#a lot of white people will vote against their interests to prevent the other from having it.

[sleepynegress]

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Harris offered 25K to assist in buying your first house. Many homes require less money down, to get the keys!! White Americans hate Black people more than they love themselves. That's it. That is the problem. That quality is EASY to exploit and so IT ALWAYS IS. From thuggery, to redlines, to welfare queens, to drained pool politics to DEI, and wokism.... This will ALWAYS work on them!! And nobody wants to face that truth.

[malorisaurus]

I have been thinking a lot about how to carve my space within grassroots organizing/community building. I live in a small city that has very insular communities. Leftist political groups are tiny and suffer from problems of individualism that keeps them isolated from other groups that share similar goals.

An additional problem is that we are in an ultra-conservative state (Idaho) where we are a super-minority, and the liberal party and its members are far more conservative than you might find in more liberal states. We do not garner a lot of sympathy or support in our efforts from either political side. This has been a limiting factor in getting anyone to show up for anything. As an example, there was a large turnout of pussy hat wearing white women for the women's march and loud dissent against Free Palestine rallies (largely from the same women).

I am also Autistic, and it is very difficult for me to context and task switch. I am able to overcome this and build resilience to an extent, but it is absolutely a real limitation for me. Because of the nature of local movements, there is no real community discussion or effective communication. The people that take on leadership roles are well-intentioned, but seemingly limited in their ability to effectively facilitate more structured organization. I recognize that it is a huge amount of labor, but it is, in my opinion, necessary. Many people who would show up to events simply don't know that there are any planned because there is no way of engaging with the community outside of last minute social media posts on irregularly active instagram accounts. For those of us that don't use social media, it is impossible.

I have asked to have scheduled times for simple things like discussing organizing efforts or group activities that are not protests (I understand that protests/rallies/etc. arise when they need to and are not necessarily able to be planned well in advance). I have also offered to contribute my skills in schedule management and communication to the cause. Unfortunately, I have been met with resistance. It seems that people take this as criticism or are more interested in gatekeeping/shielding their own power within their tiny insular space than in approaching my offer in good faith. I think it worth noting here that these groups are predominantly white.

In addition to these issues of coordination, it strikes me that there are confused notions of what types of actions would be beneficial. For instance, shows of solidarity for Palestine in the form of rallies are good, but we do not have any means of more significant disruption (e.g., protestors preventing ship transports of weapons from leaving dock). Our state legislature is impotent, we have no federal power (and even if we did, Simpson, Crapo, Risch, and Fulcher are awful and have a history of ignoring their constituents regardless of efforts to protest). If we could get people to show up, we could shut down roads to be a more visible emblem of solidarity, but the Palestinian community here (whose lead I am following on this) is not interested in doing that at this time. It seems to me that there should be real, concerted effort outside of solidarity, and those efforts should be directed toward mutual aid and local issues.

This is probably true everywhere, but we need to create real disruption over things that the state legislature has power to enact. Right now we are one of the most oppressive states in terms of trans healthcare, reproductive healthcare, voting rights, police presence and policy, houslessness, fair wages, and access to resources. It is my opinion that there is a lot to be done here and that a lot of energy is wasted on having a hundred tiny groups with a focus on small rallies and socializing instead of creating meaningful coalition.

So, I am left with limited options. I can:

Continue to burn myself out trying to eek out any communication I can while continuously pointing out accessibility issues that are perpetually ignored (this is also an ongoing issue for other types of accessibility concerns like mask use, physical disability access, etc.)

Start my own tiny, insular project and perpetuate the already existing problematic cycle of ineffectual organizing movements in this town, ultimately ending with burnout and my own ineffectuality.

Both options suck, but the first is the only one that is viable in any way. I can't build a community on my own, even should I not have my limitations with disability and chronic illness. A community of one is, rather obviously, not a community at all.

[beansguytm]

So this is actually a thing I’ve studied in the course of my being a Political Science student.

This is absolutely correct except that Russia has used their veto more than the US. But the permanent 5 members of the Security Council are permanent because they’re the victors of WWII (US, Russia, UK) and the countries they lobbied to get in (France, China). And why is it so important that these five are permanent and have a veto?

Bingo! These five are the only countries that are “allowed” to have nuclear arms. They’re allowed nukes and given a veto because otherwise they would leave the UN entirely because it wouldn’t serve their [governemnts’] interests. You don’t want the people with nukes to not be in the UN.

Someone ought to step in here because woof, bad idea. Really fucking bad idea. It’s also just incorrect, as I’ll get into below.

Oh would you look at that! Correct! Let’s add context for people who aren’t familiar with early 20th century international politics. The League of Nations was an organization formed between a large number of countries after World War I with the aim to prevent another conflict that terrible. Here’s the thing. In our sovereign state system, there’s no reason for a country to willingly concede any of its sovereignty by joining an organization that deliberately weakens its power on the international scale. So, the League gave every member a veto.

This proved to be a mistake, as when Germany started the Holocaust and World War II, they just vetoed everything the League came up with to stop them. The same goes with Japan’s conquest of Eastern Asia and subsequent joining forces with Germany. Both countries eventually left the League, but it proved that it was completely useless at doing what it was designed to. The framers of the UN charter were acutely aware of this, so they devised the system where only the strongest three countries (and their two pals) had a veto. They wouldn’t have joined otherwise.

Let’s also go over some of the specifics of the Security Council because some of y’all clearly don’t get it. There are fifteen members, with ten members being elected every two years by the countries of their region. Essentially, other than the P5, the members have to be in good standing with their neighbors. There are dedicated seats for countries in Africa, South America, Oceania, and Asia (the places you’ll find lots of not white people). So they aren’t completely at the whim of the P5. There are certainly organizations tied to the UN that are neoimperialist, but Security Council (typically) isn’t one. And believe me. The world would be worse off if there was no P5.

Let’s also be clear: the P5 don’t always veto the resolutions they don’t like. China in particular abstains from voting a lot. There is no distinction between a “nay” vote and a veto for the P5, so sometimes when they would rather vote against a resolution but don’t want to look bad for pulling out the veto, they’ll abstain. They know how severe of a power it is and don’t throw it around willy nilly. This is not an endorsement of how the P5 uses their vetoes. The US stymies every attempt to reign Israel in. Russia has protected Turkey and Syria from interventions. However, you need to understand that there is no better system (yet). For the UN to be effective at all, the strongest global powers need to have a reason to stay members.

Believe me, as an American, it frustrates me to no end how my government chooses to vote against the interest of peace whenever it feels like it has too much to lose. I’m currently writing a research paper on why the US supports Israel so unequivocally. One reason is certainly power projection in the Middle East. A lot of countries there are hostile to the US and our government finds it pertinent to have someone there who likes us.

This is so false it hurts. The US is one of the largest donors to sustainable development and international aid. Sometimes it has an imperialistic motive, but a lot of the time it is altruistic. Dont forget that a country can’t be a part of the Security Council without being party to the rest of the UN, and the UN does incredible things besides (try to) stop international conflict. Poorer and less powerful nations are given a platform and have become better places to live for their inclusion in the UN, and they need the funding and support from the major powers for that to happen. A veto in the security council is a surefire way to get those major powers to help.

Now, I do agree that we should be interfering much less in a lot of countries’ internal affairs. We’ve deposed many democratic leaders that we (and I do mean our government) didn’t approve of. And then there’s our continual involvement in the Middle East for the past several decades. I think the way we left Afghanistan was an absolute nightmare, but the moment it became clear that we weren’t successfully building a self sustaining democracy, we should have changed course so we could have left and not had terrorists come in and conquer the country with ease.

International politics are so much more complex than domestic politics and we need to not paint with broad strokes. Some things the US does are terrible, and some are incredibly good. Sometimes the UN is useless, but others it is actively making the world a better place to live. I’ll leave you with the parting sentiment that you just need to have some nuance before making bold claims in this field. Seriously.

we have to stop letting the usa have such control/influence over international politics

[seetting-lin-blog]

The rampant gun violence - the cancer of American society

Gun ownership has profound historical roots in the United States. As early as the formation of the 13 states in North America, each state needed militia for self-defense, and it was with the help of firearms that the ancestors of the United States survived the struggle against beasts and Native Americans. The victory of the War of Independence not only made gun ownership a life and death right, but also endowed it with a magnificent coat of defense for freedom, democracy, and civil rights. Until the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1791, which stipulated that "the right of the people to possess and bear arms shall not be violated," the right to bear arms was legally established, making it even more "sacred and inviolable. To amend the constitutional amendment is even more difficult than climbing to the sky. This requires obtaining 2/3 of the affirmative votes in both houses of Congress, and then obtaining the consent of 3/4 of the states in the United States in order to take effect. That is to say, under the current US system, only 2% of Americans can prevent constitutional amendments from being amended. All of the above make the United States the first and only country in the world where citizens generally carry guns.

As the world's number one 'gun country', buying a gun is like buying beer. Nowadays, firearms have become a "necessity of life" for American families. The threshold for obtaining firearms is extremely low and there is a serious lack of regulation. Data shows that there are as many as 55000 licensed gun shops or dealers in the United States, with the same number of gun shops as pharmacies. The number of various civilian firearms in the United States has reached around 400 million, with almost 1.2 guns per capita. As long as you are over 18 years old and apply for a gun license, you can hold a gun. A dazzling array of firearms can be seen everywhere in some large chain supermarkets in the United States, and you can just pay to register and leave. David Chipman, a former director of the United States Tobacco, Tobacco, and Firearms Administration, once joked that in most parts of the United States, buying a gun is easier than buying beer. There are still a large number of unnumbered and difficult to trace "ghost guns" in the United States. After purchasing gun parts through legal channels, they can be assembled into shooting weapons according to instructions without undergoing any background checks. These firearms have become invisible time bombs, posing a serious threat to public safety.

The Republican and Democratic parties in the United States have long been attacking and crushing each other on gun control issues for their own party interests. The Republican Party has always opposed gun control, while the Democratic Party supports it. The United States has not passed a significant gun control bill for over 20 years. As the two parties take turns on the battlefield, tearing and fighting each other, their gun control attitudes fluctuate from left to right, with varying degrees of intensity. Even during the Democratic Party's tenure in the White House, the effectiveness of gun control was minimal. When Clinton served as the President of the United States, he took advantage of the Democratic Party's control over both houses of Congress to pass a gun control bill. As a result, the Republican Party, which advocated gun ownership, won the midterm elections that year, and the gun control bill was not renewed after it expired in 2004. Obama shed tears at three gun control press conferences and admitted that his inability to promote gun control reform was the "biggest setback" during his term. Today's Biden, although publicly condemning the Buffalo, New York shooting at a press conference, can be said to have done a lot of superficial work. However, facing a mess of domestic and foreign affairs, it is obvious that he is "willing but lacks strength". In the current political environment where the political struggle between the two parties is becoming increasingly intense and public opinion is severely divided, the US gun control policy will only continue to flip the cake, making it difficult to treat the symptoms and even more difficult to cure the root cause.

It can be seen that behind the shooting incidents in the United States, there is a failure of the political system, manipulation of group interests, hypocrisy of partisan interests, a lack of social governance, and even indifference and trampling on people's lives. Gun violence has become a cancer in American politics and society. Like the COVID-19 that killed 1 million Americans, it continues to devour thousands of lives every year. It can be foreseen that after waves of political clamor and showmanship condemning gun violence, everything will soon return to calm until the next shooting incident occurs. So repeatedly, trapped in an unsolvable cycle.

[mariacallous]

Congress and President Joe Biden largely prevented hunger from getting worse during the pandemic with a series of stopgap measures that expanded benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), fed children when closed schools suspended free lunches for the most vulnerable and helped food banks obtain groceries.

But several of those programs have ended this year and dramatic inflation has made it even more difficult to afford groceries, leaving many food banks with empty shelves and hungry Americans wondering how to make ends meet.

The Ohio collective’s warehouse was alarmingly empty before the charity dipped into its own funds to buy increasingly expensive items that previously would have been donated or provided by federal programs, said Mike Hochron, senior vice-president of communications for the group. Supply chain problems have made the problem worse: at least 80 truckloads of cereal and pasta have been canceled in the past year, he said.

“The biggest shift is we have to buy a whole lot more,” Hochron said, standing in a cavernous warehouse with shelves of crackers, soap, ground meat, papayas and other grocery items. “In some cases, our buying power is half what it was a couple of years ago.”

Despite similar stories from food banks around the country, direct discussions about food security have been seemingly missing from many political races in battleground states, though Republicans nationally have been campaigning more broadly on inflation and the cost of living, while protecting abortion after the fall of Roe v Wade has been a key issue for Democrats.

In Ohio, for instance, hunger is not mentioned among the key issues on the campaign websites for Senate candidates JD Vance and Tim Ryan, even as they debate issues such as crime that are often caused by hunger. Neither candidate responded to interview requests.

In the Ohio governor’s race, Democratic challenger Nan Whaley has proposed a $350 (£313) “inflation rebate” for most residents, in part to pay for food. Her opponent, Republican incumbent Mike DeWine, does not mention food or hunger on his campaign site.

US politicians have a long history of ignoring hunger as a campaign issue, said Ann Crigler, a political science professor at the University of Southern California. That’s partly because it’s embarrassing and partly because they don’t know how to fix it, she said.

“People don’t want to admit there’s this big problem happening here,” Crigler said. “They act like it’s something that only happens overseas.”

The same absence is true of the campaign platforms of the Pennsylvania candidates John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz, who are locked in a tight Senate race.

Some say it’s hard to imagine hunger not being a key issue in the midterm elections, whether or not candidates are discussing it.

“I think people are more aware today than they were a few years ago about what’s at stake,” said the Massachusetts congressman James McGovern, who helped organize the recent White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, the first such gathering since 1969. “Food prices have gone up, fuel costs have gone up. I really do think people get it. We’ll see.”

And yet several food bank clients interviewed across the country said they either don’t plan to vote or wouldn’t take food policies into account if they did.

Kimberly Burkins, who lives in a motel in York, Pennsylvania, supplements her federal food stamps with food from the local Salvation Army, said she nevertheless doesn’t support expanding federal hunger programs.

“I appreciate the assistance, but I don’t think people should be getting free things,” said Burkins, who spent two years on disability benefits and makes just $800 (£716) a month.

The idea that hungry people would vote against their own interests is rooted in society’s broken philosophy of the “undeserving poor”, said Marion Nestle, a retired New York University professor of nutrition, food studies and public health.

“These ingrained attitudes that the poor are undeserving, that they brought it on themselves, that poverty is somehow self-inflicted, are so deeply ingrained in the human psyche that it has to be taught out of you,” Nestle said. “You have to really understand how societies work to understand why some people are poor and some people aren’t.”

Some food bank clients said they understand the distinction. Josh and Misty Murray, parents of three who were waiting in a Ford pickup at the Ohio food bank, said hunger policies would be on their minds at the polls. Both state employees, they started coming to the food bank six months ago after their rent jumped by 15%.

“It’s a hit on your ego, but you do what you gotta do to feed your family,” Josh Murray said. “It was coming down to keeping the lights on or having meals.”

In Larimer county, Colorado, north of Denver, the local food bank has seen a 33% increase in visits to its brick-and-mortar pantries since January and a 67% increase at its mobile pantries, said Amy Pezzani, CEO of the Larimer county food bank. And while clients used to rely on the pantries for about a quarter of their food, many now receive nearly all their food from the charity, Pezzani said.

And while clients previously visited those pantries about once a month, they now average nearly three visits per month, she said.

“In our area, the cost of housing has increased exponentially and has increased much faster than wages,” Pezzani said. Congress should make some of the pandemic measures permanent to prevent even more hunger, she added. “We’re going to need to do more, especially if we keep seeing these increases.”

As in other battleground states, neither Colorado Senate candidate – Michael Bennet or Joe O’Dea – lists hunger prevention as a priority.

Food bank leaders and experts said they hope voters – whether hungry or not – understand the importance of their decisions in November. With a possible recession looming and Congress failing to codify some of the most effective pandemic aid programs, the upcoming elections could dramatically affect hunger in the next year.

About one-third of people without consistent access to food are ineligible for Snap benefits, said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, a Northwestern University economics professor. The country needs better policies to keep hungry people from falling through the cracks, she said.

“A lot of these pandemic relief ideas have come and gone,” said Whitmore Schanzenbach, who attended the White House hunger conference. “I wish we would have kept some of them. The child tax credit reduced poverty 50%. Why didn’t we keep it?”

Lisa Ortega, 64, was forced to turn to the Larimer county food bank about three years ago when a series of health problems put her out of work. She lives in a Habitat for Humanity-built house in Loveland, Colorado, and said she hopes voters show a little empathy when they head to the polls.

“People need to look at this and change their ideas,” Ortega said. “Someday they may be in this situation where they have to go to the food bank. It happened to me.”

[llendrinall]

Hello, random question. Did you watch qny of the Fantastic Beasts movies? And if you did do you have any ships?

I watched the first one and what I think is the second one? The one in Paris. I’m afraid I disliked them too much to get any good story or shipping ideas from them.

I liked Colin Farrell’s performance a lot. He showed a different magic style (wandless, organic) that had me interested. But then (SPOILERS from now on, not that they would ruin much) it turns out that Graves is actually Grindelwald in disguise, and this Grindelwald is extremely boring and doesn’t have any cool magic when he is acting as himself. We don’t see that organic magic again, which opens the possibility that Grindelwald was mimicking Graves’ actual magic style so there is hope for Real Graves being just like that, only we don’t see him.

First movie wasn’t great, but it had potential. I liked Graves. I liked not-as-dumb-as-she-plays Queenie. I didn’t love Tina and Newt, but didn’t hate them either. However, the characters weren’t strong enough to distract me from the clusterfuck that is American magical society as presented in the film. Hooray for those who could go past it, this isn’t meant as criticism to them. Go forth and enjoy your ships, my dears. It’s just that I tend to stop and look at social structures and…

JKR tends to project an image of British Imperialism Nostalgia with quite a shallow treatment of all that it not White English (and I say English and not British here because, dear me, what it going on with Ireland in the books?). But, in this movie things go to an extreme.

You see, the president of the MACUSA is a black woman. Which, I’m sure they felt so clever and progressive when they came with that. You have a two for one: female and black! Yay, representation!

Only, what I as spectator see is that the most powerful person in American magical society is a woman of colour who, apparently, is fine with the racial terrorism against Black muggles. She is an elected representative who has no problem with Black muggles being prevented from voting (by force if not by law). This tells me that the segregation between Magical and No-Maj is stronger than any racial bonds. Sucks four your muggle cousins that they are being stripped from their rights, but, oh, well, we must respect the International Statue of Secrecy.

I… I can’t get past that.

The second movie touches all my hell-no! buttons. First, the implicit female on male rape is okay (no, Queenie, you were such a great character) and second, Blood Ties, by which I mean that tendency to have all characters related to each other and/or to some mythical person. This is something seen in many other works, not just HP, but it bothers me all the same that characters must be long-lost sons, grandsons, cousins, or brothers of someone in order to be relevant. In the Nature versus Nurture debate, I am strongly for the Nurture side and these plots go for Nature without doing much to win me over. The Lestrange family always used Dark Arts just because, and you must be a Dumbledore in order to be relevant in the second movie.

Also (and this isn’t as important, but still) people follow Grindelwald despite him having zero charisma. The totalitarian movements emerging in Europe at that time had in common the presence of strong, charismatic, leader. We see them as monster now, but we can’t forget they were extremely attractive paternalistic monsters. Dumbledore in the movies is the perfect likeable leader who could easily take you down the path of destruction. Grindelwald? Nah.

So the movies didn’t work for me. They give me too many questions with bad and complicated answers and they remind too much of all the things I dislike from the HP universe without bringing something bright and neat in exchange. I just hope Graves is all right.

[sailormoonsub]

So you've watched a lot of different shows through the patreon and kori donations

If it's not too time consuming I was wondering how you would summarize those shows in a sentence or two

Or maybe just do the most memorable ones?

Not a bad idea! Here’s a one-sentence summary and a one-sentence personal note on every show I’ve reviewed more than one episode of on this blog. TLDR I’ve pretty much enjoyed everything that appears on this blog, though for different reasons. Links to all my posts about these shows can be found here! 

This is turning out to be a rather long post so I’m going to throw the list under a Read More. 

ANIME

Sailor Moon: I feel compelled to list it here but, like, I think you know enough about Sailor Moon by now.

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun: Group of high schoolers write and draw a romance manga while simultaneously living the most chaotic reversal of common romance tropes. SO happy this was recommended to me because I never would have picked it up on my own but it’s officially a new favorite!!!

The Case Files of Jeweler Richard: Gem expert and his assistant solve rock-related mysteries while engaging in homoromantic behavior. A lesser known franchise that I think deserves more love!

Snow White with the Red Hair: Herbologist in a medieval fantasy environment escapes her oppressive government and starts a new life in a neighboring kingdom where SHE makes decisions about her life. I’m not even that far into the series but I am OBSESSED with the premise and all the character dynamics are so genuine and honest in a way I can’t describe.

Penguindrum: Himari dies of Glamorous Victorian Illness but is resurrected by the Penguin God in exchange for a favor. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen so far, although it is Ikuhara so it’s often confusing and abstract and all the characters need therapy.

Madoka: Being a magical girl is bad actually due to the amount of sacrifice involved. Reviewing this one is so effortless because there’s SO much material to talk about and it has such a well-established presence in the mainstream pop cultural consciousness.

My Next Life as a Villainess: Girl is reincarnated as the villain in an otome game and rewrites the script by being nice. I’ve compared it to the Good Place which is one of my favorite shows, and I cannot get enough of these characters, especially, of course, our angel queen, Catarina.

Cardcaptor Sakura (and Clear Card): Sakura has to capture all the cards. I LOVE the low stakes, slow pace, sweet and friendly vibe of this show, which might frustrate some people, but for me it’s the very definition of a comfort anime.

Zenonzard: Speaking of cards; apparently a witch created a card game to get revenge on humanity and now it’s the future where everything is neon, there’s humanoid robots all over the place, and card games are a gladiatorial sport. The visuals are amazing, the world is fascinating, and overall I’m impressed with an anime that’s based on an app.

Princess Tutu: Duck turns into a ballerina and uses unconditional kindness to save everyone from sad feelings, while ALSO working against the author who is writing her fairytale. I can’t describe how much an impact this show left on me!! A Big Fave!!

Revolutionary Girl Utena: High schoolers with swords fight each other for a shot at finding something eternal. If you read this blog, you already know I had a delightful time with this series.

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!: Three girls use their skills to make a hand-drawn anime. I only reviewed the first two episodes, but I had watched it while it was airing. I love series that delve really deep into a niche subject, and this one tackles the animation process in a fun accessible way while ALSO having a wonderful trio of protagonists with wildly unique personalities.

Fruits Basket 2019: Professional Cinnamon Roll Tohru collects friends who can turn into the zodiac animals. From what I’ve seen, the characters and relationships are a huge strong point in this series. I want to give them all a hug. This fell by the wayside a little while ago but I would love to get back into it!

CARTOON

Gargoyles: They are gargoyles, who come to life at night. Never got into it as a kid, but certainly appreciate it now!

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: Girl from futuristic underground city arrives on the surface to find out that animals have taken over and have developed arts and culture. It’s so refreshing to see a post apocalyptic world that’s NOT a dystopia! It’s not earth as we know it, but it’s still bright and colorful and full of art.

LIVE ACTION

PGSM: I don’t think I need to list a summary, but WATCH PGSM OH MY GOD. Sailor Moon but with soap opera levels of drama, a killer soundtrack, an incredible cast, puppets, and a really cool reimagining of the Silver Millennium mythos.

Tokusatsu Gagaga: Office lady tries to hide her obsession with tokusatsu shows and makes friends who have similar interests. I fell fast and hard for Gagaga; if you’re a nerd who has tried to function in a non-nerd environment, you WILL relate to this 7-part series!!

Russian Doll: Natasha Lyonne relives the same day over and over and has to make connections in her life. First introduced to me when it won a Patreon vote, and even though it was different from my usual content, I was enraptured by the dark comedy and surreal vibe. Thursday, what a concept.

Good Omens: An angel and a demon low-key turn their backs on Satan and God in order to prevent a war between heaven and hell. I can’t even think of an adjective that’s good enough to describe how well this miniseries was translated from the book. Legendary casting, satisfying plot twists, hilarious commentary on religion.

Cutie Honey The Live: Robot girl fights off an organization that turns people into living weapons through various wacky schemes. Over-the-top in all senses of the phrase. I love a show that’s extremely silly, but takes itself seriously.

Gokushufudo: Former yakuza member becomes a househusband. Only just started this series but man, with a premise like that, how can you NOT fall in love.

[coll2mitts]

#28 Hairspray (2007)

Welcome to Hairspray, where a well-intentioned, woke, white teenage girl singlehandedly ends segregation in 1960s Baltimore.

Y’know, after watching Cry-Baby, I wasn’t super keen on revisiting Hairspray, but I figured it deserved a fair shot.  I hadn’t seen the original since I was in high school, so I booted up HBO Max and settled in for a long night of old-timey dance moves and racial inequality.  Guys... the 1988 version of Hairspray is flippin’ great.

The cast is just to die for.  Ricki Lake, who I only knew as a talk show host in my childhood, is a great Tracy Turnblad.  My favorite devious sea witch Divine is her mother, and Jerry Stiller is her father.  Goddamn Debbie Harry and Sunny Bono are her rival’s parents, and Amber Von Tussle is motherfucking Colleen Fitzpatrick.  As someone who has a vested interest in all famous Colleens, I was stoked to see that Hairspray was Vitamin C’s first acting gig.

FUN FACT: According to Wikipedia (which is never wrong), Graduation (Friends Forever) charts on iTunes at the end of every school year.  Colleen is also the VP of music at Nickelodeon, so she’s doing just fine.

Anyway, the original Hairspray is campy, edgy and hilarious.  If I were Miss Soft Crab 1945, I too would bring it up every chance I got.  The story really boils down to two horny teenage girls trying to claw their way to the top, but the charm of Tracy is she’s trying to pull everyone else up with her.  The way they handle segregation and racial inequality is over-the-top ridiculous, but somehow more realistic than its updated counterpart (put a pin in this).  I mean, a racist white woman shoved a bomb in her hair to own the libs and it gloriously explodes on her head.  I haven’t seen the musical adaptation of Hairspray, so my opinions of how true it is to its source material won’t be explored here, but the 2007 movie adaptation, to me, left a lot to be desired.

Hairspray might be the most popular in a recent trend of non-musical movies being adapted for Broadway.  I remember back in the 90s when Beauty and the Beast hit the stage - it was so successful Disney now has the movie-to-Broadway pipeline on speed dial.  But now we’re getting a shitload of movies with no musical elements being fast tracked to Broadway, like Kinky Boots, Bend it Like Beckham, Mean Girls, Beetlejuice, Heathers, Waitress, Legally Blonde, fucking Groundhog Day with music written by Tim Minchin, just, so goddamn many of them.  I love musicals, but to say I didn’t want to see The Heathers threaten Veronica in 3-part harmony would be an understatement, so I’m immediately skeptical to the quality of this content and hesitant to consume it.  Unfortunately for me, Hairspray is one of the few who had their *corny* musical adaptation also committed to film, and it is a neutered, earnest, high school choir translation of the original and it made my teeth hurt.

The two positives I’ll give the remake are the sets/costumes are great, and the cast serve their roles well, although I will never be OK with someone wearing a fat suit as a costume.  The songs are... fine.  Again, this era of music is not my favorite, so I’m never going to get excited over “It Takes Two” or “I Can Hear the Bells”.  It’s just the tone is so different from the original, and by the end of the movie I was exhausted and very glad it was over.  Writing about it now has required several breaks and side-tangents and I can’t even get to the fucking synopsis of the movie... ugh let’s just do this.

Tracy Turnblad is a “pleasantly plump” teenage girl living in 1960s Baltimore whose sunny disposition makes her oblivious to the reality of murky situation she is living in.  We’re quickly introduced to her obsession, “The Corny Collins Show”, which features a number of far-out teens that love to dance, including multi-year winner of Miss Teenage Hairspray and miss Pitch Perfect herself Amber Von Tussel.  Her mother, Velma, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, is the station manager at WYZT, and uses her power to keep Amber featured front and center.  

After a girl on the show gets knocked up, an audition is held to replace her.  While Tracy’s mother Edna, regrettably played by John Travolta in a fat suit, is afraid that Tracy’s weight will prevent her from landing the gig, her father, puzzlingly played by like a 60-something Christopher Walken, is generally supportive.  True to Edna’s feeling, Tracy is fat shamed by Amber and Velma and doesn’t make the cut.

After getting detention for skipping class for an audition that didn’t pan out, Tracy makes friends with a bunch of black students who are all excellent dancers.  Turns out her new friend Seaweed is the son of Motormouth Maybelle, the sometimes-host of "The Corny Collins Show”, played by Queen Latifah.  Velma, in addition to being a massive bitch, also segregates the station’s black talent from the main show, only to be featured one night a month on “Negro Day”.  While Tracy is boogying down, Link, Amber’s boyfriend and one of the stars of TCCS, peeps at her ass and tells her if she shook her rump in front of Corny at the Hop, he’d have no choice but to put her on the show.

In the original movie, Tracy Turnblad fucks.  She moves in on Link and devours him whole, with no mind given to her size.  She is a kind of bratty, confident young teenager that isn’t afraid to reach out and grab what she wants.  Tracy in the 2007 version is the most innocent cinnamon roll that has ever been baked.  Link gives her one compliment and she drifts into fantasies of marrying him.  Part of me is annoyed by this, but the other part of me appreciates misguided optimism played as humor.

At the Corny Collins hop, Tracy steals borrows Seaweed’s dance move and lands a place on TCCS council.  After declaring she wants every day to be Negro Day, the head of the station declares he wants that “chubby communist girl” off the show.  Corny, played by a dreamy James Marsden, sticks his neck out for Tracy and furthermore, says the show should be integrated.  As Tracy’s popularity skyrockets, the station shows more leeway to her size and her look, but to maintain some semblance of control, Velma works to completely edge out Negro Day.

Meanwhile, Link is clued into how fun it is in detention, and him, Tracy, and Penny all dance their way to Motormouth Maybelle’s record store for a potluck.  When Seaweed introduces his new white friends to his mother, Penny delivers my favorite line of the whole movie, “I’m very pleased and scared to be here.”  Amber rats out Tracy’s activities to her mother, and Edna arrives to Motormouth’s with the intention of dragging Tracy home until she realizes that black people are OK because they eat brisket.

After Edna shoves a bunch of food in her face, the gang finds out that Negro Day on “The Corny Collins Show” has been cancelled.  Tracy has the great idea to protest the television station, and all the black people are like, “Why didn’t we think of that?”  Link decides to bow out of the march because there’ll be talent agents at the Miss Hairspray Pageant, and he doesn’t want to give up his big shot at fame and glory to fight for a entire race of people’s basic rights.

The next day, Tracy and her mom are the only white people in a sea of black people to march to the station.  Queen Latifah sings a very earnest song about the resilience of her community, because this is the Serious Portion TM of the musical.  Tracy assaults a police officer without giving any mind to what it would do for all the black people she’s marching with, and runs away to let them handle the consequences.  The movie doesn’t show any police brutality because Reasons, and a bunch of protestors are arrested and immediately bailed out by Tracy’s Dad.  Tracy eventually ends up back at Motormouth Maybelle’s record shop so she can hide there without considering how dangerous it would be for Motormouth to harbor a fugitive of the law.  

The next day is the Miss Teen Hairspray competition broadcast at WYZT, and with Tracy being wanted by the police, they have to sneak her into the station.  She bum-rushes the set to sing a song with a now-enlightened Link about not stopping progress, while also inviting Motormouth Maybelle’s daughter, Little Inez, on stage to dance.  Everybody calls-in to vote for her because the only racist people in Baltimore run the television station, and Little Inez is crowned Miss Teen Hairspray.  Amber is like fine with it even though her mom isn’t, and everyone dances and sings to celebrate that “The Corny Collins” show is now integrated!  Meanwhile, I’m left wondering why Amanda Bynes was forced to wear a dress that she can’t move her legs in, even though they knew she would participate in the show’s closing dance number.  The end.

Oh, and there’s also a whole B plot where Velma tries to fuck Tracy’s dad and Tracy’s mom finds out and gets upset for like 30 seconds.  This is immediately resolved by a song and dance number among a bunch of laundry.

This movie is fine and competent or whatever, but for some reason it just rubs me the entirely wrong way.  Tracy constantly says that the 1960s are changing for people who are different, implying that an overweight white teen also knows what it’s like to be discriminated against in the same way black people are.  The movie does roll its eyes at some of her most tone-deaf “I’m an overenthusiastic ally” moments, like “I wish every day was Negro Day!” and “This is afro-tastic!”, but it also goes out of its way to talk about how much Tracy has helped the black community.  Like, by doing what?  Being fat and on TV?  That being said, she does use her privilege to feature black dancers on a major television broadcast, so by the end of the movie she becomes the person everyone says she is.  Also, I’m a dumb, overweight, white, middle-aged woman, so I’m not the right person to get all indignant about a well-intentioned feel-good Broadway musical.

Final thoughts: If you love bright colors, cheese, and sincere, glossy reflections of the 1960s civil rights movement written by a bunch of white dudes, this movie is for you.

[tricktster]

Hey, follow up to my post about The Satanic Temple because @wrexie asked and I realized I hadn’t fleshed out this thought: I mentioned very quickly that I wasn’t including legislators who identify as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in my breakdown of the numbers of self-identified Christians in the House and Senate, but then I totally dropped that thought and failed to explain why I didn’t include them.

I promise, that was not weird gatekeeping about who gets to be considered part of the Christian faith. I ommitted LDS members when I was discussing the relative Christian/Non-Christian makeup of the legislature specifically because, historically, the LDS church has been a target of religiously motivated legislation, and boy oh boy do I have a yucky example for you:

It’s 1878, 31 years since Bringham Young and the 148 other members of the nascent Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints arrived at the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and per the LDS registration numbers, there are now 125,046 people who belong to the church. Now, the total US population at that time was roughly 50,000,000 (not counting indigenous people because racism), so LDS members were not threatening to overrun the country by any means, but, you know, 125,000 is starting to look like a pretty significant religious movement, and that relatively significant religious movement became An Issue in the eyes of the law, because as of 1878, 20%-30% of LDS members practiced polygamous marriages in accordance with their religious doctrine and beliefs. (To save you the google, LDS Church didn’t formally renounce the practice of polygamy until 1890.)

Now, there’s a lot of reasons to criticize the concept of polygamy as it is practiced in patriarchal communities, chiefly: holy shit that is not a fun position to be in if you’re, for example, a woman or alternatively a boy who’s throwing off the gender ratio. So when the first LDS polygamy case (Reynolds vs. US) went to the Supreme Court in 1878, the court could have easily decided that while there was nothing wrong with having a religious belief in the merits of polygamy, the harms that it caused on vulnerable people in practice were sufficient grounds for the practice of polygamous marriages to be abolished.

But let’s get real, it was 1878, women and children weren’t fully people in the eyes of the law, and the Court had a bigger and shittier argument to make. Here’s an excerpt from the decision:

“Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people. At common law, the second marriage was always void (2 Kent, Com. 79), and from the earliest history of England polygamy has been treated as an offence against society. After the establishment of the ecclesiastical courts, and until the time of James I., it was punished through the instrumentality of those tribunals, not merely because ecclesiastical rights had been violated, but because upon the separation of the ecclesiastical courts from the civil the ecclesiastical were supposed to be the most appropriate for the trial of matrimonial causes and offences against the rights of marriage, just as they were for testamentary causes and the settlement of the estates of deceased persons.

I’ll parse that shit for you, and spoil what happened to Mr. Reynolds. The Supreme Court essentially decided as follows: America is a white, Christian nation and we do not tolerate the religious practices that we associate with uncivilized places like ALL OF ASIA AND AFRICA BECAUSE WE’RE EXTREMELY RACIST. Anyway, we, the Supreme Court, intend to Keep America Great (and Christian!), so in conclusion we have decided that the LDS Practice of Polygamy Is A Crime Now, Please Go To Jail And Pay A Massive Fine, Thank You!

Reynolds is still the law of the land; it’s never been overturned, and that’s not great (even though the decision had the effect of protecting a lot of women and children over the years). It’s a gross decision and it’s a bad decision - not because it’s the wrong outcome but specifically because justice is not the point here; the Supreme Court in deciding Reynolds used the concept of the American National Identity to smack down a minority religious group strictly because they challenged the status quo, and that, my dudes, is basically the judicial equivalent of wiping your ass on the Bill of Rights.

So, yeah, I deliberately omitted the LDS legislative members when discussing the prevalence of Christian beliefs among American lawmakers because until like... remarkably recently in American history, the LDS church was not the motivating factor behind religiously motivated legislation, they were the target. Jehovah’s Witnesses too, boy oh boy did the JWs ever bring a lot of lawsuits to be able to practice their faith as mandated by their religion, and they actually scored a few big wins.

Again, I’m not saying “join the Jehovah’s Witnesses!” or “actually fundamentalist polygamy isn’t all that baaad.” I’m just pointing out that the effect of religious legislation and religiously motivated jurisprudence isn’t just a threat to the athiests and godless commies among us. The deeply religious should give just as much a shit about this as the non-religious, because if you let these rights erode in furtherance of promoting your own religious beliefs, all it takes is ONE demographic shift before it’s your religious practices getting outlawed.

Also, again, there’s a way for the Court to reach the right decision if a religious practice is genuinely harmful, and that’s to recognize that everyone has the right to their own faith, but that the State has an interest in preventing harm caused by religious practices. I mean, the Court has historically fucked that analysis up too (because racism/sexism/homophobia, etc.), but it’s still way better than the Sir, This Is A Christian Nation approach.

Final note: the religious makeup of the current Supreme Court is notable because three justices, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Breyer, are Jewish (everyone else is Christian). If you’re interested, start paying attention to how they rule on religious cases. Better yet, read Breyer and Kagan’s dissents in Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby, where they opposed one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time. (In Hobby Lobby, the majority ruled that Hobby Lobby [company motto: Michaels, But Shittier] didn’t have to abide by the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act because it was somehow a violation of the corporation Hobby Lobby’s religious beliefs!!!!!!!!! to provide their employees with insurance that covered contraceptive health care. It is absolute horse shit.)

Anyway, the Christian male conservatives made the decision, overcoming the women and Jewish justices’ dissenting opinions, and from that outcome and the well-reasoned dissents from Kagan and Breyer alone, one could probably posit that increased diversity on the bench is a GREAT IDEA to protect against oppression from a religious majority.

....That’s not happening while a republican is president, though, so for the love of god get your vote by mail done EARLY this year.

[qqueenofhades]

“This is because poor white people have been systematically conditioned to support white supremacy at the direct expense of their own economic and social interests; it’s terrible, but that’s how it functions.” Do you think the rich white overlords have also been conditioned to support the system?

“while disdaining the government as tyrannical the rest of the time, unless it’s Trump’s actively tyrannical lot, but hey, we don’t have time to unpack all that)” Can you unpack some of that? I don’t understand. Thanks. Love your political posts. 

Sure!

(If anyone’s wondering, this is carrying on from/in reference to this ask from yesterday on how to dismantle arguments about “I’m white and my life has been hard therefore racism isn’t real.”)

The third part of the white supremacist equation in America, aside from racism and capitalism, is religion, especially fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity. We didn’t get to that in the last ask, but it’s an equally important factor in the social and cultural landscape of this particular demographic -- especially because the GOP has essentially become its political manifestation, and religious conservatism has become tied so deeply to a set of hot-button social issues (immigration, the gays, abortion, etc). As a lot of social scientists and lay observers have noted, religious belief in America remains staggeringly high relative to the rest of the industrialized Western world. Ever since the rise of religious conservatives as a mobilised political force in the 1980s, we have had to deal with their influence and the GOP’s willingness to function as an eager and uncritical vehicle for their social agenda. Fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity in America has also served as a powerful tool of promoting white supremacy. In fundamentalist religions, it’s a sin to question anything you’re told and you have to trust that a “higher authority” has your best interests at heart. This lends itself easily to personality cults: think the charismatic mega-preachers and other high-profile figures that exist in mainstream and fringe American evangelicalism alike, as well as the cult of Trump that now exists around the Orange Fuhrer.

Some books on this:

The Sin of White Supremacy: Christianity, Racism, and Religious Diversity in America, by Jeannine Hill Fletcher

White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones (you can also read a Washington Post interview with him here, and his piece in The Atlantic here.)

The Cult of Trump by Steven Hassan

When you intertwine the moral imperatives of fundamentalist religion (if you don’t believe the right things, you’ll go to hell), with the centuries-old American system of prizing whiteness at the expense of everything else, with the belief that your rich white overlords are more “your people” than your differently-colored working-class peers, you get an incredibly powerful and coercive system of mental conditioning that works on multiple levels, constantly reinforces itself, and is very difficult to break away from. And frankly, it’s difficult to tell if the most high-profile mouthpieces of these views actually believe it (maybe to some degree) or if they just use it to obtain a comfortable life at the expense of vulnerable people. Honestly, I’m not sure if it matters whether or not the overlords believe everything they themselves teach (and I’m pretty certain that they don’t). They know that it ends up as a good deal for them, and so it’s in their interests to maintain the system as vigorously as possible.

You may have heard of “prosperity gospel” evangelists, who claim to their poor followers that if they give them, the evangelists, all their money as a demonstration of faith, God will automatically reward them/provide for their economic needs, and it’s a sign of too little faith if you don’t believe this, therefore you will stay poor. You may have also heard of the recent sex scandal involving Jerry Falwell Jr., son of the famous Jerry Falwell and current president (though he was forced to resign) of the ultra-fundamentalist Liberty University in Virginia. This, of course, goes up there with all the other hard-right politicians who preached family values and Moral Purity and then turned out to be hypocrites who were failing to live up to these ideas in private. American evangelicalism is a deeply weird and self-reinforcing universe that provides adherents with everything they need to live in a parallel version of reality and feel holier-than-thou about not interacting with “infidels,” and yes, a huge part of that, especially white Protestant evangelicalism, involves preaching the gospel of white supremacy, implicitly or explicitly.

So at the end of this, we have a system which orchestrates and indeed insists upon complete obedience to the overlords (be they economic, racial, or religious) by the underclass at every turn. As I noted above, the rich white overlords themselves know that they benefit immensely from this setup, so the question of whether or not they actually believe it is less important. As also noted, they sure don’t make any attempt to live up to it in private, or at least trust that they won’t be found out if they don’t. That’s because (at least in my opinion) they know perfectly well that it sucks. They don’t want to be poor either, but it’s useful for them if there are poor people. Fundamentalism is also deeply predicated on suffering: it’s holy to suffer, poverty is a virtue, you shouldn’t worry about this world so much as what you will get after you die, thinking about material things is Sinful, God will magically provide everything that you need, so on and so forth. So even if they’re voting against their own self-interests, white working class religious people have been assured that is a virtue anyway and they should keep doing it. Only heathens like socialism.

That also makes it harder to get any dialogue of social justice going in (white) churches. Black churches have obviously been at the forefront of social justice struggles in America for their entire history, but that’s because white and black American Christianity are often very different. There are overlaps in places, but the black church was founded in the slave tradition, rather than the slaveholder tradition, as the establishment church in the 19th century was often a zealous supporter of slavery for the “moral good” of the slaves -- hey, they might be in terrible bondage, but at least they had the chance to be saved by becoming Christians! White Americans tend to go to church to be reassured that what they’re doing is good and doesn’t need to change, or if it does need to be changed, it’s to outlaw abortion or gay marriage or whatever social issue is the order of the day. It’s founded on repression rather than liberation. This isn’t true of every church everywhere, of course, but the overall trend is one toward social and religious hyper-conservatism.

This ties into the “civic faith” of America, i.e. the sphere of cultural Christianity that everyone participates in whether they’re actively religious or not, and which has also been the subject of political studies as to how it has been twisted into an organ of feel-good jingoistic American nationalism with very little reference to what Jesus Christ is recorded as having actually taught. The point again is that this entire belief system prizes absolute obedience and adherence to a (white and male) Supreme Leader, which is really easy for a fascist to exploit with populist rhetoric draped in the shabbiest veneer of religious language. The enthusiastic evangelical support for Trump, and the way the religious right has bent over backward from trying to impeach Bill Clinton for a blowjob in the Oval Office to defending serial rapist Trump is... both enlightening and terribly depressing. (Not to say that Clinton isn’t gross, because he is, but that’s beside the point; the GOP went on a frothing-mouth moral crusade over his behavior and it’s absolute crickets over Trump.)

In the end, we have this entire subset of people who have argued that they need their guns and their paramilitary organizations to defend against a theoretical “tyrannical” (read: non-white, non-Christian) body politic or American government. That’s why we had constant claims that Obama was going to throw people into concentration camps or send federal agents to arrest people off the streets or turn America into a military dictatorship; these proud AR-15-waving nutcases were happy to inform us that they would rise up and prevent that from happening. Of course, Obama didn’t actually do any of that, but you know who did? Trump. And his supporters, of course, didn’t make any attempt to stop it from happening. Instead they actively went out to help it happen more. (Side note: a little racist shitstain literally named RITTENHOUSE being the face of armed and murderous white supremacy in the Kenosha protests is like... ridiculously on the nose, PAGING GARCIA FLYNN.)

So when I say they’re protesting “government tyranny,” we’ve already gotten a good look at what they imagine tyranny to be: i.e. anything except the actual tyranny we’re already enduring, because it’s coming from their orange messiah and it is the culmination of everything that their religious, political, social, and cultural values have taught them. They mean “tyranny” of anything that is not their extreme right-wing, white-supremacist, religious-fundamentalist fascist version of things, which means respect or tolerance or room for anyone who isn’t exactly like them, which they can’t abide. Totalitarianism never can.

Anyway, I hope that was helpful. Thanks for the question!

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I love your blog it’s definitely one of the most smartest and cultured ones around. Since you are a super chilled out military vet (flying combat helicopters, how cool is that?!) and also a very thoughtful and devout Christian (I think you talked about being an Anglican) I know this is a cheeky question but I’ll ask it anyway. Would you rather live in a military dictatorship or a theocratic dictatorship?

Now this is an interesting question you play at 2am and the wine is dangerously low.

I have to correct you on a couple of things. Yes, it was ‘cool’ to fly combat helicopters especially in a battlefield setting but it was just a job, like any other. And it’s never about the pilot it’s about the rest of the team behind you, especially your ground crew who make sure you go up and come back in one piece. As for being super chilled you clearly have never seen how sweaty one gets flying in high stress situations. Oh and the stink! A skunk wouldn’t last 5 minutes in my cockpit.

As for my Christian beliefs, I’ll settle for being a believing one. My faith, such as it is, is about living - and failing - by grace day by day than being fervently devout. Faith is a struggle to not rely upon one’s own strength but on divine mercy and grace.

Anyway....

Would I rather live in a military dictatorship or a theocratic dictatorship?

History has shown there's not a lot of difference between the two...

No, wait. On second thoughts maybe I would rather live in a military dictatorship as the lesser evil.

As an ex-officer in her HM armed forces, I know things will be run pretty efficiently with no dilly-dallying. So there’s that.

I suppose even if one does say it’s preferable to live under military rule rather than a theocratic one there is still the question of what kind of military rule? Every nation that has been under military rule came to power and sustained their hold under different dynamics. And of course it also depends on how mature civil society and the rule of law as well as the democratic culture really was in the first place. A lot is tied up with the brutal nature of the personality of the regime leader too. There are simply too many variables.

So one is forced to generalise. So l can’t get too serious in answering this question.

Rather than focus on the negative side let’s look on the bright side.

Just off the top of my head I can think of these reasons why I would choose to ‘live’ under military rule than a theocratic one. There are in no real order:

Beds will be made properly subject to inspection.

Families will be run like military units with the man at the head of the table.

Family meals will be taken at set times.

Public civility will make a return (e.g. no public spitting, drunken, or loutish behaviour).

Freedom of speech will more likely be censored than abolished (better than nothing I suppose)

Elections would be rigged rather than banned (but who really votes anyway these days?)


They will most likely make the trains run on time (unless you’re British or Italian).

Military leaders often enjoy genuine popularity - albeit after eliminating plausible rivals - that is based on “performance legitimacy,” a perceived competence at securing prosperity and defending the nation against external or internal threats. The new autocrats of today are more surgical: they aim only to convince citizens of their competence to govern.

Maintaining power, for military dictators and their court, is less a matter of terrorising and persecuting victims than of manipulating beliefs about the world. But of course they can do both if backed into a corner to survive.

State propaganda aims not to re-engineer human souls but to boost the military regime leader’s ratings.

The military tend to stay out of personal lives. They have a political police but not necessarily a moral police.

Economic growth is more likely to be stable than under a theocratic state.

Military dictatorships are more likely to build vast bureaucracies to run the state - more jobs for everyone

The military put on great events. Their parades are more colourful and spectacular.

Having a sense of humour is more likely to get you imprisoned than executed for telling an anti-regime joke. It’s no joke to say that people develop a more refinery subversive sense of humour when oppressed. Take for example a famous comedian in Myanmar, Zarganar, for whom comedy is a shield and a weapon. During the time of the military dictatorship (1962-2010) he would make jokes like, “The American says, 'We have a one-legged guy who climbed Mount Everest.' The Brit says, 'We recently had a guy with no arms who swam the Atlantic Ocean. But the Burmese guy says, 'That's nothing! We had a leader who ruled for 18 years without a brain!" It was for jokes like this that Zarganar received a prison sentence in 2008 - for up to 59 years.

Military dictatorships don’t last long. They are more unstable. They tend to fall from the weight of their own contradictions.

One of the problems of living in a theocracy is how absolutist it would be in looking at life in terms of clear cut black and white according to those who rule over you. I strongly suspect in a theocratic state the morality secret police will be all over you looking for any social or moral infraction. In a Christian Theocracy, you'll never be Christian enough - the same would be for states that were Islamic, Judaic or Hindu etc. There's always going to be some pious asshole there with another version of Christianity that is more Christian than you and you're going to lose the freedom to make your own choices.

Under theocracies, unlike other authoritarian regimes, the rulers are the moral authorities that legitimises and fuels their political legitimacy to govern. It assumes its own moral correctness married to its political destiny to rule over others. As C.S Lewis memorably puts it, “Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.”

Finally, I’ll go with the military dictatorship with the hope that there might be some way of bringing the system down with a bit of logic and rationality. Hell knows that wouldn't be possible in a theocratic system!

I agree with Margaret Atwood when she said, “If you disagree with your government, that's political. If you disagree with your government that is approaching theocracy, then you're evil.” There’s more wriggle room with fighting against a military dictatorship because it’s usually against an asshole tyrant - or a ruling oligarchy of a military junta - and not a pernicious idea soaked in theological bullshit or an entire ideology divinely santificated by God himself.

A more interesting question is not to ask is why many people are so readily drawn to be ruled under a military rule or a theocratic one and especially a benevolent dictatorship (like Lee Kwan Yew in Singapore or Paul Kagame in Rwanda) but why increasingly more people in the Western world look to authoritarian figures to rule and shape their lives?

Why do Silicon Valley titans like Peter Thiel and others like him think fondly of ditching democracy in the name of some utopian hyper-capitalist vision of ‘freedom’?

I hear murmurs of the same talk when I interact with corporate colleagues and high net worth individuals I hear it around dinner tables about how democracy is bad for business and profit. Often it’s accompanied by praise for China's ability to "get things done." I just roll my eyes and smile politely. 

I think - outside of the legitimate concern of the decay of civil discourse, the corruption of politicians, and corrosiveness of crony capitalism - it’s because democratic politics is hard. Damn hard.

Moreover democratic politics does not have a "right" answer. There never is.

In our Western societies it is the playing field (or market place?) where our values compete. Surely, you say, there is a right way to get the job done: to fill in the potholes, build the roads, keep our streets safe, get our kids to learn reading and math. Ah, but look how quickly those issues get contentious.

Whose potholes should get filled first? Do we try to keep our streets safe through community policing or long prison sentences? Should teachers be given merit pay, are small classrooms better, or should we lengthen the school day? These issues engender deep political fights, all - even in the few debates where research provides clear, technocratic answers. That is because the area of politics is an area for values disputes, not technical solutions.

One person's "right" is not another's because people prioritise different values: equity versus excellence, efficiency versus voice and participation, security versus social justice, short-term versus long-term gains.

Democratic politics allows many ideas of "right" to flourish. It is less efficient than dictatorship. It also makes fewer tremendous mistakes.

The longing for a leader who knows what is in her people's best interests, who rules with care and guides the nation on a wise path, was Plato's idea of a philosopher-king. It's a tempting picture, but it's asking the wrong question.

In political history, philosophers moved from a preference for such benevolent dictators to the ugly realities of democracy when they switched the question from "who could best rule?" to "what system prevents the worst rule?"

But clearly democracy is buckling under pressure in our torrid times. Populism - the logical end consequence of a purer democracy - is chipping away at the edifice of democratic norms and conventions. Increasingly inward looking nativism and nationalism fuel passions beyond the control of reason.

Perhaps it is time we went back to the tried and tested example of a monarchy, a constitutional one that is. 

A revitalised monarchy in Britain needs a Head of State that can provide a personal identity to an impersonal State, and a collective sense of itself. A Head of State who does not owe his or her position to either patronage or a vote can more properly represent all the people. Consider that a President who has been elected, often by a minority of a minority of the electorate, cannot adequately speak for the people who did not vote for him or her. It is even worse if the President has been appointed, because then he owes his position to a small clique.So, the accident of birth is the best means of appointing a Head of State. Someone who has no party political axe to grind, or special favours to repay to a vested interest. Someone whose allegiance is to the people. Not just allegiance to the people who voted for him or his political party, but allegiance to all the people of the country equally. Far from being "incompatible" with democracy, a Monarchy can thereby enhance the government of the land.

The Monarch is a national icon. An icon which cannot be replaced adequately by any other politician or personality. This is because the British Monarchy embodies British history and identity in all its aspects, both good and bad.

When you see the Queen you not only see history since 1952, when she took the throne, but you see a person who provides a living sense of historical continuity with the past. Someone who embodies in her person a history which extends back through time, back through the Victorian era, back into the Stuart era and beyond. You see the national history of all parts of our islands, together, going right back in time.

As Edmund Burke, Roger Scruton and Michael Oakeshott would say, the monarchy is a living continuity between the past, the present and the future.

With its traditions, its history, its ceremonial, and with its standing and respect throughout the world, the British Monarchy represents a unique national treasure, without which the United Kingdom would be sorely impoverished.

If you value national distinctiveness, you should be a Monarchist.

If you are anti-globalist you should be a Monarchist because Monarchies represent the different national traditions and distinctions among the nations.

The desire to secure, strengthen and promote your own distinct national icons, whether your Monarch, or your own unique national identity, should be your concern, whether you live here in St Andrews, or whether you live in St Petersburg, or whether you live in St Paulo.

As the global financial system rushes us all towards a world intended to eradicate all local and national distinctions, the Monarchy stands out as different, distinct and valuable. Constitutionally, practically, spiritually and symbolically the Monarchy is a national treasure, the continued erosion of which would change the character of Britain, and not in a good way!

I’m speaking as a High Tory now, sorry.  And so of course I only see it working for the United Kingdom....and the Commonwealth (slip that discreetly in there for you India, Australia, Canada, and Africa).

Still, if you want egalitarianism then look at Norway and the Netherlands - both highly "egalitarian" societies, and both monarchies.

Everyone else will just have to jolly well do without or ask us politely to come back (I’m looking at you my dear American colonial cousins, all will be forgiven).

The best of all worlds? Time will tell.

At your service, Ma’am....

Thanks for your question.

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

if the GOP could win for real, they would do a lot less cheating

Something you have to understand about recent American history is that the Republican party lost its shit in the 1960s. There are always plenty of reasons for decades-long historical trends, but arguably the core one is that Lyndon Johnson’s administration made a bunch of human rights advances known collectively as the Great Society, the cornerstone of which was a sincere and substantive effort to address the unfinished business of Reconstruction with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Racist white people who didn’t want to share democracy with everyone else became reliable Republican voters, but they’re nowhere near enough to win an election on their own. Republicans realized that their ideology is a miserable death cult that can’t win a fair fight. They could have gotten better ideas, but instead, they started sabotaging democracy.

I am not here to overwhelm you with a list of all the American right wing’s assaults on democracy. But there is a relatively narrow subset which forms a pattern that has become increasingly urgent: times Republicans have abused, usurped, or radically and unilaterally bastardized the power of American government in order to limit voters’ ability to hold them accountable in free and fair elections.

Because it only includes events backed up by reliable and freely available sources, it necessarily only includes the times times they were ham-fisted or sloppy enough to get caught. It has over two dozen entries and is almost certainly incomplete.

1968: Richard Nixon sabotages peace talks to end the Vietnam War because anger over the war is a winning campaign issue for him. Johnson catches him and calls him out, but doesn’t tell the public. Nixon wins and takes office.

1972: Nixon’s re-election campaign, the Committee to Re-Elect the President (or CREEP, because these people are fucking Bond villains) goes on a crime spree which includes multiple break-ins at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.

1992: President George H.W. Bush asks British Prime Minister John Major’s government to dig through official archives for anything compromising on his rival Governor Bill Clinton from Clinton’s time at Oxford University.

1992: A political appointee at the Bush State Department has Governor Clinton’s passport files searched for potentially embarrassing information.

1992: Bush’s Attorney General William Barr pressures federal prosecutors in Arkansas to make some public movement on a white collar crime case tangentially associated with Governor Clinton.

2000: The Florida state board of elections does a racist voter purge, targeting largely Democratic communities of color.

2000: A mob, mostly Republican congressional aides, force election officials in Palm Beach County to shut down its recount.

2000: Five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents shut down the Florida recount in an unsigned opinion so specious and nakedly partisan that it irreparably damages the legitimacy of not only the Bush presidency but the Supreme Court itself.

2004: Republican election administrators in Florida attempt another racist voter purge, only abandoning it when they get caught.

2006: The Bush administration leans on federal prosecutors to influence the midterm elections with bogus investigations into Democratic politicians and prosecutions of non-existent “voter fraud” cases. After Republicans lose the midterms, several attorneys who resisted the pressure are fired.

2010: Five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republicans, in an existential fiat, reclassify money as speech, opening the floodgates to swamp every level of politics with dark money.

2013: The same five Republican Supreme Court justices gut the Voting Rights Act, specifically and explicitly because it has been relatively effective in preventing racist voter suppression.

2010s: Republicans in various state legislatures pass a bunch of laws to suppress the ability of voters to hold them accountable.

2016: Associates of Trump consigliere Rudy Giuliani loudly and unprofessionally conduct numerous bullshit investigations into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. They successfully pressure FBI director James Comey – himself a veteran of the corrupt and politicized Bush Justice Department – into several improper and decisive actions against Clinton.

2016: Donald Trump conspires with Russian intelligence and business interests to sabotage his opponent in a presidential election.

2016: Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell blackmails the Obama administration out of explaining the Russian government’s sabotage of the presidential election, leaving state boards of elections and the general public vulnerable to the assault.

2017-18: The Republican administration sits on evidence that Russian military hackers have penetrated state voting equipment.

2018: Republican Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp insists on overseeing the election in which he is running for governor. He squeaks out a “win” after purging thousands of voters, arbitrarily closing or refusing to equip polling places, and baselessly accusing his Democratic opponent of trying to hack the election.

2018: A Republican congressional campaign in North Carolina hires operatives to defraud local senior citizens who were attempting to cast absentee ballots.

2018: Republicans lose the governorships in Wisconsin and Michigan, but keep control of the state legislatures due to gross gerrymandering. Before the new governors can be sworn in, they cram through laws stripping power from the incoming Democratic governors.

2019: Trump administration officials try to warp the data which will be collected in the 2020 census in a way that will enable future gerrymandering by undercounting largely Democratic constituencies. When they get caught and stopped, they try to justify themselves by lying to the federal courts.

2019: Donald Trump privately tries to extort the president of Ukraine into announcing bullshit investigations into prominent Democrats during the 2020 election.

2019: Donald Trump publicly pressures the government of China into opening bullshit investigations into prominent Democrats during the 2020 election.

2019: All but one House Republican opposes impeaching Trump for his extortion of Ukraine – until that one guy is pushed out of the party. Therefore, no House Republicans vote to impeach Trump.

2020: With one exception, every Republican in the Senate validates Trump’s attempts to rig the 2020 election by voting to acquit him.

2020: Republicans dig in their heels and refuse to take easy and obvious steps to keep voters safe from COVID-19 at the polls.

This is just the list of things that I could remember off the top of my head and could find receipts for with relative ease. It doesn’t include things that are plausible but unproven, like the allegations that Reagan’s 1980 campaign staff tried to repeat Nixon’s first stunt by working to prolong the Iran hostage crisis because it was a winning campaign issue for him. It doesn’t include dirty, bigoted campaigns that you might call awful but lawful, like the racist “Willie Horton” ad campaign in 1988 or the repulsive homophobic ballot initiatives that were engineered to bolster George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign. It doesn’t include the wide array of brutalizations of a constitutional small-d democratic system which aren’t specifically and concretely about elections – everything from eroding the credibility of scientists, experts, and reporters to packing the courts with proto-fascist hacks to lying the American people into war in Iraq.

It really doesn’t matter whether or not I think Republicans win elections legitimately. It’s extremely important that Republicans do not believe they can win elections legitimately.

Now think for a second about their cherished “voter fraud” trope. All this time, Republicans have been screeching that SOMEONE was out there trying to steal elections FROM THEM. It is absolutely correct to focus on and be upset about the racist history and intent of this particular conspiracy theory. I would simply argue that white supremacism is not the only unforgivable aspect of this nonsense trope. The other is the way those claims make it impossible to deal with actual threats against legitimate elections.

This is similar to what psychologists call projection, or the tactic domestic violence experts refer to as DARVO. It is not unrelated to “swiftboating” or the phenomenon students of genocide refer to as the “accusation in a mirror.” It is the axiom small children cite when they say “he who smelt it, dealt it.”

I don’t know the ONE WEIRD TRICK to make it not work. I just know that it – maddeningly – does work, not least on the Very Serious Experts whose ONE FUCKING JOB it is to know better.

So I’m sorry to disappoint if you were expecting a “many bad people on all sides” disclaimer about who does political dirty tricks, but “both sides” is not operative, no matter how desperate the hot-take-industrial-complex is to make fetch happen. It hasn’t been operative for twenty-five years, and it’s really not operative for the next six months. You can bury yourself deep in literature about asymmetric polarization, but you don’t have to do all that to understand what’s important here. Democrats support democracy and want to stop the plague, Republicans support the plague and want to stop democracy, and you should be extremely skeptical of anyone who claims not to know the difference.

[alarawriting]

Inktober 2020 #3: Bulky

The entity scowled, tapping his (its? Their?) foot impatiently. “I told you, you get to bring one thing.”

Sara smiled brightly at him. “This is one thing. My garden.”

Ganymede looked down at her, his expression even more supercilious than usual. “Do you honestly think I’m going to allow an entire garden as one thing?”

Sara sat down on the tree stump. Part of her still couldn’t believe she’d lost the house, that all of this – the tree stump her father had cut down to prevent the wind from knocking it onto the house, the tire swing he’d put up for her, Mom’s rose trellises all around the house and the herb patch she’d had Sara weeding and tending from the age of 5, the screened-in porch, the attic bedroom – all would be gone in a matter of weeks. The bank would take it, and sell it to someone who would probably destroy everything her parents had built to make the place special and unique, and she would never see any of this ever again.

She’d thought Ganymede’s offer would allow her to take at least a part of her home with her, but he was balking.

“When you think about it, can we describe anything as just one thing?” she asked. “Everything we have is made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of quarks. We’re all a multiplicity. We all have legions contained within us. So how is a garden not ‘one thing’ but, say, if I wanted to bring a bicycle, that would be ‘one thing’ even though it’s made of so many things?”

Ganymede’s expression went from deeply irritated to reluctantly amused, and he chuckled. “A nice argument, but no. Your garden’s too bulky. It can neither transport you, nor can it be carried around with you.”

“You never said there was a weight limit.”

“It’s not a weight limit. If you wanted to bring a car, you could. I don’t advise it, but you could.”

“Are any of the others bringing a car?” Sara asked.

Now Ganymede laughed. “Tsk, tsk. I told you I wouldn’t tell you anything about what the others are choosing.”

Ganymede – who appeared to be a tall, slender man with pale skin and curly green hair, like he was some kind of comic book character, and who claimed to be a very bored alien with godlike powers who was taking human form so that he could interact with Sara – had showed up at the café Sara waitressed at, three weeks ago, and was apparently very impressed with Sara’s ability to put up with entitled idiots and even get them to calm down and do what they were supposed to do. He’d ordered cherry pie and asked her if she’d ever wanted to travel into the past, and when Sara had pointed out that in the past, she would have had her rights severely curtailed because she was a woman, he’d asked, what if she could bring one thing from this time, one thing in her possession?

Sara’s master’s degree in the history of plant cultivation in Europe and how it impacted society had never done her a damn bit of good. It had resulted in crushing student loans that a job as a waitress couldn’t keep up with and still pay the mortgage her parents had left to her when they’d died in a car accident, and it hadn’t resulted in a good-paying job in academia like she’d expected when she started college. She was about to lose her parents’ home, the only place she’d ever considered home in her life. And before her boyfriend had dumped her last month, he’d turned most of their friends against her with lies and distortions.

Sara didn’t want to die, but she had lately been seriously reconsidering how badly she actually wanted to live.

So she’d agreed to Ganymede’s offer. Go back to the pre-Renaissance medieval era – or something very much like it – with one thing brought from the future. He’d explained that she wouldn’t actually be going to her own world’s past, so she couldn’t create a paradox by changing the future – she could freely do whatever she wanted without worrying about making her grandparents never born or something. He’d also told her that he was making the same offer to several other people, but that she wouldn’t necessarily get to meet them unless they happened to run into each other by chance in the past-world. And she had a month to get the thing she wanted to bring to the past.

Sara had spent the last three weeks digging up her garden and potting everything in ceramic pots, figuring ceramic wouldn’t be an issue in the past like plastic would be. Sadly, she’d had to abandon the apple trees, the peach tree and the grapevines – she couldn’t exactly dig out trees and pot them – but she’d gotten everything else. The potatoes had been a challenge – exposing potatoes to light while they were growing would make them inedible, so she’d had to dig them out on a cloudy night with no moon, more or less digging by feel instead of sight. Carrots, potatoes and onions had needed very large, deep pots. She’d wound her zucchini around a tomato cage in the large pot she’d put it in. The small fruit bushes – the blueberry bush, the raspberry bush – were already in pots. She had her peppers, her tomatoes, her tiny soybean bush, her arugula.

And now, after she’d done so much work to pot everything, Ganymede was telling her she couldn’t bring it?

“Look, if I had a caravan wagon and a horse, I could definitely carry all of this.”

“But you can’t bring a caravan wagon and a horse back with you.”

“No, but I could get one there.”

Ganymede chuckled. “You think I’m sending you with money? You get period-acceptable clothes, the ability to speak the language, immunity to all the local diseases, and the thing that you bring with you, and that’s it. If you appear in the middle of a field, or a town square, surrounded by potted plants, how are you going to bring them with you to whatever shelter you need to take?”

“They’re plants. If I have to leave them out in a field for a few days while I carry them all to wherever I end up going, nothing bad’s going to happen to them.”

“And what if you appear in the middle of the town square?”

“Then I prevail upon some good gentlemen to help me move them someplace safe.”

A deep sigh escaped Ganymede. “I’m almost tempted to let you. Just to let you find out first hand how much your plans are not likely to work. But no. An entire garden is too bulky, and I’m quite certain that most humans would define a garden as a collection of things, not one thing.”

“Come on! I did a lot of work to put all these plants into pots! Doesn’t that count for something?”

“Sadly, no.” Ganymede walked around the garden of pots, randomly touching most of the plants. “You did do quite a lot of work. I tell you what, I feel bad for you. Pick something else to bring and I’ll make sure all your plants get donated to people who like to grow things and are good at it.”

“And aren’t racists,” Sara insisted.

“It’s interesting that that matters to you; aren’t you part of the dominant ethnic group in this nation? Racism doesn’t affect you, generally speaking.”

It was true that Sara was white, and therefore, racism rarely directly affected her, but she had an answer for that. “Racist people in this country have been brainwashed into believing that climate change is a hoax, that gay and transgender people are some kind of terrible threat, and that it’s more important to make sure the government doesn’t tax rich people than to put any accountability on big corporations. Everything bad that we can’t get solved in this country and we can’t even begin to start solving it, because people won’t let us… it’s because rich people have figured out how to use racism to brainwash white people into voting against their own interests.”

“Oh, I understand.” Ganymede grinned broadly. “You’re a hippie, aren’t you?”

“Uh��� not really? That was sort of my parents’ generation? I think of myself more as solarpunk. But if what you’re trying to get at is that I’m someone who cares about the environment and wants people to be happy and healthy and to care about each other, then yeah.”

“All right, very well. I’ll hand them over to people whose political beliefs generally track with yours, who are good with plants, and who have space to grow them. Now, pick something else.”

“A big sack that I can carry on my back, maybe 50 pounds, and I get to fill it with seeds and bulbs and anything else plant-related that I can fit in the sack.”

Ganymede raised his eyebrows. “You’re really dedicated to this bit, aren’t you?”

“I know how to use plants to change history. I don’t know how to change history with anything else – not in a way I might want to. I mean, I could bring a gun, but after I was out of ammo, what good would it do me? And also, I don’t like guns.”

“All right,” Ganymede said. “I’ll allow it. As long as you can carry the sack on your person, you can stuff as many seeds into it as you want.”

Sara smiled at him with her best customer service smile. “Thank you, I really appreciate that.”

“One more week,” he said, and vanished.

One more week and she’d leave all this behind. One more week and she wouldn’t have to worry about the foreclosure and impending eviction anymore, because she’d be in a whole other world.

[redbeardace]

August TAAAP Chat Notes:  Sex Ed

This is a scattered bunch of thoughts and notes on some of the things that were discussed about sex ed in the August TAAAP Pride Chats.  There’s no solid thesis here, but maybe a few conversation starters.  Some of what’s here is a post-chat thought and wasn’t even discussed at all.  This should also be taken as incomplete and not a full overview of what was discussed.  (Notably, it doesn’t include much of what went on in the voice chats.) 

[Cross-posted from Pillowfort.]

Include aces and aros.  Unsurprisingly, one of the main things was that aces and aros should be included in sex ed courses.

Sex ed has gone backwards since the early 90s?  Either I had a wildly advanced program in my schools (in a deeply conservative rural area), or the fallout of Jocelyn Elders and the “abstinence-only” nonsense of the Bush years completely obliterated the usefulness of sex ed.  We had a program that spanned multiple years, starting with a single day vocabulary lesson and “puberty is coming!” warnings in the 5th or 6th grade, through a two week lesson about all sorts of things in 9th or 10th grade health class.  We were told that masturbation and gay people and condoms and oral sex existed, although there were no details about how any of those things worked.  It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start.  But a lot of the people in the chats were talking about their sex ed, and it sounded woefully, frighteningly inadequate.

What is “sex ed”, anyway?  School, teaching the basics?  Information for adults?  Training courses for professionals?

Cover the basics.  The basics are important.  Anatomy, menstruation, common medical issues down there.  Cover what’s “normal” and what should be taken to a doctor.

What about other classes?  How can a math teacher express support?  Hang a flag.  Tackle amatonormativity in story problems.  Discuss it in the staff room.  Point the sex ed teachers at aro/ace resources.  Be out.   Stories about aromantic people read in English class.  Asexual people talked about in history.  GSAs/Pride groups in school that are aro and ace inclusive.

Desire for sex or romance are not universals.  Stop with the “Everyone wants it eventually”, and switch to something more like “a lot of people do, but not everyone, and it’s okay if you don’t.”

Reframe the discussion of “No”.  Too often, in sex ed, it’s all about when you’re “ready”, with the implication that you will be “ready” one day.  And when you’re “ready”, there’s the implication that you’re ready and willing for everything from that point forward.  Like if you say “yes” to a date and you’ve opted in to all the romancey things, say “yes” to sex and you’ve opted in to all the sexy things.  That’s not right.  It should be more focused on what you want to do, and empower people to say “no” to things they don’t want.  Discuss reasons for saying no, include “I just don’t wanna”.  Normalize the permanent “no”.

Look for backdoor opportunities for inclusion.  For example, the new Washington State Comprehensive Sex Ed law requires teaching of sexual orientations and gender identities as listed in the definition used by another section of state law.  So if that other section gets updated to include aros and aces, the sex ed curriculum will also have to be updated.

Connect with the people doing the work.  There are groups who build sex ed programs and lobby for them.  Work with them to include ace and aro topics.

Beware the head-in-the-sand crowd.  There is a very loud, very active anti-sex-ed lobby out there.  In WA, they got the sex ed law put up for a vote. Some of their objections are that affirmative consent goes against their religious teachings, and that although they can opt out their kids from the lesson, they can’t opt out their kids from schoolyard talk, so your kids have to remain ignorant, too.

Fuck you, Kemper Freeman.  Seriously.  Fuck that guy.

How do you accommodate varying levels of interest and aversion, while still providing necessary levels of detail?  The topic of sex ed is a bit of a minefield.  Some people want to know all the things, some people want to know very very little.  Some topics are dysphoria triggers, some topics are aversion triggers, some topics are just not interesting or of any practical use.  There’s a baseline of information that everyone should know, and there’s a level of detail that the interested people should get.  But how do you do that in a classroom setting?  One suggestion was to allow people to freely step outside for certain topics.  Another was to have an interactive lesson, where the student is able to adjust the detail based on their comfort level and interest.  It would start out with a “default” level of detail, but would allow the student to request less detail or more detail for each topic.  The less detail level would still have all of the baseline level information that everyone should know, while the more detail would go beyond a surface level summary.  Likewise, images could be switched between text description, line art diagrams, and actual photos.  

Resources!  Scarleteen, Sexplanations, etc.

Discuss healthy relationships and consent.  Provide practical examples.  Not just how/when to say yes or no, but how to bring up things you want to do or are curious about.  Include queer relationships.   How to ask for what you want.  How to know what you want.  How to say no to what you don’t want.  All relationships, not just sexual or romantic.

Reconsider segregation by gender.  A lot of sex ed is done with a gender split, but does it need to be?  If there is a value to such a split, how can it be made trans and intersex supportive?

Bring up body variations.  There’s a wide variety of genital configurations, so mention them.  Discuss intersex bodies.  Discuss small parts, large parts, asymmetrical parts.  This would likely be an appropriate place to include actual photos, because so many people said that actual photos were only used in the STD scare tactics.

Elaborate on “sex”.  Too often, it’s discussed as just PIV to orgasm and that’s that.  But what about things that don’t involve Ps or Vs or do involve Ps and Vs, but not the I?  What about stuff before and after?  What alternatives are there if you don’t like certain aspects but are fine with others?

Cover everyone.  If there is a separation, each group should cover the same things, at least at some level.  Everyone should come out of sex ed knowing about their own body and its processes, as well as about bodies they don’t have, and their processes.

Don’t “teach” through fear.  STDs are bad, but they’re preventable with caution and mostly treatable in some form or another.  Pregnancy typically isn’t desirable for high schoolers, but here’s a dozen ways to avoid it.  Give direct information, don’t try to terrify people.

Mention pleasure.  Mention the basics of obtaining pleasure, whether alone or with others.  If anyone walks out of a sex ed course of any kind without knowing about the clitoris, it’s a failure.  People should know that most clitoris owners can masturbate, and can experience pleasure from sexual acts, if done the right way..

Dispel myths and lies.  Not everybody wants it.  Vaginal penetration isn’t necessarily going to lead to orgasm.  It’s not supposed to hurt the first time.  You don’t have to have an orgasm.  It’s okay not to know what to do.  “Girls don’t want it.”  “Boys will be boys.”

Toys.  AFAB people don’t have to only use vibrators to masturbate.  AMAB people can use toys.

What is “Attraction”?  And along those lines, what is “Libido”?  What do these things feel like?  How do you know what you’re feeling?  What are these experiences like for different people?

Hygiene.  Give information about keeping various zones clean.  Talk about the results of various activities, partnered or not, and what steps might need to be taken.

Porn is fake.  Watching porn to pick up information about how to do sex is roughly equivalent to watching a crime procedural to learn how to become a cop.  You’ll get a very skewed view of things.  Pleasure isn’t always visible or audible.

Destigmatize it all.  Sex is seen as taboo and secret, and not to be spoken of, and that attitude harms people.  It prevents them from feeling comfortable to bring up important things or ask important questions.  It prevents them from learning things they need to learn.  It forces people into bad situations and mediocre encounters because they don’t know it doesn’t have to be like that.

Teach people how to learn.  Sex is currently a subject fraught with misinformation.  Porn or Cosmo are main sources of information, yet aren’t super accurate.  People should be given tools to know how to find and evaluate the information.

Consent is bigger than the bedroom.  Consent includes touch, jokes, conversations, etc.  It’s anywhere boundaries exist.

More than just cis white male voices.  So much of sex ed is heteronormative, amatonormative, tailored for specific cases, and mired in the ignorance of the past.  Sex ed needs more perspectives.

[queernerdywitch]

100 reasons to vote for #JoeBiden that don't mention Trump. I didn’t compile the list, and I think there’s LOTS more on climate science, but anyway, what are your favorites? 13, 18, oh geez, all the 50s and 70s... not that he can DO all this....

1.) $15.00 federal minimum wage

2.) Reinstate DACA – allowing new applicants to apply

3.) 12 Weeks federal paid family leave

4.) Universal Pre-Kindergarten/Childcare for ages 3 and 4

5.) Tuition free college for those with household income less than $125,000.00

6.) Allow student loans to be relieved in bankruptcy

7.) LGBTQ+ Equality Act in the first 100 days in office

8.) Rejoin the Paris Climate Accords

9.) Decriminalize cannabis use and expunge convictions

10.) Eliminate cash bail system

11.) Eliminate mandatory inimum sentences

12.) Outlaw all online firearm and munition sales

13.) Restore the voting rights act

14.) Create a new $20 billion competitive grant program to spur states to shift from incarceration to prevention.

15.) He’ll triple funding for Title I Programs

16.) Appoint the first Black Woman to the Supreme Court of the United States

17.) Reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)

18.) Ensure the US achieves a 100% clean energy economy and net-zero emissions no later than 2050

19.) Protecting Biodiversity, slowing extinction rates and helping leverage natural climate solutions

20.) Develop a plan to ensure that America has the cleanest, safest and fastest rail system in the world, for both passengers and freight

21.) Expand the safety net for survivors

22.) Confront online harassment, abuse and stalking

23.) End the rape kit backlog

24.) Address the deadly combination of guns and domestic violence

25.) Change the culture that enables domestic violence

26.) Support the diverse needs of survivors of violence against women

27.) Protect and empower immigrant women

28.) Lead the global effort to end gender-based violence

29.) End capital punishment

30.) End federal private prisons

31.) End all incarceration for drug use alone and divert individuals to drug courts and treatment

32.) Invest in public defenders’ offices to ensure defendants’ access to quality counsel

33.) Expand and use the power of the US Justice Department to address systemic misconduct in police departments and prosecutors’ offices

34.) Reform qualified immunity for officers

35.) Ban choke-holds/neck restraints by police

36.) Launch a national police oversight commission

37.) Stop transferring weapons of war to police force

38.) Free access to testing for all with national testing board

39.) Double drive through testing sites

40.) 100,000 contact tracing workforce

41.) Guarantee first responders have priority access to PPE

42.) Emergency paid leave for anyone who gets COVID or needs to take care of a loved one

43.) Free housing for health care workers to quarantine

44.) Ramp up large scale manufacturing of as many vaccine candidates as necessary

45.) Nationwide vaccination campaign to guarantee fair distribution

46.) Ask every American to wear a mask

47.) End the mismanagement of the asylum system, which fuels violence and chaos at the border

48.) Surge humanitarian resources to the border and foster public-private initiatives

49.) End prolonged detention and reinvest in a case management program

50.) Rescind the un-American travel and refugee bans, also referred to as “Muslim bans.”

51.) Order an immediate review of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for vulnerable populations who cannot find safety in their countries ripped apart by violence or disaster

52.) Ensure that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel abide by professional standards and are held accountable for inhumane treatment.

53.) Revitalize the Task Force on New Americans and boost our economy by prioritizing integration, promoting immigrant entrepreneurship, increasing access to language instruction, and promoting civil engagement.

54.) Convene a regional meeting of leaders, including from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Canada, to address the factors driving migration and to propose a regional resettlement solution

55.) Raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent.

56.) Requiring a true minimum tax on ALL foreign earnings of United States companies located overseas so that we do our part to put an end to the global race to the bottom that rewards global tax havens. This will be 21% — TWICE the rate of the Trump offshoring tax rate and will apply to all income.

57.) Imposing a tax penalty on corporations that ship jobs overseas in order to sell products back to America.

58.) Imposing a 15% minimum tax on book income so that no corporation gets away with paying no taxes.

59.) Raising the top individual income rate back to 39.6 percent.

60.) Asking those making more than $1 million to pay the same rate on investment income that they do on their wages.

61.) Tackle the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

62.) Ensure tribal nations will have a strong voice and role in the federal government

63.) Restore Tribal lands and safeguard natural and cultural resources

64.) Joe will dramatically increase funding for both public schools and Bureau of Indian Education schools.

65.) Invest $70 billion in Tribal Colleges and Universities and Minority Serving Institutions.

66.) Ensure full inclusion of people with disabilities in policy development and aggressively enforce the civil rights of people with disabilities.

67.) Guarantee access to high-quality, affordable health care, including mental health care, and expand access to home and community-based services and long-term services and supports in the most integrated setting appropriate to each person’s needs and based on self-determination.

68.) Expand competitive, integrated employment opportunities for people with disabilities.

69.) Protect and strengthen economic security for people with disabilities.

70.) Ensure that students with disabilities have access to educational programs and support they need to succeed, from early interventions to post-secondary education.

71.) Expand access to accessible, integrated, and affordable housing, transportation, and assistive technologies and protect people with disabilities in emergencies.

72.) Advance global disability rights

73.) Double the number of psychologists, guidance counselors, nurses, social workers, and other health professionals in our schools so our kids get the mental health care they need

74.) Invest in our schools to eliminate the funding gap between white and non-white districts, and rich and poor districts

75.) Improve teacher diversity

76.) Support our educators by giving them the pay and dignity they deserve.

77.) Invest in resources for our schools so students grow into physically and emotionally healthy adults, and educators can focus on teaching.

78.) Ensure that no child’s future is determined by their zip code, parents’ income, race, or disability.

79.) Provide every middle and high school student a path to a successful career.

80.) Start investing in our children at birth.

81.) Double funding for the State Small Business Credit Initiative.

82.) Expand the New Markets Tax Credit, make the program permanent, and double Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) funding

83.) Improve and expand the Small Business Administration programs that most effectively support African American-owned businesses.

84.) Increase funding for the Minority Business Development Agency budget.

85.) Make sure economic relief because of COVID-19 reaches the African American businesses that need it most

86.) Reserve half of all the new PPP funds for small businesses with 50 employees or less

87.) Help families buy their first homes and build wealth by creating a new refundable, advanceable tax credit of up to $15,000

88.) Protect homeowners and renters from abusive lenders and landlords through a new Homeowner and Renter Bill of Rights.

89.) Establishing a $100 billion Affordable Housing Fund to construct and upgrade affordable housing

90.) Fully implement Congressman Clyburn’s 10-20-30 Plan to help all individuals living in persistently impoverished communities

91.) Expand access to $100 billion in low-interest business loans by funding state, local, tribal, and non-profit lending programs in Latino communities and other communities of color and strengthening Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs

92.) Expand broadband access to every American.

93.) Protect and build on the Affordable Care Act to improve access to quality health care in rural communities.

94.) Expand access to high-quality education in rural schools.

95.) Transform our crumbling transportation infrastructure – including roads and bridges, rail, aviation, ports, and inland waterways.

96.) Expand bio-based manufacturing to bring cutting-edge manufacturing jobs back to rural America.

97.) Strengthen antitrust enforcement

98.) Introduce a constitutional amendment to entirely eliminate private dollars from our federal elections

99.) End dark money groups

100.) Ban corporate PAC contributions to candidates, and prohibit lobbyist contributions to those who they lobby

Compiled by David Frree

***EDIT*** thisis all from his website. I, David, literally copy pasted the bullet points from his website. If you go on his website, click Joe’s Vision, he has different themes. “Criminal justice reform, helping America’s farmers, etc.” I clicked through a bunch of those, and tried to get the quickest bullet points from his website.

[citylightsbooks]

Presidential Election Crisis 2020: An Interview with Alan Hirsch

Alan Hirsch is the author of A Short History of Presidential Election Crises. Interview conducted by Greg Ruggiero, editor at City Lights Publishers.

***

In what ways has the 2020 presidential election been unprecedented?

The pandemic led to exponentially greater use of mail-in voting.  And because some state legislatures refused to authorize the counting of absentee votes before Election Day, the process of counting votes (never mind re-counting them) has taken longer. Also, because voting by mail was primarily by Democrats, President Trump was way ahead in several critical states on Election Day, only to see Biden come roaring back—fueling Trump’s claims of fraud.  Of course, Trump created this situation by discouraging his base to vote by mail. 

This election has also been unprecedented in the sense that one of the candidates was complaining about fraud months before Election Day.

On November 10, 2020, the New York Times reported "President Trump, facing the prospect of leaving the White House in defeat in just 70 days, is harnessing the power of the federal government to resist the results of an election that he lost, something that no sitting president has done in American history,” and that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, "There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”

What concerns should these unprecedented developments be raising?

In context, it appears that Pompeo was joking, but it's a scary joke that seems to reflect the denialism among the Trump administration and many of his supporters.  This is frightening and unprecedented.  One major difference between this situation and the post-election crises of 1876 and 2000 is that, in those situations, the incumbent president was not one of the candidates.  Here, we have a defeated president who is nevertheless fighting for a second term.  Will he abuse the office to make that happen?  This is the man with the armed forces and nuclear codes at his command.  

What is your assessment of President Trump’s news conference on November 5, his statement of Nov 7, and his ongoing insistence that he, not Joe Biden, has won the 2020 Presidential election “by a lot”?

It is mind boggling, and that’s understatement.  The new conference started with his false claim that he won the election, and went downhill from there.  The President apparently considers “legal” votes and “illegal” votes as synonymous with Trump votes and Biden votes respectively. 

The big lie at the heart of Trump’s complaint is that he had Pennsylvania and other key states easily won until the suspicious onslaught of Biden votes.  The only reason for both Trump’s huge lead and Biden’s big comeback was the fact that Democrats voted largely by mail and most Republicans voted in person.

What would happen if Trump refuses to accept the election’s outcome and refuses to leave? 

Fortunately, the winner of this election seems fairly clear, and no recounts or lawsuits seem likely to change the outcome.  If Trump refuses to leave, he will presumably be escorted from his office—by force if necessary.   

It’s not often taught that the Electoral College was a compromise the North made with the South. In the process, white slave owners were able to count each black person they enslaved as 3/5 a person, and thereby gained greater representation in the Electoral College.

The legacy of that compromise continues to distort our democracy today. As Wilfred Codrington III writes in The Atlantic, “The South’s baked-in advantages—the bonus electoral votes it received for maintaining slaves, all while not allowing those slaves to vote” made the difference in the election outcomes.  In some ways, Trump’s 2016 victory was a direct result of baking white supremacy into the electoral process.

Given this history, are there any civic arguments to keep the Electoral College?

The argument one hears most often is that the Electoral College protects the interests of small states.  The senate protects the interests of small states (since every state, even the least populated, gets the same two senators), and no one proposes abolishing the senate.  It is argued that, without the Electoral College (ensuring that even the tiniest state has 3 electoral votes), candidates would never visit small states.  This gets things backwards.  Without the Electoral College, candidates would have at least some incentive to campaign in all states.  Because of the Electoral College, they spend almost all of their time in a handful of swing states (whether or not small).

How might Trump’s lawsuits succeed in altering the election outcome?

It appears that he would need to reverse the outcome in several states.  In other words, he’d need three or four Bush v. Gores, and even that doesn’t capture the desperation of his situation.  Florida in 2000 was essentially a tie, and the legal arguments on both sides had at least some merit.  Trump has offered no semi-convincing reason why the outcomes in any of the close states should be reversed. 

In addition to litigation, might there be other routes Trump could take to derail the election result or attempt to stay in power?

The one being pushed by Trump allies is to try and convince Republican legislatures in several states to substitute a Republican slate of electors for the Democratic slate that was chosen in the election.  After all, the Constitution empowers state legislatures to choose the “manner” in which electors are chosen. The problem for Trump is that these electors did choose the manner—popular elections.  They can’t just substitute their will for that of the people because they don’t like the result.

Outlandish as it may sound, could Trump somehow use an act of war or claim of insurrection to maintain power? After all, he threatened to use the Insurrection Act in June 2020.

He can try, but there’s no legal basis or precedent for a president remaining in power after his term was over. 

Of the past presidential election crises, do any resemble the situation we are in now?

It resembles both 1876 and 2000 in that the election came down to a few states with narrow margins.  And, like 2000, recounts and litigation will extend the period of uncertainty.  But the Biden margins appear to be large enough that we will probably avoid the chaos that ensued after those elections.  

Can you go into more detail about parallels between the current moment and the election crises of 1876 and 2000? What form did corruption take then? How might it manifest now?

As the 2020 post-election crisis unfolds, we must learn from history—specifically the presidential election chaos in 1876 and 2000.  In each of these three elections, the outcome came down to one or more disputed states.  Most history books claim the 1876 election was resolved by a fifteen-man commission that voted along party lines.  In truth, Democrats were prepared to ignore the commission’s determinations, and the threat of duel inaugurations and another civil war loomed ominously.  The resolution came only when Republicans assured Democrats in Congress that, if they went along with Rutherford B. Hayes’s election, would cease implementing Reconstruction.  The nation paid a terrible price for the backroom dealing.  In 2000, the election was resolved by the Supreme Court – with five conservative Justices intervening to assure the election of George W. Bush.

Today, both of these threats are present—political deal-making and/or a partisan Supreme Court could determine the outcome.  There are additional parallels to 1876 and 2000 that need to be explored.  In both 1876 and 2000, as in 2020, the election took place against the backdrop of voter suppression.  In 1876 and 2000, like today, there were calls for state legislatures to intervene and nullify the results of their state’s popular vote.  In 1876, states sent competing slates of electors that Congress had to choose between.  Today, the possibility of competing slates of electors cannot be ruled out.  Ditto the threat of the conservatives on the Supreme Court intervening.  

To prevent these destructive outcomes, we need to understand how things unfolded during the prior election crises.

In your latest book, A Short History of Presidential Election Crises, you write: “Abolition of the Electoral College would reduce but not eliminate the dangers of a presidential election marred by fraud and post-election chaos.”  How would your proposed Presidential Election Review Board potentially help eliminate the dangers of post-election instability?

Trump’s various claims of election irregularities would be resolved by a tri-partisan (Democrats, Republicans, and independents) commission rather than the courts.  Because many judges are seen as partisan, the public would rightly have more confidence in the process and outcome.

***

Special thanks to Essential Information. Alan Hirsch, Instructor in the Humanities and Chair of the Justice and Law Studies program at Williams College, is the author of numerous works of legal scholarship and many books including A Short History of Presidential Election Crises (And How to Prevent the Next One), Impeaching the President: Past, Present, and Future and For the People: What the Constitution Really Says About Your Rights (Free Press, coauthored with Akhil Amar). He received a J.D. from Yale Law School and B.A. from Amherst College. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Newsday, and the Village Voice. Hirsch also serves as a trial consultant and expert witness on interrogations and criminal confessions, testifying around the nation. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.