#Decline of Western Civilization Part 2
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Punk History Resources: Vol 2
This is a compilation of resources found and recommended by various alternative bloggers, each of whom are credited for their contributions. This started because I was getting SO MANY asks about resources such as videos, books, and websites to use to learn about punk history. Admittedly, my own list wasn't that long, so I thought it was best to reach out to some others and share their knowledge with everyone. Now, I'm hoping to make this an annual occurrence, where we all share our knowledge with each other. So thank you again to everyone who helped out with this!!
Link to Volume 1
@whatamibutabutteredcroissant @unfriendlybat @ghost--in-a-machine @mushroomjar
YOUTUBE:
Part 1 of The Decline of Western Civilization (It recieved mixed reception from people in the scene) (whatamibutabutteredcroissant)
Part 3 of The Decline of Western Civilization (Focuses on the gutter-punks of 90s LA) (whatamibutabutteredcroissant)
BOOKS:
Some Wear Leather Some Wear Lace by Andi Harriman and Marloes Bontje (It's mostly goth/horror rock/post punk/deathrock but I feel like it's adjacent enough for it to merit a read) (unfriendlybat)
Spray Paint the Walls: The Story of Black Flag by Stevie Chick (whatamibutabutteredcroissant)
Kids of the Black Hole: Punk Rock in Postsuburban California by Dewar Macleod (whatamibutabutteredcroissant)
We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk by Marc Spitz and Brendan Mullen (whatamibutabutteredcroissant)
Left of The Dial: Conversations with Punk Icons by David Ensminger (whatamibutabutteredcroissant)
The Art of Darkness: The History of Goth by John Robb (A comprehensive history of Goth) (whatamibutabutteredcroissant)
Punk Zines by Eddie Piller and Steve Rowland (whatamibutabutteredcroissant)
The High Desert by James Spooner ( A graphic novel memoir of how the authro came into the scene) (ghost--in-a-machine)
Let Fury Have The Hour by Antonio D'Ambrosio (About the band The Clash) (anonymous submission)
MOVIES / DOCUMENTARIES:
Masque (A 10 minute doc about the Masque club in LA) (whatamibutabutteredcroissant)
ARTICLES:
History of Anarcho-Punk and Peace Punk (mushroomjar)
Late 80s and Early 90s Puerto Rico Hardcore Punk (mushroomjar)
The Jewish History of Punk (mushroomjar)
Japan's Impact on Punk Culture (mushroomjar)
The Forgotten Story of Pure Hell, America's First Black Punk Band (mushroomjar)
The Black Punk Pioneers Who Made Music History (mushroomjar)
Why Poly Styrene is Punk's Great Lost Icon (mushroomjar)
Alternative to Alternatives: The Black Grrrls Riot Ignored (mushroomjar)
Abandoning The Ear? Punk and Deaf Convergences Part II (mushroomjar)
Race, Anarchy, and Punk Rock: The Impact of Cultural Boundaries Within The Anarchist Movement (mushroomjar)
Street Medic Handbook (safety-pin-punk)
ZINES:
Sticking To It (safety-pin-punk)
So You Say You Want An Insurrection (safety-pin-punk)
All Power To The People (safety-pin-punk)
How to Survive a Felony Trial: Keeping Your Head up through the Worst of It (safety-pin-punk)
Collectives: Anarchy Against The Mass (safety-pin-punk)
Social War on Stolen Native Land: Anarchist Contributions (safety-pin-punk)
A Civilian's Guide to Direct Action (safety-pin-punk)
Critical Thinking as Anarchist Weapon (safety-pin-punk)
Security Culture: A Handbook for Activists (safety-pin-punk)
Betrayal: A Critical Analysis of Rape Culture in Anarchist Subcultures (safety-pin-punk)
ETC:
The Anarcho-Stencilism Subreddit (people upload stencils for others to use for free) (mushroomjar)
I would love to make a Vol. 3 post next year, so if you have resources and want to share, PLEASE message me!! (Preferably DMs)
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The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, 1988. Filmed August 1987 - February 1988. Los Angeles, California. ➙ [ 1 - 2 - 3 ]
#dave mustaine#megadeth#alice cooper#lemmy kilmister#ozzy osbourne#so far so good#sfsgsw#documentary#the decline of western civilization
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by Dion J. Pierre
While both sides made sharp points, the conversation remained civil, according to court documents. However, the students interpreted Fiss’s comments as an attack on their identities and filed a complaint which accused her of being “harassing and discriminatory.” With little due process, Fiss was ultimately found guilty of the allegation and forced to submit to a series of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” trainings — a form of political rehabilitation in which subjects are forced to denounce key values of Western civilization such as the meritocracy and the sovereignty of the individual.
In explaining its guilty verdict, the college accused Fiss of being culturally insensitive and imposing her “power” on the women, who are ethnic minorities of color. Fiss, it said, “began explaining the history of Alwael’s country to her,” and “caused the students to reasonably believe” that Fiss was “using [her] positional power as a professor to get the outcome [she] sought, which was for the students to agree with [her] point of view.”
The college reached these findings but declined to apply the same logic to an earlier complaint Fiss had filed about the Critical Ethnic Studies program’s issuing a statement — “DECOLONIZATION IS NOT A DINNER PARTY,” it said — which justified Hamas’s violence and implied that Jews are not indigenous to their own homeland. This is because, the Deborah Project says, CCA rules are in place to protect left-wing anti-Zionism and punish Jews who oppose it.
“Because Dr. Fiss’s beliefs do not align with the creed mandated and enforced by the college, she has suffered repeated and severe adverse treatment by CCA, which has dramatically impeded her ability to function as a scholar,” the Deborah Project said in its complaint. “As part of its policy of enforcing ideological conformity about Israel, CCA has threatened Dr. Fiss with dismissal for two reasons: (1) her refusal to comply with student demands to contact her congressional representatives to pressure Israel — a sovereign nation — to cease its military response to an ongoing threat; and (2) for respectfully challenging this monopolization of discourse and reaffirming the principles of open dialogue and open debate within CCA.”
According to Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director of the Deborah Project, the college ignored Fiss’s concerns about widespread support for Hamas’s atrocities in Israel last Oct. 7, arguing they were simply expressions of free speech.
“Karen Fiss, a fully-tenured professor at CCA was told that her pain, intimidation, and horror upon learning that a huge number of not only students at CCA but her fellow faculty members, the department chairs, and members of the administration not only justified, but supported the wanton rape, torture, and murder of her co-religionists on Oct. 7 was not problematic as far as CCA was concerned because those positions were protected by free speech,” Lowenthal Marcus told The Algemeiner.
She added that CCA “accorded no such academic freedom to Dr. Fiss, who was disciplined for a single conversation that all parties agree was civil.”
#karen fiss#professor karen fiss#deborah project#california college for the arts#maryiam alwael#academic freedom
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The nineteenth century [...] introduced a more expansionist phase in the Company’s administration. In 1813, the East India Company’s new Charter abolished its trading monopoly in India. This was the era when belief in free trade predominated. India was, therefore, opened up to all traders from Britain, who were eager to flood India with British manufactured goods. Free trade also implied a search for new markets in India, so the East India Company (which still retained administrative control of India, although it had lost its trading monopoly) embarked on a policy of conquest. The Company’s expansionist policy was facilitated by the declining Mughal power. So with judicious self-interest, combined with military force - and all in the name of peaceful trade - the East India Company began the policy of playing off one prince against another, interfering in the internal affairs of the states, or lending ‘help’ to a ‘friendly’ state against its enemies. In this way British rule was extended over a large part of India. By the 1850s Britain ruled India.
Because it had been relatively easy to conquer India, and to do so in a short space of time, the British believed that the reason for this success lay in the superiority of Europe over Asia, and above all in the superiority of the British over all other peoples. Flushed with their success, they did not think that there could be other, more complex, reasons for it. The Christian missionaries, who after 1813 were free to go to India to spread the Gospel, reinforced this view of the Indian subcontinent. Their ideas were to influence the governing of India. The Utilitarians and the Evangelicals considered the Hindu religion to be one ‘grand abomination,' and India to be full of ‘dark and bloody superstition.' They therefore regarded it as their ‘moral duty' to spread ‘western enlightenment and reason' throughout India. They brushed aside the Orientalists' arguments that India was a ‘moral and civilized' society and did not need the fare offered by the missionaries. And so began the ‘reforming' phase of Indian administration.
Those Indian social and religious practices which the British regarded as ‘barbaric' were abolished; land tenure was ‘reorganized', often with disastrous results for the social and economic fabric of India. Indian classical education was reformed. Macaulay believed the ‘great object of British government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India. And so, with his Education Minute of 1835, he set in motion the anglicizing of Indian education. Under the Governor Generalship of Lord Dalhousie reforms gathered speed; Indian laws, customs and practices were all remodelled on the English pattern. British technological and material ‘benefits' were grafted on to Indian society. More Indian states were annexed.
The driving force behind this ‘civilizing' zeal remained the inherent belief prevalent in mid-Victorian England that the British were culturally and racially superior to the mass of their subjects in India and elsewhere in the Empire. As British rule was consolidated over India, more ‘sahibs' and ‘memsahibs' (their wives) arrived from England. Since communications had improved, they tended to stay for shorter periods than their predecessors. Not only did they believe themselves to be superior, they made sure that the Indians acknowledged them as such. Locked in this racist attitude, the British rulers isolated themselves and their memsahibs in a rigid hierarchy of class system, lording it over the conquered ‘natives' with a high hand.
— Rozina Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: Indians in Britain, 1700-1947 (London: 1986), pp. 2-4.
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NOT THE ANON OBVIOUSLY BUT YOU WERE DANIELASHCUNTWARS????? did not know that lowkey had come to the conclusion that you just spawned onto my dash. god bless i think we became mutuals you over a drunk argument over the decline of western civilization part 2
I do not remember that so I was probably also pretty drunk lol but yep that's meeeeeeeee or was me
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Every time the subject of a possible US civil war or national divorce comes up I hear the same micron deep takes. America couldn’t break up because the division isn’t by state, its Urban Vs. Rural. Or that Urban vs. Rural isn’t the divide, even then people of different politics are mixed up together. Or that for every clear red or blue state there’s a purple state. None of which is in any way relevant to anything until you recognize the naïve mental model many of these people are working on... These takes betray a belief that a second civil war would be some kind of conflict between coherent independent states who’ve started identifying with/against the idea of union such as happened in the 1860s… or that somehow there’d be a series of tidy Quebec style referendums resulting in a clean division such as exists in so many meme maps:
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The truth is any post-breakup map of America would not resemble an electoral map following state lines, nor even a redrawing of state boundaries, such that the fantastical greater Idaho or Free State of Jefferson might exist as part of a wider Confederation of Constitutional Republics, or a Breakaway Philadelphia city-State join a Union of Progressive Democracies… No. It’d be nothing so comprehensible or easily mapped to modern politics. A post breakup America would probably look closer to this:
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(I really do apologize for all I’m going to have to digress) For our purposes we can broadly divide history into 2 types of period… Periods of Centralizing trends, and periods of Decentralizing trends.
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Centralizing Eras are consistently defined by big Heroic (classical sense of the word) figures that lead great armies or great nations and either win and centralize control under themselves or lose and get centralized under another. Alexander, Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, Julius Caesar, Agustus, Wolfe, Horatio Nelson, Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Grant, Lenin, Trotsky, Woodrow Wilson, Mussolini, Hitler, Rommel, Churchill, Montgomery, FDR, MacArthur, Stalin, Zukav, Mao… On and on we could list the names.
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Normandy and England’s William “The Conqueror” captured England (but not Wales, Scotland or Ireland) creating a unified kingdom on both sides of the English channel…in a feat every English schoolboy has memorized ever since (1066 and all that)… And William’s total Domain was less than 1/20th what Alexander had achieved 1300 years before. Likewise Shakespeare immortalized Henry the 5th as the very avatar of Mars…Achieving the English dream and conquering France! Only to die of dysentery within the year and have his territorial gain be entirely lost within a generation. Likewise Charlemange’s 8th and 9th century unified empire of France and Germany broke apart within a generation. And as late as 1718 Charles XII’s extraordinary military victories and revolutionary tactics couldn’t save the Swedish empire’s decline from great power status.
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Centralizing eras are marked by finicky, barely technological, advances that A) are not evenly distributed and allow the powers which have them to dominate the powers that don’t, and B) require vast numbers of hierarchically organized people working together in sophisticated coordination to make it work at all, often with extensive infrastructure than can only be worked by such a bureaucracy. Napoleonic Divisions, 5000 man Aircraft Carriers, trans-Continental railway or telegraphs, and massive continent severing canal systems (Suez/Panama) are prime examples. Decentralizing eras are the opposite. Decentralizing eras are defined by sophisticated capital and skill intensive weapons that can be utilized by relatively few people, and which are widely distributed (it being far easier to get even ridiculous amounts of money to invest in tools or skills, than it is to get 10,000+ all obeying at once you). We “sea” this with the very first decentralizing era: The bronze age collapse.
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the medieval era is defined by 3 iconic technologies: Heavy warhorses with advanced stirrups, castle/keeps (and the ranged weapons such as crossbows that lose most of their effectiveness when not defending them), and the Knights armor. This is the iconic image of the medieval period. All three are capital intensive technologies wielded by small numbers of wealthy men. Later Castles could be held against a force of hundreds by a mere dozen men, warhorses and advancing armor made knights sometimes 10-20 to 1 more effective than ordinary footmen. Within the span of 500 years major historical battles went from 100s of thousands of people in great migratory armies crashing against empires of millions, to 20-60 incredibly wealthy men, all named in the record, facing off against a similar force. Hell individual duels often decided the fates of vast swathes of country side. This is how totally heavy cavalry, armor, and castles just destroyed the very possibility of large complex states and the attendant armies. Now ask yourself… Which type of era are we in?
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None of our leaders are analogous to the great conquerors. Rather they are like the Persian and Lydian kings and courtiers of the Pre-Alexandrian period, or the late Roman Emperors and generals, or the thousands of European kings and Courtiers, endlessly fighting grinding wars that achieve remarkably little. Their ultimate achievement being that they might be mostly forgotten as merely mediocre… instead of screwing up monumentally and going down in history like Varus, or Commodus, or Croesus of Lydia whom the oracle told he’d “destroy a great empire”… but whose wars only destroyed his own. These are the kinds of people our elite are doomed to be remembered as… if they’re remembered. McNamara’s tenancy as Secretary of Defence isn’t remembered for him creating a fighting force to rival the Myrmidons or Napoleon’s old Guard, he’s remembered for McNamara’s Morons (Decent Review). . If current trends continue we’re on a fast track to eventually hit the apex of decentralization: Neo-Medievalism.
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The above is a map of the Holy Roman Empire, one of the Successors to Charlemagne’s empire which, depending on the dating, lasted from about 800ad-956ad (its very debatable when you date the “start” of the empire) to its final dissolution by Napoleon in 1806. Meaning it lasted longer than the original Roman Empire… Naively we might think this empire is a great counter example to my “decentralizing eras” thesis… Except for one thing: This was never “THE MAP” of the Holy Roman Empire. The above map comprises every territory that was ever part of the “Empire” none of which were ever all in it at the same time… And none of which were ever really part of the same political unit… Its really hard to know if there was even a single year every polity nominally within the empire recognized each other, or were even meaningfully at peace. Indeed the “Holy” in the name was a source of countless wars and conflicts, given It was adopted and maintained (grossly simplifying) as part of a double play, the Emperor at various points wanting to use his title as “Holy” Emperor of Rome to annex the Papal States and assume authority over the Catholic Church, and various Popes aspiring to use their religious authority to place their chosen allies in control of the “Empire”. The Emperor bounced back and forth between being God’s appointed supreme ruler on earth, literally crowned by the Pope, and being the Supreme enemy of the Pope in turn. Its a mess.
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You know how everyone gets confused by the electoral college or how American senators worked before they were elected… imagine that confusing mess x100, and the results determined who’d be civil waring with who, whether you’d be going to war with the Pope under the banner of the Antichrist, and later whether Protestants or Catholics would be going under the boot. So Voltaire’s quip that the Holy Roman Empire was “neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire” was very bitingly true… it often warred with the Popes, far from being Roman on at least one occasion it invaded and sacked Rome, and far from being an empire it was more a loose federation that elected its “Emperors”… But even that’s a simplification because at various points the pope was literally crowning the emperor, Rome was part of the empire, and the Crown was hereditary! It simultaneously was and wasn’t Holy, was and wasn’t Roman, and was and wasn’t an Empire. Seriously, this is the map without any simplifications:
Now tell me, is there another 3 word national title that’s hotly debated? To what extent is the USA really United? States? or America? The meaning of all 3 have shifted massively since the founding… the Union is unrecognizable from what the founders envisioned: becoming a Nation after the civil war, instead of the loose federation they set out to create. The states have gone from being almost fully sovereign republics to interchangeable imperial provinces, and are now again asserting increasing amounts of that lost sovereignty. And of course “America” neither comprises the whole of the Americas.. nor is it wholly within the Americas. ( we cannot forget Hawaii) Might there come a day we quip the USA is/was neither United, nor States, nor America? Hold that thought.
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The reason the HRE is so confusing and the reason most Medieval and early modern history is so confusing, is Medieval states… really aren’t states. Fans of Game of Thrones or Shakespeare understand the concept of feudalism and the military hierarchy of Knights answering to lords answering to kings, and Hollywood has taught most people to appreciate how that chain of command can become very conflicted and prone to rebellion or schemes, especially around a succession crisis (do you support the old King’s son, brother, or cousin to succeed him? Well who’s going to give you the better deal?) These stories make great hour and half dramas… But even as all these dynamics did happen, the actual medieval system was vastly VASTLY more complex.
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Multiple factions and entities within the same very small stretch of land might all wield some form of sovereignty and ability to make laws or rules, formal and informal, and enforce them with violence… all commanding some version of legitimacy. An individual town might have: 1. a Mayor or sheriff elected by some fraction of the propertied townspeople able to pass laws and have them enforced, even to the point of violence or death sentences; 2. An ecclesiastical order empowered to enforce its own laws upon the members of its order, maintaining armed retainers, and empowered (depending on the era) to root out and deal with heretics, (also at various points they owned and/or regulated brothels and vice crime); 3. local lodges of various guilds that variably are empowered to enforce their monopolies, collect debts, and deal with thieves, fraudsters and embezzlers in their midst, possibly including networked merchant guilds that across their various lodges might have more armed men than all but the largest individual towns; 4. Noble families that maintain arms and loyal retainers, with ancient rights and customs, including discretionary power to deal out violence to those who intrude, insult, or otherwise conflict with them… including dueling with their equals, or just brutalizing members of the lower class who insult them (imagine the brawl that starts off Romeo and Juliet, or the internecine fighting throughout, and how restricted The Prince is in setting any consequences for the Capulets and Montagues for their semi-open warfare); 5. A Knightly Order that maintains oaths, loyalties, obligations and interests distinct and separate form the nominal official chain of military command (think Templars, Hospitallers, Teutons); 6. An individual ward which a powerful alderman runs as a fiefdom/racket with a very reliable collection of thugs at his call; 7. All of the Above all over again multiple times, because we’re talking about a city that’s a conglomeration of smaller towns such as London, and the whole thing’s still organized as if it were 7 distinct entities. 8. The actual lord or governor who “rules” the town and answers to the king… on days he feels like it, and all the retainers and support people he uses to “govern” the place. There is no coherent unified monopoly on violence like we imagine the state to hold in this situation. Instead various factions and institutions have all amassed various forms of legitimacy: cultural, political, and practical…and have all carved out their little niche in which they can deal their own version of law, violence and justice. If you are a lawyer or have to deal with politics or government, or regulation, you might already be starting to see why I’m predicting this for the future but for those who are less versed in American governance:
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But they were both of them deceived. For neither the English or French monarchies truly understood the power they had wielded, nor whom had granted it to them: It was not the Crown itself that wielded absolute power, but rather the central government, and the central government was not a collection of neat hierarchically delegated power… the lawyers and bureaucrats were not gaining their power from the crown, the crown was gaining its power from the lawyers and bureaucrats. And as soon as the crown was impeding the Lawyers and bureaucrats centralization and concentration of power in their class, the bureaucrats and upstarts rebelled… Thus the English and French revolutions. Thus the state consumed the sovereign, great men were still able to wield the state like Napoleon or later Hitler, Stalin, FDR, Churchill and Moa… But the leaders now needed to appease the state, not the paper pushers the other way… then by the 1960s it had become basically impossible for even great men to control the bureaucracies beneath them. Stalin may have been killed, Kennedy was killed, Kruschev and Nixon soft couped… And no nation has had a great man leader since… the most successful leaders have been those who most effectively surrendered the last rememenants of their executive power… The executive branch and the “office of the president” is more powerful than it has ever been. The executive branch has never employed more people, nor the Whitehouse. The PERSON of the president though has never been weaker. Trump was besieged unable to fire any of his “executive” branch “employees” and now Biden physically embodies the state of things… The man who sits in the oval office is puppeted by the Whitehouse, and the Whitehouse by the executive branch… a complete inversion of how the organization is supposed to work.
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Whilst there have been many unitary states in history for whom any and all power and authority, at least officially, formally, came from one centralized institution and myth, Whether that be absolute monarchism, where it is concentrated in one person, or Unitary Republics where the “voice of the people” is 100% and only concentrated in one single assembly, The US is slightly more… sophisticated.
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This balance of powers is not dissimilar to how hard it was for a duke to control or discipline a petulant lord... Sure there was some hypothetical mechanism to remove him or wage war… but the incredible effort required means you’d rarely if ever do it for any except the worst offender. But all this becomes fractally more complicated when we zoom out. The US federal government receives its authority officially from the constitution… where does the constitution receive its authority? In an absolutist monarchy or French/Russian style revolutionary “republic” the origin of political power would be simple. The king or Director would answer to “God” or “The People” and it would be understood that the government’s continued existence meant God and “the People” were pleased and not to be consulted further on the matter. But when the American Constitution says “We the people” it actually refers to bodies and organizations entitled to represent them and give consultation. Namely the states, who all have their own assemblies, governors, courts and constitutions.
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But even this only scratches the surface because there are also hundreds of territory holding recognized sovereign nations within the US. Namely the 326 federally recognized Tribal Indian reservations each of which have their own treaties establishing rights and semi-sovereign powers derived not from the constitution, but from their own pre-existing sovereignty (if they didn’t have this congress wouldn’t have made treaties with them… they’d have just unilaterally passed a law). And these are real powers… they have armed native police, perhaps 10s of thousands of armed men collectively, who answer to the Band Councils alone.
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Is it any wonder the bureaucrats have been able to carve out such scrutiny free power for themselves? but of course informally for most of its history the map of real power looked nothing like this.
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Remember those 377 officially recognized top level governments with constitutional sovereignty in America alone? Forget that, that’s a fiction… The real number that exercise violent power, Ie. Real Political Power, is somewhere in the thousands if not tens of thousands. The City of New York is not included on that list (officially it is answerable and dissolvable by the state of New York, LOL)… and the city of New York has 36,000 armed and ready police officers at it’s beck and call (as many as Napoleon had when he invaded Italy). Likewise every dinky little city and county has its own police departments, often with elected sheriffs who functionally have independence that rivals state governments, and are only really removable by a process of impeachment at the state level. And this is before we get into the Cartels, militias, ideological movements, and collections of friends who are all shockingly armed and in many cases better trained and versed in infantry and low intensity warfare than about 90% of military personnel or police.
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I’ve by no means covered everything I want to on this topic. Mapping out the future of what a Neo-Medieval post national regime, and how we’d get from here to there is likely to be my life’s work. Both in that I’m going to be writing about it for the rest of my life and that we’re going to be living it. But one of the thing’s I want to emphasize as it would be a mistake to think of these developments as merely the rise of a “Mad Max” warlord driven world. Far from it, whatever successor institutions, aristocracies, and duchies devour the modern welfare states in a orgy of map redrawing and private fortune making will probably find that there is a great deal of economic and technological low hanging fruit just lying about. I doubt it will offset the scale of the disruption globally, but things like Cheap automobiles, cheap bush planes, cheap housing construction, low taxes, no DEI mandates, and a whole host of other things now criminalized by “Democracy” will suddenly be opened up and we’ll probably see a massive change in settlement patterns and ways of living as a result.
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We are seeing the inevitable conclusion and failure of the “Liberal Democracy” born into the world around the French Revolution. “Democracy” has expanded to the point where more people have a hypothetical right to vote than exist in the country and governments import them to vote which way the state likes, whilst “Liberal” civil rights have expanded to the point where everything is a right: Healthcare, Schooling, to get hired for jobs, to have your feelings defended… Everything is a right… Except for any of the liberties actually established in and of the founding documents or revolutions of the 18th century. Those are now forms of hate and terrorism. To speak your mind is no longer a protected right, but to be protected from someone speaking their mind about you demands the full armed response of the state.
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This is an introductory essay. A justification for my ideological projects to come. What is going to happen is largely inevitable but how long we live through the chaos of the fall or how quickly we settle on the equilibriums that will hold with the new balance of powers will be a matter that could take a 30 or 100 years war… or it could wrap up into a stable equilibrium in 5-15. I hope by digging deeper we can shorten that window, speedrun the new order, and limit the damage these abominations of governments can do on the way out.
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the best thing u can do 4 ur friends is get them 2 watch the decline of western civilization part ii: the metal years
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Concert Review: X
Sat. September 2, 2023 @ Wilbur Theatre (Boston, MA)
marquee at The Wilbur
L.A. legends X are having quite a moment this Summer. When Elon Musk decided to re-brand Twitter as X last month, the band X had the perfect response! The band is notable for being a part of the L.A. punk scene in the late 70s / early 80s, but in many ways it is kind of reductive to call them just a punk band as they incorporated so many different styles than just punk. They are a band that are bigger than the sum of their parts: D.J. Bonebrake on drums, Billy Zoom on guitar, John Doe on bass and vocals, and of course singer Exene Cervenka. Earlier this Summer I got to interview Cervenka via phone and discuss the current tour and how they have been able to perform songs off their most recent album Alphabetland, released during the Pandemic in 2020, which was also their first album in 27 years! Going into this concert, I was by no means an expert on X, but I have the utmost respect for their contribution to the L.A. music scene at the time. I have their debut album Los Angeles on vinyl in my collection and I've dug them ever since I saw Penelope Spheeris' doc The Decline of Western Civilization, which features X among a ton of their peers like The Germs and Black Flag. The band's song "Los Angeles" has also accompanied me on my trips to L.A.
X onstage
The opening act was Squirrel Nut Zippers, who I hadn't thought of in a long time. They kind of pre-dated the swing phenomenon of 1998, but had some solid songs. They were fun and got the party started. Then Billy Zoom came out and began playing his guitar and he played along with a recording of Link Wray's "Rumble" as the band came out. The Los Angeles album got the most representation of any of their albums and were among my personal faves. They slipped in a few covers including The Doors' "Soul Kitchen" (The Doors' Ray Manzarek famously produced them and they performed with Robby Krieger) and they played some brand news songs they are planning to record after this tour. This concert is the case for aging gracefully in rock: all of the members are in their 60s and 70s and could mop the floor with bands less than half their age. I mean WOW - Serious punk and rockabilly energy you don't see that often! The co-singing between Doe and Cervenka has always been such a strong part of the band's personality and they didn't miss a beat. Doe is also known for his acting and my favorite role of his was as Julianne Moore's ex-husband in Boogie Nights! But I digress. The entire band is tight!
X with Exene in the spotlight
After the show, I got to go backstage. My interview I did with Cervenka was via phone, so it was really nice to get to meet her in person and she couldn't have been any cooler!
Exene Cervenka and I backstage after the show
For info on X: http://www.xtheband.com/
#x#concert review#exene cervenka#john doe#billy zoom#dj bonebrake#squirrel nut zippers#music nerd#link wray
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Avedon 100 Exhibition
Although the images displayed in the Avedon exhibition are not part of one story, can you discover a narrative interpretation in one or more of the images offered in this exhibition?
One obvious narrative come to mind— the documentation of Jacob Israel Avedon, Richard’s father, throughout his older age and then eventually as he was dying (although the more graphic photos of his dying were not shown at the exhibition).
The photos displayed together in chronological order show the declining health of his father—The first photo at the top shows Richard’s father with a sharp expression in his eyes and dark hair (although to be fair it was most likely dyed); he is an older man but his stature and expression in the photos still demand respect; looking at this photo, I can empathize how he might inspire the type of fear and oppression in Richard that he [Richard] has described in other publications.
As the photos go on this man becomes fragile in his pressed suits—in the two photos with his polka dot tie, the suits seem to fit too big for Jacob; his frame shrinking under his boxed-shouldered topcoat, gray hair and dentures, age spots and wrinkles more pronounced.
The next two photos of Avedon's father in a black suit—the poor man looks like a complete shadow of his former self in the first photo... though his eyes are looking at the camera in the first shot, they seem lost, as if not truly understanding what he is looking at. The second photo seems to confirm his “mentally checked out” ambiguity. The last two photos of Jacob show him in a hospital gown, thinning, frail, and distant. As a viewer, it seems these may be some of the last images that Richard will make of his father who is evidently on his way out...
2. Avedon’s images often blur the lines between the genres of fashion, fine art and documentary photography. Do you feel his work acts as photojournalistic telling stories in single images and or series? Explain your reasoning.
I absolutely feel that Avedon’s work acts as a photojournalistic body of work! His collection is so extensive, it is evident that he was an absolute workhorse and probably shot everyday of his life. In that sense, he really lived by the mantra that “half the job is just showing up”, and by consistently “showing up”, he was able to create a documentation of the times, of “America, then”. Not just simply in his more obvious photojournalistic works, such as In The American West, but even in his fashion and finer art photography of celebrities and high society; those who shaped popular culture for over sixty years, from Marilyn Monroe, to Audrey Hepburn, Cindy Crawford, Chaka Khan, Andy Warhol and other members of The Factory, etc. His Portraits of Power collection of elite government officials, contrasted with the civil rights movement and figures like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the Young Lords; his high school friend James Baldwin… these are people that have gone down in American history, some have already passed away, but they were documented and live on in these iconic photos taken by one of the greatest photographers of all time.
Furthermore, there is much than can still be inferred with each photo: the attitudes of the time, style, fashion and beauty standards, social conversations of homoeroticism and sexual liberation, fights for racial equity and socioeconomic liberation, the expansion and construction of America’s Western frontier. Perhaps Avedon was not completely cognizant of these themes at the time of taking these photos, but shown together as a retrospective collective (that I also must mention was largely displayed in chronological order, to its conveyance success) his work functions to tell many stories of the people of the time. Many of his photos are strong enough to tell a story as a standalone, but compiled together, their power and success in storytelling and conveying an era in history is undeniable.
3. Choose 2 remarkably different images from the exhibition. Speak to the similarities and differences between each image. What attracted you to these images?
Two remarkably different photos are the studio portrait taken of Michael Jordan, and the portrait out in the oil field of Tom Stroud in Oklahoma. These images, though completely different, both show their subjects with such a level of dignity, intensity, and both photos focus on their subject by using Avedon’s signature white background—there is nothing that distracts us as viewers from these people.
The use of studio lighting with Michael Jordan makes his dark skin look like black gold in the way that it shines and glistens from sweat in the strobe lights. It is highly complimentary for this rich skin to be placed against the plain backdrop of Avedon's signature white. This shot is a mix of fashion and glamour that Avedon was known for—Jordan wears his iconic Jordan Retro 4 sneakers, that are still highly sought after even today. His socks are perfectly crisp and white, his huge hands in total control of the basketball, the classic Bulls 23 jersey which is also a street fashion/courtside Chicago staple to this day. Michael stands in position with an intense look in his eyes and allows the viewer to feel that they’re on the court with him, about to get their ankles broken in a fatal crossover and be humiliated after he dunks over our heads. There is poise, prestige; he demands respect, even from his small 8x10 print mounted on the wall.
Conversely, the photo of Tom Stroud in the oil field, while still demanding respect, demands so in a much different way. First, the photo must be at least 4 feet tall (from my memory), bringing a sense of prestige and recognition that demands respect for a man that, in reality, might be easily be overlooked given his “lower class” as a laborer. Like Michael, his eyes are piercing and intense, enhanced by their light color and allowing visual texture to be captured in his irises. His skin is filthy, layered with earth and oil from a days work on the field, his shirt is off, his leather vest ripped, hair sopping. The expression on his face is hardened; one can only wonder what his life story is. Though it is clear he’s had a hard life, he is not asking for pity.
Two completely different figures, one famous, one blue collar, and yet both displayed with such dignity; two men from completely different walks of life with such resolve and power in something so subtle as the expression on their faces. The amount of detail captured on both photos truly highlights the resolution capability of 8x10 negatives—the show as a whole was super inspiring as it related to this format (and large format in general). Avedon was a master, and as a student, it was highly inspirational to see so many creative possibilities of using large format cameras/film and furthermore, creative ways as to how these negatives can be printed.
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Good. Thats what democracies are about. Let's hear from an unbiased chinese civil rights lawyer from the mainland out trying to protect the repressed uigurs or the tibetans or the non-han chinese, or religious minorities of any kind. Oh wait…
okay, so, what i'm getting from this is that you think that there aren't civil rights lawyers who defend ethnic or religious minorities in china, and if there were, we would never hear interviews from them where they criticize china in western sources, because they would be too scared to speak out. and- if, for example, there were civil rights lawyers in china, speaking critically about china, in western sources, that would demonstrate that china is a democracy with freedom of speech- since "that's what democracies are all about". correct?
ohhhhhhh well would you look at that.
"aha!" you say. "but in that very interview, she talks about how civil rights lawyers have been detained or otherwise faced harassment from the state! proof of an oppressive dictatorship!"
so- just so we're clear- you're saying that if a country has detained civil rights lawyers, that means that country is an oppressive dictatorship?
And da evil "zionists" are doing such an bad job at their "genocide" the arab population has gone up almost continuously for 76 years and even went up last year amidst the fake "genocide" 😂
okay so just so we're clear, on that last part saying the population went up over the last year, you are saying that if the population is going up, it can't be a genocide? and, conversely, if there's a population decline, that is positive evidence that there is a genocide occurring? i just want us to get that established.
okay, so first off, your source for the claim that the population went up over the last year is sourced from worldometer, which in turn sourced their estimate for the population of palestine from the 2024 Revision of World Population Prospects from the UN. what's that? well, straight from the horses mouth [link]:
The 2024 Revision of World Population Prospects is the twenty-eighth edition of official United Nations population estimates and projections that have been prepared by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. It presents population estimates from 1950 to the present for 237 countries or areas, underpinned by analyses of historical demographic trends. This latest assessment considers the results of 1,910 national population censuses conducted between 1950 and 2023, as well as information from vital registration systems and from 3,189 nationally representative sample surveys. The 2024 revision also presents population projections to the year 2100 that reflect a range of plausible outcomes at the global, regional and national levels.
that's right- the 2024 Revision of World Population Prospects only contains accurate census data up to 2023, everything from there out is projection/estimate based on previous years. gee, sure would be bad for your argument, if, say, the UN had announced that it had reason to believe to population of Gaza was significantly lower than the projection:
The UN is estimating that the population of Gaza has decreased by nearly 200,000 people in just the last nine months amid Israel’s siege — a number reflective of the speed and brutality of Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land. Prior to Israel’s current assault, Palestinian and humanitarian officials had projected that there was a population of 2.3 million people in Gaza. Now, the UN estimates that there are 2.1 million people in Gaza.
but you know what population hasn't been declining?
it is insane how much you keep shooting yourself in the dick. every claim you make to try to defend israel is more applicable to china than israel, and everything you say to attack china is more applicable to israel than china. like, china is actually fighting terrorism in xinjiang, and, amazingly, hasn't had to firebomb any toddlers to do so.
isnt shady dictatorial behavior cause some some shady-ass private german philanthropy thats dodgy about its funding says so....Thats some whack thinking, you have there.
who the fuck are you even talking about? the spectator is a conservative-leaning british publication, and plenty of other sources, including staunchly anti-china sources, will corroborate that the social credit system has been misrepresented:
edit: OH just realized you were talking about MERICS. first off, that's not the only source used for the article, second off, do you have any actual evidence of a pro-China bias at MERICS, or just empty innuendo? insofar as MERICS has any sort of biases, those seem to be pro-western bias, given that Merics is centered in europe and has connections to various european establishments, like for example the Munich Security Conference. MERICS has even been accused by China of spreading misinfo against them!
In March 2021, MERICS was one of several entities sanctioned by the Chinese government for "severely harm[ing] China's sovereignty and interests and maliciously spread lies and disinformation,"
[x]
and the best you can do for sources is fearmongering nonsense from a gawker-owned tabloid rag like gizmodo? please.
me: we should base our understanding of ethics on real events, or at the very least credible thought experiments, and not fiction which was created for entertainment
helluva-hazbin-hufflepuff.tumblr.com: you know what? no. fuck this. fuck you.
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The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (2/6) W.A.S...
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that the humptyhillhead of humself promptly sends an unquiring one well to the westin questof his tumptytumtoes:
Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce
ChatGPT4o critical interpretations (Created ChatGPT):
This passage from Finnegans Wake exemplifies the novel’s densely layered language, blending wordplay, cultural references, and narrative ambiguity. The line involves a multitude of allusions and can be interpreted in several ways depending on the focus of the analysis. Let’s break it down and explore some critical interpretations of its parts.
1. "that the humptyhillhead of humself"
This phrase is a direct reference to Humpty Dumpty, the nursery rhyme character who famously falls from a wall and cannot be put back together. However, Joyce manipulates the name, expanding its meaning:
Humptyhillhead: Suggests a figure atop a hill (or wall), invoking the idea of a fall from a height, which can symbolize the fall of man (as in the biblical fall), or more broadly, the cyclical nature of rise and fall in history, a key theme in Finnegans Wake.
Humself: A play on “himself,” but with "hum" suggesting both a humming sound and the "hum" of humanity at large. It hints at both a personal and universal identity, as Joyce frequently collapses the individual into the collective.
2. "promptly sends an unquiring one"
"Promptly" conveys immediacy, possibly signaling the inevitability of the fall or the inescapability of human folly.
"Unquiring one" is a complex phrase. It can be read as a play on “inquiring one” (someone who seeks knowledge), but prefixed with “un-,” it suggests either a person who is not questioning or perhaps someone who is being "sent off" without receiving an answer. The phrase evokes notions of exile or banishment, both thematically relevant in Finnegans Wake.
This has echoes of Joyce's own experiences as a writer in exile, and the figure of the questing hero (often passive or clueless) who is sent on a journey without necessarily understanding the purpose of the quest.
3. "well to the westin"
"Westin": This could be a reference to multiple ideas. The "West" often symbolizes death or the end of life (e.g., the setting sun). The term might also nod to Western civilization, with its traditions of exploration and conquest, but also decline and fall (as in the fall of Rome). There’s also a playful potential echo of the Westin Hotel, a mundane insertion into this esoteric text, reflecting Joyce’s layering of modernity into myth.
"Well": The word could operate in several ways. It might signify a physical well, echoing water imagery—a key motif throughout the Wake. Wells also evoke ideas of depth and unknowability, suggesting the quest involves descending into mysteries. Alternatively, it could simply mean "thoroughly," implying the character is sent fully into this "western" quest.
4. "questof his tumptytumtoes"
"Quest": A classic symbol of a journey for knowledge, identity, or resolution. In Joyce’s universe, quests are often circular or elusive, reflecting the infinite cycles of history and myth.
"Tumptytumtoes": This is a playful, rhythmic sound, evoking a child's rhyme. It could be echoing Humpty Dumpty again (with its sing-song quality) but now applied to the feet, possibly as a metaphor for faltering or stumbling in the journey (as Humpty himself does in his fall). The repetition of "tum" suggests a playful but also tragic circularity, a rhythm of falling, questing, and failing—much like the cycles of history that Joyce reflects upon throughout Finnegans Wake.
Critical Interpretations
Fall and Rebirth Cycles: The allusion to Humpty Dumpty, a figure who falls and cannot be repaired, links to Joyce’s broader theme of cyclical history. Just as Humpty’s fall mirrors the inevitable collapse of civilizations, the "inquiring one" could be humanity or any figure in search of meaning or redemption who must experience a fall before renewal or enlightenment. This resonates with the Wake’s use of Vico's cyclical theory of history, where societal collapse leads to rebirth.
The Heroic/Anti-Heroic Quest: The phrase may reference a heroic quest in the vein of traditional epics, but Joyce typically subverts such tropes. Here, the "unquiring one" seems passive or confused, less of a traditional hero and more of a modern, disoriented figure—much like Ulysses’ Leopold Bloom. The quest itself is also vague and directionless ("well to the westin"), undermining the usual purposefulness of epic journeys. This undercuts the notion of clear-cut meaning or resolution in life, in line with modernist preoccupations.
Identity and Fragmentation: The play on "humself" hints at a disintegration of identity. In the wake of modernist crises of identity (rooted in personal, cultural, and historical contexts), this phrase could represent the fragmentation of the self. Humpty Dumpty, who falls and shatters, is an apt metaphor for this breakdown of unified identity. The quest, then, might be one of trying to piece together these fragments, a task which may be futile, mirroring the Wake’s complex structure of fragmented language and narrative.
Linguistic Play and Meaning-Making: In typical Joyce fashion, the line revels in its wordplay, which resists a single, fixed interpretation. Critics who focus on the linguistic dimension of Joyce’s work might argue that the passage is less about a coherent narrative than about the playful, often frustrating process of making meaning out of language itself. The mixture of familiar references (Humpty Dumpty, the West) with strange neologisms and portmanteaus invites readers to engage in the act of interpretation, even as it denies them easy answers.
Conclusion:
This line embodies the richness and ambiguity of Finnegans Wake. It can be read as a commentary on human folly, a meditation on the cycles of history, or a playful dig at the traditional quest motif. As with much of Joyce’s work, the ultimate meaning remains elusive, encouraging readers to continually reinterpret the text through different lenses. Whether one views it as a microcosm of history, an exploration of identity, or an exercise in linguistic experimentation, the line holds infinite interpretive potential.
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[Review]大世界
Title: 大世界 Great World
Author: 颜凉雨
Length: 61 chapters + 5 extras
Tag: Modern, sci-fi, slice-of-life
Summary:
130 years ago, the mysterious fog that covered the Earth brought about a ‘Wild Awakening’. Humans have thus entered the ‘Animal-morphing Era’.
A hundred years ago, the climate suddenly changed. Natural disasters became frequent, extreme weathers became common, leading to a sharp decline in food supplies and the lapse of technological advancement.
Humankind used 30 years to adapt to the change, evolving half-creature, anthromorphized etc. forms. But they didn’t expect to be faced with the crossroad of survival, instead of a new era.
But the 19 year old Tong Xiaonan (Family: Penguin) and Nie Bingyuan (Family: Polar bear) haven’t started considering the fate of humankind yet. As the freshmen of the century-old No. 4 Creature Awakening University--
Tong Xiaonan’s greatest trouble was: my friend thought I saw him as a brother.
Nie Bingyuan’s greatest trouble was: my friend spoiled and tolerated me, but he always looked at me like a dummy.
Novel
Comments *contains spoilers**
Set ~100 years after the second book, the third book focuses on the school life and world of Nie Bingyuan and Tong Xiaonan. Unlike the first two books, the third book builds a more apocalyptic world, where humankind is slowly moving towards their demise. Despite this, the tone of the book is still largely light and the first half of the book is centered around smaller scale events in the school. The second half of the book deals more with the antagonist’s ploy to change the genetic makeup of humankind so that they can awaken mythological creature attributes. MC and ML resolve this by bringing the main couples from books 1 and 2 to battle with the antagonist.
Highlights
Similar to the previous books, the main couple have pretty silly personalities. Nie Bingyuan is super smart, but at the same time superstitious and completely obtuse to his feelings for Tong Xiaonan. Oftentimes he would get jealous at other people who got too close to Tong Xiaonan. Tong Xiaonan, on the other hand, embodies the physical awkwardness of penguins, oftentimes slipping and falling while walking. He has a crush on Nie Bingyuan, but doesn’t dare to voice out his feelings. However, the other students are fully aware of their feelings for each other and basically couldn’t stand them constantly doting on one another.
The evolution of human’s abilities to turn into animals from the previous books provide a nice continuity in the trilogy. The first book depicts the start of humanity’s exploration towards their newfound abilities to attain animal traits; the second book showcases ongoing struggles as new societal hierarchies are created related to the different animal traits; and the last book explored how, aside from animal traits, humanity also obtained additional superpowers in a quickly declining world. It’s kinda sad - but also cool - to see the progression of human civilization - by the third book, conditions have deteriorated so much that people no longer have the internet and they rely only on seafood and potatoes for their staple.
Since I liked the main characters from the previous books, it is cool to see old characters making a debut again. I suspect that the author’s favorite child is Hu Lingyu, given the important role he holds for two books.
In the last part of the book, characters obtain the abilities to transform into mythological creatures. I like the added detail about how the origin of the characters determine the type of mythological creature they are (e.g. western characters turned into western mythological creatures, and Chinese characters turned into Chinese mythological creatures). This is despite the fact that their animal type had nothing to do with the region they live in lol.
Things I didn’t like
The two sections of the story don't quite flow into one another. It’s a bit jarring to read about the daily lives of the main couple and their classmates in the first part, only for those classmates to take on a very peripheral role in the second part of the story. In particular, the second pairing started strong, but quickly became forgotten in the latter part of the story.
And perhaps this is just me, but the ending of the story seems strangely nationalistic, touting China as the only country that had ever done any agriculture research in harsh conditions of the world. Which doesn’t make sense, because anyone could see that agriculture is a natural course of action for ANY country to ensure food security when food supplies are low.
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yessss late 80s glam metal is my SHIT. me and my friends always joke that on friday nights once i start drinking it usually Becomes 1988 for a while for me bc i forget my phone exists n do all manner of stupid shit. im always kinda in the 80s tho. have you seen the decline of western civilization part 2: the metal years?
-bo 🍻
I HAVENT SEEN THAT IT LOOKS SO COOL?? Ill check it out once i have free time :"-]
also 🫡 fellow man living in the 80s i think we're gonna be good friends lol
ALSO 2 sidenotes. since you mentioned loudness when recommending me some bands that means you listen to them right? if so which are your favorite albums/songs from them?? :-] favorite band member too if you have one
AND ive been considering dyeing my hair like marc ferraris and since youre a huge keel fan i wanted to know if you think i should 👀
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The Decline Of Western Civilization part 2: The Metal Years (1988)
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Me, seeing a cute trad post on living a life of growing your own food and raising animals :)
Me, clicks to see who else liked it and checks out their profile :)
It’s another “pro white” /“diversity is white genocide” profile 😒
Idk why I even bother with cottagecore aesthetics.
The "diversity is white genocide" thing will always confuse me because they act like....non White races weren't deluding themselves by mixing with non Whites 💀
People falling in love isn't "anti" anything - those people are just such losers they feel personally attacked whenever people from their own race see beauty elsewhere. That's why insecure White incel have a weird obsession with Black men and act like Black × White was the biggest race mixing threat, when stastically speaking, the White man × Asian woman is the most widespread interracial couple pattern.
It's just that those White incels never call out this brand of race mixing because they 1)themselves have a fetish for Asian women 2) feel threatened by non White MEN stealing 'their' women 3) consider Asian race mixing as a lesser issue bc in their bio essentialist eugenicist mind, Asian gene represent an actual gain in the genetic pool (unlike the low IS inferior negro one)
I guess that's also one the bitter end of the one drop rule deluding half white people into fully identify themselves as their non White part, so race mixing is a net 'loss' in the capita of White people (when objectively speaking half White biracials are a whole category of their own removed from their non White side as well)
And to get back on the tradfem => White supremacist pipeline, it definitely exists unfortunately. Many Westerners feel their civilization influence waning so they cope with their declining world jumping on the retvrn to tradition bandwagon.
That being said, while I think all White supremacist do tend to be drawn towards trad, assuming every trad is a White supremacist (like it's often said) is silly. I already made a post saying that every civilizations had tradcore, and uplifting traditional gender roles, cultivating a garden and living off the grid wasn't a 'White people' thing.
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