#YOU GOT TRUMP ELECTED BECAUSE YOU HATE JEWS SO MUCH AND YOU HAVE THE DISGUSTING NERVE TO BLAME US FOR YOUR FAILURE TO ACT? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

conservativecountrygirl · 3 years ago

Text

The Bleak Future of America

I just wanted to share with you all the thoughts that I’ve had regarding recent events. I’ve put together a theory and, though it may be far-fetched, hear me out. It fits together a little too well.

I’m sure by now everyone has at least begun to notice the absolute fear the general public has towards the unvaccinated. We’ve gotten to the point where people are terrified to go out in public (regardless of being vaccinated) on the off chance they might come across someone who is unvaccinated. The unvaccinated are now being met with the same fear and disgust that lepers had in biblical times. We are now at the point of dehumanizing the unvaccinated.

Recently, the government and mainstream media has been coming after the unvaccinated. I’m sure everyone noticed when President Biden said his “patience is wearing thin”. The general public and the mainstream media now refer to the unvaccinated as terrorists or murderers for their decision. The blame is now on the unvaccinated. The “unvaccinated pandemic” is a way to get people to turn on the unvaccinated. Why is this? To answer that, you need to think about what being unvaccinated means today. It means that, even after the government encouraged you to get it, even forced you to get it, you still refuse the vaccine. It means that you’re resisting them. It means you stand in their way.

Now I’m going to have you think back to the election results. Remember how Biden got a massive surge of votes in the early morning when no one was even counting the votes at that time? How is that possible? Simple, it isn’t. The election was genuinely rigged, and it isn’t just a bunch of Trump supporters refusing to accept defeat. It doesn’t add up. So why would they work so hard to rig an election like that? It had to take a lot of effort, right? Why would you rig an election for only 4 years to gain? Unless you planned on staying in power.

But that’s simply not possible, right? We’ve got laws, we’ve got the Constitution that clearly outlines the term limits of the president. And if that’s not held up, we’ve got us, the People. We’ll resist the government… but wait. There are already people who are resisting the government. And they’re being attacked for it. The unvaccinated now represent the resistance. But there’s no way they could come after the 80 million Americans who are unvaccinated, not without some sort of revolt. Unless of course the rest of Americans hate the ones who resist. But how could that happen? How could they turn all of America against a quarter of the country? One word. Lockdowns. The government and mainstream media have all said that, until enough Americans are vaccinated, we can’t go back to normal. With 80 million Americans still unvaccinated, we will continue with lockdowns and mask mandates. People are terrified to go back to that. They want to go back to normal. But how do we fix that? How do we go back to normal? The government and mainstream media say it’s the unvaxxed population’s fault. It’s the fault of the people who resist the government.

Think about back in grade school. I was one of the unlucky ones who had teachers from time to time that liked collective punishment. You know, the ones who make everyone stay a few minutes after class because the one person in the back row kept talking through class. It made everyone in the class hate that one person, because everyone got punished for it. Did anybody hate the teacher? Maybe, but did we hate that one person even more? Oh yes. If you think about it, the lockdowns and mask mandates are collective punishment, but on a much, much larger scale. Instead of that one person in the back of the class, it’s a fourth of the country. Do people hate the government for enforcing lockdowns and mask mandates? Probably. But I guarantee you, they hate the unvaccinated even more, since that’s who they’ve been told is standing between them and going back to normal. People are so desperate to go back to normal that they’ve been conditioned to see the unvaccinated as the enemy. We’re already seeing examples of people’s sheer hatred toward the unvaxxed. There are a good number of cases where the vaccinated have stated that they wish the unvaccinated would get Covid-19 and die. I definitely don’t think everyone is like that, but it goes to show that the hatred towards the unvaxxed is growing exponentially. After all, people all over the country are being told the only reason we can’t go back to normal is the unvaccinated.

So why all the hatred? Why does the country need to be against the unvaxxed? Why does the country need to hate the people who resist the government? Think about it this way: wouldn’t it be easier to take care of a population without resistance if everyone hated that population? I hate to say it, but Hitler was only able to kill so many Jews during the Holocaust because he got everyone to collectively hate them.

But this is America, you say. There’s no way we would let that happen. Well, no, not exactly. The government would not be able to round up all 80 million unvaxxed Americans and execute them all without a massive revolution. But what if they were still able to get them out of the way? Something that wouldn’t spark a revolution, something that was encouraged? Something like forced quarantine? If you look up quarantine facilities in Australia, you would realize that possibility isn’t far off. The government could potentially keep the unvaccinated Americans in a place like this for as long as they please, and say it’s in the name of public health and safety. Would people revolt? Not if it means they get to go back to normal. Now the government has 80 million Americans out of the way and the ability to do anything they please.

If you think this couldn’t happen to you, think about how the Holocaust began. Hitler started with creating turmoil between Jews and everyone else. Then the concentration camps came, and the people never retaliated. Had they seen the Jews as human beings, the Holocaust would have likely never occurred. They needed that hatred. They needed the divide.

When you start to see life as you know it unravel, just remember this: history repeats itself.

1 note · View note

howardschatzphotography · 6 years ago

Text

On Seeing, A Journal. Above and Beyond: David Brooks December 11th, 2018

My most recent visitor to the studio for my Above and Beyond project is David Brooks, a Canadian-born American conservative commentator who writes a political and cultural column for The New York Times. He is a regular contributor to the PBS NewsHour and to NPR’s All Things Considered, and has been a reporter and op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal. He is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and also a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic. Brooks has written and edited several books, including the anthology Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing (1996) and Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (2000), On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense (2004), The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (2011), and The Road to Character (2015). HS: You've said "politics is being overtaken by tribalism.” Would you expand on that? DB: We used to have community, and community is based on common affection and trust. Jane Jacobs, who wrote Death and Life of Great American Cities, described looking out her window one day and seeing a little girl trying to get away from a guy kidnapping her. And she (Jacobs) couldn't help, and she thought: Maybe I should go down and intervene. And then she noticed that the butcher’s wife had come out of the shop, the fruit stand guy had come out, somebody had come out, the locksmith, and the guy was surrounded. And it turns out it wasn’t a kidnapping, it was a just a dad calling his daughter. But, that's what community is like. And she describes it very famously as a ballet on the street. And we used to have those ballets in a lot of neighborhoods, where people could trust each other, they looked out for each other, they kept each other safe. Over the last 50 years, we sort of lost that, we lost social capital, as they say, and we’re more isolated and alone. And when people are isolated and alone, they do what the revolutionaries tell them to do, which is they revert to tribe. And tribalism looks like community, because it is a kind of bonding and belonging, but it’s based on mutual hatred and not mutual affection. So, it’s always us/them, friend/enemy distinctions. And if you look at polarization today, it’s not that people love their own political party so much, they just hate the other one. That's the motivator, that's tribalism. HS: Hasn’t humanity always been tribal? Isn't it in our bones? DB: Well, it’s in our bones to make friend-enemy distinctions. It’s not in our bones to have a set of communities that rule out other communities, that have to be hostile to other communities. But it is possible to have a set of people where I'm in my community, you're in yours, I've got nothing against you and we’re probably joined by a higher community, which is our national community. HS: How do you find civility? DB: I think you have to get away from that sense that people who have that are naked and alone in a world that's hostile. Where people can't be trusted. And so, my basic view is, you have to start with local dinners with neighbors, where people actually get to know each other. HS: I'm sure that happens, probably all over the United States, in various little towns, but it doesn’t seem to be infectious, it doesn’t seem to last. DB: Yes. And there are a lot of reasons for that. I would emphasize the culture of individualism that says, "I need as much space as I can to be myself." It’s also probably true that as we get more diverse, it gets a little harder to form communities.Then there are some values; we value privacy above all. And so, in most nations around the world and at most times in America, it was very normal to go up to somebody’s house who you sort of knew, and knock on the doorbell, or ring the door. And now that never happens. You would think, no, I'm invading their privacy. I'm not going to do that. We put incredibly high priority on privacy, also on work. We work really hard and then when we get home, we just want to relax, we don’t want to socialize. There's a lot of value put on that.

HS: The gulf between peoples seems pervasive all over the world. Within any country, there are us and them. Muslims and Hindus. Christians and Jews. It’s seems like your dream of a loving, compassionate vision is something that’s not within the human genome. DB: I covered the Soviet Union coming down, the coming together of community there. I covered Nelson Mandela coming out of prison, the end of apartheid there. I covered the unification of Germany. And you saw these surges of people trying to come together across differences. And we had a country here, a political system, where it wasn’t complete partisan warfare, the way it is now. That's been a deteriorating issue we’ve had for 30 years. HS: I think it goes way back, such as famous politicians who hated George Washington. DB: Of course, politics has always brutal, but then politicians also worked together across party lines. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, famously, hated each other, but they served in the same administration. And if you looked at the votes in most parties or most congresses, there was plenty of overlap. If you look at the Supreme Court, only two percent of cases 20 years ago, were decided on party lines. Now it’s well over 20 percent. There are concrete measures of growing tribal distrust. If you’d asked people a generation ago, do you trust the institutions of society, 70 or 80 percent said, yes; and now it’s only 20 percent. HS: Is this deterioration a sign of the end of our civilization? I mean, all empires self-destruct eventually? DB: Yes, it could be. When Gibbon described the end of the Roman Empire, he described it as a collection....Not a really functioning society anymore. Just a collection of isolated individuals. So, it could be, but I sort of doubt it. We go through bumpy times. If you look at 1968, it was way worse. If you look at 1932, it was worse. There have been times in our country where we’ve been in similar circumstances to today. HS: Is Trump as our president a symptom or a cause of our problems? DB: Well, it’s a symptom and a cause. He was elected because so many people are disgusted with Washington and hate what’s been done to them, or are disgusted with outsiders. And now he gets himself at the center of attention every single day by making friend-enemy distinctions, by saying those are evil people, we’re good people. He grew out of this distrust, but he plays on it and exacerbates it. HS: Can we survive him? DB: I think so. It won't be easy, I don't think our politics is going to recover for a long, long time. It will take a social recovery before we get a political recovery. But say he lasts another two years, we’ve endured two years of it, so far nothing. We’ve had a deterioration in norms and how we treat each other and think of each other. If he’s gone in two years, maybe it’ll get worse, maybe we get another version of Trump. But it’s possible that you can snap back. I just think that nothing is determined in life. And there are parts of the society that are actually kind of healthy, our economy, things like that. HS: Nothing’s determined, you can't predict the future for anything ever, really. What bothers me is the silence of good Republicans. There are bright Republican Congressmen and Senators. There are conscientious nation-loving human beings who are mute. They shudder that they have this president, but they relish what he brings them. DB: I've had many conversations with them on this subject. And, of course, I would like them all to speak up. And they say: Well, look at all the people who’ve spoken up, their careers are over. And so, what good would it do the country for my career to be over? Trump would still be Trump. You’d get some lunatic in place of me. And so, I’ll wait for my moment. I give them credit for some strength in that argument; if you speak up against Trump and you're in the Republican Party, you lose your next primary. The loyalty among Republican voters is to Trump. And not even to the party, just to Trump the person. HS: You've said: Trump takes every wound and repeatedly pokes holes in it. What do you mean exactly? DB: In our nation’s history, the most famous wounds are racial wounds. And so, he pokes at any racial prejudice and racial division. Religious wounds, city versus rural, pretty much all the divisions you can think of in society. The native versus the immigrant…he inflames one side or another of these divides. It’s just his marketing strategy. But, partly, it’s hard not to believe that he doesn’t have some level of bigotry. And then, finally, I think he just was raised in a culture of distrust. That the outsiders are out to get us, that life is a do or die battle. HS: What leaders do you most admire today? DB: I like a lot of senators. But mostly the happiest people I know are mayors, because they're actually doing stuff. The unhappiest are members of Congress. For example, a mayor I admire, though he’s controversial, is Rahm Emanuel of Chicago who came into a city that was vastly in debt, with school systems that were totally failing. He got the city out of debt and he closed some schools, and I think graduation rates have increased phenomenally, more than any other city in America. Not only because of him, it’s been through a ten-year project. And he’s just announced he won't run again, so he made a lot of enemies doing this stuff. But I think there are tens of thousands of children in Chicago now who have better education because of what he did. In Washington, you find people who are doing the best they can under bad circumstances. General Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, is doing the best he can in a bad circumstance. Some of the senators, Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, a Democrat. Ron Wyden, Ben Sasse, a Republican. They’re trying to do legislation in a bad circumstance. So I give them respect. HS: How would you change these negative circumstances? Obama tried. DB: He had the right feelings, he didn't have the right relationships. He didn't have a relationship of trust with the leaders of Congress, even in his own party. I don't think he liked hanging around with politicians, they just weren't his cup of tea. HS: How do you personally maintain a conservative bent, yet work for the New York Times? DB: I have a worldview. If I didn't have a worldview, I couldn't do my job. It’s informed by Edmond Burke and Alexander Hamilton, both of them conservative-ish guys, at least by the traditional definition of conservatism. So, I think my views are reasonably predictable. When you're writing for The Times, you're writing for a mostly progressive audience. And in that case, you just try to show respect. HS: Can you change people’s minds? DB: I think you can. I really think you can. By saying: Well, you believe X, here are the nine facts to prove that Y is possible. You can give people, a better way to live and their norms and values will subtly change.

HS: But what about the 40 percent of Americans who are pro-Trump, despite the fact he’s allergic to the truth? DB: I wish they would change their minds. But I spend most of my life with these people, and they say: Listen, I needed a change. I know he’s a jerk. I don't pay attention to all that circus stuff, all those tweets. But the economy is doing better, I feel like he’s shaken up Washington. I mean, they have their reasoning and it’s not completely idiotic. HS: You worked on a police beat in Chicago. How did that influence your thinking? DB: Profoundly, even though it was a very short time. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do journalism, I knew I wanted to write. But when I did the police beat, I came home every day with a story, and it was fun and exciting. I was super left wing, and the parts of Chicago I covered were some of the worst parts of Chicago at the time -- Cabrini Green, and the Robert Taylor Homes -- these big projects. And what I saw was earnest, well-intentioned social reform that had disastrous consequences. And it taught me that society is really complicated. And if you're going to do change you should do it incrementally. And be aware that you're probably going to have a lot of bad consequences you can't anticipate. And that's more or less Edmond Burke’s philosophy, so it turned me a little more conservative. HS: What is your process? You must have a time when you write, and then when you read. You must have time when you go to movies or have fun. DB:The fun part is the hard part. My rule is the more creative the profession, the more rigorous the schedule has to be. So I write from eight ‘til noon every day. And my wife knows to get out of my way. Before I've written, I'm just not a good person. After that, I relax. And so, if I've got my thousand words in then I relax. I listen to movie soundtracks. I need music, but I can't have any lyrics, so I listen to music soundtracks. HS: What are your thoughts about immigration? DB: I'm wildly pro-immigration. I was sort of raised by my grandfather, who was an immigrant and had a strong immigrant mentality. So, I admire the hustle of people who are immigrants. And then, just objectively, I think that immigrants are great for this country. They're less prone to commit crimes than natives. They're much more economically creative than the rest of us. Their family values are better. They're much more communal. HS: And our racial division in this country? DB: I'm somewhat optimistic about it. Since Ferguson, there's been a period of truth-telling. A lot of African-Americans saying things they wouldn't necessarily say in public or in mixed company. And that has not always been pleasant. But I think it’s a necessary stage to go through. I travel around the country with a team from the Aspen Institute, and we hold these dinners with people who are working in communities. And sometimes our dinners will be 40 percent African American, and sometimes the mood is really angry. But, I think that has to be expressed for us to move on and understand the situation in the country. HS: Are there opinions you've written that you regret? DB: Oh, for sure. I was a strong supporter of the Iraq war, that was pretty clearly a mistake. When I was young, before my kids were born, I would write hit pieces on people. Really criticizing, making fun of people, taking advantage of my verbal abilities to make others look small. And once my kids were born, then I said, "No, I don't want my kids seeing me as this kind of person." And so, I more or less stopped writing them.

HS: You often talk about the soul and heart and how people have the desire to do good. DB: Maybe that's midlife awakening. A lot of our problems come from giving that desire to be good short shrift.

#davidbrooks interview portrait art photography howardschatz npr politics news

4 notes · View notes

magzoso-tech · 5 years ago

Photo

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/the-silicon-six-spread-propaganda-its-time-to-regulate-social-media-sites/

The 'Silicon Six' Spread Propaganda. It's Time to Regulate Social Media Sites.

I get it: I’m one of the last people you’d expect to hear warning about the danger of conspiracies and lies. I’ve built a career on pushing the limits of propriety and good taste. I portrayed Borat, the first fake news journalist, along with satirical characters such as Ali G, a wannabe gangster, and Bruno, a gay fashion reporter from Austria. Some critics have said my comedy risks reinforcing old racial and religious stereotypes.

I admit that most of my comedy over the years has been pretty juvenile. However, when Borat was able to get an entire bar in Arizona to sing “throw the Jew down the well,” it revealed people’s indifference to anti-Semitism. When, as Bruno, I started kissing a man in a cage fight in Arkansas and nearly started a riot, it showed the violent potential of homophobia. And when, disguised as an ultra-woke developer, I proposed building a mosque in one rural community, prompting a resident to proudly admit, “I am racist, against Muslims,” it showed a wide acceptance of Islamophobia.

The ugliness my jokes help reveal is why I’m so worried about our pluralistic democracies. Demagogues appeal to our worst instincts. Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream, fueled in part by President Donald Trump, who has spread such paranoid lies more than 1,700 times to his 67 million Twitter followers. It’s as if the Age of Reason – the era of evidential argument – is ending, and now knowledge is delegitimised and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which thrives on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities.

All this hate and violence actually has something in common: It’s being facilitated by a handful of Internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media platforms reach billions of people. The algorithms these platforms depend on deliberately amplify content that keeps users engaged – stories that appeal to our baser instincts and trigger outrage and fear. That’s why fake news outperforms real news on social media; studies show that lies spread faster than truth.

On the Internet, everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart resembles the BBC, and the rantings of a lunatic seem as credible as the findings of a Nobel Prize winner. We have lost a shared sense of the basic facts upon which democracy depends.

When I, as Ali G, asked the astronaut Buzz Aldrin, “What woz it like to walk on de sun?” the joke worked, because we, the audience, shared the same facts. If you believe the moon landing was a hoax, the joke was not funny.

When Borat got that bar in Arizona to agree that “Jews control everybody’s money and never give it back,” the joke worked because the rest of us knew that the depiction of Jews as miserly is a conspiracy theory originating in the Middle Ages.

Social media platforms make it easier for people who share the same false premises to find one another, and then the technology acts as an accelerant for toxic thinking. When conspiracies take hold, it’s easier for hate groups to recruit, easier for foreign intelligence agencies to interfere in our elections and easier for a country like Myanmar to commit genocide against the Rohingya.

Yes, social media companies have taken some steps to reduce hate and conspiracies on their platforms. Yet these steps have been mostly superficial, and the next 12 months could be pivotal: British voters will go to the polls next month while online conspiracists promote the despicable theory of “great replacement” that white Christians are being deliberately replaced by Muslim immigrants. Americans will vote for president while trolls and bots perpetuate the disgusting lie of a “Hispanic invasion.” And after years of YouTube videos calling climate change a “hoax,” the United States is on track, a year from now, to formally withdraw from the Paris agreement.

Unfortunately, the executive of these platforms don’t appear interested in a close look at how they’re spreading hate, conspiracies and lies. Look at the speech Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg delivered last month that warned against new laws and regulations on companies like his.

Zuckerberg tried to portray the issue as one involving “choices” around “free expression.” But freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Facebook alone already counts about a third of the world’s population among its users. Social media platforms should not give bigots and paedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target victims.

Zuckerberg claimed that new limits on social media would “pull back on free expression.” This is utter nonsense. The First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law” abridging freedom of speech, but this does not apply to private businesses. If a neo-Nazi comes goose-stepping into a restaurant and starts threatening other customers and saying he wants to kill Jews, would the restaurant owner be required to serve him an elegant eight-course meal? Of course not. The restaurant owner has every legal right, and, indeed, a moral obligation, to kick the Nazi out. So do Internet companies.

Zuckerberg seemed to equate regulation of companies like his to the actions of “the most repressive societies.” This, from one of the six people who run the companies that decide what information so much of the world sees: Zuckerberg at Facebook; Sundar Pichai at Google; Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google’s parent company, Alphabet; Brin’s ex-sister-in-law, Susan Wojcicki, at YouTube; and Jack Dorsey at Twitter. These super-rich “Silicon Six” care more about boosting their share price than about protecting democracy. This is ideological imperialism – six unelected individuals in Silicon Valley imposing their vision on the rest of the world, unaccountable to any government and acting like they’re above the reach of law. Surely, instead of letting the Silicon Six decide the fate of the world order, our democratically elected representatives should have at least some say.

Zuckerberg speaks of welcoming a “diversity of ideas,” and last year, he gave us an example. He said he found posts denying the Holocaust “deeply offensive,” but he didn’t think Facebook should take them down “because I think there are things that different people get wrong.” This is madness. The Holocaust is a historical fact, and those who deny it aim to encourage another one. There’s no benefit in pretending that “the Holocaust is a hoax” is simply a “thing” that “different people get wrong.” Zuckerberg says that “people should decide what is credible, not tech companies.” But two-thirds of millennials say they haven’t even heard of Auschwitz. How are they supposed to know what’s “credible”? How are they supposed to know that the lie is a lie?

When it comes to removing content, Zuckerberg asked, “where do you draw the line?” Yes, that can be difficult, but here’s what he’s really saying: Removing lies and conspiracies is just too expensive.

Facebook, Google, and Twitter are unthinkably rich, and they have the best engineers in the world. They could fix these problems if they wanted to. Twitter could deploy an algorithm to remove more white supremacist hate speech, but they reportedly haven’t because it would eject some very prominent politicians. Facebook could hire enough monitors to actually monitor, work closely with groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP and purge deliberate lies from their platforms.

But they won’t, because their entire business model relies on generating more engagement, and nothing generates more engagement than lies, fear and outrage.

These companies pretend they’re something bigger, or nobler, but what they really are is the largest publishers in history – after all, they make their money on advertising, just like other publishers. They should abide by basic standards and practices just like the ones that apply to newspapers, magazines, television and movies. I’ve had scenes in my movies cut or truncated to abide by those standards. Surely companies that publish material to billions of people should have to abide by basic standards just like film and television studios do.

Zuckerberg said social media companies should “live up to their responsibilities,” but he’s totally silent about what should happen when they don’t. By now, it’s pretty clear that they cannot be trusted to regulate themselves. In other industries, you can be sued for the harm you cause: Publishers can be sued for libel; people can be sued for defamation. I’ve been sued many times. But social media companies are almost completely protected from liability for the content their users post – no matter how indecent – by Section 230 of, get ready for it, the Communications Decency Act.

That immunity has warped their whole worldview. Take political ads. Fortunately, Twitter finally banned them, and Google says it will make changes, too. But if you pay Facebook, it will run any “political” ad you want, even if it’s a lie. It’ll even help you micro-target those lies to users for maximum effect. Under this twisted logic, if Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Adolf Hitler to post 30-second ads on his “solution” to the “Jewish problem.” Here’s a good way for Facebook to “live up to” its responsibilities: Start fact-checking political ads before running them, stop micro-targeted lies immediately, and when ads are false, don’t publish them.

Section 230 was amended last year so that tech companies can be held responsible for paedophiles who use their sites to target children. Let’s also hold them responsible for users who advocate for the mass murder of children because of their race or religion. And maybe fines are not enough. Maybe it’s time for Congress to tell Zuckerberg and his fellow CEOs: You already allowed one foreign power to interfere in US elections; you already facilitated one genocide; do it again and you go to prison.

In the end, we have to decide what kind of world we want. Zuckerberg claims his main goal is to “uphold as wide a definition of freedom of expression as possible.” Yet our freedoms are not only an end in themselves, but they’re also a means to another end – to our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And today these rights are threatened by hate, conspiracies and lies.

A pluralistic democratic society should make sure that people are not targeted, not harassed and not murdered because of who they are, where they come from, who they love or how they pray. If we do that – if we prioritize truth over lies, tolerance over prejudice, empathy over indifference and experts over ignoramuses – maybe we have a chance of stopping the greatest propaganda machine in history. We can save democracy. We can still have a place for free speech and free expression.

And, most important, my jokes will still work.

#Miscellaneous

0 notes

theearthsheep-blog · 8 years ago

Text

and i’m feeling in a particularly venty mood right now so fuck all y’all we’re getting politlcal

and no fuck you i’m not putting this under a read more. if you follow me i want you to read this.

a) first of all yeah i don’t really get political on this here website very often and that’s not because i don’t have political opinions or because i’m worried that they’ll be unpopular, i expect most of my followers and i agree on pretty much everything. the reason i don’t post politics is mostly because they make me anxious and i’m on this website in my spare time when i don’t want to deal with it. with that in my mind, fuck the mentality of “everyone who doesn’t reblog this is a fascist”. first of all it’s very “with us or against us” and i understand where you’re coming from but there are plenty of valid reasons to not want to reblog that kind of stuff. i’m going to call out a specific post here just because it’s the one i remember and i want to give an example, but there wasn’t anything particularly egregious about it. it was a post supporting jews, i forget the exact wording but it was something simple like “this blog supports jews” and someone added on to it with something in the vein of “i’m watching those of my mutuals who aren’t reblogging this very carefully” and like... that made me feel really shitty because that’s not the kind of thing i like to post but here was this post telling me in no uncertain terms that i’m an affront to the jewish community if i don’t constantly tell everyone i’m not.

and i know there are plenty of people out there who would read this and their first thought is “oh sheep is just closet anti-semitic”. like, seriously, reconsider your worldview if that’s how you’re thinking right now. you can’t be this black-and-white.

and, like, look, i get it. i’m trans. i know what it’s like to know that a big portion of the world is literally out to get you, literally hates your actual existence. i know what it’s like to watch those around you like a hawk for any warning signs of being the kind of person it’s very unsafe to honestly introduce yourself to. i get it! but i can’t just assume that anyone who i follow who doesn’t post support for trans people on like, a monthly basis? is transphobic. and honestly i couldn’t really even assume that anyone who DOES post support ISN’T. it helps certainly but at the end of the day that’s just words. this may surprise you but people can just say words and it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. like you know how you were in elementary school and they made you say the pledge of allegiance? and after like two times it stopped meaning anything to you, and you were too young to understand it when you learned it anyway? don’t make everyone say the pledge of allegiance on their tumblr every morning, regardless of what allegiance it is you want them to pledge.

and to set the record straight, of course i support jews. anti-semiticism is disgusting. at the same time, (and this is getting into the shitty “who has it the worst” arguments that i hate) i think jews probably aren’t priority 1 right now. i’ve seen some buzz about a sudden upsurge in anti-semitic actions over the past few months (since trump got elected) and no statistics i’ve seen have actually supported that. it looks like it’s been a steady growth for several years now and like that’s worrying enough on its own but trump has already taken direct action against both muslims and latins and i feel like those are the people who need the most support right now. and honestly? i genuinely believe that trump isn’t anti-semitic, though particular members of his administration certainly are.

anyway.

that isn’t even what i wanted to talk about.

b) and this is what i’m here for, really. come on guys, you really need to fact check some of this shit. i’m not playing around here, if you think “spreading the word” or “keeping people informed” has any value at all then you NEED to curate the content on your blog. i’ve seen tons of posts that i’m sure mean well but are exaggerated or downright wrong. this plays directly into trump’s hands. especially right now, his message is that the “media elite” are conspiring against him and making shit up. this does not seem to be true in any meaningful sense, but every time some news organization uses some hyperbole to grab clicks and then every other outlet takes even the original CLICKBAIT out of context, misinformation flies quick. and it lends credence to trump’s “fake news” message.

right now, the story is the 100,000 national guard trump is secretly plotting to deploy to support ICE in removing illegal immigrants from border states (and a few that are adjacent). so where did this story come from?

the associated press claims that they have a leaked white house document that describes an executive order trump may give which will allow the deployment of the national guard of same states to support efforts to deport immigrants. this is worrying enough! this is bad!

however, the AP doesn’t just announce that. that doesn’t fit easily into a tweet and it doesn’t bait clicks. instead they say, and this is the exact quote: “BREAKING: Trump administration considers mobilizing as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants.”

the 100,000 number is nowhere, even in the document the AP says they have. - oh and just as a sidenote i’m going to keep saying the AP “says” they have a document. for what it’s worth i do believe that they genuinely got it from a white house employee, but i’m just trying to be clear here that it’s just them saying that, there’s no evidence for it either way. for what it’s worth, the white house denies the validity of the leak.

anyway. the 100,000 number actually seems to be in the neighborhood of the sum number of national guard in the states in question. in fairness to the AP, they did say “up to”, so i guess they’re covered (in that 0 is “up to” 100,000), BUT a significant fraction of the national guard are already deployed on various tasks, so it’s literally incorrect to say that anyone is considering deploying the full 100,000. plus, trump couldn’t mobilize these people even if he wanted to. the national guard for each state answer to the governor of that state. each of the fourteen governors have the final say on whether, and how many, of the national guard would be called into service.

okay, so, we have the Associated Press telling an exaggerated BUT still basically true tale. but because it was exaggerated, the exaggeration is what people will remember. in this case, it’s the number 100,000. i’ve said it enough times in this post, even if you only read this, it’s probably the first thing you’d remember about the story.

so what happens if or when this executive order actually gets signed? in a few weeks the news story comes out and says “5,000 national guard deployed to support ICE across fourteen states” and, “wow, look, that’s WAY less than those alarmist liberals told me there would be! see? everything’s fine!” so trump gets to say “the news media spun everything way out of proportion; the liberals worked themselves into a froth; and the world didn’t end”. and at the same time he literally used the military to fulfill a civic goal, which is about as big of a warning sign for fascism as i can imagine.

it is entirely possible that the white house is intentionally leaking documents that they know the news will whip into a frenzy over, just so that when the truth is less bad, people will think that it’s okay. this is trump’s path to victory, and if so it’s working alarmingly well. this is why you need to be careful. your voice matters and is valuable, don’t misuse it.

3) one last thing, john mccain just spoke at the Munich Security Conference, and his speech was decidedly anti-trump. mccain has been a critic of trump pretty much as long as trump has been a politician, and now he’s making some very, very valuable points. he may be trying to garner support in the republican party for a sort of “anti tea party” movement back to moderation, probably partly as an attempt to save the party from getting swept in the next few election cycles, and partly because john mccain isn’t absolutely fucking insane.

this is the kind of thing to watch out for, and support. even if john mccain isn’t a perfect person and he’s not my first pick for the oval office, he’s better than trump. i know that’s a low bar, but that’s what we’re reduced to. if such a movement among republicans were to occur i would happily volunteer for their campaigns if i thought they had a better chance than a more leftist candidate, and someone needed to keep actual fascists out of congress.

anyway that’s all largely speculative and not really what i wanted to talk about.

here’s a selection from his speech, sourced from the Washington Post:

[The founders of the Munich Conference] would be alarmed by the hardening resentment we see towards immigrants and refugees and minority groups -- especially Muslims. [...] They would be alarmed that more and more of our fellow citizens seem to be flirting with authoritarianism and romanticizing it as our moral equivalent. [...] I refuse to accept that our values are morally equivalent to those of our adversaries. I am a proud, unapologetic believer in the West, and I believe we must always, always stand up for it. For if we do not, who will?

now i know that it’s popular around here to hate on america. yes, we’ve been involved in some shit in the middle east and elsewhere. yes, there are tons of stains on our history of civil rights. yes, our treatment of american indians has historically been abhorrent and isn’t getting much better.

We are not as bad as Russia. We are not as bad as China. We are not as bad as North Korea. We are not as bad as ISIS.

the United States, and the rest of NATO, have the unique power to act almost unilaterally to promote western values around the world. and when i say “western values”, i don’t want anyone reading this to fucking scoff. i’m talking about freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, of assembly. i’m talking about the belief that a liberal education can make you a better human. i’m talking about the belief that people are inherently valuable. these should be a given but they are NOT.

yes. i know. the united states is not perfect, even in granting those things above to its own citizens. but it TRIES. it doesn’t fucking assassinate journalists. it doesn’t have its secret police raid meetings of non-state-sanctioned political parties. these are REAL THINGS THAT HAPPEN TO REAL PEOPLE AND IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO CARE AND TO FIGHT FOR THEM.

the united states pulling out of NATO, or of just being too isolationist to do anything about these very real threats to very real people, is i think the most plausible worst case scenario from a trump presidency. and i am SO willing to fight for moderate republicans who agree with that. people like john mccain.

like, you can probably tell i’m getting kind of emotional over here but i literally want to kiss john mccain right now.

what has 2017 done to me

6 notes · View notes

theworstbob · 8 years ago

Text

yellin’ at songs: 5.12.2007 & 5.13.2017

the songs that debuted on the billboard chart this week and this week ten years ago

5.12.2007

6) "I'll Stand by You," Carrie Underwood

I completely understand why so many people bought this. I don't think my life was improved by having heard this? But, y'know, it wasn't as melodramatic as I was expecting, maybe I picked the wrong video but it's just a nice well-sung acoustic cover of a song which I'm sure was construed as inspirational for the Idol Gives Back thing (and remembering that this was Idol Gives Back this week, yup, mm-hmm, definitely watched the wrong video), I'm glad there wasn't a thousand things happening, but like 2007 is supposed to provide a nostalgic rush, either consider a song we all knew and loved/hated back in the day or uncover a classic, and listening to this is just... Unnecessary?

8) "Never Again," Kelly Clarkson

The first line of this song is, "I hope the ring you gave to her turns her finger green," which is a hell of a thing to say. One can assess all the reasons why this is the only Kelly Clarkson single to chart in 2007 -- hey remember ten years ago when a record label could win a PR battle with a female artist seeking creative autonomy? Good times! -- but honestly, there's nothing wrong with this song on its own, this is a pretty superb, dark-as-hell break-up song, but it's also the sixth or seventh consecutive Kelly Clarkson breakup song? Like, her discography to this point is "A Moment Like This" and then a shitload of break-up songs, some anthemic, some mournful, and while I get why they would be sick of Kelly Clarkson break-up songs -- worth noting her next big hit was “My Life Would Suck Without You” -- if the 2007 public wasn't willing to hear the dark version of the kind of song Kelly Clarkson does extremely well, that's on them. This song is rad, and while I'm probably not gonna go back and listen to My December, I'm figuring that album is prolly a jam.

28) "Icky Thump," The White Stripes

...Do I have to like this song? I get that I agree with it, and I get that The White Stripes area thing people who like music tend to like, and this is the most I ever enjoyed The White Stripes' whole, y'know, thing (this and “My Doorbell”), but I don’t want to like this song. It’s just, I dunno, Jack White’s this whole person, and I don’t like engaging with that person?

56) "Up to the Mountain," Kelly Clarkson ft./Jeff Beck

yes just like the carrie underwood thing this was a very good american idol performance and like i wanna be snarkier but last week 2007 handed me seven country dude songs and, just, i would take a thousand american idol performances before another week with that many country dudes. given the alternative, this is the greatest thing i could have ever possibly heard.

65) "Signal Fire," Snow Patrol

So like, I graduated high school in 2007, right? That's kind of the connection to these songs, like, these songs would have been the soundtrack to my high school experience if I had friends who listened to pop and/or rap radio. (Hence all the buttrock appreciation in these posts. Like, real talk, Shinedown is a terrible band to which I have such a profound nostalgic connection that I routinely have to rewatch their videos just to be 100% sure that particular Southern rock band doesn't have any Confederate flags in them.) So there's a 10-year reunion coming up which I'm probably not going to go to, but like imagine a 10-year high school reunion. You see your friends. You love your friends! You are all very successful and beautiful! You see the people you hated. You greatly enjoy how fat they got and cheated on they were! You go to the punch bowl for some delicious, fruity punch, and you see the person that sat behind you in chemistry. They seem OK. You mention the crazy weather you've been having recently, and they agree, the weather is crazy. This song is that social interaction. It's a nice Braffcore song that I wasn't thinking about then and am not presently thinking about now.

78) "You Raise Me Up," Josh Groban & The African Children's Choir

...Yeah, so like, no? Thank you! But, no, I'mma sit this one out. I understand that we want different things out of life. I will not get in the way of this song's goals, and I will not invite it to impede mine. But thank you so much for bringing this to me!

84) "If I Was Your Man," Joe

I refuse to actively engage with this song on the grounds that even coming up with this angle for a capsule review required more thought and effort than was put into the writing and recording of this song. This is a middle slider in song form. They couldn't even be bothered to give this artist a name. "Joe." Joe doesn't even stand for anything, he's just a fucking guy named Joe who wants to date someone and enjoy all the attendant benefits. Sometimes, you hear a song, and you're taken to an amazing world or shown a new aspect of life or filled with the inspiration needed to tackle the day's problems, and this song is like, "Meet Joe! Joe's a dude who has a crush on someone," and Joe doesn't say anything or even wave his hand to acknowledge you. He just sits there, moving nothing.

93) "I Don't Need a Man," The Pussycat Dolls

"I don't need a hand if it only wants to grab one thing." In addition to the world, the 2016 presidential election also ruined my ability to enjoy a 10-year-old Pussycat Dolls song. Also, Kara DioGuardi. It makes sense that Kara DioGuardi and Donald Trump would describe the female anatomy in equally clumsy ways. Maybe there was no way for Kara DioGuardi to know that, ten years after this song was published, the term "grab" could reference something other than the ass when used in reference to a woman's body, but she's bad and this song is trash so I'm definitely going to hold it against her.

99) "Sexy Lady," Yung Berg ft./Junior

...I am going to applaud this song for having the audacity of using a "Diamonds Are Forever" sample. Like, Kanye doesn't own the rights to the song, and it's a completely different beat, but it's still kinda weird to turn on a song and say, "Oh, hey, someone used that song as a sample in a song I like a lot more!" And like how are you going to use the "Diamonds Are Forever" sample on a song that isn't about diamonds at all? The song doesn't mention jewely of any kind. Like, I don't know, maybe Yung Berg has always been famously anti-consumerism and I just never bothered learning that about him, but if you're a pop/rap artist in 2007, and you're going to take a sample from an iconic song about material goods, hey, I'm not a songwriter, but maybe write verses about material goods? This is as weird as a song can be without having an ounce of originality.

100) "Wipe Me Down," Lil Boosie ft./Foxx & Webbie

One weird thing about 2007 songs is, so like, when I listen to a song with, say, Lil Yachty on the track, I hear every single disgusting thing Lil Yachty has to say about the things he wants to do to a woman, and which parts of the woman he would prefer to do them to. And then you listen to a 2007 track, and there'll be half a verse missing because the record label was scared that their video would be deleted from the internet if they said the n-word. Apart from the unnecessary censorship, I dunno, this was kind of the standard Southern-pop/rap song. Repetitive to the point you just give in and enjoy it, not really about anything in particular, just annoying enough to be memorable but not annoying enough to be appreciated ironically. There were always gonna be dry spells. 2007 is very much in one, Kelly Clarkson notwithstanding.

The Top 20! With infinitely more Kelly Clarkson than ever before! 20) "When I See U," by Fantasia (4.21.2007) 19) "Movin' On," by Elliott Yamin (3.17.2007) 18) "U + Ur Hand," by P!nk (1.13.2007) 17) "Doe Boy Fresh," by Three 6 Mafia ft./Chamillionaire (1.20.2007) 16) "Breath," by Breaking Benjamin (4.14.2007) 15) "Stolen," by Dashboard Confessional (4.21.2007) 14) "Beautiful Liar," by Beyonce & Shakira (3.31.2007) 13) "Cupid's Chokehold," by Gym Class Heroes ft./Patrick Stump (1.13.2007) 12) "The River," by Good Charlotte ft./M. Shadows & Synyster Gates (2.10.2007) 11) "Say OK," by Vanessa Hudgens (2.17.2007) 10) "Alyssa Lies," by Jason Michael Carroll (1.13.2007) 9) "Never Again," by Kelly Clarkson (5.12.2007) 8) "Get Buck," by Young Buck (4.14.2007) 7) "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," by Jennifer Hudson (1.13.2007) 6) "Thnks fr th Mmrs," by Fall Out Boy (4.28.2007) 5) "Candyman," by Christina Aguilera (1.13.2007) 4) "Because of You," by Ne-Yo (3.17.2007) 3) "Umbrella," by Rihanna ft./Jay-Z (4.28.2007) 2) "Dashboard," by Modest Mouse (2.17.2007) 1) "The Story," by Brandi Carlile (4.28.2007) Alright. 2007 had a bad week. 2017 didn’t fuck up Kendrick week. Is it gonna fuck up Paramore week?

5.13.2017

44) "There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back," by Shawn Mendes

So before I even listen to a single note, the inconsistency of the title's abbreviations has me peeved. Why would you abbreviate one word but not the other? Is one g much more special than the other? Does Shawn Mendes pronounce the g in nothing, but not the g in holding? Because I've heard Shawn Mendes sing, I'd be surprised if he hits the "th" and the "ld" in those words. /// You know what? I'll give it a "not as bad as the title." I don't come away from this song having made any new conclusions about the world or Shawn Mendes as a person, so I can't really argue that this was worth the three minutes of my life it took, but it's not Joe-level nothing, so hey! It has that going for it!

64) "Lust for Life," by Lana del Rey ft./The Weeknd

I'm not here to make a judgement call about the modern adolescent experience in relation to the one I went through. I think this song is fine, it's actually kind of great in a way I'm not gonna bother to place, but I think that it's worth noting that the modern teen's "Hot in Herre" is this. There's a lot of value in a sad song with the "take off all your clothes" refrain, again I dug this, but I didn't dig it enough to try to figure out why that might be, because I'm just thinking about what a jam "Hot in Herre" is and how I think I've heard like maybe two great party jams over the course of this project. We had "Run Up," you guys. The teens don't want to party. And, I mean, why should they, it's rough out there, maybe they deserve to just shrug when they see their boyfriend approach and say, "Huh, he got a little cooler. Le sigh."

68) "Attention," by Charlie Puth

Not gonna lie: when I saw that Shawn Mendes and this dude were on the ledger for this week, I thought the milquetoast white boy army was gonna ruin this W for Paramore. I thought the weight these two idiots would add to 2017 would give the W to a week in 2007 with a Kara DioGuardi joint. But just like the Shawn Mendes song, this was acceptable! In fact: I would give this a B-! It's not as drastic a zag as when Ed Sheeran dropped "Sing," but this is reasonably funkier, a degree of funk which I never would have thought Charlie Puth capable of achieving. I think this song might be his ceiling, I can't imagine having as good a time with Charlie Puth as I did with him here (especially now that the element of surprise won't be in play), but, y'know, solid three and a half minutes. Not the worst!

87) "do re mi," by blackbear

Ah, so THIS is where we were keeping the unexceptional white boy! I knew he had to be hiding somewhere! This is the song you write you have completely purged your life of everyone who told you that you weren't clever. This is the song you write after having no one around to tell you that the fact of a curse word isn't edgy on its own. "Do re mi fa so fuckin' done wit' ya" is a garbage line because the shock is being solely derived from the use of the f-word, and that can only get ya so many times; by the time he repeats it for the sixth time, you'll think it's do re mi fa so lame he couldn't think of anything cooler to do with the conceit than recite the scale then swear. You're a songWRITER, dude! You tellin' me you could only think of one pun based on the scale? OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN AIN'T GOT THE MONOPOLY ON SCALE-BASED PUNS, YA KNOW. SO MANY OTHER WORDS BEGIN WITH FA. TRY HARDER.

90) "Hard Times," by Paramore

gosh this song fucking rules. y'all mind if i'm just a boy writing a diary for a second? because this is a song about me. i'm someone with a defeatist attitude, i'm the exact sort of person who meets hard times by giving up, and that's what this song is, it's a song about giving in and feeling defeated. they're not looking back on low points in their life and saying, "gosh, can you believe we made it?" they're sinking deeper and deeper still into a depression and saying "how the fuck do we survive," and that's such a beautiful sentiment, especially in the trump era, where i'm sure a lot of us are still shellshocked and feel the task is too tall. but they're putting this happy, energetic face on it, this song is this bouncy uptempo jam about being incredibly depressed, because it's easier to pretend you don't need help than it is to ask. i love this song. i don't care if it falls off the chart next week, it's the new #1.

93) "My Girl," by Dylan Scott

...I think I'm just feeling generous today. I'm willing to give this a "didn't mind it." Am I amazed that they just keep finding new dudes to make this exact country song? Yeah. But, it's like the Shawn Mendes song, there just isn't enough in here for me to react negatively to. The Eminem reference is probably the most exotic shoutout in country music going, and especially refreshing because I'm still angry at "Johnny Cash" from last week, and the dude has the bass country voice going, he has that earth-shaking twang instead of that nasal fuckboy twang a lot of these dudes got going on. It wasn't as engaging as that "Hurricane" thing from a couple months ago, so I'm still gonna call it bro country, but this is probably the least I'll ever mind bro country. Congratulations, Dylan Scott! Of all the bro country chucklefucks, you have emerged as the least chucklefucky!

Top 20! Only one new entry! It’s an important one. 20) "Guys My Age," by Hey Violet (2.11) 19) "Heatstroke," by Calvin Harris ft./Young Thug, Pharrell Williams & Ariana Grande (4.22) 18) "Yeah Boy," Kelsea Ballerini (3.4) 17) "You Look Good," by Lady Antebellum (4.22) 16) "The Heart Part 4," by Kendrick Lamar (4.15) 15) "Selfish," by Future ft./Rihanna (3.18) 14) "Slide," by Calvin Harris ft./Frank Ocean & Migos (3.18) 13) "Now & Later," by Sage the Gemini (2.25) 12) "DNA." by Kendrick Lamar (5.6) 11) "It Ain't Me," by Kygo x Selena Gomez (3.4) 10) "Craving You," by Thomas Rhett ft./Maren Morris (4.22) 9) "That's What I Like," by Bruno Mars (3.4) 8) "Chanel," by Frank Ocean ft./A$AP Rocky (4.1) 7) "Run Up," by Major Lazer ft./PARTYNEXTDOOR & Nicki Minaj (2.18) 6) "Green Light," by Lorde (3.18) 5) "ELEMENT." by Kendrick Lamar (5.6) 4) "Despacito," by Luis Fonsi ft./Daddy Yankee (2.4) 3) "Issues," by Julia Michaels (2.11) 2) "iSpy," by KYLE ft./Lil Yachty (1.14) 1) "Hard Times," by Paramore (5.13) May you last longer than “Run Up,” “Hard Times.”

Who won?

2017. Neither had a great week, apart from one exceptional song from both sides. “Hard Times” is simply better than “Never Again,” is what it comes down to. And now: 2017 has the lead for the year! 2017: 4 2007: 3 Looking into the future, 2007 has four songs. 2017 will be entering “Young and Menace” probably. ...I already don’t like next week.

0 notes

viralhottopics · 8 years ago

Text

Dont tell me its going to be OK: diary of a Latino teenager in the age of Trump

Angelina Alvarez fought pro-Trump graffiti by wearing a Dump Trump shirt to school. After he won the election, she kept a diary about her life and feelings

When anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican, pro-Trump graffiti began showing up around their California high school, Angelina Alvarez and other Latino students fought back with Dump Trump T-shirts.

After Donald Trump won the US election, the Guardian asked Alvarez, 17, to keep a diary about her life and feelings in this new era.

Election Day 8 November

Trump won I dont even know what to think. Im just scared, I want to be with my grandma right now and just hug her. My grandma that came here as an immigrant, who worked hard, who was able to buy a home, who sent her kids to college, who later became documented. How can people hate someone like her?

Im looking at my friends Snapchat stories and seeing that even a few of my friends are excited that he won. I ask them why they hate themselves. Unsure how to answer, they delete their stories. Im just thinking about all of the families that are going to be affected by this. I pray that we all stay strong and do not back down to any of the obstacles we have ahead of us. It is such a disappointment. Our country is a disappointment.

9 November

It was so uncomfortable at school today I had my classes that have the biggest Trump supporters in my school. They were surprisingly dead silent, all of them. They didnt look at me and I didnt really look at them. I wonder why they were so quiet though, it scares me honestly but I dont know why.

My sister and friends told me that they saw a lot of people wearing their Trump gear and congratulating each other. I didnt want to be there, I just wanted to go home. My stomach was uneasy and I didnt even want to eat lunch. I couldnt think in class, I couldnt stay focused. I wanted to run home and just lay in my bed.

One of my friends that Ive known since I was in kindergarten, whose mother is undocumented, saw my sister and broke down sobbing. And I just read a post from another friend, she and her mother were taunted by junior high kids yelling Trump and Go back to Mexico. This is happening here, at my school, in my neighborhood. Is this really my neighborhood or am I an intruder?

10 November

This morning I got a message from a teacher that we were having a meeting to talk about everything thats going on with Trump. I love that our teachers care about us and how we are feeling. In reading all the posts that people are putting up I feel sad that they are alone and wish they could join us.

I took a couple of my friends to the meeting. At first, there were only about 10 people 15 minutes later there were about 100 of us. I felt so liberated and happy seeing everyone walking in. My heart was beating so fast I wanted to cry, I wanted to hug everyone. Seeing everyone in solidarity made me so proud, it made me feel hopeful.

About 10 students spoke up and talked about not being scared, to unite and to prove the Trump supporters wrong. I wanted to get up there and point out that its not just Trump he has all these followers behind him that are capable of worse things. I want to compare our situation with what the Jews must have felt when Hitler went from being a joke to being their leader. The pigment of our skin and the accent in our voice is like the star on their clothing.

I want to say so much but I cant. I dont want to disrupt the unity in the room and the hopefulness that is being shared. I wish we could have another meeting so I could share all my thoughts and emotions. Im upset with myself for staying quiet. Its not the time to stay quiet, Ive been silenced enough.

11 November

I am so glad we were off from school today. I feel drained, so tired, I feel heavy like I dont want to do anything. I feel anxious like I am worried something is going to happen. I dont want the TV on or any kind of news. I asked my sister not to play music loud. I dont want my mom to listen to hear political shows. I want a break from the elections, I need a break from all of it.

12 November

My mom told me about a huge rally in Los Angeles put on by an organization I know, Union del Barrio. I begged her to go, I had to go, I had to release my anger and frustration. I needed to feel connected to other people. When we arrived we were shocked to see thousands of people!

There were people holding up flags from different countries, different struggles, different identities, it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. We were all chanting loudly, holding our fists up for justice, and showing love for one another, forming a rhythm together with our voices. Even though I arrived with anger in my heart, I couldnt stop smiling from all the love and unity I saw around me.

We watched as more and more people joined, we listened to speakers call out for action, telling us not to back down. I held my moms hand, I told her I couldnt believe this was going on. I looked over at her and saw she was crying. I hugged her because I knew how she was feeling. I told her that this was just what I needed. We were unstoppable and unafraid.

13 November

Part of me wanted to go to a rally in Santa Ana today because it is local and I want to show support, but another part of me didnt. I read the rules for this rally, which made me uncomfortable; its a respectability politics kind of rally. I have gone to rallies like this before, where they criticize youth who get too radical.

Those kinds of views are what got us Trump in the first place. I dont know, maybe it was a great rally but I dont want resistance to be criticized. I stand by all people who protest; whether its peaceful or not, we all have the right to feel, we have the right to react, we have the right to be angry. Please dont tell me its going to be OK, you dont know whats going to happen so stop saying that. We, youth, ultimately, have to face the consequences, we have to live with decisions we had no control over.

I told my mother I would rather hang out at the house. I want to rest; I want to feel normal again, whatever that means. I noticed that when Im out at the store, I am constantly wondering what people are thinking of me. I wonder if they voted for Trump, if they dont like me or if they will say something to us.

24 November

Hmm Thanksgiving was super uncomfortable for me. We spent the day with extended family, some of who are white. I honestly have never really felt comfortable around them.

After our Thanksgiving dinner, we were all in the living room talking. My cousins made a remark about the grandpa looking like Bernie Sanders right away they all seemed disgusted when they heard his name. My cousins kept saying how Bernie Sanders was the best and my extended family kept saying Well he didnt win, he didnt win. Pretty much insinuating that Donald Trump is the best since he won. Then my cousin asked them why they like Donald Trump and they just stayed quiet.

I looked over and saw my grandmother, my uncle and aunts, all who were undocumented at some point in their life, who take pride in their culture, their language, and their customs and wonder if they feel the tension in the room. I can tell my grandmother wants to go home. I want to go home too. But I would also defend them if anyone tried to insult them. I dont want to feel like this in my safe space on this special day.

8 December

Trump has named Scott Pruitt, Oklahomas attorney general, to head the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). How does that even make sense? Even I, a high school student, know thats bad decision. Its like having narcos lead the war on drugs.

9 January

People are salivating just waiting to see people being arrested and deported on TV. The same people whose relatives immigrated here years back but for some reason think they are the True Americans. The same people that stereotype immigrants as being Mexican criminals but dont know that Mexicans are not the majority of immigrants in the US. The same people who are not aware that the majority of those immigrant people never committed a serious crime. The same people that will root for unborn babies pro choice and at the same time for root for children to be separated from their parents.

My heart hurts for my undocumented Daca brothers and sisters who may be at risk starting next week. History repeats itself, get ready for another Operation Wetback.

16 January

Today I had basketball practice, then got to spend the day with people who practice Martin Luther Kings teachings every day. I was so annoyed seeing people post about MLK, sharing his quotes when they just recently were in support of Trump or criticized BLM. How can they not see the hypocrisy in that? Its like they have selective discrimination they discriminate when its popular.

Sometimes I wish I didnt know so much maybe then I wouldnt feel pain when I hear stories, but other days I am glad that I am 17 and woke.

We finalized our plans for Inauguration Day I am excited and angry. Excited that thousands of people from all over the world will stand against Trump and his fascist ideas, yet angry that this day kicks off his plans to harm people.

We are going to start the day with thousands of people in Downtown Los Angeles, then join an evening protest with mostly young people in Santa Ana. The following day Saturday January 21 we will be joining women in Orange County for a big march standing for womens rights. Standing up against Trump is important and I hope other people join, it is to show him and his followers that we will not back down and we will resist hate. May the universe help us.