#fuck this city fuck our government fuck our mayor

[altruistic-meme]

shoutout to walmart for doing more for my community than the government officials are

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Maya Yang at The Guardian:

Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian American congresswoman, has accused a political cartoonist of racism after he depicted her next to a pager exploding days after such devices blew up across Lebanon in what the Arab country has said was an attack by Israel. A statement from the Democratic US House representative also expressed concern that the cartoon by Henry Payne would “incite more hate and violence against Arab and Muslim communities”. “And it makes everyone less safe,” Tlaib said of the cartoon – published by the Republican-friendly National Review – which also showed her thinking how “odd” it was for the nearby pager to explode. Pagers had been a preferred method of Hezbollah members in conflict with Israel, before such devices exploded across Lebanon recently. “It’s disgraceful that the media continues to normalize this racism against our communities,” she said.

The congresswoman’s statement about the publication of the cartoon “Tlaib Pager Hamas” came after many users on the social media platform X had condemned it as anti-Arab as well as Islamophobic. Among them was the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, Abdullah Hammoud, who wrote on X: “Absolutely disgusting. Anti-Arab bigotry & Islamophobia have become normalized in our media.” The mayor added: “At what point will people call this out?” Other users condemned Payne’s cartoon directly on his own X profile. One wrote: “You should be ashamed,” and another user said: “What the fuck does she have to do with the war crimes of Israel terrorizing the [Lebanese] people? It’s because she’s Arab you thought it was okay to draw this shit?”

Payne is a political cartoonist for the Detroit News, one of two major daily newspapers in the city, which is Tlaib’s hometown. The Guardian sent him a request for comment on Friday. The slew of pager and walkie-talkie explosions to which the cartoon alludes have killed dozens of people while wounding thousands more, including children. The Lebanese government and Hezbollah have blamed Israel for the attacks. Israel has stopped short of claiming responsibility for the deadly attacks. However, in their wake, its defense minister complimented the Mossad – the Israeli intelligence agency – for its “great achievements”.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) fearlessly calls out Detroit News cartoonist Henry Payne’s racist and Islamophobic cartoon depicting her with an exploding pager.

[tanoraqui]

VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE!

Confirm your voter registration

Find your polling place

Know what ID to bring

Heck, just check out this website for a variety of official answers to voting-related questions, state by state. Or this one.

Did you know that in many states, you're required to get time off to vote?

And don’t forget your local elections! That’s where your single vote is most likely to make a difference, that’s where most of the decisions will affect your daily life and your neighbors’, and that’s where novice politicians whom you really like gain experience to rise to higher office!

- It's currently a dead heat for which party controls the House of Representatives (propose most laws, oversees the presidential election process which Trump WILL try to fuck with), so vote for that!

- 538's poll aggregates currently predict that only in 1 out of 11 timelines do Democrats win the Senate (approve Supreme Court nominees and basically every other appointment in the government) so vote like HELL for that!

- School Board members determine if books should be banned. Your Mayor and City Council members decide how much money goes to your local library, park, schools, and how much goes to the police. Do you want your local Parks Board or Transit Board or Superspecial Tiddlywinks Board to be run by someone who believes that public services should be privatized, or that they should serve the public? VOTE FOR THAT SHIT!!

- Also, in between, Governors and State Assembly and however you state or local municipality does measures, propositions and taxes... (I only know California, where our state constitution has been fighting for its life against direct democracy since 1911, and losing the whole time.) And sheriffs and district attorneys to run your local prosecution of criminals, and State Secretary of State to oversee your elections…

CANDI THE CAT IN HER STYLISH AUTUMN VEST WANTS YOU TO VOTE!

[glassartpeasants]

Run Rabbit Run .10

Yandere!Eustass Kid x F!Reader

Warnings: Death, blood mentions, physical abuse, violence, implied non-con, slight non-con, not edited for shit cause it took too long to type in general

A/N: This part is all in the eyes of Kidd so enjoy. I'm so happy for this shit to be finally published cause it took me too fucking long to do. Also working on new writing styles cause i need to be a perfectionist

music playlist

pt.1 pt.2 pt.3 pt.4 pt.5 pt.6 pt.7 pt.8 pt.9 pt.10 pt.11

~~~

“Look at them run! This is gonna be a fun island to ransack.”

“We should find the mayor and ask him where he keeps the town's treasury.”

“Good thinking, Killer.”

Even with the conversation so short, it spoke volumes as the Victoria Punk docks on the island. The beautiful blue skies shone down on the new and upcoming worst-generation supernova. With only a few months under his belt, his name was still feared throughout the south blue. His bounty getting higher and higher with every new poster.

He has yet to lose to any marine or pirate ship. Every battle he wins only makes him all the more feared, and his crew is just as terrifying as himself. Being known for his bloodthirsty ways, people would usually give him their prized possessions just to make sure they stayed clear of his wraith. But even then, sometimes, it wasn’t enough.

“This island is smaller than I thought, but it’s still mostly populated. More people, more treasure.”

“I haven’t seen any marines since we’ve docked, no boats or anything. Do you think this island isn’t under the eye of the world government?”

“Don’t matter to me. If marines try to stop me, I’ll just crush them.” The sinister chuckle that left the man’s lips made even the strongest marine tremble. Now, with a rushing set of footsteps coming towards him, Kidd continues to smirk.

A man about his own age was running full speed at him. A look of rage crossed his features as he clutched a knife tightly in his hands. Compared to himself, the man was nothing more than a twig. No muscle or anything to back him up with the fight he was looking for.

“Oh, this outta be fun.”

“Damn pirates! Leave our island alone!” The man lifts his arm to strike the notorious captain, only to be stopped by a suffocating grip. Without a second thought, Kidd’s hand gripped the scrawny man’s neck as he lifted him up. The man drops the knife to try and pry off the hand, squeezing his throat.

“How pathetic! A string bean like you thinks he can tell me what to do?” Kidd squeezes the man's throat harder and lifts him so they're eye to eye.

“News flash, I don’t like when people tell me what to do. I’ll show you what happens to people who do.” Clawing at Kidd’s hand, the man begins to see black in his vision as he starts to gasp.

“Please let my son go! He’s the only family I have!” An old man shows up hobbling fast towards Kidd and his crew. A cane in his left hand as he struggles to stay up. 

“I don’t feel like it. Little fucker thinks he can try to attack me. Yet he didn’t even land a hit like the pathetic little thing he is.” Kidd laughs at the old man’s worried expression.

“I’ll do anything! Just please let my son go!” The old man gets on his hands and knees, begging the ruthless pirate for mercy. 

“Bring me your mayor, and I’ll think about it.”

“I am the mayor! I promise, Captain Kidd, as I have the key to City Hall and everything!” The old man pulls out a key from his pants and lifts it towards Kidd.

“Well, would you look at that? How convenient. I didn’t even have to waste time searching.” Using his devil fruit powers, Kidd gravitates the key to his open hand. Looking at the key in his hand, he looks to his friend.

“What ya think, Killer? Should I let the small fry go?”

“Might as well. We have the mayor right here.”

“Looks like it’s your lucky day. Now scram before I change my mind.” The man is dropped with a thud. Holding his throat, he coughs harshly, with tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. Air finally returns to his lungs.

“Run home, son. Everything will be fine! Just go home.”

“But father-”

“Go home!” Despite his pleas, the scrawny man follows his father's orders. His throat bruised as he struggles to walk. His head spinning as the lack of oxygen has taken its toll. A crippling fear plagues the son as he walks home with unstable legs. The safety of his father was all he could think about.

“Now that that little nuisance is out of the way, we can finally get what we came here for.” Turning his attention to the old man, Kidd looks down at him.

“You either give us all the treasure this town has in its treasury, or I go back and break your son's scrawny little neck.” The mayor looks in horror at the man before him.

“I can’t! We’ve been saving it to build a marine base on the island! It’s taken us years to save up that money!” Kidd only laughs in the old man’s face.

“Too bad, old man! Now, you either give us all the treasure this shit town has to offer, or you’ll see its ashes fall from the sky!”

“But! The people need that for-” Not letting the old man finish, Kidd kicked him backwards. His fragile body hits the ground and is knocked out cold.

“Wrong answer, old fool! Burn it down and take everything! Leave no stone unturned!” Kidd watched his crew scatter before starting to break into businesses, houses, and other structures. Glass shattering, and the newfound screams sounded like music to his ears.

“Heat!” Calling out to his crew, he watches the bluenette approach him.

“Yeah Captain?”

“I want you to go kill that brat while burning down buildings.”

“Sounds good.”

Turning around laughing, Kidd’s amber eyes catch the glance of a woman hiding behind a building. Her face full of fear as she shook in her place.  From where she stood, Kidd could see the way the light shone down on her. It gave her an almost angelic glow. For some reason, it ignited something inside him. Something that told him to ruin her. To rip off that halo and wings while he fucked her down to the second circle of hell. The image made him laugh as he began to move in her direction. Himmoving in the woman’s direction caused her to finally flee.

“Cat and mouse, aye?” Kidd snickers as he beckons the woman back; any metal she was wearing would drag her right back to him. He watches her stop in her tracks before being pulled back to him at full speed. Her shrieks of terror cause him to lick his lips.

The woman’s back collided with Kidd’s chest as he grabbed her wirst in an iron grip.

“Where do you think you're going?” The woman looked up at him, and he smiled at her. He watched her tremble in place.

“Y-Your Eustass Kidd…”

“Damn right. What? You afraid?” The way she uttered his name made the fire inside him only burn brighter. A delicate little thing like her screaming out his name as he left bruises on her skin had his mind running with wild thoughts.

“Please! Just let me go! I’ll give you all the money I have. Just please let me go!” He watched in amusement as the woman tried to twist and turn out of his grip. The hope dying in her eyes felt like an addictive drug. While taking in the woman's fear, he noticed a ring adorning her finger and a metal circle on your left wrist.

“Now, why would I let something I caught fair and square go?” Finally pulling her left arm closer to his view, he finds that the circle of metal adorning her wrist was, in fact, supposed to be a bracelet. A very shitty stainless steel bracelet that he could have easily made with his eyes closed. 

“Your shitty stainless steel bracelet betrayed you, princess.” The nickname fell off his tongue so smoothly that it was almost like honey. He could feel his heart quicken at the little nickname that he decided there and then.

“My fiance worked hard to make it for me!”

“Don’t make me laugh! This is the shittest piece of jewelry I’ve ever seen!” How horribly it was made felt like an insult to him. He swore a baby could make one better. Using his power, Kidd manages to contort the ugly bracelet off the woman's wrist. He brought it closer to his face just to look at it once more, and that’s when he saw the flaw in the metal. He sees the woman reach for it but simply lifts it up out of her reach to inspect it more.

“Give it back!”

“It’s ain’t even pure stainless steel. Pathetic. Not even detailed, just a circle of metal." Using his devil fruit, he crushes the bracelet into the form of a ball. Small enough to be a bullet.

“Repel.” A laugh escapes him as he watches the small ball shoot into a store window. It shatters the entire thing and breaks something inside. Now, turning back to the woman, he smirks.

“Now, c’mon. You’re coming with me.” The woman's nails dig into Kidd’s hand. Her desperate attempt at freedom only made his lust for her grow.

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be, princess. I’m not a very patient person.” The woman's mouth opens to say something, but a loud voice pulls his attention away.

“(Y/N)! Get your hands off of her, you filithy pirate!” So that was your name? It felt fitting for a little thing like yourself. A lovely little princess like you with such an angelic name.

Looking at the person in front of him, he sees a ring adorning their left hand. It added up to the fact that this must be your fiance. AN annoyed look plastered on Kidd’s face as he realized that what should have been a quick thing was now actually gonna be a pain in his ass. Looking the fiance up and down, Kidd knew that they stood no chance against him. A single punch could take them down, no doubt.

“Is this your pathetic fiance? Ugh, I don’t have time to deal with you. I’ve got to take this treasure I found back to the ship.”

“(Y/N)’s not going anywhere with you! Let her go pirate!” Rage filled Kidd as another small fry thinks they can tell him what to do.

“Run (....)! He’s going to kill you!” Kidd let go of your wrist for a second, only to wrap his arm around your torso. He pulled you close to his chest as he trapped your arms to your sides with his strong grip. While he’d love to turn your pathetic fiance into a bloody puddle, he just couldn’t wait to bring you back to the Victoria Punk for safekeeping.

“Killer!” Not even seconds pass before his best friend shows up next to him.

“Yeah, Kidd?”

“I need you to kill them. Little shit thinks they can tell me what I can and can’t do.” He watches his buddy look down at the horrified woman in his arms.

“Who’s she?”

“My new plaything, cutie, ain’t she?” Kidd laughs as he holds onto you tighter. Your smell was intoxicating with how close you were to him.

“No! Leave them alone!”

“Alright, let’s go.” Kidd turns around just in time so you don’t see Killer murdering your fiance. But the screams could still be heard. He looks down and sees tears slipping down your cheeks as you weep in his grasp. The pathetic fiance felt like a worthless thing to cry about, in his personal opinion. But seeing your tears had his pants growing tighter.

“What a pretty sight, don’t you think?” The look of horror on your face as you watched your town burn to the ground made Kidd feel like we were on cloud nine. He just knew that the little angel he plucked from gods hand would surely be a fuck to experience. 

~~~

“Oi Kidd.”

“What is it Killer?” Watching his friend approach him, Kidd simply took a hard drink of the alcohol in his hand. His eyes scanned the bar as he watched multiple women look at him with less-than-holy intentions.

“Do you want me to go unlock that chick on the ship now? She’s been on the ship since we took her from that island a week ago? Plus, you're at the bar getting plastered and beckoning other women over.” 

“Nah. Keep her there a little longer. Plus, where would she go? It’s not like she has a home to go back to. I could honestly keep her as long as I want!” Laughing, Kidd took another swing of his drink. Having a personal fleshlight aboard the ship at all times was an opportunity only a fool would pass up.

“If you say so.”

“Come get a drink, Killer! Unwind and enjoy the lack of Marines!” Chugging down the alcohol, Kidd slammed down the empty glass on the table. His eye scanned the room, and despite the multiple women that occupied the bar, none gave him that rush that you did when he first saw you. While there were women who looked at him with lust, the fear that was in your eyes made more of an impact on his sexual desires.

Sure, he’s taken women to the Victoria Punk, but they're always gone before sunrise. No woman he’s brought to bed has ever spent a full day on the ship. Until you came along. You’ve spent a full week under the deck of the Victoria with only him and Killer knowing. And it’ll stay that way if he could help it. Having a secret little place to relieve his stress and get his fill sounded perfect for when he was stuck on the seas without a bar to be seen.

A little wingless angel stuck in the dark.

~~~

Stumbling along the hallways, Kidd can’t help but chuckle as he makes his way to your room. He’s been drinking till the early before a sudden lust flooded his body. The image of you laying beneath him was too stong to ignore. He wanted to hear your cries and moans. Wanted to feel your nails dig into his skin and cause him too bleed. 

When he opened the door that kept you locked away, he saw you sleeping peacefully. Your face content as you lay on the tattered blankets that used to hold prisioners. The light giving him just enough to walk towards a crate to light up a lantern. Once he closed and locked the door again, the lantern was now the only sorce of light. 

He stumbled over to where your head lay before sitting down. The vibrations caused you to stir, yet you refused to awaken fully. It caused a scowl to appear on Kidd’s painted lips before he tugged on a strand of your hair. The shock of your hair being tugged made your hand go to soothe the throb that followed suit.

Rubbing your eyes, you look up.”Kidd? W-Why are you here? It’s late.” Your confusion was clear in your voice, but Kidd paid no mind.

“Mmm…gonna fuck ya. Wanna hear my princess cry out my name.” Slurring his speech, Kidd laughs as he grabs your wrist and drags you up to him. The chain attached to your ankle rattled as he had you face to face.

The fear that still swirled in your eyes got him drunker than any alcohol could ever do. Your soft skin against his rough, calloused hands felt as if he were touching something sacred.

Grabbing your chin, he pulls you in for a kiss. He could feel you try to pull away, but you were no match for his strength, and he loved that. How weak you were compared to him had his already hard cock throbbing. You were the defenseless little princess who relied on him for everything.

The kiss only got deeper as he spurred himself on in his head. He pushed his tongue past your lips and groaned when he felt your own. Your taste was sweet as he explored your mouth. No matter how many times he’s kissed you, it always felt just as electric as it did the day he first kissed you. Your lips are so soft as they smudged his lipstick with how harshly he was kissing you.

Wrapping his hands around your wrists, he slammed you down on the ground before climbing on top of your body. His lips were still locked with yours as your scent overwhelmed him. It sent a fire hot sensation in his abdomen as he started to press closer to you.

Bringing both wrists above his head, he holds them both with one hand. With his other hand now free, he runs his fingertips underneath your shirt. He feels you shiver against his touch, and it causes one to go down his own spine.

Pulling his lips away from yours, a thick strand of saliva connected his mouth to yours. Hearing you gasp and pant for breath makes him slightly grip your wrists harder as he stares down at you. Your lips were swollen from his harsh kiss and sporting the lipstick that once adorned his own lips.

“K-Kidd, you're drunk. Perhaps you should just sleep. You don’t want a hangover, do you?” The nervousness and pleas that slipped past your lips went unheard by him. All he could see was his princess lying under him. Even though you tried to squirm and wiggle away, all Kidd felt was you rubbing against him. 

“Fuck.” Kidd whispers under his breath as he begins to rub his clothed cock against you. His face is right above yours as he feels your breath fanning against his face. Through his lidded eyes, Kidd can see your eyes are closed, and you're biting your bottom lip.

Moving both your wrists to one hand, Kidd uses his free one to grab your chin. “Fucking look at me. I want you to look at me while I fuck you.” Kidd can feel his heart double in speed when he’s met with your eyes staring at him intensely yet glassy.

Kidd groans out before licking his lips. Letting go of your chin, Kidd reaches down to unbuckle his pants. His eyes still strained on you and he can’t help but notice all the bites and bruises he’s adorned on your body since you’ve been here. It only makes Kidd’s need for you higher.

“What if we do this tomorrow?” Your words break through Kidd’s lust-clouded mind. ”You won’t even remember this since you're drunk, right? We can do it tomorrow!” Beads of sweat dropped from your forehead as you talked to Kidd. Obviously hoping that he might fall for the bait.

Kidd’s eyes stare at you before letting out a yawn. He didn’t say anything for a few seconds before getting up and moving away from your body. Only to grab it seconds later and drag you to lay on the tattered blankets. He fell on top of you, making you let out an ‘oof’.

The warmth your body excluded made made Kidd’s eyes grow heavy as he let out another yawn. Placing his head onto of your breasts, he allowed his drunken self just an hour or two to sleep before going back into his own quarters. No harm in a measly two hours. 

~~~

The sky filled with smoke as Kidd angrily desetroyed anything he deemed mocked him. Living or not, his anger was his own fault as ahe had no one to blame but himself. Ever since that drunken night he slept by your side, he’s never been able to sleep normally again.

Before he used to sleep all throughout the night but now. He’d wake up every two hours reaching out for someoen that wasn’t there. He’s never slept with someone all night. Or at all. But now that he’s gotten a taste of what it felt like to sleep next to someone, it wans’t something his body could sleep without. And it pissed him off.

Sure, he loved fucking you whenever he wanted, but now, it’s like he can’t go even an hour without thinking about you. Working in his workshop became a pain in the ass as he could be working on his crew’s weapons only to see your eyes staring at him in his imagination. How blown over they are when he fucks you or how you looked at him when he even enters a room.

He couldn’t even sleep with other women anymore cause his mind kept going to you! All there was was you. It pissed him off to the point he didn’t bother seeking you out of your company for a week and counting. A small part of him begged to go below deck to see the angel he stole from god. Yet the other him spoke curses on how you’ve affected him. It felt as if his head was splitting from the battle going on inside him.

“You're scowling more than usual. What’s wrong?” His friend's voice broke through his thoughts as he stood next to him. 

Running a hand through his hair, Kidd hisses. “It’s not something you can help with, so buzz off.”

“Is it about that girl below deck?”

“(Y/N).”

“Yeah her?”

“No.”

“Liar.” Snapping his head towards the masked man, Kidd glared at him. 

“Something obviously happened, so stop trying to act like nothing did.” Killer crossed his arms as he looked at his stubborn friend.

“She’s invading my mind like a damn disease! Can’t even go an hour without her popping up in my mind! Not to mention, I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in a month!”

“Can’t even fuck another whore without imagining it’s her! It’s pissing me off! Is this some sort of devil fruit?!” A snort comes from behind Killer’s mask, making Kidd madder.

“Jesus christ, your so stupid.”

“I’m not fucking stupid! If you know what's wrong with me, then spit it out!”

“It’s called falling in love, you idiot.”

Kidd’s eyes widened as he felt his heart stop. “No shot! That’s the biggest load of shit I’ve ever heard! I’m not falling in love.”

“Oh really? Well then, let her go, it’s been six months-”

“-No.”

“You're not in love with her, but you refuse to let her go?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, Kidd. Whatever you say.”

~~~

Bursting open the door, Kidd stomps through his room. His rage fills the small space as his heart beats harshly. Once again, a marine ship ruined his supply trip to an island. While normally he wouldn’t care and go on and fight, Killer advised against it. Kidd had a good amount of sake a few hours earlier and wouldn’t be on his A game if they took charge.

While Killer was right, Kidd was still upset that he wouldn’t be able to get supplies for his crew for another day till they reached the next island.  His crew had to go hungry for a day simply because of some annoying marines.

“God fucking damnit! Those fucking marines keep getting in my way!” Kidd’s eyes scan the room as he tries to find something to throw. When his eyes landed on a metal butterfly he made for you, he grabbed it off the dresser in a quick movement.

“Fuck!” Throwing it as hard as he could, he aimed for the bedroom door, which was already covered in marks from the other times he'd thrown knives at the door. The sound of a sucked-in breath makes him snap his head in your direction.

“What the fuck are you staring at?!” He watches you scoot away from him, and it only fuels his drunken rage. Who did you think you were to run away from him? To look at him with that face? Do you think it's funny when shit doesn't go his way?

His anger only heightened even more as he wrapped his hand around your foot. Digging his nails into your skin as he pulled you from him.

As soon as you were close enough to him, he grabbed your neck and lifted you into the air. “I said, what the fuck are you staring at?!” He watched you try to pry off his fingers off your neck. The small sting your nails brought only served to piss him off more.

“You're happy, aren’t you?! Do you think the Marines are going to catch me, and you’ll be free?! Is that it?!”

“I-I can’t breathe…Kidd please…” He watched as tears streamed down your face and onto his hand. The tear felt like a needle poking into his heart.

“Stupid bitch!” Stumbling over his own feet, Kidd chucks you against the wall. He watched you hit the wall and onto the floor with a loud ‘thud’ before what sounded like a crack whispered in his ears. He examines your body, not moving, and it causes a hard scowl on his face.

“Get up, damnit! I barely threw you!” Growling, Kidd wobbles over to your body before falling to his knees. His sight is blurry as his head seems to pound. When he slid his fingers through your hair, his brain failed to register the wet substance that coated his hand. He pulls on your hair so he can look you in the eyes.

“Fucking pathetic! Why do I even keep you around when you're so fucking useless?!” Your silence had Kidd’s drunken self slightly coherent.

“Hey! I’m talking to you! Don’t ignore me!” He grabs your face and, through his drunken haze, starts to see a red liquid drip down your face. A red handprint of blood was left on your cheek when he slightly moved his hand.

Your eyes fluttering shut made him sober up as the blood running down your face finally set in.

“Oi! Keep your eyes open!” Moving his hand in front of your face back and forth, his heart rate peaks when he finally watches your eyes fully close. Pulling your body close to his own, he grabs your shoulders and shakes you harder. Worry sets in as you don’t respond.

Picking you up to carry you, he hastly stumbles out of his room and makes a dash to the infirmary. The sound of his footsteps echoed through out the halls. His mouth goes dry as your lack of movement sobers him up to accurately find the room.

To his luck, Killer was already in the infirmary, counting on what they needed to restock.

“Killer, I fucked up.”

~~~

His eyes stared at the carved door as he laid his head on your chest. Your heartbeat pounding in his ears as he tried to ignore the small blood splatter on the floor that he forgot to clean up after the incident.

Your fingers running through his hair did little to calm the thoughts in his head. Even though he laid against you, he felt it wasn’t close enough. Close seemed to not be close enough.

Lifting his body up, he laid down next to you before he pulled you to his chest, you hair slightly tickling his skin. He wrapped his arms around you all the way to the point you wouldn’t be able to leave. Moving his legs, he tangled his limbs with yours. Only then did he feel you were close enough. Your scent a silent lullaby as he raced with thoughts. What if’s ran rampant.

‘What if I just took a nap instead?’

‘What if you got hurt even worse then i thought?’

‘What if you didn’t wake up?’

The thought of you no longer sharing his bed caused a panic to settle in Kidd’s stomach. Your warmth had become the only thing that allowed him to sleep peacefully. Hearing you breathe managed to be the only stress reliever that worked.

It was obvious to him now, that no matter what he might say, he couldn’t live without you.

~~~

The sound of the waves crashing against the beach felt like laughter as Kidd watched you sailing away on a ship he’d never seen before. His scream out to you echoed across the water only to come back to him, mocking him for being too late. Now, he got to watch the only thing that made him calm leave him.

The sand below him showed muddy footprints before being washed away by the ocean. Thunder and harsh rain poured down on Kidd, his hair sticking to his face as the rain pelted down his hair. Whether it was rain or tears that slid down his cheeks was anyone's guess. It felt as if time stopped while he tried to piece together what now?

His goal to find the one piece and become King of the Pirates still ran strong through his veins, but now it felt different. Not even days before this, he began to dream of when he’d finally be called King of the Pirates, when you’d be clinging to his arm and congratulating him, kissing him, and telling him you loved him. But now, that’s what it’d only be—a dream.

~~~

It’s been months since Kidd watched you sail away. Each night was plagued with that image of you sailing farther and farther away from him, every time only seconds late. Not a night went by where he didn’t wake up in a cold sweat. He’d reach out for you and be hit with the painful reminder that it was real—that you were gone.

Yet no matter where he went, it always felt like he saw you out of the corner of his eye. Or how sometimes he’d hear your voice in his ear. But when he turned to check it out, there was nothing. It felt as if he was going insane without you. And while there was intense longing, there was rage.

How dare you leave him? Don’t you know how much you meant to him? Hasn’t he shown he’s learned his lesson? He’s told you he loved you and you still left him. You have no one other then him, he made sure of it. Yet you still left.

Killer tried to tell him to get over you, that there were plenty of other fish in the sea, but he knew what he meant. He shouldn’t be shocked. You weren't even supposed to be with him for as long as you were. It was only a matter of time before the ‘relationship’ Kidd built with you would burn before his eyes. Even if he refused Killer’s words, any sane person would have agreed.

But now here he was, missing you with fury boiling inside him as he stared out over the crowd in the auction house. Privileged entitled assholes as far as the eye can see. All waiting for the show to begin.

~~~

Emotions pumped through his veins as he stared at himself in the mirror. A small splatter of blood on his cheek as all he could think about was you. How happy he was that you were back where you belonged. That after months of sleeplessness not knowing where you were, you were finally back in his arms. Whether you liked it or not wasn't something he cared to hear. He had you first. Those damn Straw Hats took you away, but now, you were back.

But you came back with a price.

Whatever happened in those months you were away changed you. All you did was fight and yell, scream and punch. Instead of the quiet angel he stole, a venomous fallen angel stood before him. But despite missing his fearful princess, the fight you put up managed to also have his blood pumping hotter. Watching you try to fight him only to lose gave him a high that only your fear could compare to.

Seeing your eyes widen in fear when he threatened to cut off your legs made a shiver of pleasure shoot up his spine. Even after you spit venom, he could not help but want you even more. Having you so close to him again made his body go haywire. Hearing you scream out in pain reminded him of when you screamed out his name in such a different, lustful tone. Watching tears stream down your face when he threw punch after punch had him resisting the urge to fuck you bloody and bruised. 

While the image was tempting, he had things to do, and he couldn’t let you think you got away with it. So he’d just send Killer down to patch you up after you’d been drenched in your own blood for a while. Maybe it’ll give you some time to contemplate. But if not, that’s okay.

He kinda liked that taste of your blood.

~~~

His heart couldn’t help but leap when he felt your lips running smoothly against his own, your warm skin glowing underneath his fingertips as you cupped his face. A calm washed over him at the small gesture. He pulled you closer and kissed you deeper, never wanting to let you go. But when he pulled away for a breath, he saw the stains of his lipstick on your face, the sight making him smile.

Kidd couldn’t help but feel the shiver that ran down his spine when he felt your breath against his neck. The rigid, cold metal of the collar on your neck had him silently sick in a breath.

“If you're gonna make me a new collar, can it be one I can sleep in?” When you mumbled those words into his skin, flashbacks from that fateful day rushed back to him. How you got out of your collar, so he obviously had to make a bigger and better one. And now you're trying to get a different one?

“Do you know why you're in that collar?” He looked down and was met with your pleading eyes.

“I ran away.” Kidd grits his teeth and digs his fingers into his hips harshly. Anger starts to surface at the memories.

“Yeah, you did. How can I trust you not to do it again, hmm? This collar makes my devil fruit powers work even better than the last one. So why should I give rewards to bad girls?”

“Can I do something to make it up to you?” The idea Killer shut down a week ago comes back to his mind. He’s done a few good studies to understand how it works, and it sounds pretty easy—easy and a perfect way to show everyone who you belong to.

“Take off your shirt.”

“W-What?”

“You heard me. Take it off.” Kidd watches you with heat pooling in his abdomen as he takes longing glimpses at your bare chest.

“Back to me.” He watches you listen and can’t help but run his fingers along your skin. Tracing your spine causes a shiver to run down his.

Getting up, he placed you down on the chair before tying you to it with a piece of metal. The sight makes him bite the inside of his cheek.

“H-Hey! What the hell!” Kidd only laughed before turning away from you. 

“You know, Killer originally talked me out of this, but since you wanted to be rewarded for bad behavior, I think it’ll go nicely with your new collar.” A rush of power surges through Kidd’s bones as he collects everything he needs.

“It’ll also show anybody who tries to take you away from me that you belong to me.” With his hands finally full, Kidd turns back to you. Your face goes rigid as he walks in your direction, which in turn makes you try to scoot away. Grabbing the side of the chair, he brings you back to him.

“Don’t worry, princess, I did my research.” A major rush of power flowed through Kidd's veins as he watched you struggle to escape.

“This is completely unreasonable! You can’t be serious!”

“You wanted to make it up to me? Well, here's your chance.” Kidd could see the panic in your eyes as he started to heat up the metal pole in his hands.

“There has to be something else, please, Kidd!” In a swift and rash motion, Kidd threw his hand towards you and felt your cheek collide with his knuckles.

“Be fucking grateful that I’m even giving you this chance! Those damn Straw Hats taught you that you can be a brat! I’m going to kill each one of those fuckers! I’ll do it in front of you so you can see what happens when you leave me!”

“You’ll never beat them! They’re gonna come for me and kick your ass!” Red clouded Kidd’s vision hearing your words. Grabbing your hair, he tugs it back so you face him. The tears in your eyes go ignored as Kidd’s grip on the metal pole tightens. He didn’t give you a second to speak before pushing the burning hot pole on your chest.

The scream you let out when the metal was fully pushed onto your skin swiped him out of his rage. The red that once blinded him was now gone as he quickly pulled away from you. He’d never heard something so ear-piercing and painful in his life. It echoed all throughout his workshop, and he felt a panic set in when he noticed he skipped a step in his rage and how you’ve now passed out.

“Shit! Shit! Oi, princess!” Grabbing your chin, his eyes studied your face to see any sign of consciousness, yet he was met with none. His heart rate spiked as he ripped away the metal he tied you with before carrying you bridal style. He rushed to the infirmary and cursed himself internally for not following all the steps as he tried to ignore the graphic third-degree burn on your chest.

~~~

All he could feel was numb, yet a pain that was indescribable when you moved his head to look at his arm. What once used to be a full limb was now nothing more than a stump. He could see his body covered in bandages as the memory of what happened came back to him. Words couldn’t seem to form as he felt his dreams crash down around him. 

“You should lay down and make sure everything heals properly.” Using the arm he had left, Kidd pulled you onto his lap. Burying his head into your scarred chest, it's then that he feels the tears on his own cheeks.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he’s cried like this, or if he’s ever cried like this. Crying so hard that he struggled to breathe and began to shake. It felt like the walls were closing in on him as he cried into your chest. All he could think of was how would he become King of the Pirates with one arm? It set him back so  much that he felt hopeless.

But when you wrapped your arms around him and slid your fingers through his hair, he pulled you closer despite his bandaged torso. The slight pain he felt was nothing compared to the pain he felt inside. 

“Just breathe, okay? In and out.” Following your command, Kidd tries to copy your breathing despite continuing to cry. Your now-soaked shirt rubbed against his face, and it only worsened the pain in his heart.

The small and gentle tune you began to hum made his hold tighter. He never wanted to let you go as you comforted him when he needed you the most.

~~~

Kidd sat on a chair next to you in the hospital bed as worry and fear took over him. His anger once again took charge and caused him to hurt you horrifically. Seeing you laying there with bandages covering your head caused a guilt he’s never felt before. He remembered the amount of blood you lost when he ran you to the hospital. It dripped from your head all the way to the hospital.

He managed to nab a doctor right away and have him work on you. Every second you were in the surgery room felt like hell. And what the doctor told him what the diagnosis was made Kidd’s heart clench.

“Since she fell off your ship, there's no doubt she has a sort of head/brain trauma. Long-lasting effects could stem from this injury. Here’s a list of some effects that you can read while I go grab another IV bag.”

Which is where Kidd sat now. Watching you breathe. Watching you breathe with the crumbled up list in hand. Your eyes closed as you sleep, unaware of the wreck he is. Grabbing your hand, Kidd brought it close to his lips and kissed your knuckles before holding it against his forehead.

Caressing your face, Kidd looks at you, sleeping peacefully. The moonlight shining off you gave you that same angelic glow he saw you with all those years ago. Despite the scars that covered your body, you were still so beautiful. Rubbing your cheek, Kidd looked down at you lovingly.

“I’m sorry, princess. You can pull through this. You have to.”

~~~

“This is how it should be, sleeping next to me.” With your legs tangled in his, Kidd scoots his body closer to yours before kissing your forehead. A wicked smile slithers along Kidd’s face.

“All those memories gone. No more talking about home. No more flinching, no more Straw Hats.”

“Those bastards, trying to play hero and stole you from me. Thinking your up for grabs when you obviously belong to me. Meant for me. You were meant to be mine and stay by my side. Why else would I have gotten a second chance?”

“Now, I’ll always have you. You look up at me with loving eyes instead of hatred. Instead of hitting me, you run up to hug me. You kiss me passionately like I’ll disappear any moment. I love it when you run up to me and jump so I can catch you. I love it when you sit next to me while I work in my workshop, giving me praise. If I had known you hit your head harder, I would have you in my arms willingly…”

“Then I would’ve thrown you against the wall harder.”

~~~

‘That selfish prick! After everything I’ve done to keep her in the dark, he comes around and fucks it up! Everything was going great! She loved me yet-’

“Fuck!” Slamming his metal hand against the bench in his workshop, Kidd begins to tear it apart. Weapons were thrown to unknown corners of the room, pieces of metal scattered across the floor, and a dent in the bench.

Kidd gritted his teeth as his whole body uncontrollably shook. The dried blood staining his hand only continued to serve his rage. Because even if Heat was already dead, the damage had been done.  The day of you holding him tight and kissing him was over. He’ll never be able to feel you close to him again. At least, not without a fight.

Hot tears began to stream down his face as he gripped the dented bench with an iron grip. His tears felt like an acid against his skin as his vision blurred. The smirk the bastard wore while he bled out behind you burned into Kidd’s memory.

Giving you a devil fruit, a logia type at that was infuriating. How the hell did he manage to get it on the boat and have you eat it? You were always by his side, so how could Heat have given it to you? The day of the fight? Or when he caught you and Heat talking to each other alone? How could he not see the signs earlier? Why did it take the busting open of your old cell door twice for him to finally understand what he needed to do?

Yet it was too late.

“God damnit.” Kidd swallowed the lump in his throat before letting out a sniffle. “This is bad. How am I gonna fix this? There’s gotta be a way-”

“Kidd.” The workshop door opens, and Killer stands in the doorway. Quickly wiping his tears, Kidd tries to regain steady breathing, hoping Killer doesn’t see his moment of weakness.

“What Killer?”

“You better have a good plan. Explain where Heat went and where (Y/N) went.” Kidd stays silent, which is all Killer needs.

“Did you-”

“I saw everything from the shadows. This could be a sign, you know?”

“What kind of fucking sign?”

“You know what kind of sign I’m talking about.” Silence covers the workshop.

“Maybe it’s time to let her-”

“No!” Kidd slams his metal hand on the bench with enough force to cause another dent.

“Well, what do you think you should do then?” Once again, the workshop goes silent.

“Giving you a week to decide for (Y/N). As for Heat, better pull something good out of your ass.” Just as soon as Killer entered, he left. Leaving Kidd to wallow in his predicament.

~~~

“Do you really think she’s on this island, Kidd? It’s been a week since the paper came out.”

“She will be on this island. If she isn’t, I’ll kill anyone I need to to figure out where she went. I don’t want a single civilian to go unquestioned. If they refuse to tell you, don’t be afraid to use violence.”

The bustling port of Haylard Island has Kidd’s eyes scanning every inch of movement. If you were on that dock, he wanted to make sure he saw you. There was no room for him to be making mistakes. He’s already made enough.

“Burn down buildings, steal supplies, and anything you think is worth something. Do not stop until the ashes block out the sun.”

“Yes, captain!” Hearing his own crew leave, Kidd finally let out a shaky inhale while looking down. The sea stared back at him, once again mocking him for losing you.

“Laugh all you want, but take my word. I’ll burn and kill my way back to her. And nothing will stop me until she’s in my arms.”

~~~

Despite the night once being full of cheers, the marine group of G-5 now found themselves fighting for their lives. What should have been a celebration was now a fight to the death as they were ambushed in the dark of the night. The once-empty sky was now covered in flaming arrows heading directly toward them.

“Everyone, man, your stations! We’re under attack, so get ready for a fight!” The captain's commands echo throughout the ship, and no one wastes a second. Running up and down the ship, Captain Tashigi checks to see if everything is in order to ensure supreme safety.

“Captain!” the sound of a terrified marine rings through her ears as she runs to the voice. Coming up from below the deck, she’s met with fire and smoke. It felt as if her heart was going to explode as all she could hear was marines yelling and the flickering of flames.

The flames only got higher as she tried to figure out what to do. Before she went below deck, they were able to contain the fires, but now, it’s almost consumed the entire deck. With how fast the flames were spreading, there was no doubt that the ship would be at the bottom of the sea before sunrise. 

Grabbing a transponder snail she kept in her pocket, she began to call the nearest marine base to help with the attack. She realized this wasn’t a battle they could fight on their own. 

“Hello! This is Captain Tashigi of G-5. We need backup right away! We’re under attack, and the ship is engrossed in flames!”

“G-5, this is (....)! We will send you back up right away! What are your locations, and can you see the attackers?”

“Our coordinates are (-------)! I don’t know, as the flames are so tall and the smoke is-” The whole ship shook as something hit the deck, causing Tashigi to drop the transponder snail and fall backward.

“-Oof!”

“Captain are you okay?”

“Something just hit the boat! I’m unaware of what it is!” Quickly getting back on her feet, Tashigi grabs her sword along with the transponder snail.

“I’m going to go check it out.”

“Keep us on the line.”

“Will do.” Putting the snail away for safekeeping, Tashigi grips her sword with both hands as she starts to walk carefully through the flames.

As soon as she stepped in, the sound of a marine screaming echoed across the deck. Panic set in the captain's stomach as her hands began to shake. The screams of pain and terror only caused more panic to set in. But she’s the captain. She has to be strong. She can’t back down.

“G-5, what’s going on?!” The screams of pain and agony continue before a loud audible SNAP rings in Tashigi’s ears. Assuming the worst, she feels all the color drain from her face.

And just like that, it was quiet.

“G-5?” With her voice trembling, Tashigi couldn’t help but be frozen in place.

“Tashigi.” Before she could scream, a rough, calloused hand covered her mouth. Looking in her peripheral vision, she saw Vice Admiral Smoker motioning her to shush. Nodding her head, Smoker lowered his hand.

“What’s going on, Vice Admiral?”

“Almost the entire deck has been engulfed in flames. We need to go to the other side of the ship.”

“But what about-”

“It’s silent over those flames, Tashigi.” With tears prickling in her eyes, she understands what he’s saying despite wishing it not to be true. Grabbing her hand, Smoker runs to the end of the ship, where there are fewer flames. Their footsteps echo, giving away their position to the attackers.

As she was running, Tashigi’s sword started vibrating before being completely pulled from her hands. She watched it fly backward and into the flames. A metal thunk rang across the deck, making her eyes widen. When she looked into the flames, she felt her heart stop.

Walking through the flames was no other than the man who had the whole new world in the palm of his hand.

“V-Vice Admiral…it’s-”

“Go hide, Tashigi. I’ll handle this.” Putting himself in front of her, Smoker points towards the darkness.

“But-”

“I’ll be fine. Go hide. Don’t come out until I come to get you.”

With a tremble in her voice, she responds. “Okay.”

Running into the darkness, Tashigi searches around with a racing heart, desperate to find a hiding spot. The sound of unintelligible yelling and metal clanking only makes her search more frantic. She should be fighting, but if Smoker says to hide…

“Killer! Go after the girl. She ran straight ahead.”

“You’ll have to get past me first. Both of you.”

“Vice Admiral.” Whispering to herself, Tashigi runs around some more before spotting an empty barrel. With no more time to spend, she jumps in.

As she gets as comfortable as she can, she puts the barrel lid over her head, leaving her in complete darkness. Her knees pressed against her chest as she struggles to take deep breaths. She tries to prevent herself from shivering.

‘This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.’ She thinks to herself as tears slip down her cheeks. She knew the stakes there were to bring you to Sabaody, but they were so careful about not giving away. It was then taking care of you. How did Kidd figure out it was them?

A loud thud can be heard throughout the deck before silence. No words were spoken, and the fear was only intensified. Tashigi felt her throat grow dry as she started to hear boots shuffling along the deck.

Sounds of things being searched causes her heart to beat out of her chest. Her body begins to shake as she hears the boots walking towards her hiding spot. 

The moonlight soon shines down on her as the barrel's lid pops open. She looks up and sees no one. The moonlight shone down on her as she feared who had opened the lid, but she soon gets her answer.

“Found you.”

~~~

Haven't been able to draw for shit so no picture

@rebeccawinters @iggy5055 @dairygrrl @childconnoisseur @menifire1092 @nerdgeekandeverysweet-blog @tremendoushorsepatrolgoth @lovemesomefanfic846 @ryuv1i @carpinchootaku @misoxramen @pinkfoxmusic @mizzhellsingsstuff

[ridenwithbiden]

"In April 2020, Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Army private, was bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, in Texas. The killer, aided by his girlfriend, burned Guillén’s body. Guillén’s remains were discovered two months later, buried in a riverbank near the base, after a massive search.

Guillén, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, grew up in Houston, and her murder sparked outrage across Texas and beyond. Fort Hood had become known as a particularly perilous assignment for female soldiers, and members of Congress took up the cause of reform. Shortly after her remains were discovered, President Donald Trump himself invited the Guillén family to the White House. With Guillén’s mother seated beside him, Trump spent 25 minutes with the family as television cameras recorded the scene.

In the meeting, Trump maintained a dignified posture and expressed sympathy to Guillén’s mother. “I saw what happened to your daughter Vanessa, who was a spectacular person, and respected and loved by everybody, including in the military,” Trump said. Later in the conversation, he made a promise: “If I can help you out with the funeral, I’ll help—I’ll help you with that,” he said. “I’ll help you out. Financially, I’ll help you.”

Natalie Khawam, the family’s attorney, responded, “I think the military will be paying—taking care of it.” Trump replied, “Good. They’ll do a military. That’s good. If you need help, I’ll help you out.” Later, a reporter covering the meeting asked Trump, “Have you offered to do that for other families before?” Trump responded, “I have. I have. Personally. I have to do it personally. I can’t do it through government.” The reporter then asked: “So you’ve written checks to help for other families before this?” Trump turned to the family, still present, and said, “I have, I have, because some families need help … Maybe you don’t need help, from a financial standpoint. I have no idea what—I just think it’s a horrific thing that happened. And if you did need help, I’m going to—I’ll be there to help you.”

A public memorial service was held in Houston two weeks after the White House meeting. It was followed by a private funeral and burial in a local cemetery, attended by, among others, the mayor of Houston and the city’s police chief. Highways were shut down, and mourners lined the streets.

Five months later, the secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, announced the results of an investigation. McCarthy cited numerous “leadership failures” at Fort Hood and relieved or suspended several officers, including the base’s commanding general. In a press conference, McCarthy said that the murder “shocked our conscience” and “forced us to take a critical look at our systems, our policies, and ourselves.”

According to a person close to Trump at the time, the president was agitated by McCarthy’s comments and raised questions about the severity of the punishments dispensed to senior officers and noncommissioned officers.

In an Oval Office meeting on December 4, 2020, officials gathered to discuss a separate national-security issue. Toward the end of the discussion, Trump asked for an update on the McCarthy investigation. Christopher Miller, the acting secretary of defense (Trump had fired his predecessor, Mark Esper, three weeks earlier, writing in a tweet, “Mark Esper has been terminated”), was in attendance, along with Miller’s chief of staff, Kash Patel. At a certain point, according to two people present at the meeting, Trump asked, “Did they bill us for the funeral? What did it cost?”

According to attendees, and to contemporaneous notes of the meeting taken by a participant, an aide answered: Yes, we received a bill; the funeral cost $60,000.

Trump became angry. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: “Don’t pay it!” Later that day, he was still agitated. “Can you believe it?” he said, according to a witness. “Fucking people, trying to rip me off.”

Khawam, the family attorney, told me she sent the bill to the White House, but no money was ever received by the family from Trump. Some of the costs, Khawam said, were covered by the Army (which offered, she said, to allow Guillén to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery) and some were covered by donations. Ultimately, Guillén was buried in Houston.

Shortly after I emailed a series of questions to a Trump spokesperson, Alex Pfeiffer, I received an email from Khawam, who asked me to publish a statement from Mayra Guillén, Vanessa’s sister. Pfeiffer then emailed me the same statement. “I am beyond grateful for all the support President Donald Trump showed our family during a trying time,” the statement reads. “I witnessed firsthand how President Trump honors our nation’s heroes’ service. We are grateful for everything he has done and continues to do to support our troops.”

Pfeiffer told me that he did not write that statement, and emailed me a series of denials. Regarding Trump’s “fucking Mexican” comment, Pfeiffer wrote: “President Donald Trump never said that. This is an outrageous lie from The Atlantic two weeks before the election.” He provided statements from Patel and a spokesman for Meadows, who denied having heard Trump make the statement. Via Pfeiffer, Meadows’s spokesman also denied that Trump had ordered Meadows not to pay for the funeral.

The statement from Patel that Pfeiffer sent me said: “As someone who was present in the room with President Trump, he strongly urged that Spc. Vanessa Guillen’s grieving family should not have to bear the cost of any funeral arrangements, even offering to personally pay himself in order to honor her life and sacrifice. In addition, President Trump was able to have the Department of Defense designate her death as occurring ‘in the line of duty,’ which gave her full military honors and provided her family access to benefits, services, and complete financial assistance.”

The personal qualities displayed by Trump in his reaction to the cost of the Guillén funeral—contempt, rage, parsimony, racism—hardly surprised his inner circle. Trump has frequently voiced his disdain for those who serve in the military and for their devotion to duty, honor, and sacrifice. Former generals who have worked for Trump say that the sole military virtue he prizes is obedience. As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, he has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship, and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.�� (“This is absolutely false,” Pfeiffer wrote in an email. “President Trump never said this.”)

A desire to force U.S. military leaders to be obedient to him and not the Constitution is one of the constant themes of Trump’s military-related discourse. Former officials have also cited other recurring themes: his denigration of military service, his ignorance of the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, his admiration for brutality and anti-democratic norms of behavior, and his contempt for wounded veterans and for soldiers who fell in battle.

Retired General Barry McCaffrey, a decorated Vietnam veteran, told me that Trump does not comprehend such traditional military virtues as honor and self-sacrifice. “The military is a foreign country to him. He doesn’t understand the customs or codes,” McCaffrey said. “It doesn’t penetrate. It starts with the fact that he thinks it’s foolish to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit himself.”

I’ve been interested in Trump’s understanding of military affairs for nearly a decade. At first, it was cognitive dissonance that drew me to the subject—according to my previous understanding of American political physics, Trump’s disparagement of the military, and in particular his obsessive criticism of the war record of the late Senator John McCain, should have profoundly alienated Republican voters, if not Americans generally. And in part my interest grew from the absolute novelty of Trump’s thinking. This country had never seen, to the best of my knowledge, a national political figure who insulted veterans, wounded warriors, and the fallen with metronomic regularity.

Today—two weeks before an election that could see Trump return to the White House—I’m most interested in his evident desire to wield military power, and power over the military, in the manner of Hitler and other dictators.

Trump’s singularly corrosive approach to military tradition was in evidence as recently as August, when he described the Medal of Honor, the nation’s top award for heroism and selflessness in combat, as inferior to the Medal of Freedom, which is awarded to civilians for career achievement. During a campaign speech, he described Medal of Honor recipients as “either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead,” prompting the Veterans of Foreign Wars to issue a condemnation: “These asinine comments not only diminish the significance of our nation’s highest award for valor, but also crassly characterizes the sacrifices of those who have risked their lives above and beyond the call of duty.” Later in August, Trump caused controversy by violating federal regulations prohibiting the politicization of military cemeteries, after a campaign visit to Arlington in which he gave a smiling thumbs-up while standing behind gravestones of fallen American soldiers.

His Medal of Honor comments are of a piece with his expressed desire to receive a Purple Heart without being wounded. He has also equated business success to battlefield heroism. In the summer of 2016, Khizr Khan, the father of a 27-year-old Army captain who had been killed in Iraq, told the Democratic National Convention that Trump has “sacrificed nothing.” In response, Trump disparaged the Khan family and said, “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures.”

One former Trump-administration Cabinet secretary told me of a conversation he’d had with Trump during his time in office about the Vietnam War. Trump famously escaped the draft by claiming that his feet were afflicted with bone spurs. (“I had a doctor that gave me a letter—a very strong letter on the heels,” Trump told The New York Times in 2016.) Once, when the subject of aging Vietnam veterans came up in conversation, Trump offered this observation to the Cabinet official: “Vietnam would have been a waste of time for me. Only suckers went to Vietnam.”

In 1997, Trump told the radio host Howard Stern that avoiding sexually transmitted diseases was “my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.” This was not the only time Trump has compared his sexual exploits and political challenges to military service. Last year, at a speech before a group of New York Republicans, while discussing the fallout from the release of the Access Hollywood tape, he said, “I went onto that (debate) stage just a few days later and a general, who’s a fantastic general, actually said to me, ‘Sir, I’ve been on the battlefield. Men have gone down on my left and on my right. I stood on hills where soldiers were killed. But I believe the bravest thing I’ve ever seen was the night you went onto that stage with Hillary Clinton after what happened.’” I asked Trump-campaign officials to provide the name of the general who allegedly said this. Pfeiffer, the campaign spokesman, said, “This is a true story and there is no good reason to give the name of an honorable man to The Atlantic so you can smear him.”

In their book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser reported that Trump asked John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?” Trump, at various points, had grown frustrated with military officials he deemed disloyal and disobedient. (Throughout the course of his presidency, Trump referred to flag officers as “my generals.”) According to Baker and Glasser, Kelly explained to Trump that German generals “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.” This correction did not move Trump to reconsider his view: “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the president responded.

This week, I asked Kelly about their exchange. He told me that when Trump raised the subject of “German generals,” Kelly responded by asking, “‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” He went on: “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’ I explained to him that Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.” Kelly told me Trump was not acquainted with Rommel.

Baker and Glasser also reported that Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, feared that Trump’s “‘Hitler-like’ embrace of the big lie about the election would prompt the president to seek out a ‘Reichstag moment.’”

Kelly—a retired Marine general who, as a young man, had volunteered to serve in Vietnam despite actually suffering from bone spurs—said in an interview for the CNN reporter Jim Sciutto’s book, The Return of Great Powers, that Trump praised aspects of Hitler’s leadership. “He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things,’” Kelly recalled. “I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, (Hitler) rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world.” Kelly admonished Trump: “I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing.’”

This wasn’t the only time Kelly felt compelled to instruct Trump on military history. In 2018, Trump asked Kelly to explain who “the good guys” were in World War I. Kelly responded by explaining a simple rule: Presidents should, as a matter of politics and policy, remember that the “good guys” in any given conflict are the countries allied with the United States. Despite Trump’s lack of historical knowledge, he has been on record as saying that he knew more than his generals about warfare. He told 60 Minutes in 2018 that he knew more about NATO than James Mattis, his secretary of defense at the time, a retired four-star Marine general who had served as a NATO official. Trump also said, on a separate occasion, that it was he, not Mattis, who had “captured” the Islamic State.

As president, Trump evinced extreme sensitivity to criticism from retired flag officers; at one point, he proposed calling back to active duty Admiral William McRaven and General Stanley McChrystal, two highly regarded Special Operations leaders who had become critical of Trump, so that they could be court-martialed. Esper, who was the defense secretary at the time, wrote in his memoir that he and Milley talked Trump out of the plan. (Asked about criticism from McRaven, who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Trump responded by calling him a “Hillary Clinton backer and an Obama backer” and said, “Wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama bin Laden a lot sooner than that?”)

Trump has responded incredulously when told that American military personnel swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the president. According to the New York Times reporter Michael S. Schmidt’s recent book, Donald Trump v. the United States, Trump asked Kelly, “Do you really believe you’re not loyal to me?” Kelly answered, “I’m certainly part of the administration, but my ultimate loyalty is to the rule of law.” Trump also publicly floated the idea of “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” as part of the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and keep himself in power.

On separate occasions in 2020, Trump held private conversations in the White House with national-security officials about the George Floyd protests. “The Chinese generals would know what to do,” he said, according to former officials who described the conversations to me, referring to the leaders of the People’s Liberation Army, which carried out the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. (Pfeiffer denied that Trump said this.) Trump’s desire to deploy U.S. troops against American citizens is well documented. During the nerve-racking period of social unrest following Floyd’s death, Trump asked Milley and Esper, a West Point graduate and former infantry officer, if the Army could shoot protesters. “Trump seemed unable to think straight and calmly,” Esper wrote in his memoir. “The protests and violence had him so enraged that he was willing to send in active-duty forces to put down the protesters. Worse yet, he suggested we shoot them. I wondered about his sense of history, of propriety, and of his oath to the Constitution.” Esper told National Public Radio in 2022, “We reached that point in the conversation where he looked frankly at General Milley, and said, ‘Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?’” When defense officials argued against Trump’s desire, the president screamed, according to witnesses, “You are all fucking losers!”

Trump has often expressed his esteem for the type of power wielded by such autocrats as the Chinese leader Xi Jinping; his admiration, even jealousy, of Vladimir Putin is well known. In recent days, he has signaled that, should he win reelection in November, he would like to govern in the manner of these dictators—he has said explicitly that he would like to be a dictator for a day on his first day back in the White House—and he has threatened to, among other things, unleash the military on “radical-left lunatics.” (One of his four former national security advisers, John Bolton, wrote in his memoir, “It is a close contest between Putin and Xi Jinping who would be happiest to see Trump back in office.”)

Military leaders have condemned Trump for possessing autocratic tendencies. At his retirement ceremony last year, Milley said, “We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator … We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.” Over the past several years, Milley has privately told several interlocutors that he believed Trump to be a fascist. Many other leaders have also been shocked by Trump’s desire for revenge against his domestic critics. At the height of the Floyd protests, Mattis wrote, “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens.”

Trump’s frustration with American military leaders led him to disparage them regularly. In their book A Very Stable Genius, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, both of The Washington Post, reported that in 2017, during a meeting at the Pentagon, Trump screamed at a group of generals: “I wouldn’t go to war with you people. You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.” And in his book Rage, Bob Woodward reported that Trump complained that “my fucking generals are a bunch of pussies. They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals.”

Trump’s disdain for American military officers is motivated in part by their willingness to accept low salaries. Once, after a White House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, Trump said to aides, “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?” (On another occasion, John Kelly asked Trump to guess Dunford’s annual salary. The president’s answer: $5 million. Dunford’s actual salary was less than $200,000.)

Trump has often expressed his love for the trappings of martial power, demanding of his aides that they stage the sort of armor-heavy parades foreign to American tradition. Civilian aides and generals alike pushed back. In one instance, Air Force General Paul Selva, who was then serving as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the president that he had been partially raised in Portugal, which, he explained, “was a dictatorship—and parades were about showing the people who had the guns. In America, we don’t do that. It’s not who we are.”

For Republicans in 2012, it was John McCain who served as a model of “who we are.” But by 2015, the party had shifted. In July of that year, Trump, then one of several candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, made a statement that should have ended his campaign. At a forum for Christian conservatives in Iowa, Trump said of McCain, “He’s not a war hero. He is a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

It was an astonishing statement, and an introduction to the wider public of Trump’s uniquely corrosive view of McCain, and of his aberrant understanding of the nature of American military heroism. This wasn’t the first time Trump had insulted McCain’s war record. As early as 1999, he was insulting McCain. In an interview with Dan Rather that year, Trump asked, “Does being captured make you a hero? I don’t know. I’m not sure.” (A brief primer: McCain, who had flown 22 combat missions before being shot down over Hanoi, was tortured almost continuously by his Communist captors, and turned down repeated offers to be released early, insisting that prisoners be released in the order that they’d been captured. McCain suffered physically from his injuries until his death, in 2018.) McCain partisans believe, with justification, that Trump’s loathing was prompted in part by McCain’s ability to see through Trump. “John didn’t respect him, and Trump knew that,” Mark Salter, McCain’s longtime aide and co-author, told me. “John McCain had a code. Trump only has grievances and impulses and appetites. In the deep recesses of his man-child soul, he knew that McCain and his achievements made him look like a mutt.”

Trump, those who have worked for him say, is unable to understand the military norm that one does not leave fellow soldiers behind on the battlefield. As president, Trump told senior advisers that he didn’t understand why the U.S. government placed such value on finding soldiers missing in action. To him, they could be left behind, because they had performed poorly by getting captured.

My reporting during Trump’s term in office led me to publish on this site, in September 2020, an article about Trump’s attitudes toward McCain and other veterans, and his views about the ideal of national service itself. The story was based on interviews with multiple sources who had firsthand exposure to Trump and his views. In that piece, I detailed numerous instances of Trump insulting soldiers, flag officers and veterans alike. I wrote extensively about Trump’s reaction to McCain’s death in August 2018: The president told aides, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he was infuriated when he saw flags at the White House lowered to half-mast. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” he said angrily. Only when Kelly told Trump that he would get “killed in the press” for showing such disrespect did the president relent. In the article, I also reported that Trump had disparaged President George H. W. Bush, a World War II naval aviator, for getting shot down by the Japanese. Two witnesses told me that Trump said, “I don’t get it. Getting shot down makes you a loser.” (Bush ultimately evaded capture, but eight other fliers were caught and executed by the Japanese).

The next year, White House officials demanded that the Navy keep the U.S.S. John S. McCain, which was named for McCain’s father and grandfather—both esteemed admirals—out of Trump’s sight during a visit to Japan. The Navy did not comply.

Trump’s preoccupation with McCain has not abated. In January, Trump condemned McCain—six years after his death—for having supported President Barack Obama’s health-care plan. “We’re going to fight for much better health care than Obamacare,” Trump told an Iowa crowd. “Obamacare is a catastrophe. Nobody talks about it. You know, without John McCain, we would have had it done. John McCain for some reason couldn’t get his arm up that day. Remember?” This was, it appears, a malicious reference to McCain’s wartime injuries—including injuries suffered during torture—which limited his upper-body mobility.

I’ve also previously reported on Trump’s 2017 Memorial Day visit to Arlington National Cemetery. Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security, accompanied him. The two men visited Section 60, the 14-acre section that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars (and the site of Trump’s Arlington controversy earlier this year). Kelly’s son Robert, a Marine officer killed in 2010 in Afghanistan, is buried in Section 60. Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” At first, Kelly believed that Trump was making a reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand nontransactional life choices. I quoted one of Kelly’s friends, a fellow retired four-star general, who said of Trump, “He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself. He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker.” At moments when Kelly was feeling particularly frustrated by Trump, he would leave the White House and cross the Potomac to visit his son’s grave, in part to remind himself about the nature of full-measure sacrifice.

Last year Kelly told me, in reference to Mark Milley’s 44 years in uniform, “The president couldn’t fathom people who served their nation honorably.”

The specific incident I reported in the 2020 article that gained the most attention also provided the story with its headline—“Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers.’” The story concerned a visit Trump made to France in 2018, during which the president called Americans buried in a World War I cemetery “losers.” He said, in the presence of aides, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” At another moment during this trip, he referred to the more than 1,800 Marines who had lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for dying for their country.

Trump had already been scheduled to visit one cemetery, and he did not understand why his team was scheduling a second cemetery visit, especially considering that the rain would be hard on his hair. “Why two cemeteries?” Trump asked. “What the fuck?” Kelly subsequently canceled the second visit, and attended a ceremony there himself with General Dunford and their wives.

The article sparked great controversy, and provoked an irate reaction from the Trump administration, and from Trump himself. In tweets, statements, and press conferences in the days, weeks, and years that followed, Trump labeled The Atlantic a “second-rate magazine,” a “failing magazine,” a “terrible magazine,” and a “third-rate magazine that’s not going to be in business much longer”; he also referred to me as a “con man,” among other things. Trump has continued these attacks recently, calling me a “horrible, radical-left lunatic named Goldberg” at a rally this summer.

In the days after my original article was published, both the Associated Press and, notably, Fox News, confirmed the story, causing Trump to demand that Fox fire Jennifer Griffin, its experienced and well-regarded defense reporter. A statement issued by Alyssa Farah, a White House spokesperson, soon after publication read, “This report is false. President Trump holds the military in the highest regard.”

Shortly after the story appeared, Farah asked numerous White House officials if they had heard Trump refer to veterans and war dead as suckers or losers. She reported publicly that none of the officials she asked had heard him use these terms. Eventually, Farah came out in opposition to Trump. She wrote on X last year that she’d asked the president if my story was true. “Trump told me it was false. That was a lie.”

When I spoke to Farah, who is now known as Alyssa Farah Griffin, this week, she said, “I understood that people were skeptical about the ‘suckers and losers’ story, and I was in the White House pushing back against it. But he said this to John Kelly’s face, and I fundamentally, absolutely believe that John Kelly is an honorable man who served our country and who loves and respects our troops. I’ve heard Donald Trump speak in a dehumanizing way about so many groups. After working for him in 2020 and hearing his continuous attacks on service members since that time, including my former boss General Mark Milley, I firmly and unequivocally believe General Kelly’s account.”

(Pfeiffer, the Trump spokesperson, said, in response, “Alyssa is a scorned former employee now lying in her pursuit to chase liberal adulation. President Trump would never insult our nation’s heroes.”)

Last year, I published a story in this magazine about Milley that coincided with the end of his four-year term. In it, I detailed his tumultuous relationship with Trump. Milley had resisted Trump’s autocratic urges, and also argued against his many thoughtless and impetuous national-security impulses. Shortly after that story appeared, Trump publicly suggested that Milley be executed for treason. This astonishing statement caused John Kelly to speak publicly about Trump and his relationship to the military. Kelly, who had previously called Trump “the most flawed person I have ever met in my life,” told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Trump had referred to American prisoners of war as “suckers” and described as “losers” soldiers who died while fighting for their country.

“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly asked. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs, are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family—for all Gold Star families—on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”

When we spoke this week, Kelly told me, “President Trump used the terms suckers and losers to describe soldiers who gave their lives in the defense of our country. There are many, many people who have heard him say these things. The visit to France wasn’t the first time he said this.”

Kelly and others have taken special note of the revulsion Trump feels in the presence of wounded veterans. After Trump attended a Bastille Day parade in France, he told Kelly and others that he would like to stage his own parade in Washington, but without the presence of wounded veterans. “I don’t want them,” Trump said. “It doesn’t look good for me.”

Milley also witnessed Trump’s disdain for the wounded. Milley had chosen a severely wounded Army captain, Luis Avila, to sing “God Bless America” at his installation ceremony in 2019. Avila, who had completed five combat tours, had lost a leg in an improvised-explosive-device attack in Afghanistan, and had suffered two heart attacks, two strokes, and brain damage as a result of his injuries. Avila is considered a hero up and down the ranks of the Army.

It had rained earlier on the day of the ceremony, and the ground was soft; at one point Avila’s wheelchair almost toppled over. Milley’s wife, Holly­anne, ran to help Avila, as did then–Vice President Mike Pence. After Avila’s performance, Trump walked over to congratulate him, but then said to Milley, within earshot of several witnesses, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.” Never let Avila appear in public again, Trump told Milley.

An equally serious challenge to Milley’s sense of duty came in the form of Trump’s ignorance of the rules of war. In November 2019, Trump intervened in three different brutality cases then being adjudicated by the military. In the most infamous case, the Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher had been found guilty of posing with the corpse of an ISIS member. Though Gallagher was found not guilty of murder, witnesses testified that he’d stabbed the prisoner in the neck with a hunting knife. In a highly unusual move, Trump reversed the Navy’s decision to demote him. A junior Army officer named Clint Lorance was also the recipient of Trump’s sympathy. Trump pardoned Lorance, who had been convicted of ordering the shooting of three unarmed Afghans, two of whom died. And in a third case, a Green Beret named Mathew Golsteyn was accused of killing an unarmed Afghan he thought was a Taliban bomb maker. “I stuck up for three great warriors against the deep state,” Trump said at a Florida rally.

In the Gallagher case, Trump intervened to allow Gallagher to keep his Trident insignia, one of the most coveted insignia in the entire U.S. military. The Navy’s leadership found this intervention particularly offensive because tradition held that only a commanding officer or a group of SEALs on a Trident Review Board were supposed to decide who merited being a SEAL. Milley tried to convince Trump that his intrusion was hurting Navy morale. They were flying from Washington to Dover Air Force Base, in Delaware, to attend a “dignified transfer,” a repatriation ceremony for fallen service members, when Milley tried to explain to Trump the damage that his interventions were doing.

In my story, I reported that Milley said, “Mr. President, you have to understand that the SEALs are a tribe within a larger tribe, the Navy. And it’s up to them to figure out what to do with Gallagher. You don’t want to intervene. This is up to the tribe. They have their own rules that they follow.”

Trump called Gallagher a hero and said he didn’t understand why he was being punished.

“Because he slit the throat of a wounded prisoner,” Milley said.

“The guy was going to die anyway,” Trump said.

Milley answered, “Mr. President, we have military ethics and laws about what happens in battle. We can’t do that kind of thing. It’s a war crime.” Trump said he didn’t understand “the big deal.” He went on, “You guys”—meaning combat soldiers—“are all just killers. What’s the difference?”

Milley then summoned one of his aides, a combat-veteran SEAL officer, to the president’s Air Force One office. Milley took hold of the Trident pin on the SEAL’s chest and asked him to describe its importance. The aide explained to Trump that, by tradition, only SEALs can decide, based on assessments of competence and character, whether one of their own should lose his pin. But the president’s mind was not changed. Gallagher kept his pin.

One day, in the first year of Trump’s presidency, I had lunch with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, in his White House office. I turned the discussion, as soon as I could, to the subject of his father-in-law’s character. I mentioned one of Trump’s recent outbursts and told Kushner that, in my opinion, the president’s behavior was damaging to the country. I cited, as I tend to do, what is in my view Trump’s original sin: his mockery of John McCain’s heroism.

This is where our conversation got strange, and noteworthy. Kushner answered in a way that made it seem as though he agreed with me. “No one can go as low as the president,” he said. “You shouldn’t even try.”

I found this baffling for a moment. But then I understood: Kushner wasn’t insulting his father-in-law. He was paying him a compliment. In Trump’s mind, traditional values—values including those embraced by the armed forces of the United States having to do with honor, self-sacrifice, and integrity—have no merit, no relevance, and no meaning."

Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor in chief of The Atlantic and the moderator of Washington Week With The Atlantic.

[mchiti]

It's past 1 am and I can't sleep so I want to share on here something that is really bugging me lately and it's happening in Italy. There's this really fascist mayor of a city in northern Italy who has basically shut down all Mosques in the city because she says they are unauthorized.

The "Mosques" we're talking about are Islamic centers organised as best as Muslims can, under the worst situations given we never manage to have proper Mosques (I live in Milan, which is a big city, and we don't even have a proper Mosque either. There was a project to build one but was shut down by the government so...)

The 23rd of December, the Muslim community of this city decided to take the streets and protest, and the mayor went crying on television on how this was a provocation because it was done right before Christmas. And one thing that really makes me cry, like real tears down my face I'm not even joking, is seeing the images of people protesting weaving little italian flags as to say "we're here, we're also italians, we just want a place to pray" how is that enough to ask...really...how. Italians don't even deserve those flags wallahi.

If you see the Mosque I attend with my family...that's nothing for it to be called a Mosque. It's a converted little villa our Islamic center bought with everyone's efforts around 20 years ago. And that's the nicest you can get, otherwise it's garages, basements...I'm soooo tired. Like we're here and we pay your taxes, the least you can give us is the dignity to have a place to come together. All this bitch of a mayor can say is "this is a victory for legality...no to places were hate is preached" soooo that's your islamophobia showing lmao. That's your problem. You can give your muslim citizens "legal" places to pray if you really wanted, but you don't want to because it feeds your propaganda. I'm so fucking sick of this country you have no idea

[c-is-for-circinate]

god the way you feel about judges is how i feel about the school board so i almost skipped the section - glad i didn't, because there's a Majorly transphobic candidate (i'm in one of the most liberal parts of the country!! wth!!!!)

Oh my god I feel you. School board elections matter so much. That's the big race around here this year too -- we're electing a school board for the public school district for the first time ever, in my city's whole history, (previously it's been mayoral appointment) and I've gotten more school board election spam than presidential, and it took me an hour of reading websites and interviews to sort through platforms and figure out who I even wanted in there because there's so much.

Because like, everybody around here knows who our state electoral votes are going to (we are still voting anyway! we will not be complacent! but yeah we all know.) But we don't know what's going to happen in our schools, and like --

Look, if it all goes to hell. If god-for-fucking-bid, Trump wins. We still have to live here! Kids still have to go to school, kids still have to grow up, and if we're about to be living in a fascist dystopia the question is suddenly, who is responsible for damage control? If we're flooded with ICE agents, who's deciding how teachers will be allowed to support kids from immigrant families? If social services disappear, who's budgeting for hot lunches (and breakfasts, and dinners)? If the Department of Education gets dissolved, who are the locals making the decisions on curriculum and standards? Who's the official body ruling on what state and federal policies about institutionalized transphobia get applied and how?

In the face of a potentially deadly overthrow of federal power, our local governments can be either an enforcer for fascism, or our bulwark against it. They matter.

Hell, the fucking Metropolitan Water Reclamation District matters (where I live)! Probably like 5% of voters here know what that office is even about. They're the people in charge of how our wastewater gets treated and released back into public waterways. Half the people running for the board this year are ecologists and residents of the most heavily-polluted areas of the region, and the other half have worked for some of the biggest corporations doing the polluting.

Just. Also. There are 94 judicial elections on my ballot this year. Ninety-four. 77 of those are retentions. I do not have it in me to research 77 separate retentions. I just don't.

So BallotReady, and InjusticeWatch, and begging the universe for the strength to endure. And maybe just voting to fire everybody because judicial turnover is good for the system, and voting at all is better than not. If I can't do the judges at least I can do the school board. If you can't do the school board at least you can do the President. God help us, we do what we can.

[seat-safety-switch]

I was halfway through my second Tetra-Pak® of oven-warmed (they say not to use the microwave) reduced-sodium chicken broth when I finally flipped to the editorial page of my neighbour’s newspaper. Those bastards in the government were sticking it to us again, with a planned “safety blitz” on the highway. You don’t need me to tell you, dear reader, what other fascist invented the concept of “the blitz.”

Now, you need to understand something about our local highway. It’s not like a real city’s. It has a bunch of jacked-up curves right in the middle, where they joined it together over successive projects as the city grew. Sometimes it’s six lanes. Sometimes it’s two. Exit lanes aren’t marked. Sometimes exit lanes are also merge lanes from a different highway. One section used to be part of the amusement park before all the fires. It’s a lot of fun, and the most fun part about it was that the traffic cops were afraid to be on the highway. Their union called it “really fucking unsafe.” With an endorsement like that, any safety operation, blitzkrieg or otherwise, would be bound to fail.

There’s another problem with the highway. During the week, it’s all commuters. Hardened drivers who know the rules of the road, and understand what to expect. They’ve been on it every day, in every weather condition. They can probably tell you every curve and bump, even if they don’t think of themselves as real drivers. Then you throw in some random asshole who doesn’t normally drive on the highway but just this once has to go across town at 9 A.M. to pick up Mister Floppykins’ anal wart medicine from the less racist of our two 24-hour vets. That random asshole – that normal person – immediately causes a twenty-five car pileup, forcing an intervention from law enforcement.

Of course, that’s a matter for the debate team. After the fact, those eggheads could argue that any enforcement operation barely scratched the surface of the law-breaking on-it-everyday speed demons who treated the highway like some kind of no-holds-barred carnage zone, a place where civility went to die and staying in your lane was practically unheard of. In reality, everyone knew the cops were catching some heat after letting the Mayor Himself’s Daughter Herself get away with a minor cocaine infraction when her gently-crashed Tesla saturation-bombed a popular downtown eatery with half-charged 18650 lithium-ion battery cells, and they needed to make some exhaust tickets in order to renew public confidence in their so-called institution.

They didn’t do it to me, of course, even though I was myself blitzed by the federales. That morning, I “had to” give my shark of an attorney, Max, a ride down south, so he could pick up a set of monogrammed cufflinks from the rotary (wrong kind, I asked) club. He’s too afraid to drive on the highway normally, you see, but he was all too willing to kick in for gas. I still will never know how he managed to turn “unjust widened-exhaust ticket” into the weeping officer handing his own badge and gun to Max.

[lemurious]

Oh fuck. I mean, London Breed wasn't perfect. She wasn't. Far from it. But we did get through the pandemic with pretty much the lowest death rate. And our new mayor is essentially a local Silicon Vallen wannabe bro with too much money, policies so vague you could make horoscopes out of them, and no idea how to actually govern.

London Breed, San Francisco’s first Black woman mayor who steered the city through the pandemic but also saw its quality of life sink, conceded her re-election race on Thursday.

Ms. Breed said in a news conference at City Hall that she had called Daniel Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who has never held elected office, to congratulate him on his win.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/us/politics/san-francisco-mayor-breed-lurie.html

[seimsisk]

I'm angry that Trump was elected because the US has global effects like contriburing massively to climate change

I'm also angry because the last time Trump was elected, he helped elect a fascist in my own country

I'm clinging to the knowledge that our government is a bit less fucked and fragile than it was in 2018. but it's only a little.

I live in a Latin American country. US politics is almost as important to us as our own politics. we've been burned too many times, suffered too many coups

I feel for the people who will become even more marginalized in the US. which is basically all the minorities. I feel closer to you rn than to the assholes who elected a right wing mayor in my city. I wish we could somehow help each other, not just commiserate while fighting separate battles

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic:

In April 2020, Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Army private, was bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, in Texas. The killer, aided by his girlfriend, burned Guillén’s body. Guillén’s remains were discovered two months later, buried in a riverbank near the base, after a massive search.

Guillén, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, grew up in Houston, and her murder sparked outrage across Texas and beyond. Fort Hood had become known as a particularly perilous assignment for female soldiers, and members of Congress took up the cause of reform. Shortly after her remains were discovered, President Donald Trump himself invited the Guillén family to the White House. With Guillén’s mother seated beside him, Trump spent 25 minutes with the family as television cameras recorded the scene. In the meeting, Trump maintained a dignified posture and expressed sympathy to Guillén’s mother. “I saw what happened to your daughter Vanessa, who was a spectacular person, and respected and loved by everybody, including in the military,” Trump said. Later in the conversation, he made a promise: “If I can help you out with the funeral, I’ll help—I’ll help you with that,” he said. “I’ll help you out. Financially, I’ll help you.”

Natalie Khawam, the family’s attorney, responded, “I think the military will be paying—taking care of it.” Trump replied, “Good. They’ll do a military. That’s good. If you need help, I’ll help you out.” Later, a reporter covering the meeting asked Trump, “Have you offered to do that for other families before?” Trump responded, “I have. I have. Personally. I have to do it personally. I can’t do it through government.” The reporter then asked: “So you’ve written checks to help for other families before this?” Trump turned to the family, still present, and said, “I have, I have, because some families need help … Maybe you don’t need help, from a financial standpoint. I have no idea what—I just think it’s a horrific thing that happened. And if you did need help, I’m going to—I’ll be there to help you.” A public memorial service was held in Houston two weeks after the White House meeting. It was followed by a private funeral and burial in a local cemetery, attended by, among others, the mayor of Houston and the city’s police chief. Highways were shut down, and mourners lined the streets.

Five months later, the secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, announced the results of an investigation. McCarthy cited numerous “leadership failures” at Fort Hood and relieved or suspended several officers, including the base’s commanding general. In a press conference, McCarthy said that the murder “shocked our conscience” and “forced us to take a critical look at our systems, our policies, and ourselves.” According to a person close to Trump at the time, the president was agitated by McCarthy’s comments and raised questions about the severity of the punishments dispensed to senior officers and noncommissioned officers.

In an Oval Office meeting on December 4, 2020, officials gathered to discuss a separate national-security issue. Toward the end of the discussion, Trump asked for an update on the McCarthy investigation. Christopher Miller, the acting secretary of defense (Trump had fired his predecessor, Mark Esper, three weeks earlier, writing in a tweet, “Mark Esper has been terminated”), was in attendance, along with Miller’s chief of staff, Kash Patel. At a certain point, according to two people present at the meeting, Trump asked, “Did they bill us for the funeral? What did it cost?” According to attendees, and to contemporaneous notes of the meeting taken by a participant, an aide answered: Yes, we received a bill; the funeral cost $60,000.

Trump became angry. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: “Don’t pay it!” Later that day, he was still agitated. “Can you believe it?” he said, according to a witness. “Fucking people, trying to rip me off.” Khawam, the family attorney, told me she sent the bill to the White House, but no money was ever received by the family from Trump. Some of the costs, Khawam said, were covered by the Army (which offered, she said, to allow Guillén to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery) and some were covered by donations. Ultimately, Guillén was buried in Houston.

Shortly after I emailed a series of questions to a Trump spokesperson, Alex Pfeiffer, I received an email from Khawam, who asked me to publish a statement from Mayra Guillén, Vanessa’s sister. Pfeiffer then emailed me the same statement. “I am beyond grateful for all the support President Donald Trump showed our family during a trying time,” the statement reads. “I witnessed firsthand how President Trump honors our nation’s heroes’ service. We are grateful for everything he has done and continues to do to support our troops.”

Pfeiffer told me that he did not write that statement, and emailed me a series of denials. Regarding Trump’s “fucking Mexican” comment, Pfeiffer wrote: “President Donald Trump never said that. This is an outrageous lie from The Atlantic two weeks before the election.” He provided statements from Patel and a spokesman for Meadows, who denied having heard Trump make the statement. Via Pfeiffer, Meadows’s spokesman also denied that Trump had ordered Meadows not to pay for the funeral. The statement from Patel that Pfeiffer sent me said: “As someone who was present in the room with President Trump, he strongly urged that Spc. Vanessa Guillen’s grieving family should not have to bear the cost of any funeral arrangements, even offering to personally pay himself in order to honor her life and sacrifice. In addition, President Trump was able to have the Department of Defense designate her death as occurring ‘in the line of duty,’ which gave her full military honors and provided her family access to benefits, services, and complete financial assistance.”

The personal qualities displayed by Trump in his reaction to the cost of the Guillén funeral—contempt, rage, parsimony, racism—hardly surprised his inner circle. Trump has frequently voiced his disdain for those who serve in the military and for their devotion to duty, honor, and sacrifice. Former generals who have worked for Trump say that the sole military virtue he prizes is obedience. As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, he has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship, and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.” (“This is absolutely false,” Pfeiffer wrote in an email. “President Trump never said this.”) A desire to force U.S. military leaders to be obedient to him and not the Constitution is one of the constant themes of Trump’s military-related discourse. Former officials have also cited other recurring themes: his denigration of military service, his ignorance of the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, his admiration for brutality and anti-democratic norms of behavior, and his contempt for wounded veterans and for soldiers who fell in battle.

[...] Trump has often expressed his esteem for the type of power wielded by such autocrats as the Chinese leader Xi Jinping; his admiration, even jealousy, of Vladimir Putin is well known. In recent days, he has signaled that, should he win reelection in November, he would like to govern in the manner of these dictators—he has said explicitly that he would like to be a dictator for a day on his first day back in the White House—and he has threatened to, among other things, unleash the military on “radical-left lunatics.” (One of his four former national security advisers, John Bolton, wrote in his memoir, “It is a close contest between Putin and Xi Jinping who would be happiest to see Trump back in office.”)

Military leaders have condemned Trump for possessing autocratic tendencies. At his retirement ceremony last year, Milley said, “We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator … We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.” Over the past several years, Milley has privately told several interlocutors that he believed Trump to be a fascist. Many other leaders have also been shocked by Trump’s desire for revenge against his domestic critics. At the height of the Floyd protests, Mattis wrote, “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens.”

Trump’s frustration with American military leaders led him to disparage them regularly. In their book A Very Stable Genius, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, both of The Washington Post, reported that in 2017, during a meeting at the Pentagon, Trump screamed at a group of generals: “I wouldn’t go to war with you people. You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.” And in his book Rage, Bob Woodward reported that Trump complained that “my fucking generals are a bunch of pussies. They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals.”

Trump’s disdain for American military officers is motivated in part by their willingness to accept low salaries. Once, after a White House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, Trump said to aides, “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?” (On another occasion, John Kelly asked Trump to guess Dunford’s annual salary. The president’s answer: $5 million. Dunford’s actual salary was less than $200,000.) Trump has often expressed his love for the trappings of martial power, demanding of his aides that they stage the sort of armor-heavy parades foreign to American tradition. Civilian aides and generals alike pushed back. In one instance, Air Force General Paul Selva, who was then serving as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the president that he had been partially raised in Portugal, which, he explained, “was a dictatorship—and parades were about showing the people who had the guns. In America, we don’t do that. It’s not who we are.”

The Atlantic released the story of Donald Trump musing about having the same kind of generals that Hitler had and complained about paying $60,000 for “a fucking Mexican”’s funeral (Vanessa Guillén).

This man is a sick monster devoid of any empathy.

See Also:

HuffPost: Trump Wanted ‘Hitler’s Generals,’ Former Chief Of Staff Says

Daily Kos: Latest Trump bombshell—and Hitler praise—will make your jaw drop

Read the full story at The Atlantic.

[cervinelich]

U.S. Americans: Vote Locally. Do it.

There seems to be a common misconception that the presidential election is the most important one not just for the USA, but for the world - WRONG!

Let me be clear: You should vote in the Presidential election.

Historically, young people don't vote. Even though young voter turnout has increased drastically since Trump, local voting is still largely being determined by conservative older generations.

Importantly, you should be voting locally in part because this is the largest influence over who gets nominated in the Primary and how your opinion is vocalized on a national scale. Also:

voter restriction/suppression

climate change efforts/issues (such as pipelines getting built)

policing, law enforcement and mass incarceration

availability of affordable housing, public transport, disability relief

education - as in, whether or not PragerU gets taught in schools

If you are worried about "being selfish" for focusing smaller local issues instead of global ones (such as the current genocide), I understand. However, this is a more effective way to pressure the current President - local legislators have more voice than we do. This is also setting up a less racist, genocidal future for global politics because Presidential nominees are almost always picked from State level positions.

The Presidential election helps people to feel good/bad about an "immediate" measurable result from a single action. But the truth is that the Bidens of the US will keep being the only rival to "I want to be a dictator" Trumps if we don't start investing our votes from the ground up.

Here is a guide (mostly from this website https://tminstituteldf.org/local-elections/ ):

CITY GOVERNMENT

School Boards:

Have the power to set policy and budgets for local schools, such as whether or not you can protest without losing your job or getting expelled.

Sherrifs:

Generally speaking, Sherrifs are fucked up. It's too much for me to go into here. They have way too much unilateral power with no oversight at all.

Prosecutors:

The largest contributor to mass incarceration

They set the terms on whether someone is charged with a misdemeanor or felony and being convicted of a felony will strip your right to vote in many states - some permanently.

City Council:

City Council approve things like city budgets and implement criminal and civil laws and regulations

Also the voice of their City at a State and Federal level. Generally, these are some of the people you should be shouting at to bring your voice higher up the food chain.

This includes the Mayor who often decides where budgets go (like schools or cops), and they also determine the level of enforcement of local laws.

County Board of Supervisors (County Commissioners):

Represent county issues in front of state and federal legislative bodies. Counties are also responsible for registering voters and administrating elections. i.e., another group of people who have a stronger voice against the elected Democrat when it comes to larger issues.

Planning and Zoning Commission:

Determines how and where affordable housing is zoned in your area. Has a huge effect on housing segregation.

Comptroller:

The City's accountant and budget manager - this is the person who audits the City Council and makes sure they aren't basically stealing money. They also approve city contracts such as those for affordable public transportation and shelters.

STATE GOVERNMENT

Judges:

This one is crucial. Your state judges act as the Supreme Court of your given state. The cases that they weigh on when it comes to state laws (such as abortion, medical autonomy, immigration, right to protest/free speech, etc.) these are binding and final.

Superintendent of Education:

This is the person who decides if PragerU gets to teach classes on why Zionism and Evangelical teachings are "ok and good, actually".

Secretary of State:

The person who certifies elections in your state - for the Presidency, but also for all of these other positions mentioned. It is so, so important that this person cannot be bought or pressured.

Attorney General:

Has influence over law enforcement agencies and represents the state in legal disputes - such as those where someone is disputing their rights are being infringed by the state. (abortion, medical autonomy, immigration, right to protest/free speech, etc.)

Governor:

Is basically the president of your state. They sign in laws, have veto power and oversee all of the other departments. They also can appoint Justices and State Senate seats if they are empty.

Not only does this person have a lot of state power, they also have a ton of influence over the broader federal climate and are one of the positions that fast-tracks to Presidency (see: Ron Desantis).

State Comptroller (or Controller):

Same as City Comptroller except extremely importantly they manage disaster relief/preparation funding - which is especially important amidst climate change.

Also oversee fraud investigations.

Public Service Commissioner:

Determines rates for things like energy, water, internet in your state.

Also deals with the gas and oil industry in your state, often being in charge of approval/rejection of the building of oil pipelines.

They can be appointed by the Governor.

State Senators:

Has just about the most authority in a state, with the ability to impeach Governors and deny someone the Governor tries to appoint

Another position that fast-tracks to Presidency

Draft and introduce/pass state laws and amend the state constitution

State House of Reps:

Can call for the removal of another legislator

Draft and introduce/pass state laws

All Right. I'm running out of steam on this post. Please, please, please, PLEASE register to vote *right now* and look over the website when you do to see if it can set up email alerts when an election is coming up.

Buy a calendar and mark voting days and stick it to your wall TODAY. Set aside an hour of your time, TODAY, to make a plan for voting.

Go to this website, enter your state. It will tell you exactly what to do. Register.

Lastly, if you don't like Biden and it makes you feel like shit to vote for him (understandably), then YOU NEED TO VOTE IN THE PRIMARY.

[apatheticintrovert]

A rant for the void.

I'm definitely too apathetic because whoever wins, does it actually matter?? We never actually have any control when it comes to our government. No president cares about us even though they're "elected" to serve us, the people. No matter what happens, the world will keep on spinning. Palestinians will continue to be bombed. The world will continue to be unjust and unfair.

In Texas ted cruz has already won to stay senator until 2031. Everything feels hopeless all the time. Norhing about this election feels any difference from the last 2, except that I can't find it in me to care. I've been saying this but the only good politician is a dead one and no matter who our president is, our country is (and has been, since its conception really) an active participant in genocide, war, voter interference in other countries, etc. Etc.) We are more informed and aware of the propaganda than ever and our government still gets away with whatever it wants with little to no repercussions.

There are still so many people that can't be bothered to care about the state of the world they live in and that's by design, we are largely struggling to make it to each new day in this capitalist hellscape we live in, in the middle of a recession, with education, resources, literal human rights being not only on the chopping block every election cycle but actively being taken away.

Which I get it... I know why Kopmala is "better" but I'm so sick of the "lesser of two evils" being our only options every fucking election. (I voted 3rd party and socialist for the first time ever this year because I didn't have another "lesser of two very obviously bad and genocidal evils" left in me) Even Obama who was so well liked and praised had record breaking levels of deportation, and there was the drone strikes...

Every election cycles feels like a slap in the face. We need a fucking revolution, that's genuinely our only hope imo. And Americans will never organize well enough to execute it. Too many people are satisfied with the status quo and not bothered by things like the ongoing genocide in Palestine and Congo and Sudan because it's not directly impacting them (to their knowledge) A large amount of the average Americans will not be bothered to care until it's too late and policy is actually directly impacting them. Idk. I'm just word vomiting at this point and it's just to vent for my own benefit.

It's weird to me how little I truly care tonight, especially compared to other people in my life and others I see online. Looking back at memories of innocent little 19 year old me voting in my first presidential election in 2016, I was so confident the country wouldn't vote for that man (who is arguably worse now and looking like he might win again) I was so much more uninformed about Hillary and politics and the us government.... I was up all night anxious and watching live coverage and checking my phone constantly. Now 8 years later, it's just like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ everything is awful and it will stay that way no matter who wins. We saw that well enough during this biden presidency. Not to mention how many people only vote during the presidential election cycle. As if all the others that impact is locally don't matter when they are oftentimes the most important and impactful, setting up city mayors, us representatives, etc.

Even with so many people out here organizing and doing the work all the time, outside of just election season, being community driven and helping out community with volunteer work and mutual aid ... It still feels so cyclical and unending.

And even though I didn't vote for her I do still understand why kopmala would be a better winner than the fascist cheeto (I live in Texas which is always solidly red anyways it's not like it made a difference other than I had the privilege to vote with my conscious and hopefully do whatever small part possible to push and uplift 3rd party candidates)... It's still just so frustrating that in this "democracy" we are saddled with the illusion of choice with our "two party system" (two sides of the same coin).

"heavy sigh*

All this to say.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ a bunch of nothing really. Just voicing my apathy and discouragement to the VOID.

[one-n-only-cedar]

Chapter 2: Beginnings

“This is Director Brooke Augustine, reiterating once again the importance of the Department of Unified Protection. The streets of your city are crawling with Bio-Terrorists and you have no power to defend yourselves or your loved ones, let us be that power.” July, 2017

I stood before a sea of people, a situation I was unfortunate enough to be familiar with. I was nothing more than a prop to my mother, I'd like to specify at these events but that would be a lie. I felt like a prop my whole life: beauty pageants from age 3, gymnastics at ages 6-14, Cheerleading(though that didn't work out), and now that I'm graduated I could go with her on any of these stupid events she wanted. My mother stood beside me looking every part the powerful mayor that she was and making some half hearted speech about new beginnings. I scanned the crowd, mostly reporters here for the Grand opening of Machiavelli's, a new restaurant in town. It was a fancy upper end sit down restaurant located right in the heart of Downtown. Across the street from a Clucky's Chicken. I noted kind of offhandedly how there was a distinct lack of customer's at the fast food place. It was noon you'd think they'd have some kind of rush.

My mother finished her speech managing to work my graduation into the end and force me up to the podium.

“Hello Citizens of Nova City.” I started and a reporter raised his hand

“As a Youth, How do you feel about the D.U.P.’s sudden involvement in this city?” the way he said youth felt condescending, like I was just some kid tagging along with mommy to the grocery store.

I tossed a look over my shoulder at my mom and she shrugged uselessly turning back to the crowd I cleared my throat, which suddenly felt like spiders were trying to crawl up it.

“I have no thoughts on the matter, the government is simply trying to do its job.”

“They could declare martial law,” Warren said interrupting my internal monolog

I looked over at him pulling my eyes away from the restaurant opening across the street. Another fancy place I'd never see the inside of. His eyes were hard, glaring at me as I tossed him a sheepish grin.

“Did you hear any of that?”

I shook my head, “no sorry I'm in my own little world here.”

He huffed, taking off the ridiculous chicken hat we were forced to wear and smoothing back his blue and green dyed hair. “I was telling you about The DUPs” he said

“Oh right, right they were brought into the city weren't they?”

“Yeah apparently some crazy ‘Bio-Terrorists’ are running around.” He said sarcastically, spitting the term as if it hurt to say

“Oh no how scary,” I said feigning fear “Bio-Terrorists, what a shit phrase.”

“Scary!? I'll tell you what's scary, these government fucks are gonna come in here and take our rights away.”

I laughed, Warren was a great person to work with and he made the time pass by.

By the time our shift had ended we both made our separate ways, Mom was at work at the hospital so I got the thrill of walking home.

The city was serene at night, hard to believe that the government thought there were terrorists here. I was walking slowly simply enjoying the midsummer cool of the night when I heard a scream. It was a shrill sound filled with fear. Immediately my heart started to pound, coursing adrenaline through my body. I moved without thinking - acting before my brain even caught up to the situation. By the time I realized I was running head first into danger with 0 preparation I had already found the danger. A large man stood over a prone woman, in an alleyway.

“Stop right there!” I shouted in my best attempt at a voice of authority. “Leave that woman alone, you-” I cut off what do you even say in a situation like this “you ruffian.” Yeah that didn't sound nerdy at all

The man turned away from the girl and his eyes struck fear into my very core; they were glowing orange. He had a sneer on his face as he flexed his fingers and fire erupted from the palm of his hands. All fear in me evaporated as the woman screamed. Regardless of my own wellbeing or inability to stand against this man I had to keep her safe. I ran, feet pounding concrete as I threw myself into danger.

The guy side stepped my charge striking my face with a flaming backhand, a raging heat scorched my cheek the powerful slap sending shockwaves of pain down my spine and bringing me to my knees

“Did you honestly think you'd come in here and be some kind of hero?”

His laugh was harsh, like he was forcing it through layers of gravel stuck in his thick neck. He snapped his hand out wrapping it around my neck, fire coating his palm and searing my flesh. Then he lifted me up, I felt my feet leave the ground as he dangled me in front of him. Then his massive palm grabbed my face fire searing my eyes, every breath was hot and ragged as I gulped fire down to my lungs in a desperate attempt to breathe. His laugh persisted ringing in my ears until I felt my body going numb, a sudden and brilliant flash of gold filled my vision, a feeling of warmth exploding out from my chest. A heat much like the one lingering on my face, only this one was comforting.

There was a sea of darkness all around me only briefly illuminated by a golden glow coming from somewhere behind me. It seemed for a moment that whatever was behind me was turning with me as I looked for the source of the soft warm glow until I looked down seeing a Radiant supernova wriggling in my chest.

My wonder lasted only a moment as I looked at the golden flower blooming within what I could only assume was my soul. It was quickly replaced by fear as I heard movement in the darkness, things scurrying around me. Things sniffing me out, a soft growl played in my ear accompanied by a dry harsh laugh.

“You're not so powerful.” Came a crazy voice like ice breaking off down a melting stream. Much like the ice the voice sent chills throughout my entire being nearly suffocating the warmth of the golden glow in my chest. “You're just a baby, you have no concept of the power within you.” Came the voice

Laughter exploded around me, the voice seemed to be toying with me. Then the cold halted and warmth replaced it gold pouring off of me in such brilliant beams that it combatted the darkness.

A scream cut off my fear and the light died down.

“Ezra?” Mom's voice came.

“Mom?” I asked voice rough

Then I was Yanked into a tight hug, her arms pulling me to her in a warm embrace. We stayed there for a moment and I scanned the room, a hospital room. I sat on a bed in hospital gowns, the smell of burnt cloth filling my nostrils until I realized there had been bandages around my head that now smoldered. Mom started to shake and I realized she was sobbing.

“Mom, what's going on?” I said

After a moment of her crying she pulled away, scanning me for injuries. “I thought you were dead.”

“Dead?” Then it all raced back to me.

“The woman, is she okay?”

“She ran while you took that beating,” mom said bitterly, “some bystanders caught it in action. They're calling you a hero.”

“Me? A hero?”

Mom turned on the little TV in the room and switched to a news channel, and there it was. Shaky cellphone footage of me; feet dangling off the ground and the Bio-Terrorist with his flaming fists one around my neck the other around my head. I looked over at mom and she refused to acknowledge the footage. I reached for the remote to turn it off but then a golden flash caught my attention. I watched as golden light burst from my hands, crawling up my arms and eventually coating my whole body. It shielded me as the flaming beast jumped back. I stood on my feet all.of one minute before the light burst off me, a wave of golden light rolled off me in all directions even going so far as to knock the cameraman over. I looked at mom and she held my gaze,

“I-I'm,” I gulped around the dry lump in my throat. “I'm one of them?”

“Oh Pooh, no. You're a hero.”

“That was the least heroic footage I have seen.”

“The woman you saved, her name was Isabel Walsh. She came forward and told the story from her perspective. The guy tried to mug her, and you stopped him.”

I nodded, “I heard her scream, it sounded like she needed help.”

“No terrorist I know would run unarmed into danger because someone needed help.” She said, swelling with pride.

Man I bet the people from school are regretting not even knowing I existed.

I stared at my reflection, my brown eyes blinking back at me, slowly I examined myself, with a cold detached analysis. Ensuring everything was perfect: my makeup, my hair, these god awful preppy clothes. I had to be the perfect sidepiece to my mother's show or I would be shunned without dinner. in my room the TV played the news,

“And in local news an unnamed teenager saved a woman from a Bio-Terrorist attack we have been unable to reach him or his guardian for further questions but the woman he saved has come forward.”

I leaned back to look at the TV just in time to see shitty cell phone footage of a golden light knocking the one filming over. The footage switched to a tired looking redhead and a reporter with big doe eyes,

“Isabel, was it?”

The redhead nodded

“Tell us what happened.”

“Well,” the girl said in a shaky tone “I was out on a walk when this big scary man cornered me in an alley. When I tried to go around him he knocked me down. I screamed and next thing I knew this brave young man rushes in and confronts the man. I didn't see anything after that because I ran.”

That kid looked like he had promise, maybe I could recruit him. Help him get a handle on those powers, he clearly has a desire to do good.

The cool air of the night clung to the black outfit that hung just loosely enough to give me room to move, and moving is exactly what I was doing. I leapt over a pipe on the roof and slid under another. Not even attempting to stop as I reached the edge of the roof I flung myself into the air soaring over the gap and landing in a roll to keep my momentum as I hit the next roof.

I liked the run. It helped clear my head. The movement was easy. Years of gymnastics and little fear of falling helped me move. I always went on runs after my mom forced me to play her prop. It always left a bad taste in my mouth and a fog in my brain. The run cleared both, here on the rooftops in the night was where I felt at home. I ran past a folding lawn chair sat in front of a TV narrowly dodging the cooler that sat next to it. Briefly in the back of my head I thought about how strange it was that a set up like this one would be here but the observation was lost as I threw myself into a much larger gap.

The space was larger than any human should be able to clear but luckily I wasn't just any human, I was a conduit. My body dissolved into a cloud of black smoke-like shadow as I pushed myself forward just enough to land on the roof of the old abandoned apartment complex. The Burrows were full of these, housing complexes that had been left to rot as the scummy landlords refused to take care of them and the people who lived there left for some place better or were removed for failure to rent. Even before the DUPs this city was a Shit hole.

“Didn't think you were gonna make it.” Came a familiar voice

“I always do” I replied turning to face Greyson, he was built like a brick wall, towering over me with shoulders so broad they made him look square. His face lit up as he smiled at me,

“So tell me, Umbress what brings us out here to the slums?”

“Two things, I needed fresh air and I got a lead. My source says there is a conduit holed up in this building.”

[thekuraning]

oh boy oh jeez oh man i hope you guys are ready for kura's tiger and bunny thought of the evening bc i ran across two-year-old comments on the Blue Rose page of the T&B fan wiki and i have OPINIONS

its actually a really benign old comment chain about USD versus Stern Dollars, but everyone pretty much says "yeah but it's still in the USA" and BUDDY BOY NO IT AIN'T. NO. IT. AIN'T.

I'VE GOT SOMETHIN' TO SAY ABOUT STERN BILD AND I'LL FIGHT ANYONE (but like in a silly way)

"But Kura, the creators literally said it's in New York and—" yes they did, this part is very much true and the aerial shot we see of Stern Bild is always around Tribeca/Manhatten area with a really nice shot of the Hudson, but that's not the point (though it does make it much easier to chart the various districts, more on that coming soon)

Something we know about Tiger & Bunny is that it is set in an alternate universe New York, and never once is the United States mentioned by name. In fact, there isn't much about world nations mentioned in general in T&B—the one time I can think of off the top of my head where "country" is even mentioned is in Dragon Kid's flashback of her parents sending her off to Stern Bild, where they tearfully say she is going to become "the pride of [their] country," so I guess we at least know the concept of countries exists. But is Stern Bild in a country? Is Stern Bild a country?

Actually, all evidence points toward Stern Bild being a city-state. It meets all three qualifications of being such: it's an independent, sovereign city that is "the center of political, economic, and cultural life" over its surrounding territories. We see these qualifications met across all three seasons, first and foremost starting with something you've heard characters talk about pretty dang often but probably never thought too much about: the Stern Dollar.

The Stern Dollar (SBD from here on out) has to get its name from somewhere, and the most likely candidate is Stern Bild itself, which means that Stern Bild mints its own currency. Often shortened to "dollars" by the characters, it's used even in neighboring towns like Kotetsu's hometown (i.e., Muramasa charging him "two dollars" for a whiskey in season 1.)

We also know Stern Bild has a very localized culture based on the events of The Rising and a few character scenes in S2. In The Rising, the backdrop to the story is the time leading up to and the day of the Stern Bild holiday of Justice Day, which celebrates the time our lord and savior Jesus Christ appearedunto man in crab form and was unfortunately eaten, resulting in the Goddess bringing her wrath down on the ancient people of Stern Bild. (hello mutuals who haven't seen Tiger & Bunny and are reading this anyways, THIS IS CANON I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP THIS FUCKING HAPPENED, CRAB JESUS) This is a holiday that is, again, celebrated outside of Stern Bild, as Kotetsu's family celebrates Justice Day despite hailing from his hometown. By extension, it's likely the same goddess is worshipped in the territories surrounding Stern Bild.

We also know based on S2 that other cities have their own hero programs, all of them ran wildly differently. However, again, we look to Kotetsu's home town—no mention of other heroes. Just Hero TV heroes. Both the religious and secular mainsteam culture are exported from Stern Bild to its outlying territories.

And finally, political life: the politics of Stern Bild are interesting af because we know basically that we have the mayor and the mayor's cabinet, which includes prominent industry figures and judges from the Justice Bureau. We typically only see them making decisions about the governance of Stern Bild, and it's true that politics exist at all levels in a nation, but the reason why it seems to me that Stern Bild is a center of political life is (SEASON 2 SPOILERS LOOK AWAY LOOK AWAY NOOOWWWW)

Well, mostly it's because of the concentration camps, which seem to exist decidedly outside of Stern Bild's city limits. Stern Bild proper is always shown to be a bustling megalopolis. It's very dense and doesn't have a lot of extra wide-open spaces laying around. However, the mayor of Stern Bild was able to have these NEXT concentration camps set up on short notice in seemingly the middle of nowhere.... Which would very likely be an outlying territory, again, like Kotetsu's very rural hometown. This one's a little bit tricky because we can't be absolutely certain, but for all intents and purposes it seems to me that Stern Bild has some political relevance to its surrounding territories.

So, is it TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE that Stern Bild is in the United States? Yeah, sure, it could be I guess. But it's much more likely that it's an independent city-state, especially since it mints its own currency.

anyways that's my tiger & bunny thought of the night, dont mind me, i just wanted an excuse to rant about this bc the stern dollar's been on my mind for a few days

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

Jewish College Students Are Just Fine

Thanks for asking

Stephen Jay Morris

5/1/24

©Scientific Morality

So, your country’s treasury has supplied cash and military hardware to a foreign country for it to ethnically cleanse inhabitants of an open-air prison. Your country is an accessory to genocide. So, what does it do? It has a campaign of propaganda. Plus, it hires agent provocateurs to attend opposition demonstrations and misrepresent the true intent of the protests. The provocateur starts a chant that says, “Death to America.” The mainstream media reports that “Free Palestine” protestors are chanting, “Death to America.” If that’s not enough, you have Right wing cable T.V. reporting that Hamas is behind the student strikes at Columbia University.

When I was among those who protested the war in Vietnam, we were accused of being funded and supported by the former Soviet Union. My generation was labeled “communists.” Welcome to the false accusation club. Zoomers are being accused of Anti-Semitism. Since when is opposing genocide Anti-Semitic? Ever since Benjamin Netanyahu and his merry band of Likud putzes have circulated lame talking points to moderates, liberals, and American conservatives.

By 1971, anti-war students were deluged with allegations, by conservatives and the federal government, of committing libel and slander against the USA. In early May, the State upped the ante by sending National Guard troops to Kent State, where they shot and killed four students. I see all the signs of that being repeated here and now, in 2024. It is happening again; however, it is happening at an accelerated rate.

Benjamin yahoo is a fan of Donald Trump. He even named an Israeli neighborhood after him. He really wants Trump to win the presidency this November. What better way to discredit Biden than by having him send money and bombs to America’s BFF in the Middle East, as it is slaughtering innocent women, children, men, and elderly Palestinians. “October 7th” is the mantra of those imitating the American Neo-Con strategy that was perpetuated after September 11, 2001. “Nine-eleven” was the chant the US used to justify its attack on Iraq. As far as the horrific attacks that took place on October 6, 2023, Benjamin Netanyahu had been warned, a year prior, not only by Egyptian intelligence, but also by Israeli intelligence, known as Mossad, that Hamas was going to attack Israel.

The whole world is outraged by the bombardment and leveling of Gaza. War? It isn’t a war when the enemy is not fighting back! As my generation was enraged by the deaths of innocents in Vietnam, the only way we could express our shock and anger was by utilizing our First Amendment right to protest. When we did, an agent provocateur would yell out in a crowd, “Lets burn down the Administration building!” This has been documented by journalists, repeatedly. Now, today’s youth is expressing their outrage, under the Bill of Rights, by holding student strikes on college campuses.

Columbia university was recently invaded by the New York City Police Department to throw out the protestors. Afterward, the Mayor of New York City gave a news conference, where he used a term I hadn’t heard since 1968, “Outside agitators.” He went on to say how he knows about these people and who they are. BUT…he never revealed who they are! I wonder if the City Attorney instructed him not to mention them by name. Outside agitators? Really? Was it Antifa? The FBI? The Monkees? You know what I think and feel? They don’t know shit! It was all a fake-out.

So, will there be student fatalities? I hope not. There were no police shootings of Black Lives Matter protesters, though some police provocateurs fired shots and undercover cops started fires. Google “Umbrella Man.”

But this is no police brutality case, this is about American Imperialism. When you fuck with the state, the bullets will fly!

Happy May Day!