#Faction Paradox racism

[rjalker]

"warrior tribes of North America" yeah you're being so fucking racist right now.

[dawnblade-disaster]

i almost went off go crazy go wild in my own tags about how this drove me up the wall but folks have thankfully added it thank u for ur service

saw aethas trying to find a peace offering gift for jaina in orgrimmar today and brother if he has to apologize for his people getting massacred one more time I’m going to lose it

[geeneelee]

One hell of an episode. I don't have anything to say about it that others haven't said smarter except PLEASE stop making everything about lore and just think about the episode for what it is. the episode is trying to tell you something stop trying to tie it into previous doctors and the master and faction paradox. This episode is about racism and it's about this doctor specifically. You really can't sit with an episode without trying to make it about something someone else wrote?

[walks-the-ages]

Nothing is more amusing than to see someone make a really well thought out post, critiquing a specific media (or a specific genre); citing multiple examples from the source material(s) about the racist/ableist/sexist themes and biases included in a work (or genre), which may or may not be intentional on the creator(s) part, but especially if it was unintentional, points out how it's showing the creators biases and speaks to the power of structural inequality in society--

Only for someone who insists that 'The Curtains Just Are Blue And That Does Not Mean Anything At All' to come in, and with all the personally-offended scoffing of a middle schooler who doesn't understand why their teacher is making them read The Great Gatsby and doesn't know why a green light across the channel is so significant to come in an exclaim "Nu-uh!!!"

The "Nu-uh"-er then usually goes on one of two paths:

"It's just a story, stop thinking so much about it! it's not that deep! Aesop stop telling those funny little fables about plants and animals, don't you know it's just nonsense for kids that means nothing!?"

"This is a really shallow/surface level reading of the text :/. (I am ignoring the fact that a true surface level reading of the text would come to the exact opposite conclusion I am arguing against, because I only care about what a text tells me , and don't care to look deeper into what the text shows me, (including unintentionally) about the events and world within the text and what it reflect about biases in the real world and society at large.")

It should be noted that both kinds of responders will either absolutely refuse to cite examples from the source material, or when they deign to respond to direct quotes from the text used by the OP's essays, they will inevitably completely fail to understand what the quotes are literally textually spelling out to the reader, and come away literally proving the OP's point and show their complete lack of credibility, by showing literally anyone following them just how bad they are at comprehending really basic text.

(They also, inevitably, also refuse to actually try to refute individual claims, because they refuse to think about the content of a text deeply enough to formulate responses to direct quotes from the source material; their usual excuse is the "Uno Reverse Card" of trying to say "If you think x work is racist/ableist/sexist, you're the real x-ish for thinking that way!!!" )

Literally, nothing makes me drop a fandom faster than fans who not only refuse to engage critically with the source material, but specifically go out of their way to demonize anyone who does analyze the media with a critical lens, if that critical lens sheds new, unpleasant light on their favorite character/institution/franchise/creator/show/etc.

This is why I love the Faction Paradox Fandom (completely unafraid to speak up about the racism/exotification of Native American tribes present in the early 2000's The Book of the War)

and Steve Shives on Youtube (Actually addresses and talks about all of the ways that the Star Trek Universe is not as progressive as it presents itself, instead of thoughtlessly defending the Federation and the racist + antisemetic caricatures that are the various aliens)

[omnifitense]

It began with the forging of the three-

I'll start again.

It began with BioShock Infinite.

Now obviously, it didn't all begin there. It's the third game in a series that itself is a spiritual successor to another series. But that's where we're starting our story. Or where I'm starting this one. Like most things that came out in the fucking early 2010s, it has not aged well. I'm not qualified to talk about the racism for reasons that would be blindingly obvious. Most people in this hellhole are too harsh on it, or harsh on it for what I consider the wrong reasons (hint: your internalized misogyny may be showing).

At the time, I really liked it. It 'woke me up' out of a sort of stupor I'd been in for a while. So I eagerly awaited the story-based DLCs.

They were dogshit. Or more accurately, the second one was dogshit and would be worth an entire essay on its own. In fairness it was made while the studio was being shut down because the lead "auteur" Len Kevine (not his real name) was taking his ball and going home in more ways than one. He started his own studio shortly thereafter, and is still working on the first game there almost ten years later because he's an indecisive both-sidesing hack who keeps getting distracted by the new craze in whatever video game he played last.

Anyway: they were dogshit. I decided to rewrite them. In Absentia was a meandering project that took me about two years, but it mostly holds up. While trying to get a handle on how to write the main character I did a search for 'omnichronal perception' or something along those lines, and ended up on the Power Listing wiki. One of the other listings on that page was for a set of contact lenses on the SCP wiki. That's a second rabbit hole right there, and one I spent many years thereafter browsing.

After In Absentia I started work on another project that didn't pan out for a variety of reasons. It and my time with the SCP wiki sort of came to a head with the release of SCP 3999, which is just monstrous and wonderful at the same time. Right from the quotation at the top of the page, which introduced me to yet another rabbit hole I'm still going down today*, and then finally closing out with (and I maintain this wasn't there when I first read it, though I'm not going back through the edit history to check) a triumphant rendition of 'Sunday (Finale)' from Sunday In The Park With George.

What is that third rabbit hole? Well, the SCP wiki has a neat little habit of cross-referencing other SCPs, whether by name or by some other aspect. Sometimes they're hyperlinked, sometimes they're not. The quotation I mentioned contains the phrase 'Eleven-Day Empire', which I took to be another SCP, so I googled it. Except...it wasn't. It directed me, of all things, to the Doctor Who wiki and explained that it was a reference to a Doctor Who spinoff I'd never heard of before, and with good reason. It's been described as 'Doctor Who without the Doctor', which isn't strictly accurate: there are a few Doctor-shaped holes in the texts, as people have noted. (Though for legal reasons, they aren't named.)

Maybe I've beaten around the bush long enough. It's Faction Paradox.

Toward the end of my attempt to write that project from before, I kept imagining someone standing outside the house where most of the narrative was taking place. Just watching. Then, in...I can't remember the year, or the month at this point, but I want to say it was either 2018 or 2019, I had a dream. I can only remember three things from it now: the Twelfth Doctor (who was only in it briefly), something about the TARDIS being a tree, and the phrase The New Omnifitense. The strangest part was, I'd skipped most of the Twelfth Doctor's run; not out of any moral stand or anything, I just missed one episode and even back then I knew that I'd be hopelessly lost next time around, so it sort of snowballed.

Each of those aspects I managed to work into Blood and Tears, in addition to the things from 3999. Blood and Tears is still close to my (pardon me for saying so) heart; it came out almost exactly the way I hoped it would, which is no mean feat given the scares I had in 2022.

If you somehow made it this far, thank you.

[gascon-en-exil]

I know that there must be Dimitri hate out there, but I never see it and I love him a lot, so I can't even imagine what they say about him. So what exactly do Dimitri haters say to explain why they hate him???

There’s a lot to go through. Let’s see if I can summarize.

Dimitri is “straight” (can’t S rank m!Byleth) and “white,” which automatically makes him the worst of the house leaders because Edelgard is a bi-for-Byleth woman and Claude is biracial.

The Eagles are the “gay house” because they have almost all of the bi-for-Byleth characters and also Ferdibert and Casphardt and Dorothea the super lesbian who fits with anyone, and the Deer are the fun meme house with Claurenz and Marihilda. The Lions are therefore the worst house because they’re dour and filled with plot-relevant trauma and even their suggestive same-sex parings aren’t light and fun and gay enough to count.

He’s mentally unstable, which makes him unfit to be a ruler and worse than Edelgard who handles her trauma (which is worse than allegedly worse than Dimitri’s because trauma can be objectively measured like that) not through straightforward violent rampages but through the systemic violence of war which is okay because the church is evil. Dimitri is weak for continuing to struggle visibly with mental illness for years after the initial trauma.

Paradoxically, Dimitri’s arc is rushed because mental illness doesn’t immediately clear up like that so it’s bad characterization.

A guilty Dimitri confesses to having killed children during the timeskip, so regardless of the circumstances this makes him a child murderer. He also says he killed women, so he might also be a rapist as a corollary to his assumed heterosexuality.

Believing Edelgard to have been involved with the Tragedy of Duscur is totally baseless as she was only 12-13 at the time, regardless of all circumstantial evidence and who her current allies are. Dimitri is therefore delusional for holding this against her. Alternatively, his gift of a dagger to Edelgard back when they were children is a Freudian symbol that he wanted to fuck her, and his obsession with her is therefore that of a sex-starved straight man attempting to force himself on an unwilling woman who also happens to be bi a lesbian for added horror. 

Dimitri and Rhea are working together in CF, and AM is the only ending that keeps the church and the position of archbishop, which mean that Dimitri is a religious fanatic who would do whatever Rhea says and would persecute non-believers. He also has one line in the parley scene in AM where he acknowledges that some people need the support of faith and the church, and therefore he hates atheists.

Edelgard wants to destroy the evil church and Claude wants to end racism, but Dimitri wants to preserve the status quo so AM is the worst ending for Fòdlan and Dimitri is an ultra-conservative reactionary. Claude would also join with Edelgard had he been given the opportunity, despite this scenario coming up twice in VW and being summarily rejected.

Dedue is Dimitri’s slave in practice if not in name, and his writing is racist and tries to push Dimitri as a woke white savior. This makes shipping them Problematic™, and this in combination with Felix and Dimilix being standard anime/yaoi tropes reinforces that Dimitri is not “really” queer despite the paired endings. Also, Dimitri tells Claude to be quiet at one point in the DLC, which makes him racist in general.

Dimitri makes some straight male players uncomfortable with how emotionally intimate he is with Byleth regardless of gender, and with everyone else around him moreover. It is also assumed that all Dimitri fans are women who want to fuck him.

Dimitri doesn’t learn the full truth of the Agarthans unless paired with Hapi, and so it’s meaningless that he kills Cornelia and Thales (which CF doesn’t) and possibly Myson as well. AM is badly-written for not addressing this, or the truth behind Rhea and the Nabateans (which CF also doesn’t do, and VW and SS each only do partway).

The rest of the Lions are right to break away from the Kingdom and fight to conquer it and kill their former friends and family, in spite of the constant unease many of them express and the distinctly bittersweet tone of all of Felix’s non-AM endings. Dedue should also have been allowed to join other houses, but he can’t because his writing is racist.

(From a gameplay perspective, though this one might be outdated as I think the meta has shifted a bit with Maddening) Dimitri is the worst of the three leaders because he’s a physical unit with an axe weakness making it hard for him to go wyvern rider/lord. He’s also unavailable for instruction and monastery activities for the first half of Part 2 which means he’s harder to use.

(Directed at those who draw comparisons to past games) Pre-timeskip Dimitri is a bland prince like Marth, and AM is the standard FE plot of the blue kingdom fighting back an invasion from a red empire. CF and VW (no one cares about SS) are better because they shake up the formula, and all of the house leaders are heroes because Three Houses encourages relativistic viewpoints.

Because of the fandom faction war criticism of Edelgard is assumed to come from Dimitri fans, who are all homo/lesbophobic misogynists and racists (indirectly because of the points above) who hate her for being a strong sapphic atheist revolutionary - and attempts to contest any of these points, or to criticize the quality of her wriring, just prove how much they hate her.

Whew. I think that about covers all the bad Dimitri takes I’ve seen online. Feel free to add more.

[arcticdementor]

The outdated definition of a liberal is that of a person who is tolerant of others, their thoughts, and their way of life. This traditional definition has been discarded in favour of an increasingly narrow one largely due to Karl Popper’s “Paradox of Tolerance” in which the intolerant cannot be tolerated as an ‘open society’ will eventually be seized by the intolerant. Therefore, Enlightened Despotism is the ‘proper’ way to govern a society.

It is human nature to challenge despotism and authoritarianism, especially as they fall into intellectual, spiritual, economic and personal corruption. So how are those who challenge such a system to be dealt with? Simply label them as ‘intolerant’, which makes them a de facto outlaw in society.

Christopher Rufo is one of these modern outlaws. Initally a documentary maker, his life recently has taken him down another, much more difficult route: challenging the intellectual basis of today’s American elites, that being Critical Race Theory. He has been credited with singlehandedly putting opposition to this trend on the political map by way of influencing President Trump to issue an Executive Order halting its instruction inside of federal agencies. With Biden’s reversal of Trump’s Executive Order, Rufo is now expanding the front far and wide, and winning key battles along the way.

…

All Italians are mafia so your family is definitely connected to at least one of the NYC Five Families, if not the Outfit in Chicago.  You grew up watching Goodfellas and then eventually moved on to The Sopranos.  You and your wop friends picked up the lingo, started talking like mafiosos, and came across as fucking idiots to everyone around you.  You tried to extort a guy down the block who had a pretty strong betting book but he told his mom and his mom told your mom and your dad got out his belt and told you that you're not allowed to be hardcore.  When was your first hit and why wasn't it Rod Dreher?

There is some truth to this. Like most authentic Italian-Americans, I have distant relatives in both countries who operate “family businesses.” Most of it is harmless: off-the-books car parts, bookmaking, loan collection. We had a relative in Philly who made a living hustling mobsters in golf—he would let them win just enough to keep them hooked, then empty their pockets every so often. The business had its ups and downs. Once, he was sitting with the family on a Sunday, watching the news, when his face suddenly went white. A local mob boss had been arrested. Turns out that our relative had made his living the previous few years hustling that mob boss on the golf course. “Goddammit, now I need to find a job!” he said when the news broke. Most of the time, I don’t ask questions.

…

It’s astonishing to me that as recently as the 1960s, interracial marriage was seen, correctly, as a moral cause and a sign of racial progress. Now, for some factions on the Left, interracial marriages, and mixed-race families in general, are seen as a form of oppression, domination, and false consciousness. They see interracial marriages as an expression of “white supremacy” or, for the minority spouse, as an “assimilation into whiteness.” Some lefties famously blasted Amy Coney Barrett as a “white colonizer” for adopting a Haitian orphan. We’ve gone from Loving v Virginia to Ibram X. Kendi in a single generation. And now we’re beginning to see the revival of informal social prohibitions against interracial marriage and actual racial segregation in schools, universities, and public institutions. I recently obtained photos from King County Library, which held a racially-segregated diversity training program, even hanging up signs outside the separated rooms labelled “People of Colour” and “People Who Are White.” It’s like water fountains in 1955, but in the service of 21st-century woke ideology. The new racial politics of the Left is almost parodically regressive.

…

Others have laid out different strategies in fighting CRT.  Some have suggested confronting Corporate HR Trainers either overtly or subtly so that fellow employees would 'see through' its illogic and inherent awfulness.  Why are these approaches either useless or even counterproductive?

You can’t persuade zealots with logic, facts, and clever argumentation; they only understand the language of power. That’s why the campaign to prove that you’re “the real liberal” or “more antiracist than the antiracists” is doomed to failure. Like it or not, Critical Race Theory is the driving force of the modern intellectual Left; they’re not going back to the philosophy of FDR, LBJ, or MLK. And they scrupulously follow the old dictum of “no enemies to the left”—they will dispatch the centrist liberals with even more vitriol and brutality than they dispatch the conservatives. This is also the core dilemma of the IDW crowd: many of them cannot imagine aligning with political conservatives; they operate under the delusion that they can “recapture the centre” and convince the planet of the virtue of Enlightenment values. That’s not how politics works. We live in a polarized political system—one winner, one loser. You’ll remember that the Girondins went to the guillotine. If, metaphorically speaking, the centrist liberals want to avoid the same fate, they will have to make an alliance with Trump-loving, truck-driving, gun-toting Middle Americans. That’s reality. We’ll see if they heed it.

…

Ibram X. Kendi is a human fortune cookie. His intellectual output is an endless buffet of word salad and phony wisdom: “Denial is the heartbeat of racism”; “In order to truly be anti-racist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist”; “Whiteness is literally posing an existential threat to humanity.” In my investigative reporting, I’ve noticed something quite interesting: the core demographic of Kendi readers is liberal, white, middle-aged women who work in public institutions. On one hand, this is a surprise: Kendi embraces a radical vision of Black Power-style revolution. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense: Kendi’s politics provides a vicarious thrill, but is completely in line with conventional wisdom. It’s revolution without risk; it’s liberation without leaving the house. That’s really the best way to understand what he’s doing. He’s not a revolutionary; he’s a self-help guru for white liberals and a reputation-laundering mechanism for multinational corporations. He is an apostle of anti-whiteness, but a mouthpiece for elite white opinion. He preaches anti-capitalism, but accepts Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.

…

The dirty secret about Critical Race Theory and, to a certain extent, the New York Times, is that they are both extensions of the state. Critical Race Theory was incubated in public and publicly-subsidized universities and then operationalized in public agencies and public school systems. In reality, Critical Race Theory has very little organic support—it’s an artificial ideology that has the illusion of support because it has commandeered the public bureaucracy and prestige media. But you’ll notice that the Critical Race Theorists are regularly ratioed on Twitter, juice their book sales with institutional purchases, and collect corporate handouts to do their work. The New York Times is similarly situated. It’s the mouthpiece of the permanent state no matter who is in office. Its purpose is to manufacture the narrative and enforce ideological discipline. But here, too, the New York Times is less powerful than it appears. Its authority rests on its historical reputation and prestige, which is rapidly being squandered with each bogus story, newsroom tantrum, and Taylor Lorenz article. I’ll admit: I was momentarily frightened when the Times was putting together a piece attacking my work on Critical Race Theory. But it turned out to be a great coup for me: the Times made a sloppy accusation, so I quickly owned them on Twitter and generated 100 times more social media engagement in my rebuttal than they did in their attack. To top it off, conservatives consider it a badge of honour to get that first NYT hit piece, so I enjoyed a round of attaboys, high-fives, and small donations from my tribe.

…

How much do you shudder when you hear Capicolo pronounced "GABBAGOOL"?

The last time I heard that pronunciation, I shuddered so hard I threw out my back. It’s more than hate speech—it’s actual violence.

[newstfionline]

Headlines

U.S.-Canada border closing to ‘nonessential traffic’ (Washington Post) The United States and Canada have agreed to close their 5,500-mile border to “all nonessential travel” as the deadly coronavirus outbreak continues to spread. President Trump announced that two Navy hospital ships would be dispatched, at least one to New York. The news comes as countries around the world adopt increasingly strict quarantine measures, major companies wind down production, and experts warn that life worldwide will be severely disrupted for many months.

White House Proposes $1.2 Trillion in Stimulus Plan (Foreign Policy) Washington is considering a stimulus plan totaling $1.2 trillion to deal with the economic fallout caused by the coronavirus outbreak. Part of the package would involve distributing cash to every American, with a number above $1,000 expected. The United Kingdom has announced a package of business loan guarantees and fiscal support worth about $400 billion. France has made $50 billion available in assistance for small businesses, a further $330 billion in business loan guarantees, and has even promised to nationalize industries if necessary. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez promised a suspension of mortgage payments for workers affected by the coronavirus as well as $100 billion in loan guarantees.

President invokes Defense Production Act (AP) President Trump on Wednesday invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA), a set of emergency powers that will give the federal government the ability to ramp up the production of medical supplies such as masks, ventilators, gloves and other equipment to help the U.S. medical system respond to coronavirus cases.

Joe Biden sweeps three primaries (NYT) The former vice president easily defeated Bernie Sanders in Arizona, Florida and Illinois on Tuesday, all but eliminating the chance for a comeback by the Vermont senator.

Earthquake hits Utah (USA Today) A 5.7 magnitude earthquake hit Utah on Wednesday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey said, knocking out power and rattling residents already shaken up by the coronavirus pandemic. About 55,000 people lost electricity in the Salt Lake City Area, utility Rocky Mountain Power said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Some U.S. embassies suspend routine visa services over coronavirus (Reuters) A number of U.S. embassies around the world will suspend routine visa services due to coronavirus precautions, the U.S. Embassy in South Korea said in a statement on Wednesday.

Peruvian president announces nighttime curfew as coronavirus spreads (Reuters) Peru´s President Martin Vizcarra on Wednesday announced an immediate restriction on overnight movement across the country in a bid to halt the spread of coronavirus.

Brazilian prisoners rebel over cancellation of Easter leave (Foreign Policy) Hundreds of prisoners in four of Brazil’s low-security semi-open prisons have escaped. The mass breakout occurred when inmates were told that planned Easter holidays would be cancelled over fears of spreading the coronavirus. “These prisoners were unhappy about the decision that suspended the Easter leave,” said Lincoln Gakiya, a prosecutor in São Paulo state. “The prisoners were told and in some units, rebelled.”

UK panic-buying (Reuters) Ice cream and chocolate Easter eggs anyone? That is all that remains on some UK supermarket aisles as panic-buying escalates. That has prompted two big chains, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, to impose restrictions on certain items: Tesco for example is limiting purchases to just two packs of things like dried pasta, toilet roll and long life milk. Aldi meanwhile introduced outright rationing, limiting customers to buying four items of any one product during each visit. The paradox is that the stores say they have enough food coming into the system--suggesting that supplies would be fine if the panic-buyers just eased off.

EU Approves Closing Borders (Foreign Policy) Most of the 26 members of the European Schengen travel area have now agreed to close their external borders for 30 days, while still allowing some travel within the bloc, although there have been closures inside the EU, too. Austria has closed its borders with Italy, Switzerland, and Luxembourg; Switzerland has closed its borders with Germany, Austria, and France; and Portugal has partially sealed its border with Spain. The border closure will likely soon include those Schengen zone countries not in the EU. The travel ban will not include Ireland, as the country has a passport-free travel arrangement with the United Kingdom. An Irish government spokesman said Ireland would consult with Britain on any implementation of the ban.

Venice canals (Reuters) The pandemic lock-down is meanwhile having some unexpected side effects in Italy. Venice canals, usually bogged down with tourists in gondolas and motorboats are now crystal clear. Those that venture out into the city and peer down into the water may even see little silver fish swimming around

Olympic Committee explores options (NYT) The International Olympic Committee has been resolute in its insistence that this summer’s Tokyo Olympics will be held on schedule, despite the spread of the novel coronavirus. But even as IOC President Thomas Bach continues to state his confidence for a July-August schedule, those familiar with the process of planning and staging an Olympic Games say the IOC surely is exploring other options--and is probably well-aware that no perfect solutions exist.

Chinese flock back to China for refuge (NYT) In a matter of weeks, China has gone from being the epicenter of the virus to almost the only refuge from it, prompting hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens abroad to flock home. About 20,000 people a day are arriving on flights into China, while five times as many arrive by land or sea, state media reported.

The U.S.-China Relationship Is on Life Support (Foreign Policy) China dropped a bombshell on the Western press yesterday as it announced the effective expulsion of all U.S. staff of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. It also demanded that both Time and the Voice of America, along with those three organizations, register all their employees in China as foreign agents. Thirteen journalists have been expelled as a result; more are likely to follow as China squeezes the bureaus, quite likely including non-Americans. The move came in part in retaliation for Washington’s recent limits on Chinese state media operatives in the United States. The effective expulsion of three of the most important American outlets would be worrying enough. But there also appears to be a wave of anti-foreigner feeling building throughout the system. Americans and other Westerners in China are reporting police questioning of their bosses, restrictions on visits by other foreigners, and increased police checks. Anti-Asian racism, meanwhile, is on the rise in the United States at the street level--including targeting Asians for wearing masks--amid the new coronavirus outbreak. Chinese ambassadors, meanwhile, continue to spread the lie that the virus didn’t originate in China, while state-linked media doubles down on conspiracy theories promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about an imaginary U.S. military role. In response, American conservatives, including the Trump administration, continue to refer to the coronavirus as “the Chinese virus,” while U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an angry call to State Counsellor Yang Jiechi and summoned the Chinese ambassador for a dressing-down. The warning signs are flashing bright red for foreigners in China, who should, at a minimum, have an exit strategy. They should expect their next visa to be hard to obtain--and keep paperwork, especially local police registrations, in impeccable order.

Another Baghdad attack (Foreign Policy) Rockets struck Baghdad’s “Green Zone,” an area including Iraq’s seat of government and a number of foreign embassies. A U.S. spokesman said the rockets landed 1.2 miles away from the U.S. embassy and there were no reports of casualties. It’s now the fourth rocket attack on international targets in the Baghdad area in just one week.

Watchdog says Israel’s West Bank settlements surged in 2019 (AP) Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank surged ahead in 2019, a watchdog group said in a report Tuesday, maintaining a rapid pace that has drawn strength from the friendly policies of the Trump administration. Peace Now, a monitoring group that opposes the settlements, said that Israel’s average annual construction rate has risen 25% since President Donald Trump took office in 2017. Perhaps more significantly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government last year approved plans to build thousands of new homes, laying the groundwork for a sharp spike in construction in the coming years. “In my opinion, they’re trying to take advantage of the window of opportunity that they have under the Trump administration, knowing that it might change in a few months,” said Hagit Ofran, a researcher for the group. “There was no such supportive administration for the settlements previously, ever.”

Ravaged by war, Middle Eastern countries face a new scourge (AP) Long-running wars and conflicts across the Middle East have wrecked potential defenses against coronavirus outbreaks, leaving millions vulnerable in Yemen, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, the Gaza Strip and elsewhere. Health care systems have been gutted; war has blasted key infrastructure. Several of the countries are carved up among rival claimant governments, factions or armed groups, snarling any attempt at nationwide protection programs. Hundreds of thousands of people driven from their homes by fighting are crowded in close quarters in tent camps or improper housing. “We are becoming very worried,” said John Nkengasong, director of Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as the virus reached conflict-ridden Iraq, Libya, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. “The impact will be magnified.”

[rjalker]

If there’s one word that describes Faction Paradox it’s fetishistic. The Faction’s followers delight in icons, in totems, in signs, symbols and relics.

Fun fact I can't type out on my phone the idea of fetish objects [in terms of religion] comes from racism!

[eighthdoctor]

romana, fitz kreiner, the dr who, aaaand an original villain okay i love you bye

romana

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang depending on regenerationhogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuffbest quality: hair her impulsivity (why NOT stay behind in E space) and compassion (ditto)worst quality: ... her impulsivityship them with: leela, narvin, and brax in any mixture; if i’m shipping her with the doctor, it’s just the two of thembrotp them with: also the doctorneeds to stay away from: DARKELmisc. thoughts: im too gay for this

fitz oh god i havent read enough edas

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type like awkward hot? would be hotter if he got taken down a few pegs? idk man | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would banghogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff ????? have not read enough edas for thisbest quality: mule-headed stubbornness esp towards associating with dangerous aliensworst quality: im sure theres a faction paradox joke to make hereship them with: quite a bit with 8, also im sure theres a faction paradox joke to make herebrotp them with: really really with 8, also with samneeds to stay away from: .... faction paradoxmisc. thoughts: i haven’t read enough edas for this

the dr

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life would love more if they would quit genociding thingshotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang IT DEPENDShogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin with a strong side of ravenclaw | ravenclaw | hufflepuff best quality: thank u for opting not to genocide us even when we really deserved itworst quality: quit genociding thingsship them with: the master, romana, sometimes associated companions but always in like, a dubiously unhealthy way (...i say, as if that isn’t true for all of my ships with them). WAIT! except 2/jamie, which r innocent & purebrotp them with: braxneeds to stay away from: i dont even know where to start here but rassilonmisc. thoughts: sums it all up p well honestly

original villain: Marcus (aka noble asshole commander)

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life marcus exists in the happy place of villains i love writing and can’t wait to killhotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang cute but 500x too much ego and racismhogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuffbest quality: is...brave? i guess. we’ll go with thatworst quality: ego and racismship them with: ew whybrotp them with: idk manneeds to stay away from: SERENAmisc. thoughts: marcus is like, charming and affable and could potentially be competent if he got his ego out of his ass. unfortunately,,,,,

[eichy815]

A New Year’s Primer on Cognitive Dissonance

According to the website Psychology Today, the term “cognitive dissonance” can be defined as:

...when your ideas, beliefs, or behaviors contradict each other:  if, for example, you see yourself as smart but can’t believe you made such dumb stock investments.  Exactly how we choose to resolve the dissonance (and its accompanying discomfort) is a good reflection of our mental health.  In fact, cognitive dissonance can be a great opportunity for growth.

This is a condition I have noticed in many of my adversaries throughout social media, over the years; and, even from some of my friends and/or acquaintances who might be reading this post from my Facebook wall/feed right this very moment.

The following are 50 sample joint-statements that reflect my own wry, rather embittered observations of the prejudice and bigoted actions that I see people inflicting upon one another in daily life.

Statement A:  this is usually a moralistic, overly-preachy statement that is basically asking members of its target audience to become “do-gooders.”

Statement B:  this is usually an outlandish statement that essentially contradicts Statement A – yet, it can sometimes also be simultaneously possessed by the very same (apparently fickle) archetype who would have uttered Statement A in the first place.

Often, the paradoxical coupling of a Statement A with a Statement B can be conjoined selectively by the deliverer of the message, cherrypicked based on the deliverer’s own prejudices.  In other words:  the person delivering the message is conveying a two-pronged, hypocritical sentiment.

Other times, Statement A and Statement B aren’t necessarily held by the same individual person – but, rather, they may represent diametrically-opposed worldviews possessed by different factions but directed at the same “group” of people.

Examine these cognitively-dissonant social messages, inhale their bigotry and hypocrisy, and then consider how the people who could wield these types of commands are essentially trying to control the human population to push their own narrow agendas.

Some of you may even be guilty of this, yourselves!

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Democrats – stop raising so much corporate money.

Democrats – you’re not raising enough money for the 2018 election cycle.

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Republicans – never make any public references to your Christian faiths.

Republicans – shouldn’t your Christianity mean that you support all social programs and oppose capital punishment?

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TV Viewers – start watching more thoughtful programs that convey intelligent messages and support diversity.

TV Viewers – the Boob Tube is rotting your brains...cancel your cable packages.

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Librarians – help save our future generations from illiteracy.

Librarians – quit corrupting our children with those pages and pages of propaganda.

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Teachers – do a better job of raising our future generations.

Teachers – stop indoctrinating our children.

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Men – stop treating women like props...let them be independent.

Men – hold the door open for women, give up your seats for them, defer to their judgment, and treat them like queens.

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Women – just tell men what you mean...stop playing mind games and word games all of the time.

Women – the world needs you to be fascinating and complex, since males are such “simple creatures.”

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Gays – stand up for yourselves and be proud of who you are and your sexual proclivities.

Gays – stop lusting after heterosexual men.

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Lesbians – don’t let yourselves be held hostage to the patriarchy.

Lesbians – put on a little makeup, while you’re at it.

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Hotties – you’re making everyone else feel insecure about themselves.

Hotties – make sure that you get out of bed in the morning looking like a runway model.

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Americans – start setting better examples for the rest of the world.

Americans – start taking a page from other industrialized nations...do whatever Europe or Australia or Canada do!

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Muslims – don’t behave like terrorists.

Muslims – start speaking out against your own kind so that everyone will stop mistaking you for terrorists.  

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Jews  – stop flaunting all of your wealth all of the time.

Jews  – start spending more of your capital so that everyone below you can benefit from your success.

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Clergy – respect the religious differences of others.

Clergy – stop worshiping that fictional god who is a figment of your imaginations.

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Pagans – good for you for not being brainwashed by the Bible-thumpers.

Pagans – stop worshiping those fictional gods who are figments of your imaginations.  

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Salt/Sugar Lovers – start eating more fruits and vegetables.

Salt/Sugar Lovers – tomato skins are toxic and leafy green lettuce is full of pesticides.

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Vegans – everyone should emulate your eating habits in order to save the planet.

Vegans – you’re inconveniencing everyone with your uptight lifestyles.

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Electoral College – thank you for giving a voice to rural states with smaller populations.

Electoral College – stop electing candidates who didn’t win a majority of the votes.

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Voters – make sure you vote, or else you don’t get to bitch.

Voters – support the specific candidate who I tell you to vote for, or else that makes you a part of the problem.

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Candidates – you need to show how well-versed you are in policy and conversation.

Candidates – don’t be too vanilla, or the people won’t vote for you because you’re not exciting enough.

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Fatasses – go on a diet.

Fatasses-Who’ve-Lost-Weight – you’re getting too skinny...eat a cheeseburger.

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Toxic People – reaffirm to those for whom you have contempt how you’re trying to be nice to them.

Toxic People – pretend to be nice to those whom you loathe, even if you’re just putting on a facade for them.

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Baby Boomers – step aside and let younger generations rise up into your leadership roles.

Baby Boomers – extend your retirement plans by another five or ten years, because we’re spending too much on “entitlements.”

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Millennials – quit plaguing society with your materialism and vapidity.

Millennials – be more like your elders who created our current political disconnect with their materialism and vapidity.

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Sweathogs – keep your noses clean.

Sweathogs – up all your noses with rubber hoses!

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Celebrities – use your wealth and power to do good in the world.

Celebrities – shut the hell up when it comes to your political views.

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Democrats – we need to get that divisive celebrity out of the White House!

Democrats – let’s run Oprah Winfrey or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in 2020!

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Republicans – the liberals really pressed their luck insisting that we “pass the bill to see what’s in the bill” with Obamacare back in 2010.

Republicans – let’s do the exact same thing by ramming through a convoluted “tax reform” package that slashes Medicare and Medicaid...that’ll show ’em!

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Disabled People – learn ways to become more independent.

Disabled People – only strive for “independence” in the ways which we command you to do so.

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Exercisers – don’t rush yourselves or overexert yourselves during a workout; perform repetitions and lifts with gradual, steady focus.

Exercisers – do as many pushups as you can...as fast as possible, within as short of a timeframe as possible!

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Black People – educate yourselves, and stop focusing on sports and rap music.

Black People – teach the rest of us how to play basketball and how to rap.

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White People  – shut up and quit dominating the conversation all of the time.

White People  – start calling out other white people, and make sure that you verbally steamroll over them for their racism.

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Latino People – celebrate your rich Hispanic culture, and bask in your spicy feistiness.  

Latino People – learn to speak English, and temper your passions.

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Asian People – set a good example for people of other racial groups with your high intelligence and work ethnic.

Asian People  – quit showing off with your success stories or bragging how much better you are than blacks or Hispanics.

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Indigenous People – you are the role models for sustainability and respect, which is something that people of all other races should emulate.

Indigenous People – stop all of your gambling and pre-diabetic eating habits.

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Boys – don’t bury your emotions and feelings.

Men – quit being so emotionally-fragile.

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Girls – you can be any type of smart, independent, resourceful individual who you want to be.

Women – if you don’t support Hillary Clinton, you are “self-loathing.”

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Nice Guys/Gals – don’t lower yourselves to engaging in personal attacks.

Nice Guys/Gals – when someone assassinates your character, don’t take it personally.

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Consumers – start spending and buying more, so that we can get the economy back on track.

Consumers – you’re being materialistic...simplify your possessions, and prepare for off-the-grid living when the economy collapses.

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Humans – be careful that you remain sensitive to other people’s feelings.

Humans – stop making every issue about you as an individual and your “hurt feelings.”

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Women – make sure you have balance in your lives.

Women – be a nurturer and an expert and a worker bee and an innovator and a leader and a follower and a power player and a mediator and an agitator and a conciliator...all at the same time!!!

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Men – stop commenting on the #MeToo movement, and shut up about it.

Men – you’re not doing enough to stand with women and speak up...#MeToo needs your voices.

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Lesbians – be the upstanding caretakers you are, and be content with your privacy.

Lesbians – a bunch of horny heterosexual men want to watch while you make love with each other.

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Gays – tell us how we can be allies to you.

Gays – stop being so politically-conscious and getting offended by everything.

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Artists – express your inner selves through vivid color and fearless shapes.

Artists – wash off that graffiti you just etched.

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Workplace Subordinates – learn how to read my mind and deliver me the exact results that I telepathically desire.

Workplace Subordinates – don’t say or do anything unless I’ve specifically told you to say or do it.

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Authority Figures – respect your subordinates’ privacy levels.

Authority Figures – call out your subordinates in front of everyone else as a way of embarrassing them.

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Worrywarts – you’re bringing us down with all of your negativity...go get therapy.

Worrywarts – ignore all of that academic psychobabble and go find Jesus.

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Voters – it’s your duty to support your lawmakers once they’re in office.

Voters – you deserve the government you get.

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Individualists -- celebrate the rich diversity of the world, while revering everybody’s uniqueness.  

Individualists -- start thinking about the “collective good” and stop making everything about you.

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In a nutshell...our culture expects us to do all of these things, without ACTUALLY doing them.  Just so we can open ourselves up to even more criticism and degradation from the peanut gallery.

If you are someone who has chosen to make a new year’s resolution, consider how you could reexamine any of the above prejudices that you might happen to possess amid your quest to better yourself.  

[djgblogger-blog]

Defying Trump, Alabama elects Roy Moore – and embraces the same old politics of rage

http://bit.ly/2friac9

The Roy Moore and Luther Strange Republican primary runoff in Alabama wasn’t quiet, staid or dignified.

Set against the backdrop of Strange’s appointment by the former – and now disgraced – Gov. Robert Bentley, Strange and Moore jockeyed to position themselves as President Donald Trump’s most reliable Senate surrogate. Only Strange had Trump’s endorsement. And yet, Alabama voters, who overwhelmingly support the president, backed the insurgent and at times inflammatory Moore by a nearly 10 point margin.

Alabama politics are often pigeonholed as reliably conservative. True, the Republican Party dominates the state, but that shouldn’t suggest Alabama doesn’t have competitive elections – it’s just that they only rarely occur between Democrats and Republicans. Alabama is what some scholars of southern politics like V. O. Key might term “bi-factional.” It is a single-party state, but within that party, factions vie for control.

Some were surprised by how competitive this special election was. Not me. I’ve lived in Alabama nearly my entire life, first as a student and now as a professor of political science at Auburn University-Montgomery. For those of us who have taken a long glance at Alabama politics, this special election was not only unsurprising – it was downright predictable.

Alabama politics then and now

To understand Alabama politics today, you need to go back to 1986.

George C Wallace.

George C. Wallace, the longtime Democratic governor of the state, had decided the future of his political career. To a packed and at times emotional audience, he revealed that he would never again seek elected office, ending his nearly quarter-century reign in Alabama. His decision left a political chasm in a state that for many years had only ever known “Wallaceism” – a political ideology unto itself, centered upon its namesake’s cult of personality.

In this void, two contenders emerged who would come to represent the future of Alabama politics.

Bill Baxley, Wallace’s lieutenant governor and former state attorney general who successfully prosecuted a Ku Klux Klan member for bombing the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, received the Democratic nod.

Guy Hunt, for many years a lonely Republican in a state dominated by Democrats, became the Republican nominee. Here was a man who had been crushed in a similar gubernatorial bid just eight years earlier. As the 1986 election got underway, many assumed Hunt would repeat his previous performance. But unlike 1978, Wallaceism was on the decline, and traditional factions were reemerging.

Historically, Alabama politics have pitted moneyed industrial and agricultural interests against poor grassroots populism. Wallace’s career was noteworthy in that he managed to harness nearly every element of populism at one point or another, vacillating between racial moderation and white supremacy, and all the way back again before he was done.

In his early career, Wallace adopted the populism of his one-time mentor, Gov. “Big” Jim Folsom, who campaigned for the everyman on roads, schools and jobs.

But following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, this brand of populism became untenable in Alabama. Whites of all political stripes demanded “massive resistance” from their politicians and offered their votes to whichever candidate gave the staunchest support for segregation. Wallace was burned in the 1958 gubernatorial election when John Patterson defeated his more moderate, Folsom-style campaign. Wallace is alleged to have remarked after his loss to never again get “out-niggered” by another segregationist. He kept that promise. From 1962 with his first election as governor, Wallaceism dominated state politics with its emphasis on what historian Dan Carter has termed “the politics of rage,” which focused almost religiously upon whites’ racial resentments, fears and anxieties.

Wallace transcended parties and factions – and became what political scientist V. O. Key called a “lone-wolf” politician. Although his personality attracted a powerful group of followers for a time, the faithful quickly drifted away once he left the political stage. After Wallace, Alabama Democrats predominantly represented the poor, the teachers’ union, plaintiffs’ lawyers and civil rights organizations.

Meanwhile, by the 1980s, a nascent Republican Party had emerged in the state. Alabama Republicans were increasingly young, educated, financially better off and white. Many simply did not remember the events that had led their parents to fall in love with Wallace or the Democrats. Culturally, they were more attuned to their evangelical grassroots and Reaganism. Republicans in this period were bankrolled by factions that represented business and land – longtime stakeholders in Alabama politics.

Republicans and Democrats engaged in a roughly 25-year battle for control of the state.

In 1986, Republican Hunt defeated Democrat and former state attorney general Baxley in a major upset. By 1997, Republicans controlled the state delegation to the U.S. Senate; in 2001, the state Supreme Court; in 2003, the governor’s mansion; and in 2011, Republicans captured the state House and Senate for the first time since Reconstruction. They then consolidated their gains with punishing partisan gerrymanders that further eroded Democratic shares of the House and Senate.

Alabama is once again a single-party state, but the factions that comprise that party are beginning to come apart.

The dog that caught the car

Paradoxically, the worst thing that might have befallen Alabama Republicans was their total victory over the Democratic Party.

Today, it’s almost hackneyed to antagonize state Democrats for their support of unions or abortion access. Democrats are no threat to Republican hegemony. Rather, the total success Republicans have achieved at the Democrats’ expense has exposed the longstanding rifts that separate Alabama’s political factions but were only held together so long as Democrats were viable sources of opposition. Without them, bi-factionalism has returned, pitting those with money against those without it; those with college degrees against those with none; those who are being held hostage by the state’s struggling education and public health systems against those who have thrived. The grassroots feel used.

Like Wallace, Roy Moore is a party unto himself. He channels the grassroots’ resentments and anxieties and makes them feel proud of their identities, predominantly as white Christians.

Alabamians have tended to fall prey to the demagogue when they felt most anxious, resentful and angry. The election of Barack Obama, America’s first black president, helped catalyze these feelings among the population’s white majority, and Trump’s election was nothing more than gasoline to the fire with its overt appeals to racism and Christian identity.

If the Alabama Democrats are clever – and I don’t see any evidence to suggest this is the case – they will position themselves either to peel away disaffected “Never Moore” types of Republicans, or they will run counterpopulism candidates who adopt socially conservative and economically liberal policies.

I don’t expect Moore’s Democratic challenger in the general election, Doug Jones, to run this kind of campaign. I also have a dim outlook for Democrats’ efforts to win legislative seats in next year’s midterms. History leads me to believe that Wallaceism – the style that initially led him to statewide success – will triumph in Alabama so long as the politics of rage are alive and well. The election of Roy Moore seems to suggest it is.

David Hughes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

[arcticdementor]

“That strange revolution which sees the sons of the bourgeois throw cobblestones at the sons of proletarians.” So observed the French writer Jean Cau of Paris in 1968, when student protests about living conditions at the university erupted into a historic rebellion against the old guard.

That year, the United States was rocked by riots, assassinations and political crisis, and half a century later, history seems to be, if not repeating itself, then certainly rhyming. Yet while there are huge differences between the 1968 and 2020 disturbances, the one continuous theme running through both uprisings, and indeed all revolutions down the years, is the prominent role of the middle class. In particular, the upper-middle-class, the haute bourgeoise, are the driving force behind revolt and disorder throughout history, especially — as with today — when they feel they have no future.

Today’s unrest involves two sections of US society, African-Americans and upper-middle-class whites, who together form the axis of the Democratic Party, but it is the latter who are far more engaged in racial activism. The “Great Awokening”, the mass movement focused on eradicating racism in America and with a quasi-religious, almost hysterical feel to it, is dominated by the upper middle class.

…

The rich have always paradoxically been radical, something G.K. Chesterton observed over a hundred years ago when he wrote “You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists: they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists.”

Before the industrial age established a political divide in which a middle-class conservative/liberal alliance opposed a working-class socialist movement, radicalism was usually an elite or at least bourgeois concern. The Reformation was disproportionately popular among the urban educated; later, while the Whigs were dominant among the wealthy London merchants, Toryism was much more common in the country as a whole.

When the French Revolution degenerated into violence a few intellectuals and aristocrats based in what is now Notting Hill sympathised with the Jacobins, but the English poor were largely unsympathetic, and showed their feelings with the brutal Priestley riots in Birmingham.

That revolution was itself largely a bourgeois affair, most of its leaders being lawyers, journalists or similar. The sans-culottes were idolised as an almost sacred group everyone had to pay lip service to, but they were often preferred in the abstract. Jean-Paul Marat called his newspaper L’Ami du peuple but in reality he despised them, partly because ‘the people’ are not that radical.

…

Marx had one proletarian colleague, Wilhelm Weitling, who he ended up putting through a ‘quasi-trial’, in Paul Johnson’s words, because he didn’t agree with all of Marx’s doctrine. The great communist intellectual believed that workers had to be instructed with a “body of doctrine and clear scientific ideas”, and because Weitling had his own opinions, he was cancelled — although Marx’s followers had a more permanent way of cancelling people.

Lenin’s Bolsheviks followed in this fashion, radicalised by their experience at universities, not factories. The Russian revolutionaries were so bourgeois that, as Daniel Kalder observed in Dictator Literature: “Only one solitary worker ever sat on the executive board of Lenin’s party, and he turned out to be a police spy.”

That noble tradition of haute bourgeoisie revolution continues today, especially in the US. The Occupy movement, for example, is deeply opposed to the 1% but largely because they come from the 2-5%; Amy Chua cited figures suggesting that in New York, more than half it members earned $75,000 or more while only 8% were on low incomes, compared to 30% of the city. They also have hugely disproportionate numbers of graduates and post-grads among their members.

The wider Great Awokening, of which the 2020 disturbances are a part, is a very elite phenomenon, with progressive activists nearly twice as likely as the average American to make more than $100,000 a year, nearly three times as likely to have a postgraduate degree, and only one-quarter as likely to be black. Likewise with the radicalisation of American academia, with the safe spaces movement most prevalent at elite colleges, where students were much more likely to disinvite speakers or express more extreme views.

…

This trend would only accelerate, driven by a combination of media, expanding education and globalisation. In his highly prophetic The Revolt of the Elites, published after his death in 1994, Christopher Lasch argued that the new ruling class was becoming far more radicalised as its values diverged from a more parochial lumpen bourgeois. This more global-minded elite, used to seeing the world at 30,000ft, now embraced diversity as a mark of status but also a faith, with identity politics a replacement for religion — “or at least for the feeling of self-righteousness that is so commonly confused with religion”.

The Great Awokening certainly draws on America’s sectarian religious tradition, in a country formed by Calvinists, Quakers, Baptists and a dozen other Christian sects, but there are also materialist causes, in particular the expansion of the university system and runaway housing costs.

High house prices, in particular caused by planning restrictions, make it harder for the urban elite to settle down and have families — something likely to have a civilizing effect — and also pushes them radically to the Left.

…

This has been bubbling up for years — and then along came the coronavirus, throwing millions of people out of work, many from exactly the sort of sections most likely to cause trouble. And what makes it slightly spooky is that a few years back Turchin predicted that there would be a violent flashpoint in American politics — in 2020.

History teaches us that disaffected and bored members of the elite can become a destabilising influence on society. In medieval Europe, the younger sons of lords, destined to never inherit land, were at the centre of numerous rebellions and wars, with the crusades acting as a pressure valve for their violent impulses. In China the term ‘bare branches’ is used to describe those excess males unable to find mates and who then went on to cause trouble, and modern America has record numbers of single people.

Perhaps the most famous example of elite overproduction is the War of the Roses. Edward III’s seven surviving children married into the most powerful families in the realm, helping to stabilise politics during his reign, but this fecund group produced huge numbers of grandchildren and great-grandchildren chasing a limited number of baronial positions, during a period when post-pandemic population decline had hugely decreased the wealth of the landowning class. When the king descended into listless insanity the rival factions turned English politics into a Shakespearean bloodbath.

The lesson of that crisis, as of every crises since, is that discontent and boredom among the rich and powerful can quickly descend into violence; it is they, in the words of the Beatles’ 1968 hit, who usually want to change the world.