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donald-is-my-man · 3 years ago

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I’ve realized a thing about Ressler.

Disclaimer: I’ll interpret the shit out of it the way I please, so don’t swing your canon bat at me.

I'm on the app, so no spoiler thingy. Gotta ruin your dash, ig.

Special Agent Donald Ressler is an imposter.

A sum of choices which were never his own in the first place.

Caged in the cell of what-ifs, doubts, self-loathing, and, most importantly, of unfulfilled dreams and desires.

The cracks in his facade of a justice crusader are beginning to show.

Donald-not-the-Agent is a good man. An honest man. A caring man.

An idealist. A believer. A man of honor and a man of his word.

Donald is led by revenge when he’s applying for the FBI. “Fueled by inner rage.”

His desire to avenge his father isn’t exactly what you'd call “honoring one's memory”.

One can't uphold the law and have their revenge.

Donald is trying to fix something which can be never fixed. Refuses to acknowledge that no amount of saved lives can change it. I'm not even sure he's allowed himself to grief properly.

Reddington—another Tommy Markin Ressler couldn’t have caught in time, a physical manifestation of Ressler’s hate and guilt. Ressler projects his rage onto Reddington, convincing himself that if he catches him, he'll make it right.

The truth is, Reddington isn't the solution. The issue lies much, much deeper.

I stand by my opinion that Don wouldn’t have killed Markin. Markin escaping justice, his dirty deeds covered by the mafia or the mobsters taking him out to cover loose ends make more sense for Ressler’s character. Forever haunted by the missed opportunity, by the guilt of not being able to save his father, by the injustice, and by the fact that he’s too weak to serve the justice himself, adds the depth Ressler lacks on the show. On the show, Ress kills Markin and it straightens him out, and that makes him just another good guy occasionally getting into trouble.

Red once said that revenge is a disease. Well, with Ressler it’s a pathology.

His father. Audrey. Meera.

For some reason, the writers didn't go through with Liz which is shame—she could've been the trigger to unhinge him and embrace the darkness in his heart. And the fact that he brings death to everyone around him could be a powerful cathartic element and a natural conclusion he'd have come to. I once have touched upon the death theme in Red's and Don's lives, and the fact that they both are lethal to their loved ones is another common thing they share but that's another conversation for another day :)

His father’s death has ruined his life, shattered his dreams. It had set him on another path, different from what he wanted.

And what he wanted, exactly?

An outsider, a looser growing up in a rough neighborhood, possibly bullied because of his looks and his dad's occupation. A boy who's trying to be a good son but sometimes fails, a boy who can't understand why dad's job is more important than their family. A boy who's dreaming of escaping all this, do something adventurous.

Just anything else, away from all this. Away from constant hardships. Away from expectations. Away from the place reminding him how weak, how incapable he is. Away from the rot, corruption, dirt.

He’s grown into an ambitious young man, a proud man, a patriot. But he’s never meant to become an agent. Not like that, at least.

A sailor? A navy seal? A soldier? Or maybe a sportsman?

I tend to think Don actually hated his father’s job because he was never around. And he might have sworn to never become like him.

His father’s death is his point of no return. He buries his aspirations and becomes a hunter—because he can’t afford being a prey. Forsakes his old self to build a new persona—endurable, courageous, invincible. Erects the bulletproof wall around him so no one can get through it. Puts on the armor, the “Family, God, Homeland” engraved on his shield.

But it’s not who he is.

He is humanistic—he values an innocent life so much he’s ready to sacrifice himself. He values the sacred integrity of a human's life.

He’ll shoot only as a last resort, in case of imminent danger or a threat to an innocent.

Did you notice how he reacts to his own kills on the job? He’s glad that the criminal is gone but he actually wishes for another outcome—the jury and the judge, and a proper sentence.

He doesn’t consider himself an executioner. His job is to uphold the law, to make sure that justice is served.

Death from a bullet isn’t justice, it’s an easy escape.

ii.

Ressler is a classic tragic hero.

Aristotle defined a tragic hero rather strictly as a man of noble birth with heroic qualities whose fortunes change due to a tragic flaw or mistake (often emerging from the character's own heroic qualities) that ultimately brings about the tragic hero's terrible, excessive downfall

He has many flaws—pride, selfishness, stubbornness.

He's angry, too—at his father. At the world. At himself. Mostly at himself because he thinks he should've been there for his father.

But his most prominent flaw is self-doubt.

I also think that most of the time Donald doubts himself as worthy of existing—that's why he risks his life without hesitation.

He toys with death not because he's suicidal, but because he wants to prove to himself he is worthy of living.

Red, whether consciously or not, has prompted Ressler to doubt himself even further.

Which, ultimately, leads to his downfall.

iii.

An idealist by nature, Donald is constantly torn between the flaws of the world and his own. Every day he sees the imperfections of the world, the true nature of all those people, and yet he still hopes to make it better.

He cares about the fate of the world more than anyone else on the TF. Of course, he'll never admit it, but if you remember all those moments when he's escorting the victims to ambulances or rescues trapped kids, you realize that this man cares.

Started as a way of sublimating his pain and the desire to avenge his father, this job had given him a purpose. That's why he's holding onto it throughout the series. You take it from him, you take his purpose away.

A soldier with no purpose is doomed.

And if damaged enough, he'll seek for that purpose somewhere else.

iv.

Anslo Garrick episode is an episode where his black-and-white world is torn into shreds.

He looks at Red and sees himself in a distorted mirror. I assume it's the same way for Red, hence his fondness for him. And I'm guessing, the fact that Reddington seems to have this human side too, terrifies Ressler a great deal.

Imagine what Ressler goes through when he realizes that Reddington does everything to save him. The man he’s hating with all his core, whom he tried to kill (not once, a couple of times), who reminds him of his father’s demise. This man is determined to save his life and he's not asking anything in return.

It's absolutely incomprehensible for Ressler.

That's when the shift in his personality starts, and the saint and sinner in him begin to compete.

On Mako Tanida, the peak Ressler's personal tragedy episode, Doanld, led by desire of vengeance once again, leaves Jonica alive although he’s the real reason Audrey is gone. Mako has pulled the trigger but Jonica is responsible for Audrey’s death.

But Donald doesn’t kill him. He wants to. God, he wants nothing else but to empty the mag into his face.

I think it's Donald first time realizing he has darkness within him. It almost costs him his job. His emotions cost him his whole life, really. Because his job now is his life.

He repeats the same scenario with Audrey as with his father, only that Audrey's death is more complicated because of pregnancy and the level of connection they shared.

Revenge is his coping mechanism [once again]—he couldn't avenge his father, couldn't catch Red, and now he's after Tanida. Another attempt to fix things, to make it right. He is well aware it won't bring Audrey back, but he does it anyway.

The only person Donald turns for help (out of necessity) is Red. And Red is actually the only person (except Jonica) who realizes Don's plan (ofc, Don doesn't share it directly, but it's obvious for Red since he knows Donald well enough, and he's been in the same situation).

Like no other, Red understands Donald. He understands him because Donald has the same issue he, Red, once had—the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself.

The darkness in Donald’s heart. His determination to do the right thing. And his desire for vengeance.

Red also knows the price one is paying once crossing the line. And he's aware, I'm sure of it, that Donald has never wanted any of this. Don's sense of what's right is pulling one over him, and he's not ready for what's coming after.

Red never regrets what he's done to the person who's hurt someone close to him. He's comfortable with it, and his conscience doesn't bother him.“...deep in his heart, he knows—he must pay.”

For such a person like Ressler, taking someone's life, even if it's justified, has consequences. Not disastrous as taking someone's life in the line of Don's work, but no less dangerous in the long term.

There's no logical explanation to this, but for some reason known only to him, Red doesn't want Ressler to pay that price.

“He has a good soul.”

vi.

When Meera dies, we see Donald act differently in the interrogation room. He doesn't kill the guy but he is actually considering such possibility even though there's no evidence he's the murderer. But Ressler's gut tells him he is. They—the murderer and Don—both know what he did.

Don blames himself for Meera' death. It's the rinse and repeat scenario of him being helpless and incapable when his dad and Audrey die.

So he yields to his emotions and betrays his own principles—treating every suspect as innocent until the evidence proves so.

Sure, most would say this makes him a hypocrite. Maybe he is. We all are, probably. Some more than others.

However, each time Donald goes against the book and lets his emotions steer him while advocating for reason and cold-blooded attitude when on the job, he does so not to exercise his authority but to do what's right because he sees the flaw in the system.

He—again—hopes to bypass that flaw and actually make the system work. He refuses to believe that something designed to do good, to bring justice, does the opposite.

One can't break the system while considering himself a part of it.

He's not ready to cut himself off from it.

Not yet.

vii.

Even being this close to crossing over, Donald still can't accept his dark impulses within—he thinks that by accepting this side of himself, he'll taint his father's sacrifice.

He does accept now—thanks to Red—the nuances of existing in the world. It's no longer black-and-white for him. Dubious and ambiguous.

And yet, after all this time, and, especially, after escaping prison, he is sure, more than ever, about one thing.

He's unworthy of the sacrifice his dad had done—because there were the times those impulses had taken over him.

Mako/Jonica; being somewhat sympathetic to Reddington; Prescott.

With Prescott he's actually finalized his presence on the other side—he can't go back from what he's done.

“I didn’t want Prescott’s real name so that I could kill him. I wanted it so I could arrest him.”

“He goes to prison, so will you.”

“I know, but I’m in the darkness, and doing the right thing is the only way I’ll ever feel the light again.”

He can't forgive himself.

viii.

“Sins should be buried like the dead.”

“Not that they may be forgotten, but that we may remember them and find our way forward nonetheless.”

We, the audience, know Ressler belongs in a jail. Ressler knows it too—that's why he's angry at Red. He was ready to be punished. Because he deserves that. He doesn't think he's above the law.

We also know that Red has been dancing long enough beyond any lines of what's good and what's evil, and he is hardly the one who can give Ressler patronizing speeches. And by saving him, in Donald’s eyes, Red evens him to other scumbags who cover up their crimes.

But that's not what Red has done for Donald.

He's given him an absolution. Forgiveness from his sins.

Red does it unconditionally—again—for the reasons known only to him.

I'm not gonna dive into the problematic content of Red actually knowing the whole Prescott issue and watching Donald do all those things because... It will take me another couple of pages lol. But surely, you can't deny how messed up Red's behavior is in that case. Tough [father's] love, I guess.

He wants Donald to forgive himself. Acknowledge—to himself—that he shouldn't be ashamed of the guilt he's carrying, and of darkness in his heart.

If Donald wants to move forward, he has to acknowledge this:

we are all sinners, one way or the other. We all make mistakes. And those mistakes don't define us if we're willing to make up for them, if we're willing to change, to redeem ourselves.

What happens next, whatever choice he makes, it doesn't define him as tainted, unworthy, irredeemable.

Accepting your own self has never been easy. And the fight between two wolves is never over in Donald's heart.

But there's always a new day. Another chance to do what's right.

There's always hope.

#donald ressler #ressler meta&essay #my posts

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tcm · 4 years ago

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Paul Williams on His Regrets and Career By Donald Liebenson

“Bugsy Malone is like nothing else,” Roger Ebert wrote in his 1976 three-and-a-half-star review. “It's an original, a charming one.”

Alan Parker’s directorial debut, a one-of-a-kind gangster musical acted out by children (including Scott Baio in the title role and a then-13-year-old Jodie Foster as a sassy nightclub chanteuse), was an early career triumph for Paul Williams. Williams is everything that he wanted to be: an actor, an Oscar-winning songwriter of era-defining hits and composer of iconic movie scores. He’s something else, too: sober. Earlier this month he celebrated just over 30 years of sobriety. “When I got sober, the career I thought I had been gone for 10 years,” he says. “I feel like Lazarus; I’m 80-years-old, and I feel like a tired 34.”

But he’s ebullient talking about BUGSY MALONE, a cult favorite in the United States, but in its native England, it is something of a viewing rite of passage for children, thanks in part to a 1980s stage adaptation by Micky Dolenz. The film itself won four BAFTAs, including Best Screenplay and Best Newcomer and Best Supporting Actress for Foster. Williams was nominated for two Golden Globes, including Original Score and Original Song.

He has completed a new musical, Fortunate Sons, about how the Vietnam War draft lottery affects two households. His last major acting role was as ex-lawyer and informant JT on two seasons of the Amazon series, Goliath. “I’ve always said I’m a pretty good songwriter for an out-of-work actor,” he jokes. “Acting is where I got my start.”

Where in the process did you get involved with Bugsy Malone?��

Paul Williams: BUGSY MALONE began as a bedtime story Alan made up for his kids. Every night he put his kids to bed, they said, ‘Tell us more about Bugsy tomorrow night, dad.’ So maybe the answer to that question is that the headwaters of BUGSY MALONE is Alan’s love for his children and his great love for the traditional American gangster film. He found a place where those two things would meet in a way that was really unique.

How did Bugsy Malone come to you?

PW: Alan Parker liked my songs, but I don’t know where he got the idea to approach me. It was around the time of A STAR IS BORN (for which he co-wrote the Oscar-winning song “Evergreen” with Barbra Streisand). He sent me a batch of beautiful color drawings of the cars, the splurge guns and the sets. Then he sent me the script, and I loved it. I was playing Vegas a lot and when I agreed to do it, he came over to talk to me. I was opening for Liza Minnelli or Olivia Newton John, I don’t remember who. Alan and I sat down at a deli, drank coffee and I was just singing bits and pieces of songs that I thought would be good ideas. I thought we needed to open with a song about Bugsy. It poured out of me. When the marriage is right, that seems to happen with me.

What was your own connection to American gangster movies? Were you a fan?

PW: Oh, my god, I was a huge Humphrey Bogart fan. One of the great times that I ever had was doing THE CHEAP DETECTIVE, because I was playing Elisha Cook’s role from THE MALTESE FALCON. As a little boy, I knew his name before I knew Santa Claus. I remember when I first came back to Hollywood to try and make it as an actor, one of the first things that happened was I walked into a drug store just as (character actor) Royal Dano was walking out. You’ve seen him in a hundred movies. I said, ‘Hiya, Mr. Dano,’ and he snapped his head around and said, ‘Hello, young man.’ I told that story on Carson, and I got a letter from Royal Dano. He said, ‘Although I don’t remember meeting you, it seems to me you were thinner then.’ I love that.

How did you approach writing the songs, because they are songs being lip-synced by children, but they are not children’s songs.

PW: The script is the Bible. The two basic tasks a songwriter have are to move the story ahead and to display the inner life of the characters. Alan Parker was similar to Jim Henson in that the rule of writing was to not write down to kids, but to write accurately for character and story. The characters Alan wrote were so strong; they are archetypes of the great Warner Bros. characters. Bugsy was John Garfield meets Humphrey Bogart.

Where did the idea come from to have the child actors lip-sync to adult voices?

PW: They got kids that could act, they got kids that could dance, but the songs had intricate rhythms and to find kids who could sing them was a challenge. I thought that if the automobiles are these weird little hybrids that make the sound of an engine but are being pedaled, and the guns shoot cream, then why couldn’t the kids sing with adult voices? It would have the feel of an animated film. It solved the whole problem. The one regret I will have my entire life is that I put another (singing) voice in Jodie Foster’s mouth; one of the great actors in American film history. That’s a terrible legacy (laughs). I did that with (the character) Beef in PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE. I used a guy named Ray Kennedy who had a great beefy voice, but when I heard Gerritt Graham sing later, I thought maybe I should have given him a shot.

This was before your collaboration with Jim Henson and the Muppets. Was Bugsy Malone a project you personally wanted to take on as something your own children could see?

PW: Bugsy Malone is the one motion picture I’ve written songs for that I’ve seen more than anything that I ever worked on, and there’s a simple reason for it. When my wife and I broke up, I would spend the weekend with my kids and I would plunk them down in front of the TV with pizza and, god bless them, they must have seen BUGSY MALONE for years. Eventually, I learned how to talk to my kids and be a sober real dad, but my kids just love BUGSY.

The closing number, “You Give a Little Love,” is Bugsy Malone’s legacy song, much like “The Rainbow Connection” is for The Muppet Movie. It was even used in a Coca-Cola Super Bowl commercial.

PW: That song is pretty much my philosophy. I absolutely believe it. My entire life has proven to me that there is something about the elegance of kindness that has always had a solid return. The core philosophy of BUGSY MALONE is, ‘We could have been anything that we wanted to be/and it’s not too late to change.’

In America, Bugsy Malone received good reviews and is a cult favorite. But it’s huge in England. Why do you think it was so embraced there?

PW: We took it to the stage in the 1980s. Every kid in England, Wales and Ireland, but especially in Great Britain, grew up seeing BUGSY MALONE. It’s like GREASE in this country. Edgar Wright did BUGSY as a kid, which led me to a role in BABY DRIVER.

Where do you rank Bugsy Malone in the Paul Williams canon?

PW: It is probably the best opportunity I ever had in this life to preach a little kindness. It’s probably the best opportunity I’ve ever been given to express the possibilities and probabilities that we could be anything we want to be. I was the runt of the litter from the Midwest; this little dude who didn’t fit into any world. I just absolutely loved music and movies and without thinking twice, I thought, ‘I’m going to do that.’ I hope BUGSY MALONE inspires that for anyone looking up at the screen and is attracted to the possibilities of telling the truth about themselves in a way that helps someone else.

Bugsy Malone is but one chapter in an incredible life and career. Have you given any thought to writing your autobiography?

PW: You know what? In recovery we call it an inventory (laughs). I think I’m at a place in my life where I feel like a beginner, like I’m just getting started. I know how idiotic that sounds at 80, but I want three digits on my driver’s license, and I think the one thing that gives me a shot at that is that I love being busy and doing the things that matter most to me, and that’s trying to tell the truth in a way that helps someone else.

#Bugsy malone #gangster pictures #warner bros #Jodie foster #child stars #child actor #old Hollywood #classic #TCM #Turner Classic Movies #Paul Williams #Donald Liebenson

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ohthewhomanity · 4 years ago

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Okay so I was listening to @amorespatospodcast talk about “The First Adventure,” and they were talking about how interesting it is that Beakley was the director of SHUSH when it dissolved, and how double-interesting it is that Beakley recommended Bradford to Scrooge when she knew that there was a mole in the agency, and they also mentioned the feather from “The Split Sword of Swanstantine” a few times…

…and this theory popped into my head, and it’s so darn wacky, I don’t really expect this to be true at all, but still… what if…?

Ducktales spoilers below the cut… haha just kidding… unless…?

On the podcast, Anna and Fabi theorized that the feather that Heron nabbed in “Swanstantine” is Scrooge’s feather, and that it could be used to clone Scrooge and create a “rightful heir of McDuck” that would allow FOWL to find the Papyrus. I like the sound of this, especially since we know that super-fast cloning IS possible in Ducktales, what with all the Gyro clones. Bradford has shown that with the help of agents like Gandra Dee, he is able to use/hijack Gyro and Fenton’s technology. FOWL wouldn’t have to wait years and years to grow an heir; they can just do it with the tech they stole. All they needed was a DNA sample: Scrooge’s feather.

But why do they need the feather now? Why didn’t they take one years ago, in all those decades of Bradford running Scrooge’s business? Bradford has clearly been calmly and quietly planning his moves for years. Why wait until Scrooge is onto him to put this plan in motion?

My answer: he didn’t wait. FOWL did take a DNA sample from Scrooge years ago. This is the second time that Bradford has tried to create a “rightful heir of McDuck.” And the first time? He succeeded!

Beakley was working with Bradford in the time of “First Adventure.” Absolutely she was. She’s the best spy in the world and she doesn’t trust anyone, so there’s nothing that Bradford could’ve said to her to make her trust him, unless she knew what he was all about. And Beakley, at some point while she was an agent of SHUSH, figured out what Bradford and FOWL were up to, and was swayed to Bradford’s side.

Beakley is not an agent of chaos. She does not encourage Scrooge to go on reckless adventures. She was happy to be his housekeeper while he was depressed for ten years, and she wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about him seeking out Atlantis in the pilot. If I remember right, she says she has more than enough adventure in her life raising Webby, and while she encourages Scrooge to talk to his grandnephews, since she values family, she doesn’t tell Scrooge to take them on an adventure. In fact, Scrooge makes a point of telling the kids to not tell Beakley that they’re going, as though he knows she wouldn’t approve.

When Beakley joins the adventure gang in “Last Crash of the Sunchaser,” she is appalled to learn that Scrooge regularly puts the kids – particularly Webby – in danger. I can 100% imagine strict, meticulous, rule-abiding Beakley hearing Bradford’s pitch about controlling the world to stop terrible, chaotic things from happening anymore, and thinking, “Huh, sure, I’m on board with order!”

“But what about ‘The Case Files of Agent 22?’” you ask. “Beakley was working with Scrooge against FOWL then!”

Well, it all depends on exactly when Beakley caught onto Bradford and he gave her his pitch. It could be that the flashbacks we see in “Case Files” are before this, and Beakley is completely above-board at this point. It’s also possible that Beakley is already working with Bradford.

Think about how protocol-oriented she is in this episode. She wants to do things by the book. She hates that Scrooge is going off the rails and changing the plan. She learns to like and respect him over the course of the episode, but the way she reacts to Scrooge’s loose-cannon nature reminds me a lot of how Bradford reacts to Heron in “First Adventure.” Scrooge also encourages Beakley to lighten up in a similar way to how Heron encourages Bradford to embrace his inner villain. Order versus chaos. Control versus adventure.

Maybe Heron had gone off the rails and started acting super extra villain-ish, creating a secret island laboratory and trying to use the Gummi Berries herself instead of just collecting/destroying them like Bradford would have wanted, and so Bradford asked Beakley to reign her in, and she did so in a way that aligned with SHUSH’s agenda, too. After all, she’s a spy; she could easily have ulterior motives for her actions. Along the way, she befriends Scrooge. And if Scrooge trusts and likes Beakley, this helps FOWL. It means that when Bradford finally decides to take a more active role in taking over the world, Beakley can tell Scrooge to let Bradford control his business.

So. We’ve got Bradford trying to take over the world, and we’ve got Beakley – the director of SHUSH – secretly working with him. And now Bradford has access to Scrooge’s finances and technologies. And, Bradford still wants the Papyrus. Maybe he’s going to just keep it. Maybe he just wants to make sure that the McDuck family doesn’t get it. Maybe he’s going to use it to get what he wants – total control of a completely orderly, boring world. The important thing is, to find the Papyrus, Bradford needs a McDuck heir.

Hence the cloning. Bradford gets close enough to Scrooge to get a feather, or some more significant DNA sample. But that’s not all he needs. Anna and Fabi pointed out that a clone wouldn’t necessarily be an “heir.” It would just be a copy. Bradford would need someone else’s DNA to combine with it.

Now, whose DNA would Bradford use? Who would he want to take a sample from? Who does Bradford have on hand who knows what he’s planning and isn’t a total villainous loose cannon?

Answer: Beakley.

It takes a long time. They don’t have Gyro to mooch off of; he’s in Japan, and even when Scrooge does hire him, he hasn’t developed his own cloning technology yet. So when they do finally create the clone, it’s a baby. They’re going to have to wait for it to grow up and be able to find the Papyrus for them.

Meanwhile, Scrooge doesn’t notice any of this, because he’s having a grand old time roaming the world with Donald and Della, creating plenty of chaos for Bradford to hate.

And then – the Spear of Selene. Della vanishes. Donald takes the eggs and leaves. Scrooge is grief-struck.

And so, I think, is Beakley.

I think Beakley has grown attached to the clone-baby, much more than she expected to, and much more than Bradford or anyone else in FOWL has. And I think Beakley, seeing her friend so affected by the loss of his family, suddenly started thinking about how terrible she would feel if something were to happen to this baby. And with Bradford in control, with Bradford who clearly doesn’t understand the power or importance of family using this baby as a tool in his plans, something terrible is bound to happen to this baby.

So she, like Donald, took the baby and ran.

Maybe she struck a deal with Bradford. Maybe she said, “Look, Scrooge isn’t going on any adventures anymore. You don’t have to worry about him creating chaos. Just keep on controlling the world using the money of the richest duck in the world, and you’ll have what you want. As the director of SHUSH, I’ll tell everyone that FOWL was defeated, and dissolve SHUSH so no one will look into your work anymore. I’ll even go keep an eye on Scrooge, and I’ll let you know if he does start adventuring again. Just let me keep the baby.”

And Bradford said yes.

And Beakley told the baby that she was her grandmother.

And Beakley spent the next decade telling her granddaughter not to bother Scrooge. Remember that that is the reason Webby gives in “Case Files” when Scrooge asks why they haven’t gone on adventures together before – Beakley told her not to bother Scrooge. Beakley didn’t want Scrooge adventuring, and she didn’t want Webby in danger.

Fast forward to “Moonvasion.” Bradford has been content this long to quietly control the world, since Scrooge hasn’t been running around causing chaos. But now, the McDuck family has caused an alien invasion of Earth. And like Bradford says, you can’t control the world if the world is destroyed.

So he goes back to his original plan. Collect the magical artifacts that the McDucks and related villains might use to cause chaos. And, importantly, find the Papyrus, the most dangerous of them all.

But, again, he needs the rightful heir of McDuck. There’s a couple potential heirs running around to choose from, but again, there’s only one person who Scrooge McDuck trusts that Bradford has reason to think he could control.

So Bradford contacts Beakley and tells her to bring Webby to him. And we know – Frank Angones has confirmed this – that Beakley would do anything to protect Webby. To protect her physically, and also, as we learned in “Lost Harp of Mervana,” to protect Webby’s perception of Beakley as a good person. The last thing Beakley wants to do now is expose Webby to FOWL and let her discover the truth.

Beakley would do anything to protect Webby. So she agrees to help Bradford create a new clone. She’s a true double agent, actively and sincerely working with both sides. In “Escape from the Impossibin,” she is both serving as a part of the distraction to keep the family from noticing the theft of the missing mysteries until it’s too late (which puts Scrooge in a hurry, sending him out into the field in “Swanstantine,” giving Heron the chance to grab the feather), and she’s also trying to prepare Webby for the very real possibility of having to fight her own family, Beakley included.

Only the best spy in the world – which Beakley is! – could pull something like this off. The thought of losing Webby (both physically and emotionally – if Webby finds out that Beakley betrayed Scrooge, Beakley could lose Webby forever) scares and upsets Beakley enough for her to betray everyone else she cares about, and even sell out the entire world to Bradford.

TL;DR, Beakley is the mole, she initially joined FOWL because she likes order but now is working with them to protect Webby, Webby is a potential rightful heir of Scrooge McDuck, and FOWL is cloning a new heir.

…and now, after rereading this whole thing for typos, I actually kind of buy my own cracky theory. Wow.

And now I’m imagining a future callback to “Last Crash,” when Scrooge told Webby that she wasn’t family, with Beakley standing right there to hear it, which he still to this day has not apologized for. What if Beakley, desperate not to lose her granddaughter, used that painful memory to try to convince Webby that betraying Scrooge to protect her was the right thing to do?

#ducktales #webby vanderquack #scrooge mcduck #ducktales 2017 #dt 2017 #ducktales theory #bentina beakley #bradford buzzard #ducktales spoilers #ducktales season 3 #the split sword of swanstantine #the first adventure #the last crash of the sunchaser #from the confidential case files of agent 22 #moonvasion #fowl #shush #amores patos podcast #i mean if nothing else I'll make this the backstory of AYHAPII if I don't like what canon does

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feelingbluepolitics · 4 years ago

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*** Highest recommendation. ***

"Sanctioning [t]rump or Greene offered the party an opportunity to draw a bright line against extremist groups and violence as a means of advancing political goals. But the vast majority of congressional Republicans conspicuously rejected the opportunity to construct such a barrier through their decisions to oppose impeachment or conviction for [t]rump over his role in the US Capitol attack and to support Greene during the recent Democratic effort to strip her of her committee assignments.

"Those choices unfolded against a backdrop of recent polls that found a stunningly high percentage of rank-and-file Republican voters endorsed anti- small-d democratic sentiments, including the belief that 'the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.'

"In a survey released last week by the conservative American Enterprise Institute, not only did a majority of GOP voters endorse that statement, but nearly one-third of them also embraced the convoluted QAnon conspiracy theory Greene has espoused alleging that [t]rump is defending the nation against a global ring of influential child sex traffickers.

..."Voters sympathetic to these conspiracy theories and the use or threat of violence as a political tool, says Daniel Cox, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who supervised the poll, have become 'a really important faction that the Republican Party is going to have to address.

..."Through their inactions on [t]rump and Greene, Republicans 'are normalizing, they are mainstreaming, what counterterrorism experts would say is violent extremism: that it is acceptable to use inflammatory rhetoric and encourage violence to achieve your ends and ... it is acceptable to engage in public life through conspiracy theories,' says Elizabeth Neumann, a former assistant secretary for threat prevention in the Department of Homeland Security for [t]rump who resigned and opposed his reelection.

"'They have fed the monster for so long that even when it turns on them, when the barbarians are literally at the gate ... when they were the targets and they were prey, they still will not turn on it. That's how dangerous is the societal threat that we are facing.'

..."The exact share of the GOP coalition responsive to extremist White nationalist beliefs or the use of violence to advance political goals is impossible to measure precisely. But polling and other research suggests that the best way to think about it may be through concentric circles radiating out from hard-core believers willing to commit violence themselves to a much broader range of GOP voters who might not become violent personally but express sympathy or understanding for those who do.

"The inner circle are the extremists actively participating in potentially violent White nationalist extremism. Neumann recently told me that number might total about 75,000 to 100,000 people.

..."Even more Republicans, of course, have consistently told pollsters they accept [t]rump's baseless claim that the election was stolen -- even though his 'evidence' was rejected by courts all over the country, including by many Republican judges. In the American Enterprise Institute poll, fully half of Republicans said the attack on the Capitol was engineered not by [t]rump supporters but by Antifa, a loose affiliation of leftist protesters -- a claim utterly disproved by the evidence.

"And a huge share of Republican voters has seconded [t]rump's apocalyptic warnings -- delivered even in his speech on the morning of the Capitol riot -- that Democrats were trying to steal 'our country' and transform it into something unrecognizable. In a mid-January poll by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, two-thirds of Republicans said that when [t]rump leaves office 'America as we know it will be over' and three-fourths described him as a 'true patriot.'

..."GOP voters most likely to justify violence and express extremist anti-democratic ideas tend to be those also most receptive to the views that studies have shown are the best predictor of support for [t]rump: hostility to the demographic and cultural changes remaking America.

"'The strongest predictor by far of these antidemocratic attitudes is ethnic antagonism [i.e. RACISM] -- especially concerns about the political power and claims on government resources of immigrants, African-Americans, and Latinos."

..."Perhaps not surprisingly, the American Enterprise Institute survey also found that anti-democratic and extremist attitudes had penetrated most deeply in the portions of the GOP coalition that have provided the most die-hard support for [t]rump, including Republican voters without college degrees and White Christian evangelicals. Nearly three-fifths of White evangelical Christian Republicans said Antifa was mostly responsible for the attack on the Capitol.

..."The growing racial and religious diversity that triggers the retreat from democratic values among a growing number of GOP voters will only accelerate in the next decade. If the Republican Party does not find more will to explicitly renounce the dark forces circling around [t]rump, persistent outbursts of White nationalist political violence could be the deadly drumbeat for the years ahead.

"'Clearly they think that's where the base is and they can't change it,' Neumann told me. 'But I would argue we are at a moment where ... if nobody steps up and tries to tell the truth and tries to lead people out of this echo chamber of stolen elections and [the belief that] violence is justified, that is catastrophic for the country. We will not survive as a democracy.'"

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her-leading-man · 4 years ago

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How do you handle being blue in the south? Is it as bad as the news says?

I have a bit of a different perspective on this as I am a life-long Republican. I left the Republican party, however, when Donald Trump was nominated by Republicans. I find the man abhorrent, embarrassing and incompetent. In 2016, I could see from my social media accounts that there was a major shift happening. The more he attacked, slandered and instilled fear of non-whites, the more white people loved him. He was viewed as a rebel and someone who would root out corruption. Even my fellow church members embraced him with open arms. I lost so much respect for people that I thought had good minds and a sense of morality. They embraced a reality TV show rapist; mostly because of their hate of Obama and Clinton. There was only one other man in my church who shared my disdain for him. I’ve lost many friends because I have spoken out against Trump and have been labeled as “woke” and a liberal. Long before I divorced, I was becoming more sympathetic to social causes that the church and the Republican party is happy to ignore. I am not a fan, at all, of the policies of the progressive arm of the Democrat party.

The whole culture here is that if Rush Limbaugh and Fox News say it, it is fact and true, and if any other “news” source disagrees they are liberal-biased and “fake.” Since leaving the church and divorcing, I have moved out of rural Alabama and into the inner city. I am trying to build a network of friends who are not in the Trump-cult, but it is a challenge. I have a near-zero tolerance of Trump/QAnon-cult members. I don’t feel like I belong in this state. I try to speak out against the cult, but to little effect. There is no changing of anyone’s mind. It didn’t matter who the Democrats nominated or chose as the running mate. The vote is set. Trump and all of the supporters of Trumpism MUST be soundly defeated on November 3rd. There will be no surrender; it must be fatally wounded. The margin of victory has to be embarrassingly high in order to kill it. My Blue vote will not matter much, but I implore anyone who lives outside of the deep south to make your vote count. The fate of our nation and any ounce of respect we may still have with our allies depends on this vote.

HLM

#my life

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nodesiretogrowup · 5 years ago

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LET’S GET READY TO RE-CAAAAAAAAP

“I have numerous science-based questions” I mean, same. It also sets up that Huey is gonna be out of his element this episode

SCROOGE HAS NO TIME FOR SCIENCE

“I AM THAT CHAMPION.” A bit full of yourself there. I couldn’t hear this line without saying “I’M. THAT. HERO.” Oh VeggieTales, you’ll always be with me

THEY ALL LOOK SO ADORABLE!!

I like that Louie does a finger gun when Scrooge gets to him

Like I said earlier, I DO NOT care Scrooge already putting pressure on these kids

Poor Dewey seems like he’s the unfavorite, which is probably how Donald felt as well

Huey makes a good point and I do NOT like how dismissive Scrooge is of the twins

That being said...they totally killed someone in battle

SOMEDAY WE’LL FIND IT, THE RAINBOW CONNECTION!

Why didn’t Launchpad crash? I know he can land w/o crashing but it’s usually when he lands in water. THIS FEELS IMPORTANT SOMEHOW though it probably isn’t

“THEY FOUND A WAY TO MAKE RAINBOWS BETTER!” God, I love Webby

“This is the best day.” WEBBY, YOU ARE REACHING CRITICAL LEVELS OF ADORABLE

Birds with beards look odd

“Yeah, sure. Of course.” Poor Huey, magic and mythology aren’t his strong point

I love that it says Odin’s Closet over the shirts. It’s the little details

“Guess Louie knows what Louie’s doing today.” And then he disappears into the shirts. I can appreciate someone who knows what they’re about

I want ALL the shirts from this episode!

“WHOA, IT’S WRESTLING!” He looks so dang happy, it’s ADORABLE

“THIS IS AWESOME!” Chanting is fun

“So these guys just copied professional wrestling?” Huey, you’re form of logic is not welcome here

Does that mean Scrooge told someone about his battles and inspired them to create pro wrestling? I’m gonna go with that

“And they will love me for it!” Dewey, sweetie, that’s only how it works half the time

I loved all the man-snake stuff. Made me giggle

Man snake be THICC. HOT DAMN

I love the little pig ref. HE’S SO CUTE

Jormungandr knows how to pump up a crowd

So, like, is everyone in the audience technically DEAD?! That makes this episode slightly darker. I dig it

I wonder if Jormungandr sees Earth’s destruction as a good thing for Earth. Like if he genuinely thinks they’d be better off in Valhalla. Or if he’s just a bastard who wants to watch the world burn

Scrooge is a bit too into playing the heel

The way Scrooge moves and the faces he makes as the Millionaire Miser remind me of Glomgold

“I watch a lot of wrestling while I fly.” “Wait, while?” This exchange always cracks me up

“Uncle Scrooge is the greatest hero of all time.” “Huh, I guess not everyone thinks so.” I feel like this is foreshadowing later events

RIP Announcer Puffin

“DIBS ON ANNOUNCING!” A dude just got KO’d bro! Have a bit of respect

And the return of the dynamic sports announcer duo. Glad Huey got his badge

I NEED MORE WRESTLING ANNOUNCER LP

Strongbeard is DOPE

“How did you know that?” “Just calling it like I see it. WRESTLING!” The real reason Launchpad knows is because he’s actually Thor but doesn’t remember. I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL

FEAR THE BEARD

“What matters is I’m doing the right thing.” I don’t know, you really seem to enjoy being a heel

This whole match is great

Dewey, there ARE NO RULES IN WRESTLING. Plus you aren’t the ref, so you can’t make that call

I have very inappropriate jokes go through my head when only one arm absorbs the beard energy

“I am so confused.” CONSTANT MOOD

DID SCROOGE NARUTO RUN AT STRONGBEARD?!

I like that Scrooge dives onto him the same way he dives into his bin

LP is so excited he pushes Huey out of the way for NO REASON

HOLY FUCK THAT DUDE THREW A CHAIR AT A CHILD!

All the bone cracking in this episode made me uncomfortable, as in my bones hurt during it

“He is such a good guy.” I’d say he’s a fair guy, not necessarily a good guy

“Which two of you will fight for me?” Webby has been waiting for this moment her WHOLE LIFE

Louie, always taking time to make that money

Who gave him a shirt cannon?!

I love that the dude comes up wearing the shirt

Dewey just slaps Scrooge in the face

Champ POPular! Too cute! I love his hair and outfit. Though I don’t think Champ POPular’s “too popular to hate.” If anything he might annoy people due to his popularity

I thought he was gonna pull out yo-yos as his “finishing touch” and I was sad when it was lollipops even though that makes more sense. BRING BACK THE YO-YOS!

“Do all the fighting and make sure he doesn’t die.” That is a valid concern

WE WILL WE WILL ROCK YOU! I’D KNOW IT ANYWHERE

Huey taking notes is adorable

“Just in time for the tag-team round.” “Wait, they’re playing tag now?! MAN!” I love how Danny says MAN

How does Huey not know what a tag-team is? It’s a pretty common term

I love Launchpad’s reading face

Dewey has red, blue, and green lollipops. Cute

“HE’S THROWING LOLLIPOPS BECAUSE HE THINKS WE’RE SUCKERS!” That took me off guard and I laughed so hard

“I’ve known you my whole life, I kinda knew how this would play out.” Louie is genre savvy. Perhaps too savvy. He’s gonna figure out he’s in a tv show

“More like Champ POP..ulation zero because he has no friends...in Friendtown.” I fail to see how that was any worse than LP’s “more like Champ UN-POPular.”

“WE HATE YOU NOW!” Tough crowd

Huey’s face after that. I just want to pinch his lil cheeks

WEBBY DON’T NEED NO WRESTLER NAME

It TOTALLY went over my head that they censored Hela with Hecka (at least they used her better than the MCU did. WE COULD HAVE HAD SO MUCH BETTER)

I would let her pin me to the mat and crush my skull in

“Oh, COME ON, THIS is what you like?! A creepy goth and her pet dog!” SHUT UP, DEWEY, THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I WANT! I’m surprised Webby didn’t slap him for the “creepy goth” comment seeing as Lena is goth and misunderstood

“HECKA YEAH! HECKA YEAH!” SHE’S SO COOL AND SEXY AND SHE HAS A DOG

Poor Huey, he’s doing his best. Hope he takes a shower later because he got pretty sweaty

HECKA COULD STEP ON ME AND I’D SAY THANK YOU

Why did Huey have all those corn puns?

“YOU’RE THE WORST! YOU’RE THE WORST!” It’s just not Huey’s day

“You don’t have to try to make it sound great, it already is.” Did this remind anyone else of Dewey’s “don’t overthink it” advice to Launchpad from Double-O Duck? He’s doing his best to help Huey

I WANT HECKA TO DESTROY ME

“EMBRACE THE BOOZE BOOS.”

Poor Dewey

WEBBY IS A BEAST! SHE WAS BORN FOR THIS!

“EMBRACE YOUR INNER HEEL!” Cuz being a heel is fun!

DUDE, WEBBY TOOK DOWN THE GODDESS OF DEATH WITH NOTHING BUT HER LEGS AND THIGHS! WE STAN!

I like that Fenny has knee pads on

“AW, YOU’RE SO DANGEROUS AND CUTE! I JUST WANT TO PET YOUR LITTLE BELLY!” WEBBY IS ME

“A classic ‘who’s a good boy?’ gambit!” AND I’D FALL FOR IT TOO! SUCH A GOOD BOI

“Wait, am I the Launchpad here?” Bitch, you WISH

“YOU CAN’T GIVE CANDY TO A DOG!” This is why you don’t have a pet, Dewey

“WHOA, back from THE DEAD for the QUEEN of the DEAD!”

Kind of a dick move, Louie

AIR GUITAR!

Jormungandr looks like a Masters of the Universe knock-off toy

WHO’S A GOOD BOI? YOU ARE!

“With a toxic personality” I think you’re projecting a bit, Jormungandr

How does Huey not know what a battle royale is? That is a very common term! Hell, there is a well known book and movie with that title!

“I’m just a humble, noble snake man of the people.” Why does the term snake man make me laugh so much?

WOY REFERENCE FTW

Dewey needs a hug! And some therapy would probably be a good idea

Scrooge’s speech started on a good note then went downhill FAST

“And lastly, I’ll use the dust of your bones as sweetener in my tea.” DAMN

“TOO FAR!” I DON’T THINK IT’S FAR ENOUGH! TELL HIM HOW YOU WILL BATHE IN HIS BLOOD

FUCK YEAH BEAKLEY!

SHE GAVE HIM THE CHAIR! I think this CONFIRMS Beakley as a wrestling fan

“I know we’re supposed to take over for Scrooge one day, but do you ever wonder if maybe we’re not cut out for it?” YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TO WONDER THOSE THINGS AT ALL!

Louie’s like WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS SHIT!

“Be LP” My new mantra

Aw, Louie sees Dewey as a hero. Like how LP saw Drake as a hero. I think @drakepad is onto something, this scene and the fight scene seem WAAAAY too much like Drake’s intro to be just a coincidence

I keep saying this, but Louie should consider a career in motivational speaking. He knows what people need to hear

“Let’s do this!” “I don’t know.” “Let’s Dewey this?” “I’m in.”

“I’LL SHED YOUR SKIN FOR YOU!” If he hadn’t of had an old man back moment that would have been a BRUTAL CUT

OMG WAS LAUNCHPAD WEARING THAT THE WHOLE TIME? You see his clothes fly off when he jumps in the ring

“Whoa. In a COMPLETELY UNEXPECTED TWIST, the announcer was Captain Crash THIS WHOLE TIME!” LP does underground wrestling matches in his spare time, TELL ME I’M WRONG

“YOUR CATCHPHRASES ARE FORCED!” I agree, Dewey could have done WAY BETTER

I like Louie just GLARING at the dude who insulted Dewey’s catchphrase

LP looks so proud of Huey

“I don’t care at all, why should I?” Methinks the snake man doth protest too much

I like how Jormungandr’s pupils are thinner during the climax. It shows off his true nature

Dewey should have been the one to do a spin attack, ya know, cuz he’s Sonic? I’ll go now

“The Pop never Stops.” That was better

WHERE ARE ALL THESE CHAIRS COMING FROM?!

I LEGIT thought Strongbeard was gonna throw Dewey his axe and I was like Dewey wouldn’t be able to lift that

SUPER SAIYAN DEWEY! Also was that a TIGER SNARL?

I like the ice pack on Launchpad’s head. Just because he can take a lot of damage doesn’t mean that LP is immune to pain

I like that the crowd CHANGED THEIR BANNERS! Nice

LOUIE AND WEBBY LOOKED SO CUTE!

LP tearing up

“A true people’s hero” I feel like that phrase will come back in relation to other characters (cough DW cough)

Scrooge is such a little shit, it’s kind of adorable

THAT END SHOT! THAT SONG!

This was a SUPER FUN EPISODE! I couldn’t really tell where they were going and I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT! I wish we had gotten Huey in some wrestling gear but maybe next time. I like the message that doing the right thing isn’t always popular but I kind of feel like Dewey getting the crowd on his side muddled the message somewhat. Poor Dewey needs therapy or something so he doesn’t feel like he needs CONSTANT approval. Again, he’s 11 YEARS OLD and shouldn’t be put into such a serious position. LP was VIP this episode. I’m bummed we’re on hiatus again, but WHAT an episode to end on!

#ducktales #dt spoilers

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 4 years ago

Text

I’m Billy Graham’s granddaughter. Evangelical support for Donald Trump insults his legacy.

American evangelist Billy Graham preaches to over half a million South Koreans at a plaza on Yoido Island in Seoul on June 3, 1973.

By supporting Donald Trump, evangelical leaders are failing us and failing the Gospel. Christian women must step up where our church leaders won't.

Jerushah Duford, Opinion contributor

USA TODAY Opinion • August 27, 2020

As a proud granddaughter of the man largely credited for beginning the evangelical movement, the late Billy Graham, the past few years have led me to reflect on how much has changed within that movement in America.

I have spent my entire life in the church, with every big decision guided by my faith. But now I feel homeless. Like so many others, I feel disoriented as I watch the church I have always served turn its eyes away from everything it teaches. I hear from Christian women on a daily basis who all describe the same thing: a tug at their spirit.

Most of these women walked into a voting booth in 2016 believing they were choosing between two difficult options. They held their breath, closed their eyes and cast a vote for Donald Trump, whom many of us then believed to be “the lesser of two evils,” all the while feeling that tug.

Jerushah Duford and grandfather Billy Graham in Montreat, North Carolina, in 2016.

I feel it every time our president talks about government housing having no place in America’s suburbs. Jesus said repeatedly to defend the poor and show kindness and compassion to those in need. Our president continues to perpetuate an us-versus-them narrative, yet almost all of our church leaders say nothing.

I feel this tug every time our president or his followers speak about the wall, designed to keep out the very people Scripture tells us to welcome. In Trump’s America, refugees are not treated as “native born,” as Scripture encourages. Instead, families are separated, held in inconceivable conditions and cast aside as less than.

The church honors Trump before God

Trump has gone so far as to brag about his plans, accomplishments and unholy actions toward the marginalized communities I saw my grandfather love and serve. I now see, through the silence of church leaders, that these communities are no longer valued by individuals claiming to uphold the values my grandfather taught.

The gentle tug became an aggressive yank, for me, earlier this year, when our country experienced division in the form of riots, incited in great part by this president’s divisive rhetoric. I watched our president walk through Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., after the tear gassing of peaceful protesters for a photo op.

He held a Bible, something so sacred to all of us, yet he treated that Bible with a callousness that would offend anyone intimately familiar with the words inside it. He believed that action would honor him and only him. However, the church, designed to honor God, said nothing.

It seems that the only evangelical leaders to speak up praised the president, with no mention of his behavior that is antithetical to the Jesus we serve. The entire world has watched the term “evangelical” become synonymous with hypocrisy and disingenuousness.

My faith and my church have become a laughing stock, and any attempt by its members to defend the actions of Trump at this time sound hollow and insincere.

One of my grandfather’s favorite verses was Micah 6:8, in which we are told that the Lord requires of his people to do justly, to love kindness and mercy, and to walk humbly. These are the attributes of our faith we should present to the world. We can no longer allow our church leaders to represent our faith so erroneously.

Women of faith know better

I have given myself permission to lean into that tug at my spirit and speak out. I may be against the tide, but I am firm in my faith that this step is most consistent with my church and its teachings.

At a recent large family event, I was pulled aside by many female family members thanking me for speaking out against an administration with which they, too, had been uncomfortable. With tears in their eyes, they used a hushed tone, out of fear that they were alone or at risk of undeserved retribution.

How did we get here? How did we, as God-fearing women, find ourselves ignoring the disrespect and misogyny being shown from our president? Why do we feel we must express our discomfort in hushed whispers in quiet corners? Are we not allowed to stand up when it feels everyone else around us is sitting down?

The God we serve empowers us as women to represent Him before our churches. We represent God before we represented any political party or leader. When we fail to remember this, we are minimizing the role He created for us to fill. Jesus loved women; He served women; He valued women. We need to give ourselves permission to stand up to do the same.

If a plane gets even slightly off course, it will never reach its destination without a course correction. Perhaps this journey for us women looks similar. Perhaps you cringe at the president suggesting that America’s “suburban housewife” cares more about her status than those in need, but try to dismiss comments on women’s appearance as fake news.

When we look at our daughters, our nieces, our female students, and even ourselves, we feel the need to lean into that tug on our spirit. You might not have felt it four years ago; we do the best with what we know at the time. However, if we continue to ignore the tug we now feel, how will we ever be able to identify what is truly important to us?

I chose to listen to my spirit to speak out. Not because doing so feels comfortable, but because it feels like the right way to leverage the voice God has empowered me with. Now I am asking all of you who feel as I do, to embrace your inner tug, and allow it to lead you to use the power of your God-given voice and not allow Trump to lead this country for another four years.

Jerushah Duford is an evangelical author, speaker and member of Lincoln Women, a coalition of women in the Lincoln Project.

_______________________________________

A false gospel: Trump and the 'prosperity gospel' sell false promises to credulous evangelical Christians

_______________________________________

The forgotten figure who explains how Trump got almost 74 million votes

Why do so many evangelicals continue to deny that Biden won the election?

Six Surprising Ways Jesus Changed The World

Jesus ‘Bows to Moon’

The Korean background of the FFWPU

The FFWPU / Unification Church and Shamanism

The FFWPU is unequivocally not Christian

Sun Myung Moon – Emperor, and God

The Moons’ God is not the God of Judeo-Christianity

Hak Ja Han is ‘Female Jesus, the only begotten daughter of God, the LSA’ (October 24, 2015)

God, Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han achieved unity inside the womb…. Hak Ja Han was lifted up to God’s wife position.

#Billy Graham #Evangelical Christianity #Sun Myung Moon #Hak Ja Han

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oveliagirlhaditright · 5 years ago

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Sunshine - A Sora Character Study Piece with Some SoKai

What my piece for the Sora Zine on Tumblr would have been, if I'd gotten in: when you know the answer to why you are the way you are--and while that state of your being itself never really changes, perhaps the reason for it does. Why does Sora always smile? This is my way of trying to answer that: based on my favorite Sora fic (that's now gone) that tried to answer the same question in the KHII era. KHIII-centric.

@thedeliverygod I think you were interested in reading this? Well, here it finally is:)

Author’s Note: Highly inspired by my favorite Sora character study of all time, that has now sadly been lost to the void. Sora sat at a campfire, by himself now, as he again thought over how Donald and Goofy had just asked him why he was always smiling. He’d at first thought they were joking, and wanted him to retort it was because the gummi ship ran on happy faces. Right? But the moment he could tell they were serious, he had of course answered that it was because of his friends who were always with him in more ways than one, and who had saved him so many times. Though that had done nothing to alleviate Donald and Goofy’s fears, either. Sora hadn’t known why they were concerned, and still didn’t. Was it because his happy-go-lucky attitude during the Exam had made him an easy target for Xehanort… or did they were worry his denying his inner darkness—and blocking it out with light—would lead to him falling? Sora wasn’t sure. But even though he had been confused by Donald and Goofy’s worry and still was, he was also touched by their love for them and had made sure to tell them that. And he had promised them that if they were that afraid of what might happen, he’d make sure to try and somewhat do better on this quest—as long as they were always with him, and they promised him they would be. So, while going out to the new worlds, Sora tried to be light and humorous as he usually was when the situation called for it—and this time, the situation really did call for it most of the time. And Sora felt like he, Donald, and Goofy were getting into more funny hijinks with people than they usually did—but also to make sure he was sober, if need be. But oh, when he got to the Keyblade Graveyard—and he needed to be upset there more than ever, with all that he lost—Sora ended up wishing strongly that he’d never thought about any of this, about giving himself a reality check… that he would have just opted to stay optimistic, and that Kingdom Hearts maybe would have rewarded him if he had. And when he was crying to Riku, that he was worthless without his friends and now they were all gone… what other choice did fate have, then, then to swallow both him and Riku up, too, to make Sora pay for those words? …And then Sora found his Light in the Darkness. His Kairi: something that he’d been suspecting about her and their bond for a while now… And though most of this was lost in the depths of his memories, Sora had thought he’d heard that term used about Kairi in regard to him before. And he’d idly wondered then if that meant what he was taking from it: that he, perhaps, would have been a much different person—a darker one—if Kairi hadn’t come into his life like a comet for the soul. But it was only after Sora had twirled her around—feeling better than he had in a long time, when he realized that she had saved him as she had promised, and that through that it had allowed him to aid everyone else, too—and Kairi was explaining things to him, that Sora thought he really understood it all. No… he wouldn’t have necessarily been a different person without Kairi, but her natural light—that of a Princess of Heart—made his shine all the brighter, as she worked with him to get things done (though Kairi, ever modest, wouldn’t take credit for any of that at all). And Sora hoped that he could somehow make her shine all the brighter, too—and that he could do the same for his other friends—so they could show the world what it could be by example, not leave it as it was. And it was why Sora suddenly decided that Donald and Goofy thinking he smiled too much—even if he of course got where they had been coming from—was wrong: because if the other way was just seeing the crack in the surface, instead of finding a way to patch it up through sheer force of will… Sora knew which one he’d choose every single time. When Kairi brought Sora back to the others, he was truly out of breath from everything he’d just experienced—and also in being in awe at Kairi, who all of his feelings for were finally coming together like a massive puzzle—but as Sora felt that he’d just figured out a mystery of the universe through it all, and that the prophecy really meant nothing and they had to win… what else would he feel soon after, than the rug being pulled out from under him once again? The person who had just given Sora all these wonderful feelings—and made square pieces fit into circles holes for him, like they never had before—… Kairi, was struck down right in front of Sora’s eyes. And there was no world without her. For a moment, Sora fell himself being pulled into the pit of darkness, that he’d always fought so hard against, as he tried to murder Xehanort for his actions and almost seemed to wish that it had been anyone but Kairi who had died. Eventually—like how the night was always darkest before the dawn—Sora found some hope again… in the form of Roxas chastising him, of all people, for being worried… in Xion comforting him about Kairi’s condition… with Donald and Goofy being there for him as they always were—as Sora so needed—now being his points of reason… and in the promise that there was a way to stop Master Xehanort, after all. And Sora held onto this promise and did the right thing for the world, as he had since he’d realized on his first adventure that his new friends from the other worlds were just as much his responsibility as anyone and anything else. And so, Sora found bits of the light again this way… even though at this point, it was like slats of it coming in through barely opened blinds—the darkness still ever-present there—but he would gladly take it to any alternative. And Sora found himself thinking about Kairi—as he fought and fought and fought the Xehanort clones in Scala Ad Caelum, in some ways thinking he was losing his chance to see Kairi ever again forever by doing so, but also thinking that this might be the only way to save her… Perhaps he’d put her up on a pedestal. Even if she couldn’t have darkness in her heart, it was clear that she still had anxieties, insecurities, and self-consciousness that she worked through to be the most bright star that she was. In a lot of ways, she had worked to push the light through her own blinds, too, and wasn’t too different from Sora right now, in that way. And that… that was really the way one ought to live their life—and it was now clearer to Sora than anything else was; he knew Donald and Goofy even did this themselves, too (“No frowning, no sad faces.” “Yeah, you’ve gotta look funny. Like us.”), even if they hadn’t quite seen it on that night a few months back—so when the choice soon became Sora’s own life or Kairi’s, Sora chose the latter gladly; and made sure to embrace Kairi with any light he could, even to his last moments, so she might never know the clouds as the backdrop to the silver lining while he was there. But Sora wasn’t foolish enough to think it would all be rainbows and sunshine for Kairi without him, either. No. But Sora liked to believe that maybe he’d passed on some of his light to her--so she had that to stand on, and to fight the darkness with, when she surely started her own journey, that would surely be so much like his. For the ones you loved deserved nothing less than all the sunshine you could give them, in Sora’s eyes.

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crushedbyhyperbole · 5 years ago

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Beyond Broken - Chapter Six

Chapter Summary: Thor's stalking reaches a new high with the help of a certain former Russian spy. He comes to realise that he's hopelessly addicted to the woman named Jess. Thor gives her a name for himself, and they strike an easy rapport. Weeks on, something suddenly changes and Thor is thrown into a dilemma: kiss the girl or do the honourable thing.

Words: 5.6k

A/N: Here, Donald Blake is Thor's alter ego. (It's a little nod to the comics.)

Warnings: Angst, emotional hurt & distress, crying, a really mean argument happens, sexual attraction, soft Thor, first kiss, morale dilemma, guilt, bad language... also Thor is a stalker (but he means well). Really long chapter - sorry.

New Heights

Thor had accepted that the mystery woman had not wanted his company on her walk back through the park but he did not stay on the promenade. At a distance he followed her, watching her traverse the foot-worn trails through the brush in the sporadic light of the lampposts.

He watched from the shadows as she met with her fiancé, as he kissed her and they embraced. With the use of his bionic eye he watched them walk further up the street where they seemed to get into a fight. He couldn’t make out the words but he could see she was angry, and then terribly sad. Whatever that man had said or done to her was none of his business but it irritated him nonetheless.

When they both disappeared into an underground parking garage, he thought perhaps they lived there in the building above. Soon after, a small red Toyota emerged onto the street and disappeared along a side street. Perhaps not then.

There were many things about the woman that he didn’t know, and those were mostly things that he had no right to know, like where she lived or worked for example. Thor liked to know things, he preferred to be prepared.

The parking garage served the offices and businesses above, of which there was a mixture from legal to health and not surprisingly, an art studio. It also served as a limited space public parking area.

The art studio is promising. He thought.

The next day he went to investigate, disguised as a rich entrepreneur. He carried a suit very well and had seen enough of Stark’s interactions with people to know how things should be done. So, wearing the petrol blue three-piece he had worn to the first Avengers press conference and ball, and the large silvery time piece gifted to him by Clint two Christmases ago, he availed himself of the studio’s exhibition.

The paintings were mediocre at best. In all his years on Asgard, visiting all nine realms, and the years he’d spend here on Midgard, he had never seen anything as unsatisfying as what they produced in this era and called modern art. The sculptures were better, in particular a twisting metal contraption that spun, creating undulating waves using the motion of each segment. It looked like a jellyfish propelling itself through the deep ocean. The kinetic sculpture was powered by a motor inside the gallery but the intent for the piece was for it to be wind powered.

It was beautiful, mesmerising even.

“Good morning, sir.” The smartly dressed assistant approached him. “Can I show you our video catalogue of kinetic sculptures?”

“What’s the artist like?” He asked aloofly, suddenly disinterested in the motion of the sculpture.

“I don’t quite follow.”

“For me it’s more about the artists journey than the final piece. The kind of person they are, the things they’ve overcome, their process. Can you show me some biographicals on your artists instead? I have a specific need to find a connection.” Thor could feel himself oozing with charismatic over-confidence and pompousness.

“Certainly, sir.”

The young man scurried away but did not return. Instead an older lady in a designer pants suit, with a commanding presence approached.

“I understand you wanted to meet the artist.” She smiled smugly.

“You painted all of these works?” He spread his arms and gestured largely.

“Save a few.” She nodded, eyeing him like a snack.

“And the sculptures?”

“Some.” She drank him in from head to toe. “I mainly work in clay, like this one.” She stroked her hand lovingly down a large sculpture shaped like a lady’s forearm, the base was like the roots of a tree and a single leaf sprouted from one of the splayed fingers. “It’s the tree of life.” She smiled with pride.

The piece was titled Yggdrasil.

You have no idea what Yggdrasil really is. He thought.

“Poetic.” He said, nodding with false appreciation. “What about the metal-work?”

“My partner. He works large-scale for public display.” She flicked her hand dismissively. “These are the smallest of his works.”

“And it’s just the two of you?” Thor was starting to despair.

“Yes, we’re a business here, not just a labour of love, Mr…?”

“Blake.” He supplied languidly.

“Mr Blake?” She mused over the name. “British aristocracy?”

“Something like that.” He coughed nervously. “How could you tell?”

“You have a rarefied air about you. If I did portraits I’d offer you my services.” She winked, predatory.

“I’m after something in particular, a connection. Not a portrait.”

“And what is the budget, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“The price is irrelevant, for the right piece.” He took another look around, trying not to notice her greedy smirk. “None of your assistants paint?”

“No, neither of them.” She scowled.

“Are you sure? I had heard there might be a budding artist in hiding up here.” He winked at her cheekily.

“You’ve met Alasdair, and She’ree has no skill with a brush. She is wicked with record keeping but isn’t artistic in any way.”

“Sherry? The brunette?”

“She’ree. The redhead.” She was growing impatient. “It’s obvious that nothing here has caught your eye, Mr Townsend.”

“Yes,” he blinked disappointingly, “it appears this has been nothing but a wild goose chase. I apologise for wasting your time, madam.”

What in Odin’s name was he doing? Stalking a woman he’d seen out walking her dog? Visiting places in the hopes of seeing her or finding out more about her?

On his way down in the elevator he noticed an older woman staring intensely at him, unashamed. He looked away but she did not. Looking at the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the doors, his shoes, his fingernails, everywhere but her, he endured the ride to the ground floor in uncomfortable self-conscious silence. A nervous smile and a quick exit later he was striding out of the communal lobby and onto the street.

“There you are!” A familiar voice stopped his heart. He panicked. Stopped dead outside the doorway and stepped immediately left, hiding behind the pillar. He mentally blessed the girth and steadfastness of the stone feature.

“Did you see that guy?!”

“What guy?”

“The guy who just got off the elevator.”

“What guy?”

“The hunk in the swanky blue suit.”

“I didn’t see a guy.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Come on, we’ll miss all the good tables.”

She was coming. Heading his way. She’d see him and the game would be up. She’d be upset, creeped out, disgusted even. She’d tell him to stay away from her and he’d do what she asked, of course he would, but it’d hurt. Ever since he’d met her he’d felt different, less angry, less loathsome. She’d calmed his inner storm without him fully realising, until now, the extent of the effect she was having on him.

“I swear if I was twenty years younger I’d be getting arrested for rape.” The older woman laughed. “He was beautiful, Jess, absolutely stunning. My Charlie would be getting a divorce if someone like that walked into my life. Hell, I’d probably never walk right ever again.”

“Jesus woman, I can practically hear you squelching as you walk. Do you need a napkin?”

Both laughing heartily, the two women exited, and as they did so, Thor shuffled himself around the column, slotting himself between the stone and the full-length glass of the lobby frontage. The girl at the desk frowned at him.

He smiled nervously and moved away. The two women turned the corner and he was suddenly safe. And now he had a name. Jess. Why hadn’t he looked closer at the woman in the elevator? He could remember next to nothing about her except that her hair was short and light, that her eyes were brown and made him uncomfortable, and that she wore dark coloured formal attire. There were no clues at all.

He racked his brain for information. He hadn’t even seen his mystery woman, only heard her voice. There was a chance that he had been mistaken, and it hadn’t even been her.

You know in your heart it was her. He pepped himself up. Now remember more!

It was useless. The more he plundered the memory the fainter it became until he could barely hear his mystery woman’s voice in his head.

This is wrong. He berated himself. She’s taken. You should just let her go. There’s nothing for you but heartache and a knee to the groin. If you’re lucky, just heartache.

He couldn’t argue with the facts but it didn’t change the other fact that he’d become different since he’d met her. The small amount of interaction he’d had with her had lifted him out of the gutter and back on his feet. Imagine what getting to know her better could achieve. He was attracted to her, certainly, but sex wasn’t the ultimate goal. He decided he’d be happy just to have her in his life. A friend, someone he could share things with, good and bad.

So stop the creeping.

“Ok, fine!” He huffed aloud.

That evening, after he watched Jess meet her fiancé at Neptune’s coffee shop, watched him kiss her and hand the dog off to her before dashing away, Thor realised that he had no willpower, couldn’t be trusted and also he decieved himself all too often. Telling himself he’d stop stalking her had been a bare-faced lie. Well, almost. Instead, he was stalking the fiancé.

Thor tailed him six blocks to a small hotel by the lighthouse, right near where Thor lived. He knew that the man made it back to meet Jess by ten pm, so what could the fiancé of a beautiful woman like her possibly be doing going to a hotel several nights a week?

Thor disliked the man before, but now he was disgusted.

Jogging back along the promenade he made it to marker twelve later than usual. Jess was already there, sitting in his seat.

“Stealing my seat now?”

“You snooze, you lose.” Her smile was mischievous. “I thought for a moment you’d found a better spot.”

“This is definitely the best spot.”

“You sure you’re not holding out on me?”

“Certainly not.”

“Alright.” She looked at him with suspicion. “You keep your secrets.” She gave him a tiny wink.

Talking to her that evening he could only think of the betrayal that was happening at that very moment in a hotel room a little over a mile away. Where did she think her fiancé went while she was here walking their dog?

When she left their communal spot to meet back up with her fiancé again Thor followed. The man looked crumpled, dishevelled, flustered. How could she not notice that? It wasn’t Thors place to judge. Maybe she was so in love that she didn’t see, aand discover her fiancé’s treachery would break her heart.

The next day Thor used the communicator.

“Romanoff,” he rumbled, “It’s Thor. Yes, yes, I know you know who I am. Listen, I need a favour.”

He asked the former spy to get him some information on who had been staying at the hotel by the lighthouse the previous night.

“It’s a personal project.” He said vaguely when she questioned him. “I need to find someone.”

“Any thoughts on when you’re coming back? Steve is worried about you.”

“Tell him I’m fine. Tell him I said hello.”

“I’ll email you what I find.”

“Great, Thank you.”

Romanoff was thorough and efficient. There were only four rooms booked at the hotel that night. One a couple from Canada. One a lady who had been staying there since Monday and was due to leave on Sunday – promising. One a conference suite rented by the hour – also promising. And one an elderly gentleman there for one night.

There were additional notes and photographs attached. Romanoff had pulled driver’s licences, addresses and a flurry of other information from the SHIELD and law enforcement databases. The elderly gentleman apparently lived in Florida but visited New London once a year on the anniversary of his wife’s death. Not him then. The woman was staying in the hotel for a week while her house was repaired, after all the recent rainfall, her basement had been flooded and needed significant repair. Ooops. That just left the conference suite.

It had been rented on an ongoing basis by a Mr Charles S. Duffy. Charles was an investment banker living right here in New London. Age 58. Married, with one child [DECEASED]. Vehicle: Silver Ford Explorer. The plate number was right there too.

Thor sent a reply requesting more info on Duffy’s activities at the hotel, and received CCTV footage of the man entering the hotel and various cameras tracking his movements into the Seaview Suite - as the name on the door said. A short while after, a tall man looking very much like Jess’s fiancé entered the suite also. Both men emerge from the suite within minutes of each other shortly before ten pm.

His communicator played a snippet of a tune with tension and drums. He’d received a message.

[N.R] Are you P.I. Thor now?

[T.O.] It’s personal. What is P.I?

[N.R] Forget it.

[T.O] Please don’t tell Stark.

In the early evening he went to the gym. They were used to seeing him there now and happy to let him go about his business without interrupting him to find out if he knew how to use each of the machines. There was always the occasional patron who looked on, impressed, to see how much he was bench pressing. He pushed himself hard, realising he’d missed this aspect of his life.

It was warmer today than previous days. The progression into late spring /early summer was apparent now that his month-long brooding session was drawing to a close. Soon there would be more people staying out later in the evenings due to the nicer weather and the lighter nights. He decided he might as well enjoy the beach while he could.

Tucking his shoes into his gym bag he crossed the railings and dropped the few feet down onto the sand. It was cold and damp between his toes, not at all as pleasant as he had hoped. Using his bag as a seat he sat a few metres up from the dark line that marked the most recent tide line and picked out pebbles to throw at the water. If he timed it just right he could throw the pebbles right at the leading edge of the water as it shifted and began to recede.

The yap of a small dog startled him. He’d know that bark anywhere but he refused to turn around, that would be… desperate. Soon the clunk of heels along the promenade drew to a stop nearby. He continued to throw his stones, unable to prevent the small smirk that forced its way onto his lips.

It felt like he sat there for hours waiting for her to notice him, he’d exhausted all pebbles in the reachable vicinity and would be forced to move very soon. Just when he was about to admit defeat, her voice carried down to him.

“You tired of sharing your spot with me now?” She said playfully, leaning on her forearms on the railings, as was her preferred position.

Acting as if he hadn’t noticed her approach he turned, looking surprised.

“Oh, hello!” He waved and stood. “Not at all. I’m a very gracious landlord.” Approaching the raised wooden walkway he came face-to-face with her ankles. Looking upward, the line of her nylon-sheathed legs disappeared at the knee under that wonderfully shaped skirt she seemed to prefer. “You may squat here at my marker as often as you like.” He smiled, squinting a little against the light behind her. “I mean, you said you were a squatter, I didn’t mean that you should squat. Unless you’d prefer to come down here. I mean I can help you, if you’d like?”

Oh shut your infernal mouth for once! His face burned.

“I’m fine thanks.” She laughed, lowering her head until her smirk was smothered by the backs of her hands. “I’m not exactly dressed for climbing fences.”

“I’ll come up then.” He slung his bag across his back and pulled himself up and over the railings. Dusting the sand from his feet he put his shoes back on, regarding her furtively while his head was lowered.

“You come here every day?” She asked.

“In one way or another, yes.”

“Oooh, mysterious.” She poked fun. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“Well,” he rumbled, swallowing dryly, “I come here to use the gym, or run sometimes. I do live quite close, just over there in fact.” He pointed to the waterfront apartment building a mile up the shoreline. “Mostly I come here to be at peace.”

You give me peace. He thought.

Something in her face changed, softened even, if it could possibly get any more appealing. There was a sadness in her eyes. He couldn’t look away.

“You lost someone?” She broke eye contact first, staring down at her hands.

“hmm?” He was baffled for a split second. “Oh you mean The Infinity War? D-Day? Yes, I lost a great many people that day.” Did his voice just break then? “But before that even… I’ve seen some terrible things.”

He was aware that he shouldn’t be going down this road, not with her. He’d hoped to remain anonymous, to leave Thor -The Avenger behind and become Thor - the man instead. Or possibly even not Thor at all, just a man.

“Were you in the army?”

“Close enough.” He nodded. If he wasn’t careful he would give too much away. “I prefer not to speak of it.”

“I get it.” She reassured. “We’re all hurting, it’s just that some of us hide it better than others. A lot of people died. It’s harder to find people who didn’t lose someone.”

“Life is the only thing that can be stolen and never given back.” He muttered. “And time.”

“Profound.” She praised.

“I have my moments. There’s a lot going on with me, you know.” He tried to lighten the mood. “Part-time public-space landlord, rain chaser, and philosopher. To mention just a few.”

His humour was verging on cringeworthy. How had he taken it from harrowing inner turmoil to shameless flirtation in one sentence.

“I’m sure you have many talents.”

Had she just flirted back or was that sarcasm?

“I’m Jessica, by the way.” She proffered her hand.

He took it gently, raising it and bowing as if to press it against his forehead in a gesture of utmost respect.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” Charm oozing from him in waves. “My name is…”

What should I tell her? Hello, I’m Thor, God of Thunder! Out of the question.

He spoke slowly, giving himself a chance to think of a name. He’d never given it any thought before, if he wasn’t Thor then who was he? The woman in the art studio had thought him British aristocracy, so what was a good British name? A British King perhaps. Henry. Richard. George. William. Yes, that one!

Her face dropped, slack jawed and horrified she watched his mouth start forming the name. Seeing the shock bloom across her face was enough to make him reconsider the whole false name thing.

“W-i-l-l-you excuse me.” He turned and fake sneezed into his hands.

“Bless you.”

“My apologies. My name is Donald, my friends call me Don.”

Your friends call you Point Break but you’re not telling her that. He thought.

“Don?”

“I’d offer to shake your hand but, well…” He grimaced, making a show of wiping his hands on the legs of his jeans.

“Yeah, I’m good.” She chuckled. “Good to know you, Don.”

“Lady Jessica.” He swept himself into a flourishing bow drawing a good-humoured eye roll from her. “The pleasure is mine.”

“My friend’s call me Jess.”

“If I’m permitted?”

“I don’t mind. Knock yourself out.”

“Very well, Jess.”

He might have looked bashful for a moment as she looked him up and down. He’d gotten more than he had hoped for so why was his chest aching and his gut telling him to escape? She was beautiful, he really couldn’t think that enough. Her steely-blue eyes were large and expressive, delicately arching brows and rich dark hair framing her perfect face. The sweep of long lashes had him holding his breath when she blinked long and slow, a slight blush on her cheeks as they spoke.

“Have I got something on my face again?” Her brows knitted subtly.

Jerking out of his daze, he searched her visage for anything out of place.

“No, you look perfect, as always.” He’d totally missed that he’d been staring at her the whole time.

She frowned more deeply, tucking a few carefree strands of hair back behind her ear.

“I should go, it’s already after ten.” She looked away with a look he could only describe as shame. “Daisy has been so patient with me.”

Thor wanted to say something. Apologise. Make light of his inability to read a situation. Tell her how much he enjoyed her company. Anything to take the shame from her expression. Ask her to stay - not that it would help. Instead he went with:

“She’s a good dog.”

After they parted, Thor mentally kicked himself. He always had an uncanny knack of making things awkward. More often than not it was endearing and usually made him quite likeable, especially to women. But then again they mostly only wanted into his trousers, more so when they discovered he was a god. Jess was different, she was guarded. He felt that he hadn’t overstepped any boundaries but this was Midgard and his ways were foreign here. He would have to be more careful with his compliments so as not to make her uncomfortable.

The next day she returned. And the next. Thor found himself falling in with her routines. Before long they’d been talking five nights a week for several weeks. Thor started walking with her while she walked the dog, always keeping a proper distance and never making her feel awkward. He brought a ball for Daisy Duke which became something they did, he kept it in his gym bag always. He told Jess it was becoming part of his daily workout so he and Daisy would run and chase each other in the grass while Jess watched on, laughing.

Jess started bringing an extra coffee with her for him. He’d tried the tiramisu hot chocolate, and while he enjoyed the taste he couldn’t excuse the excessive calories but he didn’t tell her that.

“I like my coffee how I like my men.” He said flatly. “Long and black, and bitter on the tongue.”

“Lewd!” She’d laughed long, feigning disgust, tears running down her cheeks. “That’s something my mind will never unsee. Thanks for that.”

That had been one of Thor’s favourite days with her. The day she laughed so hard she cried. He’d seen tears in her eyes before, shamefully brushed away, emotions denied. Now they made her eyes sparkle like star-steel. Wet cheeks or not she was stunning. Her hand momentarily rested on his bicep and he found her almost too close for comfort. He’d been laughing too, but now he was looking at the play of happiness on her lips and sparkle in her eyes. She’d done the same, eyes flicking down to his mouth as her laughter subsided. His skin prickled with anticipation and it was like he was frozen in place, seeing her within reach but unable to make the moment real.

Something broke in her and she snorted loudly, falling into a second round of laughter. It took the awkwardness out of the moment. Perhaps she hadn’t felt it like he had. He hoped she hadn’t noticed him hungrily drinking in the sight of her, hanging on her every gesture like a breath exhaled on a still and frozen night, where one slight caress could send him spiralling.

No matter how he felt, Thor was the perfect gentleman. Always respectful, always chivalrous, always considerate. He’d been brought up that way. He never intruded on Jess’s time with her fiancé, remaining out of the way during drop offs and pick ups but making sure she was safe. In the beginning the fiancé had walked with her in the park before leaving to ‘meet up with friends’ – those were Jess’s words. But now he left her at Neptune’s in order to dash off for a few hours with his lover. Thor had done enough digging to see what the man was up to but he didn’t understand how could Jess not see? She was astute and incredibly smart; she reminded him of Jane a little in that respect.

Sometimes people can’t see what they don’t want to see. He told himself many times.

Her fiancé was having an affair with another man. Thor didn’t want to be the one to break the news to her but the longer it went on the harder it was for him to stay silent. The risk that she would blame Thor for telling her and never speak to him again, however, kept him quiet. He was torn.

Spring turned to summer and they still met each other in the park. Thor had been content with simply sharing her time on the nights she was there. Jess hadn’t offered anything else, nor asked.

Conversation was easy and they talked about a great many things, though never anything too personal. He discovered that she worked at a dental surgery nearby (she had pointed up the street where Neptune’s was on the corner), which then triggered a memory of the day he’d gone to the gallery, and the woman in the elevator. There had been an astringent smell he had barely even noticed but with the new information his memory returned, richer, and now with aroma-vision. Thor had chuckled out of the blue, drawing questions from her.

“I know that building.” He’d replied. “I visited an art dealer there once, very disappointing show but the woman there offered to capture my likeness.”

“I bet she did.” Jess’s tone was full of inuendo, but Thor’s look of innocence made her laugh all the harder.

Thor told her he worked in ‘security solutions’ which she accepted. It hadn’t been far from the truth, in a scaled down, simplistic way. They shared anecdotes, although Thor held back; there was much of his life and antics that were well documented in the media here on Midgard, and although Jess didn’t seem to pay any attention to that, there was bound to be something that would make his real identity known to her.

She really seemed to enjoy his company and he watched as she blossomed from the closed off, pained and self-diminished creature into a radiant, vibrant and exuberant woman, full of life. It was basking in this glory that Thor finally saw that life could be good, even after all of his failings and defeat in The Infinity War. Good could come out of evil, and that he deserved happiness as much as everyone else, in whatever capacity it presented itself.

Things changed dramatically one Saturday night. Jess arrived at Neptune’s as usual, straight from work. Thor watched from a shaded part of the park as she met with her fiancé. Thor would wait for her until she crossed over and pick up her trail, meeting her a little way down the footpath. Her fiancé had stopped getting her the usual hot chocolate with tiramisu a while back so she and Thor took it in turns to buy drinks for each other. Today it was Thor’s turn and he had 2 cups in hand ready waiting.

There seemed to be an issue, however. They were arguing, arms wildly gesticulating, voices raised. The fiancé was pointing at the park aggressively, his face growing more red. Jess was crying. She took the dog leash from him looking up at the sky in supplication. Suddenly she slapped him across the face and scooped up the dog, striding away from him, heedless of oncoming traffic. The fiancé left without a backward glance.

Thor’s heart almost stopped as she stepped out onto the road. He scanned up and down but she was clear. Her pace quickened, feet skipping as she partly jogged through the park’s gateway from the street. He didn’t want her to know he’d seen so he moved to intercept her at the joining of their two paths.

“Hey, you.” He said in the calmest tone he could muster, falling into step beside her. “Good day?” He prompted, hoping she’d open up.

She didn’t even look at him.

“Jess?”

Her face was streaked with tears, and she stared ahead only as if it was the only way to hold her composure. A few more strides on he decided to take action. Getting out in front of her, he transferred both cups to one big hand, base stacked on lid, and stopped her with a hand laid gently on her shoulder.

“Hey, hey,” he soothed, “what’s the matter?”

That was all it took for the floodgates to open and she was crying again, shoulders shaking, gasping for breath as she let go of her composure.

Thor put the drinks down beside his feet and stepped forward to pull her into a hug. It was such a natural gesture, he didn’t even think about the space he promised himself he’d always give her, nor the physical contact he knew he shouldn’t engage in. She needed him in that moment, and she didn’t shy away.

Jess leant into him, allowing him to wrap her in his arms, and pressed her face into his chest. She sobbed and sniffled, breathing hot and humid through his t-shirt onto his skin. They stood like that for a while, with him rubbing her back in the most platonic way he could, and her soaking his chest with her tears.

Daisy started pulling on the leash and it seemed to draw Jess back to the here and now. She stepped back as Thor’s arms fell away. They felt all wrong with the warmth of her gone and he wasn’t sure what to say, or do. Without more information about why she was so upset, he could very well say the wrong thing and make everything so much worse.

“Is there anything I can do?” He spoke softly.

The park had few enough people in it that they were relatively alone, and the quality of the light made it feel like they were secluded in a twilight realm. He longed to hold her again but to do so would not be proper.

“No.” She exhaled a heavy, shuddering breath, and wiped her cheeks with the palms of her hands.

When she looked up at him a second later she looked so vulnerable. His heart ached to see her this way.

Her eyes flicked down to his soaked t-shirt and back up to his face. Her eyes went wide and gasped a little.

Thor panicked. She was about to say something about him touching her.

“I’m sorry, I…” He gestured with his arms.

“I’m not.”

She didn’t miss a beat. Stepping forward quickly, she stood on her tip-toes and pressed her lips to his, freezing him on the spot.

Her lips were soft and a little puffy from crying but they felt divine. She released the seal of her lips but kept gentle contact, trailing her mouth across his, slowly drawing him into a response, parting his lips with hers until things suddenly clicked.

His response was immediate and thorough. Catching her waist with one hand and sliding the other into her hair, he cradled her, deepening the kiss. He delved into her, tasting the salt of her tears and the sweetness of her mouth. It was everything he’d imagined it would be and he was swept away by the wave of passion that crested and flooded his senses.

Her hands were on his face, in his hair and she was sighing through her nose as their tongues touched and circled in the join between them. One more little moan from her and he swore to himself that he’d lay her down right there and see what other noises he could coax from her beautiful lips.

This isn’t right. He thought, mentally kicking himself as he so often did when he thought improper thoughts around her.

Thor was the first to pull back, breathless and startled. He felt like he had as a boy getting caught stealing sweet treats from the kitchens. This thing between them now wasn’t his to have, it was a dream and was destined to remain as such.

“I can’t allow you to do this.” He beseeched, steadying her with hands on her upper arms, thumbs gently stroking against her blouse. “Your fiancé might be an unfaithful weasel but you’re better than that. I could not forgive myself for making an adulterer of you.”

Her furious frown was complete and undeniable. There was confusion there also, and tears. Plump beads collecting on her lower lids, making her eyes turn glassy.

Turning on her heel, she fled, tugging the poor dog with her.

“Jessica, wait!” Thor felt like he’d been punched in the gut by Hulk, breathing was difficult and he ached.

He knew he should not follow, she wanted space or why run? She’d already cleared the park and it took every ounce of willpower to keep his feet firmly planted where they were because every nerve in his body told him to go to her and his muscles twitched to obey. The fading feeling of her lips on his pulled at something in his chest, making him feel hollow. What in Odin’s name had he done?

#thor fanfiction #thor fanfic #thor odinson #thor x ofc #thor fan fiction #marvel fanfic #angst #emotional hurt #thor kiss #cloudy's writing #beyond broken

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theculturedmarxist · 5 years ago

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ROBERT SCHEER: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of “Scheer Intelligence,” where the intelligence comes from my guests. In this case Max Blumenthal, who I must say is one of the gutsiest journalists we have in the United States, and have had for the last five years or so. He’s, in addition to having considerable courage and [going] out on these third-rail issues — like Israel, being one of the more prominent ones — and challenging some of the major conceits of even liberal politics in the United States about our virtue, our constant virtue, he’s done just great journalism. I really loved his book, “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel,” which came out in 2013, because it was based on just good, solid journalism of interviewing people and trying to figure out what’s going on.

I’d done something a half century earlier, or not quite that long ago, during the Six-Day War in Israel, where I went over when I was the editor of Ramparts. And I know how difficult it is to deal with that issue, because I put Ramparts into bankruptcy over the controversy about it. [Laughter] So maybe that’s a good place to begin. You know, you dared touch this issue of Israel, and it didn’t help that you are Jewish. I guess you are Jewish, right? Do you have a background, did you practice any aspect of Judaism? Literature, culture, religion?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: I’m a Jew who had a bar mitzvah, and I even had a bris.

RS: Oh. [Laughs]

MB: And you know, I’ve continued to pop in in synagogues here and there on High Holy Days. I guess you could say, you know, when the rabbi asked, you know, asked me to join the army of God, I tell him I’m in the Secret Service. But I’m definitely Jewish, you know, and it’s a big part of who I am and why I do what I do.

RS: Well, and I thought your writing on that, and your journalism, was informed by that. Because after all, a very important part of the whole experience of Jewish people as victims, as people forced into refugee status, living in the diaspora, was to develop a sense of universal values, and of decency and obligation to the other. And I think your reporting reflected that. However, my goodness, you got a lot of heat over it. And it’s the heat I want to talk about. I want to talk about the difficulty, in this post-Cold War world, of actually writing about the U.S. imperial presence, or writing critically about what our government does, and some of its allies.

And I think Israel is a really good case in point, because we have one narrative that said in the last election we had foreign interference, mostly coming from Russia. And we talk about Russia as if it’s the old communist Soviet Union, with a top-down, big, organized party — forgetting that [Vladimir] Putin actually defeated the Communist Party, and even though he had been in the KGB, and most Russians had been in some kind of official connection with society or another. Nonetheless, Russia really has gotten very little out of whatever interference it did. Israel, that is very rarely talked about, interfered in the election in a very open, blatant way in the presence of Netanyahu, who denounced Barack Obama’s major foreign policy achievement, the deal with Iran, and has focused U.S. policy mostly against the enemy being Iran, and ignoring Saudi Arabia and everything else.

And the interesting thing is that Israel’s interference in the election, and Netanyahu, has been rewarded over and over — the embassy got shifted, the settlers got more validation, now there’s a big peace plan that gives the hawks in Israel everything they want. So why don’t we begin with that, and your own writing about U.S.-Israel relations. It’s kind of odd that there’s — or maybe not odd, maybe it’s just because it is the third rail — that there’s been so little discussion about Donald Trump’s relation to Israel and his payoff to Netanyahu.

MB: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot to chew on there. I would first start with just an observation, because you mentioned that we’re in a post-Cold War world — well, we’re not in a post-Cold War world anymore, we’re in a new Cold War. And for all the attacks I got over Israel, which were absolutely vicious, personalized, you know, framed through emotional blackmail, attacking my identity as a Jew, calling me a Jewish anti-Semite — the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is this right-wing racket over there in L.A., made me the No. 4 anti-Semite of 2015. You know, I was right behind Ayatollah Khomeini. But you know, the worst attacks, the most vicious attacks I’ve received have actually been from centrists and liberal elements over my criticism of the Russiagate narrative that they foisted on the American public starting in 2016, and also on the dirty war that the U.S. has been waging on Syria, and how we at the site that I edit, the Grayzone, started unpacking a lot of the deceptions and lies that were used to try to stimulate support among middle-class liberals in the west for this proxy war on Syria, for regime change in Syria. This was absolutely forbidden, and that attack actually turned out to be more vicious and is ongoing.

With Israel, you have a situation where you have, not maybe a plurality, but maybe a majority of secular Jewish Americans, progressive Jews, who have completely turned their back on the whole Zionist project. And it has a lot to do with Netanyahu. Netanyahu is someone who came out of the American — out of American life. He went to high school in suburban Philadelphia, he went to MIT, he was at Boston Consulting with Mitt Romney. His father ended his life in upstate New York as Jabotinsky’s press secretary, the press secretary for the revisionist wing of the Zionist movement that inspired the Likud party. So Netanyahu is really kind of an American figure, number one; number two, he’s a Republican figure. He’s like a card-carrying neoconservative Republican.

So a lot of Jews who’ve historically aligned themselves with the Democratic Party, who see being a Democrat as almost synonymous with being Jewish in American life, just absolutely revile Netanyahu. And here he is, basically the longest-serving prime minister in Israel; he’s completely redefined the face of Israel and what it is. And he’s provoked — I wouldn’t say provoked, but he’s accelerated the civil war in American Jewish life over Zionism. And what I did was come in at a time when it wasn’t entirely popular, to not just challenge Israel as a kind of occupying entity, but to actually challenge it at its core, to challenge the entire philosophy of Zionism, and to analyze the Israeli occupation as the byproduct of a system of apartheid which has been in place from the beginning, since 1948, which was a product of a settler colonial movement.

That really upset a lot of people who kind of reflect the same elements that I’m getting, who are attacking me on Syria or Russia. People like Eric Alterman at The Nation. He wrote 11 very personal attack pieces on me when my book “Goliath” came out in 2013. Truthdig, you, Chris Hedges, it was a great source of support. And you, you know, you opened up the debate at Truthdig, you allowed people to come in and criticize the book, but kind of in a principled, constructive way. Whereas Eric Alterman was demanding that The Nation censor me, blacklist me, ban me for life, and was comparing me to a neo-Nazi by the end, and claiming I was secretly in league with David Duke. And that was because he had simply no response to my reporting and my analysis of the kind of, the inner contradictions of Zionism.

And so to me, it was really a sign of the success of the book, that someone like Alterman was sort of dispatched, or took it upon himself to wage this really self-destructive attack. And in the end, he really had nothing to show for himself; he wasn’t arguing on the merits. And that’s just what I find time and again with my reporting is, you know, you get these personal attacks and people try to dissuade you from going and touching these third-rail issues, but ultimately there’s no substance to the attacks. I mean, if they really wanted to nail me and take me down, they would address the facts, and they really haven’t been able to do that.

RS: Right. But Max, if I can, let’s focus on the power of your analysis in that book, which is that it is a settler colonialism. And Netanyahu actually is — we can talk about the old labor Zionists, you know, and what was meant by progressive Zionism and so forth. Even at the time of the Six-Day War when I interviewed people like Moshe Dayan and Ya’alon and these people, they all were against a full occupation of the West Bank. They didn’t act on that, unfortunately. But they were aware of the dangers of a colonial model. But right now you have a figure in Israel in Netanyahu, who is, very clearly embodies a racialized view, a jingoistic view of the other, which is really, you know, very troubling. And he’s embraced by this troubling American figure.

And so what your book really predicted is that the settler colonialism was a rot at the center of the Israeli enterprise — and historically, one could justify that enterprise. I don’t know if you would agree. But even the old Soviet Union, I think, was the second, if not the first country to recognize Israel. There was vast worldwide support for some sort of refuge for the Jewish people after such horrible, you know, genocidal policies visited upon them. But what we’re really talking about now is something very different. And that is whether political leadership, and interference and so forth comes mainly for Democrats, very often; obviously, for republicans and Bible-belters and all that, who seem to like this image of the end of time coming in Israel. But really what’s happening — and it’s not discussed in this election, except to attack Bernie Sanders, who dared make some criticisms of Israel in some of these debates — you have a very weird notion of the Jewish experience, as identified with a very hardline, as you say, sort of South African settler colonialist mentality.

And so I want to ask you the question as someone–and we’ll get to it later — you grew up sort of within the Democratic liberal establishment in Washington. Your parents both worked for the Clinton administration, were close to it. How do you explain this blind eye toward Trump’s relationship to Netanyahu? And ironically, for all the Russia-bashing, Netanyahu and Putin seem to get along splendidly, you know. And that doesn’t bother people as far as criticizing Netanyahu. So why don’t we visit that a little bit, and forget about Eric Alterman for a while.

MB: [Laughs] Well, he’s already forgotten, so we don’t have much work to do there. But there’s a lot, again, a lot to chew on, a lot of questions packed into that. You know, just starting with your mention of Moshe Dayan — who is a seminal figure in the Nakba, the initial ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in 1948 to establish Israel — he was the southern commander of the Israeli military. And he later kind of became a kind of schizophrenic figure in Israeli politics; he would sometimes offer some kind of left-wing opinions, and then be extremely militaristic. But you know, when it came down to it, Moshe Dayan — like every other member of the Israeli Labor Party — was absolutely opposed to a viable Palestinian state. He even said that we cannot have a Palestinian state because it will connect psychologically, in the minds of the Palestinian public who are citizens of Israel — that 20% of Israel who are indigenous Palestinians — it will connect them to Nablus in the West Bank, and it will provide them with a basis for rebelling against the Israeli state to expand the Palestinian state.

The other labor leaders spoke in terms of the kind of, with the racist language of the demographic time bomb that, you know, we need to give Palestinians a state, otherwise we will be overwhelmed demographically. And so the state that they were proposed was what Yitzhak Rabin, in his final address before the Israeli Knesset, the Israeli parliament, called “less than a state.” He promised Israel that at Oslo, he would deliver the Palestinians less than a state. And if you look at the actual plan that the Palestinians were handed at Oslo — which Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority chairman, didn’t even review before signing — the map was not that different from the map that Donald Trump has offered with the “ultimate deal.” And they’d say, oh, you get 97% of what was, you know, offered in U.N. Resolution 242 in 1967. But it really just isn’t the case when you get down to the details. What the strategy has been with the Labor Party, and with successive Israeli administrations — and with Netanyahu until he got Trump in — was to kind of kick the can down the road with the so-called peace process, so that Israel could keep putting more facts on the ground.

So it was actually Ehud Barak of the Labor Party, Yitzhak Rabin’s successor, who moved more settlers into the West Bank, by a landslide, than Netanyahu did. Ehud Barak actually campaigned on his connection to the settlers. And then Netanyahu capitalizes on the strength of the settlement movement to build this kind of Titanic rock of a right-wing coalition that’s kept him in power for so long. And if you look at who the leading figures are in Israeli life — Naftali Bennett, who was from the Jewish Home Party, he comes out of the Likud party and he’s someone who was an assistant to Netanyahu. Avigdor Lieberman, who was for a long time the leader of the Russian Party. Yisrael Beiteinu, this is someone who came out of the Likud Party, who helped Netanyahu rustle up Russian votes. It’s a Likud one-party state — but then you have, culturally, a dynamic where starting with 1967, the public just becomes more infused with religious Messianism.

The West Bank is the site of the real, emotionally potent Jewish historical sites, particularly in a city like Hebron. And the public becomes attached to it and attains its dynamism through this expansionist project, and the public changes. A lot of people from the kind of liberal labor wing became religious Messianists, started wearing kippot, wearing yarmulkes, the kind of cloth yarmulkes that the modern orthodox settlers where.

RS: OK, but —

MB: Today you not only have that, you have a new movement called the temple movement, which aims to actually replace Jewish prayer at the Western Wall with animal sacrifice, as Jews supposedly practiced thousands of years ago, and to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque, and practice Jewish prayer there. This is not just a messianic movement, but an apocalyptic movement that is actually gaining strength in the Likud party. So when you mentioned Donald Trump’s “ultimate deal,” there’s one detail that everyone seems to have missed there, which is prayer for all at the Dome of the Rock, at Al-Aqsa. That means there will be Jewish prayer there, officially, that Palestinians must be forced to accept that and destroy the status quo, which has prevailed since 1967.

RS: I know, but Max, before I lose this whole interview here — because I think that’s all really interesting; people should read your book, “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel.” That’s not the focus of this discussion I want to have with you.

MB: OK.

RS: And I want to discuss, in this aspect, the whole idea of Israel as a third-rail issue for American politics.

MB: Yeah.

RS: American politics. And the reason I want to do that is there’s obviously a contradiction in the Jewish experience, because Jews — as much or more so than any other group of people in the world — understand what settler colonialism does. They understand what oppression does, they’ve been under the thumb of oppressors. And so I would argue the major part of the Jewish experience was one of revolt against oppression, and recognition of the danger of unbridled power. And that represents a very important force in liberal politics in the United States: a fear of coercive power, a desire for tolerance, and so forth. And we know that Jews have, in the United States and elsewhere in the world, been a source of concern for the other, and tolerance, and criticism of power.

And the reason I’m bringing that up is it seems to me it’s a real contradiction for the Democratic Party, which you know quite a bit about. And in this Democratic Party, there’s this great loathsome feeling about Donald Trump. And many of these people don’t really like Netanyahu. You know, the polling data shows that Jews are, you know, just about as open to the concern for the Palestinians as any other group. And Bernie Sanders, the one Jewish candidate, is the one who dared to bring up the Palestinians — that they have rights also, that they’re human beings. He’s being attacked for it as, like you, a self-hating Jew. And so I want to get at that contradiction. And, you know, full confession, as a Jewish person I believe it’s an honorable tradition of dissent, and concern for the others, and respect for individual freedom. And I think it’s sullied by the identification of the Jewish experience with a colonialist experience. It is a reality that we have to deal with, but that’s not the whole tradition. And I daresay your own family, whatever your contradiction — and I should mention here your father and mother both were quite active in the Clinton administration, right.

And your father, a well-known journalist, Sidney Blumenthal, and your mother, Jacqueline Blumenthal, was I think a White House fellow or something in the Clinton administration? I forget what her job was, but has been active. And they certainly come out of a more liberal Jewish experience, as do most well-known Jewish writers and journalists in the United States. That’s the contradiction that I don’t see being dealt with here. Because after all, it’s easy to blast Putin and his interference, but as I say, Netanyahu interfered very openly, but in a really unseemly way, in the American election by attacking a sitting American president in an appearance before the Congress, and attacking his major foreign-policy initiative. And there’s hardly a word ever said about it. It doesn’t come up in the democratic debates. You know, and the — as I say, there was this incredible moment where Netanyahu, after coming over here and praising Trump for his peace deal, as did his opponent, then he goes off and meets with Putin. And so suddenly it’s OK, and yet the Democrats who want to blast Putin don’t mention Netanyahu, and they don’t mention his relation to Trump.

MB: Well, yeah, I was trying to illustrate kind of the reality of Israel, which just, it’s gotten so extreme that it repels people who even come out of the kind of Democratic Party mainstream. And the Democratic Party was the original bastion in the U.S. for supporting Israel. So my father actually held a book party for my book, “Goliath,” back in 2013. It’s the kind of thing that, you know, a parent who had been a journalist would do for a son or daughter who’s a journalist. And he was harshly attacked when word got out that he had held that party in a neoconservative publication called the Free Beacon, which is kind of part of Netanyahu’s PR operation in D.C. You know, it was like my father had supported, provided material support for terrorism by having a book party for his son.

But the interesting part about that party was who showed up. I didn’t actually know what it was going to be like, and it was absolutely packed. I mean, they live in a pretty small townhouse in D.C, and there just was nowhere to walk, there was nowhere to move. And I found myself in the corner of their dining room shouting through the house to kind of explain what my book was about and answer questions. And a lot of the people there were people who were in or around Hillary’s State Department, people who worked for kind of Democratic Party-linked organizations — just a lot of mainstream Democrat people. And they were giving me a wink and a nod, shaking my hand, giving me a pat on the back, and saying thank you, thank God you did this. Because they cannot stand the Israel lobby, they despise Netanyahu, and they’re disgusted with what Israel’s become.

And we had reached a point by 2013 where it was pretty obvious there was not going to be a two-state solution, and that whole project, the liberal Zionist project, wasn’t going to work out. You know, and the fact that they just could give me a wink and a nod shows also how cowardly a lot of people are in Washington. They weren’t even stepping up to the level my father had, where when his emails with Hillary Clinton were exposed, it became clear that he was sending her my work. And he was actually trying to move people within the State Department toward a more, maybe you could say a more humanistic view, but also a more realistic view of Israel, Palestine and the Netanyahu operation in Washington. Working through [Sheldon] Adelson, using this fraud hack of a rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, has kind of their front man. They ran like a full-page ad in the New York Times painting me and my father as Hillary Clinton’s secret Middle East advisers.

And then one day in the middle of the campaign, Elie Wiesel died. You know, someone who is supposed to be this patron saint of Judaism and the kind of secular theology of Auschwitz, who had spent the last years of his life as part of Sheldon Adelson’s political network. Basically, he had lost all his money to Bernie Madoff, and so he was getting paid off by Adelson. He got half a million dollars from this Christian Zionist, apocalyptic, rapture-ready fanatic, Pastor John Hagee. He was going around with Ted Cruz giving talks. And so when he died, I went on Twitter and tweeted a few photos of Elie Wiesel with these extremist characters.

And I said, you know, here are photos of Elie Wiesel palling around with fascists. And the kind of Netanyahu-Adelson network activated to attack me. And ultimately it led — I actually, within a matter of a few days, it led to Hillary Clinton’s campaign officially denouncing me and demanding that I cease and desist. And so, you know, I looked at the debate on Twitter, and a lot of people were actually supporting me. And it was clear Elie Wiesel, this person who was supposed to be a saint, was actually no longer seen as stainless, that the whole debate had been opened up by 2016.

And now when we look at the Democratic Party and we look at the Democratic field, you know, Bernie Sanders — he’s better than most of the other candidates, or the other candidates, on this issue. After we put a lot of pressure on him in the left wing-grassroots — I mean, I personally protested him at a 2016 event for his position on Palestinians, and we shamed him until he took at least a slightly better position, where you acknowledge the humanity of Palestinians. But what we’re hearing, even from Bernie Sanders, doesn’t even reflect where the grassroots of the Democratic Party — particularly all those young people who are coming out and delivering him a landslide victory tonight in Iowa — are. The Democratic Party is not democratic on Israel, but it’s no longer a third-rail issue. You can talk about it, and the only way that you can be stopped is through legislation, like the legislation we see in statehouses to actually outlaw people who support the Palestinian boycott of Israel. So we’re just in an amazing time where all of the contradictions are completely out in the open.

RS: OK, let me just take a quick break so public radio stations like KCRW that make this available can stick in some advertisements for themselves, which is a good cause. And we’ll be right back with Max Blumenthal. Back with Max Blumenthal, who has written — I mean, I only mentioned one of his books. He wrote a very important book on the right wing in America that was a bestseller; he has been honored in many ways, and yet is a source of great controversy. And I must say, I respect your ability to create this controversy, because it’s controversy about issues people don’t want to deal with. You know, they want to deal with them in sort of feel-good slogans, and it doesn’t work, because people get hurt. And including Jewish people, in the case of Israel. If you develop a settler, colonialist society, and that stands for the Jewish position, and you’re oppressing large numbers of people, be they Palestinian or others, that’s hardly an advertisement for what has been really great about the Jewish experience, which I will argue until my death.

It was represented by people like my mother, who were in the Jewish socialist bund, and two of her sisters were killed by the Czar’s police in Russia. And they believed in Universalist values, an idea of being Jewish as standing for the values of the oppressed, and concern for the oppressed. And most of their experience in the shtetls, and out there in the diaspora, had been being oppressed.

And so I don’t want to lose that there. But I wanted to get now to the last part of this, to what I think is the hypocrisy of the liberal wing of American politics, or so-called. And now they call themselves more progressive. And it really kind of centers around Hillary Clinton. And whatever you want to say about Bernie Sanders — you know, Hillary Clinton’s recent attack on Bernie Sanders, that no one likes him and he stands for nothing and he gets nothing done. And I think this is a, you know, a person that I thought, you know, at one point — despite her starting out as a Goldwater girl and being quite conservative — I thought was, you know, somewhat decent.

And I’m going to make this personal now. I was brought to a more favorable view of Bill and Hillary Clinton, in considerable measure, by your father, as a journalist at the Washington Post, and then working in the administration. And I respect your father and mother, you know, and Sidney Blumenthal and Jacqueline Blumenthal, I think are intelligent people. And I once, you know, went through a White House dinner; I think I only got in because your father put me on the list, and Hillary Clinton said I was her favorite columnist in America — no, the whole world — and it was very flattering. But I look back on it now — Hillary Clinton has really represented a kind of loathsome, interventionist, aggressive, America-first politics that in some ways is even more offensive than Trump. When Trump said he’s going to make America great again, Hillary Clinton said, America’s always been great. What?

MB: Yeah.

RS: What? Slavery, segregation, killing the Native Americans — always been great? You grew up with these people, right? You were in that world. What — so yes, they can come up to you at a book party and say, yes, it’s about time somebody said that. But what are they really about? That they — you know, you mentioned Syria. You know, their great achievement, they created a mess of that society. And she’s the one who went to, said about Libya, oh, we came, we saw, and he’s dead. You know, sodomized to death. So take me into the heart of the so-called liberal experience.

MB: Well, first of all, since you invoke Sidney Blumenthal so frequently, he has a — I think his fourth book in a five-part series on Abraham Lincoln out. And you know, these books address Lincoln almost as if he were a contemporary politician. It’s a completely new contribution to the history of Lincoln, and if you invite him on, be sure —

RS: I’m familiar with it, and I’ll endorse it —

MB: If you invite him on, you can ask him, I would love to hear that debate —

RS: I certainly would, and I have — as I said, I have a lot of respect for your father and mother. I’m asking a different question. Why do good people look the other way? Or how does it work? Just, you know, to the degree you can, take me inside that Washington culture. And where there’s a certain arrogance in it, that they are always, even when they do the wrong things, they’re just always accidents. They’re always mistakes. You know, it never comes out of their ideology, their aggression. So I want to know more about that.

MB: I mean, I saw all these — so many different sides of Washington. And so — and I was always supported by my parents, no matter what view I took. So I don’t feel like I have to live in my father’s shadow or something like that. They remain really supportive of me. I have a new book out — it’s not really new, it came out last April. It’s called “The Management of Savagery,” and it deals substantially with my view of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, but particularly the Hillary State Department, the Obama foreign policy team, and the destruction they wrought in Libya and Syria. So, you know, I put everything I knew about Washington and foreign policy into that book. And so I really would recommend that as well.

But, you know, how does it work with the Clintons? They were — they set up a machine that was really a juggernaut with all this corporate money they brought in through the DLC, the Democratic Leadership Committee. It was a very different structure than we’d seen with previous Democratic candidates who built — who relied heavily on unions and, you know, the civil rights coalition. And that machine never went away. It kept growing like this — kind of like this amoeba that began to engulf the party and politics itself. So that when Bill Clinton was out of power, the machine was passed to Hillary Clinton, and the machine followed her into the Senate. And the machine grew into the Clinton Global Initiative, which was this giant influence-peddling scam that just cashed in on disasters in Haiti, brought in tons of money, tens of millions of dollars from Gulf monarchies, and big oil and the arms industry — everything that funds all the repulsive think tanks on K Street through the Clinton Foundation.

And everyone who was trying to get close to the Clinton Foundation, whether they were in Clinton’s inner circle or not, was just trying to gather influence. That’s why you saw at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, behind her, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was basically Jeffrey Epstein’s personal child sex trafficker, just trying to cultivate influence with people who have this gigantic political machine.

So that’s why so many people, I think, have stayed loyal to this odious project, and have looked the other way as entire countries were destroyed under the direct watch of Hillary Clinton. Libya today — where Hillary Clinton took personal credit for destroying this country, which was at the time before its destruction, I think the wealthiest African nation with the highest quality of life — is now in, still in civil war. We’ve seen footage of open-air slave auctions taking place, and large parts of the country for years were occupied by affiliates of Al Qaeda or ISIS, including Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte. It was immediately transformed into a haven for the Islamic State.

This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton. There would have been no Benghazi scandal if she hadn’t gone into Libya to come, see, and kill, as she bragged that she did. And in Syria, she attempted the same thing; fortunately failed, thanks to assistance from Iran and Russia. But this was, it consisted of a billion dollars, multibillion-dollar operation to arm and equip some of the most dangerous, psychotic fanatics on the face of the planet in Al Qaeda and 31 flavors of Salafi jihadi. Hillary Clinton said we can’t be negotiating with the Syrian government; the hard men with guns will solve this problem. She said that in an interview, and that’s her legacy.

Beyond that, you know, I in Washington grew up in a very complex situation. I don’t know what view people have of me, but I grew up in what was – D.C. when D.C. was known as C.C., or Chocolate City. It was a mostly black city, run by a local black power structure with a strong black middle class, and I grew up in a black neighborhood. And I kind of saw apartheid firsthand, where I saw how a small white minority actually controlled the city from behind the scenes. And then, you know, and I saw that reality, and then I went to school across town in the one white ward to a private school, and I got to know some of the children of the kind of mostly Democratic Party elite. And so I saw both sides of the city. And it was through that other side, and also my parents’ connection to the Clintons, that I — I mean, I barely interacted with the Clintons. I’ve had very minimal interaction with them ever.

But I did get to meet Chelsea Clinton once. And you know, for all my reservations about the Clintons or what they were, I thought you know, she was kind of an admirable figure at that time. She was a — she was a kid, she was an adolescent who was being mocked on “Saturday Night Live” because she was going through an awkward phase. She went to school down the street at Sidwell Friends, and I met her at a White House Christmas party; she was really friendly and personable. And you know, since then, I’ve watched her grow into adulthood and become a complete kind of replication of the monstrous political apparatus that her family has set up, without really charting her own path. She just basically inherited the reign of the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative. She does paid talks for Israel. Her husband Marc Mezvinsky, he gambled on Greece’s debt along with Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs. You know, the squid fish. I mean, there’s just — I mean, as a young person, seeing someone of my generation grow up and follow that path, do nothing to carve out her own space — it just absolutely disgusts me.

And now Hillary Clinton is still there! She won’t go away! She’s not only helped fuel this Russiagate hysteria that’s plunged us into a new Cold War, but she’s trying to destroy the hopes and dreams of millions of young people who are saddled with endless debt by destroying Bernie Sanders. And it’s because she sees her own legacy being smashed to pieces, not by any right-wing, vast conspiracy, but by the electorate, the new electorate of the Democratic Party. And I absolutely welcome that. I think, you know, tonight in Iowa, a landslide Bernie victory, one of the takeaways is this will be the end of Clintonism. It’s time to move on and hand things over to a new generation. They had their chance, and they not only failed, they caused disasters across the world.

RS: So this is — we’re going to wind this up, but I think we’ve hit a really important subject. And I want to take a little bit more time on it. And I thought you expressed it quite powerfully. But the error, if you’ll permit me, is to center it on the personality, or the family. And I don’t think Clintonism is going to go away. Because what it represents — and I know you —

MB: It could be become Bloombergism, you know?

RS: Well, that’s where I’m going. I think what Clintonism represents is this triangulation, this new Democrat. And I interviewed him when he was governor, just when he was campaigning. And I did a lot of writing on the Financial Services Modernization Act and on welfare reform, and all of these ingredients of this policy. And what it really represents — no wonder they’re rewarded by the super wealthy. But the Democratic Party lost its organizational base with the destruction of the labor movement and weakening of other sources of progressive class-based politics, concern about working people and ordinary people.

And what Clinton did is he came along, and he had a sort of variation of Nixon’s Southern Strategy, how he got the Republicans to be so important in the South. And it was this new politics, this redefinition. And it’s not going away, because it’s the cover for Wall Street. It’s the cover for exploitation. And the main thing that happened from when you were young — or born, actually; you’re 42 years — it’s 42 years of, since Clinton really, and you can blame Reagan, you can blame the first President Bush, you can blame other people, and certainly blame the whole bloody Republican Party. I’m not going to give them a pass.

But the fact is, what the Clinton revolution did was it made class warfare for the rich fashionable, in a way that no one else was able to do it, no other movement. And it said these thieves on Wall Street, these people who are going to rip you off 20 different ways to Sunday — they’re good people, and they support good causes. And you mentioned Lloyd Blankfein, you know; “government” Goldman Sachs, you know. Robert Rubin came from Goldman Sachs; he was Clinton’s treasury secretary. And the whole thing of unleashing Wall Street and getting, destroying the New Deal — that was a serious program to basically betray the average American and betray their interest. And that’s why we’ve had this growing income inequality since that time. That’s the Clinton legacy in this world, really, is the billionaire coup, the billionaire culture.

MB: Yep, the oligarchy was put on fast-forward by the new politics of the Clintons. What they promised wasn’t, you know, a break from Reaganism, although there was certainly a cultural difference. They promised continuity, and that’s what we saw through the Obama administration. Obama presided over the biggest decline in black home ownership in the United States since, I think, prior to World War II. You mentioned Glass-Steagall; this set the stage for the financial crisis; NAFTA, destroyed the unions, shipped American jobs first to Mexico and then to China, and destabilized northern Mexico along with the drug war that Clinton put on overdrive, creating the immigration crisis that helped fuel the rise of Donald Trump.

Welfare reform — all of these policies were just, were odious to me and so many people at the time, but there was just this desire to just beat the Republicans and out-triangulate them. Now that we’ve seen the effects on them and so many people have felt the effects, you have an entire generation that sees no future, that realizes they’re living in an oligarchy, realizes that the alternative to Bernie Sanders is a literal oligarch, this miniature Scrooge McDuck in Mike Bloomberg, and they’re just not having it.

I don’t know if Hillary Clinton understands this history; I don’t think she sees it in context. She just blames Russian boogeyman and fake news for everything. But the rest of us who’ve lived through it really do, and it’s the continuity that is so dangerous, especially on foreign policy. I mean, the Libya proxy war and the Syria proxy war, the stage was set in Yugoslavia with NATO’s war that destroyed a socialist country and unleashed hell on a large part of its population. And we still don’t debate that war. The stage for the Iraq invasion was set in 1998 with Bill Clinton passing the Iraqi Liberation Act, which sent $90 million into the pocket of the con-man Ahmed Chalabi and made regime change the official policy of the United States.

It’s tragic that Bernie Sanders voted for that. But we have to see the cause and the effect to understand why so many people are in open revolt against that legacy. And you’re right, it goes well beyond the Clintons. It’s a program that markets right-wing economics and a right-wing foreign policy in a sort of progressive bottle. Now what they’re trying to do with the label on that progressive bottle, the way they’re trying to preserve it — we see it a lot through the [Elizabeth] Warren campaign — is through a kind of neoliberal identity politics that divorces class from race and gender, and attempts to basically distract people with needless arguments about Bernie Sanders saying a woman couldn’t have gotten elected in a private conversation that only Elizabeth Warren was party to.

So I’m really encouraged, I guess, by the results that we’re seeing. We’re talking tonight on the eve of the Iowa caucus. I’m encouraged by those results, just because I see them as a repudiation of the politics that have just dominated my life as a 42-year-old, and just been so absolutely cynical and destructive at their core. But I would just remind anyone who is supporting Bernie Sanders and listening to this — he’s not just running for president. He’s running for the next target of a deep state coup, and the deep state exists, and will respond with more force and viciousness than it did to Donald Trump, who actually has much more in common with them than Bernie Sanders.

RS: I didn’t quite get the grammar of that last paragraph, not any fault of yours. You said he’s not just running — can you —

MB: He’s running for the next target of a deep state coup, the forces of Wall Street. You know, the —

RS: Oh, you mean he will be the target.

MB: He will be the target.

RS: Yeah, you know, it’s — you just said something really — OK, I know we have to wrap this up, but it’s actually just getting interesting for me. [Laughs]

MB: Sorry about that.

RS: No, no, no, come on, come on. [Laughter] What I mean is, I do these things because I learn, and I think, and you know, my selfish interests. And really the question right now, I did a wonderful interview with Chomsky on this podcast, and he took me to school for not appreciating the importance of the lesser evil. And I’ve lost sleep over it since. You know, well — and we always fall for that, you know. On the other hand, some of the things you’ve been talking about, you know — and this is going to get me in big trouble — but you know, Trump is so blatant. He’s so out there in favor of greed and corruption.

He’s so obnoxious. And actually, in terms of his policy impact — not his rhetoric, but his policy impact — is he really that much worse? Well, for instance, you mentioned NAFTA. The rewrite of NAFTA, even before, you know, some progressives got involved in it, it was a substantially better trade agreement than the first NAFTA. You know, he hasn’t gotten us into Syria-type, Iraq-type wars.

He actually — so I’m not — you know, yes, I consider him a neofascist; rhetoric can be very dangerous. He’s obviously spread very evil, poisonous ideas about immigrants and what have you, you know, I can go down the list. But the people that you’ve been talking about, that–you know, and I voted for all of them, and I’ve supported them — are they really the lesser evil? You know, or are they a more effective form of evil?

MB: I mean, to understand Trump, we just have to see him as the apotheosis of an oligarchy. In its most unsheathed, unvarnished form, he’s just lifted the mask off the corruption, the legal corruption that’s prevailed, and been completely unabashed about it. Donald Trump was targeted with this kind of Russiagate campaign, which was partly run by Clintonite dead-enders who wanted to blame Russia for her loss, and to attack Donald Trump with this kind of McCarthyite rhetoric. But it was also being influenced by the intelligence services — figures like John Brennan and James Comey, and neoconservative hardliners who could easily jump back into the Democratic Party. And they were just seeking a new Cold War, to justify the budgets of the intelligence services, and the defense budget and so on.

But at his core, Donald Trump, what he’s actually done, especially domestically, I think outside of the immigration stuff, is he’s been kind of a traditional Republican. And he won a lot of consent from Republicans in Congress when he passed a trillion-dollar tax cut. He’s given corporate America everything he wanted after kind of campaigning with this populist, Bannonite tone. So in a lot of ways, Donald Trump does share more in common with the Democratic Party elite — with a lot of the figures who’ve been nominated to serve on the DNC platform committee, who are just from the Beltway blob and the Beltway bandits — than they do with Bernie Sanders.

And I think that if Bernie Sanders gets the nomination, there will be an effort to McGovern him. To just kind of turn him — turn this whole process into McGovern ’72, hope that Bernie Sanders gets destroyed by Donald Trump, and then wag their fingers at the left for the next 20 years until they get another Bill Clinton. I think that they don’t know how to stop him at this point, but they’re willing to let him be the nominee and go down to Donald Trump, because Bernie Sanders threatens their interests, and the movement behind him particularly, more than Donald Trump does.

RS: You know, they will stop Bernie Sanders, and they will do it by the argument of lesser evilism. And you see the line developing —

MB: But who is the lesser evil, Bob? I mean, Joe Biden is like this doddering wreck. There is no other candidate who seems even remotely viable against Trump.

RS: No, no, no — I understand that. I’m telling you what — well, it seems to me there’s — you know, you want to talk about fake news, the, misreporting of Bernie Sanders — in fact, the misreporting of what democratic socialism is. I mean, he’s now branded in the mainstream media as some hopeless fanatic because he dared to defend democratic socialism. Democratic socialism has been the norm for the most successful economies in the world, even to a degree when we’ve been successful. That was the legacy of Roosevelt, after all, is to try to save capitalism from itself. That’s why you had some enlightened government programs, you know, right down the list, and that’s what saved Germany after the war, and that’s what France and England and so forth, that’s why they have health care systems.

But the mainstream media has actually taken a very moderate figure, Bernie Sanders, and demonized him as some kind of hopeless ideologue, right? And as you point out, Bernie Sanders is hardly a radical thinker on issues — particularly, as you mentioned, about the Mideast and so forth. What he is, is somebody who actually is honoring the best side of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: you can’t let these greed merchants control everything, you have to worry about some compensation for ordinary people. That’s what Bernie Sanders is all about. And it should be an argument that has great appeal to people of power, otherwise they’re going to come after you with the pitchforks. Instead the mainstream media, in its hysteria, you know, has taken this word “democratic socialist” and used it to vilify him.

But the point that I want — and we will end on this, but I’d like to get your reaction — that came up in my discussion with Chomsky, who I have great admiration for. But it is this lesser evilism. And I think while, yes, people in their vote can think about that, they can vote that way — I’ve done it much of my life; I’ve voted for all sorts of evil people because they were lesser. But as a journalist — and I want to end about your journalism — as a journalist, I think we have to get that idea out of our head. And it means being able to be objective about a Donald Trump when he comes up with his NAFTA rewrite, and say hey, there are some good things in it, including the fact that you have to pay $16 an hour to people in Mexico who are working on cars that are going to be sold in the United States, OK. And what the liberal community has been able to do in the mainstream media, MSNBC, is Trumpwash everything.

Which brings us back to your critique. They’ve been able to say — they’ve made warmongering liberal and fashionable. They’ve taken the — they’ve made the CIA now a wonderful institution, the FBI a wonderful institution, [John] Bolton a wonderful hero. And I want to take my hat off to your journalism, because you have — and I do recommend that people go to your website, the Grayzone. Because you have had the courage to say, wait a minute, what’s called a lesser evil can’t be given a pass. Because in fact, maybe in some ways, or in many ways, it’s a more effective evil. We know what Trump is; he stands exposed every hour of every day.

But you know, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton — and I’m not trying to pick on them, but you know, they represented this embrace of the Wall Street center — they were much more effective in redistributing income to the rich. You know, you can talk about Trump’s tax break, but the real redistribution came with letting Wall Street do its collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that caused the destruction of 70% of black wealth in America, 60% of brown wealth in America, according to the Federal Reserve. So really, in this election, people have to think — you know, yes, I’ll hold my nose and I’ll vote for the lesser evil. But what’s that going to get us? Does it get us a more effective evil, a better-packaged evil? Last word from you?

MB: Well, I mean, one of the things that we do at the Grayzone.com, our mission is to oppose this policy of regime change that the U.S. imposes across the world against any state that seeks some independence from the U.S. sphere of influence that wants to craft its own economic policies in a socialist way, like Venezuela, Nicaragua. We, you know, we exposed a lot of the deceptions that were trying to stimulate public support for regime change in Syria, that would have been absolutely disastrous. And in all of these situations, we don’t stand alone, but we stand among a really, really small group of alternative outlets who don’t play the lesser-evil game on regime change.

Where we say, well, this leader or that leader are horrible, and they are evil dictators, but we should also be kind of suspicious of the, you know, of the war that the U.S. might wage. Or we should be critical of these brutal economic sanctions that have killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans through excess deaths. We say — we actually look at the alternative to the current government and show that there actually isn’t the lesser evil, that the alternative is far worse. In Syria it was Al Qaeda and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood; in Venezuela it’s Juan Guaidó’s right-wing, white collar mafia, which is a front for Exxon Mobil. Same thing in Nicaragua.

And you know, as much as I respect and I’ve learned from Noam Chomsky, he plays that lesser-evil game on regime change. He’s trashed all of the, all of these governments. He celebrated the collapse of the Soviet Union, and we saw what happened to Russia after that. So it’s important to look at lesser evilism through a historical context, and then we can apply it to the United States as well. Look at who’s been sold to us as the lesser evil that we had to support. Well, we’ve been talking about them, Bob, for the last half hour, and they’ve subjected Americans to the same evil the Republican Party has, for the most part. Maybe they’ve limited it to some degree. But now there’s actually an option for something that I’d say is moderate in the United States.

You’re right — Bernie Sanders does nothing, and proposes nothing, outside the framework of the New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. I don’t even think he’s a democratic socialist. I don’t know what that term really means. He’s a social democrat. And he is someone who at least offers a change from the consensus where the government actually starts to intervene to prevent people from dying excess deaths across the country, from the opioid crisis, from poverty, from homelessness. Eighty percent of new homes that have been built in the U.S. in the past two years are luxury housing. And you know who else is supporting Bernie Sanders besides all these debt-saddled youth? Active duty U.S. military veterans who are sick of permanent war. $160,000 in campaign contributions have been given to Bernie by active duty vets. That’s something like eight times more than have gone to Joe Biden, who is involved at the forefront of almost every American war since Gulf War I.

And we’re really capitalizing on that at the Grayzone. We understand the American public and the western public are sick of being lied into war, and they’re sick of being pushed into lesser evilism, whether it’s abroad in countries that are targeted by the U.S., or at home. And so we’re just there providing balance and exposing whatever the lie is of the day.

RS: Let me, as an older person, end with a little editorial about what — and I agree with the thrust of what you’ve been saying — but why I think this word “democratic socialism” is important, not just social democrat. Because it acknowledges the vast harm that has been done by the left in human history. It’s not just the right, it’s not just the corporate elite, and it’s not just the oligarchs. That people got hold of a message of concern for the ordinary person. It happened in religion too, after all, you know; structures were developed, people who claimed they were following the message of Christ, and they ended up building edifices to the exploitation of ordinary people.

I think what Bernie Sanders represents — and I’ll ask your response, but what I think he represents, the reason he’s so authentic — he actually believes in the grassroots. He actually believes that an ordinary person in Vermont can make intelligent decisions about the human condition, and about justice and freedom. And I think the reason Bernie Sanders can survive the rhetorical assaults on his leftism or his socialism, is that what people of power in the capitalist world have managed to do is identify this cause of social justice, a notion of democratic socialism with totalitarianism, with elitism. And Bernie Sanders — and this is a good night to celebrate Bernie Sanders, if it’s true; I hadn’t caught up with the news, but if he’s really doing that well in Iowa. Because I thought he would get 1% of the vote four years ago when he started; I never thought this would happen.

I think what makes Bernie Sanders authentic is his respect for the ordinary person. He is the opposite of that leftist elitist–and you have them as well as rightist elitists — who thinks they have to distort history to protect the average person from reality. And Bernie Sanders is — he speaks truth about what’s going on. And at a time when people on the right and the left have nothing but contempt for most of the politicians, and journalistic leaders and everything else, for having betrayed them. So I think Bernie Sanders is a ray of hope. I wish he would be around a lot longer, but then again, I wish I’d be around a lot longer. But it’s nice to run into Max Blumenthal, who’s half my age and has all of that spirit that I’d like to see in journalism. So thanks, Max, for doing this.

MB: Thank you, Bob. It’s a real honor.

RS: And by the way, I ignored that last book of yours. Could you give the title again and how people get it?

MB: It’s called “The Management of Savagery.” And let me pull it off the shelf so I can actually read the subheader. You can edit this. It’s called “The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump.” And it’s really kind of my look at the, sort of how the politics of my lifetime and my generation has been shaped by foreign policy disasters that an unelected foreign-policy establishment has subjected us to.

RS: Full disclosure, I actually have not read it, and I will get it as soon as I can.

MB: I’ll send you a copy —

RS: No, no, no, you got — it’s hard enough to make a living as a writer. I don’t think you should give these things away for nothing. I’ll get myself a copy. And I want to thank you again. I’ve been talking to Max Blumenthal, check out his work, check out the Grayzone. These podcasts are done basically for KCRW, the public radio station in Santa Monica, where Christopher Ho is the engineer who gets it up on the air.

At Truthdig, Natasha Hakimi Zapata writes the brilliant intros and overview of these things and posts them up there. Here at USC, Sebastian Grubaugh, the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, really gets the whole thing going and hooks up everyone, thanks to him. And finally, there’d be no “Scheer Intelligence” without the main Scheer, Joshua Scheer, who’s the show’s producer. And we’ll see you next week with another edition of “Scheer Intelligence.”

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smuggsy · 5 years ago

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IN PLAIN SIGHT / Chapter 3 A Band of Brothers Story (1) (2) + read it on AO3. Taglist: @gottapenny

The nervousness of the arrival, the prostpect of being turned away by Lieutenant Nixon despite previous arrangements and the impromptu marathon she’s been made to run uphill make her scrunch up her nose at the smell of the dining place. She isn’t the slightest bit hungry.

She does down that glass of water within a couple of seconds though.

Luz (George, as he’s untroduced himself) watches her do it with an amused smile from the opposite side of the table. Alex Penkala still has that arm of his thrown over her shoulder.

“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” he inquires, picking up another nearby glass of water - this one half full - and handing it over to her.

She shrugs as she swallows it all down in one go. Christenson is standing nearby, she doesn’t catch the sympathetic look he throws at her when she places the second glass back on the table noisily.

“I jus’ learnt” she provides, choosing to omit the fact that what they’ve just witnessed outside has been nothing but sheer luck. She’d just aimed to where she thought the glass was standing - which doesn’t mean she isn’t an actual avid shooter, but there is a limit to all human ability and getting a target off range in pitch dark with an M1 is the limit to her human ability. “My old man - he’s a good shot.”

“You from New York?” Skip leans over the table with a cigarrette between his lips and a friendly face, he squints at her.

A slight and desinterested nod from her has him celebrating his right guess.

“Whereabouts?” Penkala asks, cocking his head casually, stealing the cigarette right from his friend’s mouth and getting a smack on the head for it.

“Brooklyn. Are there any apples?” She stands up with the intention of finding that out, getting a piece of fruit or anything that isn’t too oily or savoury - no proper dinner for her weak stomach tonight. No sooner has she got on her feet than Alex Penkala is pushing her down again, his never-leaving arm over her shoulders the culprit.

“Hey Perconte!” he whistles right on her ear, and she shrugs him off with annoyance. “An apple for the Big Apple boy!”

She turns around to see a short black-haired guy rolling his eyes and rumagging behind him on the other side of the kitchen counter.

“I ain’t your butler Penkala, why don’t you come’n get it yourself?!” he barks back.

“Hey! It’s for Oli here, c’mon!”

“Well he got legs, don’t he?”

Olivia fights down a sigh and stands up, then a hand coming from her right throws a green apple upwards in front of her for her to catch - which she does, albeit rather sloppily.

“Thanks.”

“So you had like, camouflage training n’ all that?” the apple-giver asks, he isn’t the tallest man around by any chance, his hair is slightly ruffled, his eyes are rather blue-ish. He takes a seat to her right, blocking the only way out of affectionate Alex Penkala’s embrace.

“Yes, concealment, observation… A lot of standing still and sitting still and lying still” she almost laughs at their scowls and groans of feigned boredom. “Weather conditions, map reading-”

“We do map reading!” Muck chimes in.

“Weather?” apple man frowns to her left. “Really?”

She turns to him and takes a bite off the fruit.

“Wind and temperature can cause a bullet to miss its target, you gotta take it into account before you pull the trigger” she explains.

“Sound to me like an excuse for being a shitty shot” Private Guarnere interrumpts from the corner. Olivia isn’t one to judge people on first encounters, but he surely is a grumpy one: he’d snatched his bag back from her hands with as much an unfriendly manner as Sobel had done. “What if it’s too hot? Won’t your ammo melt right down?”

His teasing prompts another wave of laughter among the men on the table, Olivia stops herself from rolling her eyes.

“I didn’t know you needed to study metheorology to get in the army” Muck joins in.

“Well, it’s just a couple of lessons…”

“Should’ve been running, boy” Guarnere smiles once again, mockingly. “You need a couple o’ lessons on that!”

Another round of laughter has her taking a rather hasty bite from her apple and she stops trying to explain anything else to them - most of the group disbands soon after, heading outside for a smoke or a game of cards. Private Martin - the apple private - takes a look at her filthy looking hair and sweaty collar and tells her to go get a shower before he leaves, as if she hasn’t been considering it already. As if she’d just go to sleep with that grim all over her neck and face.

On her table only a redhead remains - minus one Popeye, who had been asleep through all the commotion and still now hadn’t batted an eye opened once.

“How come you the only company in tonight?” she gestures towards Don, pretty sure that’s what Skip had called him earlier before he stole his pack of Lucky Strikes and sprinted off with Penkala on his tail.

Don snaps his head up from his letter a few seconds later and gives her a tired look.

“Sobel’s favourite hobby, revoking our weekend passes” is what he says before he turns back to his paper. He’s clearly not in a talkative mood and she needs to hit the showers and carefully plan her whole approach - so she leaves him and sleepy Popeye to make each other company.

“See you, then…”

“Malarkey” he offers with a monotonous voice, not looking up. “Donald.”

“Right. Night.”

Once outside, she stands there like an idiot, turning left and right unsure of where to go. Last time she saw her muffle bag it was on Sobel’s office steps, being left there as she ran after him to beg for a chance to prove her worth. She isn’t particularly keen on the idea of returning there to retrieve her belongings - doesn’t want to have to face him again, lest he change his mind and send her walking to the nearest bus station. I suggest you go back to whatever shithole you came out of and repeat whatever shitty training you got.

Fortunately, her inner worries dissipate soon as she catches sight of Lieutenant Winters, approaching with steady pace and both her bag and rifle thrown over his shoulder.

The fact that he’s smiling before he reaches her already makes Olivia take a liking to him.

“Private Brown” he acknowledges, and she stands straight. “At ease.”

“Sir” the takes her things off his hands with a nod. “Thank you, sir.”

“You got a bed yet?”

“No, sir.”

“Let’s find you one” he sends a distrustful look to the cloudy sky and starts walking. “That was quite an impressive showdown back there.”

“Thanks…”

I was lucky to hit that glass at all.

“You definitely lifted the mood, make a couple of friends already, I assume?“

"Yeah, I think we bonded alright…" Penkala’s a bit clingy, though. But Christenson’s pretty decent.

"I’m sure you did” he nods.

Olivia stares at his expression for a little too long before she understands it. Jesus, do the the C.O’s hate Sobel as well?

She can definitely tell Winters isn’t a fan by a long strech. It’s the smile that he’s unsuccessfully trying to fight down what gives him away.

“Here we are, there ought to be a couple of spare beds in here.”

She follows him inside, where two idle soldiers stand to attention soon as they catch sight of their superior, a couple of cards helplessly flying to the ground in their haste to get off the bed.

“At ease,” Winters immediately says, and Olivia drops her things by the second bed to her right. Someone’s definitely been sent home. “This is private Brown” Winters waves a hand in her direction as her two fellow troopers resume their game.

“Yeah, we know” one of them - looks a tad bit older than the rest, she thinks - sends a friendly smile her way.

Winters doesn’t try to supress his smile this time, he turns to her and gives another short nod.

“All in order?”

The sheets smell like dust and the cot looks as uncomfortable as she knows them to be.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Sleep well then, I’ll see you in the morning.”

She salutes him before he’s got a chance to turn around and leave without waiting for it. She can see he’s not that kind of officer. Not the Sobel kind of officer. More on the Campbell side, she considers, but she doesn’t let her thoughts wander in that direction yet. She saw him a couple of hours ago, surely she can’t be getting all nostalgic already?

“Heard ya gave Sobel a hard time over a glass” one of the soldiers on the bed comments, looking at her as the other one watches his own cards in deep thought.

“I guess so” she shrugs, not quite sure where she stands with these two. She can’t go making assumptions this early, she’s already managed to get on her Captain’s bad book so nothing good will come out of her celebrating the incident. Can’t quite join in on the joke, not yet.

There’s a laugh.

“Ya guess?"

She stops unpacking her belongings - a book and a small notebook all she’s brought along from home - and turns around.

The one who smiled at her earlier stands up and approaches. She meets him halfway, ready to shake his already outstretched hand.

"Sargeant Lipton” he says, and boy isn’t she glad she didn’t let herself get too excited about mocking Sobel now. “Welcome.”

“Thanks. Oliver, which you already know…"

"Everyone’s gonna know it by tomorrow boy” blondie adds with his thick southern accent.

“That’s Bull” the sargeant points behind him. “He’s friendlier than he looks” he adds under his breath before smiling kindly again and returning to the bed. “Ain’t that right, Bull?”

“What’s that?”

Olivia returns to her task - mostly turns around to hide the smile that creeps onto her face as she gathers up a change of clothes.

“What did you say? That ya gonna lose this round again? Damn right you are.”

Maybe she’ll get lucky. Maybe her platoon’s not that bad. Maybe. Maybe it’ll all be nice and well.

Except for the going to war bit, that is.

※ ※ ※

The first good thing that happens to her in Camp Toccoa is finding the showers empty. She doesn’t wait around to see that change - in fact, she probably breaks a record, quickly handling the soap with one hand and keeping a towel in the air with the other, blocking any incomers’ view from her cubicle.

She’s in the farthest corner but that does nothing to put her mind at ease. She’s done before two whole mintutes have gone by and returns to the barracks with her hair still damp.

She knows she got lucky today, with most of the camp empty; still, she pushes that thought away in favour of getting some very much awaited rest.

And she’s out before anyone else, probably.

Which - if she weren’t so exhausted - would also make her a bit uneasy: first day, bunch of guys in close proximity, hot as hell that she can’t cover herself with anything lest she draw more attention than she’s already getting for being the new one.

Not that there’s much to cover up anyway - but then again, her lack of volume up there is nothing but helpful in a situation like this. Bandages can only do so much. Again: she’s too tired tonight to pay any of it any mind.

Just before she drifts off she seems to hear Mike somewhere near, saying something along the lines of… dirt and sleeping, and penises.

“Jesus Penkala, grow up -”

“Shhh, you grow up” Skip answers in his friend’s behalf, standing close behind.

“How would you like it if I put a rat on your face while you slept?”

“I’d kick ye in the balls - we’re not putting it in his face now shut up” Skip continues to whisper, as his blue-eyed friend squats down and places the tiny animal next to Oliver’s right foot.

“Where did you get a rat, anyway?” Don takes a bite of his Hershey bar as he stands at the foot of the bed, stance quite relaxed and looking not the least bit remorseful.

“I did!” Comes the unnecessary loud answer from the third bed opposite.

Alex stops frozen in his half-risen position at the sight of the new sniper mumbling in his sleep.

“Damn it, Perconte!"

"Shhhhh!”

“It was in that dirty-old kitchen” Frank adds, voice unlowered.

“Should’ve saved it for the stew” Joe mumbles, before he turns over on the bed to face Liebgott, who’s been chewing that gum for at least an hour now and is watching the macabre plan unamused. “Right, Joe?”

Liebgott doesn’t have time to answer, but he does roll his eyes as a high-pitched scream echoes through the room, followed by an outburst of laughter and one John Martin rising up from his slumber with a curse.

“Here we go” Joe mumbles, resuming his writing, uninterested.

“For fuck’s sake, can’t we have one quiet night?!”

“Aw, come on, Johnny…”

Olivia can feel her hair sticking out in various directions and she’s blinking into focus when Martin comes over to take the rat off the cot, looking like he’s about to fish out his bayonette and stick it in someone’s throat.

“Wait!” She snaps.

Meanwhile, that trio of devils is barely holding it together at the sight of her sleepy and terrified face - undoubtedly the pranksters.

She stumbles over to Martin and cups her hands next to his.

“I’ll take it” she says, shaking her head, as if that’s going to make her slurry words less slurry.

Private Martin lets the tiny animal fall on her hands with an unhappy grunt - it stops squeaking in pain and quickly scurries over her arm. She grabs it again.

“Everybody go to fucking sleep!"

"Hey, it’s still early!” Frank protests, just now getting comfortable with a book on his lap.

Olivia sends a killer glare to both Skip and Penkala when she walks past them to set the rat free outside. They’re still enjoying themselves when she comes back in.

“Real mature guys, nice” she makes a face and rolls her eyes. “You pull something like that again and my finger may just slip next we target-practise” she warns, still half-asleep, word filter not really on.

Luckily, they know she means nothing by it.

“If I hear one more word-” Martin starts again.

“Alright, grandpa!”

“Yeah, Johnny, we’re in bed, we’re in bed, see?” Alex insists, as he jumps on his (very far away, Olivia notices with joy) cot.

She doesn’t drift off for another thirty minutes after that. Whoever’s on her left seems to be quite dead - which leads her to believe it’s Popeye, if the golden hair is anything to go by. On her right, a dark-haired soldier she hasn’t met turns over and meets her eyes and points a finger gun at her a couple of seconds before someone turns the lights off.

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