#also how is not voting authoritarian... i'm starting to think people don't know what that word means (not that it has much of a meaning ngl

[lusciousrasputin]

are you, perhaps, an idiot

[batboyblog]

Hi! I was wondering if you're planning to continue the "Stuff the Biden Admin is Doing" series through early January? I'm seeing a lot of hopelessness and (obv) tons of focus on the new cabinet picks, their plan for the first 100 days, etc. And I'm hoping that we can take some time to focus on what (if anything) the admin is using these last few weeks to try and accomplish. Ty for all you do!

honestly I don't know.

when I started it there was just overwhelming zeitgeist that Biden didn't do anything as President, that he was so old he was basically dead, that his brains were soft bananas and endlessly "he promised to get rid of Student loan debt and that just never happened! so why believe anything he says!" all of which was horse shit. So I felt like rather than just bitch about it, I'd do what I could in a very small way to be counter programing to that. But the election was always a part of it? I was always making them with the implied case that Joe Biden deserved re-election which I firmly believe he earned by any objective marker, and after he decided he couldn't overcome the propaganda wave about his age and health, that his Vice-President surely deserved election based on what their administration had managed.

I hope I did convince at least some people to vote for Harris in the end.

any ways, for me posting more as the Biden administration ends would be deeply depressing, dealing with what we're losing and comparing what every week will look like for the next 4 years. Also at this late date, new rules are subject to a review period where the President can freeze and reverse them pretty easily so a lot of anything the Biden team passes can and will be stopped and returned because Trump will become President during the review period. Likewise any Executive Orders Biden's signed during his Presidency can be ripped up on day one of the Trump Presidency

So anything the Biden team gets done before January is very fragile at best and thats sad and depressing

any ways, I think if I'm feeling up to it in January I'll maybe try to write up some kind of overview of the full 4 years of the Biden Presidency and how great it was. And Sadly I suspect I'll get more and more active in covering the trash of the second Trump Presidency

sadly for all of us, I don't think there will be much good news in the years ahead, but I think we have to learn to live with that? um authoritarianism relies not so much on enthusiastic mass support so much as mass apathy, the majority going "ugh there's nothing we can do, why bother paying attention" or "it makes me too sad/upset to watch the news" I see a lot of people pushing vaguely self helpy "take care of yourself" type posts about gardening or whatever as activism and I fear people pulling away from the uncomfortable, from politics and giving up on the idea that change is possible. Someone talked about how middle class liberals in Europe, in Germany in particular after the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 failed almost totally and the authoritarian conservatives won, these liberals withdrew from political life and became very focused on art, music, domestic life because they gave up and you have in the 1850s-80s a period where conservative elites in Germany have basically all their own way and it had longer term echos. I fear that a lot.

[a-loose-collection-of-ants]

Ok. Shit.

I get the feeling I'm not gonna sleep tonight, and who knows, I might regret this tomorrow but I need to get some thoughts out.

I've tried to retain this idea that most people are inherently good. Some of this is the remnants of whatever religious faith I was brought up in, and some of it is just what I tell myself to stay sane. It's getting harder to think that way, but I am trying to hold on to it.

There's this image I keep replaying in my head. My dad and I were visiting family down south shortly after he had wrapped up his cancer treatment. We stopped by my aunt's house in South Carolina, and she told me with tears in her eyes about how she had started gardening again after my dad's diagnosis. There was a Trump flag flying from her roof.

On another visit to the same family members, we were visiting a college and walked by a gender neutral bathroom. My uncle made some off-color joke about it and then quickly moved on when nobody laughed. My sister (a sort of closeted trans woman) looked at me with an expression of both deep sadness, and whatever face you make when you watch a bird fly head-first into a window.

My point is, I know these people aren't filled with hatred and malice. It's not constructive to waste your energy hating them when their greatest sin is ignorance.

I barely remember the Obergerfell decision, but I remember being in middle school around the time it happened. Attitudes towards queer people weren't great, but they changed so rapidly that I barely noticed. Maybe the fact that this was when I realized I was queer gave me a false sense of security when it came to the "moral arc of the universe", or maybe it's the example I have to hold onto about how fast things can change.

It's easy for people to fall into patterns of hate when they lack exposure, and the media landscape right now is making easier to avoid that sort of exposure. The basis of the fight against extremism is education, and I think it has to also be compassion.

Don't get me wrong, I also have family that are more than likely not worth the effort ("they" control the weather and all that), but those aren't most people. Most people are exhausted by politics. They see the price of groceries and vote for the other guy regardless of who's name is on the ballot. Or they're like a classmate of mine, who didn't really like either candidate and was having trouble just voting for the "better" one.

If anything, I guess this is a reminder to myself to hold on to empathy despite everything. It's fine to feel angry. Hell, it's probably good if it gets you moving. But we cannot respond to dehumanization with more dehumanization.

I'm not really all that religious anymore, but I hold on to some things. One of them is this: All things, by virtue of being crafted by God's hands, have value. Or, as my dad said it "God don't make no shit". This goes for yourself, as well as everyone else. I can't let myself lose that right now.

I don't want to belabor my point too much, but I do want to say that I saw people saying things like "it's all over if trump wins". I'm not going to lie, it's bad and people are going to get hurt and die because of this. America was waiting for the results of it's biopsy and we found out it's cancer... but we're not dead yet. I don't have a specific action I can advocate for, but please, don't give up. Authoritarianism is a longstanding wound on this country and it festers in apathy.

Take a deep breath. Regardless of what happens, time moves forward and the sun will rise in the morning. I am going to go to work, make some dinner, and hopefully find some way to work volunteering into my schedule.

Recommended listening if you want to cry right now

[cazort]

I know this may strike some as a cynical take, but I want to point out that Netanyahu and other Israeli hardliners have a direct incentive in seeing their own citizens slaughtered by Hamas, because it furthers their agenda.

Here is how they benefit:

It raises the level of anger, hate, and us-vs-them thinking in the voting populace, increasing the desire for retaliation and thus increasing political support for aggressive military action against Palestinians, including both slaughter of Palestinian civilians and seizing of land, and also for more restrictive policies like tightening of checkpoints, economic isolation, etc. These are policies the hardliners have always wanted and are always looking for excuses to implement.

It distracts from the highly unpopular reforms Netanyahu and his supporters have been doing to consolidate power, remove checks and balances and make the Israeli government less democratic and more authoritarian. Just a few weeks ago there were massive protests against these reforms, and calls for Netanyahu to resign or be ousted, but now this discussion has been totally sidelined by this new "war".

It also distracts from the corruption in Netanyahu's regime, including the large number of Hasidim and ultra-Orthodox who are riding on government welfare payments while avoiding military service, and who then give Netanyahu a large portion of his power.

I'm not saying that Netanyahu orchestrated or planned the Hamas attack. But he has definitely been complicit in actively creating an environment that led to this attack.

The current Israeli government's policies have focused on things that increase suffering for the Palestinian people, the sort of "apartheid" state, and they engage in security theater, but while showing incompetence in actual border security.

I do not think this is a coincidence. Having the appearance of strong security but actual weak security, and then escalating the antagonism and oppression of the Palestinian people is exactly the mix of factors that empowers Hamas and encourages and enables them to attack the Israeli people like we have seen recently.

And then when the IDF does carry out operations in Palestine? They flaunt cruel practices like the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas, banned by international convention. Why? Because this is just going to make the Palestinians even more angry and radicalized, driving more of them to continue supporting and joining Hamas. By making themselves into a demon, the Israeli government draws out the sort of violent, depraved behavior that we have seen in the recent Hamas attack, that gives the hardliners the excuse they want to carry their genocide of the Palestinian people out to completion.

I do not see any evidence that Netanyahu actually cares at all about the Israeli people. I don't know for sure what is going on in his head, if he's a cold, calculating schemer, or if he is a passionate zealot who believes his own lies, or some other depraved scenario, but I do know his actions and the actions of his government drive in that the people getting killed are just pawns in a broader scheme to consolidate power and seize as much of Palestine as possible. I see no evidence that he actually cares about his own people in a deep way. All Israeli lives lost simply serve to consolidate his power and further his agenda, and the more brutal and cruel the loss of those lives are, the better for him.

I think it is time people start holding Netanyahu and his government accountable, and it is time the world starts seeing him and the other key people in his government as the war criminals that they are. They are slaughtering the Palestinians while using their own citizens as fodder in their agenda.

[karanseraph]

Allegedly, when my dad was young, my paternal grandmother told him "all men have a dark side." I think she meant well. She was born in the early 20th century, she came over frome Ireland on boat as a child. She had a stepfather who was from another immigrant community. Families were large. There was a lot of poverty and alcohol. They were Catholic, so they also took "original sin" as a concept seriously.

I think this did my dad harm. He actually is a person who struggles with empathy. Now, it's apparent he's neurodivergent from multiple traits he has and that this probably runs in the family, but no one we knew was diagnosed back then. He views criticism as personal attacks. It's difficult for him to see difference between people (like his difference) as positive of a challenge to accept and accommodate and instead thinks (in his darkest moments) that he's broken. Or that I also am someone who needs to be fixed.

But, somehow, I'm sure from conversations most of my siblings including my brothers voted blue and genuinely are able to care about others and will try to help.

And, to clarify, my dad has done volunteer work a d actually helped some people a lot. He is in no way evil. He's human. He is a product of his time. He was indoctrinated, arguably, by nuns, and Jesuits, and the Knights of Columbus, by bullies, and every bit of 1950's US government propaganda about scary different people and the importance of conforming and being "American". He says he didn't know that he was poor as a child because everyone was like that around him. He had a moment in the late 80s where he was arguably upper middle class. But he's also one of those older people now who don't really have wealth in the oldest sense but have pension/retirement tied up in stocks market scrap and keep mortgaging their house when they need cash.

Anyway, this is long.

But what I'm trying to say is people are flawed and human and make mistakes, but they aren't born or made evil or good. I think it's more harmful to say to kids that they have darkness or sin inside them from the start than to focus on choices going forward and the possibility that when one does make a mistake they can also make amends.

So, we should try to tell kids that.

Model good behavior and choices for kids as much as we can. Communicate that humans of all ages can make mistakes. Get rid of the concept of authoritarianism and infallibility in any individual or organization. Embrace differences. Talk about our feelings when we feel hurt by another's choices or actions so we can understand or compromise.

Just do our best and be excellent to each other.

And, specifically, for those boys some are worried about - I know lack of funds can impede this - but give them lots of room to play, give them books about all different people and experiences, take them on trips to see how real people do their work, let them engage with all the dramatic play props and costumes and clothes and dolls. Let them have building toys and action figures they choose. Let them use telescopes and microscopes to shift their perspective. Let them draw and paint and write. Let them compete and measure, without focusing on the win itself.

And let all kids do those things (but above posts were about boys).

And if there's a financial struggle to provide all this, try libraries or a device that can stream old episodes of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, or Reading Rainbow, or Sesame Street, etc.

Because, going back to my dad, he wasn't really able to model the most typical social-emotional behaviours or interactions for me, but I could see Optimus Prime or Fred Rogers interact with others.

And my brothers turned out pretty OK possibly because our dad was able to provide many books but also because he decided with my mom early on that girls could play with cars and boys could play with dolls.

And how/why he decided that when he was such a product of past generations and watches a certain news channel three or four times a day now I can't explain. But he did.

So, we know, I think, how to help kids. I worked in early childcare education for a time myself. People know how to help kids. But...there's also a struggle for any service to be profitable which means the teacher-student ratios can get stretched and that teachers can get stuck with so many assessments and standardized testing requirements that they aren't just spending time with the kids.

But we know.

And, unfortunately, there are some in the world who have differing goals. Right? Like do you want healthy men who can work together with diverse groups of people in cooperating to better the world? Or do you want obedient workers? Soldiers? Slaves?

Men themselves are not the problem. Boys aren't a problem.

It's young people growing up with divisivness and poverty and war and demand of conformity and obedience, etc.

So, probably the best we can do foe young men is to try to understand that they aren't evil by nature. Probably Patriarchy hurt them. But because of that, they don't want to admit it to themselves, because that would be weakness.

We need to keep showing them that there are places for men (again, all people need attention, but above posts were about boys and men) in the society we want.

We can say it to men we know. We can say that we really liked when they did math homework with us, or played Lego with us, or played us music we liked, or organized a tabletop game, or built us a bookcase, or cooked chicken the way we like, or taught us how to draw our eyeliner, or even expressed a desire to defend us against another man. (These are just some examples from my life, yours are likely different.)

It would be nice if we didn't also have those negative influences in the world, but we do and we can't stop them overnight or by ourselves.

So, we do our best to model and encourage the behaviours we want and to protect institutions that help like our public libraries, and to ask for policies that will (actually) improve schools.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[bloodgulchblog]

Armor by John Steakley pt 1

I know a little more about Armor than I did last time I said anything about it. The book is divided into 5 sections, and I just finished the first. The next one starts the "space pirate section" which, if reputation is to be believed, is kind of a slog compared to the front end, so we shall see how that goes for me.

So. The front end.

Armor is about a power-armored soldier named Felix as he goes on his first combat drop onto a hellish planet called Banshee to fight the endless hordes of the ants (which is what humanity calls the bug-like aliens they are fighting.)

In keeping with the tradition of Starship Troopers (the very obvious inspiration for this book), the ants' motives are not known and there is no effort made to explore them. They are a soulless living tide of enemies, and nothing more. We also know very little about humanity's goals, or how the planet Banshee fits into any of them.

Felix, having proven himself naturally skilled with the armor in training, is chosen to be a Scout instead of a Warrior. This mostly means that Felix's odds of surviving this are even lower than they already were. Despite this, of all the soldiers on his team that drop, Felix is the only one who survives.

When he manages to link up with the rest of the force, he finds them in dire straits struggling to survive against an endless onslaught of ants that is far worse than anything any of them were prepared for.

It all goes very very badly.

This section of the book is written in the third person, so we spend a lot of time with Felix but we don't actually know a lot about him. We have some faint hints that his backstory might be interesting, but what we do know is limited to this: He thinks they're all going to die, he's probably right, he's bitter and frustrated and terrified. He keeps having these dissociative episodes where he feels like he isn't himself, instead being driven by this ruthless, cold, practical entity inside him he calls "the Engine" that is able to keep surviving no matter how much Felix the guy should probably be dying.

I'm too early on to comment on the book as a whole because I don't totally know where all of this is going, but I'm having an interesting time as a book nerd.

So far, the good:

Steakley is at least trying to do something interesting stylistically? That isn't to say that I think the prose in Armor is good, because it frequently is not. But I am the kind of reader who gives points for moxie when someone tries. I can't throw too many stones from my glass house, you guys know how much I love a dramatic turn of phrase.

Also, I guess I do want to know what Felix's deal is.

The bad:

There are some cool ideas in here, but Steakley's lack of experience as a novelist shows. Some details of the world building and the military strategy are dumb. For example: All armor has a self-destruct mechanism, but nobody is allowed to know about it because they might misuse it (???).

The philosophy he clearly wants to imbue this with feels kind of weak and generic. "War is hell" is true, but I've consumed so much "war is hell" that it really needs some fresh teeth on this truth for it to inspire me to feel anything. Compared to The Forever War, Armor is obviously written by someone with sincere interest but without really saying anything.

When people tell you Armor is Starship Troopers without the politics, they're kind of right. It doesn't have a project (at least so far) the way Heinlein had his whole "what if there was an authoritarian government where you had to join the military to be able to vote" project in Troopers. I think any time anyone writes about war it's inevitably political, and people who think they're writing apolitically about war are just blind to how their politics inform what they think an objective view of the world is, but that caveat aside: Armor is writing about the fantasy of an alien war where the enemy isn't people, you don't have to consider the personhood of the enemy for even a second, and thus that pretty much invalidates the depth of anything it has to say about "war" because "war" in this book is so unlike what real war is.

…That's not to get into the phenomenon of unpersoning the enemy to desensitize soldiers to killing them (a very real thing), but this section is getting long and I have other things I want to talk about.

Like style, again.

While I am positively predisposed to the effort I've seen so far and I think I am guilty of some of these sins often enough myself, I know what I am and what I'm about, I still have to say Armor feels a bit raw and over-written. It could've seriously used a much firmer editing pass than whatever it got, there are a lot of darlings in here that needed the axe. Steakley uses a lot of short, choppy sentences that would flow better with a little more connection. On the other extreme, he frequently describes things in super dramatic ways with obvious play with wording/sentence structure that are kind of cool but… he does it a bit too often. You can only make big plays so many times before you start getting more bad results than good. He sometimes pours way too much gravitas on moments that don't need it, and it becomes repetitive. Even worse, when he does give you a sentence that might actually be beautiful, it's drowned out by all the other things that aren't.

But speaking of repetition: Let's talk about the action sequences.

I feel like they are very polarizing. Some people love, really really love Armor for its action sequences. Steakley gives you punch-by-punch descriptions of a lot of ant fighting, and through cursory perusal it seems like the Internet falls along two camps about this:

One group loves and praises it. This kind of person wants every detail written out so they can see it in their mind's eye in perfect detail.

One group finds it incredibly tedious and repetitive, because there are only so many ways you can describe somebody punching an ant and the way the ant's body parts come apart, and there are thousands of these things and they have no emotional stakes attached.

….As you may have guessed by this juncture, I am definitely one of the latter camp.

But I'm not here to insult people for liking things I don't like. I'll accept there's a whole school of action writing (and action reading) that just isn't my dish.

If that is you, so far I think you might like this.

But I'm just in the first section, so I am not ready to endorse the book.

I've heard the back 80% of this thing is like, kind of rough and weird and also maybe not something I'll have positive words to say about.

But we'll find that out later.

…And maybe I'll loop back and talk about the plot in more detail.

In the meantime, here are some specimens of Armor's writing for you:

Here's some of Steakley being super dramatic:

Here's a fight scene:

(I think this is example is one that works better than a lot of the others? The ones from later in this section where a bunch of warriors are fighting ants paragraph after paragraph are worse.)

[solarbird]

Let's talk about Kari Lake's statement here, because she's talking about what they want to do: hold the union hostage:

We need some strong governors to get in there and push back against the Federal government, remind them who created the Federal government, it was the States... not the other way around. And we are going to start proving to them that we are sovereign. We are not serfs of the Federal government. Especially not this Federal government with this illegitimate president.

There's a key point in here she's right about: the states, in our constitutional system, are ultimately sovereign.

At least, on paper.

The states can, at their discretion and without support from the Federal government, call a congress of the states at any time.

And they can do whatever the hell they want while they're at it - at least, in terms of what they create. It's not law yet, but it can be. Whatever they come up with goes back to the states as a whole for approval.

And in theory, once enough states adopt it, it becomes the new constitution - the new law of the land.

Nothing about any of that says there has to be a popular vote.

Because yeah, the constitution says sovereignty lies with the people, but in practical terms, it lies with the several states. Which means the state legislatures.

Like Wisconsin's, where Republicans can't be removed from power even if they lose the popular vote by 20 points.

Last time this happened, we got a whole new Constitution. And it was different enough that states just left the old Union (under the Articles) and joined the new Union (under the Constitution).

And some of the states that didn't, at least at first, sent ambassadors to that new Union. You know. To keep in touch and keep their options open as they make the decisions they need to make.

Now, some people might say "this is different, this constitution doesn't allow secession, it's permanent."

So were the Articles. And unlike our current Constitution, they were explicitly so.

As for secession, well, that was decided with guns. Might be again too. Also might not.

But this wouldn't even be secession, necessarily. States refusing to recognize a new, "illegitimate" constitution? That's whole new ball of wax, and I just outlined how that went last time. And that... that's precedent.

You want to engineer a national divorce, this is how to do it.

Or you just threaten it seriously enough and be willing to go hard enough to that line to get your demands met - which is to say, everything you'd get in your Christian ethnostate, applied to the whole country.

Now I'm sure as hell not going to go along with that, because I literally can't. Their Christian ethnostate makes me, as a person, illegal again. They're trying to make us all illegal again in the current framework, there's no question they'd demand it in any new one.

But there are big, serious, enough-money-to-be-immune money players who will not want that kind of separation, and they'll do everything in their extraordinarily extensive power to prevent it.

The authoritarians should know that very well, and consider it a card in their deck.

So that's what we're dealing with here. The threat, the strategy, the goal.

Would they cross that line? Would they call that convention, write up that Christian Nationalist country?

Probably. I think so, anyway.

Because my entire life, they have done nothing but double-down, and I don't see them ever stopping on their own.

After all - why would they?

God is, they are quite sure, entirely on their side. And everyone else is quite literally either a tool or an out-and-out follower of Satan.

I know that because they say so. They always have. All you have to do is listen to them.

And that's why they must be stopped, because they will never stop on their own. There will be no accord, no compromise, no middle ground, because they will not permit one, because to them, compromise is literally a deal with the devil, and they will. not. have that.

That's what Kari Lake is alluding to here. Her movement hears her. They know what she's saying, because they say it amongst themselves.

That's what's at stake in the state races - and also, that's your language lesson for today.

[strictly002]

Who needs democracy?

That is the question...

Yes, seriously! What is so special about democracy? Why does the US attempt to spread democracy? There's actually a chapter in that article detailing the rationale. It starts like this:

The rationale for outside support for democratization in the Middle East is outlined by Albrecht Schnabel, who says that the Middle East is a region with strong authoritarian regimes and weak civil society and identifies the democratization dilemma in the region as the following: a strong civil society is required to produce leaders and mobilize the public around democratic duties, but in order for such a civil society to flourish, a democratic environment and process allowing freedom of expression and order is required in the first place.

I'll translate: the US spreads democracy, because democracy is good. But is it? Is there anything inherently good about democracy?

I live in a (somewhat functional) democracy. What do I get out of it? I get to vote in issues (and people) that I barely know anything about. I could spend a lot of time studying the subjects (and people and their stance on issues). It's a major pain in the rear, especially if I want to get to the point where I can call myself an expert. Unless I'm an expert, why does it matter what I think? And do I want to become an expert in every question society wants an answer to and demands an answer to it from me through a ballot? Not really.

There's of course the other problem that even if I do become an expert, how can I judge if a candidate's promises are actually honest and realistic. The candidate might just be lying to get the office, but it's also equally possible that she is honest, but ineffective, gets hobbled by internal opposition, external circumstances or unforeseen events. When voting for people, even being an expert doesn't help all that much.

The alternative is that I either don't vote or vote uninformed. That's easy to do, I just tick a box in random, or based on some preconceived notion (Republican good, Democrat bad or the other way around). Which is not really expressing my desires, mostly because I didn't even put the effort in to know my desires.

Since the easier route is to do nothing, most people will do just that. Me doing the work, being a responsible member of society means nothing when my vote only worth as much as an uninformed one. In other words, all that work I've sunk into me getting informed will be for neigh in a democracy where everyone has the same amount of say.

In other words, democracy is governed by averages, and averages are at best mediocre.

What do we want?

And really, what do we want? I suspect what we really want is to make sure that well qualified people are running things. We want to make sure that decision makers make good decisions, that experts are listened to and that the country follows down the best possible path.

In other words, we want meritocracy, not democracy.

The political arrangement is irrelevant. It could be a kingdom. A theocracy. A socialist utopia. Anything. As long as it can guarantee that every job is performed by the best possible person for that position, mission accomplished.

To give you an example: let's say we live in a meritocratic kingdom. The king is - by definition - is the best person to run the country. This is not a statement of the past, it's a statement of the present. The king gets to remain king as long as he is the best person to run the country. As soon as someone is deemed to be better, she replaces the current king and become one herself. One could argue that there's tremendous incentive for the king then to make sure nobody ever becomes better than he is, but that's against the rules: a person with such tendencies is certainly not the best person to run the country, so by definition will not be king or at least not any more. Same logic holds for the ministers, mayors, judges, police chiefs, military leaders, heads of central banks, the whole lot.

In fact, in many ways, a well-run corporation is non-democratic meritocracy. It functions more or less similar to the kingdom example I just gave you. People advance up on the leadership chain - theoretically - based on their abilities and raise to the best position they can hold. They stay there as long as someone better comes along, and gets promoted to replace them. But when was the last time you got to vote on the director of finance in your workplace? It's certainly not a democracy!

There are many problems of course. To start with: we would have to agree on what 'well qualified', 'good decision', 'expert', 'best possible path' and all the rest actually mean.

That's not easy, you don't have to look further than the current debate around abortions.

There's the problem of finding those who can best lead towards those agreed-upon goals too. How would we find them? How would we judge their credentials? Their achievements? How can we make sure that they stay in the position only as long as they are truly the best qualified? How can we ensure (as the kingdom example showed) that they don't get to stifle competition before it can reach a level that threatens their position? Before it is apparent to others?

These are hard problems, and I'm not going to offer a solution. What I'm going to say though is this: democracy is not the goal. Meritocracy is. Democracy is a poor approximation of that, failing left right and center. It's not the only approximation. Corporate structure is another one. That's not perfect either. Are there others? Maybe. Could they be better then what we have now? I don't know.

But putting democracy on a pedestal and worshiping it as inherently good and desirable is wrong and misleading. In fact, I suspect, this adoration of a political system is coming from the top and is a tool to preserve the power of those who have it, and consequently works directly against the real goal: achieving meritocracy. But that is a long discussion that I'll have to leave for another time.

[politics-and-philosophy]

Ok, so I know that I'm supposed to be weirded out by the fact that this person clearly created a random brand-new tumblr just to message me anonymously, but honestly, I'm honored.

Look, this tumblr is straight-up blank, aside from the header photo. Is that a homemade handgun btw? It looks like it. Honestly though, I just feel kinda honored. Because this person is either scared enough of me to want anonymity (I can't see why) or scared enough of the reprisal they would face on their main blog (this one makes more sense).

So, again, let's go point-by-point.

I don't think the government should have control over who owns a gun in the same way I don't think the government should have control over who lives and dies. I think that gun ownership should be restricted constitutionally, by removing and replacing the second amendment. In this new amendment, I want only three types of individuals to be allowed to own guns:

1. Those in remote areas who require guns for survival.

2. Collectors of historic guns who can only load and fire them on shooting ranges.

3. Active duty military personnel deployed in foreign soil, and domestic soil only during a foreign invasion.

This list notably excludes cops, active duty military on domestic soil, security details, sport hunters, and everyone else. I have said all this before though.

This would not give a monopoly on power to the government, in fact, it would significantly stymie the power the government already has over people by removing the threat of firearms.

Personally, I think this would stop almost all gun violence, not just mass shootings. The majority of gun killings are committed with guns which were once legally owned (the US is a net exporter of illegal firearms, mostly to Mexico, due to our lax gun laws). Furthermore, while 4 in 5 gun homicides are committed with a gun not owned by the perpetrator, that's not the end of the story. 30% of those guns are stolen, but of those 30%, over 4 in 10 are not reported stolen until after a crime is committed, and 44% of gun owners whose guns were stolen did not respond to attempts to be contacted by police. Of the other 70%, reported lost, in 62% of instances, the legal owner of the gun was unaware of where or when the gun was lost. That is a staggering number of people who are reckless with firearm safety.

A large part of this is due to shoestring purchases, where someone who passes a legal background check will go and buy a gun for someone who wouldn't, or to then go and sell it at an upcharge on the black market, only to claim it lost or stolen when it shows up at a crime scene. The legal gun market directly supports and enables both gun crime and the illegal gun market. Making it more difficult to legally get a gun will make it exponentially more difficult to illegally acquire a gun. More on this later.

Mass shootings are a small percentage of total deaths, but these deaths are unique in how horrible, violent, and early in a person's life they come. They are always the direct result of hate, and are a uniquely American problem within the developed world. Unlike robbery murders or even homicides motivated by passion, mass shootings don't target a specific individual. They seek to kill a group of people indiscriminately. Essentially, they're a violent hate crime, almost always motivated by a right-wing view of society and a belief that violence solves problems.

It's also laughable that the ownership of a gun somehow puts you on even footing with the government. Do you know how much firepower the government has? Even military grade weapons are useless against an actual military.

Ok, here's Oxford's definition of a civil right:

Please go read this. Civil rights are rights of society and politics. They are things such as voting rights, marriage rights, freedom from religious infringement in your life, right to exist in society and politics. Gun ownership is no more a civil right than is the right to smoke crack.

America has a gun violence epidemic, compared to the rest of the world, and even compared among the states.

Here's a fun graph comparing gun violence and gun ownership among first world countries.

Here's a graph comparing gun violence and gun regulation within the United States:

Ok, finally, on to fascism. So, let's start from the top and work our way to different outcomes. We have our first decision at "Is the current gun violence rate and mass shooting epidemic within the US worth fixing?" Personally, I think yes. If you think no, I invite you to tell that to anyone who lost a family member in a mass shooting and see if you don't get punched.

Having resolved yes, we move onto what to do. There are three real solutions.

1. Increase of law enforcement

2. Increase of surveillance

3. Regulation of firearms

Notably, mental health reforms is left off this list. I've addressed that several times in other posts. In summary, mass shooters don't seek mental services and the majority of perpetrators aren't mentally ill, they're disillusioned with society.

Now, as a liberal and specifically a social liberal, I hate fascism and think that among the political ideologies out there fascism and authoritarianism are a special kind of evil. In general, I see it as better to have a large government which serves the people instead of a small government which oppresses the people. A lot of conservatives, especially anarco-capitalists, think that a small government is necessarily less oppressive, but that is not true. Governments can be large, but if they are beholden to a citizenship, they'll obey said citizens. Small governments who are isolated from the populace easily turn towards oppression.

But I digress. Let's start with the first choice, and see where it takes us. For this exercise, we'll be assuming that when the government is given control over a certain aspect of our lives, they'll want to increase that control. So, we increase the law enforcement in all major metropolitan areas, meaning armed guards at malls, churches, movie theaters, schools, etc. And even though mass shootings still occur when armed guards are present (Parkland) or when police arrive on scene within the minute (El Paso), it's okay because we get to keep our guns, everybody has a gun so everyone is safe. This is basically a police state. The scary thing is conservatives have actually proposed this. Sean Hannity said on live TV that we need to place armed guards at every public area. And if you don't trust the government, how the hell could you trust the armed guards they have stationed outside the grocery store.

Next solution is increased surveillance. If access to guns is to remain unrestricted, then we need to be able to find the killers before they kill. What do all of the mass shooters have in common? An internet history rife with extremism and alt-right views. So, screen everyone. And go ahead and start censoring people who have those views too, just to be safe. But once we have a suspected shooter, how can we know when they're about to commit murder? You can't arrest someone for fitting a profile. So, you start tracking them, looking through their purchases, making sure they aren't trying to get someone to buy them a firearm, following them, watching them. Even if all they did is post on the internet with no intent, now the government knows their every move. And suddenly, the small minor infractions that everyone commits daily start to add up. So, one agent decides to hell with it, let's just bust him early for something, anything we can make stick. This isn't a hypothetical, either. There are countless stories of cops falsifying evidence just to make the arrest because they believe an innocent person is guilty.

Finally, firearm regulation. Now here you might think that if you lose your firearm, you lose your safety. Ignoring for a moment that I specifically advocated for law enforcement to not have firearms, if you genuinely think you are safer with a gun than without it, you are wrong. The mindset that, without your gun, there's nothing to stop the government from trampling your rights ignores the fact that even with your gun, there's nothing really stopping the government from trampling your rights, because the government has a lot more guns than you and they're a lot bigger. Now, perhaps you think that having an armed populace means a resistance or insurgency is possible. Ignoring that the government could squash any insurgency within the US, who even says the insurgents are on your side politically? What's stopping them from rising up right now? The same thing that's stopping the government from killing any dissidents: the fact that we live in a society and without it the government would collapse. Often times people speak as though the government is some separate entity when in reality in America every single person who us eligible to vote or pays taxes is a member of the government. We are the power base of the government, and to distinguish between the citizens of the US and the government if the US is a real gray area, because the government can't exist without the economic base that is our society. You called us sheep but we aren't sheep, we're the golden goose and you never ever kill the golden goose. The government won't come to put us all in camps because they'd wake up broke the next day. And even if they did, your gun wouldn't stop them, it just means they'd kill you.

When you arm everyone, you arm EVERYONE. Not just the lawful responsible owner, but the mass shooter, the murderer, the rapist, the insurgents on both the right and the left, the domestic terrorists, the gang bangers, the government sympathizers, the government itself, everyone. And while obviously it's not every gun owner, it could be any gun owner. And any realistic way to distinguish the difference between a responsible individual looking to own a gun and a mass shooter arming up is with a level of invasiveness that should make you incredibly uncomfortable. This is what I mean when I talk about surveillance.

Let's come to a conclusion here, because this post has gotten quite long.

The idea that you could amass enough firepower to resist the government is not reasonable. What protects you from the government is not weaponry but anonymity. Currently, our system has both, but having both allows criminals and murderers to readily access firearms and kill people. So, since the weaponry isn't protecting us anyway, might as well get rid of it and save some lives.

EDIT: The blog that sent these messages no longer exists, and I don't have access to them anymore, so I'm glad I screenshoted when I did. Kinda confirms my suspicion that they just wanted to anonymously harass me. Oh well, nothing as predictable as a coward.

[cazort]

I really disagree with the idea here that all conservatives borderline-facist and conservatives have always been associated with the facist and extremist ideologies and movements we see nowadays. I don't know if you are old enough to see the change, but I am.

I grew up in a small city in south-central Pennsylvania in the 1980's, and there were a lot of people there who were kinda conservative patriotic types, like they loved Reagan and loved the military and flew the American flag.

And a lot of these people also opposed book bans, opposed voter ID laws, and talked about how book bans and strict ID laws were a slippery slope leading towards facism and authoritarianism, and they gave the example of Nazis in Germany leading up to the Holocaust and WWII, and talked about how they were proud to be an American because they were proud to participate and be civically active in a society that had a consensus among both parties to reject those sort of intrusions and erosions of civil liberties. They were also much more pro-immigrant than you see nowadays.

Now, were some of these people manipulated into voting for policies they wouldn't agree with fully, under Reagan? Probably yes. But also, the Republican party was different back then, and what was called a Conservative was different back then.

Watch this 1980 clip from a Republican primary debate between Reagan and George H.W. Bush, when asked a question about allowing Mexican immigrants who are in the US illegally, to attend public school in Houston, TX:

Please, listen to this whole clip. Both George H.W. Bush and Reagan.

There is no xenophobia, no hate, no racist dogwhistles, and both candidates even go out of their way to pre-emptively shut down racist rhetoric before it even starts.

George H.W. Bush takes the stance of wanting illegal immigrants to get full social benefits available to US citizens. He then calls these illegal immigrants "honorable, decent, family-loving people" and says that we are also worsening relations with Mexico, and he makes an emotional appeal talking about young kids who are growing up uneducated and made to feel that they're outside the law, and he calls them "good people" and "strong people".

Reagan, the more conservative of the two, (a) acknowledges that the US is the larger and more powerful of the two countries (US and Mexico) and that we need to be more mindful of this power and we have failed to acknowledge this power disparity in the past (b) opposes construction of a border fence (c) wants to make it easier for Mexicans to come into the US to work legally, and talks of opening the border (d) expresses concern about the wildly high unemployment in Mexico and how allowing Mexicans to work in the US is critically important to keep Mexico from devolving into violence.

And this is the more conservative of the two stances.

I'm not saying Reagan is perfect, I could write a book on policy stances where I disagree with Reagan, and horrible things that happened under his administration, from regressive tax reform to support of anti-Democratic governments, to all sorts of other things. I think it's hard to deny that Reagan was the most conservative president the US had in a long time at that point, but back then conservatism was really different and was not the sort of facist-xenophobic-populist stance you see nowadays.

I really do not think facism is conservatism. I think the US has experienced a realignment from the Republican party being more conservative-to-moderate (in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush years) to being neoconservative with Christo-facist leanings (in the George W. Bush years) to being primarily far-right facist-populist (under Trump.)

PLEASE. Please go back and watch material from the Reagan and George H.W. Bush years and even earlier. There is plenty of it on the internet. And realize how much things have changed. Watch Nixon admit wrongdoing and resign. Watch Reagan admit wrongdoing in the Iran-contra affair. Now, try really hard to find a single clip of Trump admitting wrongdoing about anything.

These are not the same parties. I'm not saying conservatism is good. But I am saying conservatism is a heck of a lot better than facism. And I'm saying that the Republican party and what people call "conservative" has shifted from being actually conservative, to being not really conservative at all and much more facist.

And seeing that is critical to fixing what is wrong with our political system. We are not going to make any progress if most of the left wrongly believes that Trump and Reagan were the same thing.

I would encourage people to start putting the word "conservative" in quotes whenever it is being applied to people who are using big government to advance a socially-conservative agenda, who show blatant disregard for the US constitution, or whose actions are destabilizing society.

Examples:

"Conservatives" who try to criminalize abortion, often to the point of harming medical care for people who don't even want abortions, such as people who have miscarriages.

"Conservatives" trying to mandate strict enforcement of gender norms and trying to micro-manage what doctors and healthcare providers can and can't do, even in private care of patients.

A "conservative" president who constantly fires his appointees, replacing them with new ones or sometimes just leaving the slots vacant.

A "conservative" president who makes a media spectacle out of everything, constantly whines and moans, and refuses to take responsibility for even the smallest mistake.

"Conservatives" who fight against business interest and are continually at odds with large, mainstream corporations.

"Conservatives" who organize and carry out a chaotic, violent riot that ends up beating and killing police officers.

If you support these things, you're not really a conservative because conservatives believe in small government, want to maintain law-and-order, respect the police, support business interests, and want to maintain stability and continuity in society, right?

The more you think about it the more you realize there aren't really many conservatives left in the US. The Trump movement is not conservative. The Republican party barely has any conservatives left in it and has become actively hostile to conservatives.

I think the sooner people realize this, the sooner our society will return to some sort of sanity.

Don't help far-right populist extremism gain validity by calling them conservatives. They are not. Call them "conservatives" and point out why you're putting it in quotes.

This is ultimately going to be much more effective at getting conservatives, and I mean real conservatives not "conservatives", to stop voting Republican until that party can clean house, and stop supporting absolutely batshit policies and some of the lowest-quality candidates I've seen in my entire life.