seventyfaces

[seventyfaces]

#I've been seeing this post around and being bothered as fuck by it for all the reasons you just articulated#Sorry guys. Sometimes you need some of the bigots in your tent. This is how democracy works.#Being willing to be allied with assholes is sometimes necessary to keep people who are thrilled to be allied with assholes out of power.#It is eternally frustrating as fuck that you need to concede to assholes and take care of assholes who do not want to take care of you.#Marginalized people being sick of this shit are so right to be sick of this shit.#But that is what being a minority is in a democracy. Needing to court other groups so you can be in a majority.#That's just the nature of how power works under a democratic system#And for all the flaws of democracy it's stillbetter than everything fucking else.

The point of this post is that the bigots are not, actually, in my tent. They are outside the tent, in their own tent, voting to burn down my tent, and yet people are telling me to have rachmanus on the bigots who are in the process of trying to destroy the federal government.

This post is not about infighting in Democratic or progressive spaces. This post is about everyone I know IRL who voted for Trump, even knowing that I am disabled, queer, and Jewish.

This is about the person who I love dearly who looked me in the eyes and said they voted for Trump because Harris is worse. This person agrees with so many progressive things. This person disagrees with everything Trump has done and didn't want to vote for Trump, but claimed they "had to" because Harris would be worse. This is not that person's first vote for Donald Trump.

The point of this post is that people can agree with progressive politics all they want, but their voting record indicates they don't love me back, because they don't care about me, because they don't give a shit if I die.

Trump voters owe me financial compensation.

[seventyfaces]

Updated version of Boy Who Cried Wolf but there are actual wolves every single time and no one ever believes the boy - they get closer and closer every time he tries to warn them, until it's too late and the whole town screams at the boy for not warning them "enough", and blame him for the wolves at their door.

[seventyfaces]

Prison abolutionists often believe in mob justice because they have nothing to replace prisons with, but still understand, at some level, that their "no prisons, at all, ever" plan fails when you encounter certain crimes. Therefore their only solution is mob justice.

why do i have to explain to grown ass adults that human rights r called human rights bc every single human is entitled to them bc they r human, n they should never b taken away no matter who they are or what they did. and that advocating for the removal of human rights, nomatter who the target of it is, is not only incredibly cruel but will eventually spiral and lead to oppression. didnt we learn that shit in like 5th grade.

[seventyfaces]

You can tell frum Jews don't run the world, because if we did, Daylight Saving Time would not exist.

[seventyfaces]

This got reblogged so I figured I'd ramble on a bit more about this, this time with spellcheck so I make sure my fingers don't get too excited about spelling legitimate.

Anyway, this is all a result of years of casual research, none of it recent, so my sourcing is unfortunately Just Trust Me, Bro, but here we go:

There's a meant-to-be-heartwarming story about a kid who looks at a map/globe and innocently asks "who drew all the lines". There is an answer to this question, though. The question is, for the most part, wars and treaties.

War is a fundamental aspect of how countries and territories were divided up into countries.

You essentially got to be a country/polity/independent organization (not going into folks who paid tribute to another country) in two ways: by having the military strength (and/or treaties) to protect your border from invaders and by having your neighbors recognize you as a country. The second part is, uh, not as important as the first?

Before world travel was commonplace, no one actually cared if Country X three thousand miles cared if Country Y really was a country or not; maybe they have merchants who traded back and forth, but it essentially did not matter what every country on earth thought of you, and it didn't matter what the 5 biggest countries on earth thought of you, either. Either you could protect yourself from your neighbors invading you or not.

There is also something else and that is called empire. That's where you just invade other countries and annex them/control them.

Important to all of this: legitimacy does not come from the people in the country. Especially in terms of empire, they did not give a flying duck what the people in the country thought about it. Empire is about power and about taxes and having something for all the young rich men to do so they don't overthrow the imperial core out of boredom. So it doesn't matter if the people-who-don't-have-power in the country want to be that country.

Then we get to the World Wars.

And yes of course nationalism started before then, etc etc. We were not here to get into the causes of the World Wars. We are not here to get into the question of "what exactly makes the French the French? What is the essential essence of Frenchness that defines the French?" especially because those questions only apply to the heart of empire. Someone who is in the territory that is owned by France cannot be a Frenchman, not really. But that is also a question that comes up, and I feel that is a question that can only come up through empire. It is only when your country is so big and so oppressive that you have to navelgaze and say "who are we, really?"

It's also a question you have when you have a lot of disparate groups, who do not get along, but are forced to get along to run a country together because Someone Else Drew The Lines, they were not empowered to create their own borders by winning a war or writing a treaty.

After WW2, there has been a massive splitting up of countries. And then post Soviet Union, again.

After WW2, there's also the United Nations.

And an increasingly globalized society.

Oh and also passports.

The question of "what's a country" is now no longer a question between you and the local power brokers. The question of "what's a country" is now the business of the entire world.

But noticeably post-WW2 there's a lot less of right of conquest. Suddenly, winning a war doesn't mean you get the land in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Why not?

Ah, because suddenly we care about the conquered people. We care what they think and what they want.

This is a good thing but it's also a pretty damn new thing, and it gets applied very very very unevenly.

The international community is also not great at always recognizing splits of countries that happen without war, either, because they may have vested interests, financial or otherwise.

Because all of a sudden, there is some arbiter of if your country is a real country or not, and it isn't Might Makes Right, it's do the other countries want you to be independent or not.

Into all of this is also a certain, shall we say inertia? It's the idea that everything that was the way it was when I was born is correct, and any changes that happen after are illegitimate and strange. So if a country was a country when I was born, it should stay this way. This philosophy can't really show its face in public but it's an inertia underlying a lot, this whisper of "well you used to be a country".

Who's a country? Who can issue passports? Who has a seat at the table? Who must be respected?

Most folks on tumblr, I imagine, haven't heard of South Ossetia. I assume more of them will have heart of South Sudan. South Sudan is the "newest" country in the world. Why is it widely recognized to be a country, when South Ossetia isn't?

Short answer: Politics.

Long answer: several books on the subject, people's thesis, people's life work, etc.

What does this have to do with Israel? Israel has a lot in common with the African countries that gained independence from their colonial overlords post WW2 (and, as a sidenote, fucking renamed themselves away from their colonial names). Jews are indigenous to Israel. Israel also has a very, very, very strong right of conquest to the land.

So why does it lose legitimacy in people's eyes? Because they pick and choose whose opinion matters. My ancestors were living there when the Ottomans were still in charge. Their opinion is discarded; the opinions that "matter" are only the ones that support an antisemitic narrative. Somehow Jews belong nowhere in the world. They aren't indigenous to Israel but need to go back to Israel.

The reason the diaspora is as large as it is began with the Jews being expelled from the land by a conquering empire. The Jews have been expelled from an uncountable number of countries, because we are an oppressed minority. Israel wasn't safe for us either, but we kept going back to it, we kept living there.

When other oppressed minorities stood up and said "we want our country", we are one of them.

But that doesn't matter, because somehow all the ways of a country being legitimate don't apply to Jews. Because the antisemites said so. And you can't convince them otherwise because they generally live in countries that are the product of empire.

I have a post about explaining to an Israeli how Hawaii became a US state. Hawaii became a US state in 1959.

If Hawaii being a US state is acceptable, but Jews having political power in Israel isn't, I have to ask: why?

Because a lot of the time, you scratch these questions and the answer is "it's not okay that we did it, but it was so long ago" (it wasn't), or "it's not okay that we did it, but the Hawaiians want to be Americans" (if they say they want independence, are you willing to fight for them?) and sometimes quite frankly the answer is "it's okay when we do it".

[seventyfaces]

"But I am/my family are one of the good ones!" Who told you that you were good and so therefore laws don't apply to you?

Trump voters owe me financial compensation.

[seventyfaces]

People love to repeat age-old bigotries and misogyny and act like they've just come up with something clever. People have literally been saying this about silly women reading silly literature since at least the 1800s.

It's the same as people parrotting the same antisemitic talking points that are at least fifteen hundred years old, as if they are the first ones to ever think it up, rather than accepting that they are part of a long tradition of repeating the exact same thing.

intellectuals online love to pretend like they think women who read romance books are birdbrained weakminded silly idiots who think everything they read in a book is real and good and who are wandering through the world like mindless little sheep waiting to fall into the arms of rapists and abusers because they read in their books that these are good. nothing like asserting your intellectual superiority by expressing concern that girls who stalker romance are being groomed into allowing the rise of fascism and becoming responsible for misogynist things that men do irl. 37583749 self righteous faux woke concerned quote tweets on random women having fun in a bookstore talking about their kind of corny dark romance books. woww it’s so SADDD and SCARY that women can tell the difference between books and real life. is this the downfall of feminism?

[seventyfaces]

New Trump executive order just announced: as of this shabbos, the line must be changed to "gam ki elech bi REDACTED tzalmaves".

[seventyfaces]

What have the Jews done? Stayed being Jews. That's enough and that's too much.

The Jesus/Judas Complex

The only Good Jews are the Jews who are self-sacrificing, who will go willingly to their deaths for the salvation of others. The Good Jew, who will willingly undergo torments unto death, is the only Good Jew.

The Good Jew will absolve their murderers. The Good Jew will 'turn the other cheek'. The Good Jew will write "I still believe that people are good at heart" when being persecuted. The Good Jew will lay down and die for the comfort and education of others.

But for all other Jews who fail to attain such lofty standards?

They are betrayers, corruptors, colonizers, genociders, child murderers, blood drinkers. Capitalists and communists. Sexually depraved and yet sexless, where even the Jewish men are emasculated. They are White, yet also still Other. They are rootless cosmopolitans, from nowhere, yet told to go back where they came from. Their mere presence is a taint, and yet they hide among the disciples of the Good Jew, waiting for their chance to betray and sell out.

The only Good Jew is a Dead Jew who goes willingly to die, on the cross of the Romans or from the knives and guns of terrorists. All other Jews, who refuse to lay down and die, who dare to say "Am Yisrael Chai", that the Children of Yisrael Live, are therefore innately evil and irredeemable, and must be shunned for daring to cling to life.

[seventyfaces]

dear internets, Mr. Elmo Monster Of Sesame Street is but a mere television talk show host, he has done nothing to deserve these comparisons.

[seventyfaces]

We can't welcome you with open arms if you're still willing to stab us in the back.

Trump voters owe me financial compensation.

[seventyfaces]

Watching people bend over backwards to chide other people for not emphasizing with Trump voters makes me want to scream a single word. And that word is Teshuva.

You know who have done teshuva for a vote they made -- not knowing it would hurt people, but then realizing the enormity of their errors? Many Nader voters in Florida. They realized how they were duped, how they were complicit, and they have dedicated every election cycle since then to begging people not to make the same mistake they made. That is teshuva. They acknowledged what they did wrong, really delved into why and how it happened, and have done what they could to make amends, even while knowing that there is no possible way to actually make amends to all those hurt, all those people dead, all those people who suffered, for the entire legacy of Bush 2, which they feel heavy on their shoulders.

Trump voters? Even the youngest would have been 14 when Trump attempted a coup. Anyone who voted for Trump this time around either knew what they were doing, or were so willfully ignorant -- a choice, nay, I even say, a stubbornnes, a privilege to believe that nothing truly bad would happen to them, it would only happen to some anonymous other -- that it didn't matter to them.

Being upset that the leopard is now eating your face does not constitute regret for voting for the leopard to eat our faces.

You didn't care about us. You were willing to let us all die, force us to suffer for your enjoyment. And now you realize you will suffer along with us and now you are screaming at us to save you, to help you, to not blame you for the evil you have voted for.

Buddy, that ain't regret. That ain't making amends. That ain't being sorry.

That's just what got us into this mess in the first place, you thinking you can do whatever you please and someone will swoop in to fix your fuckup without you having to do anything to help. Without you having to acknowledge that you did anything wrong. Without you having to admit that you were wrong to say that we were acceptable losses, that our pain didn't matter, that our children and our elders and our spouses and our siblings and our communities and our selves don't deserve better than what you did to us.

No, you want us to come and save you from yourself, without admitting your mistake.

But until Jesus comes, you aren't getting someone magical to save you, so you have to do the work, too.

And you have to admit you are a major contributer to why we are in this disaster of your making. Or else there is no healing.

Trump voters owe me financial compensation.

[seventyfaces]

Because something you have to reckon with when it comes to modern day "paganism" is that there are a huge number of religions in the world that can be described as being pagan. But when you call yourself pagan, you are orienting yourself in a religious mode that is counter to Christianity. If you were a devotee of one of those existing religions, you'd call yourself by the name of the religion.

And so when you then take from religions that Christianity outright murdered... you need to be respectful of the fact that you're rummaging through a graveyard.

I have zero problems with pagans in general.

I have one hundred million problems with this general idea I keep seeing amongst pagans that they can come in, say we're wrong about our own stories, and steal them to "reclaim" them. You're not reclaming anything. This is theft.

[seventyfaces]

Sometimes, too, I want pagans to take a step back and say, "was this religion murdered?"

Essentially, if they're treating religious entities as free real estate because, hey, no one's using them anymore, so it's fine to pick them up and pick and choose and play games with them and completely make things up about them... to just stop and think "is the reason ''no one'' follows these gods anymore is because this religion was systemically murdered?" and when the answer is yes, treat things with a lot more respect for the culture they came from.

Because I know pagans who wrestle with the fact that their religion was wholly invented in recent history, as an attempt to revive religious systems that were destroyed. And then there's the ones who don't. Those are the ones who say "we're the daughters of the witches you couldn't burn". Because no. No, you're not.

I have zero problems with pagans in general.

I have one hundred million problems with this general idea I keep seeing amongst pagans that they can come in, say we're wrong about our own stories, and steal them to "reclaim" them. You're not reclaming anything. This is theft.

[seventyfaces]

I have zero problems with pagans in general.

I have one hundred million problems with this general idea I keep seeing amongst pagans that they can come in, say we're wrong about our own stories, and steal them to "reclaim" them. You're not reclaming anything. This is theft.

[seventyfaces]

ngl I think being but dust and ashes is a skill issue. the entire world was created for me

[seventyfaces]

Jewish culture is truly not understanding everyone saying that Trump was holding up a Bible upside down in that notorious photo. What do you mean, there's nothing wrong with that picture?

Dawning realization: oh right, that's a Christian Bible. The binding should be on the other side.

Jewish culture is picking up English books backwards

.