#civic society

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"SWASTIKA PROMOTER CANCELS MEETING; CHARGES ASSAULT," Toronto Globe. August 17, 1933. Page 3. ----- Second Gathering Postponed After Talk With Police --- SWEARS OUT WARRANT ---- (Canadian Press Despatch.) Kitchener, Aug. 16. - Beset on every side with opposition to his efforts to form a "Swastika" club in Kitchener, Otto E. Becker tonight had cancelled the second meeting he had planned to inaugurate the movement. After conferring with police today, the out-of-work German immigrant said a gathering he announced for tonight would be postponed.

Becker swore out a warrant today, charging Gustav Lueck, member of the "Old Comrades' Club." a local organization of German veterans, with assault.

The assault, Becker alleges, was the outcome of an altercation which resulted from a report written by Lueck, which said Becker had been on relief in Germany before coming to Canada and had been on relief in Windsor for two months before he moved to Kitchener.

Becker denied the statements, and today stopped Lueck on the street. An altercation ensued, Becker says, and in the course of it, he claims, he was kicked in the face.

[culturalarchitect]

Farewell then, the Matthew Street Festival: you will not be missed it seems…

So, Liverpool’s MSF has finally been axed in an torrent of righteous civic reasoning: its cost, its burden on the rate payer, the fact that it didn’t give Liverpool good marketing head, the dire quality of its lookalikee, soundalottee-like-the Beatles bands and the staple rhetorical ingredient that has everyone nodding vigorously: the plethora of out of control drunken youth and elders who should…

[varunamatya]

The New Generation

I have often observed and asked myself many times, why is it that whenever there is a fire accident or sparks are emitted from electrical poles as well as if a vehicle collision happens? Why aren’t the general people fleeing from the scene to not only avoid self-danger but to also clear the perimeter for others to provide aid? Instead, they congregate on the perimeter as though they are going to…

[communistkenobi]

The deeply moralist tone that a lot of discussions about media representation take on here are primarily neoliberal before they are anything else. Like the shouting matches people get into about “purity culture” “pro/anti” etc nonsense (even if I think it’s true that some people have a deeply christian worldview about what art ought to say and represent about the world) are downstream of the basic neoliberal assumption that we can and must educate the public by being consumers in a market. “Bad representation” is often framed as a writer’s/developer’s/director’s/etc’s failure to properly educate their audience, or to educate them the wrong way with bad information about the world (which will compel their audience to act, behave, internalise or otherwise believe these bad representations about some social issue). Likewise, to “consume” or give money to a piece of media with Bad Representation is to legitimate and make stronger these bad representations in the world, an act which will cause more people to believe or internalise bad things about themselves or other people. And at the heart of both of those claims is, again, the assumption that mass public education should be undertaken by artists in a private market, who are responsible for creating moral fables and political allegories that they will instil in their audiences by selling it to them. These conversations often become pure nonsense if you don’t accept that the moral and political education of the world should be directed by like, studio executives or tv actors or authors on twitter. There is no horizon of possibility being imagined beyond purchasing, as an individual consumer in a market, your way into good beliefs about the world, instilled in you by Media Product 

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jason Wilson at The Guardian:

In a December 2023 speech, JD Vance defended a notorious white nationalist convicted over 2016 election disinformation, canvassed the possibility of breaking up tech companies, attacked diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts and talked about a social media “censorship regime” that “came from the deep state on some level”.

The senator’s speech was given at the launch of a “counterrevolutionary” book – praised by the now Republican vice-presidential candidate as “great” – which was edited and mostly written by employees of the far-right Claremont Institute. In the book, Up from Conservatism, the authors advocate for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act, for politicians to conduct “deep investigations into what the gay lifestyle actually does to people”, that college and childcare be defunded and that rightwing governments “promote male-dominated industries” in order to discourage female participation in the workplace. Vance’s endorsement of the book may raise further questions about his extremism, and that of his networks. The Guardian emailed Vance’s Senate staff and the Trump and Vance campaign with detailed questions about his appearance at the launch, but received no response.

‘Congratulations on such a great book’

Vance’s speech was given in the Capitol visitor center in Washington DC last 11 December, according to a version of C-Span’s subsequent broadcast of the event that is preserved at the Internet Archive. The occasion was the launch of Up from Conservatism, an essay collection edited by Arthur Milikh, the executive director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life. In his introductory remarks on the day, Milikh said the book “maps out the right’s errors over the last generation … on immigration, on universities, on the administrative state”.

The book, however, appears more directed towards supplanting an old right – seen as too accommodating – with a “new right” focused on destroying its perceived enemies on the left.

In the book’s introduction, Milikh writes: “The New Right recognizes the Left as an enemy, not merely an opposing movement, because the Left today promotes a tyrannical conception of justice that is irreconcilable with the American idea of justice … the New Right is a counterrevolutionary and restorative force.” Also in that piece, Milikh offers a vision of the new right’s triumph, which has an authoritarian ring: “We like to say that one must learn to govern, but a truer expression is that one must learn to rule.” In his speech, Vance first offered “congratulations on such a great book, and thanks for getting such a good crew together”, and then warmed to themes similar to Milikh’s. “Republicans, conservatives, we’re still terrified of wielding power, of actually doing the job that the people sent us here to do,” Vance said, later adding: “Isn’t it just common sense that when we’re given power, we should actually do something with it?”

Brad Onishi, author of Preparing for War, a critical account of Christian nationalism and the host of the Straight White American Jesus podcast, said: “Vance, many Claremont people, including some folks in this volume, and especially the ‘post-liberal’ conservative Catholics that he hangs out with, have advocated for a form of big government that will wield its power in order to set the country right.” He added: “And you may think, well, OK, that doesn’t sound so bad. But here the common good is rooting out queer people, making sure non-Christians don’t immigrate to the country and outlawing things like pornography that are currently a matter of personal choice. “You end up with this conservatism that promotes an invasive government conservatism rather than a small government.”

[...]

‘Free our minds … from the fear of being called racists’

In the book, commended by Vance, a series of authors take reactionary – or “counterrevolutionary” – positions on a number of social and economic issues. In one chapter, John Fonte writes of disrupting narratives of civil rights progress: “The great meaning of America, we are told, comes from liberating so-called oppressed groups and taming the power of privileged groups. Thus, our history is one of liberation: first of Blacks, then of women, then of gays, and now of the transgendered.” Fonte retorts: “Not only is this narrative false; it will take us further down the path of national self-destruction … On the questions of slavery, American Indians, and racial discrimination, the progressive narrative is not a historically accurate project designed to address past wrongs, but a weaponized movement to deconstruct and replace American civilization.”

Like other authors in the collection, Fonte offers policy recommendations. He proposes heavy-handed federal intervention into education: “[T]he US Congress should prohibit any federal funds in education to support projects … that promote DEI (“diversity, equity and inclusion”) and divisive concepts such as the idea that America is ‘systemically racist.’” In his chapter, David Azerrad tells readers: “We need to free our minds once and for all from the fear of being called racists.” The assistant professor and research fellow at rightwing Hillsdale College, and former Heritage Foundation director and Claremont Institute fellow, also claims that conservatives have been too conciliatory on race: “For too many conservatives, the goal is to outdo progressives in displays of compassion for blacks … yet blacks continue to vote monolithically for the Democratic Party and progressives have only ramped up their hysterical accusations of racism.”

Azerrad continues with white nationalist talking points on race, crime and IQ, writing: “It is not racist to notice that blacks commit the majority of violent crimes in America, no more than it is to incarcerate convicted black criminals … There is no reason to expect equal outcomes between the races … In some elite and highly technical sectors in which there are almost no qualified blacks, color-blindness will mean no blacks.” Elsewhere, Azerrad writes: “[C]onservatives will need to root out from their souls the pathological pity for blacks, masquerading as compassion, that is the norm in contemporary America … This is most obvious in the widespread embrace of affirmative action (the lowering of standards to advance blacks) and the general reluctance to speak certain blunt but necessary truths about the pathologies plaguing black America – in particular, violent crime, fatherlessness, low academic achievement, nihilistic alienation, and the cult of victimhood.”

[...]

‘Do not subsidize childcare’

Helen Andrews, meanwhile, offers “three things we could do right now that would put a big dent in the multiplying lies that have come from feminists for the last forty years about women and careers”. Her first proposal is to “stop subsidizing college so much”, since, according to Andrews, in the 22-29 age group, “there are four women with college degrees … for every three men. That is going to lead to a lot of women with college degrees who do not end up getting married.” “Second,” Andrews continues, “the Right can do more to promote male-dominated industries. Reviving American manufacturing and cracking down on China’s unfair trade practices isn’t just an economic and national security issue; it’s a gender issue.” Her third proposal is “do not subsidize childcare” – since the fact that “many working moms are struggling” with childcare costs “might actually be good information the economy is trying to tell you”. Andrews is the print editor of the paleoconservative magazine the American Conservative and has previously written sympathetically about white supremacist minority regimes in Rhodesia – renamed Zimbabwe after white rule ended – and South Africa.

Scott Yenor claims in his chapter that before the 1960s, America lived under a “Straight Constitution, which honored enduring, monogamous, man-woman, and hence procreative marriage. It also stigmatized alternatives”. Yenor is a political science professor at Boise State University and a fellow at the Claremont Institute. He then claims: “We currently live under the Queer Constitution”, which “honors all manner of sex”, and under which “laws restricting contraception, sodomy, and fornication are, by its lights, unconstitutional”. Yenor claims: “These changes in law are but the first part of an effort to normalize and then celebrate premarital sex, recreational sex, men who have sex with men, childhood immodesty, masturbation, lesbianism, and all conceptions of transgenderism.”

Yenor says the state should intervene in citizens’ sex lives: “In the states, new obscenity laws for a more obscene world should be adopted. Pornography companies and websites should be investigated for their myriad public ills like sex trafficking, addictions, and ruined lives. The justice of anti-discrimination must be revisited.” In a separate essay co-written with Milikh, the editor, Yenor advocates in effect destroying the current education system and starting again. The essay includes a recommendation for school curriculums: “Students could start building obstacle courses at an early age, learning how to construct a wall and how to adapt the wall for climbing … Students could learn to build and shoot guns as part of a normal course of action in schools and learn how to grow crops and prepare them for meals.”

The Guardian reports that Trump VP pick and Ohio Senator JD Vance promoted far-right extremist views from Arthur Milkh’s Up From Conservatism essay book.

[mollysunder]

Some people have long essays for why Viktor will s2's main antagonist. Meanwhile I think Viktor will be a main antagonistic because he's got some of the worst traits of a tech bro. Iykyk.

[ramblebramblefun]

Kacchan hasn't even been gone two full days and Izuku has already managed to Commit a Crime.

If Kacchan has to interrupt his vacation to bail Izuku out of jail, then Kacchan will end up in jail. For murder.

Izuku does not want to be murdered. Or to interrupt Kacchan's vacation! Kacchan has earned this vacation! Izuku will not, cannot, be the one to interrupt it.

Which means that he absolutely, must not, on any account, get caught.

Covering up your crime is also a crime! So Izuku is going to have to commit at least two crimes to hide the fact that he has already done a crime, and maybe Kacchan had a point about how Izuku absolutely must not be left to his own devices, but making Kaminari babysit Izuku like some kind of crime-baby was just plain mean. To Kaminari.

Izuku can run circles around that guy.

Kacchan should have made Mina do it. Oh well! Kaminari's not awake yet, so all Izuku has to do is-

"OPEN UP! THIS IS THE POLICE!" The bellow was accompanied by a pounding fit to wake the dead. Or Kaminari.

...

Kacchan is going to kill him.

[lightbulb-warning]

can I just say the way you draw kokichi as a fucking unhinged gremlin makes me v happy as a kokichi kinnie

IT'S WHAT HE DESERVES!! <3

its what all of us DESERVE!!!!!!!!!/lh

[hoorayezenglish]

🇺🇸 #9 - 50 Facts About The USA - The US Flag - Facts About The United States of America for ESL EFL - English Learners

[respectthepetty]

I absolutely adore your posts. The care you put into them helps me put together the pieces, I usually notice some things but don't link them together so you've been a great help! Please keep it up!

Well, you're in luck because I'm never leaving this place, and I cannot stop yapping about colors, so I'll be around to annoy everyone who hasn't blocked me for a very long time.

However, I do have jury duty for the next three months, and I doubt the courts will be hunky-dory with me watching my little gay shows while waiting around, so I might have to watch these weekday shows on the weekends. But we'll see what Lady Justice has in store for me. Either way, I still very much believe in "Be Gay, Do Crime" so if my civic duty gets in the way of me watching Jack & Joker, I WILL download that show and watch it on the government's time AND dime! Peaceful Property too!

But all of this was just to thank you for the appreciation, and if it takes me a bit to get to my lengthy posts, know that I will get to them, I'm just held up in a courtroom making sure that someone advocates for restorative practices rather than punishing people for the crime of being poor in a capitalist society. You know, what Peaceful Property and Jack & Joker are all about.

[karnalesbian]

outside the dmv: honestly feel bad for people who work at the dmv like imagine dealing with long lines of frustrated people all day about the most trite bullshit

standing in line at the dmv: I was a fool. The lady at the desk is the enemy. Her only objective is to specifically worsen every aspect of my day and or life, and she will stop at nothing in pursuit of that end.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"DOGS ON RELIEF." Kingston Whig-Standard. May 27, 1933. Page 1. ---- Verdun, Que., May 27- Six hundred dogs are on direct relief in this city, it was charged by speakers before the Verdun Proprietors' League, who expressed opposition last night to continued ownership of pets by families forced to live on direct relief.

[AL: This is one of those phony 'scandals' cooked up by middle class homeowners and their associations - claiming both widespread fraud and angry that poor people HAVE PETS.]

[sameteeth]

anyways, i do think its really interesting that chuuya figures out that dazai was putting pieces into place to get him ousted from the sheep like a month ahead of time... its also really interesting to consider WHY dazai did it and the implications it carries. dazai watches shirase and yuan pressure and guilt chuuya about "doing his part" for the sheep as a person with an ability, then immediately takes action to relieve pressure from chuuya

which is kinda funny bc dazai at least in the short term is following what shirase is saying - dazai has the ability to help save the hostages, and he does lol. demon prodigy indeed. MORE IMPORTANTLY though. dazai recognizes that chuuya is being controlled by the sheep even though he is the leader. chuuya and mori make good comparisons here - this arc starts with mori bemoaning his responsibility as the boss of the port mafia, and we see chuuya consistently failing to do his responsibility as the leader of the sheep. he even denies the title of king, stating that it's only his ability that puts him above the rest. to digress a bit, i think this is partly why when chuuya joins the port mafia he so quickly submits to them - he is no longer the sole ability user, and thus the responsibility doesnt rely entirely on him to protect the group. something to be said here about the way bsd almost never touches on the ability user vs non-ability user dichotomy but ill save that. back to the main point. dazai takes it upon himself to free chuuya from the sheep. he acknowledges the limitations chuuya has to function under as the leader of the sheep and the weight of the responsibility he bears for no reason other than his ability

but then! dazai forces chuuya into the port mafia to save him from the sheep ! doesnt that seem contradictory??? isnt that hypocritical? chuuya seems pissed about it!

granted, I'd be pissed too if my friends stabbed me with a switch covered in rat poison then tried to gun me down. regardless, chuuya can see how dazai set him up to be outcast from the sheep without having to break the tie himself. chuuya is loyal to the sheep, even when they distrust him. But! this gives chuuya a chance to escape, even if it's to the port mafia. i think the important thing to focus on here is that the port mafia is an Actual organization made up of adults. the sheep are a bunch of kids, ones that are easily led. the limited pieces we see of them are shirase and yuan, who throw temper tantrums and try to clumsily manipulate chuuya when he doesn't listen to them. they admit to stealing alcohol from mafia-adjacent territory and just generally seem immature... because theyre kids. but what we see of the mafia is much different. mori is a strong leader because he is smart and rational. he thinks ahead. he, unlike chuuya, is the leader because he wants to protect yokohama, and understands the sacrifice necessary to do so. chuuya is the leader because no one could beat him in a fight. the port mafia offers a chance for growth (ignoring that these are children in the mafia ok play with me here) as a fighter and as a leader - chuuya becomes an exec when he's still a teenager i think (theres not a specific age anywhere i can find) and is a much more calm and smart fighter once he joins.

so it's good (play with me) that chuuya is able to join the port mafia. BUT he would never have been able to leave if dazai had not forced his hand. this paradox - the idea that chuuya obtains freedom from being forced to leave something he doesn't want to - is SUPER interesting to consider !! here i will dissolve into rambles. i learned about this paradox in the context of mary wollstonecraft and the vindication of the rights of women - wollstonecraft believed only educated people could truly be free, as they were not only free of oppression but also no longer slaves to their emotions, and were able to have opportunities and use their education for their own betterment. the situation with chuuya reminded me of this, because with the sheep chuuya had no one to rely on or to teach him, limiting his capacity for growth and ultimately his freedom. the sheep were reliant on him for protection, and feared him, but chuuya had everything to lose if he were to try and leave the sheep. he had nothing without them, and they needed him for his power. but they were beholden to their emotions, immature and uncertain how to actually get power. their primary motivators for action are retaliation - dazai mentions this when chuuya attacks him, and shirase and yuan mention this when they are urging chuuya to help them. but when chuuya talks to mori and koyo (<3) about their actions, both of them are much more forward thinking than that. mori is very cunning and sly, and koyo tells chuuya that even if things go south in the meeting she's taking him to to, they know how to move forward. chuuya's world has expanded beyond the sheep's limited gaze.

of course, he's still trapped in the port mafia, but if you REALLY want to discuss free will..... we'll be here all fucking night. free will is really hard to pin down and i always have to talk about determinism and its a lot to wrap ur head around and i just like drawing connections between stuff i like

[micamicster]

Due to the stupidest situation on earth i have to drive 2 hours to hand deliver my mail in ballot today and then drive 2 hours back for my ED shift

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Laura K. Field for Politico:

On July 29, 2021, JD Vance appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show back when he was still a Fox News host. Like Carlson, Vance had once opposed Donald Trump, and like Carlson, he had transformed into a prominent Trump supporter and a rabid participant in the culture wars. “We are effectively run in the country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs,” he told Carlson, “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He went on to name Kamala Harris (and Pete Buttigieg, and AOC) as his prime examples of the childless leaders who should be excluded from positions of power. For years, Vance has played a key role in the elite echelons of the New Right, which can be described, loosely, as the intellectual wing of the Trumpified GOP (including many of the people in charge of Project 2025). This mixed-up group of intellectuals, activists, politicians and influencers is made up of a wide array of characters, who hold to a variety of belief systems and sometimes have divergent policy goals.

But the one instinct that Vance and the rest of the New Right share is a deep skepticism about modern feminism and gender equality — or what the New Right calls “gender ideology.” Overt chauvinism that seeks to roll back much of feminism’s gains is one of the most obvious unifying threads of this varied movement, and Trump’s choice of Vance anoints and entrenches it into the culture-war side of the MAGA movement. Vance appears to be a decent family man — someone who supports traditional conservative values, and is even willing to buck conventional GOP norms by supporting strong pro-family policies. But a quick perusal of his thoughts on women and gender reveal some unusual opinions that lie outside the American mainstream, beyond a stray comment about cat ladies.

Vance is staunchly opposed to abortion, and has suggested that it is wrong even in cases of rape and incest. He has compared the evil of abortion to that of slavery, and opposed the Ohio ballot measure ensuring the right to abortion in 2023. He also was one of only 28 members of Congress who opposed a new HIPAA rule that would limit law enforcement’s access to women’s medical records. He has promoted Viktor Orbán’s pro-natalist policies in Hungary, which offer paybacks to married couples that scale up along with the number of children (a new Hungarian Constitution that banned gay marriage went into effect in 2012, so these benefits only serve “traditional” couples). Vance opposes same-sex marriage. During his 2022 Senate campaign, he suggested the sexual revolution had made divorce too easy (people nowadays “shift spouses like they change their underwear”), arguing that people in unhappy marriages, and maybe even those in violent ones, should stay together for their children. His campaign said such an insinuation was “preposterous,” but you can watch the video yourself and be the judge.

In all of this, Vance fits squarely within (and identifies with) the faction of the American New Right that typically refers to itself as “postliberalism.” Patrick Deneen, a professor at Notre Dame, captured the basic outlook on gender and feminism among this cohort in his 2018 hit Why Liberalism Failed. Deneen’s argument is that liberal modernity is based on an irreparably individualistic view of human nature, which leads to a culture that values autonomy over community and family life. “Liberalism posits that freeing women from the household is tantamount to liberation,” he wrote, “but it effectively puts women and men alike into a far more encompassing bondage,” because work outside the home is submission to the forces of market capitalism. Somewhat bizarrely, in the postliberal mind, even gay marriage — people coming together and uniting legally into family units — becomes a form of social dissolution, because it is based on individual choice rather than traditional moral forms. Vance is an admirer of Deneen’s work and was a featured speaker at the launch of his most recent book, Regime Change, at Catholic University in May 2023. Vance spoke highly of Deneen’s book, identified personally with postliberalism and the New Right, and declared himself to be “anti-elitist” and “anti-regime.” He has picked up on the populist language used by the postliberals, who speak in all-or-nothing terms like the “ruling class,” “replacing the elites,” “using Machiavellian means to Aristotelian ends,” or “searing the liberal faith with hot irons.”

The most important figure in American postliberalism is Harvard professor Adrian Vermeule, whose 2022 book Common Good Constitutionalism describes a mode of constitutional thinking that would make it much easier for conservatives in the United States to legislate morality. Under Vermeule’s conception, judges could rule against a given law — say a law allowing marriage equality, or abortion in another state — by appealing to his “Common Good” standard. Vance is also friendly with the Claremont Institute, an election-denying “nerve center” for the broader New Right movement. He gave a speech at their newly opened “Center for the American Way of Life” in 2021 where, revealingly, he declared that the conservative movement should be about something simple: “I think that we should fight for the right of every American to live a good life in the country they call their own, to raise a family and dignity on a single middle-class job.”

The Claremont cohort is home to, or friendly with, some of the most extreme anti-feminists and misogynists in the movement, such as Scott Yenor, a professor at Boise State and a fellow with Claremont’s Center for the American Way of Life. He courted controversy in 2021 for calling career-oriented women “more medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome than women need to be.” Or Jack Murphy, a stalwart of the Manosphere, who once declared that “feminists need rape,” and was a fellow with Claremont in 2021. Many of the leaders at the Institute, including Yenor and the president, Ryan Williams, are also part of a newly formed and pro-patriarchy fraternal organization, the Society for American Civic Renewal.

[...] National Conservatism is the big tent, umbrella organization where the New Right comes together. Vance has been a speaker at all three of the four National Conservatism conferences that have taken place in the United States since 2019 — including the meeting in D.C. earlier this month, where he gave the final keynote address at a VIP dinner on the closing day. Whereas the first big NatCon conference seemed like an upstart, fringe affair, this year, Chris DeMuth, a former American Enterprise Institute president who is one of the conference’s key leaders, opened the conference by declaring: “A revival of faith, family, and fertility are not far right, they are the new mainstream!” Vance, for his part, gave a speech titled “America is a Nation,” which touched only lightly on questions of gender, merely echoing DeMuth’s call for a renewal of the American family. Patrick Deneen was pleased.

J.D. Vance’s New Right/postliberal views on gender roles give off weirdo vibes.

See Also:

Politico: Are Republican Voters Ready for the Nerdy Radicalness of JD Vance?

[muddypolitics]

(via Inside A Secret Society Of Prominent Right-Wing Christian Men Prepping For A ‘National Divorce’ - TPM – Talking Points Memo)

A secret, men-only right-wing society with members in influential positions around the country is on a crusade: to recruit a Christian government that will form after the right achieves regime change in the United States, potentially via a “national divorce.”

It sounds like the stuff of fantasy, but it’s real. The group is called the Society for American Civic Renewal (the acronym is pronounced “sacker” by its members). It is open to new recruits, provided you meet a few criteria: you are male, a “trinitarian” Christian, heterosexual, an “un-hyphenated American,” and can answer questions about Trump, the Republican Party, and Christian Nationalism in the right way. One chapter leader wrote to a prospective member that the group aimed to “secure a future for Christian families.”

This is the real enemy of the United States