#but being a leftist and doing leftism is not fucking easy

[phantom-of-the-memes]

The pandemic has truly shown that a big majority of self proclaimed leftists are performative as fuck.

The minute their supposed morals require them to do something that is so MILDLY inconvenient to the them (i.e. wear a mask), it all suddenly goes out the window. This is why us disabled people get left out of the conversation when it comes to leftism.

The beginning of the pandemic, as awful as it was, there was at least some glimmer of hope in regards to disabled rights. For once I saw people I know posting about protecting our lives and the importance of staying home and masking. I was getting tons of support opening up about being disabled and chronically ill.

The thing is though, that this was because they had no other choice! They had to stay home, they had to mask, because it was a mandate! So it was easy for them to think to themselves “wow, I’m so brilliant, I’m doing so much for disabled people”.

When we finally got to go back in person in university, I was so glad to see most people masking. Imagine how gullible I felt the day I walked into the lab when they had removed the mandate the night before, to see not a single person in a mask. Just for some context which makes this even worse; this was a biochemistry/ immunology lab. Our professors were quite literally the ones developing the vaccines in Ireland. Not even they could be bothered to mask.

For the first while my friends would always mask around me because I asked them to. Then it became less and less. They’d pull the ole “omg I’m so sorry I left it at home” shit. Then eventually they stopped giving excuses and just expected me to be ok with them endangering me.

I remember everyone posted about getting vaccinated the first time around. Now as each booster comes out you hear less and less about it, less people getting boosted.

And the pièce de résistance!! Leftist circles… this is the most disheartening. At every leftist gathering/ protest I’ve been to, no one is masking. There’s always this one awkward performative moment where they say some shit about “being mindful of the space you’re occupying”, and they direct people to a box of masks they brought… I’ve never seen one fucker take one. Self proclaimed socialists and communists who “protect the rights of minorities”, don’t give a fuck about disabled people.

They’ll talk the talk, but their actions are so weak. Can’t even wear a piece of fucking fabric on their faces to protect us.

[possession1981-moving]

u know what i’m soooooo honest and blunt on here with most things but that thing about struggling with hygiene making the leftism leave people’s bodies really hit home and like i realized i should be more open with my hygiene struggles bc why should i cate anyway. like a few years ago i would literally shower maybe MAYBE every two weeks. i have just been able to go from showering once a week to showering twice a week in the past couple months with a lot of trial and error to make it as easy as possible for myself. growing up i would have meltdowns and be hit and screamed at and thrown into the shower by my parents when i was still refusing to shower after weeks. this wasn’t just as like a toddler or something. it went on until i was probably 13. showering is so painful and stressful and exhausting and overwhelming for me and i have to plan my entire week around when to shower and sometimes i still don’t have the energy when i planned to do it and then i just have to stay dirty. i’m very lucky in that i have no problem keeping up with face washing and brushing teeth and changing my underwear etc, because many people’s disabilities affect these things as well. however, i am always filled with shame whenever another headline about hygiene goes viral and suddenly everyone’s posting about how disgusting it is to not shower at least once a day, preferably twice. it makes me feel sick to my stomach and it makes me look at myself in the mirror and wonder if people can smell or see the grime on me. especially in the last couple years because for more then 10 years i would basically never ever sweat (apparently it’s a common pots symptom?) and so if i didn’t shower i didn’t think people would actually be able to tell bc i wouldn’t smell. it still made me feel gross but it didn’t make me feel worthless like it does now when i do sweat and i probably do smell sometimes. especially when i don’t have the energy to change my bra and i wear the same sweat-soaked bra for 3 days straight in summer which definitely happens. often. because i’m disabled. i have no choice, because sometimes keeping up hygiene means having to sacrifice the ability to feed myself or go to a meeting. and sometimes it means having to spend the rest of the day in bed. i try very hard with my hygiene, i do what i can to make up for the lack of a full shower, i have periods when i CAN actually shower daily or every other day. but when i can’t, it’d be really fucking nice to feel that i can admit that this is a struggle for me around fellow leftists and not fear the repercussions of being labeled unhygienic and disgusting.

[amysgiantbees]

NOT ME (Spoilers)

God I love it. Hate that it's a hyper-fixation though ATM. WTF am I doing not sleeping over a fucking QL. Everyone cross your fingers that one day I get some fucking meds JESUS

Onto the point:

Love the characters

Everyone can cry SO well! So easy for crying to be awkward or fake looking. But instead they have the jack pot of criers across the whole cast. INSANE

Gun Atthaphan Phunsawat I love you (if they've done anything problematic in their personal life I retract this statement but you could not pay me to give a shit or keep up with actors personal lives so IDK) Goddamn. In the first few episodes I was like, surely Black will be in the coma forever or die because this man can't be scary. He's so perfectly meek and gentle. Then BAM there he comes playing Black PERFECTLY with such intensity! Incredible! They're so nuanced and different.

Screaming for Dan to tell Yod they were threatening his parents. Which by the way ARE HIS PARENTS OKAY???????? Go check on them sir.

Love Tod. I knew in two or three episodes that you were the bad guy but still had fun watching you be rich and slutty with your tits out as I waited for White to catch up. Wonder what his parents are like.

It makes me sad that Black left the gang. I get he doesn't want to be in White's shadow and is FIERCELY independent but I feel like he and White are meant to be together. Or at least in each other's orbits. You have a literal preternatural twin connection. Take it as maybe a sign you should stay together. Also, useful to know when the other is hurt. I'm surprised that there was so little rushing to save the other, especially when Black was being drowned. Black is also SIGNIFICANTLY less feral when White is around. You're good for each other.

Absolutely love that even without anyone else's influence White still isn't a complete saint. He lies and loves to cheat. Much like Black is at first overwhelmingly angry and violent but there's depth and care there clearly as you go. I find it so fascinating that Black, the most aggressively for the cause out of the two arguably, is the one that's friends with Tod. I think that's such a rich dynamic and if there's a second season I'd love for it to be further explored. Also love that White's intelligent and sensitive. Him toughening up doesn't involve him repressing his feelings. More characters (men in particular) should cry.

God it's amazing to have a show seriously engage in leftist theory. Have characters disagree, argue, explain, be intersectional. Usually shows will just have one leftist character that's the but of the joke, or there's a character that's supposed to be leftist but their opinions are so shallow, milk-toast, and surface level either no one could take them seriously or they're not even leftist. It's a breath of fresh air. I liked that the characters weren't perfect in their ideologies but realistically flawed without mocking leftism. It felt like real leftists, some who occasionally have more rage than sense but they're all on the right track.

Loved how Tawi felt like a real business man. He wasn't mustache twirling he was laser focused and if diplomacy was the solution he was going to take it. He was such a realistic slime ball. Rich people do things like hire disabled staff or other positive actions, but Yok's right it's either for publicity or the other harm that they're doing is cancelling that out. The way he'd call staff "family" without finding new jobs for them. So realistic, loved to hate him. Would love to see a second season where he goes to trial or Tod assassinates him.

Absolute slut for art being integral to the plot and not only that the inherent political nature of art.

So glad Dan quit. ACAB. Hope he quits NFT's while he's at it.

Love intelligent women and all but what do you mean Eugene knew the whole time? Then why didn't you confront Black about it before now. That just seemed silly. I liked her figuring it out on her own but she didn't need to have known always.

White and Sean's sex scene still made me uncomfortable. I get he got as far as he could to telling the truth but maybe don't have sex yet then. It's technically rape to lie about who you are.

I wish the women were slightly more involved in the story. Or that there was a second season where they were all a part of the gang (except Nuch. Love her but I can't see her ever joining an illegal organization). Namo already seems like she might have been to the hideout before and Eugene figured it all out on her own. Let them join! They'd be great. Or I could see Nuch, Namo, Gene, Dan, and whoever is writing that news blog being the face of the gang. Organising protests and have lot's of B plots as they have their own group. Community is so important especially in anarchy media.

More episodes in general would have been great. Would have loved to dive into Black more. I think it's really interesting that he's taking law. I wonder if his mother pressured/molded him to follow in her footsteps like their dad did with White? Or if law was his choice. Or if it's both (although he does canonically skip classes a lot, but that could be his rebelliousness or ADHD - I'd love to see more disability rep) I'd love to know more about the breakdown between Tod and Black. How Black got more radicalized. If it was their mother's fault.

I'd love a second season where they get some charges and have to grapple with the legal system. White and Black's dad tries to make it go away to save face. Some people are for him getting them out (or just getting the twins out and letting the others take the blame), live to fight another day style. Some want a trial even if it's unfair for the principle of the thing. Gram might try to defend himself. If he did Nuch would absolutely tell him he's an idiot and then help him.

Would love to have seen or see in a season 2 them advocating for disability rights. Maybe even having a disabled cast member. There was no mention of a disability petition at the protest and it felt somewhat unsatisfactory to end Yok's mother's story with "she has a nice boss now". I'd really love if that was the next issue they tackled. They could have an interpreter at the protest. I'd also love to see one supportive parent. If they could convince her that ROL is cool. Or at least get her to attend a protest, meet up with other sign language users.

I'd also love to know about Gumpa's history. I really feel like the kidnapping was new for him but otherwise he's seen some shit. I wonder if he was part of a group too and what happened to them.

[illnessfaker]

like i cannot imagine unironically saying something as ridiculously absurd as

some people have depression and easy sources of serotonin are in short fucking supply for us and need our comfort media and you saying that we should deny ourselves happiness because you have issues with said comfort media isn't very leftist of you actually

because i'd already done some of the most basic reading into things like psych-critical, anti-psychiatry, and mad liberation at the very same age as the person who wrote this (21). if that's something you can't even be bothered to do before attempting to lecture other people about ableism regarding mental illness on the internet + claiming to do so from a leftist perspective while spouting this absolute goddamn nonsense, you're not being leftist about ableism or mental illness, you're being a fucking embarrassment.

like this is on top of the fact that "leftism" and "comfort media" do not belong in the same sentence. this is such a painfully liberal way of looking at ableism it makes me want to vomit. Mad in America is a free resource and i am begging y'all to utilize it.

[beatnikbedlam]

honestly? modern leftism’s obsession with stuff like “i don’t owe you an explanation,” “you don’t deserve praise for not being racist,” “you need to be constantly vigilant for mistakes or you’ll get thrown to the wolves” makes it EXTREMELY FUCKING EASY for right-wingers who are very good at love-bombing and telling people “you’re fine as you are, you don’t need to change” to get a foothold with people who have no real experience with having to admit they’re wrong. it’s a very hard thing to do if you don’t know how, it has to be learned. but most leftists seem to just expect that everyone else should be able to do it perfectly, even the ones who struggled with it themselves! i hate that ONE PERSON can make a tumblr post like a decade ago saying something like “you don’t owe anyone emotional labor” and then a bunch of dipshits just repeat that shit uncritically for years and make it an entire facet of their personality and now it’s just the dominant mode of thinking on the left without anyone really thinking about the repercussions of what that being a core tenet of your politics will do to things like your ability to reach out to new people

[awesome-therealjesus]

This is a pretty bad faith take that completely ignores the motivation behind most of these "libs" voting Democrat and insisting others do as well.

Politics are fucked in America. The 2 party system does a very good job at holding itself up within our system because the two parties are deeply established at this point. We're not going to "let's all refuse to vote because fuck all of them" that away, and we have to live with the results for 4 years. It's not that Democrats shouldn't be answerable to their voter base, they should. But there are a couple problems created and perpetuated by our system.

First if the Democrat loses, the worse guy wins. I think Democrat politicians love this fact, makes campaigning easier and they don't have to listen to people as much. Sadly, the Democrats benefitting in this gross way does not invalidate the fact that they're the better viable option.

Second, Democrat's base is wildly varying. Republicans have plenty of variety too, but they largely don't care if their politics negatively affect people who aren't them, so as long as Republicans are catering to the one or 2 awful things they care about they're in. Democrats are left with everyone else who isn't far right, which is a very large range of people who very vehemently disagree with each other. This makes it VERY hard for democrats to be answerable to their base because there is no unity in what that base wants.

The praying to God to voting for a politician analogy is interesting and I'd say not incorrect, but also kind of just how voting works. It is not special to "the libs".

I'm getting really sick of seeing this no nuance bullshit leftists keep flinging at each other. The leftists who pushed for voting, are just as bad. Leftism will go nowhere and accomplish nothing if we continue to tear each other down for differing opinions. Especially when doing it in such a way that ignores the meat of the opinion and its motivations for an easy gotcha as opposed to trying to understand one another.

The Right is unified by hate whereas the Left is divided by minor disagreements. We are too busy bickering to get anywhere despite being much further from our goals than the Right currently is.

it’s so funny the way libs talk about US politicians on this site. they aren’t public servants who should be answerable to their voter base or justify their presence in a democratic election, they are basically akin to god and you pray to them and if you don’t get the outcome you like you blame everyone around you for not praying hard enough

[withteeths]

Maybe Steamrolling Games is Bad Actually

Videogames are unique in that they are inextricably tied to corporatism and have been since birth (this is an oversimplification but roll with it). This means that to an extent most companies even since the ’80s have never really cared about proper preservation or easy access to their titles. Nintendo carts were originally manufactured to have their battery die in 3 years so you would have to buy a new one (this failed, but it’s why you still see a lot of dead carts floating around). I think there's a nostalgia issue within the gaming fandom regarding "oh x was great back then" but a lot of the time, games manufacturers have been historically shitty and anti-consumer and it’s just that they now have the tools to execute it much more effectively. Regarding obtrusive DRM, that’s an issue PC games have had since their zenith, where if you lost your original copy of a manual or a small plastic key you could never play a game again because the codes were individualized for each copy and support would refuse to give you a new one. Even back in the arcades, there were particularly batshit examples like the CPS board, which I shit you not was built to explode a battery pack filled with corrosive acid if it detected you were attempting to repair or modify it. There’s a lot to say about the current state of games but what I would likely illustrate is that 2/3 major consoles are racing to decide who will be obsolete first. Games consoles are reaching a point where they are trying to emulate PCs with more restrictions and DRM. We're already seeing interest in steam spike again and it’s likely that eventually, we will see almost a crash for consoles where no one can justify the price for games they can play on a PC rig. The only solution I see there would be a merger between the two consoles which feels inevitable. 

That being said as interest in the PC space increases again so does attempts at entering the bubble. We have Epic, Origin, Microsoft, Indiegala, Itchio, and Steam all vying for attention, requiring accounts, and offering exclusives to justify the use of their storefront over others. Some people think this is a good thing because it's breaking up Steam's monopoly but it literally is not, if you ever really wanna hear me rant ask me about Leftist obsession with itch being some sort of ethical steam, which it is provably not. In the end, the real sort of saviour figures that work to preserve games are random ass people on the internet. I know people who automatically assume that at the end of the day, companies care about games preservation too, and they usually have a three-pronged argument that cites a) Steam’s ability to allow the redownloading of delisted games, b) retro companies periodically rereleasing titles for modern consoles in compilations, and c) companies doing limited reruns of a game that fans request. All three of these examples are basically an incredibly effective use of diversionary tactics, but most of the time when someone cites these I just assume it’s a misunderstanding and not outright malicious intent because a lot of the time companies will attempt to actively implant these ideas to build brand loyalty.

My main dissertation is usually that Steam is incredibly selective with what titles you can redownload, and most importantly, corporate benevolence is more-so a band-aid on a gaping wound! There’s no contingency for when Steam might migrate to a new service, go belly up, or become obsolete when a new OS is created. That means thousands, tens of thousands of dollars worth of games are just gone, permanently, along with fan mods, DLC, and content. It’s a terrifying thought that not many people bring up when discussing the problems with game storefronts that focus so much on providing a cloud and have DRM attached to every purchase. In a way, Steam preceded the trend of not allowing consumers to actually own the things they purchased, and they’ve avoided criticism by strategic use of silence and creating the illusion of a company being made by the consumers they’re attempting to serve. At the end of the day, Steam is a business, and if you ever lose access to your Steam account, or they decide to up and leave one day, you will not be able to play almost all of those games, even if you have them installed on a hard drive, because if you’re online, they connect with a server to ensure your steam account has the ability to play them. When it comes to other arguments like the limited rereleases or use of compilations to preserve arcade titles, I usually just beg people to look at community-driven options that have existed for years. The Scott Pilgrim game is a big source of contention, but I would point out that for years now, it was playable, for free, with all the DLC, on PCs. Preservationists didn’t wait for the gods of Universal and O’Malley to rerelease it for 30 bucks or save up to snatch the fucking ridiculous 200$ limited edition with shitty paper cut-outs, they straight up just did the work to make the game free and available. RCPS3 has (with a contemporary build) been able to run the game pretty flawlessly for years now, in fact, it was how I played through a majority of the game in high school on my shitty brick of a laptop. If you look further out than this one example then it gets even better, MAME and other emulation backends have been able to play obscure, unfinished, and homebrew titles with 100% accuracy, on almost any setup, for free, for decades! I found out about many of these options back in 2015 or so, certainly late to the curve, but I never really questioned as to why emulation, games preservation, and some key titles being available on PC remained some sort of arcane, unknown knowledge to most people interested in games. In the end, the answer was a highly effective propaganda campaign that combined with strategic use of DMCA takedowns has resulted in the concept of communal games-preservation and emulation becoming some sort of debate, where people will wholeheartedly side with corporations in some sort of quest for preserving things the “ethical and correct way,” which is code for preservation on the condition that it remains profitable for the IP owners.

 I think the best way to illustrate this would be with the community built around the preservation of an infamous PS4 title, PT. The story of its inevitable delisting from the storefront and the messy breakup between Kojima and Konami is well known, so I won’t regurgitate it, look it up at your own leisure. What is significant here is corporate reactions to attempts at preserving the game, which can basically be boiled down to Konami acting with borderline rabid fervour to prevent redownload, redistribution, or recreation of a seven-year-old demo, released for free download. Mentions of solutions to redownload the game have been taken down, fan-made recreations for PC, and archival servers that store a copy of the game for future preservation or emulation. Usually when this is brought up a debate occurs citing that technically speaking, Konami has a right to do this whenever they want, for whatever piece of media they believe infringes on their copyright. On one hand, yes this argument is factually correct considering the current state of copyright and ownership of media, but on the other hand, what compels someone to step into the ring for a multi-million dollar company with the primary argument being “well actually, people SHOULDN’T be able to play this specific video game until it benefits the shareholders”? In my opinion, it’s some sort of corporatized symbiosis where players believe that, if you cull the bad actors and play by the rules of the company, you may be able to eventually play the game a couple of years down the line. Sure, this has happened in the past with a few isolated cases, but it can’t be stressed enough that this is a genuinely dangerous and reductive position for people to take regarding games preservation.

 I have two colleagues, Mariken and Fotocopiadora, who released a short interactive title called Videopulp (playable here: https://fotocopiadora.itch.io/videopulp). It’s a dramatic reimagining of a real historical event, wherein a promotional event was held in 1994 at Lelystad to destroy bootleg carts by a figure in a Mario costume. This perhaps best encapsulates something I am pleading with younger generations to understand, as an archivist, art historian, and creator: corporations are not your friends, and they never will be. With the rise of online circles of leftism, this concept is starting to gain traction but is starting to be polluted with concepts of fandom and tribalism. This has lead to arguments that while *most* corporations are bad how could you say that about Nintendo? Or Valve? Mario is so innocent and characters like Wheatley are beloved by all! I feel some people don’t realize that they can enjoy a select title or character without enlisting in a corporate faction in the battle for “best company” or “best videogame”. It leads to a parasocial kinship with a nonexistent figure that was hand-crafted to ensure consumer loyalty to a certain brand. It’s depressing, terrifying, and should stand as a disquieting example of how the grip of capitalism on works of art has permanently distorted how we think and engage with media today. So, what’s the solution? As always I can never really provide something concrete that’ll act as a cure-all, only things that people in games need to work towards. Bring up conversations about games preservation, create archives for your own work, support archivists and boost their work whenever a new discovery is created, and try to promote optimism and solidarity in your hobbyist communities. I’ve noticed a lot of futility being intertwined with the future of AAA gaming, use of online storefronts, and the inability to own pieces of media anymore, and I feel this should be pushed back against, even in a minute way. Open-source programmes still exist that allow you to hold on to what you have purchased, offline and ad-free options exist for games launchers, e-readers, and media players. The future isn’t bright, but it is not a place without hope, and as long as people continue to enter communities with passion and ingenuity, I think we have a chance at stopping the events at Lelystad, 1994 from happening again. 

[whattaloser]

Why I’m a Leftist

I know I’m probably just some dude who reblogs cool stuff to most of my followers but I’ve got a nice long story/rant about my political beliefs here that I’ve been wanting to write for awhile

I am a leftist first and foremost because I value human life. Everyone matters. No person is inherently more important than another person. Everyone has inherent rights that should not be infringed. People who infringe on other’s rights are morally wrong to do so. In essence my leftism is based on doing what is right. Obviously everyone has their own opinion on what is right but what is vitally important is knowing why your moral code is right. This is why so many people become liberals or conservatives or otherwise rather than leftists. They simply do not know enough about how the world works. There are a lot of reasons they don’t know, not the least of which is intentional covering up history and preventing education. I don’t believe people who aren’t leftists are stupid, but I do believe leftists know more. It’s kinda fucked up but it’s the only way you can explain inconsistencies in other’s values.

My path to leftism was full of cringe. When i was 7 years old Al Gore was running against George Bush for president. I did not know enough to have a real opinion on it but I am happy to say that I wanted Al Gore to win. This thought was based on very little if any logical reason. I basically flipped a coin in my head I think. Or maybe there was some outside influence that I wasn’t aware of, like my older sister who I looked up to might have said she liked Al gore. Either way, from then on I was in favor of democrats and did not like George Bush. When 9/11 happened I remembered thinking how dumb it was that people lined up around the block to get gas. Even as a child I knew that some buildings going down wasn’t going to end the great nation of the United States. In general I thought the United States was a great country. I knew from movies and tv as well as elementary school history that the United States was the most powerful country in the world. 

I recall in Sixth grade my teacher mentioned she liked George Bush because he was against gay marriage. Somehow at the time my opinion was the opposite despite being raised Catholic. I believed in god until I graduated high school and suddenly my desire to be religious slipped away and so did my belief. I do not consider this a great loss. 

Sometime in middle school or early high school I had solidified my opinion that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan was pointless and George Bush was a bad president. I was heavily influenced by movies and somewhat by video games that had imparted plenty of anti-war messages. Talks with my dad about nuclear missiles, watching History channel shows about world war 2, and playing Metal Gear Solid which had explicit nuclear disarmament messages, all informed me on the horrors of war. This was not enough to make me totally anti-military. In high school I wanted to join the military because I thought it was an easy way to get life experience and eventually pay for college. I was attracted to the Marines because of how cool movies like The Rock and video games like Call of Duty made it seem to be a Marine. I thought they were the best of the best. I was simultaneously against war, against veteran worship, and very pro-military. I was indoctrinated by years of government propaganda but also disillusioned by all forms of media including the book All Quiet on the Western Front which was about a soldier becoming disillusioned by witnessing horrors of war and the negative impact it had on everyone in his country. I spoke with a recruiter during my senior year and expressed my desire to be a Marine but I told him I wanted to wait a year after high school so I could get physically fit enough. The recruiter did not care that I was underweight and out of shape. He didn’t even care that I was very enthusiastic about joining, he was still putting on his best salesman demeanor which made me incredibly uneasy. The experience is supposed to pressure people into signing up on the spot, I think they even had forms for me to sign (i can’t really remember though) but I was not ready and was aware enough how I was being manipulated although not entirely cognizant. After that I no longer wanted to be in the military.

I also have to point out that I grew up in an unstable household. My parents were both loving but they were flawed and made mistakes and had problems. My dad was a typical Gen x man’s man. A little bit too emotionally repressed, but actually really good with kids when it came to play time and still is. He worked a lot because my mother couldn’t. My mother has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder as long as I can remember. Her medical bills related to her problems combined with other financially bad decisions by my parents caused my home life to be fraught. I lived in varying degrees of poverty until my parents separated and me and my siblings moved with my mother to her parents’ house away from my father. Prior to moving though, we endured great financial difficulty. We were unable to afford school lunches but could not apply for free or reduced lunches because technically my father made a lot of money, however it was all garnished for medical bills. My father always tells about how he bought a car that had hidden frame damage and when he attempted to sue the dealership for selling a bad car he lost and was garnished for that as well. Despite making over 25 dollars an hour in 1999, my father could not afford school lunches for three kids and couldn’t afford to pay the gas bill. Without going into too much more detail, life sucked and continued to suck until I graduated, at least financially. I still found plenty of joy and it wasn’t always that bad. We still found ways to have good things like video games and we could always rewatch old movies but there’s a lot of psychic weight that comes with being that poor as a child and I’m sure it affects me and my ability to empathize with others who in bad conditions. 

So i watched a lot of movies and documentaries, read a lot of books growing up, discovered internet forums at the age of 11, played video games, moved to a town that had a very large Hispanic population, and I even grew up poor. All of this life experience turned me into a very average liberal upon graduating high school. I was a very optimistic 18 year old. I thought science could save the world. If I was 18 today I would be an average redditor stereotype probably. The point here though is I still wasn’t a leftist. Only vaguely progressive and full of optimism. This is when I got sucked into the anti-feminist pipeline.

I can’t remember what exactly what I had going on in my life but I remember it was around the time of Gamergate. Everyone on the internet, celebrities, and pop culture were saying “if you believe in equality between genders you’re a feminist” an did not like that. And there was a ton of people online to tell me I was right in not liking that. They all said feminism was not necessary anymore because legally you couldn’t discriminate against women and I agreed. Gamergate made it worse for reasons too complicated to get into in this already long post but suffice it say I was “pro Gamergate.” This put me at odds with my closes friends who thought feminism was great and had no qualms with it, and were already embracing the idea of being a “social justice warrior.” Despite reading all kinds of anti-feminist think pieces and reveling in the discourse, I was still very progressive and liberal minded person. Still thought the military was bad, that black people were discriminated against etc. But so many aspects of anti-feminism were appealing to me as a white guy who tried their hardest to do what they’re told is right, had low self esteem, undiagnosed adhd and depression, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what feminism was. Two things got me out of anti-feminism though. The first and most important thing was having friends who were patient with me about it. I didn’t reveal how into anti-feminism I was because I was ashamed but they could sense it and pushed back when they could. The second thing that got me out of it was actually finding feminists online and reading what they had to say, staying away from poorly written clickbait articles that fueled misogynist tirades against feminism. After reading and learning from feminists it finally clicked. Our society is patriarchal and that affects how people interact with each other regardless of what is legal. Many of the complaints of anti-feminism talk about how men have it in society, so how can society be patriarchal. It’s because of patriarchy that men are put in bad positions. Some of the more self aware anti-feminists had retorts against these ideas but they were emotionally charged. There’s still some anti-feminists I have respect for because of how well prepared and logical they were when it came to disputing feminism. But when it came down to the fundamental tenants of feminsim all they could respond with was anger or outright denial of reality. (If you’re like I was and don’t understand how anyone can thing modern feminism is good please feel free to ask me more, I just can’t get into specifics in this long ass post) Anyways, once you understand patriarchy and how it affects an individuals actions then you can start seeing how other institutions and cultural norms can affect an individual. This is basically fundamentals of leftism. I’d say about 90% of my path to leftism was just naturally absorbing cultural and historical information through consumption of media. The most conservative people I know are people who haven’t read very many books or seen very many movies. I’m not saying watching Austin Powers at the age of 10 will make everyone a leftist but constantly recontextualizing the world by learning something new, even if you learned it from some dumb comedy movie, can give you better grounding in a shared reality.  Don’t know how to end this but I want to say when I was a teenager I thought “communism is good in theory but it doesn’t work in practice” and I had almost no historical basis for it other than the vague notion that USSR = bad despite having consumed a massive amount of media. None of it taught me what communism actually was, I didn’t know who Karl Marx was, and I had no clue why communism in the USSR failed. You can know a lot without knowing the truth so if you’re struggling with a loved one who is mind poisoned by conservative keep in mind that they know a lot but they’re missing something important to give clarity. 

This has been my Ted Talk

[evilelitest2]

You keep saying certain trends need to be removed from the progressive movement, which ones?

1) Conspiracy theorists, this just fucking murders leftism, because it makes people unwilling to accept new information, which means they just inevitably slide into bad places.  See also Rosanne.  This goes for anti vaxxers, Truthers, people who get into the “Israel Lobby” too much but also just general conspiratorial thinking.  I see a lot of people talking about “The DNC” or “The Media” in terms that are more conspiratorial than factual, and have trouble understanding literally how things work.  Which not only makes people unable to really understand WTF is going on, it also feeds into Right wing thinking.  If Sanders fans are already acting as if “The mainstream Media” is one single unified entity secretly controlled by a cabal of capitalists and so you can just dismiss what it has to say*, it is pretty easy for the Right to justify their own narrative that any media that isn’t Fox News/Brietbart/Drudge Report is a single unified entity with a liberal bias secretly controlled by Jews (or George Soros if they want to hide their true intentions)

* Their are certain biases and issues that are shared by the media, but these are more structural systemic issues rather than deliberate efforts by specific individuals.  There are specific networks/newspapers which are purely propaganda piece but that doesn’t apply to the entire media.  Or to put it another way.  Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post does influence its content, but they don’t just get their marching orders from him.

2) No tolerance for bigotry.  This should be obvious but it is remarkable how people who are progressive in on issue (class, gender, race, sexuality) are super intolerant in other respects.  In this primary we see this with the dirtbag left and their class reductionist tendencies where they are pretty left wing in regardless to class, but super racist/sexist/homophobic in every other respect.  or how TERFs are pretty good in terms of fighting women’s oppression, but are vile when it comes to the rights of Trans people.  Or Black Nationalists tendency towards antisemitism and misogyny, or Zionists tendency towards Islamaphobia.  People who are marginalized often have a difficult time recognizing others who are marginalized, doubly so if it involves recognizing a certain privilege they do in fact posses (black men, white homosexuals, straight women the list goes on).  The left really  needs to get better at making intersectionality a reality of its practice rather than a tool of rhetoric. 

3) Drop the romantic revolutionary Aethetic The Left gets really into these 60s images of everybody overthrowing the stodgy all establishment and embracing a new exciting world.  And these always crash because its less about the practical reality of actually fixing problems and more about the image of rebelling.  Its like how Rock n Roll did totally overturn the status quo when it first came into the stage, but very quickly became a form of conservatism in its own right.  

Basically end the Leftist cool kids club. I’m really sick of leftists who seem to get into leftist thought primarily to give them a lenses to look down on people but not do anything about it, the Marxistdude bro approach

It also is self destructive because it leads to the left being like...reluctant to persuade people to our side which is just self destructive (see also Sanders 2020 campaign) 

4) Stop stanning dictators and being nostalgic for autocracy.  It is so very frustrating to see people outraged over the US use of torture (as you should be) but being apologists for Assad.  I am very tired of seeing leftists argue against holocaust Denial and then being like “oh but Stalin wasn’t that bad actually”.  

5) Fucking Moral Cholesterol nonsense, purity fixations are autocannibalism

6) No embrace of Gamergate tactics.  Doxxing is wrong regardless of the target.  Bullying, abuse, harassment is wrong even if the victim is an absolute shit head.  Actually I take this further to murder and torture.  We are the side who oppose police brutality, advocate prison reform and oppose war crimes, we shouldn’t be falling into this nonsense.  

7) No anti intellectualism.  The world is complicated, huge, and nuanced, there isn’t a single source of evil for everything wrong with the world, human beings can be bad in one element and good in another, and we aren’t following the narrative of a drama.  The Right’s values are anti intellectuals we need to stop following their lead but just reversing the scripts

[janiedean]

To hop on the ecology train, I also think it's about virtue-signalling. Some people are deeply concerned by global warming, but most of them are just trying to feel "woker". And since solving the problems is extremely complex and nobody has the keys, they latch onto easy stuff (not eating meat because they/their parents are rich enough to buy vegetables, not taking the car because they live in big cities) and being aggressive to the people who don't (for whatever reasons) just help (cont)

them elevate their status and gather communities. They get frame and the right to be contemptuous easily, so why not doing it.

oh that’s totally a thing, but I mean... guys let’s be honest here, virtue signaling is about 95% of the so-called american *leftist* activism so there’s nothing new under the sun - I mean, have I ever seen one single post on here that when discussing what to do to improve the US saying ‘hey maybe a 14% illiteracy percentage is unacceptable and maybe we need to work on that first and foremost’ instead of going at *ignorant* people who voted trump without understanding the stakes? nah. and I don’t see it from US politicians either but that’s another problem entirely. and I mean, when that post about the kentucky miners striking was floating around a lot of comments were like IDC THAT STATE VOTED FOR TRUMP THEY CAN DIE and like....... that’s not how leftism works nor who activism works and saying that people who might (or might not, who knows if harlan county miners voted trump or not??) have voted for trump because most likely they understood from his electoral promises that he wasn’t going to close their mines/would implement policies that would allow them to keep their jobs which no one has given af about on both sides since the seventies then they deserve to die and to lose their jobs while we all post about how we’re all so much better because we vote the right candidate? like, that’s virtue signaling same as ‘oh I’m not voting CANDIDATE WITH THE BEST CHANCES TO WIN EVEN IF I DON’T 100% AGREE BECAUSE MY IDEALS SAY NO when if you don’t do that trump wins’ and it’s the exact same principle. and until **leftist** (in between ** because as stated.... there’s leftism and leftism) comes from a place of virtue signaling and not really giving a fuck about people who were less lucky than you were and who can’t afford what you can afford, we’re going exactly nowhere. /two cents

[thewebcomicsreview]

[I tried to reblog this but Tumblr got mad at me for some reason so I’m doing a link post instead. Damn it, Tumblr]

Okay. Fair warning, I’m not a huge Star Wars fan, but I have seen the movies, and I don’t much care for the EU. Quotes come from IMDB.

The problem with this is that Star Wars, as a film series, has always been about how all of those things are terrible. Individualism and romanticism are always presented as chauvinistic and antithetical to the common good

In what way is the totalitarian fascist empire based primarily on Nazi Germany “individualistic” or “romantic”? Totalitarian governments are about as far from individualistic societies as you can get, and what romantic ideal does the empire use to justify its rule?

Governor Tarkin: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away forever.

General Tagge: But that's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?

Governor Tarkin: The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.

“Fuck you, Death Star”.  There’s no indication ever that the Empire has any ideals that it’s supposed to stand for, or that there are places where the locals are pro-empire. In Episode 3, Palpatine says he’s becoming emperor for security reasons, which has less to do with the philosophy of Star Wars and more to do with the Patriot Act,and was pretty explicitly not the rationale by ANH.

Success and failure in every Star Wars film is measured by whether or not characters embrace and cultivate collective action

This is only true if you ignore the bad guys generally, and specifically ignore Revenge of the Sith, where Palpatine teamkills everyone and wins completely as a result, and then makes an empire of bad guys who work as a coherent unit and still fail.

That being said, the leftism in the original trilogy is embedded far deeper in the story. In A New Hope, Luke and Han grow as characters by expanding their view of the world and understanding that they have a moral obligation to participate in something bigger than themselves.

It’s a massive stretch to say “protagonists have to work together to fight bad guys” is an inherently “leftist” trope. Doubly so in the Vietnam War context of A New Hope. The problem with America’s involvement in Vietnam wasn’t that soldiers weren’t working together.

In The Empire Strikes Back, our heroes face ruin when they’re separated from the Rebel Alliance, and Luke nearly destroys himself by acting out of selfish impulse and valuing the defeat of Vader over the greater good.

I know I just said this one, but

[Luke has seen a vision of Han, Leia and Chewie being tortured in Cloud City]

Luke: I saw - I saw a city in the clouds.

Yoda: [nods] Friends you have there.

Luke: They were in pain…

Yoda: It is the future you see.

Luke: The future?

[pause]

Luke: Will they die?

Yoda: [closes his eyes for a moment] Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.

Luke: I’ve got to go to them.

Yoda: Decide you must, how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could; but you would destroy all for which they have fought, and suffered.

Luke didn’t go to Cloud City to fight Vader. He went to save his friends. Yoda wanted him to complete his training so that he could beat Vader, but Luke considered his friends more important than his destiny. It was Yoda who wanted the big one-on-one anime fight, that’s why he withheld Vader being Luke’s father because he (correctly) thought knowing that would make Luke unwilling to kill Vader.

Only the collective actions of Lando and the people of Cloud City allow our protagonists to survive

What? “The people of Cloud City” don’t do shit. Lando turns on the stormtroopers, then announces “Hey, yo, I just turned on the Empire so everyone better bail” and everyone bailed. There were no useful NPCs on Cloud City helping save the day. The only thing the people of Cloud City did that Lando didn’t tell them to do was deactivate the hyperdrive on the Falcon to prevent the heroes from escaping.

It’s essential that Luke’s redemption of Vader is not what defeats the Empire- that’s just his personal journey. His contribution is to distract the Emperor to aid in the mission’s success. Even if Luke had failed and turned evil, the Emperor and Death Star would still have exploded.

The Death Star would’ve exploded, but Luke had enough time to drag Darth Vader to the shuttle. If they all turned evil, the Emperor could’ve walked to the shuttle himself and flown off to his fleet of Star Destroyers just outside (that all, uh, magically disappear in the actual movie, but shh).

When the Clone Wars erupt (caused by capitalist powers run amok), instead of protecting the people as their historical role is described, the Jedi become generals in a conflict with disposable soldiers to protect the property of the Republic, going so far as to become bodyguards to its Supreme Chancellor.

1. The Clone Wars are caused by Palpatine as an attempt to overthrow the government, and have nothing to do with capitalism except that the trade federation is allied with him for reasons never really explained in the movies. 2. I have no idea where Diaz is getting the idea that the Jedi weren’t protecting people. I’m pretty sure Yoda defended a bunch of Wookies in Episode III. 3. Also they protected the Supreme Chancellor, who by my count is a people. Sure, he was evil, but the Jedi stopped protecting him when they figured that out.

4. It kind of undercuts your “Star Wars is pro-collectivism!” theory when you attack the Jedi for using an army of literal clones to defend the Republic. The original stormtroopers were not individualistic, and this carries over to the First Order as well.

Poe Dameron: What's your name?

Finn: FN-2187.

[pauses]

Finn: That's the only name they ever gave me.

Poe Dameron: Well, I'm not going to call you that. Let's see... FN... I'm going to call you Finn. How about that

Finn: Yeah, Finn. I like that.

Finn literally doesn’t have a name until Poe gives him one. Their bond starts with Poe recognizing Finn’s individuality in an actually kind of aggressive way.

If Yoda killed the Emperor, he’d be arrested and the Emperor’s claim of Jedi traitors would be validated. Some other horrible person like Tarkin would take over, and the Galaxy would hate the Jedi even more. Yoda and Kenobi were still overvaluing individuals at the expense of understanding the systemic causes for their situation; they’ve already lost, and this is why they don’t take serious action again until the people of the Galaxy begin to unite together on their own

[Citation needed]

The Republic was willing to support Palpatine because of the droid army he was secretly running. Killing Palpatine would end the clone wars, and thus end the crisis was was threatening democracy. The war WAS the systemic cause, and killing Palpatine would end it.

Canto Bight shows those capitalist forces never went away: Finn and DJ discuss an arms dealer who has literally been in business selling weapons since the time of the original Empire.  

DJ does give a “both sides are the same vote Jill Stein” speech, but DJ also sells them out to the empire, so it’s not over because he doesn’t have the moral high ground

Poe plainly thinks being a good pilot is “blowing something up” because that’s what Luke and Lando did, forgetting that the successes of those characters were the result of intense, meticulous planning and cooperation. Poe is preoccupied with glory, the easy-to-remember parts of the Rebellion. Of course, the old Rebels never went off script because they understood their job was part of a disciplined group effort, but Poe fails to internalize this. This kind of chauvinism doesn’t just cut Poe off from others and cloud his judgement, it gets almost the entire Resistance killed.

Poe’s flaw in TLJ is that he takes huge risks that don’t always pan out, and that he doesn’t unquestioningly follow a leader who refuses to tell anyone why her plan isn’t a suicide mission for reasons that rapidly make less sense over the course of the movie. Poe’s plan didn’t involve blowing anything up, it was literally to disable the tracker so that all the rebels could escape, which he did because he thought that was the only way they could escape because no one told him about the secret base their cloaked ships could escape to because that plotline honestly doesn’t make much sense the longer it went on.

Finn’s attempted suicide run against the “battering ram,” while seemingly selfless, is still grounded in selfish desire to “win,” unlike Admiral Holdo’s sacrifice. Poe even tells Finn that it’s too late to destroy the laser weapon, but Finn goes anyway. Even if Finn had destroyed it somehow, it wouldn’t have saved anyone, just possibly delayed the First Order, which was the point of their attack before Poe called it off. Holdo’s sacrifice was different because she was directly saving defenseless ships from being exploded.

Can you hear it? Can you hear the creaking of Aaron Diaz bending over backwards to fit the plot of the movie into his theories? Holdo wasn’t trying to save the resistance’s property. She wasn’t worried about the poor defenseless ships. She was worried about the people, and her sacrifice bought them some time. Which is exactly what Finn would’ve done had Rose not pushed him out of the way. He would’ve destroyed the lasers, the resistance would escape out the back door, badabing badaboom.

I know this would’ve happened because it’s literally what happens when Luke shows up and heroically sacrifices himself instead.

Yes, it’s kind of strange that the movie goes “heroic sacrifice is bad” immediately before a heroic sacrifice saves the day, but blame Rian Johnson for that I didn’t write this shit.

Despite appearances, it’s not Darth Vader that Ren idolizes, but Luke. Unlike Finn and Poe, Ren grew up around his hero, but when it was clear that Luke didn’t compare to the legend of Luke, Ren retreated to a legend he could never meet: Darth Vader.  Ren was also trained with an incomplete, sanitized version of the Jedi, and once again when this sanitized version fell apart, he turned to evil  

A reasonable fan-theory with no textual support. Luke tries to kill Kylo after Kylo turns to the Dark Side. We have no idea what made Kylo listen to Snoke.

Appropriately, unlike our heroes, he doubles down on his chauvinism and never learns the lesson

Kylo is not evil because he’s sexist (1), because he feels any great attachment to the Sith (2), or because he’s patriotic (3), so I don’t think you’re using the word “Chauvinism” correctly. He doesn’t even care about Vader anymore by the end of TLJ.

Luke disappoints Rey, but this doesn’t have the disastrous impact that it had on Ben Solo because Rey’s aim is understanding, not personal glory.

Let’s ask Rey what she came to Luke for.

Rey: I need someone to show me my place in all of this.

Hm. It sure seems like Rey wanted to know what her individual role in the story was, and perhaps even had hopes that it would be “the hero”, which is why she’s reduced to tears when she learns her parents were some randos. Rey absolutely wants the personal glory, but she’s willing to accept not being super-special because protecting the resistance is more important to her.

Facing the Emperor, Luke wasn’t tempted by his offers of personal power and glory because that’s not really what he wanted. Rey was tempted, but resisted. It’s her character arc! It’s a big part of why she wanted to turn Kylo good, because she wanted to do it.

Rey: You didn't fail Kylo. Kylo failed you. I won't.

Amazingly, "Rey wants personal glory but rejects it in order to save the resistance” works way better for the point Aaron Diaz is trying to make then his own interpretation, but Diaz has some thing where he doesn’t want to admit flaws exist in his favorite characters even when their whole storyline is about overcoming said flaw.

That spark is carried most clearly in Rose and Rey. Both have humble origins and never aspired to be recognized as heroes, both are disillusioned by meeting their heroes, and both grow from that experience while inspiring others to take up hope.

Diaz ignores Rey’s arc and Rose kind of doesn’t have one (certainly not one related to being crushed to learn Finn’s a wuss) so I’m not sure how they both grow but okay.

I’m spending way too long on this. Star Wars as a franchise isn’t “about” anything, because a billion different people have worked on it (Marcia Lucas, George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy, JJ Abrams, and Rian Johnson being the most important) and they didn’t all share an artistic vision or even a cultural context.

[scumfuckus]

honestly thats the problem with leftism on this site and why there will probably never be a meaningful leftist resistance originating here, these politics are supposed to be for the common people by the common people but when all these complex conflicting ideas are presented it becomes impossible to organize in any way other than something like antifa which is really just a reaction to the far right.

honestly ur completely right. like im someone who *really* wants to understand and tries to do research on all this political terminology but i still have no fucking clue. its no wonder you get so many people who never go any deeper than just being like, moderately left liberal - anything more radical is just not easy to access at all. and then from blogs i follow that are heavy into the ~*discourse*~ i see a lot of infighting between ideologies that i cant even differentiate (though, yknow, that could just be bc im uneducated on it all) man idk im too dumb for this but yeah u right

[ithisatanytime]

 Leftist ideology is completely indefensible and it relies on the fact that women and insecure midwits will adopt it. its so fucking easy to tear apart the leftist narrative, its based on lies and there are MOUNTAINS of literature that show its just a bunch of made up shit. the people pushing this shit know women don’t care about evidence, they are social creatures and for them politics is a social game, they have political convictions which serve the same function as a purse or a shirt, its to sort themselves into social groups. insecure midwit men adopt leftism because leftism at its core denies the existence of hierarchies and the objectivity of standards. they could never hope to meet the standards for masculinity, but instead of striving to do the best they can and acceping that ideals are meant to be pursued continually, they live in denial. Leftism also is a great way for a person insecure about their intellect to appear smart in a way. its like wearing thick  rimmed glasses, its a superficial outfit of an intellectual.

 they are reddit, they are twitter. i call them “trump cum jokers” because they make jokes about trump and cum, being selectively irreverent. “what if trump did a big CUM???” basically they are going through a mental checklist of what they think girls would like and trying to check the boxes. its political and topical to show that they are “intellectuals” and also moral, and the cum part is to show a sense of humor and that they dont take themselves too seriously. they are universally effeminate and over socialized, they are extremely fragile, so they dont show any real part of themselves. they live in complete fear of embarrassment and social ostracism. While fear of embarrassment is a universal human trait, women are especially sensitive to this, and likewise leftist men, they only attack in groups, but if you pick one out of the pack and insult him he folds like paper.

a quick amendment, woman do have convictions and passion, but it stems from their strong sense of empathy. its an emotional thing and therefore easily manipulated. “won’t somebody please THINK OF THE CHILDREN”

[gothra]

I’ll admit that I kind of felt a bit mean about the first person I replied to. I felt a bit nervous to reply to this because I was afraid that I would cast shame on myself and my perspective and be the laughingstock of Tumblr if I was defensive and wrong.

Never again will I doubt my instinct on my take on this issue, because here goes the evidence that this ideology is rife with people who are intellectually lazy and plastically progressive to the point of being selfish and ignorant. Someone described this perspective, your perspective as “navel-gazing” and I’d never used that term before, but I predict that it will become a well-loved part of my lexicon. There’s certainly ample evidence of it right in front of us (hint: it’s you). So, I won’t become the laughingstock of Tumblr today. I don’t think that anyone with a modicum of rationality will fault me for saying that what you are saying is defective, lacking in practicality and compassion, and downright stupid. It’s really fucking stupid.

No, I am not dissatisfied by the pipe-dream of prison abolition because of my belief in “ontologically bad people”. As far as I’ve been able to ascertain, based on what you’ve said, questions of moral ontology and epistemology have little to do with what I’m saying. I believe that people can do bad things and do good things, and that good people want to do good things and do them, and that bad people want to do bad things and do them continually. I don’t believe that morality is inherent, I believe that it is learned and that the things we deem moral can fluctuate relatively and situationally. I believe that there are things that are bad across the board, and I believe that there are bad people that can change, and bad people that won’t change. I don’t believe that debating the ontological questions surrounding morality really does anything for the sake of my argument. I don’t care about it right now, it doesn’t matter to me, it has nothing to do with why I think prison abolition is a bogus idea.

You want to know the real reason why there’s never going to be an answer to prison abolition that satisfies me?

It’s because prison abolition is a hazy fantasy that seems to do nothing more than creative a pseudo progressive excuse not to consider the people who are victimized by harm. When you’re defending these hypothetical reformed prisoners, it’s easy to not consider who is harmed by not having a place to keep people who are violent or cruel, even for a limited period of time, while they undergo rehabilitation. Things like prison abolition are the best possible way for someone to seem like a true blue leftist without any actual leftist work. You don’t have to do grassroots work for something that you know is farfetched, and when people ask you what you believe, you can tout it and they’ll be dazzled, like a baby pre-object permanence that startles when you move your hands away from your face. Peek-a-boo! I’m lazy! It’s the conspicuous consumption of leftism. Like I said, there are no solutions, just illusions, just stage tricks and fog machines.

Your grand answer to “what do we do about violent offenders?” is that we “heal the people who were harmed”. I’m not too daunted by vagueness, so I’m willing to dig deeper into that statement, despite the fact that I shouldn’t have to, because it’s your belief and you should be defending it. So let’s say that you are saying that, in order to treat violent offenders, we have to treat the violent offenders that have been harmed that lead them to becoming violent offenders. Why does it feel as if you’re implying that violent offenses are a result of social disadvantage and not because they come from a place of privilege? If that’s what you’re implying, then what’s the point of even having a conversation about privilege in any sense? What’s the point of even talking about white privilege, if black and brown people commit more crimes because of social disadvantage? What’s the point of talking about male privilege? All we’ll really have to do is treat the relative social disadvantage, and all of our problems will be solved. That would mean that the problem isn’t actually privilege, but all of the people struggling because of their lack of that privilege. Except, if you’ve spent a second in Social Justice 101 (not hard, all you have to do is stick your head out of your window, so to speak, on this website and you’ll pick up on it) you know that privilege creates a power disparity between the person with privilege and the person without and the person with the power often uses it to their advantage, at the expense of the person without. Men with male privilege commit more violent crimes than women, who don’t have male privilege. White people with white privilege commit hate crimes more than people without that privilege. People without disabilities commit more ableist hate crimes than disabled people. All of these groups (women, POC, disabled people) are at social disadvantages, yet they are experiencing more crime than the people with the privilege that they lack. The people with the privilege haven’t been harmed by society in the same way, especially not when they’re committing violent acts at the highest level. Are you going to tell me that Alex Murdaugh, the high-powered, Caucasian, male attorney recently convicted of murdering his wife and his son (the same son he shamelessly got off the hook for the reckless death of a young woman) is in desperate need of the same kind of social intervention and resources that a young black man who was raised poor in an abusive household would need? Or a young black woman? No. You can’t. That’s because violence is not reserved for the weaker members of society, it is practiced with impunity among the circles of the big and powerful. In more radical/radical-leaning circles, and the circles that study abuse (DV, IPV, etc.) we talk about the myth of “mutual abuse”, or the idea that abuse can go both ways, and the reason we talk about that, is because we know that true harm is done by people who are stronger to those who are weaker, who often have more going for them anyway. All of this is to say that your notion that the solution to violent offense is to “heal the people who were harmed” completely ignores the reality that often, those that perpetuate harm are in positions of power over those that they are hurting and their healing should come second, not first. It obfuscates the conversations that we’ve been having for years about who is or isn’t a victim.

Despite what you’ve tried to tell me, prison abolition should answer the question, “what do we do with the perpetrators of harm?” because that’s the point of prison in the first place. The point of prison is that it is a place to put and deal with perpetrators of harm. That’s the entire conceit of the existence of prison. There are systems in place that exist for a reason, and, in the case of prison, that reason is to keep prisoners, or perpetrators of harm (as well as harmless crimes, but in this discussion, we’re specifically talking about people who perpetrate harm) away from everyone else. Prison exists because someone asked, “Where do we keep all of these people instead of just hanging them or sending them home?”. And I see what you did at the end with the insistence that it should be about “How do we heal the harmed?” and because I recognize and understand that what you mean is that prison should be about healing the people who go in to prison, so that they become healthy members of society. However, your insistence that, because prisons perpetuate harm that they should be abolished tells me that you don’t consider people that perpetrate harm against other as people who qualify to be abolished, therefore, making your mystical insistence that prison abolishing should be about “healing the harmed” very apparently not about the people who matter the most: the victims of the harm done by people who end up going to prison.

Oh, but it becomes clear, you don’t seem to think that there is even such thing as a victim. I only seem to get this hands-off approach from people who prescribe to ideologies that convince them that boundaries are just mean rules that waste everyones time and make life unnecessarily difficult, instead of them being things that are a direct result of some things being and some things not being. Yes, fool, there is some thing as a “victim” and a “perpetrator”. If you break into my house and assault me, I am the victim of the assault, and you are the perpetrator of that assault. There is no fog or complexity surrounding those notions, especially not in a situational sense. If you break into my house and assault me, but you had a bad childhood, that doesn’t suddenly call into question whether or not I am truly a victim of your actions. It’s not rocket science. The person who has something done to them is the victim, and the person who does the thing is the perpetrator. And you don’t have to be perfect to be a perpetrator or a victim (because no one is perfect), but your personal history doesn’t necessarily shift the light of victimhood onto you. You can experience child abuse and then later go on to abuse your own children. And, in a conversation about the existence of prison, I don’t know what you mean by a legal consequence being “unjustifiable”, like you seemed to imply when you said that “distinctions between perfect victim and perpetrator don’t exist, even in the legal system, because it’s a myth we tell ourselves to justify the unjustifiable”. Are you talking about death sentences? Because I don’t believe in state-sanctioned executions, so I’m not talking about executions. I’m talking about prison, which does not inherently result in death. Prison isn’t “unjustifiable”. It’s actually quite justifiable that people that are violent should be taken away from others for the safety of everyone.

Prison abolition shouldn’t exist. It just shouldn’t happen, especially not if it means that we suddenly have to do a tap-dance to redefine what it means to be a victim in the first place. Is it not enough to say that people that go to prison shouldn’t have to live in inhumane conditions? We have to demolish institutions intended and proven to promote our safety because sometimes people that do bad things have bad childhoods? That’s ridiculous. Tearing down systems isn’t the point of being a leftist, and being a leftist shouldn’t be your motivation for tearing down those systems. You are not an ideology, you are a person, we are people, and people need to think about things before they start believing them, or telling other people to believe them.

And your “straightforward answer” to how communities should deal with people who continually perpetuate harm is about as straightforward as the rest of your bullshit: “retributive violence”, which is quite literally an eye-for-an-eye policy that, at a basic level means that people should do onto others as they have done to themselves. So, if I’m raped, I should just go and rape my rapist. If someone assaults me, I should just go and assault him back. And then, he’ll just assault me back because I assaulted him and then I’ll assault him again. That’s wonderful. That is a truly wonderful idea. I mean, if we ignore the fact people who aren’t under the protection of the criminal legal system are often punished for retributive violence by being incarcerated or scorned or shunned or murdered by the people they were trying to defend themselves against, and if we ignore the fact that communities often don’t deal with perpetrators of violence out of fear of the perpetrator or ignorance or because they themselves benefit from the violence, and if we ignore the fact that legal systems often punish the person engaging in retributive violence harsher than they punish the original perpetrator (if they even punish them at all) and if we ignore the fact that it essentially adds to the greater amount of violence in the world and that isn’t a good thing and if we ignore the fact that it shouldn’t even be the responsibility of the victim to reopen the wound by committing an act or acts of violence that they might not even want to commit instead of putting the onus of justice on the system that is literally named for it’s purpose of dispensing justice, and if we ignore the implications that giving people free reign to hurt the people that hurt them creates (incels already engage in violence against women that commit the grave sin of hurting their feelings) and if we ignore the fact that “retributive violence” is a stupid idea that contradicts your point at the most fundamental level by replacing a system that you said “needs to be abolished because it causes harm” with a not-so-system that quite literally predicates on people engaging in retaliatory harm, then this stupid idea is actually completely wonderful and we should implement it right now, instead of turning our attention to making prisons a more transformative place.

We should all be engaging in this kind of unstructured, individual justice, and in a post-prison world, when I call the police (or whatever brilliant idea you people have come up with to replace them) to report a violent crime committed against me by someone who we decided was far too pweshous to be locked up in a big scawwy pwison, and I tell them what happened and they tell me that I wasted my time, because I should have just hunted him down and killed him instead, I guess I’ll just have to shrug my shoulders and say “you’re soo right, officer. Golly, isn’t this new system of operations much better than locking up criminals? Wow, I feel so much safer now that the “false dichotomy” of victimhood has been dissolved and I’m free from the burden of identifying as someone who has had something bad done to me.” And then he’ll leave and I’ll lock my door and fetch my killing knife and get ready to do the thing that some loser anarchist on Tumblr thought was sooo smart. What kind of world are we supposed to live in where the easiest and supposedly “least” harmful solution is to go out and hurt other people instead of just relying on the systems that have already been set in place, and transforming them to better suit our ethical needs? If you have an older son and a younger daughter, and your son pushes your daughter down the stairs and she breaks her arm, what are you going to tell her on the way to the doctor’s office? Considering everything you’ve said so far, I imagine you’d it would be something like, “No, sweetheart, big brother isn’t going to get in trouble. We’re going to give him some ice cream, and put a cast on your arm, and when we get home, you can jump on his arm until it breaks, and that will fix everyone’s issues!”

Luckily, I don’t think anyone with half a brain believes it’s a good idea. Because it isn’t. A world without prisons is not a world that I want to live in. It’s not a world where the prison doors “lock from the inside”, and it’s not a world that would be safe for the people who matter most: VICTIMS OF THE VIOLENT CRIME. If you want reform, want reform. If you want transformation and progress for prisoners, good. If you want to abolish a system of containment that keeps violent people out of the streets, keep your shitty ideas out of the water, fecal matter is a biohazard and I’d hate to contaminate the sane with your lack of social awareness.

I’ll never forget when I was arguing with a person in favor of total prison abolition and I asked them “what about violent offenders?” And they said “Well, in a world where prisons have been abolished, we’ll have leveled the playing field and everyone will have their basic needs met, and crime won’t be as much of an issue.” And then I was like “okay. But…no. Because rich people also rape and murder, so it isn’t just a poor person thing. So what will we do about that?” And I don’t think they answered me after that. I’m ashamed to say I continued to think that the problem was that I simply didn’t understand prison abolitionists enough and that their point was right in front of me, and it would click once I finally let myself understand it. It took me a long time to realize that if something is going to make sense, it needs to make sense. If you want to turn theory into Praxis (I’m using that word right don’t correct me I’ll vomit) everyone needs to be on board, which mean it all needs to click and it needs to click fast and fucking clear. You need to turn a complex idea into something both digestible and flexible enough to be expanded upon. Every time I ask a prison abolitionist what they actually intend to do about violent crime, I get directed to a summer reading list and a BreadTuber. It’s like a sleight-of-hand trick. Where’s the answer to my question. There it is. No wait, there it is. It’s under this cup. No it isn’t. “There’s theory that can explain this better than I can.” As if most theory isn’t just a collection of essays meant to be absorbed and discussed by academics, not the average skeptic. “Read this book.” And the book won’t even answer the question. The book tells you to go ask someone else. “Oh, watch this so-and-so, she totally explains it better than me.” Why can’t you explain it at all? Why did you even bring it up if you were going to point me to someone else to give me the basics that you should probably already know? Maybe I’m just one of those crazy people who thinks that some people need to be kept away from the public for everyone’s good. Maybe that just makes me insane. Maybe not believing that pervasive systemic misogyny could be solved with a UBI and a prayer circle makes me a bad guy. But it’s not like women’s safety is a priority anyway. It’s not like there is an objective claim to be made that re-releasing violent offenders or simply not locking them up is deadly.

[reinterlacing]

I’m over Identity Politics.

This is a milestone in my lifelong political evolution which I’ve been approaching for some time, and apart from their call on me to consider all this again, it has little to do with current events (the post-’rona #BLM protests, for any future archaeologists reading my important blog).

So what do I mean? Well, with apologies for this being an idea I haven’t chewed on long enough to articulate as well as I’d like, how about this?

I believe that idpol inevitably decays into the Oppression Olympics and causes tons of pointless infighting among people who could otherwise be doing something useful.

While its existence is both highly understandable and even quite useful in some circumstances, identity politics for identity politics’ sake is, in my opinion, doing far more harm than good for the American left.

It’s valid to say that this is an easy position for me to take because my skin practically couldn’t be any whiter, and because it’s been easy to pretend to be straight my entire life. But there’s a counterargument. While I can’t escape the problematic statistics of my biological ancestry,1 the fact remains that I’m not straight, I’m not typically gendered, and perhaps most obviously and most importantly, I’m not neurotypical, never have been, never will be, wouldn’t even want to be.2

So how do I fit in? I do have a degree of morbid curiosity as to how the Painfully Woke would seek to erase MY identity as a neurodivergent nonbinary bisexual human being simply because I disagree with centering all these person-labels as one’s primary political raison d'etre. Every scrap of evidence I’ve seen for the past few years tells me that a truly orthodox Wokester would read this and immediately seek to festoon me with a lifelong Bigotry Warning Flag so that not only they, but all who cross my path in the future, would know to discount, ignore, and ridicule anything I might say.

This self-limiting and counterproductive. For many reasons. As some would say, we live in a society. An unending campaign of hostile shunning is never a good way to promote harmony in any society.3

So where is the line between an oppressed group coming together to wield political power to benefit themselves & possibly others, versus 2020s American Woke Performative Leftism? I don’t know. Clearly what is happening now in the USA involves people acting on both sides of that line.

I consider #BLM an example of identity politics which hasn’t yet outlived its usefulness & entered the decline phase, likely because it’s centered on a group which is undeniably oppressed via state violence with frequent deadly outcome (as opposed to “microaggressions,” uncomfy words, and disagreeing opinions) and because #BLM is focused for now on a primary cause - ending police brutality & racial disparities in the American legal system. But there are plenty of (mostly white!) SJW dingleberries hanging on to the moment and Performing their Leftism for all to see as well. And those people, as far as I can tell, are useless at best and highly counterproductive at worst when it comes to their effect on the actual achievement of actually progressive actual causes.

Some might call me a bigot for pointing out what everybody outside the Woke Left filter bubble knows to be true. And when we get down to brass tacks, I just don’t give a fuck.

The reason for that is similar to why I don’t give a fuck about whatever people still invested in the Democrat Party4 might say about my inconvenient politics: namely, that those people don’t represent me, they don’t give a fuck about me, they won’t do anything to advance my interests, and their existence just adds endless complication to the existence of me & mine & people like me. So if they get mad because I speak & act on my truth, so what?

I’m not even really sure what the point of writing all this was, maybe just to clarify it for myself because I spend a lot of time on social media frequented by leftists, performative and otherwise. For what it’s worth, besides being written in the context of the #BLM protests finally having some long-deserved success in causing actual change, what sparked the actual urge to write this instead of just chew on it moar, was the whole ridiculous nerd fight about renaming the ‘master’ source code branch in a revision control system popular with programmers. Which, man, I’m just not going to step in on other than to say that maybe some people could be otherwise focused.

Oh well, so it goes.

23andme pegged me as 99.9% European, 0.1% sub-Saharan African. I did some napkin estimation and arrived at the conclusion this could plausibly be the result of one (1) black ancestor somewhere around 1520-1580 AD. Otherwise it's Scottish cave people all the way down.

How’s that for “you could never understand” oppressed status? My entire way of experiencing the world is different from normies on a hardware level!

I understand that some on the left - some of my friends, even - do not have a goal of promoting harmony in society. I do.

I hate this GOP PR strategist invented name. With the CARES Act et al, the Democrat establishment earned it with their 100% complicity in the largest upward wealth transfer in American history. It makes the 2008 crisis look like a lemonade stand bankruptcy. Ask yourself why Americans are battling state unemployment systems for $600/mo COVID aid - if eligible, which requires them to lose their job - when other countries at our standard of living have provided 2-3x the amount of aid, and often done it in such a way (thru payroll) that jobs didn’t need to be lost, in fact, would be far more likely to be waiting when lockdowns eased. Ask yourself why the Democrat establishment isn’t fighting tooth & nail for H.R. 6918, the Paycheck Recovery Act introduced by progressive legislator Pramila Jayapal. (Conveniently, I’ll tell you: It’s because the Democrat Party leadership is working for the same wealthy donor class the Republican Party leadership is working for, and that is what people mean when they say "Democrats and Republicans are the same.")

[prodigaisons]

i feel like there’s a lot of meaningful discussions to be held about historical communism/socialism and overall just. discussions to be held in general but at the same time like,,,,, there’s also overall more important work to be done ???

like. it’s hard bc there’s so much stuff that’s just...... happening and so many ppl are just barely hanging on so it’s hard to like. properly discuss and explain the intricacies of why previous communist countries aren’t communist anymore and why they “failed” or were apparently horrible. like, it’s more complicated than “they weren’t Really communist” or “it was all just propaganda” but we rarely have time to address that when like, black trans women are being killed and government suppression is being covered up.

like it’s. it’s clearly important that we somehow reunite the left and once again have functional activist groups that can make real, lasting change. if we don’t figure out how to do that, more people are going to get hurt. if we don’t start unionizing again, shits just going to get worse. and like, while it’s easy to say “well it’s unimportant if people know theory and history” it is, at some level, necessary.

sure, a lot of left-leaning liberals will stand beside leftists during blm protests, they’ll agree that things need to change about labor laws, they’ll support lgbt rights, etc. but like...... lbr here, the major block (at least in North America) is anti communist propaganda. many of these ppl don’t resist leftism bc they DONT want people to have better lives, but bc it’s so pushed into us that communism is bad. these ppl will sometimes literally have ideas that are almost literally communist, but insist they ARENT communist or socialist on the premise that those things are bad

the reason, ofc, being that it’s hard and kind of fucking scary to admit that the country you live in has actively been trying to ruin people’s lives for over half a century. like, yeah, everyone loves to shit on americans but let’s not pretend like the american gov gives a shit about us. the us doesn’t do this to protect american citizens, they do this to protect the wealthy. and there’s a certain fear to that, esp if ur already a marginalized person.

like idk the answer necessarily but we do have to probably start trying to make accessible ways for ppl new to leftism to understand the historical and theoretical contexts of communism and socialism if we intent to group together and make lasting change