starshine1118

[starshine1118]

Hey have we considered that the reason that one guy in the Prequels was really chill about offering some Jedi death sticks isn't some massive conspiracy that the Jedi are all doing massive amounts of drugs, or even that he didn't realize they were Jedi, but instead that arresting people for non-violent drug offenses is fucking evil and the Jedi aren't cops? And the people of Coruscant generally know that as long as they're not killing people the Jedi aren't actually interested in fucking them over?

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oh im gonna be weird about this for so long

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we did it tumblr

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you have no idea how much it pains me that I can't watch goncharov. I want to watch this movie so bad it makes me look stupid.

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I’m curious about the friendship between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter (and presidential friendships in general,) I’d like to know what that looked like for them. Would they go and do things together or was it just a few phone calls a year?

Their relationship is really interesting because during the 1976 campaign and in the years right afterward, Ford and Carter genuinely did not like each other. It wasn't a normal, opponent vs. opponent rivalry, either. They straight-up disliked one another, and that was extremely unusual for Gerald Ford, who got along with practically everybody he met throughout his life, rarely had bad things to say about other people, and was almost physically incapable of being unkind to others, no matter what side of the political spectrum they belonged to.

What changed was when President Reagan sent all the living former Presidents -- Nixon, Ford, and Carter -- to Cairo in 1981 to attend Anwar Sadat's funeral following Sadat's assassination. The three former Presidents all flew together on one of the planes normally used as Air Force One, and there was some tension at the beginning, but the person who broke the ice, oddly enough, ended up being Richard Nixon. Ford then suggested that the former Presidents should drop all formalities and just refer to one another as Dick, Jerry, and Jimmy. As Ford remembered, "I guess we figured we were gonna be in a plane together forty hours, more or less, and in order to be pleasant, it was a good idea to just wipe the slate clean, which we did." Ford and Carter eventually started bonding, partly over the fact that Ronald Reagan was a major reason why each of them ultimately lost their respective bids for re-election.

At the time, Carter was having trouble building his Presidential Library, and he asked Ford for some advice since Ford had just recently opened his library. When Carter mentioned he was having some issues raising money for the library, Ford offered to come down and appear at fundraisers for him, and asked Carter to return the favor and visit the Ford Library for an event.

As Thomas M. DeFrank writes in his 2007 book, Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations With Gerald R. Ford (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO):

"Carter accepted, triggering a Jimmy-Jerry tag team match extending over several years. These back-scratching appearances didn't convert them into friends, but the relationship was notably friendlier. They began staying in regular contact, talking on the phone, and exchanging birthday greetings. Their contacts were sufficiently public that some of Ford's closest political allies grumbled that he was spending altogether too much time with Carter -- not unlike similar complaints from [George H.W.] Bush 41 partisans today that he hangs around Bill Clinton too much. Ford brushed off the complaints. Beyond their shared practical interests in Presidential Libraries, another unifying bond was at play. Both ex-Presidents had strong reasons not to like Ronald Reagan, which helped cement their ties even though neither one would ever admit it publicly. To one old Ford friend, the calculation was simple: 'Once you did something for his library or museum, you were a friend for life.'"

As they got older, Ford and Carter would sometimes make joint appearances at Presidential Libraries or universities, or events for important causes, and they even wrote a joint op-ed during the Monica Lewinsky scandal urging Congress to censure President Clinton instead of impeaching him. They felt it was a bad precedent (which it has clearly turned out to be) and would be bad for the country. Unlike Ford, Jimmy Carter wasn't very easy-going or personable, so there were times when their friendship would get a little frayed. Ford once told a friend, "Well, you know Jimmy. He can be a real pain in the ass, but we get along."

Eventually, they promised one another that they would deliver the eulogy if the other former President died first. President Ford died first, on December 26, 2006, and Carter attended every event during the several days of ceremonies, from Ford's lying in state at the U.S. Capitol, to the national funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral, and traveled with Ford's family and the former President's remains to Ford's hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. At the church service in Grand Rapids, Carter delivered his eulogy, and also attended the private interment service when Ford was buried as at his Presidential Library. In his eulogy, Carter repeated the gracious first words he had said when delivering his Inaugural Address on the day he took over the White House from Ford in 1977, "For myself and for my nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land." It was a remarkable relationship between two former Presidents who, again, genuinely disliked one another for quite some time.

[starshine1118]

every time i see someone call kirk and spock the oldest ship, i'm filled with the urge to go "hmm actually the holmes and watson girlies have been here for a hundred years now", and i refrain because i know the natural conclusion of this game is gilgamesh and enkidu

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if you believe in jewish right of return but not palestinian right of return... literally what. our whole thing is that we were kicked out of our homeland but held fast to it and then returned. why should that not be available to other people. why should that not be available for palestinians.

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The art history version of “you’d look prettier if you smiled more”

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Serious question here: As succinctly as possible, please explain how antizionism is antisemitism, and how Zionism is not a settler colonial project.

In Short:

Zionism cannot be settler colonialism because it is, by definition, decolonization of the Jewish People's (aka the People of Israel's) native lands by its indigenous inhabitants. Inverting the reality of this is bigoted against Jews. Denying Jews their self-determination in their native lands is hateful against Jews. Turning us over to people who openly aim to genocide the Jews is hateful against Jews. Acting like you can separate a core tenant of Judaism that 90% of ethnic Jews agree with, from Judaism and its people, is pretty twisted and hateful against Jews.

But yeah I don't believe in oversimplifying things so... I will expand on this.

In Medium:

Zionism is a belief that Jews should have a nation and self-determination in our indigenous land where all ethnic Jews originally come from. Zionism succeeded in it's goals and currently Israel which currently houses half the world's Jews, most of whom are Holocaust and MENA (Middle East and North Africa)-region refugees and their descendents displaced from genocide and ethnic cleansing to the one place that would accept them. There is a little over 14 million Jews in the whole world and a little over 7 million of them live in Israel.

Antizionism is the belief that half the world's Jews, those 7 million Jews, can go fuck themselves, and their self detetermination. That they can, or should be genocided by their neighbors who have already shed their countries of their Jews, and that they would deserve it, too. That the world's most persecuted group of people have no right to self determination in oir native land, and the children of those who colonized our native land have all the right to self determination in our native land.

That is fucked, and antisemitic.

In Long:

Let's look at the history of Jews.

The Hebrew people who would later be called Israelites and then Jews were by all genetic and archeological accounts, descended and derived from Cannanites and split off to form a distinct culture in the land around 3700 years ago, eventually gaining control of the land somewhat approximating Israel's current borders.

Zionism is defined as the belief that Jews, who have been the most persecuted group in human history, deserve a right to self-determination in a nation in our indigenous land that we came from. Zionism is an old movement found as far back as the Old Testament from Jews who were exiled by Babylonian colonialists from Israel to what is now Iraq in years 597-538 BCE, after which most of the Jews were returned to Israel by Cyrus the Great of Persia. Later Romans would conquer what was by then known just as the Kingdom of Judea, and after a failed revolt in 135 CE they slaughtered 1 million Jews and sent most of the rest of us on slave ships and caravans around the Mediterranean and Middle East, bringing us far out into the world.

They renamed the land Syria Palaestinia, after the Philistines, which translates to INVADERS, who were a likely Phoenecian people who invaded the coast by sea and lived in oddy enough Gaza and that area and warred against the Israelites in Old Testament times and were eventually lost to history as a group 1000 years before Romans arrived.

From then we have yearned for our return. The idea of return to Israel is in our prayerbooks, mentioned as the closing of the passover Seder every year with a "Next Year In Jerusalem!", it is in our religious laws, and many commandments of our religion can only be carrid out in the land of Israel. Our holidays are organized around the agricultural calendar of the Levant with its dry and wet seasons instead of four seasons. In the late 1800s this movement of return to our homeland gained actual political traction in the world for the first time, and meanwhile Jews were returning to Ottoman (read: foreign imperial colonialists) Palestine and Jews were buying land (read: decolonizing) from the Ottoman Empire, and building things like small agraryan communes and even Tel Aviv was built on such a purchase not far from the ancient city of Yafo. Ottomans had ruled for 400 years before their downfall and Jews were Dhimmis, second-class citizens. We decolonized more of our land, and eventually the British took over and mucked about, and then in 1947 the UN votes Yes to a partition plan that would separate the land between the Jews and the children of our colonizers, and Israel agreed to this and Palestine did not. Israel decided fuck that we want independence and declared it with no particular borders established in this declaration. The same day, Egyptian tanks were rolling through Gaza into Israel, and a metric fuck ton of Arab nations join in and invade via Gaza and West Bank, and joined with Palestinian fighters, with the intention to "Drive the Jews into the Sea" and thus there was a war.

The Arabs lost this war they started badly enough that they now call it "The Catastrophe", and were pushed out to 1948 borders which left Palestinians with less land than they would have had if they peacefully split it with us by the Partition Plan.

This nation that the Jews yearned so hard for, for 2000 years straight, became Israel and it has existed as the singular Jewish country for over three quarters of a century now. We successfully decolonized and now have self-autonomy of our native land. Half of us live there. And those who are not Jews who are in our borders? Equal rights, equal everything. 1.6 million Palestinians living peacefully with Jews. 2 million Muslims living peacefully with Jews. Nowhere else in the region. You want to take that away (how? And then what? You saw what happened on Oct 7 and either stayed silent or cheered) and then say you don't hate me and my people? Be real.

Because what would happen if Israel goes away is just more of this:

...but without an army to protect us.

I don't know that every part of Israel's decolonization process has been pretty, or optimal, or free of human suffering. I do not agree with how Netanyahu's government does things, and especially with regards to the West Bank which was (unlike Gaza really to my knowledge) part of our former native territory and we should back off it because just as 7 million Jews aren't going anywhere, neither are the Palestinians, so they should also have autonomy over some of this land. It's not their fault they are the children of Judea's colonizers over the millenia. They have nowhere else to go.

Zionism says nothing at all about what to do with the children of our colonizers, especially when they keep trying so hard to kill us all the time. There's a range of opinions on that, but Zionism itself says nothing about it.

I'd like to say that our decolonization was done without bloodshed. But as I am frequently reminded by the "antizionist" crowd, "decolonization is violent".

Maybe it is. Didn't have to be. Didn't start off that way. Didn't have to do the Hebron massacre of 1927. Didn't have to try to drive the Jews into the Sea all those times and lose creating a refugee crisis. Didn't have to lob rockets at us for decades. Didn't have to do October 7th. Zionism won already, half the world's Jews are in our native lands enjoying our self-determination, and we have an army to defend the Jews now, and if anyone tries to kill us, it will always be their mistake every time. We aren't perfect human beings, but we are human beings, and we deserve self-determination as all peoples do, even if we don't do it exactly the way you want all the time.

Zionism is about Israel as a Jewish Nation existing, and ultimately not so much about what the State of Israel as a political entity does...those things are something else, and support of them or not supporting those things have little or nothing to do with what Zionism is, which is why 90% of Jews are Zionist despite a broader variety of opinions on Israeli politics or Israeli-palestinian geopolitics. The common thread is Jews should have a country in our native homeland.

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You know, for people who insist that Israel shouldn’t and doesn’t have the right to exist, “antizionists” are sure as fuck trying to make sure that it will be the only safe place left for Jews on the planet.

Almost as if your antizionism has never been anything more than naked antisemitism masquerading under a guise of ‘human rights activism.’

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I was reading this fic, where there’s a scene where Sam teaches Bucky to cook, and for some reason I seriously thought he was just forgoing the spatula for his hand.  It makes sense, if you think about it. 

Also, I really like fics where Bucky is kind of weird and robotty, and doesn’t really know how to function like a human being. 

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Saying that being a Zionist (which is being pro Jewish liberation) makes you inherently anti-Palestinian is like saying that being a feminist (which is being pro women liberation) makes you inherently anti-men.

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This is one of the funniest things I've found on tumblr and I've seen some shit

[starshine1118]

Hello friends, there's a dogwhistle I've seen used a couple times on tumblr that I want to discuss.

Fellow neurodivergents especially, please listen-- towards the end of this post I describe how some in our community have been using it without knowing what it means.

A fairly common antisemitic dogwhistle used amongst alt-right circles on the internet is being a "noticer," "noticing patterns," "pattern noticer," etc. I've seen this from a couple Tumblr blogs I follow reblogging memes and such that use this term but don't provide any context about what sorts of "things" they may be noticing.

Here's the meme that I saw a blog I'm following reblog last night.

Seems pretty harmless, right? It's a meme with a cute cat.

In alt-right circles, what they are referring to "noticing" is the conspiracy theory that Jews control the world/"noticing" evidence of an imagined globalist (read: Jewish) world order/etc. If you see a meme that uses terms like "noticing patterns" that doesn't elaborate what those supposed patterns are-- just leaves you to fill in the blank yourself-- take a look at the types of things OP might be posting. The alt-right has an idea that it's forbidden to talk about who might be behind the "conspiracies" they talk about (again, the target is frequently Jewish people) so lack of context is often a red flag.

I sent the blog who reblogged this an ask informing them that the meme was a dogwhistle. If you see someone reblog something like this, check what they've been posting. If this seems like an isolated incident, the person probably reblogged it not knowing what the term actually meant. That's why dogwhistles are so effective-- to the average person they look harmless if you don't know what to watch out for!

Let's take a look at how alt-righters use this term.

Here's an alt-right definition of it from Urban Dictionary.

Oh boy, this one gets a bigotry bingo for all the dogwhistles used here. If I miss any, feel free to comment. Here are the ones I found:

-Noseticing: Noticing plus nose, based on the stereotype for Jewish people to have large noses.

-"those who cannot be named"/skirting around saying Jew: again the idea that it's forbidden to talk about who they think is behind their conspiracy theories.

-"world events and agendas": idea that Jewish people have a Globalist agenda etc etc

-Degeneracy: Nazi term to describe the behaviors/people they find undesirable.

-Early life: refers to the section in a person's Wikipedia page. If a person was brought up Jewish, it'll usually say so there.

-Oy vey: a Jewish exclamation of exasperation that Nazis have unfortunately co-opted when talking about Jewish people.

Here's probably the most obviously antisemitic meme I found.

The title and first bullet point include the "noticer" term. This meme also talks about a "group" who controls wealth. Who might the poster be referring to here?

Here's a Twitter account with many similar alt-right terms. Explicitly identifies as a Nazi and ethno-nationalist, etc etc.

A couple other pages. I clicked on them to see if I could find any more examples but the first seemed pretty blank and the second... Well, I don't have a twitter so I couldn't view.

Let's unpack these a little. The first one has "13 outta 52," a statistic used among white supremacists to depict Black people (especially African-Americans) as "savage": 13 referring to the percentage of America that is Black and 52 referring to the alleged percentage of murders in the U.S. that are committed by Black people. "109 countries" refers to the idea that Jewish people have been expelled from 109 countries during history. (Which isn't entirely true. Some "countries" in this count are actually cities, regions, etc.) Some white supremacists may use the number 110 instead to suggest that it should happen again.

The second one has a blurb alleging a global sterilization effort and concerns of fertility. This is likely in connection to pro-natalism for white people. If Nazis want a so-called "Aryan nation," they're going to want white people to populate it, and so they encourage white people to have babies for their cause. Nazi Germany employed this tactic as well, even awarding "Aryan" German women who had four or more children for their contributions to the Nazi cause.

The reason why I'm emphasizing that context matters is that some neurodivergent people have seen this and co-opted it into neurodivergent circles. As a person who is Jewish and autistic, this is pretty alarming to me. I'll show a couple examples from Tumblr:

And

I've left out the URLs of the OPs because I want to give the benefit of the doubt-- they both explicitly refer to being a "pattern noticer" in terms of neurodivergence. And it's easy to see why introducing this term to ND folks would be an easy way to get a dogwhistle passed off as harmless! Since autistic people often have analytical minds, we often make connections that others might not be able to see. But unfortunately, using terms like this only makes it much easier for antisemites to fly under the radar.

Stay safe and let's keep Tumblr free of this shit.

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It is not that Jews are a more superstitious people I think, it's just that we have a really strong cultural taboo against expressing optimism, and an even stronger one against expressing certainty.