#as if they themselves are not complicit in driving out working class people every time they raise the rent

[justsomeguycore]

like it makes me physically ill that this whole mass of people genuinely believe that they’re “supplying housing” by buying properties and renting them to people. girl you’re not supplying housing you’re holding it for ransom

[notmuchtoconceal]

To reflect upon the brutal and fascinating realities of human sacrifice in many cultures of antiquity -- usually rendered as stylish and alluring spectacles of mass-terror to cement the divine right of conquerors -- may make one squeamish when collaborating with extant energetic intelligences for whom constant human folly is nothing new, but who nevertheless seem to demand forms of biblical flattery.

Chimpanzees and other primates will sometimes eat their babies, or eat their competitor's babies. You give these fuckers a spark of divine light and let them wall themselves off in tremendous gilded cityscapes where they're constantly hallucinating God-visions and bloodlust, they're liable to go a little fuckin crazy. They've been -- in a non-insignificant sense -- divorced from their natural context of small tribal bands and blown up to hive scale, rendering their awareness functionally more cellular.

You watch the news every day, don't you? I don't gotta tell you constant exposure to murder and carnage numbs your capacity to feel, especially when your loving and compassionate political leaders are telling you this is all necessary and according to plan. You saw the Dark Knight. You know what the Joker said to Harvey Dent. I'm not tellin you anything you don't already know. What, you think a bunch of weird edgelords on the internet over-meming made that any less true or beautiful? What the fuck is going on in the human mind that facts stop being persuasive when they're told to you by someone you find personally disagreeable?

It's becomes human beings aren't concerned with facts, they're concerned with survival. This is because humans remain animals despite their spark of divinity. Yet, if one is living in a mass urban industrial center, what is more dangerous to one's survival are the words they're told and act out, as the only wild animals in cities are bosses and muggers, who think in pretty similar ways, the main one being they ain't sheep. They're not corralled. They're not led by the nose into slaughter, cause they can act on their own volition, though with no respect for the realities of the soul, they'll just fuckin eat you like Upton Sinclair's concrete Jungle.

Yeah, buddy. Eat the working class. Grind em up and put em in your burgers. Remember, kids. Regulation and unionization are your enemies. It's your bosses who have your best interests in mind. Your bosses who want to farm your time, underpay you, rule your life, and brainwash you into learned helplessness towards the systems designed to fail you.

The product is you. You're being sold.

You're acting like a dumb whore cause in an age where privacy is being eroded, you can weaponize your lack of privacy. Look all a fucking round you. Most people are way too complicit in their own suffering to just say what they mean. Usually, when you're making excuses for other people, it's cause you want to make those same excuses for yourself. It's enabling and junky behavior is what it is, bro. Sometimes the only way you can show a fucker you love em is by smackin their whore mouth and letting them bleed cum and drool all over themselves til they wake up.

Right, so.

Now that I've said a bunch of needfully cruel things to drive away the fuckers who can't handle it, I'm gonna tell you -- brave, strong brothers who still remain -- about three practical and non-murderous points about embracing a sacrifice-oriented mindset which can help you de-clutter your life, strip-out the bullshit and attract what you want -- with no cost to me, because I already have everything I could ever want from you.

First off, to offer a sacrifice (think of it as a gift, you already do this) to a non-material entity does a couple things. First off, it shows seriousness and commitment via a willingness to expend material means, showing me and you that you already value something higher than mere resources. You could say it acts as a crystallization of intention. A symbol of exchange. To offer a gift is to make the first move, make yourself a priority, and redirects consciousness towards consideration of your goal. In essence, a concrete object given is the initial means by which intention moves from an abstract idea to the beginnings of a practice.

Second, the nature of the sacrifice. There is where your imagination comes in, sweetie. Think about the object you are offering, and the context of how it appears not only to you, but the goal itself. If you've been over-standardized by institutions, you may struggle here. Not only to think in terms of symbols and associations, but to trust your own fantasy life, for fear that it is incorrect or illogical. You gotta trust me here, kid. Follow what turns you on. Don't say no. Part of doing a ritual and entering into a sacred space is to suspend ordinary modes of rational discourse to commune with your unconscious. This is why commitment and making the first step is important. You need to know you're going there to give yourself the permission to be there. If you're scared, you may need to follow steps to sorta dip-your-toes in.

Reading most grimoires or demonic codices, you may get a sense that a lot of the steps are arbitrary, largely because they are. Some ritual functions have a definitive psychological anchoring effects which play off unspoken realities of the human body, but most are there to trick you into having some confidence in yourself by giving you a checklist to complete. As with any field of study, the more you know, the more you know what can be safely skipped. Ultimately, you need to trust yourself here. What's most effective for you. What's going to make you get off your ass and do this evocation, get the life you want? As with any collaboration, you will know yourself as you come to know the other.

Think of what you already do with friends or superiors. A libation can be a toast, a way to loosen up, a way to entertain. In some sense, a ritual isn't any different from throwing a party or planning a wedding, for these two are ritual events meant to crystallize certain moods or occasions.

Think about what objects truly mean to you. What they represent. What they're in the image of, or what they're used for. Let the thoughts come to you. Sit with them. Experience the real you. Your real wants.

From there on, put it together. Make a collage, tell a story.

Subdividing from the nature of sacrifice, there are two main distinctions in an object you're willing to surrender, and that comes down to the why.

If there is something you have which is precious to you, but which you know someone else would make better use -- you may give that as a gift. You are freeing yourself from a responsibility you cannot fully entertain, and bravely empowering someone else, not only raising the net total of human divinity, but also carrying on your dream through them.

Secondly secondly, if you have something which is precious to you, but which you no longer need, or is holding you back, well -- smash it, or gift it someone more deserving. There is catharsis in controlled destruction.

If your love has been tainted by bitterness, you may strengthen your resolve and your will by quick and semi-painless amputation. Alternately, if you feel the object is cursed -- you may consider a curse, at its simplest level, as simply a prolonged and aggressive negative association -- then surrendering that to an enemy will help you kill two birds with one stone, perhaps even painlessly unburdening your enemy of some of this more persistent and irritating delusions if the curse can drive him to light.

If I replaced the word "sacrifice" with downsizing, it would go down a lot more smoothly, for in fact -- coining new phrases is itself a form of magic, association being primary on the emotional level, and words and concepts being constantly sullied by misuse and distortion, necessitating they be purified and restored by regeneration into a new form.

[caeliri]

Deadwinter

Summerglen was silent in the dismal winter daylight.

Alabaster drifts had consumed the village, swallowing any errant sound that might have manifested in the abandoned town and obscuring the abandoned equipment of the masons and the carpenters who had toiled beneath the unhindered sun just a few short months prior. Now, the bustling streets were barren, buried in drifting dunes of heavy snow, the even, orderly, repaved roads undisturbed.

The village had not reached completion, not with Caeliri’s lofty aims to capitalize on it’s utter decimation. It was morbid, but the destruction of Summerglen allowed them to alter the wild weave of the gradual, organic growth that had birthed the village into something more conducive to continued expansion and quality of life for villagers and visitors both.

With the remnant stones from the ruined homes and businesses, they had begun to reorganize and rebuild - until the Alliance invaded. Still reeling from the damage done by the last invasion of the Dawnspire’s lands, and the monumental losses that Summerglen had suffered in it’s citizens stubborn desire to remain rooted in their homes, Caeliri had not allowed the same mistake. As soon as the Alliance began to press against the eastern coast of the Dawnspire, she’d all but forced her people to the Citadel to wait out the Siege.

She wondered where they were now - had they escaped to Sunhaven when the alliance took the Citadel? Had they scattered to the winds like so many dandelion seeds? Had they found themselves lost in the endless ebb of snow and sleet that the heavens rained upon them, and been consumed in icy dunes much the same as their village had?

Her breath fogged in the air, but the hazy clouds that wafted from her lips could not compete with the blur of hot tears welling on her lash line.

All that she had accomplished lay in ruins once more - this time by her own hand.

Arbiter moved through the steep sloughs unburdened, his hoof-falls even and measured as he plowed through the knee-deep snow. The Deadwood that haloed Summerglen in a ring of ash had been more difficult to traverse, with hidden pits and overturned trees that had made the destrier stumble more than once. They were lucky they had made it through without him snapping an ankle.

As they approached the estate, Caeliri pulled Arbiter to a halt and dismounted; she lost half of her height in the snow, stiffening as it slid down into her boots.

In their haste to leave Hallowhearth, one of the stablehands had left the stall doors open, and though wind had blown a fair dusting of snow into the empty stalls, it was clear enough to lead Arbiter inside and put him up where the wind could not bite at his haunches and where his own body heat - and a horse blanket pulled down from the upper echelons of the half-attic above the stable - would keep him through the night. If she could have made it to Summerglen on foot, she might have left him in the citadel.

The cherry wood doors of Hallowhearth had been locked upon her leaving - Lyla must have been responsible, for Caeliri would have never betrayed the self-scribed adage of her House - to dissuade looters, and it seemed they had held firm in her absence. With a twist of her gilded key and the wealth of her weight pressed up against the rightmost door, the frozen hinges stubbornly gave way and allowed her enough space to slip in between the two carved goliaths. Within, Hallowhearth was freezing, the stone floors like ice beneath her boots, the thin, stained glass windows doing nothing to keep out the cold. Accompanied by the clack of her own footfalls, Caeliri made her way into the Great Hearth - Hallowhearth’s living room - and set herself down before the vast, empty fireplace.

It was an ashy abyss.

Still, it held her rapt, and hours came, and hours went, and no matter how hard or long she stared at the jagged spikes of charcoal jutting from the ash-licked rack, her frustration could not ignite their blade-like edges.

“Thank the Light, you’re actually here.”

Reflexively her hand fell on the crystalline blade that sat sheathed beside her, gloved fingers tensing over Anar’alah’s hilt until the voice registered.

Liadove stamped his feet at the threshold of the Great Hearth, sending spheres of tightly packed snow skittering across the floor like pale spiders fleeing from a giant. His clothes hung loosely off his frame, layered and vast in an attempt to hold his body heat, and as he moved into the estate’s vast living room his gait was stiff and restricted.

She released Anar’alah before he could round the couch and see, fingers slowly peeling away from the blessed blade that Telchis had gifted her upon her ascension to her station.

Caeliri had never truly seen the need for a personal guard, not in the first days of her knighthood, not now that she was, undoubtedly, a prime target for the Phoenix Guard’s unyielding suspicion, yet through her denials of his aid Liadove Winterthorn had remained steadfast in his duty.

He was not someone to fear.

“I had a feeling -- didn’t want to be riding all over the countryside in this weather though.”

“Not many other places to go.”

“You could have left Quel’thalas all together.”

That made Caeliri snort. They both knew that she would never; running from the repercussions of her actions was not something she did. “On what ships? They’ve all been conscripted by this point. For once, I think my penchant for being familiar and well-known would be a great disadvantage.”

Exhaling, Liadove looked at the empty hearth, brow creasing deeply at the dead space.

“You could have gone to Alah’danil.”

The familiar name made Caeliri flinch - she was trying hard not to think of the coastal paradise that was a second home to her, trying to quell the keening grief at the sudden, violent death of the future she was meant to build there with Lord Dawnstrider.

“Veloestian has no part in this - I would not make him suffer for my choices.”

“He will suffer all the same,” Liadove countered, “if you are deemed a traitor to the state.”

Her.

A traitor.

Anger ignited in her veins, a vicious, screaming heat that burst free from her breast and coursed through her body. At her sides, her fingers balled until her knuckles went white as the snows that enfolded them, and she spoke, her voice low and even and lacking it’s usual melodic ring.

“Do you know why we are even bound up in this moronic war?”

“Because the Alliance invaded our country.”

“No,” her voice static and stony, she continued, “It is because Sylvanas invaded Darkshore. Sylvanas began open aggressions against the Alliance unbidden, for whatever mad purpose drives her. She ordered the Horde to invade the homeland of the Kal’dorei, she ordered the Horde to set their capital ablaze, to murder their men and women and children without scrutiny, to snuff out the lives of innocents, should it further their progress towards their ultimate goal. Sound familiar?”

Liadove’s lips pursed and his eyes narrowed as he crossed his arms over his chest.

“Whether we like it or not, we began aggressions against the Alliance first; the Horde struck the first blow, and it was an unholy, deplorable blow. We burned the Kal’dorei’s home to ash for the simple sake of conquest. The Alliance have every right to the rage that fuels their march across our country.”

“How can you say that?” Fury rippled through Liadove’s voice, a rare and poignant flare that made Caeliri’s ears swivel. “You, of all people - you would blame the people of Quel’thalas, the people who are boiling their boots to feed their families, who are being found frozen and blue by cold, empty hearths in their own homes?”

“The common folk of Quel’thalas have done nothing to deserve this,” Caeliri interjected, “they do not lend their aid to wars, they do not involve themselves in the politics of the ruling class. But Quel’thalas, as a nation, is not blameless.”

Hackles still high, Liadove grit his teeth and forced out, “What do you mean?”

“When the Alliance invaded the Undercity, the Archon knew they would come for us next - he said as much to me many months before they made landfall. He anticipated the coming devastation - we are the last foothold of the Horde on the Eastern Kingdom. It does not take a military mastermind to determine they would come for us in time.

And what did Lor’themar do?

Nothing.

What did the Archon do?

Nothing.

Ah, wait, no!” For a moment, Caeliri’s voice crested high and saccharine, a mockery of her common candor, ”Silly me, there was something - we placed a gag order on anyone who dared to speak against her, threatened anyone who would think to question her judgement or her reasoning or the validity of murdering thousands of innocents to further whatever veiled gains she sought to make.”

Her tone came crashing back down again, but her words had lost their measured pace, favoring a furious fervor that caused words to bleed together and her volume and cadence to pitch wildly, “We could have decried Sylvanas’ genocide, distanced ourselves from her decision, assured the world we did not stand behind her actions, and we did not. We remained silent, complicit--

“--For our own safety--”

“-- so that makes it just?” Caeliri stared at Liadove, and for the first time her question was not rhetorical. “It is the same argument I made, to myself, to others, over and over again. We held our tongues for our own safety, and what has that accomplished? Quel’thalas is paying the ultimate price - for someone else’s mistakes. Worse yet, rather than work to remedy such, the commanders of Quel’thalas’ armies have opted to further the animosity between us, to give the Alliance all the more reason to strike back harder and with greater vengeance, to draw blood for generations to come. Novastorm and Silverbrooke claim they act in the interest of their children, but their short-sighted vengeance fails to comprehend that the children of every Alliance soldier they slay will grow with hatred in their hearts, and one day return to kill their children in turn. It’s a cycle, and endless fucking cycle, of hate, of hurt, of violence, of revenge, and it does not stop until someone makes it stop.”

“And you’re going to make it stop,” there was and edge of mockery to his voice that made Caeliri’s nostrils flare.

“No. I’m not an idiot, regardless of what people may wish to think of me. I know I can not stem the tide of violence alone - I’m not a fucking martyr, or some kind of savior. I am a girl who has grown up against the backdrop of war, who has grown tired of the endless cycle of vengeance and death and it’s defendants. I will not be a part of it, not anymore. I will not remain complicit, I will not be made silent. If they wish to vilify me, to call me a fool, to imply I am a coward for standing steadfast upon my principles, let them. I have grown weary of wasting breath to try and sway the hearts and minds of those who were set on violence from the start, and of bending myself to validate every vile action of those around me. I have had enough, Liadove.”

“You would break your oath, then? Sully your own honor?”

A sharp, jarring laugh crested from Caeliri’s lips, and the unhinged melody made Liadove’s body erupt in vast mountain ranges of gooseflesh.

“The Oath-” her composure regained, Caeliri lifted a hand to wipe a welling of tears from her left eye, and if it was unclear if they was laughter-born or honest grief, “do you know what the Sunguard’s oath even is?”

Silence.

“By the light of the sun, for the glory of Quel'Thalas, I vow my life, word, and honor, to uphold the laws of my nation and the code of the Sunguard.   I promise to defend the weak from oppression and protect my kin from foes both foreign and domestic. I will conduct myself with compassion, valor and truth at all times. These duties I take up willingly, in the name of Silvermoon and the Sin'dorei.”

“Aren’t you acting in direct violation of your oath?”

“Aren’t they? Where is the compassion in their actions, the valor, the truth? We can’t choose which parts of the oath to adhere to, and which to discard, else the whole of it is meaningless.”

“But your life will be forfeit if you betray your oath,” now there was anger and desperation both bleeding into his voice, growing ever more fervent with his volume. “What of Summerglen? What of all the plans you have put in motion?”

Caeliri’s eyes shot away, “Summerglen can find a new steward - I’m hardly irreplaceable. You may be lucky enough to have someone with greater experience appointed to the station in my absence.”

Now, Liadove was shouting, his voice echoing through the empty halls of Hallowhearth like thunder, “What of Lord Dawnstrider,--”

“Don’t.”

 “--and your plans to start a family? You would abandon him for the sake of your principles?”

“DON’T.”

“You would let yourself be taken from Firestorm, after all that he as lost as well?”

His words struck her heart, a series of blows fatal to the flames that had been stoked in her breast, and Caeliri began to deflate, her slight form caving in on itself beneath the weight of her own choices, and the ripple of hurt she had cast out into the cosmos. Her jaw, set in stone seconds before, began to quiver violently.

When she spoke again, she was cowed and quiet, words barely above a whisper, “It would be selfish to invalidate the just for my own self-gain--”

“Bullshit!” Liadove slapped a hand on the arm of the couch, “Is your sense of self-worth really so fundamentally damaged that you would not allow yourself the future you have earned?”

Caeliri flinched.

“I can not stand here and denounce those who act without honor or compassion, and then proceed to do the same--”

“You’re being stubborn. These ideals you are so desperate to cling to are a farce! By your own account, even the Archon, a man you idolize, is vulnerable to abandoning his principles when it suits him. Everyone will if the opposite outcome is advantageous to them! I do not want to see you executed or sentenced to incarceration for the rest of your life because you will yield on this ideal! Ideals are not reality--”

“--nor will they ever be, if we do not actively act towards upholding them. They are not reality, but they are the pinnacle we wish to strive for, and they are pointless if we do not struggle. They are not meant to be easy to act upon--”

“Fuck the philosophy, Caeliri, that’s not the point.”

“Then what the FUCK is?” She leapt to her feet, arms cast wide, bloodless fingers splayed to beseech the air around them, and the reborn anger in her voice was only strengthened by the hot tears that rushed down her cheeks. “What is the point in having morals if you do not uphold them when they are tested? What is the point in striving to survive if you only feed into an endless cycle of misery and hatred? What is the point in saving Quel’thalas today if it will be destroyed tomorrow by the mistakes we have made? What. Is. The. Point?”

“The point is I don’t want you to go to prison!” Liadove slammed his hand down on the couch again, this time hard enough send the whole thing scooting towards him, the sound of wood on marble ugly and loud. 

“The point is, you made promises, to Veloestian, to Vaelrin, to your friends, to your family, and you will break them all in one fel swoop if you break your Oath! The point is, we need you when the war is done, to do what the others will not - do you think they will give a moment’s pause once they are given their accolades to aid those still left suffering? From all that you had said of them, they will, all of them, ride off to their estates or to their places of comfort and assure their lives are stable and good and happy and leave the rest of us to pick up the pieces of a country in ruins!”

“The point is, you are my friend, and I do not want to see your life ruined because of a fantasy you refuse to relent on. Caeliri, you deserve the happiness you sought for yourself, and you will ruin everything you have worked to accomplish if you continue on this path.”

Now, the room was filled with nothing but their labored breaths, their points exhausted even if their anguish was not. There was nothing more to say, not without folding back on their own words, without chasing each other ‘round and ‘round and ‘round and ‘round and ‘round until one or both of them grew weary of words.

Silence and their slowing breathing reigned between them for several painful, pregnant moments, moments where their eyes were unwavering from one another’s.

“Why did you come here, Liadove?”

He rolled his shoulders - once, twice, thrice - and cracked his neck to release the tension that had built through his upper torso. “Originally, I came to tell you that the other Kin’tari have abandoned their posts. They have disavowed themselves of the Sunguard, and of Lord Truefeather, it seems, and set out across the countryside to serve the common folk, and aid in dissuading and dispersing the bandits emboldened by Morningstar’s offer of clemency.”

Victory roared through Caeliri’s sea-green eyes, and a smile began to creep up her face at the latent validation in Liadove’s news, but he continued, “and to tell you that the Archon calls for you.”

That killed the smile blooming on her features. “What?”

“He has put out a public statement denouncing your actions in the battle for the Dawnspire, and summoned you to appear before him before weeks end.”

Any glimmer of satisfaction that had been worming its way into her features drained away then, and she gawked, jaw slack and eyes wide.

“If you do not go…” He didn’t need to tell her. It was the fate she had already assumed would befall her. “Caeliri, I beg of you -- return to the Archon, bite your tongue, accept his judgement. You may yet walk away from this with your future in tact.” His plea was met with silence, and he slammed his hand again on the plush surface of the couch, the sound dull but loud. “Are you listening to me?!”

“Yes.”

Silence.

Liadove’s desperation ebbed towards anger again. “You said yourself that you can not make this right. It is beyond you. It is beyond any one person to turn the hearts and minds of mortals for more than a fraction of a moment, and even then…” He let his hands fall away from the couch at last, palms stinging slightly from the intensity of his repeated strikes. ”You can not undo what has been done, and you can not atone for the sins of others. Don’t ruin your life to try and teach the world a lesson - you are the only one who will suffer for that.”

Liadove turned on his heel, the move graceless and awkward and stiff, and headed for the door, a miasma of fear and frustration propagating in his wake.

Outside, the pale dunes were disturbed by burst of wind that sent a mournful moan through the village, scattering the snow like so many motes of ash against a grey and gloomy sky. Arbiter brayed in his stable, the sound a muted, distant call of distress, and then Summerglen was silent once more.

brief mentions; @thenaaru, @quelfabulous, @felthier

@thesunguardmg

[performanceroll-blog]

YOU MEET IN A TAVERN! You've got your world built, the players made their characters and you can't wait to unleash all the monsters you know on the poor unsuspecting lvl 1s. The characters, however, have to somehow get to the goblin caves/basement filled with giant rats/kobold den first. How do you introduce the PCs into the world and to each other? Let me just start off saying that there are as many ways to do this as there are DMs - and equally as many opinions on what way is the best. We're gonna go through some of the classic ones to give you the general idea, as well as some more unique ones if you want to surprise your players. Overall, though, it all boils down to your own personal prefrence. THE TAVERN Yup, you guessed it. The number one most popular way to start a campaign is in a tavern. Hey, if it's not broken, don't fix it, right? Tropes are tropes for a reason. They work. Starting off in a tavern has its numerous benefits. A tavern is a place where the most varied of people can meet. You can put almost anyone and anything in there and not have to think too hard on why they’re there. It's a great way to introduce npcs you'd like your players to know right off the bat. If the players are new, you can ease them into social interactions and roleplaying by engaging them on a level they are familiar with - have a bartender simply ask them for their order.  It starts off a conversation and also offers the opportunity to try out some skill checks. Trust me, all players, be they new or veteran, are going to try to haggle for prices. Ask for that persuasion roll. If the players are more roleplay-firendly, you can leave the first few minutes up to them to interact amongst themselves. That way they can get to know each other a bit before you throw them to the wolves. Taverns are also a great place to introduce some lore. This works best when it comes naturally and doesn't seem forced. Nobody likes an exposition dump. Try to wait for the players' initiative to learn something about their surroundings. Maybe the PCs overhear a conversation at the nearest table. Maybe the bard in the corner is playing a song about the latest world events. Maybe the tavern itself is a piece of lore - there are carvings above the bar that hold various names and when the PCs inquire about them, they learn that they are the names of all the people who held the title of Deepest Throat in the past 10 years. (pun intended - and you can do with the title what you will :)) From there a drinking contest is bound to happen. A little harmless competition to start off a campaign won’t hurt anyone....OR WILL IT? :)  When everyone's a bit more relaxed, you've tried some rolls, had a few conversations, you can start introducing the plot. A notice board with local mercenary work, a damsel in distress barges into the tavern, the barkeep needs help with deratization in the basement... anything can be thrown into a tavern and has every right to be there. THE ESCORT MISSION Again, one of the common tropes. Often times it is troublesome to put the PCs into one place and have there be a plausible reason for them to be there at the same time. It can be even more troublesome to have them immediately form a party and stay together. You can sort of cheat your way into this by having them be working on the same job - such as escorting someone or something from point A to point B. Regardless of their backstories, they need only to figure out a reason why they're escorting this merchant to that coastal town in the south. Not even all of them need that to be their actual job. Maybe one of them was simply traveling in that direction and met up with the others who were guarding the caravan. This set up also gives you the opportunity to take a few of the oppening moments to encourage conversation and getting to know one another. After the oppening stages, you can start the plot with having something unexpected occur. - maybe a simple pack of wolves attacks the caravan and you can introduce combat without having it be something really stressfull right off the bat. Or maybe the caravan itself is part of the narative and you can start the "plot" after they arrive at the destination. Whatever the case, now you have your PCs together. PART OF THE SAME ORGANIZATION A mercenary company, an adventuring guild, students at the same school, soldiers in the army, part of the same pottery class... there are countless possibilities here. This particular premise does demand some cooperation from your players with having to synchronise their backstories, but hey, if they're up for it, it's a great way to skip past the potential initial awkward stages. You just assume the PCs already know each other and you can even discuss how close they are, who likes who, why the elf and dwarf are best friends etc. They can describe their party dynamics and have that be the roleplaying intro into the game. Then simply give them a task to complete for the organization and the story writes itself from there. THE JAIL Whether it was grand theft cart, petty thievery or even an unjust sentence, the PCs found themselves in jail. And would you know it, the mayor is just in need of a couple of people willing to walk the grey area of law to deal with a particular problem he has. Do this for him and your sentence will be revoked. This also offers the potential for the PCs to get to know each other before you introduce the mayor as the driving force of the plot. Hey, maybe there's this other inmate there too who seems to be a random person locked up for public indecency but is actually the big bad of the story. I myself do love foreshadowing things to my players. THE SHIPWRECK Not unlike the jail, it is a situation that has been forced upon the PCs and requires them to work together to get out of it. It's a construct of storytelling that allows you to circumvent the "Why would I even travel with these people..my character would never..." trap of PC backstory and alignment. This one is a great way to have there be a contained introductory story to your campaign. You don't have to spend a ton of time developing the whole world if the party can't leave this tiny island for the first 4-5 levels. A little railroading at the begining doesn't have to be a bad thing - especially when done well.  AMNESIA Here we go into the more complex options. There are countless books, games, movies and tv shows that hinge on the protagonist not remembering their past. This can also be used in dnd and to various degrees. First of all, though, it requires cooperation from your players and they have to be complicit to this kind of start. Now, you can go with everything ranging from the PCs not remembering their names, to their whole backgrounds, to not actually having access to their character sheets. The first 2 are simple enough. You can have it just be a plot point and for some reason important to the story that they have amnesia. I wouldn't recommend using it just for the sake of it. If you're going with amnesia, there has to be a plot related reason for it. Maybe they are all part of a medical/scientific/magical experiment. Maybe they were all killed and ressurected as chosen of the god(s) for some higher purpose - I dunno, you do the brainstorming there.... Regardless of the reason, they now immediately have something in common which will hold them together as a  group. The last one, though, is a bit tricky, and one that I'd like to try out at least once myself. You can go with the players not remembering  anything about themselves. To avoid metagaming, that would constitute them not having access to their sheets - at least in the begining. It also means that they would probably have to roll totally random classes. Most players already have an idea on what they want to play, though, and would be against such a campaign start, I would assume - but if you have a table of veterans, maybe they'd like to try out something out of the ordinary. Through the first few sessions, via skill checks, attack rolls and everything else, they slowly learn about their stats. They take notes on modifiers you give them and piece by piece put together what their actual class and background is. I can see it being quite fun and a good roleplaying excercise. It also requires no background story whatsoever and you can fill in the blanks as you go through the campaign. The DM does have to do a lot more work than usual though, as they have to be familiar with all the PCs and their abilities, and engaged enough to offer bits of information on the char sheets to the players when it is appropriate. LEVEL 0 One interesting way to start is having the PCs be simple commoners in a village or small town. This takes care of having them need to get to know each other and having a reason for them to be there.  As you've probably gathered by now, I find these to be the main problems in regards to storytelling when starting a campaign. Similarily to the Amnesia start, PCs would not have classes to begin with. They would essentially be commoners with no special abilities. Then you introduce a plot point they need to deal with which will initiate them into the adventuring lifestyle. There are various ways to do that. The simple one would be a band of goblins/wolves attacking the farms. The difficulty here is risking a tpk because the PCs don't have any combat capabilities to speak of. You should probably encourage creative ways to deal with the problem rather than rush them into a combat encounter. I would, however, prefer something like a village fair with various games that nudge the PCs towards their respective classes - an archery competition, arm wrestling, hide-and-seek, etc. This also provides a ton of opportunities for social interaction. When you grow tired of the village life, introduce a new plot point and set the newly baked adventurers on their adventuring way. ISEKAI Anime has had an oversaturation of this genre in the past few years. That doesn't mean, however, that you can't go with it in your dnd game. This is actually my favorite potential way to start a campaign, and one I haven't tried or seen anyone do yet. If you don't know what "isekai" means, it is the trope of a regular Joe from our plain ol' boring world being transported into a video-game (usually a mmorpg) world, usually being overpowerd in said world and having to deal with their newfound circumstances. Your players would start off as regular people doing their regular everyday things and all of a sudden be transported into your dnd setting. This would be an interesting way of allowing meta player knowledge being used in game. Also an interesting roleplay excercize. They would essentiatlly be playing themselves as someone else - their new characters. Another way you could go about this is to have them play PCs from the real world from the get go and have them be transported into a dnd world. That way you could roleplay their characters knowing nothing about monsters, magic or fighting. I miss the excitement of not knowing what it is you're encountering. Nowadays, everyone knows what a goblin is... or a kobold, or a beholder... Imagine if you, as you are now, sitting in front of a computer, would all of a sudden be dropped into a cave with a beholder in front of you. Yup, I'd be terrified as well. . . There are a couple more common tropes I could mention, but I hope you got the gist of what's important and can adapt that to your own possibly original attempt to start a campaign. My start was not as elegant as it could have been if I had gone with one of the above, but I wanted evrything to play out as naturally as possible with a healthy dose of realism in game -so I started the PCs in the same small town with their own personal reasons for being there that all had a common thread which eventually brought them together. It actually took 2 sessions for them to convene at the same place and form a circumstantial party, but we got there and it was quite an excercise in DMing. Thanks for reading and, as always, have yourself some inspiration ;)

[venikamenon]

Boundaries & The Men Who Did Not Respect Mine

In light of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, the #metoo movement, the accusations against powerful people in the entertainment industry in India, discussions around sexual assault have been inescapable. Here are a few instances that impacted my life profoundly. 

This is going to be a little long and a little all over the place but strap in, because it’s an emotionally exhausting ride.

This story begins in 6th grade.

My maa and I were vacationing in Shimla, a north Indian mountain-covered city. On our last night there, we were waiting in a crowded bus station for our Volvo to depart.

I was wearing a white puffy jacket, given to me as a present by my American aunt and uncle, which automatically made it more special than all of my other jackets. I don’t remember anything about this vacation apart from what was about to happen, but I remember being happy. I remember smiling at all the other families that waited along with us. My mother, the sole provider for my family of five, was first and foremost a bad ass professional (a word I would not have been allowed to use back then), so when she was able to tear herself away from her work, it was a reason to celebrate.

I remember smiling at this man who was looking at me.

Me, I was 10-11 at the time.

I did not think anything of it in the moment. But pretty quickly, I realized this man was following my maa and I around. Every time I looked up – and I did have to look up as I was a short chubby child –, he was a few feet away. His face holding a smile and his eyes staring right at me, unwavering, unblinking, focused.

I remember feeling uncomfortable, not being able to breathe, and looking at my maa for help, but not being able to say anything.

Every time, I would turn my back to him, he would circle around us to be in my field of vision. Over and over again. No matter where I looked and how hard I tried to look away. I was frozen, stuck in a nightmare, unable to vocalize.

After what felt like an eternity, we finally boarded the bus. As I looked back one last time to check if I was safe, I was horrified to see him walk on after us. That was it. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t be trapped on this bus with this man for hours. I remember beginning to tear up, and whisper to my maa some incoherent words about this man following me and smiling at me.

She immediately stood up and screamed in the bus “THIS MAN IS HARASSING ME”. She didn’t ask me if I was sure, she didn’t ask me why I didn’t say something sooner, she didn’t ask if I had proof. She stood up and screamed “THIS MAN IS HARASSING ME” and in that moment, protected me and took the public burden off of me.

This man immediately ran out. No one on the bus said anything.

I don’t remember anything else from this whole trip, but I will never forget this man’s face and how this man made me feel. He made me feel dirty and ashamed, as if I had done something wrong. He made me want to rip my soul out of my body and put in in another new and unseen one.

Two things happened as a result of this. First, to the confusion of my mother, I refused to wear that white jacket again, even though it was the warmest, the fanciest and the favoritest jacket that I owned. I couldn’t separate that memory from the clothes I wore that night, no matter how irrational the connection. And if I couldn’t get rid of my body, this was the closest thing I could throw out.

Second, I stopped smiling at strangers.

All this and I’d never even been touched. I would not be able to prove anything in a court of law.

This was the first time the ether had whispered to me, beware of strange men – a recurring theme in every woman’s life, but particularly in India where the danger is “out there” (a notion with heavy classist connotations but that is for another time).

At 17, I moved to New York to pursue my education at a liberal progressive school with 70% women-identifying folk. A safe place.

At the end of my first week of school, a safe place, I called my maa and told her that one of my friends, in the room opposite of mine, had been raped by another student. Both of them were women. Anyone can be an abuser, but what was most shocking was that the abuser just dropped out the very next day of the case being filed with the school, so this person faced no consequences. However, this is not my story to tell.

I know this story does not fit neatly into the man-assualts-woman narrative, but the truth is messy and full of nuance. The other truths are that statistically, men are the primary perpetrators of interpersonal and sexual violence, and that almost all women know someone or have themselves been victims of sexual violence or harassment. It was the first time I witnessed an institution be unable to hold an abuser accountable.

My second year at college, I took an intermediary French class with Man Trash. Man Trash and I were friends, the way you are friends with someone in your class when you need to know when the next test is and what the homework is. We would often be in the same spaces because Man Trash was a good friend of one of the men in my Sophomore year crew. Man Trash was always funny, good at French and nice to me. But, when Man Trash expressed interest in one of my other friends, I became a little concerned. You see, I had heard through the grape vine that Man Trash had been accused of non-consensual touching. I looked into it a little further and found out that two women on separate occasions had brought up the fact that Man Trash had not respected their boundaries. So, when my friend expressed reciprocal interest in Man Trash, I had to confront him before things got any further.

Man Trash proceeded to tell me that it was all a misunderstanding, that alcohol was involved and that the school had already looked into it and they didn’t find anything. And I believed him.

I had been on the school’s Sexual Assault Task Force for a year at this point and had thorough insight into how flawed the investigative procedure could be. I had mocked these pathetic excuses of “alcohol” and “misunderstanding” for vile behaviour from men I didn’t know, mainly online, before.

And yet, I believed him because we had partied together, and he was always nice to me. He was my man friend’s good friend. He helped me with my French homework. I never tried to find out more details or to corroborate if what he told me was true.

A year later, while I studied in Paris my junior year, he raped another friend of mine. However, this is not my story to tell.

This was the first time I was complicit and was unable to hold an abuser accountable. I am so sorry to the women I failed by associating with this despicable human being and giving others the impression that he was safe to be around.

That year when I was in Paris, I used Tinder for the first time. The first Tinder date I went on was at a bar, and it went well. He offered to drop me home. Once we were in his car, he insisted that we go back to his place, even though I repeatedly said no. In a very calm voice, he kept insisting “let’s go to my place.” He did not shout. He did not act violent. But he kept driving away from my house. I was terrified. I finally said I was going to call my friends if he didn’t stop immediately. That’s when he reluctantly turned the car around. When I typically tell this story, it’s for a laugh: ha ha the one time I was almost kidnapped ha ha.

One of my closest NY friends – a man – has recently been encouraging me to get back on Tinder. I haven’t been able to explain to him why it’s just not for me. I can’t explain to him how trapped I felt in that car in Paris that one time. How suffocating it was to say no repeatedly and be talked over and ignored. I can’t separate that memory from that app, no matter how irrational the connection.

There isn’t even time for the story about the man who asked if he should send me a picture of his penis in the middle of our conversation about skateboarding, or the man who grabbed my butt on the train, the man who followed me on to campus one night when I got home too late etc.

As women, we are encouraged to either bear our souls and recount our most horrific experiences for the benefit of some men maybe perhaps kind of understanding our frustration and distrust of men a tiny bit, or move the fuck on with our lives because god forbid our emotions inconvenience you.

Here, I would like to clarify that in no way I’m saying what has happened to me is the same as sexual assault.  Too many women I know have experienced way worse. My point being: women experience gross and blatant, sometimes traumatic, disregard for their boundaries all the time.

When my mother was first starting off her career, her boss gave her a few x-rated magazines to file. She quit shortly after.

When my high school friend was on the way to a birthday party with this boy we had both known for many years, he tried to grab her on the way there. He apologized to her years later and she may have forgiven him, but I never will.

A fellow college alum who graduated many years before me, recently wrote about how her abuser was trying to re-invent himself in the age of #metoo as a changed man, having never apologized to her or shown any repentance.

My favorite statistician, Mona Chalabi, finally reported someone she used to work with who regularly send her inappropriate messages.

I know there are other stories out there, but none of them are mine to tell. But in each of these cases, the perpetrators faced no lasting consequences.

I am using this to process and to collect my own thoughts. If you made it through to this part, I don’t have a neatly packaged message for you. 

Sometimes, I want to scream till my lungs give out. Sometimes, I want to write till my laptop dies. Silence is no longer an option for many of us.

[vinegarhillvintage]

From a Native Son

I grew up in Charlottesville. My roots are in Charlottesville. I am Charlottesville. I write this at a time as tears flow in cycles, and I still haven’t totally reconciled what happened this past weekend. The truth is, I’m still struggling.

I’m struggling, in a sense, because I know all too well how the abuse of discretionary power has done harm in Charlottesville—for generations. I’m struggling because our cries for help have, for so long, seemingly fell upon deaf ears.  I’m struggling because, one of the most renowned and powerful universities in the world has stood by, and at worst, been complicit in the suppression of human potential—for years. 

My family is from Vinegar Hill, and the narrative of my existence begins there. Laura Smith recently wrote that, “In 1965, the city of Charlottesville demolished a thriving black neighborhood. The razing of Vinegar Hill displaced families and dissolved the community.” Many of the families that were displaced were moved to the Westhaven public housing community following the destruction of Vinegar Hill. Smith went on to write that, "The trauma of losing their community and homes was enormous and the financial toll would follow them for the rest of their lives."

My earliest memories are from 824-H Hardy Drive in Westhaven, where my grandmother lived.  I would hear stories about Vinegar Hill at my grandmother’s kitchen table—often. She was like a mother in the community, keeping the peace, maintaining order, and fixing a plate for anyone who was hungry. And boy, could she cook.  I would hear stories of how there was a sense of community in Vinegar Hill and how people worked their hardest to address this nostalgia for authentic community where they found themselves.  I would hear of how the young boys played marbles and baseball and how the girls would jump rope and play jack rocks and how—the love was real. 

I was kind of an old soul. (I still am). I would just sit around and listen. They let me in on the conversation as if they were leaving a portion of history with me. I took it all in. I soaked it all up. It gave me context. It helped me to understand, when I came of age, that I came from a people with a culture and with dignity but who were often deemed degenerate and sub-human by those with primitive morality.

In retrospect, the familial ties and nostalgia for community kept us safe in the subtle hostility of Charlottesville. To be certain, there is a great many of people in Charlottesville of all colors and creeds that sought to deal with this stealth supremacist mindset, and I have deep and meaningful relationships with people of all colors and creeds in Charlottesville. Nevertheless, even though we often couldn’t articulate it, we couldn’t point to it exactly, we knew that the dark forces of evil were present—at all times. 

My mother was able to get a United Way scholarship for me to attend one of the best early childhood programs in the city: Westminster Presbyterian on Rugby Road, on the campus of the University of Virginia.  In most cases, she wasn't able to take me to school because she had to work, but one of my older cousins or uncles would walk me just a few blocks up the street from what we called the ‘Jects’ [Projects] to Westminster. 

In my family, even though we were a poor and working-class family, education was seen as ‘salvation.’ Everyone was on board. While my family had struggled as laborers mainly in service to the students and faculty of the University of Virginia, they drew one conclusion from their experience in the halls of Mr. Jefferson’s university. Education is power. 

My grandmother was a janitor at the law school. My mother was a clerk for patient and financial records, and my father was a construction laborer that took pride in every brick that he laid to build the extension to the UVa hospital.  We would look across the tracks into the horizon, and he would say, ‘Son, I built that’ probably not even knowing the historical depth of what he was saying.  

In a real sense, the greatness of what you have heard or seen of Charlottesville was unquestionably built, in large part, by African Americans.  

The frustration with this statement is that economic mobility and educational outcomes for African Americans native to Charlottesville have largely stayed the same. It makes it difficult for one not to wonder after a couple of generations if this reality is not by design, and it makes those ‘it is what it is’ and realist types quote Tupac when he said, “It ain’t no hope for the youth, and the truth is there ain’t no hope for the future.”

This fatalism hit hard in Charlottesville during the Crack Cocaine epidemic. We got hit hard. But the double blow was the mandatory minimums that went with the sentencing. Crack wiped out a whole generation in Charlottesville and perpetuated socioeconomic disparities that were never dealt with to begin with.

What I have to say may in fact take a book to get it all out of me, but I just had to say that I am unfortunately not surprised at the hate that materialized itself to the world in Charlottesville. Many people in Charlottesville will admit that we have felt it, but just couldn’t articulate what it was or who was an authentic ally.  The truth is that there are cities throughout America that have a similar historical narrative and what happened in my hometown could have happened in a lot of places. 

My hope is that when the media leaves and the world directs its attention to something else going on, that the people of Charlottesville will pick up the pieces and demonstrate leadership and work towards authentic reconciliation that deals with long-standing socio-economic and human rights issues that prevent the place that I love from being all that it projects itself to be.

Architect, Kenneth A. Schwartz wrote in 1995 of Vinegar Hill that, “It would be impossible to resurrect Vinegar Hill in its earlier form... However, some form of reconstruction can be imagined, and one hopes that this new interest in the area can seriously consider the rich history of the place and the memory of its former residents.” 

As it is with Charlottesville as a whole... It would be impossible for Charlottesville to ever be the same after the events of 12 August 2017...However, some form of reconstruction can be imagined, and one hopes that this new worldwide interest in Charlottesville can help us to consider the wholistic history of the place and the possibilities for its current and future residents. 

by Sarad Davenport Serial Do-Gooder

[lewepstein]

Just Plain Wrong

Picture an early morning scene in which a four year old boy is sitting alone in a large sandbox at a local playground.  His father is watching from a bench close by while his son surrounds himself with all of the many toys provided by the community to those who come there to play.  Since the child has arrived first, he has taken two tricycles and parked them in his imaginary “garage.”  He has also grabbed all of the sand toys- plastic trucks, shovels and pails - and placed them around himself in a large semi-circle.  Within the next half hour other adults and children arrive.  But the little boy doesn’t want to relinquish what he now sees as his possessions.  He refuses to share the tricycles, pails and shovels with the other children.  He believes that because he got there first he is entitled to keep everything for himself.  But even the five and six year olds who have just entered the playground are saying to their caregivers that what the boy is doing is “unfair.”

Most of us would agree that it would be just plain wrong for the father of the little boy to not insist that his son share with the other children.  It is obvious to all that the child  cannot use all of his accumulated playthings at once, and that his hoarding denies others the opportunity to enjoy their time at the playground.

The scene that I have just described is a pretty good description of economic life in America today and what we tolerate in our political culture.  You could say that we have been brainwashed to believe that society must be organized around the principle that whoever comes up with a scheme to grab all the toys for himself has the right to hold onto them forever.  But, isn’t the playground scene that I am describing also an apt metaphor for the three richest men in the United States having the combined wealth of the lower-earning hundred eighty million of our fellow citizens?  And is it really OK that a number of the corporations that these billionaires own and control pay no taxes, while some of their lower paid employees have to choose between spending their meager salaries on either prescribed medications or food?  This may sound a little like Charles Dickens’ nineteenth century novel, “ A Tale of Two Cities,” but it is also a portrait of America in the year 2019.  

Many of us have taught our children the virtues of sharing and even the four year old in the sandbox soon learns that it is just plain wrong to keep all of the toys for himself when there are others present who would enjoy using them.  In a similar vein, anyone who sees himself as an even modestly spiritual and moral human being or attends any church, synagogue or mosque is instructed to be generous and kind to others - nothing more than charity and compassion 101.  And yet, we as a nation tolerate fabulously wealthy drug companies getting away with a five fold mark-up of survival items, like epipens.  And as yet there has been no popular revolt against a health care system that allows insurance companies to use a business model designed to either deny or limit payments for treatments that they deem “too expensive,” “too experimental” or simply “unnecessary.”  In fact, it is the “fiduciary responsibility” to shareholders of those who work for these companies to maximize profits by offering less - not more - to those of us who are suffering from disease and are in desperate need of healing and support.  It doesn’t take a great ethicist or moralist to see that these practices are just plain wrong.

When and where did we lose our moral compass and come to justify this kind of greed?  Was it in the days of the American frontier when every male settler believed he could become a wealthy rancher, and to hell with everybody else?  Or is it in the still prevalent cowboy myth revived by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s that enshrines the notion that the only person I really need to look after is “number one” -  namely me - and that others must fend for themselves.  To me, this sounds like the type of “rugged individualism” that refuses to embrace an even bare-bones awareness that we are all in this together - each a part of a family, a community and a nation - every one of us a cog in a complex and interdependent multitude of connections, interests and needs.

Most of us get it that it would be wrong to start a bonfire on our front lawns even though it would be a quick and cheap way to dispose of garbage and old furniture and to avoid paying the fees of a pick up service.  And yet, we as a society tolerate one corporation or an entire industry’s decision to dump its sulphuric waste into the atmosphere which then dramatically affects the acidity of the rain needed to irrigate the crops that we all depend upon for our food supply.  We observe this same attitude with gun owners and the National Rifle Association when they demand and defend unlimited access to firearms even as our children are mowed down by deranged shooters who should never have been allowed to acquire that type of firepower in the first place.  It is this selfish, privileged and arrogant worldview that is so malignant when applied to our global village where everything and everyone is so profoundly connected - where global warming is threatening life on our planet and wealth inequality along with climate based crop failure is producing mass migrations of people of a magnitude that we have never seen before and leaving war, terrorism and political upheaval in its wake.

The American “four year olds” who are monopolizing the  toys in our collective playground have names.  They are  Jeff Bezos, Charles and David Koch, Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg, among others.  They hide behind their corporate identities named Amazon, Exxon Mobil, Eli Lily, Lockheed Martin and Monsanto.  They are part of a powerful and privileged class of individuals and cartels who, in the short run are reaping tremendous benefits from capitalism’s cruelty, inequality and environmental degradation.  They will argue that they are charitable and willing to share, and they will occasionally even throw a toy or two to others, when it suits them.  But woe to anyone who actually says that society’s wealth and resources belong to everyone and that their hoarding must come to an end.

In terms of equity and sharing it would make sense that the privileged and the powerful would be reined in by true adults who had the interests of everyone in mind and saw fairness as their mission.  But, what we are getting today from those who are supposed to be representing us is  mostly complicity and compliance with what the wealthiest one percent want.  The most infamous of the complicit is named Mitch McConnell, a senator from Kentucky. But he is just one patriarch in two large families called the Republicans and the Democrats who both, insanely, take bribes from the privileged and powerful few they are supposed to be monitoring and are therefore completely beholden to them. Call them the billionaire class or the wealthiest one percent - they have come to hold tremendous authority over those who should be reining them in and leveling the playing field so that the rest of us can also have access to all that our wealthiest society in human history has to offer.    

Where once there was a counsel of wise adults who ruled judiciously on challenges to wealth and power, there are now a majority of  billionaire class collaborators whose names are Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. They give their stamps of approval to the status quo and cloak the power and privilege of the entitled one per cent  in the language of law.  Sadly, these biased arbiters of right and wrong get to occupy the same benches for the rest of their lives.  But the most pernicious and cruelest irony of all is that the current director of the playground is incapable of fairly monitoring those he is in charge of because he is a functional four year old himself.  The grasping and greedy Donald Trump lies constantly, operates without even the pretense of a moral code and is incapable of seeing the world beyond his own shallow self interest.   Like most children, he views any questioning of his ideas or actions as hostile acts and calls those who challenge him his “enemies.”  

If so much of what I have just described is just plain wrong, then how do we as a people make it right?  The answer begins with turning our moral outrage into energy and not being deterred by the predictable attacks that the playground bullies will level against anyone who insists that they share their wealth and privilege.  Bold, common sense programs like “The Green New Deal,” “Medicare for All,”  universal pre-kindergarten and childcare” an annual wealth tax and free tuition at public universities not only demand that wealth and resources be shared, but provide solutions for problems that our gilded age, laissez faire, market based system of economics has not been able to solve.  

The first major obstacle to introducing these types of programs into our current system is the tantrum that the one percenters have when asked to share their wealth - they will do anything and everything in their power to scare the hell out of us so that we reject any progressive programs along with the politicians who are trying to level the playing field:  This is what you can expect to hear:

“That program will be a job killer.”

“Don’t engage in ‘class warfare’”

“Beware of ‘too much government.’”

“You never want to lose your freedom of choice.”

“Just allow the ‘free market’ to do its thing.”

“Big government programs are too expensive.”

“Only the private sector ever gets things right.”

“Do you want to live in a ‘welfare state?’”

“Why tax the rich? We give millions to charity.”

“It will all ‘trickle down.’”

These arguments appeal to our fears and are not about facts.  Working class families are not free when they are struggling to pay for healthcare.  The so called “free market” is rigged and does not promote freedom when monopolies are driving the planet to extinction.  The much maligned “Welfare State” is now mostly about corporate welfare - the Medicaid, food stamps and other benefits  that we, the taxpayers pay to Walmart and McDonald workers who are not receiving a living wage.    

The bogeyman of  “too much government,” is really fear mongering about the government controls, oversight, regulations and taxation needed to rein in the excesses and dangerous practices of the  healthcare, pharmaceutical and energy cartels.  And to the argument that the Federal government never gets it right, I would argue: What about The W.P.A. in the 1930s that rebuilt our infrastructure and put the country back to work?  How about Social Security - called “creeping socialism” by the millionaire class of that era - and  Disability and Medicaid that even the conservative Tea Party members don’t want to give up?  And have you considered our Interstate Highway System and our National Park System, one built under Eisenhower and the other begun under Teddy Roosevelt? - both massive, big-government programs.  And what about our National Space Program that placed a man on the moon in the 1960s and Medicare, a government run health program for those over 65 that most people highly value?

When all else fails, the message from the  billionaires  and the politicians who are in their pockets is, “Watch out! Those who are pushing for Medicare for All and taxing our wealth  are socialists”.  Beware of the “red menace” and “don’t risk losing what you have.”  But, the reality is that only through massive, socialist, government sponsored programs like “The Green New Deal” and “Medicare for All” will the playground that we all live in become livable for all.    

Time is no longer on our side and a window is rapidly closing as the free market four year olds and their representatives continue trying to convince us that capitalism is freedom and that any and all attempts to redistribute and regulate their wealth and power is tyranny.  Unfortunately, the word “Socialism” may still be scary to many.  Perhaps, too revolutionary to view as a realistic solution.  But it is becoming increasingly clear to many of us with each climate disaster and mass migration that we may be facing a choice between Socialism and barbarism.

So let’s not allow the entitled and their hired hands to frighten us into believing that large common sense government programs cannot work in the United States.  And let’s not be scared off again by the words “Socialism” or “Revolution.”  It is Democratic Socialism that has provided a way of life that most European citizens swear by and are not willing to give up and it was a revolution against tyranny and unfair taxation that gave birth to our nation.  An unwillingness to uphold our country’s proud, revolutionary tradition in these critical times could turn out to be just plain wrong.

[citizentruth-blog]

What Corruption Really Means For America - And For Both Parties - OPINION

New Post has been published on https://citizentruth.org/what-corruption-really-means-for-america-and-for-both-parties/

What Corruption Really Means For America - And For Both Parties

Democrats just introduced their “Better Deal for Democracy” platform, but does it resonate?

(Represent.Us, by Joshua Graham Lynn) With the introduction of their new “Better Deal for Democracy” platform, the Democrats are finally spotlighting corruption, the issue that out-polls nearly every other issue. But are Democrats really listening to the American people?

The new platform reveals a deep misunderstanding of the electorate. It asserts that President Trump and the Republicans are solely responsible for letting a handful of billionaires and special interests take over our government. But voters increasingly understand that both Democrats and Republicans are complicit in the corruption of American governance. For too long, promises have been followed by inaction. Both parties have either ignored the need for systemic reform, or failed to act when they had the chance.

President Obama campaigned and won on his promise to change how Washington works, but squandered the chance to meaningfully address it for the two years that his party held power in both houses. The DNC got caught cheating in the 2016 primary election and new revelations show their dirty work continues. For years, Republicans have been a no-show on this issue, and while President Trump promised to “Drain the Swamp,” his party is in full control and so far they’ve merely swapped alligators for crocodiles.

Americans know the deep problems with ethics, elections and campaign financing go beyond any one President, beyond the partisan debate du jour, and beyond Democrat vs. Republican. Americans know the system is rigged against them, and it’s driving them away. 68% of non-voters cite “the corrupt system” as their reason not to vote – that’s about 38% of all Americans – and the party who brings them back will have a massive advantage. The “Better Deal” is a good start, but until Democrats divorce themselves from the finger-pointing, take responsibility for what’s broken, and exert the real political capital required to fix it, they’re doomed to keep losing elections.

For nearly 40 years, the Democrats have failed to convincingly counter President Reagan’s 1981 inaugural edict “Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem.” At the time, it was shorthand for government getting out of the way of private sector growth. Today, our government (under both major parties) has been so thoroughly captured by private interests, that it indeed has become the problem.

There’s no point in blaming one party or the other anymore, or drawing false equivalencies. It’s time for them both to own up to their roles in this mess, because the failure of government to meet the needs of the public threatens the viability of our nation. MIT professor Peter Temin recently found that America is regressing into a Third World Country for 80% of its citizens; The Economist Intelligence Unit declared in 2017 that our Republic is no longer considered a full democracy; and for the second year running, American life expectancy is on the decline despite staggering technological advances.

Failed governance by both parties – funded with our taxes – has robbed the middle class of their future, condemned the poor to a life of poverty, turned health care into a luxury few can afford, put millions in prison, and shipped our jobs overseas. We’re working harder, generating more wealth than ever, but keeping less of it.

The American Dream is becoming a nightmare.

This isn’t hyperbole. It’s fact. If you live on the coasts or in a wealthy enclave, you might not believe it. But it’s there, and candidates who want to win are going to need to start taking responsibility for it. Americans are more afraid of political corruption than nearly anything else – healthcare, war, pollution. What voters need are candidates who level with them about how we got into this mess, then (and only then) present solutions that end the pay-to-play culture in Washington, and secure our elections so voters are in charge.

The “Better Deal for Democracy” has many of the right policy ingredients. The platform is promising, if imperfect. It appears to include decent reporting requirements for lobbyists, a crackdown on public servants convicted of bribery and changes to how elections are funded. It should go further, but most voters would be happy to see the progress being proposed.

My organization’s model legislation, the American Anti-Corruption Act, is a more comprehensive package of the most popular and powerful reforms that could be passed today to address the corruption problem. End gerrymandering, bar gifts from lobbyists to politicians, require fully transparent political spending, and change how elections are funded. That’s the strong medicine required to cure an extremely sick patient. In today’s Congress, neither proposal has a snowball’s chance in hell of passage — but that doesn’t mean credible candidates must make empty promises. There’s a movement afoot and candidates can be part of it. They can lead it.

Following in the footsteps of women’s right to vote, interracial marriage, and civil rights, Americans across the political spectrum are working together state by state to unrig the system. From the Dakotas to Alaska, Ohio to Michigan to Maine, Colorado to Florida and elsewhere, grassroots conservatives and progressives are working together, taking the reins on a new era of change and winning reforms that Congress has been unwilling or unable to pass.

Serious candidates should be honest about the problem, and commit to really doing what it takes to fix it. Those who do will be the ones who win in 2018 — and that actually would be a Better Deal for America.

American Prosperity Has Become American Poverty

[standupmagazine-blog]

Why we wanted to get involved in that boring subject called politics

What do you do when the unthinkable happens? Twice in 2016, I awoke to that question after a long night of dozing and starts in front of rolling news coverage. That now infamous morning on November was a haze of nagging dread and disbelief. What now? At midday driving through the streets of Sunderland to get to St Peter’s campus, the roads were still sleepy. The radio chat was of aching voices, all echoing the same shock. Nobody could understand how it had happened. Nobody understood how America could have chosen a man who had been caught on tape bragging about sexual assault as president. Trump represented erratic bigotry. He threw out slurs and hatred at each rally, and gave different promises with every speech. Nobody knew what that would mean, but hope had been extinguished. The helplessness that Remainers had felt in the summer had trebled; there was some comfort in knowing that Brexit was an isolated event — that was our country’s choice alone but now there was guilt. Had Brexit inspired a wider lurch to the right? It was fitting that my reaction was to want to surround myself with my peers at Sunderland university. In July, Sunderland unexpectedly felt the global spotlight. The New York Times even wrote on how this poor city had voted overwhelmingly for Brexit despite the pain it would inflict, and now we were looking at the US and muttering the same shock about their choice. On days like those nothing gets done. Our tutor gave up in defeat and for our three-hour session, he threw out the lesson plan to discuss business models and gave us the time to vent, rage, and almost cry over the state of everything; from Trump, Brexit, climate change, marginalisation, the economy and to the silencing of young people. The (ever annoyingly hot) IT suite was filled with a buzzing rage that choices were being made for our futures without our consent. Unless journalists on the campus speciailise in politics, it’s not an everyday conversation people usually have, but now that changed. It was the only topic that mattered. The political discourse had failed our generation, and as aspiring journalists there was a feeling of betrayal. Perhaps I should revise my statement, because while it seemed as though nothing was achieved (except venting) a seed was planted. The five of us left that MA session feeling just as angry as before, yes, but also curious; perhaps if we worked there was something we could do. If there was any chance the Christmas break or January exams and deadline stress would distract us from the goings on of the world then it was quickly shattered when Trump confirmed he would stick by his promises, including building the wall in Mexico, and May offering nothing but a hard Brexit at any cost so long as it curbed migration. The world was burning on hate, and we’d had enough. This semester we were tasked with creating a magazine — just one — and we could choose the groups. It was a nice project; to test our design skills and our journalistic dedication but it just wasn’t satisfying. We wanted more than doing what was easy for the marks. The five of us banded together and came up with one vision: Stand Up. Never was this going to be a one magazine project, this was about getting the magazine out there to thousands of people and trying to change. This was starting our own movement, and amplifying silenced voices. We don’t have the millions in the bank that most magazines do; we actually have a grand total of zero but we have resources around us and we’re all working around the clock. The UK feels at a crisis point and quite simply, we have to do something for all of our futures.

We want to get involved with directing the narrative of the UK, but we want other people our age to feel empowered to do the same. Our writing will reflect that; we’ll list events going on around the country and find new (and accessible ways) for people to engage in politics. The challenges though, do go beyond money - but let’s face it, that’s always going to be a major stumbling block for any start up. In my course, I could not have asked for a better team. We’re loud, we have different likes but there’s an unwavering respect that means we can debate different ideas. It’s also just fun with these guys. To be honest, university gets in the way of our group chat — but there was a major problem of a project of this nature being handed to five people who just happen to be on the same course. We’ve got great representation of gender, disability, sexuality but we’re all white. In a political magazine, that’s just a major question mark against us from the beginning and rightfully so. Coming up with a plan to try to make this magazine as intersectional as possible became even more critical, and from that very fundamental level it might not even be possible. We could just ignore race because none of us can talk about it without risking talking over people, but that means we end up with a magazine that only reflects whiteness and then what’s the point? So we go back to the core of journalism and we do it right. Have you ever noticed that with almost every allyship thinkpiece, whether it be about race, trans rights, women’s rights, whatever, that the ally who penned it always has to put in somewhere “I’m so shocked that this is happening”. I don’t know when journalism came about “I”, the individual, but it’s not supposed to be, unless offering profound insight. For example: a marginalised person commenting on their experiences. An ally commenting on their experiences of others suffering and how shocked they are doesn’t count. Stand Up then needs to utilise our journalists by using us to amplify silenced voices. We’re just a means to an end for community workers, volunteers, unsung heroes etc to have their voices heard. We write for them. If we were a panel show, then we’d be the guys picking who would speak on the panel and then recording it for them. A journalist should be able to step away from themselves, it’s about the people they’re interviewing and the story at hand after all, not about us. We are seeking out as many diverse sources as possible. You know a disabled march we could feature? Great, but did the trans woman of colour find the march a safe space? Body positivity? Excellent, are there visibly disabled people in the movement? Journalism is complicit in the rise of the far right across the UK, Europe and the US by pandering to the right wing at the expense of marginalised people. This cannot happen here. We are constrained by the remit of the project. Not many magazines start out in this way. We have a single issue Brexit special to deliver which is for our MA (but about so much more than that). However, if successful we are keen to make this a monthly fixture. If the desire for the magazine is there, after the first issue there’s a lot more freedom. We can expand our team and hire more diverse writers. Until then, we have to prove that this is a respected outlet people can trust, so that they want to be associated with the brand. If we raise a profit, then that will go to paying our writers. I don’t agree with any organisation who doesn’t pay their writers (and I’ve worked at many outlets I respect and admire without pay). I’m not too proud to ask for donations so I can give money to my staff. They work damn hard and they deserve paying. Writers’ wages are an intersectional issue; those who are expected to work for free are often marginalised in some way. While middle class politicians can walk into a journalism job at a respected outlet, get paid hundreds or thousands for eight hour working weeks, marginalised writers are struggling to make it above the poverty line. I’m immensely proud of our ambitions, which were inspired by one university deadline. Hey, people are always talking down the work ethic of students, right? Well, we’ve got a huge uphill battle to climb so we can get credibility and funding, but we’re doing this because it’s simply right. We have an opportunity to try, we may never get access to design equipment like we have at the university. Just maybe, we might be able to empower a few people, or inspire a few young people to take action against fascism or stand in solidarity with marginalised people. Hannah, Siarlot, Alice and Lee have also made quite a frightening reality actually a challenge to relish. Most of the team didn’t get into journalism because of politics, but this kind of magazine is exactly why we chose this career because it’s founded on the belief that writing and broadcasting can change the world. It’s up to us to decide how we’re going to use that chance to try to make things better.

#WeStandUp

Over to your questions….

Will your magazine feature feminist advertising?

Yes, although this is our kind of default mode (and it should be for every publication anyway). We want to empower young people and it wouldn’t work to have something antifeminist feature in Stand Up. Not one of us would want that kind of content there anyway!

What has been your hardest decision?

We were offered a pretty amazing advertising deal, and it’s very early in the day for something like that. There’s a temptation just to run with it when you get an offer but it didn’t quite fit our brand. We’re going to be very content heavy, there’s not going to be a great deal of ad space in our magazine and so the link up didn’t quite marry at that moment. There may be a future deal of a different nature but it’s about having the steel to say “this isn’t quite right for us” and not just see the short-term potential and dive in at the expense of the long-term goal.

What has been the easiest consensus?

That if I forget to bring the chocolate to the next editorial meeting I’m out.

Will Stand Up be featuring youth councils as a general overview or as a regular feature? Youth councils are definitely what we’re watching and no doubt will be a great source for some of our content. Their achievements are fantastic and we do want to celebrate people getting on and trying to change things. Our brand though is looking to young people who feel overwhelmed and left behind. We want to give them a voice and find new ways of engagement. People in the youth councils are doing fantastic work, but that’s their outlet and they are engaging through that. It’s the young people who might want to join a youth council but don’t even know they exit that we’re primarily targeting. Their presence is likely to be more generic then and mentioned potentially in a range of articles rather than just having one youth council feature.

Stephanie Farnsworth

Editor, Stand Up

[josephinefox-blog1]

DEEDS NOT WORDS- a century on.

Again, I must first apologise for having not written this piece sooner as it now has been a good few months since I attended the Procession to mark 100 years since women achieved the vote.

On the 10th June 2018, a march ran through central London to celebrate the suffragettes movement that kick-started a chain of events, leading to the gender politics we are experiencing today- yes it may be a far cry from the  equality we wish to accomplish (between class, gender and race) but it is definitely a progression from what once was.

It was truly an uplifting experience, with celebration, passion and determination to not let such legacies die, but to drive the movement further and work for equality that is in tune with our 21st century needs; we must now consider our sisters from other cultures and ethnicities, allow them to speak and tell us how we can do better- we must accommodate, we must accept how our privilege is ingrained within us and how we can dismantle such a thing. We must consider and work alongside also our non-binary friends, our gender fluid friends, queer, lesbian, bi, transgender; all of our friends who feminism should benefit and actively work for and alongside.

This experience, above all, highlighted to me the importance of action. The message of ‘deeds not words’ was a token amongst the suffragette movement and I feel it has somewhat been lost through the decades. Feminism now has other stigmas attached to it that make people less willing to identify as a feminist at all, let alone act on it. Due to this, if people do label themselves a feminist, they see this as controversy enough, that in some way they have done their part by agreeing that yes, women do deserve better in society and that the patriarchy does harm us all.

Let me say: this isn’t enough.

Forget the tees sold in stores fuelled by sweatshop workers that declare ‘FEMINISM’, forget the aesthetic of an angry woman requiring better or a sensitive man saying ‘imagine if that was your daughter …’ – these dissipate to nothing if your values aren’t acted upon and make a difference in not only our society now, but society in generations to come. Who’s going to remember Julie the self-proclaimed feminist on social media sites, if Julie doesn’t actively work on this role? If she doesn’t actively use her voice to call out everyday sexism? If she doesn’t use her feminist title to look within herself and see how she too, perpetuates inequality and how she may stop this?

Feminism is a role and a responsibility that we all hold to keep society progressing and deeds speak much louder than words.

So… HOW CAN WE HELP?

It must be said that the finger is to be pointed at white men and white women. We must do better for our allies of colour and of the LGBTQ+ community. Every day, they face a struggle we cannot comprehend and it is as a result of our ingrained privilege that benefits us in ways we would never even consider. So in these ways, every day is a constant battle for activism; they are required to speak out against injustices at a fault of our own.

And yet we think that acting upon equality is optional- because why would we wish to dismantle a system that ultimately benefits us? Why would we wish to put so much effort into something that isn’t mandatory? Or life and death?

We should want to do better for the betterment of society, to lift others and support them in how they say they need it after our centuries of harm to them. So from this, our actions include listening and accepting and acting upon our areas of improvement. Using our privilege to amplify the voices of those who have been unheard for so long. Investing money and time and support into those who are struggling. Challenging those who stand complicit, urging them to also join us.

We can no longer think that our want to do better is enough, that is somehow compensates for all the harm caused. We need to do better.

[synecdocheofouch-blog]

On the ‘Noble Savage’ in particular and dilemma of whiteness in general

Organized society necessitates a certain amount of infantilization. To rely on others, and make it instinctive to rely on others for your basic needs, to make filling them yourself beyond imagining. That’s not entirely a bad thing, when it’s handled well in a fair just society (composed entirely of magical elves), but otherwise it’s kind of like child abuse as an ingrained institution. To justify this (and the huge inequalities that make it seem necessary to those in power) in a society that justifies itself on ideas of ‘fairness’ ‘equality’ and ‘merit’ those with disproportionate power touch themselves imagining an ideal of ‘self reliance’ and not needing anyone else (contrary to that civilized ideal of almost mechanical deference that gives them their disproportionate power) putting them among the (most) virtuous (being the ones who are needed, who must be deferred to, whose norms and interests determine popular understanding of ‘good’), and that it’s a real thing that's ever existed anywhere (even they must still act with consensus, or at least not against the interests of their own class. even hunter-gatherers venerated their prey and staple foods). So. The ‘Noble Savage’ bastardized ideation/appropriation of tribal (or even modern disenfranchised-enough-to-resort-to-self-help*) cultures.

And onto (white) people appropriating shit in general: the state of whiteness (in most of the world; maybe not KSA or PRC) is one of oppressing, whiteness is an act of oppression. The benefits (often in a zero sum system) are passive and come to you whether you want them or not, and you’re told you deserve them for reasons that have nothing to do with the amount of melanin you don’t have (almost) every time. But oppression hurts the oppressor as well as (of course always to a lesser extent than) the oppressed, and it necessitates certain ways of being; having servants is creepy, whipping slaves is hard, relying on others for everything is infantilizing as fuck, and living among a captive population that outnumbers you and could destroy your way of life by just stopping (not to mention active resistance) is fucking terrifying, traumatic, and limits the ways you can be in the world; noone had fun in sparta, white confederate families were always abusive, and apartheid south africa was probably just as creepy.

So. What is one to do when born into this? To actively swim against that current, to decline the benefits and advantages you’re unjustly offered pretty much from birth (and they’re never blatantly offered on merit of your race, so you have to decide whether to err towards sensitivity and fuck yourself more than you need to or specificity and still reap some of the rewards while feelings like you’re resisting in total solidarity?) insults others, functions implicitly as a call-out of everyone who just went with the flow. That pisses people off. That calls all their achievements all their joy all their daily satisfaction and maybe even their suffering (in their un-nuanced eyes) unjustified, unreal, cheating, made up (which it kind of is, but you still have to be exceptional to win at the olympics even if your pharmacist helps out, and a 10% edge at the roulette table still leaves you penniless more often than not). So obviously, in a society where we’re always told to go with the flow, that shit and all the attendant blowback isn’t an option, but for anyone with a conscience and basic self awareness just going with it’s not an option. What’s a self-aware but not self-critical milquetoast asshole to do?

This is where I compare cultural appropriation to libertarianism, and I’m pretty sure I owe one party or the other an apology but I can’t quite figure out which (I’m so sorry; white girl with dreadlocks, seattle yuppie. That comparison was mean spirited and I shouldn’t have. now stop making out.). A lot of (white) people whose awareness of the problem floats just below consciousness because they don’t quite have the integrity, emotional backing, or intelligence to resist instead cling to something else. for economic inequality, it’s libertarianism, a rejection of the system without actually pushing back against it, gaining all your strength through its most despicable mechanisms. For race, denying association with whiteness or white culture is a fun start, but since the view from nowhere isn’t a thing (and it would be fucking boring if it was) you have to claim SOME perspective, and what’s better than claiming you’re oppressed? you’re entitled to some sense of justification, after all; you are sorta-kinda not just going with the flow of whiteness. you're aware enough to cringe at those ‘white peepul aer uppressed mineorities!’ white nationalist asshats, so you can’t be one of them; your face would get tired! The obvious answer is: claim the identity of someone your whiteness oppressed (which you can only do because of that same whiteness, but hypothetical you isn’t self critical because that can be uncomfortable, so shush), because you can’t have benefitted been involved or even really be complicit if you’re from the streets (specifically a lovely cul-de-sac off maple drive in orange county), how could you possibly be the oppressor? it’s some bullshit psychopretzel absolution, but it seems to work for a lot of people, which is why they take it so hard. Besides; white culture is awful and boring and so pervasive as to be almost invisible. who wants to be invisible for reasons that aren’t creepy?

This isn’t me making excuses. I take joy in the discomfort of others, and hate myself fucking passionately, so I try to swim against that current at every opportunity, but it helps to understand why. I’m not sure I have a solution here. maybe the closed I can come is:

if you won your gold metal cheating doesn’t it nag at you? never knowing if you were really the best, or just ‘good enough’? it can’t all have been for the pretty rock.

Weirdly, even (white) people who HAVE legit connections to other cultural identities (regional poverty cultures, geekiness, disability, deafness, etc.) tend to either do this, or (so very often) be more dedicated to their whiteness, to avoiding the marginalization that goes with these other identities, to erase and make white these other parts of themselves. After all; being white is more fun than being a (white) disabled queer if comfort’s your priority.

*By ‘self help’ I don’t mean ‘boot straps!’, but ‘killing the pig who keeps raping members of your community yourself(ves)’, or ‘finding something to kill/cook when you’re hungry’.

[joronomo]

4 Dreamers Who Deserve To Be Deported For The Crime of Being Brought Here By Their Parents

New Post has been published on https://joronomo.com/4-dreamers-who-deserve-to-be-deported-for-the-crime-of-being-brought-here-by-their-parents/

4 Dreamers Who Deserve To Be Deported For The Crime of Being Brought Here By Their Parents

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push();

You may have heard the recent announcement by the Trump administration that they plan on removing the protections of DACA – the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – a policy implemented by the Obama administration that allowed individuals who immigrated to the United States illegally as minors to receive protections from deportation and become eligible for work permits. The program was enacted to offer protections to individuals who were largely raised in the United States and could not be held accountable for the actions of their parents – and because it would be cruel to tell someone who was brought to the US as an infant that they had to leave for nebulous immigration law reasons, particularly since they were simply people raised in the US, indistinguishable from legal citizens except for their immigration status.

On top of that, there are strict guidelines for DACA – it must be renewed every two years, you must be in school or have graduated high school/gotten your GED, and cannot have committed any felonies or serious misdemeanors, so the individuals who qualify for DACA have significantly lower crime rates than the rest of the population.

Still – they have committed the most heinous crime of all: NOT TELLING THEIR PARENTS THAT BRINGING THEM INTO THE UNITED STATES WAS HIGHLY UNETHICAL. 

1. Here comes the story of a true CRIME INFANT, now going by the pseudonym “pcaedus” on Reddit, who left this damning admission of their criminal choice to remain in the country with their parents, instead of dutifully exiting the United States as a 4 year old by themselves:

DACA recipient here. Came here at 4 from the Korea, 22 years of age now. Grew up through the US education system, never left the US. Graduated last year with a Nursing degree and managed to land a full time nursing gig in a great hospital in the city.

I pay taxes, I have my own place as of last month, got a bunch of great lifelong friends and a fantastic GF, but now I can only legally work and stay here until 2019 when my DACA stuff expires. Then I’m forced to say goodbye to everyone I’ve ever known and start a new life with my skill set somewhere else.

It’s easy to demonize us, say how we don’t belong here, how we should go back where we came from. I’ve had PMs telling me I should kill my parents, others saying how I should spite them, how it’s their fault and I should hate them for it and blame them for their actions. My point is every one of us DACA kids have our own stories, our situations are different. We did come here legally. My parents were sponsored by a corporation in the UK. They screwed them over by cancelling their work visas after. At that point they had already settled here and had investments that tied them down.

At the end of the day they gave birth to me and yes, what they did was unlawful but it’s also because of them that I was the first in my entire family to graduate college. My parents worked hard to give me my education. They scrapped by with cash jobs. We’ve lived in basements and now they’re business owners. It’s hard to understand from my perspective but I’m not going to hold it against them after all they have given me.

The truth is some of us DACA recipients give back so much to US society, we’re new graduates, we hold prestigious degrees from ivy’s, we’re Doctors and Nurses, firefighters, engineers, architects… some of us are even in the military.

I was planning to continue my post-bach education here but unfortunately this is the harsh reality for us if Congress doesn’t do anything in the next 6 months. I’m fortunate for all the experiences I’ve gained here in the US and the memories I have from here will stay with me for a lifetime.

Look at this REMORSELESS admission of crime – it’s almost as if they don’t regret self-deporting themselves as a 4 year old and instead building a wonderful life in the so-called “land of opportunity”! Disgusting.

2. And then we have Jesus Contreras – who was complicit as a 6 year old in his mother’s crime of illegally immigrating to the United States JUST for “a better life” and “to escape a horrible and dangerous situation at home.” And what’s he up to now? ILLEGALLY acting as a paramedic and saving lives in flood-ravaged areas around Houston:

Jesus Contreras, a Houston-area paramedic, barely slept this week. There wasn’t much time for rest after Harvey started pummeling southeast Texaslast Friday. Too many people needed his help — diabetics, cancer patients, elderly folks trapped in their homes.

Contreras camped out at a fire station when he wasn’t rushing around in an ambulance. He didn’t make it back to his house in Spring, a suburb north of Houston, until Thursday afternoon.

Contreras arrived in the United States with his mother when he was 6. They had come from Nuevo Laredo, a city in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where their lives were strained by a “violent situation at home.” The promise of a new life in America was partly about “getting away from my dad and the things he was involved with in Mexico,” Contreras said.

He came of age in Houston, working hard through high school and college while volunteering at his local church. He earned his paramedic certification at a community college last year and soon got to work — something that would not have been possible without DACA.

Imagine the gall – saving TRUE AMERICANS as someone who LEGALLY should not have even been there in the first place. If it were me drowning in Houston, I would have said “no thanks” to his illegal attempts at saving my life and died like a REAL PATRIOT.

3. Excuse me while I hold in my vomit – meet Larissa Martinez, the admitted CRIME LORD who confessed in front of everyone that she was UNDOCUMENTED (in her valedictorian speech, because she represented the best of us – someone who strove for her goals and fought to achieve all she could. Also, she’s heading to Yale btw):

This is what happened after a Yale-bound valedictorian in Texas revealed she is an undocumented immigrant:t.co/YamQEsiKjt

— Mic (@mic) June 9, 2016

Terrible – she committed a grievous crime of coming into a country she wasn’t born in just to work for a better life. Unlike us real TRUE Americans, who went through the effort of being born here already.

4. Juan Escalante is your classic ultra-criminal with no redeeming qualities whatsoever – he and his family came into this country WITHOUT ALL THE PROPER PAPERWORK IN ORDER and then he went on to study hard, get a Master’s degree, and work as an immigration advocate. In other words, this guy is pretty much John Dillinger but even worse. Here’s what Juan “Crime-Doer” Escalante wrote in a Medium post:

Imagine being 11 years old, and after living in the United States for over ten years, you are consistently reminded that you would not be able to accomplish much due to your immigration status. That you wouldn’t get a job, go to college, or be accepted in the country that you grew up in due to your immigration status. That is, of course, after graduating from high school, trying to navigate the country’s broken immigration system, and paying taxes.

Then, years later, the U.S. Government comes along with an opportunity for you to pay a fee, undergo a background check, meet particular requirements, and surrender significant amounts private information in exchange for the ability to temporarily shed your fear of deportation, work, and drive. This is exactly what the DACA program did for me, and countless others, give us an opportunity to contribute back to the country that saw us grow up.

Knowing full well that DACA could not give us legal permanent residence or U.S. Citizenship, hundreds of thousands of Dreamers like myself spent the last five years working across the United States. Thanks to DACA, Dreamers have been able to build their lives, go to school, and invest in the economy by buying a home or a car.

And then later was profiled by the New York Times (although maybe it should be called the New York CRIMES, am I right?):

I was working an unpaid internship in 2012 when I caught word of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) announcement via Twitter.

I ran to the office lobby, turned on the TV, and immediately knew right then that life would not be the same. I called my mother in tears and proceeded to tell her that my brothers and I would be able to benefit from a program that would temporarily shield us from deportation while allowing us to work and drive legally. I understood DACA was a temporary program that would not cover parents, but it renewed my commitment to fight for relief for the rest of the immigrant community.

Since that day I have taken every opportunity to grow, learn, and contribute back to my community. In 2013, DACA allowed me to re-enroll at Florida State University and pursue a Master’s degree in Public Administration. By 2014, I was in the middle of working a job in Tallahassee, Florida, studying for my master classes, and advocating at the Florida Legislature for a bill that would allow undocumented students to obtain in-state tuition at state colleges and universities. In a rare display of bipartisanship, the bill passed and was signed into law by Florida’s Republican Governor, Rick Scott.

I graduated with my Master’s in 2015, full of hope and energy that I would be able to put my education to good use. With degrees in hand, I was able to obtain a job as a digital immigration advocate – putting my years of experience and passion to good use. Simultaneously, and thanks to the new in-state tuition law in Florida, I was able to help both of my younger brothers enroll at Miami Dade College and Florida Internation University – they are currently pursuing degrees to work in business and communications, respectively.

The government NEEDS to focus on getting rid of the REAL CRIMINALS – people like Juan, who came here in their youth and have done everything in their power to become productive members of society and work harder than everyone else.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); Source link

[dieselpunk-progressive-blog]

Back by Popular Demand

Since the election, I’ve made a point of keeping my mouth mostly shut about politics, both for my sanity and that of my friends and family. But as we’re now past the half time show for this first year of the Trump administration, I find that my sanity is more endangered by my silence than by my engagement. The maddening bit, though, is that it is not the Donald’s performance as the nation’s executive which is driving me insane, but rather the general failure of the Democrats to provide any sort of organized, motivated and effective opposition.

As I repeatedly pointed out during the 2016 primary season, there has been a general sea-change in the political, economic and social values of these United States. This coincides, unsurprisingly, with the massive impact of economic globalization and the emergence of the Millennial Generation as the newest, fastest growing and soon-to-be-if-not-already largest voting block in the United States. In a great many ways, Millennials reflect the energy and attitudes of their Boomer grandparents, who are currently fighting them tooth-and-nail for both political and economic power. But the real irony of this, is that the Boomers, are fundamentally doing the same thing; they, however, are now taking the role of intransigent elders determined to forestall the socio-economic evolution of the country. One might now entertain an energy-policy based on harnessing the speed and torque of the Kennedy Brothers in their graves.

Of course, the parallels are not exact. Most prominent in it’s absence is the character of a genuine, external existential threat to the American way of life, or just American life, despite the continued saber-rattling of North Korea. There’s also the greatly diminished (though not extinct) role of institutional racism and sexism, although these two insidious evils remain and continue to adapt for survival in an increasingly egalitarian society. And the struggle for justice and social enfranchisement of the LGBT+ alliance has added new dimensions as well. But perhaps the single most important difference between the second decade of the 21st Century and the sixth decade of the 20th, is that we find ourselves confronted by the same evils which threatened to consume the nation all through the first half of the last century. These are evils which cross all boundaries of race, religion, sex, gender and ethnicity. These are the evils of economic concentration and fashionable ignorance.

The antitrust and antimonopoly laws of the early 20th Century, combined with the economic reforms and regulations instituted during Franklin Roosevelt’s administration created the framework for the expansion of the greatest economic power in the history of the world: the American Middle Class. Living wages, guaranteed retirement benefits in old age, restraint of market speculation by commercial deposit banks; all these things, and more, made it possible for American citizens to invest in their own futures. Home ownership, which really should be thought of as investment in a community, became a reality for most citizens. So did the expectation that their children would due do better than their parents. People could afford to buy the sort of manufactured goods the fueled general economy, and as a result kept more-or-less everybody employed. The odds that very many people were going to get rich this way were nil, but for people who lived through the chaos of the late 19th Century, the deplorable income disparity of the Gilded Age, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and two World Wars, stabile, moderate economic growth and prosperity was Heaven on Earth.

Of course the capital interests of Wall Street and big business across the country were universally opposed to anything that seemed to cut into their profit margins. This isn’t anything new today, nor was it in 1902, when the coal miners of the country went on strike, threatening to not only halt the machinery of American Industry, but to literally freeze the country to death for want of heating fuel that winter. The tide of power between capital and labor, or more correctly private and public interest, has shifted back and forth for centuries. But the post-Industrial world has seen that balance of power shift almost exclusively into the hands of private interest. FDR worked hard to create economic circumstances that engaged as much of the population as possible in participating in both the productivity and prosperity of the nation. Since then, private interests have worked long and hard to shift as much of that prosperity to themselves as they can. It isn’t practical to make moral judgements about this fact, it is simply a natural law of human behavior: given the opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of strangers, with whom they have no personal ties or empathy, and expecting no social consequences, a significant number of people will do it.

Birds sing, grass grows, and Wall Street makes money.

The problem with this lies in that the balance has been shifted too far towards private interest, for too long. We can say this because we can observe conditions that closely parallel those of the aforementioned periods of economic turmoil. Debt-to-earnings ratios are entirely out of control, large amounts of public money are being used to subsidize extremely high-risk private business decisions, income disparity is close the same levels as the Gilded Age and roughly half of the US economy is now focused on trading paper instead of building goods. And just to put the cherry on top we’re already starting another mortgage bubble, because people have been taught to see their house as a commodity to be traded, rather than a roof over their heads. We have people working more hours, earning fewer dollars, that are worth less, while the price of the basic goods and services they need are climbing, because lax interest rates have driven inflation. And behind it all are the very wealthy private interests which invest billions in buying political campaigns, in order to promote more of the same policies.

Of course, while this is happening, we somehow have an electorate which paradoxically has the greatest access to information, and the lowest levels of education and comprehension, in history. It is tempting to point fingers at the national media organizations, but the real culprits are the voters.

Yes, the voters. Us.

Over the last twenty-some-odd years we have gotten into the comfortable habit of ignoring public discourse and conflicting views which challenge our assertions and assumptions, in favor of conveniently prepackaged, pre-analysed and above all demographically targeted infotainment. It began with the Cable News Network (for those of you too young to remember CNN’s origins) and and spiraled completely out of control since then. There are now just six corporations which completely control all of the information available via the mainstream media, and this gives them the power to control what the content of our national discourse is.

Ah hah, some of you are now saying, I don’t have to rely on the Big Six, I can use the internet! Bravo, you; now take a quick turn around your browser of choice and take a look at what the most prominent search results for current events are. You will notice that, baring your particular local news, they are all covering the same dozen or so stories, from one of approximately five points of view: far left outsider, left insider, centrist/moderate, right insider or far right outsider.

Viewed another way: HuffPo, MSNBC, CNN, FOXNews and Breitbart.

And you are perfectly fine with this, because you can look at that list and pick one of them out, saying to yourself, well, those guys get it mostly right. Damn near every single voter in this country (and most non-voters) are convinced that their particular view of public policy is unambiguously Right. As a result, we don’t take the time to hear what each other are saying, and so we have no idea about the frustrations, fears and needs of our fellow citizens. We are complicit in our atomization and alienation from one another, and the absolute worst part of this is that we are proud of it.

It doesn’t matter if the discussion is about climate change or confederate statues. One half of this country simply assumes that their prejudicial caricature of the other is all there is to them. Does anyone really believe that the overwhelming majority of angry white men who tried to start a riot in Charlottesville, Virginia were actually upset over the removal of a statue that most of them had probably never known was there a week earlier? Of course not. Most of those guys are worried about their jobs, their homes, their families and their economic stability in general. But those issues aren’t being discussed, and when someone brings up those realities, they get dismissed with words like ‘privilege’. As if, somehow, being white and male makes any given person immune to the exact same economic turmoil that has ravaged everyone else in this country for the last thirty-some-odd years.

Yes, the statistics matter. Yes, white males are as a group less likely to have been damaged by globalization, the mortgage bubble, student debt, etc. But that only means that the number of those who’ve been damaged is smaller, not that they are each less damaged as individuals. And why does that fact matter? Because when lump all white males in a box, and ignore their individual circumstances, you are alienating them. You are saying that their needs and fears don’t matter and denying them a stake in society. And as a result, you turn them into an enemy. Worse, the very small number of actual reactionaries can them recruit these people. This is exactly how ISIS does it.

This is exactly how the Nazis did, and still do, as demonstrated in Charlottesville. These guys listen to and sympathize with the genuine racists and Nazis, because nobody else is listening to them or giving them a stake. And the same is absolutely true of women, Millennials, Latinos, Christians and every other demographic subset in the United States. You can’t just try and sweep them up into a bloc and hang a two word label them. You can’t just speak to people’s identity; you must address their actual, concrete needs.

Women are more than a set of reproductive organs; they need jobs that pay a living wage. African-Americans are more than the descendents of slaves; they need comprehensive health care, now. Latinos are more than exploited migrant labor; they need education to provide their children better opportunities. And literally everyone needs us to stop sending our sons and daughters to kill and die in foreign countries.

All this means we have to actually step outside our echo chambers, leave our social media bubbles, and make the effort to hear what someone is saying, rather than what we’re assuming about them. We have to work, hard, at correcting our ignorance of our fellow citizens, and stop being proud of it.

Both of these two points, about the corruption and imbalance of economic power and the atomization of the electorate, form the foundation of my tremendous frustration with the Democratic Party in the wake of the Trump Presidency. I would have thought that the general decline in party membership as a percentage of population should have indicated that they needed to make a serious course correction in their policy positions and agenda. I cannot avoid pointing out not only their inability to defeat a narcissistic reality television personality with all the vocabulary and maturity of a cranky five year old, but the fact that they lost the faith and loyalty of the working class voter in three of the states hardest hit by forty years of Republican economic policies.

And so, I return to the fight in earnest. The concept of ‘the resistance’, as it it spoken of by the current Democratic Leadership, is laughable at best. Have we forgotten that the Republicans were ’the resistance’ during the eight years of the previous administration? This accomplished little, and now they’ve swept into power again, we can see how much work they actually put into developing eventive policies to put into the legislative process. For the Democrats to follow this exact same playbook at this point isn’t just insufficient, it is positively counterproductive. The fact that instead of developing a platform oriented around the clearly Progressive push in modern American politics, they want to attempt to garner votes with a rebranding campaign, does nothing to inspire enthusiasm for them. It seems, in fact to fly in the face of Chuck Schumer’s New York Times piece. He started signaling that the Party was ready to change tack and move in line with the now more left leaning electorate, but such an agenda, with definable, concrete objectives, has yet to manifest.

The new slogan for the new brand (A Better Deal) is vague, undefined and is very obviously the product of a corporate focus group trying to evoke the legacy of FDR without committing to the actual policies he put in place. Aside from wondering how much they had to pay Papa John’s Pizza to forego legal action, the first question that any reasoning American citizen should ask is, ‘Better than what?’

Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick?

[oldguardaudio]

Rush Limbaugh Explains -> Charlottesville Was an Organized Crisis Democrats Didn’t Let Go to Waste

Rush Limbaugh Combat the Drive-By Media at HoaxandChange.com

rush obama shadow government against trump at HoaxAndChange.com

Rush USA Flag at HoaxAndChange.com

Aug 15, 2017

  RUSH: I think the mayor of Charlottesville took a page out of the book from the mayor from Baltimore. What was her name? Forget her name. Remember where she said — what was her phrase? Give them space. Give them room so they can get it out of their system, give them space.

Look, the police were ordered to stand down in Charlottesville. Somebody wanted that to happen, folks. The police were told to stand down. The police are saying, “No, no, no, no. We were retreating to go get our riot gear.” Well, why didn’t you show up in riot gear? If you retreated to get the riot gear, why didn’t you come back with the riot gear on if that’s where you went?” They were ordered to stand down.

I’ll tell you something else. I think all of this is organized, folks. I think Terry McAuliffe, in fact, was trying to use this whole episode to launch his presidential bid and he botched it because he doesn’t have that big ability to get noticed. I mean, this is a pretty big deal. This is what Democrats do. This is what Clinton, Oklahoma City bombing launched the rebirth of his presidency. The Democrats see a crisis and found out how they can benefit from it while making people think they’re trying to fix it or solve it. And I think McAuliffe was doing the same thing.

Remember Rahm Emanuel, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste? I think not so much there are people that wanted this to happen but knew it was going to and so let’s see if we can milk it. And in order to milk it, it had to happen. And in order for it to happen, the police have to stay out of it. As the NYPD said, “It wouldn’t have had have happened here. We wouldn’t have let these two groups get within eyesight of each other. And we certainly wouldn’t let some renegade car enter this whole scene.” Somebody wanted it to happen, or somebody knew it was gonna happen and didn’t want it to stop because they wanted to try to capitalize on it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, if I didn’t have this every day — this microphone — I’d be as hog-tied, frustrated as you are. And I am. I am. I just I acknowledging I have an outlet for it here. But, folks, all of this — this is all organized, and it isn’t anything new. The same people that rallied after Hurricane Katrina are this bunch. The same people were in Ferguson. They’re the same people that rallied in Oakland. These are the same people that have been around for at least since the Bush administration protests.

Occupy Wall Street. It’s the same bunch of people, just moving from protest to protest and march to match. It’s the same bunch of people. Now they do have their true believers, don’t misunderstand. I mean, there’s plenty of poisoned-minded college kids out there who have been brainwashed and literally poisoned with hate for their country, and they’re there. But I’m telling you, the organization for this is the same. It’s being done on purpose.

It’s not spontaneous. It’s being done on purpose. It is reported as though it’s all spontaneous. It’s reported as though, “Everything was peaceful and everything was tranquil — until some people decided to march in Charlottesville to oppose the tearing down of the Robert E. Lee statue, and that is what ignited the flame.” That’s the exact opposite of how this is all happening. It’s the left that is thoroughly organized and bought and paid for and is essentially on call, if you will.

They are on standby. Few people would probably know that or acknowledge it, even if told, because the way it’s reported makes it all look spontaneous, makes it look like… Well, just look at Indiana. Mike Pence signed into law the Religious Freedom Protection Act. Remember how immediately there was a massive statewide protest against Pence and the Illinois legislature as a bunch of racist homophobes, Christian zealots?

The media shows up — the national media — and they start knocking on business doors trying to find a business that would admit it would not cater a gay wedding. They finally — in some suburb of a suburb — found a 22-year-old daughter of a pizza owner, “I — I — I wouldn’t. I — I don’t think I would,” and they just descended on this poor pizzeria and this young woman, and they just painted her out to be the modern incarnation of evil. That was all planned and action waiting in the shadows for the go signal.

But it’s reported as though it is a national outrage! “The people of America are beside themselves at the idea we need to preserve American history! The American people cannot stand the idea that there’s a Robert E. Lee statue anywhere, and they side with the leftist protesters that want to take them down.” That’s the way it gets reported. You’re being lied to — we’re all being lied to — every minute of every day in the form of what they tell us is news, which is really just the narrative that is the advancement of the leftist agenda.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, folks, Hillary Clinton has just given $800,000 from her campaign fund to the Trump resistance movement, which is what’s funding all of these rent-a-thugs. It’s all a left-wing movement, and it’s all organized.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yeah, I’m looking for a story. I had had it right here at the top, and I’m gonna find it. Peter Beinart in The Atlantic magazine had a story before Charlottesville happened, and it’s all about the danger of the violence that’s coming from the American left today. I’m stunned that The Atlantic ran it, but again they ran it before Charlottesville happened. And I just had it, and I showed it to Snerdley here just moments ago. But this is what happens, things accumulate and stack up on top of each other, and it’s here somewhere.

But, anyway, before I find those things there’s another piece here about: “Think Things Will Be Rosy for Democrats in 2018? Not So Fast.” Dan Balz in the Washington Post. This is also an interesting piece, and it’s along the lines of the piece that ran in November of 2011 when the Democrats acknowledged they’re getting rid of white working-class voters.

But I want to get back to Charlottesville here on the theme we had earlier that the mayor played a role in the police department there standing down. The Washington Free Beacon is reporting that the Virginia state police say they were not outgunned in Charlottesville despite Terry McAuliffe’s claim.

Now, I just want to reiterate a theory of mine. I’m not suggesting that any of these people made this happen or orchestrated the event. I think they knew it was gonna happen and sought to capitalize on it. I think it’s why the police were told to stand down. Terry McAuliffe wants to be president. He’s thinking of seeking the Democrat presidential nomination for 2020. And I think he was gonna launch his candidacy from this event. He tried to, and the fact that you haven’t heard about it is an indication how poorly he did and how badly it went.

But it’s right out of the Rahm Emanuel playbook: Never let a good crisis go to waste. I’ve been saying since yesterday, in any of these events, you ask yourself who benefits? There’s always a benefit here, because this is organized, these protests, these riots are all organized and have become strategic. They are tools that the American left, the Democrat Party is using to basically transform the country, to essentially take it over, making it look like they are nothing more than the representatives of the popular opinion of the country.

It’s one of the greatest scams that we’ve seen being run. The media is complicit and makes it happen. Terry McAuliffe in the aftermath, in order to explain why didn’t the cops do anything? Why did the cops stand down? It’s a big deal. And McAuliffe came out and said, “Well, the riot cops and the state police were outmanned, they were outgunned. I mean, these Nazis and these white supremacists, they had military grade ammo and weapons.” Really?

Well, it’s what McAuliffe told the New York Times Sunday. He said the right-wing protesters had better equipment than the state police and that that accounted for part of the reason police took what critics have decried as a hands-off approach. McAuliffe said, “Hey, it’s easy to criticize, but I can tell you this. Eighty percent of the people here had semiautomatic weapons. You saw the militia walking down the street. You would have thought they were an army. I was just talking to the state police upstairs. They had better equipment than our state police had. And yet not a shot was fired, zero property damage.”

So he’s trying to claim credit here. The Nazis and the white supremacists were a militia. And they had better weapons than the state police. Now, wait a minute. All of a sudden Democrats likes Terry McAuliffe are saying the police are not sufficiently armed? I thought the Democrat Party was the party that believed the police were vicious, mean, racist pigs. I thought the Democratic Party thought the problem was that the cops have guns and that there’s too much militarization going on in police forces. But now all of a sudden Terry McAuliffe wants more of that.

Terry McAuliffe, the governor, wants the police to be more militarized. Well, that’s not what they were saying after Ferguson and Baltimore. So why have they changed their tune? Anyway, this is not true anyway. There weren’t any firearms visible in any of these video clips that we’ve seen and some of the still shots. The idea that the white supremacist nationalists and the Nazis had semiautomatic weapons and were more deeply armed than the state police? That’s just a bit of a stretch.

And from the Associated Press. “Experts: Police Response Inadequate at Charlottesville Rally.” So this theme is picking up. Now we have a flashback. Let’s go back to August — not a flashback, actually. This is a story from August 14th. I don’t understand what the flashback is here. It’s from The Daily Caller. “Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer declared the city the ‘capital of the resistance’ at a rally held in January following the election of President Donald Trump.” Oh, I see what the flashback is here. They’ve got it dated today but the event happened back in January. So the mayor of Charlottesville, guy by the name of Mike Signer, said that Charlottesville is the capital of the resistance.

He said this in public at a rally in January after Trump was inaugurated. Signer — maybe he pronounces it Signer. I don’t know. Again, I’m not trying to mispronounce it. I just haven’t heard it pronounced and it looks like it’s Signer, Signer. If I’m mispronouncing it, please don’t be distracted by that.

“Signer organized the rally to announce his plans to ‘resist’ the Trump administration by providing legal assistance to immigrants and directing the Charlottesville’s Human Rights Commission to address reports of xenophobia or racism.” This is right after Trump’s inaugurated. Look at what this mayor is already presuming. Charlottesville’s Human Rights Commission to address reports of xenophobia or racism? He also said “he was considering violating federal law by making Charlottesville a ‘sanctuary city’ for illegal immigrants.

“The rally was reportedly attended by hundreds of citizens as well Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim American soldier died in combat in Iraq, who chastised Trump for his proposed Muslim immigration ban in a speech at the Democratic National Convention.”

I’m telling you, folks, all this is organized. The mayor of Charlottesville has been getting ready for this ever since Trump was inaugurated. “January 31st, 2017, Charlottesville mayor holds rally to declare city capital a resistance.” That’s from the NBC affiliate WVIR. So don’t doubt me on this one.

And then we have another story. This is a flashback from The Daily Caller: “How Obama Handled Racial Nationalist Attack.” And this is about the Black Lives Matter demonstration in Dallas where an avowed black nationalist murdered five police officers during a Black Lives Matter demonstration.

“The act of violence was well-planned and was motivated entirely by the hate-filled ideology of the shooter, Micah Xavier Johnson. With several officers dead by the hand of a committed black nationalist, one might think the Obama administration may have considered the assassinations domestic terror and launched an investigation into groups associated with this ideology.”

But he didn’t. He did condemn the shootings, but he did not call out or even allude to the hateful views of the shooter. You know what he did you know? You know how Obama dealt with the murder of five Dallas cops? You remember? He blamed “powerful weapons” for the violence. Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, “exploited the tragedy to push for gun control and praise the cause of Black Lives Matter. No mention of Johnson’s ideology or ‘hate’ in was made in her statement.”

Now, Trump and his team have been urged to speak out against the so-called Alt-Right from the get-go. I never heard of this Alt-Right, by the way, until sometime late last year. And when I was first asked what it is, I didn’t know. I couldn’t answer it. I don’t know what the Alt-Right is. It seems to me the left has defined the Alt-Right as white supremacists and Nazis, so forth and so on.

Rush Limbaugh Explains -> Charlottesville Was an Organized Crisis Democrats Didn’t Let Go to Waste Rush Limbaugh Explains -> Charlottesville Was an Organized Crisis Democrats Didn’t Let Go to Waste Aug 15, 2017…

[mikeo56]

The Feuding Kleptocrats

The Trump kleptocrats are political arsonists. They are carting cans of gasoline into government agencies and Congress to burn down any structure or program that promotes the common good and impedes corporate profit.

They ineptly have set themselves on fire over Obamacare, but this misstep will do little to halt the drive to, as Stephen Bannon promises, carry out the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Donald Trump’s appointees are busy diminishing or dismantling the agencies they were named to lead and the programs they are supposed to administer. That is why they were selected. Rex Tillerson at the State Department, Steven Mnuchin at the Treasury Department, Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency, Rick Perry at the Department of Energy, Tom Price at Health and Human Services, Ben Carson at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Betsy DeVos at the Department of Education are eating away the foundations of democratic institutions like gigantic termites. And there is no force inside government that can stop them.

The sparing of Obamacare last week was a Pyrrhic victory. There are numerous subterfuges that can be employed to cripple or kill that very flawed health care program. These include defunding cost-sharing subsidies for low-income families, allowing premium rates for individual insurance to continue to soar (they have gone up 25 percent this year), cutting compensation to insurers in order to drive more insurance companies out of the program, and refusing to enforce the individual mandate that requires many Americans to purchase health insurance or be fined. The Trump administration’s Shermanesque march to the sea has just begun.    

William S. Burroughs in his novel “Naked Lunch” creates predatory creatures he calls “Mugwumps.” “Mugwumps,” he writes, “have no liver and nourish themselves exclusively on sweets. Thin, purple-blue lips cover a razor-sharp beak of black bone with which they frequently tear each other to shreds in fights over clients. These creatures secrete an addictive fluid though their erect penises which prolongs life by slowing metabolism.” Those addicted to this fluid are called “Reptiles.”

The addiction to the grotesque, to our own version of Mugwumps, has become our national pathology. We are entranced, even as the secretion of Trump’s Mugwump fluid repulses us. He brings us down to his level. We are glued to cable news, which usually sees a huge falling off of viewership after a presidential election. Ratings for the Trump-as-president reality show, however, are up 50 percent. CNN, which last year had its most profitable year ever, looks set in 2017 to break even that record and is projecting a billion dollars in profit. The New York Times added some 500,000 subscribers, net, over the past six months. The Washington Post has seen a 75 percent increase in new subscribers over the past year. Subscriptions to magazines like The New Yorker and The Atlantic have increased.

This growth is provoked not by a sudden desire to be informed, but by Americans’ wanting to be continually updated on the soap opera that epitomizes the U.S. government. What country will the president insult today? Mexico? Australia? Sweden? Germany? What celebrity or politician will he belittle? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Barack Obama? John McCain? Chuck Schumer? What idiocy will come out of his mouth or from his appointees? Can Kellyanne Conway top her claim that microwave ovens that turned into cameras were used to spy on Donald Trump? Will DeVos say something as stupid as her assertion that guns are needed in schools to protect children from grizzly bears? Will Trump make another assertion such as his insistence that Obama ordered his phone in Trump Tower to be tapped?

It is all entertainment all the time. It is the result of a media that long ago gave up journalism to keep us amused. Trump was its creation. And now we get a daily “Gong Show” out of the White House. It is good for Trump. It is good for the profits of the cable news networks. But it is bad for us. It keeps us distracted as the kleptocrats transform the country into a banana republic. Our world is lifted from the pages of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” in which the “eternal” dictator was feared and mocked in equal measure.

The kleptocrats—and, now, those they con—have no interest in the flowery words of inclusivity, multiculturalism and democracy that a bankrupt liberal class used with great effectiveness for three decades to swindle the public on behalf of corporations. That rhetoric is a spent force. Barack Obama tried it when he crisscrossed the country during the presidential campaign telling a betrayed public that Hillary Clinton would finish the job started by his administration.

Political language has been replaced by the obscenities of reality television, professional wrestling and the daytime shows in which couples find out if they cheated on each other. This is the language used by Trump, who views reality and himself through the degraded lens of television and the sickness of celebrity culture. He, like much of the public, lives in the fantasy world of electronic hallucinations.  

The battle over health care was all about the most effective way to hand money to corporations. Do we stick with Obamacare, already a gift to the for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical industries, or do we turn to a sham bill of pretend care that gives even more tax cuts to the rich? This is what passes for nuanced political debate now. The courtiers in the media give the various sides in this argument ample airtime and space in print, but they lock out critics of corporate power, especially those who promote the rational system of Medicare for all. Health care costs in the United States, where 40 cents of every health care dollar goes to corporations, are double what they are in industrial countries that have a national health service. This censorship on behalf of corporations is the press’ steadfast lie of omission. And it is this lie that leaves the media at once distrusted by the public and complicit in Trump’s fleecing of America. When we are not being amused by these debates among corporate lackeys we listen to retired generals, all making six-figure incomes from the weapons industry, selling the public on the imperative of endless war and endless arms purchases.

Trump understands the effectiveness of illusions, false promises and lies, an understanding that eludes those in the Freedom Caucus, many of whom want to do away with health care systems that involve government. If the ruling kleptocrats strip everything away at once, it could provoke an angry backlash among the population. Better to use the more subtle mechanisms of theft that worked in Trump’s casinos and his fake university. Better to steal with finesse. Better to strip the government on behalf of corporations while promising to make America great again.

The kleptocrats, whatever their differences, are united by one overriding fear. They fear large numbers of people will become wise to their kleptocracy and revolt. They fear the mob. They fear revolution, the only mechanism left that can rid us of these parasites.

They are perverting the legal system and building mechanisms and paramilitary groups that will protect the kleptocrats and oligarchs when the last bits of the country and the citizens are being “harvested” for corporate profit. They don’t want anything to impede the pillage, even when climate change forces people to confront the reality that they and their children may soon become extinct. They will steal despite the fact that the ecosystem is collapsing, heat waves and droughts are destroying crop yields, the air and water are becoming toxic and the oceans are being transformed into dead zones. There will be hundreds of millions of desperate climate refugees. Civil society will break down. They won’t stop until their own generators have run out of fuel in their gated compounds and their private security forces have deserted them. When the end comes they will greet it with their characteristic blank expression of idiocy and greed. But most of us won’t be around to see their epiphany.

The kleptocrats have placed all citizens under surveillance. This is by design. They sweep up our email correspondence, tweets, web searches, phone records, file transfers, live chats, financial data, medical data, criminal and civil court records and information on movements. They do this in the name of the war on terror. They have diverted billions of taxpayer dollars to store this information in sophisticated computer systems. They have set up surveillance cameras, biosensors, scanners and face recognition technologies in public and private places to obliterate our anonymity and our privacy. They are watching us constantly. And when a government watches you constantly you cannot use the word “liberty.” The people’s relationship to government is that of slave to master.

The kleptocrats have used the courts to strip us of due process and habeas corpus. They have constructed the largest prison system in the world. They have militarized police and authorized them to kill unarmed citizens, especially poor people of color, with impunity. They have overturned the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which once prohibited the military from acting as a domestic police force, by passing Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act. Section 1021 gives the kleptocrats the power to carry out extraordinary rendition on the streets of American cities and hold citizens indefinitely in military detention centers without due process—in essence disappearing them as in any totalitarian state. The kleptocrats have handed the executive branch of government the power to assassinate U.S. citizens. And they have stacked the courts with corporate loyalists who treat corporations as people and people as noisome impediments to corporate profit.

This omnipresent surveillance state and militarization of the forces of internal security are designed to thwart popular revolt. These tools are the moats the kleptocrats have built to protect themselves from the threatening hoards. Full surveillance, as political philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, is not a means to discover or prevent crimes, but a device to have “on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” The most innocuous information will be twisted and used by the kleptocrats to condemn anyone considered a threat.

The kleptocrats, in the end, have only one real enemy: us. Their goal is to make sure we are mesmerized by their carnival act or, if we wake up, shackled while they do their dirty work. Our goal must be to get rid of them.