#death to amagakkka

[ultraericthered]

[ultraericthered]

Pegasus addresses his home nation. He is greatly disappointed.

[ultraericthered]

Reminder for Americans, as the nation is to become a fascist state.

In every way, from now until this empire crumbles, keep resisting.

[ultraericthered]

I've been very familiar with Wicked for several years now. I read the novel that the musical was based on (which mostly kind of sucked), knew the story of the musical, and have listened to the soundtrack. But it alway sat just okay with me. In particular, the character of Elphaba Thropp, I felt, was a very interesting concept - what if the Wicked Witch of the West was a layered, sympathetic, relatable person whose whole deal was so much more complex than simply being "wicked" for no reason, and that popular image of her as the cruel, nasty, fearsome hag we're all familar with was a myth based in a propagandized narrative spun to turn people against her? With Glinda the Good Witch, the Wizard of Oz, and the land of Oz itself all being deeper and darker than they appeared at a glance? That is fantastic on an imagination level, though it took the musical to fully realize the idea, and we got a great take on the Oz lore and great iteration of the Wicked Witch as a result. But I still didn't feel Elphie was anything too much greater than the character who sourced her (Margaret Hamilton's Witch in particular is a great villain on her own merits), and she sort of started a trend in both parodies and legit works of going for the lazy "they're not truly evil, they're just misunderstood!" villain revisionism, particularly when coupled with the equally lazy "and the people you thought were good guys were actually the real villains!" Count Dracula, Captain Hook, Maleficent, Jafar, Cruella De Vil, the Grinch, Carmen Sandiego, Lex Luthor, Light/Kira and even other lesser villains like the fucking Beanstalk Giant got this treatment over time. It's like Wicked made what was done as a joke with the Big Bad Wolf way back when acceptable to play straight, so it was a sore spot on Elphaba's legacy for me.

But let me tell you...watching Wicked Part 1 in theaters in the year 2024 the other day made something go off in my head. Elphaba's story through just Act 1 alone struck a chord with me that it hadn't before, to the point where I had to hold back tears towards the very end. Suddenly not only was all the political commentary in the story so much clearer and more relevant than it had ever been, but I got Elphie's character arc and a core piece of it that ties directly into that political commentary after it had gone over my head for years.

SPOILERS FOR WICKED PART ONE WILL FOLLOW

So the part of Elphaba's story that got me was her "relationship" with the Wizard of Oz. How she lived her life since childhood idolizing this man, absolutely loving the idea of the Wizard, being thankful to him for every blessing she and the land of Oz had, and dreaming of a day where she'd one day meet him, be apprenticed by him, and become like family with him because if he, the Great and Wonderful Wizard of Oz himself, could accept her, then the entire rest of Oz would have no choice but to accept her too. She'd finally have the mass acceptance, validation, and care from others she'd always yearned for. And yeah, that has to do with her self worth issues and yearning to belong somewhere with someone, and I always got that well before seeing the movie. Struggling with your self esteem and feeling ostracized from the world around you due to having been born different from others with whom you share that world was always the relatable aspect for Elphie for me, 'cause I've been there.

But the stuff with the Wizard once she's actually met him took on a whole new meaning for me now. It's been said ad nauseum now that the idea of some carnival barker huckster fraudster simpleton being put into a position of political power and leadership despite having no actual power and next to no merits to him all while others around him with their own sinister agendas look to curry favor with him in order to use him to their advantage and reap benefits from his position, and these people creating a scapegoat out of whoever can serve as a "common enemy" to unite people in fear, anger, hatred, grievance, prejudice and opposition to, is more timely, hard-hitting and realistic now than ever before, drawing parallel to the rise of our incoming First Felon President and the MAGA nightmare we cannot seem to awaken from. All of it said, all of it true. However, it cuts way deeper for me. In my scenario, the Wizard of Oz isn't the Felon, as I never had any faith or loving for that man and all he did was exceed my reservations about him. The Wizard of Oz is my country, the (former) United States of America itself. Just like Elphaba in Emerald City, on the days following November 5 2024, I had to look at something I'd been taught was Great And Wonderful since childhood, something I'd loved and gone on believing truly was Great And Wonderful for years, and reckon with the harsh truth that I'd learned about, loved, and had wanted to serve something that never actually existed. And the fault doesn't lie with the Founding Fathers and the fundamental creed that America was built upon, which is as Great And Wonderful now as it was all those centuries ago. The fault is with the sad reality that, due to people, ideas, beliefs, systems, institutions, traditional practices, holes and vices in government, and the corrosion of democracy, the nation we've had since the founding, the nation I've lived in from the day I was born, has constantly failed to live up to its own core ideals. People in power still can and do take away "certain inallieable rights" that all humans are born with from the humans born with them, all citizens are not treated with equality, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is continously impeded, we are not "indivisible" no matter how fragile the states hold together, there is not "liberty and justice for all", there exists a certain class of people who are, in fact, above the law, the three branches of governments seldom function the way they were made to, and the melting pot isn't "melting" people the right way as much since we've become more exclusionary than inclusive. As with the Wizard and the Grimmerie, this country is run by weak, stupid, mediocre men who are either unable to read the Constitution, or they can but just do not feel inclined to actually follow and respect it in letter and spirit. The only truly good, fair and just thing for a long while was the "self-governing" nature of the populace's participation in democracy and the self-corrections that would be made from it... but that ended up exploited in order to become the very thing that sealed its damnation. My nation was never evil, but at the same time, it has never been great, as it's so often failed to do good. It's a nation of moral goodness in perpetual bondage by the not-so-good that wants to exploit all the good it's capable of for them and their interests alone. "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave?" Sure, but only because the Free and the Brave who've lived here are all far better than it deserves.

And then we reach "Defying Gravity." I always linked the title of this song to Elphaba taking flight on her broomstick. But only now do I grasp the full meaning of that title, and the weight the term holds in its proper context. Elphaba is making a choice to defy Oz. To rebel against a corrupt system by a corrupt government that is corrupting the land and harming vulnerable others. She makes this choice even when what she's rebelling against holds the advantage in all power sans magical and possesses the resources and means to turn the ignorant masses against her and ensure they remain on their side. From the offset, she is very unlikely to prevail. That's why it's like struggling against a greater force that is trying to push you down and can normally easily do so - a force like gravity. And yet Elphie fights. She defies. She does so even if it means she has to make herself look like a villain, reasoning that even if her enemy is great and powerful, and the odds of defeating it seem impossible, it's not more powerful than her skills, her gifts, her convictions and her willpower. And so long as she has those, it can and will never bring her down.

I'd say the lesson here is "domestic terrorism in defiance of your government is good, actually", but it's a little bit more complicated.

So yeah, Wicked Part 1 is a masterpiece and Elphaba Thropp is an inspiration. If what she does is "wicked", then let us all aspire to be as wicked as her as the fight to rejuvinate the soul of our decayed republic and lay claim to a better future for all people in it goes on.

[ultraericthered]

"I have seen generations of humans and elves accept the darkness that lurks in all of us beside the light. There is no black and white, only shades of gray. We must all carry complexity. But please, believe me: that there is beauty in this burden."

Respectfully, Aaravos, I must half-disagree. In terms of people and what's inside their hearts, there's "no black and white" in that no person is entirely without sin and evil in them and no person is entirely devoid of moral virtue and decency in them either. That is, always has been, and always will be the essence of humanity.

But in terms of universal truth, common sense and reason, and spiritual morality? There are shades of gray light enough to be classified as "white" and dark enough to be classified as "black"; light and dark, good and evil. Some things that should be understood to be unambiguously right, and others as unambiguously wrong.

With a vote, electing back into power a seditious insurrectionist scumbag traitor to his country, corrupt businessman, con artist, career criminal, cult leader, domestic terrorist, convicted felon, adjucated rapist, and all around hideously awful, sinful human being with fascistic aspirations to tear down the institutions and system of liberal democracy that make a constitutional republic nation what it is so that he can stay in power and transform the office he'd abused and betrayed the last time he held it into one of an authoritarian autocrat strongman dictator....that is not right, for any reason.

The righteous fury within me that arose on November 6 has only been enhanced with the news of Jimmy Carter's recent passing. Just the idea that had things tilted just a little bit differently, this kind, good man who'd lived to be 100 years old could have passed away in complete peace, content knowing that the capable, responsible and moral candidate he'd voted for, Kamala Harris, would be taking the reigns in the oval office next year, and that all would eventually be right in the country and world he'd be leaving behind....but in the reality we live in, he died a failure, knowing that the side of the true patriots that he was on had been rejected and defeated at the ballot box and that the literal traitor and felon who never under any circumstances should've been given a second chance to run for the office he'd defiled and lead the country he'd betrayed (for real, the US's chances of survival were fucked the moment he wasn't pulled from the White House on Jan. 7 and put through a political guilotine for the crime he'd openly committed) was going to be back in charge next year, free to burn down the federal government and the country along with it. All because of an irredeemably stupid and immoral electorate that values their own banal wants over the greater good.

And wouldn't you know it - Der Felon is still mentally unstable and miserable to his tiny, holllow, vacant core. Elon is fashioning himself as the true emperor, and Vivek is following along. JD has receded from the spotlight, just waiting to seize his next best opportunity. Republican officials are showing willingness to defy their leader when his nominations and policy proposals are so terrible and unpopular that it puts their careers and their power in jeopardy, while others remain sycophantic and fanatically loyal, leading to much in-fighting. And the MAGA cult faithful are spiralling into a cannibalistic civil war of their very own, sweeping Republicans and Far Lefties up in it too! All is total chaos in the dumpster fire world of American politics, all because of the many dumbfucks who just couldn't vote for a woman.

So in the coming year, I hope to see an implosion within Washington DC. I hope to see a revolution by the states and all the dissatisfied citizens who might gravitate back towards the Democratic Party now that the other party is the governing regime that cannot govern and can only make lives even worse. I hope MAGA and the Far Right in this country lose everything in their petty civil warring, have the most spetacularly pathetic meltdown and collapse into powerlessness and irrelevance. And I really hope Der Felon, who we can all plainly see is cognitively broken, demented, unhealthy, incompetent and unable to serve a full term, is dragged kicking and screaming out of the White House well before 2029, thrown back out into the world where all of the legal battles, charges, and sentences still await him, and he's stuck in an inescapable mental purgatory of 24/7 stress, agony, indignity, humiliation, and suffering at the time he finally dies, leaving the country and the world as better places without him in them, with him being immortalized as a dark, shameful, embarrasing chapter of world history and remembered not as the 47th US President, not even as the 47th and a half US President, but as the weak, feeble, ignorant, mentally deranged and utterly worthless loser puppet of political disrupter/usurper Elon Musk and President JD Vance.

And then, maybe half a decade later or maybe a full decade later, I can only hope the still living dumbfuck deplorables who voted for this can give the most heartfelt, tearful, snivelling, grovelling, broken down and humbled of apologies to Kamala Harris, the President the nation needed who was tragically not the President it deserved.

"I want to make them hurt. Because they struck a wound in me so deep, that it will never heal. To survive such a wound is to suffer forever and I want them to share that suffering. I want them to hurt."

Now THAT, Aaravos, I can fully agree with you on.

[ultraericthered]

This scene hit pretty hard when I saw it earlier this year.

It hits way, WAY harder now.

Especially if you pretend Sol's a bald eagle.

[ultraericthered]

This meme will prove useful for God knows how many occasions.

[ultraericthered]

We can live beside the ocean Leave the fire behind Swim out past the breakers Watch the world die

How shit is looking in America right now:

[ultraericthered]

I am definitely not discounting the possibility that MAGA in collusion with Russia cheated to rig and steal the election from Harris-Walz, with all of their "stolen election!" and "look out for cheating!" rhetoric being projection and confessions about what they were really up to. But I'm absolutely not going to be certain in that theory unless hard concrete evidence pointing in that direction turns up. I'm not going to be like MAGA and take my feelings as valid substitutes for facts.

But I do want these conspiracy theories to hound Traitor on his way to the White House and beyond. What goes around comes around.

I am confused.

It was reported two days before the election that early voting totals were already 50% of the 2020 totals for the entire election. Multiple records smashed for early voting.

But the final total was so much lower than 2020? What, did everyone get super fired up for early voting and then suddenly lose interest on election day?

You might think, well, if everyone voted early, that's fewer to vote on election day. Which I guess is possible. But it seems incomprehensible for such massive turnouts in early voting to just evaporate. And it didn't jibe with what I heard from people on the ground, at precincts - busy lines, big turnout, the most they'd ever seen.

And yet...like 20 million votes fewer than 2020.

I am not remotely a conspiracy freak but...this math ain't mathing.

[ultraericthered]

I empathize with the Palestinian people because that first thing - "They were failed by their elected government" - is the same for us here in the DSA (Divided States of AMAGAKKKa).

I empathize with the Palestinian people.

They were failed by their elected government, and now that same elected government is using them as human shields.

They have been failed.

[ultraericthered]

It means we're still fully human, and they're not.

not to get political on this page (but actually yes, I will talk about this because it’s important) but what does it mean when they lost and their first thought was violence and when we lost last night all we could feel is immense sadness and fear?

[ultraericthered]

These voters voted for a felon, and destroyed everything we worked on for the past 8 years out of frustration and desperation.

No, fuck that. By crossing a line such as voting for a felon, these monkey-brained human failures have destroyed everything that the American Experiment worked on since the fucking founding. They've elected into office a Mad King George, the very fear that the founders hoped a constitutional republic and democratic system could prevent. Ergo, the United States of America of yore is broken and dead.

Fortunately, we technically still have the Constitution, and it gives us permission to strike back. It might be like the old American Civil War, except the rebels and government abolistionists are the good guys.

Sorry...

I tried my best. I really did. Even with the clout I have, it was not enough. Not even Taylor Swift could fix this. The electorate was just too angry to counteract. Kamala under-performed all demographics and ended up doing worse than Hillary.

It's true that Trump's support collapsed, but it was among loud people who voted for him in 2016 and 2020. They ended up getting replaced by regular ass people. That's why there were less Trump signs and his rallies were smaller. Many people just had pent-up anger and didn't show it off.

I'm so heartbroken at this electorate. These voters voted for a felon, and destroyed everything we worked on for the past 8 years out of frustration and desperation. Now Democrats are literally in the exact same position they were in the early 2010s.

The entire Democratic party needs to reinvent itself; otherwise, they will continue to lose.

[ultraericthered]

Remember, we gotta play by the Republicans' rules here. They tell us Joe Biden was always but a puppet figurehead while Kamala Harris was the one truly "in office" and running the country, so the same is to be true of the incoming administration of President JD Vance, Shadow President Elon Musk, and the weak, aging, cognitively crumbling dimentia patient they're using as their puppet figurehead.

[ultraericthered]

This is no longer the United States of America to me. That veil was dropped this election. It's the Divided States of AMAGAKKKA.

#DeathToAMAGAKKKA

Never have I actually felt hatred towards America, not once in over 40 years. I've been angry, disappointed, frustrated and sad, but today I hate America. I hate the mindblowing stupidity, the lack of education, the elector system, the gerrymandering, the out of control guns, the religious nut jobs, the way you line up to screw yourselves over because you simply can't resist the charm of being addressed by a wannabe dictator. I despise the fact that so many of you fail to realise the consequences of this election and how you can't just leave all the international commitments and deals without fucking things up for everyone involved. I hate the short sight, your lack of decency, your gullibility, self-centrered ignorans and how willingly you're ready to sacrifice the lives of innocent people just because you're incapable of seeing reason. You just elected a criminal, sexual abuser who openly talks about how he wants to dismantle your democracy. He's bragging about committing crimes, cosies up to dictators - who don't respect him one bit, they just see him as a gullible moron - and has shown time and again how he's willing to sacrifice anything to make himself feel powerful. And no, you don't get to tell the rest of the world how your election is none of our business, not when we live in a world where international relations, trades and cooperations are the norm. I hate how so many of you are ready to sacrifice Ukraine, the climate, your own school children, pregnant people etc. because you've made MAGA your identity. You just elected a wannabe dictator like it was a popularity contest in some bad comedy, without giving a single fuck about what it might cost not just you, but the rest of the world. You just elected a man who openly admires dictators and praises those who're on the verge of becoming dictators. What's wrong with you? Are you all so thrilled about the prospect of women dying due to fear of seeking help during a miscarriage? Does it make you happy, knowing that when a country actually ASKS for your help, you turn your backs on them? You are an embarressment for the free world and all I hope now, is for the ramifications to hit those of you who voted for him the hardest - along with those of you who threw the opportunity of voting away because Harris wasn't good enough. You just elected a man who praised Hitler and somehow this has become normal. And for that, at least for a while, I hate every single one of you who made this normal, no matter your reason. Because none of them are good enough for this monstrocity of an election.

[ultraericthered]

I understand. I'd be like that towards my home nation at this point.

It probably says nothing good about me and I swear I'm not like that irl, but watching things go wrong for Piltover keeps giving me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. It was obvious the attack on the Memorial was a Noxus play from the start, but damn if it wasn't satisfying to watch Piltover get shat on.

[ultraericthered]

I'm kind of in-between where both of you are - one perspective seems a little too overly pessimistic, despairing and defeatist about the entire national situation while the other seems a little too overly optimistic and dismissive of the very real threat that a demented clown like the First Felon poses now that he's back in power, how much more dangerous his MAGA cult movement and the fascist oligarchy regime that's formed behind him could be, how long the pushback against Trumpism is going to take, and how much worse and more damaging than the last presidencies this is sure to be.

It's best not to assume anything is off the table now. We need to sound the alarm and mount pressure on both the politicians and the courts so that they know we're not OK with the idea of a President overstaying two terms, even if two inconsecutive terms. Especially when the "President" in question is a convicted felon who shouldn't even be where he is right now.

A Republican House member introduced a resolution to amend the U.S. Constitution to allow President Donald Trump — and any other future president — to be elected to serve a third term.

Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee introduced the measure days after Trump was sworn in for a second non-consecutive term in the White House.

The 22nd Amendment currently bars anyone from being elected to more than two terms.