#I've been going to protests since the 80s and I've seen it every time

[cinemaocd]

Every Protest Has

Outside provocateurs starting property damage, and violence.

Hardened activists/Professional protestors that are out to get strategically arrested. Usually <10 people.

The groups with almost no connection with the cause being protested who try to make it about themselves.

The cops starting shit. Escalating to militarized police response.

Street theater.

Privileged people starting shit with the cops putting marginalized folks in even more danger.

Surveillance.

Private Security

FBI informants

Counter protestors not in a formal protest group but scattered around the margins, making themselves visible to the media but also on or near public transport so that they can intimidate people coming/going to the protest

"Non-lethal" crowd control methods.

People with bullhorns who should not have them. Ever.

and finally but probably most importantly:

Every protest has

been mischaracterized, often wildly so, by the media.

[sirfrancisvarney]

I had been enjoying this season of True Detective so much, and I was so looking forward to the last episode and seeing how they'd wrap things up, but when it finally aired, I was left feeling so disappointed.

The explanation given of what Tsalal was up to in the beginning made absolutely no sense, to the point where I was willing to believe it was a cover story for something else. Unfortunately, the nonsense about whatever they were drilling being too hard to extract DNA from is apparently true, somehow. I don't understand it. We've been drilling into glaciers and permafrost for decades. Why would the core being too "hard" make it too difficult to extract DNA? We're talking about ice; why can't you just thaw it? Are you trying to get DNA out of literal rock, like fossilized bacteria or something? Shearing DNA is the least of your problems. And what sort of pollution is going to make your cores "softer" without destroying or contaminating your samples? Am I really supposed to believe that's the best method available?

Look, on some level, what the Tsalal scientists were doing isn't actually important, because as far as the narrative is concerned, it's just a MacGuffin, just something to get them there and give them a reason to kill Annie K. and kickstart the plot. On the other hand, what they were doing is the most important thing, because it serves as their motivation, and if I can't believe the first crime, the whole plot falls apart. For the story to succeed, I have to believe that they would all kill Annie K. over her attempted destruction of their work. And since the scientists aren't given much in the way of characterization (like at this point I still don't know if they were all completely off their rocker or if Clark was right and they did find what they were looking for), then their research has to be something I would recognize as being worth killing over. But their research makes no sense, so I don't. And this killed the story for me. 

In the companion podcast Issa López talked about listening to indigenous women and getting their input when developing the story, and I've seen people online comment on the show accurately portraying life in Alaska. I just wish the science side of things had received the same level of attention.

On a more personal and subjective note, the ending was also too happy for me. There was a time when I liked tales of badass women getting revenge on evil men as much as anyone, but those stories feel like empty wish-fulfillment nowadays. I can't believe in those kinds of endings anymore, because they only seem to exist in fiction. Was a single video from a dead man who was well-known to be mentally ill really all it took to bring down the mine? In 2020, there were video recordings of both Ahmaud Arbery's and George Floyd's murders everywhere on the internet, protests in every state in the US, people getting their eyes shot out or receiving permanent brain damage from cops shooting them in the face, and for what? After all that, as soon as 2021 rolled around, the newspapers were platforming all these bullshit liars claiming crime was now worse than it was back in the 80s.

I don't know, maybe I'm just too cynical, but I don't believe justice or change can be made so easily or quickly, and it irritates me sometimes to see it presented that way in fiction. Maybe if the Tsalal research had made more sense, I wouldn't have been as bothered by the rest.

[maggiemooo]

Had to edit this as this was in response to a reply I think you deleted. This reply is going to focus on mostly Democrats who call to vote, but it is an answer to why not voting.

I think what all the pro voters miss (and to be fair a lot of the non-voters do as well) is that to be vocally anti voting is to try to combat the endless waves of voting propaganda.

Every four years, we get people that never talk politics otherwise and only stay "informed" from corporate news, telling us things like if you don't vote for Harris, it's a vote for Trump (that's not how voting works, and also I've been hearing it since Gore vs Bush). or that every vote is equal or counts (not according to the electoral college). Or that Dems support policies that that they vocally don't, or wont (they can say whatever they want and there's no real mechanism to be held to those promises). Or that anyone who's anti-voting is a Russian bot (seems they miss the cold war). There's no shame in the lies that pro voters will shove down all of our throats. They lie, they bully, dog pile, gaslight, because their party feels entitled to my support.

and this is is just surface level griping. as someone who is apparently politically inactive, I've seen how the voting season decimates grassroots political movements too (and not just every 4 years, but in state elections too). If you've already forgotten, the George Floyd uprising happened in 2020. Everyone was home, and it was a lot bigger than previous BLM protests, it was bigger and more sustained than the womens march. You saw a lot of democrats jump onto the movement (while peace policing it and constantly pushing outside agitator narratives), and a lot of candidates used the movement to get elected. And you could see it everywhere, for better or worse. But then election fever starts taking hold, and instead of police killings and racialized police violence being discussed, electoralism becomes the main conversation. And we get Joe 'crime bill' Biden as president. So now the demands for abolition or reform of police wilt away and we get larger police budgets, and more killings by the police each year since 2020. And, because a democrat is in office, the liberals aren't showing up anymore, or raising a stink.

And for a party who campaigned on combating covid, we've seen the shift very quickly to a party of covid denialism. Not only at the top, but 80% of the people in my life have accepted this narrative as well. Few people get vaxed anymore, even less mask (not even in hospitals). Tests and vaccines are now only available for those that can afford it. There's no sick leave protections. There's no funding for programs (Interestingly, a good amount of the funding there was went to cops). We were shorted on our promised support.

You can see this happening in real time with Gaza, as democrats realize they're more comfortable supporting genocide, or getting wrapped up in only discussing why voting is important instead of doing anything to end the slaughter of Palestinians. The democratic party is the slaughter house of liberatory movements. It has for a long time, and there's no sign of it stopping anytime.

But at the core of it, we are in the imperial core of a country that was funded and maintained off of colonization, genocide, and slavery. It hasn't once stopped. I have no interest in being heard or participating in this system. Electoralism not only says "voting is the only meaningful political act you can take", but that it's also a moral necessity. I don't want a seat at the table covered in the spoils of war, I want to tear it down.

And this is why I don't think 3rd party is viable either. If you want to vote them, whatever, but a lot of the criticism remains. The structures of power remain, and there's no recourse if they don't hold their promises either. And they still pull labor away from revolutionary projects into electoralism.

But every four years, all the liberals come out of the wood work to say we have a sacred civil duty to the empire while standing proudly in front of a fascist flag, and y'all are taken seriously.

To be vocally anti voting is an attempt to combat the bullshit. I do it because I think a better world is possible, but any chance of change gets kneecapped by the myths that voting is a viable path for that change. That we have a duty to the empire that rules over us. That showing up every four years to be complicit in the system is either good or enough.

If you're american and you're the type to post 24/7 about not voting for the democrats then I feel like I've gotta ask like...

Are you voting for a third party or not voting?

If you're voting for a third party then that's legit af. Voting as strategically as possible is probably usually the smart thing to do (first past the post systems suck like that), but it's unreasonable to expect everyone to do it all the time. I usually vote for the NDP. The first time I got to vote in a federal election I voted for the marxist leninist party lol. Those sluts obviously had no chance of winning!

If you're not voting then like are you doing so because you think voting doesn't accomplish anything or because you thing not voting accomplishes something?

If you think voting doesn't accomplish anything... That's fair! That's kinda true! It's like adjacent to the truth! I feel like voting is like such a low effort thing that it's worth bothering with anyways, but your individual vote isn't gonna decide the election and most things won't change regardless of the results. Electing Harris will definitely not end Israel's ongoing occupation of and genocide in palestine (it's embarrassing that some people still believe that it will) (which is a reasonable thing to be a single issue voter (or I guess non voter) about).

If you think that not voting accomplishes something tho... Lmao? What? How?