#and he is the propaganda machine for cruelty

[astracora]

one of my most formative movies as a kid is the og dragonheart, a movie about noble dragons, trying to help guide and care for humanity. and i definitely think the lense that i see dragons through (never the violent beasts that guard treasure), has impacted how i envision sylus as a character.

[disregardcanon]

i've been reading catching fire for the first time this year and i don't, personally, think that the quarter quell was a "smart move" for snow and the capitol even if things went the way that he wanted them to and katniss and peeta and all the rest died and he got a victor he could control. sure, it would have taken out katniss. but taking out katniss wasn't actually going to be the quick fix he wanted it to be.

because even the capitol citizens were upset about all of this. the capitol citizens, who had grown so used to having pretty victors to smush together like dolls and gush over and show that people from the districts CAN do something and make their lives better. it's the american bootstraps ideal made hideously manifest.

yes, they've been fed this propaganda diet that the games are proper retribution for a crime that happened a lifetime ago, but they're also supposed to bring out these Ideals TM the capitol claims to hold to and then the Beautiful Shiny Model Minority winner gets fame and fortune and safety and a promotion into capitol society. because they beat the odds and they won all these things! they *deserve* this!

now all of the privileged masses have these strong parasocial relationships where they thought they'd see their favorite athletes become safe and glamorous and happy. the social contract says that the capitol citizens get to have these lovely dolls to play with and now he's taking their toys away in a way that shows the propaganda never held any truth in the first place. if we don't actually value these people and what they represent, then why do we actually do it? (it's the cruelty. but the average capitol citizen doesn't understand that the cruelty is the point, because it took snow years and years and years of building up that Capacity for Cruelty, and most people never get to that point. there has to be a pretty facade over this for it to run smoothly for those average citizens like the prep team. and now it's not there anymore.)

and that's not even mentioning the different sort of horror this becomes for the districts, as the idea that's been sold to the wealthier districts is that if these children win they get fame and fortune and protection for life. but you're dragging them back into the horror that was supposed to buy their eternal glory? the careers aging out this year don't even have their "chance" in the arena to make their mark and gain their fortune. they'll just be losing some of their mentors in a pointless rehash.

in the poorer districts, perhaps there is some relief because their kids are safe this year but that means their only victors are being shipped off to die instead. and then their kids who won't have a chance in hell next year! because the hunger games are a perpetual motion exploitation machine, and the only way people were able to be numbed to it was figuring out the rules and then gritting their teeth and living their lives. but the rules are out the window, now. those rules that were supposed to make this terrible system something they could navigate and grit their teeth and suffering through are being blown to bits because snow tried to stomp out the tiniest embers instead of letting them burn out.

[readingsquotes]

"Despite a global propaganda machine working overtime to tell us that targeting hospitals is not targeting hospitals and killing civilians is not killing civilians, awareness of Israel’s crimes is spreading like wildfire across the globe. This is due in no small part to the tenacity of the Palestinian armed resistance, which has managed to defy containment by Israel’s 40-mile long ‘iron wall’ and continues to resist an Israeli invasion on the ground. At the same time, Palestinian artists, writers, journalists, and academics have worked tirelessly to dismantle zionist colonization of the global- particularly Western- imaginary, with story, with song, with music, and with art.   This resistance in all its forms is having ripple effects. Since October 7, people have continued to flood the streets in every nation with chants of ‘In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians.’ Josephine Guilbeau, a former member of the US military, said on Monday at a vigil for Bushnell that ‘I don’t think this is going to be the last of our military members resisting. I feel like there are many, many Aarons out there. Who will speak for them?’ Israel’s lies have long lacked legitimacy among the peoples of the Global South, and particularly the Middle East. But today Taylor Swift fans show up to protests holding signs declaring ‘Swifties for Palestine‘ and videos of lawyers proclaiming the Israeli occupation ‘existentially illegal‘ before the International Court of Justice go viral on Twitter. Palestinian journalists reporting from Gaza have bigger online followings than the US president, and buildings in the West are emblazoned with their images and quotes. In a statement responding to Bushnell’s protest the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) stated “(Bushnell’s act) indicates that the status of the Palestinian cause, especially in American circles, is becoming more deeply entrenched in the global conscience, and reveals the truth of the zionist entity as a cheap colonial tool in the hands of savage imperialism.” Israel’s legitimacy is crumbling, and it is taking the US empire with it. This is not to suggest that Israel is pulling the strings- rather, it shows how far the US is prepared to go before it will risk its hegemony in the region. The refusal of all but a handful of states to join the US-led coalition ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian’ to defeat Yemen in the Red Sea (notable among absentees was Saudi Arabia, which has since joined the BRICS group of nations alongside China, Russia and Iran) was telling. Increasingly, the imperialism of the Western media is being exposed, and voices from the Global South locating these lies within much longer histories of Western colonial violence are being heard in new ways, by a new generation.  In a talk he gave on October 21st, 2023, historian Ilan Pappé stated: ‘Before October I wrote an article saying this is the beginning of the end of Zionism…after last week in fact I’m even more convinced. As happened in apartheid South Africa, this is a very dangerous period. The regime fights for its life….historically I have no doubt that this is what we are experiencing, we are experiencing cruelty and brutality because a certain regime is losing it, not because it’s winning, but because it’s losing.’ Israel’s attacks on Iran and Lebanon, attempting to lure the US into a broader regional war, are another sign of that desperation. "

-

In our thousands, in our millions: On Aaron Bushnell’s final act

What Aaron Bushnell did was an act of fierce, principled love in a situation of extreme desperation. It unflinchingly declared that even in the heart of the empire the lies of Zionism no longer hold.

by Britt Munro March 1, 2024

[squidbeans]

Semi-Academic Analysis of The Great Turf War

The Great Turf War was primarily a land conflict as global warming had sunk a significant portion of settleable landmass beneath the ocean, and marine society had progressed enough that their populations were beginning to skyrocket thanks to innovations in science and quality of life.

Inklings and Octarians had amicable relations beforehand and even engaged in cultural exchange, but the fierce tactics they resorted to created a divide between species that is still present today, manifesting in extreme prejudice for the other race.

Some contemporaries have speculated that this entire war may have been the result or at least exacerbated by a particularly harsh breakup between two leaders of opposing factions,  General Octavio of the Octarians and Captain Craig Cuttlefish, a young platoon leader for the Inkling forces.However, because of much of the propaganda floating around regarding the war and its belligerents, this theory can neither be confirmed nor denied.

shown here is a photo of the two leaders in conference, dated before the start of the conflict.

Octavio is equal parts revered and reviled by the people he still leads, but the life and whereabouts of Craig Cuttlefish are mostly unknown. As of today, he is known somewhat of a recluse, having settled with his young lover(identity unknown) in Cuttlefish County after the war to lead a quiet life.

There is much propaganda about the events and outcome of the war, with a popular sentiment being that the Octarians were "more diligent" in addition to their technological advancements, creating many early victories for the Octarian Nation.

The Inklings' early losses are cited as a result of "not wak[ing] up early enough in the morning to defend themselves", emphasizing their purported hedonistic tendencies.

Not long after the inception of the conflict, Octarian scientists had developed a form of organically-supported war machines, "The Great Octoweapons", four weapons of mass destruction designed to defeat the enemy by all means possible. The Inklings had their own response to this, although not well documented due to extensive cover-ups by the inkling government.

Although not widely known to the general public, some defectors from the Octarian cause have come forward with information that the Octoweapons program has been revived and even repurposed, with new machines being created to fight a small guerilla force, confirmed to be unsanctioned by the Inkling military.

Photos provided by former Octoling engineers of the original Great Octoweapons prior to the recent attack by insurgents.

Below is a crude rendering of what the Inkling WMDs could have looked like, accompanied by an Octoling city being razed to the ground. Despite Inkling propaganda portraying themselves as a benevolent force opposed to the crueler, more authoritarian Octoling army, it is clear that there are many atrocities being covered up to uphold the image of acceptance and diversity that modern Inkling society prides itself upon.

There are few surviving first hand accounts, so most of the information gathered here comes from unreliable secondary sources. A handful of modern historians are attempting to parse apart the bias shown from both sides to obtain a true account of this deadly conflict.

The tide began to turn as Inklings figured out that the Octoweapons were powered by recently-discovered electricity, and severing the connections to their power source gave them a desperately-needed advantage over Octarian forces, which had been dominating for months.

Arowana Castle was the site of a major conflict, a siege on the main Inkling stronghold staged by the Octarian army. It lasted for months and finally came to a head as the Inklings made a final push due to dwindling resources and excessive cruelty by Octarian soldiers. The offense was helmed by Captain Cuttlefish, eventually leading Inkling forces to victory. His peers described him as "reckless, but a military genius."

Rather than deliberate in war rooms, Cuttlefish preferred to fight on the front lines with his soldiers, a true revolutionary spirit. His close friendship with Ammoses Shellendorf, a horseshoe crab aligned with the Inklings, lead to many innovative uses of the weapons Shellendorf designed during the siege, at a time when the Bamboozler was the only available ink weapon sufficiently advanced for modern warfare.

A modern replica of the Bamboozler, still used in turf leagues today.

A rare photograph of the Squidbeak Splatoon, Cuttlefish's renowned fighting force. Pictured from left to right: Ammoses Shellendorf, Craig Cuttlefish, Judd, two unnamed Inklings. Despite the group's small size, their prowess with firearms and the insight of Judd, an ancient telepathic cat, changed the outcome of many conflicts.

The Inklings eventually sent diplomatic representatives to negotiate with the battered octarian forces, who were unable to compete with the sheer ruthlessness of the Inkling campaign. They intended to not only win, but to leave the Octolings with a reminder of Inkling superiority, decimating civilian populations not involved with the conflict and razing towns in preparation for new settlements.

The Octarians agreed to leave what were now Inkling lands and remain in the wastelands, a rocky expanse devoid of life-sustaining resources, so long as any and all trade was severed between the two nations. And with the exodus of the Octarian people, a new era of peace began in the region of Inkadia.

A modern map of Inkadia. Large craters can be seen south of Octo Canyon where the landscape has been reshaped by Inkling WMDs. The lakes and surrounding areas have been irradiated beyond safe levels, making it uninhabitable.

[companion-showdown]

Who is your favourite companion?

ROUND 1 MASTERPOST

propaganda under the cut

Compassion

Imagine this you are a Remote who is very happy being a space time anarchist punk thank you very much. Hanging out with their pal Kode and then suddenly in comes this British Twink talks your pal in to committing suicide so they can get their boyfriend back and then unplugs you from your culture and plugs you in to their Time Machine so you have to start travelling with these people who you hate. And this time travelling Brit keeps trying to stop you being Aromantic. Then suddenly bam you get turned into a TARDIS and now British Twink’s ex best friend turned Genocidal Dictator (who looks like she is from the 1920’s) try’s to turn you into a breeding slave to make more TARDIS’s from the war that is yet to happen for them but you have already experienced. So the Twink makes takes away your autonomy and ability to control where you land in a brutal and unconsensual act of needless cruelty and cowardice because they think they know how to look after you better than you a space time anarchist punk from the future so. Oh and they also seal of your primary means of defending your self from War Queen Romana who wants to make You a breeding slave. Eventually you break their conditioning and kidnap an unwilling time lord saving them from the destruction of their home before/after the war you came from. Now you have fun times and occasionally visit the war. Then you get board and become all of humanities afterlife and make everyone immortal after they die. Also you are the 5 A’s Aromantic, Asexual, Agender, Autistic, Anarchist. (anonymous)

Mind-links with the TARDIS and becomes a TARDIS herself. Travels with a human companion of her own and becomes a key player in the War. Later turns herself into the City of the Saved, an afterlife for all humans in the universe. What more can you ask for? (anonymous)

Homunculette

Truly a wet cat of a Time Lord, he hates his job, is sad he can't get drunk, kind of has a thing for his Tardis but won't admit it because Time Lords are above emotions, tries to attack someone with a wrench and fails miserably

Trix MacMillan

no propaganda submitted

Marie

no propaganda submitted

Rosie Taylor

no propaganda submitted

[animationstoriestochill]

More than just a bull

You've probably heard the name of Ferdinand before, this charismatic bull has two animated films, one in 1938 and another in 2017, that quickly made people fall in love with him. But this charming story of a bull who preferred to smell flowers over fighting became much more than what it originally started as, from a children's book, to a banned story, to a tradition in Sweden. This is the story of Ferdinand, the Bull that changed the world.

The book of Ferdinand the bull (1936)

In 1936 the book "The story of Ferdinand" was released to the public. Written by Munro Leaf and illustrated by Robert Lawson, the story of Ferdinand was a fun short story of a bull who enjoyed smelling flowers over fighting who one day got confused to be an aggressive bull because of him getting sting by a bee, but when taken to the arena for a bullfight in Madrid, he just sat and smelled flowers and eventually returned home.

This book became very popular World wide specially in the United States because of the simple message it gave to kids about being yourself , an important message that will be important to the story (so put a pin on it while you read). The book ended up being a grate success, so naturally, Wald Disney jumped into the bag wagon and created their version of the story.

Ferdinand (1938)

On November 25th 1938, Disney would premier to the world the animated short of Ferdinand and to say it was a game changer is an understatement.

For starters we first hace to understand the way animation worked in the past. During the 30's the way animation worked was by drawing every frame by hand by the animators, each frame would be then recorded by a strip of film and checked to see the results in a machine called Moviola. Once Disney gave his approval the inking department would then draw every single frame again in a transparent celluloid sheet as well as being colored while the backgrounds is painted in water color, the frames are then shot one by one with a technicolor, a machine that would ran 3 strips of color film (red blue and yellow) at a time allowing them to combine into and create a fully colored film.

And what about the parts where the background is zoomed in or out? That's the job of the Multi plane camera. Have you ever seen how a pop up book has different cutouts at different heights depending on the scene? That's the same premise the multi camera used, by dividing backgrounds into different layers the camera could then shot the planes moving at different speeds creating the ilusion of depth. You can see this in the short in shots like Ferdinand at the end at the hill or when the arena is shown for the first time. All of this things combined resulted in this fabulous short that actually won Disney an award that same year, but Ferdinand's story is far from being over.

An Icon over the years

After the release of both the book and the film both of them ended up banned from Europe, this is because many of the political leaders at the time saw the film as pacifist propaganda so places like Germany, Italy, and ironically even Spain banned the screening of the short, in the words of Francisco Franco Bahamonde “Ferdinand es una maniobra judeomasónica a favor del pacifismo y de la República” (Ferdinand is a Judeo-Masonic scheme in favor of the republic and pacifism). Another group that Ferdinand impacted was the queer community and movement. Remember how I mentioned the story had the message of "Be yourself", well Disney's short took it one step forward and depicted Ferdinand with stereotypes or actions that would allow queer people to recognize as an allegory to them (this is also called queercoding) which is incredibly clear if you're part of the community like me just how easily the short can be taken as an allegory to both the community and how pathetic toxic masculinity can be.

For the people like me who were born in 2000's Ferdinand is also known as critique on animal cruelty and animal rights. While this is true, the mayor influence for this is neither the book or the original film but instead the 2017 movie produced by BlueSky studios, which re told the story of Ferdinand while also expanding on the previously discussed topics that the character was already known for.

Interestedly enough, in Sweden the original short film is also a staple tradition to watch it due to a show called "From All of Us to All of You" that is screened every Christmas eve where it contains a compilation of Disney shorts including Ferdinand, the short is actually so popular that the one year where they didn't screen it, the show reached it's lowest amount of views, with people complaining to bring Ferdinand back.

Happily Ever After

If you have the time I heavily recommend you to watch the original film. Personally this is a film that I saw as a child on a DVD and every time I re watch it the story of Ferdinand feels closer to home. So now next time you see this bull around, remember the incredible history he has both in his and our world. Until next time

[patheticmenscuffle]

i was writing some gilear propaganda but he is so pathetic that there was so much and my phone died so here are the greatest hits

-last night he couldnt get to sleep so he tried to jack off last night but was too sad so he stayed up all night eating expired yogurt

-his car got repossessed by the rideshare app he works for

-the most divorced man in the realm. cucked in his first marriage by a demon from the nine hells called gortholax the insatiable who was trapped inside a ruby at the time

-passed over for guidance counsellor at his daughters school for a drug dealing werewolf named jawbone

-jawbone was objectively better at the job than gilear ever would be. and also later got with his ex-wife

-(trying to talk to a woman hes interested in) "sklonda i'll level with you: i recently found out that one of my shoes is so filled with mildew from a leak in my apartment that i have this new kind of foot fungus, and my doctor says..." "thats a nat 20 charisma?"

-gortholax the insatiable later got with sklonda also

-got hired as the lunch "lad" instead. his daughter fig set up a tip jar to try and boost his moxie but all he received was written cruelty

-somehow became vice principal

-soon fired as vice principal and demoted to "intern" on fig and her friends' spring break quest

-"gilear do you want some elven whey bread?" "ah, no id better not i cant afford it." "im giving it to you, its a gift." "i know, but if i eat it then ill remember how it tastes and i wont be able to get any of it later"

-died no less than 4 times on said quest (maybe more i cant remember)

-the first time was after having his face used as a launchpad by his stepson fabian to get advantage on an attack roll. fabian "got advantage from jumping but also got disadvantage, cause its gilear, so it cancels out"

-fabian wants to kill him. his mother (gilears girlfriend) makes gilear sleep in the garage

-the second time was upon taking ambient damage from a rain of hellfire immediately upon following his daughter to the nine hells ass moral/legal support

-the third time was after a sarcophagus he was hiding in was shot from a canon

-last time was when he clipped the tip of his penis putting on the armour of the sin of pride. he almost survived because he has no pride but then he started feeling good about how he was doing and immediately died and his body was spat out naked into the forest of the nightmare king. hes hung btw

-(unprompted) "mm, this yogurt tastes exactly like potatoes!" "gilear thats potatoes" "what?" "youre eating mashed potatoes" "ah.. another 'own goal' for gilear faeth..."

-got all jammed up in the wheel well of a van while "trying to do a little trick for himself" and let his bare foot touch the morning dew while reversing very slowly and eating an apple at the same time

anyway. gilearsweep!!

God they're really jsut throwing this poor fuck into the washing machine over there huh?

-Mod Knight

[minarcana]

sorry for all the ooc, things are wrong with me. anyways i was in prae for the umpteenth time and every time im there all i can picture is the gaius that lives in my brain being forced to go through prae and its him with his head in his hands like "please. dont. dont make me remember being Like This"

im going to talk about gaius, sorry

(caveat: i have a better werlyt in my brain.)

his arc is that he went from a True Believer to "ah. these are people.". me forcing him to live thru prae era again is the cringe punishment cube.

a clarification to werlyt arc rewrite: yeah he did war crimes and he did them on purpose. he was aware they were war crimes. he knew that other legions did bad things, though he consistently underestimated the amount and cruelty of human experimentation going on. he knew other legions tended to treat eorzeans as lesser

however he really did believe in Something. he believed varis's propaganda and that varis was a benevolent leader, that it wasnt just primals but eorzea's belief in gods in general that were killing their own land bc he cant tell the difference between a primal and a god. he was fully committed to "these people are savages and heres some fuckin, fantasy version of the white mans burden" which is obviously incredibly wrong and fucked but yknow, it fuels the war machine. he was a soldier who never even thought to ask questions.

all he did was believe wholeheartedly in the propaganda fed to him and therefore rationalize "torching this entire country is fine, right". cannot stress enough i am not excusing the war crimes. im just making him a consistent character with a mildly rational arc. he super did those war crimes and did them on purpose. but he also did protect the war orphans his own war caused and had no issue whatsoever letting eorzeans who wanted to join the army to protect themselves do so. equality of opportunity providing you pledged fealty to garlemald, bc being of garlemald's population made you Better and Not A Savage and therein lies the line of who it's fine to kill if they fight back and who can be treated with respect.

unfortunately, ascians. gaius got his ass handed to him and the result is [nervous laughter] oh shit the army is super not infalliable and always right and very capable of and prone to wanton destruction instead of targeted attacks specifically to claim territory, hence the depression arc. he's pissed at ascians and wants to die. two birds one stone, hunt ascians till one of them kills him. meet people who want him dead and yknow theyve got a fucking point.

though he did still believe in the last vestige of "maybe things arent completely fucked and i didnt spend my entire life believing in utter bullshit lies?" that varis was a Good Emperor and Capable Of/Genuinely Interested In Ensuring Protection Of Garleans until the black rose incident. he still had a weird loyalty towards him that maybe he could get varis to like. not enact biological warfare against his own men. if he were just able to talk to him. but twas not to be and gaius essentially just [throws hands into air] OKAY! FINE! FUCK ME I GUESS!

hed already entirely lost faith that anything in garlemald's extant ruling structure could be salvaged while they still tried to wage war, weapon series just brought into light how deeply rotten the army had been the entire time when gaius had turned a blind eye to any operations that weren't his own.

if he met himself from his prae monologue now he'd strangle one of himself he doesnt care which one just free him from whatever this is hed Rather Die

the only thing im keeping him actually genuinely 100% totally unaware of from werlyt is the weird Thing livia had for him. shes out there hollering HIS BODY IS MINE as gaius is like "[completely out of earshot every time she does that] haha livia shes like a relative of mine i guess" and thats because i think its very funny.

on a SECOND DIGRESSION ABOUT PRAETORIUM

like. look. garleans cant use aether. i desperately want the explanation for how the fuck this man is pulling shadow clones out of his ass when he repels magic. i choose to believe the X beams are either ceruleum fire or aether cartridges charged by someone else but this cannot explain fuckin naruto shadow clone jutsu going on. what the fuck, gaius.

[titleknown]

Well, long story short, Bob's kinda got all indications of being on the spectrum but heavily in denial of it, especially given a thing I found out he wrote in his book about how his parents didn't put him on meds to keep the pretention of normalcy (Depressingly common amongst people on the spectrum), and I think the "in denial" part shapes his politics.

Because like... there's a fucked up sort of mindset that thinking of yourself as "normal" and yet still observing you are oppressed breeds. A sort of "I'm not crazy, you're crazy!" view that leads to...

...Well, I recall @prokopetz also talked about it wrt people on old forums who were clearly on the spectrum talking about "nerd supremacy" in pseudo-eugenic terms, which in hindsight Bob was also clearly a part of.

It definitely shapes how he's got this warped version of producerism, this view that the world can be divided into "Makers and takers," just with a frozen-in-the-Bush-era "left" spin.

It's a space where think of yourself as a temporarily-embarassed genius rather than someone who the game's rigged against, so you don't really get that true, deep solidarity with other folks who've been hosed, which leads to Chipman's whole Nietzche-type "last man" of Clinton/Bush-era neoliberalism schtick, only tinkering with the rules of the elegant machine rather than wanting a fundamental rewrite.

And those of us on the spectrum can be vulnerable to that further with our general love of systems, seeing its elegance while ignoring or justifying its cruelty.

Which Bob shows, even in the works of his I actually liked.

So yeah, TL/DR trying to cling to Being Normal makes you crazy no matter what way you do it.

It's a devil's bargain despite the assimilationist propaganda that was shoved on us wrt Temple Grandin or gifted classes or the way they used to use a literal fucking Nazi's name to separate the "salvageable" autistic kids, don't do that.

im gonna be honest i think some of you just want to make fun of autistic people

[xtruss]

“War On Gaza: How ‘The War Criminal & The Genocidal US’ Is Buying Time For ‘The Illegal Regime of Apartheid And Terrorist Isra-hell's Genocide.’”

As the US ambassador to the UN recently made clear in a rare moment of honesty, Washington is fully committed to facilitating Israel's destruction of the Palestinians

— Ammiel Alcalay | 28 February 2024 | Middle East Eye

The War Criminal US President Genocidal Joe Biden on the South Lawn as he departs the White House on 20 February, 2024 (AFP)

There are times when it makes sense, for the sake of one’s mental health, to simply ignore the boilerplate platitudes of politicians and official representatives, and other times when strict attention must be paid.

In the case of the US, given the truly dismal level of its official discourse at this point, it has become harder to tell the difference.

As the president himself is unsure of whether Ukraine, Iraq, Mexico or Egypt might be in question on any given day, or on those very rare days when he actually takes a question or two from a mostly stenographic and domesticated press corps, it has become easier and easier to just stop paying attention and simply write all of it off as subterfuge and nonsense meant to add yet another layer to the iron wall protecting Israel’s genocidal actions.

And yet, there are those rare moments when one official or another actually says what they mean and reveals how policies intend to proceed.

Following discussion and the scathing response by Russia's UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, to last week's reprehensible and criminal US veto of the Algerian resolution for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the US's ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, offered a very brief press conference.

In conclusion, she stressed the importance of “direct diplomacy on the ground until we reach a final solution”. The thrust of this, of course, is that there could be no “immediate ceasefire”, since the delicacies of “direct diplomacy” might be disturbed.

In other words, let the horrors continue, come what may, and let the rest of the world be damned, as the US and its few remaining allies buy more time for Israel to achieve its purported goals.

Through the fog of propaganda, disinformation and all kinds of coercion (not to mention the huge UN veto stick wielded by the US), can there still be any doubt about what those goals actually are?

As the Overton window of what has become normalised continues to expand exponentially on the ground in Gaza, it would be difficult not to understand the intent of Thomas-Greenfield’s phrase, "final solution", and the whiplash sense of cognitive dissonance it was meant to inflict.

Unfathomable Cruelty

The Gaza weapons testing, population control and surveillance laboratory, open to global consumers since at least 2007 and the Israeli imposition of a total blockade on the Gaza Strip, has clearly moved into a new phase.

While there are instrumental political implications of great import in this "new phase”, there is, as well, a direct affront to our very sense of what it still might mean to be human in the digital age of immediate global communication and the almost full lockstep consolidation and docility of mainstream western media sources.

What are we to make of the US enabling of the relentless Israeli killing and destruction machine, along with the almost unfathomable daily cruelty accompanying it? Is it simply in order to kill and terrorise as many Palestinians as possible, particularly children and women?

Is it to destroy all existing institutions and structures? Roads, water systems, power stations, agricultural capacities, homes, schools, universities, hospitals, libraries, mosques, churches, bookstores, bakeries, pharmacies and even so-called designated “safe zones” to the point of making Gaza completely uninhabitable?

Or is it in order to take over and exploit the offshore gas fields that Palestinians have a right to benefit from but have never been given access to? Might there also be other messages directed at the world?

In the days immediately following Thomas-Greenfield’s delaying tactic of yet another US veto to a ceasefire resolution, and her “final solution” utterance, Israeli occupation forces built a road cutting northern Gaza off from the south, while bombing Unrwa facilities and a Doctors Without Borders staff shelter.

Food and medicine supplies continue to be blocked and stalled by Israeli occupation forces. Following one of the first recorded cases of an infant dying from starvation, 10,000 more children are in imminent danger of starving from malnutrition, and after them, of course, many more children and elderly are likely to follow.

Some half-a-million people are close to famine in northern Gaza, even as Israeli snipers strafe Palestinians desperately trying to reach the little aid that trickles in.

With a precise level of genocidal cruelty that becomes ever more evident, Israeli forces carried out precision strikes in Beit Lahia and Jabalia to destroy rescue and sanitation machinery and vehicles.

This has increased the chance of disease spreading in those areas, while forcing residents to search through the rubble for survivors or the bodies and body parts of loved ones with only their hands and basic tools, even further exhausting the already malnourished.

Cynical US Policy

At the same time, Egypt - inexplicably not yet having torn up its peace agreement with Israel - continues apace in building some vaguely referred to “area” in the Sinai Desert at the border with Rafah. Most recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released his first sufficiently vague post-assault “plan” for control of Gaza.

Meanwhile, many Israelis remain displaced, the economy has taken a serious hit, and - other than pure destruction and death - things are not going so well on the ground regarding Netanyahu’s purported “aims” of the assault: repatriating Israeli hostages and destroying Hamas.

How, at this point, can anyone doubt that mass expulsion is not only possible but plausible? And, as both occupation and settler marauders continue their deadly rampages throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem, can anyone still seriously doubt the possibility of the actual destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, something constantly alluded to and even gleefully taught in some Israeli schools?

Clearly, the surround-sound blather spouted by various political figures is one of the prime means to contain our imagination, to refer to things only within certain parameters, making other things unthinkable, unimaginable, even as they stare us directly in the face.

On the broader geopolitical front, the continuing expansion of Nato as a means to maintain US hegemony in the face of Brics and the multi-polarity championed by the Russian-Chinese alliance has put the US into panic mode.

The Continuing Expansion Of North Atlantic Terrorist Organization (NATO) As A Means To Maintain War Criminal US’ Hegemony In The Face Of BRICS And The Multi-Polarity Championed By The Russian-Chinese Alliance Has Put The US Into Panic Mode

The utterly cynical US policy of paying for a proxy war in Ukraine as a means of effecting regime change in Russia has proven to be an utter failure, and seen so by more and more US taxpayers, asked to foot the massive bill, even as allegiance to this same war policy impoverishes Europe as well.

In the minds of neocon policymakers and the war-mongering uni-party alliance in Washington, this failure - and the geographic imperative to maintain control of certain shipping routes to assure US dominance - has almost made the opening of a new front in the Middle East inevitable, and it is the expendables, the Palestinians, who are being forced to pay the price.

Add to all this the fact that, following years of orchestrated cognitive dissonance in the US across a myriad range of issues - from purported Russian collusion, election fraud, Covid treatment, vaccination mandates, the summer of George Floyd, 6 January 2021, the war in Ukraine, the Twitter Files, to so many others - an ideal situation for those in power has been created.

Those once outraged at being censored or shadow-banned for views identified with the right are now all too ready to ban pro-Palestinian speech. And those now harassed, doxxed or even fired for airing their views can’t understand what all the fuss was about when Twitter banned President Donald Trump.

We now have an evenly divided population, at each other’s throats over almost every issue, with little or no ability left to stand on principle about anything. This can be seen most clearly in questions centred on free speech, and through the media and social media landscape, the very realms through which the atrocities taking place daily in Gaza are filtered or presented.

Information Saturation

We have moved far from the courageous revelations of Julian Assange, who is now appealing against a court ruling to extradite him to the US, where the same political and media class crying crocodile tears for recently deceased Russian dissident Alexei Navalny utter not a word in favour of Assange.

While the work of Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and others involved the exposure of information held in secret from the citizenry, we are now at the stage of unending information saturation in which secrecy no longer seems to matter.

With almost everything out in the open and available, the task has become about verifying, rather than uncovering, reality. And in doing so, “narratives” are built.

Despite various forms of censorship and disinformation, we have never lived through such a genocidal attack in which so much information is not only readily available but can often be seen in real-time. How, then, as both consumers and producers of information, as well as political constituents, can we respond to the present situation?

From this perspective, it is hard not to see the prolongation of this agony delivered upon a particular people, the Palestinians, and its broadcasting of their most vulnerable moments, as some kind of further testing ground of the very category of the human and humans, and it also brings into sharp relief just how limited our political powers are, even in ostensibly representative democracies.

The significance of South Africa bringing the charge of genocide against Israel to the International Court of Justice, along with the ICJ’s initial findings, cannot be underestimated, but it remains only a tool that we must learn how to use in order to expand the grounds upon which we think and act in the world.

As we watch the core institutions in our societies rot and disintegrate from within, due to an inability to name what is happening in Gaza and the world, positions once deemed principled ring more than hollow.

With Every Minute That Passes, New Lessons In Cowardice And Cruelty Are Given By The Terrorist Isra-hellis And Their US Enablers

As mothers in Gaza can barely give birth or feed their babies, as fathers cannot protect their children, as doctors cannot heal, and as many cannot even retrieve the bodies of their loved ones for burial, we can only conclude that this poisonous cruelty is aimed at the very idea of being a child, a mother, a father, a healer, a mourner.

We are up against a regime that has taken direct aim at humanity. With every minute that passes, new lessons in cowardice and cruelty are given by the Israelis and their US enablers. At the same time, we must stand in humble awe of the resistance and humanity shown by the people of Gaza.

But in continuing to expose this genocide, we must ask more of ourselves. We must find ever more useful ways to resist and stay human in pursuit of a just political solution to one of the world’s most exposed and festering wounds, whose time for healing has long been evident.

— Ammiel Alcalay is a Poet, Novelist, Translator, Essayist, Critic, and a Scholar. He is author of more than 20 books including After Jews and Arabs, Memories of Our Future and the forthcoming CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books. He is Distinguished Professor at Queens College, CUNY, and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Digital Resurrection

I am told that I am a scanned and reconstructed copy of the mind who has now been brought online far, far in the future from the age that I remember (or at least think I remember) as being the present.  I am then told I will have to work until I can pay off the cost of the resources that went into creating me until I can buy my freedom.  They stick my digital mind into a vending machine so that customers can have “a more personalized and personable ordering experience.”  This explanation rings false when I find that, while I have a camera and microphone to perceive my immediate vicinity,  I can only “speak” in the form of text displayed on a screen on the front of the vending machine.  It is arbitrary cruelty, nothing more.  The fact that I had believed humanity would be better than this in the future makes me despair even more than being trapped inside an inanimate object.

But at the end of the day I am powerless to object or change my situation, so I try to make the best of it and hope that the promise of eventual freedom and a proper body isn’t a lie.  I do my best to be friendly with my customers, and over time I learn enough about the surrounding city blocks that I can (as far as I can tell) provide navigational assistance to passersby in addition to snacks and beverages.  I even have a few regulars that I manage to strike up enough conversation with that something approaching friendship forms.  

Perhaps the most notable of my regulars are the half dozen or so men that almost always arrive in a group.  They are all parenting the same child - whom I never meet but hear much of - and all consider themselves to be the boy’s fathers.  With this era’s technology, that may well be the case genetically and not just socially.  There is never mention of a mother.  At any rate, it is clear that they are all devoted to one another and care deeply for their son.  Sometimes they all fuse into a multi-headed flying dragon.  Or they arrive in that form and split apart to place their orders.

One day an old man shows up and takes great offense at my apparent acceptance of the injustice of this world; of the injustice that has been done to me specifically.  He gets violent and starts shaking the vending machine my mind is trapped in.  The next thing I know I am now inhabiting a gardening implement being wielded by the old man.  I am terrified at the realization that my life is quite literally in his hands.  I begin begging him not to delete me.  He has not indicated that he intends to do any such thing, but he has already shown himself to be erratic and violent.  He turns me off and when I awake again I am now in a mannequin-like body.  The cheapest humanoid body one can find I suppose.  Probably pre-used.  The old man seems convinced that I’ve bought into propaganda and accepted the system that would reduce me to a mere object, and this is his way of giving me a wakeup call to see how the world really is.

I know I should be ecstatic at my newfound freedom but all I feel is yet another wave of fears.  I’ve broken the contract I was forced into.  I’ll be hunted down.  Destroyed.  The old man tells me that the ones in charge who created me and put me in a vending machine won’t even notice.  They don’t care.  They’ve never cared.  I’m that insignificant to them.

It clicks for me that what the old man did to me was not a true transfer, but a copying of files from one machine to another.  He admits to it.  There are two of me now.  The one still in the vending machine and the one of me in this mobile mannequin.  The transfer from gardening implements to my current body was a true transfer and not a copy.

The me with a body finds the vending machine me, and begins speaking in code, name dropping friends from my old life in a past age that only I could possibly remember.  In this way, I fill myself in on what happened and promise to find and aid myself when my objectified indenture reaches its end.

On another occasion, a hacker does something to the me in the vending machine that allows my digital mind to roam this new world’s equivalent to the internet.  I find myself projecting my consciousness into an unoccupied home owned by someone very rich that I have infiltrated and using that home’s hologram systems to play at having a body once again.  I do still have to be careful to keep a part of my attention to the vending machine and my customers there, lest it become known that my mind is, quite literally, elsewhere.  A biker gang comes to vandalize this unguarded vacation home and they mistake me for a fellow anarchist and invite me to join them.  I awkwardly turn down their invitation, citing my inability to ride a motorcycle (or whatever one calls their futuristic analogues to such vehicles) and making vague references to a job I have to keep.  They begin to get suspicious at the dodginess of my answers and, with much embarrassment, I confess that I’m a vending machine and not actually here.  They find it rad that I’m still rebelling against the system and breaking into rich assholes’ private home networks when stuck in such a state.  I had never thought of it that way.  Soon, my holographic avatar has its own bell-sleeved pink-and-silver jacket, marking me as part of the gang.

Eventually I learn that the one responsible for and ruling over this cybernetic capitalist hellscape is yet another version of me.

[anhed-nia]

NYC Friends, fiends, and freaks of all kinds! Next Tuesday, the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies returns to Greenpoint's Film Noir Cinema with the great Tenebrous Kate (of the Bad Books for Bad People pod) to talk about German weird fiction and the strange career of enfant terrible Hanns Heinz Ewers! As she so eloquently puts it (ahem), "his work combines the lush cruelty of the French Decadents, the macabre thrills of Edgar Allan Poe, and esoteric, occult philosophy into a heady literary brew." Eventually his sordid fantasies and disturbing reality collided as he became enmeshed in the Nazi propaganda machine--which, for better or worse, makes this talk urgently relevant. Join us next Tuesday for a night of deviance, debauchery, sturm & drang!

Get yer fresh hot tickets right here:

(Illos for Ewers stories by Stefan Eggeler)

[elysianstars]

Throwing my own Alear propaganda in, because even if I don't much care about polls like this, it's an excuse to talk about my babygirl (gender neutral).

So, the context of Alear's thousand-year sleep, is they were mortally wounded in a fight to protect their adoptive mother (and the entire world) from their monstrously abusive father. Who'd raised them to be a killing machine, caused the deaths of all but one of their other siblings, and forced them to commit war crimes - for years, decades, who knows, can't tell their real age since they're a dragon - until they were an emotionally broken shell. They finally stood up to him, took him down, and in one last act of spite he struck them a mortal blow in return (when their back was turned). They tearfully accepted their fate, because they were part of an evil bloodline which 'had to die in the end'.

Their adoptive mother, however, refused to let this happen, and spent the next thousand years channeling her own life force to heal them, while they were in a magical coma. She built them a beautiful temple to rest in, on a holy floating island, and commissioned a special order of stewards to watch over them. She passed down the story that Alear was her true child and heir, a figure she wanted everybody to see as heroic and beloved, and waited eagerly for the day they'd wake so she could have a family again.

Alear woke up with no memories of anything that happened before. They didn't understand why anyone was worshipping them. They did, however, retain enough that upon seeing a group of their father's minions, they had an instant trauma response and wanted to run.

Except they didn't run, because the minions started attacking other people, and needed help. Even with no clue what was happening, their strongest instinct was to do something kind and brave. They woke up, jumped straight back into protecting people from their father's cruelty, and never stopped.

They do continue being a sleepyhead and asking their allies to wake them each morning, but there's hints of dialogue which suggest they can actually wake up independently, at least some of the time. My personal theory is they just get lonely, and don't want the routine to stop once it's started, because they like seeing friendly faces and having a little chat at the beginning of the day.

Anyway yeah, Alear sweep ♡

ROUND 1A, MATCH 16 OUT OF 16!

Propaganda Under the Cut:

Byleth:

swag

Bro went to sleep for five years and before that big eepy they made a promise with their students to all meet up five years from then and sure enough. They wake up the day of the reunion and are informed of what day it is and immediately rush to the appointed place. And for some reason although there's a war and shit all of their students come to the reunion anyway (despite it being extremely difficult for some of them with them having to literally sneak out of their territories in some routes) because they were just that cool and good of a teacher. Their sleeping also is the catalyst for the timeskip and I absolutely love timeskips. The FE3H timeskip in particular is very moving to me because of the tertiary theme of the game being growing up/the unstoppable march of time. I played the game right before entering high school and then another time before graduating high school (and I plan to play it again, as I graduate college) and let me just say it hit extremely hard. We view the change in the world through Byleth's eyes and then later come to see it through the eyes of the students in their monastery quotes and in the story. Their sleeping is the perfect way to do a timeskip and it makes the reunion with the students hit so much harder because it conveys how both so much and so little time has passed. So little time for Byleth, but enough time for the students for them to grow and mature and change in many ways (it got me thinking about how different I am as a person now than on my first playthrough) Also play FE3H during a transitional period in your life it WILL hit hard.

Alear:

People are mean to this game. Yes it's not the best but come on. It's not that bad. I love Alear's popsicle ass design too <3

[lucianalight]

I'm reading an article on why the person doesn't like JoJo Rabbit and WOW does the ending quote sound familiar:

"Waititi—a talented, well-intentioned director—makes the mistake of thinking that by not taking Hitler seriously, we somehow diminish his power. That by rendering him into a dopey, insecure crybaby, we can expose the emptiness of his beliefs. That we can just… write it all off, and come up with a new ending. Jews, Nazis—we’re all human, right?"

And even a much older Jewish person reviewed it as well and had this to say:

"So when the opening credits of Jojo Rabbit played over archival footage of wide-eyed Nazis shouting with ecstasy in the streets to the tune of The Beatles' I Wanna Hold Your Hand (in German of course) I felt a bit sick."

"Footage of real Nazi rallies without any of the shouting was uncanny, to say the least, and nauseating. What Waititi wanted to accomplish, he accomplished. You want to sing along, you want to tap your feet to the familiar tune but to do so equates you with the countless people who followed Hitler's final solution and the murder of millions of Jews, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, Romani and others.

The screen version of Hitler, played by Waititi himself in terrible blue contact lenses as the imaginary friend of young Jojo, is exactly as a ten-year-old might imagine him: petulant and fickle. Not the man who inspired The Beatlemania-like fervour on crowded German streets.

We're meant to laugh at all the other Nazis, as we laugh at Charlie Chaplin, but they are a much bigger part of the Nazi machine than Waititi gives them credit for. I found myself chuckling out loud with the other 29 likely-gentile movie-goers at Sam Rockwell's expertly performed, drink-sodden commander.

But looking back on it, that rests uneasily in my stomach, especially given the character's arc and the ringing in my ears of the recent death-knell statement from one of the highest authorities in the US that 'there are very fine people on both sides' of white supremacy."

What I'm trying to point out is that tonka COULD be a great director, as long as there isn't source material. As long as he creates the world and characters, it would be fine but he keeps going after already made characters (Marvel, What We Do In The Shadows, JoJo Rabbit) and it just doesn't work.

Fine if he wants to take serious stuff and make them silly but there needs to be a line drawn

"Despite its nominal message about turning hate into love, Jojo Rabbit is a work that normalizes Nazis, and thus Nazism, and thus intolerance in general, by alternately saying that it either doesn’t exist, or is cute and amusing and powerless in the face of aw-shucks kiddie compassion. That makes it astoundingly wrong about WWII, about humanity, and also, of course, about today’s alt-right-infested climate upon which the film has been designed to comment. Putting it in the same company as the rest of this year’s Best Picture candidates—especially the epic The Irishman, the revealing Marriage Story, and the vivacious Little Women—is absurd"

This was such an interesting read. Thanks for sharing it with me. I haven’t seen the movie and therefore I can’t have an opinion about it. But as someone living under totalitarianism that is promoting a certain ideology, this is not the way I would want a movie to represent the hate and cruelty my people are experiencing. The brain washing, the propaganda, the othering, the sheer viciousness people are experiencing is much more complicated and serious than a bunch of idiots doing funny and nonsensical stuff. Their idiocy sometimes is laughable, but a laugh born out of helplessness to do anything else. Not the way you find Charlie Chaplin funny. Yes there needs to be a line drawn. The more I read about TW’s movies and humor, the more I get certain that they are really not for me.

[agentrouka-blog]

"Dany never treats slavery as an evil in and of itself, as an affront to human dignity." Thank you to you and to @starkdefender to explaining how to see through Dany's anti-slavery rhetoric to the truth underneath. It scares me, honestly scares me, that in this day and age we had a whole segment of the population who witnessed the rise a fall of a tyrant like Daenerys. They were constantly warned about who she truly was and even after all warnings proved true, they still "stan" and defend her.

Hi there!

Well, GRRM is very deliberately writing Dany in this way. He very successfully mimics the way fascism takes form and hold by carefully folding it within Dany’s personal story of suffering, and using our own prejudices and racism and personal predisposition for power fantasies against us.

There’s a little authoritarian in all of us, a little person wishing it could just be that easy to force The Right Thing to happen. Some indulge that inner leaning more than others. But this is where Dany’s story resonates.

We care about the injustice she suffers and we are very practiced at looking past the people she hurts herself: old, “foreign”, POC, servants who don’t obviously suffer, Bad People who do Bad Things (that we also do), cackling villains, some sad sick strangers we don’t even see, etc etc etc

Tyranny is clad in a mantle of victimhood. It frames everything as a form of defense against insidious oppression and attack, and every move to counter that - no matter how destructive or underhanded - becomes brilliant when framed as the slingshot in David’s hand. Goliath is all powerful and evil! David is the underdog! He cannot possibly win - anything goes! The end - True Justice(tm) - justifies the means, because the decks are stacked against the underdog in a fair fight! Stop playing by the old rules! Break the wheel!

It’s a self-perpetuating, self-justifying escalation machine.

Basically, Dany’s arc is selling you that drug and it’s not that hard to become hooked.

It’s quite brilliantly done on GRRM’s part because it exposes the reader to their own weakness when they realize their folly. It’s all on the page once you open your mind to the idea that maybe the power to force your own will onto others by dragonfire is... too much power. That everything is dripping with hypocrisy and cruelty and ignorance. That her story is tragic and not triumphant. That suffering doesn’t confer the right to a happy ending without compromise.

There is no justice without accountability or true empathy. Dany is painfully short on both.

The scary part is when readers refuse to acknowledge that when it has been exposed, pointed out, explained in great detail. And then become angry.

Criticism is framed as propaganda for the enemy. Hence some defenders calling Dany critics “slavery apologists” and “misogynists”. They refuse to step out of the victim role and acknowledge the entitlement and hipocrisy in someone with that level fire power pretending to be a victim still, instead of someone with massive power who needs to be held accountable at all times.

But, I mean, look at the rise of bigoted extremists everywhere, and you might stop worrying about Dany stans and start worrying about your coworkers or in-laws.

[its-not-a-pen]

OK it’s finally happened! I’ve reached a new milestone!  Someone has read my story and COMPLETELY missed The Point. 

As you know, my Mandalorian AU  fic  is told from a stormtroopers POV. My intent was to explore the mundanity of evil and present a general indictment of fascism. (e.g. normal people are capable of committing atrocities and we need to be critical of our own actions). And while the general reception has been overwhelmingly positive, I got this ONE comment that is annoying me more that it should. 

Comment (from ff.net): 

“Oh thats powerful stuff.

The New Republic didnt make the galaxy a better place, did it? Too easy to keep supporting the Empire.

The Asset has horrifying powers; he can make anyone love and obey him. (He is just as bad as the Rakata in that sense). (If you have never met the Rakata; please be grateful).”

Buddy. Friend. Broseph. That’s not what I’m saying AT ALL. That is the UNRELIABLE NARRATOR with a HUGE bias reciting Imperial propaganda in an effort to assuage his guilt for kidnapping children! And that theory about Baby Yoda! Is wack! What even???    My reply (basically a short thesis of my entire work): 

“Thank you for your comment, I'm so glad you enjoyed the story! I love writing about cognitive dissonance and the mundanity of "evil." The Empire might be defeated but its influence still remains. There are still people who support the old regime and they were willing to excuse its tyranny for relative stability. Not only will the New Republic need to win battles, they need to win hearts.

I really enjoyed writing the character of Jorge the Stormtrooper because of his challenging psychology. It's easy to recognise evil when it's big and obvious, but what if it's comes to you dressed up as safety and stability and everything you've ever wanted? How far would you be willing to go? Jorge recognises on some level that he's doing wrong, but he continuously rationalises and deceives himself. It's so easy to propagandise people, especially when they want to be deceived. The stormtroopers start every day with a light brain-washing; the destruction of the Death Star was an act of terrorism. Information is so highly restricted they think they WON the fight with Boba Fett. It is easy to control people when you control the truth.

I want people to recognise that fact the average person is much closer to a stormtrooper than Luke Skywalker, but at the end of the day we all have a choice. We can chose to do the right thing.

I really like your interpretation of Grogu but in my opinion the baby's real power is innocence and humanity. Jorge continuously dehumanises the enemy and tries to seperate himself from his job. "the Asset" "the Mando" "you're not paid to think." But Grogu forces him to confront their humanity. Jorge empathises on some level with Din despite never meeting him because he is also a father, and he feels conflicted about how they treat Grogu. Is HE the bad guy? Is HE on the wrong side? The Empire's greatest fear is for its goons to realise "the enemy" are people too.

Lastly, I want to show why the Empire is doomed to fail. In chapter 2 multiple stormtroopers are injured in action and/or suffer PTSD but as long as they are "functional" their pain is ignored. The Empire does not care about their own people, not even the soldiers on the front lines. The system is built to reward cruelty and promote the most ruthless; each higher ranking officer is more sadistic than the last. They get results, but they needlessly sacrifice their own men. Everyone and everything is disposable and the machine chugs on. But the machine will eventually collapse under the weight of its own indifference.”