#The Issues: ​Crime | Abortion | Socialism

[xtruss]

Latin America’s New Hard Right: Bukele, Milei, Kast And Bolsonaro! Crime, Abortion and Socialism, Not Immigration, Are The Issues That Rile Them

— April 1st 2024| Santiago, Chile 🇨🇱

A montage of right-wing Latin American leaders on a red and blue background with Donald Trump throwing maga hats at them. Illustration: Klawe Rzeczy

“Mr president!” Javier Milei could barely contain himself when he met Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near Washington in February. The pair embraced and exchanged slogans, with Mr Trump intoning “Make Argentina Great Again” several times and Argentina’s new President yipping “Viva la Libertad, Carajo” (“Long Live Freedom, Dammit”) in response.

Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s Popular Autocratic President, had already addressed the conference. “They say globalism comes to die at CPAC,” he told enraptured Republicans. “I’m here to tell you that in El Salvador, it’s already dead.” Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s Hard-Right Former President, was a star guest in 2023. He, like Mr Trump, claimed without evidence that his bid for a second term was thwarted by fraud. His supporters also attempted an insurrection.

These scenes suggest a seamless international alliance between Mr Trump and the leaders of Latin America’s hard right. Its members also include José Antonio Kast of Chile, who has spoken at cpac in the past too. This new right basks in Mr Trump’s influence. It has turned away from a more consensual form of conservative politics in favour of an aggressive pursuit of culture war.

Its ascent began with the surprise victory of Mr Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018, followed by that of Mr Bukele in 2019. In Chile Mr Kast, the founder of a new hard-right Republican Party, got 44% of the vote in a presidential run-off in 2021 and his party won an election for a constitutional council in 2023. Mr Milei won his own surprise victory in November. Would-be leaders of the radical right jostle in the Politics of Peru and Colombia.

Unlike its older European and North American equivalents, the Latin American hard right does not have roots in the fertile soil of public anxiety about uncontrolled immigration (although this has become an issue recently because of the arrival of millions of Venezuelans fleeing their country’s rotten dictatorship).

The new group shares three hallmarks. The first is fierce opposition to abortion, and gay and women’s rights. “What unites them is an affirmation of traditional social hierarchies,” as Lindsay Mayka and Amy Erica Smith, two academics, put it. The second hallmark is a tough line on crime and citizens’ security. And the third is uncompromising opposition to social democracy, let alone communism, which leads some to want a smaller state.

There were common factors in their ascents, too. They were helped by a sense of crisis—about corruption and economic stagnation in Brazil and Argentina, gang violence in El Salvador and the sometimes violent “social explosion” in Chile.

Cousins In Arms

But each leader has adopted a different mix of these ideological elements. The hard right in Latin America are “cousins, not brothers”, says Cristóbal Rovira of the Catholic University of Chile. “They are similar but not identical.”

Mr Bolsonaro’s constituencies were evangelicals, to whom he appealed with his defence of the traditional family, and the authoritarian right in the form of the army, the police and farmers worried about land invasions and rural crime. But he was lukewarm about the free market and fiscal rigour. Mr Bukele made security the cornerstone of his first presidential term, overcoming criminal gangs by locking up more than 74,000 of El Salvador’s 6.4 Million Citizens. His economic policy is less clear and, despite his claim at CPAC, is not self-evidently “anti-globalist”.

Mr Milei was elected for his pledge to pull Argentina out of prolonged stagflation and to cut down what he brands as a corrupt political “caste”. A self-described “anarcho-capitalist”, he is a fan of the Austrian school of free-market economics. Unlike Mr Trump, he is neither an economic nationalist nor protectionist on trade. He has only recently adopted his peers’ stance on moral issues. His government supports a bill to overturn Argentina’s abortion law, and says it will eliminate gender-conscious language from public administration. Mr Bukele followed suit.

Mr Kast attempted to put conservative morality in the constitutional draft his party championed, which was one reason why it was rejected in a plebiscite. He wants tough policies on security and against immigration. “We should close the borders and build a trench,” he says. He wants to “shrink the state and lower the tax burden”. Whereas Mr Bolsonaro is a climate-change sceptic and anti-vaxxer, Mr Kast is not.

Democracy For Thee, Not For Me

Right-wing populists also have differing attitudes to democracy. With his attempt to subvert the election result, for which he is under police investigation, Mr Bolsonaro showed that he was not a democrat. Mr Bukele is contemptuous of checks and balances. His success at slashing the murder rate made him hugely popular, allowing him to brush aside constitutional term limits and win a second term in February.

Mr Milei’s “disdain for democratic institutions is clear”, says Carlos Malamud, An Argentine Historian, citing Mr Milei’s break with convention by giving his inauguration speech to a crowd of supporters, rather than to Congress. But, Mr Malamud adds, Mr Milei may yet learn that he needs to include the parliament in government.

“I’m a democrat,” insists Mr Kast, and his opponents agree. “On security and shrinking the state, we share views with Bolsonaro,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean that we are the same as Milei or Bolsonaro or Bukele.” As Mr Kast notes, policy choices are shaped in each country by very different circumstances.

So are the prospects of the various leaders. Mr Bukele is by far the most successful, with would-be imitators across the region and no obvious obstacles to his remaining in power indefinitely. In contrast, Mr Bolsonaro’s active political career may well be over. The electoral court has barred him as a candidate until 2030 (when he will be 75) for disparaging the voting system at a meeting with foreign ambassadors. He may be jailed for his apparent attempt to organise a military coup against his electoral defeat; he denies this and claims he is a victim of political persecution.

Mr Milei’s future is up for grabs. Succeed in taming inflation, and he could emerge strengthened from a midterm election in 2025. But if he refuses to compromise with Congress and provincial governors, he may be in trouble before then. In Chile, Mr Kast seemed to overplay his hand with the constitutional draft. The election in 2025 could see the centre-right take power. One influential figure of that persuasion argues that Mr Kast is unable to represent the diversity of modern Chile.

Ultimately, the group is bound by an international network built around common political discourse and cultural references. Mr Kast chairs the Political Network for Values, an outfit previously led by an ally of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Populist Leader. Vox, Spain’s hard-right party, organises the Foro de Madrid, a network of like-minded politicians mainly from what it calls the “Iberosphere” in Latin America.

These gatherings offer a chance to share experiences and sometimes a bit more. Mr Bukele has advisers from Venezuela’s exiled opposition. Mr Trump’s activists have shown up at Latin American elections. Recently, Mr Bolsonaro took refuge in the Hungarian embassy in Brasília for two nights when he feared arrest.

But there are no signs of central direction or co-ordination. The right in Latin America has long claimed that the Foro de São Paulo, a get-together of Latin American left-wingers, is a highly organised conspiracy. All the evidence is that it is a loose friendship network. That seems to be true of its right-wing peer, too. ■

— This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "The Anti-communist International"

[sparksinthenight]

News from around the world:

[batboyblog]

April 1st is Election Day

Are you feeling sick, depressed, angry, outraged and all the other bad feelings about Donald Trump and Elon Musk this March? WELL FUCKO! its time to get to work, the first major test of the resistance to Trump-Musk is this April first! two special elections to the US House in Florida and a Supreme Court election in Wisconsin.

Florida's 1st and 6th Congressional Districts are having special elections on April 1st.

Right now the House of Representatives is 218 Republicans to 215 Democrats, flip these two seats, its 218-217, one vote away from being able to hold Trump and Musk accountable, and there are lots of Republican Congresspeople in their 70s and 80s.

The First Congressional District used to be well know sex criminal Matt Gaetz' district till he resigned hoping that'd mean The House wouldn't release a report on all his sex crimes, but the House released it anyways and Matt didn't get to be Trump's Attorney General. Any ways Trump endorsed Republican Jimmy Patronis, an ally of Ron DeSantis, which pretty much closed the Republican primary.

The Democrat is named Gay Valimont where ever you live in the US you can phone bank, if you live in Florida, or southern Georgia, Alabama, or Mississippi PLEASE! for the love of GOD! find time this month, one weekend to knock doors, and if you have a spare dollar, maybe don't buy something off Amazon? give it to the cause?

Give Volunteer Events

The Sixth Congressional District used to be Michael Waltz' seat till he resigned to be Trump's National Security Adviser, you know that gross bullying of Ukraine's President Zelensky? Waltz was definitely a part of planning that little show.

Any ways Trump endorsed well known lunatic Randy Fine to be the Republican nominee. Fine's not even in Congress and he's already threatening Democratic members he doesn't like.

The Democratic nominee is teacher Joshua Weil You can phone bank from anywhere and like I said if you live in Florida or southern Georgia please please give of your time and knock some doors. If you have a dollar to spare it'll go a long way.

Give Volunteer/Events

These will both be up hill fights, they are normally very safe Republican seats. However, these are not normal times, Musk and his DOGE are about as popular with the public as an untreated STI. Musk is firing veterans, and military spouses from their jobs, cutting back the VA, and Social Security, firing park rangers, air traffic controllers, nuclear weapon experts, civilian workers from the Defense department, Trump is purging the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. These are all things traditional Republican voters do not like. So you (and I) all have a chance to tell them all about it. No matter what happens on April 1st I don't want a single Florida voter to not know about these elections and how important they are.

Wisconsin!

Every bit as important as the special elections in Florida and maybe more so for the people of Wisconsin, Wisconsin is having an election for a Supreme Court Justice. The Wisconsin Supreme Court is right now 4-3 liberal to conservative. Liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley is retiring and the election will elect her replacement for a 10 year term.

Right now a case is before the Wisconsin Supreme Court to decide if the state should ban abortions under an 1849 law. If Conservatives flip this seat they will ban abortion in the state

The Conservative candidate Brad Schimel has made clear in very sexist language that banning abortion is a top issue for him. What's more Schimel is endorsed by Elon Musk. Musk is pouring MILLIONS of dollars into this race, it's the most expensive Judicial race in Wisconsin History thanks to Elon Musk and likely one of the most expensive judicial elections in American history. This is your chance to go head to head with Elon Musk and kick his ass.

The Liberal in the race, Susan Crawford, is endorsed by all the liberals on the court, the Wisconsin Democratic Party, and dozens of unions including the teacher's union. She's promising to keep abortion legal and to stand up to oligarchs like Musk.

If you live anywhere in Wisconsin this election is about you and your future and the next 10 years of your state, please volunteer. All of us can phone bank or postcard write from anywhere, And if you're in Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, or Michigan's UP and you want to make Musk sad? find a weekend this month to go to Wisconsin and knock some doors.

Give Volunteer Events

Where ever you are you can and should make a difference, even if it's just to share this post to help it reach someone else. Its time to stop feeling bad and start fighting back.

[argumate]

there are a few reasons for why someone might wish to reduce the level of immigration rather than increase it:

it's illegal to build housing, so there will be nowhere for them to live -- this is a valid concern! a society where it is illegal or very costly to build housing will have difficulties with immigration, and population growth in general, new family formation, seniors downsizing, people living closer to their jobs, in fact there will be many problems; please consider legalising the construction of housing immediately, it makes everything so much easier.

we don't have enough schools/hospitals/trains for more people -- similar to a housing shortage this is a valid concern and has a similar solution: build more infrastructure! if you have a shortage of vital infrastructure and an inability to construct more then that will be a constant drag on growth regardless of immigration.

immigrants reduce wages -- this is a complicated one as it gets tangled up in so many different hypotheses:

immigrants that are not allowed to work may work illegally and accept low wages without complaint as they fear deportation, while immigrants that have rights may demand higher wages.

population increase does not automatically lower wages as people consume as well as work (wages rose faster in the 1960s despite population growth being high).

if immigrants reduce wages, why doesn't that lower prices? if lower wages flow through to higher corporate profits then that suggests issues with market concentration and lack of competition that are independent of immigration.

many industries have gatekeeping bottlenecks that prevent new workers from joining in order to keep wages high, like healthcare (which often leads to a two tier system where e.g. nurses might be paid less than doctors if they aren't protected by the same guild).

immigrants require too much public support -- another complicated one if you believe that immigrants work too much for too little, since this idea suggests that immigrants import excess consumption instead of excess production; of course it's possible that young immigrants work hard and don't consume much in the way of healthcare while older immigrants work less and consume more healthcare, so both assertions could be true simultaneously depending on which immigrants you are talking about (in practice I don't think it's the case that immigrants or their descendants consume noticeably more public support than non-immigrants).

immigrants might be axe murderers -- unclear whether this belief relies on immigrants having committed axe murders in the past or planning to commit them in the future, but with crime rates at historic lows it seems that axe murders fluctuate due to reasons that are not tied to immigration levels (and there are so many candidates to choose from: social policy, incarceration rates, abortion access, lead in the petrol, war and mass mobilisation, availability of mobile phones and the internet, dozens more hypotheses).

immigrants might make people racist -- this sounds funny but it's true that due to the way people get tribal (and unfortunate media incentives) if any immigrant does turn out to be an axe murderer then it will potentially prejudice popular opinion against all immigrants, much like the way if a serial killer turns out to be a middle aged man it justifies treating all middle aged men as serial killers, etc.

I'm ignoring the overtly racist reasons why someone might want to constrain immigration as those are unpleasant; there are obviously a lot of covertly or implicitly racist reasons but I think it's better to take them at face value first.

I believe there are strong moral and economic arguments in favour of what you might call a "let people do what the fuck they want" policy towards immigration, and that most of the challenges to adopting this relate to self-inflicted own goals where a society shoots itself in the dick by making it impossible to build housing where people want to live, or impossible to build power stations, or impossible to build train lines, and then laments the lack of the infrastructure necessary for life; we don't have to do this, and we could all be a lot richer if we just stopped choosing not to be.

[cleolinda]

At a fundraiser in Massachusetts earlier this week, Walz went after Tommy Tuberville, the Republican senator from Alabama, saying, “I feel like one of my roles in this now is to be the anti-Tommy Tuberville, to show that football coaches are not the dumbest people.”

Once again, as an Alabamian I would like to apologize for Tommy Tuberville, the former Auburn coach and current U.S. senator who is dumber than a sack of wet mice—

In an Alabama Daily News interview after the election, Tuberville said that the European theater of World War II was fought "to free Europe of socialism" and erroneously that the three branches of the U.S. federal government were "the House, the Senate, and the executive." He also said that he was looking forward to raising money from his Senate office, a violation of federal law.

—but also a fucking bigot. Please review the lengthy “Tenure” section of his Wikipedia page as to why I hate him, for reasons including but not limited to: voting against the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act; claiming that Democrats are “pro-crime” and want reparations for descendants of enslaved people “because they think the people that do the crime are owed that,” what the fuck; being an election denier and voting against a January 6th commission; being a climate change denier; being transphobic as fuck (a whole section); famously holding military promotions hostage over the issue of abortion availability for service members (yeah, he’s THAT guy); denying that white nationalists are “inherently racist” (“I call them Americans”); and calling Zelenskyy a dictator and supporting Putin TWO MONTHS AGO. Tim Walz, I bid you read this fuckstick for filth. Thank you for letting me vent. Roll tide.

[f1ghtsoftly]

All The Women’s News You Missed This Week

3/3/25-3/10/25

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump delivered a joint Congressional address. Democrats wore pink to protest this and two female Democratic leaders Sen. Elissa Slotkin and Rep. Alexandria Occasio Cortez delivered notable rebuttals.  You can watch Slotkin’s address here and read an opinion about AOC’s Instagram live rebuttal here. The world celebrated International Women’s Day with protests both inside the US and abroad, most notably in Latin America. Giselle Pelicot’s daughter has also accused her father of rape, tragically, without her mother’s support. 

The news was filled with feel-good stories about women’s rights, particularly in the Global South, and a variety of interesting investigative pieces centering women’s voices, which left me wondering why those stories aren’t covered as heavily 11 months out of the year. 

Fights continue in the US and Poland for reproductive justice. Women continue to make news for leadership lead on a variety of political issues, both as world leaders, like Mexico’s Sheinbaum, or as activists, like the Berlin Women’s Day protesters who were brutalized by police due to their support of occupied Palestine, Serbian women leading protests against government corruption and a Caribbean woman who founded a nonprofit to fight for disability justice in Antigua. 

Want this in your inbox instead? Subscribe here

International Women’s Day

Feminists express anger, outrage at Women's Day marches in Mexico, Argentina and Peru

We now have an actual DEI Watchlist

Opinion and Investigative: 

The Women Who Wanted to Leave Their Husbands Over Politics

Three women grieve their dream jobs after being fired by the Trump administration

Reproductive Justice: 

Woman, 74, charged under abortion protest law

Young People Are Fleeing States With Abortion Restrictions 

Trump has dropped a high-profile abortion case in Idaho. Here’s what that means

Ultrasound now needed for pill abortions in Wyoming after lawmakers override veto

Women in the News: 

Trump didn't want to talk about Medicaid last night — so AOC did

Heather Hill is running for governor of Ohio. Who is she?

Professor Fiona Raitt: Dundee champion of legal reform and women’s rights, dies at 68

Azerbaijan’s Imprisoned Women Journalists 

Who is Elissa Slotkin, the Democrat who responded to Trump's speech? 

Arizona lawmaker who announced plans in a floor speech last year to get an abortion is resigning

As US and Canada trade barbs, it's so far so good for Mexico's Sheinbaum

LGBTQ: 

California’s Gavin Newsom opposes trans athletes in women’s sports, splitting with progressives

Prosecutors say there’s no evidence so far that torture and killing of missing man was a hate crime

Male Violence Against Women: 

What if m23s struggle was also a feminist one?

Gisèle Pelicot’s daughter: She abandoned me as a fellow victim 

Palestinian women come forward with allegations of increased sexual violence by Israeli forces since Oct. 7

Authorities in the Dominican Republic search for missing American university student

An Israeli woman and her Indian host were gang raped in southern India, police say

Canadian serial killer's victim found in landfill

Mother's murder left irreplaceable void, court hears

Women Getting Justice???

Andrew Tate, social media influencer who faces trafficking charges, sits cageside for UFC 313

Italy approves draft law targeting femicide with punishment of up to life in prison

Jay-Z sues woman who dropped rape claim against him

Women Fight Back: 

WATCH: Massive violence against women by Berlin police at the international women’s day protest 

Diagnosed with arthritis at 24, she set out to hike... and change an unequal society

The Dems' 'Let's All Wear Pink' Stunt Fell Painfully Flat. Here's Why.

‘I screamed and the world listened’: how astronaut Amanda Nguyen survived rape to fight for other victims

Female students mark International Women’s day by leading protests in Serbia against corruption

Activists open abortion center in front of Polish parliament on Women’s Day

Maasai girls take up self-defense as protection from sexual abuse and early marriage

Activists in Trinidad and Tobago push to include women’s occupations on Hindu marriage act

Feel Good Stories: 

‘I’m still dancing’: Derbyshire woman has 105th birthday rave at care home 

A resort entirely staffed and run by women in Sri Lanka seeks to break gender barriers

 Cyndi Lauper ‘cried’ after song title was made into feminist slogan for protests

‘We had all this energy’: the landmark gathering of women that unnerved the Chinese government

Arts and Culture: 

Pamela Bach, Baywatch Actress and David Hasselhoff's Ex Wife, Dies by Suicide at 62

Music Review: The Lady Gaga you loved and missed returns with pop ‘Mayhem’

Movie Review: A reckoning in surreal, riveting ‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl’

Movie Review: In ‘My Dead Friend Zoe,’ a dark comedy about PTSD

Alanis Morissette’s furious feminism lives on  

As always, this is global and domestic news from a US perspective covering feminist issues and women in the news more generally. As of right now, I do not cover Women’s Sports. Published each Monday.

[cinnamonest]

Don’t worry about replying to this in any capacity. Just wanted to say that I read your most recent post and it was extremely helpful and informative for me. I was just talking to my dad earlier about really struggling to understand how anyone could support Trump when he is just a complete bumbling fool of a man at best and a piece of shit bigot and sexist at worst. (Not to say that Harris is some beacon in the darkness, not a fan of her either.) But the perspective you offered was really enlightening so thank you for it. and I hope you are doing well enough, all things considered, and that regardless of what happens in the coming days that things get better for you and your community.

Thank you, that's very kind. I'm very glad it was helpful, I was worried I was coming across the wrong way or didn't word it very well or could be misinterpreted.

If it helps, I had some more thoughts I think would expand upon that, specifically for women — since I see a lot of posts essentially asking how women can possibly vote for the guy, and I think I can explain that too, as I've been thinking and talking a lot about that with women who I know intend to do so.

1) I think for the upper class, they tend to focus more on social issues, because economic issues don't affect them as strongly.

But for some of these people, especially moms, the increased cost of living is literally a matter of "how am I going to feed my children, how am I going to pay electric AND water," etc. So it becomes a priority, especially as many families have lots of kids, and some are single moms. They don't really think as much about social issues, whereas when I went to college, most of the kids cared only about social issues. The more financially secure someone is, the less preoccupied they are with economy.

But for a mom, the safety of and provision for their kids is paramount above all else, so economy and crime will take priority.

But since we only have 2 major parties, people often assume that whichever you vote for, you must agree with ALL of the party's official stances, which is often not the case. That's part of why our bipartisan system is so divisive and breeds hostility, because it creates an "us vs them" mentality.

2) women in the area I talked about don't really even think about abortion/reproductive rights. They're not militantly anti-choice (like some of the more suburban moms of kids I went to school with), it's more that no one ever really thinks about it at all. Many of them have kids very young and lots of them, it's just normal. They also don't have careers to focus on in the way higher-class women do, and many have no chance of ever going to college, so there's less reason to hold off on it.

People do what's normal per their class/local culture — so here, if a girl gets unexpectedly pregnant (which is... not uncommon), they don't freak out or think about how it will affect their future, how they'll afford it etc, they usually just... shrug, drop out of high school, marry the guy, have the kid.

When we were 16, one of my good friends got pregnant, and she too did exactly that. She was unironically overjoyed to find out too, rather than panicked or dismayed. Like, when she took the pregnancy test, I was there with her, sitting on the tile floor of the church bathroom at 9 pm with the test we scraped cash together to buy from the gas station-pharmacy hybrid shop down the road, and she, as a 16 year old high school junior, was actively hoping, fingers crossed and smiling and everything, that it would be positive. She's now 24 and is about to have baby #5.

And part of the reason she was fine with it was... because her mom had her at 15. It's a very cyclic thing. The possibility of abortion would not occur to them unless someone else brought it up.

3) Moreover, when women vote, they focus on what affects them specifically as a woman — and prioritize what's most "real" to us as an individual woman, the hypotheticals one can most realistically see happening to them. But what that most realistic thing is, varies a lot from woman to woman.

For a woman living in, say, Maine or northeast California or even a safer rural place like Idaho, I can see how abortion is probably the most "real" thing to them, that they can see themselves being in a position to affect them.

Whereas for me, having experienced harassment and aggression, reading about these statistics and headlines, violence is something I am much more afraid of happening to me. I'm very careful to avoid an area where I was harassed before.

But for someone in a low-crime place, that isn't something that's going to be a priority.

I personally now realize that a lot of the misunderstanding and clashing is a matter of the fact that women in many blue areas simply don't think about this, because they've never had a reason to, and that's perfectly understandable.

But a lot of women in areas like my home do not realize that. Many women at home strongly believe that "them uppity rich white women out in California or wherever the hell" (quoth my 90-something year old neighbor), are aware of, but simply don't care about, the consequences women here/poor women face. I used to think so too, when I was younger, because that's what I was told.

As a result, they view their blue vote as a very "let them eat cake" heartless-rich-person sort of thing, as selfish and/or classism, in the same way that women in blue areas likely view their red votes as female-class betrayal, religious brainwashing, believe their husbands must be controlling them, etc.

Now, with greater life experience, I not only understand that it isn't like that at all on either side, but I can also see why many blue-area women dismiss our experiences as "not really happening" or "right-wing propaganda," simply due to the fact that it's very difficult for them to fathom it, because it's so different from the reality they live in, it feels like it can't be real.

4) it *is* true that these women are often demonized and gaslit for talking about the rapes, job loss etc, so that has shifted even more moderate women very rightwards over the last few years, because they feel silenced/censored.

Donald is a sort of savior figure — he acknowledges the issue they otherwise feel censored on, and moreover, has essentially promised to take away the men that hurt them, their daughters, sisters etc. They want to feel safe again, they want their husbands to get their jobs back, feel like they have a secure future, etc, and his platform is literally "make America safe again, make America rich again, make America great again."

That line you may have seen all over the internet a few days ago, where Donald said something along the lines of "I'm going to protect the women if they like it or not"? And you know how it earned disgust from the mainstream population of women?

That line was received extremely positively by women at home. I've already seen them sharing it around with my mom/aunts/grandma on facebook, in a positive light, ecstatic. It makes them feel seen and heard in a culture that otherwise puts a hand over their mouth, and they cling to those words in hope of a better future.

Tldr: it's women who are vulnerable and afraid and desperate, going for the only option that has promised to address their needs. Much conflict comes from the limited human ability to grasp things outside of ourselves, our tendency for solipsism — an unfortunate part of the human condition that has plagued our species from the dawn of time.

[fandomsfuckoff]

i have a lot of hot takes on "guy stuff" but it feels pointless explaining anything that isn't exclusive to trans men or even lgbt+ men to tumblr.

and no, most of them aren't related to misogynistic culture, it'd be a cold take to be like "hm. yeah. i think locker room talk as they call it is normalization of violence against women and such".

idk. i think our "theory" is incomplete if we keep listing semi universal man stuff as exclusive to marginalized men. maybe it's just selection bias but i don't think "people hated me when i started t" is exclusive to trans men, some aspects of it - like "twink death" are , but a lot of cis men have their mom just suddenly hate them when they hit puberty. a lot of cis men were suddenly ostracized by people who used to be their friend (not for no reason, btw, a lot of teenage boys suddenly become awful and all that) .

i'm listing social things because i think i'll be killed for listing systemic things tbh. Please also do some research before listing things you think are systemic - like divorce- men aren't simply being denied custody every time , it's that they don't ask. or "false rape allegations" a very very small percent are false and usually a guy "falsely accused of rape" has done some other crime that was misogynistic in nature. "baby trapping" is almost never done.

most people who would argue there are any systemic issues for men did no research and are fighting imaginary battles, and i hate them for it. also, no, that doesn't trump womens issues, ffs women just lost abortion protections (though, trans men never really had any lolll).

[thechibilitwick]

As an honorary Shidou apologist, I am breaking my silence. I’ve finally decided to go on a rant on why I don't think Kirisaki Shidou is an organ harvester.

(fair warning I like absolutely suck ass at organizing my thoughts, so if some of this is incoherent or if it seems like i'm repeating myself my bad 😭 I mainly wrote this for fun)

So, I'm aware that this theory is the most popular consensus when it comes to Shidou (and tbh, I think part of it is because a lot of people kinda look over him? Like at least a tiny bit more than the others, considering a lot of people also don’t realize how his main victim was probably his son and not his wife, but I digress) (plus I think all milgram characters are looked over to a certain extent). While I do think parts of it are probably accurate in some way, I don't think he was a full-on organ harvester (as in he actively stole from patients through illegal means. emphasis on actively) and that the theory in and of itself is flimsy at best. He's morally questionable, yes, but it’s more in the sense that he’s a somewhat apathetic guy who lacked understanding on how his own set of morals and values (i.e. pushing for organ donation) could be seen as wrong. So if he were an organ harvester, wouldn’t he be aware that it’s illegal? That’s what confuses me whenever people bring it up. I don't actually doubt that he may have done something illegal for his family's sake, it’s just that I still highly doubt it was something he actively did. And that seems to be what a lot of people think when they refer to the theory. (if i’m wrong please forgive me, i just assume organ harvester shidou = people think he did it as a job)

Anyways, more under the cut for those interested (it's a bit lengthy my apologies)

It then kinda trickles down to how his guilt stems more from the consequences of his actions rather than the actual action of taking organs. The root of his guilt comes from the realization that basically asking families to pull the plug and use their loved ones' organs for donation is a very, very hard decision; one that he kept pressuring for. If he was an illegal organ harvester, and was aware that his actions were in fact illegal, why the hell would he feel so guilty to the point that he’d start having suicidal ideations? That’s the key difference between his profession and his possible criminal activities; one is a burden both emotionally and morally, the other is more or less a literal burden. And based off of Shidou's character, he seems to be much more emotionally affected. That's also why I think a lot of people jump to the conclusion that his guilt stems from his actual actions rather than their effects. (does that make sense oh lord i am going ☝️🤓 so hard rn)

I get that some parts of his MV or lyrics seem to be suggesting that, but also it’s important to note that Shidou has a very strong bias against himself and definitely painted himself in a negative light. I mean, that's why he thinks every single preceding patient before the final incident is a victim to him, why he shows himself staying professional in a professional setting as apathetic (minus the pressuring part), and why he literally equates his job to STEALING. Not only that but, imo, it's also a little too unrealistic and might not actually fit the criteria of Milgram. Milgram is for crimes that are in a morally grey area. So if it really was organ harvesting, is it really in a grey area? (though I guess you could say that doing it for family's sake would be, but that's only for his family. He'd have no reason to do it otherwise). Plus, it'd make more sense and fit the theme of touching upon social issues (i.e. abortion, bullying, societal standards, mental health, etc.) if shidou’s entire dilemma was in regards to (albeit questionably done) organ donation, a complicated ethical topic in Japan.

Throw Down actually gives a pretty good rough idea of Shidou's thoughts towards his crime and his feelings in regards to it. He felt like he was blinded by his own values, and that inadvertently caused him to be unaware of the suffering he caused through his job. It really does shock me that he somehow was able to pull-off getting a forgiven verdict in T1 because he certainly comes off as cold and uncaring in regards to his work.

I think the final bridge in Throw Down kinda summarizes his entire mindset, actually.

​​Now slowly close your eye, put your regret on display Wishing you for someone else's sake With the same expression no matter who comes I don’t feel scared because I don’t know

Shidou doesn't quite understand the feelings of his patient's families, and therefore he acts remorseful and sympathetic more than he actually feels. Why? Well, because he didn't know. Up until that point, he never understood the weight of his actions, and focused on his role as a doctor. "This is an upsetting subject, yes, but it's for the greater good, right?” A braindead person has little to no chances of living, so why not use this as an opportunity to donate their organs? Moreover, as a doctor I believe it’s typical to be "emotionally detached” (for lack of a better word) since I’d assume becoming emotionally connected with a patient would make things at least a bit messy.

His mindset comes crumbling down though, presumably because he experienced the same or a similar situation. This part remains muddy for me, since we don't know much about what the actual cause for Shidou's guilt is. There are several possibilities, with the most plausible ones being:

he lost his own family member and had to go through with the same decision,

he tried to save a family member using donated organs, but failed, making it seem like everything he has done as a doctor was in vain

(a secret third option would be him making someone he cares about make that decision but it's very unlikely and also requires too much mental gymnastics)

But no matter what exactly he did, it all trickles down to the validity of his morals. After realizing the pain of losing a loved one, the struggle of trying to save them, and the unfortunate failure which left all efforts practically pointless, Shidou would understand the actual weight of his actions and why all those families were so reluctant to let go of their own.

This is even more evident in his T2 voice drama, Asclepius.

"In order to save the life of someone you don't know, please let me kill your family," I told them. It doesn't even take much thinking to realize how cruel that is, but… I didn't realize it until the very end.

This is the gist of Shidou's crime, or at least part of it (considering he says "Well, about halfway" when Es asks if their judgment was right). Again, this tells us that Shidou's guilt comes from the act of the effects of organ donation rather than the literal action. And this also implies that his "murders" did in fact have to do with being in a medical situation, it's just the way he went about it was at the very least morally questionable.

I will also acknowledge that he says he killed for selfish reasons, which most likely relates to trying to save his own family member. Here he could possibly have actually done something illegal such as tampering with patients or illegally taking their organs (latter is a stretch imo). Plus, his distorted T2 voice trailer line is literally "You're in the way, hurry up and die" which would only make sense in the context of waiting for a patient to die. But it could also just be him continuing to pressure for organ donation, but now with his own selfish motives.

Going back to the "halfway" comment, while I personally believe it might have to do with how Shidou views his crime as more than just taking organs, it more likely implies that something else happened that Shidou would consider murder. That being the actual death of his family member. It's implied through Throw Down that he was trying to save someone but failed, which he was responsible for. Then from there it'd make sense to assume that he would feel some form of guilt for the rest of his patients, either for the reason of failing to actually utilize donated organs even with the opportunity of being able to save them, or for just realizing the what it actually feels like to have to give up on your loved one. (does. does that make any sense.)

So yeah, I don’t think he’s an organ harvester due to what’s known regarding his crime, the reasoning for his guilt, and with the way he is as a character. The most I’d personally believe is that he decided to harvest organs for the sake of his loved one, but even that seems like a stretch to me. Thus, that is why I believe Kirisaki Shidou is not an organ harvester.

Anyways I’ve rambled on long enough, thank you for reading if you did and remember to drink water and vote shidou innocent in trial 3 because i will shit my pants if he doesn't get inno

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

de Adder

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 8, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 09, 2024

Social media has been flooded today with stories of Trump voters who are shocked to learn that tariffs will raise consumer prices as reporters are covering that information. Daniel Laguna of LevelUp warned that Trump’s proposed 60% tariff on Chinese imports could raise the costs of gaming consoles by 40%, so that a PS5 Pro gaming system would cost up to $1,000. One of the old justifications for tariffs was that they would bring factories home, but when the $3 billion shoe company Steve Madden announced yesterday it would reduce its imports from China by half to avoid Trump-promised tariffs, it said it will shift production not to the U.S., but to Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico, and Brazil. 

There are also stories that voters who chose Trump to lower household expenses are unhappy to discover that their undocumented relatives are in danger of deportation. When CNN’s Dana Bash asked Indiana Republican senator-elect Jim Banks if undocumented immigrants who had been here for a long time and integrated into the community would be deported, Banks answered that deportation should include “every illegal in this country that we can find.” Yesterday a Trump-appointed federal judge struck down a policy established by the Biden administration that was designed to create an easier path to citizenship for about half a million undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens. 

Meanwhile, Trump’s advisors told Jim VandeHei and MIke Allen of Axios that Trump wasted valuable time at the beginning of his first term and that they will not make that mistake again. They plan to hit the ground running with tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, deregulation, and increased gas and oil production. Trump is looking to fill the top ranks of the government with “billionaires, former CEOs, tech leaders and loyalists.” 

After the election, the wealth of Trump-backer Elon Musk jumped about $13 billion, making him worth $300 billion. Musk, who has been in frequent contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin, joined a phone call today between President-elect Trump and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky. 

In Salon today, Amanda Marcotte noted that in states all across the country where voters backed Trump, they also voted for abortion rights, higher minimum wage, paid sick and family leave, and even to ban employers from forcing their employees to sit through right-wing or anti-union meetings. She points out that 12% of voters in Missouri voted both for abortion rights and for Trump.

Marcotte recalled that Catherine Rampell and Youyou Zhou of the Washington Post showed before the election that voters overwhelmingly preferred Harris’s policies to Trump’s if they didn’t know which candidate proposed them.  An Ipsos/Reuters poll from October showed that voters who were misinformed about immigration, crime, and the economy tended to vote Republican, while those who knew the facts preferred Democrats. Many Americans turn for information to social media or to friends and family who traffic in conspiracy theories. As Angelo Carusone of Media Matters put it: “We have a country that is pickled in right-wing misinformation and rage.” 

In The New Republic today, Michael Tomasky reinforced that voters chose Trump in 2024 not because of the economy or inflation, or anything else, but because of how they perceived those issues—which is not the same thing. Right-wing media “fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win,” Tomasky wrote. Right-wing media has overtaken legacy media to set the country’s political agenda not only because it’s bigger, but because it speaks with one voice, “and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.”

Tomasky noted how the work of Matthew Gertz of Media Matters shows that nearly all the crazy memes that became central campaign issues—the pet-eating story, for example, or the idea that the booming economy was terrible—came from right-wing media. In those circles, Vice President Kamala Harris was a stupid, crazed extremist who orchestrated a coup against President Joe Biden and doesn’t care about ordinary Americans, while Trump is under assault and has been for years, and he’s “doing it all for you.”

Investigative reporter Miranda Green outlined how “pink slime” newspapers, which are AI generated from right-wing sites, turned voters to Trump in key swing state counties. Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, who studies focus groups, told NPR, “When I ask voters in focus groups if they think Donald Trump is an authoritarian, the #1 response by far is, ‘What is an authoritarian?’” 

In a social media post, Marcotte wrote: “A lot of voters are profoundly ignorant. More so than in the past.” That jumped out to me because there was, indeed, an earlier period in our history when voters were “pickled in right-wing misinformation and rage.”

In the 1850s, white southern leaders made sure that voters did not have access to news that came from outside the American South, and instead steeped them in white supremacist information. They stopped the mail from carrying abolitionist pamphlets, destroyed presses of antislavery newspapers, and drove antislavery southerners out of their region.

Elite enslavers had reason to be concerned about the survival of their system of human enslavement. The land boom of the 1840s, when removal of Indigenous peoples had opened up rich new lands for settlement, had priced many white men out of the market. They had become economically unstable, roving around the country working for wages or stealing to survive. And they deeply resented the fabulously wealthy enslavers who they knew looked down on them. 

In 1857, North Carolinian Hinton Rowan Helper wrote a book attacking enslavement. No friend to his Black neighbors, Helper was a virulent white supremacist. But in The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, he used modern statistics to prove that slavery destroyed economic opportunity for white men, and assailed “the illbreeding and ruffianism of the slaveholding officials.” He noted that voters in the South who did not own slaves outnumbered by far those who did. "Give us fair play, secure to us the right of discussion, the freedom of speech, and we will settle the difficulty at the ballot-box,” he wrote.

In the North the book sold like hotcakes—142,000 copies by fall 1860. But southern leaders banned the book, and burned it, too. They arrested men for selling it and accused northerners of making war on the South. Politicians, newspaper editors, and ministers reinforced white supremacy, warned that the end of slavery would mean race war, and preached that enslavement was God’s law.

When northern voters elected Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 on a platform of containing enslavement in the South, where the sapped soil would soon cut into production, southern leaders decided—usually without the input of voters—to secede from the Union. As leaders promised either that there wouldn’t be a fight, or that if a fight happened it would be quick and painless, poor southern whites rallied to the cause of creating a nation based on white supremacy, reassured by South Carolina senator James Chesnut’s vow that he would personally drink all the blood shed in any threatened civil war. 

When Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, poor white men set out for what they had come to believe was an imperative cause to protect their families and their way of life. By 1862 their enthusiasm had waned, and leaders passed a conscription law. That law permitted wealthy men to hire a substitute and exempted one man to oversee every 20 enslaved men, providing another way for rich men to keep their sons out of danger. Soldiers complained it was a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” 

By 1865 the Civil War had killed or wounded 483,026 men out of a southern white population of about five and a half million people. U.S. armies had pushed families off their lands, and wartime inflation drove ordinary people to starvation. By 1865, wives wrote to their soldier husbands to come home or there would be no one left to come home to. 

Even those poor white men who survived the war could not rebuild into prosperity. The war took from the South its monopoly of global cotton production, locking poor southerners into profound poverty from which they would not begin to recover until the 1930s, when the New Deal began to pour federal money into the region.

Today, when I received a slew of messages gloating that Trump had won the election and that Republican voters had owned the libs, I could not help but think of that earlier era when ordinary white men sold generations of economic aspirations for white supremacy and bragging rights. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[reasonsforhope]

Mexico’s Supreme Court threw out all federal criminal penalties for abortion Wednesday [September 6], ruling that national laws prohibiting the procedure are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights in a sweeping decision that extended Latin American’s trend of widening abortion access.

The high court ordered that abortion be removed from the federal penal code. The ruling will require the federal public health service and all federal health institutions to offer abortion to anyone who requests it.

“No woman or pregnant person, nor any health worker, will be able to be punished for abortion,” the Information Group for Chosen Reproduction, known by its Spanish initials GIRE, said in a statement.

Some 20 Mexican states, however, still criminalize abortion. While judges in those states will have to abide by the court’s decision, further legal work will be required to remove all penalties.

Celebration of the ruling soon spilled out onto social media.

“Today is a day of victory and justice for Mexican women!” Mexico’s National Institute for Women wrote in a message on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. The government organization called the decision a “big step” toward gender equality...

The Details

The court said on X that “the legal system that criminalized abortion” in Mexican federal law was unconstitutional because it “violates the human rights of women and people with the ability to gestate.” ...

-via AP News, September 6, 2023. Article continues below.

The decision came two years after the court ruled that abortion was not a crime in one northern state. That ruling set off a slow state-by-state process of decriminalizing it.

Last week, the central state of Aguascalientes became the 12th state to drop criminal penalties.

Abortion-rights activists will have to continue seeking legalization state by state, though Wednesday’s decision should make that easier. State legislatures can also act on their own to erase abortion penalties.

For now, the ruling does not mean that every Mexican women will be able to access the procedure immediately, explained Fernanda Díaz de León, sub-director and legal expert for women’s rights group IPAS.

What it does do — in theory — is obligate federal agencies to provide the care to patients. That’s likely to have a cascade of effects...

Lifting Abortion Restrictions Across Latin America

Across Latin America, countries have made moves to lift abortion restrictions in recent years, a trend often referred to as a “green wave,” in reference to the green bandanas carried by women protesting for abortion rights in the region.

The changes in Latin America stand in sharp contrast to increasing restrictions on abortion in parts of the United States. Some American women were already seeking help from Mexican abortion rights activists to obtain pills used to end pregnancies.

Mexico City was the first Mexican jurisdiction to decriminalize abortion 15 years ago.

After decades of work by activists across the region, the trend picked up speed in Argentina, which in 2020 legalized the procedure. In 2022, Colombia, a highly conservative country, did the same.

-via AP News, September 6, 2023. Headings added.

[beardedmrbean]

An army veteran has been convicted after praying silently outside an abortion clinic for his own unborn son.

Adam Smith-Connor, who was given a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay £9,000, claimed that the verdict had “criminalised thought”.

The army reservist, who served in Afghanistan, was prosecuted for breaching a ban on protests within a legal buffer zone around the clinic in Bournemouth, Dorset.

He claimed that he had the right to silently pray for an unborn son whom he now regrets aborting 24 years ago and that prosecution amounted to “criminalising someone’s beliefs”.

But at Poole magistrates’ court on Wednesday, Judge Orla Austin ruled he had failed to comply with the ban under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014.

She said that even though he was engaged in silent prayer, his presence within the buffer zone could still have a “detrimental effect” on people attending or working at the clinic.

“He was given the opportunity to leave and chose not to comply with that,” she said.

ADF UK/X

The case comes with the Home Office set to enact legislation that will ban protests, including silent prayer, within 150-metre buffer zones around abortion clinics from the end of October.

Mr Smith-Connor said after the hearing: “When George Orwell wrote 1984, he meant it as a warning, not a guide book. His predictive powers were off by 40 years but apart from that the notion that thought crimes could become established in the British legal system was sadly accurate.

“How can we ask British troops to put their lives at risk defending freedom abroad while fining, arresting and imprisoning people back home for the thought crime of praying? This court has decided even a silent prayer is now a criminal act.”

The BPAS clinic in Bournemouth has been previously targeted by protesters and was made the subject of a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) in 2022 by the local council.

The order creates an area around the clinic so women visitors and staff members can come and go without being harassed and subjected to verbal abuse by pro-life campaigners.

Mr Smith-Connor, 51, was spotted behind a tree on a green in a public space about 50 metres from the entrance of the BPAS abortion clinic on Nov 24 2022.

Catherine Brookfield, a council officer, approached him, told him he was in breach of the PSPO and asked him to leave.

Mr Smith-Connor, a physiotherapist from Southampton, Hampshire, refused, saying he was expressing his human right to pray and that he was “praying in my mind”.

Ms Brookfield told him that he was within the buffer zone and that “prayer as disapproval” was prohibited by the PSPO. He was issued him with a £100 fixed penalty notice. When he did not pay this, his case went to court for a trial.

Mr Smith-Connor argued in court that no-one was entitled to know the contents of his thoughts.

But in finding him guilty Judge Austin said he was “clearly engaged in prayer”.

“He was capable of being seen, he was engaged in prayer and it would have been perceptible to an observer. He said he would not be looking at anyone so he could not breach their privacy but I find his presence and the circumstances could cause detrimental impact,” she said.

“He was there without a reasonable excuse and it was a breach of the PSPO. The location was important to the defendant but it was open to him to attend Saturday or Sunday, before 7am or after 7pm.”

Christian charity

Mr Smith-Connor was supported by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF UK), a Christian charity. The court heard it covered his legal costs of £29,000 but he would be liable for any prosecution costs.

Jeremiah Igunnubole, legal counsel for ADF UK, said they will be appealing the criminal conviction. He said: “This is a legal turning point of immense proportions. A man has been convicted today because of the content of his thoughts – his prayers to God – on the public streets of England.

“We can hardly sink any lower in our neglect of basic fundamental freedoms of free speech and thought. We will look closely at the judgment and consider an appeal. Human rights are for all people – no matter their view on abortion.”

[dosesofcommonsense]

Just how far were the Globalists tempted to take the minors can know they’re trans ideology? So far that they actually said babies could think in the womb, which would make them fully functioning human beings and exposing their abortion friends to murder charges.

But, but, but, that fetus (which used to mean baby and progeny before Webster went woke) isn’t a human.

Planned Parenthood is the largest international arms seller on earth. If it’s not a baby, why is Planned Parenthood selling (human) organs for profit?

Great question.

Now, here’s the line between free speech and crimes against humanity. You can talk about your ideologies and beliefs all you want. As much as I hate the ideology and practice, free speech says you can voice your opinions.

You can have those beliefs, but I don’t have to support them. I can call attention to them and remind the government that those ideologies should not be tax payer funded nor should clinics offering those services be able to sell the murder victims.

Planned Parenthood became a money laundering front. They took tax payers money and killed millions of kids worldwide and sold the victims (like you’d quarter an animal….$1,000 for a liver and $3,000 for a heart…just absolutely evil) for profit. They lined their pockets with the blood of humanity leaving death and destruction in their wake under the guise of helping people dodge responsibility and “guiding parenting choices”. They took part of their profits and donated back to the Congressionals and higher ups who helped them the most. Tax payer money in. Blood money out. Campaign donations back. They were the money laundering front before Ukraine.

For everyone telling you that God is ok with abortions, know that those people are lying to you. Did you forget Christmas already?

Mary was engaged to Joseph. She was around 14. She was a virgin and the Holy Spirit inserted Jesus into her body. No, that doesn’t mean she had sex with God. If that happened, she wouldn’t have been a virgin. Somehow, miraculously, embryo Jesus was deposited into Mary’s body. Joseph had thought of canceling the marriage, but upon being visited by an angel, he immediately marries Mary. They keep the child. For two blameless Jews, that was a HUGE thing.

Having a baby outside of marriage in BC times was a giant social faux pas, because it was a big deal in Jewish law. It was an even bigger issue in advance of a marriage when the soon to be husband wasn’t the father. Joseph could have done several things, yet he obeys and marries the girl.

Does God like abortion? NO.

[mariacallous]

Why do young leftists think that under communism queer rights and women rights will be automatically protected? They make it seem like under communism we won't have to worry about these things. My parents grew up under communism where abortion was a crime and so was being gay. Socially conservative communists is all I've known growing up. It genuinely pisses me off when leftists are trying to connect every single issue back to capitalism bad/communism good as if it's that simple.

Wishful thinking, ignorance, deliberate mendaciousness, edgy contrarianism

[leverage-ot3]

time for the obligatory post about what episodes I want to see in the upcoming leverage season(s)

(for reference, I made this similar post in 2020 after the reboot was announced. I'm pasting some from that post bc I still want them to happen lol)

new ideas:

I mentioned a date night episode in the last post (apollo really did bless me with foresight for the date night job on that one) but for considerment: ot3 date night. possibly their first date night after they all get together. breanna and sophie know it's happening (harry is, like, peripherally aware) and some crime hijinks are going down and the three of them are frantically trying to stop bad things from happening that are going to interfere with the date. I want to see them going through it behind the metaphorical curtain. I want to see breanna fighting for her life trying to out-hack the hacker that is going to ruin their ten-part itineraried date. harry has to get in a fistfight and eliot is so proud about it when he finds out after everything is over

tree law episode. harry has been frothing at the mouth about it since it was made. his life has been moving him towards this penultimate moment. breanna thinks it's HILARIOUS and cheers him on 100% of the way. she is VERY enthusiastic about this con

I'm not going to mention certain things because I've seen jrogers posting on bluesky social and I know he might be already writing some of those plots

con that the food trucks have plot-relevance. like, one of his food truck stations is being harassed /victimized by, like, a local gang or something that takes advantage of food truck/cart workers and the team steps in. the actual (veteran) food truck workers get involved in the con. leverage international might just have gained a few retainer members

quinn should come back for an episode. I know the actor is friends with ckane. they should make it happen because it would be iconic and I said so

on a similar note, ckane is friends with jensen ackles and. guys. wouldn't it- wouldn't it be extremely funny if a flame from eliot's past named sean sylvester who is a rugged drifter with a questionable past

episode where tara or maggie (or BOTH, can you imagine how powerful that would be???) come back and there is slight flirting with sophie possibly??? that or very obvious chemistry from a past tryst. sophie has slept with both of them, I know it in my heart of hearts. bonus points if tara and maggie fall in love (I think it would be funny. maggie's taste in men is canonically atrocious, I think she deserves someone like tara at this point)

I just want a lot of side characters to come back, okay? sue me I miss them

gonna put the rest under the cut since this post has become obscenely long

not episode-specific, but I want more mentions of the korean leverage team. and all the other teams too! we know that in canon there is the south korean one, the nigerian one, and one in london (I think that's it for mentions so far, but correct me if I'm wrong!)

episodes addressing issues with american imperialism and its effects on minorities and marginalized communities, specifically within this country (there aren't a lot of episodes where they are actively out of country)

dear fucking god take a more abolitionist stance on policing I'm begging. would it KILL you to not be weird about cops? pls just punch some more cops. take down white supremacist cops, I'm sure you can scrounge something up bffrrn

women's rights episodes. I know it's kind of recent, but episodes about accessibility of stuff like birth control, abortion access, etc. y'all are capable of making excellent episodes on that I know it

more climate crisis-related episodes. god knows you're feeling it in the deep south

taking down a corrupt megachurch pastor (although lbr, there is no ethical megachurch anything and you can fight me on this)

something to do with ace rights bc I think it would be really cool to see the team advocate for that stuff, especially since breanna is canon ace

helping a polycule that is being victimized by X organization/entity (maybe a housing association or medical or something???). breanna is bombastic side-eyeing the ot3 the entire time. it is making hardison sweat. sophie thinks it's hilarious

taking down 'writers' that use ai and self-publish AND/OR people that take original/fan works off of like ao3 and wattpad and publish them for personal profits without the author's consent. breanna would have a field day with this (god herself could try to convince me that girl does not read/write fanfic and I wouldn't believe it)

episode about underfunded public schools. we saw corrupt private schools in the fairy godparents job but I want an episode that would make abbot elementary writers proud

episode addressing native/indigenous. eliot is from oklahoma, I'm sure he is well aware of the health/job/economic/etc disparities on reservations. I will email jrogers about it myself if I have to- it anyone can get people going about native rights through a tv show it would be leverage.

I sent an ask to wil wheaton once asking if he was open to returning to leverage and I think he said he would be down for it. but chaos either has to be a reluctant ally to leverage international and is being handled by quinn as a hitter OR he is just. in jail. bc he sucks.

bpas and/or pfas episode. breanna has mentioned microplastics before but I want more

the team tears the shit out of conversion therapy camp owners and plants the seeds for legislation that will punish parents that try to send their kids to those hellscapes

while we're at it, I'd love to see an ep where they tackle the trans bathroom issue. god knows the news doesn't talk about it nearly enough

something to do with foster care. they end up starting some sort of foster care network that past clients/allies can take part in. maybe a mentorship program for kids that want to do what they do one day (they are very reluctant to encourage kids to participate in crime BUT if that is the avenue that they are going to inevitably go towards, they guide them in the right direction). nana makes an appearance (*insert 'everybody liked that' meme*)

prison industrial complex episode. I KNOW we had the jailhouse job BUT we really need this in our year of 2024

another episode on corrupt influencers. maybe influencer parents? dear god pls take them down a notch

ep where there is an underlying message that tells you how to avoid becoming victim to scams or something, or like is a tutorial for how to identify scams you might fall victim to (sorry, I just have to say this after two separate people tried to pig butcher me in less than two (2) weeks))

not to say I want them to do an ep calling out cop city, but it would feel really good to watch the leverage team rip that concept to SHREDS

the minimum wage job. need I say more? we deserve the catharsis

pls go after goodwill execs, esp the ones in the pnw that have their sector as for-profit and have become millionaires+ because of it while paying their staff (especially disabled staff) fucking pennies

while we're on the topic, pls call out salvation army (the corporation)

I can probably go on for like five hours so I'll stop here

ep that we get to see harry and his daughter bond :)

job where they get to lower the price of insulin (and other drugs)

actually, you know what? an episode where the crew annihilates big pharma and terrible insurance companies

I think that breanna should be able to go off about mass/over consumption as a treat. I 100% believe she has Thoughts about it. like, she will absolutely call out the corporations that are responsible for these trends, but also she should be allowed to mention our tendency for overconsumption as a society. obviously there are a few corporations that are doing most of the world's pollution/ecological damage, but we should be doing our part too and I KNOW it would be in-character for her to go off on it

I bet she has a LOT to say about influencers, tbh. obviously not all influencers are bad, but there are sooooo many problematic ones and problems within the influencer industry

sizing discrimination in the modeling/clothing industry. let eliot talk about how there are no perfect bodies. also while I'm on the subject, can we PLS have more body-diverse background actors on the show? I know this is nitpicky but I'd really love to see some more people that look like me, even if they are just in the background

a thinly veiled writers' rights episode (I'm looking at you media execs and the stupid amount of time it took for you to comply to the WGA demands)

something to do with media companies making entire movies/tv shows and then fucking cancelling them/not releasing them and using them as tax write-offs. every time it happens it baffles me. that is cartoonishly stupid villain shit. I can't imagine lovingly working on a project for a year plus and then the company just going, nah, we aren't going to release it because you suck and it's a good business move

ai art and ai in general. please. let it BURN

okay now I'm done

ideas from the previous post that I still want:

comicon job. I said it before and I will say it again- we deserve it!!! come on, it's the age of the geek after all!!! (in the last post I also said a ren faire ep, but I will let the card game job count for that)

summer camp ep? I saw a tumblr fic about it and I think it could be cute. it could kinda be like the fairy godparents job- eliot in charge of some type of sports (archery, fencing, etc), hardison would be in charge of arts and crafts (this boy might be a genius with tech and in general tbh, but the show did such a good job of showing that he’s also very talented with the arts- sculpting the statue for the miracle job, forging the old diary in the king george job, etc), parker would LOVE to be in charge of a high ropes course. breanna would totally be down for some sort of nerdy kid robotics or simple, traditional camp games (can't go wrong with the classics. everyone loves making bracelets!) I feel like it's too stereotypical to have sophie have kids put on a play but we all know that's exactly what she would do. idk for harry? I think he has the same traditional camp activities vibe as breanna. he's in it for the nostalgia. OR something to do with videogames

please, please, please, please, please make an episode where they take down a cult, im begging. that would be such a good episode. definitely a mindfuck episode like the experimental job (4x11). I’ve seen a few posts about a job dealing with a cult (here’s one) and I think it would be really interesting 

MORE STERLING being DONE with leverage shenanigans!!! give me feral!sterling like in the frame-up job (5x10)!!! give me sterling that protests every step of the way but conveniently looks away and “whoops, the team just disappeared, I have no idea how that happened!!! diddly dang darn it, they got away again!!! sorry guys!!!” bonus points if mcsweeten is there too and also participates in intervening hijinks

the team takes down a circus that is still using and abusing wild animals!!! because first I’d LOVE to see acrobat!parker swinging up in the air like a pro and being in her element, but also because those places are the fucking worst and need to Go Down. give me eliot having to pose as an animal trainer with deep sympathy for the animals being abused, quietly talking soothing words to them when he thinks no one is around (correction: hardison is, in fact, around, and filming his boyfriend’s softness to save for later). give me charismatic hardison playing the role of ringmaster, running and flaunting about and being passive-aggressive to the circus master. give me eliot freeing the animals from their chains when they are finally able to shut the place down and relocate the animals to sanctuaries (his hands shaking just a little as twists the key in the lock, because he too was once an abused, caged animal in his own right and he knows how liberating it is to finally be free). 

[goldenhallyu]

Why Sulli is one of my biggest inspirations

Hello i'd like to share some of the reasons why Sulli (aka Jinri) is one of my favorite people in the korean entertainment industry and why she is such an inspiring woman. I also provided links to several articles so you can read more in depth about certain amazing things she's done.

!Note that south korea is a highly conservative and misogynistic country. Especially in the idol industry, women are judged for every single little thing they do. Sulli however decided to lean against the standards set for female idols and always did as she pleased and what she thought was right. It's sad that only now after she passed netizens are being nice and supportive towards her. I'd like to share some of the reasons why she was such an inspirational woman and why she should never be forgotten!

1.Going Braless . Sulli didn't like wearing bras

and would often post pictures of herself while not wearing one. Of course this shouldn't be considered an issue at all but even western countries often still take offense to it fsm so obviously highly conservative korea was very unhappy about her decision and would send her lots of hate and call her vulgar names for it. She never stopped doing it though.

2. Abortion Rights

Sulli is pro choice! She celebrated South Korea changing their anti abortion laws which ofc was yet another reason for people to hate her.

3. Raised awareness on her public instagram about comofort women and showed her sympathy despite knowing she'll make her japanese fans upset by shedding light on it .

Japanese people often don't like to acknowlage their war crimes and felt very offended by Sulli for talking about it on her social media. Being the woman supporting feminist she is, she thought it was an important topic to discuss and posted about it regardless.

4. Openly shared her relationship

Dating is often completly banned for kpop idols altogether and only few dare to make their relationship public. Only in recent years have idols slowly starting sharing their relationship status. But back then idols tried their absolute hardest to hide that they're dating in fear of facing MASSIVE backlash, sometimes even receiving death threats. Yet Sulli openly posted photos of her and her now ex boyfriend on her instagram like any other normal person would.

5. Openly expressed her sexuality

making her own choices on when or how she decides to be sexy, taking all power from netizens sexualizing her against her will. This is a big issue in the idol industry, especially due to conservative views, a woman openly showing herself to be a self empowered sexual individual is looked down upon and seen as offensive. Netizens often called her mentally unstable, dirty, nasty and a wh*re for simply not wearing a bra or showing cleavage (which is quite scandalous in korea) or taking sexy photos as an adult woman! She talked about this and the double standards in depth in Persona:Sulli!

6. Defended herself

It's very rare for idols to stand up for themselves especially in such a blunt, forward way. Usually when idols have to apologize for the most mundane stuff, an official apology is issued through the agency but Sulli always took matters into her own hands.

7. Endured a massive amount of hate and ultimately left f(x) for the sake of protecting herself from hate and persuing her true artistic visions

She was constantly harrassed from her "attitude" to her looks, her views, her behavior and her talents.

8. Publicly discussed mental health, inlcuding her own struggles,

and based her solo debut around DiD. Mental Health was and still is very stigmatised in South Korea. While it's slowly changing, talking about such things back then was seen as highly controversial and people wouldn't be very understanding at all. Moreover netizens would think of idols to be ungrateful if they'd ever talked about their struggles.

9. Just overall always supported women and their rights. (girls supporting girls shirt, talked about being a feminist and wanting women to be equal on tv and defending fellow female idols).

Again, with Korea being a very conservative and sexist country, people sent her a massive amount of hate (mostly men) for speaking up about womens rights. This still happens to other female idols today when they declare themselves to be feminists.

10. Was unapoligeticly herself no matter what.

Always showing her personality and interests and voicing her opinions. She loved showing everyone how fun loving and free spirited she is . All she ever wanted was to be loved by others but she still didn't want to change her identity for others to do so.

11. Loved herself and her beauty

and would also voice it yet she was never arrogant or felt like she was better than anyone because she's pretty (Persona:Sulli)

12. She critizised the idol industry and the publics treatment towards idols (see Persona:Sulli)

13. Sent a low income student a feminine hygiene package for free

and planned to regulary send out packages to girls who couldn't afford to buy these products themselves. Unfortunatly she passed away before she had the chance to do so.

Theres so much more to Sulli. But these are some of the main points as to why I love her so much.

She endured the tremendous amount of hate for such a long time and despite feeling hurt she always remained true to herself. She struggled a lot but always continued doing what she thought was right and didn't apologize for simply living her life and being a feminist.