#capitalism gains less if there's less people to exploit

[balkanradfem]

Do you think that low birth-rates are a problem?

I think they're the opposite of a problem :)

[arabellasleopardcoat]

Spring (Cregan Stark x Reader)

Summary: As a Princess, you aren’t used to rejection. But Cregan, your husband, has vowed to only ever love one woman, and it isn't you. Right?

Warnings: Slightly less unreliable narrator (Cregan has come to his senses, reader is on the way) Mature language.

A/N: I really thought these two would get their mess sorted out in nine scenes, but I was far too optimistic. Lucky me, I had one season as backup! Also, thank you so, so much for continuing to read this series and your kind comments!

IT IS FUNNY, how wrong can Cregan be about people. He is no longer afraid to admit it. He had been mistaken about you. 

The utter viciousness you had displayed, bringing up his dead wife, had only been a source of anger for him at first. He had thought you an evil little bitch, unafraid of exploiting weak spots to hurt him. 

Then, he had seen you with Rickon. And his world had just… Shifted. As if every piece of furniture in Winterfell had been moved exactly one inch to the left, and no one had told him, leaving him stumbling around in his own home.

You weren’t evil or jealous. Or, more likely, you were, but not because of some petty reason, it was because you were insecure. The mere idea was laughable, why would a Princess of the Realm be insecure? But it made too much sense for him to ignore. 

Each time Cregan had cracked a joke that compared you to Arra, like commenting on the number of packages and dresses you had brought from the South, you had taken it as a personal criticism. You felt unappreciated, so you lashed out and avoided him at every turn. 

You were kind, smart, and capable. Just not in the way Cregan was used to women being capable. The northern women were considered capable because they were physically strong, able to wield bows, ride hard and long or withstand the terrible weather. 

You, instead, shared Prince Jacaerys’ strength. You were honorable, unable to leave a child in need, and kind, enough that you would comfort them until their parents reached them. But most of all, you had a brain suited for politics. 

Cregan had never noticed before because he had never bothered to truly look at what you were doing, but your charities were to make your mother’s cause more popular with the smallfolk. He had heard your mother was doing a similar thing in the capital, delivering food to the starved population due to a blockade of the own Blacks’ making. Not that the commoners cared about the last part. They only cared about those who put food on their bellies. 

And perhaps the Queen dowager and Princess Helaena were popular in the South because of their involvement in the Septs, but you were exploiting the lack of those here. Without Septs, there were no Septas or Septons tending to the sick and poor. You were. And the North would remember, when it came time to march for your mother’s banners. 

Cregan would bet Ice that you were having tea with the northern ladies not to gain friends. The Old Gods knew you were an introverted creature, painfully awkward at niceties, much like he was. It explained why the two of you were so uncomfortable with each other. You were probably entertaining the northerns to win their loyalties, knowing the combined pressure of Cregan’s oath and their wives would make his lords more eager to drop coin and men for your war. 

Oh, if Cregan got you on his side, the two of you would be a force to be reckoned with. He could already see how much security you could bring to the North, how well fed you could be during winter, if you decided to work with him and not behind him. 

You were a wonderful woman. Kind and tender to his son, smart as a whip, utterly terrifying when crossed. You would make a fine wife to any lord, and Cregan couldn’t believe how stupid he had been not to see it. You just needed to be encouraged, and Cregan, dumb as a rock, had been doing the exact opposite. 

While you hadn’t exactly been trying, Cregan was man enough to admit that part of the blame laid on him. He had been pushing you away without even realizing it, comparing you to Arra at every turn, without considering how that might come across to you. 

That ended today. He would prove himself worthy of your love and loyalty, and win you over. Cregan wasn’t a man of half measures. He would woo you or spend the rest of his life trying. 

Set in his decision, Cregan walked to your chambers. He waved off the guard’s attempt to announce him, casually strolling in. 

You were seated next to the fire, the leather-bound book you usually carried around spread over your lap. It was a heavy tome, bound in brown leather with golden engravings. It was written in High Valyrian, a language for which Cregan had little use, so he had never learned it beyond recognizing the alphabet. 

There was a striking beauty to your expression when you were at ease, the peaceful expression you wore becoming you much more than the usual frown you directed at him. Cregan found himself wondering how beautiful you must look smiling, if you looked this radiant when at peace. 

You had the sort of face to be lit up with happiness, he could already tell. His heart ached to be the one that finally coaxed it out of you.

“Princess,” Cregan calls, softly. You set your book aside, ready to get up and curtsy, but he halts you. “No need for that, wife. My ego is not so fragile I need my woman to bow to me.” 

“Lord Husband.” You reply, for once not frowning. Your face remains carefully neutral, which Cregan considers a victory. He would attribute it to his remark about his ego, but it is more likely due to guilt. He will take it regardless. 

“No need for that either, much less today.” Cregan smiles at you. “You may call me Cregan, if you wish. I am here to thank you for caring for my Rickon while I was away.” 

You look far more confused than you did before. You look like you want to approach him and run at the same time, your wool gown fluttering as you squirm in place, undecided if you are approaching or not. 

“I simply did my duty, my lord.”

Cregan’s smile widens, amused by you. 

“Singing him was part of it? By the Gods, I thought I had a wife and not a minstrel?” And the dry, northern humor doesn’t seem to suit you because you frown slightly. Cregan fights the urge to curse, instead making a mental note. You dislike being mocked, even in jest. He wonders what sharp words you had to endure in the South to be like this, and feels a wave of pity. Dark of hair and no dragon to shield you? Perhaps that was why you were far kinder to Sara than to him. He gives a tasteful cough. Or at least, his attempt at it. 

“I only meant to say you went beyond your duties, and I thank you for it. You didn’t have to, but it meant the world to him.” Cregan tries again, and you blink at him, as if he were unable to understand anything at all. 

“He is a child.” You say, slowly.  “No person would leave a child in need.” 

“You would be surprised.” Cregan thinks of how his own mother had treated Sara when she had arrived at Winterfell, treatment that hadn’t improved when his aunt took on as the Lady of the household. His sister had only known freedom after Cregan had taken over his seat, and she was still judged by the rest of the North, even though in a much subtle manner. 

“Mmm.” Your reply is noncommittal. 

“He has been asking me lately why he doesn't have a lady mother.” Cregan attempts again. He is not above using Rickon to have an excuse to spend time with you. And to his amusement, it does work. You pity his son more than him, it seems because you begin to pay him more attention.  

“What did you tell him?” You tilt your head to the side, curious. It’s a surprisingly cute gesture for the unshakable princess that you are. 

“I do not know. I have not answered him.” Cregan searches for somewhere to sit, but apart from the loveseat in which you are soaking up the warmth of the fireplace, there is none. He grabs the stool by your writing area, and brings it over. 

He sits on the stool across from you, wiggling a bit with how uncomfortable it is. It feels like his knees are on his chest, by the Gods. It’s clearly meant for a shorter person. Your rooms are not made for receiving visitors, he should have thought of that earlier. You need a space to receive people that isn’t the sitting room. What if you wish to have more private conversations?

“Surely he knows she is dead?” You are too caught up in your disbelief to protest that he is rearranging your furniture. Good. 

“He does, but doesn’t quite grasp what dead means.”  Cregan is being honest. Whoever has the heart to explain to a child of two namedays what death is, is a braver man than him. 

“Perhaps you could say she is in the Seven Heavens?” Your frown comes back, but this time it isn’t angry. Instead, it’s puzzled. You are trying to help him, and it makes him fight the urge to smile. He doesn’t want you to think that he is mocking your suggestion. 

“We do not believe that here.” 

“Neither do I.” And this time, there is the barest beginning of a playful smile on your lips. Oh, you minx! Cregan smiles to himself, charmed. It emboldens him to continue. 

“Just, I would like it if you saw him more often. With me. Perhaps… He has asked about you, and I am not asking you to replace her but I… He sometimes needs a more feminine touch.” 

“Of course.” You agree. And he can see in your eyes you think he might be trying to use you as a stand in for Arra, not truly believing his words, but that is alright. Cregan will show you. Or at least, he is going to do his very best attempt. 

YOU MAKE SURE there are enough pastries and hot water available before you stand up.

“I am afraid I must leave you, my ladies. But you are welcome to continue enjoying the hospitality of Winterfell.” The sitting room is filled with northern women. You have begun inviting them for tea twice a moon, trying to ensure your mother will have all the support she needs when she takes King’s Landing. 

It has proven to be quite the difficult task. Northerns are often suspicious of outsiders, and from what you have learned through these gossip sessions, they rarely marry southrons. The only ones who do are the most important Houses, like the Starks or the Boltons. It means that most of your ladies are northern by birth, and not through marriage as you are. 

“This early?” Lady Mormont asks, bluntly. Her bluntness had discomfited you during your first meetings, but you have come to find it refreshing. “Princess?” She tacks on, remembering she is supposed to mind her courtesies with you. 

“This early.” You confirm, with a smile. You have planned the time of this tea with precision for this same motive, knowing it will appeal to their loyalty, but also allow you to escape the socializing. “I have a play date with my Lord Husband and little Rickon.” 

One of the ladies coos. Lady Mormont barks out a laughter. 

“Ah, to be a young woman with that many suitors.” 

“Only the very best.” You smile, and leave them to feast on the pastries. 

You make your way to Cregan’s solar at a leisure pace. The crushed velvet gown you are wearing is in a blue so pale it almost looks like the gray of House Stark. It is one of your old ones, meant to evoke House Velaryon’s colors. It fits you again, having gained a bit of weight during your time in the North. You hope it is a gown suitable for playing with a toddler. 

As you enter, you notice Rickon is arriving as well, tugged along by a maid. He chirps a greeting to you, a mix of your name and title that sounds more like gibberish. Yet, you are helpless to him.

“Rickon!” You kneel by him, as he runs to be picked up. You indulge him, smelling his hair as you lift him. He smells of sweet innocence, and a bit like Cregan. You hate that you cannot hate him or be indifferent any longer. The little boy has stolen your heart. 

Rickon gives you a toothy smile, his hands clumsily going to cup your face. Who can resist him? Not you. 

“I see you found each other.” Cregan leans against the door, smirking. He holds two cups. “Warm milk with honey. For the cold.”

You cannot help but smile a little. 

“Our knight in shining armor!” You tease, more for Rickon’s benefit than him. “Let us in, good Ser. So I can place my little wildling down and he can drink it.” 

Cregan laughs and moves aside to let the two of you pass. As you do so, you cannot help but notice how much space he takes up, tall and wide. Your eyes linger on his shoulders. You have not seen him wield Ice yet, but you have seen the sword. He has to have considerable strength to do so. 

The thought is strangely thrilling. Your stomach does a somersault, but before you have time to analyze it, Rickon begins to squirm in your arms. 

“Down! Down! Doggie!” He pleads. You look to see what has caught his attention and notice that Cregan has moved the rug so it lays by the fireplace, and placed some of Rickon’s toys there, including his more favored one: A soft cotton white wolf. 

You set Rickon down and take one of the cups from Cregan. Both of you sit down on the rug as well, and watch Rickon play with his wolf, ignoring his cup of milk. You have come to learn that playing with an only child is much different than playing with your younger siblings, Rickon mostly plays alone and wants you there to show you things. 

It forces you to keep conversations with your husband, if only because the silence would be too awkward otherwise. 

“I have arranged for us to have tea when Rickon tires.” Cregan informs you, a bit stiff.

“Oh, I already had tea with the…” You start, before Cregan interrupts you. 

“You are far too thin still. Besides, I know your tea spreads are made of mostly northern sweets. I asked the cooks to make one of your favorites, Prince Jacaerys was kind enough to set up correspondence for me with the cooks of Dragonstone.” 

It’s awfully thoughtful of him, and you will examine it later because your mind is still stuck on one tiny detail. One that infuriates you. 

“You are corresponding with Jace?” You ask, trying hard not to sound violent. After all, he has been very kind to you as of late, and guilt has begun to creep in for your careless words about his late wife. Not that you will apologize or anything. You intend to pretend nothing happened and be extra nice to Cregan, indulging Rickon and him on all the tea and play dates in the world. 

“I am. He would be very pleased if you stopped burning his letters.” His tone is chiding, though gentle. You take a deep breath in. Jace, the traitor. Cregan keeps his tone kind. “He still grieves your brother, Princess. Do not make him mourn a sister in life.” 

“Does he think I shall never forgive him?” You ask him, baffled. Rickon begins building a tower with blocks on the rug, insisting that the two of you aid him in building Winterfell, so Cregan’s answer is delayed. As you place some blocks to make the entrance, you have time to think over his words. 

All alone in Dragonstone, Jace must be feeling as lonely as you are. Only more because he has no Cregan and Rickon to stand with him. 

What he had done was a deep betrayal in your eyes, but was it truly? You had known you would have to marry eventually, and it probably wouldn’t be a love match. Jace had done the best he could in the terrible circumstances you were in. Moved by his fear of losing another sibling, he had entrusted you to Cregan because he thought you could be happy here. Safe. 

And you were. There was no fiercest protector for you apart from your husband. After marrying him, no one had dared even to breathe the rumors of your bastardy, and he even worried about what you ate, by the Gods’ sake!

“You can hold a grudge.” Cregan says, cautiously, when Rickon is distracted by his cup of milk and begins to attempt drinking it. Usually, drinking his milk is followed by passing out, so he is careful to support him in his lap. The sight makes your chest feel oddly warm. 

Oh. 

Oh. 

This was bad. 

You were falling in love with Cregan. 

“Perhaps I don’t want to any longer.” You say, looking into his eyes. You are no longer speaking of Jace. 

Cregan seems to catch on your meaning because he reaches forward and takes your hand in his. Fixated on how big and warm his hand feels against yours, you almost miss his soft words. 

“Neither do I.”

SARA’S EYES, GREY and so much like his father’s, are fixed on him. Cregan tries to ignore her, unwilling to give her the satisfaction of appearing uncomfortable. But before the hour passes, he is squirming in his chair, unnerved by her silent stare. 

Sara continues to stare. Cregan refuses to speak to her. After a while, she sets down the book she has taken from his shelves, a dreadfully boring account of the battles fought by the Kings of Winter, and perches her chin in her hands. 

That way, her staring is much more obvious. She is comfortably laid back in one of the armchairs he has in his solar. Cregan likes company when he works, and it’s easier to ask for her opinion if she is right there. Unfortunately, it also means she can stare at him for hours on end if she so wished.

“What?” Cregan asks, when he can’t take it any longer. He pushes away the reports about the safety of Wintertown and how prepared they are for winter, and looks up at her. She still doesn’t speak. “Sara!” 

“Apologies, brother.” By her smile, she is anything but sorry. “I just find it fascinating.” 

Cregan sighs. He doesn’t really want to bite, but if he doesn’t, Sara’s teasing will get worse and worse.

“What is fascinating?” 

“How you have managed to turn into a spineless southron in less than two moons.” Cregan can only gape at her. What is she going on about? “Not only have you turned timid, you are also a moron. And cunt struck. Well, are you? I know you are not getting any, does one need to actually be bedding the woman to be cunt…” She doesn’t even finish her words, cackling with laughter.

His face grows hot, burning with embarrassment. 

“I should have married you to an Umber and be done with it.” He mutters, under his breath, which only makes her cackle further. Both of them know that Sara would never be married off as if she were some cattle. Cregan loves her too much for it, and she is a deeply independent woman. 

“Who would advise you, then?” She asks him, brazenly. “Your sweet little wife? While she is great at wrangling lords and ladies, I doubt she has the stomach for warfare.” 

“There is a certain innocence to these Velaryons, yes.” At his words, Sara glares. She hates to be reminded she had not been as immune as she liked to think she was to Prince Jacaerys’ charms. “But if the worst comes to pass, I actually intend to have her hold Winterfell alongside you and Rickon.” 

“There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.” Sara approves. “Shall you march south, Rickon and I will suffice.” 

“I wish to begin teaching her, when she no longer seems willing to murder me.” 

“I think she isn’t willing to murder you any longer.” And it is as good of an endorsement he will get from Sara. 

“She still seems to think I do not love her.” Cregan whines. 

“Because you mention Arra all the time. I have heard it’s in bad taste, but what would I know?” Sara rolls her eyes. “I am just some bastard girl.” 

“Are you simply going to complain or will you help me?” Cregan looks at her and tries giving her his best pleading look. Then, he decides to stroke her pride. “You know I always seek your council, even above other lords.” 

“Even above Lord Cerwyn?” Her mouth purses in a dubious pout. Fuck. His sister or his best friend? In the end, the choice is easy. Sara is here now, after all. 

“Of course.”

Sara positively beams. 

“You should tell him so.” Her rivalry with him had never made any sense to him, they had known each other since childhood, too. The man didn’t even care about who her mother had been and never took insult with her… Well, insults. Plural. Always thrown at him by Sara. Now that he thought of it, his friend always sought excuses to see Sara. Odd. “Loudly. But I am feeling generous and not demand that you do so immediately. I shall gloat in my victory, and it will be even sweeter if he doesn’t know.” 

“Your advice?” Cregan asks, tiredly. The Gods knew that she would talk circles around him if he let her. She was honest, but she also had a gift for courtly speech that Cregan despised. 

“Women like gifts. Or I do. And I am a woman.” Sara shrugs. “She is a Princess, of course she does too. And don’t just gift her anything.” 

“I would never be…” That stupid, Cregan wishes to add, but Sara is still speaking. 

“Gift her something special. Something unique, tailored to her. And especially, something that you wouldn’t gift practical Arra.” 

Cregan stares at Sara. Sara stares back. Then, very pointedly, she picks up her book and continues to read. The message is clear. He will not get any further help. 

Still, her advice lingers. In the coming days, Cregan cannot shake the thought, regardless of what he is doing. As he inspects his men, as he reads during his spare time, even as he bathes. All Cregan thinks of is you, and a gift that would please you. 

He even dares ask Rickon. His suggestion of a direwolf isn’t exactly bad. It’s just difficult on its execution, and not something Cregan would choose when thinking of a gift for you. 

He discards many more ideas, from rolls of myrish lace to donations to your charities. You ran far too cold to wear the former, and the latter wouldn’t truly be a gift to you. He wastes nearly a week coming up with a suitable idea, and two more corresponding with the Prince, the Maester at Dragonstone, and securing the goods he needs. 

It’s all worth it, when he takes a look at the finished present and can know that you will love it. 

[zinjanthropusboisei]

"This makes me think about the person who stole the Free Farm Stand. We had laughed it off as a mistake, of little consequence. But the mindset that claims permission to convert a free gift to private property, robbing the community for individual gain, is of the highest consequence. Our petty thief deserves a name, so let's call him Darren, after the CEO of ExxonMobil. We often lay the blame for the outcomes of cutthroat capitalism on the "System." There's merit in that, given the complex layered interactions, but no excuse. Let's remember that the "System" is led by individuals, by a relatively small number of people, who have names, with more money than God and certainly less compassion. They sit in boardrooms deciding to exploit fossil fuels for short-term gain while the world burns. They know the science, they know the consequences, but they proceed with ecocidal business as usual and do it anyway. Their behavior feels to me like the same kind of arrogant entitlement as Darren the Farm Stand thief or Darren the Planet Wrecker. They're all thieves, stealing our future, while we pass around the zucchini."

Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry (p.70)

👏👏👏👏👏

[eugenedebs1920]

Just a little fun wordplay 😊

We no longer stand in solidarity. There were periods when we did. These periods saw the biggest gains and the greatest successes of the masses and the middle class.

In the mid to late seventeen hundreds a collective of average people, some educated, some not, some of moderate wealth, others without. With the cumulative efforts, and rebellious spirit, these men, and a ragtag group of immigrants, fought off the mightiest global military forces, while at the same time, composing a series of ideas that would guide a free and prosperous society for centuries.

Theres always bad concepts, arbitrated by bad actors. Characters whose personal agendas of greed and self indulgence overpowers all aspects of decency and humanity. This was the case of the slave owning south.

As this young nation had shown before, there was no tyranny that couldn’t be bested. Again, an aggregation of peoples joined forces for the plight of humanity. For the freedom of the most vulnerable among them, a long, bloody, brutal war was carried out. Again, those who stood for the good of the common man toppled a hierarchy of wealthy, racist, tyrannicals.

Less than a century later a buzzing came from across the Atlantic. A charismatic overlord saw a susceptibility in his people. He would prey upon this by demonizing and lambasting those who weren’t arian, attesting the root of Germany’s woes lay in these immigrants poisoning the blood of their nation.

The largest conflict the world had ever seen commenced. Our cousins in England had bombs dropping on their doorsteps. The manufacturing of equipment and ammunition would prove to not suitable to subdue the forces against them. Again, a coalition of immigrants and native born American slaves would rise together in the fight against totalitarianism. Again their resolve would be victorious.

At home the powers of industry and capital would subjugate the workers of America. Making vast sums of wealth off exploitation. The accumulation of workers, all immigrants, men and women, brown and white, would capitalize on their numbers against the capitalists numbers of capital, showing that without a workforce the power of industry lies not in the wealth one holds but in the richness of solidarity. Again, this patchwork of peoples would, for now, would conquer despotic forces.

Society would see a period of great prosperity after the labor movements and the devastating war. That is with the exception of those stolen from the continent of Africa and forced to be here against their will.

The tether of reconstruction was long snapped and the menace of oppression in the south had ensnared in its provocations an atmosphere of violence and a thraldom of segregation, disenfranchising an already marginalized people.

Again, a plurality of common poor peoples amassed for the battle against those who contended their superiority over them. An exercise of non violent direct action through the plethora of peaceful persons would placate to the general population the putridness of the prejudices cast upon them by immoral ignorant racist, bringing to light their struggles. Again, the community of conciliating colored Americans coincided to overcome their oppressors.

At the same moment the military industrial complex Eisenhower had warned of, continued to manufacture conflict. This time in south east Asia.

This was a war where the richest county in the world, with the most advanced weaponry, combated communism on some of the poorest people on the planet. The atrocities, like never before, came through the screens, and into the living rooms of every American home. An anti-war, pro love revolution would sweep the nation. Again, the whole of these heartfelt hippies helped in the masses hearing that the horrific hurt perpetrated to these peasants across the globe was harmful to humanity and entirely wrong.

Where we stand now the masters of men have maniacally manufactured a mistrust amongst us.

They have seeded the sourness of the soul throughout our society. This syndicated system of separation from our various sects has shattered our symbolic social structure so severely, simple salutations have strained our sense of sensibility. Systematically dividing the civil citizens in seismic shakes of uncertainty.

A proud and progressive people, pushed apart purposely so politicians and powerful players of commerce can profit by polluting our planet and our perception. Pontificating on a provocation promoted to produce pre manufactured prejudices poised to poison person against person as the prerequisite for prestige.

We have shackled ourselves to the self indulgence of a capitalist culture only curating the catastrophic collapse of the middle class, whilst the cumulative cancer of cash corrodes the contemporary consciousness, cultivating corruption and canceling our once mighty congregation of caring and compassionate countrymen.

Before brethren born by the same bloodshed, serendipitously say our goodbyes, may we not bask in the blessings befallen between us, embracing the brotherly bonds, and the battle brought on by breaking that brokerage long ago, so difficult to ascertain again. Our best bet is to let bygones be bygones and believe that better beginnings rise in the dawn. Because brother, you are my family beyond blood our betterment is best bestowed building upon bridges not barriers, bound by bravery in the land of the free.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserve in our archive

By Julia Doubleday

(About a lot more than covid, but talks a lot about it later on)

This week, The Guardian reported that the 1.5 degree climate target agreed upon at the 2015 Paris talks is now “deader than a doornail.”

This will come as little surprise to the public, which has watched as loathsome politician after grinning salesman after equivocating lawyer has steered us ever closer to catastrophe as years and promises fade.

Decades ago, upwardly mobile people in the West were living in a happy delusion. As the Greed-is-good 80s gave way to the Dotcom 90s, the ruling class sold their vision of the future: a rising tide lifts all boats. More money for me means more money for all. Let’s all get rich and happy.

Globalization, neoliberalism, and capitalism, the three ingredients of prosperity everywhere, for everyone, forever. Cut regulations, let businesses thrive, let the markets reign. National borders should constrain people, not capital. In 1991, the USSR collapsed. In 1992, Francis Fukuyama published The End of History. As big business thrived, the Democratic party sprinted toward the center, with the Clintons pioneering “triangulation” and The Third Way. The markets roared. Then in 2001, 9/11 kicked off the 21st century, and a new era of global instability and warfare; the rest, as they say, is (even more) history.

The moments before- the moment where capitalists’ fantasies looked poised to come true- weigh heavy in the minds of our political elite. In the 90s, it all seemed possible; you could denude the rainforest because the rainforest was, after all, infinite; Coca-Cola could suck down all the clean water it desired; big ag could monocrop the hell out of the land; no two countries with a McDonalds would ever go to war; and meanwhile, the middle class would grow, standards of living would increase around the world, everyone would be better off! It was win/win/win/win/win! All those environmentalists and communists were passé; they’d been wrong. The best way to save the Earth, and the people on it, was through economic development.

But capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction, and now, in 2024, we all watch in horror as the planet heaps punishment after punishment on the species too arrogant to understand the warnings we’re generously given. Every emergency light is flashing red- change course or perish. Our feckless leaders seem incapable of understanding.

It’s not only the Earth that has suffered as the decades of exploitation accumulate. The workers, too, feel the crush as the ruling class cannot resist taking more, more, more for itself. Although distributing its ill-gotten gains more fairly would preserve its own position for longer, those at the top are too deluded, too greedy, too loyal to the belief system of their cult to understand this. Leftist, environmentalist, indigenous voices that were once marginalized now gain audiences through social media.

So, we come to the point that the contradictions of capitalism are intensifying. Workers in the West can no longer envision themselves getting a college education, making a decent living, buying a 4-bedroom home, retiring with a pension. Workers around the world, meanwhile, who manufacture our things, continue to suffer inhumane standards of living. Although the most extreme poverty lessens, over half of workers still live on less than $10/day. The global middle class doesn’t materialize anywhere other than, arguably, China, free from the clutches of the IMF and its predatory structural adjustment programs.

It is against this backdrop that the Democratic Party attempts, every two years, to defend the status quo.

The Democratic Party is a party ferociously committed to looking backwards. They yearn for 1995, when the future was neoliberal deregulation, triangulation, and the Clintons. When Fukuyama announced that history had ended, it seems like a lot of Democratic officials stopped reading.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, what the hell does this all have to do with the election just passed? Surely, you’re not arguing that the Republican party is the counter-weight here, the anti-capitalist foe? Not at all. No, the Republican party is capitalist, hyper-capitalist. They have, however, faced the reality that the status quo will not continue as is. There won’t be a future where a diverse, global family shares in the wealth produced by capitalism, where the poor are raised up to become the global middle class and globalization saves the wretched of the Earth.

The communist, socialist, or leftist alternative vision of our future is to dismantle the machine of exploitation that destroys, kills, denudes, and steals resources and workers. In order to have a planet, and workers who share in its bounty, we need to rethink the way we govern ourselves and our resources, drastically. And allowing a teeny tiny group of people- billionaires- to have outsize influence over political and economic policy flies in the face of democratic governance itself.

The fascist vision of the future is to buckle in, turn the machine up higher, and kill anyone who gets in the way. Protect the billionaires at any cost, while understanding very well that it is billionaire vs humanity itself. Get your followers to identify with the former and hate the latter. Build walls, keep out climate refugees. Deport people en masse. As things get worse, blame minorities. Distract people with culture wars, misogyny, racism, transphobia; same as it ever was. As the extinction-level outcomes of climate change materialize, shove your followers into a bottomless vortex of conspiracy, let them be dragged to the bottom, sputtering, swearing, soaking and drowning. Republicans, now led by Donald Trump, don’t act as though there will be enough to “go around”; they act as though they are going to divide society into “winners” and “losers,” with the “losers” condemned to low-wage labor, prison, deportation, or death.

This is how feckless liberalism condemns us to fascism. It offers us no future, while silencing the leftists who try. It’s no longer believable to say you represent workers and donors, oil companies and the environment. You have to pick one. When the chips are down, you have to pick a side.

The public is living through the collapse of what briefly appeared stable: a globalized, capitalist economy, deregulated in accordance with the principles of neoliberalism. This global economic system, little-bound by the laws of individual states and thus more powerful than pseudo-democratically run states, is running up against the physical limitations of the planet. Oil is not infinite. Polar ice caps melt. The methane in the permafrost is a climate bomb. Monocropping degrades the soil. More climate disasters mean less arable land for agriculture. Continually overusing groundwater means water shortages.

You can’t run a global society on the principle that what makes money for a private company today is always beneficial, and what harms the collective in the long-term is never detrimental.

The Democrats’ problem is that they will not acknowledge what has become clear to so many of us: that their “triangulation” 90s-era compromise, their brilliant idea of representing both big business and workers is simply not possible. The interests of these two groups diametrically oppose one another, and the capitalist mythology that rich people getting richer helps everyone get richer didn’t turn out to be true. As rich people and corporations have gobbled up an unprecedented proportion of American wealth, they’ve also grabbed up all the land and property, pushing homes out of reach for ordinary workers. When rich people own all the homes, how can poor people own those same homes? Capitalist dogma refuses to acknowledge constraints on resources, refuses to blink as we watch our homes flood, our fields turn barren, our cities begin to suffer water shortages.

The growing dissatisfaction with Democrats’ doublespeak came to a head in 2015. Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders launched a longshot Presidential campaign against pre-selected nominee Hillary Clinton. What happened next shocked political analysts and observers. Clinton came into the race with the support of every major player in the Democratic establishment, every media endorsement, and a billion-dollar war chest. Sanders, conversely, boasted nothing but a straight-talking style, a refusal to accept corporate PAC money, and a few oft repeated talking points about the billionaire class.

Fueled by $27 donations, Sanders’ campaign went on to win 23 contests, but was dragged down by the unanimously hostile response from Democratic insiders, political commentators, media outlets, and, unsurprisingly, the donor class. A party that was interested in winning vs. the powerhouse Trump campaign would’ve taken seriously a grassroots campaign that was able to perform so well with so many disadvantages. Instead, the Democratic party and its Superdelegates repeatedly put its finger on the scale for Clinton, leading to the disastrous first win for Trump in 2016.

Now, finally, I’m getting to COVID.

A big part of the Democrats return to power in 2020 was COVID. That’s not my opinion; that is what exit polls tell us about voters’ decision to turn out for Joe Biden. The top two reasons Democrats had for turning out to the polls in November of 2020 were racial justice issues and the pandemic.

Democrats never seemed to understand how reluctantly the public returned them to power. It wasn’t an, “oh, thank God, Joe Biden is here,” vote. It was a “we have to get this fucking guy [Donald Trump] out of here” vote. A good chunk of the party was still angry at the way Sanders had been treated. Workers were still suspicious that Democrats were promising to represent them during campaign season, then going on to represent donors. But frankly, the country was in crisis.

In November 2020, vaccines were not yet available for COVID-19. The nation was headed into a winter wave that would kill hundreds of thousands. And, importantly, the media didn’t downplay these deaths, it emphasized them. When a hundred thousand died, their names made the front page of the New York Times. The Democrats capitalized on the gore. When 220,000 had died, Biden announced that “no one” who had overseen that kind of death should remain President. 800,000+ Americans have died of COVID during his Presidency, which he has yet to resign.

Yes, yet again, Democrats pulled a bait and switch. Just like with immigration, racial justice, police violence, climate change and indigenous land rights, Democrats cried their crocodile tears right up until the Inauguration, then dried their eyes. AOC famously went and sobbed at a detention center during Trump’s Presidency, which she did not do again during Biden’s term. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer wore Kente cloth and kneeled in solidarity with George Floyd in a roundly mocked photo op before going on and giving the police more funding under Biden. I always thought it was a nice touch that Nancy’s mask was around her chin.

And Biden, Harris, and their spouses held a memorial at the reflecting pool for the 400,000 Americans who died of COVID under Trump the night before their Inauguration, only to never again mention Americans dying of COVID en masse again when they actually had the power to do something about it.

In short, Democrats went Back to Brunch, in a big way. The politicians, the analysts, the media allies, the donors, the pundits, and upper-middle-class Karens, the people with “I’m With Her” bumper stickers on their BMWs, the consultants, the actors, the data guys, the people who don’t notice the cost of groceries, they all together, astonishingly quickly, said thank you immigrants, Black people, disabled people, indigenous people, trans people, we won’t be needing you anymore, and went right back to pretending neoliberal capitalism isn’t about to hurl us all over a cliff.

My focus is COVID. I followed closely as, in the delusional world of the Biden liberal, getting COVID (a virus which damages the brain, heart, and immune system) twice a year became a totally okay and in fact laudable thing. I watched as wearing a mask went from being socially positive, to being socially ok, to being socially negative, as Bidenism reverted from anti-Trump to its true form; pro-capital. To protect capital, people need to accept this new condition of employment: more, repeated sickness, zero protections and ongoing risk of disability.

Their catchphrase for accepting this new, degraded quality of life was “back to normal.”

But while I focused on COVID, this wasn’t the only arena where Democrats pushed people “back to normal”. While Trump was in office, the Democrats succeeded in riling up their base about immigration, climate, and racial justice. As soon as they got power back, they tamped it all back down. As far as Democrats were concerned, Trump was in the rearview. So now everyone could go “back to normal.”

No more crying in front of detention camps.

No more kneeling in Kente cloth.

No more masks, COVID tests, or memorials for hundreds of thousands dead.

Donald Trump won this election because 19 million Democrats who turned out for Joe Biden failed to vote. Everyone has their own opinion about why. To me, it seems that in 2020, the public pushed Democrats back into the White House not excitedly, but reluctantly and conditionally. Instead of understanding that they owed the voters, particularly the most marginalized, this last chance at power, Democrats smugly swaggered back into the Oval Office and slammed the door behind them.

“See ya next cycle!” they called over their shoulder. Is it a wonder they didn’t?

For four years, the Biden Administration and “resistance libs” have been acting as if Donald Trump was a bad dream, fascism creeping across America a bad dream, COVID a bad dream. None of it was “real,” we all woke up and wanted “normalcy”, everything went “back” to what it should be, we all threw our masks away and returned to brunch. But that was never what the voters, who elected Biden in desperation, asked for.

We asked for a party, for leaders, who were ready to confront the crises brought into sharp relief under Trump, not bury them.

So wake up now, liberals. Trump was never your nightmare, Biden was your silly little fantasy. Dark Brandon can’t save us. The donor class can’t save us. Triangulation and deregulation and big legislation with giant handouts for oil companies can’t save us. And anything that can’t save us now, will doom us.

Because normal isn’t coming back. The crisis isn’t over. It’s only getting started.

[youdonthavedid]

The real-world consequences of a large number of people pretending to have dissociative identity disorder (DID), like we’re seeing in this recent online trend, can be significant, both for individuals who genuinely suffer from the disorder and for society at large. These consequences include:

Stigma and Misunderstanding of DID

Skepticism toward real cases: Increased prevalence of people pretending to have DID can lead to skepticism among the general public, healthcare providers, and even family members of those with legitimate diagnoses. This can make it harder for individuals with DID to receive support or be taken seriously.

Media misrepresentation: Public attention on fake or exaggerated cases may perpetuate harmful stereotypes about DID, framing it as an attention-seeking behavior or entirely fictitious.

Erosion of Trust in Mental Health Diagnoses

Undermining clinical authority: If the perception grows that DID is easy to fake, it may erode trust in the ability of mental health professionals to accurately diagnose and treat complex disorders.

Distrust in self-reporting: Since DID diagnosis relies heavily on self-reported symptoms, widespread fabrication could undermine confidence in the self-reporting process for all mental health conditions.

Resource Allocation Challenges

Misuse of resources: Mental health services are already stretched thin. If people pretending to have DID seek therapy or participate in support systems meant for those with real disorders, it diverts resources away from those who genuinely need help.

Research setbacks: Falsified cases can contaminate clinical studies, distorting research data and hindering progress in understanding and treating DID.

Harm to Advocacy and Awareness Efforts

Delegitimizing advocacy: Advocacy organizations for DID and trauma-related disorders may face backlash if people perceive them as platforms for attention-seekers rather than legitimate support networks.

Reduced funding: Public and institutional support for DID-related research and resources may decline if the disorder is viewed as overdiagnosed or fabricated.

Ethical and Interpersonal Consequences

Exploitation of trauma narratives: Pretending to have DID often involves mimicking behaviors and experiences associated with severe trauma, trivializing the real pain and suffering of individuals with histories of abuse or trauma.

Interpersonal harm: People pretending to have DID may manipulate others, whether consciously or unconsciously, by leveraging the perceived vulnerability associated with the disorder to gain sympathy, attention, or social capital.

Online and Social Media Impact

Normalization of misinformation: Platforms like TikTok and YouTube have seen a surge in content creators claiming to have DID, often presenting the disorder inaccurately. This can spread misinformation and confuse viewers about what DID actually entails.

Fetishization and trivialization: Public displays of DID-like behavior can lead to its fetishization or reduction to entertainment, further disrespecting those living with the condition.

Legal and Institutional Consequences

Legal abuse: Individuals faking DID might exploit the diagnosis in legal contexts to evade accountability, creating precedent for suspicion and making it harder for genuine cases to be considered seriously.

Policy resistance: Policymakers may become less likely to prioritize funding or protections for trauma-related disorders if they are perceived as prone to exaggeration or fraud.

While the intent behind pretending to have DID may vary—from seeking attention to exploring identity—the consequences are overwhelmingly harmful.

They not only undermine the credibility and dignity of those with DID but also exacerbate societal misconceptions about mental illness.

[alpaca-clouds]

How the French Revolution lead to Capitalism

Alright, this is another thing that I was asked about from some Castlevania peeps, as I mentioned this. And I guess, yeah, it is fair that should elaborate on this.

The French Revolution - somewhat inadvertent - gave us capitalism and everything that came with it. Sure, capitalism would not have happened without colonialism and mercantilism already being in place, but that does not make it less true that the French Revolution was very influential in giving us the system we have now.

If school taught you anything about the history of economic systems, it was possibly that the system before capitalism was feudalism. Chances are, everyone skipped over mercantilism.

To quickly go over it again:

Feudalism was more than just an economic system, but basically is a word to describe medieval society overall. Under feudalism pretty much only nobility and the church can own anything - especially land. Everyone else is just leasing it from them and will hence have to pay part of their harvest or whatever they make on that land to the nobility that owns it. Meanwhile the nobility is beholden to whatever king they live under as well, making the money automatically acrew on the top of the pyramid. If harvests were good, this could work fine. But in years of bad harvests the peasants were often fucked.

Mercantilism was the trading system that was brought on by colonialism. To make it short: Mercantilism was a system that sought to exploit the colonies for their raw materials, to then create products from those within any given country to enhance the value. It also sought to mostly export goods and not import them (colonies were after all "part of the country"), so that the country could acrew as much money (as in gold and silver) as possible. While a lot of the companies used for this trading were held by nobility, this is not true of them all. As such the mercantile system allowed for certain merchants to become as rich if not richer than nobles.

Which brings us back to the French Revolution. Again: France had once again a war with the English. After all, chances are that if you pick any time before the French Revolution, England and France were at war. And because of that war, France then went to help the American Revolution. But two wars one after another put France in dept with a lot of people, and Louis XVI could no longer pay this dept back. So he raised taxes. And as nobility and church, who held more than 50% of the wealth of the nation, were not taxed, the peasants were like: "I don't think so, buddy." Partly, too, because the last two years had had really bad harvests and people were already starving. Hence: Revolution.

One of the earliest things the Revolution established, was that "every man is equal and should be treated as such in the eyes of the law" (of course, at this time, with the asterisk of "unless they are a slave"). While women were generally still discriminated in large parts of France, they still also gained a lot more legal protections and rights such as no-fault divorce. (Which Napoleon quickly did away with, and it then took until 1975 in France that no-fault divorce returned into law.)

Now, some of you might point out, that The Wealth of Nations was written before the French Revolution. But to that I say: "Well, Marx wrote Das Kapital in 1867 and last I checked, we still don't have communism."

Smith, when writing, The Wealth of Nation was largely inspired by the fact that he did not like the Mercantile system in place. As someone who read the darn thing (no, I do not recommend it) I also still have to say, that it is not the worst. While Smith assumes some things that by now we know are wrong (like barter), this is far from the Chicago school capitalism of our days. Smith even muses about the question that his proposed system might work better, if there is some safety of housing and food for the laborers.

Though of course we should also keep in mind, that Smith was originally a theologist and boy howdy, does it show. Something that modern economists do not like to admit: When Smith talks about the "invisible hand of the market", he does not mean that the market is somehow all-knowing and perfect. He means literally God! He basically says: "Well, God will keep the market balanced."

But as I said: Smith very much - just like Marx - laid out a criticism of the current system and a theory for how to improve it. He did not manage to get this system pushed through.

Because at this point Edmund Burke entered the picture. He was a British statesman, who most certainly had some thoughts on the French Revolution. I would even argue that some of them were valid, but not all. Two very valid and for the time progressive thoughts he had were, that he opposed slavery and capital punishment. He also criticized the Revolution for the "everyone is equal" bit, while clearly not treating slaves as equal. A much less progressive thought that he had was, that nobility was a good thing, actually, and so was the monarchy, and everyone actually profited from that. He was a very religious man and thought that the system of kings and nobles was indeed intended by God.

However, Burke eventually befriended Adam Smith, and the two of them spend days talking about the economy and God. And through this Burke realized one thing: If the people were no longer willing to just accept the rule of nobles because God said so, they might very well accept it, if it was based on merit.

Now, I do not want to make Burke out as a mustarch twirling villain, because he honestly believed that this was a good thing that would somehow help everyone.

Most of all, he believed in this idea of thr "natural order" of things. (This is a theme that the vampires bring up again and again in Castlevania Nocturne. The idea, that if not by the laws of God, then some still are fated to rule by the law of nature.) And he believed in clear societal hierarchies.

And from this arose the idea of capitalism and the meritocracy. Basically: Yes, we use a free market, and those who have the most money and hence the most influence actually have earned this position through their hard work. They are in this position by their own merit. Please ignore, that former nobility with their generational wealth had a much better starting position in the free market, than your average peasant Joe.

And here is the thing: Burke was at times the paymaster of Britain, so his thought kinda mattered. And while he did not live to see the thoughts he and Smith shared come to fruition, he is one of the big reasons, this system arose.

It was a way to secure nobility's rule over everyone else, even after the death of the old system.

And mind you, this kinda stuff was absolutely also discussed in France. Because once the people managed to get somewhat the same rights for most people, there absolutely was a conversation whether certain things like food and a living space should not also be included in those rights. Especially as during the French Revolution the price of bread and soap (among others) was very, very instabile, making the thought that the state should guarantee it a very natural one.

Some of the people living under the French Revolution - especially those, who also brought forth the anarchist thought - were absolutely proposing something we would today call socialism at the very least. But of course, in the end it was for naught, because the Revolution eventually failed - and once Napoleon was in power, such conversations were quickly stopped.

Of course, it should be noted, that either way: The system we live under during those last 25 years has a lot more in common with feudalism once again, than anything Adam Smith envisioned. And while Smith was also a conservative, he did not approve of feudalism.

[puckpocketed]

Hello. You might have seen this floating around on twt:

link 1 // link 2, archive link

If by any chance you or someone you know are thinking about joining in on the challenge… no one can stop you but I implore you as someone who makes art, as someone with friends in an often-exploited creative industry, as someone who lives in late stage capitalism alongside you and has seen this play out before: proceed with caution.

Read the fine print on that form. There is NO guarantee of an internship, much less a job at the end of it. I haven't gone further than this form, but if anyone reading this does, and if there's no written agreement that your work won't be used without credit to you + payment for services rendered - RUN.

This is a common corporate tactic to get free labor out of people. I'm not saying this is necessarily what’s happening; for all we know this was done as a completely innocent move to drum up some fan engagement and as a genuine search for talent for their analytics team. WHO KNOWS. But I can't ignore that I’ve seen this situation play out again and again, at every scale.

Job interviews, when they ask you how YOU think they should improve their systems, how YOU would solve their problems? When they require that you do some problem-solving for them, and it goes beyond a simple task? That’s a free consultation you’re giving them, that's free work you or someone else should be getting paid for.

When big streamers/influencers ask their fans to join in on a fan art contest to choose their new pfp/banner? That’s hundreds, possibly thousands of pieces of free art they never would’ve gotten otherwise. They could've gone to the trouble of paying someone in-house to do it, hiring someone for that position, commissioning a professional for a piece. It's free work from their dedicated fans.

In this case, Utah HC is asking fans to not only choose/provide their own dataset, but to do a complex analysis on it AND do the work of visual and verbal communication to senior management, who likely do not have a deeper grasp of the concepts and will need it simplified. The stipulation that you will present your work could be ANYTHING!! The "five page deliverable" is already bananas to me, having dipped my toe into what analytics is and how complex the fun ones are. Condensing it all is WORK. The presentation portion may include speaking time and answering questions; the groundwork for doing this effectively may include producing data visualisations, making spreadsheets, time consuming write-ups. Maths and science communication is hard. It is WORK. They are asking for free labor.

Many have already called it out, but it's still gaining traction via retweets from big accounts uncritically sharing it. I found out through the official Puckpedia account. Jack Han called it out pretty eloquently on twitter and on his substack:

Many people aspire to work as an analyst in the NHL. Earlier today the Utah Hockey Club gave those people a glimmer of hope. Utah’s Summer Analytics Challenge is unusual in that it doesn’t provide a dataset or detailed instructions. The open-ended contests contrasts with other public (ex: Big Data Cup) or private (ex: NHL team interview) events. In those scenarios, participants are given proprietary data to clean, model and analyze, which influence direction and methodology. Meanwhile, Utah is seemingly happy with anything as long as the writeup is under five pages long. Utah’s contest also stands out in its near-total absence of legal fine print. There are no mention of intellectual property implications, which is perhaps fitting when the team is asking participants to bring their own data and analysis. [...] Open casting calls such as Utah’s analytics challenge start out as a lose-lose-lose proposition: > The employer loses because it will have to invest massive human resources to trawl/filter/evaluate/reverse-engineer the hundreds of write-ups it is sure to receive, with no guarantee that any of them will be of use > Applicants lose because the vast, vast majority of them will have nothing to show for their efforts, while a tiny minority risks having its IP stolen > Good ideas lose because they’ll be born into an environment where their parents (the applicant & the employer) have no defined relationship and won’t be in a position to grow together

link, archive link

I do try to keep things light on this blog, but this is super personal for me <3 thank u for listening

[hypermascbishounen]

I have very little patience for people that take the 'representation' in this show seriously, given what we know about the people making it. But also what I know about the industry they inhabit.

I grew up with someone who made it into the western comic book industry. They were radicalized into the alt right through it, and the process started at a prominent sequential art school.

They were taught very blatantly that art from other cultures or people who aren't white, is inferior, competition, and the only thing to do with it is "elevate" it via appropriation, as an industry standard. The school was incredibly white, while in a very black area.

Once they started working, they found multiple bigots who feel they're being "silenced", and even more people - some well intentioned, but many not - who absolutely see minority stories as a way to advance their own careers. And they do often get the idea that it's nice of them to do, bc in a nepotistic and insular environment, their main pushback will be from a neonazi working for the same publisher.

Not everyone there is white or racist, but it can be very hsrd to be a poc, or to write a story that isn't defining its minority characters by their minority status, bc your justification to even write them is probably being pitched directly against a white supremacist. And it's very hard to treat the work of other cultures respectfully, when your bosses boss doesn't want their works to take any sales away from an adaptation.

So the whole system from the bottom up is designed to filter for bigotry and reinforce white supremacy, whether it's someone who sees writing black people as "pandering" to someone who see writing black people as pandering and they deserve a biscuit for doing it. Same for other races, queerness, or any other topic that could be connected to civil rights. Animation is not much better than comics on this, their industries overlap.

And ultimately: the main function of this is that the majority of people working in comics and animation will still be white. And that the poc working in the industry, have to play by the rules of white people, who dictate how they are written about.

N!Isaac and N!Annette are not black creations, they are more or less mouthpieces for how black people are percieved by people who aren't black, which is they exist to teach others lessons. Same with N!Isaac as a muslim, or N!Annette as a girl - they are Lessons for Christians or Men. Their entire existences revolves around white men, from a wider storytelling context(and also in story in Annettes case).

As far as I'm aware, Shankar has been the only poc in a particularly prominent position in nfcv's writing. And as much as I don't really care for his writing either, I don't doubt Ellis was hard for him to work with and was probably ultimately deferred to often. That the best nfcv has to offer minorities materially irl, is an indian-american possibly being spited by a big name white guy sex-pest throwing a tantrum, I'm really not feeling like all rep on this show is likely to be flawless and beyond criticism. Least of all when I can feel so much contempt for the Japanese source material off of this "adaptation" in general.

As bad as it may sound, it really seems to me that N!Isaac and N!Annette have both been written as Perfect Minorities™.

OG Isaac was the perpetual second one. Not incompetent by any means, but you know the deal, he was salty as hell that Hector was just a tiny bit better :P In the show, the dynamic is flipped: it's Isaac who is Dracula's special babyboy. But he is the special babyboy to such an exaggerated degree that he makes Hector's inclusion not only completely useless, but even detrimental: why would Dracula bother to hire an average Devil Forgemaster, without a shred of physical prowess, who he considers to be "a child in a man's body", and who he had to resort to lie to (Hector literally shouts in the war room that he doesn't enjoy the needless suffering Dracula is causing)... when Isaac by all means is strong, smart (allegedly), much more efficient in Forging, and 100% on board with Dracula's extermination plans to the point of being the only person Dracula can trust?

The story would improve if Hector, again, was the better Devil Forgemaster, even with his pesky morals. But we can't have that, can we? They were absolutely adamant, for whatever reason, that Isaac had to be black, despite him being probably the worst character to make black and Muslim. And black people can't be inferior, right? They can't need the help of a white person lesser POC, right? So Isaac in the show has become literally untouchable by the narrative. He gets everything he wants. He gets all the sympathy, because boohoo don't you feel bad that the guards are a bit mean to him, of course he should kill them all and turn them into monsters. He gets all the badass scenes, hell he literally gets wounded once in the whole show. He gets to be Enlightened.

And Annette... well, we talked about it plenty of times. Annette has Special God Powers. Annette gets coddled by total strangers. Annette has the right to hurt Richter where it stings the most without anyone calling her out. No one dares to point out Annette's genuine mistakes or bad behavior, even the most confrontational character after herself, Maria. Annette gets to make a Rousing Revolutionary Speech to the same French people she looks down upon. Annette gets to have the most prominent character arc, while Richter is left bumbling around and gets one (1) cool scene.

Representation in NFCV seems to be limited to three characters: 1) the narrative's darlingest babies who can do no wrong because they need to be popular on twitblr, 2) cardboard cutouts with barely a speaking line to pretend our world is more complex than it actually is, and 3) jesus christ please think more than three seconds next time.

Let's be perfectly real here:

both Isaac and Annette are the way that they are to appeal to a very specific,wide and vocal crowd on social media, the same crowd who cries for representation, by which they usually mean utterly perfect characters who can do no wrong and can easily vent their frustrations on other cast members because people, through these characters, can feel vindicated for their own frustrations. Frustrations that can be justified in a way, especially where racism is involved, but it essentially means that characters like Annette and Isaac are not really characters, but rather they are meant to be power fantasies of sorts. They're there to be black characters who are very strong and look down on the white oppressors etc. And you know what? There's nothing wrong with power fantasies, but only as long as they're written competently. Otherwise you don't really have a power fantasy. You have a weird amalgamations of Mary Sues mixed with social media discourse

This is especially blatant with Annette since, at least with Isaac, I don't think he ever uses the color of his skin as a justification for his attitude (he uses his religion but that's another can of worms).

I am almost certain that characters like these are inserted partly because it's a no-lose scenario, because you absolutely cannot criticize them without being accused of bigotry. This is made all the worse by many ACTUAL bigots chiming in and making any actual discourse impossible. I'm sure that big corpos like Netflix know this by now: create a character who's a minority who the US public cares about (I need to specify that last part because I get the feeling that people would not get nearly as uppity about, oh I dunno, Roma characters? Native American characters? Because social justice is only about those "cool" minorities that the public has been taught to think are worth it, anyone else barely even registers on the radar), write them in a way that satisfies the social media pseudo activist crowd, wait for the bigots to show up in order to easily paint any detractor as a racist, thus creating a very easy equation of "show has representation= good. Bigotry= Bad. Hate the show= You're a bigot"

I say "almost" because there's always the possibility that the guys behind the wheel genuinely think they're doing a great job

This may sound crazy, but look at all the praise they get, look at how much encouragement they get. And all this goes beyond NFCV, this sort of phenomenon is very widespread so it wouldn't surprise me if even the Deats brothers think they're masters of representation who can do no wrong because if enough people keep saying one thing without pause then you're bound to think it's the truth.

For instance I am pretty certain that Deats and the gang genuinely don't think that Alucard's threesome is not rape, or Lenore's treatment of Hector. Because they're not conventional depictions of rape and if you go ask most people on social media, hell even on the street across your own home, they'll most likely tell you the same.

I hate NFCV but what I think I hate more is the overall social climate that lead to its creation

[misterbitches]

I have mixed feelings about the episode!

If I hadn’t have gone online I would have been more of a blank slate. It’s good to know my criticisms are affirmed by others but it doesn’t mean this show is weak because even with the faults this episode was still entertaining at the very least. I feel crazy! Like some of my issues with the social commentary so far are dealt with—not remediated per se but addressed—or tended to.

The whole marriage thing isn’t a bad scenario typical of a BL imo because it makes sense. Patriarchy has everything to do with the hoarding of wealth. You have to make sure a woman has limited options for offspring to preserve a familial/blood line. Marriage is a business practice (it isn’t final or static but marriage and love are not interchangeable and “love” is a very specific goal that is hard to meet particularly if you are poor) and even if Rosé doesn’t want it, that’s how you secure capital…via legacy and literal financial bonds (presented as familial).

Rosé isn’t a good person. As much as Save is a bitch and Hope is…whatever he is (and agree with the user that said they should have kissed there!) the show is telling us over and over that THESE PEOPLE ARE POOR GUYS. THEY HAVE NO MONEY. I don’t know if the audience understands what that means fully. That means that Tattoo’s actions are not the same as Arun’s or even Joke’s; Jack’s poor decisions aren’t the same as Joke’s; Save is being absolutely insane and fucking ridiculous and wow I hate him but even his decision is not the same. You see how much hospital bills are, not having insurance, INSURANCE LITERALLY BEING TIED TO YOUR JOB AND THE NUCLEAR FAMILY. Things these people do not have, nor should not have to have, and the pains you go through to do everything right so the state says and you still get fucked.

That’s why the whole ~dOn’T sTEaL~ would piss me the fuck off! Jenny’s character makes complete sense! I know this is an easy way for us to express this idea of never being able to “get out” but poverty isn’t actually a cycle. Poverty is man made, it is not real. A cycle suggest something inevitable where an underclass would always have to exist, some sociogenetic defect that you just can’t beat and the cure (money) is just too hard to find (as in made up but never freely given). What makes that cycle relevant? Capitalism. This term has bred such reification i swear. It makes it seem like this is something they can GET OUT OF and BREAK on their own volition (with no direct action against the capitalist class/elites like you know…robbing them)

To be wealthy is to inhibit a class position, a social category, in which your livelihood depends on the subjugation of others. It’s obvious that Boss has limited money—and that dwindles—he relies on his boss. He is a manager, an inbetween, a boss but not The Boss. He is a cop essentially (cops have more autonomy tbh) to literally protect private property and collect and give to his bosses. They’re also all landlords and deserve to die.

Anyway there is no cycle as a real tangible thing one can take control of. There are people who choose their comfort and life over others and exploit to maintain, retain, and gain. ANY type of wealth hoarding is immoral. Richness is immoral.

Every single one of these people who suffer are in this position because of rich people. The monopoly was literal and exaggerated metaphor but rich people HATE and i mean HATE they LOATHE they resent disdain the poor. They hate you. They hate me and I’m not even poor! It is not a (referent-less) cycle! These are deliberate choices being made by others to make sure ppl stay poor—women, children queer ppl, darker ppl, the disabled…

If we focused less on the actions of those who have had to work in service of the pillagers and more on the pillagers and why the FUCK these people do this and get to do it, maybe Jack’s choices would make sense. Yes they are frustrating but I don’t necessarily think this is bad writing considering that Jack’s life could be made a living hell if he “got another job” which…ok but where? Who will hire him? How quickly will he make that money? With what skills when he has one very good one that could be used AND this money could be made immediately?

Are these particular choices stupid or do they exist in a broader story that is unfolding? Obviously this is a tv show beyond bl bc this episode was like completely story related and I enjoyed that. There was def some stuff where i was like wow this seems a bit rushed and it does seem like filler but it also technically isn’t…? If I’m thinking beyond what I would like to see with romance. If I think of it as more of s general show that is openly queer but that’s just the life of the show…then was this an outlier or does it fit? Even if it doesn’t I still get to understand more of what they think abt the world…? Idk i liked this episode i go back and forth! But it was a good way to spend my hour.

Also rose’s plan is fucking disgusting neoliberal drivel and insulting lmao when joke threw that all i could think of was bush and that shoe

[acti-veg]

About billionaires & millionaires: among so many of them, there must be a few who actually donate their money and/or are a bit more aware of how much their wealth can help? Do you know of any who contributed significantly to donating to charity or to a good cause? And how do you personally feel about them?

I think that looking for the ‘good ones’ sort of misses the point about what it is that makes a capitalist unethical. You can have a networth that puts you in the millionaire category while just living on a wage like all working class people, having a nice car, a nice house in a lovely green area - there is nothing wrong with that in and of itself.

The salient factor is your social relation to capital. If you own a sweatshop and you give your workers 100th of the value they produce in a given day, and take the rest for yourself, that is unethical. If you then give away a 20th of the value your workers produced to charity, does that make it any less unethical that you exploited your workers for that money you gave to charity? That money shouldn’t have been yours to decide what to do with it in the first place.

There are many ultra-rich who give a lot to charity (a lot to us at least), but that doesn’t change anything about the ethics of the way they gained that money. Bill Gates is known as a big philanthropist, he has donated enormous sums to various health charities to tackle polio and malaria. He also exploits his workforce with horrendous working conditions, and crushed smaller businesses in Microsoft’s rise to power. He is unethical because he is a capitalist who exploited others to become a billionaire, not just because he is a billionaire. Giving away money doesn’t wipe away that stain.

I think that charitable donations have, for the capitalist class. become the secular version of paying the church for indulgences. “Yes, I exploited and harmed thousands of people to get rich, but I also give a small portion of those ill-gotten gains to the poor, so I’m a good guy!’ Too often the public buy into this. That is only considering genuine altruism too, ignoring how often ‘charitable donations’ are actually a form of lobbying, PR or tax reduction.

Just for perspective, an annual wealth tax of only 5% on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, fully fund the shortfalls on existing humanitarian appeals, deliver a 10-year plan to end hunger, support poorer countries being ravaged by climate impacts, and deliver universal healthcare and social protection for everyone living in low- and lower middle-income countries. The 100 richest people on earth could end world poverty four times over, by themselves.

Chris Rock once said: “if the poor knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets.” He was right. When they throw a million dollars at a flood campaign we heap praise on them, but it’s the equivalent of a normal person throwing a penny into a charity box. There is no amount of charitable giving that can turn an exploitative capitalist into a good person.

[balkanradfem]

It was a while ago I read this tumblr post, which still comes to my mind every time I think about the future. It was explaining in an insightful way, how it's not a violent revolution that will bring forward the better future, it's slow and consistent change of our everyday life, of our habits, the resources we use and the way we go about achieving things. If we're hoping for a future where we're not dependent on capitalism, not destroying the environment, not robbed of our labour for a fraction of the money we need to survive, we'll have to slowly die capitalism out, by changing our own living habits.

If a sudden shift happened, and capitalism stopped functioning overnight, for most of the people that would be unsurvivable,  all of the resources, food, jobs and life-sustaining services would stop. And we can't afford that. But, if instead we slowly backed away from it, generated alternatives, created communities and systems that can sustain us without capitalism, then it would only be a matter of time before capitalism is fully dead, with everyone alive, everyone safe. And this slow shift would be able to happen through decades and generations, and it would still be a great positive shift, with a future in sight. Capitalism offers no survivable future, seemingly ready to last as long as it can by destroying whatever is left from the environment and people alike, for the benefit of the few.

So let's see how we got here, or how I feel, looking back, we got here.

People used to be less dependent on a global system of distribution of resources, even just a 100 years ago; survival and trade skills were passed down in families and communities, and people would be able to make inside of their home and communities, a big percentage of things that we today would buy at the store. In those times there was no other way to gain those resources but by relying on people's knowledge, skill and labour. The future, however, promised a more convenient and easy way to gain all those resources, because they would be made by machines, and thus cheaper. And things kept coming in cheaper, for no visible labour required; you just needed to have money to buy them, which not everyone had.

But this too, would change as cheaper and cheaper things arrived, and it became less convenient to make those things yourself or within your community, and more convenient to just trade some money, and have it all be done for you. For people then, it could mean less energy spent on survival, more leisure time, more health and longer lifespan – except, it didn't, because the jobs that they needed to earn that money, tended to take all of that away. So still, there was a lot produced at home or within the communities, independent workshops and artist shops, so people within in the community would benefit from each other, instead of benefiting some faceless global corporation.

And now we know where this went; conveniences started lining up to the point where not having a certain convenience meant that you were below the norm. They sometimes got mixed up with inconveniences, but those inconveniences were 'necessary'. For instance, pollution became necessary, highways, huge trucks delivering goods, the oil industry, destruction of forests and habitats, exploitation of the poor, extinction of certain animals, and by the end of it, the climate change.

When I was born, my mother and grandmother still attempted to pass some skills that their mothers taught them; I remember being taught how to knit at the age of 5, the activity which at that age, seemed awfully tedious and was soon abandoned, and my grandmother showed me how to crochet, which I also soon forgot. After the age of small child, they both looked at the world, shrugged and decided 'she won't need it', and they have stopped trying to teach me any skills of the sort.

Buying things, rather than making them, already seemed the norm. People were readily telling you that you are stupid for trying to make something, when you could get it in the store, for very little money. Having animals at home, or growing food, was slowly getting replaced by buying it cheap, or buying tons of snacks, and biscuits and cakes, which now you could get pre-packaged, readily available to consume at your leisure. If it brought lots of waste from packaging, plastic and other non-degradable materials, nobody cared, it was new, convenient, and available, and we would have it, and live luxuriously.

Soon nobody seemed to talk anymore, about what we used to do before we were able to buy anything we could possibly need at the store; nobody would tell me what were the names of the native plants, and which ones I could make into teas, I was instead told to change my priorities because this kind of behaviour will never get me any money. All of my efforts to do arts and crafts, to forage, to make things from scratch, to paint and invent stories, were called frivolous, because they would not generate the one thing that was now the only thing worth generating: money.

It simplifies things a lot, instead of making various, interesting, self-made and beloved items that would all require different knowledge and skills, a human is now required to put all of their talents into 1 thing that would generate revenue, and then do that one thing, for entire life, and this would present a normal life on earth now. This was how it was presented to me, and it was before I found out that keeping one job for the whole life, was no longer an option, that changing jobs was the norm and was not often volountary.  I did not, however, understand how doing that one job would not make someone go insane, and nobody was explaining that to me, it was just, the life.

So while the world was shifting into this new concept of 'make nothing but money', the first millionaires started to appear, the billionaire was not even conceptual, having 1 million was equal to being the richest person on the planet. That is pretty laughable to us now. Back then, it felt like heading into a new exciting world, but we know better now. We understand that lives consisting of a job and thousands of conveniences, easily sends a human being into a depression. We understand that relying on a job to keep us alive, and having constantly to compete with everyone else unemployed, to get one, has brought us to a place where others are a competition, not a resource, not a community. We understand that living in a world where we have to market ourselves as a resource, causes a lot of us to lose self confidence and the feeling of value, while it sends others into obsession with becoming popular, gaining perceived value, gathering a public image, that would later prove to be profitable.

By this time, unknown to us all, this life of convenience and consumerism had caused immense damage to the environment, and we were mostly kept in the dark about it, so we wouldn't complain. We learned about the holes in the ozone layer, but were told it was merely the fault of certain aerosols, and the rest of the stuff was fine. We would in the future get to watch oil spills and devastation of animal habitats, never fully connecting it to corporations who were responsible. Acid rains were mentioned, but we were told they caused by the new pesticides, but it was the fault of the farmers, they said, who simply used too much of it. Now we know it was the exhaust fumes from cars, factories and coal power plants. Climate change was barely mentioned, and even less believed in. And now, we can no longer ignore it.

So, what do we do in order to progress? We obviously can't go back to where we came from, but we are now made aware that the amount of energy and resources we're consuming, and the amount of toxic waste we're creating, will devastate the planet to the point where a big chunk of it will become inhabitable, millions of both people and animals, will end up dead if we keep going. But wait! How can I blame the people for any of this, when it's obviously the corporations that are doing the most damage, lobbying and hiding what is in actuality going on? And you're completely correct, I would have to say, it is corporations, and for the most time, we really didn't know the extent of damage they were doing. So why are the corporations exactly doing all of this? For profit. And who's giving them all that profit? Well, the consumers, by consuming all of the oil, energy, goods, resources and products they make. So how do we take down the corporations? By not giving them any of the profits. But, we can't do that in the current state of the world, we need cars, and food, and that food to be shipped and delivered from the distant lands, and we are all depressed and if we can't at least have our favourite snack, food we're used to, little treats and pieces of clothing that make us happy, we no longer feel like we can live!

And that's where the slow and meaningful habit shift comes into place. The thing is, we're not the same people we were 50 or 100 years ago, we don't have the skills of our ancestors, we're not used to producing our own resources, we are out of touch with nature, and we struggle to find our communities and feel valued. But we also have, so much more information and education at our fingertips. We have more scientific data, we have more access to information, we have more people creating public resources, we have the experiences and wisdom of generations back, only waiting for us to reach out, to tap into what the humanity knew  centuries ago.

We're made to do various activities! We thrive on changing our habits by season, even by weeks. We thrive in communities, with no competition for resources. We love creating art, music, crafts and beauty just for fun, and the communal value of it cannot be compared to money. We don't like being reduced into human resources or labour force, we don't like repetitive activities that don't produce results or seem nonsensical, we don't like to be stuck within one room for most of the day, we don't like being replaced when we stand up for our rights.

I can already see a lot of people valuing all of the things on this planet that cannot be exchanged for money, but have intricate value in our lives and experiences; wild animals, plants, forests, environments and ecosystems filled with life, little stories and jokes we tell to each other, making crafts just for the sake of making things, creating their own clothes or fabrics, learning how it was done in the past; growing food, foraging, herbalism, basketry, making of soap and fixing things on our own, visible mending, connections and building communities, we are remembering it's what we want and need, and we're not going to build it the way it was in the past; we're going to do it our own way, with the knowledge and experience we have, the way we think is the best. All we need to do is start small. Do one little shift that takes you one tiny step away from consumerism. Add one little enrichment in your life that doesn't have anything to do with money or purchasing. Find little ways to save on energy that doesn't make any dips in your happiness or comfort levels, that only requires a little bit of your attention or focus to do.

Big shifts are not sustainable, and are not survivable, but we didn't get here by a big shift; we got here by a series of small, almost invisible shifts that we barely felt were happening, until it was our new normal. We can do small, painless shifts too, but this time, they're going to be conscious, purposeful, with thoughts of the future behind it, and they're going to come from us. Not the corporations, not the money holders, but us, pushing the future to the direction that we want.

[marxistlesbianist]

We hear a great deal about the crimes of communism but almost nothing of its achievements. The communist governments inherited societies burdened with an age-old legacy of economic exploitation and maldevelopment. Much of precommunist Eastern Europe, as with prerevolutionary Russia and China, was in effect a Third World region with widespread poverty and almost nonexistent capital formation. Most rural transportation was still by horse and wagon.

The devastation of World War II added another heavy layer of misery upon the region, reducing hundreds of villages and many cities to rubble. It was the communists and their allies who rebuilt these societies. While denounced in the U.S. less for leaving their economies in bad shape, in fact, the Reds left the economy off Eastern Europe in far better condition than they found it.

The same was true of China. Henry Rosemont, Jr. notes that when the communists liberated Shanghai from the U.S.-supported reactionary Kuomintang regime in 1949, about 20 percent of that city’s estimated 1.2 million were drug addicts. Every morning there were special Street crews “whose sole task was to gather up the corpses of the children, adults, and the elderly who had been murdered during the night, or had been abandoned and died of disease, could, and/or starvation” (Z Magazine, October 1995).

During the years of Stalin’s reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women’s rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that “socialism doesn’t work” is to overlook the fact that it did. In eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.

Michael Parenti, Black Shirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

[therealparasites]

On today's episode of Pseudoscience Nonsense: H. Pylori infection confirmed!

First off, I have no clue how these geniuses came to the conclusion that a parasite = every known bacteria, virus, etc. but here we are 😐

So, what is H. Pylori?

It is a common type of bacteria that infects your stomach. It has the potential to damage tissue in your stomach and part of your small intestine. The infection can cause inflammation, and in some cases can lead to peptic ulcers in your upper digestive tract.

H. Pylori is common. Lots of people have it, and lots of people don't end up with ulcers or show any symptoms of infection (but it still is a big cause for ulcers).

Howeverrrrrrr

You still don't wanna play around with H. Pylori. This bacteria goes after your stomach lining by releasing enzymes that make your stomach acid less acidic, and weakening the lining. This means your stomach will be at a greater risk of being damaged by acid, and strong digestive fluids! Which ya know would then lead to sores and ulcers.

What causes H. Pylori?

Experts believe the infection is spread from person to person by mouth. So kissing an infected individual, eating food that isn't cleaned or cooked properly, drinking contaminated water, or coming into contact with infected vomit or poopy.

Now that we all know about H. Pylori, let's talk about the pictures! We see a group member has been diagnosed with an H. Pylori infection and doesn't want to treat it with medications. Not the best move considering ulcers can eventually wear down your stomach lining and cause bleeding, holes in your stomach wall, blockages if the ulcer is blocking the path for food to leave your stomach, AND STOMACH CANCER (oh wait they think cancer is parasites too 😬)

Thankfully, Ms. Haley has a (bullshit) cure for them! For the very low price of $185 a month, she'll send you...*checks notes* PDF files??? Of 'codes' to read???? Seems very legit, definitely not somebody grifting and capitalizing on someone else's fears!! Why trust doctors who spent years of their life in school to learn about these things when Haley has the cure in the form of pixels on a screen!?

In conclusion, y'all just wash your hands after you use the bathroom and before you eat, cook your food properly, and don't drink lake water and you'll be ok. And if you truly suspect you may have some kind of parasitic infection, PLEASE IM BEGGING just go see a doctor.

(disclaimer: I'm not a doctor or nurse of any kind, I just have a strong sense of justice and DETEST those who exploit others for capital gain😘 all info on H. Pylori brought to you by the Johns Hopkins website)

[ketsuarting]

My theory is that Alastor was a total fraud, that he didn’t kill all those overlords, but instead took credit for someone else’s secret killing of them, to raise his rep, and then slowly acquire some actual power through soul collecting. And that this was the reason he would make a deal with *someone*, for some real power in case he ever found himself in an actual fight, either with the real killer, or someone else entirely. To say most of the time he was smiling it was to cover genuine nervousness, an everlasting fear that someone, anyone would recognise him for the fraud he is. To say the real reason he didn’t join the Vees was that he knew they would figure him out. Like if you look at ‘Stayed Gone’, you know how Vox glitches out during the song and it seems Alastor does it from afar? The previous part of the song has Vox skip down the hallway to the other Vees while singing, and on his first step, ONE OF ALASTOR’S SYMBOLS GLOWS ON THE FLOOR BEFORE VANISHING. This barely lasts a few frames, but it is real, it is there, to say Alastor’s power is based on the illusion of it: he is a powerful demon now, sure, but not all-powerful. Hence why his duets were always about getting under the other’s skin: because they are more powerful than him, but do not know it. Lucifer being the first he would go up against to actually know himself more powerful, hence Alastor’s annoyance, not wanting weakness to give way to further weakness. Maybe in the present after his deal he thought he had that power, hence why he looked so confused when Adam beat him: he really thought the power he was given was enough to stand against him and win. Given the Vees will apparently be main characters next season, and we’ve gotten to know some of the current overlords, I would not be surprised if the big mystery next season is overlords going missing again, only this time Alastor will be unable to take responsibility for the disappearance, and we the audience will learn the truth of what he is, or rather what he’s not.

I wanna agree in part to this, because I also believe Alastor is playing up his skill for more than it is.

He's the radio demon, that MEDIA. And the strongest parts of media is rephrasing data to the masses as to mislead them. This, in turn, would also be Vox's strength, and thus those two are locked into an eternal battle of (mis)information.

That's also why alastor probably engaged in the stayed gone rap duel in the first place. He position is already precarious what with the 7 year absence, but if vox now starts gaining foothold in their little war? Alastor would be fucked long term.

Alastor is also clearly BETTER at what he does than Vox. Because vox is less of a show host demon and more of a CEO/Producer demon. I collect strong allies to put in front of the camera, he himself isn't really a face for TV (haha see what I did there?)

I do believe though that Alastor has some inherent strength. He is adept in the arcane more so than your average demon, his voodoo capabilities are presumably what give him a leg up in hell.

Also. Alastor was a MURDERER. A serial killer at that!!! Presumably that's actually not what most people did before hell. For example: angel dust got into hell for his drug addictions, husk for his gambling addiction. Valentino probably landed his ass down there for exploitation (though he shows a carelessness for the lives of those he considers property), velvette I assume will be revealed to either b cyber bullying of sabotaging competition and Vox seems to be in hell for crimes of capitalism. (These are mainly head canons but My point is more that these people aren't in hell for murder explicitly.)

Alastor is powerful, but he DEFINITELY is lying and obfuscatinga bout how powerful exactly. It works to his benefit. Unlike Vox who has the urge to PROVE his strength at every turn.

And this is actually something they're polar opposites on. Vox is honest to a fault. Literally, to a fault. He NEEDS hell to know that the demon is back. He NEEDS them to realize that he doesn't want them to even give him their time of day. He needs velvette and Valentino to witness his whole manic episode about it.

Meanwhile Alastor couldn't be honest if his life depended on it, literally. He must have known that he can't beat Adam. Deep down he must have realized how FUCKED he would be. But he either a) deluded himself that he stands a chance or b) lied to the other in order to safe face.

Also a big part of alastor are his deals. He literally bluffed himself into a position of power, by misleading others into deals that would benefit him much more than them.

Husk retained his power, but how does it matter if Alastor wields it?

Charlie has to do one favor that 'harms no one' but what if it ends up being something that benefits people that are purely evil?

His deals suck ASS and people fall for it anyways because he either gives them no other option or make them feel like they're having the upper hand for once.

But at the end of the day he is just a sinner. If Lucifer wanted to he could obliterate his Twink ass in a second. Adam too, could've absolutely finish alastor, but he delighted in the radio demon running away from him. Probably because Adam understand what kind of blow to the go that must've been to the guy.

[dailyanarchistposts]

B.7 What classes exist within modern society?

For anarchists, class analysis is an important means of understanding the world and what is going on in it. While recognition of the fact that classes actually exist is less prevalent now than it once was, this does not mean that classes have ceased to exist. Quite the contrary. As we’ll see, it means only that the ruling class has been more successful than before in obscuring the existence of class.

Class can be objectively defined: the relationship between an individual and the sources of power within society determines his or her class. We live in a class society in which a few people possess far more political and economic power than the majority, who usually work for the minority that controls them and the decisions that affect them. This means that class is based both on exploitation and oppression, with some controlling the labour of others for their own gain. The means of oppression have been indicated in earlier parts of section B, while section C (What are the myths of capitalist economics?) indicates exactly how exploitation occurs within a society apparently based on free and equal exchange. In addition, it also highlights the effects on the economic system itself of this exploitation. The social and political impact of the system and the classes and hierarchies it creates is discussed in depth in section D (How do statism and capitalism affect society?).

We must emphasise at the outset that the idea of the “working class” as composed of nothing but industrial workers is simply false. It is not applicable today, if it ever was. Power, in terms of hire/fire and investment decisions, is the important thing. Ownership of capital as a means of determining a person’s class, while still important, does not tell the whole story. An obvious example is that of the higher layers of management within corporations. They have massive power within the company, basically taking over the role held by the actual capitalist in smaller firms. While they may technically be “salary slaves” their power and position in the social hierarchy indicate that they are members of the ruling class in practice (and, consequently, their income is best thought of as a share of profits rather than a wage). Much the same can be said of politicians and state bureaucrats whose power and influence does not derive from the ownership of the means of production but rather then control over the means of coercion. Moreover, many large companies are owned by other large companies, through pension funds, multinationals, etc. (in 1945, 93% of shares were owned by individuals; by 1997, this had fallen to 43%). Needless to say, if working-class people own shares that does not make them capitalists as the dividends are not enough to live on nor do they give them any say in how a company is run).

For most anarchists, there are two main classes:

Obviously there are “grey” areas in any society, individuals and groups who do not fit exactly into either the working or ruling class. Such people include those who work but have some control over other people, e.g. power of hire/fire. These are the people who make the minor, day-to-day decisions concerning the running of capital or state. This area includes lower to middle management, professionals, and small capitalists.

There is some argument within the anarchist movement whether this “grey” area constitutes another (“middle”) class or not. Most anarchists say no, most of this “grey” area are working class, others (such as the British Class War Federation) argue it is a different class. One thing is sure, all anarchists agree that most people in this “grey” area have an interest in getting rid of the current system just as much as the working class (we should point out here that what is usually called “middle class” in the USA and elsewhere is nothing of the kind, and usually refers to working class people with decent jobs, homes, etc. As class is considered a rude word in polite society in the USA, such mystification is to be expected).

So, there will be exceptions to this classification scheme. However, most of society share common interests, as they face the economic uncertainties and hierarchical nature of capitalism.

We do not aim to fit all of reality into this class scheme, but only to develop it as reality indicates, based on our own experiences of the changing patterns of modern society. Nor is this scheme intended to suggest that all members of a class have identical interests or that competition does not exist between members of the same class, as it does between the classes. Capitalism, by its very nature, is a competitive system. As Malatesta pointed out, “one must bear in mind that on the one hand the bourgeoisie (the property owners) are always at war amongst themselves… and that on the other hand the government, though springing from the bourgeoisie and its servant and protector, tends, as every servant and every protector, to achieve its own emancipation and to dominate whoever it protects. Thus the game of the swings, the manoeuvres, the concessions and the withdrawals, the attempts to find allies among the people and against the conservatives, and among conservatives against the people, which is the science of the governors, and which blinds the ingenuous and phlegmatic who always wait for salvation to come down to them from above.” [Anarchy, p. 25]

However, no matter how much inter-elite rivalry goes on, at the slightest threat to the system from which they benefit, the ruling class will unite to defend their common interests. Once the threat passes, they will return to competing among themselves for power, market share and wealth. Unfortunately, the working class rarely unites as a class, mainly due to its chronic economic and social position. At best, certain sections unite and experience the benefits and pleasure of co-operation. Anarchists, by their ideas and action try to change this situation and encourage solidarity within the working class in order to resist, and ultimately get rid of, capitalism. However, their activity is helped by the fact that those in struggle often realise that “solidarity is strength” and so start to work together and unite their struggles against their common enemy. Indeed, history is full of such developments.