mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, obsessed over low-flow toilets, ordered the rerelease of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release, called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek), hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech, took advice from the MyPillow guy, claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists, said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition, never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign, falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent, announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest, insulted the leader of Canada, insulted the leader of France, insulted the leader of Britain, insulted the leader of Germany, insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!), falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues, blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually, continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders, said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked, left a NATO summit early in a huff, stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that, called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary, refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise, and a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment. But other than that. . . Please share. This is how history books will read, because these are PROVABLE FACTS! Truth

[caltropspress]

FEEDBACK LOOP #7: Curly Castro’s “Weapon 13X” featuring Breeze Brewin

There was a very old man, an old white man out in the crowd, and he started screaming and crying like a baby and he kept crying and he said, “God damn, God damn, what is this God damn country coming to that the niggers have got guns, the niggers are armed and the police can’t even arrest them!” He kept crying and somebody led him away through the crowd.

—Robert F. Williams, Negroes with Guns (1962)

Gun flash beats the child’s head in, maniac teeth dance in a bloody grin blue lies, badge confessions, yng dude dead just beyond his mama’s arms

—Amiri Baraka, “Stop Killer Cops”

Police said Cleaver and Hutton were holed up at 1218 28th Street with two 9 mm automatic pistols, two AR-15 and one military-type M-14 automatic rifle, and a large supply of ammunition, some armor-piercing.

—Berkeley Barb, Volume 6, Number 15, Issue 139

1.

“Weapon 13X” is a diptych. Two verses; one pivot—or volta, for you bookworms. Curly Castro is first with a séance that summons the mysteries of Clarence 13X and Weapon X. These nullified variables and Roman numerals come together in an elixir mix so potent that it would make Aes Rock choke on the amalgam. Castro opens the fission gate and discharges two-hundred forty thousand mega-therms on the city of brotherly love, the city of bombs from above onto a 6221 Osage Avenue row house. Shameek just got bust in his arm, leg, leg, arm, head. The Black man is God personified, and Logan is regenerative. Adamantium claws. Mathematical jaws. Science dropped and experiments performed. Spark this like metal does when dragged across concrete.

2.  “Harriet would grab her balls, / This my gun, and this my rifle.”

Harriet Tubman gets cast by Kubrick for Full Metal Jacket, recites the Rifleman’s Creed, but it was actually a pistol she kept buried within the folds of her calico. She sallied forth seeing visions from the overseer’s heave of a weight—made her skull snap. Don’t sleep. “When the caliber’s inside you,” you can’t necessarily count on “the muzzle smoke revival.”

3.

Quelle Chris provides production, lest we forget his 2019 Guns album with its Dada-bullet, double-barreled barrage album art. The title track armed to the teeth: “Ain’t no cracking that code, / Ain’t no safety on locks, / Might as well get you one, / Procrastinating will get you popped.” The machine gun funk outs finks and COINTELPRO cooperators, conspirators, dispiriters. Here, Castro’s got those same turncoats and sucker MCs in his sights, so to speak.

4.  [The oppressor] teaches the Negro that he has no worth-while past, that his race has done nothing significant since the beginning of time, and that there is no evidence that he will ever achieve anything great. (Carter Godwin Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro, 1933)

Castro makes a promise, provoked by those who came before him, those who brandished firearms in the faces of their enemies:

We never will disarm: these are the lies that you were sold, When your glory tripped up, you trade your weapons in for gold. With Yakub in the schools, trade your dreams, knowledge folds. Found the tome, Mis-Education Negroes…

Dr. Yakub sloshing liquids in the lab—Bunsen burners explode and the lab leak is viral whiteness. Tricknology replaces Biology. Castro is looking back while moving forward. “Doomed to repeat it”-type forewarnings. He knows the ledge and also wants his people to.

5.

aim     get your sights & its sound in abstract or journal movements to a peace settlement

dude shot my man

dead,          precious lord blow off theres no willy in th blues theres no you.

—from Tom Weatherly’s Maumau American Cantos (1970)

Castro is a “gunhand, cybernetic with spray cans, / Basquiat, baklava, Mau Mau.” That’s likely an intentional malaprop—surely his militant stance calls for a balaclava. Even still, Castro doesn’t stutter. He will still sh-sh-shift his voice on you—the dynamics of his delivery raise stakes and get guttural, scraping against sewer plates. He’s potent, even if Basquiat’s pistol appears flaccid with its hand-scrawled linework. In another piece, Basquiat starts the decolonization process at the point of a safari helmet. The image detonates.  

6.  Free country? Man, I should fuck you up for sayin’ that stupid shit alone.

“This film is a call to racial violence!” a film critic shouted at Roger Ebert after a screening of Do the Right Thing. She worried Bed-Stuy would set fire to theaters, but Lee’s 1989 film wasn’t The Rite of Spring in Paris in 1913. An amerikan psychotic turn to theater violence would be postponed until Aurora in 2012, and it would be white violence, which would come as a shock to none who have tracked the trajectory of white violence. Displacement is white violence, too. White violence is a sine qua non for gentrification. And so Castro allies himself with “Buggin’ Out battle brownstone houses, some Bird fans, / While Mookie turns the radio up and launched the trashcan.”

7.  “We are the weapons.”

Of late, Castro has consistently been proving you’re out your depth, with verses so allusive they suggest a strong “Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith, nobody blink. / They don’t now who the fuck that is” vibe. So what, though? At this point, Castro’s a vet, an elder. The youngins need to catch up or cash out. Get KRS-One bookish, kiddies, or be left behind. Be the weapon or never prosper. Create your own mythos: “Omega built a mother by the sun and Cyclops sent / a blurred Baraka poem capable to raise the dead. / Yet instead I use the sword...”—with Wu-Tang pronunciation of the w in “sword,” of course. History moves backwards and forwards at the same time. Language is lost and recovered. The poem is “blurred” because it’s been duplicated on a mimeograph—a machine that involves a “drum.” The words are ink-smudged. Baraka’s former partner, Diane di Prima, shouted, “"Power to the people's mimeo machines!” Accuse and attack, Baraka sloganeered. We’re talking about agency—by hand-crank, handgun, or mic check.

8.

Castro creates imagery like Emory Douglas did with paint: painfully bold and saturated with color like blood soaks clothes. Baraka called Douglas’s art a combo of “expressionist agitprop and homeboy familiarity,” which applies to what Castro does on the track. I quote Mao who called literature and art “part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause,” and Mao quotes Lenin who called lit and art the “cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.” And Baraka also said Douglas’s work:

functioned as if you were in the middle of a rumble and somebody tossed you a machine pistol. It armed your mind and demeanor. Ruthlessly funny, but at the same time functional as the .45 slugs pouring out of that weapon.

The Panthers were trapped and tear-gassed in a West Oakland basement. Eldridge Cleaver told Bobby to go out naked—unarmed as the day he was born not quite eighteen years earlier—but he emerged from the burning house fully dressed, with dignity, and he was searchlighted and shotshotshotshotshotshotshot dead.

Castro needs Brewin to make the cypher complete—a two-man killarmy using loud words in quiet wars, no silencer.

9.  “Before blurting out, try analysis, brother.”

Breeze’s Yo, listen… at the start of his verse is comparable to Sir Thomas Wyatt intoning Whoso list to hunt… to begin his 16th-century sonnet. The amalgam here is less Five Percenter plus clandestine government experimentation and more a deconstruction of the both violent and sexualized language of braggadocio. “Anything you say isn’t played like Miranda Rights,” and so we’re already with our hands behind our backs, silenced by an pig officer’s gag order. The competition doesn’t get played; they play themselves.

Sir Thomas Wyatt sets it off like so:

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, hélas, I may no more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow.

Breeze has wanted to stay pleasant to the ears—you know, like Lauryn Hill phone sexing—so this isn’t new territory but rather a well-worn path. Wyatt’s wearied and “so sore” by “the hunt,” the pursuit of his love interest, even though he knows “where is an hind.” Still, “as she fleeth afore / Fainting [he] follows.” He can’t help himself.

Love is lost within violent pursuit. Breeze speaks of a “plan to strike” and “zero in” on a “target,” his quarry. He and Castro are “talking about broads often, no doubt, / We broad and burly as hell, / Brag about the hunt, you was jukin’ a girly gazelle.” Breeze’s assault is dizzying, a salvo from all angles: “Hit ’em with some counter clay rebuttals that’s subtle but still befuddle if dude slow.”

10.  “It’s nothin’, I gotcha, and that’s word to Super Lover Cee.”

Super Lover Cee and Casanova Rud’s 1988 single “Girls I Got ’Em Locked” articulates the carceral embrace of “locking” a girl down, which—consequently—requires violence to enforce: “Don’t ever touch a girl owned by me or I’ll ruin ya’, / Slap you with my mic simultaneously as I’m doin’ ya.” The girl is commodified, and Super Lover Cee takes a proprietary attitude toward the relationship. If you overstep, you’ll be ruined, that is, you’ll fall. And while you’re prostrate, you’ll be slapped with the phallic mic simultaneously. Is the Super Lover doin’ her or you, though? What’s truly getting him off? That hypermasculine posturing skews homoerotic. Breeze Brewin laughs at you for subscribing to the nonsense: “Dag, if that was what you believe then your world be a hell.”

11.

Liberal discourse suggests policing your impulses. Put down the gun—don’t touch it. “Touchy subjects,” like racism (apparently), get the “We need to have a conversation” treatment. Look, don’t touch. Don’t touch the exhibit of stolen artifacts—those Benin bronzes in the British Museum. Beneath the topic of orignoo gunn clapping, Curly Castro’s track is about the x’s and o’s of eros as well. Many gestures meant to protect women are merely some other man staking his claim, adorning her with “diamonds in letters plain,” as Wyatt writes of the collar around the deer’s “fair neck.” Wyatt’s sonnet warns against overstepping (or even half-stepping). The collar reads Noli me tangere (touch me not)—she belongs to someone else. It’s a bad touch example. Like his fellow Indelible J-Treds, Breeze Brewin is the living circle-circle-dot-dot: nobody can touch him.

12.

Let’s bring it back to Little Bobby Hutton. When Eldridge Cleaver told him to leave the ambushed basement naked, he was thinking of Bobby’s safety. He thought the extreme measure of appearing on the street without clothes would be enough to convince the pigs he wasn’t armed. Cleaver was naïve to think so. Bobby Hutton was right to emerge clothed. In doing so, he rejected the indignity of the auction block, the lynching, the mutilation and spreading of souvenir flesh. The searchlight made Bobby Hutton the subject of a spectacle, yes, but he refused to consent to the psychosexual desires of white supremacy. He refused the castration ritual. Little Bobby Hutton, in effect, threw down a challenge to the cops: Use your imagination once again. Try to think of a few situations where your own weapon might be used against you…used against you…used against you.

Images:

Emory Douglas, The Black Panther, Vol. IV, No. 78, 1971 (detail) | Weapon X (detail, issue unknown) | Emory Douglas, Rat Subterranean News (1970) | Harriet Tubman with gun sketch | Anti-Mau Mau British propaganda poster | Newspaper headline from Negroes with Guns | Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (date unknown) | Jean-Michel Basquiat, Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, and Amorites on Safari (1982) | Screenshot from Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) | Two images from the Berkeley Barb, Volume 6, Number 15, Issue 139 (1968) | Emory Douglas, The Black Panther (miscellaneous poster) | Medieval depiction of the hunt (unknown) | Image detail from the Berkeley Barb, Volume 6, Number 15, Issue 139 (1968)

[bigmacdaddio]

Trump

Trump will never be forgotten because he incited an insurrection against the government, mismanaged a pandemic that killed over half a million Americans, separated children from their families, lost those children in the bureaucracy, tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church, tried to block all Muslims from entering the country, got impeached, got impeached again, had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history, pressured Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia, bragged about firing the FBI director on TV, took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community, diverted military funding to build his wall, caused the longest government shutdown in US history, called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,” lied nearly 30,000 times, banned transgender people from serving in the military, ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions, vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers, refused to release his tax returns, increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion, had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history, called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers, coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist, refused to concede the 2020 election, hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House, walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl, called neo-Nazis “very fine people,” suggested that people should inject bleach or disinfectant into their bodies to fight COVID, abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey, pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans, incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic, withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords, withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal, withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances, insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter, pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op, failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies, called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries, called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,” claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere, forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader, believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe, suggested the US should buy Greenland, colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges, repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,” claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases, violated the emoluments clause, thought that Nambia was a country, told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public, called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution, nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet, nominated a corrupt head of the EPA, nominated a corrupt head of HHS, nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department, nominated a corrupt head of the USDA, praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies, refused to allow the presidential transition to begin, insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death, spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president, falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote, called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,” falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year, considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions, mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID, locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones, used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,” hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser, pardoned several of his shady associates, gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressman who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories, got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!), had a Secretary of State who called him a moron, forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history, botched the COVID vaccine rollout, tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him, charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties, constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate, claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear, called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,” used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise, opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling, got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers, claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US, ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings, blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining, redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle, got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,” threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution, botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them, pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes, thought that the Virgin islands had a President, drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane, allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing, rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos, pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID, rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers, held blatant campaign rallies at the White House, tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man, refused to attend his successors’ inauguration, nominated the worst Education Secretary in history, threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted, attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t), allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues, struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble, called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,” threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders, went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic, claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,” seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution, demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director, praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles, completely gutted the Voice of America, placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service, claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower, suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country, suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public, overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported, reduced the number of refugees the US accepts, insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames, gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address, named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties, eliminated the White House office of pandemic response, used soldiers as campaign props, fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him, demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade, hired a shit ton of white nationalists, politicized the civil service, did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government, falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts, claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won, insulted reporters of color, insulted women reporters, insulted women reporters of color, suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs, attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him, summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election, spent countless hours every day watching Fox News, refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas, hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer, tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him, acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney, attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a women who accused him of sexual assault, held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present, didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media, stopped holding press briefings for months at a time, “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power, led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform, claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers, tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course, suggested that the government nuke hurricanes, suggested that wind turbines cause cancer, said that he had a special aptitude for science, fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure, blurted out classified information to Russian officials, tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida, fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban, hired Stephen Miller, openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them, interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel, abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war, tried to get Russia back into the G7, held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden, seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive, lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated, falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t, shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies, still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan, still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks,” forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID, told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” fu**ed up the Census, withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic, did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,” allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act, seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win, constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump, claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened, said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake, claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him, claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President, created a commission to whitewash American history, retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain, claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there, hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims, had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others, bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties, apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House, stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians, falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police, said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about, tried to rescind protection from DREAMers, gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic, tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax, said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states, deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented, claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln, touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all, retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile, forced through security clearances for his family, suggested that police officers should rough up suspects, suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs, tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender, suggested the US not accept COVID patients from  a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher, nominated a climate change sceptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy, retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden had played a song called “F**k tha Police” at a campaign event, hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags, accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address, claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia, mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, obsessed over low-flow toilets, ordered the rerelease of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release, called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek), hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech, took advice from the MyPillow guy, claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists, said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure, never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign, falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent, announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest, insulted the leader of Canada, insulted the leader of France, insulted the leader of Britain, insulted the leader of Germany, insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!), falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues, blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually, continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders, said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked, left a NATO summit early in a huff, stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that, called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary, refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and keep his promise, and a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment.

[seymour-butz-stuff]

The argument for keeping House and Senate Republicans rests on the premise they somehow lack the disqualifying characteristics (e.g., congenital lying, racism, constitutional illiteracy, conspiracy-mongering) that addle President Trump. Think again.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) used to be considered a middle-of-the-road Republican — before she exonerated Trump for plainly impeachable conduct. Now, she sounds just like him. Iowa Starting Line reports that Ernst now seems to embrace "a thoroughly-discredited QAnon conspiracy theory about U.S. deaths from covid-19 being a mere fraction of what has been reported.” Without any factual support — and with massive data to the contrary — the senator insists it’s all a plot:

“They’re thinking there may be 10,000 or less deaths that were actually singularly covid-19,” Ernst said, seemingly referring to the debunked conspiracy theory that only around 6% of covid-19 deaths were due to the virus. “I’m just really curious. It would be interesting to know that.”Going even further, however, Ernst also suggested that doctors were intentionally falsifying coronavirus cases in order to receive more money for caring for the patient.“These health care providers and others are reimbursed at a higher rate if covid is tied to it, so what do you think they’re doing?” she questioned the crowd.

What may have started as a debunked conspiracy theory — that doctors are conniving to over-count patients — is now seriously propounded by a U.S. senator (as FactCheck.org reported: "multiple experts told us that such theories of hospitals deliberately miscoding patients as covid-19 are not supported by any evidence”). If anything, the number of official coronavirus cases, as Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has explained, is a fraction of the actual cases.

Meanwhile, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) has followed Trump’s lead in espousing racist gibberish. This week, he put up a Facebook post (later removed by the social media platform) that included a photo of armed Black men and protesters and declared, “If this shows up, we’ll consider the armed presence a real threat. We being, We the People, of Louisiana. One way ticket fellas. Have your affairs in order.” By deploying the word “this,” Higgins dehumanized the individuals depicted, reducing them to mere objects. The response? No rebuke. No censure. No expulsion from Congress. Is it any surprise? A party that welcomes two QAnon-embracing congressional nominees has become a cesspool of hate and conspiracies.

Beyond expressions of overt racism and ongoing support for totems of the Confederacy, denial of systemic racism is now the default setting for virtually all Republicans, including the president, attorney general and members of Congress. Statistical data (not only in the criminal justice system), the series of unjustified police killings of African Americans, the disproportionate number of Black people afflicted by covid-19, and nearly every other social or economic indicator (from life span to wealth) reveal that the tentacles of racism still have a stranglehold on the country. The notion that everything is fine and that no institutional racism exists is the defense mechanism of a party invested in white supremacy. A party that willfully denies the painful reality of endemic racial inequity — and, therefore, lacks the desire to remedy it — cannot responsibly govern in a multiracial society. (Interestingly, in the wake of the tear-gassing of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square, numerous high-ranking military leaders acknowledged the scourge of ongoing racism. The U.S. military, it seems, is far more progressive and honest on the issue of race than the GOP.)

All of that is in addition to other atrocities from the GOP. Republicans routinely amplified Russian propaganda; repeated outright lies (e.g., that President Barack Obama illegally spied on Trump or that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found no evidence of obstruction of justice); went along with Trump for months in his anti-mask sneering; echoed baseless claims of widespread voter fraud; and joined Trump’s hunt for the identity of the whistleblower in the Ukraine scandal (whom they dubbed a traitor). Whether they actually believed this nonsense or simply regurgitated Trump talking points is irrelevant. They willingly took part in the assault on truth and contributed to remaking the party into a cult of personality.

House and Senate Republicans are not helpless bystanders in the Trump travesty. They protected him from criticism, enabled his antics and amplified his most egregious lies. Once you determine Trump is unfit to serve, it really is not possible to give the rest of the party a clean bill of health.

#2

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

It is what it looks like. Do not flinch.

The murder of George Floyd is exactly what it looks like. I cannot tell you if you should watch the whole excruciating video. I can tell you that you have seen enough to know exactly what it is.

The attorney general ordering the tear gassing of peaceful protestors and having a priest forced out of her church because Trump wanted a photo op is what it looks like. Do not flinch.

Powerful members of the most powerful military in human history really did refer to American cities as a “battlespace” and prowl around the streets of Washington in combat fatigues. Black Hawk helicopters really were used to intimidate peaceful protestors.

United States Senator Tom Cotton really did call for an even more severe military crackdown against every demonstration in the country. The New York Times really did publish his fascist screed without criticism or even comment.

Armed men claiming to be federal agents but refusing to further identify themselves is as bad as it looks.

White supremacists really are using peaceful protests as cover to provoke violence. They want a second civil war. They think they can get what they want.

Military vehicles rolling into DC are exactly what they look like. Do not flinch.

This is the wolf-watcher-who-cried-wolf problem that we keep having with Trump. A lot of people sounded the alarm years ago that Trump would take us to this point. A lot more people with a lot more power heard the warnings, mocked everyone who was worried about things that hadn’t happened yet, and got used to the idea that those things could happen. And so when Trump does exactly what he what he has always said he would do, they’re surprised but not shocked – when what they need to be is shocked but not surprised. Pooh-pooh, you’re just hysterical, the humvees on the streets of the capitol aren’t tanks yet.

Despair is justified, but it is not productive. 

If you are at least relieved to hear that the four men responsible for Mr. Floyd’s death have been not only fired but charged, you are far from alone. An overwhelming majority of the American people are on the right side of this. (Sometimes when we’re thinking about systematic issues like white supremacy it can be easy to essentialize, but that does include a clear majority of white people understanding that having armed sociopaths roam the streets murdering with impunity is actually not great for public safety.) That is what it looks like: fuel for the struggle to stop this from happening again.

Former military officials have raised the loudest alarms they know how to do. General Mattis – who ran the Pentagon for this administration – openly compared Trump to Hitler! That might be encouraging for some civilians or politically persuasive for others, but it’s important because it sends a strong and clear to people who are on active duty now: if you’re in the military, you’ve been trained to refuse to obey unlawful orders, and you’re about to be tested. And that is positive because it seems to be breaking through. The people who are currently top leaders in the Marines, Air Force, and National Guard have made it clear that they are hearing and agree with the protesters. Even the current officials who helped with Individual-1’s authoritarian stunts this week have since acknowledged that ordering troops into the streets of American cities is a bad idea, and even publicly reminded officers that they should only follow lawful orders – which, implicitly, means preparing officers to disobey unlawful orders.

That’s one of the most encouraging responses to Trump’s dictatorial cosplay earlier this week. The other is the fact that, you know, it didn’t work. The next day, even more demonstrators turned out. The crowd was just as peaceful, just as resilient, even larger and more diverse. If Trump felt like his actions the day before had helped him, he would have doubled down. Instead, he spent the night having his usual Twitter tantrum.

When you have to worry about state violence against peaceful protesters, every day that demonstrators aren’t terrorized by the government is at least a short-term win. But more than that, it’s proof of concept. Some combination of top-down pressure from military top brass and bottom-up pressure from demonstrators can make him back down. That’s good to know.

It can be complicated to trust your eyes and ears when the real work is long term, slow, and therefore invisible. Sometimes you have to witness a symbolic gesture and be encouraged to turn it into something more. Despite the violence perpetrated by local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, there were a lot of police who took a knee with the protesters, or even marched with them arm in arm. That is not a substitute for systematic reform, but if it were only a meaningless gesture to deflect criticism, they wouldn’t have resisted doing it before. That helps to validate the protests for people who aren’t paying attention, which makes the necessary changes more doable politically.

City governments have also tried to take concrete steps to show they are making an effort. I do literally mean concrete: Confederate statues and other racist monuments have been coming down over the last week. A hundred and sixty-five years after his insurrectionist force surrendered Richmond, the traitor Robert E. Lee will be removed from the historic capital of the so-called Confederacy. And that sure looks like a good start.

At the beginning of the COVID crisis, a lot of people worried that we would see violent scapegoating of vulnerable populations. And rightly so. Hate crimes against Asian-Americans have gone up in response to the “Wuhan virus” meme. But today we’re also seeing something else. The fear, frustration, and helpless fury so many of us have been sharing in the last couple of months is starting to pour out not into the perpetration of more injustice, but into demands for justice.

People singing and dancing in the streets of American cities are exactly what you want them to be: giant crowds of people from all walks of life refusing to let the bastards grind them down.

Do not despair. But do not flinch.

#racism #authoritarianism #police brutality #george floyd

[teamapplesauce]

Excessive Force is Never Okay

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJa9h25j/

It has been 150 days since George Floyd was killed by police officers in Minneapolis. Since then, there have been hundreds of Black Lives Matter protests across the United States. In the video above, a large group of police officers are shown violently restraining protestors. The video focuses on one protestor in particular, who is in a wheelchair and is obviously paralyzed from the waist down. The man was defending himself from the officers who then pushed over his wheelchair, dragged him out onto the pavement, and used excessive force to restrain him. The man was trying to get back in his wheelchair while his legs still were caught in the seat. As several officers tried to restrain him, he resisted out of fear and tried to push them away. The police then yanked away his wheelchair from him and one officer threw and broke it. Protestors in the background recorded the incident and screamed back at the police for what they were doing to this man.

While there is no background information or context given on the situation, the force displayed by these officers was far too excessive for a protest for equality. Those who are against the Black Lives Matter movement or those who support the Blue Lives Matter movement instead, often argue that the violence used by the police is always justified. Their main argument is that the whole story isn’t shown and that the protestors did something to deserve the brutality, like starting a fire, assaulting an officer, etc. While this can sometimes be the case, there is no situation where a paralyzed man would need to be thrown on the ground, brutally restrained by multiple officers, and his wheelchair destroyed during a protest for equality. Their goal should be to de-escalate the situation, calm the crowd, and PEACEFULLY restrain the person(s). Aren’t people innocent until proven guilty? Even if he had started a fire or hurt someone, the actions displayed by the police officers present is absolutely horrifying.

As children, we are taught to respect and trust our law enforcement and Police. Another common argument against Black Lives Matter protestors is “Well, if they respected our police and complied like you’re supposed to, then nothing bad would’ve happened.” How can we possibly do that when we see innocent people standing up for what they believe in get tear gassed, shot with rubber bullets, thrown on the ground, beaten, and arrested without cause? How can black children trust the people who shot their parents during a “routine” traffic stop? How can they trust the people who shut down protests fighting for their right to live but protected those with MAGA hats and screamed “all/white lives matter”? How can persons of color be expected to perfectly and calmly comply with police when they are in fear for their lives?  How can anyone stay calm when they have a gun pointed at them? Black Lives Matter is not a trend. It is not just a blip in the chaos of 2020. It is not an overreaction to police brutality. It is a continuation of the Civil Rights Movement. It is a fight for equality. It is a fight against racism. It is a fight for what is right. Black lives DO matter.

(written and posted by Shannah Roberts on October 23, 2020 at 9:45 a.m.)

#blm #blm protests #blm movement #blacklivesmatter #police brutality #acab #excessive force #wheelchair #biden2020 #end police brutality #end police violence #abolish cops #abolish police #defund12 #defund cpd #defund the military #defund the police #equality #civil rights #george floyd

[alyssadoesbooks-blog]

Wrongfully Accused

By Alyssa Tyson

Matt peered into the rear view mirror for what had to be the tenth time that morning, smoothing down his curls and huffing another sigh. He didn’t feel ready, but he supposed he never would.

He had never considered himself a vandal, had never considered himself violent, had never considered himself villainous in any capacity. Typically, his daily life consisted of a ten minute commute to his office in downtown Richmond, Virginia, then a nine hour workday, and the occasional stop for drinks afterwards with a few coworkers. His nephew Jordan often called him boring. Matt hated to admit it, but that was probably an accurate summary of his character.

Far more accurate than criminal.

Matt shifted his gaze once more to the courthouse looming ahead, a dark, desolate monument to his before and after. He wondered if Levi, his attorney, was already inside. If he’d see any faces he knew among the witnesses, the jury. If his brother would be there, too.

He brought the tips of his fingers to the still-healing gash in his forehead and winced. He hated the way the stitches protruded from his skin, the way they’d become his most defining feature. Sometimes, he’d forget they were there, and then he’d pass by a mirror or catch his reflection in the dark of his phone screen.

With these passing moments came flashbacks. It was strange, Matt thought, remembering so clearly something that still felt as though it had happened to someone else. One moment, he and countless others had been protesting peacefully before the graffiti-covered monument of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, chanting choruses of “black lives matter” and “I can’t breathe,” and the next, a militia of Richmond city police had charged forward, spraying tear gas in their wake. Matt had fallen to his knees in a fit of coughing, gasping for air; he’d lost track of his friends, of the world around him, of everything but the asphalt beneath him. He’d hoped his bandana would have protected him better, hoped it wouldn’t have come to this, but he’d been wrong.

That’s when the rubber bullet had hit him out of nowhere, thus beginning the longest 48 hours of his life.

Matt had been arrested and held that night in Richmond City Jail, alongside hundreds of other protesters, under charges of vandalism and breaking curfew (despite the fact that the crowd had been gassed 20 minutes prior to 8 P.M.). He’d been bailed out by the community bail fund two days later, but others hadn’t been so lucky. Even now, there were misdemeanor charges against him; it seemed that no matter what, Matt couldn’t escape that night. Everywhere he turned, he had meetings with his attorney, interviews with reporters, phone calls with his family--just in case--and today, his hearing. It had been two weeks since he’d been to work, unable to focus on anything else.

Now, Matt unlocked his phone to check the time. 11:15. He knew he should head inside, probably--he’d never done this before, so he wasn’t quite sure--but he couldn’t shake the ache in the pit of his gut. He couldn’t help but fear that something would go wrong again. That the judge, the jury, anyone and everyone would take one look at the color of his skin and deem him immediately guilty. There was no way he could afford the $2,500 vandalism fine, no way he’d survive five years (or even another night) in jail. He himself hadn’t spray painted anything, hadn’t made any sort of permanent mark of protest for fear of being charged with vandalism; as a paralegal, he’d known it was a class 6 felony. 

Now, he found himself wishing he’d had. Caution had gotten him nowhere.

His phone lit up with a notification. For a moment, a cold shock of fear ran through him; every time someone texted him, he expected more bad news, another friend jailed or injured or worse. Fortunately, it was just his attorney.

Good luck today. Remember, I’ve got your back; don’t let them intimidate you. See you soon.

That was his cue, he supposed. With one final look at his wound in the mirror, one final refresh of his lock screen--just in case--Matt exited his car and headed toward the courthouse, preparing for the first day of the rest of his life. Sources (click):

Keller Law Offices - Wrongful Accusations

Vandalism Charges in Virginia

Crowds gassed in Richmond, VA before curfew

Rubber bullets fired on peaceful protesters in RVA due to “unlawful assembly”

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO RVA COMMUNITY BAIL FUND

#blm

[joshslater]

Great Meadows

@jd07201990 just dumped a bunch of unfinished scripts. So, with a few tweaks here and there, here is someone else’s content.

Sitting here, staring down at my large palmed, clammy hands, feeling the burning warmth of new hormones rushing through me, I knew I was screwed. “What’s Ma gonna think”, I thought to myself, shuffling my large, sweaty sneakered feet. I kept having flashes from the trippy process popping in and out of my head. They said it’d take a few days for me to settle in. That such a big change is always rough, especially on girls. “I should’a just stayed home…” was my last thought before another skull-splitting migraine had me fall onto the stiff cot, passed out.

I’d been incredibly curious as to why my older brothers got to go to camp every summer, and I had to stay home, or enlist in summer gymnastics classes. They always came back at the end of summer, excited to tell of all the fun they’d had, all the cool activities, new friends. It sounded amazing! I had to sit there at dinner times, listening to them rub it in. Having only small accomplishments to talk about myself when it was my turn. I was tired of it. At the end of the school year, when it was time to sign my brother’s up, I made my move. I waited for mom to fill out their forms, and stealthily made a copy for myself, changing my name from Kari, to Kaeden. I know it is an all-boys camp, but once there, what could they really do?

On departure day I hid in the back of the truck, underneath my brother’s bags and gear, for the entire ride. It was awful, but I knew it’d be worth it when I got to see what the camp was all about. I’d been afraid my treasonous bladder would give me away, but the hot car had me thirsty in the trunk after the first hour. We arrived after a 4 hr drive, and while they got their papers handed in and sorted, I snuck out of the truck and into the grounds, finding a side door open along the main building. Once our parents left, it’d be too late for them to send me home, I figured, so I waited till all the cars left, and the sun started to set, marched up to the offices where the paperwork was handled, and put mine down on the desk. The man sitting behind it looked shocked, muttered a bit, then sighed, picked up my paperwork and read it over.

Name: Kaedan Atherton Age: 16 Height: 6’1” Weight: 154 lbs Hair: Blonde Eyes: Green Known allergies: none Dietary restrictions: none

He read though all of the false information I’d added, interests, past activates.

“Miss, Atherton. I assume you’re Heath and Daniel’s sister. Yes? Are you aware this is a boy’s summer camp?” I began to answer, but he cut me off, clearly not interested in having his rhetorical question answered.

“Aaaaa... This is going to create so much problem whichever way we go about to solve this… Are you really 16, or was that made up too?”

“No, I’m 16.”

He went silent and kept staring at the desk phone, as if he expected it to ring at any moment. He sat still uncomfortably long and then suddenly lurched forward, attacked the phone and dialed a three-digit number.

“Yeah, this is Robert. Are you still looking for a candidate for Moth 3?” Whoever was on the other side spoke quite a lot. ”Yes, I have a girl.” More talking “16” The line went quiet for a bit, then some more talking. “OK, I’ll bring her over if she agrees.”

Turning to me “Alright, there is something we can do. Spend an hour for science and then you are free to spend your summer here like any other boy. Would you do that?” I’m not stupid, so I knew there was a catch. Well, not stupid enough at least, but I made this bed. Time to sleep in it. “Yes.”

“OK, you are old enough to make a decision like this on your own, legally.” He stood up and walked over to a filing cabinet, opened the next to bottom drawer and rifled around a bit. Then pulled out a few papers, walked back and handed them to me. “So. Either sign this and stay, or I’ll call your parents to pick you up tomorrow.” The papers were dense legalize. Lots of cross references to laws and precedent, as if whoever wrote it thought all of this was self-evident, or didn’t want you to understand it. I thought of what the dinner table would look like the next time we all ate together. The stories we would share. How I would be a part of them for once. Damn right I signed the papers. While I did that he brought me a glass of water and a small dropper bottle. Brown glass with a rubber pipette in the cap. He poured some water in the glass, and added two drops from the bottle. “Last chance to go home as you are.” I emptied the glass in one go.

He took my arm and lead me across the camp, using side paths that went through the trees. I had a feeling he didn’t want anyone to see me. We’d barely walked a few buildings away from his office when the world started to sway. I was getting nauseous, having a creeping feeling of dread, and I think I saw a squirrel. When we got to a large, barn style building, we went to the back and he pushed a button on an intercom on the wall. “Code 91. Immediate response required”

He looked down at me and let go of my arm as the door buzzed, and opened. Two large men dressed in white scrubs came out, grabbed me by the shoulders and rushed me through. They looked eerily like Arnold Schwarzenegger, both of them. We went down a staircase as the door above slammed shut, and entered a room full of what looked like Frankenstein’s lab equipment. I panicked, pulling myself away from the men. I tried to run towards the stairs, following the fleeing squirrels. I only made it a few feet before they grabbed me again, pulling me to a chair and sat me down. Holding me down. Another man came out of a side door, dressed in double buttoned lab coat and goggles, pulling on a pair of gloves. He spoke in a hardcore, heavy German accent.

“Ah, Code 91. Haven’t had one of these in years. Wilkommen!” I tried to scream, but the orderly to my left clapped his hand over my mouth. They were both wearing world war two style gas masks now.

“No need to fuzz, it’ll only take a bit. I’ve gotten quite good at this particular physical! Now, Franz, Dözer, please take… Hmm” the German man headed to a computer and pulled up my file. “Please take Kaedan, to ze chamber”.

With my mouth still firmly covered, I fought and yelped as the two men carried me to a table, with what looked like a giant human shaped cake pan. They forced me into the mold, strapping my legs, torso, arms, and head down into the groove, and adjusted things until I was firmly stuck. I couldn’t move a muscle. I started screaming threats, until Dözer stuffed a gag into my mouth, with a hose attached to the ceiling. All the squirrels were lined up and just laughed. I was left in the cold metal mold while the Doctor set things up on a computer panel. I could hear him mumbling.

“Hm, Kaeden Atherton. Ah, yes, the Atherton boys! Good kids those two, talented, handsome. Hm, I think I know what to do here. Kaeden, says 6’1”, so shall it be! 154 lbs, check! Eyes and hair, no problem there. Now, details… details… I guess I’ve got free reign here. That is quite some athletic accomplishments you’ve listed here. Let’s use that as a guide for muscle development. Soccer. Lacrosse. Oh, climbing? Best make sure you’re a match to your strapping brothers, eh?” The doctor started typing things and using a 3D mouse, like one I’d seen in my graphic design class, to move something on the screen. Probably more squirrels. He kept rambling off little details as the top half of the human mold came down from above me, sealing with a harsh hissing sound and a cloud of gasses. I could feel my entire body slowly turning to strawberry jell-o.

“Now, skeletal and muscular systems… tall, thin, strong boned, muscle density upped a bit, rebalance muscle fiber composition. The brothers are quite fit, might as well match… Body fat needs to go down a lot. Oxygenation, cardiac development. There.

Hmmm, just a little more in the shoulders… that’s it, nice proportions, good shape.

Chest, check. Abs, check. Hips, check. Thighs, check. Calves, check. Oh… What about size 9? Yes, that ratio of fitting… no, let’s go 10 to be sure.

Now, for the secondary features. Would’ve been easier had you been younger, but I can fix this. I think, second to highest levels. Ah, definitely. Just like Heath, no, more so! May as well go full out. Dial it up to 10.

Hormone levels, highest. Ooh, right, must match the physical bits. This will be an interesting summer for you in an all male camp. I think Miss Atheron might be the new alpha in the family when this is all settled.

What settings have we left? Hmm... Looks like you’ll be a lucky lad! 8” to be proportional to the height… you know what, let’s go for 10 again… yes, yes, and hmm, a bit thicker and make those a bit larger… there, perfect! A well built young man. On those hormone levels we’ll probably see a lot of development during the summer as well.

Now, I think we’re set! Alright, Alright, here we go! Mr. Atherton, Welcome to Great Meadows Boy’s Camp!”

With that, he pushed one last button on the control panel, and I felt the metal mold heat up and start to vibrate. I tried screaming, tears welling up in my eyes as pain shot through my body. All the squirrels ran away.

When I woke up in the rickety wooden cabin I had a pounding head ache and was completely parched. I had no idea what was real and what had been hallucinations. I was pretty sure my raging hard on was real, and the implications of that wasn’t lost. I would definitively have something to talk about at our next family dinner.

[steampunk-magicalgirl]

Mason Pines and the revival of a maffia

The city of Portland, Oregon has always been strange. But with pro-nats rallying in the streets and the supernatural population constantly fearing for their lives the tension has never been higher!

The city needs the dinner crew, but the dinner crew is currently inactive.

It's time to do something about that!

(yet another transcendence au fic lol) 

on ao3

´´BAN ALL THE MONSTERS! BAN ALL THE MONSTERS! BAN ALL THE MONSTERS!´´

She tightened her grip on the pole and held the sign up higher, the sound of sirens in the distance drowned out by the people all around her screaming.

´´BAN ALL THE MONSTERS! BAN ALL THE MONSTERS!´´

Warm bodies pressing closer to her own, she attempted to take a step forward, only to be pushed back by the behind of a large man slamming into her.

´´BAN ALL THE MONSTERS! BAN ALL THE MONSTERS!´´

Something seemed to be forcing the line of people back, in the split second that the man in front of her stepped aside she managed to catch a glimpse of several police officers decked out in heavy protection gear and wielding shields forcefully pushing her line of protesters back. Swept along with the sea of people, she struggled to stay on her feet as one of the protesters raised a small object up in the air and tossed it.

´´BAN ALL THE MONSTERS! BAN ALL THE MONSTERS!´´

Eyes tearing up, she struggled to take a deep breath as gas filled the air around her. People were pushing from all sides now, desperate to get away, but nobody able to see a damn thing! She could feel her chest tightening and heart beating faster as she threw her sign on the ground and started frantically trying to push her way through the sea of fleeing people.

´´BAN ALL THE MONSTERS! BAN ALL THE MONSTERS!´´

After what felt like forever, but what was in reality probably only about a minute, her outstretched hands finally made contact with a cold concrete wall. Following the wall she soon found herself stumbling blindly into an alley. She sank to the ground almost immediately, trying to calm down and catch her breath while rubbing furiously at her eyes.

Well, this was a catastrophe. At least dad didn’t know that she had gone here, he’d no doubt freak out once the gassing incident reached the news. Now she just had to make her way home and pretend that this never happened, maybe that she’d been out with a friend.  

A hand grabbed her from behind.

Fuck.

 *

 Robert Pines had been having a great day so far. The sun was shining, bird were singing, and all the bills had been payed on time, so yes, all in all a great day. That was, until the police came in with his daughter in handcuffs.

´´You sure are lucky miss. If you’d been anyone else you’d be spending the night in a jail cell.´´

´´Thank you so much for bringing her home then officer. I  promise that this won’t happen again,´´

´´hmph´´ the officer reluctantly uncuffed and handed over Robert’s daughter, before he turned around and headed out the door. Once the police were gone, Robert turned all his attention to the sulking teenager in front of him

´´I can’t believe you Mason! You should know better than to put yourself in danger like that!´´

´´…sorry,´´ Mason said quietly ´´it wasn’t that bad though,´´

´´Not that bad? You literally just came home in handcuffs! ´´

´´Yeah, unfair isn’t it? Doesn’t it make you mad-´´

´´Mason,´´

´´- it wasn’t me who should have been wearing them, those pro-nats -´´

´´Mason! Listen to me!´´ the girl went quiet, but kept her gaze focused on Robert ´´Thank you. Now, stop trying to change the subject and think for a second. I may not agree with their ideology, but what those people were doing was completely lawful – ´´

´´you mean trying to ban innocent people from existing?´´ Mason mumbled angrily, but Robert chose to ignore her

´´  - and anyone could have figured out that just waltzing up there and screaming in their faces would have ended badly.´´

´´but-´´

´´No buts! You’re grounded for the rest of the week, now go to your room!´´ Mason shot Robert a look of pure disbelief before she turned on her heels and marched angrily towards the stairs. Before she went up them though, she stopped on the bottom step and turned once more to face her dad

´´What a great Don you are. You’re not even trying to protect your own crew members.´´ Robert didn’t say anything, Mason didn’t either, they just held each others gaze for a few seconds longer than necessary before the girl turned around again and finally made her way up the staircase.    

Robert let out a heavy sigh and sat down on the living room couch.

Protect your own crewmembers, sometimes Robert really worried that Mason was taking the whole dinner crew thing to seriously. Yes, he had hear the stories, and yes, he knew exactly what the organization had been like in it’s glory days, but that was hundreds of years ago! Right now, the dinner crew was just a little more than an urban legend, giving the Pines family a special place in the eyes of the law and some level of respect from Portland’s oldest citizens but nothing more, and Robert fully intended to keep it that way. With things being the way they were, the world didn’t need more vigilantes roaming the streets.

If only his daughter could understand that.

  *

  Mason wasn’t angry at her dad. Sitting at her desk, scrolling aimlessly through social media, she knew that she should probably be more upset about the whole thing. Oh she was upset with the police for arresting her and taking the actual offenders side, she was angry at the protester who’d thrown that damn gas bomb at them and ruined everything, but dad? Dad meant well, he really did. And she knew that he was just doing his best to look out for her but really, she was almost 18, she could take care of herself! Dad should be more concerned with the preternaturals that the pro-nats were threatening. Wasn’t it the dinner crew’s job to protect them? Wasn’t that why her great-great-something grandpa had founded it in the first place? So no, Mason wasn’t angry but she was… disappointed. She liked another cat picture on her screen, and kept thinking. Dad really had to start taking his job as the Don more seriously. Sure, he insisted that there wasn’t much for him to do, with the crew having been very inactive for years now, but couldn’t that just be because no one had tried to put it back together yet? Really, how hard could it be, Mason bet that even she could do it!

Hey, maybe she should do it! Now would be a good time, right? But how would she manage to do that? Dad would certainly not approve, let alone help her. And Mason had no contact whatsoever with already existing members, not to mention that most of them had left Portland long ago. No, Mason needed help if she was really going to pull this of, the question was who would be able to help her…

 *

 The answer came to her 3 weeks later, while working on her personal project of compiling the family tree. She had already made it as far back as great-great-something grandpa Hank’s branch, and there she had noticed a bit of an… oddity. Namely, her g-grandpa’s old documents almost all contained mentions of an uncle. Someone who, according to every official record, should have been long dead and gone at the time of g-grandpa’s birth. And yet, here Hank was talking and writing about him as if though he’d known him personally. This piqued Mason’s interest, and the deeper she dug into it, the more she managed to find, until she was almost certain that she could link this mysterious uncle to another unexplained yet prominent figure in the family’s history.

Alcor.

It felt right. Even though all her internet searches had turned up nothing noteworthy when looking more into it Mason felt confident that she’d reached the right answer. Alcor was a Pines, and even better, Alcor had apparently been friends with Hank, aka the original Don Pines. Meaning that he’d at some point been involved with the dinner crew, meaning that any and all of the oldest members most likely knew him! Alcor was the person Mason needed to make this plan happen, no doubt about it.

She just needed to find a good way to talk to him.

 *

 He hadn’t planned to answer this summoning at first. The summoner had used a very basic circle, and the sacrifice used was nothing more than a half-eaten candy bar. Such a sloppy summoning was rarely done seriously, and the few times that they were well… what could a person with no means to find a better sacrifice than their own leftovers possibly have to offer him? However, this one felt different. Something about the feeling he got from the tugging at his being told Dipper that he’d better answer this one, so he went to have a look. He went to have a look, and was pleasantly surprised at the sight of his nephew’s current incarnation standing with her hands resting on her hips and a smug smile on her face in front of him. Still, Dipper didn’t know this person, better to play it safe.

´´W̢҉͜H̀̀͢O̷ ͟͡͞D̶͢A̛͟R̵̢͝E̷̛S ̸̡҉S͏U҉͏͘M̸̨̨M̴̷͟ON҉ AL͜C̢O͠R̡̀̕ T̵H̢E̵͏ ͝D͜RÈ̷A͜͠M̕͘B̧E̸N̡̡D̴E̴̛R?̢͞҉´´  

´´Greetings Alcor. Or should I maybe say, hi uncle Dipper?´´ a cold shiver ran down Dipper’s none existing spine, but he was careful as to not let the surprise show on his face. Did she know? How? She shouldn’t be able to remember, and while her aura emitted a sense of slight familiarity towards him, it was nowhere near the level that one would expect from a child that they’d practically helped raise. His surprise must have still shown though, because the girl grinned. ´´I’m right aren’t I? You really are Dipper Pines! I knew it!´´ Dipper raised an eyebrow and peered suspiciously at the girl.

´´… w̧h̷o ar̕e y̨o̴u͡?´´

´´Sorry, how rude of me.´´ the girl made a move to extend her hand, but seemed to think better of it and opted to give a little wave instead ´´Mason Pines, nice to meet you!´´ internally, Dipper laughed. She was a Pines! Of course! She was a Pines and her name was Mason! Externally though, he recovered from the surprise as best he could and tried to keep the mask on a little longer, because this may have been one of his niblings (in more ways than one apparently), but she was still a person that Dipper hadn’t met before. And she’d used one of his more well known circles, not the family one, so he doubted she’d summoned him just to hang out. Not to mention that it had been years since he’d last interacted with this particular branch of the family.

…it couldn’t hurt to be a little friendly though.

´´ Mason Pines huh? Well then, girl who shares my name, what can I do for you?´´ Mason’s face lit up a little as Dipper confirmed her theory, then it quickly darkened.

´´I need your help with something, but first I need to confirm something,´´

´´Oh? And what would that be?´´

´´How well do you know the dinner crew?´´      

#gravity falls #gravity falls transcendence au #dipper pines #mason pines #alcor the dreambender #fanfic #my writing

[kellykadesperate]

dredged up for the night

for @aarondingel

There’s Robert’s mug on the side of the bed, a massive printed R in gold patterned red stars scattered inside. Aaron thinks about it breaking and knows how dark his mind has ended up. 

Robert’s sleeping, breath slow and harsh and Aaron’s got his head against his chest so he can hear him better. So he can know that he’s alive.

He’s not been taken from him, like that.

There’s a beating in his chest, it doesn’t stop because his mind won’t stop working fucking over time now that Robert is here, sleeping soundly, doing well. 

Now, Aaron can have moment. Alone. 

He can lean over and stroke Robert’s arm, kiss his head, hold his hand the way he did with Liv. He can close his eyes and overthink and hate himself for not being there with him. 

Because if he wasn’t there, he could have died. 

It’s as simple as fucking that.

Robert makes this small sound and turns over so that he’s facing Aaron and it only makes it worse. He’s got a cut on his head doesn’t he? He looks almost so broken that Aaron’s thinking of him laying on the floor, shot wound, having the nerve to try and die on him before they’d made up.

Aaron leans out, pulls a hand across Robert’s face and blows out a shaky breath. 

“If you died like that.” Aaron bites his lip, shakes his head as he speaks because he can’t control it. He just can’t. “I wouldn’t have been able to — not like that.”

He closes his eyes, the confession weighs him down.

••

Aaron’s got half his body under the covers when Robert decides tonight is the night when the questions will start rolling in.

It’s been nearly a week and they’ve been fine but apparently not fine enough because Robert’s in the mood to dredge up shit that makes Aaron want to cry.

“I’ve stopped checking it every night.” Robert says, head towards the ceiling, tilted, eyes widening a little because it’s so dark in here now.

Aaron’s grateful for that. He doesn’t want Robert seeing him huff out a breath and brace himself for what’s coming next.

“That’s progress, right?” Robert says, and Aaron reaches out, pulls a hand under Robert’s grotty old bed shirt and rubs his stomach in this oddly comforting way. 

“Of course it is.” Aaron whispers, face pressing into Robert’s neck, still stroking. He reckons that if he makes this all about how Robert is coping than it won’t be turned back on him. 

Or the fact that Robert might check the boiler every night but so does he. 

“What about you?” Robert says after the longest time in the world. He holds his breath and Aaron feels the up and down of his husband’s breathing dramatically slow down as he keeps the hand against his stomach. 

He feels his throat close.

“What about me?” Aaron says, blinks out a smile that doesn’t meet his eyes but it’s supposed to add lightness to his tone of voice.

It has.

Hopefully.

Robert pulls himself up on the bed. Light on and everything. It clearly hasn’t had the desired effect then.

“Aaron, coming home to us like that must have been —“ Robert stops himself, he’s all bed hair floppy against his forehead and worn eyes and concern. “The worst thing.”

Aaron sort of wants to wallop him and hug him at the same time.

“You could say that.” 

“Well why don’t you.” Robert offers, quick, eyes flickering though and giving away the fact that he’s probably had this conversation in his head for way too long before now. 

“Why don’t I what?” Aaron can feel the edges of an argument happening at nearly half eleven at night so that’s a fucking great sign. 

There’s splinters of it breaking out and all he can think about is that Robert probably has meetings in the morning and Seb’s too tired for this shit so he’ll scream the house down if they dare to wake him.

It rises inside him until Robert does his stupid shrug and then opens his mouth.

“Why don’t you say what it was like.” 

And Aaron doesn’t need this.

“Why?” Aaron decides on saying the answer with the least syllables. 

“Because — because it might help.” Robert waves a hand out. “I got out of that hospital and it was all about me. And then Liv was making it all about Lachlan and I didn’t — I should have listened to how you felt about it.” Robert looks genuinely sorry for what he’s done, like he’s actually done something wrong and Aaron doesn’t know how to react to that.

So he doesn’t. He just folds his arms over and waits for him to gather his thoughts.

“You have ... you have nothin’ to be sorry for.” Aaron says, decides that more soft touches over Robert’s arm will be enough to ease the slight tension in the room. “Alright? Listen it, it was one of the worst things I’ve ever had to see in my life. Finding both of you like that, thinking Seb was — but it happened, and we’re all fine okay?” 

Robert stares, like he’s waiting to say something but then Aaron kisses him and yeah, he’s still got it. He gets Robert all caught up in it and soon he’s able to reach behind and turn the light off.

He thinks he’s won but he hasn’t because Robert still has more to say, skin against skin, eyes wide and sad.

“You said, not like that. I couldn’t die like that.” 

He has to ruin it.

Aaron frowns, thinks about bluffing his way through it. “Huh?” 

“The night I came back from the hospital, you kept saying it when you thought I was asleep.” Robert looks worried again. Fuck.

“I don’t — I don’t remember, I probably didn’t —“ Aaron fumbles and Robert catches him.

“You said it. I just want to know why.” Robert says, “It’s been on my mind and —“

“Well don’t let it be.” 

“Aaron.”

“Seriously Rob.” Aaron almost pleads but it’s too late because he’s already thinking about it again isn’t he?

The gas, the smell, the way it all seemed like some cruel fucking trick on him by someone nasty up there.

“Like that? Like, like what —“

“Like how I tried to end it all.” Aaron says, slams it down hard against Robert’s chest like he’s let off a grenade.

His chin wobbles and there’s tears falling down his face and —

“There. Okay? You nearly fucking got gassed to death and that’s how I tried to die.” 

Robert’s eyes turn glassy and he holds a hand across his mouth for a second before he speaks. “I didn’t even connect the dots that way.”

Aaron makes himself smaller, shudders. “I got this really bad flashback when I waiting for you to wake up. So vivid. I haven’t — I haven’t had one like that for years.” He holds his hands together because they’re being stupid and shaking about. “But it all came flooding back because of the —“

“Smell, yeah.” Aaron’s eyes flicker as he hears Robert, he’s gulping hard and sighing. “Aaron, I’m so sorry.”

He’s sorry and he shouldn’t be, an original screenplay by Robert Sugden.

“It ain’t your fault.” Aaron says. “It was just a shock, and it made things go dark again.” Robert looks seriously at him and Aaron sighs. “I didn’t do anything don’t worry.”

“But I do.” Robert says, terrified always of the worst.

Aaron offers a small smile, lets Robert untangle his hands and hold them. 

“It’s my job. So when you said what you said, I didn’t know what to think.”

Aaron bites his lip, unhooks his hands to wipe them across his face. “Imagine you did die like that.”

“Aaron.”

“No really.” Aaron’s voice breaks a little. “Imagine if my husband died the way I wanted to all those years ago because the thought of having a husband made me feel sick.” It sounds so bad that he winces. “That’s why you couldn’t die that way, it’d be karma and I’d hate myself for —“

Robert hovers a hand over Aaron’s shoulder, his eyes are wide because sometimes the way Aaron thinks is scary. “It wouldn’t have been your fault at all.” He says. “So stop all that.” 

Aaron feels him brush a hand across his face, tries smiling again. 

“I’m sorry.” Aaron whispers, and then his eyes are wide and sad again. “I was so scared about losing ya.” He admits. “You know that right?”

“Of course I do.” Robert says. “You slept on that hospital bed all night. No ones ever done that for me.” He turns all red the way he usually does when he’s embarrassed.

Aaron loves him.

“Only me.” Aaron whispers.

“Only you.” Robert brings their faces together, and then their mouths and Aaron really loves him.

“I love you.” Aaron has this soft look in his eye that Robert falls apart under. “I should have told you, we said we’d talk through everything didn’t we? I was just scared to talk about it, make it even more real you know?” Robert nods understandingly and Aaron feels his shoulders relax a little under it. 

“But you’re … you’re okay now?” Robert’s hesitant and Aaron holds his hand and decides to be a sap about it all because it’s too late to turn back now.

“You’re here aren’t ya?” 

Oh yeah, all the cheese he can muster.

It earns him a big Prince Charming smile from Robert and he loves him a whole lot by the way. 

So he kisses him, and they kiss some more until they’re laying back down again.

“Hey,” Robert whispers, hand across Aaron’s chest now. “You know how gas was always linked to what you tried to do to yourself back then?” Aaron doesn’t know where exactly he’s going with this but he nods all the same. “Well. Now it’s linked with you saving my life right?”

Aaron doesn’t say anything, just sort of tries to process what he’s saying and Robert carries on.

“You were saved. Then you saved me. You were saved to save me, if we’re being cheesy.” Robert smiles and Aaron looks up at him. “Or not.” He panics slightly and then Aaron’s yanking him by the shirt and pulling him down to kiss him again.

“You, are very good with words.” Aaron has something stuck in his throat because all of that made a load of mushy sense didn’t it? 

“Yeah?” And sometimes Aaron doesn’t get how Robert doesn’t get how good he is at making him feel better.

“Yeah.” Aaron whispers, clings tighter and closer and relishes in the fact that every memory is changing meaning in his mind.

#attempted suicide mention tw #robron fics #hope you like it! #robron

[lilnasxvevo]

I just listened to the Lukashenko BTB episodes where Robert’s guest was a literal 17 year old that he found when they were both reporting on the protests in Portland and getting tear-gassed and what have you and i just can’t stop thinking about what different people REvans and I are because like, if *I* encountered a plucky teenage reporter in such a dangerous situation id be like “wtf no get out of here!!” but Robert was just like “Haha! I like the cut of your jib, child!!”

And to be fair, besides Robert just having a general “hey I’m not gonna tell people what to do” “recovering libertarian” style of communicating with the world, I feel like he realizes that such a determined little man is going to do what he’s doing whether Robert gets himself involved or not, and it’s probably better for Robert who is gigantic and crazy and an adult to keep an eye on him than just letting him scoot off on his own

#DOES remind me of CA3 and how Steve reacted to realizing Peter was a child #which was not letting up on him AT ALL #vs Sam and Bucky being taken so off-guard realizing that he was just a kid that they got webbed to the floor #I realize that Robert and Garrison are Real People but that’s just what comes to mind for me #and like Garrison is very very smart he’s not your average 17 y/o I acknowledge that too #I don’t want to come across as condescending as to his ABILITIES he’s just. v young.

[parkerbombshell]

Interviews This Week on Bombshell Radio August 01-07th 2021

We have great interviews all week on Bombshell Radio.Just Another Menace Sunday" radio thing. Hour 1: A Conversation (from the The Hotel Cafe) and tasty Musical Sandwich™ with Livingston Taylor! Hour 2: New Melodic Rock 'n Roll from: Erica Nockalls, Matt Behringer (Velvet's cover!) The Bots, Angel Olsen (Men Without Hats cover!). Stand Up and Say No, Shannon Lay, Parcels, Ane Brun, Dry Cleaning, Amyl & The Sniffers, The FM's, Jungle, Mini Trees!Thursday Alex Green of Stereo Embers :  3 interviews this week! “Storm Coming” The LA.-based artist, producer and composer Ethan Gold’s debut album Songs From A Toxic Apartment left his fans wanting more and more is exactly what they’re getting. Gold will be releasing a trilogy of albums that will surely make his longtime fans very pleased and it will also bring him scores of new ones in the process. The first in the trilogy is Earth City 1: The Longing and it’s a stunner. A meditation on isolation and loneliness in a seemingly deeply connected digital world and feeling like an outsider while being on the inside, Earth City 1 is a moving and heartfelt glimpse of modern life and how it engenders alienation. A sly pop craftsman, Gold’s music is warm, heartfelt and comforting, even when he’s exploring themes that break us all apart. Over the course of his career, Gold has produced and arranged for Elvis Perkins, composed film scores which featured John Grant and Staves and in the process crafted some of the most unforgettable pop songs around. In this conversation Gold talks to Alex about the past and the future, Leonard Cohen and the freedom of performing poetry onstage. www.ethangold.comwww.bombshellradio.comwww.alexgreenonline.com Twitter: @emberseditorInstagram: @emberspodcastEMAIL: [email protected]   "To Be Dreaming" The North Carolina-based singer/songwriter Ashley Virginia's style falls somewhere between '70s country cool and west coast cosmic Americana. Like the spiritual daughter of Stevie Nicks and Gram Parsons, visually, Ashley Virginia is one of the most distinct and innovative artists you're likely to meet. But fashion aside, Ashley Virginia's music is as cosmic as her clothing—an arresting blend of indie folk, experimental country and '60s pop, her debut album And Life Just Goes On Living is a stirring first effort that marks the arrival of a major talent. Her voice is rich and emotive, her lyrics are heartfelt and honest and her songs are brave and bold.  From being tear gassed by Raleigh police during a peaceful assembly during the George Floyd protests to her own mental health, Ashley Virginia presents the unvarnished truth of the world and the raw and sometimes unsettling state of the human soul. In this conversation, Ashley talks to Alex about weddings, fashion, and the perspective of having a 9-5 job in the music business. She also opens up about mental health and why being onstage is one of the most comfortable places for her in the world. www.ashleyvirginiamusic.comwww.bombshellradio.comwww.alexgreenonline.com Stereo Embers On Twitter: @emberseditorStereo Embers On Instagram: @emberspodcastEMAIL: [email protected] www.alexgreenonline.com New episode of #stereoembersthepodcast with my guest @sethglierSeth has a new album out later this month called #thecoronation on #mpressrecords and it’s a stone cold stunner.We had a great chat and I can’t wait for you to hear it this #wednesdayCool side note is Seth covers #oneofus which was written @ericbazilian who is a good friend of the podcast and had his own episode back in #may.#sethglier#singersongwriter#bombshellradio   ON EPISODE 261:Award Winning Playwright & AuthorBrad Fraser is my guest to talk about his NEW memoir ALL THE RAGE. His YouTube movie seriesOLD MOVIES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE, as well as Disappearing The Queer     Just Another Menace Sunday! Monday 6pm EST Just Another Menace Sunday" radio thing. Hour 1: A Conversation and Musical Sandwich™ from Hayley Mary & Johnny Took (from DMA'S) to celebrate Haley's new EP "The Drip." It's the first time they've ever been on the radio together! Hour 2: New Melodic Rock 'n Roll from: Self Esteem (I'm going to play this every week until she agrees to have a conversation with me about it!), King Princess, Drug Store Romeos, Wet Leg, Ora The Molecule Tuesday : 6pm EST "Just Another Menace Sunday" radio thing - A Conversation and Musical Sandwich with an artist who just made her debut on Later with Jools Holland singing one of my fave tracks of the year - SELF ESTEEM! Wednesday: 6pm EST Hour 1: A Live Conversation from The Menace Studios, and Musical Sandwich™ with Megan Wyler - to celebrate the release of her new record "Upside Now!" Hour 2: New Melodic Rock 'n Roll from: Dylan Cartlidge (x2), Major Spark, Damon Albarn, CHVRCHES feat. Robert Smith, Damon Albarn, Drug Store Heroes, Lord Huron, Courtney Barnett, Car Seat Headrest, Ratinoff! Thursday: 6pm EST Hour 1: A Conversation and hopeful Musical Sandwich™ with Joe Sumner! Hour 2: New Melodic Rock 'n Roll from: Vangelism (x2), Mother Mother, Yves Tumor, Desire Marea, Jesse Malin, MNDR, Rufus Du Sol, The Goon Sax, The Parrots, The Zolas! Friday: 6pm EST Just Another Menace Sunday" radio thing. Hour 1: A Conversation (from the The Hotel Cafe) and tasty Musical Sandwich™ with Livingston Taylor! Hour 2: New Melodic Rock 'n Roll from: Erica Nockalls, Matt Behringer (Velvet's cover!) The Bots, Angel Olsen (Men Without Hats cover!). Stand Up and Say No, Shannon Lay, Parcels, Ane Brun, Dry Cleaning, Amyl & The Sniffers, The FM's, Jungle, Mini Trees! Saturday: 6pm EST Menace Sunday w/Dennis The Menace. Hour 1: An Interview with Milo Greene and their Musical Sandwich Hour 2: New Melodic Rock and Roll from Light FM, Depeche Mode, Dan Croll, The Flaming Lips, Adam Ant, Ducktails, Foxygen, Matt Pond and more!   Read the full article

[arbane235]

Good summary of the accomplishments of Trump:

"I know I’ve been highly critical of the Trump presidency. But to be fair, and in the spirit of Presidents Day, I'm here to apologize for all my rants and just admit that President Trump wasn’t that bad...... other than when he incited an insurrection against the government, mismanaged a pandemic that killed nearly half a million Americans, separated children from their families, lost those children in the bureaucracy, tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church, tried to block all Muslims from entering the country, got impeached, got impeached again, had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history, pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden, fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia, bragged about firing the FBI director on TV, took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community, diverted military funding to build his wall, caused the longest government shutdown in US history, called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,” lied nearly 30,000 times, banned transgender people from serving in the military, ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions, vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers, refused to release his tax returns, increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion, had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history, called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers, coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist, refused to concede the 2020 election, hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House, walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl, called neo-Nazis “very fine people,” suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID, abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey, pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans, incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic, withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords, withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal, withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances, insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter, pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op, failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies, called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries, called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,” claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere, forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader, believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe, suggested the US should buy Greenland, colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges, repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,” claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases, violated the emoluments clause, thought that Nambia was a country, told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public, called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution, nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet, nominated a corrupt head of the EPA, nominated a corrupt head of HHS, nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department, nominated a corrupt head of the USDA, praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies, refused to allow the presidential transition to begin, insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death, spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president, falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote, called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,” falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year, considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions, mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID, locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones, used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,” hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser, pardoned several of his shady associates, gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressman who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories, got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!), had a Secretary of State who called him a moron, forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history, botched the COVID vaccine rollout, tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him, charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties, constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate, claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear, called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,” used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise, opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling, got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers, claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US, ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings, blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining, redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle, got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,” threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution, botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them, pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes, thought that the Virgin islands had a President, drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane, allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing, rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos, pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID, rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers, held blatant campaign rallies at the White House, tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man, refused to attend his successors’ inauguration, nominated the worst Education Secretary in history, threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted, attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t), allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues, struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble, called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,” threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders, went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic, claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,” seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution, demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director, praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles, completely gutted the Voice of America, placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service, claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower, suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country, suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public, overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported, reduced the number of refugees the US accepts, insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames, gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address, named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties, eliminated the White House office of pandemic response, used soldiers as campaign props, fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him, demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade, hired a shit ton of white nationalists, politicized the civil service, did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government, falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts, claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won, insulted reporters of color, insulted women reporters, insulted women reporters of color, suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs, attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him, summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election, spent countless hours every day watching Fox News, refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas, hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer, tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him, acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney, attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a women who accused him of sexual assault, held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present, didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media, stopped holding press briefings for months at a time, “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power, led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform, claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers, tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course, suggested that the government nuke hurricanes, suggested that wind turbines cause cancer, said that he had a special aptitude for science, fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure, blurted out classified information to Russian officials, tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida, fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban, hired Stephen Miller, openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them, interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel, abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war, tried to get Russia back into the G7, held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden, seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive, lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated, falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t, shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies, still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan, still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks,” forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID, told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” fucked up the Census, withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic, did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,” allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act, seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win, constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump, claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened, said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake, claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him, claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President, created a commission to whitewash American history, retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain, claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there, hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims, had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others, bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties, apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House, stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians, falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police, said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about, tried to rescind protection from DREAMers, gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic, tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax, said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states, deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented, claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln, touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all, retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile, forced through security clearances for his family, suggested that police officers should rough up suspects, suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs, tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender, suggested the US not accept COVID patients from  a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher, nominated a climate change sceptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy, retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event, hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags, accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address, claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia, mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, obsessed over low-flow toilets, ordered the rerelease of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release, called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek), hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech, took advice from the MyPillow guy, claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists, said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure, never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign, falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent, announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest, insulted the leader of Canada, insulted the leader of France, insulted the leader of Britain, insulted the leader of Germany, insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!), falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues, blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually, continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders, said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked, left a NATO summit early in a huff, stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that, said and did nothing when US intelligence agencies presented intel that Russia placed bounties on the heads of US soldiers stationed in the middle east, called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary, refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise, and a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment.

But other than that. . .   Yea, he was great!" - Unknown