#but at least it’s a clear message about how dangerous institutional cults can be to healthy development when they disrupt it

[gch1995]

Hey, fun fact! The word isn't "attachment" in those Eastern beliefs, that is the closest English equivalent that could be had one of the dozens of times it's been grossly on trend to appropriate the shit out of numerous non-Christian religions in Western societies. It was an exceptionally poor choice on Lucas' part to not come up with an in-universe word/phrase or keep it to fully stating "selfish attachments." As it was an exceptionally poor to show us parallel stories of how to raise an emotionally healthy human and how to do exactly the opposite, while giving us a Jedi Order that explicitly states and demonstrates exactly what it means by "attachments," which is any manner of emotional attachment as any such attachment can become negative, and more importantly (something found in so many religions), will always come before the group's well being. Human beings with attachments that are emotionally and biologically normal will always put their loved ones before institutions, ideologies, and ideals. This is exactly why so many religions have always had their priests, priestesses, monks, warriors, etc. be committed only to the belief system and community, not allowing marriage and children and sometimes requiring removal from family, friends, and original community. Just, you know, in societies that have an awareness of healthy development in children, protective laws regarding children, that generally look down on cults, and know what adult agency is, we stopped thinking it was appropriate to remove children for lifelong induction into orders and it's got to be an adult decision that one can change their mind on without experiencing exile or execution.

It was shortsighted and tastes a bit like unintentional appropriation, but at least in justification of the former, it was meant to be a narrative understood by children. We see that love wins and that there is good love and unhealthy love, and it's literally that simple and that complex. It's that badly told, that well told, and that unintentionally well backed up in its own material in how both happened. By turning it into "well, ACTUALLY, you just don't know that Lucas meant..." and having every primary character he created drastically changed to justify that, all that's accomplished is giving a message that is contrary as hell to the one we were given.

I mean, is it shocking that they kept shitting on Luke? No. For one thing, this guy has to end up being disney's Luke in the ST, that's his trajectory. For another, look what they did to Han Solo, a guy whose whole arc in the OT had to be obliterated to make Kylo possible. That did not bode well for anyone. They're going to do whatever they retroactively need to do in order to make their own shit make sense and to "fix" the things that weren't loved about Lucas' saga.

Yep, Lucas definitely engaged in some cultural appropriation of Eastern religion with the Jedi Code. However, regardless of his intentions, what we got was a story in which healthy love in a normal human being can easily be morphed into unhealthy love in their adulthood when their natural healthy emotional development as children is suddenly disrupted by a religious soldier cult who tells them ambition, anger, close attachments, love, family, and individuality is “dangerous,” “greedy,” “selfish,” and “wrong” over and over again throughout their formative years, and refuse to give them that healthy emotional support and freedom they once had as children when they try to reach out for it.

Then, in the OT movies, we see that Luke Skywalker had a full, healthy, safe, and normal childhood before getting involved with the Jedi, so he’s not afraid to stand up for himself, and he knows how to form healthy attachments, which allow for him to be able to save the day for love of family and friends.

While Anakin does hold responsibility for his crimes as an adult, he was selfish, and no one forced him to turned on the Jedi in that moment in Revenge of the Sith, I always thought diminished responsibility was more appropriate than just holding him entirely accountable because, yeah, his sanity of mind is not all there. His agency is deeply compromised to ever feel safe doing better. He has every symptom of poorly treated/severely neglected C-PTSD, OCD, and several of BPD. He genuinely doesn’t believe he has much of a choice but to obey Sidious and all these corrupt and abusive authority figures throughout his life because they essentially do hold his and/or his loved ones lives in their hands. Anakin’s been conditioned to be obedient to corrupt authority his whole life. He’s been a soldier in battle for over thirty consecutive years of his life, and thinks the only way to be safe is by being a good weapon, a good protector, or a good tool for others. At least in the original canon.

Anakin’s options for healthy support and safe escape from the living hell that is his life of abuse, manipulation, oppression, and warfare generally come down to decisions between right vs wrong with him having to pick between life or death and danger or safety of self and/or loved ones. Yes, he became a coward, but there also was never a safe option for him to do better. Killing and war crimes become like a unhealthy compulsion for him to survive Sidious by taking his orders, as a release for anxiety, and release for other negative emotions in the moment. It’s not presented as this long-term or premeditated thing on his part that he recognize the horror with full clarity of mind. While he knows that doing these awful things ultimately doesn’t make him feel any better in the long run, he does keep getting taught throughout his life by these corrupt authority figures that committing these acts of abuse, warfare, and murder are “necessary” to survive. His views of right vs wrong are being manipulated by abusive and corrupt authority figures in these two space cults most of his life from which escape is highly risky, so his moral judgement is skewed.

Yet, Anakin also is still guilty because he did pretty much give up trying after he went dark until Luke came along, and he did have a conscience. While his agency was compromised, his love for Padme did absolutely become selfish when he went dark. Thus, he still had to pay for his crimes. He doesn’t get the happily ever after with his wife and kids after going dark and hurting his wife in a blind rage as punishment. He doesn’t get to make it up to the entire galaxy for being a mass murderer and war criminal against them over the past 23 years at the end of RotJ, just Luke, who he dies saving because he realized his love for his son was greater than his fear of Sidious.

Disney was trying to recreate that same sort of tragic backstory with Ben Solo/Kylo Ren of villain with compromised agency to feel safe doing better, but, in my opinion, they forced it too much and made it feel unbelievable. It’s not realistic. Palpatine has to be brought back from the dead, and his interest in corrupting Ben Solo for the dark side is so great that he infiltrates his mind? What? Anakin’s agency was severely compromised to feel safe ever doing better, but the narrative also made it clear that he still had a choice to do better, even if he didn’t believe he had and/or deserved one after being groomed for years by abusive and oppressive corrupt authority figures and feeling too afraid to do the right thing. Thus, he is still held as responsible for his crimes. Anakin’s actions and choices were his own, regardless of the poor emotional/mental stability, the force being a metaphor for a drug addiction, lifelong oppression of abusive authority, lack of safe opportunity for escape to anything better, and limited to nonexistent healthy support. His agency was deeply compromised, and his motivations understandable. However, ultimately the Jedi Order and Palpatine didn’t force him to commit mass murder against them in Revenge of The Sith, and, while there was no safe escape, Anakin also is guilty for giving up on trying to fight the dark side after going dark.

With Ben Solo/Kylo Ren, his family and friends treated him well, he came from a wealthy and famous family, and Luke didn’t stop him from seeing his parents. However, the narrative wants me to buy that it’s not at all his fault he became an asshole since Palpatine infiltrated his mind, influencing his actions and thoughts from childhood, and Palpatine told him he deserved more kindness and power from his family and friends, even though he was already getting it from them on the light side? Too much agency is taken away from Kylo, and his family and friends are too good to him for me to believe that he would actually fall for Palpatine’s lies of them trying to “hold him back” or “make him weak.”

While he was wrong to commit murder of the Jedi Order for Palpatine in his desperation to avoid abandonment and getting hurt, Anakin wasn’t wrong to grow to distrust and resent Obi Wan and the Jedi Council because they genuinely were moral hypocrites who treated him like crap. Yoda ran the Order like an emotionally abusive/oppressive cult. Obi-Wan was an emotionally negligent, misguided, and toxic guardian, friend, and mentor who usually sucked up to Yoda to try to get on the Council, even if that meant throwing people he cared about under the bus and living in total denial to do it. The Council was using Anakin as a pawn to commit treason against the Chancellor when they suspected he was a Sith without the entire Chamber’s consent or knowledge. Yoda, Obi-Wan and the other Jedi adults he grew up with were enabling and perpetuating the biddings of a classist, corrupt, and hypocritical Republic head of government that enabled and supported slavery and oppression on the outer rims, while blindly claiming to support “democracy,” so they were going down either way.

Yeah, Palpatine deceived and manipulated Anakin, but he also was influenced to turn on the Jedi Order and Republic because the way they were running genuinely did suck. They genuinely did compromise his agency to feel safe doing better. It doesn’t mean they deserved for Anakin to participate in murdering the whole Order for Palpatine, nor are they directly responsible for his actions and choices as an adult, but you can tell the Obi Wan and the Council did heavily contribute to Anakin’s fall to the dark side. They did give him valid reasons to distrust and resent them and feel afraid by being emotionally/psychologically abusive, manipulative, and oppressive.

There is no real evidence that Ben Solo has of his uncle, his parents, and the other Jedi being awful. It’s just Sidious’s lies, which makes for a far less compelling and relatable motivation. It makes it seem like he’s just a delusional and entitled brat who wants power for shits and giggles.

Why is Palpatine suddenly so intent on fucking up the Skywalker family? Yeah, Anakin was a good weapon for him, who perpetrated his crimes, but he still wasn’t really necessary for his rise in the long run. He was just an added bonus and opportunity for him to be lazy. Not to mention that there’s not much organic or realistic lead up to Ben Solo being an asshole, or a compelling motivation like there is with Anakin.

The Kylo Ren we are introduced in TFA is an entitled, narcissistic, and self-aggrandizing manchild with no redeeming qualities. He was his uncle’s favorite student. He got to keep in touch with his family back home after going to train as a Jedi. He’s upset about being overindulged by his uncle because he thinks that means he’s not really earned his place as a Jedi, even though he’s made a lot of friends in the temple. How is it even possible for Sidious to be back from the dead? Also, why does Rey ever suddenly like this asshole at all? They spend most of their time fighting, and Kylo Ren was just abusing, torturing, and stalking Rey the whole time. Most of the time it’s abusive and in the end it feels forced.

As for Luke, he is really out of character in the ST movies, but especially in The Book of Boba Fett. Lucas intended for him to be the guy who broke the toxic cycle of his predecessors with that whole “no attachment” bs. No one expected for his new Jedi Order to be perfect, but Luke actually enforcing that “no attachment” bs rule that he knows helped fuck up his dad and the last Jedi Order is entirely out of character. This is the same man who grew up with healthy attachments to family and friends and learned the importance of having personal agency to make free choices without being pressured. The stuff that is now labeled Legends material is more true to his original characterization.

Of course, there are still many fans trying to defend this OOCness of Luke, Anakin, Obi Wan, Leia, and Han in Disney Star Wars, the old Jedi “no attachment” rule, and all the other retcons. It’s not what Lucas actually intended, but since when have any of these Disney SW fans ever respected GL’s original story? They wanted a a story of simplistic good vs evil tropes between the Jedi and the Sith that the original Star Wars saga never fit, and Disney is trying to give them that, and recycle all of Lucas’s original stories.

[route22ny]

The split-screen reality of the Trump era became all too real for Stephen Richer recently, and in a very literal way. On May 15, the Arizona election official — a Republican — was looking at two computer screens. On one was former President Trump’s claim that a key election database had been deleted, an “unbelievable election crime.” On the other screen was that very database, quite intact.

“Wow,” Richer tweeted. “This is unhinged. I’m literally looking at our voter registration database on my other screen. Right now.”

A couple of days later, he made his dismay even more explicit.

“What can we do here?” he asked in an interview with CNN. “This is tantamount to saying that the pencil sitting on my desk in front of me doesn’t exist.”

When Richer unseated a Democratic incumbent to become Maricopa County’s recorder in November, he thought he had won the most boring job in politics: maintaining the county’s voter files. But he had not reckoned on Trump, #StopTheSteal, and the most massive, audacious and successful propaganda campaign in modern American history — a campaign that has adapted Russian-style disinformation to U.S. politics with alarming success.

Fortunately, Richer and his local Republican colleagues have refused to be victimized. Instead, they have shown how to fight back.

Information warfare takes many forms, but it has an overarching goal: to divide, demoralize and disorient a political foe by manipulating the social and media environments. As Yuri Bezmenov, a Soviet intelligence defector, explained in a chilling 1983 interview, “What it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their family, their community and their country.”

One potent weapon of mass distraction is the “fire hose of falsehood,” a torrent of lies that aims not so much to persuade as to confuse and disorient. After Russian intelligence services got caught poisoning a defector and his daughter in the U.K. in 2018, the Russian government responded with a blizzard of mutually contradictory lies: Britain did it, Ukraine did it, a jealous lover did it, it was a suicide attempt and so on.

Another standard technique: conspiracy bootstrapping. First you spread a rumor. Then you demand an investigation. Failure to investigate just confirms the conspiracy, but so does an investigation with a negative finding. It’s a trap: either ignoring or debunking the conspiracy theory propagates it.

Those techniques are not new. Intelligence services and propaganda experts understand them well, and master propagandists like Josef Goebbels and Vladimir Putin have used them to powerful effect. What no one imagined was that they could be deployed by an American president and his party — and not against a foreign antagonist, but against the American public.

Pundits often say that, whatever his authoritarian tendencies, Trump is too inept and inattentive to have done much lasting damage to democracy. They are wrong: In the realm of information warfare, Trump is a genius-level innovator. It was he who figured out how to adapt Russia-style disinformation to the U.S. political environment, no mean accomplishment.

His use of the fire hose of falsehood was masterly. In his 2016 campaign, according to PolitiFact, 70% of his checkable claims were false or mostly false, a flood of untruths whose like had never been seen in a presidential campaign. He began his presidency by lying about the weather at his inauguration and also lying about the size of the crowd. By the time his presidency was over, Washington Post fact-checkers had clocked him at more than 30,000 confirmed falsehoods, with nearly half coming in his final year.

Similarly, he was a master of conspiracy bootstrapping. He retailed conspiracy theories and falsehoods on the grounds that a lot of people were saying them, although of course he was the sayer-in-chief. Truth and common decency need not apply; when a prominent cable news host criticized him, Trump peddled an absurd (and deeply cruel) lie that the host was suspected of murder.

The black arts of disinformation had the intended effect, at least from Trump’s point of view. They exacerbated the country’s divisions, commandeered the country’s attention, dominated his opponents, disoriented the media and helped him establish a cult of personality among followers who trusted no one else.

Still, he saved the worst for last. His pièce de résistance was the propaganda attack on the 2020 election. Beginning months before the election, he launched a drumbeat of unfounded attacks on mail-in voting. Pundits were puzzled. Many Republicans vote by mail, and the pandemic was especially dangerous to older voters who lean toward Trump; why discourage them from voting safely and conveniently?

But Trump was aiming for the post-election. He saw he was in electoral trouble. With the anti-mail campaign, he was organizing, priming, and testing an unprecedented propaganda network, ready for use if he lost.

And then came #StopTheSteal itself, a disinformation campaign whose likes the country had never witnessed. It mobilized the White House, Republican politicians, social media, conservative cable news and talk radio, frivolous litigation, and every other available channel to broadcast the message that the election was rigged. The Big Lie, as it was aptly named, failed to keep Trump in office, but it succeeded at its secondary goal: turning the Republican Party itself into a propaganda organ.

In April, only a fourth of Republicans believed Joe Biden was legitimately elected, and GOP politicians who insisted on truth were persona non grata.

With that as background, we can see more clearly what is going on right now in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest. In 2020, Biden carried Maricopa by more than 45,000 votes, and with it the state. The result was certified by the Republican governor, double-checked twice by the county’s election officials, and then confirmed by two independent audits.

But in classic bootstrapping fashion, Trump and state Republican leaders seized on conspiracy theories, such as that phony ballots had been smuggled in from Asia, to launch an unnecessary recount conducted by an unqualified company whose boss had promoted uncorroborated charges of election fraud. In textbook fashion, the controversial recount drove yet more public attention to the conspiracy theories, engendering yet more suspicion and spawning me-too demands for partisan “audits” across the country.

The Arizona shenanigans will not change the outcome of the 2020 election, but that is not the point. A great propaganda campaign is cyclonic and self-propelled: once unleashed, it takes on a life of its own, heedless of any underlying reality. By that yardstick, the Arizona recount is a great propaganda campaign.

Americans have never been exposed to Russian-style disinformation tactics, at least not coming from a major political party and deployed on a national scale. We are thus dangerously vulnerable to them. What can we do? There are no quick or simple answers; developing immunity requires everything from more sophisticated journalism and better-designed social media platforms to teaching media literacy, and much more.

But here is where to start: Do what Stephen Richer did. Insist loudly, unwaveringly and bravely on calling out lies, even at the cost of partisan solidarity.

Once it became clear that the #StopTheSteal campaign was escalating instead of dying out, Richer went public with a no-holds-barred denunciation of what Trump and his enablers were up to. “Just stop indulging this,” he told CNN. “Stop giving space for lies.”

At his side were all five of the Maricopa County supervisors — four of whom are Republicans. Calling the recount a sham, a con, and a “spectacle that is harming all of us,” they declared they “stand united together to defend the Constitution and the republic in our opposition to the Big Lie. We ask everyone to join us in standing for truth.” They also wrote a blistering 14-page letter shredding the alt-audit in detail.

Propaganda attacks succeed when critical points of resistance collapse; they stumble when trusted voices expose lies for what they are. Individuals and small groups may not be able to shut down a propaganda campaign or neutralize all its effects, but they can strip away its facade of legitimacy and act as an anchor against runaway fabulism. That was why the Soviet Union struggled so mightily to silence Andrei Sakharov and other dissident voices, and why those voices ultimately brought down the evil empire.

And it is why Rep. Liz Cheney made a difference when she chose truthfulness over her job in the Republican congressional leadership. The day she was booted, she read her colleagues John 8:32: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” She could not end #StopTheSteal, but she could, and did, dent its credibility and embarrass Republicans whose equivocation and silence abetted the Big Lie.

In the same way, Richer and his colleagues in Arizona laid down a marker. They risked their political standing and even their personal safety (Richer has needed security protection) to expose their own party’s propaganda and shame those who spread it.

The deployment of Russian-style information warfare has allowed Trump and his authoritarian cult to usurp the Republican Party. And they are not finished. Now that they have succeeded with mass disinformation, it will be a fixture of American politics for years to come.

Countermeasures begin, though do not end, with personal integrity: standing up for facts and staying reality-based, whatever the short-term political costs. Think of it as epistemic patriotism, and pray for more of it, especially from Republicans.

***

The author, Jonathan Rauch, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the author of “The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth.”

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-arizona-dreaming-20210522-uyd6ivuv75hd5gof2geyd5adtu-story.html

[agentsokka]

Davekat Fic Recs [P2]

Continuation of my Davekat fic rec list from ye old 2016. An absolute metric shit ton of Damn Good Fics™ have dropped since then, and it’s criminal I haven’t updated that original list in so long. 

As per usual with these things, you won’t find much luck here with smut content. Some stories feature scenes, but for the most part, the fics themselves aren’t exclusively about such.

Cheers!

[Oneshots]

English is Full of Really Shitty Metaphors: You knew you probably shouldn't stay on a planet mostly inhabited by trolls once you finished your adult pupation and your blood color became more apparent. You also knew that you should learn a couple of other languages so that your weren't floundering around like an idiot when you eventually did move. Talking to random aliens on the internet seemed like a really good way to practice.

Fatalistic Humor, or, Jokes to Make Post-Mortem: ‘Head over heels’ is an appropriate turn of phrase because falling in love is exactly like throwing yourself down an endless staircase of inconvenient emotion.

i’m at the combination dunkin donuts & urgent care: Karkat Vantas is convinced beyond a doubt that his neighbor is some variety of murderer, until they actually meet in person. Highlights include blood at the laundromat, Dave's weird obsession with candles, and a box of shitty swords.

In Which a Loser is Sick: IN WHICH A LOSER IS SICK AND TRIES TO DENY IT, A TROLL IS ALSO A LOSER AND TRIES TO DENY IT, PISSING PANTS IS DISCUSSED IN THE SAME LINE OF CONVERSATION AS CALMING DOWN, VRISKA IS MENTIONED BECAUSE OF COURSE SHE IS, SOUP IS MADE AND SUBSEQUENTLY IGNORED, AND AN ACT OF AFFECTION IS REPAID BY THE WEAKENING OF AN IMMUNE SYSTEM. Dave gets sick and Karkat takes care of him.

Pretty Friggin’ MATRIMONIAL: Karkat is planning the proposal to end all proposals, but a clueless Dave has plans of his own.

Rumination: Dave and Karkat do some thinking, talking, kissing, and cuddling. Not necessarily in that order.

Self Sabotage and Other Symptoms of a Damaged Soul: Ok so everyone knows Dave and Dirk had a long amazing talk that presumably ended with Dave asking him for advice on the Being Not Straight stuff. My problem is, Dave also spent three years with his gloriously gay twin sister on a fucking space rock while he was right in the middle of coming to terms with all this stuff. So I wrote this mostly to reconcile the gap I think exists there, with a bunch of other Dave centric stuff thrown in with it.

Shitty Punchlines are the Purest Form of Self-Deprecation: Laying somewhere solidly post-credits and wondering, when do we start feeling like winners? Or is that not part of the package? Where's our fucking GameFAQs guide to navigating these stupid first steps into an eternity processing whatever the FUCK just happened, here? Going through that door was supposed to fix everything. Wasn't it? What's it going to take to fix ourselves?

Sleepwalk: Dave has unfortunate nocturnal habits. Karkat handles them better than anyone might've expected.

Start at the Beginning: Don't stop until eternity. And even then. (Davekat, meteor to can land to earth c and on. Happy anniversary.)

Sweatertown - Population: Two: Dave's cape gets hijacked, but Karkat knows what to do about it.

Tested: Dave and Karkat want to escape Aperture Science Laboratories.

That Cultural Divide: “Dave,” says Karkat neutrally, “why are they beating him up?” And your mouth runs dry.

Valentine’s Day: Valentine's Day through the three years on the meteor.

What to do When Your Boyfriend is Too Hot: Moving to a new universe and a new paradigm brings a lot of changes. And Dave kind of likes the way things were before, back on the Meteor, when he had Karkat all to himself and didn't spend sleepless nights waiting for the shoe to fall.

[Multichap]

About a Time I Failed: A doomed timeline AU. Instead of trolling John, Karkat finds himself scrolling through Dave's entire timeline. He is horrified by what he finds, and ends up in a pseudo-friendship with somewhat reluctant Dave. The story spans the rest of this timeline- Dave and Karkat's budding internet romance, the beta kids becoming friends, the start of SBURB, and, eventually, all of them realizing that Dave and Karkat's diversion from the Alpha Timeline has doomed them all. [Incomplete]

And it’s a Downward Spiral from There: One day, the whole world is going to acknowledge you as that one guy who finally made contact with aliens, but if you had known that getting drunk was going to lead up to abduction, a potential probing, and becoming the worst cult sacrifice this side of the galaxy, you probably would have just stayed at home. [Ongoing]

Astronomy in Reverse: Dave and Karkat are intergalactic pen pals, originally paired together for an extra credit school outreach project. Now, three years of correspondence later, they're best friends... and Karkat is finally immigrating to Earth. [Ongoing]

Breathe: Your name is Dave Strider, and there's nothing good about John and Rose changing schools. Without your twin sister and best friend, you've been left socially crippled at school, and barely coping at home. You're nearly certain that your mental health has been slowly spiraling downhill. You have no clue how you'll last the year to high school graduation. In all this, there's just one single ray of light. Your name is Dave Strider, and there's nothing good about John and Rose changing schools. Except for meeting Karkat Vantas. [Ongoing]

**The Calm is Terrifying When the Storm is All You’ve Known**: There were two kinds of trolls who went to Earth: rich shitheads with too much money and free time, and desperate assholes who couldn’t survive on Alternia, even with the best efforts of the young Condesce. Karkat hated the planet almost immediately, but with his home planet too dangerous for mutants, he really didn’t have any choice but to hide out on this weird little diurnal planet. At least he’d be safe. Or so he thought, right before blundering his way into an accidental friendship with the son of an anti-troll terrorist. Slow burn, shifting perspectives; romance really isn't the focus here but it'll still play a significant part; extra content warnings will be posted with each relevant chapter. [Ongoing] [y’all I’m serious read it it’ll water your crops and clear your chakras it’s Good Shit]

cold desert: Curiosity killed the cat. It probably just wasn't as good at being nosy as Dave is. [Ongoing]

Demon Eyes: In which Dave goes in to kill a demon for his bro, and things...don't exactly go as planned. [Ongoing]

Doc Scratch’s School for Supernaturally Gifted Adolescents: One minute you get a mysterious message from a man who types all in white like a jackass, and then the next thing you know you're being whisked away to a mystical school for kids with superpowers. If you weren't Dave fucking Strider, this sort of thing might bother you. [Ongoing]

Fortuitous: Dave and Karkat build a pillow fort and an unexpected chain of events occurs. [Ongoing]

If I Lose Everything in the Fire: The Kaiju - or Horrorterrors, as the trolls call them - first invaded Earth through a transdimensional rift at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Serving the Condesce in her quest to add Earth to the Alternian Empire, these monsters have terrorized humanity for twelve years. With the help of rebel troll factions and the adaptation of Alternian mind integration technology - The Drift - the Interspecies Defense Program has fought back as the last line of defense between the Kaiju and Earth. Karkat Vantas was a Jaeger pilot, fought for freedom in the Assault on the Breach that brought trolls to Earth. The loss of his co-pilot left him bitter and full of rage, but desperate times have lead to him being recruited to join the fray once more. Dave Strider is the best and brightest the Interspec program has to offer. Jaeger Restoration Project Head, highest simulation score on record, and younger brother of the Deputy Marshal - except he's not allowed in a Jaeger. Nobody expects them to be Drift Compatible. [Ongoing]

i'm sick of the things i do when i'm nervous: Two idiots poke at recovery with a stick. [Complete]

IN WHICH TWO SETS OF HUMAN BROTHERLY BONDS ARE ESTABLISHED, SEVERAL CORRUPT INSTITUTIONS OF MORALITY ARE IDEOLOGICALY DEMOLISHED, A DOG WITCH USES GOD POWERS TO MESS WITH EXQUISTELY CAREFULLY PLANNED INFRASTRUCTURE PLANS FOR SOME TREES LIKE A JACKASS--: --APPROXIMATELY A BILLION FUCKING CONSORTS AND CHESS PEOPLE, ALONG WITH A LOT OF USELESS GOD MODED LAYABOUTS ARE LEAD TO SUCCESSFUL COLONIZATION AND ESTABLISHMENT BY A SUCCESSFUL AND COMPASSIONATE LEADER, AND LONG-SUNDERED SOULMATES TORN APART BY FEAR AND DEVASTATING, MIND-BOGGLING STUPIDITY ARE REUNITED AT LAST BY A WISE, COMPASSIONATE BOSS / GUIDANCE FIGURE AND HIS LOYAL, EFFICIENT RIGHT-HAND MAN. THERE ARE AT LEAST THREE CRYING SCENES, TWO KISSES, AND OVER TEN TOTAL MINUTES OF REAL-TIME DESCRIPTION OF LONGING GAZES AND TENDER HUGS. 2 RESOUNDING ENDORSEMENTS OF BELOVED MUNICIPAL OFFICIALS. PRIMERS ON HUMAN/TROLL INTERSPECIES ROMANCE. THIS TEXT IS SUGGESTED SCHOOLFEEDING MATERIAL FOR ALL REASONABLY GROWN HATCHLINGS GAZING OUT ON THE BLIGHTED WASTELAND OF THEIR PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS, WISHING THEY WERE DEAD, AND DESPERATELY YEARNING SOMEONE WOULD CLUE THEM IN ON JUST WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON. RATED 8(17)+ AND UP. [Complete]

M.C. Escher that's My Favorite MC [It’s the End of the World as We Know It]: Dirk has a plan, when he's 18 he's going to take Dave and get him the fuck out of their terrible lives and start over. Until then being the barrier between Dave and Bro is his only job, his soulmate is just going to have to wait goddamnit. Dave has a plan, it involves getting internet famous and not going gay, easy right? Karkat also has a plan, to repeatedly track down his dumb as rocks soulmate and get him to actually talk to him for fuck's sake. [Ongoing]

Midnight’s Son: Dave Strider's father, a prominent detective, is tasked with infiltrating the Midnight Crew. Dave, worried about his father's safety, decides to do a little undercover work of his own and tries to befriend the boss's son, Karkat Vantas. [Complete]

Nothing Risked, Nothing Lost: Try as he might, Dave remembered nothing from the first four years of his life. There were three signs of imminent upheaval. First, the King of Derse disappeared without a trace. Second, the Queen of Prospit dropped dead. The third sign was the return of long-lost royalty. Not like any of this was Dave's concern. Not the war between Prospit and Derse, not the horrorterrors of the Furthest Ring, not the failings of some dumb monarchs. He was a nobody. Not like Rose, a bona fide Seer of Light. He wasn't sure why she wanted them to go to Derse, but he followed her, anyway. Like he always did. [Hiatus]

Off Court: Your name is Dave Strider, and a hospital wasn’t the setting you had imagined when you thought of seeing your twin again. Your name is Karkat Vantas, and having Terezi drag you around her weird human legislacerator training probably wasn’t the worst way you could spend the rest of your sweeps. And then you meet him. [Ongoing]

Palisades, Palisades: In your memories, you see Dave Strider, fourteen-years-old and made up of lean muscle and awkward limbs that he would still need a few years to grow into fully. Crows surround him, all cawing impatiently, vying for the chicken sandwich in his backpack. He swears loudly as he swings a stick at them, trying to get them to leave him the fuck alone. “Stupid feathery assholes,” he’d always complain once he finally shooed them away. You tear yourself out of the memory. You miss him, and you hate yourself for it. [Complete]

The Red Thing: The first time you ever realised there was something wrong with you, you were two sweeps old. You still remember it like it was just yesterday. You were at the playground in your then-community, which you had long since moved from. You’d been playing ‘tag’ with some of the other young trolls, but had tripped and scraped your knees. One of the other troll’s custodial guardians had noticed what had happened, and wandered over to make sure you were alright. You don’t think you’ll ever forget the look on her face when she picked you up and saw the mutant-red seeping through the knees of your pants. Things spiraled downhill quickly after that. You’d never quite understood what was happening when you were young, but you’d known that you’d become an outcast. Other trolls around you started to avoid you. Sometimes they’d throw things at you – food, stones, anything that might hurt you. Other times, they’d call you names – mistake, mutant, freak. You preferred when they tried to hurt you. At least then you could fight back. [Ongoing]

space cowboy disaster zone: Your name is Karkat Vantas, and these nights you eke out a quiet living on Antoren-3, helping around the Caltira Inn or scavenging out in the rust plains. It’s a simple life, and the only excitement you get for the most part is from the stories of other scavengers, a handful of bar fights, and the occasional salvageable wreck. Fresh wrecks, you’ve only seen a handful of times, and when John spots the telltale streak of light from a distant crash in the middle of a rust storm, you’re eager to get first dibs on whatever it might contain, the elements be damned. You don’t expect a survivor. [Ongoing]

Stepping Stones: A series of vignettes concerning the evolution of the relationship between Karkat Vantas and Dave Strider. Or, the troll title: IN WHICH DAVE AND KARKAT DISCUSS THE VARIOUS DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HUMAN AND TROLL GENITALS, THERE IS AN AWKWARD CONFESSION OF EMOTIONS, DAVE AND DIRK FINISH THEIR CONVERSATION ON THE ROOFTOP, DAVE GETS SOME ADVICE FROM A FEW OF THE LADIES IN HIS LIFE, AND THERE IS A SMUTTY EPILOGUE. [Complete]

The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Dave was silent. YES. YOU. The voice answered him before he even had a chance to speak up and voice his confusion or curiosity with a lack of delicacy only a child was capable of. It had a harsh way of speaking, brash enough to be rude and so loud the sound of his voice practically echoed off his skull. In it he could feel the rich, crimson flow of blood, the drip, drip, of molten lava degrading stone so ancient not even the gods of old would have lived to see it form. A being so old, so vast, that even to speak his name would grant one with immeasurable power. It made him shudder, little hands clenching into fists against rough stone. HUMAN CHILD. In which Dave is alone and Dragons exist. Shenanigans ensue. [Ongoing]

Stow Away: Calm and collected, that's Dave Strider. The docking station around him is chaotic and loud but he is like ice, cool and clear. None of that is true of course, but nobody is looking closely enough to notice the way his hands shake and his eyes dart around underneath the opaque plastic of his vintage sunglasses. Dave Strider sneaks on board an Alternian ship in an attempt to flee his shitty situation on Earth. This is the first of many questionable decisions. [Complete]

Time Displacement: Side A: After the events of the game, Dave wakes up in a universe that is familiarly unfamiliar. Sburb didn't happen, all their guardians are alive, and Bro is...different. [Ongoing]

Transcend: Dave doesn't get troll romance, but that's okay because Karkat is bad at it anyway. A journey through all four quadrants and a bit more. [Complete]

[onbeliefpod]

On Legal Threats

Since March, I’ve been working on a limited series podcast called On Belief: A Podcast About Cults. It has been uniquely rewarding as a project: I have learned new things every day, I’ve been the recipient of endless generosity, and I’ve been given a unique opportunity to help people tell their stories about either covering or surviving groups which engaged in coercive thought reform.

About a month ago, I received a message in the show’s inbox: One of the groups that make up this week’s topic, Large Group Awareness Training, sent me a Cease and Desist.

Among the claims were that I was participating in Defamation Per Se, and that I was infringing upon the group’s copyright.

The letter also contained 12 pages of their own branding information for some baffling reason.

5 lawyers looked at it. Many scratched their heads. All laughed at it.

The episode in question was a series of interviews, some on the record, and some not, sitting on a hard drive. It hadn’t been edited. It’s fairly hard to participate in defamation if the audio in question hasn’t even been imported to GarageBand.

It didn’t stop this group from spending $5 on my Patreon just so they could monitor every episode.

This same group emailed myself and guest Brock Wilbur regarding 2 throwaway lines in the NXIVM episode, which referenced a popular TV show about Russian spies. Again, they claimed, we had participated in/I had enabled a platform for Defamation Per Se. It was Brock’s choice how to proceed. For his own reasons (mostly that the 2 sentences were not material to the rest of the episode) we complied with the legal request.

However, the original letter was still sitting there like a sword of Damocles. Once I published the episode about █████████, they would proceed with whatever legal plans they had, because that’s how this works: Groups that have deep pockets and a chequered past (to say the least!) will use that money to scare people into silence.

What (if anything) was the move here?

Then, and incredible thing happened: more people from other groups in the LGAT category reached out. It soon became clear that all groups in this category follow a similar method to their progenitor.

There was also the matter of *how* the lawyers had discovered I had put out a call for sources: They regularly scour the message boards of Cult Education groups and institutions, looking for actionable speech or potentially dangerous speech (to them.) This is an outrageous abuse.

So the story of █████████ became the larger story of Large Group Awareness Training. Now there are 3 stories from people who have taken seminars from different LGATs.

I’ve also included an explainer at the top of the episode to highlight some of the lengths █████████ will go to to silence people. It’s not Scientology level, but it’s damned close. (Unlike Scientology, they still want to be seen as a respectable business, after all.)

I began to catalogue the numerous pieces of background evidence people had sent me to back up their claims of their time with LGATs. I had episodes of major news broadcasts (including 60 minutes and Barbara Walters) which had been scrubbed from the internet. I had been sent anonymously a French news report, 1 hour of damning evidence against █████████, also mysteriously scrubbed from the internet.

I don’t like bullies. I also don’t have tens of millions to defend against defamation torts. So what do you do?

There is a defense to Defamation called The Small Penis Rule. The Small Penis Rule is basically this: if you create a character in a piece of literature and make that person instantly recognizable to a reader, but you make one part of their description something the person you’re ultimately referencing include something they wouldn’t want to defend in court, you are invoking the Small Penis Rule. If I write a book with a cotton candy haired, disgusting racist who becomes president, but I also talk about how no woman wants to fuck him, I doubt I’m getting a nastygram from Rudy Giuliani. No one wants to have to be deposed for that.

So I have redacted the direct references to these groups, but the experiences are real, verified by an additional dozen or so accounts and documents indicating that the people I interviewed are telling the truth.

If █████████ wants to send me a nastygram, or proceed with legal remedies, they will first have to meet the bar that a) it’s immediately recognizable which group has been referenced and b) that the sources in question have participated in Defamation Per Se. They would also have to defend against the unorthodox means by which they attempted to silence us.

I would like to thank the counsel of █████████, because without their nastygram in plenty of time to edit this episode, we would not have come up with an elegant solution to help bring you this important story.

I absolutely detest bullies.

I hope you listen to the episode, because LGATs not only are on the rise, you probably know someone who has participated in one.

Know anyone who went to a weekend long ‘business seminar’ to become a better leader or communicator? Likely, they were participating in Large Group Awareness Training.

These groups cost a lot of money, so they often seek out partnerships with major corporations which will pay the full fare for interested employees to take the courses. Often, the employers are taken in by the professional-enough looking branding and the ‘medical’ endorsements in the brochures. They often have no understanding of the cult-like operations of these groups.

You can judge for yourself in the episode today whether you believe LGATs are cults, but whether something is a cult, or merely cult-like is splitting hairs. Any situation where you feel pressured by your job into doing something that makes you feel uncomfortable is wrong.

You should not have to tell a room full of strangers at a Marriott that you were raped just so you can get a promotion at work.

You should not have to participate in meditation exercises which make you mentally break down in order to have better relationships with family.

Large Group Awareness Training uses Attack Therapy and victim blaming language to break people down during their training in order for them to feel catharsis and relief when it’s over. This is discredited as a form of therapy by most bodies which govern mental health care.

Large Group Awareness Training companies are also going after a very lucrative growing market: the newly non religious. The fastest growing religion in North America is ‘no religion.’ But it doesn’t mean people don’t still want rules, structure, and community in their lives, and it definitely means they’re willing to pay for it. LGATs are stepping in to fill the void and absolutely howling on the way to the bank.

Here is a list from Wikipedia of LGATs. Members from many of these orgs came forward to talk to me. All of them shared objections with the therapeutic methods and of the limitations put on group members, such as NDAs and rules prohibiting going to the bathroom or for cigarette breaks during the (often 12 hour+) days.

Large Group Awareness training might not be ‘a cult’ in a traditional sense, but it doesn’t matter how religious your Catholic church might be, you’re still allowed to go to the bathroom during a service.

I started this podcast to help people tell their stories of abuse, and I intend to see that through with this episode, even if the names have been redacted and the sources have been given pseudonyms. This story is too important.

If you’d like to listen to the episode, you can do so wherever you get podcasts. The full episodes (Including previous episodes covering What IS a Cult? NXIVM, The Family, Aum Shinrikyo, and Messianic Judaism) are on my Patreon.

I hope you find this episode informative.

To the legal team and executive at █████████: thank you for your support of the Patreon and the genesis for this amazing swag idea:

Swag available here

[republicstandard]

The Guardian's Arwa Mahdawi Supports the Patriarchy and the Victimization of Women

Well friends, it is another day ending in 'Y' and that means there is another feminist moonbat screeching at the sky about guns. Actually make that two but Jessica Valenti doesn't count as newsworthy anymore. Sorry Jess.

Our kids are literally being shot to death by weapons of war, and the government continues to do nothing. ~ Jessica Valenti

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Yes, it certainly appears that after decades of creeping gun control and a Soros-funded PR blitz featuring Teen-Bop Against The Evil Guns that the mean ole gubbermint just isn't doing enough to restrict the rights of people to protect themselves. H.R.5717 is a figment of your imagination. Lex B from the Freebird Forum describes 5717 thus:

Over 10 states looking to institute risk protection orders which authorise the unwarranted seizure of firearms from “dangerous” individuals. People like ex-girlfriends, postmen, welfare agents, mental healthcare workers, family members and others can petition to have your guns remove from your possession without evidence for a minimum of one year and a maximum of a lifetime. This outrageous law is supported thoroughly by the NRA! A bill is being introduced to the federal government to disburse more funds to states which adopt this risk protection measure. Spread this to your family members, friends and acquaintances, whether liberal or conservative. This is one of the most dangerous laws I’ve seen in my lifetime.

If you were under any doubt that the gun control agenda is going ahead full steam, Trump or no, #MAGA or no, this is your wake-up call. The Guardian columnist cries out in pain as she strips your rights.

Staying with the Guardian, Valenti's compadre Arwa Mahdawi describes herself as a Palestinian-Brit in New York; three intersecting aspects of identity that would lead most sane people to be avidly pro-Gun if they had any sense.

British: Strict gun laws don't stop acid attacks, global jihad and criminals using guns.

Palestinian: Having no guns to shoot at the Israelis with is proving a problem.

New Yorker: self-explanatory.

I won't even go into Greater London without at least a fully licensed concealed carry soup-spoon. It's that dangerous these days.

So, what is Arwa's burning issue?

I wrote about how feminism is cynically being used to sell guns https://t.co/ZqEvupaUvG

— Arwa Mahdawi (@ArwaM) May 18, 2018

Yes, it's the heinous reality of all-American babes openly expressing their love for the Second Amendment (and by crimminy it is a beautiful thing- but we'll get to the ladies later). The bee in Arwa's bonnet is that pure, innocent and beloved feminism is being used -used!- to sell guns. Heaven forbid that a cult which has no problem selling pussy hats and infantilizing coloring books be co-opted by women with a different opinion about what a self-determined woman means in 2018.

We begin with the unfounded conflation between "women" and "feminism". It's very easy for feminists to then claim that they speak for all women when they use this simple rhetorical trick. Note: Feminism and women are not the same thing. Will Wheaton is not a woman as far as we know, but he is undoubtedly a feminist. So is that guy who just jumped the shark with Star Wars VIII, you know. That guy who will never know what credibility or talent is. There are probably other male feminists out there too, but who cares.

Firearms, it would seem, have become a feminist issue. Second amendment proponents and the gun industry are using female empowerment, and even the #MeToo movement, to sell their products and fight back against gun control.

Ladies, through feminism you can become empowered! So empowered. Just not empowered enough to take responsibility for your home and your person, because that is actually being exploited by the gun industry. Could you imagine the look on Harvey Weinstein's face if he pulled out his piece and Rose McGowan had pulled out a piece of her own, with a thicker barrel? If we take Mahdawi's view, it is probably for the best that she was raped by one of the most powerful people in Hollywood; because you just can't allow women to become too good at not being raped by the literal physical and financial embodiment of the patriarchy. Maybe I'm a bad feminist, but I fully support the right of all women to shoot rapists square amidships.

When faced with examples of actual rape, the feminist mentality is forced into a paradox. What comes first? The victim, or the ideological need to subvert the dominant paradigm? In her own article, Arwa Mahdawi writes:

Shayna Lopez-Rivas, 23, who recently graduated from Florida State University, also bought a gun after being attacked. Lopez-Rivas grew up in an anti-gun household and always had a negative view of guns until she was raped on campus in 2014. “I had pepper spray, he had a knife,” she said. “I wasn’t fast enough or strong enough.” The first time she picked up a gun, Lopez-Rivas felt empowered. “As much as women are equal to men in every other way, the truth is that in a biological sense we’re not equal. They’re bigger, faster, stronger. We need to find something that is an equalizer. And for me that equalizer was a firearm.”

Arwa's response? Pure feminist sophistry.

It’s important to listen to women like Lopez-Rivas, who have found guns to be empowering. It’s crucial we don’t dismiss their experience. Nevertheless, it’s also crucial that we don’t let gun rights activists cynically exploit women’s rights to sell more guns. While firearms may empower some women, they kill a whole lot more.

Some wags out there might accuse Arwa Mahdawi of literally exploiting someone's rape to make her point in this very excerpt, but that would be uncouth. Correct, but uncouth. In the mind of the feminist, guns are simply part of capitalist patriarchy. There is no question that they are evil, and must all be destroyed- for the women. Actual rape victims like Ms. Lopez-Rivas who have been through hell on Earth are dismissed with a handwave; that they shouldn't be dismissed but, actually, dearie, even though if you had a gun you might not have been raped, the fact that guns also kill women means that you really should be quiet. Sisterhood, Yeah!

Live. Speak. Stand. Run. Carry with Confidence. Ladies, chances are your assailant is gonna be bigger, stronger and faster and that’s why you have @alexoathletica for your gun, your mace, or even your phone. Yeah, you’ve got it covered. #TeamTomi #alexoathletica #NotYourAverageGunGirl

A post shared by Tomi Lahren (@tomilahren) on Mar 22, 2018 at 5:54pm PDT

Hey, it's that Tomi Lahren girl from the TV who says stuff. Seems like she entirely agrees with the assessment of Ms Lopez-Rivas that according to the most horrifying field test imaginable, men are stronger than women and shooting a rapist is a good tactic that may prevent your rape. Mahdawi's response?

Much of this messaging seems to echo the NRA line that guns empower women.

Well Arwa, maybe -and I mean, just maybe- you could consider the possibility that the NRA are right, just this once? It is a very poor piece of thinking indeed to assume that your enemies are always wrong; not only is that almost certainly not true (except in the case of the Green Bay Packers) but it betrays a certain arrogance in that you consider your own position to be unassailable. Is it so far beyond the pale that the National Rifle Association might have a point?

In the aftermath of this year's school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Loesch also defended guns by arguing that arming women would help them defend themselves against sexual assault. Framing gun rights as a feminist issue feels disingenuous and exploitative when there is a huge amount of research that shows women are more likely to be killed by a gun than saved by one.

Here is the crux of Mahdawi's case- it's one that has been drip fed into the cultural zeitgeist by virtually every liberal media outlet available; and generally it comes down to this utter mess of an assertion. Women are more likely to be killed with a gun than to save themselves with a gun. Therefore, guns are bad for women.

NEWSFLASH. Guns are bad for everyone. That's what guns do. That's why you want to be a competent gun owner when faced with someone with a gun or some other weapon who wishes to do you a mischief. The data this claim comes from appears to stem from this study by the anti-gun Violence Prevention Center. In it, the claim is made that a woman is more than 100 times more likely to be killed with a gun than to save herself with one. The message is clear; save the ladies, get rid of your guns.

Fortunately, it appears that the women of America are smarter than gun-grabbing feminists.

I have no apologies for my graduation photos. As a woman, I refuse to be a victim & the second amendment ensures that I don't have to be. pic.twitter.com/5CKmQobrMb

— Kaitlin Bennett (@KaitMarieox) May 15, 2018

I don’t take normal college graduation photos... pic.twitter.com/eI1NvLFYHs

— Brenna Spencer (@BrennaSpencer) April 7, 2018

Further, Mahdawi recognizes this truth. Female gun ownership is on the rise, and they are buying guns for self-defense. Even with the flawed comparison of all women killed by gun versus all women saved by gun on the table, the result is not less guns, in reality. It is more women making the smart choice that, in a world in which feminists have demanded equality even when there is none, self-defense is a personal responsibility.

According to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey, women are more likely than men to say that the only reason they own a gun is for protection. While 27% of women say protection is the sole reason they own a gun, only 8% of men say the same.

Wyoming: 53.8% of people own Firearms Gun Homicide rate: 1.7 per 100k DC: 25.9% of people own firearms Gun Homicide rate: 18.0 per 100k https://t.co/VtRvV733Bp

— Andrew Quackson🇺🇸 (@AndrewQuackson) May 21, 2018

One might speculate that the breakdown of the nuclear family may have had something to contribute to these figures, which gall Mahdawi so much but please me immensely. It is my suspicion that perhaps if feminists had not been quite so keen on demonizing men and all we stand for that, perhaps, we may see far fewer spinsters needing to defend themselves with firearms; that would be a husband's job, after all.

The gatekeeping by the feminista media denizens is nothing short of anti-woman, anti-liberty hypocrisy. Of course, Mahdawi doesn't give a damn about rape victims, murder rates or women at all. This is a one-hundred-percent ideologically-driven poop-fling from the cheap seats; because it cannot be allowed to stand that pretty girls can responsibly promote responsible gun ownership in an era when pretty girls are kidnapped and murdered by MS-13. In the United States. In liberal Houston. By El Salvadorean Dreamers! It must be that the NRA hates women!

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Ok, let's wrap this one up. Mahdawi has in the past published overtly racist and misandrist articles, whatever this is:

Latest column is on frugality porn, LinkedIn broetry, and condom snorting https://t.co/NfhG0BiDP4

— Arwa Mahdawi (@ArwaM) April 4, 2018

And, of course, literally subverting other people's businesses that she is paid money to do a serious job for with SJW-lite nonsense.

am currently freelancing at an agency, drafting corporate manifestos. have amused myself by peppering manifestos with Black Panther quotes ('build bridges not barriers' etc). unfortunately this has now been found out...

— Arwa Mahdawi (@ArwaM) February 22, 2018

Now I feel bad about picking on Arwa. She clearly can't help it, the Kool-Aid is just too damn strong.

Go buy a gun today, ladies.

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[deniscollins]

China’s Legislature Blesses Xi’s Indefinite Rule. It Was 2,958 to 2.

If you were a multinational business executive with operations in China, what actions, if any, would you take after the national legislature lifted presidential terms limits, enabling President Xi to remain President the rest of his life? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

President Xi Jinping set China on course to follow his hard-line authoritarian rule far into the future on Sunday, when the national legislature lifted the presidential term limit and gave constitutional backing to expanding the reach of the Communist Party.

Under the red-starred dome of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, nearly 3,000 delegates of the National People’s Congress, the party-controlled legislature, voted almost unanimously to approve an amendment to the Constitution to abolish the term limit on the presidency, opening the way for Mr. Xi to rule indefinitely.

The amendment was among a set of 21 constitutional changes approved by the congress, which included passages added to the Constitution to salute Mr. Xi and his drive to entrench party supremacy.

Mr. Xi is using his formidable power to dismantle parts of the political order set in place in the 1980s and 1990s by Deng Xiaoping, who led China on a path of economic opening and liberalization. This includes the system of collective leadership and regular, orderly transitions of power that became the norm after Deng died in 1997.

Mr. Xi “has shown the world that he can scrap decades of institutional building with hardly any public dissent from the elite,” Victor Shih, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who studies elite Chinese politics, said by email after the vote.

Ever since the party said two weeks ago that it wanted to remove the 35-year-old line in the Constitution limiting the president to two consecutive terms, there was never any real doubt that the congress would approve the move. But the lopsided outcome — 2,958 votes in favor, two against, three abstentions and one invalid vote — underlined how much Mr. Xi dominates politics and feels emboldened to demand drastic changes.

The delegates applauded briefly when an official declared the vote was over, and clapped again for 20 seconds when the outcome was announced.

“No disagreements, no different points of view,” Ma Shunnan, a delegate representing the Chinese navy said in a brief interview shortly before the vote. “Every delegate is on the same page.”

Next weekend, the congress is expected to continue that show of lock step support for Mr. Xi by voting him into a second five-year term as president, along with electing a new lineup of government officials.

Sunday’s constitutional amendments marked a victory not just for Mr. Xi’s own ambitions, but also for his quest to entrench the Communist Party at the heart of politics, society and the economy as China ascends globally.

Mr. Xi, 64, has in effect created a new legal basis for ruling for another decade or longer as president, along with holding his other posts as Communist Party chief and military chairman. Without the amendments, he would have been forced to step down as president in 2023, weakening his control.

“Under Xi Jinping, China is making a U-turn,” Susan Shirk, the head of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego, wrote in a recent assessment of Mr. Xi. “Personalistic rule is back.”

The amendments also reflected his goal of expanding party influence across China’s increasingly complex and wealthy society.

One elevated “Xi Jinping Thought,” the catchall term for his ideology, into the preamble of the Constitution, honoring him alongside leaders like China’s founding father, Mao Zedong. Another authorized a new investigative agency to step up the anticorruption drive that Mr. Xi has used to consolidate his control over the party.

“There’s an argument to be made that these are the most fundamental political changes to the Chinese Constitution since it was implemented in 1982,” said Ryan Mitchell, an assistant professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

As delegates streamed from the hall after the vote, several said they hoped Mr. Xi would serve for a third or fourth term. One delegate, Tan Zeyong of the southern Chinese province of Hunan, said Mr. Xi should serve until he was age 78, which would keep him in power until 2031.

“This goes a step further to establish Chairman Xi’s leadership and the Party’s leadership in the country,” said another delegate, Wei Xuefeng from Sichuan Province in southwestern China.

Supporters say ending the term limit will allow Mr. Xi to avoid becoming a lame duck in his second term, and give him added authority to pursue other parts of his agenda: overhauling the military, stamping out graft, reducing extreme poverty and fixing an economy grown dependent on debt and heavy industry.

Shen Chunyao, a legislative official with the congress, told reporters after the vote that it made sense to remove the term limits so that Mr. Xi can continue to steer China as president as well as party chief and military commission chairman. There are no term limits on those latter two posts.

But the decision could prompt a backlash among moderate members of the party elite, who see a dangerous hubris in Mr. Xi’s actions, some experts on Chinese politics have said.

“This is going to cause some serious consternation within certain circles that are not marginal,” said Patricia Thornton, a professor at the University of Oxford who studies Chinese politics. “It’s been clear for some time that Xi doesn’t share power well at all, but it’s also clear to me that he genuinely fears resistance and opposition from within the party.”

Some Chinese people worry that the abrupt change augurs a return to the strife over succession that troubled the eras of Mao and Deng.

“Abolishing the term limit on the leader of state does not make a leader but a usurper,” Wang Yi, a former law lecturer who now works as a church pastor in Sichuan, said via a phone message. “Writing a living person’s name into the Constitution is not amending the Constitution but destroying it.”

This was not the direction that many imagined Mr. Xi would take when he stood at the congress in 2013 to accept his first term as president, soon after he became Communist Party general secretary.

In his first months as leader, Mr. Xi vowed fidelity to China’s 1982 Constitution, which brought in the two-term limit on the president, and paid homage to Deng, the patriarch who had vowed to end lifelong rule so an autocrat like Mao could not re-emerge. Such gestures led some to think that Mr. Xi be would be a relatively mild leader.

Instead, Mr. Xi has proved to be a strongman who now appears intent on at least partially undoing Deng’s political legacy.

“Term limits, avoidance of a cult of personality, and the end of routine political purges — all of these were part of China’s reform-era leaders’ efforts to steer the nation out of the chaos and instability of the Maoist era,” said Carl Minzner, a professor of law at Fordham University in New York and author of a new book on Mr. Xi’s authoritarianism. “As these start to fall like dominoes, the operative question is: What could go next?”

Removing the term limit follows a series of political victories for Mr. Xi, including being crowned “core leader” of the party in 2016. But none of these steps ignited as much astonishment, and disquiet, as Mr. Xi’s decision to end term limits on the presidency. Even most experts who thought Mr. Xi might take that step assumed he would build up to it over several more years.

For now, opposition in China to the constitutional changes has mostly been smothered. Censorship erases much online discussion, and critics have been detained. Many liberal intellectuals and former officials are privately alarmed, but most also seem pessimistic about the potential to rein in Mr. Xi unless a crisis breaks his authority.

Sunday’s vote showed Mr. Xi’s control of the National People’s Congress, which in theory is separate from the Communist Party. The handful of dissenting votes this time was lower than the 45 votes of no and abstentions lodged against less important constitutional amendments in 1999, and the 27 no votes and abstentions in 2004.

Delegates are coached and cajoled by party organizers in meetings that take place away from the television cameras, said Rory Truex, an assistant professor at Princeton University who studies the National People’s Congress.

“The atmosphere was very solemn and dignified,” one delegate, Cai Peihui, said of the discussions about the amendments before the vote. “The democratic process is flawless.”

[gch1995]

I answered your question, @mynameisanakin.

If you guys want to chime in you can. At this point, I’m less angry about all the character assassination and character arc destruction that Filoni and Disney have put Han Solo and the Skywalker family from the OT and PT movies by George Lucas and original EU, and just find it laughable. 😆😆😆 It’s so obvious they don’t really care about being original, staying true to creator intent, or telling a good story anymore. It’s just about money. The Skywalker family was the heart of the George Lucas’s original and prequel trilogies, whether we agreed with them morally or not, their achievements, choices, failures, redemptions, sacrifices, motivations, and relationships made Star Wars a fun and relatable story that was both simple and compelling. When all that character development is thrown away of the originals out of nowhere for absolutely no other reasons than to to pander to the obnoxious prequel haters who always wanted for Vader to be a cartoon villain that George Lucas never intended for him to be, even in the OT movies, to appeal to them and retell the same story that the original creator already told with their mostly bland and ripped off OC characters because they’re too lazy to come up with anything else, of course, the fans of George Lucas’s canon in the OT and PT movies are going to be pissed off. For better or worse, Star Wars was a story about the Skywalkers ultimately changing the galaxy and coming together as a family. Yet, Anakin’s, Luke’s, Leia’s, Padme’s, and Han Solo’s previously established characterizations and meaningful character development is all butchered and tossed in the garbage by Disney to try and “fix” Lucas’s canon and make sense of their current garbage.

If you guys want to chime in you can!

@drygingergood

@beatrice-otter

@grand-duc

@caracynthia

@padme-amitabha

@itohan

@dalekofchaos

@the-chosen-anakin

Hey, fun fact! The word isn't "attachment" in those Eastern beliefs, that is the closest English equivalent that could be had one of the dozens of times it's been grossly on trend to appropriate the shit out of numerous non-Christian religions in Western societies. It was an exceptionally poor choice on Lucas' part to not come up with an in-universe word/phrase or keep it to fully stating "selfish attachments." As it was an exceptionally poor to show us parallel stories of how to raise an emotionally healthy human and how to do exactly the opposite, while giving us a Jedi Order that explicitly states and demonstrates exactly what it means by "attachments," which is any manner of emotional attachment as any such attachment can become negative, and more importantly (something found in so many religions), will always come before the group's well being. Human beings with attachments that are emotionally and biologically normal will always put their loved ones before institutions, ideologies, and ideals. This is exactly why so many religions have always had their priests, priestesses, monks, warriors, etc. be committed only to the belief system and community, not allowing marriage and children and sometimes requiring removal from family, friends, and original community. Just, you know, in societies that have an awareness of healthy development in children, protective laws regarding children, that generally look down on cults, and know what adult agency is, we stopped thinking it was appropriate to remove children for lifelong induction into orders and it's got to be an adult decision that one can change their mind on without experiencing exile or execution.

It was shortsighted and tastes a bit like unintentional appropriation, but at least in justification of the former, it was meant to be a narrative understood by children. We see that love wins and that there is good love and unhealthy love, and it's literally that simple and that complex. It's that badly told, that well told, and that unintentionally well backed up in its own material in how both happened. By turning it into "well, ACTUALLY, you just don't know that Lucas meant..." and having every primary character he created drastically changed to justify that, all that's accomplished is giving a message that is contrary as hell to the one we were given.

I mean, is it shocking that they kept shitting on Luke? No. For one thing, this guy has to end up being disney's Luke in the ST, that's his trajectory. For another, look what they did to Han Solo, a guy whose whole arc in the OT had to be obliterated to make Kylo possible. That did not bode well for anyone. They're going to do whatever they retroactively need to do in order to make their own shit make sense and to "fix" the things that weren't loved about Lucas' saga.

Yep, Lucas definitely engaged in some cultural appropriation of Eastern religion with the Jedi Code. However, regardless of his intentions, what we got was a story in which healthy love in a normal human being can easily be morphed into unhealthy love in their adulthood when their natural healthy emotional development as children is suddenly disrupted by a religious soldier cult who tells them ambition, anger, close attachments, love, family, and individuality is “dangerous,” “greedy,” “selfish,” and “wrong” over and over again throughout their formative years, and refuse to give them that healthy emotional support they once had as children.

Then, in the OT movies, we see that Luke Skywalker had a full, healthy, safe, and normal childhood before getting involved with the Jedi, so he’s not afraid to stand up for himself, and he knows how to form healthy attachments, which allow for him to be able to save the day for love of family and friends.

While Anakin does hold responsibility for his crimes as an adult, he was selfish, and no one forced him to turned on the Jedi in that moment in Revenge of the Sith, I always thought diminished responsibility was more appropriate than just holding him entirely accountable because, yeah, his sanity of mind is not all there. His agency is deeply compromised to ever feel safe doing better. He has every symptom of C-PTSD and OCD. He genuinely doesn’t believe he has much of a choice but to obey Sidious and all these corrupt and abusive authority figures throughout his life because they essentially do hold his and/or his loved ones lives in their hands. Anakin’s been conditioned to be obedient to corrupt authority his whole life. He’s been in war for over thirty consecutive years of his life, and thinks the only way to be safe is by being a good weapon, a good protector, or a good tool for others. At least in the original canon.

Anakin’s options for healthy support and safe escape from the living hell that is his life of abuse, manipulation, oppression, and warfare generally come down to decisions between right vs wrong with him having to pick between life or death and danger or safety of self and/or loved ones. Yes, he became a coward, but there also was never a safe option for him to do better. Killing and war crimes become like a unhealthy compulsion for him to survive Sidious by taking his orders, as a release for anxiety, and release for other negative emotions in the moment. It’s not presented as this long-term or premeditated thing on his part that he can totally self-control with full clarity of mind. While he knows that doing these awful things ultimately make him feel any better, he does keep getting taught throughout his life by these corrupt authority figures that committing these acts of abuse, warfare, and murder are “necessary” to survive. His views of right vs wrong are being manipulated by these two space cults most of his life, so he becomes confused.

Yet, Anakin also is still guilty because he did pretty much give up trying after he went dark until Luke came along, and while his agency was compromised, his love for Padme did absolutely become selfish when he went dark. Thus, he still had to pay for his crimes. He doesn’t get the happily ever after with his wife and kids after going dark and hurting his wife in a blind rage as punishment. He doesn’t get to make it up to the entire galaxy for being a mass murderer and war criminal against them over the past 23 years at the end of RotJ, just Luke, who he dies saving because he realized his love for his son was greater than his fear of Sidious.

Disney was trying to recreate that same sort of tragic backstory with Ben Solo/Kylo Ren of villain with compromised agency to feel safe doing better, but, in my opinion, they overdid it. It’s not realistic, and they took away too much of Ben’s/Kylo’s agency. Palpatine has to be brought back from the dead, and his interest in corrupting Ben Solo for the dark side is so great that he infiltrates his mind? What? Anakin’s agency was severely compromised to feel safe ever doing better, but the narrative also made it clear that he still had a choice to do better, even if he didn’t believe he did after being groomed for years by abusive and oppressive corrupt authority and feeling afraid. Thus, he is still held as responsible for his crimes. Anakin’s actions and choices were his own, regardless of the poor emotional/mental instability, the force being a metaphor for a drug addiction, lifelong oppression of abusive authority, lack of safe opportunity for escape to anything better, and limited to nonexistent healthy support. His agency was compromised, and his motivations understandable. However, ultimately the Jedi Order and Palpatine didn’t force him to commit mass murder against them in Revenge of The Sith, and, while there was no safe escape, Anakin also is guilty for giving up on trying to fight the dark side after going dark.

With Ben Solo/Kylo Ren, his family and friends treated him well, he came from a wealthy and famous family, and Luke didn’t stop him from seeing his parents. However, the narrative wants me to buy that it’s not at all his fault he became an asshole since Palpatine infiltrated his mind, influencing his actions and thoughts from childhood, and Palpatine told him he deserved more freedom, kindness, and power from his family and friends, even though he was already getting it from them on the light side? Too much agency is taken away from Kylo, and his family and friends are too good to him for me to believe that he would actually fall for Palpatine’s lies of them trying to “hold him back” or “make him weak.”

While he was wrong to commit murder of the Jedi Order for Palpatine in his desperation to avoid abandonment and getting hurt, Anakin wasn’t wrong to grow to distrust and resent Obi Wan and the Jedi Council because they genuinely were moral hypocrites who treated him like crap. Yoda ran the Order like an emotionally abusive/oppressive cult. The Council was using him as a pawn to commit treason against the Chancellor when they suspected he was a Sith without the entire Chamber’s consent or knowledge, and Yoda and the other Jedi adults he grew up with were enabling and perpetuating the biddings of a classist, corrupt, and hypocritical Republic head of government that enabled and supported slavery and oppression on the outer rims, so they were going down either way. Yeah, Palpatine deceived and manipulated Anakin, but he also was influenced to turn on the Jedi Order and Republic because the way they were running genuinely did suck and compromise his agency to feel safe doing better. It doesn’t mean they deserved for Anakin to murder the Order, nor are they directly responsible for his actions and choices as an adult, but you can tell the Obi Wan and the Council did heavily contribute to Anakin’s fall to the dark side. They did give him valid reasons to distrust and resent them and feel afraid by being emotionally/psychologically abusive, manipulative, and oppressive.

There is no real evidence that Ben Solo has of his uncle, his parents, and the other Jedi being awful. It’s just Sidious’s lies, which makes for a far less compelling and relatable motivation. It makes it seem like he’s just a delusional and entitled brat who wants power for shits and giggles.

Why is Palpatine suddenly so intent on fucking up the Skywalker family? Yeah, Anakin was a good weapon for him, who perpetrated his crimes, but Anakin wasn’t really necessary for his rise in the long run. He was just an added bonus and opportunity for him to be lazy. Not to mention that there’s not much organic or realistic lead up to Ben Solo being an asshole, or a compelling motivation like there is with Anakin.

The Kylo Ren we are introduced in TFA is an entitled, narcissistic, and self-aggrandizing manchild with no redeeming qualities. He was his uncle’s favorite student. He got to keep in touch with his family back home after going to train as a Jedi. He’s upset about being overindulged by his uncle because he thinks that means he’s not really earned his place as a Jedi, even though he’s made a lot of friends in the temple. How is it even possible for Sidious to be back from the dead? Also, why does Rey ever suddenly like this asshole at all? They spend most of their time fighting, and Kylo Ren was just abusing, torturing, and stalking Rey the whole time. Most of the time it’s abusive and in the end it feels forced.

As for Luke, he is really out of character in the ST movies, but especially in The Book of Boba Fett. Lucas intended for him to be the guy who broke the toxic cycle of his predecessors with that whole “no attachment” bs. No one expected for his new Jedi Order to be perfect, but Luke actually enforcing that “no attachment” bs rule that he knows helped fuck up his dad and the last Jedi Order is entirely out of character. This is the same man who grew up with healthy attachments to family and friends and learned the importance of having personal agency to make free choices without being pressured. The stuff that is now labeled Legends material is more true to his original characterization.

Of course, there are still many fans trying to defend this OOCness of Luke, Anakin, Obi Wan, Leia, and Han in Disney Star Wars, the old Jedi “no attachment” rule, and all the other retcons. It’s mostly not what Lucas actually intended, but since when have any of these Disney SW fans ever respected GL’s original story? They wanted a a story of simplistic good vs evil tropes between the Jedi and the Sith that the original Star Wars saga never fit, and Disney is trying to give them that, and recycle all of Lucas’s original stories.