#and since trump is comfortable in his victory he's showing just how much of a scumbag he really is

[pinkautist]

it has been proven that trump thoroughly cheated. let's see what they do about that

[fulcrumstardust]

non-zero-sum game sounds really interesting and quite fitting. I'm also curious of learning the game. I feel like it's another college AU but maybe I'm totally wrong!

So, “non-zero-sum game” is my take on the sex pollen trope. 

I don’t have much except some vague idea of the things I *don’t* want it to be (because, you know, consent) but it’s more likely to be Jyn getting under the influence during a mission, either forced or by accident. And then having to deal with the situation under the care of Cassian (who is a pragmatic dude and treats it as any other work thing), hoping it won’t be worse than a bad hangover. Spoiler alert: it is. So they agree that the best thing to do is for her to get laid and Jyn decides to pay a nice lady for that, but it doesn’t go exactly as planned. Enters more comfort from Cassian, always here to have his partner’s back, and well. He helps. 👀 “learning the game” is indeed a college AU! I’m impressed, wow! It’s just a PWP fun little party idea, I’m considering merging it with another fic, but there’s this scene I really like where Cassian teaches Jyn to play brisca. 

He turned his head and looked in her direction (looked at her) and smiled. Jyn’s heart nearly stopped. How handsome he was… dark hair, dark eyes, such a sweet smile—not unknowing of her presence. He lowered his face, reflexively, almost shyly. Not quite so. Jyn took her cue, pushing herself from the wall to cross the room before she could change her mind, blood pounding in her ears.

She stopped next to the couch he was sat on, doing her best to brush her nervousness aside, and bravely said: “Hi.”

He smiled at her again, tilting his head up to meet her eyes. “Hi.” …Damn, his voice was as attractive as the rest of him. Maybe even more.

“What are you playing?” Jyn managed to ask.

“Brisca,” he said, showing her his hand of cards—not the typical French suits she expected—but batons, swords, and other symbols in deep shades of red and green.

“I've never heard of it.”

“I can teach you if you want,” he offered with another smile. “It's very easy to play.”

She would have been stupid to pass on such an opportunity. “Sure.”

He moved aside, making some space for her to sit on the couch. Jyn sunk next to him, trying to ignore the curious stares from his friends, her leg pressed again his own with a pleasant warmth. Her breath caught in her throat when her eyes went up to his face, now so close, seeing the corners of his mouth curving up with a friendly expression.

“I’m Cassian,” he introduced himself.

Even his name sounded way more attractive than anything she had ever heard. Come on, pull yourself together, girl.

“Jyn.”

“Jyn,” he said, and no one had ever said her name like he did. “So, like I said: very easy. The goal is to have the highest score at the end. See the card on the table? It’s copas… cups, so that’s the trumps for this game.” Jyn nodded as she followed the explanation. “It’s Melshi’s turn to go first…” And surely enough, the guy on his left put down one of his cards: six of swords. “Since it’s not copas, the player will the highest trump will win the trick—if not, the highest espadas. You follow me?”

“Yes,” Jyn said, frowning in concentration.

It was Cassian’s turn next. He bent forward and put down the two of cups, then drew another card to replace it in his hand. 

Turning his face to her, he continued his explanation while the others played: “All cards have face value, except the Three is stronger than the King.” Jyn naturally leaned toward him, as to see his cards, a little behind his shoulder. “Okay, so Shara has played four of copas so she wins this trick.”

On the other side of the coffee table, the girl named ‘Shara’ gathered the cards with a little smile of victory and everyone drew another set of cards. This time, Cassian went first while Jyn tried to get more familiar with the different suits. Additionally, seating so close to him, she found herself registering the smell of his perfume like a particularly… enticing detail of his person. 

She even surprised herself in feeling so strangely comfortable in that closeness, despite knowing next to nothing about him.

Cassian won the round. “Want to go next?” he then asked, handing his cards to her.

“Oh, sure,” Jyn said with only half her confidence.

“I’ll help you.”

“Isn’t that cheating?” someone joked. Jyn tried to trace back the voice to its owner. Sitting on the carpet next to Shara, another guy wearing dog tags over his t-shirt (that she thought lived here) flashed a mocking smile to Cassian. He didn't respond and the question got lost between some laughs and the ambient music.

Jyn waited for her turn on the next round, trying to remember everything Cassian had just said. She showed him the card she thought made the most strategic sense and searched for his approbation: “This?”

Leaning back on his arm, Cassian nodded at her. His right hand rested right behind her on the couch and she could've easily invited herself into a hug. A little agitation burst into her chest at the idea, but she needed to make sure he was into her… and not just an actually friendly guy.

Jyn won a few tricks (still under Cassian's supervision) but ultimately finished last after everyone had counted their points. She didn't really care, more intrigued by the guy sitting next to her than anything else tonight. 

Cassian had reared back on the couch, keeping his arm loosely extended. When Jyn did the same, she placed herself into his embrace almost by accident. Very smooth. Anyone else pulling this move on her and she might have been irritated, but it worked like a charm with him—most likely because she wanted it to. Her heartbeat certainly seemed to agree. 

Jyn fell against his side, thrilled by the possibility of seduction, and his arm curled a little around her waist. Not in a restrictive way, but enough for her to notice that he was holding her against him.

“Are you a fraternity member?” Jyn asked, turning her face to him.

“No,” he said, looking back into her eyes. “I just like to crash their parties…  but I've never seen you here before.”

“Maybe you don't remember,” she nagged.

“Oh, I would remember you.” He smiled again, more with his eyes than his mouth, and Jyn felt a blush on her cheeks. Hopefully, he couldn’t tell. 

Wondering what to do with her hands, Jyn settled one on his stomach. Even through his t-shirt, the warmth of his body spread to her palm, feeling him breathing quietly under her touch. Once again, her attention lingered on his musky perfume and she barely reminded her brain to follow on the conversation.

“I'm more of a dorm party kind of girl,” she said, “but Bodhi asked me to come so I thought I’d make an exception.”

“You're friend with Bodhi?” he asked with a slight surprise.

“Yeah, we’re in the same course.”

“Oh.” Cassian’s expression faltered, making Jyn frown in reaction. “So… you’re a freshman.”

Shit. She looked at him more closely, trying to evaluate the situation. Evidently enough, he wasn’t enthusiastic about it. Jyn could’ve lied about her age, but she couldn’t justify such a shitty move. She took a deep breath and said: “Yeah, that’s a problem?”

Cassian gave her a half-smile, apologetic. “Depends… It might be.”

“Might?”

“I’m twenty-four,” he said, “so… I think I’m a little old for you…”

Jyn’s (fuzzy) brain couldn’t decide which information to prioritize. One thing was for sure: she could always trust her daddy issues to being attracted to older guys. On the other hand, Tanith had said ‘no freshman’ so, hey. Her mind shrugged. “I can decide by myself if you’re too old or not.” …God, if this isn’t what a fourteen-year-old would say.

Jyn started to think that her chances to go beyond an innocent flirt had just died—and she wasn’t happy about it.

“Hmm,” Cassian voiced, “I guess we’re just talking right now.”

She wondered if he was asking her or himself. “Sure.”

If ‘just talking’ included being snuggled against him with his hand on her waist, she could live with that just fine.

[duhragonball]

Cult Classic

I had a really exhausting week, so I’m going to try to chill out by writing this thing about cults that’s been bouncing around in my head since... oh, like January 6th?   For some reason?     But it’s also about my insanely long OC fanfic slash vanity project slash concept album.  Join me, won’t you?

Okay, so back in... geez 2018?   Has it been that long?   Around October 2018 I started working out the details for the big climax of the “1000 years ago” section of my fanfic.  From the start I had this idea that the Legendary Super Saiyan would be locked into a death struggle with pretty much the entire Saiyan population, led by a Saiyan King who just can’t handle being upstaged.   But I had to figure out a lot of details to make that actually work.   What I finally ended up with was the Jindan Cult. 

Why a cult?  Because I wanted my King character to be the main villain, but also be physically weaker, but also he needed to be powerful enough to challenge the heroine. I came up with all these different ways to beef up his power level without making him a Super Saiyan himself, but ultimately I wanted him to have an army of Siayans at his back.   That led me to consider some sort of magic elixir that would make them all stronger, but especially the king, since he’s ultimately in this for himself.  At first, I considered having him mind-control all of his goons, but I spent the mind control nickel in earlier arcs, and I’ll have to use it again later, because Towa and Demigra use it.   Then I thought of drug addiction, which is sort of like mind control but not literal brainwashing or anything like that.  And that led me to the cult concept.  

One major inspiration for me was the real-life cult called “NXIVM”, which made the news back in 2018 when their leaders started getting arrested, including “Smallville” star Allison Mack.   Every time I read about it, it felt like something from a movie, but it was real.   I guess the celebrity angle made it more bizarre to me, because it’s sort of like “Hey, this isn’t just some group of randos; someone you’ve heard of is in this thing.”   Not that I ever paid much attention to “Smallville”, but you get the idea.  She didn’t just join NXIVM, she eventually became one of the top recruiters.   Some of the character arcs in my fic were my own attempt to understand how a person goes from Point A to Point B. 

The big plot hole, though, in my mind, was that I came up with this whole master plan for the bad guys, but it involved sending wave after wave of Saiyan cultists to die in pointless, unwinnable battles against Luffa.    I couldn’t have them win much, because if they beat her, they’d just kill her, and the story would be over.    It struck me as fishy that these Saiyans would sign up for a war where the casualty rate is 100%, but I tried to lampshade it as best I could.   “Yeah, all those other chumps couldn’t beat Luffa, but I’ll pull it off because I’m special!”   It still seemed a bit unlikely.  

But then 2020 happened, and I guess the main thing I learned from that year was that people will accept almost anything in order to believe a comfortable lie.  The joke I’ve seen on the internet is that we need to retire the expression “avoid it like the plague”, because it turns out a lot of people don’t actually avoid plagues very well at all.   The horrifying thing about COVID-19 is how easily people will accept the climbing death tolls.   “Oh, well this person was already in bad health, so they would have died eventually anyway.”   I don’t want to get too political here, but I’m pretty sure a lot of the anti-mask, coronavirus-is-a-hoax crowd are the same people who made up tall tales about “death panels” in Obamacare.    “They’re gonna euthanize your grandma!” they would say, but now they say your grandma is acceptable losses if it means reopening bars and restaurants.

Actually, I do mean to get political, because holy fuck, Qanon stormed the Capitol Building.    Look, if you don’t believe Joe Biden won the election, I don’t know what to tell you, except please get far away from me, right now.  If you’re not familiar with Qanon, a few years ago some guy on an image board posted a bunch of cryptic messages and claimed to be an important government figure who would know about important things.    People started “deciphering” his “clues” and when he stopped posting new ones they started inventing their own “clues” and interpreting them any way that suited them.    This led to an overarching narrative that Donald Trump was actually part of this massive sting operation to arrest hundreds, maybe thousands of left-wing politicians, celebrities, and whoever else.    Any day now, he was supposed to have Hilary Clinton arrested, and also JFK Junior would somehow show up and help him, even though he’s been dead for 22 years.  Every day, these Qanon guys would add on more bizarre lore to their “theories”, and every day none of their predictions would come true.  Then Trump lost the election, which put them in a bind, because their whole mythology is based on the idea of him saving the world as POTUS, and now he wasn’t even going to be POTUS for much longer.  

I’m pretty sure this had a lot to do with the lies about election fraud.    Trump himself refused to accept defeat, and his supporters didn’t want to accept it either, so they all told each other that it wasn’t real, and they believed each other so much that they dug in their heels.   But then they’d take this stuff to court and the judge would be like “Uh, what evidence do you have of mass voter fraud?” and they would just be like “lol nvm!”  I mean, if there was proof for any of this, why would they not want a judge to see it?   But for Qanon, it was more than just being sore losers.    They needed all their whackamaroo predictions to come true, and Trump losing re-election would upset the applecart.  

So then they started telling themselves that they could win this thing through the boring certification process.   I think it was like, December 14 when all the states had to certify their results.   So they held out hope that nothing was over until then.    Then they pinned their hopes on the Electoral College, and that there would be enough faithless electors to hand Trump the victory, in spite of the voters.   I found this one amusing, since I used to see tumblr suggesting the same thing back in 2016, when they were still trying to come up with ways for Bernie Sanders to win.  

Then they decided Mike Pence could fix everything, because on Jan 6, Congress would officially count the Electoral Votes and formally declare the winner, and Mike Pence would step in and overrule the whole thing, because the Vice-President oversees that process.    Except he just oversees it, he can’t legally change the outcome, especially on a whim.    And then the riot at the Capitol happened, and I’m pretty sure all these Qanon types thought it would mark the beginning of a nationwide uprising, with all seventy-odd million Trump voters going apeshit, but it... didn’t work out that way.  

Then they convinced themselves that everything was building to January 20, because the innauguration was actually a clever trap, and once Joe Biden took the oath of office, he could then be arrested for treason, so you see, they had to make it look like Trump lost the election, because it was the only way to fool Joe Biden into incriminating himself... or... something.   But Jan 20 came and went, so the latest fallback position I heard was that there’s a double-secret REAL inauguration day, and it’s in March, and the January 20 one isn’t legitimate, even though Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2016, but whatever.    That, or the guy we see in the White House now is actually Trump disguised as Joe Biden, or a Joe Biden android or something.   

I think I sort of understood that Qanon is a cult, but I didn’t really put the pieces together until the events of January unfolded.    Pre-November, it just seemed like a conspiracy theory, without any real timetables or prophecies, like Flat Earth.    But once the end of the Trump Administration was in sight, it really started to look like all the doomsday cults I’ve heard about over the years.  The predicted events wind up failing to come true, and they invent new predictions to explain away the old ones.   It’s not about the veracity of the claims as much as the claims themselves.    People want to believe there’s this whole elaborate explanation for everything.    They wanted to believe that Trump was this hypercompetent superheroic messiah, because the alternative is to face the uncertain reality: that he had no idea what he was doing, and real people were going to suffer for it.  

I think I sort of worked that idea into my fictional cult, but I backed into it.   NXIVM was a sex cult, not a doomsday cult, or an elaborate conspiracy theory, so I was mostly fixated on all the depraved things the cult could do to its members.   But they all share the same lure: a belief system that promises to make everything fit. I’m not sure what the hook was for NXIVM, but Allison Mack didn’t go in thinking about how much fun sex trafficking would be.   That came later, after she was convinced that NXIVM had all the answers, and one of those answers involved sex crimes, apparently.   In the same vein, Qanon attempted to explain mass arrests and executions by claiming that Hilary Clinton eats babies or something.   “Well, I don’t want babies to get eaten, so I guess breaking into the Capitol building seems like a reasonable course of action.”  

Weighed against real life, a bunch of Saiyans accepting a 100% casualty rate doesn’t seem so outrageous.   It also helps that sometimes the leaders of these groups can buy into their own hype, and think they’re infallible when they’re really not.    This week, I started reading the Darth Plagueis novel again, and I’ve seen the Sith from Star Wars referred to as a cult, but I never gave it a lot of thought until I noticed that Plagueis buys into the whole Dark Side of the Force thing a little too hard.   At times, he’ll wax philosophical about how the Jedi are the real bad guys when you think about it, and he’s not just saying that to be manipulative.   He honestly believes that the Sith can save the galaxy from decline, which is stupid and hypocritical, because they’re the ones causing all the decline.    I always got the impression that Darth Sidious understood that it was all about accumulating power as an end unto itself, and any high-minded talk of necessary evil was just to keep the rubes in line.    Rise of Skywalker plays into that idea nicely.   He somehow survived Episode VI, but he let the Empire collapse, because if he can’t rule it, he doesn’t want it to exist at all.   But he’s still playing himself, because he thinks he can win by following the same failed ideology that got all the previous Sith Lords killed.   

That’s pretty much all I have to say about it right now.    I need to move on to other topics, because Towa’s not doing a cult thing, so my fic is moving in a different direction.   But I feel better for getting this out of my head.

[quakerjoe]

It is important to remember that, because, as New York’s Sarah Jones writes: “Tara Reade is difficult to dismiss.”

Since she publicly accused her former boss, Joe Biden, of sexual assault, multiple outlets reported corroborative evidence that supports her account. She says she told her brother; The New York Times and The Washington Post confirmed that she did. She says she told an anonymous friend; reporters confirmed that too. She told the Intercept that her mother, distraught over her treatment in Biden’s office, called into Larry King Live to ask for advice around the time of the attack, and the clip emerged. On Monday, Business Insider reported the most significant piece of circumstantial evidence to date: A former neighbor and a former co-worker of Reade’s both told the outlet that Reade disclosed a traumatic event to them in the mid-’90s.

The news cycle moves at a breakneck pace in the Trump era, and time passes oddly in lockdown, but Joe Biden’s coronation and the third-party support for Tara Reade’s assault allegation (which Biden denies) are both very recent developments. Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, and Amy Klobuchar all endorsed Biden at the beginning of March; Reade’s interview with Katie Halper, containing her new, more serious accusations, came at the end of that month; The Intercept and Business Insider partially corroborated her story over the last week.

It is, as I mentioned, now the start of May. Thus far, the Biden campaign and Democratic Party organizations have, for the most part, dismissed the story. As The New York Times reports, “progressive activists and women’s rights advocates” have spent weeks urging the Biden campaign to “address the allegation” more thoroughly. They drafted a letter pushing him “to model how to take serious allegations seriously.”

Biden simply chose not to. The groups sat on the letter.

As the Times puts it, Biden’s aides have said they “remained unconcerned about any significant political blowback from Ms. Reade’s accusation.” They are “confident that the allegation will not shake voters’ perceptions of Mr. Biden’s character,” and they “believe that voters will view the allegation with great skepticism.”

All of that could be true. It is also answering a different question than the one those activists and organizations thought they were posing. They, ostensibly, should not be worried about whether Biden can win with a strategy of waiting for these allegations to go away on their own. But that is all the Biden campaign can offer them. (So far. Biden is scheduled to appear on Morning Joe today, and he is expected to answer some sort of question about Reade’s allegations.)

What his campaign is trying to imply is that Biden’s nomination is inevitable, instilling resignation in those who feel queasy about the allegations but who desperately want to beat Donald Trump in November. They want people who might, under normal circumstances, push a politician facing an accusation like this one to open up the Senate records that could shed light on the veracity of these claims to instead come up with reasons why Biden should keep them closed. (Biden has reportedly sent operatives to look through the records.) It is hard to ask the Biden campaign to “model how to take serious allegations seriously” when it seems more interested in following the old model—of having your fiercest partisans defend you in the press with blithe hypocrisy.

But instead of throwing up your arms at being forced to choose between either defending Biden or simply holding your nose and voting for a man you now suspect may have done something terrible, remember—it is only May 1.

Biden is the presumptive nominee in large part because the party leadership coalesced around him, signaling clearly to voters that he was the right man. The most respected and admired figures in the party could now coalesce around another path: Biden bowing out and the presidential contest continuing.

The 2020 Democratic primaries were notable for featuring a huge slate of candidates who were all broadly acceptable to the rank and file. The majority of Democratic voters regularly told pollsters they had favorable opinions of all of Biden’s closest competitors for the nomination. The candidates who couldn’t crack 50 percent were, for the most part, not unacceptable to Democrats but mainly unknown. Loyal Democrats paying the closest attention to the race bemoaned the early exits of numerous perfectly qualified candidates.

Guess what? They can return, if they want to.

The right circled the wagons around Brett Kavanaugh when he faced allegations of sexual assault that were hard to disprove, in large part because he was replaceable. To stick with him was an important display of power and dominance; to withdraw his name and advance an ideologically identical replacement would have made no difference to the right’s larger political project, but it would have been a demoralizing surrender to the forces they hate. There are now some on the Democratic side who feel even more tightly attached to nominee Biden because they, too, are determined not to surrender to the forces they hate, citing Bernie Sanders or Vladimir Putin or both.

But (among the commentariat, at least), there are more left-of-center voices responding with hopelessness or helplessness. I can’t believe male politicians, and the political establishment, are making me do this again threatens to become a common refrain. That reaction would be understandable if the bulk of the corroborating evidence had emerged in October (there is suggestive evidence that right-wing groups had had the Larry King Show tape filed away for just such time; suspiciously, they had it ready to post almost as soon as The Intercept published its story). But it is not October. It is May. Joe Biden is not the nominee. The primaries are still happening. It is within your power to demand an alternative.

The organizations that wasted weeks drafting a letter urging the Biden campaign to come up with an acceptable response to all this could now draft one instead urging Biden to step aside and let the primaries continue. Barack Obama could gently suggest that Biden do what he knows is right. Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, and Amy Klobuchar could unsuspend their campaigns. Or some of them could choose, just as they chose to throw their support to Biden, to endorse a well-qualified also-ran they believe deserves another shot, such as Jay Inslee or Julián Castro. And then the Democratic voters could decide. That’s how the system is supposed to work: 

Neither the Constitution nor the bylaws of the Democratic National Committee require that the guy leading the delegate count on May 1 win the nomination.

If Biden left now, on his own terms, perhaps with some polite fiction about his health or stamina, the rest of the primaries could play out as designed, in a civil, well-managed continuation of the contests, and the eventual Democratic nominee could emerge without being seriously wounded.

Based on how the Biden campaign has responded to the allegations so far, and on what they have asked the most principled and loyal Democratic partisans to do, or even to think, a Biden victory in November could be nearly as demoralizing (if not as existentially dangerous) as a Biden defeat. His campaign is run by some of the most cynical people in the Democratic Party apparatus, and unless today marks some sea change in the way they view these allegations, they will continue to believe that they can ignore and dismiss this story and still win. They may well be right. And if you are comfortable with that, there’s not much else to say. But no one is under any obligation to adopt that cynical argument and use it to excuse anything. They would like you to believe that the choice before you is-

All In With Biden or another four years of Trump. That is not remotely the case.

The alternative scenario is not some outlandish, unprecedented piece of political-junkie fan-fiction, in which backroom deals at a virtual convention produce an Andrew Cuomo–Stacy Abrams ticket. The elections already on the calendar would simply continue with an existing slate of perfectly qualified candidates.

That is possible. It’s not even unreasonable, nor would it necessarily hand the election to Trump. Barack Obama became the presumptive nominee in June 2008. He had plenty of time to unify the party, introduce himself to the rest of the nation, and win the November election.

But just because Biden could step aside and allow the primaries to continue without him doesn’t mean that he will. And it is worth reflecting on why that is. Democratic leadership would panic, obviously, at the thought of changing horses in what they already view as the middle of the stream. But they also seem to believe their die-hards won’t care and the people most vocal about wishing to change things won’t demand a reckoning. They are relying on people already fully invested in a Joe Biden campaign—not just the campaign operatives and donors and elected officials, but the outside organizations and the professional activists, and the think tanks and the media personalities, and even people who seem to do nothing but post all day—to entertain no possibility of disinvestment. But with months to go before the convention, there is plenty of time for people with power and platforms to use them.

[arlingtonpark]

2020 Election Night Survival Guide

Hey, everyone!

It’s Halloween night, but the scariest night of the year is going to be in a few days on Election Day.

Since everyone’s wetting themselves over this, here’s a quick survival guide for Election Night.

Part I. The State of Play

In the United States, political authority is shared between three institutions: the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Elections for all three will be occurring on Election Night 2020.

The President is elected by the Electoral College. Each state is given seats in the College based on the size of their Congressional delegation.

Candidates for President put forth a slate of candidates to represent their state in the College, which voters choose by popular vote.

This system was chosen because a national popular vote was not possible at the time. 

As of now, Joe Biden is almost certainly going to win the election. He is polling ahead in every state Barack Obama won in 2012 except Ohio and Iowa, and is liable to win Arizona and maybe even Georgia. This will give him a comfortable victory. 

The Senate is composed of two Senators for every state. One third of the body elected every two years for a total term of 6 years for any one Senator. 

The current crop of Senators was last elected in 2014, a very good year for Republicans. 

It was not expected, though, that Democrats could undo those gains since they were made by Republicans wiping out Democrats in Louisiana and Arkansas, and other similar states.

Democrats used to have a strong presence in those states, but that presence was wiped out in the Obama years.

Republicans didn’t make those gains in swing states, but instead in state’s whose voters switched allegiances. It was hard to see Dems making a comeback.

A lot has changed though.

States like Arizona, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and even Kansas are competitive now. This was unthinkable in 2014.

Dems have made gains of their own in these states among suburban voters. These people are generally white collar workers who are better educated than average. And they are repulsed by Trump’s basic indecency.

The Dems are now widely expected to win a majority of the Senate -- possibly even a comfortable majority.

The House is composed of 435 Representatives who’re elected every two years. 

The dynamics are the same as the Senate: Dems are gaining in the suburbs, and Republicans are gaining among blue collar workers. 

The Dems took over the House in 2018 and they’re expected to increase that majority by 10 seats or so. 

Part II How to Handle Election Night

Assuming you want to watch the election returns come in live, here’s how to best do it.

Firstly, do not watch the TV news coverage before the actual vote counting starts. 

It’s all drivel and you’ll annihilate your brain watching it.

It’ll mostly be padding to fill up time and make it seem like a lot is happening when not much is.

As well as pundits trying to divine the meaning of this election before it’s actually happened.

And lots of bemoaning of how we can’t all just get along. With no one even trying to think of solutions. 

Don’t waste your time.

You should use the time before the polls close to get up to speed on what the candidates stand for, and how various scenarios might affect you.

To the extent you can stomach such speculation.

Vox is a great news source with a great series of articles on Biden’s platform.

Here.

President Trump...he has no platform.

Literally.

It’s just a copy-paste of the 2016 one. 

Of course, a lot depends on the congressional elections, and I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty of that here.

There are elections for various governorships up, but you can ignore them, unless it’s your governor up for election. 

The governor of any state that isn’t yours only matter if they’re likely to run for President in a few years. 

There are also some high profile local elections going on.

To varying extents, Dems are hoping to expand their power in Arizona, Michigan, Texas, and North Carolina.

Republicans are hoping to do the same in Wisconsin.

Arizona, South Dakota, New Jersey, and Montana are holding referenda to legalize marijuana.

Oregon will be voting on legalizing mushrooms and decriminalizing all other drugs. 

California has a number of referenda on the ballot regarding rent control, criminal justice, and labor laws.

Florida will be voting to raise the minimum wage to $15, potentially the ninth state to do so.

In any event, feel free to make a party of it.

Order a pizza, have snacks out, beer. Whatever you want. I’d urge you to invite friends over, but, you know...

You can turn the TV news on at 6pm if you like, but I recommend you leave it on in the background and not pay close attention until 8pm. 

I also recommend choosing which network to watch based solely on which one has the most gimmicky, over the top presentation. 

TV news has zero value to you aside from providing real time, unprocessed information. 

Leave the game play analysis to the internet.

Have a laptop open if you have one. Otherwise have a computer handy.

I recommend having three tabs open.

One for the New York Times’ live election night interactive. You know those touch screen displays the networks have their election nerds using to show the state of the race as votes are counted?

The NYT’s interactive is that, but all to yourself.

I also recommend reading the accompanying article explaining how the interactive works. It’s pretty cool what programmers can do these days. 

Lots of news sites will have online interactives, though. Choose whatever you like, but the NYT’s is generally the best. 

The second tab is for Twitter. Twitter is the best place to be for real time analysis. I’ll have a twitter list available for you to use if you like.

The people on this list fall into one of three categories.

The first are the election nerds. These people are adeptly familiar with the United States’ political geography and can tell which side is winning before all the votes are counted.

The second are the pundits. 

Smart ones, mind you.

Political scientists and commentators. I made sure to get a mix of liberal, conservative, and moderate voices. Obviously they provide the commentary on the nerds’ analysis. 

The third and final are a couple of joke accounts for laughs. PixelatedBoat, originator of the milkshake duck meme and the Gorilla Channel hoax, is in there, as is President Nixon’s Twitter impersonator. 

The final tab is for a good quality liveblog. I recommend 538′s, but again, most news sites will have liveblogs going, it’s just that 538 usually has the best one. 

Lastly, as races get called, don’t be afraid to cheer or boo. Election day is pretty sterile, which is a shame because it used to be very rowdy and frenetic. By all means, be emotional.

You’re free to call it a night whenever you want, but there’s no point in carrying on past 1am, so I’d recommend stopping there.

There aren’t any exciting races on the west coast, and California is notoriously bad at vote counting, as they are at ALL things involving government, so the outcome of those races won’t be known for a while. 

Part III The Known Unknowns

Now comes the stuff everyone is panicking over.

Is this the end of democracy?

Eh, probably not.

In theory, Trump could successfully steal the election, but only if it’s a close race.

It’s not a close race.

There is no way for Trump to steal the election. Not through excluding mail ballots, not through the courts. There just isn’t one. 

The Supreme Court won’t help Trump unless they think they can get away with it, but the recent confirmation of Barrett to the Court has put them on notice, and that will restrict what they can do. 

Trump could contest the results by asking Congress to certify his slate of electors as legitimate over the electors the voters chose, but that’s not an issue if Dems control the House. 

That’s really it.

There’s no other way for Trump to win even if he loses the Electoral College.

Even recent buzz about late arriving mail votes not counting probably won’t amount to much.

Most of the people mailing their ballots in late are actually Republicans lol ^^.

Here are some issues to actually look out for:

Trump thugs policing polling places. Voter intimidation is illegal. If someone is intimidating you, report them. 

Hoax ballot stuffing. Don’t be surprised if people fake fraudulent voting to juice Trump’s claims of a rigged election. Treat such allegations with caution.

Violent unrest is unlikely to happen even a little bit, but I won’t be surprised if there are at least some isolated incidents.

While there is some risk, I actually think the danger is overhyped.

The likeliest outcome of this election has always, always been that Biden cakewalks to Inauguration Day. 

Even the talk about not knowing the winner on election night might have been all hype.

Florida, despite its reputation, is actually very good at counting ballots, and the winner of the state should be known on election night. 

A lot can be extrapolated from this, and some news sites might call the race just off of that. 

If who won Florida isn’t known on election night, then you can start panicking. 

Trump will definitely fume about if he loses, but if the outcome is clearly in Biden’s favor, it’ll just be hot air.

It shouldn’t surprise you to know that if Trump loses, he will make no effort to shepherd a economic bailout bill into law in the time between the election and his formal exit from office.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Also Trump. 

Trump himself has openly floated the idea of fleeing the country if he loses.

He’s over $200 million in debt and will have to sell most of his assets to pay it off. He also faces prosecution for various crimes he committed before and during his presidency.

If he does, he’ll probably try to brand himself a fallen hero in exile, and live off of his supporter’s Patreon donations or whatever. 

Oh, yeah, and the rallies. Trump is planning to keep holding his rallies even after the election, even if he loses, even as the plague is ravaging and the economy is in the toilet.

Don’t be surprised if his supporters are completely blind to the utter failure of leadership in that.

Let’s see, what else to cover...

I guess that just about covers it.

Have fun, kids!

[chubbydino]

Hi! I finally gathered the courage to read concatenation (normally I don’t really read fics with unhappy endings) and I LOVED IT. I mean, it tore my heart out, threw it on the ground and stepped on it, but still. It made me feel so much, which is not something that a lot of stories are able to do. Just a question, I remember reading somewhere that you would maybe write a fix-it but I can’t find it anywhere, so was it just an idea or something you plan to do? Thanks!

hello! there was talk about a fix-it for it a few years ago, and i did start one, but i’ve since deleted it after only writing a few paragraphs. i couldn’t write a fix-it that did any justice to the story. 

i did write an epilogue, tony’s letter, that you probably already read if you just read the series, just to kind of tie up tony’s thoughts on everything for people who wanted that. it was part of marvel trumps hate for 2016 i believe. 

but yeah, no fix-it fi planned or published. i’m so happy you read the series though, and that it was worth it for you to have waited so long to read. :) it always makes me smile when i see someone new has left a comment or kudos or something. <3

i did find a little section of a fic i never published while i was looking for the epilogue i had started, so though it’s not a fix-it, it isn’t angsty (at least, not to me lol)! just some stony pining sass and quips. 

below the cut!

Grey streaks of sunlight filtered through the missile-proof glass of the of an empty bedroom in the Avengers compound. Despite being unoccupied, the room was meticulously clean—the most unkempt part about it being the memory foam mattress on the floor, still wrapped in plastic. A low crackle of thunder echoed against the barren, muted-grey walls, and as the winds changed, the patter of rain against the glass could be heard from the doorway as Steve stood there, surveying.

The compound was much smaller than it appeared upon first glance. The living area was one of the biggest rooms, excluding the training facility that wasn’t attached to the compound itself. Steve was starting to see it as home, but it would take time. New faces were appearing faster than he could remember names, and he had a bit of trouble with that. So many of them were just kids. So many of them would be barely functioning human beings without powers, but here? It was impossible to expect them to meld perfectly. But they tried. Tony and Bruce spent hours designing things to be comfortable and accepting.

Steve just never anticipated himself being the one to feel out of place here. It wasn’t like it was that big of a surprise, but he’d just been so comfortable living at the SHIELD compound, then in the Tower. Upstate New York was a big jump from that.

“Captain,” Friday said, her voice coming in crystal clear as though she was standing right beside him. “Mr. Stark is able to see you now. Please make your way to the conference room, Sector Alpha.”

Despite being small on the first two floors, the compound had an extensive underground network that was large enough to warrant its own zip code.

“Thank you,” Steve said, glancing around the empty room once more. It would be filled within the month, he was sure. It was either a new superhuman, or a visiting one. The guest manifest was something of a joke nowadays.

Steve made his way down the hallways, eyes running over the photos hung on the walls. Various teammates with their arms slung around each other, laughing. Triumphant newspaper articles showing zero casualties and major victories. Graduations, awards—all kinds of things that made the compound feel more like a college campus than a house.

But the further along he went from the living quarters, the sleeker and more professional things became. Steve was more comfortable here, surrounded by expansive glass windows and minimalist metalwork. No photos, no art on the walls. Everything became sterile and transparent.

The windows to the conference room had already been tinted, effectively sealing the room from wandering eyes. Not that Steve had seen a soul since arriving, but it was barely five in the morning, so everyone was either asleep or training already.

The doors opened for him as he entered the conference room. An enormous oak table took up most of it, and several windows were actually seamless TV screens to watch something upwards of fifty channels at a time.

Tony sat with his back facing the main screens, sprawled in his chair, turning back and forth, back and forth. He fiddled at a tablet screen, two fingers curled at his mouth. He was working, but it was busywork. Steve knew the difference between a Tony in crisis and a Tony trying to distract himself. Either way, he didn’t acknowledge Steve’s arrival.

Steve took it all in stride, and rounded the table to take a seat beside Tony. He scooted back a bit, putting a healthy amount of space between them.

The sound of the rain didn’t reach them here. Natural light didn’t even reach them here. Everything was artificial and cold. A war room.

Steve leaned back in his chair, propping his head up with one hand. Silence ticked by, broken only by the quiet taps of Tony’s fingers on the glass of his tablet.

“You’re late,” Tony finally muttered, not looking up.

“Yeah,” Steve said, lifting his head from his hand in a casual motion. “I was looking around.”

Tony let out a snort. “I ought to clear out your room and give it to someone else, with how often you show up.”

“I’ve been busy,” Steve said quietly.

“Busy,” Tony repeated.

“Yeah.”

“Busy,” Tony said again.

With a final tap to his tablet, Tony tossed the piece of glass like a discarded magazine. It skittered across the table and settled a few inches from Steve. Steve glanced at it, expecting to see some sort of article or video, but it was blank.

“I wasn’t aware—“

“You can’t just leave me like that,” Tony growled. “In charge. You can’t just do that without warning me first.”

“Remind me to tell the mass murderers of the world to give me a heads up before they start killing people,” Steve replied easily, unfazed.

“That’s bullshit,” Tony shot back. Steve couldn’t see true anger in his eyes yet, though. “You’ve been stateside for three weeks. You can’t possibly think I didn’t know you’ve been stateside for three weeks—did you think I didn’t know?”

Steve blinked once. “I didn’t think you cared.”

Tony scowled at him, leaning forward in his chair. “What were you doing on your little vacation?”

Steve shrugged. “I had to clean my place out in Brooklyn. My lease was up a month ago and they held everything out of courtesy. I had to arrange to get it all shipped here.”

“Your storage unit,” Tony said tartly.

Steve frowned. “It arrived, didn’t it?”

“Of course it arrived. It arrived weeks ago.”

A shrug was all he could really muster in response. “Then I helped with cleanup for that Queens disaster—which I’m sure you saw on the news. After that I visited Bucky in Brooklyn for a few days, saw Sam on his leave weekend and helped out at the VA.”

Tony worked his jaw, and Steve cocked a brow at the flicker of anger he saw in his eyes now.

“You’re a real class act, Rogers,” Tony finally forced out. He stood abruptly, and Steve reflexively stood too.

“Hey, what’s going on? I didn’t warn you, I get it. I’m sorry. But I don’t always get a warning, Tony.”

He didn’t realize he’d reached out until Tony shrugged him off.

“Don’t,” Tony hissed. “Don’t start with that shit.”

Now Steve was genuinely confused. “Okay. Let’s—we can talk about this. Let’s talk about this. That’s what we’re here for, right?”

That response only served to piss Tony off all the more. “Oh please. Enough with that feelings crap, Steve. I’m done with all of that—I’ve been done since you—“

Steve hand came to rest on Tony’s cheek, effectively silencing whatever he’d been about to say. A warm understanding came to Steve’s eyes, and he moved closer, enough to feel Tony’s breath on his collarbone.

“You think I wasn’t thinking about you,” Steve said.

Tony jerked back, but Steve followed him, keeping close.

“Shut up,” Tony cut. “That’s not what this is about.”

“Sure. You’re just here to chastise me about my leadership.”

Tony slapped his hand away. Hard. Hard enough that Steve had to blink a few times to process, and that was enough time for Tony to snatch up his tablet and start toward the door.

“Welcome back, Cap. I’m getting some coffee, then you’re going to meet Vision, Natasha and I to bring you up to speed.”

He stormed toward the closer exit, and Steve thought momentarily to let him leave.

Of course, Steve Rogers never let anyone get the last word.

He jumped forward, cutting Tony off at the door and yanking him into a kiss.

He tasted like bourbon. Just a faint taste, like he’d sipped on some hours ago and hadn’t eaten anything since. Tony certainly hadn’t slept--judging by the bags under his eyes--so Steve knew better than to assume he’d fallen asleep with that taste in his mouth.

“You didn’t say anything,” Tony hissed when they broke apart. He gave Steve a frustrated shove.

“You said no favoritism.”

“Fuck you,” Tony spat. “That doesn’t mean you don’t show me some fucking decency.”

“Let me get coffee with you,” Steve murmured, hands settling at Tony’s waist.

Tony was quick to remove them.  “No.”

“Tony,” he began, “Tones. Let me get you coffee.”

Tony just scowled at him. “I don’t know what I expected from you, if I’m being honest. I genuinely don’t. I don’t know what I expected. But I definitely didn’t expect you to treat me like a dick.”

A little flare of anger nibbled at Steve’s gut. “You laid the groundwork very clearly. You specifically told me you wanted no special treatment. You specifically told me you wanted this to be a working relationship. Professional—that was the word you used.”

“Because that’s what I want,” Tony cut. “But that doesn’t mean you ignore me!”

“I didn’t ignore you—“

“You didn’t so much as text me when you came back. I got a mission report five days later after two weeks of nothing.”

“If you were worried about me, you’re allowed to say it. Nobody’s here.”

“Fuck you.”

Tony tried to leave again, but Steve hooked him around the middle with one arm, blocking his path.

“We talk here or we talk over coffee,” Steve said evenly. “Those are the options. I don’t care which.”

“You don’t get to make those decisions. I’m heading the compound right now.” Tony chopped his arm with an elbow, and Steve relented. He slid away, and Tony shot him a glare. “I’ll see you when we meet with Nat and Vision. You know, our teammates? Red guy, weird looking? Girl, red hair? Short? Likes leather and spandex?”

“Tony—“

He didn’t get another word out before the door was closing and Tony was walking briskly toward the in-house coffee shop.

Steve watched him go, unsure of the sudden strain in his chest. What he and Tony did behind closed doors was nobody’s business, but apparently that special treatment he’d been so adamant about not receiving was something he’d actually wanted all along. This was something Bucky would laugh at him for, had Steve dared to break his promise not to tell. But he was pretty sure Bucky already knew anyway. The whole team knew, at least in some fashion.

With a heavy sigh, Steve stepped out and headed in the opposite direction, chewing the last of the bourbon taste from his bottom lip.

************

“There really isn’t much to report,” Natasha said, thumbing through digital pages of activity logs. “A few issues with telepathic powers, but Wanda and Vision handled that area. Combat training schedules are consistent, as is improvement.”

“T’Challa visited for several days and imparted some wisdom in a sort of ‘master class,’ if you will,” Vision added. “We saw a slight spike in improvement with several female students after his visit.”

Natasha rolled her eyes, but Vision continued, oblivious to his innuendo.

“All in all, very few issues to report that concern you, Captain Rogers. A few technical malfunctions with our security system, an attempted trespass by a belligerent ‘fan’ of ours, and two incidents of misconduct—all of which were handled appropriately.”

Tony was staring at him through a stylish pair of glasses, but Steve ignored him. “Sounds like everything went smoothly.”

Natasha leaned back, only briefly glancing between him and Tony. “So, you’re back to stay with us for a little while?”

“For now, yes,” Steve said with a nod. “I figure I ought to help out since I left so abruptly.”

Tony let out an indignant snort.

“Really, we need to get our advanced hand-to-hand classes back on track,” Natasha said. “I’ve been able to handle it, but I can only teach so many classes before fatigue sets in. If I’m called on mission, I don’t want to be worn down.”

“I don’t need the explanation,” Steve chuckled. “I’ll handle those, and I’ll start back in with the combat strategy too, if that’s okay.”

“You’re the best one for it,” Natasha replied with a shrug. She stood, gently tapping Vision on the shoulder. “Well, we’ll leave the two masterminds to discuss. As far as I’m concerned, this meeting is over.”

“Thank you for the update,” Steve said with a dip of his head. “I appreciate it.”

Natasha grabbed her bag and left, nearly closing the door in Vision’s face, but he passed right through it amyway. There was light music playing in the background, coming from the wet bar over in the far corner. Steve thought to ask if Tony wanted a drink, but he knew better.

“I wanted to apologize,” Steve said after an unsteady silence had lengthened between them.

Tony said nothing. He turned his face away, chewing the inside of his cheek.

“I should have contacted you. The reason I didn’t was because I didn’t know where we stood. Last time we talked, you made it very clear that you didn’t want any special treatment—hell, that you didn’t even want me to talk to you outside of ‘business hours.’ So how was I supposed to guess that you wanted me to text you?”

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, but still wouldn’t look at him.

Steve had to fight every urge to keep pressing, but he held his tongue and leaned back instead, at a loss. Their relationship was complicated at best, and moments like theses made it even worse for them.

“Pick one word and tell me how you would describe what I mean to you,” Tony said, eyes still closed. “I want you to pick one word.”

Steve frowned, but began to rake his brain for the proper word. Surprisingly enough, a blank nothing came to mind. He could think of no word to describe Tony Stark. None that would accurately fit. Friend, confidant, partner. He trusted Tony more than anyone on Earth. More than Bucky at this point. Bucky was still too unpredictable in some instances.

“Everything,” Steve said decidedly.

Tony finally looked up at him, momentarily shocked. It quickly faded to anger, though.

“Well. Some way to show it,” he snorted.

“What do I mean to you?” Steve pressed, unaffected by Tony’s quip.

Tony’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if he’d just discovered he’d been tricked

“Well?”

For a moment Steve thought that Tony wouldn’t respond. Instead, Tony let out a sigh. “I think we need to discuss what happens when one of us goes off on mission.”

Steve’s lips pursed, not allowing himself to show the hurt sucking a hole in his chest. That was how it went with Tony Stark. One minute he was snapping about being too public, the next he was chastising Steve for not showing him enough affection.

If he hadn’t been to infuriatingly handsome, Steve might’ve had a chance. 

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

In 2019, Barack Obama and Donald Trump were America’s most-admired men.

Which is just one reason why Obama’s endorsement of Joe Biden this week was billed as a momentous political event. Obama is a divisive figure — could the first black president in a country like America have ever been anything but? — but he’s the last Democrat to cobble together a winning coalition. He motivated a massive turnout of black voters, played on his pop cultural cache to excite millennials and persuaded upper Midwestern whites to support him.

At its core, Biden’s candidacy is premised on restoring that halcyon Obama era — electorally as much as politically. That’s why Obama will be key to Biden’s success, perhaps more so than any other campaign surrogate in the modern era. The former vice president, while respected, was seen as a weak candidate until his blowout primary victory in South Carolina. Yet the support of those who helped him win that race — black Democrats — is premised largely on his having served under Obama. Biden has yet to crack the nut of gaining sufficient support from white Obama-Trump voters in key states, and his campaign is at an unprecedented stand-still, as at least 28,000 Americans have perished in a pandemic that threatens to overshadow the next months, if not years, of the nation’s life.

Obama, possessed of an almost preternatural equanimity, could be a comfort to Americans as an unsettling presidential campaign plays out. There’s one question that looms large, though: Are Obama’s political powers in 2020 the same as they once were?

The former president retains great political assets. His average approval rating in 2009, the first year of his presidency, which was dominated by the Great Recession, was 56.5 percent, and while it dipped into the 40s for much of his tenure, Obama’s post-presidential approval numbers have been strong. Gallup’s first retrospective job approval rating for Obama in 2018 — a barometer for how his presidential legacy was faring — was 63 percent. An average of YouGov polling collected between February 2019 and February 2020 found that 55 percent of Americans have a positive opinion of Obama. That’s higher than Biden’s approval in polling averages, which is about 45.7 percent, according to RealClearPolitics. Obama also outpaces Trump, who is currently at a 44.1 percent approval rate, according to the FiveThirtyEight tracker. A popular surrogate at his side during a time of crisis should be nothing but a boon to Biden.

Obama’s specific appeal to demographics that turned out in lower numbers during the 2016 election could be another way that he helps his former vice president. Democrats’ narrow loss in 2016 could have been due to any number of factors, but some have pointed to decreased black turnout in key states as a potential culprit. While Biden has done well with black voters already — his win in the South Carolina primary propelled him to the nomination — Obama’s presence will likely continue to help him. The same goes for young voters. While Biden, by dint of being a Democrat, is likely to do well with the youth vote, he struggled with the demographic during the primary. Obama’s presence on the campaign trail — even a virtual one — could be the youthful tonic that Biden needs, after the reputational hit he’s taken with left-leaning millennial and Gen Z voters.

Biden’s ultimate test, though, will be whether he can win back the largely white Obama-Trump voters in the general election, and it’s unclear whether even Obama himself can help him do that.

Obama’s presidency accelerated a political realignment that came to define the 2016 election: whites without a college education making an exodus out of the Democratic Party. States with large populations of these white voters, like Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, which Obama counted as key to his winning coalitions, slipped away from Clinton. In 2008, roughly half of non-college-educated white people identified as Democrats, and half identified as Republican. By 2015, only a third were Democratic-leaning.

Gallup data shows that Obama’s approval ratings with whites nose-dived over the course of his presidency: In January 2009, 63 percent of whites approved of him, but only 47 percent did by January 2017, when he left office. Biden, who has long played up his “middle class Joe” persona, is not yet faring well with the kind of middle-class white voters his candidacy is premised on winning back. A recent analysis from Nate Cohn at the New York Times shows that Biden doesn’t have a wide lead in key states that swung the election in 2016 — his margin over Trump in states packed with Obama-Trump voters, like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, ranges from 1 to 4 points, according to the analysis.

That not even Biden has won over these voters could start to smart for some Democrats, especially since the party put forth its most diverse field of primary candidates only to nominate an older, white man. Finding relative political safety in a white nominee, however, was long in the making. In 2017, I wrote about a newly prominent group of young, white male politicians whose political resumes and communication styles reeked of Obama-imitation. They had all of the hallmarks of the former president — type-A discipline, good resumes and relatively moderate politics — but of course, they were all white. They were less likely, perhaps, to spook moderate white voters who had come to resent the party of the first black president.

In some ways, Biden is the ultimate “white Obama” candidate — a white, male Democrat trying to ride the former president’s “hope and change” coattails, but also put the traditional white American male face to the presidency. Much remains fluid about the 2020 election, including what form campaigning and voting will even take, so it’s hard to say if Obama’s resurging presence in the news during a time of crisis — which might very well extend into the high campaign season of the fall — could remind Obama-Trump voters what they liked about him (and Biden by extension) to begin with.

But that’s a big “if.” America, which has ridden an emotional political roller coaster for the past four years, seems to be only approaching the apex of another steep peak on the ride. The next seven months remain largely uncertain, but, queasily, seem to promise only one thing for sure: a terrifying ride. It’s anyone’s guess if Obama, a figure from our calmer past, will have the power to soothe and motivate key voters in our uncertain times.

[imamotherfuckingstar-lord]

A Second Chance

Steve Rogers x OFC

A/N: Set between Civil War and Infinity War. LISTEN GUYS I KNOW IT’S AN OC WITH STEVE BUT YOU HAVE TO READ THIS. I love it so much and it’s in first person, so just read it! Thank you @firefoxcaty for commissioning this!

Summary: Caty and Steve are each other’s person until the Accords divide them.

It started with the Accords, a thick well written document that Tony Stark had presented to the Avengers; and off the bat, everyone had disagreed on whether to sign it or not. There was no surprise on my end that Steve was the forerunner of the opposition, but man, it pissed me off. I remembered that night, after Tony said everyone had some time to think it over, I had read through half of the Accords. Around two in the morning my eyes started to hurt, and the words started to blur, so I went to find my best friend.

Steve was in the gym, abusing the punching bag as I walked in, admiring his ass a little, because the man had an ass. Although, that thought quickly vanished as they always did, when he turned to look at me.

“Can’t sleep either,” he asked. I walked over and asked if he’d mind the company. “Of course not, I can’t sleep, a lot on my mind…”

“I know, same,” I sighed, sitting down on the bench against the wall. He sat next to me and the two of us fell into that usual silence; the comforting one, where no one has to talk because it was enough the we were together. It was like that, Steve and I; close friends, confidants, the person you came to for those long deep conversations, the tough conversations. He was my person, in the Gray’s Anatomy sense and it had been like that for a while.

“So, I read some of the Accords.”

Steve’s eyes flickered over to me; his mouth pursed into a frown. “And?”

I shrugged, the edge of my shoulder touching his. “It makes sense.”

“You got to kidding me, Caty.”

His accusatory tone had surprised me and for a moment I wanted to punch him, and I had never felt that way before, not towards Steve; never him. Was he the one that was kidding? Sure, the Avengers had saved people, that was our job but at what cost? Tony had told me the story of the young man killed in Sokovia and we all had seen with our eyes all the collateral damage during all our battles. I had witnessed the people shouting for help, their lives slipping away as we rang victorious each time; the blood on my hands were just as red as the enemy, maybe more. I thought, yes, Steve would have his reservations, but come around eventually. Sitting next to him, his eyes wide in surprised, had made think different.

“Steve, Tony’s right, we have to sign.”

“Come on, that’s not freedom,” he argued, back pressing into the wall. “You want the government to decide what we do? The way SHIELD did? Hydra was running the show, what makes you think it won’t happen again?”

“Talk about paranoid.” I stood up from the bench and glared at the man, unable to understand. “People die because of us; innocent people and you think what you want trumps that?”

“No,” he replied coldly. “I don’t think that, but why should we have someone else tell us what we need to do?”

“You got to be shitting me,” I shouted, throwing my hands in defeat. “I can’t with you right now, I have some more reading to do. I mean, you should at least do that.”

I walked out the night, knowing in my heart that signing was the right thing to do, and if Steve refused, as did the others, things were going to hit the fan.

…

And they did.

History would show that the Avengers divided into two sides that ended in an airport fight; Steve vs. Tony, and I was certain Steve was on the wrong side. He had stood across from me, eyes zeroing in on me as everyone stood still for a moment, waiting for someone to say or do something. He called out my name, asked me to rethink my position.

“Caty, please.”

It hurt, badly, the pain in his voice as he said my name, and something snapped inside me. Clarity came over me and it was like I was seeing Steve for the first time. He was so pure in virtue and I knew he thought he was doing the right thing, and hell, maybe he was, but it all seemed to late. Just as Steve was certain signing was wrong, Tony was deadest on making sure everyone signs – he wanted the team to stick together, but I knew it wasn’t going down like that.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” I said to him, ignoring everyone else, because in that moment they didn’t matter. “Reconsider and we can fix this before it goes any further.”

He looked over to Bucky, a man who looked withered down and shook his head, holding up his shield. “I can’t.”

That’s how it started, the fight; teammate against teammate, friend against friend. Wanda had come for me; I fought her, holding my punches until I realized she wasn’t and before I could really fight, I was thrown yards away, arm broken in an instant. I shouted in pain and Steve saw me, rushed to my side, forgetting what was happening all around us.

“You’re going to be okay,” he reassured me, helping me sit up against a metal crate. His eyes drew down to mind and my heart raced as he touched my face. Blood from a cut on my forehead stained his fingertips and tears started to fall down my face. I hated feeling weak, but with Steve, it was different.

“See,” I whispered, closing my eyes for a moment to relish the way his hand felt on my skin. “We both have blood on our hands now.”

Steve’s head hung low for a moment before he took a deep breath and grazed around his surroundings. “I didn’t want this.”

“I know, but this is it now. What are you going to do, Steve?”

A part of me then wanted him to give up, to end it all, and when his blue eyes studied mine, I wanted him in a way I never realized. Sure, I noticed how attractive he was, I wasn’t blind, but it never occurred to me that it was more. That he meant more to me than being my person or that he was my person, and that’s why I was feeling these things now, realizing them now.

Tears, again, filled my eyes as he sighed. “I’m sorry, Caty.”

My lips trembled in pain, and not the physical kind; my heart was breaking because it seemed I wouldn’t be seeing Steve for a long time. I wouldn’t be able to spend time with him, going to baseball games and late movie showings, spend time talking about nothing as the night wore on. It was ending in the middle of an airport in Germany before it could even begin.

“God, I’m so sorry,” he repeated, his hand running through my hair. Slowly, he leaned in forehead against mine and for a second, I thought he’d kiss me, but he didn’t. Instead he took a deep breath and got up, saying he had to go.

“I know,” I nodded, holding my arm against my chest; it hurt almost as much as the entire conversation. “I know, Steve.”

He walked away then, not looking back and I felt it then, that it was for the best.

…

Something was going on in the city, I sensed it in the air as I walked out of the deli, lunch in hand. There was a strong rumble as I held on to a light pole, head whipping back and forth to try to figure out what was happening until my watch beeped. Rhodes had Tony make them for the remaining Avengers, they were faster than waiting for someone to answer a call. Touching the holo-screen pop up button,  I saw Tony.

“We have a problem.”

“I can see that, where you at?”

He gave the location and said he’d send me a suit; twenty seconds later, a special mark he had made for me landed at my heels. Sighing, because I was damn hungry, I suited up and flew to Tony. I was shocked to see Bruce, then the wizard man and his friend, but none of that mattered because New York was being invaded again. The lot of us fought, but in the end, Tony and the wizard had disappeared, leaving Bruce and me alone. After a brief hug hello, because I hadn’t seen the man in a long time, he handed over a dated cell phone.

“You have to call, Cap; we need his help.”

“Tony didn’t explain to you everything that happened while you were gone, did he?”

Bruce shook his head in defeat. “He did, but none of that matters. Make the call.”

Staring at the cell in my hand and the chaos around us, I knew the past didn’t matter; Bruce was right, this was more than hurt feelings and longing, it was another fight all the Avengers needed to come together for. So, I sucked it up and pressed Steve’s name, hesitating for a moment as it started to ring until Bruce gave me a supportive nod.

It rang twice before he picked up, his voice hitting me like a ton of bricks; it felt magical, warm, and sad.

“Tony?”

“No,” I whispered, holding back tears. “It’s me.”

…

Bruce and I sat on the kitchen counter, a cup of coffee in each of our hands. I listened as he explained what had happened to him since Ultron and how he was in space, I joked that at least someone was able to go to space. The two of us laughed until we both heard voices in the other room; one was Rhodes, but the other I recognized immediately, and my face fell, as did my heart.

We both left our coffees in the kitchen as I followed Bruce towards the voices. He gave me a wild look when I shoved him first into the room and I watched as he hesitated before walking in, calling to Natasha, who looked different from the last time I saw her. Sam, Wanda, and Vision were looking worse for the wear, but my eyes were deadest on the man in front of them; Steve Rogers.

He had a beard, he looked good considering it all and when he saw me, his face lit up in a smile that said the past was the past; he was just happy to see me. I couldn’t move for a moment as he started towards me, the others gathering together for hellos and hugs. My chest ached and I wanted to cry, but I wanted to be tough too, so I didn’t.

I just watched as he stormed up to me, his mouth slightly opened, as though he was ready to speak all the things he wanted to for so long. I hadn’t seen him in about two years, but it felt like yesterday- the two of us at the airport, my broken arm and his conflicted heart. I wished I had said something then, but there was no time for that now.

“Steve,” I whispered as he embraced me in a warm, tight hug. “Steve…”

“I know,” he whispered back, his mouth close to my ear. He held my close, hands around my waist as he rested his chin on my shoulder. “God, I’ve missed you.”

Both hands slid up his back and my fingers caught the strands of hair at the nape of his neck. I touched them carefully and knew I couldn’t lose him again. Even though a big fight was coming, the big fight, I knew this was our second chance. Our first real chance at something more than friends, something more than what we had, and I wasn’t going to miss out this time.

“I’ve missed you too.”

[evilelitest2]

Okay I'm going to be very careful with my words but I wanted to get a second opinion on this. We know besides the establishment being cowards and backing Biden he never would've gotten this far without older blacks. Do you think it was a bad call and against their best interests to vote for him despite his record showing he uh doesn't have the best track record on race? This is not me blaming anyone by the way.

Ok, this is complicated, an`d i’m seeing this talked about a lot, the African American vote.  some caveats because this is a really complicated subject

1) The african American vote is not universal.  Like the white vote, it is divided based on age, location (there is a big distincition in southern vs. northern vs. Western black voters), religion, income and class.  There isn’t a universal way to understand the african American vote, so eveyrthing I am going to say are generalizations and anyone reading this should be careful to fall into generalizations.  There are many african Americans who voted for Biden btw.  

2) Voters make their choice for a variety of reasons, some of which I am not getting into, and it doesn’t always affect their ideology.

I also want to make clear that I am talking about black voters who ideologically might actually like sanders platform more than Bidens, there are also many african americans who just are conservative (like whtie conservatives).  

Ok so something that people need to understand about the African American community, espicially in the south is this.  Since the Republican party is so defined by white Nationalsim, blacks are among the worse hit by any republican administraiton, this has always been the case.   like Trumps administration has hurt me personally in a few ways, but no where near as much as it is hurting racial minorities in the United States.  So a lot of African Americans tend to focus on “harm reduction”  when voting since they are the ones who get harmed.  

tied to this is the place of hte Democratic Party in black culture, where it is one of the fundemental pillars.  Espicially in the south, where the democratic party is sort of the one major national instiution actively trying to protect black Americans.  Like try to imagine the sheer level of shit that the Black Community in Missisopi or Alabama has to endure, being trapped in some of the most conservative red states.  So loyality to the democratic party is as fundemental in the black community as the Republicans party is to the eventalist community.  

Its also important to understand that as a rule, african Americans are the best voters in the country.  not just in the sense that they always go out to vote in every eleciton, its also that they tend to organize, voluenteer, give money, and raise awareness.  This is partly due to the very well established community focus of black culture, but its also because they know full well what happens if a Republican wins.    a good example of this was Doug Jones 2018 shocking victory in Alabama, which was only possible thanks to massive black voter turn out.  

The only other voting community as good as the African American in terms of being voters are the Evengelical Christian community, who are like their evil fundementalist twin.  But that is a story for another time.  

But you know how despite Trump clearly being an atheist, the religious right supports him because he gives them what they want, and Mike pence serves as their surrogate.  That is very similar to Biden with Obama as the surrogate, except that what the black community wants are objectively good things and not crypto fascism.  

Because of how good the black community is about getting the vote (espicially older black women) the democratic party relies primarilty on black voters.  And in the last 30 years, the black community has been extremely successful at steadily taking over the democratic party, and forcing it to address their issues.  Which is why Joe Biden in 1980 is playing nice with segergationists and Joe Biden in the 2020 is running on a platform of racial justice.  Because now the democratic party needs the african Americans to survive, they are moving steadily to the left on those issues.   If the progressive movement wants to really be successful, we really should copy their example, because that the political leaders of community knows exactly what needs to be done to acheive tangible results.   Ideally by turning many African Americans into progressives, but that would require the progressive movement to purge itself of its nastier elements (Chapo House) 

See the progressive wing of the party has a long history of valuing rhetoric over the pratical, and this alienates them to a lot of black voters who are desperately afriad for themselves and their families.  

and that is why they supported Joe Biden, because while many of them don’t actually like him and aren’t happy about his legacy on race, the fact is they know that he needed them to win.  And thus as a reward for supporting him, he will give them what they want (again just like the evengelical community for trump but not evil).  

specifically, they want the following 

A) A democratic Supreme Court.  The greatest blow to the Black community in the last 20 years (except Trumps election) was SCOTUS overturning the 1965 Voter’s Right act, which has been devestating to black voting power, espicially in in the south 

B) A national law to push back against voter repression 

C) Federal support for Black lives Matter

D) The Federal goverment to really crack down on the Alt Right and White Nationalism.  

E) Pushing to end the wealth gap between the black and white community (which shrank dramatically under obama).

And most importantly, get trump and his white nationalist supporters out of office.  

There are other policies obviously, but for many prominent african American leaders, Biden is a major way to acheive those ends and so they support him.  And biden frankly is likely to deliver, between his 8 years working with Obama and his reliance on the black community in 2020, many African Americans feel like he is somebody who is going to listen to them and take them seriously.  

So I don’t really feel comfortable saying that they are voting against their own best interest, instead they have a different set of “best interests” than what leftist usually consider.   There is more at play than a strictly materalist understanding of politics.  

[someguyscaliforniavoterguide]

Select L.A. County/California Races, March 3, 2020

Hi friends, it’s me again. I am here to offer my opinions on how you should vote. As before I am up front about my biases: I am a Warren supporter, I live in L.A. and I am actively pro-density (Yay SB50, you deserved better) and pro-transit. I live in the east Valley, so I tend to focus more closely on the issues that directly impact my side of town, though I try to keep an ear out on things countywide. 

Last time I did this a couple of folks reached out to give me gifts to say thanks for doing this guide. This year, I would encourage anybody who wants to say thanks to donate $5 to Fair Fight,  a group founded by Stacey Abrams to fight voter suppression in the 2020 election. We’re gonna need all the help we can get in November to defeat the GOP, and Abrams is doing it in a smart way. 

Other voting guides

This is my voting guide and reflects my general opinion on things. However, I am indebeted to many other guides, including the Knock L.A. Voter Guide and the L.A. Podcast Voter Guide for their takes. I don’t always agree with them, but both of these are invaluable resources for the progressive voter in Los Angeles. 

L.A. City Council 

This year the even numbered seats are up for re-election. Half of them are effectively uncontested, a couple are very much contested, and two are free for all because of term limits. 

CD2: Ayinde Jones

Look none of these candidates set my heart afire. I work with Councilmember Krekorian’s office a lot (remember, I live in the east Valley) and he’s a competent politician with a ton of endorsements and community ties, I have no illusion he’s going to win his full term comfortably on March 3. However, I believe it’s good to encourage competition, and Ayinde Jones did a good (not great) job at the candidate forum I attended hitting on themes of how the parts of CD2 north of Victory are being left behind as the area evolves. I wish he were better on S50, but then again all three candidates were opposed, so that’s kind of a wash. I look forward to hearing more from Jones in the future. 

CD4: Sarah Kate Levy

From a paucity of options to a surplus of options next door. CD4 is currently represented by David Ryu, a politician who came out of the Neighborhood Council system and went on to become...a city hall politician. Both his opponents are great. Nithya Raman is the founder of SELAH, a group that does amazing work helping the unhoused in Los Angeles, and recently led Times Up! Hollywood for a year. I’d vote for her in a heartbeat, but I am encouraging people to vote for Sarah Kate Levy for two reasons: first, Levy is unabashedly supportive of SB50 and we need this kind of leadership, and second I am hoping these two excellent women will get so many votes that they overwhelm Ryu and leave him in third place. Fingers crossed. 

CD6: Bill Haller 

This is another shoo-in. Nury Martinez is the City Council president and has the backing of the County party and all the local clubs. I am endorsing Bill Haller because he supports an agenda that includes more public funding for affordable housing, more and better transit, and climate justice.  

CD8: Marqueece Harris-Dawson 

There are no other candidates in this race, so congratulations on your re-election Councilmember Harris-Dawson. 

CD10: Aura Vasquez 

This is an open seat, and the smart money has Mark Ridley-Thomas as the frontrunner. Ridley-Thomas is a current member of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors (more on them later) who is termed out of that position. I’m endorsing Aura Vasquez, a progressive activist with ties to Mid-City who has served as a commissioner for LADWP and led fights for renewable energy, banning single use plastics, and housing affordability in her community. 

CD12: Loraine Lundquist 

Dr. Lundquist rules. She takes public transit to debates, she is an honest to goodness scientist, and she nearly beat a Republican in what is the most conservative district in L.A. during a special election. I have donated money to this lady because we need to win this one. Her opponent, John Lee, wasted no time in trying to block housing for the homeless in his district and in attacking a successful safer streets project on Reseda Blvd. The city has a chance - a really great chance thanks to the realigned municipal elections - to toss out the worst possible councilmember in favor of the most progressive voice, don’t mess it up. 

CD14: Cyndi Otteson

This race is Kevin de Léon’s to lose, but he won’t commit to serving a full term since he really wants to be mayor. I say let him have his spare time to run for mayor and select Ms. Otteson, a grassroots activist who has the support of the UTLA and who is the only voice in favor of the Colorado Blvd alignment of the NoHo to Pasadena BRT project. Transit equity matters, and Ms. Otteson deserves your vote this March. 

LAUSD School Board 

Deferring to the teachers’ endorsements on this one. 

Board Seat 1: George McKenna

Board Seat 3: Scott Schmerlson

Board Seat 5: Jackie Goldberg

Board Seat 7: Patricia Castellanos

Glendale City Council: Dan Brotman 

An environmental activist with progresive views, Brotman will be a useful voice in Glendale’s city hall. 

District Attorney: Rachel Rossi 

George Gascón and Rachel Rossi will both be light years better than the current county D.A., Jackie Lacey. Both have promised to make substantial reforms in the office. I am really torn on this one, since I think Gascón’s experience as a Deputy DA in San Francisco is a big deal, and since he has the backing of the County Party. I am endorsing Rossi in a tilt-at-windmills hope that somehow she and Gascón make it to the final ballot in November and give us a thoughtful debate between a career prosecutor bent on reform and a public defender whose goal is reform about methods and ideas. Anyway, don’t vote for Jackie Lacey is all I am saying here. 

Superior Court

Voting for judges is stupid. We shouldn’t be doing this, but since we have to, I’ll make some suggestions. My math is based on other progressive endorsements, Party endorsements, and reverse-engineering some well known conservative voting guides to, if nothing else, make sure I am not voting for their endorsement. 

Office 17: Shannon Kathleen Cooley (the race is uncontested) 

Office 42: Linda Sun

Office 72: Myanna Dellinger

Office 76: Emily Cole (Cole is a prosecutor, but her opponent is a man who literally changed his name to “Judge” after serving as a judge in Stanislaus County) 

Office 80: Klint James McKay

Currently an administrative law judge, he impressed Public Defender Union representatives with his thoughtful and articulate answers to their questioning.

Office 97: Sherry L. Powell (Powell’s opponent ran as a conservative Republican for state assembly in 2018, this is a defensive vote)

Office 129: Kenneth Fuller

Office 131: Michelle Kelley (the race is uncontested)

Office 141: Lana Kim (the race is uncontested)

Office 145: Troy Slaten (Slaten’s opponent has a troubling history of misconduct and should not be elected to a judgeship) 

Office 150: Tom Parsekian

Office 162: David D. Diamond

L.A. County Board of Supervisors

The Supervisors oversee policy for the County, including all unincorporated areas, the LASD, County Health services, etc. For a county of TEN MILLION PEOPLE, there are only five supervisors, so they have a hugely outsized influence. 

Seat 2: Jorge Nuno 

A lot of progressives are endorsing Holly Mitchell in this seat. Me, I just can’t go there when she’s speaking at events for Livable California and when she gave a floor speech opposing SB50. Though he’s the front runner, Herb Wesson doesn’t deserve your vote - he was City Council president when the homelessness crisis exploded and he’s done little to address it. Nuno is a progressive and has an ambitious platform. 

Seat 4: Janice Hahn 

She’s solid, and nobody’s pushing her from the left. 

Seat 5: John Harabedian 

Kathryn Barger, the incumbent, is a Republican who supports Trump’s immigration policies. John Harabedian is a solidly Center Left Democrat who has the backing of the county party and who could, in this presidential election year, win an upset in what is traditionally a Republican stronghold of L.A. County. Vote for him. 

County Ballot Measures

Measure R: YES YES YES 

This will provide crucial tools to the already existing civilian oversight committee for the LASD, including subpoena powers. It also requires the commission to study ways to divert offenders from jail. You need to vote yes on this. 

State Ballot Measures 

Prop 13: Yes

$15B in bonds to invest in public schools and “local control” to allow local school districts to issue larger bonds. The only real opposition is from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a revanchist organization that is singlehandedly responsible for much of our state and local problems in the past few decades. Don’t listen to them. 

Congressional Elections 

Despite some misgivings, I am generally supporting the progressive challengers here to hopefully lead to a Progressive/Center Left election in the fall. 

CD 25: Christy Smith 

She has a good track record in the state assembly and a strong local support network. She’s not a carpetbagger with a YouTube show, and she’s not a Republican. 

CD 28: Adam Schiff 

He’s not the most progressive guy in Congress but he’s been critical to holding Trump accountable. He’s earned this vote. 

CD 29: Angelica Duenas 

Tony Cardenas is a bit of a non-entity on the national stage but he does good local work and he was an early vote in favor of impeachment. The rape allegations against him which troubled me last time were dismissed with prejudice in 2019. Cardenas has a progressive challenger, Angelica Marie Duenas, who has run in the past as a Green Party candidate. I don’t trust her decision to abandon that label and come into the Democrats after getting drubbed in 2018, but overall I like her ideas and I’d be happy to see her and Cardenas in a runoff this year. 

CD 30: CJ Berina 

Brad Sherman is an okay Congressmember. CJ Berina is a young, progressive challenger who’s attracted the attention of the Sunrise Movement. I’d vote for him to try to push the GOP out of the runoff and make this a race between the Center Left and the Progressive Left. 

CD 34: Frances Yasmeen Motiwalla

Jimmy Gomez is solid; let’s push the GOP out of the runoff though by supporting this progressive. 

State House 

District 39: Luz Rivas

District 41: Chris Holden 

District 43: Laura Friedman 

District 44: Jacqui Irwin

District 45: Jesse Gabriel 

District 46: Adrin Nazarian

District 48: Blanca Rubio 

District 49: Edwin Chau 

District 50: Richard Bloom

District 51: Wendy Carillo

District 53: Godfrey Plata

District 54: Tracey Jones

District 55: Andrew Rodriguez

District 58: Margaret Villa

District 59: Reggie Jones-Sawyer

District 62: Autumn Burke

District 63: Anthony Rendon

District 64: Fatima Iqbal-Zubair

District 66: Al Muratsuchi

District 70: Patrick O’Donnell

State Senate

SD 21: Kipp Mueller

SD 23: Abigail Medina

SD 25: No Endorsement - I rarely do this but honestly Anthony Portantino does not deserve your vote. Write in Mickey Mouse. 

SD 27: Henry Stern

SD 29: Josh Newman

SD 31: Richard Roth

SD 33: Lena Gonzalez

SD 35: Steven Bradford

County Committees 

Look this is getting waaaaaaaaaaaaaay into the weeds. What I am going to say is this: I know that a lot of “progressive” slates are out there and I encourage you to try your best to vet them. In my district, one of the candidates is somebody I know personally - she actively campaigned for Jill Stein, she circulated the decades-old “Clinton Death List” to voters, and she pushed Pizzagate theories. I am not voting for this person, but she is endorsed by “Progressive California” so...just be careful. 

[phroyd]

LYON, France — The chant was faint at first, bubbling up from the northern stands inside the Stade de Lyon. Gradually it grew louder. Soon it was deafening.

“Equal pay!” it went, over and over, until thousands were joining in, filling the stadium with noise. “Equal pay! Equal pay!”

Few sports teams are asked to carry so much meaning on their shoulders, to represent so many things to so many people, as the United States women’s soccer team. Few athletes are expected to lead on so many fronts at once, to be leaders for equal pay and gay rights and social justice, to serve as the face of both corporations and their customers. Fewer still have ever been so equipped to handle such a burden, so aware of themselves, so comfortable in their own skin, as those American women.

Yes, they had acknowledged as the World Cup got underway last month, anything less than a trophy would be a failure. Yes, they were willing to be made symbols of different fights for equality around the world. Yes, they would be as spectacular on the field as they unabashedly insisted they were.

With the swagger of pop stars and the inevitability of a freight train, the American women completed the sporting part of their journey on Sunday, clinching their second consecutive World Cup trophy by dispatching the Netherlands, 2-0, in the tournament’s final match.

The victory, which gave the United States a record four   titles over all, was secured with goals from Rose Lavelle and Megan Rapinoe, the latter of whom was honored as the best player of a tournament in which her opponents, at times, ranged from rival teams to internet scolds.

“Getting to play at the highest level at a World Cup with a team like we have is just ridiculous,” Rapinoe said, “but to be able to couple that with everything off the field, to back up all of those words with performances, and to back up all of those performances with words, it’s just incredible.”

On top of her official honors, which in addition to most valuable player status included the Golden Boot as the tournament’s top scorer, Rapinoe over the course of a month made herself the unofficial face of the World Cup: a soccer star immune to the false modesty that afflicts so many athletes when faced with microphones; a proudly gay athlete eager to use her platform to champion the rights of marginalized communities; the target of the ire of President Trump who, halfway through the tournament, publicly criticized Rapinoe on Twitter for dismissing even the possibility that her team would visit the White House once the competition was over.

After the game, on the podium where she and her team would lift the tournament’s gold trophy, Rapinoe had a long chat with France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, and she accepted an invitation to talk in the future with FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, whose organization she has criticized repeatedly for not caring about women’s soccer and not investing enough money in its growth.

Several hours after the final whistle, even Mr. Trump was tweeting his praise. “Great and exciting play,” he wrote in sending his congratulations. “America is proud of you all.”

The American women won because, in their minds, on an existential level, they had to win. In March, the team’s players filed a lawsuit in federal court in March against the United States Soccer Federation, accusing it of engaging in illegal workplace discrimination — in areas such as pay, medical treatment and workplace conditions — on the basis of their gender. The heart of the argument for better compensation was their stellar performance over the years; winning in France would help them make their case. Losing, they knew, would sting.

In the competitive sense, this was by most accounts the toughest, most competitive women’s World Cup, reflecting all the progress made around the world in the game since the United States won the first edition of the tournament in 1991.

Within this crucible, though, and amid the distractions, the American women hardly missed a beat. They scored 26 goals and allowed only 3.  They did not trail for as much as a second, winning seven straight games, including four knockout-stage games in a row against a series of ascendant European rivals.

“In terms of the path and the level, this was pretty challenging,” their coach, Jill Ellis, said.

The United States and the Netherlands played evenly in the first half of Sunday’s final, with the Dutch stanching the vaunted American attack with nerve and physicality for the game’s first hour. In a span of two minutes late in the first half, the Netherlands goalkeeper Sari van Veenendaal used three different parts of her body — her rib cage, the bottom of her foot, and her fists — to stop clear scoring chances from the Americans.

“I said to the players at halftime, ‘At some point it’s going to break, and it’s going to break our way,’” Ellis said.

That happened, finally, with 30 minutes to play, when the Dutch defender Stefanie van der Gragt, trying to clear a ball floating through the penalty area, instead kicked striker Alex Morgan in the shoulder, gifting the Americans a penalty kick.

Rapinoe stepped up and converted the shot — low and to the goalkeeper’s left — to score her sixth goal of the tournament. As the pro-United States crowd filling the stadium erupted in cheers, Rapinoe jogged toward the corner flag, uncurled a slow pirouette and lifted her arms to either side, like a bullfighter awash in adulation.

Lavelle clinched the victory nine  minutes later. After receiving the ball at the center circle, an acre of space ahead of her, she dribbled in a straight line toward the goal with a series of delicate, little touches, a magician wiggling her fingers before a trick. Once in range, she shimmied her hips one final time, unsteadying the lone defender in front of her, before cutting the ball to her preferred left foot, which she used to wallop the ball inside the right post.

Almost immediately after the final whistle, Nike, one of the team’s sponsors, released a stirring advertisement portraying the players not merely as soccer champions, but as champions of equal rights, with a narrator envisioning that “a whole generation of girls and boys will go out and play and say things like, ‘I want to be like Megan Rapinoe when I grow up.’ And that they’ll be inspired to talk and win.”

And in a sign of how much the United States team has meant to fans and even players from other countries, the Dutch team before the game posted its own tribute video to the American women, stating, “You showed us where dedication and ambition can bring you.”

“So much of what we have to shoulder all of the time is heavy,” Rapinoe had said before the game. “It’s no secret that we’re sort of the leaders in the women’s game in a lot of different issues — equality, pay quality, gender issues — and at large our team has been very open and willing to sort of get in any kind of equality fight.”

The fight continued, even as the game came to its conclusion.

When the final whistle blared, the Americans rushed onto the field and zigzagged across the grass in celebration. The Netherlands players collapsed to their knees. Players from both teams broke down in tears. Enormous American flags emerged, and the United States players draped them over their shoulders.

Then came the chants for equal pay, and in that moment, the victory, the trophy and the team, became vehicles, once again, for a message.

Phroyd

[lisinfleur]

Mishaps - Chapter 02: Like Shadows

Author’s notes: here is one more chapter of our story! I hope you guys are enjoying!

Warnings: People who love Aethelwulf may dislike this. Other than this, 18+, mentions of kidnapping and corruption, some dirty talk and bad language.

Words: 2259

"And since then, she didn't show up?"

His voice was mixed with the sobs of a female voice coming from the crying girl sat on the other side of his table, trying to dry her tears with an already wet paper towel.

"No. She just vanished. Annie is not like that! She never missed a call of mine, but her cellphone is going straight to the mailbox. First, I thought her phone could be discharged, but not for so long. There are more than three days without a single notice, she doesn't answer her door and the neighbor said she didn't come home that day. I'm so worried! She's my friend... Please, officer..."

"We'll do everything in our power to find your friend, Mrs. Ashford," he interrupted her, warranting they would do the best, trying to give her at least a drop of comfort about the whole situation.

"July," she mumbled, sniffing against the paper towel once again "You can call me July. You make me feel like my mother when you call me Mrs. Ashford".

July was nervous. She always talked too much when she was nervous and you would know that if you were around. But the officer in front of her was being tolerant with her little annoying mannerisms.

He needed to be.

Aethelwulf needed to keep her talking if he wanted to find more information about the mention she made during the little testimony she was providing while denouncing your disappearance.

"Fine... July," he said trying to smile at her. "I understand what you feel. But... You mentioned a man... Someone who was going every day to see Mrs. Watson at the coffee shop... What was his name?"

"I don't know how to say it correctly. Visark... Vit... serk... Annie was the only one who could pronounce it correctly and somehow it made him interested. He was visiting the coffee shop every day, but he's not going there anymore. I'm sure he was going only because of her and now that she's not there, he lost the interest in the store. She was so in love with him... We thought they would be together. We even played about the nickname we gave him... We used to call him Annie's Sunshine. Now Annie is not there... Oh, god! What happened to her?" she started crying again after speaking a sea of useless information, causing Aethelwulf to sigh, trying to keep the fake smile in his face.

Damn. It would be so easier if your co-workers were men... Women and children were all the same: he hated to interview any of them for it was hard to make them keep the focus when they were witnesses or victims of anything.

You weren't different. But with you, his problem was to make you speak. You simply became mute after what you saw and it took him about a week to make you answer him your name...

Did he ever tell you how much he hated to work with the Witnesses' Protection Program?

"I need you to keep the focus, Mrs. Ashford... July, July," he corrected himself before that girl could start to talk about her age, her mother and all that stuff once again.

His fingers messed up with the computer in front of him and he turned the monitor towards July, showing her the picture of a man that she recognized at the same moment.

"Is this the man who was visiting your work, miss?"

July covered her mouth, but not for seeing anything bizarre: it was a journalistic article about the Lothbrok family. In it, a picture of Hvitserk near his brothers, with a certain focus on his face for the paragraph was talking about his way of life and his position into his father's company.

"Oh my god!" she exclaimed, getting a genuine smile from Aethelwulf's lips.

"Is it him?" he asked, excited.

He could feel in his guts! This time he would get it...

He was searching for so long any breach he could find into that damn family! He knew about their business, the real ones, but Aethelwulf never were able to prove Ragnar's activities so as he failed to prove your father's activities before he was killed. So as he was failing to catch Björn and his brothers now...

All he wanted was a huge prison like that to make his career and leave that dirty small department and the work with witnesses he hated so bad.

And maybe you would be his way outta that shit.

"Man... I would never believe if someone told me this story! A Ragnarsson was going to our coffee shop every day and we didn't even notice? And he was interested in Annie! Oh my gosh!" July exclaimed again and Aethelwulf had to swallow dry to keep the smile in his face.

What in the actual fuck was wrong with the women of that town?

They all looked at the sons of Ragnar as if they were gods or anything like this! Even the women from the police station! How many times he saw the female police officers drooling over magazines with one of them at the cover.

Was he the only one able to see the kind of bastards these people were?

"So, it is the man, right?" he insisted, trying to call July back to the subject.

"Yeah. It is him," she confirmed.

Aethelwulf smiled like a wolf, not being able to hide completely the victory in his smile: finally, he would catch one of them and prove to everyone he wasn't lying or crazy.

The sons of Ragnar were as dangerous as their father once were. And with the right luck, maybe he could force Hvitserk to talk.

Maybe go up on the ladder to put that arrogant, the older of them, Björn Ragnarsson, in his place: behind bars.

"How long since the last time he came?"

His entire interrogatory with July resumed to information about your relation with Hvitserk and his presence in the coffee shop. After the tenth question, July was already confused.

"But officer... Why is Vitsark so important to this situation? When she got strange, he wasn't there and after she was gone, he still came a lot of times looking for her... I don't understand..."

"Don't worry, Mrs. Ashford. You already contributed a lot with this investigation. I'll be in touch. Now just calm down and wait for our call, ok? We gonna do everything in our power to find Mrs. Watson, don't worry," Aethelwulf said, suggestively conducting July to the door of his office.

"Officer..." she tried, but Aethelwulf gave her purse in her hands and smiled.

"Have a nice day, Mrs. Ashford."

"It's July!" She said before he closed his door, coming back to his table, trying to organize his notes.

Every single information she gave was itching his instinct, telling him Hvitserk was somehow responsible for your disappearance.

He took back your case from his archive and closed himself in his office, ignoring the time for lunch and laying himself over your file.

Pages and pages about Horik - the bastard he came closer to catch...

Ragnar took the prison from his hands when he killed Horik before the arrest warrant was ready...

You were the key to his case. His little gold mine.

"Who could say you would bring one more chance, sweet Y/N," he said, looking at your picture on the folder in his hand.

There was some time since he saw you for the last time, but that file had everything about your life. From your mother's fate in Horik's hands to your address and telephone number, everything about you was a file for him. One he abandoned years ago...

He could still feel the bitter taste of being so close to the victory and have it taken from his hands the way Ragnar did, killing Horik days before he could execute the prison, taking from him the laurels of catching one of the bigger drug dealers of the country and worse: taking his place, forcing him to start the case from zero. Why?

Because nobody believed when he said it was Ragnar... He never had a single proof that Ragnar's hands were deeply sunk in your father's blood and everything became even harder when a random bastard confessed the murder of your father, turning everything into a circus to the press and giving the whole credit to another officer who supposedly found the real murderer while he was walking in circles with the rest of the department.

Bullshit!

Aethelwulf knew both of them were being well paid for that stupid theatre: the officer and the bastard. But without concrete proof of what he was saying, it was all this: words.

Years more of investigation trying to build a case against Ragnar for the bastard to be killed in the middle of a trip to England. Aethelwulf was waiting everything would lay on his wife's hands - an alcoholic woman who would surely commit enough mistakes to give him plenty of proofs against that family.

He could still remember how much he screamed in fury when Ragnar's ex-wife killed his widow, fleeing to God knows where...

God no...

Him.

That bastard.

Björn Ragnarsson.

He was sure Björn knew not only where his mother was hidden but also he was still keeping her in touch even knowing his younger brother couldn't forgive his stepmother's murder.

Those bastards hated each other, but even then, the god damn motherfuckers knew how to work as a team... Since the company was passed to their hands, not even a single mistake was committed! Not a single detail slipped from their hands to give him a breach through where he could reach one of them and break them all...

Until today.

Until you.

You who was once his better trump against Horik when your testimony against him for your mother's murder was exactly what he needed to get the arrest warrant...

You who was once his little treasure box.

Here you are again, giving Hvitserk's head in a silver plate for him.

All he had to do was pull the pieces together and...

"What are you doing, Aethelwulf?" the chief of the department came into his office, looking at all the papers over his table and the picture in his computer before sighing "Organize your stuff and go out for lunch."

"I'm not..." he tried to start, but the chief cut him before he could say anything.

"You won't start this shit again, Aethelwulf! I have a woman outside of this office who came to talk about her best friend disappearance and left this station confused about why were you asking everything about the Ragnarsson in their coffee shop! You leave this family alone, for God's sake!"

"Why?" Aethelwulf asked, looking straight at his boss' eyes "Just because they're rich, sir? I am telling you for years they have replaced Horik and taken control of their business! Years! Since Ragnar..."

"Since Ragnar, I have to hear this stupidity!" his boss cut him again "You're losing this department resources and time trying to build a case where there is nothing for you to mess with! You're obsessed, Aethelwulf! Enough! I gonna put Heahmund in this girl's case and you gonna take a break!"

"I don't need a break!" Aethelwulf insisted "And she's under my protection since she got into the program!"

"So, you can work alongside him. But your instance is under his and he will be the head! Heahmund is more stable and I know I can trust him. Enough of you trying to find something against the Lothbrok family in every single case we receive in this station! Leave them alone, did you understand me, officer?"

Aethelwulf growled, but there wasn't a choice for him.

"One day you guys will regret to let them work freely," he said, annoyed.

"It is a free country, Aethelwulf! Every man and woman in this place can work freely. And the Lothbroks will keep working freely until someone proves me they're doing anything but transporting containers and filling their asses with five times more money than us, in half of the time and with less than one-third of our work! Their business is legal, Aethelwulf, put this shit into your head. Now go lunch and take the rest of the day off. Go take some air, find someone to fuck, God damn it, boy, take these men out of your head or I'll start thinking your problem is passional. Get outta my face, boy! Now!"

Aethelwulf growled again, in the back of his throat, taking his folders, locking them into his drawer and leaving his office with a frown.

But he was convinced.

Not even his stupid boss or that asshole of his favorite, Heahmund, would prevent him to reach his objectives.

He knew Heahmund wouldn't hear him about Hvitserk's involvement. So, he would use his free time to search and find the connections and then when he could put his hands in that damn Ragnarsson, everyone would have to admit he wasn't wrong.

His steps crossed the newsstand and he saw the business magazines. At least three of them stamped with that blonde bastard...

His fingers took one of them outta the stand and he took a good look in Björn's eyes.

"Your empire will fall, bastard. Not so far from now, your empire will fall."

And you would be his key to open the door of success and close the handcuffs around those bastards’ wrists.

Once and for all.

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[dukeofriven]

America: A Prophecy

‘What God is he writes laws of peace, and clothes him in a tempest? What pitying Angel lusts for tears, and fans himself with sighs? What crawling villain preaches abstinence and wraps himself In fat of lambs? No more I follow, no more obedience pay!’ So cried he, rending off his robe and throwing down his sceptre In sight of Albion’s Guardian; and all the Thirteen Angels Rent off their robes to the hungry wind, and threw their golden sceptres Down on the land of America. - William Blake, 1793

America is becoming ungovernable.

It’s simply much too large, too varied, and much too polarized for any one candidate to garner even the plurality of support needed to effectively govern as a president, complicated by the weaknesses of America’s social/political system that demands a democratically-elected executive somehow stand for the nation as a whole.

This isn’t a ‘diversity’ problem or a call for ethnic of cultural homogeneity. I’m from a country with greater diversity than the United States and we manage just fine. (I mean we’re facing a rising tide of rightwing resurgence exacerbated by decades of failure by ruling parties to replace the antiquated first-past-the-post voting system so I wouldn’t call us “fine” but those issues are rooted in numerous social trends, not racial demographics.)

It’s more a condition of the scale of Unites States and the internecine conflicts of groups within it. I remember during the last election hearing a lot about letting perfect be the enemy of good: ‘yes this candidate might not understand your ethnic/social/cultural group particularly well or speak to your issues, but you ought to vote for them anyways.’ From a certain point of view that’s true - I think it hardly uncontroversial to say that the world generally and America specifically is demonstrably worse under Donald Trump than it would have been under Hillary Clinton.

But leaving aside the candidates as individuals for a moment and viewing them purely as symbols the President-As-Unifier and the electoral circus around it becomes faintly absurd. The more often you have say to one group or another ‘stop needing a candidate to be exactly like you and just give them your vote because they’re more like you than the other guy,’ the more you overlook centuries of pain and marginalization. Groups that never had voices before have voices now: loud voices, prominent voices, and they are finding that they don’t want to sit down and shut up in the interest of some mythical unity anymore. They can���t. And therefore these presidential primaries are only going to get worse as things go on. They’re already getting acrimonious again, and those groups who have been told to swallow their voices again and again if they don’t want things to get worse are realizing that they’ve been used as tools as the status quo for far too long. Things don’t get worse when they shut up and vote like they’re told - but they never get better, either. Not in meaningful ways, or not rapidly enough to be meaningful to most of them .(‘By supporting the status quo you achieved a social victory and it only took you 45 years and your entire youth to see it come to fruition.’) The ‘baby-steps’ of change have started to seem less like care and caution and more like infantilization.

When the only people who could vote in America were white, adult, male property-owners you could have two political parties: there really was more that united voters then divided them, such as all voters belonging to the same class, ethnicity, language group, social background, Enlightenment-moulding education praxis, and willingness to compromise on treating human beings as disposable tools for labour. The greater the franchise has expanded in America the farther and further from that ‘unity’ things have gotten.

Since the Trump election in particular the question is asked: “What’s caused the polarization of America?” The real answers are a multitude of factors: unhealed wounds in the body politic after the Second Indochina War; the malaise, complacency, and self-indulgent omphaloskepsis of being the so-called superpower in the 90s; post-colonialism and free market economics bringing the worst ravages of capitalism stateside and decimating the illusion of a stable middle class. There’s lot of reasons as things are rarely simple.

Perhaps the most critical cause, however, the one with the greatest impact, has been this widening of not just the franchise but the gradual realization by the newly-enfranchised that they vocalize social discontent and express it - or at least attempt to express it - through voting. The ‘silent majority’ can only exist when the majority of oppressed and marginalized groups suffer in silence. The divisions that exist now existed in the 1950s, but they are only now being vocalized in such a prominent way. Even the labour movement and the Great Depression in the thirties did not sufficiently create an impression of intractable internecine rivalries such as now can be seen dividing America.

Republicans have understood this for a long time. This is why their politics have grown more and more tribalistic as the years have gone on. So long as they can dominate amongst specific strata of demographics they don’t have to care about winning any kind of nation-wide majority. They can fixate on the plurality that rigidly shares its belief systems: a rigidity created by and continually reenforced by the rhetoric of Republican doctrine and dogma. Democrats coasted on this for years, thinking that if Republicans focused only on a handful of groups then they benefited simply by having everyone else by default.

But it didn’t really work out that way. Gerrymandering by Republican bureaucrats helped a lot here by segmenting voting districts so that anyone outside the Republican voting base got split across multiple voting districts and never coalesced into more than a handful of centralized sources of power that the Democrats could rely on, but there’s a bigger issue. This Republican plurality positioning has only short-term value: they’re a demographic time bomb and as far back as 2012 I can remember their saner members talking about this as a matter of some urgency. But they were ignored, and the GOP is on a death-cult rocket ride to eventual obsolescence, although they’ll pull as much of American down around them as they go in an act of spite.

But that’s not the problem (or, rather, it is a problem but it’s not what I’ve come here to talk about today). Democrats got so used to coasting on being the party of the default that they lack any ability to talk to groups specifically. Nobody likes being taken for granted and they’ve started pushing back. Clinton’s failure to secure a margin of victory overwhelming enough to overcome the limiters of the Electoral College showed that two years ago: plenty of groups stayed home, an act of protest against a party that expected their vote for no other reason than 'not being the other guy.’

Nobody seems to have learned that lesson very well. Imagine two, three presidential elections from now, when the GOP is a spent force whose membership lists are now covered with dead people. (The oldest baby boomers are over 70, and when age brackets start to die in numbers it becomes a cascade. I can remember going from parades of WWII vets to a handful of wheelchair veterans in about a decade, and from some WWI vets to none in the same length of time.) For the younger among you two, three elections might seem like a long time, but it isn’t: years rush by faster than you think. So picture that world with a GOP in terminal decline and a Democratic party witnessing the prophesied triumph of demographic inevitability.

That’s essentially a one-party state, but a party that already struggles to be enough things to enough people now is going to buckle under pressures the American political system simply wasn’t built to handle. America was built around being a two-party state - of being a country in which the majority of people fit comfortably enough into two broad binaries and vote accordingly.

But they don’t, and they can’t, and America as it presently exists may be quite literally ungovernable. The centuries of appalling violence within America only complicate the picture further - it’s the sort of mixture of history, population, and anger that lead to the Balkan Wars, the conflicts between former members of the Warsaw Pact, and more recently the creation of South Sudan. America already had one civil war, there’s no reason to think that a re-fragmenting of America isn’t possible, especially given how contentious the language seems to be among different groups.

America has a scale problem, and I think Americans don’t really understand this. I live in the second largest country in the world by area but nobody actually lives here. See this?

It’s about fifteen years out of date, but the population hasn’t expanded beyond those yellow borders: just make the red bits much redder and you’re golden. Yet even this is still not getting the full picture. Let me show you with my photoshop skills: Everybody in the green bit:

Does not equal the population of the blue bit. If Canadian politics ran purely off of direct voting the entire country would be dominated by a group of people who live in about 0.14% of the country. What this means in practice is that for all that Canada has different grouping of cultural diversity (i.e. the political/social/cultural makeup of PEI as distinct from Vancouver as distinct from Iqaluit), should a civil war of either literal or abstract nature break-out the power of bodies is still located in one place. This is the population density of America:

Look at all those different concentrations of people and power. Like I said Canada does, of course, have other centres of power outside of old Upper/Lower Canada: despite what it thinks Toronto is not the entirety of the universe. But the multiplicity of metropolitan spaces and concentrated population centres such as you have in America don’t exist here. What am I getting at with this? America has spaces of intensely regional identity on an enormous scale. In Canada, for example, even Quebec separatism seems to be dying a slow and painful death. We’ve all got our our local identities, but Canadians are still mostly Canadian first, something else second. America by contrast, have fought a bloody civil war over slavery that afterwards was reshaped (falsely) into a war about regionalism, which mutated later into tribalism. This is why right-wingers in Union states spout Confederate flags. The flag doesn’t represent the literal loyalties of the Confederacy but its values: racism, white power, using human being as disposable tools for personal enrichment, and racism. (Anyone wanting to argue is welcome to read the Constitution of the Confederacy, which is nothing but the US Constitution with extra bits about slavery and river trade stuck in: it’s not subtle, and the character of the Confederacy is not up for debate.) Americans - or at least a worrying percentage of Americans - tend to link their national and tribal identities quite strongly: all you have to do is watch a Trump rally to work that out. To be an American is to be like me - thus, anyone unlike me is unAmerican. That is the sickness, the rot that is chewing up America from the inside. The right wing seized hold of the idea that the only Real Americans are those just like them, and other groups have started to adopt the same mindset out of self-defence, and these fractures are only going to deepen. Take that and add to it the way that political tribalism is fusing with regional identity and you begin to see the scope of the problem: you’re reaching the point where nobody from Region A can ever be thought of having any authority over Region B because Region A people are the Other. (Trump will probably be the last New Yorker City dweller to ever hold sway in the GOP: his successors will bind themselves to the base not merely through the tribal shibboleths of hating brown people and the poor who believe in improving their lot through anything other than force of will, but also through regional identity. No Californian Republican is likely to ever see front-billing again: you’ll prove your loyalty by only living in the ‘right’ places - solidly red, with no compromising purple of ideological weakness.)

So look at the Democratic party two, three elections from now: the party of everyone in the country who isn’t the GOP. How is that a functioning political group? What could it stand for that would effectively cover such a diverse collection of people? You cannot be the party of the centrists and the progressives and the leftists and the disaffected rightists and the communists and the socialists and the ethical capitalists and the neo-Marxists and the socially-liberal libertarians and the left-leaning rich and the remaining middle class and the working class and the vested corporate interests unwilling to directly support fascism and on and on and on. Democrats can run on the ‘Not Trump’ platform for the moment because the GOP will likely be the party of Trumpism from here on out. (The GOP had enough sense of self preservation to distance itself from Nixon back in the day, but ever since it refused to repudiate Reagan after Iran-Contra it’s shown that it is only ever going to double-down on its bets from here on out: it’ll be riding this train until the very bitter end.) But ‘not Trump’ is barely sufficient even now - because people want to know what the party is for, not just what it’s against. And it can’t be for everything but Trumpism - it’s too broad a field. So America is rapidly become ungovernable, because one party wants to serve a demographic facing extinction, and the other wants to be the Big Tent of literally everyone else no matter how different they may be. Which looks great on a poster about tolerance that you’d hang in a kindergarten class but is untenable when trying to unify 18-year old queer anarcho-syndicists of colour and 50-year old suburban capitalism-apologist whites: their goals are too divergent for harmony to make political sense. (And yes, ‘suburban’ is an antonym of ‘queer.’ Trust me on this.) They want fundamentally different things; just because they mutually do not also want a third thing does not mean they make stable, good, or even plausible allies. The Waffle Guardians and The Crepe Defenders can come together and agree that Pancakes are garbage but that is the end of their common cause, not the start of meaningful co-operation on a variety of issues mattering to both groups, because those don’t really exist. So America is becoming literally ungovernable because its institutions are incapable of operating outside of a narrow binary between two relatively close points. It was not designed, and cannot handle, the intense tribalism of the moment, nor the future that will contain a multitude of independently-minded political groups who are no longer willing to engage with big tent politics that ultimately never forward their own causes. We talk right now about a battle for the ‘soul’ of the Democratic party, but that’s bull. The fight is for who gets to keep the branding and the cachet of the name ‘Democratic Party’ - the next step is party secession, first when the centrists realize the progressives really do mean to literally destroy them and the status quo they hold dear, and then further fragmentation from there. I could go on and on down various laneways here about how increasing tribalism is straining the American system on a structural level. Take the Supreme Court, which only functions without a heavily politicized judiciary because otherwise democratic desires are stifled by entrenched judicial positions that judge issues only on their political merits. Or take how binary elected government in general only works with the understanding that every time power swaps between two groups the next group doesn’t instantly undo everything the last group did out of spite. (We’re seeing that in Ontario right now, actually, as a serious of ‘fortunate’ events brought into power a man so craven he makes Donald Trump seem downright generous in comparison. Our new premiere realized that if he just stops caring about re-election he can do whatever he wants to enrich his corporate buddies in the short-term, so he’s doing things that are enraging even his base, like removing anaesthetic coverage from colonoscopies. He, like Trump, is a ‘political outsider’ but unlike Trump his ego doesn’t need people telling him they love him - he’s perfectly happy being a vindictive thug, so even though he used populist anger to get into power he feels no reason to do anything for anyone who put him there. This is what happens when you elect a suburban drug dealer whose only goal is to revenge himself on an entire province for not taking his brother the crack-smoking mayor seriously. Ontario is so, so screwed.) Fundamentally, presidential republics are a disease. The American republican system has damaged every country its ever been exported to as its central structural weakness - an ability to be easily subsumed by autocrats - has been taken advantage of in basically every case, not to mention its tendency to fall into political deadlock. America’s own legal experts don’t recommend the country’s constitution to other - RBGs herself said that she would not use the US Constitution as a model to any country creating one today. The fractures that so ruined South America and the emerging African states that took the Us as their role model are finally happening in American itself. This feeling of paralyzation will only worsen in the years to come: it was practically baked-in to the political system from the start, the inevitable breaking point of planned obsolescence. America must either change - such as adopting a parliamentary model better-suited to handle the diverse social, ethnic, cultural, and regional demographics of such a large country, or taking an axe to existing institutional binaries and demolishing the two-party state - or die. I recognize the irony in saying that there is a binary choice about handling the inability to handle non-binaries, but there is a third option: sticking with the status quo. A status quo that is groaning under the strain of modern America, a status quo for which simple, minor modifications are unlikely to be enough to relieve the pressures the system is under. You could try that. You’ve been trying it for decades. How’s that choice working out? Two to three elections from now the idea that you can neatly divide political extremes into Liberal and Conservative, and that harmony can only be found in collaboration, will be so dead that not even the most committed advocate of the status quo will be able to ignore the smell - though he will, of course, say that the onus is on other people to come back from their ‘extremist’ positions, because it’s never centrism’s fault when people reject it as insufficient to the crises of the present. To the Americans who read this, you’re going to have to choose - and it really is a choice, surprising as that may seem. You can choose to let America end. To let it die. Countries die all the time. That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. Say you’re from a blue state: do you still want a future of sharing a country with a red state? America stays together because ‘more unites us than divides us’ - but is there a point where that truism can no longer be consider true? And at that point is there still value in remaining a union? Meaningful value, and not just a sense of duty or obligation to an ideal that doesn’t seem to have any real-world resonance? What is the point at which political compromise becomes something you can no longer stomach - when working together goes from making deals with the opposition to making deals with the devil? When do hyperbolic statements like the other side being 'the devil’ stop sounding like hyperbole? For all that I talked about the Founding Fathers and their immediate voting heirs being ‘the same’ one point on which they disagreed was slavery - but they found themselves able to compromise on the use of humans-as-property for labour. That I one of the founding pacts of America: some of us don’t like slavery, but we can live with it in the interest of unity. Could you, a time-traveler-turned-Founding-Father, make the same choice? On what are you willing to compromise to keep the union a union - what agreements could you make and still be able to meet your own gaze in a mirror? Keep in mind that choosing ‘change’ is no guarantee that the change will be successful, or that the post-America that emerges from that change will be any more a place you want to live in than if you had chosen to keep America alive. I merely want the full and total weight of those decisions to be clear. American compromised on slavery at the moment of its birth: it has lived with the consequences of that compromise ever since. America continues to exist because matters were compromised on - some benign, some heinous, all done in the interest of a greater good. Are you willing to make such compromises future - and are you willing to accept the consequences of what might happen if you are not? There is no ‘going back.’ The post-Trump America will not be a ‘return to normal.’ It can’t. Too many lines have been crossed for there to be a simple return to ‘normality’ when all this is done: that normal is dead. If you choose to try and reinstate it - if you choose neither change nor death but the old status quo - then the problems that birthed this current crisis will remain. Is that status quo strong enough to withstand a second round with such events? That’s something you’ll have to decided. Until then, American will remain ungovernable.

[drumpfwatch]

State of the Union 2019 Commentary

It’s been a week and some change. Let’s talk State of the Union.

First off, I’d like to make a comment on the overall speech theme. Trump spoke of unity and everyone coming together, but that very morning he went to yell at how obstructionist and obnoxious the Democrats were being for not giving him his baby bottle wall. This man, who speaks of himself as the best deal maker in the world, and bragged he’d be able to get everyone to get together and make friends, sort out their differences, when he has done nothing but make demand after demand and concede no ground.

A compromise, Mr. Trump, is two people coming together and agreeing on something they’re both willing to do while conceding parts of what they want. It’s called a surrender if someone gives you everything they want while getting nothing. Dummkopf.

So with that, let’s begin at the beginning. I warn you right now I don’t want to go over every single point he made, but I’ll cover as many of them as I can and comment as needed. There are other commentaries out there, some as soon as the day after, and those are more than cool to have hanging around. I’m sure between all of those you can come up with a total summary of what he said, based on every single word. With that, let’s begin.

As per his theme, he started the speech by calling for unity and cooperation. All well and good for anyone else. We should avoid revenge politics - which is fucking rich coming from him, but whatever. Specifically, he calls congress to concern themselves “with the agenda of the American people” but…

Well, we’ll get to that.

He thanks some WW2 vets and then talks about how he’s interested in “America First.” People have on more than one occasion pointed out that given his actions, he seems to mean “America Only” when he says that, and that should be a premise that is upsetting to everyone but I have no doubt there is a large portion of the population of the American population who are more than happy to ignore the rest of the world. They already do, after all.

He then introduces Buzz Aldrin, saying that we’ll be going to space on American rockets again. And he’s actually, sadly, right there. Back in 2011, the Space Shuttle program was retired, and we’ve been relying on the Russian Soyuz capsule to get us into the space ever since. The successor to the Space Shuttle Program, the Space Launch System, has been slow coming for numerous reasons. It is, however, finally going to be ready to go in 2019 and will perform its first mission in 2020 - sending a craft to Mars. They wanted a rocket that could get a crew to Mars eventually, and the Senate…

Well, let’s just say congress stuck it’s fingers into the Space Launch System so much that it has been derisively called the Senate Launch System, and a lot of astronauts and NASA Engineers are concerned that it is basically a horrible, efficient money sink. Still, as an avid space fanatic, I’m glad we’re making efforts, at least. Though I’d point out that those efforts have been in motion long before he ever got there to direct them. This is, after all, the man that believed we could go to Mars before his first term was out.

He next goes on to talk about the economy, claiming that our middle class is bigger and more prosperous than ever before. This is untrue. While it seems to be complicated, the general consensus is that while the Middle Class has been stable in size, they tend to have less and less, especially in comparison to the upper class. That is where the real problem is, as well. The absolutely ridiculous wealth disparity. Though I get the feeling that removing taxes from private jets is totally gonna help with that. She says, sarcasm frothing in her mouth in a mixture of rage and bitterness.

He then claimed responsibility for the parts of the economic boom that have been happening. First of all, the economy is...not exactly booming. But there are good things happening in it. It’s sort of a whirlygig of insanity, if I’m honest. Now, you’ll hear me say this again a few other times, but I am not all that educated when it comes to economics. Economics is a chaos system and I much prefer stable ones with easy to predict results. Is a thing right or wrong, is this method an effective way of accomplishing the intended goal. Things like that.

That said, I do know a few things, and one of them is that a lot of people who do know a thing or two about economics point out that this economic boom began in 2016, which means it's entirely possible that this is a result of Obama’s policies were responsible, we don’t really know. Maybe Trump did have something to do with it, but it’s often not accurate to blame the problems or successes of an economy on a single thing. So this claim gets a big ol’ stamp of “UNVERIFIABLE” from me.

I can say that wages are not rising, or at least as much as he thinks. The Federal Minimum Wage was not changed since 2009, and lost about 9.6% of its purchasing power because of inflation. While some states have made major strides towards livable minimum wages have been made in places like New York and California, I’d be willing to bet dollars to donuts that if you removed the massive amount of wealth that people like Jeff Bezos make, you’d find that they are stagnant, or even lowering.

There’s a thought for a math rant sometime.

Anyway, he then praises the 5 million people who got off of food stamps. First of all, the number is 3.5 million. Second of all, it’s a bit more complicated than that. To summarize, while the decrease in unemployment is helping, there’s another little niggling thing. There was a provision in the law that basically said you could turn off some of the safety nets if employment rates rose, and a lot of states decided not to pay for those benefits. I won’t argue whether or not that was a right or wrong decision, but I will say you don’t get to wave around the number of people who are off a program as a victory when the reason they’re off it isn’t because they don’t need it, but because they were kicked off it.

We’re the hottest economy in the world, he says! And he’s wrong. I mentioned before that we’re in a weird sort of “Good Things, Bad Things” phase, but I don’t think I need to tell anyone that the stock market has been all over the place, falling and rising considerably at random. Meanwhile, S&P has downgraded America’s credit score. I think we’ve got a problem, and I know we’re not the hottest economy.

He then goes onto say that the unemployment rate for people of color is the lowest it’s ever been. And shockingly, he’s right on this one. Sort of. The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the rate of unemployment for hispanic people and black people actually went down, and was at one point the lowest it’s ever been. Asian unemployment has sorta been all over the place. What makes it strange, however, is that each of these groups had a random and sudden spike since November/December of last year, while for whites it’s been pretty stagnant. Last hired, first fired, I guess.

He also talks about the same with disabled people and that is blatantly untrue. While it seems the number of people who qualify for disability also is going up, they’re not getting employed any faster.

I should also mention that even if we could point to one specific thing as responsible for these changes, I doubt it would be the fault of the man who himself wouldn’t house or hire black people.

He also celebrated getting rid of the estate tax. Which yes, he did. That is not necessarily a good thing. He acts like it applies to small businesses and farmers, but it doesn’t. One person said on the matter “If you don’t feel comfortable calling what you own an estate, then you probably aren’t affected by the estate tax.” You and your guilded crotch spawn and protected up to 10 million dollars. Only after that is your wealthy taxed on death, and only to prevent the the existence of a permanent landed gentry. The only people benefiting from the end of the estate tax are literal millionaires, who can afford to give some of that dosh to the community.

He then talks about Obamacare, and how he get rid of the Individual Mandate. He claims this was the most unpopular part of the law, and he’s right, but analysts point out that it’s more complicated then Thing Bad So Get Rid Of. Without the Individual Mandate to get people motivated to apply for coverage, a lot of people simply won’t get insured. Further, the whole point was that forcing the younger people to pay for insurance when they’re less likely to need it helped to add money to the pool that could be used to help cover the people with pre-existing conditions or complications. That said, it’s also a good thing not having people pay for coverage they can’t afford, so...it’s complicated.

Trump then bragged about cutting the most regulations of any President ever, and I won’t deny that he has. I will, however, point out that this is a horrible thing that should concern and frighten all of you. While some of those regulations may seem arbitrary, literally every one of them was written in the blood of some innocent person who died so a corporation could make an extra buck. We’ve already seen an increase in food poisoning and infections and the increase in food recalls since 2013 has been kind of horrifying. Trump has been eagerly cutting regulations to “Pre-1960s” levels. You know, before we had seatbelts. It’s very harmful to cut those regulations, and it needs to stop.

He then says that America has corporations coming back in record numbers. On this, he is also not wrong. The Jobs report was very good, and we should all be happy about that. That said, whether or not he is the one to thank for that is a bit more complicated, as usual. It turns out that some of these gears were set into motion when Obama was in office. Some of them are just the effects of a slow recovery process since the 2009 Recession. That said, they did take a sharp rise in 2017. So yay for him, I guess.

Except, again, if deregulation is how you’re doing this, then you’re doing it wrong. We should not be sacrificing the blood of American people so that a few already stupid wealthy people can get even more stupid wealthy. The reward is not worth the cost.

He then goes on about how we’re the number one producer of oil in the world. This claim is untrue. There has, however, been a boom in oil and natural gas production due to things like the invention of fracking and loosening of regulations that goes all the way back to the Bush Era. The rate is increasing such that by sometime into the 2020s, we will be the greatest producer of oil and natural gas, at least privately. Considering those materials are murdering our planet this is also not good news, but since Global Warming is, of course, a conspiracy cooked up by the Chinese to steal American Jobs, that doesn’t matter. We are also not a net exporter of energy, by the way, but are on are way to becoming one.

Then things get...weird. Everyone starts chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” in this really low and creepy tone that I was frankly a bit creeped out by. It was like these people thought they were at a football game and not a session of Congress. Then again, this is my first time really sitting down and paying attention to the State of the Union, so this may be normal. I just didn’t like it.

What should, however, terrify everyone is his next babbling remark. He spends five minutes or so going on a rant about how “If there is going to be peace in legislation, there cannot be war and investigation.” Which, frankly, reminded me of a mafia frontman. “Lovely country you got here, shame if somethin’ were to happen to it. You noisy folks stink’ yah nose into my bosses business makes it real hard for him to keep wild guys like Big Jim ova deya under control. I can’t promise you won’t upset him wid all this.”

Sorry, trumby. You don’t get to talk about the need to stop our adversaries when you may well have been put in office by one.

Ughk, I hate using that word. Adversaries. It makes it sound like we have a boat load of enemies, when in reality we have like, 3 or 4, and otherwise a series of complex political relationships. Like we can’t work together with those people for a better future if we all just calmed the fuck down.

Like they’re not people.

Whatever. There are more important things to worry about.

Like how he goes on to mock the democrats for not approving his nominations. Even though a whole boatload of them are sketchy as fuck, should have never even been approved at all, or were just never filled by Trump in the first place.

Also can I just say that it’s fucking rich hearing aa man like Trump complain about not getting a nominee approved after what his party pulled with the Supreme Court? We call that hypocrisy.

He then goes on to talk about making life easier for prisoners and punishing people who abuse our veterans. Now, I could point out that prison reform was actually Barack Obama’s whole big thing and he passed a lot of laws in that regard, and Trump has not, and Former President Obama also passed VA reform in 2014 that allowed for people who mistreated veterans to be harshly punished. That said, Trump has been making further strides on those initiatives, and in fact his most approved and liked legislation is the First Step Act. These are the sorts of policies that really can make life better for people, and it’s nice to see everyone getting behind them. Ofcoursewecouldfurtherthesegreatstridesbyclosingdownforprofitprisons, andotherthingsthatimcertaindontappealtoarepublicanmindset, but that’s for another day. What I’m saying here is that as much as I don’t like it, I have to admit Trump has done a good. I don’t care who past them, how they developed, they were good things that happened. Yay! Good job Trump, you get a big shiny gold star.

We then move on to the Racist section of the speech. He starts by talking about the Migrant Caravan and I am shocked at how wrong and full of hatred this man is. He claims these refugees are an “onslaught” of illegal aliens when they’re all coming to America to seek asylum. You know, something that’s completely and totally legal. But no, this is an INVADING FORCE of ILLEGAL ALIENS that need to be stopped with 3,750 more Soldiers with GUNS. They managed to make it all the way to the American border with only one small kerfuffle with the Mexican border police, before arriving at the American border not to see Lady Liberty’s open arms welcoming the hopeless and downtrodden, the weary and poor, but instead heavily armed and barricaded troops who would then go on to use tear gas on them. Is that the America we want to show to the world?

Now, to his credit, Trump admits that Immigrants enrich our society - which is entirely true. Yes, there’s a bit of stress on lower-wage jobs when they first arrive, but that’s minimal in comparison to the benefits. Not that saying that to someone who got laid off and replaced with a migrant is no consolation, I fully understand, but there are ways to help these problems. Also, side note, if he believes immigrants are so awesome and enriching to our society, then he would be more than happy to have them enter the country. But the immigration system here is a convoluted mess of insanity that takes forever to get anything done and then occasionally does nothing, and Trump has just been making it worse. Just a thought.

Now I wrote an entire post about the wall, so I won’t go into it too much here. But the wall is an expensive, stupid, and ineffective idea. Drugs aren’t coming through skirmishers who are dodging around the border, they’re coming through ports of entry. The San Diego wall he was talking about isn’t nearly as effective as he pretends, and it didn’t really start working until the entry port in that area was spruced up. Smuggler still break through it all the time, as well, to the point where an area of it is called “Smuggler’s Gulch.” It also has trapped migrants into paying more to cross to the bad guys, taking riskier and more lethal routes, and actually trapping “illegal” migrants in who may want to leave. Most of the time, men would come up, do some work for cash, then go home once they felt they had enough, but now they’re coming, staying, and bringing their families.

Trump also points out that there were people in that room who voted for the wall, but I reckon the immense amount of insanity that came from that previous attempt are why a lot of people don’t want to do it again. Trump says that “No issue better illustrates the divide between America's working class and America's political class” but in truth, 60% of Americans are strongly opposed to the wall. The wall is a lost, stupid cause, and Trump needs to give it up before he hurts himself with his flailing about it.

OH, and just as one last cherry on the cake, it won’t stop sex trafficking either. Most traffickers bring there people in through on legal Visas, which they are then forced to overstay as those visas are held from them. In fact, over 80 anti-trafficking organizations got together to say that Trump's comments on the matter were actually harmful to efforts to stop this stuff.

He then goes on to tell the story of the Maddison family. I honestly don’t remember what it specifically was, because they are just a prop to garner sympathy for his position, and I’d actually be fine with that if the idiot didn’t use it to spread a lie. This family lost ones they love to MS13 members. That’s horrible and tragic and very sad, and I feel for them and wish it hadn’t happened. But acting like this is how every “illegal immigrant” operates is just a flat out lie. While the actual numbers are hard to tell, we know enough to say that if you strip away the illegal crime of coming here when not allowed, “illegal” immigrants commit 16% less crimes then the native-born population. Most of them are just people who want to escape an insane life and live the American Dream. But, see, they’re hispanic, so they can’t. You have to be white to be an American.

So with all of that said, let’s jump ahead to a cute moment where he talks about women taking 53% of the open jobs. Again, not his fault but go off I guess.

He then goes on to celebrate the women in Congress, of which there are more than ever before. Hurrah! I appreciate that little wink and nod, and in fact Donny, you get a gold star for this one too because this one is your fault.

By proxy.

Pretty much every one of those women ran for office because they hated you, your policies, and your stupid ugly face. They’re not there because they like you, they’re there because they want to stop you. So I think I’mma just take that shiny gold star away.

Next, he bounces back to talking about the economy, because Trump can’t focus on a single thing. Again, I won’t say much on this because economics is not my speciality, but people who DO know a thing or two about economics are pretty much in agreement that tariffs are a tool, and not a very good one. The analogy I like to use goes something like this. Imagine tariffs as a double edged knife you’re going to use to stab someone you don’t like. You’re already dealing with a weapon that’s not the safest, but guess what? This one also doesn't have a hilt, or a guard, or a pommel or anything. It’s literally just a long, serrated sheet of iron with a point on one end. So whenever you hit the other guy, you’re cutting yourself too. You can’t not.

Tariffs need to be used with the precision of a scalpel, and only if they’re determined to be the right tool for the job. And that’s without accounting for the unintended consequences like how rich people can probably find a way to avoid tariffs so they hurt the poorer people more, or you know, starting a trade war because the other people can just pass tariffs on you too?! And if any of you think this gigantic flatulating, tiny-handed orange with a racist stick coming out of its ass is capable of “precision” then I have a bridge I’d very much like to sell you.

He also goes on to talk about NAFTA again, and I’m gonna have to plead ignorance on this one. I don’t know if NAFTA is or is not a good deal, or if UMCA is a better one. I don’t know enough about economics and I don’t know enough about the laws themselves. I’m at least grateful the idiot didn’t cancel NAFTA before enstating UMCA, and those people who are smarter than me I keep talking about say that Mexico and Canada may not be in a mood to negotiate a new trade deal. So who knows. I’m not going to say much else on the matter.

So then we move on to infrastructure brieful. Trump talks about how it’s crumbling and needs repair, and he’s not wrong. The infrastructure report card for the US is, frankly, abysmal. But this begins a trend on a couple of topics.

He goes on to eagerly talk about how we need to improve health care, and lower drug prices! That we’re going to get rid of HIV in 10 years! That Childhood Cancer is going to be eradicated! Everyone gets paid family leave! All this wonderful pie-in-the-sky stuff that is super cool to hear him talk about, and I’d be totally behind him….

If he were actually doing anything on these matters. Trump talks a big game on these things, but hasn’t made any moves. Whenever he starts to, his business buddies step in and explain why they’re going to lose money and he stops.

So! He then moves on to talk about the legislation in New York that protects women’s rights to get an abortion anytime and how horrible it is that they’re murdering babies.

I think the response the white-clade congress women gave was the best.

I think the look on Angela Ocasio-Cortez’s face is the best, but the look on Angelia Ocasio-Cortez’s face and I think that’s Kathleen Rice giving the stink eye.

I don’t want to get into a debate about abortion, because that really is the best way to get everyone everywhere ever to hate you. I will say this, however. The law more or less only applies to pregnancies that would kill the mother or if the baby is already dead, and it wouldn’t matter if it didn’t.

Do you honestly think a person is going to go throw eight months of the most harrowing and obnoxious process the human body is capable of performing and then just suddenly decide “You know what? I don’t want this baby anymore.” If you’re that far along you either wanted the baby and were willing to suffer for it, or you never wanted the baby and were prevented from getting an abortion when it would’ve been kinder. The law isn’t about murdering babies, it's about letting women have control over themselves and their bodies. Acting like it’s some horrible evil that happened just makes you look dumb.

We then go onto nonsense about military bravado. Trump yammered about how he forced our allies to pay their fair share in NATO - which is honestly a kettle of fish I want to talk about in its own post, but suffice it to say it’s interesting everything he stresses and hates NATO for makes matters easier for Putin.

The real thing I want to talk about is the nuclear treaty he eventually meanders into like a toddler into a wall. Look, I’m not going to pretend that I understand the intricate diplomatics of nuclear negotiations, but even I know that YOU DO NOT ARBITRARILY CANCEL A TREATY THAT PREVENTS NUKES FROM BEING BUILT. You want an arms race?! This is how you get an arms race!

So what if Russia is “flaunting it” and ignoring it? I do not give one single solitary flying fuck. You negotiate a treaty that makes them suffer consequences - or better yet, stop not making them suffer the consequences they’re supposed to when they pull that shit - and you do it while the other treaty is still active. The last thing we need right now is a nuclear war and I don’t want to fucking hear that you’re taking Russia out of a treaty that at least somewhat contained them.

This man is going to get us all killed, I swear to Athena.

He then starts saying that “oh, the world would be in Nuclear war with South Korea if it weren’t for him, and he’s just wrong. I mean I know the nature of reality is such that there’s no real way to measure the tiny micro changes in the fabric of events that could lead to a given result, but I can say for damn sure that North Korea became more aggressive after Trump took office, and that their nuclear problem is largely for deterrent purposes because they are afraid of. Not that anyone should have nuclear weapons. Point is, this claim is bullshit, and I don’t need to source anything because it’s fantastical.

Next up is Venezuela, and his whole...spat against socialism. First of all, socialism is not responsible for the collapse of Venezuela because it wasn’t socialist. Those close to Maduro call his state a narco mafia government under the guise of socialism. It’s complicated - like everything else here is - but it can basically be summarized that instead of gathering material in the government and using it to support the people, it gave all that to big companies and then just kept taking and taking. Because that’s what unregulated big companies do. There was no market.

That said, even if Venezuela had been socialist in the truest sense, that doesn’t mean that socialist policies couldn’t work or shouldn’t be used. When applied properly (with a mix of capitalism, in my opinion), you can create a prosperous country that takes care of everyone by skimming off the top of those who have much and giving to those who have little. We’ve seen it work in different circumstances before, and even an entire country that made it work up until Stalin decided to take it over and twist its efficacy into bullshit.

He then talks a bit about Israel and Palestine, which is another basket of snakes I refuse to open other then to say that treating it as casually as he does is stupid. Israel and weird creepy end times Christians are the only people who actually don’t want a two-state solution. Sooo yeah.

Next, he speaks on how he’s done with the war against ISIS and that the troops are coming home, but fails to give a time frame and talks about not fighting an endless war - something I’d be more willing to believe if he wasn’t spewing money into the military like a sick man on laxatives does into the toilet. But whatever, I’m all for both of those things, so if he does them I’ll compliment him accordingly and apologize for not believing him.

The last thing I really want to talk about is how he brags about getting out of the Iran Nuclear Deal. That was actually working just fine and had finally squeezed Iran into cooperating and now they don’t have to while still giving them breathing room for their civilian population. But that is a complicated matter, that, again, is more difficult to ascertain than “Thing Good” or “Thing Bad.”

From there, the rest of the speech is just chest beating and bravado. Emotional appeals about how great America is and how free we are and blah blaah blaaah. I actually don’t have a problem with this - the swelling call to action at the end of the speech is a very effective tool and it’s not like I haven’t used emotional manipulation myself, even in this very article. But the point is that it’s not factual - it’s not meant to be criticized as a series of claims or even critiqued at all. It’s bravado, pure and simple. Trump is good at it, and he did a good job with it here.

Before I conclude though, I just want to quickly comment on one thing. Him derailing antisemitism is hilarious. You’re like 4 years too late on that bro.

Anyway, conclusions.

Most of the problems with this speech can be summed up with “It’s not that simple, idiot.” The world is a complicated place and Trump tried to simplify it. His ignorance to fully explain the complexities - or, as the case may be, even bother to understand them - has led him to misinform people live on TV. I’m not going to spend time talking about whether it was deliberate or not, I have long since given up and trying to determine where Trump’s evil ends and his stupid begins.  

I will say that I give him one or two points for doing the things right, but given how much else was disgusting and, frankly, hateful, it’s very much “even a broken clock is right twice a day” type thing. Trump’s state of the Union was a cavalcade of lies and misjudgements, interspaced with bravado and unnecessary calls to his god. This is a secular nation, people. I should not hear about God no less than 4 times in the most important speech the country makes.

Hopefully he’ll be out of office soon.

[askalibertarianus]

Mass Shootings, Gun Control, And The Misdirected Masses

Franc Turner  August 8, 2018

“We’ve now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” – George Orwell I was recently doing some statistical analysis for my own curiosity and amusement. My thoughts on these matters may not be very popular, but I think that it is rather important to consider uncommon perspectives when it comes to the “leaders” of this nation enacting legislation due to the momentum of perceived public outcry, demand, and public relations. With the heated atmosphere of anti-gun vs. pro-gun, gun violence, the NRA, mass shootings, rallies, town hall meetings, Democrat vs. Republican screaming matches, etc., I wanted to research the numbers that relate to the topics at hand. Through a little bit of digging, I was able to look up the data from every mass shooting in this country, from Columbine to Parkland, and every mass shooting in between. And when I say “mass shooting”, I am using the Congressional Research Service’s definition of the term in which four or more people are killed, not including the perpetrator. I started at Columbine because that incident seems to have been the jumping-off-point of the exponential trend of similar events happening more frequently in the public consciousness. I gathered the numbers of individuals killed in each of the 58 shootings. Through some simple and straightforward mathematics, I totalled the number of individuals killed in mass shootings from Columbine (1999) to Parkland (2018). The total number of people killed in mass shootings in this country during that nearly two decade time span is 535. (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/). That number made me wonder how many individuals are shot and killed by police each year in this country. Unfortunately, people didn’t keep records of that kind of thing until three years ago, as far as I could find. For 2015, the number of people shot and killed by police was 995. For 2016, the number was 963. And for 2017, it was 987. This year, so far, there have been 531; for a grand total of 3,476 in the past three years alone. While it can be argued that many of those instances are “justified in the line of duty”, many others have transpired like that of the Daniel Shaver shooting.

The 24- hour media circus also made me think back to the (never discussed) number of civilians estimated to have been killed in the 17-year-long “War On Terror”, which is between 1-2 million, conservatively; none of which had anything to do with the events of 9/11 (a day which was used as the catalyst for these indiscriminate regional massacres), while the majority of those killed are women and, yes, CHILDREN. And I would bet that the current number is more likely to be much higher, as those estimates are from a few years ago . This also caused me to think back to events such as Kent State, Ruby Ridge, and Waco, TX; all of which took place in the not-so-distant past, carried out by your own benevolent government. Again, if you’re unfamiliar with those incidents, I suggest you read about them. The point is that your own government kills more people in a matter of a few days (on the average) than all of the mass shootings that have taken place in this country in the past 20 years, combined. And yet, there is almost zero outrage about this blatant and disturbing fact. There are no marches, no rallies, no town hall meetings, no wall-to-wall media coverage. Your own government is committing mass murder on a daily basis and will continue to do so while they con the citizenry into bankrolling the whole thing. For the past couple of years, I’ve found it fascinating to watch the willfully oblivious masses feed right into the “Us vs. Them” political mindset; with each and every new hashtag spreading like a zombie outbreak from “World War Z.” People seem to find comfort and peace of mind through recreational outrage, as instructed by the various news agencies.

The individuals who support the two major political gangs (Republicans and Democrats) in this country have compared the “opposing” faction’s de facto leader to Hitler. I’m guilty of it too, but I’m biased because I think that that every President we’ve had in the past 40 years has been a fake-smiled, friendly-faced fascist. But since Trump is the current figurehead, I’ll use that particular cult-of-personality as an example. For many self-proclaimed Democrats, Trump is Hitler-incarnate. And yet these masses of people are also demanding that Trump’s government enact legislation to ban the population from having certain firearms which they deem “only military and law enforcement should have.” So, basically it’s, “Trump is Hitler! You can’t trust anything he does! Give HIM all of your guns! That’ll show him! VICTORY!” They also want universal background checks, mental health screenings, and more. And Trump, himself, has even stated that he would like the government to be able to take weapons from anyone whom they deem to be a threat, without due process. His exact quote was, “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” And there’s a certain percentage of Trump supporters who will go along with anything he says because they still believe he’s going to “Make America Great Again”, which is useful for the continued perpetuation of the incremental obsolescence of the Constitution as a safeguard against government overreach. This is the same Trump which recently sold $350 billion dollars worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. So, it’s ok to give Saudi Arabia weapons, but not ok for American citizens to have weapons? That makes perfect sense. And I’ve heard arguments such as, “Europe has strict gun control and these kind of events don’t take place over there. It’s uniquely an American phenomenon.” Didn’t the deadliest mass shooting in recent memory happen in France just a few years ago? That one in which 137 people died, causing everyone to change their profile picture to have the colors of the French flag? And all of this is aside from the fact that our government, along with other major governments of the world, are holding the citizenry of the entire planet hostage under the threat of nuclear annihilation. It’s not the people doing these things, it’s their governments. Do we really want Trump’s government to be the only ones who have guns? It has been argued by many (whom you may never hear speak on any major news outlet) that the purpose of government is to cause the problems which they, in lock step, offer to “fix”; hence, creating an artificial “need” for themselves to “protect” you from each boogie man they’re conditioning you to fear. “The people can’t be trusted to protect themselves, so let’s make ’em all rely on those in power to do that job for them.” Genius, I tells ya. Pollution, war, poverty, hunger, scarcity, oil, hatred, hardship, violence, drugs, waste, etc..; these are not combatted by governments, but carried out and perpetuated by them. Max Igan described this trend as applying to even the simplest aspects of our daily lives. Take something as simple and seemingly straightforward as seatbelt laws. “If you don’t wear a seatbelt, you pay a fine. If you don’t pay the fine, you’ll go to jail. If you don’t let them take you to jail, they’ll come and arrest you. If you don’t allow them to arrest you, they’ll kill you.” Whether it’s in the wake of mass shootings, terrorism, war, or any other reason, actions taken by governments are not just about creating safety, security, protection, and harmony in everyday life. They’re also often about creating, enforcing, and conditioning obedience within the population, so they don’t question who’s got the keys to the shackles around their ankles. The bottom line is that human beings have a right to defend themselves. Period. And the ironic thing is that any kind of gun ban would be enforced at the barrel of a gun (the same guns which they are banning). I was always a person who believed that people should lead by example. Therefore, if the governments of the world would like their citizens to disarm, they should first destroy each and every one of their own weapons, starting with every nuclear weapon. A few months ago, half a million people marched on Washington to beg their imperial overlords to take away more of their own rights. If people are genuinely concerned with saving the lives of children, then stop allowing your own government to kill innocent people around the globe with impunity, and stop pretending like you or the government have the moral authority to “allow” other people to have the right to defend themselves. A human being doesn’t have to ask permission to do that, it’s self evident. The world has literally gone insane, my friends.

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[thegaitguys]

Hey, Bourdain, I would have loved that roll.

“I will never be a young man or younger than I am today. I will never be faster or more flexible. I will never win a competition against a 22-year old wrestler in my weight class. I will never be a black belt. None of these things will happen but none of that matters anymore.”

– Anthony Bourdain/Parts Unknown Season 6. Episode 4

I mentioned sparring (rolling) with Chef Anthony Bourdain about 2 years ago on my other blog, TheGaitGuys.com.  It never happened, and now, it never will.  At the time, Bourdain and I were both blue belts in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Bourdain did not know me, nor I him, but we had some things in our lives rooted in common ground. His death to me was a bold punch to the gut, one that doubles you over and makes you stumble backward.  I think his choice of an early life departure in 2018 hit some of us hard because we felt some inner connection, perhaps jealous aspiration, to him and the life he appeared to have commandingly by the tail.  Bourdain and I had some commonalities, the love of good food, a late life start into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, writing, art, and creative outlets.  His broad palate of creative works was an inspiration to me. I also enjoyed what he said, but more so how he said it; his descriptive and colorful command of the English language spoke to me. Bourdain's death was a tragedy to us all, the world has lost another creative talented soul.

I recently was presented with my purple belt in Brazilian JiuJitsu from one of the art's legends, my mentor, my brother, 4x World Champion, Professor Carlos Lemos, Jr.  Some consider the purple belt as a transition in the art where the basics start to congeal into something more clear and meaningful. (I refer the reader here to my previous post on "the language" of jiu jitsu LINK). It defines the completion of a long base of fundamental work, and of stronger resistance, heavier responsibilities and bolder headwinds to come. 

It took me 5 years to get my purple belt in jiu jitsu. This is far longer than it will take many to get to this stage, many will be into their brown belt by this point, yet still far from the coveted black.  In Brazilian jiu jitsu, purple does not even mark the half way point to the multi-tiered black belt. Thus, my mere five years still represents a kind of adolescence in the journey.   Many will not get to this purple stage, they will quit before they reach this pivotal point in this most difficult art.  Trust me, I almost gave up as well, I too found all kinds of excuses to abort, but for me the trick was to make myself go to the academy on the days I truly did not want to, when I was finding something else that I could, should or wanted to otherwise do. When we are uncommitted, it is easy to find excuses not to follow through. We might use our marriage, our work, our kids, money, time, injury, these are all excuses that will be victorious if one lets them grow into such a thing.  If one is weak enough, an individual can let one of many forms of resistance grow into a plausible victorious excuse, one that trumps commitment and personal growth. I know this problem all to well, it is part of my past and my every day.  Wishing and hoping are like dreams, they are not real, it is only execution that makes anything real. How badly do we want it, that is the greater question.

The color purple, the color of resistance?

I am slow at learning what many already know, that the stuff in life that seems to matter is the stuff that is difficult. It is the stuff that we have to work hard at. It is not the stuff that comes easy, it is not the gifts and not the handouts. It is often the stuff that makes us weak and tremble. It is the stuff that actually ask something more of us, it is sort of a sacrifice to step into an unknown void.

I recently had a patient come in who is a recovering heroin addict. As I was working on his shoulder and he rambled into a dialogue about feeling lost in life. I have known this young man since he was a little boy.. He said he was looking for some relief and an easier time in life. I asked him why he was looking for that and he said he was tired. I asked him to at least consider if perhaps he needed something else that was difficult and hard to embrace, something else that would ask him to make a different kind of sacrifice in life, a different set of choices. He looked blankly at me.  I expanded my words, sharing with him what a jiu jitsu lifestyle looked like; mental and physical struggles, fitness, rewards, commitment, loyalty, purpose, brotherhood, family, leadership, general well-being. He said it sounded like just what he needed. It is never hard to give out the phone number for that recipe.

I'm not sure I fully deserved this purple strip of heavy cotton around my waist. I am not where I should be in my opinion, but I am where I am. In any chapter of life, it is about accepting where we are. To my mentors perspective and wisdom, I think maybe, just maybe, this was a message to step forward, to step up, and accept the responsibility of where I should be and force me into the responsibilities I have been shirking. And if that's the case, the point was made, loud and clear; step into the resistance, accept active responsibility. Take action, instead of making excuses. These are easily comments made on many of our lives.  Easy doesn't pay the bills. Easy doesn't generate growth, or insight. Easy doesn't add to a quality of life and a sense of achievement. The dis-ease of "easy" has led most into regret upon their last hours of a life.

I will never be a young man or younger than I am today. I will never be faster or more flexible. I will never win a competition against a 22-year old wrestler in my weight class. I will never be a black belt. None of these things will happen but none of that matters anymore.” –Bourdain

Bourdain was right on some things, many things in fact, this could be noted if you followed his work over the last decade. He is right in that I will never be a younger man than I am today, but with constant pressure against resistance at the age of 51 I do feel better than I did a decade ago. This year I will work to be faster, stronger, and more flexible than I was last year. The alternative path will not get me to a better place, so I will meet those resistances head on. As Bourdain eluded to, I too may not win a battle with a 22 year old, but knowing what I know now, it just might now be fun to try. As for Bourdain's feelings on a black belt, I do not care much either. I have more deeply discovered that meeting the path of resistance head on in the moment, and facing the responsibilities and expectations that confront me as I press through the dominance hierarchy (thanks Jordan Peterson) is the true journey.

I was getting lazy and complacent as a blue belt in arguably the toughest martial art that exists. Having purple firmly tied around my abdomen, and all of the responsibilities that accompany it, was a lesson I needed to feel deep in my being. I believe that if one is not struggling and moving forward into more difficult winds, they are being held back, in fact losing ground, being further pushed back by one's own laziness in accepting that place of mere perceived comfort. Nothing good comes from complacency, even though we feel stable and safe, that is the deception of the moment, we are in fact becoming more fragile.  Lesson learned. I was the clay pot, never to meet the heat of the furnace.

" A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot . . .

 it has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain."  - Mildred WitteStouven

I am still on the adolescent scale on this martial art's journey of lessons. These are just a few things I have gleaned to this point that might help those a few steps behind me, maybe even beside me:

Purple. It might just be the true color of resistance in this art form.

If you choose to give up on jiu jitsu, make it a real good reason, because it just might turn into later regrets. I quit for 2 months early on, and I am ashamed of that. If you say it is because of your work, your marriage, your school, your whatever, have a good talk with yourself.  Make time for something this important. This is not supposed to be fun or easy all the time, if it is not hard at times, you are doing it wrong and you are not being forced to grow.

If you disappear after a year, you missed the message. This is a journey, a marathon, a lifestyle, a grand path inward, and outward. If the journey showed you the destination too soon, the pot of gold, the long path to enlightenment would be missed.

If you are not getting what you want, don't leave or give up. Those things might not be what you need. Be patient with the lessons of jiu jitsu, often you will be surprised that what you needed was far different than what you thought.  This goes for our training, and our lives.  Let the art deliver its message and lessons to you. Most things in life do not turn out how we hope or plan, but often the best things in life are the surprises.

If your focus is the color or your belt or the number of stripes on it, you are missing the point. This is an investment, a lifetime journey and insurance policy on our soul. Forget about the color of the cloth around your waist, or around another's waist for that matter.

Persistence always wins. Even if you lose, you win. I've been here 5 years now. I'm still here. I have seen more people leave, disappear, or give up, than have persisted. Pace yourself and stay the course, sprinters do not get very far. Be the tortoise, not the hare.

Look beside you. One of the people on either side of you won't be here in 6-12 mo. The problem is, we forget that the person beside us is saying the exact same thing about us. Don't give them the satisfaction of not being present on the mats in a year, persist, prevail. Stay the course.

Stop trying to win each time you spar. There's very little value and feedback in winning. The lessons are in the losses, the meaning is found between the arm bars and chokes. The lessons are in the smallest of things, and often in the sharing afterwards. Stop trying to win. Be a step ahead of the guy trying to win, be the observer, be this listener, you will learn more.

It is all relative, see your journey as where YOU are at this moment, not where others are. The beauty of this art and it's journey is that you cannot and should not compare yourself to others. Let others help to be a measuring stick for your own progress, but more importantly, mostly compare yourself to your yesterday's self. What do I mean by this? Let me help.  I am a mere footstep into a Purple belt.  I cannot compare myself to other purple belts that have been here a year, let alone one that is 20 years my junior. Nor should I compare myself to a youthful 25 year old blue belt who is just 3 years out of a college wrestling program. I cannot compare myself to a 200 pound white belt. I cannot compare myself to a 60 year old black belt.  I am my own unique package, a 51 year old, 155 pound doctor who trains a few times a week who's hands are raw and pummeled by most Tuesdays. I cannot compare myself to anyone else other than the person I was yesterday, nor should you. Trust me on this, I speak from experience.

Most things in life that are worth anything do not come quickly or easily. This is about choices, habits, routine, commitment, struggle, fear, pain, and sacrifice. This is about meeting resistance every day.

Do not be afraid to fight for worthy things in life. (This is a good time to remind the reader of the all too important, yet mostly sarcasm piece, here on this blog which I wrote in 2016. My first post, The death of the schoolyard fight: The great unravelling of our modern day social fabric.)

Close your mouth. Open your ears. Show up. Practice. Be patient. Share the story of your journey, it might save someone's life.

In life, if one steps back far enough, and often enough, enough to see the forest instead of just the trees, the messages and lessons become more clear. "Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things."-Miyamoto Musashi

Dear Chef Bourdain, I would have loved that roll, but maybe in another lifetime it now seems. However, I am going to imagine that a few threads within the tapestry of this purple belt are yours brother, just as there are threads within it of my fellow academy brothers and sisters. Through them I have reached this stage of the journey.  Bourdain, rest peacefully until we meet old man. Save a little sweat for me, and a heavenly street side "meat in tube form" with all the fixin's, for I am a fan as well.

Sometimes we need a "band of brothers" to shine a light of truth on our ways, leading us back to the  honest path. Thank you Professor Carlos Lemos, my fellow teachers, and all those who paved my path to this point. The struggles, pain, sweat and defeats were worth it, and continue to be.  Being completely honest with myself, I can see the woes of my ways in finding peace in comfort and complacency. I feel that I did not honorably serve the blue belt previously wrapped around my waist to the level I should have. That weighs heavily on me. And because of that, this purple wrap now too weighs heavily upon my hips, and with it, a bigger target on my back. Lesson again learned. It is time to make things right.

-Shawn, purple belt, Brazilian JiuJitsu, ("the gentle art"),

Gracie Barra Downers Grove,

Professor Carlos Lemos, Jr. 4x World, Brazilian, European, American & Pan-Am Champion