#anyways one more time i see a fucking liberal tell me to vote for racist and cop i WILL vote for sonic instead

[cumbunnywitch]

I've seen at least one, but posts saying not to blame the people who didn't vote for Harris because whatever are fully in the wrong and they always will be.

You chose moral high grounding and purity culture over the possibility that our protests would work. You chose "she leaned too right in her campaign" over "Trump and the people who want to puppeteer him are going to get a lot of people killed." You chose the democrats being idiots over the republicans want a racist rapist.

You didn't choose? No, you had a choice. You used yours. If you chose not to vote because you wanted to use your non-vote as a voice to show the democrats that they have to win your vote, you're still going to get your face eaten by the leopards. They aren't going to hear you anyway.

Protests work on the left side of our shit-ass two party system because they at least pretend to care.

Here's just, off the top of my head, the things you decided were less important than telling the democratic party "No you have to be good enough":

Student Loan Forgiveness or Relief

Healthcare

Trans Rights

LGBTQIA Safety

Abortion rights

Palestine/Gaza

Ukraine

Industry Regulation(notice all those recalls on food lately?)

Cost of Living

Police Reform

Taxes

There's no such thing as a single-issue voter, not anymore. The right is diametrically opposed to making any of the above better for anyone, whether or not they voted for that shitstain, unless you're very rich, and very white, and a very straight man.

Honestly, if you voted for Jill Stein, at least you fucking voted. Her numbers won her absolutely nothing but at least you voted.

But no. "Don't vote for Harris because she's not good enough! She's running a campaign to secure moderate republicans!" Yea no fucking shit. That's what they've been doing for the last forever. Yea, it still sucks. But most moderate liberals who actually vote still struggle with that list up there. There's literally a democrat trans woman who just got voted in who wants to support Israel's genocidal campaign of murdering every Palestinian.

And you know what? If she sees that line, she might actually stop and think and move a little bit over to my perspective. Every conservative sees that line and immediately thinks "Yea kill the fuckin' brown people!" because they don't consider them fucking people.

If you didn't vote because you saw people saying Harris wasn't leftist enough, not liberal enough, she was a former prosecutor or the democrats haven't done enough for you in the last 4 years, you fell for the Russian psyop. You fell for the propaganda.

Does it suck that Harris wanted to court the swing states and their moderately conservative voting base over to vote for the first woman president? Yea, it's been a shitty idea for decades and they've been doing it for as long as I've been voting. Obama was the center-ist centerist ever, and he still got healthcare reform passed. He also drone striked a lot of people and gave banks billions of dollars when the financial sector faceplanted after trying to balance on a pin for the longest time.

I was gonna add a read-more or chop this up better but no. You get to read the whole thing. If you didn't vote, or you voted for trump, I want you gone. Unfollow me, block me, because you clearly either don't care enough to prevent our slide into authoritarianism and a fixed court for the next 60 years, or you actively hate me.

[sasukemexican]

bruh

[gracereadstoomanybooks]

answering questions I’ve been asked on TikTok✨

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QUESTION: how did you get into reading?

So, when I was in middle school (many moons ago) we had this thing called AR Testing. Basically, you read a book and take a test on it—the questions were things that happened in the book, it was really simple. If you got a good grade, you got points. The more points you earned, the more eligible you were for the reading party at the end of each semester. Me, being the nerd I am, got top of my class because I went through 8th grade level books like it was nothing. The librarian at my school brought me books from the high school to read since everything was easy for me, and alas, my addiction began. And now that I have adult money, it’s a true addiction. Also, telling my father “I’m bored” and his response being, “go read a book or something” so thanks dad.

QUESTION: what’s one book you ALWAYS recommend to people?

This one is tough because I’ve read THOUSANDS of books, but if I had to choose one, it would probably be Confess by Colleen Hoover. I fell in love with her work in high school when I first read Ugly Love, but Confess is the type of book that pulls at your heart strings, y’all. It has everything people love: humor, sexual tension, drama, love. GO BUY THE DAMN BOOK. Or honestly any book by Colleen Hoover—she’s a fucking amazing author.

QUESTION: outside of making TikToks, what do you do for a living?

I currently work at a restaurant and hate every second of it. If anyone tells you to become a server, DONT. It’s not worth the hassle, I promise you. Sure, you can make decent money but the amount of rude customers and shitty tips you receive each shift is very disheartening. If you really need a job, do anything BUT work in the food industry.

QUESTION: what’s your wattpad story about?

First question: which one? I have about 30 drafts sitting there waiting to be posted. But, I’m going to assume you’re talking about the Harry Styles fan fiction I’ve been working on for the past 4 years and haven’t had the courage to post. I’ll tell you a little about it: Elaine Aldridge is forced into a betrothal to a man she’s never met & loathes. She goes to his court and realizes things aren’t what they truly seem. And the guard her future husband sticks on her??? None other than Mr. Harry Styles. Add in some magic & deaths and you’ve got my story— The First Prince. (Honestly, that’s an extremely shitty description so if you wanna check it out go to my wattpad account)

QUESTION: how old are you?

Ahem. . . twenty-one.

QUESTION: what is your dream career?

Being a published author and having people rave about my books. That’s all. Or, an editor for a publishing company. Imagine reading all day and being paid for it🤩

QUESTION: what was your least favorite read of 2020?

I already KNOW I’m gonna get shit for this but....... the wicked king. YALL I LITERALLY COULDNT GET THROUGH IT IM SO SORRY, I STILL HAVENT FINISHED IT

QUESTION: current favorite author?

Sarah. J. Maas. I don’t know what it is about her writing style, but it’s addicting. Throne of Glass is hands down the best series I’ve ever read. A Court of Thorns and Roses is the first book I’ve EVER reread. Her stories truly suck you in and hold onto you—you get lost so easily in her writing and it’s like once you’re done with a series, nothing will compare. Or, at least that’s how I felt after finishing Kingdom of Ash. Honorable mentions: Jennifer L. Armentrout, Penelope Douglas, L.J Shen, Elle Kennedy and Kennedy Fox.

QUESTION: any recommendations/tips to give to a new reader?

I’ve always given this advice to people who want to get into reading: find what you like and start with that. If you like romance, I’ve got a list for you to choose from. Mystery? Another list. Sci-fi? I GOT YOU. Fantasy? Yes! Sports fiction? It might take me a second but I’ll find you a book. Nonfiction? I’m zero help in that category, honestly. The point of the matter is that you’re never going to enjoy a book if you aren’t interested in the underlying topics.

QUESTION: do you ever find yourself comparing your life to fictional life?

Yes. All the time. I daydream about being apart of the Inner Circle and living in Terrasen with Aelin and Rowan. I think about what it would be like to have real powers and a mate. It drives my boyfriend crazy—but he loves me anyway.

QUESTION: what are your most anticipated books of 2021?

Here’s a list:

A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas

The Crown of Gilded Bones by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Gods and Monsters by Shelby Mahurin

Crescent City 2 (Untitled) by Sarah J. Maas

A Vow So Bold and Deadly by Brigid Kemmerer (I just ordered this one & it arrives tomorrow)

Blessed Monsters by Emily A. Duncan

QUESTION: why did you start a Tumblr?

Honestly, I used to love tumblr when I was in grade school (way too young to be on here then but what else is new). I like having an extra space to get my questions and comments out without having to compress it into a 60 second video for TikTok to see. Tumblr is a good place to blog & post things like this.

QUESTION: what’s your favorite song right now?

I’ve listened to Carry You by Novo Amor every day for the past two months and I cry each time.

QUESTION: why write Harry Styles fan fiction?

Simple: I love Harry Styles. I’ve been a fan of him and One Direction since they were on X FACTOR. Read that again. X. Factor. I used to watch their performances on YouTube before WMYB even came out. Of course, I love all of the 1D boys but I was always a Harry gal. And I look up to him in a way—I’ve read things about people wishing they knew him personally and honestly? I would never want to meet him. I like the version of him I’ve cooked up in my brain over the past 10 years. I like the symbiotic relationship I have with his music. Fine Line is a ✨masterpiece✨. HS1 is a ✨work of art✨.

now, some topics I’ve been asked way too many times and want to finally get to:

QUESTION: political views?

the saying “anyone but trump” has been in my brain for the past four years. No, I’m not a republican. No, I’m not a democrat. I like to think of myself as a progressive (ahem, liberal) Did I vote for a democratic candidate? Yes, and I’d do it again and again until the US isn’t one of the worst countries—I’m sorry, businesses— to be apart of. I wanted Bernie but got Biden, and I’m alright with that. And my girl Kamala🥳

QUESTION: how did you feel about the BLM protests?

I went to multiple BLM protests and donated a lot of funds to BLM & other organizations. It’s 2021, people... stop being fucking RACIST. And don’t be afraid to call racist people out! Black Lives Matter, even if no one is posting about it anymore.

QUESTION: thoughts on abortion?

your body your choice, queen! not my uterus, not my problem.

QUESTION: there was a comment on an old video of yours talking about r*pe, why did you delete the comment?

I made a video when I first started my account on TikTok about reading in public and feeling “turned on” by it. Go watch it if you don’t know what I’m talking about. BUT, some ignorant male decided to comment and say “this is how girls get r*ped”. Whew. So. I deleted the comment because ....

I am a victim of sexual assault. Along with a lot of other women. 1 in 5 women have been victims of sexual assault. Talking about being r*ped isn’t funny.

No one else needed to see his comment. I reported it immediately and his account was shut down.

I never got justice for what happened to me, and the fact that some random male—who had never even met me or seen me before my video showed up on his FYP—had the nerve to comment that? Unacceptable.

this question isn’t as controversial but

QUESTION: what’s the best way to get out of a toxic relationship?

okay, let me just start off by saying that the people around you who love and support you are going to be your backbone. Leaving a toxic situation is hard, and every situation is different, but my best piece of advice to offer you is don’t be afraid to ask for help. Your loved ones are going to be there for you when you need them, even if you don’t believe they will. If you explain what’s happening, someone you know and love will drop whatever it is their doing to make sure you get out safely. good luck my babes.

now, back to our regularly scheduled program:

QUESTION: any tips on making tiktoks?

Literally none. I post what I think is funny and relatable and if anyone agrees, I’m satisfied. Even if it’s one view, it’s good enough for me. So I guess my one tip is to not base your life off of an app and followers.

QUESTION: favorite Harry Styles fanfic?

DONT MAKE ME CHOOSE. Duplicity is up there, along with Stall 1&2, and Kiwi. After? Absolutely not.

QUESTION: favorite WEBTOON?

y’all already KNOW. LORE OLYMPUS BY USEDBANDAID. Rachel is a genius and I have reread the series a million times. Hades is my soulmate and Apollo can rot in the fiery pits of the Underworld. also, if we’re talking about other webcomics, reading Walk on Water on mangadex...🤫

QUESTION: favorite movie?

Howls Moving Castle. I will be getting my “a heart is a heavy burden” tattoo very very soon.

QUESTION: I read your Elain theory on tumblr, can you explain a little more?

I thought I was pretty straightforward but I’ll say it again: she is always the “good” one and it’s too suspicious. SJM has already given one Archeron sister a happy ending, Nesta’s is obviously inevitable, but Elain? She has too many options for a happy ending. Lucien, who is her “mate”. Azriel, who is intrigued by her slightly. Her human guy—I don’t remember his name—who is disgusted that she’s not human anymore. Or, alone, planting flowers all day. BUT! My point is that she’s not truly happy. She was forced into the Cauldron just like Nesta. She was ripped away from the life she loved so dearly and didn’t want to give up. The man she was going to marry now hates her guts because she’s a High Fae. She has the perfect set up for a villain plot line and I’m all here for it.

well, that’s all I feel like doing tonight. hope you enjoyed my little q&a! be kind, and talk to you later! byeeee!

[laele25]

Republicans are willfully stupid

And now that I have your attention, let me explain.  Here are some the asinine ‘wow, you’re really dumb enough to believe that, huh, hoss?’ excuses I have seen tossed around by Republicans trying to justify voting for Trump and his enablers. 1 “But Democrats want to kill babies.”  Okay, straight up, if you believe that, you’re a moron who deserved to be mocked into silence.  The only people who have been ‘killing babies’ is the US government who has thrown them in cages for the last four years and bombed the Middle East for the last 20.  Fuck off with your faux morality pearl clutching, I ain’t even renting it.   You just want to tell other people what to do with their bodies so you can justify your racism and have a false sense of morality.  Until you care about the children separated from their families, the children dying during our drone raids. or the child homeless and starving or stuck in abusive homes, you do not ‘think of the children’.   You are pro-forced birth and any CPS worker worth their salt can give you a lesson on why forcing people to have and keep children they do not want is incredibly cruel, especially to said child. 2.  “Higher wages will make things  more expensive!”  Hoover would have LOVED to have your bootchoking idiots around when the stock market crashed in ‘29.  Since you only care about anecdotal evidence instead of data, well, lucky for you, I live in a city with a $15 an hour minimum wage.  Before the country had to shut down (by the by Washington was rated the best place to ride out the pandemic because we have a sane governor and social safety nets) , there were help wanted signs in nearly every business.  Why?  Because people don’t have to have three jobs to make ends meet.  Yeah, housing is obscene, but that is because of an unregulated housing market, just like the rest of the country.   A Big Mac is still only six bucks here.  Five years after $15 an hour. And before anyone runs in with ‘But what about the people who are being paid less than $15 an hour and aren’t in ‘low wage jobs’?’  Because that’s another, ‘Wow, you really are deepthroating that boot hard, aren’t you?’  When the minimum wage goes up, ALL WAGES GO UP.  Why?  Because businesses have to pay more to get good workers.  It’s your ‘free market’ at work. And finally, the most classist argument of all ‘But those are just part-time jobs for teenagers.’  Now besides the fact all of the data says you’re fucking wrong and FDR flat out said he started the minimum wage as a living wage because any American who works full time shouldn’t be destitute, I’m gonna go again with appealing to your self-centeredness because you are all you care about. So what you’re saying is you only want fast food, retail sales, janitorial services, housekeeping, medical assistants, and secretarial work from 5pm to 10pm and weekends when those teenagers who you believe should do all that work are not in school.  On top of their on average four hours of homework a night.   Right... 3. “TAXES, OMG!”  First of all, you are not the only ones who pay taxes.  In fact, and here I go with data you won’t like, big blue liberal cities pay more taxes than you and take less tax money.  Why?  Because people have better wages, so there’s less destitute people living on food stamps.  Imagine that. Also, the taxes you already pay are going to pay for new weapons of war that will go over budget, arrive late or are never delivered, or will be obsolete or never work anyway.  Another big chunk goes to corporate subsidies, so that big corporations can pay their stakeholders even more and buy back their own stock to artificially inflate the value of the stock so they get even richer.  While paying little or no taxes at all. So, yeah, taxing people over 400k matters shit all unless you make over 400k a year and if you do, you should be paying more taxes.   You cannot avoid death or taxes.  But make sure the money is being spent on things that help you, idiot. 4. “SOCIALISM!” Insert gif of Bernie Sanders yelling boo here.  Because that’s how ridiculous y’all are.  Medicare and Social Security are socialism.  Pensions?  Socialism.   Stop using that word, you have no fucking idea what it means.   5. “Trump is doing the best he can with covid.”  You are not wrong.  This is as good as the incompetent, idiotic, senile, narcissistic, sociopathic, self-serving asshole can do.  Which means he is absolutely unfit for the job.  If you believe otherwise, you’re either as stupid as he is or don’t pay attention to anything but Fox News. And you’re probably also a tiny dicked racist who hates ‘immigrants’ even though we’re a country of immigrants.  It takes a special kind of willful, hateful ignorance to not see what’s happening.  And if you do and think that it won’t affect you, well, congrats, now you are the same as the Germans who looked the other way when the Nazis ran on anti-Semitism.   Now, if anyone has anymore stupid Republican gaslighting you want me to debunk, let me know.  Because i am fucking done.   ETA: Centerists, you’re worse than the Trumpters, because you want us to be happy with them taking away some people’s rights and leaving some people out in the cold just to mollify the sociopaths on the right.  Shame on you especially. 

[johnrossbowie]

LEAVING TWITTER

I wrote this earlier in the fall, before the election, after dissolving my Twitter account. I wasn’t sure where to put it (“try up your ass!” – someone, I’m sure) and then I remembered I have a tumblr I never use. Anyway, here tis.

How do you shame someone who thinks Trumps’ half-baked policies and quarter-baked messaging put him in the pantheon of great Presidents? How do you shame someone so lacking in introspection that they will call Obama arrogant while praising Trump’s decisiveness and yet at the same time vehemently deny that they’re racist? How do you shame someone for whom that racism is endearing and maybe long overdue?

You don’t. It’s silly to think otherwise.

Twitter is an addiction of mine, and true to form, my dependence on it grew more serious after I quit drinking in 2010. At first it was a chance to mouth off, make jokes both stupid and erudite and occasionally stick my foot in my mouth (I owe New Yorker writer Tad Friend an apology. He knows why, or (God willing) he’s forgotten. Either way. Sorry.) I blew off steam, steam that was accumulating without booze to dampen the flames. Not always constructive venting, but I also met new friends, and connected with people whose work I’ve admired for literal decades and ended up seeing plays with Lin-Manuel Miranda and hanging backstage with Jane Wiedlin after a Go-Go’s show and exchanging sober thoughts with Mike Doughty. When my mom passed in 2018, a lot of people reached out to tell me they were thinking of me. This was nice. For a while, Twitter was a huge help when I needed it.

I used to hate going to parties and really hated dancing and mingling, but a couple of drinks would fix that. Point is, for a while, booze was a huge help, too.

But my engagement with Twitter changed, and I started calling people my ‘friends’ even though I’d never once met them or even heard their voices. These weren’t even penpals, these were people whose jokes or stances I enjoyed, so with Arthurian benevolence I clicked on a little heart icon, liked their tweet, and assumed therefore that we had signed some sort of blood oath.

We had not. I got glib, and cheap, and a little lazy. And then to make matters much worse, Trump came along and extended his reach with the medium.

There was a while there where I thought I could be a sort of voice for the voiceless, and I thought I was doing that. I tried very hard to only contribute things that I felt were not being said – It wasn’t accomplishing anything to notice “Haha Trump looks like he’s bullshitting his way through an oral report” – such things were self-evident. I tried to point out very specific inconsistencies in his policies, like the Muslim ban meant to curb terrorism that still favored the country that brought forth 13 of the 9/11 hijackers. Like his full-throated cries against media bias performed while he suckled at Roger Ailes’ wrinkly teat.  Like his fondness for evangelical votes that coincided with a scriptural knowledge that lagged far behind mine, even though I’m a lapsed Episcopalian, and there is no one less religiously observant than a lapsed Episcopalian. But that eventually gave way to unleashing ad hominem attacks against his higher profile supporters, who I felt weren’t being questioned enough, who I felt were in turn being fawned over by theirdim supporters. If you’re one of these guys, and you think I’m talking about you, you’re probably right, but don’t mistake this for an apology. You suck, and you support someone who sucks, and your idolatry is hurting our country and its standing in the world. Fuck you entirely, but that’s not the point. The point is that me screaming into the toilet of Twitter helps no one – it doesn’t help a family stuck at the border because they’re trying to secure a better life for their kids. It doesn’t help a poor teenager who can’t get an abortion because the party of ‘small government’ has squeezed their tiny jurisdiction into her uterus. It doesn’t help the coal miner who’s staking all his hopes on a dying industry and a President’s empty promises to resurrect it. I was born in New York City, and I currently live in Los Angeles. Those are the only two places I’ve ever lived, if you don’t count the 4 years I spent in Ithaca[1]. So, yes, I live in a liberal bubble, and while I’ve driven across the country a couple of times and did a few weeks in a touring band and am as crushed as any heartlander about the demise of Waffle House, you have me dead to rights if you call me a coastal elitist. And with that in mind, I offer few surprises. A guy who grew up in the theater district and was vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage or felt you should own an AR-15? THAT would be newsworthy. I am not newsworthy. I can preach to the choir, I can confirm people’s biases, but I will likely not sway anyone who is eager to dismiss a Native New Yorker who lives in Hollywood. I grew up in the New York of the 1970s, and that part of my identity did shape my politics. My mom’s boss was gay and the Son of Sam posed a realistic threat. As such, gays are job creators[2] and guns are used for homicide much more often than they are used for self-defense[3]. I have found this to be generally true over the years, and there’s even data to back it up.

“But Mr. Bowie,” you might say, though I insist you call me John - “those studies are conducted by elitist institutions and those institutions suck!” And again, I am not going to reason with people who will dismiss anything that doesn’t fit their limited world view as elitist or, God Help Us, fake news. But the studies above are peer-reviewed, convincing, and there are more where those came from.

“But John,” you might say, and I am soothed that we’re one a first name basis - “Can’t you just stay on Twitter for the jokes?” Ugh. A) apparently not and B) the jokes are few and far between, and I am 100% part of that problem.

I have stuff to offer, but Twitter is not the place from which to offer it.

After years of academically understanding that Twitter is not the real world, Super Tuesday 2020 made the abstract pretty fucking concrete. If you had looked at my feed on the Monday beforehand – my feed which is admittedly curated towards the left, but not monolithic (Hi, Rich Lowry!) – you’d have felt that a solid Bernie surge was imminent, but also that your candidate was going surprise her more vocal critics. When the Biden sweep swept, when Bernie was diminished and when Warren was defeated, I realized that Twitter is not only not the real world, it’s almost some sort of Phillip K. Dickian alternate timeline, untethered to anything we’re actually experiencing in our day to day life. This is both good news and bad news – one, we’re not heading towards a utopia of single payer health care and the eradication of American medical debt any time soon, but two, we’re also not being increasingly governed by diaper-clad jungen like Charlie Kirk. Clouds and their linings. Leaving Twitter may look like ceding ground to the assclowns but get this – the ground. Is not. There.

It’s just air.

There are tangible things I can do with my time - volunteer with a local organization called Food On Foot, who provide food and job training for people experiencing homelessness here in my adopted Los Angeles. I can give money to candidates and causes I support, and I can occasionally even drop by social media to boost a project or an issue and then vanish, like a sort of Caucasian Zorro who doesn’t read his mentions. I can also model good behavior for my kids (ages 10 and 13) who don’t need to see their father glued to his phone, arguing about Trumps incompetence with Constitutional scholars who have a misspelled Bible verse in their bio (three s’ in Ecclesiastes, folks).

So farewell Twitter. I’ll miss a lot of you. Perhaps not as badly as I miss Simon Maloy and Roger Ebert and Harris Wittels and others whose deaths created an unfillable void on the platform. But I won’t miss the yelling, and the lionization of poor grammar, and anonymous trolls telling my Jewish friends that they were gonna leave the country “via chimney.” I will not miss people who think Trump is a stable genius calling me a “fucktard.” I will not miss transphobia or cancelling but I will miss hashtag games, particularly my stellar work during #mypunkmusical (Probably should have quit after that surge, I was on fire that night, real blaze of glory stuff I mean, Christ, Sunday in the Park with the Germs? Husker Du I Hear A Waltz? Fiddler on the Roof (keeping an eye out for the cops)? These are Pulitzer contenders.). Twitter makes me feel lousy, even when I’m right, and I’m often right. There’s just no point in barking bumperstickers at each other, and there are people who are speaking truth to power and doing a cleaner job of it – Aaron Rupar, Steven Pasquale, Louise Mensch, Imani Gandy and Ijeoma Oluo to name five solid mostly politically based accounts (Yes, Pasquale is a Broadway tenor. He’s also a tenacious lefty with good points and research and a dreamy voice. You think you’re straight and then you hear him sing anything from Bridges of Madison County and you want him to spoon you.). You’re probably already following those mentioned, but on the off chance you’re not, get to it. You’ll thank me, but you won’t be able to unless you actually have my email.

_______

[1] And Jesus, that’s worse – Ithaca is such a lefty enclave that they had an actual socialist mayor FOR WHOM I VOTED while I was there. And not socialist the way some people think all Democrats are socialist – I mean Ben Nichols actually ran on the socialist ticket and was re-elected twice for a total of six years.

[2] The National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, “America’s LGBT Economy” Jan 20th, 2017

[3] The Violence Policy Institute, Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self Defense Gun Use, July 2019.

[saintambrose]

haha it’s US politics hours

listen, this tumblr has always been a fandom place since its inception and I’ve not really designated it as a space for political discussion because 1) I have several other avenues for that arena of discussion and 2) escapism was the theme here; but I’ve finally watched The Comey Rule and I have some THOUGHTS 

and I’m not really sure how active anyone is here anymore anyway, because I’ve not really been around as regularly as I was before the nsfw-ban shitstorm, so. Diving right in.

Probably my favorite thing was how it painted the American right wing as this faux-centrist bastion of impartiality at first, the whole circus with HiLLaRy’S EmAiLs being about how they legitimately believed they could play the angle that the emails were a threat to national security all while they knew damn well it was a huge big nothingburger (with a side of hatred of women) while doing that thing that right wingers have done since the Reagan administration where they malign anything left of fascism as communism (including basic human rights) and then, predictably, you have all these very furrowed-browed old white men sitting around a conference table being VERY CONCERNED that precisely the thing they wanted to happen came true and they are completely unprepared to do damage control on the mess they engineered because WHITE MEN ARE INCAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPT OF CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR OWN ACTIONS. 🤣😂🤣😂

In all seriousness. I wasn’t crazy about Hillary either. I don’t like dynasties of any kind, royal or political. I don’t like establishment dems who are really just center-right in the real world while masquerading as left in backwards-ass bizarro-world USA. But I’m an old motherfucker now, I’m well into my 30s, I’m boring and watch CSPAN for leisure and shit. I read the reports coming out of the DOJ. One of my degrees is in political science, though admittedly, that’s the least thing that matters, in the scope of everything else these days. But it’s safe to say Hillary was unfairly maligned while republicans committing atrocities exponentially worse have been treated with kid gloves for decades. A very distinct double standard has been applied here for....longer than I’ve been alive, that even the most educated people on the left have refused to acknowledge for far too long. I watched that entire BeNgHaZi hearing (which is easily accessible on youtube, so there’s literally no excuse not to know the facts on this), and everyone knew -- everyone knew it was a bullshit smear campaign. 

So, this post isn’t so much a review of the miniseries more than it’s an indictment of the corruption of American politics. The most damning aspect being that, on principle, US politics has always had a problem with embracing progressive policy, and basic civil rights in general. That’s not news; people have known this for some time. But the thing that this miniseries really illustrated in a very cartoonish, yet succinct, way is that there are experienced professionals who hold the highest, most powerful seats of authority in this country who won’t bat an eye at dedicating their entire careers to denigrating common decency, basic human rights, and even constitutional law, while being absolutely incapable of conceiving the long-term consequences of these actions, who will then turn around and concern troll over the ashes of the empire they enthusiastically helped to burn down. It’s nauseating. It’s infuriating. It shows a pathological disregard for personal responsibility.

Everyone was so preoccupied with their massive turgid erection for hating the Clintons (and women) that no one saw they were enthusiastically living in a henhouse built by fucking foxes. No one saw the genuine threat. 

And, by extension, no one had the balls to acknowledge that age-old instinct of white men willing to engage in a scorched earth campaign simply to satisfy their worst impulses and entitlement complexes. 

Can you fit “Who cares if we’re screwing over several generations with corrupt court-packing and a flagrant disregard for checks-and-balances predicated entirely on the honor system; we just don’t feel like doing domestic labor or respecting women and minorities so we’ll continue expediting reprehensible policies that exploit the most vulnerable people in this country because we can’t compete in an authentic meritocracy" onto a campaign slogan banner? 

I sounded the alarms on this trend 20 years ago, meanwhile. My parents and I had just gotten US citizenship, luckily months before 9/11 and the patriot act; and as an outsider looking in, as someone who had risked their life escaping a dangerous regime at an incredibly young age, I saw the warning signs in the republican party even back then. Naturally, I was denigrated as an alarmist and a butthurt liberal. 

You know, I’ll acknowledge that as a white person, I’m not the average American’s image of what an “immigrant” looks like. My experiences here over the past couple of decades have thrown into sharp relief how “immigrant” is just a dogwhistle for racist bullshit, because people who concern troll about us don’t seem to have many problems with us white ones. But I came out of a communist country. I’m straight outta the eastern bloc. And I don’t think there are any words in any spoken language that can do justice to how insulting it is when americans try to americasplain communism to me. Bitch. Y’all don’t fucking know. You just don’t.

The point is, even back then, I could see the slippery slope republicans were tumbling down, and I can't say I derive any pleasure from being vindicated in such an extreme fashion. Like. I told y’all motherfuckers. TWO DECADES AGO.

People who aren’t familiar with US politics, and even long-term US citizens who for some reason feel like it’s a waste to pay attention to your own shit, seem to spend a lot of time trying to unpack what precisely went wrong. My observations came up with 1) the manipulative aspect of US history in public schools glossing over, and even omitting, the most gruesome aspects of the revolutionary war, the holocaust, and the cold war (and oftentimes, the cold war is NEVER EVEN COVERED, which is especially insulting to me, for obvious reasons); 2) the manipulative aspect of US history in public schools teaching kids that the Declaration of independence and the Constitution are unassailable doctrines of freedom and liberty, and, as such, after independence was won, no further activism to maintain democracy was needed so we can all just smoke a bowl and be complacent because all those authoritarian third world regimes we constantly ridicule and criticize can NeVeR HaPPeN hErE 😒; and 3) how limpdick both-sidesism replaced civil, comprehensive political discussion because the right spent so long abusing, denigrating, and bullying the left that it was just easier to play it safe and take the milquetoast ~centrist~ stance, which always, always, always capitulates to the lowest common denominator, which is always the oppressor. 

And generally just this age-old trend of holding the victims of systematic oppression to a higher moral and behavioral standard than the perpetrators of systematic oppression. 

Guys, I’m tired. I’m so tired. 

I’ve gotten a few questions over the years about why my writing is so angsty, why it always seems to follow the same themes; war crimes, PTSD, gore, torture. 

I already escaped one authoritarian regime. The USA promised us one thing, and then once we got here, it started emulating the very tyrants we worked so hard to get away from. A lot of people have no idea what that feels like. How much of a betrayal that is. Especially considering all the financial and legal landmines one has to navigate just to do it, and then we’re punished for that, too.

I write about PTSD because I fucking have it. I write about war crimes because I’ve experienced them firsthand - just as a victim and not the perpetrator. I so often write about soldiers committing them because I want to roleplay what it’s like to not be a victim for once. 

tbh writing a fucking Hamilton fanfiction is one of the most cathartic things I’ve ever done, but the extensive research I’ve had to do to be able to write this thing has been low-key traumatic. There’s a lot of historical material I’ve consumed that should have been covered at the most basic level of compulsory education, but conspicuously isn’t. And I know that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s by design. 

Democracy - and independence, freedom, liberty, justice, civil rights in general - isn’t just some final xbox achievement that you unlock and then just shelve the game and forget about it for the rest of your life. You have to keep grinding to maintain it, because there will always be selfish, malicious people out there who will dedicate their entire lives playing a long con to ensure you don’t get the same opportunities as them. For the love of god, stop playing the both-sidesism game. From someone coming out of the eastern bloc, I can tell you with great confidence that that was part of the propaganda campaign you were fed to keep you from engaging so they could install a dictatorship under your nose. Do some self-guided historical research, guys. It can be very illuminating.

Anyway. I’ve gone on long enough here, but damn, don’t screw this up again, guys. Today is the first day of early voting in Texas, and I’m going to do my duty. When I first came to this country, after experiencing the rigorous vetting process and labyrinthine legal requirements of US citizenship, I was led to believe that in exchange for that privilege, I was personally responsible for my own civic self-education. It’s so much more important than you've been led to believe. 

[safflowerseason]

veep rewatch - 3.02

Season Three, Episode Two - The Choice

aka - The One Where Dan Gets Seasick 

(It seems like a good time to begin this series again...)

Gary, to himself in the mirror: …When did you get your dad’s face?

LOL at Dan telling Richard not to be cute. 

Gary: Ma’am, instead of doing all this pre-campaigning, sometime in the next 24 hours, you grab a mic, you say, "I'm Selina Meyer and I'm running for President of the United States!” *beat* Selina: I’m just gonna use the bathroom really quick.

Kelly: This definitely does not do video. Amy: Then what were you doing?!  (I just think it’s hilarious the way Anna Chlumsky delivers this little line…that perfect outraged bemusement.)

Hahahaha Dan gets so seasick. He’s so terrible I don’t even feel sorry for him. (This also means his S2 line about power-boating on Lake Erie is now irrelevant, which is fine because I think this is a more hilarious canon fact about Dan.) 

Wendy, about Jonah: Look who I found in a basket on our front door. 

What the hell is Jonah wearing in this scene. What is that terrible cardigan. What is that T-shirt he is wearing underneath. What.

Criminal: Hey, I voted for you! Selina: Thank you very much, sir! But I’m afraid you have to go to prison!

The chaotic scene on the boat, with everyone yelling and speaking over one another about POTUS’s announcement is quite well done, reminiscent of the scene in the kitchen during Helsinki (another great Selina-Amy-Gary-Dan group scene.) 

Ben: Ma'am, I swear to God, we all thought he was gonna just eat some shrimp, rattle off a few platitudes, go home, watch Full Metal Jacket for the millionth time and fall asleep.

Amy: Has POTUS gone nuts? We can’t have a crazy president.  Gary: In Italy they do.  (Heh.)

Selina: I can't identify myself as a woman! People can't know that! Men hate that. And women who hate women hate that, which, I believe, is most women, don't you agree with that? 

Dan: I swear to God, I felt better on the fucking boat.

Dan: And as vice president, here's your choice, two doors, pro-choice, pro-life. That’s it. Selina:…Is there a third door?  Amy: What, like a woman's door?  Dan *scornful*: A back door? No.

Lots of little physical comedy bits in this episode…Dan being sick on the boat, Selina and the bathroom door, Richard and Kelli getting tangled up in the phone lines….Most of these bits require really coordinated dialogue as well, characters speaking over one another at the exact right moment…I feel like this kind of really specific and technical scene work went away in the later seasons, in favor of the characters just screaming outsized insults at one another. Which is a bit sad, because these scenes are so superbly done, and all of the actors involved really get to show off their technical skills as well as their mastery of the dialogue. 

There’s an argument to be made that the premise of this episode is not super realistic. I suppose it’s plausible that a lame-duck outwardly liberal but still old-white-male POTUS might reveal he has a more conservative view on the timeline for abortion. What’s less plausible is that Selina’s response requires completely rethinking her views on the topic, or that she’s run for high constitutional office in the United States without articulating a clear stance on the issue. The whole “what’s Selina’s position?!” drama is a bit over-blown. Why doesn’t she just reaffirm whatever her stance is? (I guess that is kind of what she ends up doing, by rehashing the book). And the notion that she could reverse her previous position to something more conservative that aligns with POTUS’s views does not actually make any sense politically, considering Selina’s party and her hopes for the future…like presumably POTUS has also pissed off other members of his liberal party? And he’s a lame duck POTUS anyway. Who cares? 

However, I think this is an example where it’s fine that a show about politics does not hold up to perfect realist scrutiny, because it still makes for a great episode of television where we see Selina really wrestle with her identity as Veep and as a female politician, and we get to dive deep into the stakes of a “controversial” political issue (in quotations because it shouldn’t be controversial) and watch how the team deals with it. 

Jonah: I’m going to be updating more than I'm actually dating…which is a shitload. I think in the BMTL universe, Jonah resurrects Ryantology and his unhinged videos are part of how he wins the presidency. This kind of aggressive-direct-to-the-people-straight-talk-cut-through-the-bullshit rhetoric is exactly how Trump appeals to his base (even though it’s not at all true that it’s “real”), and is certainly more interesting politically than Jonah advancing as a politician because he’s racist and sexist and hates vaccines. 

Kent and Sue begin their hilariously robotic flirting in this episode. 

Selina’s got so many great lines in this scene about gender politics and the politics of abortion, all of which I would put on a coffee mug or a t-shirt.  “Get the government out of my fucking snatch.” “If men got pregnant, you could get an abortion at an ATM.” “As a woman, I am not gonna put in a fuckin’ sentence ‘As a woman…’ I am not putting my eggs in that basket.” “This is about access to safe abortions for vulnerable women.”

Read alongside one another, these lines illustrate how conflicted she is, not about abortion, but about her identity as a female politician and in turn, how that identity is perceived by the public to influence her political choices and views. She doesn’t want to be a labeled as a feminist political warrior, but she is still clearly passionate enough about women’s issues enough to try and figure out a way to articulate her views without sacrificing her political future—a future that depends on the support of old, white men. 

Costume-wise, Amy stands out among the ensemble in another turquoise green dress (I am very into her snakesin heels). This one is a wrap dress that is a bit darker than her dress for Mike’s wedding. Selina is wearing a black top and a red skirt, in a not-so-subtle nod to her struggle over what to say in public about abortion. Dan’s and Mike’s ties both have red in them. Unusually, nothing in Amy’s outfit really links her to Selina or to Dan.

Selina: Well, he fucking fudged it. Now we know he’s running for President, that stupid bastard. 

Dan’s meltdown is very well done by Reid Scott. This season, he really brings out Dan’s more intense side, highlighting his obsessive and neurotic qualities that we don’t normally see (because Dan keeps them buried) and adding this slightly unhinged edge to the character. At the same time, he emphasizes how Dan struggles to keep up the usual facade that everything is easy for him. In the previous episode, we even saw a flash of Dan’s crazy eyes. I simply don’t understand how Mandel watched Dan’s arc in S3 and came to the conclusion that this character didn’t really care about anything except money and sex. All Dan cares about in this season is winning, to the point where he actually self-destructs. It will be really fun to observe how the writers and RS play out Dan’s journey with this rewatch. 

Amy to Dan: Go home. Take an Ambien. Take fifty!

Ben: I’m going home, and if anyone needs me…I don’t care.

Poor Gary in this episode. He fails so hard at trying to be an actual political strategist. 

Dan: Hey you, Ugly Betty, give me that burrito! Jonah: Don’t just give it to him, dude!

“This is what happens when you fuck with my office!” Dan literally is seconds from beating up Jonah in this scene…his dangerous side on full display here. Part of me wishes we saw more of this super macho physical enforcer Dan, but at the same time, I do think it’s a bit jarring compared to Veep’s regular tone as a show. (It also makes you wonder what Dan’s breaking point is, when it comes to physical violence.)

Selina: Well, I said nothing…a big, fat, morbidly obese nothing.

[thelunacy]

From 2016, I don’t know the original author.

"An 18 year old with a shit life ahead of them doesn’t want or need a dose of centrist reality from a Liz Kendall or of slow, pragmatically-obtained progress from an Yvette Cooper or a Hillary Clinton; they want and need to be able to afford somewhere decent to live in a community worth living in and to have a job to go to after they finish their education."

 This, right here, is what moderates and conservatives don't understand. You think young people support Sanders because they want "free stuff"? Well, what the hell are you offering them? Literally nothing. You're telling them "Yes, the system is rigged against you, but play it anyway," but you're giving them exactly no motivation to do so.

 Wait another decade for social progress, kid, because we've been doing this civil rights thing for sixty years and they're still killing the black dudes in the street...but trust us, our conciliatory way of doing things is the only way. Go to college, that's the way to have a great career and get wealthy... except it just isn't, anymore, and that's a fact. Go out and get a job, except nobody wants to pay you a living wage and they'll figure out every way in the book to deny you benefits and then call you a Commie when you look to that government to help out because you'd rather see your tax money go to helping you and your fellow Americans than to pointless and horrific wars or to bail out sociopathic speculators who see the entirety of the American economy as a game of online Texas hold 'em.

 What, precisely, are you offering them that Sanders isn't? You say he can't get them any of the things he's talking about, but you're not even willing to try. Maybe next generation, kid.

 I wonder how many of you understand how close we are to general strikes or worse. You can keep people in line if you give them nothing but hope. Take away the hope and they'll cut your throat. History bears that out time and time again.

 And even if Sanders loses, you're fucked. Because you'll do nothing of value for the kids, or you'll make things worse, and that Sanders Presidency That Might Have Been - the one that never has to face the harsh light of political reality - will pass into myth, even more so than Gore 2000 did. Sanders won't even have to get elected to win, because for the rest of their lives they'll be trying to recapture this moment.

 And nobody else will offer them anything else to get behind and believe in. If you really wanted to defeat socialism, you'd do better to give Bernie a single term to fuck everything up. But that's not how political people think, which is why I don't have much use for them. Businesspeople see Q1 of next year. Wonks see the next election cycle. But the smart eyes are always on the horizon.

 So you're fucked no matter what. The GOP is dead in the water. It's the party of racists and crazy people who have absolutely nothing to offer anyone and greedheads and people who believe angels check their Facebook timeline to see if they got enough likes to cure their cancer. It's not the party of better jobs, pragmatic economics. It brings nothing to the table but guns and gilded cages.

 But the Democratic Party is fucked too, because nobody has any faith in it anymore. And why should they? The Dems have zero vision. They're the designated drivers. People like me only vote Democratic because the GOP look like a bunch of wolverines dressed up like a Klan rally to us - and if you think I'm exaggerating or in the minority, you really are out of touch with the kids.

 Sanders gets the kids because none of them actually believe in Clinton or anybody like her. The old liberals love her because she resonates with their careful, methodical idea of how progress is made. She makes them think of the Sixties and the Seventies, of upstanding citizens committed to respectable change that does fundraisers in a suit and tie with Fleetwood Mac playing on the PA.

 But everybody's tired of thinking about tomorrow, there, Lindsey Buckingham. They want to think about today. Nobody wants to wait another generation to see things get better anymore. And unless you haven't noticed, the kids don't much give a shit what you think about that anymore.

 If Sanders wins, it might be an object lesson in political pragmatism. Or he might actually make things happen. Clinton won't. The GOP can't win because all of their candidates are mentally ill Bond villains, and the only change they can effect is to up the timetable for actual violent revolution in this country.

 Yeah, that. I just came out and said it. But it's in the air. It's still a long way off, but you can smell it if you know which way the wind is blowing. People are tired of racism and sexism and the church of corporate capitalism, and it's a lot harder to pacify them than it was back when they could jump in the game and get rich themselves. They're poor and gonna stay poor, and if you try to tell them how to live their poor lives too, that they can't have equality or reproductive rights? Man, they're gonna come at you, and I don't care how many guns you've got. The kids can stick C4 on a drone. They can wipe out your bank account with a laptop. The day Anonymous stops being a bunch of hippies and neckbeards and Burning Man doofballs - the day it stops feeling the need to be anonymous anymore - you are fucked.

 But keep pushing them. Keep patting them on the head. Keep backing them into the corner and telling them you know best because you marched for the ERA once and said some very harsh things about apartheid at a rally before a Sting concert in 1988. Keep thinking they're on your side. Keep thinking they see this the way you do. They don't. This is good and evil for them. And for me and a lot of us aging hipsters too.

Things are about to jump off one way or another. The Sanders campaign is the weatherman telling you which way the wind is blowing. If you can't see that, God help you, because nobody else can. Or will."

[qqueenofhades]

So dare I ask what the nightmare in detail is regarding Brexit right now?

@tollers-and-jack said: I’m asking for the rant…

@rhymeswithtessa said: I’m a big fan of your rants gimme your thoughts on brexit

@onlymorelove said: Ahem. I am interested in your rant. If you feel like sharing. 💗

Ahaha wow. Apparently this is something the people really want to hear about. Disclaimer, just remember that you asked for this, and that this is, as Captain Holt would say, a trigger for me. So if this periodically devolves into incoherent screaming/application of capital letters and exclamation marks, and what have you, just know that.

So… I wrote these posts soon after Brexit in 2016 explaining what a spectacularly stupid idea it was even then. If I said anything optimistic in those posts, in a sort of grasping-at-straws-maybe-this-will-work sort of flailing way, please disregard it. We have had empirical evidence of how this played out. Spoiler alert: it failed. It failed so comprehensively on every possible level that it seems almost ludicrous for a supposedly modern political system, but this is 2019, the world is dogshit, and we are all retreating into our little late-capitalism xenophobia bubbles with our right-wing strongmen and our populist rhetoric and the UK is now a global laughingstock. Which believe me, the ex-British Empire richly deserves, especially given the part that anti-immigration paranoia played in this whole debacle, but also, I live here and really would Rather Not.

I do not even know how to sum up the ridiculousness of the past few months, where – almost at the end of the two-year period of triggering Article 50, with just a very short amount of time to the original exit date (29 March 2019) – the UK finally managed to secure a withdrawal deal. Mind you, it was a shit deal that both sides hated, but by golly, It Made Brexit Happen, and since the Theresa May-bot has only been able to repeat over and over that she will Make Brexit Happen, there you have it. Not surprisingly, it proceeded to be comprehensively defeated in Parliament by the largest majority ever seen since World War II. It then was subject to surface-level makeovers and cosmetic tinkering about the backstop in Northern Ireland (since among many other things, the ardent Brexiteers forget that oh yeah we share a land border with an EU country and peace in Ireland is kind of a thing that should be paid attention to). The DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) of Northern Ireland, whose 10 MPs prop up the minority Tory government, absolutely hated it and would not support it, since it would effectively introduce different regulations for NI than the rest of the UK and thus jeopardise the, you know, United Kingdom. Plus it would require the EU’s assent to end the arrangement, and also we can’t have that. Because reasons.

The deal was then thumpingly defeated for a second time, people got worried because uhhhh aren’t we supposed to leave the EU in like a week, Parliament had to institute emergency measures and hold a series of votes on Brexit alternatives, those also got defeated and May would not even commit to honouring the will of the House, 6 million people signed a petition asking for Article 50 to be revoked and the Brexit process cancelled (the biggest in parliamentary history) and got ignored. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage led a pathetic procession of 200 diehard Leavers against literally 1 million people in London calling for a new referendum, the deal got defeated for a third time after they had to do all kinds of fancy-dancing to get it back for yet another vote, they got the EU to agree to a crunch extension to 12 April, and now that that is three days away with absolutely no consensus in sight, have sent May back to Europe to beg Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron to extend the deadline to 30 June. They actually had to pass a bill (by one vote) forcing her to do this in order to avoid a no-deal Brexit. The EU is justifiably exasperated with this utter, unbelievable incompetence, the fact that the hard right wing of the Tory party pulled this absurdly irresponsible jackshit without any clue how to do it, and the way the UK still thinks it can just pick an a la carte deal where we’re great and the EU sucks and blue passports and blah blah Great Britain is Great!!! And there has been absolutely no collective awareness from either major party that maybe, just maybe, trying to undo a legal and political and cultural alignment that has existed since at least 1973 when we were a founding member of this project, in two years, with no idea how, to please a xenophobic lying campaign, WAS A STUPID FUCKING GODDAMN IDEA!!!!!!!!!!!!

(we pause while the blogger breathes and drinks heavily)

Anyway, that is the short version of Nobody Still Knows What The Fuck Is Going to Happen. Technically if we stayed in the bloc past 22 May, we’d have to hold elections to the European Parliament, which bitch bitch whine whine, the Brexiteers don’t want to do. Maybe we think we’re entitled to more special treatment (no scratch that, we definitely do) because we can’t sort our heads from our asses and have been so wildly and bogglingly arrogant and incompetent that it would almost be funny if people’s lives and livelihoods and futures weren’t at stake. And we have the goddamn European Research Group (aka the hard Brexit wing) yapping about how no deal wouldn’t be that bad and we should just take it on the chin because Blah Blah Blitz Spirit, Nationalism Patriotism Our Freedom From The Tyrannical EU. (Sidenote, if someone just punches Jacob Rees-Mogg in the elitist Little Britain face, you don’t know where I was, God I hate him so much.) Every single business, manufacturer, industry, finance, medicine, food, education, you name it outfit has been warning that no, actually, no deal would be catastrophic and the UK is not remotely prepared for it. To the point we have the military on standby to deliver basic goods if it happens??! How. How is this acceptable??!?!? I don’t understand??!?!

(And the Brexiteers who are like “this is Britain let’s all just hunt hares and grow food in our back gardens,” which, yes, is something I heard actually said, are out of touch to a truly stupendous degree. Yes I’m sure that a modern first-world country wants to resort to subsistence farming to feed its 66 million people. Do they. Even. Hear Themselves. Racism is a hell of a drug, my friends! And if you want to be like “oh no it’s not about racism/anti-immigrant sentiment, it’s about the economy,” let’s just say that the newsreader covering a Brexit march said that he’d never seen so many white people in one place and was forced to apologize, because racist white people don’t like it being pointed out to them that they are racist white people. That tells you a lot. And the Leave campaign has been convicted multiple times for breaking electoral law and just flat-out Lying to the public, so the people who voted Leave thinking they were in fact getting a better economic deal were deceived outright and have indeed often expressed regret that they were so wildly and deliberately deluded. So anyway. Fun!)

I cannot emphasise enough the sheer, staggering arrogance and delusion of the people who proposed this project and then forced it through, because the British public has believed throughout its entire history that it’s better than the whole world (see again: imperial nostalgia and Oh No The Foreigners Are Coming and etc) and has been fed for a good 25 years on this point on a lot of bullshit stories about how terrible and Liberal and Anti-British the EU is, because the British popular press is a flaming dumpster fire (you think Fox News is bad, and it is, but so many of the tabloids are basically Fox News UK). So the Brits feel as if they’ve been so unfairly repressed by the EU and need to Take Back Control (once again, there is a very long history of this  rhetoric of the English being supposedly attacked and repressed by foreigners, dating back to the idea of the “Norman Yoke” resulting from the Conquest, which became a big deal in the 19th century – I am a historian, I can pull receipts for days on this). Once again, they think they can just do whatever they want, the EU is the bad guy for not giving it to them, that we should set ourselves on fire and jump out the window rather than sit at the table like grownups with the rest of Europe, and just take our ball and go home and yet still think we are entitled to preferential treatment.

I just…. I don’t even. I DO NOT EVEN. I seriously lack the words. 

So we may get another rolling series of short-term extensions, we may not, nobody can come to any agreement on what should be done, May promised to resign to get the deal through, the deal did not get through, the whole setup is so unsustainable that it feels like a general election is an inevitability, and the obvious solution would be another referendum to see if the people even still goddamn want this. But the Brexiteers, for all they bluster about upholding the will of the people to leave, resist this with all their might (what are you fucking afraid of? If you’re so confident that you’re still the majority, you should WANT another referendum to confirm it, but you’re cowards and you know you’d lose and you’re tied to this stick of dynamite for Ideology Reasons, god damn it). The message has been always that We Must Deliver Brexit and This Is What The People Want, while the people are breaking records saying that no, actually, we’d like another say, because everyone has now seen that this is an absurd shitshow that cannot be accomplished (and ONCE AGAIN WAS NEVER! FEASIBLE! IN THE FUCKING FIRST PLACE!!!!) and it hey, actually was not a bad idea to be in the EU. 

This is again, the alignment of the entire post-WWII political and legal world. It confers countless benefits, freedom from tariffs, the single market, a customs union, visa-free travel, no roaming charges, the right to live and work in 27 other countries, etc. But because the ex-British Empire (which really wishes it was still the British Empire) has its fragile racist panties in a bunch about other people coming to live here (when as ever, the problem isn’t immigrants, it’s austerity budgets and the Tories absolutely gutting government and NHS funding and social programmes and thinking that the solution to knife crime is to punish teachers for not noticing their students getting into it), they have decided this is actually the best course of action. Because we don’t want those Non British People telling us what to do. Ew gross.

As people have said, it’s like trading a gourmet three course meal for a bag of crisps and feeling self-satisfied about it, because boy we sure showed them. It has been bungled to a degree truly stupefying to everyone who isn’t a marching Brexiteer ideologue, Labour have…. really not inspired any confidence whatsoever that they’d be able to handle it better (since they have wildly see-sawed between what they will and won’t support, if they’d revoke Article 50 or support a new people’s vote or so on) and the Prime Minister has failed on an utterly fundamental degree to build cross-party consensus or engage with other European leaders or display any ability to consider alternatives. The Tories have truly felt that they can ram this through without any reference to anyone or anything else, and fuck consequences, I guess. The British economy has already lost approximately £66 billion as a result of Brexit uncertainty and loses more every day, every major firm is moving its headquarters to somewhere they can take advantage of EU law, this will leave us poorer, more isolated, less secure, with fewer options, and generally a worse deal in every imaginable way, and yet, because again, racism and xenophobia is a hell of a drug, there are still some factions who feel like yes, this is absolutely what we should do. 

It is truly a slow motion car crash of nightmares, it’s completely avoidable and yet nobody has the backbone to do that, Parliament and the PM have completely broken down, nobody is listening to the British people for whom they are supposedly doing this, and once again, the British Empire absolutely 100% deserves this. But as someone who lives here and would actually kind of like to get a job here, Jesus Christ. Jesus. Christ. JESUS. CHRIST.

[yobaba30]

~ Tim Wise

1/ If the Dems blow this election it will not be because they were "too far left on policy" or because they "weren't left enough." It will have little to do with policy at all. They are making a mistake caused by traditional consultant theory that does not apply here...

2/ And by listening to influential pundits in liberal media who also don't get the unique nature of Trumpism, relative to normal political movements & campaigns...this election is NOT going to be won by talking about all your "great plans" for health care, jobs, education, etc..

3/ And the reasons are several...Let me begin by saying that I have experience confronting the kind of phenomenon we see in Trumpism, and far more than most. Any of us who were involved in the fight against David Duke in LA in 90/91 know what this is and how it must be fought...

4/ So before explaining what the Dems are doing wrong right now, a little history...In 1990, white supremacist David Duke ran for U.S. Senate in LA, and in 1991 for Governor. He lost both times but both times he won the majority of the white vote (60 and 55% respectively)...

5/ I was one of the staffers of the main anti-Duke PAC at the time & ultimately became Assistant Director. In 90, even though our Director Lance Hill, myself & a few of our founders wanted to focus on Duke's bigotry, ties to extremists and appeals to white racial resentment...

6/ ...after all, that WAS the issue--it was a moral struggle against racism--we had mainstream Democratic consultants who warned us against focusing too much on it. They said that "played into Duke's hands" and allowed him to set the agenda....

7/ So sure, we could discuss his ties to Nazis & such, but we shouldn't make a big deal out of his contemporary racist appeals, per se, bc "lots of voters agree" with those appeals...they even encouraged us to talk about utterly superfluous shit like Duke paying his taxes late..

8/ Or Duke avoiding service in Vietnam, or Duke writing a sex manual under a female pseudonym (yeah he did that)...although Lance held firm that we needed to talk mostly about racism, we did end up talking about some of that other stuff too, sadly...

9/ I say "sadly" because doing that normalized Duke as a regular candidate. Attacking his generic character or bill paying habits (or even discussing his inadequate plans for job creation, etc) treated him like a normal candidate. But he was/is a NAZI...

10/ And none of his voters were voting 4 him bc of jobs, or tax policy or support for term limits, etc. And none were going to turn on him over late tax payments, Vietnam, etc. Indeed throwing that stuff out there & downplaying the elephant in the room (racism) seemed desperate..

11/ It allowed people to say "well if he's really this racist, white supremacist, why are they talking about all this other stuff?" It actually undermined our ability to paint him as the extremist he was/is. And as a result, the threat he posed was not clear enough to voters...

12/ And this didn't just allow him to get votes he might not have gotten otherwise; it also depressed turnout among people who almost certainly disliked him but didn't think he could win or would be all that big a deal if he did. In fact I recall convos with "liberals"...

13/ ...Who said they weren't going 2 vote bc after all Duke's Dem opponent was just a shill for the oil and gas industry, and that was just as bad, blah blah fucking blah...because some lefties can't tell the difference between corporatist assholes and actual literal Nazis...

14/ But we bore some responsibility for that because we got suckered into playing this conventional game and "not playing into his narrative." Anyway, Duke gets 60% of the vote, black and white liberal turnout is lower than it should have been and Duke gets 44% of vote...

15/ In the Governor's race we dispensed w/ all that bullshit. We talked about Duke's ongoing Nazism and the moral/practical evil of his racist appeals. We discussed how that moral evil would have real world consequences (driving tourists and business away, rightly so, from LA)..

16/ Because it was wrong, and it was not who we wanted to be, and it was not who were were. We were better than that and needed to show the rest of the country that...

17/ Now, did this flip any of Duke's 1990 voters? Nah, not really. Indeed he got 65k MORE votes in the Governor's race than the Senate race. But it was never about flipping them. We knew that would be almost impossible...

18/ To flip Duke voters would require that they accept the fact that they had previously voted for a monster, and people are loath to do that. Our goal was not to flip them, but to DRIVE UP TURNOUT among the good folks, many of whom stayed home in 90...

19/ And that is what happened. The concerted effort of the anti-Duke forces (not just us), challenging Duke's "politics of prejudice," and making the election about what kind of state we wanted to be, drove turnout through the roof...

20/ 28,000+ registered on one day alone, between the initial election and runoff (which Duke made bc of the state's open primary system), with tens of thousands more overall: most of them, anti-Duke folks...

21/ When it was over, Duke had gotten 65k more votes than in 90, but his white share went to 55 (from 60) and overall to 39 (from 44) because the anti-Duke turnout swamped him...So what does this have to do with 2020 and Trump? Do I really need to explain it?...

22/ First, trying to flip Trump voters is a waste of time. Any of them who regret their vote don't need to be pandered to. They'll do the right thing. Don't focus on them. That said, very few will regret their vote. They cannot accept they voted for a monster or got suckered...

23/ Duke retained 94% of the folks he got the first time out (and got new people too), as Trump likely will. So forget these people--or at least don't wast time tailoring messages to them. And policy plans for affordable college don't mean shit to them, nor health care...

24/ Their support for Trump was never about policy. It was about the bigotry, the fact that he hates who they hate...Second, as for the "undecideds." ...Not many of these but seriously? If you're still undecided at this point about this guy...

25/ Then there is almost no way to know what would get you to make up your mind...I doubt it's a plan to deal with Wall Street though, or infrastructure, or tax policy...

26/ If anything, I would say crafting an argument that this is an existential crisis for the nation--and making it about Trump's bigotry and who we want to be as a country, would be far more effective in inspiring them to make up their minds...

27/ And what I know for a FACT is that this message--that Trumpism is a threat to everything we care about and love about this country--is what will inspire the Dem base to vote...and THAT is what this election is about...

28/ I'm not saying the Dems don't need policy ideas, but focusing on wonky, look-how-much-I've-thought about-this stuff is not going to move the needle in 2020...

29/ What the left never understands is: we need to stop approaching elections like the goddamned debate team, and start approaching it like the right does, like the cheer leading squad...

30/  The right knows psychology and we know public policy and sociology...great. The latter does not win elections...

31/ People who say the Dems should ignore Trump's race baiting because its some genius political strategy calculated to distract us, are idiots. He is no genius. And if you downplay it you NORMALIZE him. If you make this about policy, you NORMALIZE him. He is a racist...

32/ He is a white nationalist.

He is an authoritarian.

He and his cult are a threat to the future of the nation and world because of their hatreds.

His movement betrays the country's promise.

THAT is the message that will drive turnout. Not debates over marginal tax rates...

33/ Or how we are going to fund schools...And anyone who says we should ignore the race baiting to talk more about Mueller and Russia is an even bigger fool...that's like talking about Duke and late tax payments or other corruptions...it might all be true but is not the point...

34/ Not to say the House shouldn't impeach over that stuff. They should. But the 2020 candidates must craft a message that is not about that.

Trumpism is the threat to America, more than Putin.

And Putin didn't birth Trumpism.

Conservative White America did...

[rottenbrainstuff]

I noticed in the tags for one of your posts that you said Canada is heading down the same kind of path the US is. Would you mind explaining that to me? I haven't heard about that kind of thing going on but as someone who's major life goal is to move to Canada to be with her lover this sounds pretty terrifying. No pressure if you don't want to discuss that kind of thing though, I generally use Tumblr as an escape for this kind of shit so I totally understand.

Sure I can explain what I mean.This is long, guys, and I'm on mobile, so I apologize.I mean. First of all. I think I might be exaggerating a bit, our politics are always less extreme than the USA and I think they always will be. Our government is organized differently. But a lot of people, Canadians included, have this idea that Canada is this magic land of polite people and free healthcare and we're so much better than the US, and that's just really honestly not true.And I am getting worried about our political situation.First of all, Canada is not and never has been a magic perfect land where there is no racism and everyone is lovely. Our government has a shameful history dealing with indigenous people. We took entire generations of children away from their families and put them in residential schools and beat their culture out of them. We stuck them onto reserves where the conditions were terrible. There's been a huge problem with native women going missing and the police don't care, they don't devote the resources to investigating. And google starlight tours. That's a fun little thing where cops would grab a drunk native, drive them way the hell out on the highway, and just dump them off in the middle of nowhere, at night, in the winter, to let them find their way back to town in the cold. People have died from that. They deal with a ton of social issues now and there's a lot of racist sentiment against natives and it makes me want to scream, like, do you not understand, we did this to them? We broke their culture and all this shit you're complaining about is the fallout from that.We had Japanese internment camps during WW2 just like the US. After 9/11 we had a sharp increase in anti-Muslim bullshit too. There's rural areas in southern Alberta with "a proudly pro life community" signs stuck along the highway. Our government does stupid shit too. Our education didn't get gutted as bad as in the US, but my province made deep cuts to education funding in the 80s and 90s and TO THIS DAY we're still recovering from that. I just want everyone to forget this notion that we're just so much better here and all this crap can't happen here, and honestly I think it's Canadians ourselves who are the worst for this, because i think it makes us stop examining ourselves and asking questions.Which brings me to...I don't like where I see things headed. Living right next to the US, it's inevitable that we are influenced by what goes on there. I think some Canadians are really shocked by what's happening down there and it's really solidified this sense of "well I don't want THAT to happen HERE!"....But there's other things going on as well. I definitely notice a lot more racist buzz. Familiar members of mine who were just annoyingly conservative before are now blatantly and offensively islamophobic. In my province we recently had someone set fire to a mosque during evening prayer. There's graffiti and hate crimes. I do notice it getting worse.Recently we had a bit of a political shakeup, in that we got rid of Stephen Harper, a conservative premier who had been in office for a while, and elected Trudeau, who is liberal, and... despite what you might think of him, is a charismatic leader. In my province, we've had a conservative provincial government for decades, and we got so sick of it that we voted NDP in the last election, which is a worker's party, essentially, and they raised our goddamned minimum wage.And just like in the US, when you elected Obama after all the grumbling there was about Bush and there was push-back against Obama, there seems to be a conservative push-back to all of this.In Ontario they recently elected an absolute buffoon as premier, Doug Ford, and to be honest he strikes me as Trump Lite. He is related to an absolute fuckhead who used to be a mayor, Rob Ford, and whose "antics" were so ridiculous it got us international attention. Anyway this asshole Doug, he wants to do fun stuff like limit access to abortion, and roll back the minimum wage, and other bullshit like that. I thought he was too ridiculous and extreme to get elected premier, and I was wrong.A year or two ago we had a municipal election in my city, and there was concern that there was a mysterious lobby group that no one knew anything about trying to influence the election. Municipal elections are municipal! There was a gross smear campaign and people even stooped to literally sweeping the city and removing all the signage placed out by one of the candidates. Luckily it turned out the campaign didn't work and the candidates that had been targeted mostly all still won, but like. It was just so chilling to me, in the context of everything else that's been happening lately. I'd never seen anything like that happen in my city before.I hear nothing but articles about what a shitty job Trudeau is doing, first it was he was fucking us over by not pushing through this stupid goddamned pipeline, then it was that he was a liar and a traitor by eventually signing the pipeline, he's corrupt, he's a liar, all this shit. My *liberal* friends are telling me all this stuff. I'm not saying he's perfect. He's not. But here's the thing.There's been reports of concerns of Russian and Chinese involvement with our elections. I take consumer response surveys to earn money. Sometimes the surveys ask about local politics or concerns. Suddenly in the last year, the political surveys are unprofessionally biased and asking me questions about conservative politics. A fun local paper we had was recently bought by someone else and now instead of fun local stories, it's all this urgent scaremongering. FLOOD SEASON! AIRLINE STRIKE DISASTER! CITY HOUSING CRISIS!And I think about how we had the facebook data mining, I think about the Russian Tumblr accounts spreading discord to demoralize left leaning voters, and I'm worried that I'm watching the start of that. It makes me feel extremely uneasy. I think there's something going on.The Conservative party is kind of fumbling around at the moment, and I'm worried there's going to be a massive reorganization, and come next election, we're going to be looking at a racist, religious conservative candidate who wants to privatize our healthcare, limit immigration, reduce abortion access, freeze minimum wages, let oil and gas do whatever the fuck they want, etc etc etc. I'm worried it'll be a scary candidate like we've never seen before.And I'm worried that our next election will be Trudeau VS Trump 2.0, and the left-leaning voters will be split between parties, because these shadowy groups have spent a few years making everyone disagree with each other, and it will be the same thing, the exact same goddamned thing that happened in the US. "But Trudeau is so corrupt...." they'll say, and they'll split the vote, and we'll have some awful, awful shit who wants to ruin everything.Now, that's a pretty alarmist attitude, perhaps. There's certain values and certain rights we have in Canada that we're pretty passionate about, and I don't think politicians would be able to get away with as much bullshit up here as they do down there. But I don't know what's happening any more. I'm not sure of anything. Every time I think "it would never get that bad" or "people would never let that happen" something happens that proves me wrong, so. I honestly don't know. I have a really bad feeling in my gut from the weird things I see happening, I've put two and two together, and I don't like what I see.So I mean. At the end of the day, I don't think things up here will ever be as crazy as things in the US. Our government is organized a little differently, we deal with issues a little differently. But I'm still concerned. I don't like what I see, and these last two years have taught me that human beings are fucking disappointing and we don't fucking learn, from anything.I think Canada is a good place to live, and I think it will probably continue to be a good place to live. (Maybe stay away from Ontario and the prairie provinces though)There's my extremely pessimistic point of view. Probably other Canadians wouldn't tell you this, so maybe take it with a grain of salt. Message me if you have any other questions, I would love to answer them.

[fentonizer]

THE SHANEYS SIX STAR PIZZA or “Big Pizza in Little England”

There’s no such thing as a bad pizza, or so the saying goes. I suppose the logic is that pizza, a food consisting of primarily dough, tomatoes, and hot cheese, is impossible to make badly. I can understand the thought there; after all, humans have been making dough since at least the nineteen-nineties, and even then it’s not that difficult. Bung some tomatoes and cheese on there, put it in the oven and boom- like the moon hitting your eye, that’s amore.

I live on pizza. Pizza is fantastic. Every meal that I eat that isn’t a pizza is part of my strict pizza-meal-replacement regiment (doctor’s orders). It’s a millennial thing, you know, along with not really being that fussed about spending the day in a department store, and real-terms wage cuts. When a group of friends and I went away for the night, pizza was on the top of the menu.

We went Champing. This is a portmanteau of the words “church” and “camping.” As a rule, any activity that is a portmanteau is worthy of derision. Moreover, when “camping” is one of the words, it gives off the general vibe that camping is rubbish because people are far too stuck up to debase themselves with tents and mud and disposable barbecues. This is how we got Glamping (glamour camping), no tents, but a hessian yurt, with shower, fridge and gigabit Wi-Fi. You know, the kind of thing that Jo Whiley does when she goes to Glastonbury to maintain the facade that she’s down to earth and relatable (her most recent trick is being on the radio alongside Simon Mayo. Not gonna fly Jo, sorry, we’re on to you).

Champing is not really camping at all, so I don’t know why it’s called that. You sleep in a church, not a tent. They give you each a kind of single bed that you’d more likely see the war-wounded on, and you can bring a duvet. There’s no electricity. There is a portaloo. Glamping is more camping than Champing.

I digress because it’s extremely easy at this point to discount everything that’s going to follow as the mad ramblings of a middle-class, millennial, left-liberal hipster. I mean, I am exactly that, but stay with me here as I tell you my thesis and do not write me off as a yuppie (even if I do have M.E.): this pizza is directly responsible for Brexit.

The church was in Norfolk, specifically the constituency of Broadland which has a population of 128,500 and is 96% White British. 54% of the votes from Broadland were to leave the EU (78% turnout).

Broadland is the pinnacle of Little England, a phrase referencing the idea that England is better off isolated and alone. I’mma a strong, independent country that don’t need no European Union. A sort of reverse manifest destiny, if you like. This is at the core of Brexit, really. The EU makes us do things, they force their rules on us, their immigrants, and we’re not having any of that. England is great, it always was it always will be, we can go it alone. And for these people, I can see why they think that. Everything around there, the small village of Booton where we stayed, and the nearby town of Reepham, it ran on a superficially English infrastructure giving a false-sense of English self sufficiency.

Anyway, back to the pizza, and more specifically, Shaneys. Or Shaney’s, I don’t know, the apostrophe comes and goes. If you want a good rule of thumb for ordering food from an unknown place in the UK, try to avoid anywhere that will sell you kebabs and chips and burgers and pizzas and fried chicken. There was a similar place around here called Four-In-One, so called because you could get salmonella, norovirus, campylobacter and E. coli from a single order. There’s also a place with the highly unoriginal slogan “you ring, we bring” which to be honest, is the bare minimum I expect from food delivery.

Our initial suspicions were put at ease when we looked at the review on popular fast food delivery aggregator Just Eat, whose business model consists entirely of making sure small businesses can’t be found online unless they pay Just Eat to be on the site, and then taking a cut of all their orders. Shaneys had an impressive 4.8 out of 6 stars (NB: I don’t want to get started on the 6 star rating system, but rest assured I think it’s fucking stupid). These high marks were also buoyed by knowing that this was an average of over one thousand reviews. The will of the people is clearly that Shaney’s is a “good place to eat.”

Georgina gives 6 stars and says “Always order from here… Great wraps and the garlic mayo is the best!” Deanne gave 6 stars and says “The order arrived on time and was warm. The food had been well cooked, without being greasy.” Deanne is easily pleased, clearly. Susan orders from Shaney’s for ethical reasons: “Always enjoy pizza and kebabs from Shaney’s, supporting local businesses.” Danny gives a slightly poorer 3 and a half stars (NB: half stars as well!?) and says “it all turned up lukewarm… Food was ok once it was warmed up.” Danny later died of dehydration brought on by extreme and persistent bowel evacuations.

Ok, look, before I carry on, I don’t care that Shaney’s is bad. I don’t care that every pizza used sweetcorn to bulk out a meager selection of toppings, charging me £9.50 for a tweleve inch pizza you bought from the only pizza catering company these kinds of places use. If I wrote a thousand words about every place I’d eaten that was bad, I’d be a sad lonely individual. What irks me much more is that for the people of Reepham, this is fine dining. Shaneys grill is a treat. These pizzas are “good pizzas.” These are the sheltered middle classes that form the vast majority of a populace that needs to be catered to. Politics aims to please these people more than anyone, and they don’t even know what a good pizza is supposed to taste like. They complain when their coffee milk isn’t as hot as just-off-the-boil water. These are the kind of people that the “omelette and chips” option at the back of an Indian restaurant menu are for. The kind of people who think English Breakfast tea is grown in the UK and complain when their hotel abroad “only” has Assam or Ceylon.

I’m exaggerating for effect, of course (except the tea thing, I saw that with my own eyes). Not everyone who has ever worn a tweed jacket is a huge racist, I know that.

The more populated an area in England, the more likely they were to vote Remain in the Brexit referendum. The more people were around a multicultural society, the more they realised what a benefit such a thing really is. Trying new things is how we grow as people, and it’s no shock that traditionalist conservatism feels like such an outdated school of thought to the young. A generation for whom the world has never been smaller, and for which the circumstances of one’s birth, from nationality, race, sex, and gender, is cause for introspection and empathy rather than the basis for natural law.

We spent seventy pounds at Shaney’s. We got a free bottle of 7up and a complementary cheese and tomato pizza, topped with “SORRY” spelt out in sweetcorn. According to the Companies House, Shaney’s Grill LTD (formerly registered as Shaney,s) is owned by one Mr Bikliqi, who is of Albanian heritage. Shaney’s applied for dissolution in May 2018.

I write very occasionally because even though I enjoy it, no-one reads it. If you did read this and enjoy it, first of all thank you! Please consider letting me know so I can write more things and feel good about it. You can also show your support by buying me a coffee via ko-fi.com/fentonizer!

[mermaidfan76]

Homeless Autistic Girl

Hey guys... this really kills me to ask, however right now I’m homeless at the moment.

Technology, I’m living with a long time friend who is hounding me to find a job since she believes it’s just so damn easy and move out by The end of February. I’ve put out application after application and only maybe a couple have called back for an interview. Only for them to tell me the same exact thing over and over, “You don’t seem like you will do well for this job.” With out even giving me a garsh darn chance to show them I’m willing to work my butt off.

Yet, they hire people who are literally ALLERGIC to manual labor, and pay them twice the wage to appease them so they don’t get sued. It pisses me off. I have Autism and PTSD, I watched my mother and fathers beloved dog get run over by a car, I know these people have mommy and daddy’s that coddle them. My parents died on September 22, 2013. My sister’s threw me out in the cold and said I’m on own. I’m still here, sadly. Not one day goes by and I don’t think about giving up and killing myself. Love to give that bayberry (under a new name) Bitch and all the rest what they wanted in the first place! With heartless pieces off shit like them in this world, I definitely don’t feel it’s worth the aggravation!

You push, you kick, you fight, you bite, you bunch, but guess what you end up someone else’s lunch! It’s survival of the fittest and you’ve won the game if you have Money, Fame, and/or Power! Just 1 on these gives you the right to control poor peoples lives!

You can play the advocate for good all day, but turning a blind eye to the innocent people that are truly in pain by the very people you are advocating for. Who’s the real villain? Saying the people who did nothing deserve it because someone said its poetic revenge... read a book. Get your facts straight, you really think they would attack now? Why didn’t they attack back then? People don’t postpone revenge -_-...

(if I had a grudge against a person, I’d want to get them now, not expect my descendants to attack his descendants. 1. How do I know if they’ll follow through? 2. What if everything is patched up and my other descendants didn’t know that and still desire to take their revenge? (They don’t even know what the whole argument is about... could be about stealing the last slice of pizza) This is about taking over the world just like before! We stopped them once! They’re trying again, however they fooled you!)

So with politics, islamphopia (more like not wanting an ideology of woman haters who desire to take over any free country and turn it to a world of oppression and insanity), racism (a political term used when a white person doesn’t agree with you), feminist (because women are oppressed because they have tits and a vigina), fatphopia (because veggies don’t taste like cake, if they did we’d still become fat, why? Because we’d get sick of sweets and want savory tasting veggies that you only get from cake... oh the irony), LBGT without Q (Queers are just feminist men who are really flamboyant gays... and real gays try to avoid, ever heard the term, “Queer as a Clock work Mouse.” Man I miss my English mother! The LBG, The Les, The Bi, and The Gay, do as you wish... Hey I’m you Bi, I find shapely girls just Be A U Ti Ful to draw, have to get that full body motion. Gays, love ya, best guy friends and you give perfect fashion advice, Lesbians, you’re very easy going and easy to talk to, al yal are A O Kay in my book. Trans, um... look umm... I’m female... I have more of a male mind... we can find common ground here can’t we?) and that’s what I go through everyday. Half the words I’m called... how do they apply to me? Like racist? I judge by character, not by skin tone.

(All I see is another human being in front of me. If you act like you’re above a human being, than I’ll treat you the way you treat me. Not one human is above another. If you have earnt that privilege than you are granted that only by the people who gave you such power, however they have the power to take it away. That is the true purpose of the second Amendment! In short; “a president is a civil servant to the people of his/her country that he/she has sworn to protect! As such nothing is beneath them!”)

I really wish people would do their homework...

My friend I was talking about earlier; well she’s not only getting on my case about finding a job, but she’s also pissing me off about politics. Her plan is to be an American History Teacher. She wants to teach her class how America was founded on the “Socialistic” Principles we use today and that’s bullshit! We wouldn’t have many of our largest company products that I bet everyone of you see every single day, more than likely every minute of your day.

(For Starters:

Let’s start off with Ford, if America was a Socialistic Society, well then all of you who drive a Ford let alone a car in general, would walk everywhere. If it wasn’t for Ford’s Model T being a Successful test run clearing the way to Model A. Ford’s company could only up from there. (Btw: anyone who drives the VMW Bug- just a little trivia for you did you know that the original design was created by Adolf Hitler himself? Adolf Hitler was the original Designer for the shape of that car the VMW Bug, just a little tid pit I know from Graphic Design School, hope that doesn’t ruin your VMW driving experience:D)

Another one I’d like to point out: McDonald’s, that famous Golden Arches fast food places started as a ma and pa rest stop, now it’s one of the biggest fast food chains in the world! Mickey D’s started again in America! Again how is that possible in a Socialistic society?

Socialism is structured to where everyone is equal... equal pay... equal healthcare... equal quality of living... doesn’t count the politicians! In this system if you work you’re an idiot. Those who sit on their ass get everything handed to them, those who work their asses off barely survive. So why bother putting yourself through that much torture. Because:

No one working:

No power

No cable

No doctors

No teachers

No police

No food

No safety

No security...

Why? This would have been a good thing! This here proves Socialism doesn’t work!

If everyone decided to not work because they’re getting ripped off; than America shuts down! The government is screwed! And so are the moochers!)

Those are only two examples of capitalism being a good thing.

There is so much more... not to mention the feminist aspects like Susan B. Anthony: Voicing her “opinion” by voting for who she thought would be a good president. Of course the judge was going to let her off with a warning because “woman privilege” (woman today would be like okay and do it again), however she, Susan B. Anthony, A Real Feminist, (no Feminist is an insult to her, She a Real Woman, The Genuine Wonder Woman!) demanded she was sentenced to jail just like any man who broke the law! (Please oh please can we do that to these modern, pussies who call themselves women!) The first woman to fly a plane over the pacific Amelia, or the women who rose up against unjust treatment Rosa Parks, I mean come on. Worst of all is, she’s being taught tha John Wilkes Booth was Republican and Abraham Lincoln was Democrat... and it’s reversed. There’s a saying the liberals came up with: “if those damn n$&@€ must vote then they should only vote Democrat!”

My friend has become heartless and greedy, I’m in a fucked up spot because of a malicious brat who played innocent and didn’t understand what happens when you compromise. It’s not one side surrenders and the other gains, but what do I expects from the preppy college school type, (not all preppy girls are mean, I just have this personality that sends the wrong vibes and makes them more territorial)AKA mean girl type... however, this girl demanded everything goes her way or else. She’s from Georgia, yet she comes to higher elevation part and in the middle of the US, it’s winter yet she expects sunshine and beaches? All of us to be drinking out of a coconut? Yes, her hair is blonde at the roots, and she smokes pot in the apartment. Kind of gives you a clue on the person she is. Of and her Boy Toy is always there... when I stayed there. She blamed me for her messes, and her food she didn’t eat. Thing is I hate fish. Well another one to count she has a low IQ from the Mercury poisoning... and here I thought fish helped with brain development.

Anyway, it was hell, so my friend volunteered on the condition that I find a job and move out ASAP. I’m tryin as hard as I can here.

Being told no everywhere I go is very discouraging. I’ve made a gofund me campaign to maybe to maybe help a little... I don’t expect anyone to donate really... if anyone could click the link and share it to a friend they know and spread it around.

By February the only place I’ll be staying is my car on the side of the road... just sharing the story helps. Thank you.

<link>https://www.gofundme.com/homeless-autistic-girl<link>

[magicalmelonball]

The Unpopular Opinion: Nazis vs People Perceived as Nazis

Note: I've decided to continue my rant series, but the titles will be changed now. They will be called "The Unpopular Opinion" series. Just so you know.

READ BEFORE CONTINUING:

Please note that I do not condone the behavior of anyone that describes themselves as a nazi, white supremacist, etc. If you continue reading and think that I do so, then you're just an idiot that can't read, and I'm not at all sorry for saying that. You're just as bad as the Nazis you go after.

Congratulations, Liberals and Anti-Fa, you played yourself.

We already know what happened last weekend. A Nazi dumbass ran over people in an effort to harm them and ended up killing a woman in the process. I'm pretty sure we can all agree that this person is a pimple on the face of America that needs to be popped. He can rot in jail for all I care. I wouldn't shed a tear for this man if he got the death penalty either, to be honest.

However, because of this tragic event, people are using it as an excuse to go after anyone they disagree with.

"B-b-b-but Ginny, the people we disagree with are ACTUAL NAZIS! How can you say that?!"

Of course, the idiots at the protest (that was once peaceful until anti-fa did show up, btw) are Nazis, no doubt. But what about everyone else? 

Are they? 

Are they real, actual Nazis? 

Let's take a look over the past year, shall we?

We started off slandering anyone that wanted to vote for Trump as a "deplorable," thanks to Hillary Clinton. You know, the same woman that said that Robert Byrd was a hero of hers. 

https://twitter.com/StockMonsterUSA/status/896798087393427456 

Then news post after news post came out to slander what Trump said about illegal aliens, spinning it as if he said he was going to deport all Mexican, illegal or not. So it became okay, thanks to the media and ignorant folk, to call anyone that remotely agreed with Trump in any way as some sort of racist, white supremacists, and/or a Nazi.

If you DARED to share an opinion that doesn't fit the radical left (or the alt-left as I like to call them) then you were labeled. Slandered. They took anything a person said and twisted it in the worse way possible to make themselves look right. A good example I have is tweets sent to me on Twitter just yesterday:

https://twitter.com/mahoumelonball/status/897521956861423616

vs

https://twitter.com/jampackedballs/status/897523028464152576

Note what I actually fucking said and what this idiot tried to spin it as me saying. This is a VERY COMMON practice for Liberals. Either they twist your words, or they start attacking your character, your appearance, etc etc. (Or, fuck, both depending on the idiot you're talking to.) Noted director of Frozen and Tangled, Lino DiSalvo, retweeted the call by a radical group to identify anyone they thought was at the protest. Retweeted pictures to use to identify. I called him out like so:

https://twitter.com/mahoumelonball/status/897143630007349248

To which he decided to twist what I said:

https://twitter.com/LinoD/status/897218339482808321

I replied my argument, saying the using doxxing to go after people they don't like will not just hurt the person you're going after, but could hurt their family, friends, or loved ones that may not even be involved with that bullshit.

He still as yet to respond, especially after THIS came out today:

https://twitter.com/Independent/status/897538573326483457

Title: "Charlottesville: Arkansas man trolled on social media after being wrongly identified among white nationalists"

Someone that wasn't even there was falsely identified as being there. He had to flee his home. He's been attacked relentlessly and called horrible names.

HE WASN'T THERE.

As of this post, Lino has still not acknowledged the response or the news articled that proved me right. I've determined he's just another ignorant asshole that refuses to believe he was wrong. Just like anyone else that seems to think it's okay to attack people with violence as long as they THINK the people they're attacking is a Nazi.

ANYWAY...

Let's move on to everyone saying that this is Trump's fault.

I'm sorry, are you mentally challenged? (I would say retarded, but I'm pretty sure I'm already going to get hate for this alone. Don't need the overly sensitive coming over and crying about "THAT'S OFFENSIVE TO PEOPLE I'M SPEAKING FOR.")

Are you going off the article after article claiming that he's racist without ever actually showing proof that he is? Or are you going off that one illegal immigrant comment again that was twisted into the worse way it can be? Surely you can't be talking about the Democrats that got money from Klan members or the KKK secs that approved of them. And in no way are you referring to where he called David Duke a bigot and racist?

Or are you just blindingly following whatever MSM tells you to believe without taking in context or looking up things in the past yourself?

HMMMM.

If this is Trump's fault, then it's Obama's fault that the BLM member killed 5 cops in Texas during a BLM rally. It's then also Obama's fault that three black adults kidnapped a white kid and tortured him because of Trump. It's also Obama's fault that his administration pushed this divide between white and black people even harder in the early 2010s. (No, wait, that's not sarcasm. That's actually fucking true.)

Welcome to this new world order. Where people are so overly sensitive that someone they don't agree with speaks and they scream and cry for a safe space. Where people try to claim you can't be racist against white people because they never knew of oppression (because white people can't be poor and treated like shit either, amirite?). Where people tear down statues and burn paintings because they were either about white people or just a part of history they don't like instead of going down the sane route and having a community meeting about it and speaking and debating like ACTUAL FUCKING ADULTS!

Ahem... I digress...

What we're seeing now is Main Stream Media spinning things to not only try to start a war with Russia, but pushing for this potential fire keg of a new Civil War. We're seeing people that refuse to look up information or even bother to read the other side because "muh feelings." No one wants to admit they're wrong on both sides, to be honest, but what a world we live in when the media spins Anti-Fa as some sort of heroic group that attacked students at Berkely with broken bottles and U-Lock bike locks.

Because they were all racists?

Right?

Because the media said so.

....Right?

"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." "Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." "Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."

-George Orwell

[sleepybiflinge]

Okay, so it’s time to rant. I feel like it’s something I’m famous for. I tend to upset both lefties and righties, so this may be upsetting to some of you, but honestly I am just pissed off at the political climate today and the fact that I am to this day still seeing people on here defending the DNC, Clintons, Booker, etc. Granted, it goes both ways. There are a ton of Trump apologists. One of them is(was?) a pretty good friend of mine who I argue with on facebook constantly, but it’s very hard to argue with someone that only listens to some facts and ignores the others. Why haven’t you unfriended this bitch-boy? You ask. Well, unlike some people, I’d rather have a conversation, defending my views, listening to the other side, despite the fact that I disagree with the views of a right-winger. I back up my facts, and let him back up his, even though both of us come to the table with heavy biases. His may favour our first ever Oompa Loompa President, but he also despises the alt right. Why is that relevant? Because certain people on the left (specifically here on Tumblr) are the same. You see something or someone that (even slightly) disagrees with your views, and you go after them. You don’t let people defend themselves. Instead of having a conversation, you also turn into angry piss-babies (like my friend) lashing out at any and all conflicting views. Trump, his administration, the neo nazis that are the “alt-right” (it can be argued that literally all the things I just listed are the same thing, which they basically are, since Bannon is literally acting as Grima Wormtongue for Trump) SHOULDN’T be forgiven and normalized, but a conversation still needs to happen. We can’t just stop the political process from working for 4 years (at the least 2, depending on the senate race.). But some major reforms need to happen with the democrats. (The republicans too, but that’s not my department. I don’t care what happens to them really.)

But let’s get into some juicy topics. The Muslim Ban. An unconstitutional executive order which he has been promising throughout his campaign that even some of the most conservative people did not believe, and yet it happened. How? Why? Well, the reason is simple: We elected a racist. However, have you ever wondered, why these 7 countries specifically? Well, let me tell you, when I heard of the muslim ban and how it was going to target 7 MUSLIM SPEAKING COUNTRIES, I correctly guessed 5 of the 7 countries. But how? How can one possibly predict which countries are going to be banned under an executive order? Well, that number, 7, is pretty specific. 7 is the number of countries we actively bombed under Obama. And guess what? 5 of those 7 are part of the muslim ban. The rage that triggered this rant actually stemmed from an article relating to that, and here’s the headline:  President Donald Trump is bombing four of the seven countries from where he's restricting immigration. 4 of 7? Oh my God, already? How could he? Well, he is actually continuing (and, horiffically, expanding) the work of Obama by bombing those 4 countries. Actually, arguably, he’s currently doing LESS than Obama right now, seeing as it seems that he’s not yet continued to bomb Somalia. 

Unfortunately, herein lies a huge problem:Hypocrisy from the left in the face of the same damn situations when they are done by the left and by the right. Which is why I am always so damn frustrated with this fact. Obama DID do good things domestically (although, it could be argued that some of his policies were a bit right winger as well, he still did a decent job) But when it comes down to foreign policy, we have consistently approved intervention and overthrowing of countries. After WW2 our policy has been “get involved in as much shit as possible” and while I understand the concept of giving aid to poor countries, we do not need to invade EVERY SINGLE FUCKING COUNTRY THAT WE DO NOT AGREE WITH. We can’t keep doing this shit. We DID indirectly create ISIS. How? Well, Oh gee. Let’s see. Remember Afghanistan during the cold war? Us supporting Bin Laden? Remember Iraq? We go in, destabilize a country, destroy it’s government for what? Just to elect a US-friendly government? Because that’s all it’s about, isn’t it? Interfering with elections just so that you can have like-minded governments that support you. Saudi Arabia is our biggest ally, and look at them: One of the biggest human rights violators in existence. And yet here we are getting into conflict in YEMEN AND SYRIA AND WHERE EVER ELSE BECAUSE GUESS WHAT? SAUDI ARABIA ASKED US TO! BECAUSE WE ARE SAUDI ARABIA’S LITTLE BITCH BECAUSE OUR FOREIGN POLICY IS TO BE FRIENDS WITH THE BIGGEST OPEC COUNTRY!!! And I shouldn’t even have to provide you with sources for that. If you think for a second that our foreign policy isn’t at least mostly oil-based, I don’t know. I just don’t know what to do with you. If you think for a second that our government (and I DO, in fact, mean both democrats and republicans) give the SLIGHTEST SHIT about human lives and any KIND of human rights violations that they’ve caused, you’d be wrong. And yes, I may be getting more and more aggressive throughout this but that’s not the point. If you think it’s about HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS THAT OTHER COUNTRIES COMMIT then you would be deeply wrong. HELL, WE CAN’T EVEN TAKE CARE OF OUR FRIGGIN OWN!!!! Or did you forget that one of your favourite corporate democrats, Cory Fuckboi Booker, along with TWELVE OTHER DEMOCRATS voted against a bill that would PREVENT PEOPLE FROM GETTING MEDICINE FROM CANADA FOR CHEAP. Keep in mind that this medicine is EXACTLY THE SAME AS HERE! So the defense of “It not being safe” which Fuckboi Booker is trying to use is being bought. And yet, when googling ol’ Fuckboi’s name, I get these results:

Which are unacceptable. Who GIVES A SINGLE SHIT IF HE’S VEGAN? WHY DO YOU WANT HIM TO RUN? NJ has a lot of pharmaceutical companies, and it’s obvious that he wants to keep those companies’ rights above the residents of that state. And yet liberals want him to run. I, for one, am DEAD FUCKIN TIRED OF ELECTING CORPORATISTS! Wanna know why Clinton was so disliked? Literally NO ONE TRULY THOUGHT that she cared about her people. And yes, she won the popular vote, but only based on the fact that over half this country disliked trump more. Never have I seen two candidates so largely disliked run against each other. AND GUESS WHAT? “PIE IN THE SKY” BERNIE KEPT A POSITIVE APPROVAL RATING THROUGHOUT! REMEMBER THE POLLS? THOSE PLACED HIM LIKE 10-15 % ABOVE TRUMP AT ALL TIMES. But it’s in the past. The DNC fucked up and you all know it. Wikileaks only revealed the pieces of shit they were throughout. Which is why I refuse to back corporations. Anyway, back on topic of Good ol’ Fuckboi Booker and Bernie’s Pharma Bill, because I went on a tangent there: Please, read the next phrase carefully, I don’t want it to be misunderstood:: THAT BILL THAT OL’ FUCKBOI REFUSED TO VOTE FOR? GUESS WHO VOTED FOR IT? THE FUCKING ZODIAC KILLER AND TWELVE OTHER REPUBLICANS!!! And yet these democrats refused to represent their people.  I’ve been told all my life, “Democrats at least care about people. People of all races, religions, sexualities” and so on. And yet here we are trivializing the rights of other people. From MASS DEPORTATIONS UNDER THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION (2.5 million from ‘09-’15) to all these wars that cause the refugee crises that we are currently experiencing worldwide. The truth is, we are at fault with most of the awful fucking shit going on in the world today. I have seen articles defending the invasion of Yemen and sources that focus on the humanitarian crisis (Which we’ve been escalating more and more, might I add. Even more under Oompa Loompa possibly than under Obama.) And yet where have you heard about Yemen in the Mainstream Media in the past few years since the conflict began? I’ll tell you: Never, and if at all? Barely ever. A bypass. A casual mention. I bet you’ve been hearing about it more lately though, haven’t you? Wanna know why? Because we elected a fascist cheeto that’s why. Now you get angry at civilian casualties, don’t you. But two years ago? When the Saudis ramped up their campaign? Nah. Or how about our involvement in Syria? I’m not going to get started on Lybia, because I don’t have the time to rant even more than I already have but I want to touch on Syria.(The following source is a video)  In 2008, Saudi Arabia, Quatar, and a couple of other countries (Turkey) approached Syria with a pipeline. Syria didn’t want this. Therefore, Boom! Civil War! US starts arming rebels in Syria on behest of Saudi Arabia. (Link to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s article here) And do you want me to keep going? Cos I wanna key in on Syria for a moment here, it’s the epitome of foreign intervention by the US. It’s such a typical case. I could rant about Ukraine as well, but I have done that plenty in my time, and don’t exactly feel like digging through sources to find those to link them. Anyway, remember how we’ve been reported to on Syria? That we’re supporting “Moderate Rebels” in Syria? Literally there is no such thing. Remember how everyone was outraged as Aleppo was happening? Well, here are some facts you may not have heard. These “Moderate” US-backed terrorists in Aleppo have broken ceasefires (Following Sources are Graphic) Murdered civilians as they fled,(Following links are videos, non-graphic, I don’t remember which videos): held schools and hospitals hostage and so on. And yet here we are still claiming that we are on the right side of the whole Syria debacle (Russia’s involvement happens to be the only approved involvement, and I’m not going to deny my biases, seeing as I am a Russian that has a US citizenship, but it is the only country that was approved) Do I agree with Assad? No. But should he be overthrown? Well, if you look at voter turnout data, Syria’s turnout in 2014 was 73%. Much higher than US’s meager less-than half numbers. And I don’t know, make of that what you will, but if a dictator gets more voter turn out than democratically elected nominees on election day, there’s something wrong. There are plenty of human rights violations on all counts. Hell, even the United Fuckin States has some human rights violations. And yet, here we are allying ourselves with one huge Human Rights violator and trying to overthrow another. That, and the whole pre-Trump cold war rhetoric that happened as well. (Which may be another positive of electing the cheeto. I honestly voted for Jill Stein in part as a protest, in part because I wanted to vote for the peace candidate, and, in large part, because I was afraid of what Clinton could possibly do to Russia. Considering I have family there still, and a good friend of mine is currently doing his military training, I really wanted to avoid that.)

I wanted to talk Russia specifically as well, but let’s be honest, now that you know I’m Russian, there’s no way that you’ll listen to me. That, and also the fact that hey, where’s the media still raging about Russia hacks? Oh wait, everyone magically forgot. Because they have no use for it anymore. But here, have some sources anyway. Here’s DNC denying FBI investigations into DNC servers Here’s Obama admitting DNC Emails being leaked Here’s Craig Murray talking about the guy that leaked the emails and another article on craig murray Oh, and just to add to that, remember that story on Russia hacking Vermont’s ENTIRE electric grid that literally everyone reported on and to this day most have refused to correct? Also false.

But anyway, that’s it. I could go on and on. Honestly this entire shit always gets me riled. There are plenty of other things I am angry about that I didn’t mention: Standing Rock, other, mostly domestic issues, corporations basically running our government. I can’t write a fucking dissertation, okay? I am defending my views, while pointing out controversies on the right AND the left. But yeah, here. Have at it. I’m ready to take the full brunt of all the hate I’m about to get for posting this. However, if you’d like to create a conversation and keep this going, you may. Sorry this ended up being so long. I tried to get my main points across, hopefully I did. This literally took like two days to type (mainly cos college.) If you have any qualms about any claims that I didn’t go into enough detail on or something, bring it up, I’ll clarify as best I can. Thanks. 

[thisisnotreallife]

Gut Feeling

A few years ago, I lost my best friend over an “I told you so” moment. She was one of those best friends that you feel--no, you know--is another part of yourself. It turns out she wasn’t, really, but lord, did we have some fun times. 

Anyway, it wasn’t actually an “I told you so” moment. It was a “Maybe I told you so, but...” moment, which--because nobody, and I mean nobody likes to hear those four words--she interrupted in anger before I could finish with the part that mattered most: “there are some things we have to find out on our own.” 

I have felt since late last spring, when it became clear that the DNC was to nominate Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, with utterly despairing certainty that Donald Trump would win the presidency. Disparage polling all you want--and surely many will, now--but the polls remained nearly the same from early on in the primary to general election results: by some forecasts of a Clinton-Trump matchup, Clinton could win by 1-2%, but by others, Trump by the same margin. The risk all along was too great, too uncertain so as to be certain in the opposite direction.

When I would tell a Clinton supporter during the primary that pitting Clinton against Trump in the general was a surefire way to give us, and the rest of the world, “President Trump” (and god, how terrible?), it was as if they had fingers in their ears, ostrich heads in the sand. 

When you know a truth and no one is listening to you scream it, it is the loneliest feeling in the world.

But I am not here to say “I told you so,” even though that is what I hissed through my teeth that Tuesday night in November when I wasn’t leaking tears or throwing back whiskey. Wednesday’s 8:00am class the next morning was not easy--not least of all reckoning with the knowledge that some in that room were not in mourning for our country as I was. Instead, I am here to reckon myself with the fact that--and of course this is true--there are some things we all have to find out on our own. As a college teacher, this is at the center of my philosophy, but as a human, it is easier to forget. 

What was not easy for me to forget throughout the entirety of this election cycle, however, was the anger palpable in the community around me. I could not forget Patrick’s Mexican-American students attending classes at the neighboring campus where he teaches who voted for Donald Trump--for reasons ranging from actual approval of his policies & ideas to a dislike of Clinton rooted not in her femaleness but in her perceived inability to be sincere, or in the case of one student, the release of the DNC emails that revealed a Clinton campaign reference to Latinx political outreach as “taco bowl engagement.”  

I could not forget the kindest man we have met here in eastern Oregon, a dedicated first responder and Trump voter, who brought ten dozen farm-fresh eggs from his “ladies” to his classmates in Patrick’s class, who trades me bread for eggs like some kind of a socialist, and makes me blush with how good he makes the bread out to be. I couldn’t forget his son, either, who--when they invited us to a local rodeo and shared their box seats with us--at one point cited statistics of higher crime rates amongst black Americans, and when I told him those statistics were manipulated and actually showed quite the opposite if you looked at them another way, said to me, “Huh. Okay, I believe that.” 

I could not forget my student, who wore a Make America Great Again hat to my class occasionally, who emailed me after I showed the class the documentary The Hunting Ground to say that he had been so moved by the message of the film that he was sitting down to show it to his girlfriend that same night. 

I could not forget my “liberal” colleagues or the people whom I left Facebook to get away from, who disparaged these people constantly, who relegated them all to the same category of “racist” or “sexist” or “deplorable,” despite their very real and very human qualities, despite their brown skin or their defense of women’s rights and consent, despite the fact that their views & perspectives that are considered backward are largely built out of a lack of knowledge, a lack of awareness, a lack of access to the same experiences and information that you have. 

What I became acutely aware during this past year, and perhaps since moving to Pendleton, is the fact that each American has a different set of information they are working with, and what that set of information contains depends on the media they consume and the people they surround themselves with, both virtually and physically. And no matter what the set of information contains, that is our only lens through which we view the world. 

Do you see how complicated the political divide is? Do you see how we have become the way we have become? Blocking and unfollowing to curate our feeds perfectly to reinforce our own ideas and confirm our own biases? And how ineffectual it is to scream epithets of ‘sexist’ and ‘racist’ when the people at whom you are screaming don’t understand history or current events in at all the same way that you do? 

America’s problem isn’t that one half of Americans have completely different values than the other half. It isn’t that one half of Americans are sexists and racists, or even that one half of Americans think racism and sexism is okay. 

America’s problem is with education and information. The problem is with insulation of ideas and beliefs. The problem is with a culture that does not encourage understanding, and instead encourages dichotomies. I don’t know about you, but I learned about the danger of binary thinking--red vs. blue, liberal vs. conservative, good politics vs. the other side--from my main man Jacques Derrida back in ENG313 at Western Washington University, and I never looked back. 

Know this: You are not different from a Trump voter. Sure, perhaps you are different from the Trump voter who is actually a virulent racist.* But you are not different from a Trump voter like Patrick’s egg-sharing student. You just have a different set of information. 

I began writing this post the day after the election, but it has sat, unfinished, in my Drafts folder since then. I haven’t wanted to think about politics much, or about what was going to happen today, on inauguration day, or for the next four years after. When I did, I felt sick to my stomach, and so I stopped reading the essays and articles and think pieces, stopped looking at Twitter and watching the news, unfollowed the blogs that were scapegoating varying voter demographics rather than placing the blame (where blame was due) with the Democratic Party who lost the election, and praised Obama that I had quit Facebook last June, so that I didn’t have to see what was going on in that unreality. 

I expect that, while I will follow policy changes and resist threats to our nation’s core values of freedom, equ(al)ity, and democracy, I will not be paying much attention to the news over the next few years. The media played its own part in today’s dystopian farce, and in many ways has only served to further the political divide we have now the monumental task of facing down.

I believe very strongly that the only way to move forward is to actually reject the divisiveness. I may not have believed that before moving to an area where my ideas and beliefs were in the minority--or perhaps more accurately to an area where most of the people had access to an entirely different set of information than my own, unlike when I lived in Seattle amongst (mostly) like-minded folks. 

But now that I have lived here, now that I have listened to friend after friend in insulated, liberal communities avow that they do not know a single Trump supporter and have felt confusion and disbelief since the election, I know that it is up to those of us who do feel sick with heartache and also fear in this moment to reach across the divide that is only there because of superficial reasons--reasons like access to information. And how sad, to let one’s access to information prevent you from thinking one is a good person, a person with whom it is worth working together toward a better future for our country. 

The day after the election, I had a text exchange initiated by my father with the two words “We’re fucked.” We discussed the importance of learning history, and of critical thinking, and we joked about the inanity of it all. And then, at the end, I thanked him, for raising me to be a compassionate & kind human being first and foremost, and then a thinker second of all. 

If these are our priorities--our true priorities, and in that order--then there is no chance that love won’t win. No chance at all. 

*Perhaps, but I tend to think not even then.