#Disabled doctor veteran

[transgayhawkeyepierce]

The problem with Elementary was, while it was fun to see a Holmes adaptation that takes his addiction seriously, it forever stuck that version of Watson in a caretaker role. Joan really wasn't given enough characterization and never seemed to be able to catch up. I stand by my opinion that they should have made her a vet with a limp. At least some significant trauma would be a reason why she needs Holmes too, outside of his Incredible Intellect. Why she's an outsider too. It would have provided something warm and understanding to their dynamic outside of arguing and disappointment.

My second big gripe with it, is how the cast generally treated Holmes? Like, as the designated Freak and Boundary Violater, it seemed like the series thought that was justification to have every other character just show such extreme contempt towards him at the drop of a hat? Even yelling at him and talking to him in such a harsh manner I would consider it extremely inappropriate in a work environment. Even if Holmes was in the wrong, I would often feel like the reaction to whatever he did was also in the wrong, if not more so lol. Like, for instance there's a plotline in season 2 where Holmes asks Watson not to fuck his brother. Clarifying that his brother is a bad person, and he just doesn't really want her too because it's his brother. This is treated as insanely unreasonable on his part for absolutely no reason lmao. Why? I just really felt like This Holmes and Watson just don't like each other. Or rather that Watson just genuinely doesn't like Holmes and feels he is a burden on her life.

And a bit of minor one, but the wierd Insistence that Holmes is straight, straight straight straight, to the point of rubbing the audiences faces in it. Like, I'm not against necessarily changing characters' genders to make Sherlock Holmes a less male-centric story or whatever, but as a character who is widely interpreted as gay or ace, it was just very weird and unnecessary? Also the Holmes and Fem!Moriarty romance obsession thing got old sooooo fast.

[xterrahealthnexusletters]

Doctor in Salem OH

At Xterra Health | Nexus Letters, based in Salem OH, we offer affordable Nexus Letters for VA Disability. Our services are crafted by veterans for veterans, providing expert medical opinions and compassionate support. For a reliable doctor in Salem OH, who understands the complexities of VA claims, trust Xterra Health. We're dedicated to helping you navigate the process and secure the benefits you deserve.

[rememberwren]

A Dichotomy of Thought || 1

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Further Parts You move next door to a disabled veteran and his troubled partner.

Warnings and details: disabled!Johnny; established Ghoap future Ghoap/reader; domestic abuse (not Ghoap); heavy themes of suicide, violence, abuse, poor coping mechanisms, prescription drugs. I’m not sure if I have anything here, let me know if anyone is interested in this series.

#

A helicopter goes down in the mountains of Kazakhstan and it takes a piece of Soap with it. They never recovered the arm—nor the three service members who lost more than their arms in the crash. The thought is one that Johnny’s mind cycles back to often, in moments of quiet or while he lies awake at night feeling tremors in an arm that’s no longer attached. Suddenly he’ll wonder: what are those bones up to, buried in snow and ice so deep the sun will never touch them again? Do they miss me?

Fuck, he misses them.

#

After the accident, the world is very black and white. Mostly it’s black. Blackness at the edge of his vision threatens to creep in when he stands too long, when he stands on his own, when he turns his head too fast. Anytime his blood pressure rises over that Goldilocks number of 120/80, it threatens to drop him faster than Simon used to during their first weeks of training together in the 141.

The doctors say that he’s a miracle. The traumatic brain injury had his brain swelling and pushing at the confines of his skull like water freezing in a bottle. Give him a little longer in the cold and maybe his cap would blow off. Except it hadn’t; he was still dealing with swelling all over: in his thalamus, his hypothalamus, in his cerebrum, all the words he’d never bothered to learn in school and couldn��t fucking remember now no matter how hard he tries. He gets the point. Simon does too. Johnny should be dead.

Instead he just wishes he were.

Even now, when he can remember his name and Simon’s and even (more often than not) the name of the waitress who serves them chicken and waffles at the local diner every Saturday, there are still more bad days than good. Still more darkness than light. Still more nights waking up to the sound of helicopter blades slowing, the relentless hum becoming a deafening chop chop chop like the thrum of his heartbeat. There’s that moment of weightlessness when the helicopter goes down and he has yet to go with it that makes him wake in a cold sweat, nauseous and looking for something to be sick in.

Through it all, Simon is there. Simon is the light. He’d laugh if he heard Johnny say that—though a laugh is probably too generous. Simon doesn’t laugh much these days. Not when he spends three fourths of his time taking care of Johnny and the other fourth thinking about how better to take care of Johnny. If it weren’t for Simon, Johnny would have done himself in by now. There’s a thousand ways to do it; plenty of arms and munitions in the apartment they share together. Or there are the pain pills, if he wanted it to look like an accident. A few too many of those and he could crawl right through that darkness in his vision and find out what’s on the other side. As soon as the thought crosses his mind (and it crosses his mind more often than that fucking chicken crosses the road), the guilt comes, like anyone and everyone can read it on his mind: his mama rest her soul, Simon, Jesus on the cross. After all of the work that has gone into him, into saving his broken body and mind, into rehabilitating him, how can he even think of throwing in the towel?

Turns out it’s pretty fucking easy to think about it.

As a matter of fact, he’s thinking about it the first time he meets you, when you nearly do the job for him.

It’s spring, cool, and he’s working up a goddamn sweat anyway. Simon stands in the alleyway, smoking and pretending not to watch as Johnny hobbles up and down the length of the parking lot with his forearm crutch. His armpit throbs. His knee throbs. His head throbs as he continues along, beating out a strange little rhythm on the concrete—thum-thump, thum-thump, thum-thump. He says all the curse words he knows and dreams up a few new ones too. It’s supposed to be getting easier, but Simon just pushes him harder to make up for the ground he covers. That’s one of the shitty parts about loving an ex-military man; he never goes easy on you.

Johnny’s thinking about the tub upstairs, just big enough for him if he curls in on himself. Sometimes a hot bath helps the knots in his muscles, but sometimes when Simon leaves the room to get a washcloth Johnny will slip beneath the surface of the water and see how long he can hold his—

Then you come out of absolutely nowhere in your shitty little four-door and nearly hit him. As a matter of fact, you do hit his crutch, sending it sprawling out of his hand and sending him clattering to the ground on his bad side. For a moment, he thinks: this is it. This is how I die. Not in a helicopter in Kazahkstan but here, now, today, and he can’t tell if it’s relief in his belly or regret. Then your tires squeal like pigs on the pavement, the smell of burnt rubber thick in the air, and he is face to face with you and your horror, close enough that the air from your hasty turn brushes along his body and sends his heart pounding.

“What the steaming bloody fucking Jesus do you think you’re doing?” he finds himself shouting, pain lancing all along his side from his fake knee to the stump of his arm. Simon is there all at once, cigarette abandoned to smolder to ash in the alleyway, putting his hands under Johnny’s armpits and lifting him like a child even when he yelps in pain like a kicked dog. Johnny leans against him heavily. The edges of his vision are turning black. He bangs his fist against the hood of your car. “Did Jesus send ye? Did He tell ye to finish the fucking job and do me in? ‘That’s the cunt right there, beam him with your car’? Did he tell you that?”

You reluctantly get out of the car, not even wearing a goddamn seatbelt. The car’s soft, insistent alarm begins to remind you with unending politeness that the door is open and your seatbelt is off while you stand there, pallid, eyes huge and watering in the face of Johnny’s shouts.

He sees then that one of your eyes is swollen almost completely shut, blood turning the white sclera pink like the fine mist of blood over the snow when they finally pulled Johnny free from the helicopter. No wonder you didn’t see him coming, with a single functioning eye. He’s opened his mouth to tell you so (and to tell you a dozen other fucking things) when he nearly swoons, the rug of the world being tugged under his feet by the hand of God.

Simon slips a firmer arm around Johnny’s waist.

A man gets out of the passenger side. He begins to berate you for not paying attention, for nearly killing Johnny. Johnny agrees, but is annoyed all the same. He’s the one who almost died; leave the shouting to him.

“I’m so sorry,” you choke out, tears dripping near-constant from your eyes. “I’m an idiot. I’m so sorry. Let me get your—”

“Done enough, haven’t you?” Simon asks cooly. It sends you reeling back into the car where you sit with both hands over your mouth, chest hitching with your panicked sobs.

“Hey, is he, like, okay?” your partner asks.

“Fuck off,” Simon says, deftly ushering Johnny over one shoulder and holding the crutch in the other. He carries them back to the elevators without breaking a sweat, and Johnny cries on his shoulder from the pain of it, the sheer embarrassment of it the whole way home. The day before Kazahkstan he couldn’t have been able to tell you the last time he cried; now he cries every fucking day from one reason or another.

“I’m fine,” Johnny says when they make it back to the apartment and Simon eases him down into a chair. They arrange his knee in the one position that has it throbbing less, but then Johnny bats Simon’s hands away. “Go. I’m fine. I don’t need you hoverin’ over me.”

“Alright.”

“Fuck off with yer alright.”

Simon doesn’t say anything. Johnny hears his footsteps leading toward the bedroom they share—hardly a bedroom, how long has it been since they slept there together peacefully? Since they fucked? Johnny can tell you how long it’s been. Since before things went black and white. The footsteps stop then.

“You stepped in front of her, Johnny,” Simon says, his voice low but not quiet enough to count as a whisper. “I watched you do it. Don’t think you’re so fucking slick.”

He shuts the bedroom door behind him.

[gemmahale]

Okay, I'm home, I've been on the road for the better part of 4 hours today due to a miscommunication and a cancelled event, and I've had this rant brewing.

Being Anti-Military and Pro-Veteran are stances that can mutually exist.

Games like CoD and whatever other FPS/Military Simulation game is out there is propaganda. It’s meant to make you want to sign up or support military action.

The military (I’m speaking specifically to the US, as I am most familiar with them by proxy) uses some incredibly underhanded techniques to ensure they have the warm bodies soldiers they need to keep the system working as intended.

This includes but is not limited to: promises of paying for education, aspirations of “seeing the world”, provision of job security, access to healthcare, a stable job and housing, etc. They use things like “patriotism” and “glory” and “security” to lure people in.

And then, when that person is wholly and completely reliant on the military - for a paycheck, housing, healthcare, you name it - they spit them back out into the world with a "thanks a lot and good fucking luck."

Into a world where:

Financial support for care has been axed and axed and axed again under "budget cuts"

Care is secured with red tape so thick you can tightrope walk across it

Care is denied for things the military caused (by saying "it didn't happen while you were serving".) *Yes, that's a direct quote from a doctor to one of Kallen's peers. When assessing a life-altering injury sustained while they were in country overseas, it was deemed as "non-service related injury”.

In comparison to civilians:

Veterans are ~40% more likely to be homeless.

Veterans are ~80% more likely to suffer from untreated mental and physical health issues - PTSD, hearing loss, nerve damage, etc.

Veterans are ~60% more likely to turn to addictive substances - alcohol, drugs, etc.

Veterans are ~70% more likely to commit suicide.

This isn’t limited to combat vets. Logistics specialists, administrative specialists, IT specialists all get screwed when they leave.

Ask just about any veteran that has served, they are incredibly likely to be staunchly anti-military.

The military causes a tremendous amount of damage to every person involved, even if they aren't aware of it at the time.

It’s a cult, it’s an abusive relationship, it’s predatory. Treat it as such.

Support veterans, advocate for their care. They made choices you may not agree with, but they made them because of what they thought the military was offering to them. Many thought they were doing the right thing for their country - that was the lie they were fed from 9/11 on (in the US). Then they were chewed up, spit out, and left for dead by the same people that made all those promises to them.

Here are some US-based, apolitical Veteran Support groups (many have International chapters/members):

22 Until None - 501-C3 that provides support to veterans by veterans. There are local chapters on Facebook that are all active and are listed on the website

Disabled American Veteran - Veteran help association; involved in legislation and local assistance, connections to VA advocates to help navigate the VA

Wounded Warrior Project - 501-C3 charity supporting disabled veterans.

Note: I am absolutely not doing the "not all servicemembers" thing here. I'm saying "veterans are living with their choices, and still deserve access to care."

[hhnguyen]

aren’t you just precious

Everything medical related was a google search, so those in the medical field please don’t come for me - I was a literature major for a reason 😭

♢ Pairing: Parents!Jake & Neytiri x Oldest daughter!Reader

♢ Word count: 2k 

♢ Genre: suspense, action, angst, slight humor - Warnings: explicit description of injuries, blood, cursing, reader is a lil crazy

⌲ Description: Your iknimaya goes a little south. Aka introducing the ‘demon ikran.’

M A S T E R L I S T

Jake Sully, a marine veteran at the age of twenty-two had gone through absolute hell on earth before ever setting his disabled ass on Pandora. 

He thought he had seen the worse - comrades shot down right in front of his eyes, the blood covering their skin, blank dead eyes staring into his soul. Sometimes there were those who were actually blown to bits by bombs and grenades, screaming not even five feet away from him as they clutched their missing limbs, begging a nonexistent God for mercy.

Then there was his own injury. The pain he hardly remembered, because he had gotten to the point of delusion when they finally managed to drag him out of the war zone, half dead, and to the VA hospital.  

The incoherent words he had heard after waking up from his surgery despite his hazy vision and buzzing hearing at that time, yet the truth coming out of the doctor’s mouth had still hit him in the face like the largest ‘fuck you and your life’ to exist. 

“...ave severe spinal injury...fixable...expensive, marine.”

A severe spinal injury that was fixable but too expensive for a marine like him to afford. 

For an active man as he had been in the past, the thought of being paralyzed from the waist had been his worst nightmare to the point of being ready to waste away his life. 

Though even after all that shit, Jake Sully felt like he wanted to throw up as he stared at his oldest baby girl at the fresh age of fourteen laying there in front of him; delirious as he had once been in the same position, bleeding and bruised. 

He could only thank Eywa that your heart was still beating and your body intact. 

Well, mostly. 

The almost nauseous angle of your left wrist certainly did not look natural. And their bones were fortified, stronger than anything else to human knowledge. Yet it had managed to snap as easily as that. 

Neytiri - his beautiful, poor mate. She was distraught, one would say more so than him. Sitting only inches away from your fevering form in one of Hell’s Gate treating rooms for avatars, muttering prayers with dried tears upon her face. 

Your injuries had been so severe that not even the abilities of your grandmother, the Tsahik, could heal you solely through the spiritual power of Eywa. These kinds of injuries needed the advanced surgery of human technology. 

His other children were barred from coming inside, having been firmly ordered to remain in their village as he and Neytiri made sure that you would be okay. None of them wanted to keep them away, but neither did they want them to be traumatized by seeing your bloodied and broken form. 

A stark contrast from the smiling and proud sister that they knew. 

And yet, you had still managed to complete your iknimaya. 

Jake watched with a bated breath from the air upon Bob, his own faithful ikran through the years, as he saw the slight encouraging push Neytiri had given you on the edge of the nesting place. Your, oh so small form, looked firm and stubborn as you steadily stalked forward in a crouched form, the band for the beak held in your grasp with determination. 

He watched as one ikran flew away. Then another. And another. A third one. Fourth. Fifth. Sixth. 

He had lost count after the eleventh. 

You were getting frustrated, he could see that. Neytiri was still there, calling out for you to calm down. To be patient as he moved Bob a little bit closer, but not too much to distract you if you were to see him hovering. 

And there he was. 

Jake had seen it before you did. The vicious screech even reached him high up in the clouds and echoed above all the other ikrans. 

He felt his blood run cold as the midnight blue beast, nearly black in color with its yellow and green detailing jumped down from the highest point of the rocks and landed behind you as you whirled around with snarl of your own. 

But then as fleeting as it had been, you had grinned, taking in the magnificent animal despite its bloodthirsty aggressiveness. 

“Aren’t you just precious?” Neytiri had told him of your words in the aftermath. 

His mate hollered in encouragement, and he could hardly stop the prideful tug of his own lips. 

Rather than you leaping on the beast, Jake straightened up as he saw the ikran run at you as well. Both were only inches away from crashing, as you last minute decided to slide beneath its belly - slight enough to fit as you rolled away on the other side and then slung the catcher around its mouth swiftly before throwing yourself on its back. 

His expectations had been hopeful from that moment. Positive. But wrong, oh so wrong. 

Rather than trying to snap at you by turning, he watched in horror as the ikran seemed to have a human mind as it slammed against a stone wall, you hitting it first. 

Neytiri had screamed, already half leaping forward but stopping herself as she saw you still clinging to the beast. 

Both had thought that had been the worst of it until the ikran tried it again. This time deliberately falling backward to land on its back with a rumble, where you were hung on. 

“LET GO MA ‘ITE! LET GO!” Neytiri was yelling. Or begging. He couldn’t be sure in his own fear. 

But both of them underestimate you, as a growl mixed with what Jake had assumed to be a painful yell from yourself erupted. Legs manage to wrap around the animal’s neck despite being crushed underneath its weight. 

He saw belatedly you were only holding on to the banshee catcher with one hand as you pulled at its head hard enough to make the animal let out another vicious muted screech. 

And then you truly proved you were his daughter. 

“C’MON YOU MOTHERFUCKER. GRANDPA BOB WAS BETTER THAN THIS!”

The ikran had gotten angrier, trashing before suddenly rolling like a fucking bowling pin on the stone-covered ground. 

Towards the edge of the cliff. 

Neytiri ran, and Jake dove, both reaching out and screaming your name as you and the ikran fell off the edge. 

As his mate leaned almost desperately over the edge, Jake forced himself to draw Bob back up, only for a few seconds - not to interfere with the rite. But it was in those few seconds he felt like his heart had stopped beating. 

There was that familiar screech again. 

Then you were soaring. 

Up in a straight line, past Neytiri and him. Tsaheylu clearly made as the ikran listened to your orders. 

There was a blinding grin on your face as you soared, clearly looking for him and letting out a whoop. 

The moment your eyes caught his, Jake felt his grin slip. 

Your eyes, open just moments before suddenly rolled back. Your whole body went slack as you fell over the side, your newly bonded ikran screeching at the sudden weightless feeling as the bond broke and your body went straight down. 

Jake hadn’t heard his desperate yell, this time diving down without stopping. 

He thought you were dead when he managed to catch you and flew back up, only to have Neytiri meet him in the air on her own mount, an expression so clearly in distress. Without a word, they both made haste back to the village, your newly bonded ikran following closely behind. 

“How is she?” His voice sounded like it had gone over fifty years of smoking with no water. It felt like his whole body was weighed down with stones. 

“She’s alive,” that’s all that Max could offer with a grim expression. “She will need surgery. The momentum of her slamming repeatedly against stones with the ikran’s weight on top has managed to collapse a lung.”

Jake had never wanted to sob like a newborn baby until now. But he needed to remain calm, or at least sane. For Neytiri’s sake, and your siblings.

“Usually surgeries like these lead to long-term conditions in life, but we’re certain that with the Na’vi biology she will heal just fine without complications. But it’s the healing that will take time.”

He was nodding along, but it felt like he was far away. Only hearing a slight inconsistent sound in his ears as he watched through the see-through glass into the room where you were all connected up to tubes and an oxygen mask. 

It was so human, the whole situation of you being in a hospital bed for avatars - Jake wanted to laugh. Not in humor, but maybe in slight delusion at the situation. 

“Okay, okay…” he swallowed. “Anything else?”

His human friend was taking pity on him, Jake knew. 

Max has been there since the beginning. Seeing Jake growing his own family and now being placed in this position. “Besides the broken wrist and strained ankle, it’s mostly cuts and bruises. So she will have to wear a brace as well as remain seated for the next week or so. And check-ups every three days.“

“Yeah, we can do that,” Jake croaked. “When’s the surgery?”

“As soon as possible.”

Another nod. “Thanks, man.”

“Of course.”

He had to nearly pry Netytiri away from you as she snarled protectively. But he had to explain that she couldn’t join in on the surgery due to contamination concerns. The whole room had to be fixed to match that of a Na’vi body, the surgeons wearing oxygen masks as the space was filled with Pandora’s toxic air for your sake. 

It was an open lung surgery, Jake had been told. A risky procedure even on earth. It had taken four hours. Four hours full of anxiety and fear. 

But you had pulled through, Max said, Norm closely behind with a relieved teary smile himself. The man was like another uncle to the kids despite his avatar form. He had watched their ceremonies, rites and connections to Eywa. So to Norm, this was just like a family member to him. 

You had slept for a full day and a half after the surgery, still confined to the avatar hospital room before your eyes had fluttered open with difficulty. A cough erupted followed by your painful whine at the action.

Netytiri had hushed you gently, crouching down and stroking your hair back. Fresh tears fell at seeing you conscious again after so long, sobs breaking out as you flashed a sleepy smile at her. 

Neytiri had felt like Eywa had pulled the entirety of Pandora away from underneath her feet during the hours of your examination and surgery. Clutching Jake to her and never wanting to let go as her oldest baby was at the mercy of nature and your own will to live through. 

But she knew. 

You were strong. You always had been. And you had fought. 

Neytiri had never imagined a day when one of her biggest nightmares nearly came to pass. 

To lose one of her children. 

She would rather throw herself off the highest point on Ayram alusìng than lose one of her precious babies before their time. She believed in Eywa with her whole heart and soul and knew their beings were only borrowed and one day had to be returned. 

But Eywa would not take her children away from her until Neytiri herself agreed. 

Until that time, she would do anything to protect them. But to have it happen during one of their most treasured rites in life had prevented her from doing many things. 

Interfering for once. Because you had said so before as if knowing how horribly wrong it could go. 

“Do not stop me, mama. I can do this on my own.”

Of course, you could. And you did. 

Despite having to brush the doors to Eywa’s home yourself to succeed. 

And as your parents carefully helped you back home to the village after five days of observation at Hell’s Gate after your surgery, you couldn’t help but snicker despite the stabs of pain.  

Your mom had admonished you gently to not aggravate your wounds. Whereas your dad held back the roll of his eyes with amusement tickling the sides of his mouth. 

“Why are you laughing, flower?”

Your grin was shit-eating as you looked up at him.

“My iknimaya was so much cooler than Toruk Makto’s.”

“You little skxawng.”

I feel like I lowkey pulled this one out of my ass, but oh well. 

taglist: @nao-cchi @eywas-heir @ssc7514 @spicycloudsalad @calums-betch @httpjiikook @ricecakeslove @fanboyluvr @iwaslikeblah   @the-wandering-pan-ace @avatarloversblog @eternallyvenus @enchantinggoateefox @arianapntn @heydemonsitsme @slyvixen1029​ @promiseofeywa @love13tter @directioner5life @bambisposts-blogs​ @melllinaa​  @sugarmummystuff6​ @lovekeeho​ @hai-kbai​

[leonardoeatscarrots]

Some of @lavenderleavened 's 1920s batman AU

"You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing."

Reblogs > Likes!

What if we were both disabled military veterans who became doctors and committed medical malpractice to exact our revenge on the system that failed us? And we were gay? What then? 😳

[mightyflamethrower]

In the last 20 years, the Left has boasted that it has gained control of most of America institutions of power and influence—the corporate boardroom, media, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the administrative state, academia, foundations, social media, entertainment, professional sports, and Hollywood.

With such support, between 2009-17, Barack Obama was empowered to transform the Democratic Party from its middle-class roots and class concerns into the party of the bicoastal rich and subsidized poor—obsessions with big money, race, a new intolerant green religion, and dividing the country into a binary of oppressors and oppressed.

The Obamas entered the presidency spouting the usual leftwing boilerplate (“spread the wealth,” “just downright mean country,” “get in their face,” “first time I’ve been proud of my country”) as upper-middle-class, former community activists, hurt that their genius and talents had not yet been sufficiently monetized.

After getting elected through temporarily pivoting to racial ecumenicalism and pseudo-calls for unity, they reverted to form and governed by dividing the country. And then the two left the White House as soon-to-be mansion living, mega-rich elites, cashing in on the fears they had inculcated over the prior eight years.

To push through the accompanying unpopular agendas of an open border, mandatory wind and solar energy, racial essentialism, and the weaponization of the state, Obama had begun demonizing his opponents and the country in general: America was an unexceptional place. Cops were racist. “Clingers” of the Midwest were hopelessly ignorant and prejudiced. Only fundamental socialist transformation could salvage a historically oppressive, immoral, and racist nation.

The people finally rebelled at such preposterousness. Obama lost his party some 1,400 local and state offices during his tenure, along with both houses of Congress. His presidency was characterized by his own polarizing mediocrity. His one legacy was Obamacare, the veritable destruction of the entire system of a once workable health insurance, of the hallowed doctor-patient relationship, and of former easy access to competent specialists.

Yet Obama’s unfufilled ambitions set the stage for the Biden administration—staffed heavily with Obama veterans—to complete the revolutionary transformation of the Democratic Party and country.

It was ironic that while Obama was acknowledged as young and charismatic, nonetheless a cognitively challenged, past plagiarist, fabulist, and utterly corrupt Joe Biden was far more effective in ramming through a socialist woke agenda and altering the very way Americans vote and conduct their legal system.

Stranger still, Biden accomplished this subversion of traditional America while debilitated and often mentally inert—along with being mired in a bribery and influence-peddling scandal that may ultimately confirm that he easily was the most corrupt president to hold office in U.S. history.

How was all this possible?

Covid had allowed the unwell Biden to run a surrogate campaign from his basement as he outsourced his politicking to a corrupt media.

Senility proved a godsend for Biden. His cognitive disabilities masked his newfound radicalism and long-accustomed incompetence. Unlike his past failed campaigns, the lockdowns allowed Biden to be rarely seen or heard—and thus as much liked in the abstract as he had previously been disliked in the concrete.

His handlers, the Obamas, and the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren radical Democrats, saw Biden’s half-century pretense as a gladhander—good ole Joe Biden from Scranton—as the perfect delivery system to funnel their own otherwise-unpopular leftwing agendas. In sum, via the listless Biden, they sought to change the very way America used to work.

And what a revolution Biden’s puppeteers have unleashed in less than three years.

They launched a base attack on the American legal system. Supreme Court judges are libeled, their houses swarmed, and their lives threatened with impunity. The Left promised to pack the court or to ignore any decision it resents. The media runs hit pieces on any conservative justice deemed too influential. The prior Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer whipped up a mob outside the court’s doors, and threatened two justices by name. As Schumer presciently put it, they would soon “reap the whirlwind” of what they supposedly had sowed and thus would have no idea what was about to “hit” them.

Under the pretense of Covid fears, balloting went from 70 percent participation on election day in most states to a mere 30 percent. Yet the rates of properly rejected illegal or improper ballots often dived by a magnitude of ten.

Assaults now followed on hallowed processes, laws, customs, and institutions—the Senate filibuster, the 50-state union, the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, Election Day, and voter IDs.

Under Biden, the revolution had institutionalized first-term impeachment, the trial of an ex-president while a private citizen, and the indictment of a chief political rival and ex-president on trumped up charges by local and federal prosecutors—all to destroy a political rival and alter the 2024 election cycle.

Biden destroyed the southern border—literally. Eight million entered illegally—no background checks, no green cards, no proof of vaccinations. America will be dealing with the consequences for decades. Mexico was delighted, receiving some $60 million in annual remittances, while the cartels were empowered to ship enough fentanyl to kill 100,000 Americans a year.

“Modern monetary theory,” the Leftist absurdity that printing money ensures prosperity, followed. It has nearly bankrupted the country, unleashed wild inflation, and resulted in the highest interest rates in a quarter-century. Middle-class wages fell further behind as a doddering Biden praised his disastrous “Bidenomics.”

Biden warred on fossil fuels, cancelling federal leases and pipelines, jawboning lending agencies to defund fracking, demonizing state-of-the-art, clean-burning cars, and putting vast areas of oil- and gas-rich federals lands off-limits to drilling.

When gas prices predictably doubled under Biden and the 2022 midterms approached, he tried temporarily to lease out a few new fields, to drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and to beg the Saudis, and our enemies, the Iranians, the Venezuelans, and the Russians, to pump more oil and gas that Biden himself would not. All this was a pathetic ruse to temporarily lower gas prices before the mid-term elections.

Biden abandoned Afghanistan, leaving the largest trove of military equipment behind in U.S. military history, along with thousands of loyal Afghans and pro-American contractors.

Biden insulted the parents of the 13 Marines blown up in this worst U.S. military debacle since Pearl Harbor. He lied to the parents of the dead that he too lost a son in the Iraq war, and when among them later impatiently checked his watch as he seemed bored with the commemoration of the fallen—and made no effort to hide his sense that the ceremony was tedious to him.

Vladimir Putin summed up the Afghan debacle—and Biden’s nonchalant remark that he wouldn’t react strongly to a “minor” invasion of Ukraine if it were minor—as a green light to invade Ukraine.

When Biden did awaken, his first reaction was an offer to fly the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the country as soon as possible. What has followed proved the greatest European killing ground since the 1944-45 Battle of the Bulge, albeit one that has now fossilized into a Verdun-like quagmire that is draining American military supply stocks and killing a half-million Ukrainians and Russians.

Suddenly, there are three genders, not two. Women’s sports have been wrecked by biological men competing as women, destroying a half-century of female athletic achievement. Young girls in locker rooms, co-eds in sororities, and women in prison must dress and shower with biological men transitioning to women by assertion.

There is no longer a commitment to free speech. The American Civil Liberties Union is a woke, intolerant group trying to ban free expression under the pretense of fighting “hate” speech and “disinformation.”

The Left has revived McCarthyite loyal oaths straight out of the 1950s, forcing professors, job applicants, and students applying for college to pledge their commitment to “diversity” as a requisite for hiring, admittance, or promotion. Diversity is our era’s version of the Jacobins’ “Cult of Reason.”

Race relations hit a 50-year nadir. Joe Biden has a long history of racist insults and putdowns. And now as apparent penance, he has reinvented himself as a reverse racial provocateur, spouting nonsense about white supremacy, exploiting shootings or hyping racial tensions to ensure that an increasingly disgusted black electorate does not leave the new Democratic Party.

The military has adopted wokeism, oblivious that it has eroded meritocracy in the ranks and slashed military recruitment. It is underfunded, wracked by internal suspicion, loss of morale and ginned up racial and gender animosity. Its supply stocks are drained. Arms productions is snail-like, and generalship is seen as a revolving door to corporate defense contractor board riches.

Big-city Democratic district attorneys subverted the criminal justice system, destroyed law enforcement deterrence, and unleashed a record crime wave. Did they wish to create anarchy as protest against the normal, or were they Jokerist nihilists who delighted in sowing ruin for ruin’s sake?

Radical racial activists, with Democrat endorsement, demand polarizing racial reparations. The louder the demands, the quieter they remain about smash-and-grab looting, carjacking, and the swarming of malls by disproportionally black teens—even as black-on-black urban murders reach record proportions.

In response, Biden tried to exploit the growing tensions by spouting lies that “white supremacy” and “white privilege” fuel such racial unrest—even as his ill-gotten gains, past record of racist demagoguery and resulting lucre and mansions appear the epitome of his own so-called white privilege.

This litany of disasters could be vastly expanded, but more interesting is the why of it all?

What we are witnessing seems to be utter nihilism. The border is not porous but nonexistent. Mass looting and carjackings are not poorly punished, but simply exempt from all and any consequences. Our downtowns are reduced to a Hobbesian “war of all against all,” where the strong dictate to the weak and the latter adjust as they must. The streets of our major cities in just a few years have become precivilizational—there are more human feces on the sidewalks of San Francisco than were in the gutters of Medieval London.

The FBI and DOJ are not simply wayward and weaponized, but corrupt and renegade. Apparently the perquisite now for an FBI director is the ability either to lie while under oath or better to mask such lying by claiming amnesia or ignorance.

Immigration is akin to the vast unchecked influxes of the late Roman Empire across the Danube and Rhine that helped to finish off a millennium-old civilization that had lost all confidence in its culture and thus had no need for borders.

In other words, the revolution is not so much political as anarchist. Nothing escapes it—not ceiling fans, not natural gas cooktops, not parents at school board meetings, not Christian bakeries, not champion female swimmers, not dutiful policemen, not hard-working oil drillers, not privates and corporals in the armed forces, not teens applying on their merits to college, not anyone, anywhere, anytime.

The operating principle is either to allow or to engineer things to become so atrocious in everyday American life—the inability to afford food and fuel, the inability to walk safely in daylight in our major cities, the inability to afford to drive as one pleases, the inability to obtain or pay back a high interest loan—that the government can absorb the private sector and begin regimenting the masses along elite dictates. The more the people tire of the leftist agenda, the more its architects furiously seek to implement it, hoping that their institutional and cultural control can do what  ballots cannot.

We could variously characterize their efforts as destroying the nation to save it, or burning it down to start over, or fundamentally transforming America into something never envisioned by the Founders.

Will their upheaval  succeed? All the levers of the power and money are on the side of the revolutionaries. The people are not. And they are starting to wake to the notion if they do not stop the madness in their midst they very soon won’t have a country.

A perfect metaphor for what the progressives have done to America.

[reality-detective]

Did You Know: Oprah Winfrey has been arrested?

Her crimes: 👇

Treason

Child trafficking

Accessory to mass murder

Conspiracy to influence the outcome of an election

Aiding and abetting the enemy

And there are other high crimes I'm sure.

Pay Attention because the Oprah Winfrey they show us on the te-LIE-vision is a doppelganger (who is nowhere near as fat and the teeth are different) or it's AI generated.

The research everyone should be doing is lööking these people up and comparing past photos to the present.

Biden is NOT Biden

Kamala Harris is NOT Harris

Lloyd Austin is NOT Austin

John Fetterman is NOT Fetterman

The Pope is NOT the pope

Charles is NOT the King of England

And there are a whole lot more, worldwide.

The shamestream media is still Fake...

"Everything you see isn't fake, it's controlled."

This isn't called "The Great Awakening" for nothing. Unfortunately we're still waiting for people to wake up AND stand up. ⚔️🛡️

We the people need to be "United" because Divided We Will Fall ����🇲

Have you had enough yet?

This happened in my area just last week. 👇

As a disabled veteran, my VA doctor just vanished. He was a big time vaccine pusher and over the years I got to know some lab techs in the facility really well and on Thursday they informed me that 5 doctors, 3 pharmacists and 8 nurses just stopped showing up for work and seemed to have disappeared without an explanation. The VA facility I use is currently understaffed and they're rescheduling appointments. Maybe more will be vanishing? You don't have to believe me, all I'm asking is that you do some of your own research and stop being so complacent.

So if you think nothing is happening... You are a part of the problem and you're the people we're waiting for to wake up. Comatose people can't stand up.

Germany 🇩🇪 Netherlands 🇷🇺 France 🇫🇷 they are doing it right.

What you going to do? 🤔

[unreone]

OPENING EMERGENCY COMMISSIONS

I am a Filipino artist with autoimmuno deficiencies and currently enduring urinary complications (For the lack of the better term, I am pissing blood for three weeks and experiencing chronic pains on my lower torso region. I have not yet went through the urinalysis as the uni clinic doctor advice to exactly pinpoint the cause due to hectic academic schedule.)

I have two younger siblings, a veteran disabled father with metal implants on his legs and a mother with lung problems. Today, September 21, 2024 at 8:43 am, we received an eviction notice, adding to the pile of financial problems that we are currently confronting.

I would highly appreciate it if you look into my commission sheet right here:

UnReone's Commission Form

Since this is an emergency, I am willing to negotiate and lower my rates but these are the base prices:

My Google Form does not collect e-mails.

But in case you wish for other point of contact, I can also be found here:

I KNOW this is highly out of character for me to reach out like this, as often as possible, we'd like to solve our private matters on our own hands, the same way our people value genuine hardwork, but desperate times needs desperate measures. The fandom tags inclusions are the spaces I've drawn for before, and it's quite relevant considering I provide example in my Reference Sheet.

Please, Please, Please help in your own way. Reblogging does wonders to small artists like me. My younger sibs don't deserve to live in the mountains again.

REBLOGS ARE HIGHLY ENCOURAGE!!!!!

[disbabeled]

This was originally a reblog to another post but I think it deserves its own post. So.

Let's talk about MAiD.

The original purpose of MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) was to give people that were already dying the choice to die in a dignified and painless manner. That original purpose has shifted so far that it's now being used for people with non-terminal disabilities, mental illness, and even people experiencing poverty.

Plenty of people have heard of the disabled veterans that were offered MAiD when they requested a ramp but have you heard about the man with an undiagnosed illness choosing MAiD because doctors weren't able to diagnose him? Death is the only option he sees and it's the best one they can offer him.

What about this disabled woman who is opting for MAiD because she can't afford the medical care she needs? This is a colossal failure of the system. This woman has a kid, a family, and wants to live but she sees no other options here. The government will pay for her to die, but not for the care she needs to live.

This man is applying for MAiD because the alternative is homelessness. He doesn't want to die, he's afraid to die. But with the way he is living now, this is the only choice he sees.

This is a form of eugenics. Keep the disabled and mentally ill from getting the help they need and offer us death instead. And hey, if you save some money along the way that's just a fun little bonus.

Over $30 billion is going to the military while people are choosing to die because they can't get access to the most basic social supports they need. It is easier and quicker to access MAiD than it is to access disability support.

We are living in a dystopia and not enough people realize.

[thexie-and-stars]

Tips to get doctors to listen to you

I just had a doctors appointment which confirmed my suspicions that I have POTS so, here's some tips from your veteran doctor appointment-er: 1. If possible, get a disabled doctor, they know what your going through. 2. "My [partner/roomate/parent/friend] thinks I might have {x}, can you confirm or deny that? 3. "I'm glad we ruled out [x], but can we look at [x]?

There are other tips, Im just tired

[briarpatch-kids]

Hi, you've mentioned before that you slowly lost your abilities over time, and I have a question related to that, but feel free to ignore this if you don't want to talk about stuff. How did you know when you were at the point of struggling with things where having a support person to help you out with different tasks? What was the process of getting a support person like?

I keep getting new health issues and I've reached the point where there's things like laundry that I can't do with any regularity. My friend suggested I look into getting a support person to help me with the tasks that I've been struggling to do, but I don't know where to even start with figuring out if that's what I need or if I'm even struggling enough to need that type of help.

This is kind of a difficult question because there's a difference between NEEDING services and actually qualifying for them. I know people who can't care for their house, but can't get services until they're more disabled, I know some places require you to be housebound, and I know the services I get are different because I go through the veteran's affairs and they have different rules.

There's usually two or three separate types of service, bath aid for washing your body, homemaker services for the home, and home health for medical needs like IV medicine and the like.

Bath aid is the easiest to qualify for, and some people even get it temporarily after surgery or whatever. If you struggle to bathe, can't wash parts of yourself, or have to wait too long in between baths, this is the service for you. Most insurances and government services offer bath aid.

Homemaker aid is what you'd be looking for, basically someone to come in and help with chores and cooking and stuff like that. This is harder to qualify for, but don't give up because of that! You'll have to look into what your insurance or government covers and if you qualify. If you can't take care of your house, there's no reason you shouldn't ask! An alternative might be a laundry pickup service or housekeeper coming in once a week to help you catch up.

For home health, it's stuff like filling up medicine boxes or doing maintaining on a medical device like a feeding tube or port. They usually give you a checkup while they're there and if you have any wounds, they can do wound care. If you have an implanted medical device that needs regular attention and you can't leave the house easily, you'll probably qualify for this via insurance or government aid.

Tl:Dr if you struggle a lot, it doesn't hurt to ask your doctor and find out what you can get!

Edit: @kelpforestdwellers if you have the energy I think you'd be a better fit for answering this since you get a variety of care and aren't getting it through veterans affairs

[mariacallous]

Mexico is in the throes of its first presidential campaign with two women leading the race. Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and former Sen. Xóchitl Gálvez top polls ahead of the June 2 general elections, virtually guaranteeing that the country will soon inaugurate its first female head of state.

It is a milestone both for Mexico and for Latin America. Countries across the region have embraced mandatory gender quotas in public offices, and none with more fervor than Mexico. A 2019 constitutional reform mandated that elected and appointed positions at all levels of government must be gender-balanced. As a result, political parties looked to women to fill senior candidate slots.

Sheinbaum has at least a 15 percent advantage over Gálvez in most recent polls. But even the third-ranking, male presidential candidate Jorge Álvarez Máynez reflects the reach of Mexican feminism: He chose a veteran feminist politician, Patricia Mercado, to coordinate his platform for part of the campaign; Mexican magazine Quién called her the “third woman” in the race.

Although they stand for different political ideologies—Sheinbaum represents the governing left-leaning Morena party, Gálvez heads a more pro-market opposition alliance, and Álvarez fronts a centrist group—the candidates agree on many gender-related issues.

All three say they support the Mexican Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to decriminalize abortion in federal health centers. They also promise to launch a publicly funded system to provide different types of care work and pledge to reduce gender-based violence. In Mexican politics today, openly criticizing feminism usually leads to candidates ���being canceled on social media and losing votes,” abortion rights lawyer Ninde Molina told Foreign Policy.

Still, Molina and many other activists are approaching the milestone election with a mindset of determination rather than euphoria. The fact that a politician is a woman “does not guarantee that she is a democrat or a defender of human rights” or feminist principles, Molina wrote for Este País this month.

According to Molina, the woman presidential candidates have shied away from offering detailed stances on abortion during the campaign, other than to support the Supreme Court decision. The same goes for Álvarez. That nuance matters because 19 of Mexico’s 32 federal jurisdictions have yet to decriminalize the procedure. Many public hospitals don’t offer abortions even where they are legal, Molina added, and Mexico’s public health care system is often short on abortion pills.

The candidates have been more specific about their plans to combat gender-based violence. All three pledged to create new violence prevention programs and strengthen prosecutors’ capacity to investigate femicides.

As Mexico City mayor, Sheinbaum carried out similar policies on the local level, Mexican doctoral candidate Ana Sofía Rodríguez Everaert wrote in a profile of the politician for Foreign Policy. These included staffing prosecutors’ offices with female lawyers trained to work from a gendered perspective. During Sheinbaum’s tenure, lethal violence in the capital fell by 32 percent, according to estimates made by feminist group Intersecta.

Plans for a national care system endorsed by all three candidates, meanwhile, have advanced in Mexico’s congress but not yet become law. Broadly, the program would devote more public money to funding care workers and facilities for newborns, children, the elderly, and disabled people. It would also reorganize existing day-care, disability, and pension systems to allow people without formal work contracts to pay for and receive care.

When it comes to feminist demands in Mexico, there is significant consensus—including on the ideological right, political scientist Mónica Tapia told Foreign Policy. The challenge is translating that agenda into results. “Our big lesson learned here in Mexico is that parity is necessary, but not sufficient” to advance progressive gender goals, Tapia said.

To help promote lasting change, Tapia helped co-found Aúna, a group that recruits and trains female candidates for political office who are committed to a range of policies intended to reduce gender and economic inequalities and boost environmental protection.

Aúna has coached candidates from both left-wing and right wing-parties; some have later cooperated on legislation while serving in the Mexico City government. Aúna is inspired by similar initiatives for women and nontraditional candidates in the United States, Colombia, and Brazil. Fifty Aúna candidates are running in the June 2 elections at the legislative and gubernatorial level.

While parity requirements have helped lead Mexico to its symbolic presidential election, Tapía said, “a wider ecosystem” of activists is moving feminist demands forward across the country.

[transcriptroopers]

I have a tangent, troopers. I am shot-gunnin’ it, hitting like ten different topics. I think I have a point, bear with me.

Something I have found increasingly important to emphasize when engaging with theory is the ability to delineate overlapping types of violence and to clearly define which is a more immediate threat to life.

I have two personal facts to illustrate my point.

First, I recently began using a cane. This has changed my life significantly. I now need more accommodations to perform the same tasks. Even in a hospital, I have to tell doctors to slow down so I can keep up. My cane upsets able-bodied people and makes them nervous around me. There’s no denying that in being a case user, I face oppression.

Yet, in every way, my circumstances are better than someone who uses a wheelchair. Because I’m not sitting down, everything is still at my height. I may be forced to walk in the grass if there’s no sidewalk, but a wheelchair user is screwed. I can still walk and get exercise and not worry about atrophy like if I used a wheelchair. I would be inconvenienced having to use the stairs during an emergency, whereas in a wheelchair your life may be in danger.

We are both types of disabled people who face oppression at the hands of an ableist society, but we still have different experiences, and have different - sometimes competing - accessibility needs. It is not “oppression olympics” to be able to identify when one type of disenfranchisement is a more severe and immediate threat to life; I am not betraying cane users to advocate for better accessibility for wheelchair users.

Next, I’m a veteran of the United States Army. I am also LGBT, and I am being vague about the specifics of that on purpose. There is an inordinate number of people who think this is a good thing – that I am both LGBT and a veteran. Everyone thinks it looks good for #Diversity for there to be #Representation. 

I understand where this is coming from, because I used to think this way. Being an oppressed group, LGBT people are hungry to see people like them being portrayed positively, and in the US, the military is almost universally revered. I have never been harassed for being a veteran IRL, always praised; in fact, being a veteran has often shielded me from harassment associated with being LGBT, using a cane, etc. But online, folks will very casually wish for your death in the most gruesome ways, accuse you of crimes you’ve never committed, and block you before you can explain that, actually, you purposely enlisted in your MOS in Air Defense (protection against incoming missiles) because you didn’t want to hurt anyone, and even before drone warfare the vast majority of soldiers will never see combat. And it hurts your feelings, because you’re Me, a sensitive LGBT who didn’t expect the people who I thought were my friends to want me violently killed, Just Like my oppressors did, right??

So, here’s how I got over all that and got to the root of the issue: It’s only online that people are free to unload, sometimes; they are frequently shadowbanned by social media. My material reality is that as a disabled veteran, even an LGBT one, I have innate privileges because I am a soldier first. I have free healthcare for the rest of my life, and if I need it, assistance with legal matters, education, and housing. I could get a 10 to 20% discount in almost any store or restaurant in the country. I could get a placard for my car and it would reduce my chances of being pulled over. I opted for the optional “Veteran” mark on my drivers license to endear any cop who pulls me over. There are like three different national holidays celebrating me where I can get free food. An angry person online who says “veterans kys” hurts my feelings, but doesn’t in any way make my life materially worse.

Meanwhile, I have very much been a victim of hate crimes for being LGBT, both online and IRL. Even in the PNW I was assaulted and encountered actual hate groups like Proud Boys. There are no hate groups against veterans. Even if veterans are high risk for homelessness and drug abuse, (just like for example, idk, LGBT people) it is very clear to me which group is more meaningfully affected by violence.

Like I said, when you’re a rather sensitive person, a stranger gruesomely wishing for your death is upsetting regardless of the reason. Obviously I would prefer that people don’t do this at all, just as I would prefer that there be no kind of oppression at all.

But there is, so they do. And because I have a Critical Thinking Brain, I was able to realize that there was a difference between an outburst from someone with the ability to act upon it and an outburst from someone with almost no ability to act upon it. A jailed prisoner heavily draped in chains yells “I’ll kill you!” A well-trained soldier pointing a gun at you says “I’ll kill you!” Which are you more afraid of? 

If you answer “both,” you are being willfully obtuse. You know the prisoner has next to no chance of carrying out their threat, but you know the soldier’s gun is loaded, and they have killed before. We are all capable of understanding that there are degrees of power and violence. I don’t begrudge any person who casually wishes for the deaths of soldiers, even though the soldier is themselves a victim of a kind of violence by the state. In fact, you can read all about the various abuses endured by soldiers on my blog, but the woes and miseries of soldiers are not (and should not be) of consequence to their victims.

Now that I’ve made you read two pages of blathering, guess what this post is really about? That’s right – Palestine. Fuck.

Western colonial nations are responsible for the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, and it is with our manufactured consent that the US and Great Britain continue to escalate the violence. Thus, it is more important than ever for us to be able to critically examine the way oppression affects us.

Israel is a settler-colonial state: a group of settlers who have violently expelled indigenous people from their land. This is documented fact; even early on in the occupation, 1948-esque, comparisons to American cowboys were being made, implicitly stationing their enemies as dirty savages on untamed land which was being claimed for use by a pure and righteous civilization. 

Unfortunately, even in modern times, US Americans still believe the above rationale for their own displacement of indigenous people. To do otherwise would be to admit that we ourselves do not belong on this land – land that we live and work on and sometimes have “owned” for generations. We choose to believe what matters is Now, and the other stuff is all in the past. 

Sadly, it’s true that many Indigenous American Peoples are no more. But numerous Indigenous American Tribes and Nations are still around, their customs have endured, their languages are alive, and they are still working their lands, as best as they can given the circumstances we’ve given them. However far back the atrocities were, Indigenous Americans deserve not only recompense, but leniency for behaviors that we on our high horses may find uncouth but otherwise don’t materially affect us or our privileges.

This is my opinion for other settler-colonial states as well, including those of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, etc. If settlers cannot feasibly “return home,” as will often be the case, then they must at least concede ownership of what was never theirs to take and cease reaping the benefits from their settler status. This would involve returning land and power to their original peoples, (likely not all or even most of it, especially as so much is now destroyed and heavily populated) and laws being rewritten so that they are not settler-centric. 

In that case, for me, the Palestinian Genocide has one starting and end point: this is a conflict between the colonized and the colonizer. It is essential to view all further analysis from this lens, lest we lose context and get confused when spin doctors tweak our media, or when our friends accuse us of supporting our own oppressors.

Why am I putting all of this on my soldier blog?

Because it is us, soldiers, who are complicit with this genocide. Even American soldiers right now are complicit with Palestinian Genocide because it’s with our weapons, aircraft, finances, and strategies the genocide is being perpetrated. I remember being enlisted ten years ago trying to argue for the rights of Palestinians to At Least not be war crimed on a regular basis, and was mocked, because I was arguing for rights for “inhumane terrorists,” and aren’t I a hypocrite because aren’t I LGBT, and don’t I know that Palestines hate LGBT people? It frightens me to see how much worse it has gotten in ten years, and how many otherwise peaceful people have bought into this pinkwashing: using LGBT rights as a cudgel to determine who “deserves” human rights and who deserves violence. Palestinians do not have to be perfect victims to deserve human rights, and I find the thought that a person in any context deserves to die to be abhorrent.

I feel obliged to state here that I am not Jewish, though I have been considering conversion for a few years. I first sought out a rabbi in 2020 and paused my journey due to the pandemic. I still do self-study but don’t consider myself capable of speaking on behalf of Judaism. 

I do feel capable of speaking on pinkwashing soldiers, and this is very simple: an LGBT soldier is still a soldier. Being a soldier overshadows all of our other identities, be they gender, sexuality, race, religion, wealth, or ability. This is drilled into us. People tell us to go away and die (if they feel safe to do so) because we are complicit in the overwhelming, overarching violence that is the state. We are no different than cops in this regard. Israeli soldiers, too, are soldiers before they are anything else. Women, LGBT, POC, Poor, Jewish. Often, the oppressor has themselves been oppressed. That's why it's so easy to convince people that their actions are just.

But here we see the same situation as before. The Palestinian, after eighty years of violent apartheid and genocide, bombed, starved, half-dead, says, “I’ll kill you!” The Israeli Soldier, with billions in US aid, who controls the Palestinian’s water, food, fuel, medicine, roads, air, and borders, calls the hospital and tells them, “We will bomb you in sixty seconds.” And then they do, and they want my sympathy because I too am a Soldier, and so I must understand that they have Lost, and it is So hard to lose people in war; so hard.

Of course they have my damn sympathy! I can’t help it; I have plenty of it to go around! Of course I’m opposed to religious persecution, to the killing of innocents, the destruction of culture! That is why I stand with Palestine in the first place! I hate violence, that’s why I joined a strictly defensive branch of the army, and don’t believe in the death penalty even for “really bad crimes" because I know how easily people can manipulate the public opinion against people who’ve committed “really bad crimes” for real this time I promise guys this time. And you don’t have to believe me, you can still tell me to kill myself and that I’m a murderer and I won’t begrudge you for that either.

We are currently seeing an unprecedented rise in antisemitism globally. Indeed, Israel only exists because of antisemitism in countless other nations across millenia. Even the US, Israel’s greatest ally, has deeply embedded antisemitic roots. Unless every other major country in the world immediately and aggressively begins to tackle their own antisemitism within their own borders, something akin to Israel will continue to exist, which in turn makes us responsible for the Palestinian Genocide. 

Until that is addressed, we’re left with the original fact: Israel as it exists is a settler-colonial state, built on stolen land amidst an on-going genocide, and because Israel’s military is conscripted, that makes even ordinary civilians complicit in the war crimes of their armed forces.

American civilians cannot allow this violence to continue. We must reject genocidal rhetoric and demand that we return indigenous land not only to Palestine, but all Indigenous Peoples everywhere. 

Lacking a punchy ending to this tangent, I’ll leave a list of links to various organizations that you can support in this time.

UNRWA United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East. Currently on the ground in Gaza attempting to deliver humanitarian aid despite bombings.

Jewish Voices for Peace - This was one of the groups who marched on Capitol Hill declaring “Not in our name.” A civil rights’ group.

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund - They specialize in emergency medical care, training surgeons, and even sending children to the US for otherwise inaccessible treatment.

Decolonize Palestine - A basic resource to start with if you want to learn more about why this violence is inextricable from colonialism.

[blood-injections]

Some Weird Doctor Death/Phoenix Witch related headcanons

He’s called Doctor Death Defying for a reason, he survived the helium wars and he continues to survive in the zones despite being a disabled veteran and staying mostly out of the fight. They say he has a deal with the witch, that he’s actually been ghosted many times but just keeps returning.

-He doesn’t actually have a deal with the witch, she’s just an old friend. There wasn’t a Phoenix Witch until the zones came to be and the Helium Wars were fought. There was a woman that Doctor D fought with that was one of the first killjoys to die and she was so brave and passionate and when she died and found her spirit haunting the battlefield she decided to become a guide to those that followed her. During the wars she became a battlefield ghost story from soldiers that nearly died and swore they saw this diety. She became known as Mother War and when the wars ended that story was forgotten and as the younger generation took up the fight and started seeing her she became known as the Phoenix Witch.

-He alone can talk to her, that’s how he always knows the bad news as soon as it happens, how he can broadcast the traffic and say what killjoys have been ghosted moments after it happens.

-He’s a bit of a cryptid or urban legend because lots of joys, especially the younger ones, think he’s a ghost or spirit haunting the airwaves because they’ve never met or seen him before, only heard him. He’s talked about in a similar air to when people talk about the Phoenix Witch, like he’s something mysterious and unknown or out of their ability of understanding. Doctor D thinks his ghostly status is hilarious, especially whenever Cherri complains about joys not believing that he knows him

-If you tune to the AM radio there’s no stations except for a scratchy weather station from Battery City, but there are strange noises in the static and if you drive around the zones the noises turn into whispers as you seemingly get closer to the broadcasting source. The whispers are said to be the radios picking up the Witch as she talks to ghosted killjoys and guides them on their way. But if you follow the sounds to the place where the whispers are clearest, loud enough over the static to sometimes make out words and piece together conversations, you’ll find that you’re outside Doctor Death’s radio station.

-When he really does die and Cherri takes over the radio, he announces a “Doctor D’s Ghost Hour” just like how Doctor D once announced Cherri Colas Poetry Corner and let him take over the radio for a little while. Everyone expects it to be an hour of silence, maybe as a memorial, or maybe it’s an hour of telling stories about him. When Doctor D’s voice actually comes on, however, people think Cherris playing old recorded tapes of him. But he’s not, it’s exactly what it’s titled as.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

In March, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s colleagues laughed as the California Republican mocked President Joe Biden’s age, saying he would bring Biden “soft food” so they could negotiate over the debt ceiling.

But McCarthy apparently did not bring Biden anything to eat during their talks, and the President chewed up the GOP’s debt limit proposal instead. Republicans aren’t laughing anymore.

“Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) tweeted on Tuesday, making clear she opposed the compromise legislation that came out of Biden and McCarthy’s negotiations.

Biden, 80, is the oldest person to serve as President of the U.S., and his age and alleged senility have been a constant focus of Republicans and right-wing commentators, despite assurances from his doctors that there’s nothing wrong with his mind. Polls have also shown that voters have concerns about Biden’s age.

During the debt limit standoff, McCarthy repeatedly said that by refusing to negotiate with Republicans, Biden was “bumbling” the U.S. toward a potentially catastrophic default. Even some Democrats criticized the President for not publicly engaging as much as McCarthy has in recent weeks. But as of Wednesday, default seemed unlikely, and the outlines of the deal appeared favorable to Democrats.

Asked if Biden had gotten the better of McCarthy, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), replied, “Yeah, I think that’s a fair assumption.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), meanwhile, said he believed McCarthy had simply been “misled.” He didn’t say by whom.

Even McCarthy conceded that he had been impressed with Biden’s negotiating team during the talks, calling them “very professional, very smart” and “very tough at the same time.”

But the Speaker has denied that he was outsmarted, touting the bill’s reductions to government spending and stricter “work requirements” for federal food benefits that Democrats opposed. The legislation would reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, in large part due to cuts to non-defense programs, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“How were we outsmarted? The largest cut in the history of Congress. The biggest ability to pull money back,” McCarthy told ABC News on Tuesday. “We’ve got work requirements for welfare where the Democrats said was a red line.”

Still, Biden got plenty of wins in the bill, which cuts federal spending far less than Republicans initially hoped. And in a twist, the CBO said the work requirements won’t reduce spending or enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The program supports 20 million households and already limits benefits for unemployed adults without children or disabilities who are between the ages of 18 and 49, unless they work or perform some other qualifying activity for 20 hours a week. Republicans proposed expanding the work requirement to people in their early 50s, as well as restricting states’ discretion to exempt some recipients. The CBO estimated the Republican proposal would have saved $11 billion and reduced SNAP enrollment by 275,000.

Biden signaled early on that he was open to stricter work requirements for SNAP, just not “anything of any consequence” — a statement that drew mocking laughter from McCarthy and his colleagues as someone, apparently a lawmaker behind the Speaker, shouted, “Loser!”

Sure enough, Biden agreed to expand SNAP’s work rules to people as old as 54 — but the White House also won changes that render the net impact of the bill inconsequential, at least from a budget perspective. The CBO said that, thanks to brand-new work requirement exemptions for veterans and homeless people, the bill would actually increase SNAP enrollment by a small amount and boost federal spending by $2 billion.

The analysis was not a surprise to the White House; a senior administration official said Sunday that “we expect that the number of people subject to SNAP work requirements will stay roughly the same under this agreement.”

The deal also preserves key Democratic priorities like student loan debt relief, climate change funding, and the bulk of investments aimed at making sure the wealthy pay their taxes.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) likened the bill to a “shit sandwich” that Republicans would have to eat — a sentiment shared by other Republicans planning to support the bill in a vote on Wednesday.

That doesn’t mean Democrats don’t have concerns about the legislation. Progressives, in particular, are furious that Biden was forced to negotiate over the debt limit at all, warning that he set a precedent Republicans will exploit time and time again if the debt limit isn’t abolished.

“It rewards the hostage-taking that the Republicans have gotten so damn good at,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Tuesday.

Still, Democrats maintain the GOP has underestimated Biden at every turn, pointing to his many legislative accomplishments in the last Congress, including bipartisan investments in infrastructure and semiconductor research, and his signing of a historic climate change bill.

“If you haven’t figured out by now that our president is in the top 1% of negotiators, you haven’t been paying attention the last two and a half years,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told HuffPost.