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shihalyfie · 3 years

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Shiramine Nokia, and her role in Cyber Sleuth’s narrative

This one’s on request! Cyber Sleuth is quite the interesting game and a rather landmark entry in the franchise, mainly for being a love letter to the franchise and its long history itself, and for being the franchise’s very first work exclusively aimed at adults, meaning that it can explore different topics that wouldn’t normally be Sunday morning timeslot material, while also being a little more willing to assume that the people playing this are familiar with a lot of older parts of the franchise (not that it’s advisable to have complete lockout, but the game benefits greatly by not needing to assume lockout by default).

One of the ways Cyber Sleuth exhibits its “franchise love letter” status is by starting off the game all the way back at the franchise’s roots, before Digimon Adventure changed the game and everyone’s perception of Digimon and Digimon partnership, when the V-Pet lore was intertwined with Digimon as elements of hard sci-fi. As the game proceeds, the atmosphere slowly starts to resemble the more fantasy-like version of the franchise established by Digimon Adventure and its follower entries -- and that change is represented in none other than Nokia herself.

Before we begin: As anyone who follows my meta work has probably noticed, I generally prefer to have my analyses use tons of references and screenshots so that it’s easy to follow and the evidence is concrete, but Cyber Sleuth is a game, and it’s much harder to get those things without replaying the entire game, so I hope this won’t be too hard to follow despite being mostly text.

Nokia’s background and personality

If we want to apply the producer’s statements on Twitter, Nokia is 17 years old at the time of Cyber Sleuth, and has a backstory of having originally been a shy, bullied child who broke out of her shell thanks to the influence of her cousin (who, of all people, happens to be none other than Date Makiko). The flashback we get with Nokia in chapter 18, however, portrays her as just a fairly cheerful, go-getter child, but (although we only get to see her hair) she’s not quite as “flashy” or in-your-face as the description entails.

A possible hypothesis for rationalizing this all together comes from a what we learn about the process of memory wiping in Cyber Sleuth chapter 14: even if memories are extracted from the person, there’s some kind of residual memory left behind (the producer’s above statement also states that the same thing had even happened to Suedou). In Hacker’s Memory chapter 16, Arata confesses to Ryuji that the first Under Zero incident and Jude's loss to the Knightmon had re-triggered his trauma from having lost Yuugo years prior -- “not the memory, but the feeling.” So in other words, there was some feeling of loss that came after the loss of Yuugo that impacted those involved -- and it’s very possible that this deeply impacted and traumatized Nokia as well.

Assuming we’re still following this line of thought (since, again, this background point wasn’t actually in the game proper), Nokia eventually decided to break out of her shell thanks to Makiko’s influence, and become eccentric and assertive, and thus, the game begins.

While we’re here, I also want to point out that Nokia is also voiced by Han Megumi, possibly the Digimon franchise’s most notorious “promoted fangirl” who freaked out after getting to meet her childhood characters’ voice actors while cast as Airu in the Xros Wars crossover and ended up casted in a handful of major Digimon roles thereafter as a result. Which is not to say that her voice performance wasn’t also absolutely perfect for the bright and aggressive Nokia, but, you know...considering the below analysis, food for thought.

Nokia as a representative of “the conventional franchise”

Cyber Sleuth opens on a world where Digimon are largely seen as hacker programs, and even the hackers themselves only see them as non-sentient programs; there are ones like Chitose who treat them with empathy, but his attitude seems to be kindness towards them in a way not entirely unlike a family would treat a Roomba. Although he doesn’t admit to it at first, Arata himself also comes from this “world” of hackers, and we later learn that Yuuko herself is as well (via her “Yuugo” persona), meaning that, other than the playable protagonist, Nokia is the only “outside-context” person -- a completely ordinary civilian who’s gotten dragged into all of this.

Much like, say, the protagonists of Digimon Adventure.

With this background behind her, once she’s thrown into the world of hackers, she immediately has a “fateful encounter” with Agumon and Gabumon, instantly recognizable as two of the franchise’s most prominent Digimon (and complete with their Adventure voice actors, too). And I do especially bring up Adventure specifically, because while Nokia’s position in the game does end up taking in certain elements that roughly came around that era and possibly slightly predated it (mostly Digimon World and V-Tamer), Agumon and Gabumon weren’t particular mascots of the franchise until Adventure basically blew everything to pieces.

Right off the bat, Nokia does not have a single shred of doubt that Agumon and Gabumon are living beings and should be treated as such (again, much like the protagonists of Digimon Adventure; even Taichi in his “is this a game?” mode never doubted this). And they open up their meeting with this conversation:

Agumon: Umm, who are you? Nokia: It... It can talk?! It's so... so... so adoooooorable! M-M-M-M-My name's Nokia. What're your names? Agumon: Me? My name is Agumon! Gabumon: I... I'm Gabumon. Nokia: Agumon and Gabumon? Hee hee! What weird names! Gabumon: Hey, they're not weird! Agumon: You're the one with the weird name! Nokia: As if! My name's not weird! Hee hee!

And on top of that, Agumon refers to Nokia as having a “familiar” scent. Remember this for later.

Nokia’s second encounter with Agumon and Gabumon in Cyber Sleuth chapter 3 involves her properly partnering herself with Agumon and Gabumon, and learning about the existence of the “Digital World”. Note that, for all intents and purposes, EDEN had been treated like the functional equivalent of the Digital World in this narrative up until this point -- cyberspace with hackers, coming from the network, it’s basically a “digital world” from top to bottom, and yet here Agumon and Gabumon are introducing the concept of a more fantasy-esque incarnation of a digital world. (And, in fact, despite EDEN being right there, many long-time Digimon fans playing this game often complained about how little you get to see the “Digital World” in this game, because of how associated that term is with something more fantasy-like.) So, again: here we have Nokia, who’s forming a partnership with Agumon and Gabumon as equals instead of recruiting them as hacker tools (even the protagonist wasn’t immune to this method), and being indirectly responsible for introducing the more fantasy-like concept of the Digital World that the modern franchise is currently associated with.

Nokia embarks on the conventional shounen anime character arc of starting off cowardly, but eventually learning to have her own inner strength, with her Digimon evolving in accordance to her emotions. And, eventually, in Cyber Sleuth chapter 8, she decides to form her own hacker team, called the “Rebels”. She ostensibly bases it off the old creed of Jude, having heard that they were a team that never caused trouble for others, but we later learn via Arata turning out to have been its former leader, and the even later portrayal in Hacker’s Memory of its spiritual successor Hudie, that this is an extremely rose-colored image of them -- Jude (and Hudie) was not a well-intentioned team by any means, but rather a sort of mercenary group meant to enforce the “freedom” of EDEN, often taking on shady jobs and “punishing” entities they considered to be causing chaos. But in this case, Nokia forms her team under the idea of legitimately fighting for justice and good will -- again, much like a Digimon Adventure protagonist.

In case the metaphor weren’t clear enough, Nokia decides that the members of her group will not be called “hackers”, but “Tamers” -- the same lingo used by the franchise to refer to a human who partners alongside a Digimon to help them get stronger -- and that she wants to promote the idea of humans and Digimon working in tandem (complete with emotional bonding exercises). For this, everyone looks at her weird, and yet her methodology, initially naive as it seems, keeps working, because Nokia’s natural charisma starts bringing people from different places together and making quite the formidable team. Everyone is perplexed by this, but perhaps it’s only natural, because Nokia has just independently invented the modern concept of Digimon partnership in a world where it did not exist. And this is eventually solidified by the Under Zero invasion in Cyber Sleuth chapter 10, in which Omegamon is finally formed (from sheer guts on her part).

Omegamon is yet another symbol of the modern franchise, but it’s important to remember that he hasn’t always been so; even his appearance in V-Tamer was as more of a tactical piece than any kind of game-breaker, but the impact of Our War Game! has led him to constantly make a resurgence in major franchise roles (maybe a little too much these days). However, on top of Nokia basically embodying the modern franchise itself by doing this, Nokia and Arata’s positions are an obvious reference to Our War Game! in particular, being Omegamon and Diablomon Tamers -- but they’re not seen directly fighting each other. In fact, Arata’s partner only ever reaches Diablomon when he’s at the highest point of his morality, so the reference is more ideological; Nokia represents the more idealistic and heroic side of Digimon, whereas Arata represents the more dirty-playing and cynical hard sci-fi side of it (remember that Diablomon himself was rather detached from the fantasy conflict of Adventure, being a mysterious entity that sprouted out of nowhere on the Internet and wreaked havoc). Moreover, Nokia’s usage of Omegamon embodies a theme that’s central to both Our War Game! and Cyber Sleuth itself as a whole -- while most people associate Omegamon with Taichi and Yamato these days, the original method of formation back in Our War Game! came from “bringing people from different places together”. Nokia managed to bring together a formidable army in a place where everyone else in the hacker world was trying to promote a dog-eat-dog philosophy, and the sense of cooperation is arguably making her stronger than anyone else.

(I should also point out that Nokia’s name is, obviously, a reference to the Finnish telephone communications company, and this has a lot of relevance to the game’s theme of connection, along with her phone Digivice...and, also, the method used to bring everyone’s powers together in Our War Game!’s spiritual successor, Diablomon Strikes Back. Feels a bit too on-the-nose here.)

In the second half of the game, when the world starts falling apart due to the Digital World portal opening, Nokia becomes one of most important people holding everything together as Arata goes off the deep end and Yuuko starts fixating on her own personal problems and revenge -- because she’s the one most in tune with treating Digimon as the living beings they are, she’s most active in advocating for them and helping them bond with humans, and and she’s the one making the chaos be a little less chaotic. The second half is basically the more fantasy-esque version of Digimon leaking into the sci-fi, with the sidequests progressively resembling your average Digimon anime monster-of-the-week episode, and holding that all together is Nokia, who becomes a vital figure in maintaining that fellowship by being in tune with the modern franchise’s philosophy.

Through all of this, Nokia ends up taking a role rather similar to a Digimon protagonist, which is highlighted very strongly in Cyber Sleuth chapter 18 when she ends up literally becoming the player character while the main protagonist is out of commission. During that time, Yuuko and Nokia learn the truth of what happened during the EDEN incident eight years prior -- and we also learn that the five children involved had an extremely conventional “first meeting in the Digital World” experience that could have been pulled right out of the first episode of a Digimon anime, with them having a lovely adventure meeting new creatures. And at the center of that “first contact” was none other than Nokia, Agumon, and Gabumon themselves:

Agumon: Um... who are you? Nokia: Ahem! I am Nokia! And just who are you? Agumon: Me? My name is Agumon! Gabumon: I... I'm Gabumon. Nokia: Agumon and Gabumon? Hee hee! What weird names! Gabumon: Hey, they're not weird! Agumon: You're the one with the weird name! Nokia: As if! My name's not weird! Hee hee!

Nokia, Agumon, and Gabumon’s meeting at the beginning of the game had been an (accidental) reenactment of their first meeting in the Digital World eight years prior -- and, in the flashback, Nokia invites them to go on an “adventure” with them. So in other words, Nokia getting involved in the hacker conflict at the beginning of the game was, unknown to all of them, her attempting to restore that beauty and idealism of the Digimon Adventure-esque philosophy and fun in a world where the Eaters had torn it away and EDEN had turned into a haven of cynicism and hacker battle royale.

In the end, the game’s conflict is only resolved by bringing everyone together; Arata has to be retrieved from the deep end, and Yuuko has to settle her deep-seated personal grievances. Everyone makes a promise to return together, in the sense of making things right and repairing the connections between them that had been cut in that incident. The final battle (momentarily) causes the playable protagonist to literally fall apart, and the one reaching out to them and sending her message to them at the end of the game is none other than Nokia herself -- again, in the absence of the game’s protagonist, Nokia is the one with the closest role, because in the face of the new world going forward, she was the one who contributed most to restoring its idealism.

Ultimately, all of this is especially because Cyber Sleuth works under one of the most terrifying imaginable premises for a fan of a kids’ franchise: “we made an entry for this, but for adults.” Many of us can testify that this kind of premise can go very well, or very badly -- the latter especially in the case of things that decide “taking the opportunity to do things that you can’t do on a Sunday morning kids’ timeslot” means “going out of your way to put edgy violence and sexy things and cynicism just because you can”, or, in other words, looking down condescendingly on its kids’ franchise roots with malice and deciding that something for adults means “more suffering” and not “issues that require more life experience to understand”. The reason the game ended up getting as much acclaim among longtime Digimon fans as it did was that despite being the franchise’s first venture into this territory, it did end up setting itself up as something that took that opportunity to do something new and unique that would have never made it into any of the prior entries (holy hell the doll quest) and yet never gave up on the idealism and themes of connection that make up the franchise at its core, and paid respect to everything that had contributed to all of that while it was at it.

And at the center of that is Shiramine Nokia, who is effectively the spirit of Digimon Adventure, condensed into a single character.

#digimon #digimon story cyber sleuth #shiramine nokia #nokia shiramine #shihameta

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life-rewritten · 4 years

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Lovely Writer Episode 3/4; The Discovery of Identity; Transformation, Perceptions and Hidden Ideals

Writing about this show is interesting, mostly because I have so much to say about everything. With this show it’s layers upon layers upon layers, it’s a lot of information even if it seems like a cheesy BL and like a typical storyline. The story tackles with so much irony and hints and clues to unveil and also representations of real life that takes sensitivity and time to understand and acknowledge. The show is so good already in 3-4 episodes and it’s also at times soft and romantic whilst also at times real and painful about some of the truths about society and the acting and writing industry. The director, screen writers and producers of the show have come with this ideology that they are making a BL storyline but they do not want to repeat the same mistakes as the previous, no instead they will call it out, educate the audience and also still have flawed characters learn and grow from their actions. That’s why with this show even the villains are not villains per say but humans who are forced to act the way they do to survive, they’re understandable and have reasons for why they will end up being an obstacle but also this show has no heroes, at first it seems that Gene and Sib the main characters are going to be perfect, and one dimensional caricatures that fall in love with no personality, depth or growth but actually both of them are flawed, have interesting perspectives on things, attitudes to people and ways of thinking that is vital to connecting them to where the story is going. And that’s brilliant. Whilst episode 3 is more information and outlook into the other characters as Gene deals with pressure of the industry and people and his new feelings for Nubsib, episode 4 is a softer , calmer episode dealing with Gene and Nubsib actually making their relationship mean something to the audience, showing that they could have a chance to grow a healthy, romantic love story and not the toxic, worrisome ones we feared. And I adored both episodes. So this essay we are going to be focusing on the love story of Gene and Nubsib portrayed in these two episodes, but also how it connects to Gene’s self awareness, and also unveiling Nubsib’s character more and changing him from being seen in a sinister scary light to a soft romantic light instead.

The Price of Ambition: The Effects of Pressure

So First of all Episode 3 maps out what the writers and director want to achieve with this show. I tend to think this show becomes like a self insert for the director/writer. What they make Gene say about the way a story should be written, is also what they want to tackle and achieve with this. The nightmare scene discusses about the physical nature of BLs when it comes to NC scenes, the show mocks the lack of actually talking about the reality about what that entails by showing us Gene learn about positions and educate himself on that topic, but also it mocks the audience who expected from the books for the show to be more explicit and aggressive with NC since that’s what happens in the novel with Gene and Nubsib. Gene says in the nightmare scene that all he wants is a story that does not need that type of content to get fans but focuses on the depth of its characters, fleshing out their romance and showing why they are in love, a way to make the audience focus on the humanity of the characters as they fall in love. And that’s exactly what immediately the show starts to show, we start to immediately after the nightmare scene see Nubsib’s true colours and realise he’s not just with Gene for physical chemistry but he’s actually warm, comfortable and his love for Gene is actually quite pure and innocent despite him using inauthenticity to show it. So that’s important to think about because the next episode goes into more detail as well about these two’s romance, we start to really flesh out our characters opinions on companionship and love and we evade a NC scene by focusing on gentleness, devotion and protective love that Nubsib has for Gene as he ensures that he treats Gene properly and does the right thing and wait for consent. That’s one of the best things about this show, it will talk about the issues of BL industry but it’s not going to repeat the same mistakes its making. Yes Nubsib seems like a typical controlling, manipulative BL lead but actually he’s different and all we have to do is wait to understand why he’s hiding who he is and what his aims are. But the show is also not afraid to talk about flawed characters, and problematic actions, we may have characters that make mistakes because that’s life but they will learn from those actions. This is why I’m really in love with this show.

Episode 3-4 also tackles transformation and the discovery and awareness of self. Especially since in episode 3 the theme is pressure, the pressure to conform which makes Hin want to start writing new BL novels like Gene did so he can get more success and notice from his writing, pressure to be something different like Aey has to do because he’s pressured to act romantic on set with Nubsib with people who objectify and sexualise them, and pressure for Gene to write more NC scenes and lose his own values and ideas on what he wants his content to be like. So there is this idea of pressure causing characters to transform and push down parts of them self.

Desperation and Transformation

I do not know where Hin is going in the storyline of course episode 4 focuses most of the story on the development and intimacy of Gene and Sib’s new relationship but in episode 3, I still feel like I could be right about Hin. Hin is a mirror image of Gene just like Aey is a mirror image of Nubsib. Both of them are exposing the hidden flaws of the characters. The more we focus on him the more we have a storyline for him building, we’ve been told he wants to be a writer, he’s not making money, he’s not being noticed, he has a lot of things that he wants to do but his sacrifices hint that there is a desperation in him that I think it’s really important to observe and notice that’s going to make him soon snap or act out. In episode 3 Hin mentions his new BL novel more, and he asks Gene to look into it. I do need to mention that Hin and Gene have essentially the same outline/novel idea because it’s both based on the love story of Gene and Nubsib brewing. Gene is writing about an actor and a writer falling in love with each other, Hin is writing about an editor in chief falling in love with an actor it’s really similar, like really really similar as a layout, it may be different because he doesn’t always see them but what are the odds that he is writing out the same dynamics as Gene’s new novel and asking to Gene to look at it. If the novel ends up being similar isn’t he essentially a rival to Gene? Where is Hin’s storyline going? No matter how much I want to say his journey is to write and become popular and to assert himself with his BL writing, I just don’t see it not being more important?

All I see is a layout for Gene and him being rivals even though it doesn’t seem like it right now but for him to be like Gene you’re my idol, I look up to you and I really love you, yeah positivity, it’s great he’s inspired by Gene, it’s great that he feels these emotions towards Gene, and there’s no hostility, but I do think that if he thinks Gene is taking writing for granted, or doing something that makes him look like he’s taking that path for granted, then he would be affected, and be disappointed, and disappointment breeds resentment so I think it’s really interesting Hin isn’t being noticed by the publisher, he’s in a desperate situation right now, pressured right now to do something good and so he’s started to start writing BLs similar to Gene, I can’t help see similarities to ideas about plagiarism, because twice they have mentioned him being immensely helpful and writing the same ideas as Gene, I can’t help notice that they’re both writing for the same publisher and one of their new books is going to be seen as more fit for the publisher, and three Tee has directed and loved characters that seem positive and obsessed with the main character only for that character to be revealed to be the obsession drove that person to villainy. Pressure and Desperation reaches a height with him, and he reacts by giving into that and being an obstacle to Gene later. I love Hin right now but I can’t help thinking he’s going to be an obstacle to Gene and Nubsib, I can’t help thinking he’s an obstacle to writing path of Gene because he really could sacrifice Gene to become like Gene, to replace Gene, because he needs money and notoriety to make it as a writer. Hin also mentioning Gene as an idol is mirroring Nubsib because that’s exactly what Nubsib also sees him as, Nubsib relates to Hin, because he understands being affected and looking up to him the same way. Gene gives him a positive feeling and makes him want to do well, and pushes him to do more I’m guessing.

There is twice that Gene is mentioned as an idol to others, he’s an idol to Hin and he’s an idol to Aey. Nubsib does not like that Aey has read Gene’s novels, he does not like the fact that Aey seems really supportive towards Gene. One Nubsib can call out bullshit, because he’s king of faking and pretending, and as mentioned Aey is like Nubsib’s mirror character, I think Nubsib knows how fake Aey is and he sees Aey as a rival. I really do think the mirror characters may be rivals to each other to and that’s the pattern. Two is Nubsib jealous because he thinks there’s any chance for Gene and Aey to get close? The jealousy and frustration and possessiveness he feels for Gene around Aey is something that needs to be noticed, because Sib definitely has an issue with Aey only he and Aey knows about. I don’t know why he’s so upset about Aey’s actions because he’s literally doing the same thing, he sees Gene as an idol etc, so why’s he upset about Aey unless he sees Aey in him and that he’s just as fake as he is being. So there’s two reactions from Nubsib towards the two who mention they look up to Gene, one is jealousy and disgust and anger towards Aey and the other is support and understanding towards Hin.

In the episode where the nightmare scene talks about how Gene wants to focus on characters and not focus on the sexual relationships of the BL storyline, not focus on the toxicity of the characters but the depth and reality about their relationship and personalities, we finally get to see the answer to our question, Nubsib is 100% in love with Gene, there is no weird scary feelings about him in both episode 3 and 4. Episode 3 exposes how he feels for Gene, his natural state and personality with Gene, even when Gene is not watching him, he’s still devoted and caring about him when Gene is sick, he doesn’t need to do that if he’s being creepy and evil and what not, every single thing he does with Gene it’s like there’s a hold on him, and he forgets where he is and it’s just filled with ultimate devotion, ultimate care, and three Nubsib is someone who cares and cherishes Gene so much that his consent is important to him. Nubsib is very practical and serious about issues with consent, even with the kiss, he ensures Gene is okay with it, even in episode 4, he struggles to not give in to Gene’s drunk demands telling Gene he’ll wait till he’s ready. He’s not forceful, he’s not controlling, all he wants is for Gene to be near him and okay.

Now you could argue that there is a line between non consent and manipulation/coercion but I do think Nubsib was falling more into the line of coercion a little bit as first like manipulating a need for a kiss, but the most important thing that has been noticed since episode 2, is that it’s not by force, he gives Gene a lot of options repeatedly, even if he acts all sad to get guilt, or what he wants. It’s also not because he is sad that Gene is like let’s do whatever it is, it’s more like Gene sees it as opportunity to get better with his writing since Sib inspires him to write, but also he feels comfortable and safe with Nubsib. Nubsib asking for consent is something I really appreciate about him and something I like about him so much.

Gene’s self discovery is also explored in episode 4 more when we have an episode that just focuses on him and Nubsib starting their relationship. There is a transformation of Gene who is avoidant and evasive of companionship to someone who starts to want that and see the value in that by living with Nubsib for almost a month. By the end of episode 3, his fear of vulnerability and the truth makes him regress and try to bring back what he sees as normal and get some kind of control of his environment that Nubsib has successfully invaded in.

Nubsib; The catalyst for transformation and inspiration

Nubsib causes Gene to have a transformation. Not that being an introvert is a bad thing, I’m an introvert and I also dislike always being forced to go out and hang out in large crowds. But it’s about how Nubsib’s presence is essentially making Gene become better, discover his loneliness in distancing himself from people due to his obsession and focus on writing. Nubsib makes Gene feel good and that’s why you see a difference in him from episode 3-4 after spending just almost a month with him. Even though I was confused with his transformation this episode just because he seemed more outgoing, a bit more open to people, as we see in episode 4, his work is what pulls him away from people but also it’s how he feels when he’s surrounded by people who make him feel uncomfortable. People who bring out worry, insecurity and more. He rather just focus on writing than deal with those people.

I do agree that Nubsib is invasive until episode 4 ha. Gene is an introvert. And as one the way Nubsib does invade his space was a lot, but Nubsib just has feelings for Gene, he’s a doe eyed puppy around him, he loses himself basically when he gets into caring mode with Gene, he doesn’t try to hide his support and eagerness to be with Gene and show him affection, because it’s so automatic for him to take care of him, protect him, treat him, because he sees Gene as a romantic partner so I do agree it is uncomfortable but that’s not the reason why Gene is even weird about it. Episode 3 and 4 is about Gene’s internalised homophobia about his sexuality. When Gene starts to put two and two about his feelings for Nubsib he explodes with anxiety and anger because he’s still struggling to accept who he is, but also he has a lot of misunderstandings and biased opinions about what being gay/queer actually means. Because of the way BL has made him view it as unrealistic, shallow, and well toxic, not that being gay is that, but he believes him ending up that way makes him like the characters in his novel, makes him be part of a world he’s seen so negatively about, something he’s trying to escape from because of seeing it as shallow and toxic. When Nubsib invades Gene’s space as well, its for positive reasons it’s not him purposely trying to make Gene uncomfortable, it’s to help and make sure Gene is okay, safe and cared for. So it’s not because Gene is scared by Nubsib’s actions because he’s scary but it’s because of panic and repressed feelings he’s felt for him since episode 1. So these are ways we can tell that Nubsib’s feelings under his façade is genuine, he’s just like Aey and others where they are inspired and affected by Gene.

Nubsib: The catalyst for transformation and self discovery

The past two episodes instead of seeing Nubsib being ‘shady’ just like what Gene wanted from the nightmare scene, we saw Nubsib’s good side. His genuine personality with Gene is exactly how he treats him. What I’ve decided with Sib’s character is he’s not evil, manipulative or someone so powerful he thinks he can get with everything. He’s not greedy or scary. He’s just a spoilt child. A child who wants attention, a child who feels neglected, hence he acts like how a spoilt child does, he manipulates the situation to get what he wants and is a brat, but acts like an innocent person on the surface to get what he wants but he’s in a position of being used to getting what he wants, a position of power especially with Tum who he screams at and shouts at, that’s what a child does, just throws tantrums and make it hard for the person they know they have control over. He’s just a child who’s naïve, puppy like, who wants Gene to look at him. But he’s also spoilt because he’s in a place of privilege, so him being spoilt makes him treat others badly, but Gene makes him different, he wants to be someone better for Gene.

As of episode 1, it has been hinted that Gene is attracted to Nubsib, he feels this inherent care for Nubsib, wants to hang around him and is also curious about him naturally. He is affected by Nubsib’s presence, and his presence is the the thing inspiring him and makes him want to write. He’s being inspired by his real feelings but doesn’t know that because he has IH. So the question was in episode 3, as the show started to hint about it; if Gene knows about his identity and sexuality and who he is or was he learning about himself through finally falling in love with Nubsib. I thought he was learning about it but episode 4 made me think he’s known and has just been avoiding it. Gene isn’t homophobic as I’ve seen people worry he is, he has a very ignorant, uneducated, societal opinion on what those relationships is like. So Gene is like very similar to another character Tee directed Type from TharnType (before all those who detest this idea start to click of listen to the explanation), the thing with Type was his was psychological trauma and hate and pain making him have the mindset he had, he never got to know or understand who he was because he tried hard to avoid thinking about anything to do with sexuality. With Gene, it’s his writing that makes him act sometimes homophobic, makes him overreact when there’s ideas to him being queer/gay or being in a situation like that, the way he acts is because of the corruption of the industry he has had to witness; its why he thinks its all shallow, no substance, it’s so ironic and funny to me because he’s about to find out that what these stories portray or the boys love does have substance, because now he’s falling in love, like real love, authentic love he now understands the real feelings behind wanting to write a boys love story about just two men in a relationship, he now understands the sexual attraction behind some things, why it’s just like any other novel about real life relationships, he understands why characters in BL might be more important than just what the industry is using it for.

Gene’s way of educating himself as the show goes on in this industry is so great to me and one of the reasons I adored episode 3. Opening himself, researching and trying to understand more about things is so important because

1. He’s a writer trying to do well by this genre but he also feels uncomfortable about

2. He’s someone represented by this genre as he is queer character.

3. He’s literally going through self discovery the more he writes his novel

For example the nightmare scene in episode 3 is the catalyst of that episode. It what spirals the transformation in Gene’s character we start to see, from being withdrawn to starting to be comfortable and open. He goes through the nightmare and Nubsib shows him care when sick. (That’s what he represents to him, comfort, healing, warmth, companionship, protection). Because he feels cared for by him, he also starts to want to show the same to Nubsib to show him the same care, warmth that Nubsib was showing him etc. And because he has been holding unto his feelings for Nubsib, has been feeling overwhelmed by his fear about them, when he gets drunk to avoid dealing with him sending him away, he blurts out all he’s felt, he becomes the most truthful at that moment because he’s been holding unto all these thoughts since he first met him. But he also says to Nubsib in episode 4 that he reminds him of a lead BL character and it’s like aww he complimented his looks but the fact that Nubsib reminds him of that isn’t a good thing to Gene remember, he doesn’t want to end up like BL characters because he thinks there’s no substance, no truth, just toxicity with that situation so it’s something he panics about that it’s ironic because he’s essentially falling for someone and playing out a BL trope.

BL: The pressure of transformation and authenticity

Another thing meta about this show is the inclusion and mirroring of Bad Engineer the series. I mentioned in my previous essay whilst Bad Engineer is another meta call out to the industry it also could play a role as a shadowing device to show you similarities and differences between Nubsib and Aey the actors who play Kin and Bun the caricatures and characters that are exaggerated. It kind of exposes the thoughts and ideas about these two in an interesting way. Let me explain. Bad engineer starts of with Bun being forced to get the attention of Kinn who is aggressive and seen as wanted and powerful but too scary to go near to. After he hugs Kin we already are hinted from Nubsib’s audition line that Kin could not let go of the mark Bun left on him and becomes essentially obsessive and controlling over Bun wanting to be with Bun. Okay first of all it’s already calling out and exaggerating the obsession that Nubsib seems to have for Gene, he would go to lengths to hide who he is, make up excuses to be near him and hide his power and privilege (by lying he’s poor, and about his housing situation essentially lying about the power he probably does hold over people) which is why his exact words he says to Gene in the audition is foreshadowing, he knows who Gene is before, he’s been affected by whoever Gene was to him in the past and he’s in love with him. Just like Kin proceeds become hooked onto Bun.

What’s really funny is that Aey is playing a character that is very vulnerable and gentle and sweet, like what is normally perceived as a typical feminine uke stereotype. It’s interesting because its because he gives of this vibes that he was chosen for this audition, but also in reality he’s wearing a mask to act like this to Gene and everyone around him especially the vulnerable act, where he makes you feel guilty for being in his way or making you feel pitiful for how he’s treated by Nubsib. The fact that Tawan (played by Mhok in the series) is a second lead in bad engineer the series and Mhok is essentially in the second lead role for Aey, he’s the one behind the scenes unrequitedly loving and caring and worrying about the main lead but is always neglected or pushed aside for the other main which is mirroring how Aey isn’t seeing how Mhok cares for him (he gets so jealous if you notice whenever he has to see Aey and Nubsib together) and is pushing him away to focus on his hunt for fame by getting Nubsib’s attention.

Nubsib has a different type of similarity with Kin. It’s how people perceive him that’s similar to how Kin is on the surface, but also Kinn is an exaggerated character, who is toxic and Nubsib as finally shown isn’t going to be toxic or problematic because the writers don’t want him to be that way. For some reason Kin is filled with anger and is aggressive and loud, Nubsib isn’t as angry as Kin but he also expresses his distaste of things when it doesn’t go his way with anger and tantrums to Tum especially because he’s a spoilt child. Kin is possessive, aggressive and obsessive and even though Nubsib isn’t like that in a large scale, he has some of those traits, he is possessive with Gene, and protective and jealous easily when it comes to him thinking something is in the way. Kin is a trope, he’s written to make fun of semes in BLs like Fighter from WhyRU, someone seen as cold and indifferent to people who is meant to be seen as rough and mean, rich, but then the story unveils a softer side when he’s with his partner later. Or Kin also reminds of toxic Kdrama male characters (its not just BL this trope is used), like Gu Jun Pyo from boys over flowers who is just like Kin because he’s rich and spoilt. The reason why Kin and Nubsib is similar is because is that Kin likes to get what he wants, he’s just as invasive, he’s forceful (though as mentioned Nubsib isn’t as problematic with this as Kin), he’s just as determined to do what it takes to get his partner. Both portray this demenour around them where they are not meant to be messed with.

And I think that’s important about Nubsib, there’s some kind of power and control he has that makes people not mess around with him when Gene is not in front of him, he doesn’t try to be nice or kind as he does when he’s with Gene. Things that they don’t have in common is that for Gene, Nubsib is the opposite, he’s gentle to Gene, because he’s determined to a better person to him, he’s manipulative but he’s not forceful or aggressive towards him, although he wears a mask, he’s actually authentically automatically the way he is with Gene as we have seen in both episodes. Gene transforms him; he makes him kind, caring and sweet. Gene is a prized person to him; so valuable and worthy that he doesn’t even think he’s worthy as he is for him hence why he chooses to be better with him, he doesn’t see Gene as less than him but the others he does which is something that does need to be worked on. But if he is spoilt and privilege, if he’s been so used to people treating him this way then I can see why he can be this way. So Kin and Nubsib’s character calls out Nubsib’s flaws and Aey and Bun’s character also show what Aey wants people to view him as on the surface and Mhok and Tawan are mirroring the same roles.

Bad engineer being written by Gene is so funny to me since all he does is like complain how much he hates everything to do with tropes like it, so there must be some kind of shame inside him for him writing it to remove pressure from his company even though he doesn’t want BL to mean that. It also again shadows Hin’s desperation as Hin takes on his own BL novel, because Gene must have been so desperate when he first wrote it because he was writing it just to also please people and be noticed as a writer more.

Lovely Writer is it obvious despite my late releases of my analysis that I am obsessed and I have high respect and love for this show? The fact that there is problematic worries in the storyline, there are flawed characters and action in the plot, but they’re so real and human. The fact that this show talks about BL, and is trying to make fun of it, call it out but then the characters in it are also falling into some of its tropes and ideas. But it does show that with love sometimes people do get into these situations even though it’s seen as problematic or weird, but it’s dealing with sexual attraction, showing instant connections and portraying passion, sometimes when people are into someone you can get crazy, possessive, sometimes you may even want to be with that person all the time. It’s really important that the show is drawing a line between what is toxic and what is not, what is romantic and what is not, the authenticity of romance vs the idealism of romance in tv shows and books. The fact that Gene and Nubsib are falling in love with each other and are going to go through a lot together I think shows me that at the end I will also think they’re meant to be together, they’re like a realistic couple falling in love. Gene feels real to me. Nubsib feels human to me even though we’re uncovering his personality. All of the characters feel real and dimensional to me. It’s something I love about the show, it just feels so real despite being literally a BL that’s making fun of how unrealistic BLs are, it’s so real, it’s so meta, it’s so important and I really think it’s needed in this genre, and industry. I think it’s such a great, great show. I love Tee, because he’s good at directing these layered, meta, deep shows always able to provide reasons for why the story is the way it is, what its trying to show, why the characters are the way they are and make mistakes, there’s so much depth to his stories and the things he chooses to focus each time he does a show. In a way Gene’s character development and growth is so important to me because to him the BL industry and genre is bad, and the show seems like that’s what its message is as well, because that’s what his perception seems to portray only, as Gene falls for Nubsib who is literally like a trope that reminds him of the stories he seems to hate (especially when he discovers his inauthenticity) , as he falls in love and finds out more about his relationship, his sexuality, his identity as he starts to realise how BL should be written, why it should be created, that there can be authentic love stories in BL, he can change what BL represents for people like him. I just think its fantastic to see him with a negative perception on writing BL to finally understanding why it should be written but it should be written in a different way, or changed to fit a different way, instead of letting corruption happen he shouldn’t give in but should try and change. He may be making fun of the fact that BL is known for its weird tropes like NC, but NC is real its just attraction between two people, as long as its not toxified or problematic its just another way people can show feelings, there’s so many het series that have NC scenes but when it comes to BL its seen as a fetish or something negative when really if done right its just two people being like normal couple and giving into their affections for each other. Yeah I think this is amazing to talk about and portray. This is one of my favourite shows right now, and I’m so eager about where we’re going with this. Because I just love the layers, the message and the story.

#lovely writer #lovely writer the series #thai bl #bl series #bl drama #nubsib #cwg #nubsibgene #march #kaoup

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thevividgreenmoss · 4 years

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The more I see from Mark Fisher the more fruitless his writing seems in terms of actual implications for theoretical/practical future movement of any anti-capitalist politics...like for all his talk of the impotent paralyzed state of a left unable to escape or meaningfully able to learn from its past, beset by circular patterns of discourse and movement it's tied itself up in as a result of cultural fixations/conflicts and stifling insular academic and/or online intellectual developments that are often completely detached from the actual political sphere, unable to formulate an actionable political programme that can genuinely confront power, have no relevance to the social base of a potential anti-capitalist movement, etc, like for all the talk of that shit his own critiques of those things tend to essentialize them as inextricable, even inevitable features of capitalism itself and as a result cultural or intellectual trends that are not intrinsic to but symptomatic of a system based on this particular mode of production, and that develop as a result of the interplay between societal elements existing within and formed by that system in a given time and place, are posited instead as defining features of that system (for example the insistence that regurgitation of past cultural forms must be seen as inevitable features or tendencies of capitalism - and that that alleged fact has some fundamental explanatory power - rather than being seen as trends that have come to prominence, and cyclically have become prominent before as well, due to the ebbs and flows of accumulation of intellectual property & consolidation of productive/investment capital etc and that at times have given way to or existed alongside dominant cultural/artistic movements outside of that retrofetishistic lane. Which like even when that was the case capitalism was still bad...like the problem is not encapsulated by the culture's perceived failure to find the next jungle music, nor would it be solved or meaningfully altered were the next jungle music to be found). And in that process you're bestowing an undue sense of significance upon and giving a completely misplaced centrality to things that you're purporting to be criticizing on the grounds that they distract from and are unproductive when it comes to dealing with the pressing core issues by which we're actually faced, while completely failing to incorporate the breadth of actual political & economic shifts, movements, conflicts, etc both against and in favor of the expansion of capital within your analysis in the same way that the individuals/organizations/institutions that you started out critiquing are guilty of. And that related failure to genuinely consider political reality as it exists outside of certain insular left spaces & discourses as well as the left spaces & discourses being used as the basis for the critique being advanced largely neglects anything that might be going on outside of metropolitan centers within advanced western states (and even then it seems mostly confined to the anglosphere) that might complicate or even outright contradict the narratives being advanced, which idk may also contribute to the tendency to grossly generalize and even essentialize specific aspects of society or culture that have taken shape in the first-world as being endemic to capitalism itself as it exists and must exist everywhere at all times...and even if that's being done based on the view one sometimes sees that as capitalism advances then the societal condition of the global south will come to resemble that of the current north then it's still bullshit because while of course that does and will still continue to happen in some respects, there's no broad convergence of that sort in sight at all and given increased pauperization already in motion as a result of ongoing economic trends and mass migrations as a result of accelerating climate change the future of LA or Berlin might look more like the present in Rio de Janeiro or Mumbai than vice versa...idk like there are genuinely interesting discussions of music and evocative (though by no means novel on the level or either tone or content) descriptions of a certain kind of prevalent malaise and ennui peppered throughout Fisher's work but his analyses of the way those things reflect and/or are produced by capitalism itself either fall off the mark or, again, aren't advancing any ideas that haven't long been circulating either in the marxist critical tradition or in any others that have in differing ways been in some form of dialogue with or have to some degree been influenced by it (even those that either explicitly/self-consciously or not find themselves in opposition to marxism, poststructuralism being probably the most obvious/notorious example) right down to the concept of capitalist realism itself, which as elaborated by Fisher offers nothing that isn't present in the diverse and even divergent analyses & conceptual frameworks surrounding ideology, consciousness, hegemony, the ~real~, etc that were already there in the work of everyone from Marx himself to Lukacs to Gramsci to Althusser, Baudrillard, Jameson, Eagleton or numerous other notable figures even just within the western intellectual realm. Like the only distinguishing feature of Fisher's capitalist realism is his contention that in the aftermath of the USSR's collapse, not only has the social reality generated by capital successfully naturalized itself in various pervasive ways as it has been doing for the past five hundred years, but now there's been a crucial turn in that since 1991 there's been an additionally ingrained negation of our ability to conceive of or pursue alternatives to neoliberal capitalism on a collective level, which allegedly wasn't there before...which like I'm sorry but that's a ridiculous fucking claim to make especially in light of the fact that shortly before his death Fisher said that the movements behind/supporting the rise of Jeremy Corbyn to labour party leadership & the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign represented breaks in and the beginning of the end of the era of capitalist realism, which like. If that's the standard then how does the latin american pink tide of the late 90s-late 00s, which involved much larger popular movements that were much more firmly rooted in and directed by the working classes and peasantry and that pursued much more radical goals and even in the face of counter-revolutionary forces that have been ascendant in recent years still succeeded in attaining significant tangible gains for themselves, especially when compared to the negligible results that revived new deal democratic or midcentury labour agendas have had so far in the US & UK, like how did that shit not contradict capitalist realism well beforehand...or the fact that in Cuba the first post-Soviet decade entailed a renewal of genuine socialist energy & societal transformation of a kind not seen since the first 10-15 years immediately following the revolution, or on the other end of things, the clerical authoritarianism that existed in iran already at the time, or the terrifying rate at which the genuinely fascist RSS consolidated popular support and came to have an increasing hold over the various institutions governing Indian society, especially since the early 90s, until at this point there's no significant challenge to their power within the second most populous country in the world...like all those things seem to be much greater refutations from so-called capitalist realism to the point that the concept seems to have no meaning or utility at all...like whether intentionally or not, Fisher's ~acid communism~ basically leads to the same endpoint, perhaps with different aesthetic trappings, as FALC bullshit, where residents of the first world are freed of the labor and alienation of the past by a super expanded version of the welfare states created by postwar european social democracies and can both go to raves and consume as often as we want. The problem wasn't the violent abstraction of commodified life, the value form, whatever it was that we couldn't pursue and indulge in the thrills and pleasures that per my mans Lyotard & Nick Land are undeniably present in capitalist consumer society except now we can, thanks to those beefed up fully automated welfare states, those indulgences are no longer simultaneously a source of malaise and depression as they previously were when the free market barred the masses from partaking of them with the freedom and reckless abandon that are necessary in order to give us that truly liberated libidinal fulfillment. What the effects of the magically automated extraction of the natural resources necessary to maintain that steady flow of goods and resources to the fully automated luxury acid communists might be on the environment, how that might impact the people that live in the places where extractive industries tend to be based, how they might fit into this acid FALC utopia, whether they'd be forced into ever more menial forms or labor building or providing upkeep for the robots that replaced their former fellow proletarians in the first world, whether their labor might itself be the supposedly 'automated' part of fully automated luxury communism, whether they might legally be recategorized as robots so as to prevent that seeming contradiction from shaking things up, no need to trouble ourselves with that

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oliverpdaniel · 4 years

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Let’s talk about casual homophobia.

I wanted to share a transcript of a TikTok video by a minor celebrity (I won't do them the honour of identifying them, but suffice it to say that this individual thrives mostly on controversy and poor publicity), to demonstrate what day-to-day homophobic language looks like. Many of these questions have been asked to me, or tell of real things that I've experienced, due to a generally callous view of queer folks. The quoted parts are the actual video, the unquoted responses mine.

Note in advance that some of these questions are clearly oriented towards gay men, but I am responding from the perspective of a bisexual man. Anyway...

"Okay, these are my questions for the gays – sorry, I was on Straight TikTok for a minute; what?"

Or, as you might like to call it, TikTok. For those unfamiliar, "Gay TikTok" is a small subset of the TikTok community that makes videos primarily revolving around in-jokes and shared experiences of the queer community. Thus, "Straight TikTok" is only extant in contrast, a joking reference to certain, overwhelmingly heteronormative parts of the TikTok community. While I'm not a big fan of the idea of 'ownership' or deciding who's allowed to say what, this (obnoxiously straight, in every sense of the word 'obnoxious') celebrity is trying somewhat unceremoniously to insert themselves into a narrative not their own here. Not off to a great start.

(1) "Would you care if your partner was bisexual?"

Whelp, this is one I can't really answer, can I? But, this still does lean into the old "gold-star" ideology of homosexuality, which makes it off-putting from the jump. For those unfamiliar, a "gold star" gay/lesbian is one who has never had sex with the opposite gender. This is a completely silly distinction, that fails to take into account personal circumstances, as well as – y'know – the fluid nature of human sexuality. TL;DR, even if you're exclusively into one gender, you shouldn't care about your partner's sexual orientation (other than, y'know, making sure it includes your gender) because, leaving aside the absolutely rad underworld of polyamory, they're only going to be into you while they're with you.

(2) "Have you ever been with someone of the opposite gender?"

Ah, more gold-starring! A great way to start. "You're trans? What's your deadname?"

(3) "Do you take offence when a girl calls you her Gay Best Friend?"

The Gay Best Friend is an expendable, non-threatening fount of femininity in masculine form, someone to go clothes-shopping with and who will give you sassy advice on boys. God forbid, however, that the Gay Best Friend try to be vulnerable with you about the difficulties of LGBTQIA+ life; they're only there for sashaying and making out with at parties, right? The Gay Best Friend is an incredibly harmful notion to men on both sides of the sexuality spectrum. Gay (and ESPECIALLY bi/pan/poly) men already know to fear the label, because of the dismissive treatment and expectation of performative homosexuality that comes along with it. Straight men should fight against it, too, because it's a symptom of the present hegemony of heterosexual relationships, which revolves around sexual transactionalism and a healthy dose of gender-role-fuelled intimidation[1]. (If you've never heard any of those words, you're probably the target audience here.)

(4) "Be honest – how many times has a straight person tried to hook you up with a gay person based solely on the fact that they're gay and no other compatibility requirements?" (with a devilish smile, into full blown "oh guuuuuurl" laughter)

This is a real thing that happens to people, myself included, all too frequently. It tells us that when you look at me, you don't think "Oliver", you think "Gay", and next time you meet another gay guy, that's the word ringing through your head. It's not funny. It's hurtful. If you're going to recommend a partner to me, make sure you actually have faith in a connection forming. As someone who ended up in an abusive relationship as a result of overzealous matchmaking, it's not something to be taken lightly; relationships, especially gay relationships and all the societal friction they inevitably entail, are not here for your endearment.

(5) "Are you down to hook up with someone who's 'just curious'?"

MORE gold-starring! God, could you imagine the uproar if a lesbian approached a straight person and said that they "missed dick" and/or wanted to experiment!? Oh, wait, that's already common in straight porn to the point of cliché. Gag; and not the good kind of gag.

(6) "Do you proudly wear the rainbow flag, or are you kinda against it because it kinda segregates?"

...what? When I first found this video, it was being duetted (TikTok's side-by-side video response) by a queer person, and at this point they took the opportunity to say, "I don't like you." I echo the sentiment.

(7) "Are you a 'yaaaaaas kweeeeen' gay or are you, like, 'fuck that shit what the fuck?'"

WE ARE NOT HERE TO PERFORM QUEERNESS FOR YOU. Leaving aside the sociolinguistic aspects of queer language and its intersection with (read: theft from) African-American Vernacular English, if people want to act flamboyantly gay, THAT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. If people want to act "normal" (read: heteronormatively!!!), that's NONE OF YOUR GOD DAMN BUSINESS. Queer people are fucking people, they act differently in different scenarios, and it's not for you to fetishize or to find "too much sometimes". When you accept a queer person into your life, you're accepting every facet of them into your life, for them to live and love unapologetically – not just the parts you find entertaining.

(8) "This might be a dealbreaker for me: do you like musical theatre?"

Yes. But even if I didn't – if I liked drinking beer and watching Nascar (sorry dad), but wish I had a boyfriend to do that with, guess what? That's my own fucking business. And, again, if your idea of a "dealbreaker" when engaging with a gay person is whether or not they like musical theatre – probably one of the most tired stereotypes about gay folks – and not, I dunno, if they're fun to be around and respect your boundaries and opinions, then maybe you're not looking for a gay friend for the right reason.

(9) "Be honest – do you still go through the Chick-Fil-A drivethrough and get that spicy chicken sandwich or those nuggies?" (big, face-scrunching smile.)

This is the one that REALLY got me. This displays just how tone-deaf this person is and how deeply they've objectified the concept of homosexuality for themselves. Chick-Fil-A is a massively homophobic organization from the top down, and they donate millions to organizations that want to bring into question my very right to exist, morally and legally.

As a straight person not affected by these issues, it's easy to say "well, I know I /shouldn't/ go to Chick-Fil-A because of the 'gay stuff', but oh IT'S SOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOD!". It's easy to momentarily forget one's morality because hey, it's not like you're directly hurting anyone, right? But, as a queer person who has to walk by the brand-new Chick-Fil-A at Yonge and Bloor every day on my walk to class, seeing the lines wrapping around the block lets me take direct measure of who, and how many, are willing to forget about me for just long enough to enjoy a fucking chicken sandwich. Go literally anywhere else. Eating at Chick-Fil-A is a choice, and it's a choice that informs me that you care less about my right to live than your own personal enjoyment.

(10) "Do you get upset when they have straight actors portray gay characters?"

This is a whole other debate, so I'm not going to get into the actual subject matter of this question. But hey – maybe, in an industry literally overrun with queer people, maybe we can stop converting a significant and pernicious problem in entertainment into a cutesy debate topic? Something really tells me that this person isn't going to start whipping out the intersectional feminist literature to explain their argument here. In all likelihood, it'll sound more along the lines of "but Eddie Redmayne looked so GOOD in that dress!"

(11) "And what's the GAYEST thing about you?'

Nope. Shut up and choke. I hate you.

Never tell me for a second that homophobia is "over" in Canada/the West/wherever. Never tell me that it's a distant issue, remaining only in far-off religious backwaters. This is what it can look like. Fetishization; dismissal; turning struggles for human dignity into pseudo-intellectual debates.

I'm not here to be your Gay Best Friend.

I'm not here to date your new gay acquaintance.

I'm not here to repeatedly explain to you my need to have rights.

I'm here for the same reasons you are.

I want to live and love, not to be treated like a toy.

Footnotes

[1] Okay, I'm obviously not saying that all straight relationships are built around sexual transactionalism and intimidation, nor am I saying that non-comphet relationships are not. But, in my experience as a reformed Gay Best Friend who has had to provide counsel to cishet friends over some INFURIATINGLY stupid relationship/courting issues, I would argue that a full ninety percent of them could be resolved if the experiencer simply viewed their partner/interlocutor/'tyng' as another human being, rather than being from the mysterious species that is The Opposite Gender.

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bidaubadeadieu · 4 years

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sorry for the long post, but fwiw most of it is quotes of other writers

So I’m just gonna have some quick opinions. Just read these two contrasting pieces about contemporary antiracism training, particularly focussed on the work of Robin DiAngelo:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/magazine/white-fragility-robin-diangelo.html?referringSource=articleShare

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/antiracism-training-white-fragility-robin-diangelo-ibram-kendi.html

There is a lot of background info here that I don’t think is very controversial, i.e. racism exists, even (or especially) among well-intentioned white liberals, and most people want to do something about it but don’t know what. Sure. Also, definitely big undercurrents of “who is allowed to have opinions we respect on race” where the discomfort among white people around trusting other white people on race issues is palpable. Nobody really goes out and directly says “should anybody care what a white woman has to say about race, or should we only be reading books on race written by BIPOC?” but I think that’s where one heart of the debate lies. In general, I like the Times piece better, the intelligencer piece runs a bit too close to “horseshoe theory” and “enlightened centrism” by claiming that the predominant figures of contemporary racism (including not only DiAngelo, but also scholars like Ibram Kendi) are actually reinforcing racism. Not so sure about that.

But I’m actually more interested in discussing another different facet of the interplay between these two articles, because it relates to my work. I’ll excerpt two portions:

Running slightly beneath or openly on the surface of DiAngelo’s and Singleton’s teaching is a set of related ideas about the essence and elements of white culture. For DiAngelo, the elements include the “ideology of individualism,” which insists that meritocracy is mostly real, that hard work and talent will be justly rewarded... [a different educator said] another “hallmark” is “scientific, linear thinking. Cause and effect.”... [but then a critic said] “The city has tens of millions invested in A.P. for All, so my team can give kids access to A.P. classes and help them prepare for A.P. exams that will help them get college degrees, and we’re all supposed to think that writing and data are white values? How do all these people not see how inconsistent this is?”

And then:

Glenn Singleton, president of Courageous Conversation, a racial-sensitivity training firm, tells Bergner that valuing “written communication over other forms” is “a hallmark of whiteness,” as is “scientific, linear thinking. Cause and effect.”This is not some idiosyncratic oddball notion. The African-American History Museum has a page on whiteness, which summarizes the ideas that the racism trainers have brought into relatively wide circulation... These values are not neutral at all. Hard work, rational thought, and careful planning are virtues. White racists traditionally project the opposite of these traits onto Black people and present them as immutable flaws. Jane Coaston, who has reported extensively on the white-nationalist movement, summarizes it, “The idea that white people are just good at things, or are better inherently, more clean, harder working, more likely to be on time, etc.”

I just want to assert a defense of the the idea that rationality, individuality, and punctuality are elements of white culture, but critically, that they are not inherently virtues. Here’s where I think the author of the Intelligencer piece has bought into a myth, that science really is the privileged way of uncovering objective truths about the natural world, that hard work should be rewarded. These ideas are rooted in capitalism, and can easily be contested, for example:

The assumption that there was a single scientific method was reflected in the work of Comte, who asserted that there was a hierarchy of knowledge in which ‘science’ was the pinnacle. Consequently, Comte argued that even sociology could be a positive science modelled after physics —an ambition that sociology has long since abandoned, but one to which economics clings. Implicit in this belief is the proposition that the generalisations in physics are somehow more basic than those of the other sciences and certainly more basic than in the social disciplines, and that somehow everything can be reduced ultimately to physical generalisations. Reductionism in the spirit of Greek atomism lies at the heart of this assertion. This reductionism, this reification, this scientism, is, however, inconsistent with the wide range of real scientific practices and theories that are not reducible to physics. This inconsistency suggests that changes in belief and terminology are required. ... Similarly, from the Enlightenment, we have inherited a cultural image of the scientist as a hero overcoming ignorance and bringing reality under control. The effect is to privilege particular types of inquiry, particular social practices and their associated stories over other forms of inquiry. It is not so much that one should necessarily object to the use of a general term such as ‘science’ to encompass the wide range of systematic inquiries carried out into the character of the physical and social worlds; rather, it is that ‘science’ now carries too many misleading entailments, implying a privilege and a unity of method that cannot be sustained.

(The Cult of the Market: Economic Fundamentalism and its Discontents, Bolderman, 2007)

All this is to say an existence proof: there exists a framework which acknowledges the value that white culture places on individuality and rationality, while simultaneously acknowledging that those values contain both benefits and harms, to elements both within and without white culture. This framework acknowledges the societal loss that comes from rejecting forms like social philosophy, indigenous and customary legal systems, collective ownership of property, polychronic cultures’ perceptions of time, etc. We must, of course, still adequately prepare BIPOC children in schools for the values of the dominate white culture which will determine their quality of life, not eschew those values until they turn 18 and then throw them to the wolves of white supremacy, but we could also do better to acknowledge the ways that these values are in no way universal or guaranteed.

#race #science #antiracism #science policy #white culture #sociology #i guess #i feel like western thought is an appropriate tag here but that phrase should really only exist with big scare quotes around it #and I don't think I can put quotation marks in the tags lol

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badsithnocookie · 5 years

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Mmmh, I have a question because some things that I have found isn't really detailed. So, could you illuminated us with your knowledge and headcanon please, about sith wedding, and red sith wedding please? it's for.. my work. *cough cough*

oh man weddings. yeah there’s not much in the way of canon on these and it’s like ?? on the one hand, yeah it allows people to rp what they want etc but it’s also kinda. underwhelming. (like the only actual wedding ceremony in vanilla is doc’s, so... yeah)

anYway red sith weddings

i figure that sith are going to be Huge on pomp and ceremony, and weddings are going to be a Very Big Deal. a traditional sith wedding is going to be an Event on a scale with, say, a high catholic ceremony (saying this only on the scale of ritual and grandiose Bullshit i’d expect it to entail, rather than any actual analogies involving catholicism). especially if your oc is from a noble sith family, there’s going to be a lot of Names And Faces there as well as reams of extended family (and let’s face it, sith wedding drama would be dialled up to eleven from regular wedding drama. i suspect most people try to stop short of actual murder during a wedding/afterparty but everyone still talks about That One Time that Darth Whatever got stabbed with their sister in law's dessert fork)

obviously the lower down the social ladder you go the less impressive your guestlist is generally going to be, though sith very much have to keep up with the joneses so there's going to be huge social pressure to throw extravagant parties. even though i generally reject the idea that sith are hedonists, everyone needs to let off steam sometime, and sith very much are about the theatrics of flaunting what you have (and then some more, for bonus)

i would not expect sith wedding vows or other traditions to be particularly gendered, and there's definitely not going to be any "love, honour, and obey" bullshit. I kind of want to say that sith vows would generally reflect and reference if not the sith code directly then at least its general ideals (those of personal strength and passion, claiming one's place in the galaxy against hostile opponents, etc).

"I, [name], take you, [partner's name], to be my [husband/wife/spouse], on this day, and forever more. As you are my passion, so shall I be yours. My strength, is our strength. My victories, our victories. All who stand against us will be cut asunder. This I swear to you."

this is just an example ofc. i am sure someone out there could come up with something better :p

worldbuilding note - pre-ziost, the wording is probably going to invoke the emperor's authority at some stage, even if it's just the celebrant saying sth like 'we are gathered here in the sight of the emperor to witness the matrimony of these two idiots'. post ziost ofc that wording may change dependent on the ideological bent of the celebrant and or idiots in question

going back to the note above on gendered issues: none of this bride-in-dress-groom-in-suit shite. sith wear sith robes, or more likely ceremonial armour (with heavy emphasis on 'ceremonial' - it is more likely to be armour-styled-clothing than actual armour, though i suspect more powerful sith would also include an actual armour underlay, because sith). both parties regardless of gender would probably wear jewellery signifying familial ties/history, regardless of what they wear on a day to day basis, going back to the pomp/ceremony thing above (also the fact that sith are very have-it-flaunt-it, and obsessed with bloodlines and lineages).

personally i've always figured that rather than One Single Sith Jewellery Tradition there are a few different ones depending on familial history and jewellery (while imperials tend to have a fairly singular tradition, in part because imperial culture is more of a monoculture but also because uniform regs are a Thing that exist). but this is 100% personal hc ofc. at the very least though i feel safe in saying that there would be jewellery exchange or acquisition as symbolic of the merging of two families/bloodlines in marriage.

in the case of a sith marrying an imperial in an otherwise traditional wedding, it'd be dress uniform time for the imperial in question (remember, military service is mandatory in the empire). in the case of a sith marrying a non-sith non-imperial, i think we're out of the comfort zone enough that it qualifies as a non traditional marriage *cough*

~non traditional weddings~

this would cover a whole host of sins but in the context of red sith is largely likely to be small scale and or military/imperial weddings. to wit: i've always hc'd there's a disconnect between sith and imperial culture, with imperial culture being much more practical and less grandiose than sith (and particularly red sith). sith culture, imo, would still have a lot of hangovers from pre-ghw sith culture, whereas imperial culture was set up against that as it is largely held responsible for being what lost them the ghw (my starting point here however is dk's revan fanfic, so take that as you will).

imperial weddings are thus largely going to be military weddings and while these are not immune to pomp and ceremony if you're high up the command chain enough (examples: 1, 2) they're still going to have a different atmosphere to primarily religious ceremonies. the other exception to those links i want to note is that the first one in particular is from a religious nation (rather than a secular one), and while the empire is a theocracy, the state religion is also mostly only concerned with sith. imperial weddings, to my mind, are going to be closer to civil weddings - take place in either civil offices or other non-religious premises (hotels, conference venues, etc). (and that's excluding people who get married in ad hoc services on board ships etc)

for a sith and particularly a red sith to give the finger to sith tradition and have an imperial wedding is obviously going to be a Statement all on its own but [shrug emoji] this is a rabbithole down which i am too lazy to disappear

when it comes to sith outside of the empire they are… largely going to be even more a case of "sith do what sith want" than they would otherwise (which lbr is impressive). obviously the amount of 'traditional' a red sith outside of the empire incorporates into a wedding is going to vary by individual sith but at the very least i would expect that they'd throw a big fuckoff party and bring important (to them) traditions into the mix - so frex. if an ex-empire sith had particular family traditions about clothing/robes or jewellery. ultimately though such a wedding is going to be nontraditional by virtue of the fact it's happening outside of the larger sith culture, so it's going to be a case of "[shrug emoji] sith do what sith want"

#the-sith-in-the-sky-with-diamond #long post #sith blogging #swtor worldbuilding

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meditationadvise · 5 years

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The Emotion-Bashing Needs to Stop

Emotions are an abundant facet of being human. We ought to recognize our distinct capability to experience the complexity of humanity's emotional range, instead of bashing those which we sometimes may consider 'negative'.

There are no strictly 'great' or 'negative' feelings. Fear as an example, is a need for survival. Temper is essential for engaging the search of justice. Sadness aids us to comprehend the numerous loves and ideals we have in life.

Yet we do reside in a duality of positive as well as adverse spin. Both components make a whole. So there are feelings that we refine as more favorable, like 'happiness', or even more unfavorable, like 'despair', yet both play a necessary role in helping us to learn and grow within the earthly context we find ourselves.

The Distinction between Feelings and also Feelings

There are many academic and unscientific variants for exactly what are considered key as well as second feelings, which can be additional explored in this write-up. Directly I like to check out it merely within the context of duality, meaning the 2 main feelings are Joy and Fear, or Love and Hate.

Every various other feeling would certainly then be an intricate blend of these two.

Yet regardless of exactly what we prefer to classify as primary feelings, there seems a great deal of confusion over the difference in between emotions and also sensations. As I described in a previous post:

" Everyone has the exact same feelings, yet most of us have various feelings. These 2 human states are unique not just because they are refined in different areas of the mind, but because feelings are mostly physical, whilst feelings are mainly psychological constructs.

Our feelings are a blend of our feelings, ideas, ideologies, ideas and also memories. All these aspects collaborated to not just affect the emotions that we have, but also establish exactly how we 'feel' concerning just what is going on in our globe. Recognizing the difference in between our feelings and feelings is crucial to contextualising our emotions right into the bigger pictures of our lives."

A superb analysis of this difference is supplied in this post. Here is a passage:

" Emotions originate in the subcortical regions of the brain, the amygdala and also the ventromedial prefrontal cortices, as well as develop biochemical responses in the body changing your physical state which originally aided our types survive by generating quick reactions to threats as well as benefits. Psychological responses are coded in our genetics and are globally comparable throughout all people as well as various other species ...

Feelings come from in the neocortical regions of the brain, are psychological organizations and also reactions to emotions, and also are subjectively affected by personal experience, beliefs, and also memories. A sensation is the mental portrayal of what's going on in your body when you have an emotion, as well as is the by-product of your mind viewing and designating suggesting to the feeling. Sensations adhere to emotion, involve cognitive input, are usually below mindful recognition, and can not be measured scientifically."

Therefore, what we would generally consider as a feeling is more than likely a combination of energy that results in a 'feeling'. This is because our general experience is not simply a psychological reaction, but additionally an experience entailing a complex setup of the numerous layers of our mind and also body.

In enhancement, when we refer to someone as psychologically mature, what we're really describing is their greater mastery of their response to their emotions, or their 'feelings'. In this feeling, the higher the understanding we have of the power that we process within us, the higher our power to recover as well as expand ourselves.

Healing and Growth

When somebody claims they're feeling bad, that suggests their overall response or response to their emotions makes them really feel unfavorable. The opposite is additionally true, when we say we really feel good, it implies that the emotions we're experiencing are being processed according to specific ideas, memories and also other power into a favorable mental experience.

Of course if we're grieving heavily or in a desperate state of concern, it will be unlikely that we'll be really feeling 'excellent', however we could still feel material with the best sort of philosophy. In any type of case, those experiences are the rarity, not the standard. Our typical frame of mind and heart is just one where we choose the best ways to reply to the world.

We have the power, which is why we need to create equipped and enlightened approaches on life. If we achieve success, they will successfully assist our involvement with both the challenges and also euphorias that we're gifted each day.

That's not to take anything away, however, from the significant influence our past can occasionally have on our present. Most of us recognize that injury, for instance, has a considerable effect on both our physical hardware and psychological software. If this trauma happens in the onset of brain growth, after that the neurology is essentially wired because way.

This can be extremely tough to recover because it takes many years to permanently rewire the neural pathways of the body-brain (implying the neural links that exist throughout our analytical, digestive system and heart circuits), as well as redesign the mental constructs of the mental mind.

But it's not impossible. Continuous meditation is a truly effective means to become conscious of the subconscious dysfunction that exists within everybody. Via becoming aware of our harmful style, in time we could literally transform the physicality of our wiring in a process called neuroplasticity. The psychological word for this is psychiatric therapy, suggesting we change our conceptual design for the purpose of recovery and growing ourselves.

So no matter the resource, if we're in a continuous state of clinical depression or stress and anxiety it is our duty to liberate ourselves from it. It's a hard tablet to ingest for lots of due to the fact that they aim to someone or something at fault, but this technique is always ineffective and also disempowering. Simply, unless we take ownership of our recovery and growth, then nothing will certainly change.

Of program that doesn't imply we need to take obligation for an event or person that brought upon enduring upon us, yet our reaction to it is where we must take control. If we have actually continued this suffering in a self-harming style over a long duration of time, then that is a truth that we require to own.

For those that intend to boost their mental state, I really recommend you read 'The best ways to Obtain Out of the Rut of Self-Harming Ideas and Sensations'. As I clarified because write-up:

' When our self-harm comes to be a major health issue, occasionally we are detected with a condition as well as prescribed medication. Nevertheless, drugs typically aren't the remedy to these dysfunctional psychological states, they are just a device that helps an efficient chemical equilibrium so that the problem is less complicated to cope with whilst we try to find as well as embark on means to fix it.

What really cures most, however not all, useless frame of minds works psychotherapy. Usually it is booked for an expert to guide, however that is for severe instances or when a person can actually access them.

The reality is we could take on psychiatric therapy on ourselves. We actually already do it. Whenever we have had understanding right into a problematic mindset and also took on adjustments to eliminate or alter it, it was literally psychiatric therapy in activity.'

When we experience problems such as these they are both mental and physical. In any way times there is a bottom-up and also top-down influence, implying that emotions or chemical alcoholic drinks affect our psychology, and also frame of minds influence our physicality.

If major harm is brought upon and also strengthened over years, it could have a considerable influence on both our physical machinery and our psychological architecture. That's why the longer it takes place, the longer it requires to rebalance it right into a normally healthy and balanced state.

This is exactly why self-administered psychiatric therapy is an area that should be educated in our schools. As a specific, we must be frequently reviewing the innate power we need to recover as well as expand ourselves. This training must begin with an early age, right through to the final stages of our third dimensional presence, so culture as a whole is equipped with understanding and abilities of a restorative and also developmental nature.

Final Thoughts

Life is an emotional roller-coaster trip, there's no uncertainty about that. If we have a adverse psychological reaction to our experience, there's no have to reduce it, we need to reply to it in the most practical and also healthy means that we can.

After all, the goal must be at peace with life, not simply be 'pleased'.

The belief that specific feelings are a problem is unreliable due to the fact that they are just an all-natural facet to being human. Just what we ought to redouble on nonetheless is the abuse of particular feelings, such as excessively feeding our despair or anger, as well as the consistent self-harm that most of us cause on ourselves after we have actually experienced something that we have regarded 'unfavorable'.

With the right kind of thoughtful perspective we could discover from all of our experiences anyhow, regardless if there is 'justice' to be had or not.

There is likewise a serious lack of empathy to individuals who are experiencing in a state of anguish or complication. The majority of people who are excessively regulating are being so because they are lost in some kind of injury or fear.

It's 'pain-based' habits, not 'aware' behavior.

Over the internet or face-to-face, we require to be much more gentle to those that are oblivious, abusive, arrogant or self-indulgent. If we react in an equally unsophisticated method-- such as misuse an abuser or condemn a condemner-- after that all we do is strengthen their discomfort and also little healing or development is likely to occur.

It's essential for us to all take a major chill-pill in this dark-age of misery, misconception, division and disharmony. The harsh fact is that most people actually are subconscious soldiers of a socially-engineered schedule to preserve the dying control-matrix. When we have concern for the manner in which these people have been designed to unconsciously really feel-- such as vulnerable, materially disappointed and also in an existential state of suffering-- after that they have a better opportunity of emancipating themselves from their pain and also starting a process of recovery and also growth.

And the more that occurs, the extra we can heal as well as grow our collective consciousness.

#healing #meditation #what is meditation

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schraubd · 5 years

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"Navigating Intersectional Landscapes" for Jews: Half Bad, Half Good, Sadly Incoherent

The Reut Group, in partnership with the JCPA, has written a new set of guidelines for Jewish community professionals seeking to deal with the "challenge of intersectionality" to Jewish engagement on Israel. It's a fascinating piece, in that I disagree with much of the diagnosis but agree almost entirely with the prescriptions. Normally one sees the opposite -- agreeing with the problem but disagreeing on how to solve it. Here, I think the guidelines do an exceedingly poor job in identifying the issues but -- miraculously -- ends up urging action-items that are very close to what I'd propose anyway. It creates a whiplash document which is myopic in the first half and insightful in the second half. It's a 43-page document that should be started at page 23. Start with the positive. The guidelines decisively reject uncompromising approaches that effectively write-off huge swaths of the Israel-critical Jewish community unless they agree to become Bibi-cheerleaders. It says that communal "redlines" and definitions of Israel "delegitimization" should be drawn narrowly and with an eye toward a big tent, and suggests that this tent should include even harsh Israel critics (the "wedge" point, the guidelines suggest, should be peeling off "harsh critics" from outright radical anti-Zionists -- the former kosher, the latter not). It notes that many Jewish youth express feelings of "betrayal" when their only pre-collegiate education on Israel consists of simplistic cheerleader narratives, and thus insists we'll need to prepare them for tough conversations. It speaks out against the propensity of some Jewish writers and organizations to effectively carpet bomb the slightest whisper of "anti-Israel" activity from progressive writers and political figures, especially from racial minorities, and says that we should be more willing to unite around issues of common concern even when there are sharp disagreements over Israel. Critics of Israel should be encouraged to structure their concerns in ways that manifest continued engagement (e.g., BLM-sympathizers should aid Ethiopian Jews protesting police violence; immigration activists should work on behalf of Eritrean asylum-seekers, all in ways that try to shore up and bolster humanitarian and liberal institutions currently operating in Israel). Overall, the document preaches a message of engagement and putting in the work, and understands that overreaction can be as damaging as the initial blow. Finally, while framed around the "challenge of intersectionality", the article doesn't present intersectionality as solely an enemy to be destroyed but rather a resource to be harnessed -- you beat bad intersectionality with better intersectionality (though I might suggest here that part of that project is starting to wean ourselves off the reflexive treatment of intersectionality as a "challenge"). All of these are things that I like. But it's weirdly difficult to see how they got to this fabulous destination given the route that they took in identifying the problems they purport to tackle. The first, diagnostic half of the document almost entirely fails to recognize the fact that Jewish anxiety around Israel stems from tensions emanating from two sides, not one. Yes, there's the problem of people on the far-left demanding Jews "check their Zionism at the door", or submit to humiliating ideological litmus tests before being acknowledged as one of the good Jews. But there's the equal problem of people in the pro-Israel community demanding Jews "check their progressivism at the door", insisting that they are traitors to the Jewish people if they insist on applying progressive values to issues surrounding Israel or even, sometimes, just for being progressives generally. Both sides of this are troublesome, and both sides contribute to the problem. I suppose the authors might argue that the goal of this document is simply to focus on the "intersectional" aspect of the challenge, and grappling with the challenge of rigid and uncompromising pro-Israel fanaticism is best given its own treatment. One problem with this apologia is that I've never seen a document of this sort written by a body like the JCPA which takes as its "challenge" the way rigid and uncompromising pro-Israel fanaticism prompts American Jewish disengagement. You can't argue for division of labor if you never actually assign anyone to cover the other half of the work. Moreover, the very topography of the document seems to make this problem incognizable: its taxonomy of "American Jewish tribes" re: Israel -- "aligners", "moderate critics", "harsh critics", and "radicals" -- is presented as a continuum from most safe to most threatening. "Aligners" -- those who "consider Israel to be an integral part of their Jewish identity and generally support the State of Israel" -- lock down one side of the spectrum and are presented as wholly unproblematic and uncomplicated figures, as against the "critics" who, though not portrayed as "enemies", are viewed as at-risk. Yet pretty much any of us in the "moderate" or "harsh critic" camp have a lot of experience with an unnamed and unmarked fifth tribe -- the "zealots". These are the people who radically identify not just with "Israel" but with its most extreme, irredentist settler right, and who actively seek to sabotage or demolish any Israel discourse -- in the Jewish community or outside -- that is viewed as a threat to the Greater Israel project. It is a problem, and an increasingly unforgivable problem, that we refuse to call this group out or treat it as if it isn't a meaningful player. Is it representative of the majority of "pro-Israel" Jews? No. Is it at least as prominent, toxic, and destructive as the anti-Zionist "radicals" that are the "bad guy" focus of documents like this? Yes. For many Jews, then, the forces which end up yielding disengagement from Israel aren't (just) looming pressures from the far-left, which they may be closer to or more distant from as they traverse from "aligner" to "moderate critic" to "harsh critic". Rather, it's bidirectional -- the left-radicals tug us from one side and the zealots from the other, and (pinching towards the center of the continuum, if not necessarily the political spectrum) we see ambivalence or apathy from the "aligners" or the "harsh critics" who seem unwilling to challenge the bad behavior of their neighboring extremists. The result is a feeling of being "pulled apart" on the issue of Israel -- "engaging" with Israel means choosing between two equally unappealing forms of zealotry. This was a major theme of the "safe and on the sidelines" study on Jewish student disengagement that came out of Stanford a few years ago: simply put, students felt like Jewish life on campus meant enlisting in a war. Go to the various social justice groups, and they were asked to join a war on Israel. Go to Hillel, and they're called to join a war for Israel. But these students didn't come to college to fight a war, they came take some classes, have some beers, make some friends, and get their psychology degree. They aren't averse to Israel being part of their Jewish lives per se, but they are averse to becoming ideological soldiers in a brutal trench war, and they felt that both "sides" of the fight refused to leave room for anything but fanaticism. So they disengage. If you want to write about why some Jews are disengaging from Israel, approximately half the story hence has to target overly zealous and uncompromising efforts by putative "Israel supporters" to impose a "my way or the highway" approach that should be and will be flatly unacceptable to huge swaths of contemporary American Jews. The prescription section gestures at this by insisting that "red lines" and "Israel delegitimization" be drawn narrowly. But the failure to explicitly grapple with the far side of the problem comes at cost -- the document is notably vague in actually laying out what is and isn't a legitimate operating case of "delegitimization", and offers virtually no guidance as to how to respond to those forces in the Jewish community which have recklessly and harmfully expanded the in a bid to exclude giant swaths of the Jewish community (consider the mostly successful efforts to bar J Street from the "communal circle" at the institutional level). Likewise, the document commits one of my cardinal sins in that it does not even acknowledge, much less explore, the possibility that there ought to be right-ward "redlines" -- positions associated with the "pro-Israel" right that, if taken, preclude them from being considered members-in-good-standing of the Jewish communal world. It's not an accident that our redlines are only applied to JVP and not ZOA. If you only read the diagnostic part of document, you'd come away with the impression that the only reason Jews (and non-Jews) are drifting from Israel engagement is because of unreasonable haranguing from an ideological left that thinks Israel can do no right. The idea that the right side of the political spectrum bears any responsibility for the problem -- including the erosion of Israel as a "bipartisan" issue -- is scarcely even gestured at. The simple reality that a deeply conservative government imposing deeply conservative policies and which has deeply entrenched itself as the dominant force in Israeli politics is going to eventually become deeply unpopular with progressives is not even acknowledged. At some point, asking progressives "why don't you like Israel?" is like asking them "why don't you like Mississippi?" It's not some mysterious-cum-mystical antagonism -- it's because they're both conservative places enacting conservative policies which progressives aren't going to like! There's no strategy for arresting that trend that doesn't entail, at least in part, trying to insist on more progressive policies in those locales. The astounding lack of attention to the way right-wing forces have their share of responsibility for undermining American Jewish engagement with Israel is only underlined by perhaps its only exception. Buried in footnote 21 (in approximately 3 point font) we see this doozy: "Israel’s lack of a credible and persistent commitment to the two state-solution has become a significant stumbling block in Israel’s relations with World Jewry. Any form of annexation in the West Bank would dramatically and potentially irreversibly accelerate that trend." Yeah, no kidding! Talk about hiding elephants in mouseholes! But taking that seriously means that, if your goal is reversing the disengagement of world Jewry from Israel, you need in part to tackle "Israel's lack of a credible and persistent commitment to the two-state solution" -- and that includes taking on the members of the pro-Israel community who outright oppose a two-state solution and are seeking to affirmatively undermine it at every turn. Yet even as one-stateism has become Republican Party dogma, it gets virtually no attention in favor of an entire section on the "Corbynization" of progressive politics -- a serious problem in the UK, but utterly marginal as a feature of American politics. This sort of abject failure of perspective has long since passed the point of indefensibility. In essence, prescriptively the document seems to tacitly acknowledge that there are a host of bad practices, most of which generate from overzealous efforts to defend a "pro-Israel" position, which end up backfiring and driving Jews and non-Jews away from even a complicated respect for Israel as a state. But it refuses to actually come out and name the problem in the diagnostic section, instead presenting the challenges as emanating almost univocally from the intersectional left. The result is a document that is functionally incoherent -- and I fear that the generally salutary actions it recommends will end up being corrupted and perverted because of an inability to honestly reckon with the full scope of the problem. At the meta-level, one of the biggest challenges facing Jewish communal cohesion, unity, and engagement -- on Israel or anything else -- is our ongoing practice of giving destructive right-wing forces free passes. We dedicate pages upon pages of agonizing over every fringe-left march or protest or chant, but when the time comes to apply that same discerning analysis to our right-ward colleagues, we clam up. As many good ideas are contained in the prescriptive sections of this guideline, for me it stands out as embodying that trend, and it's one we just can't tolerate anymore. This doesn't mean suddenly letting bad behavior on the left go unchallenged. But it does mean we need to start developing principles and guidelines that clearly and unambiguously dictate what sort of behavior from the Jewish right crosses the line, just as we already do with the Jewish left. And when the Jewish right does go past its red lines, we need to simply get over our sniveling fear of calling it out by name. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2G3ZM6Q

#Israel #Jews

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adios-aoidos · 6 years

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What the Rich Think: a fly on the wall essay by 4onSix

This essay was written by user 4onSix on one of the leftist subreddits. I repost it here only so that the good people of tumblr can also read it. You can find the original post here.

~~~

I’m poor. If it weren’t for the ACA I couldn’t afford my crappy insurance. Even then, I can’t always afford medicine or doctor visits. I don’t own a tv, laptop, & if I weren’t mechanically inclined, my car wouldn’t run. I struggle to save money for the dentist and the cat’s vet.

But through strange chances of employment, I know some rich people. Without going into details, I work a blue collar job, but also as a musician.

Both jobs have introduced me to rich people. The ones I know best are probably “low” 1 percenters , but through them I’ve meet a few absurdly wealthy. Probably not anyone in the 9-figure range, but I have trouble gauging. I do know, most 1 percenters don’t view themselves as rich, as they all know people with far more money. The only ones who came from “upper -middle” classes have high income jobs and married up.

I’ve known some long enough that they forget, at least somewhat, my background. They certainly find my views amusing, and aren’t afraid to tell me what they really think.

The rich know how to code-switch in a way that will make your head spin. They talk differently at home, work, school and among friends. Their children go further, as in addition to that, they usually like hip hop, and online culture. (FWIW, “Get Out”, and “This is America,” had a profound impact on some of these kids. But, will it stick?)

Some of them are liberal, more are conservative, but those are sort of skeptical libertarians. They aren’t opposed to gay rights, many aren’t opposed to transgender rights. They love pot. I’ve noticed the rich women largely acknowledge systemic racism. Some of the men do as well, though more believe minorities could achieve social & limited mobility through “hard work.”

But most common, at least among the men, is an ideology that I don’t recognize. It’s not Randian Objectivism, as they usually acknowledge luck and the vagaries of fate. They usually accept that life and society are inherently unjust. And I mean “accept”- they have no desire, even to reform existing systems.

Their acknowledgement of luck is actually problematic, as it makes them more protective of their status. They know they could not simply replace any lost wealth.

It’s not nihilism as they do usually believe life has inherent meaning. It’s just a meaning reserved for a small group of people.

I’m not sure post-modernism fits, but I lack a better term. Everything is relative to them. They can have pet causes they care deeply about. It’s not just optics; they feel good about it. For example, they may donate money and even time to children’s hospitals, but adamantly oppose expanding Medicaid.

Every single one of them despised Trump in 2016. Most voted for him. The few liberals loved Hillary, but would take Pence over Sanders any day. Some of them, while still preferring a Romney-esque figure, have grown to love how he “triggers the libs.”

The conservative & libertarians among them despise the Democratic Party. While leftists view the Democrats as a centrist party, to them, any redistribution of wealth is socialism. They aren’t being ironic or dishonest when they claim Nancy Pelosi is a socialist. Hire taxes = socialism.

Once, in response to complaints about a local tax increase to fund road repair, I made a sarcastic joke, saying maybe taxes should be “a la carte.” It was clear that I was kidding, but everyone there essentially believed that. To them, corporate, property, income, estate and marginal taxes are all the same thing. You cannot “trick” them by saying you’ll only raise taxes on large corporations.

(It should be obvious that given those views, that reforms and moderation make no sense. Don’t cede power to be viewed as respectable; you’re not and never will be.)

I never wrote this stuff down, as I think other writers have done a better job. I have some issues with Chris Hedges, but his writing about boarding school are great.

But things have changed. I am trying to write this as carefully as possible, but please criticize me if needed. Some of these people are Jewish, maybe half. I live in the (mid-Atlantic, Acela Corridor.) They are mostly secular, but are Zionists, liberal or otherwise. They largely ignore Israeli politics, so to them, Netanyahu is not a Likud conservative; he’s just the Israeli leader.

After the massacre in Pittsburgh, I expected some of them would be filled with grief, concern, or even fear. Most Jewish people I’ve talked to have been shaken by this horrific tragedy.

So, I was surprised that the response from the rich was blasé. Yes, they thought it was tragic. But, they refused to see any connection to mainstreamed conservative bigotry. They universally condemned protestors who opposed Trump’s visit.

I thought this apathy was due to the Tree of Life’s progressive bent, or its ties to HIAS. But it was not. They simply can compartmentalize their identity in a way I cannot understand. Their solidarity retracts to the smallest contingent in which they belong.

I thought, perhaps they would take the Israeli position, that Jews are not safe anywhere except Israel. But they did not.

This is not to say they are not scared. But it’s not down to religion, it’s all of them. In the past few years, many of them have built up gun collections. They joke about the “zombie apocalypse.” I’m sure they have safe rooms and safe houses, emergency supplies and plans.

But their fears aren’t those of the persecuted minority. It’s a recognition of the growing instability of the socio-economic order, and the destruction that entails. They’re afraid the horse they’re riding isn’t truly broken.

A few nights ago, i overheard a discussion among a several middle aged rich men, a few of whom live in Florida.

They started talking about Gillum & DeSantis. They outright acknowledged he was a white supremacist. They don’t necessarily agree, but more than that, don’t really care. They think Rick Scott is a class traitor for expanding Medicaid. I expected to hear about Gillum’s tangential connection to BDS, but that wasn’t their concern.

To them, he’s a socialist, a criminal, and an existential threat. DeSantis could be a fascist, but he won’t raise taxes. As throughout history, as recently as Bolsonaro, the wealthy will ALWAYS side with fascists, over even milquetoast progressives. The liberals ones are no exception.

The topic of “the caravan” came up, and again, veered into fascism. Basically it was evenly divided between, “Let them in, they just have to work for free.” And “Time for target practice.” No exaggeration. (A few of these guys unironically love “The Purge.”)

I don’t know what any of this means. I don’t know what the best tactics are.

I just know, things are gonna get heavy, and I’m afraid a lot of leftists, particularly socdems and demsocs, have no idea of what they’re facing. It’s easy to talk about systems and theory, but these guys have all the power, the police and armed forces, and a highly attuned personal instinct for survival .

It’s absurd to think they can be persuaded to relinquish anything. So, to quote a dead guy, “What is to be done?”

~~~

#eat the rich #wealth #inequality #essay #communism

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glittergummicandypeach · 4 years

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Conservative Evangelical Eric Metaxas, Doing Twitter Theology, Claims ‘Jesus Was White’ | Religion Dispatches

When Eric Metaxas tweeted that “Jesus was white” on Monday the small corner of Twitter in which Metaxas is sometimes a conversation piece erupted quickly, and with wild speculation. Is he looking for attention? Being provocative? No one actually believes that Jesus is white, do they? Surely Metaxas is smart enough to know that this claim is easily refuted. But, it appears that he didn’t misspeak; he said what he meant to say.

There are a few serious issues with this tweet. The most obvious, of course, is that its central claim is patently false. Jesus wasn’t “white” in any sense of the word, and there’s no clearer way to state this. He was born and lived his entire life in the Middle East. What’s more, “white” as a category is a social construct, and a relatively recent one at that, so the claim is thoroughly anachronistic.

Of course, Metaxas isn’t the first to depict Jesus as something other than a Middle-Eastern man, and it’s a well-known fact that artists frequently take enormous liberties when they paint Jesus as a subject. Frank Wesley often depicted Jesus as having blue skin, for example, like the Hindu deities Shiva, Rama, and Krishna. Janet McKenzie’s “Jesus of the People” seems to depict Jesus as both genderfluid and mixed-race. Warner Sallman’s “Head of Christ,” possibly one of the most recognizable images of Jesus in the world, depicts Jesus as unmistakably white. In short, Jesus is very much “a messiah in our image.”

But the real issue with Metaxas’s tweet has nothing to do with “artistic license.” The problem lies in the fact that, at the heart of his statement that “Jesus was white,” is a claim of ownership that’s inextricably tied to the problem of power. “Jesus was white” = “Jesus is one of ours.” And coming from Eric Metaxas, this claim could not be more perverse or more dangerous.

Claims of ownership aren’t new for Metaxas. Those familiar with his work know that in 2011 he penned a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who was imprisoned and executed by the Third Reich for participating in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. After it was published, Metaxas’s biography was strenuously criticized by Bonhoeffer scholars around the world, and for a variety of reasons, from its failure to draw from primary source material to its misuse of German texts (a language Metaxas doesn’t speak). But among the most scathing criticisms were those who argued that Metaxas’s portrait of Bonhoeffer is essentially that of a neoconservative evangelical. Richard Weikart called it “counterfeit,” and “sanitized,” while Clifford Green concludes that a better title for the book might have been “Bonhoeffer Hijacked.”

Metaxas’s book went on to be a New York Times Best Seller, which suggests that more than a few readers were drawn in by the notion that “Bonhoeffer is one of ours.” Claims like this are thoroughly and unequivocally utilitarian in nature, whether they apply to Jesus or Bonhoeffer. They treat people as instruments and rob them of their dignity as unique individuals, instead treating them as if they exist for the purpose of bolstering those in positions of privilege and of power.

But the claim that “Jesus was white” is only the first sentence of Metaxas’s tweet. The rest is equally problematic, if not more so. The tweet is actually in response to another tweet from Neil Shenvi, an amateur Christian apologist and avid blogger, who noted that Dr. Robin DiAngelo, best known for her book White Fragility, had partnered with the United Methodist Church to explore the topic of white privilege in a video lecture.

Metaxas took this announcement as an opportunity to mock and critique the notion of white privilege: “Did [Jesus] have ‘white privilege’ even though he was entirely without sin? Is the United Methodist Church covering that? I think it could be important.”

Jesus was white. Did he have "white privilege" even though he was entirely without sin? Is the United Methodist Church covering that? I think it could be important. https://t.co/lNv67Z7g5l

— Eric Metaxas (@ericmetaxas) July 27, 2020

But here he betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what “white privilege” actually is and what it entails. In her book DiAngelo defines it as “a sociological concept referring to advantages that are taken for granted by whites and that cannot be similarly enjoyed by people of color in the same context (government, community, workplace, schools, etc.).” And, as she also notes, “stating that racism privileges whites does not mean that individual white people do not struggle or face barriers. It does mean that we do not face the particular barriers of racism.”

White privilege is primarily a systemic issue, not an individual one. Aside from the fact that (again) Jesus was not white (and that whiteness did not exist as we understand it today), the fact that Metaxas spotlights him to ask whether he had white privilege is to miss the point entirely. It’s also curious that he ties the concept of white privilege to the notion of sin. From a theological perspective, “white privilege” could certainly be understood as a sort of “social sin,” namely, as a flawed system that white people often unknowingly benefit from and participate in. But this doesn’t fit at all with Metaxas’s individualistic misunderstanding of white privilege. This statement just further betrays the depth of his ignorance.

What he seems to be getting at is: if white privilege is sinful, and Jesus was sinless, but Jesus was also white (again, he wasn’t), then did he enjoy white privilege? If he did, then it stands to reason either that Jesus wasn’t actually sinless (a point that Metaxas is not likely to concede), or that white privilege doesn’t exist (a point that Metaxas is very likely to support).

And if Jesus didn’t have white privilege, then white privilege is something that white people can presumably “escape” or “opt out of.” The formula is a logical disaster because it rests on a flawed understanding of whiteness, of white privilege, and of Jesus’s identity as a human person.

It’s difficult to tell which of these conclusions Metaxas was actually after. It also doesn’t much matter since each is fundamentally without merit.

As I write this, Metaxas’s tweet has been severely “ratioed,” which means that the number of responses far exceeds the number of “likes” and retweets. This is generally an indication that a tweet’s contents are either deeply controversial or profoundly ignorant (or both). In short: Twitter users have pushed back on Metaxas, and they’ve pushed back hard. In response he’s deployed a Trump-ian combination of backpedaling and doubling down on his initial claim.

When one user pointed out that Jesus was Jewish, Metaxas responded: “Exactly! Which shows how arbitrary and self-contradictory racial categories can be. Many consider Jews ‘white’ and accuse them of having ‘white privilege.’ But if Jesus is beyond racial categories, why aren’t other Jews? And what about Egyptians? And Greeks? Who gets to decide?”

Here, both Metaxas and his interlocutor fail to appreciate that “Jews” doesn’t imply a homogeneous “racial” category. The claim that Jews are “white” or even “mostly white” is as nonsensical as the claim that Christians are “white” or “mostly white.” Like Christianity, Judaism is a global religion that is socially, ideologically, and racially diverse. But it’s also curious that Metaxas proffers the claim that “Jesus is beyond racial categories,” especially since his misidentification of Jesus with a “racial category” is what started the conversation in the first place.

When another user pointed out that “Jesus likely looked like modern day Palestinians-not Scandinavian,” Metaxas responded: “So it’s about how you look? About the actual color of your skin? So most Jews today are ‘white’ & have ‘white privilege’ but some don’t? Who decides? Are Stephen Spielberg & Woody Allen not white? My point is that these identities only seem to apply when woke people say they do.” Metaxas, making very little sense here, is clearly attempting to wiggle out of the mess he’s gotten himself in. Perhaps the best response to this tweet comes from another RD contributor, Sarah Morice Brubaker, who tweeted:

“*pinches bridge of nose, sighs heavily*

A social construct, being social, exist[s] in some contexts and not others. Jesus was a 1st c. Palestinian Jew so he didn’t have white privilege, a signature style, a favorite country song, or an opinion about the designated hitter.”

*pinches bridge of nose, sighs heavily*

A social construct, being social, exist in some contexts and not others. Jesus was a 1st c. Palestinian Jew so he didn't have white privilege, a signature style, a favorite country song, or an opinion about the designated hitter.

— Philosophia Petrillo (@smoricebrubaker) July 28, 2020

It remains unclear exactly what Metaxas was after in his initial tweet. While not universal, the notion that the historical Jesus was not white, as we understand that category today, is fairly widely accepted, and this is the case regardless of religious or political affiliation. Does Metaxas really believe that Jesus was “white”? Judging from his understanding of how whiteness works, the answer would seem to be yes. And this is an assessment that he both confirms and denies in his responses, which only adds to the difficulty of determining his motivation.

The sentiments expressed in Metaxas’s twitter feed are more serious than just one person tweeting ignorantly about things he doesn’t understand. Rather, his ill-formed ideas about race and racism are indicative of a much deeper and more widespread disease. They’re symptoms of ignorance, but they also serve to invigorate and reinforce it.

Metaxas’s ignorance is especially dangerous because he has an audience eager to make sense of the world. But the vision he provides is fundamentally misguided. It’s a lie. And as long he and others remain unchallenged, this cycle of misunderstanding and hatred will continue to manifest itself. Today we see it in the vitriol directed toward supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement. Tomorrow it may take a different form. Some claim that we have lost the ability to talk charitably about race, but I would argue that we have never been able to talk charitably about race. We have done a fantastic job, however, of ignoring the issue and pretending that all is well. And all is definitely not well.

The subtitle of Dr. Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility book is “Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism.” When all is said and done, the true value of Metaxas’s tweet and its aftermath may be as a case in point, or at the very least, as an illustration that in terms of our collective understanding of “whiteness” and how it functions, there remains much work to be done. And there certainly is value in that reminder.

This content was originally published here.

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16thstreet · 7 years

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Alternative Loyalty and the American Council for Judaism

By Steven Trebach, Research Intern

I am a Research Intern at the Center for Jewish History (CJH) and a recent graduate of Haverford College. My original goal was to research dual loyalty, which led me to documents concerning the American Council for Judaism (ACJ) within the Center’s Partner’s collections, particularly the American Jewish Historical Society. In the mid-20th century, the ACJ accused Zionist Jews of not being loyal to America.

This blog post intends to explore the nature of the ACJ’s claims using archival and supplementary materials. In this piece, I will introduce the ideas of dual and alternative loyalty, the ACJ, illustrate the nature of ACJ’s alternative loyalty charges, and try to understand how these charges fit into larger patterns of alternative loyalty. The specific AJHS archival materials in question are a series of correspondences from and about the ACJ.

First, my research revealed several kinds of alternative loyalty charges that have developed with regard to Jews throughout the world. The most relevant to the ACJ’s accusations is what can be referred to as polity conflict. Jewish polity conflict is the accusation that Jews are loyal to another geopolitical entity, especially one whose interests can interfere with those of the polity in which said Jews live. When the charge acknowledges a Jew’s loyalty to their place of residence alongside the conflicting foreign body, the allegation is dual loyalty. For example, the Iraqi fear that Iraqi Jews supported British consolidation of power in Iraqi, leading to a pogrom, Al-Farhud. (Moreh & Yehuda, 2011, p.12). The second major kind of alternative loyalty is ideological disloyalty, based on the idea that Jews hold allegiance to a foreign philosophical movement conflicting with society’s values and safety. An American example of this is the disproportionate targeting of Jews for anti-communist loyalty tests by the Postal service during the late 1940s (Spiegler, November 4, 1948).

These kinds of allegations have precursors in anti-Semitic conspiracies, such as blood libel, and events, such as the Dreyfus affair. The modern phenomenon, into which the ACJ’s allegations fit, arose with the establishment of revolutionary resistance politics within Jewish communities, such as Zionism, Bundism, and multiple forms of socialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Though these movements were largely concentrated in Eastern European Jewry and their American progeny, alternative loyalty claims related to these revolutionary resistance movements occurred from Argentina to Hashemite Iraq. That these indictments were leveled against diverse, loosely related communities might suggest they arise not from a community’s behavior but rather from a source within the accusing society.

Image: Judah Magnus Museum via FoundSF

The ACJ is a Jewish organization that was founded in opposition to Zionism. The group has many of its organizational and ideological roots in the 1942 Atlantic City conference, a meeting of 36 rabbis concerning the growth of Zionism, which revealed a schism between supporters of “nationalism versus religion” and vice versa, in which the ACJ took a firm stance against Jewish nationalism (Kolsky, 1990, pp.49, 54).[1] The ACJ’s position, according to correspondences by one of its leading figures Elmer Burger, was that Jews were not “not a minority group of Americans identified by a separate ‘Jewish’ nationality” but rather a religion; the ACJ’s ultimate desire was secular integration for Jews in America (Berger, April 21, 1950, pp. 2,8) Thus, the ACJ rejected any Zionism or nationalism that contradicted that sentiment. As such, the ACJ was “the only American Jewish organization ever formed for the specific purpose of fighting Zionism” (Kolsky, 1990, p.ix). This distinction placed the ACJ outside of mainstream Jewish life.

It is in this context that the ACJ seems to make two kinds of common alternative loyalty charges. The charges are framed as concern for the wellbeing of the Jewish community rather than fear of Israeli desires contradicting American ones. Their dual loyalty claim, the charge that one had divided one’s loyalties between two polities, is well illustrated in Norman Thomas’ “Letter to Maurice Spector.” Thomas argues that the American Council puts forward “the charge that certain statements by Zionist leaders here and in Israel opened the way to the development of dual loyalty, and to exaggerated charges of dual loyalty by actual or potential anti-Semites” (Thomas, February 3 1950). Just as Iraqis during Al-Farhud may have seen hypothetical Jewish allegiance to the British as a potential danger to Iraq’s sovereignty, the ACJ saw Zionist loyalty to Israel as a potentially dangerous conflict with their American citizenship.

The ACJ’s criticisms also seem to contain an element of ideological treason, the accusation that one is committed to ideas deleterious to one’s polity. Elmer Burger, a rabbi and ACJ leader, “considered Zionism the last attempt to maintain any traces of ghetto control over the lives of individual Jews” (Kolsky, 1990, p.109). This critique of Zionist Jews does not posit Zionism as an allegiance to another polity but rather as an ideology that acts negatively upon Jews. I believe this is comparable to the Argentine fears of Jewish communism and the Soviet fears of Jewish anti-communism.

There are two key differences between most alternative loyalty charges and those of the ACJ that must be addressed. All of the other rhetoric originated in a source external to the Jewish community and arguably entailed hostility towards it. The ACJ’s ideas arose within the Jewish community and suggest concern for it. Even the direct accusation of dual loyalty is meant to mitigate potential anti-Semitism.

The clearer of the two is the internal-external division. Though on the surface, this may seem major, it is easily resolvable with regards to the dual loyalty case. The ACJ followed the premise that “we are Americans”; therefore, they charged dual loyalty not as Jews but as Americans (Berger, April 21, 1950, p.1). Thus, they saw themselves as holding no special communal attachment to the Zionists on the plane of nationalism outside of an Americanism they shared with gentiles. Therefore, from the ACJ’s perspective, the accusation was against a different community.

Demographic concerns bolster the above claims. “Council members were differentiated from the rest of American Jewry on religious, social and economic as well as ideological grounds” being primarily upper-class, Reform, German Jews as opposed to poorer, more religious Eastern European Jews (Halperin, 1961, p.454). These two populations inherited two very different relationships with Judaism and nationalism. “German Jews… were barely distinguishable from other German immigrants” and “were proud of their German heritage…and retained their German nationalism even after becoming American citizens,” a mentality that likely informed their “the opinion that Judaism is primarily a religion” (Kolsky, 1990, p.18) (Thomas, February 3 1950). Accepting Jewish nationalism would intrude upon this treasured German heritage. Conversely, Eastern European Jews “had lived in Jewish enclaves in Eastern Europe and … considered themselves an ethnic group” (Kolsky, 1990, p.22). Thus, strains of Zionism positing Jews as a separate people would be more attractive to them than to members of the ACJ. Thus, as they had strong social and cultural differences, the ACJ may have felt themselves part of a completely different community than these other Jews.

The above explanation does not account for the ACJ’s intended benevolence. Why would an organization attempting to protect the Jewish community use rhetoric reminiscent of more hostile groups? One hypothesis is that ACJ members such as Norman Thomas can be taken at face value: they fear anti-Semitism being visited upon Jews for their dual loyalty. By providing the same rhetoric devoid of violence, perhaps they could extinguish alternative loyalties before they draw the ire of more hostile groups. Zionist counterpropaganda, however, had a different explanation. They argued via the ideas of Kurt Lewin that “the person seeking to enter a higher status group has to be especially careful to disown any connection with the ideas of the group to which he once belonged” (Halperin, 1961, pp. 456-457). As ACJ members mostly of or striving for higher social status than Zionist Jews, Lewin’s idea seems applicable. One could therefore argue that although the ACJ claimed benevolence, their true motivations were an internalized hostility towards association with Jews of lower social and economic status.

Ultimately, the case of the ACJ provides a clear but complicated example of alternative loyalty charges that demonstrates the intellectual complexities surrounding the topic. The libraries and AJHS archives within the CJH contain sufficient archival and supplementary data for the future in-depth evaluation this topic deserves.

Works Cited:

Archival Materials:

American Council for Judaism. (1947). American Council for Judaism Collection, undated, 1943-1991 . American Jewish Historical Society. Call Number: I-344.

Berger, April 21, 1950

Thomas, February 3, 1950

NJCRAC I-172: Committees- Committee on Overt Anti-Semitism- Loyalty Test – Postal Employees- 1948-1951-1&2. American Jewish Historical Society.

Spiegler, November 4, 1948

Published Books:

Halperin, S. (1985). The Political World of American Zionism. Silver Spring, MD: Information Dynamics Inc.

Kolsky, T. A. (1990). Jews Against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

[1] It should be noted that the Atlantic City conference took place after the aforementioned Farhud in Iraq, but it is not clear whether or not the participants were influenced or aware of said events, given the overwhelming cacophony of the contemporaneous World War II.

#American Judaism #Reform Judaism #Research Intern #Steven Trebach #American Council for Judaism #Dual Loyalty #Alternative Loyalty

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archivesdiveronarpg · 7 years

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Congratulations, LESLIE! You’ve been accepted for the role of CLAUDIUS. Admin Bree: Put simply, this application was everything I’ve been looking for in a Clark app and more. You nailed him from start to finish, from your analysis to your interview (his cigarette, his nagging conscience) to the faintly nostalgic para sample (the violin, in particular). You brought him to life in all of his terrible, tragic glory, and I can’t thank you enough for applying. I can’t wait to see what you do with him on the dash! Welcome to DiVerona! Your request to change his faceclaim to Richard Armitage has also been accepted. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

Out of Character

Alias | Leslie

Age | 17

Preferred Pronouns | She/her

Activity Level | I’m attending summer school by June and school starts in July, which means I’ll inevitably come across busy weekdays and weekends. However, my activity is mostly still dictated by how much muse I have for my character. Writing is never an issue for me so long as my muse hasn’t been milked dry that day.

Timezone | GMT +8

Current/Past RP Accounts | My accounts can be found here (x), here (x) and here (x). Most of my experience, as you may as well realize, are from only city RPs so I’ll be deviating from my comfort zone here, should I get accepted!

In Character

Character | Claudius (Clark Godrej). While I love Cillian Murphy, could you possibly see Richard Armitage in his stead? This is only a secondary concern, though!

What drew you to this character? | Is it considered a crime if you, at age seventeen, have not read any Shakespeare play? Of course I’ve seen adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Much Ado About Nothing, but other than that my knowledge on Shakespeare is nada. The initial knowledge I have of Claudius comes from Cliffsnotes (I especially like the part where the writer calls him ‘morally deficient’ and how he sacrifices humanity and humanness to acquire his goals), but reading his biography just made him more interesting for me.

It’s easy to conclude from first glance that Claudius is some sort of psychopath, but I believe that he is far more than that. C (I hope you don’t mind if I use this in future reference to him) has the makings of a Byronic character: plots spread across his life nothing short of tragedies, with misery and scorn imbued in his heart although still capable of love. More than that, however, I see him as possessing an inferiority complex stemming mainly from being constantly behind his older brother, whose shadow still rightfully looms his very movements to this day. Fusing Byronic characteristics with inferiority and you have yourself a deeply flawed character. As a writer, I aim to make my characters written in such a way that they aren’t just an overplayed trope.

Additionally, while he’s an emissary of the Montagues, his true loyalty lies within himself and himself alone—doing everything with his interests in mind, his mob allegiance only taking second place to his selfishness. Though what is important here is why he has become so selfish in the first place—and the answer lies with his older brother yet again. He’s neither owned nor valued in his life, and the barest semblance of anything that could become his he takes so with passion. This has especially struck me personally, considering that I’m a little bit of a greedy prick in real life (what can you do? Haha) but I do so with a justification it’s just me “taking back what I’ve lost”. And that’s primarily what C has become. So much has been taken from him that when the opportunity presents itself to “steal” something which is his brother’s own, he does so with a smile on his face, because he thinks—he knows—this is what he deserves. Him loving his brother’s wife and him killing his brother, however, are other stories entirely.

Despite all my ramblings, I don’t think I’ve definitively answered why I damn well love C so much already. He’s suffered most his life and from that he becomes a truly grey character for whom it is difficult to sympathize with, and with good reason. He’s malicious, selfish, and bitter; on the other hand, he’s driven, loyal to a fault, and extremely calculating in his methods. Without a doubt, C is human and everything that entails – a product of life’s calamities and fleeting radiance.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character?

Giya | Similarly to the third-season villain in The Legend of Korra (I can’t help but make a reference!), the one thing that tethers the villain to the ‘earthly realm’ is that of his one true love. I imagine that C will approach her death with the same approach as he did his brother’s own. He’ll be throwing himself to his work in an effort to erase all memory of her, but this fails with even the barest mention of her name. It will be an interesting and admittedly difficult challenge to paint him as anything but irredeemable after that point, because what else is there for him to live for in this goddamn world? The thought process would be unreal. In his mind, he’s killed for nothing. Now both his brother’s and Giya’s deaths lull in his conscience. Nightmares come more than ever before, as if compensating for their scarcity back then. Her death has unlocked in him a weakness that he so wishes to eradicate. Ultimately, though, I just want to see how he can grow from all this. He truly doesn’t have anything holding him back now, which leads to him becoming more reckless than ever.

Gallows (TW: suicide ideation) | Whether he be huddling in stacks under stacks of books or requesting that he take on other responsibilities aside from his job’s conventions, C is unwittingly distancing himself from others. He’s a tightly wound up storm and within good reason—in his perspective the universe throws tragedy to him constantly. So tightly wound is he that when he’s approached with the subtlest impression of compassion the storm comes resurging. Because, in the deepest trenches of his organ writhing underneath his ribcage, there remains still sentiment that motivates him to live. But he is so good at hiding his emotions, so good that I fear the inevitable numbness will push him further and further the edge. That being said, I desire for him to have even one friend to whom he can open up. It’s scary and characteristically unnatural for him to do so, but without a support system, I have an inkling that he’ll believe death is the only escape to the horrors he’s lived.

Gone Wrong | The brazen hiss of a car tire as it glosses over a roughly cemented road. Bones and synapses and organs smashed as his air bag failed to protect him from the damage. Lungs filled with inhaled carbon monoxide. Eyes dimmed, with only blinding white light in his line of sight. A fire developing from the car engine. Himself, unable to escape. C is a perfectionist above all. And while he’s internally already broken, I’d like to explore how physical incapability and how the loss of work – the only thing that keeps him going now – influences his actions. Always one to stubbornly brush off help, there’s no telling how he’ll fare on his own. In his perspective, such an accident is his past’s way of coming back to haunt him.

In Depth

The following THREE questions must be answered in-character, and in para form (quotations, actions written out if applicable, etc). There is no minimum or maximum limit for your response - simply answer as you would were you playing the character.

TW: suicide ideation

The pair opposite each other on a shadowy nook in the comfort of his home. Separating them is an old mahogany coffee table smattered with scratches and even a bite mark, stemming from a former dog of whom he’s now disposed. A glass ashtray, whose surface has turned the color of tar, sits on the middle. Two glasses of water—the lone thing which Clark has prepared for them both, actual sustenance be damned—is placed strategically on its sides, as if guarding the ashtray’s secrets. Crossing his legs and drumming his fingers endlessly on the arm rail, he waits impatiently for the other’s question, having no desire except to continue his day per usual.

“What is your favorite place in Verona?” The interviewer asks, expression of pure civility.

A shake of his head, fingers flicking his cancer stick before it finds its way between his lips once more. A click of a lighter is heard as he alights his cigarette and begins to induce poison in and out his lungs.

Momentary silence is observed before his chapped lips part to repeat the other’s words. “My favorite place in Verona…” He muses, crossing his arms over his chest which serves as another means of defense. He decides not to give an honest answer, and having easily mastered the art of deceit he’s certain that the other will believe him regardless of his utterance.

“…is the capital library.” Then again, his response carries an undercurrent of truth. He neither wholly desires the fragrance of old books wafting through shelves that shadow the most miniscule of moves nor the hushed atmospheres upon which even a mellow laugh of a child is contorted into something ominous. He craves, in their stead, the peril lurking above the bookshelves and away from an entire city’s line of sight. It is among one of his safe spaces, a place where he can tread with peers of similar ideologies, those who have learned to accept him despite the rage bubbling underneath his system.

But you’re still lying. A conscience, faded but still ingrained into the back of his mind, tells him. He daren’t admit it to anyone, but the bridge dividing both parties is where his heart lies. The Castelvecchio stands unwitting of its role in the raging civil war, and he’s loath to think how much tragedy it has seen. And oh how he desires to trace both the footsteps of Capulets and Montagues and to discern how many of them have taken their last steps here—

—and how sometimes, when his heart is heavy and his shoulders become too heavy laden, when all efforts of alleviating the pain becomes all for naught, he imagines how it feels like to jump from one of its stones and into the raging river underneath.

But that is a story for a later day. Now, all that concerns him are finishing his cigarette. And this ruddy interview.

The other man taps his feet ceaselessly on the mahogany floor, eager to write his words yet again. But Clark is not one to satisfy another. In fact, he relishes in taking away their pleasure. Let him experience a twinge of suffering, a lone crevice of his mind says, let him.

A gleam in his eyes is evident yet again as he throws the stick somewhere, making neither moves to throw it properly nor extinguishing its tip. Let it burn. His conscience says treacherously.

He sees the impatient expression plastered on the other’s face, and a faint gale of laughter escapes past his lips. “Oh, do you want me to continue?” He utters, raising a single brow. “You’re not going to get an answer more than that.”

“What does your typical day look like?” The man almost stammers now, but ever so quick on his feet, disguises the gaffe with a small cough.

His head tilts, ever so slightly, at the candid inquiry. A perfectly-sculpted mask shatters only in the rarest of occasions and today is no exception. His face is still, devoid of emotion, with only those who have been trained in the art of distinguishing the cartography of Clark’s face having the knowledge of where to look. The faint curl of his lips is suggestive of sinisterism rather than of genuine amusement, cerulean blue irises glimmering with that of the sweet smell of danger.

“Shall I bore you with the details?” Clark leans back on his chair, folding his hands on his lap as he does so. His eyelids flutter shut as he inhales the remnants of nicotine looming in the air, a fleeting repose to boredom.

“That’s why I’ve been brought here.” The interviewer does not even attempt to conceal his slight annoyance.

Let him wait. His conscience, or at least whatever is left of it, speaks. These days the small voice in the back of his head only serves to vex him all the more. Sometimes it speaks well, but far more frequently it does its stark opposite. The latter now speaks to him, in a cold, calculating way that almost mirrors his own speech.

A shallow laugh bubbles and escapes from his system before he can stop it. “Don’t tell me you’re actually interested in the makings of an emissary. Wouldn’t you rather learn about the boss, who sits atop his throne? Or their second-in-command, whose deeds are so dark they can bring the diablo on his knees? Or the advisers, whose words occasionally serve much better than the soldiers’ actions?”

There is no response on his opposite’s part. He continues.

“Or wouldn’t you rather learn about the unspeakable?” Clark leans forward, looking side by side as if to keep a secret from an invisible audience. “Wouldn’t you rather learn of a thief in the night, strutting across the room as their eyes fixate on another silhouette? Wouldn’t you rather learn of a man with quiet, calculated steps, stifling his would-be victim’s mouth with a handkerchief and plunging a knife into their back? Wouldn’t you rather learn of a man whose arm contains now a trail of crimson as he remorselessly leaves his victim, who has lips growing purple with each passing second and their skin flaking at the slightest touch?”

He sees him now, swallowing in fear as Clark utters his sentences.

Fear is what he does best, he thinks.

“…that beats talking about mundane business trips, no?”

The interviewer conceals none of his fright, almost instinctively taking the glass of water and, putting his lips onto its brim, drank its contents until it is half-empty.

“Erm… I suppose we should skip to the last question,” the interviewer speaks, “what are your thoughts on the war between the Capulets and the Montagues?”

“You want the truth?” Clark replies, almost gnashing his teeth.

The interviewer nods, gaze fixated at him, as if daring him to finally venture onto the realm of honesty.

“Who was it that said, ‘All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal?’ Sun Tzu, or John Steinbeck?”

“I believe it was Steinbeck.”

“And it was Einstein, was it not, who said that ‘killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder’?”

Another nod of the interviewer’s head.

“I believe in neither,” Clark speaks, voice carrying an undercurrent of exhaustion. His next words are a product of his mind’s quiet, feeble surrender, letting his walls down ever so slightly. There is no doubt on the authenticity of his words. “War is humanity’s greatest achievement. We have grown past the point of conventions and conformity to the extent we wage battles in an effort to fight for our ideologies. In war, we see the best and the worst of mankind. Innocents cry for help and the braves deliver. In war, there comes innovation and breakthroughs, inventions that wouldn’t have otherwise been made if we remained not in distress. War makes heroes and victims of us all. War is not a dishonor to civilization but rather its saving grace.

“That being said, who am I to judge as to whose faction is in the right? One man’s enemy is another man’s freedom fighter, and the Capulets and the Montagues understand this. In both points of view, there is no senseless brutality but justified hatred. And while I belong to the latter faction, if I had been born on the other side of the tracks, I most likely would’ve followed suit on the other team.”

Moments of defenselessness aren’t especially sought after by him, but Karma’s ugly cousin Fate ought to have thought otherwise following this encounter’s inevitability. Even while he is having the conversation his candor stings, like a snake’s venomous bite, as if the serpent seething in his system desires nothing more than to sear its scales permanently onto pale flesh. To bring back the mask he’s slowly uncovered.

Heedless of mind’s qualm, he continues, “I’m a selfish man. I do things primarily for my own gain. I’ve forgotten how it’s like to care for another. Being an emissary is just a job. I don’t expect, nor anyone should expect, that I be a hero.”

Gradually pushing himself out of his chair, Clark begins to take out another cigarette stick from his breast pocket. I’ve said too much. He muses internally as he lights the cigarette and brings it between his lips, unable to resist nicotine’s sensual destruction. Walking over to where the interviewer sat, Clark brings his free hand on their shoulder, he utters:

“Enough is enough.”

In-Character Para Sample: We do require one in-character para sample. Again, write as much or as little as you need to get your interpretation across.

01.

In his hand, he holds a picture frame of himself and his music teacher. It’s dingy and dusty from decades of wear and tear, its outlines faded as if adding a natural vignette. It has been long, too long, since he’s last held his much-loved string instrument. It is rare, almost nonexistent, that his work be entailed with bouts of rhythmic resonance.

From happier times, it’s captioned.

“Clark Godrej,” his teacher once said, “you are a promising violinist.”

He remembers those days where sonorous notes weaved by his fingers fill the room as effortlessly as a summer breeze. He remembers the violin’s warm vibrato that dispels the sorrow surround him. He remembers the magnified, thunderous applause befitting for an artist of his talent. As a child four feet ten tall, he is the smallest of performers, pale and porcelain skin serving only as another reminder of his fragility.

But the string instrument is far from the only thing which he manipulates. He has trained the line of his lips to contort into a smile; eventually it becomes a part of him. A smile, seamlessly orchestrated, with no single note amiss, and with every chord struck with the neatest precision. It is a trick he uses as a means to hide the darkness coursing through thin veins. He performs this smile every time he takes a bow on the stage, with his parents and brother distinctively absent.

Even as a child, Clark’s memory has never been quite fickle. But at some points there is a failure of clarity, a glitch in the well-oiled machinations that is his consciousness.

He remembers small things.

He remembers the young Clark as he leaves the recital is a torrential downpour of rain. The pitter-patter of his ruined leather Oxfords as he makes the way back to the Godrej home. Even then it seems to him like Fate’s bitter laughter, taunting and flagrant in its repose.

He remembers himself staggering through the family’s doorsteps like an animal venturing into a new cage. The case enclosing his violin is wet all over, having used it to safeguard his own body.

He remembers a silhouette carefully approaching him. “You’re late.” His father speaks first, lips curled into a grim line.

He remembers himself mussing up his hair, droplets of rainwater stuck to his raven locks dampening his fingers. “It was raining.” He chimes in gently. “Did I miss dinner?”

He remembers the tension looming between the pair like thick musk, carrying an undercurrent of disapproval. “You did.” The words roll out of bared teeth. Like a statue his body hardens, swallowing in fear as he sees his father’s tightly-wound features. “Did you do this on purpose again?”

He remembers himself not listening. “Of course not. What’s for me to gain?” His remark is uttered as a faint mumble, as if his speech is still uncertain to tread another lie. He remembers not wanting to be there, not at all, not in a family dinner where his brother was celebrated and himself all but ignored. “I’d rather rest, if that’s alright by you.” The sigh he releases from his system is heavy and resolute.

He remembers his father not wishing to rescind, instead pushing on his inquiry. “Do you think this is some sort of game, Clark?” His father doesn’t wish to rescind, instead pushing on his inquiry.

It is at this point that his mind fails him, drawing a blank where there should’ve been a memory.

But he does remember this:

He remembers a resounding, echoing slap.

He remembers a hand-shaped bruise on the side of his cheek as he looks at himself in the mirror the next day. It stings at the slightest touch.

He remembers a quiet breakfast.

He remembers darkness.

And he remembers a violin, split in two.

(The next two are just drabbles for a graphic for his relationships with Haresh and Giya that I gave up doing because I have 0 Photoshop skills whatsoever haha)

02.

His grief, like many things about him, is tightly concealed. No one will know about his running as soon as the wake came to a close, his legs failing him, and him sinking to his knees as soon as he opens his front door. No one will know how he takes one look at his bare flat and realizing how bereft he truly is of company and friends and anything akin to love. No one will know how he untangles his tie and wishes that he can also untangle himself from his mask of feigned indifference, worn so constantly that it’s already been seared permanently into his flesh. No one will know how he prays that night, prays with only God as his witness, asking for a mantra of reconciliation even though he knows his deed is unforgivable.

No one can know.

He is Cain, and he will carry his sin to the grave.

And when Death does come to find him, as it shall inevitably, whether today or tomorrow or the next, Clark will point his gaze right back. His eyes will brim with tears, unshed and unspoken, for it is only in his last moment that he can expunge his prolonged sorrow.

03.

Long has he past brave illusions for a happier and more radiant tale, plots coated with no small amount of deluged tragedies and stuck in a ceaseless discourse with Fate, ever so realistic in its manifestation. Hope for his tale’s possible saccharine resolution bid its farewell so long ago leaving him with only bare remnants of opportunities for felicity, but when the shadows grew too long and the days felt too short, he tenaciously and persistently hanged onto these loose ends.

But as Giya’s thread, too, is cut loose, he finds himself holding onto nothing.

And what else is there to live for?

Extras:

Pinterest (x) Inspo tag (x) There isn’t a lot round here, but hopefully it works. X Playlist (x) Element: Fire MBTI: ENTJ “The Commander” Moral Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Primary Vice: Pride Primary Virtue: Prudence

Headcanons:

GIYA. The way I see it, Clark first sees Giya as his brother’s property. So when their mutual attraction is made known, Clark is obviously ecstatic, for he’s acquiring something that was rightfully his brother’s own. Somewhere along the road, however, he does fall in love with her to a fault, enough for murder to come into play. That said, Giya is the only person Clark has ever opened up to, and that list includes his parents and his brother. There’s no one on Earth he would kill – or die – for. It is because of this reason that her death affects him more than his brother’s own. Love is something he’s gone through decades by without, and with her absence comes him growing more and more detached from reality.

MENTAL ILLNESS. I wrote Clark with the idea that he is suffering from psychotic depression. Having been diagnosed with a mood disorder with psychotic features myself, I believe I am able to do this interpretation justice. I’ve already made evident some of his symptoms in the interview and para samples, including irritability, difficulty concentrating, talks or threads of suicide, isolation, and psychotic features such as hearing things that aren’t present. Still, this remains undiagnosed, considering he’ll probably go set something on fire before he goes to a therapy session.

FAMILY. While he had a relatively good upbringing, one incident comes to mind (as is evident in the para sample) that serves as his breaking point. By no means was his father abusive, but the ordeal turned into a heated debate that led to a physical squabble which has permanently blacked out from his system. It further sets up his animosity towards his family and his envy towards his dear, darling brother.

MUSIC. Classical music is his go-to genre, while his violin is his favored string instrument. He owns a Merano 4/4 purple violin.

APARTMENT. His apartment is quaint and comes equipped with a small living room, a kitchen, and a bedroom on the upper floor which is a converted loft. Despite this he keeps it meticulous, save for a few cigarette butts here and there.

SEXUALITY. Clark is demiromantic, but experiences sexual attraction to both men and women. That being said, he doesn’t exactly search for sexual conquests. He lets it develop naturally, and if the chemistry is there, he pushes forward.

He smokes way too much.

I wrote Clark with the idea that he carries himself with a malicious streak, eager to make others fear him, lest they actually see through his mask and attempt entrance.

#accepted #accepted: claudius

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katrinatravelsthroughasia · 7 years

Text

Final Integrative Essay

At First, K-pop; At Last, Japan:

My Journey of Changed Assumptions with Asian Conversations

I have been looking to Asia since I first stumbled upon K-pop in 6th grade. My interest in the popular culture of Korea quickly grew into a fascination with the language, cuisine, and history of a country that is not my own. While traveling during Interim to China, Japan, and South Korea, I was forced to perform a distinct identity, partly due to my physicality and partly due to my citizenship, and contributed to the “worlding” of whatever culture people viewed me as having. I also experienced the shifting of the visions I had of “Asia,” specifically Japan, before going. In juxtaposition with everything I knew about Asia, especially Korea, my developed concept of Japan was challenged when I actually visited. In this essay I will explore the themes of what imagined community I had in mind for Japan, the preconceived images that have been transformed, and how the linguistic landscape shaped my understanding of Japan, as well as how these have affected my identity as an “Asian Studies” student, all through the trip with Asian Con.

My initial interest in K-pop developed into a committed involvement with the Korean Culture Association on campus. In fact, I am still independently studying the Korean language in my free time, due to many years of interest and involvement. As for the rest of Asia, I dipped my toes into the world of anime a few years after discovering Korea but didn’t really acquire a desire for Japanese culture until I (somewhat randomly) decided to learn the language at the beginning of my time at St. Olaf. Only after visiting China through Asian Con can I now say that I also have a serious interest in learning more about China. My curiosity of Asia has grown slowly yet steadily over the past eight years. However, since 6th grade, I have only imagined Asia through the entertainment media available to me in Minnesota.

After finally getting the opportunity to visit these countries for myself, I realized that television and reality are indeed different. I had the image of an “imagined community” floating around my head about what life in Japan looked like before visiting, and they mostly resulted from comparison with what I understood about the other locations I would travel to during Interim; first Beijing and Shanghai, and later the familiar Seoul. I expected Japan to be much different from both China and Korea. Flying from Shanghai, I expected Japan to be cleaner and quieter, but to what degree I was unsure. Upon returning home, I realized how many similarities could be found between the three, contrary to what I had assumed might be in this “imagined community.” Indeed, people around the world enjoy good food in very similar ways, or interact with social media the same way. I had quite the thorough understanding of Korean culture for an American, so my prior text was significantly more in play there than the lack of prior text with which I went to the other two countries, especially China.

I had a general idea of the overall vibe of Japan and the difference between areas of the city, but I didn’t have many expectations as to how interactions would happen in those spaces. Benedict Anderson defines an “imagined community” as the abstract ideas we have about a certain society and location before experiencing it. “So often in the “nation-building” politics of the new states one sees both a genuine, popular nationalist enthusiasm, and a systematic, even Machiavellian, instilling of nationalist ideology throughout the mass media, the educational system, administrative regulations, and so forth” (Anderson 163). We have been taught believe certain things to be true, often through media and education, and therefore act accordingly. As an American, I am living with thousands of other people who are supposed to be on my “team,” even though I only know a miniscule fraction of them. This idea of community is conceptualized through concepts like “geo-bodies” and “prior text”—we have a long background of being told that a map or a flag represents “us,” and that we must respect that symbol of our existence. I have somehow learned about “Japanese culture” over the years; things like Pokémon and J-pop, and I already had an affection for sushi and soba, so I did not go there completely clueless, but I did not have a strong “prior text” beyond these basic, “exterior” things. It was perhaps the slight lack of knowledge that caused me to be more open. But my understanding of the Japanese people and how they behave was greatly lacking, because I only had the images shown to me in the media to rely on. Perhaps shockingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, I found the Japanese people to be quite similar to every other person I’ve interacted with in this world. There is indeed a lack of geisha and samurai, and an abundance of very normal office workers.

Benedict Anderson’s idea of a preconceived notion of a society, labeled with the term “imagined community,” describes a phenomenon of interpreting things differently from how they really are. Karen Strassler introduces the idea of “refracted visions” in her book of the same name. According to Strassler, a refracted vision is when the meaning changes depending upon who is viewing the photograph (in Strassler’s case) or otherwise, or what kind of impressions it gives off. She argues that “images become increasingly central to the ways individuals and collectivities imagine and recognize themselves” (3). But these views are not always reflective of the actuality. Pictures, or whatever we view, often don’t show the truth of the thing. This is caused by our own bias, the photographer’s bias, and preexisting ideas that interfere with what could be gleaned from the image. Personally, I was raised and educated with the idea that Asia is very far away and very different from Minnesota. The former has been made somewhat false with modern transportation, and the truth of the latter is debatable, as I have learned through Asian Con.

My experiences in Asian Con are the strongest basis for how and why I now better understand the concept of “Asia,” and Japan in particular. When I was young I saw the strong sumo wrestlers, the cherry blossoms, or the electric streets in pictures and videos of Japan and gleaned that they are perhaps an idealized version of “Japan,” but I now know that they are only a part of a much more complex history and culture. I would argue that a visit to the location in question is absolutely required to fully understand why and how things are shown that way to “outsiders,” and I was hoping my own images would be altered by doing so. Indeed, I changed my own very basic, media-based visions of Japan by traveling to see it for myself so I could attempt to absorb the culture in a non-biased way. Part of this entailed traveling outside of the center of Tokyo, which was done by visits to Nikko and Kyoto, and by traveling to areas not on the “top 10” of every travel book in existence.

A random trip to the somewhat empty town of Koganei was decided last minute when we had only a small amount of time to spare after one of our required interview assignments one day. We took the train just two stops away from International Christian University and wandered in hopes of finding magnificent movie maker Miyazaki’s art studio or the building he used as inspiration for the bath house in Spirited Away. We did not find either. However, we experienced a magical little neighborhood with a brown-grass park and the most delicious ramen I have had in my entire life. This location revolutionized the image I had of Japan. Unlike a place like Shibuya or Akihabara, Koganei felt more like my hometown. This made me think that perhaps Japan isn’t so very different and that it’s not just a nation of mouthwatering sushi and extraordinary cosplay. In fact, there are dads who cannot get kites to fly, couples who fight, and children who loudly do not want to go to the potty all over the world. My vision was refracted, was changed by my numerous experiences, and I began to see the geo-body of “Japan” in a completely different light.

The “linguistic landscape” of a place is another aspect that changed how I experienced Japan. This concept constitutes any visible written word of a location which can then be characteristically analyzed. My language is perhaps my greatest connection to the country, so it only makes sense that I would be highly interested in the things I saw written everywhere. It was fascinating to find Japanese in all of the little places and work it out like a puzzle; the kanji of the “caution, slippery when wet” sticker in the shower of my dorm room, things written only in katakana on the back of fashionable jackets, and so on. This is what Peter Backhaus calls the linguistic landscape. He mentions that “one frequently comes across apparently English expressions that only make sense when read as Japanese” (Backhaus 120). Reading things in their original context with original intentions still intact has a huge impact on the way something is interpreted. For me, I was given an insight into the Japanese way of thinking because I knew the language. At this point of the trip I realized how much more Japanese I want and need to learn to be as skilled as I want to be, which motivated my learning during second semester. At the same time, I was extremely pleased to discover that I am capable of communicating in a foreign language and can engage with people who might not speak English. It was addicting to use my language skills, which is one of the reasons why I was so eager to find a way to return to Japan very soon.

When I think about traveling back to Japan this summer for my internship, I am very glad I made the effort to make it happen, and that I enrolled in Asian Con in the first place. Without the language basis and cultural background, I do not know how comfortable or passionate I would be to return. I am already searching for a subsequent opportunity to visit, even though I have not yet started the first one. After all of the readings and learning I have done in Asian Con, I can now say that I have a changed and improved understanding of Asia, and that it is not based upon media nearly as much as it used to be. I do not think I could be a qualified Asian Studies student without the experiences that Asian Con has given me. Thanks to this program, I was able to examine the imagined community I had for Japan and transform my image of a place through visits to “normal” locations, all with the help of a language-based understanding of the linguistic landscape.

I second the motion to rename it Greatest Con, because I have grown in so many ways because of it.

Works Cited

Anderson, Benedict. "Census, Map, Mueseum." Imagined Communities. 3rd ed. London: Verso, 2006. 163-85. Print.

Backhaus, Peter. "Case Study: Signs of Multilingualism in Tokyo." Lingistic Landscape. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2007. 64-140. Print.

Bardsley, Jan, and Laura Miller. "Behavior That Offends." Manners and Mischief Gender, Power, and Etiquette in Japan. Berkeley: U of California, 2011. N. pag. Print.

Strassler, Karen. Refracted Visions: Popular Photography and National Modernity in Java. Durham: Duke UP, 2010. Print.

#spring2017 #asian con #katrina travels #katrina goes to asia #china #japan #korea #identity

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nothingman · 7 years

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When Mike Cernovich, one of the most prominent alt-right internet trolls supporting Donald Trump, was interviewed on 60 Minutes, he used the platform to spread conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton's health and to allege that she is involved with pedophilic sex trafficking operations. But he also declared his belief in single-payer health care.

"I believe in some form of universal basic income," he told CBS’s Scott Pelley, citing concerns about technological unemployment. "I’m pro-single-payer health care. Is that right-wing or is that left-wing anymore? Well, if you have a lot of people, a large swath of the company, or country, are suffering, then I think that we owe it to all Americans to do right by them and to help them out."

This might seem like a bizarre position for a far-right conspiracy theorist to take. Single-payer health care, after all, entails nationalizing most or all of the health insurance industry and having the government set prices for doctors’ services. Conservatives in America have spent the better part of the past century arguing that the idea is socialistic, would lead to long waits for lifesaving treatment, and would give the government power over the life and death of its citizens.

But Cernovich is less a traditional conservative than he is a Trumpist — and Trumpism in its purest, alt-right variety cares more about white working-class identity politics than traditional conservatism. More and more, Trump fans are seeing single-payer as part of that.

Alt-rightists and other Trump-loyal conservatives — Richard Spencer, VDARE writer and ex–National Review staffer John Derbyshire, Newsmax CEO and Trump friend Christopher Ruddy, and onetime Donald Trump Jr. speechwriter and Scholars & Writers for Trump head F.H. Buckley — all endorsed various models of single-payer in recent months and years.

Even elites in the alt-right mold who once deplored single-payer are changing their tune. Pat Buchanan, the paleoconservative three-time presidential candidate whose white identity politics and fiercely anti-trade and anti-immigration stances helped inspire the modern alt-right, had free market views on health care in the 1990s and condemned Obamacare as a scheme to kill Grandma in 2009. This week, he told me in an email he has “not taken any position on single-payer, and [has] pretty much stayed out of the Obamacare repeal-and-replace debate.”

Curtis Yarvin, a Silicon Valley programmer whose writings under the pen name Mencius Moldbug helped launch the neoreactionary branch of the alt-right, told me he welcomes the movement’s trend toward single-payer, viewing it as a “sincere effort to think realistically in the present tense rather than in abstract ideology.”

Insofar as the alt-right, and the Trump-supporting right more generally, have a coherent economic agenda, it’s a vehement rejection of the free market ideology crucial to post–World War II American conservatism. While Paul Ryan reportedly makes all his interns read Atlas Shrugged, figures like Cernovich, Spencer, and Derbyshire are trying to build an American right where race and identity are more central and laissez-faire economics is ignored or actively avoided.

This has been most obvious on immigration and trade, where libertarians’ opposition to most or any government restrictions is in tension with the alt-right’s economic nationalism. But it’s also true on health care, where the pure alt-righters are joined by more mainstream pro-Trump voices like Ruddy and Buckley and even some Trump-wary conservatives such as Peggy Noonan.

The Trump-supporting right’s case for single-payer is part of a vision of a party where ideological purity on economic issues is much less important, and where welfare state expansion can be accommodated if it serves other goals — like building a political base among working-class whites.

The welfare state has always been more popular with the Republican base than with its elected officials. Trump arguably won the presidency in part by being the first Republican in years to promise to protect Social Security and Medicare. My colleague Sarah Kliff has run focus groups with Trump voters where participants bring up their admiration for Canadian-style single-payer unprompted. The alt-right single-payer fad suggests that elites are finally catching up.

The ultranationalist case for single-payer health care

Some of the arguments that the Trumpists and alt-rightists offer for single-payer are the standard concerns about the plight of sick and suffering Americans that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Bernie Sanders speech — like Cernovich’s insistence that “we owe it to all Americans to do right by them, and to help them out.”

Other arguments are offered more in sorrow than in anger. Derbyshire, for example, laments the fact that Americans are unwilling to accept a true free market in health care — but argues that single-payer makes more sense than the current hodgepodge of insurance subsidies and regulations and tax breaks.

“Citizens of modern states will accept no other kind of health care but the socialized or mostly socialized kind,” he said on a 2012 episode of his podcast, Radio Derb. “This being the case, however regrettably, the most efficient option is to make the socialization as rational as possible.” Single-payer, he concludes, would involve “less socialism, and more private choice,” than “what we now have.” (Derbyshire doesn’t really explain why socializing insurance is less socialist than not socializing insurance.)

But the main argument offered by Trumpists is about their movement. Donald Trump famously promised in May 2016 to turn the Republican Party into a “workers’ party.” The implication was clear: Republican elites before him like Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney prioritized deregulation for businesses and tax cuts for the rich, and offered little or nothing for working-class people, specifically working-class white people. Instead, the party relied on social issues like abortion and immigration to earn their votes.

F.H. Buckley, the George Mason University law professor who led Scholars & Writers for Trump, even approvingly cites the leftist writer Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas? on this point. “Frank asked how it was that the poor folks of his home state voted for a Republican Party that cared so little for their economic interests,” Buckley wrote in the New York Post. “Become the jobs and the health-care president, and you [Trump] will have answered Frank’s question.”

“Steve Bannon has said the Republicans will become a party of ‘economic nationalism,’” Buckley continued. “No one has bothered to define this, but here’s one thing it must mean: We’re going to treat Americans better than non-Americans. We’re going to see that Americans have jobs, medical care and an enviable safety net.”

Of course, the Trumpists are big fans of using racialized, not explicitly economic appeals on issues like immigration and crime to win votes. But whereas they see mainstream Republicans like Paul Ryan or Jeb Bush making those appeals as a smokescreen for unpopular economic policies, they want to pair the appeals with an nationalist economic agenda that is actually popular with these voters.

“Unlike Paul Ryan and Rich Lowry, who masturbated to Atlas Shrugged in their college dorms and have no loyalty to their race, Donald Trump is a nationalist,” Richard Spencer writes. “We can’t ignore the politics of this. If Trumpcare passes, leftists can credibly claim that Trump has betrayed his populist vision. They will recycle the hoary script about nationalism and ‘scapegoating’ immigrants as a means of pushing through a draconian agenda. And they’ll have a point!”

Single-payer, Spencer insists, would "serve our constituency" (read: white people), give the right an answer to the appeal of social democrats like Bernie Sanders, and encourage the growth of the alt-right movement: "So many writers, activists, and content creators on our side shy away from becoming more involved, not just out of fear of social punishment, but out of fear of being fired and losing their health insurance."

Moreover, as soon as health care becomes a public issue, an alt-right government could use that power to promote a more vigorous, healthy white race on a number of dimensions. "When single-payer healthcare is implemented, issues like food safety, nutrition, and obesity become matters of public concern,” Spencer writes. “It will draw more attention to the alternative we are presenting to America’s current lowest-common-denominator society."

Of course, single-payer would overwhelmingly benefit a lot of nonwhite Americans as well. But programs like Social Security and Medicare do too, and their universal nature and the fact that they’re tied to work have led them to be less racialized and stigmatized than cash welfare or Medicaid. Single-payer’s universality is appealing because it helps the white working class without making them enroll in means-tested programs traditionally associated with black and Latino beneficiaries.

This is a key strategy of the far right in Europe

Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images

Marine Le Pen on the campaign trail in Lille.

The ideological vision being offered here is hardly original. The political scientist Sheri Berman has argued that fascism and nationalism succeeded in Europe before World War II largely because unlike traditional conservative parties, fascist parties could provide a real challenge to the social democrats’ promise of relief from the suffering of the Great Depression.

"Across Europe nationalists began openly referring to themselves as 'national' socialists to make clear their commitment to ending the insecurities, injustices, and instabilities that capitalism brought in its wake, while clearly differentiating themselves from their competitors on the left," she writes in The Primacy of Politics.

And more recently, this strategy been adopted by some far-right parties in Europe. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s Front National, has relied heavily on "welfare chauvinism” in her presidential bids, a promise to protect and expand social programs for (white) native workers against migrants who might exploit them and drain money that should be going to noble French citizens. Geert Wilders, the far-right leader in the Netherlands, used to be a small-government conservative but began publicly fighting cuts to health programs and calling for expanded pensions once it became clear that this appealed to the lower-income voters who loved his anti-Islam message.

This trend isn’t universal; the Freedom Party in Austria, for example, was a traditional laissez-faire party on economics. But it’s become a popular strategy for several parties, from the Finns Party in Finland to the Danish People’s Party to the Sweden Democrats, whose leader once tweeted, “The election is a choice between mass immigration and welfare. You choose.”

And American far-rightists have noticed. James Kirkpatrick, a fellow writer of Derbyshire’s at VDARE (an anti-immigration site named after the first white person born in the American colonies), has approvingly cited the nationalist, authoritarian Polish Law and Justice Party’s strategy of tacking left on welfare to tack right on everything else. The country’s “patriotic government,” he swoons, “outflanked the Left and strengthened its grip on power with universal health care.”

The difference between those parties and Trump’s would-be workers’ party is that European countries already have universal health care. And one thing that happened once it was established is that mainstream conservative parties got on board with its preservation. The British Conservatives and the Gaullists in France and the Christian Democrats in Germany don’t try to repeal their countries’ universal health care systems. At most, they push for market-based reforms that retain universality but maybe introduce some more copays or an increased role for private insurers and providers.

When that’s the mainstream right-wing alternative, a right-wing party that calls for expanding welfare and health benefits seems more plausible. More to the point, most of the countries enjoying a far-right resurgence employ some system of proportional representation, which allows new parties without much political base to quickly gain ground in the legislature. Tellingly, while Le Pen does well in France’s presidential elections, there are only two Front National members in its National Assembly, which elects by district à la the US or UK.

So even if Trump were to be persuaded by his followers and embrace single-payer, he’d face a tough task. He can’t form a new right-wing party and sweep the legislative elections; he has to change the policies of the existent Republican Party, which has spent decades fighting proposals for universal health care, and get a quorum of members in the House and Senate on his side. That’s much harder, and suggests that the Spencers, Buckleys, and Derbyshires of the world won’t get their wish on this anytime soon.

via Vox - All

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