#fuck them all these politicians and fascists but I repeat myself

[macksting]

[ID: Twitter thread by Niles. "having to sit back and watch the same 9/11 propaganda tactics be used and be successful is making me go insane. (Thread continues:) "like I legitimately feel crazy man. Remember when all of Hollywood booed Michael Moore because he said the Iraq War was wrong? We're in that stage of this bullshit. (Image of news article titled, "White House walks back Biden's claim he saw children beheaded by Hamas. US president spokesperson says comments were based on news reports and claims of Israeli officials.") Niles continues. "Bro just got up there and lied to the whole world and the White House is Walking Back his statements. But it's too late because all they needed was a little media permission to go destroy Gaza. This is fucking crazy." /end ID of first post.] [ID second post: Reuters article titled "Biden says he has no confidence in Palestinian death count." Guardian article that says "Bush discredits Iraqi death toll report." /end ID]

Ultimately no matter how seemingly nice or goodly any US president is, ultimately their job is US imperialism, hegemony, and supporting the wealthy. You don't get that job by being a good person. You get it by being born into blood money, playing favorites, ignoring horrors, and buying in. And obviously the vast, vast majority of people who do so won't gain nearly this level of power, so they'll have sold it all for nothing. Addendum: Uuuuuugggggh I am reminded by my doomscrolling that there are people who conflate the Israeli state with all Jewish people, and that's cursed and bullshit and horrifying. This is a state doing state things. Please do not mistake me for a nationalist. I'm white as a saltine, I ain't trying to butt my head into internal discussions nobody should be listening to me about, I'm just trying to hold murderers accountable and wouldn't you know it but that pretty much means every elected and appointed official in the United States, among others. I just don't want anyone to have to read beyond this post in some mild panic fearing I'm one of those awful shitheads using this genocide as an excuse to be antisemitic. I mean, feel free to look at my shit and hold me accountable for anything I do wrong, but if all you need is a moment's assurance that this isn't ABOUT THE JEWS for me, or anything else like that, here ya go. Honestly if I pulled shit like that my Jewish friends would just punch me in the teeth. I consider it a good sign that they haven't. It's nationalism. Nationalism sucks. There can be nuanced situations, but ultimately our goal should be an end to states and nations and such bullshit.

[dgcatanisiri]

So, the issue right now is (broadly speaking) about how the media is ignoring Warren, seemingly as at least in part a response to how Clinton failed against Trump in the 2016 election, that there’s a skepticism about how a woman will legitimately fare against him, since by common wisdom, Clinton should have won.

(I mean, it’s also because Warren’s openly targeted the corporations that finance the mainstream media, but this is the one that’s being talked about so let me focus myself for a moment.)

The thing about Clinton is, first of all, let’s not discount the impact that Russian interference had to tip the scales in Trump’s favor - she DID win the popular vote, which means she was more wanted the Trump. 

Second, but more important, and this was the case throughout her campaign, she did not excite or motivate the youngest and largest voting bloc. More to the point, a number of millennials/gen zs were kinda put off by her campaign’s attitude and approach in how to market to them. Like, when the campaign was actually looking to these voters, it very much had the air of “how do you do, fellow kids?”

There was this very distinct and noticeable feeling throughout her campaign that Clinton was doing making the decisions that made sense within the political arena, but severely cost her in the PR department - the one that always comes to mind on this count is her immediately giving Debbie Wasserman-Schultz a position right after she had to resign as the DNC chair because of her leaked emails. Yes, DWS was a savvy enough politician that on paper you’d want her involved. But she just went down because of remarks she’d made, at the least, doing this right afterwards smacks of rewarding bad behavior.

Clinton’s campaign tried to bring back the moderate to the Democratic party. And the thing is, not just has running moderates actually been a consistently losing strategy for Democrats, but the people who have come of age over the last twenty years have also eroded all confidence that the younger generations have had in politics. Which, honestly, her campaign just seemed blind to. 

Like it wasn’t that millennials (and gen z, but unfortunately, the way that punditry treats millennials as a whole is as if they are the youngest section of gen z, so for simplicity’s sake I’m going to just say millennials) didn’t want a woman president. It’s that we didn’t really feel enthusiastic about THIS woman being president. That we looked at her record and found it lacking. That we thought she represented the establishment that was leaving us behind. 

That was why Sanders’s message resonated so well with the younger generation, that they made up a significant chunk of his support. Especially when we saw the DNC acting like Clinton’s nomination process should be a coronation - from 2012, there were talking heads discussing her run as a foregone conclusion. Her first endorsement came in 2014. The people who ran against her aside from Sanders were nobodies everyone knew would drop out before any serious competition happened. And the Democratic party’s response at large to Sanders seemed to be anger that he was interfering in Clinton’s ascendancy. It seemed like dragging Clinton to even acknowledge that Sanders’s campaign and platform had any good plans - even if they were unviable in the short term - was like pulling teeth. Her VP pick was a relatively safe moderate, instead of being any kind of appeal to the Sanders voting bloc. 

Millennials have grown up in a different world than the Clinton generation. We have grown up in a world where the US is always at war. Where polarization is the default state of our politics. Where there seems to be a new crisis at least once a month. Clinton was as establishment as it got, having a political pedigree that had it being her business before many of us were alive. And the problem is that millennials don’t have faith in the establishment. 

Clinton’s loss came not from what beltway pundits thought about her but the way that she failed to genuinely connect to the average person. And no amount of comments about “hot sauce” were going to do that. There were actual policy decisions and statements of hers on the record that were questionable at best - even the ones that were the best of bad situations, like supporting DOMA, or going with the popular stance at the time, like her vote for the Middle East wars, or the infamous “superpredators” line and support of the Crime Bill that has disproportionately hit black people... These things all made her hard for millennials to want to support. 

To millennials, electing a woman president has been an issue of “when,” not “if.” The first presidential election that I was eligible to vote in, I voted for Barack Obama, the first black president in the US. We have seen these shifts come, and so we’re looking at it as “we want the RIGHT woman, not just A woman.” If this is a woman who’s going to go into the history books, we want it to be someone we believe in.

And belief... That’s one of the cornerstones in millennial support. We want candidates who we believe in. That’s how you get enthusiasm, and, by extension, get millennials to the booths in November. We don’t just want to vote, we want to believe in something. Now, argue how much that helps in a political system where involvement is actually needed to get things done, sure. But the point is that the system is failing to respond to how we’re coming in to it, not that we’re the ones in the wrong for wanting to have something to believe in.

So, coming back to the starting point... Warren. This is a woman with a proven track record. This is someone who has laid out repeated how-to guides for her path forward. This is a woman who we can easily want to believe in. But the way the media seems to be looking at her, as she’s the female candidate who actually could contend for the top spot, she’s “just Clinton again.” That we all know Gabbard is dead in the water and Klobuchar is unlikely at best, but Warren could be the candidate... But then it’s a woman against Trump again, and he beat the last highly electable woman.

Clinton’s loss had a lot of factors, many of them dependent on her as a candidate, on her history as an elected official. That is not the same with Warren. She has a history of being on the side of the American people.

Of course, that also brings us back to the fact that corporate America is scared shitless of Warren being elected, and would rather allow a fascist dictator be completely unrestrained than risk an iota of their power.

We’re completely fucked, aren’t we?

[workersolidarity]

One thing that should unite the left more than ever is that we're all being fucked over capitalism in general. Especially if you live in a culture that is built on commodification and capitalism, and to break through the lies that we have told and try to do good by leftism is noble and it betters humanity the more leftism rises.

I would hope. But just like the early 1930's, were at a junction of history. Neoliberal Capitalism could easily degrade into more Nationalism and the continued rise of Fascism.

Or trend could go towards the Socialist Left.

The part that worries me is how the Ruling Class has such a brutally tight grip on Western culture. They've been so effective in their propaganda over the years that it's now acceptable to read Mein Kampf and try to "understand Hitler".

You walk into many public libraries and book stores and easily find a copy of Mein Kampf or an awfully generous biography of Goebbels.

But good luck trying to find a copy of Foundations of Leninism or Dialectical and Historical Materialism anywhere besides the internet.

Somehow the Bourgeoisie have convinced the public that, yeah, Fascism is bad, but it's okay to be a little Fascist-curious.

But Stalin, oh my Lord! Now that guy is completely and utterly unacceptable to read or try understanding! He's "worse than Hitler" and "killed more people in the Soviet Union than Hitler did in the Holocaust" are refrains I hear all the time.

Nevermind that the entire Anti-Stalin/Anti-Communism paradigm is based on out-and-out lies. Nevermind that a little Independent research debunks any and all claims of Stalin's supposed crimes. Doesn't matter!

Even among other Socialists you'll hear the same tired lies, most of which can be traced to Trotsky (somehow he's an acceptable Socialist but not Stalin), or from Krushchev's "Secret Speech", and some of the lies come directly out of fictional literature from the Cold War Era! Yet, even so-called "Leftists", "Socialists", and "Anarchists" who question anything their Government says about any other topic, disbelieve the Corporate Media on topics of War, but swallow without question these baseless lies about Stalin and the Soviet Union.

This is such a remarkable stranglehold on a narrative of Revisionist History, I'm stunned whenever someone actually questions it.

Consider some other well worn lies that people swallow hook-line-and-sinker.

A. America won the war against Fascism

Nevermind the fact that the US didn't even enter the European Front until the tide had turned. Ask any Westerner and they'll tell you it was the US that defeated the Nazis and Fascism, and liberated the Concentration camps.

B. America entered World War II to defend "Freedom" (whatever that means), to Liberate the Jews, to defeat Fascism and Nazism, and to defend "Western Values" (another meaningless refrain repeated without thought everywhere in the Western world).

Again, completely ignoring the fact that the US didn't even enter the War until the Red Army was marching on Berlin. Nevermind, that the US was only interested in preventing a Europe united under Socialism. Nevermind that any Holocaust survivor remembers like it was yesterday exactly who Liberated them from the Concentration camps; and Earth to America! It wasn't us!

These are just the most obvious examples of how the Bourgeois of the Western Imperialist Powers have a complete stranglehold on the Narratives that even most Leftists still believe.

You're allowed to question anything in America. As long as that anything isn't the Historical Revisionism of the Second World War or the Anti-Stalin Paradigm.

So for me, the question becomes, how exactly do we educate the Proletariat in Western Nations if we can't even get them to believe that Stalin didn't kill 60 million Soviet Citizens (out of 100 million total) and the Soviet Union wasn't an Totalitarian dictatorship that was essentially the same as Nazi Germany?

I mean, how do you build Socialism when the Bourgeoisie have convinced the world that the only example of Socialism to have ever existed wasn't actually Socialist but was instead akin to Fascism?

And now even the word "Socialism" is being debased by Liberals and Social Democrats to mean something completely different from what it is? If prominent Politicians and Political figures are allowed to go around claiming Sweden is a Socialist country, then how do you ever convince people that this not only isn't true, but real Socialism looks like the Boogieman of Nation States the Soviet Union?

How do we reclaim Socialism from the Capitalists and Liberals? Better yet, how can we reclaim Socialism with scaring off Working Class when they have disinformation coming, not only from their enemies, but also from the Petty-Bourgois Political figures who've convinced them they're on their side?

We're essentially battling multiple disinformation campaigns coming from all sides. How can we blame the Working Class for being confused by all this?

And this is how the Bourgeois Class of today operates. They allow Liberals to reclaim Socialism without challenging it all that much because they see how this will only add to the confusion and divisions of the Working Class; essentially assuring enough confusion to keep a genuine Revolutionary Proletariat from forming.

Which leads me back to the beginning. Things can go either way right now. But with Liberals being so distrusted and no adding to the difficulties facing Communists in building a genuinely Revolutionary Working Class, I see Workers facing a much easier path towards Fascism than I do Socialism.

I don't know what to do other than educate people as best I can, involve myself in local Socialist Organizations as I already do, and just hope that something profound changes in the radicalization process for Workers.

We need to build a broad infrastructure on the Socialist Left that can bring diverse viewpoints that share a unified vision for Revolution together. This has to include a network of Revolutionary Socialist media productions such as podcasts, radio shows, websites and news sources, as well as a network of Socialist Organizations and Parties; basically some type of connecting Infrastructure that as it grows and matures, could eventually lead to a unified Vanguard Party that will hopefully be able by then to be dominated by Marxist-Leninists while slowly shedding it's more Right Wing and Opportunist wings of the Party.

That's the only way I can visualize an actual path towards Revolution. Any goal less than that is doomed to fail. That should be clear to everyone after Venezuela and Bolivia this year.

So yeah, again I've gone way way over the top in response to a comment, but this is the most important issue facing the Socialist Movement. I have some hope, I do. Just not a whole hell of a lot.

[tessatechaitea]

Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child

Darkseid pees out of his eyes.

"It's 2020 and Frank Miller is still doing 'Not' jokes" is the only review of this comic book you probably need.

The Joker and Darkseid are cumming in their pants over the engagement in the election cycle. I guess people who want to stop terrible politicians from making the country a living hell for a vast number of the population are simply falling into their trap! Stupid people who want a better world! Can't they see that the only way to defeat The Joker and Darkseid is to disengage from the circus of election cycles and simply live their own life without any concern for others? Doesn't the electorate know the best life to live is the life that leads to Ayn Randian defenses of their own selfish needs? Just shut up and take what they give you, you dumb fucks. I should probably finish reading this story before I continue to jump from conclusion to conclusion about Frank Miller's point. His ultimate point might simply be that the children will save us all! Or that it doesn't matter if the children change the world or not because the adults will all be dead by then so who fucking cares? Supergirl Lara confronts Darkseid by blasting him with her heat vision. He dies multiple times or something but doesn't somehow. He applauds her rage the way bad guys always do and then calmly sits down to tell all of the children a story. He's going to be sensible and rational which means it will be the truth, I think. Obviously if you have any emotional attachment to your beliefs, they're garbage beliefs. Until you can squeeze all of the humanity out of yourself, the things you believe won't hold up in rational debate! So divest yourself of your rage, children! It will only make you more logical and intellectually stronger! But also divest yourself of your joy and your despair and your other emotions I can't think of! There must be more, right? While Darkseid is distracted regaling everybody with his tale of the anti-life equation, Superboy sneaks up behind him and takes over his Omega Effect. He turns it back on Darkseid and Darkseid disintegrates into non-existence. Unless he was transported back in time. I don't really know how his eyeball lasers work. Darkseid doesn't stay dead for long. He returns as the Omega God, as the end of everything, as the final death of everything on Earth.

But maybe later, I guess?

Batwoman beats up some Jokers and shuts down Trump's ability to broadcast to Gotham. It makes Darkseid angry enough to return for some reason. Probably a metaphorical reason. Or an analogical reason. I think maybe my attention span is seriously slipping! And right when I'm getting to the part that's probably going to explain what the fuck is going on in this comic book. Superboy destroys Darkseid by calling him an old fart. Also maybe a little bit by blasting him with a new super power: neutron vision! Darkseid has now had his powers stripped so far back that a human bouncing a rock off of his head makes him bleed. But still he thinks, "I will manipulate these fools with my lofty words!" But then Greta Thunberg clenches her fist at him and Batwoman says, "You have no power here! We're thinking for ourselves now!" And then that's the end somehow. Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child Rating: I can't comprehend what I just read. Maybe the point was that we shouldn't comprehend what other people want us to comprehend? Maybe it was an anti-propaganda story? Maybe it was just terrible writing pretending to be art? It's so hard to tell because it's trying so hard to be complex! Is it's complexity real or a facade? I can't tell! Maybe I should stick to easier things to understand, like James Joyce's Finnegans Wake or Alan Moore's 1300 page novel, Jerusalem, which I finished. Maybe that's Frank Miller's problem. Maybe he just didn't have enough pages to really get to the point he was trying to make. But then if he did have more pages, how many would he waste by simply repeating the same things over and over again? For those of you who haven't read this (or Superman: Year One), he does that a lot. Not in the good way that Tom King and Gertrude Stein repeat themselves. Just in a way that makes you think, "I got it! Superboy is right in Darkseid's brain." Maybe that's a poor example from this comic book because repeating that over and over works to show how painful Superboy's presence in Darkseid's brain is. But I assure you there were many other examples that I can't make excuses for. I just can't be bothered to dig back through the comic book to find them.

[legalist217]

Do Voldemort/Snape/Umbridge lmao

I think you’re overestimating my ability to not be creative about the situation, as well as my self-preservation and my interest in women because that’s what makes Umbridge rank worst from an SO perspective. (she’s not even a pretty woman, she’s a super gross woman inside and out, so it does nothing for me on any level, meh, bleh, weh)

This got lengthy so it’s under a cut, you’re welcome, enjoy. And I bothered to put these into exactly no logical canon timeframe. 

Well get this out of the way, fake date umbridge. because I will find ways to mortify her. I will drag her to youmacon. I will point out a photograph taken of Nancy Pelosi in a pink suit with all the Senate pages and then assure her that, no, of course you’re just as pretty in your headmistress photo as that Muggle politician is. Why would there even be a comparison. dear. [this is a real photo that we saw being taken at the Capitol when we toured circa HBP’s film coming out; we had to stifle giggles] 

And then arrange a scenario where she’s jailed for tax evasion. I’m not marrying the toad; no fifth amendment protections for non-spouse SOs as I recall. I assume MACUSA can ensure she’s put somewhere good and tedious. 

(note: this is the only scenario where I envisioned it happening in america)

now, hm. I guess I would slow burn Voldemort because I reckon if you’re his stated enemy, that’s probably not a changeable status. He’s all emotionally stunted in that way. So enemies to lovers doesn’t seem plausible. So, then, I guess I’m some Bellatrix-esque tart, except, well, myself. So rather than wetting myself over THE DAHHK LAWD, I’m just mildly amused at his fascist goals. “That’s a way to do it, I suppose, but hate’s a pretty tedious method to carry on with the world, and let’s remember that you never actually held power long term *ducks AK* so maybe something less... Hitlery? Oh don’t look at me like that, you grew up in muggle-trash London, you know who Hitler is.” 

And it goes on and on and on and on and on and it is a slow burn because he’s incapable of love and I think the best we manage for much of the run before the author begins developing carpal tunnel is “I barely tolerate her because she has 0.01% of a point; I tell the others she is too amusing to kill.” At least now I have slytherin creds to brandish to get a foot in the door. 

And being endlessly at such a tenuous “I guess that was almost funny, so I won’t murder you?” stage, I don’t have to figure out how to kiss a noseless man or how to deal with a jealous pet snek. 

you’re going to regret this

Enemies to lovers is a very tolerable way to deal with Snape, given the options on this playing field. Professors who tell you that your answer is wrong only for the right answer to be “the same thing but because I said it, it’s right” are my least fuckin faves. Snape treads close to that territory. 

But again, I have slytherin creds now. I’m also quite impulsive, so I can see myself writing him an annoyed owl after a class detailing specific moments where his behavior decreased the educational advantage to Housemates and how this is him not being a benefit to team and should I go to Dumbledore about this; like give that one gryffindor kid double shit, dude might deserve it for all I know [I am bad at popular gossip when it comes to school IRL], but stop fuckin it up for us and maybe for other students who are genuinely trying, ya pissant. And while Snape is very much a pissant, I think he also cares a lot about the House. And to a degree, his job; he definitely gave a fuck when he was sixteen about teaching potions because he was rewriting the goddamned book. 

So, I dunno, maybe I can get through to him. I still get detention for unmitigated sass, but I knew that’d happen. Too bad he doesn’t realize how much I am wont to chat while working. And I have an IRL habit of roping even introverts into talking with me when I’m inclined to. What’s he gonna do, give me more detention? I don’t give a shit. I’ll clean this office and every office. Why the hell not. Castle’s an interesting place. How often do I get an elf’s eye view of the place? And anyway are there any good articles out on lacewing colony collapse disorder, because I hear that might screw over the polyjuice industry? Any good places to write? Lacewings are aptly named, you gotta admit. They need more words devoted to them. And then I force him to read my poetry because who the fuck else here knows about lacewings aside from maybe Hagrid who has automatic distrust of green robes? He tells me it sucks. I grin. (I cry later, but that’s not because he said it, just because no one wants to hear that their poem sucks in such flat words.)

In real life, I’m still in touch with some of my professors after graduation and some of them have outright said they think of me as a friend. I wouldn’t date them, because they are married and I am sensible and they are twice my age and the list goes on. But this is a forced narrative scenario, and given my dating history and its repeated Bad Calls, I can see me writing longer and more detailed letters than just “hey got a new job at Witch Weekly doing book reviews, it’s basically whatever’s on the Prophet’s best-seller list minus anything too difficult for a stay-at-home witch to bother with.” He writes back terse one-liners if I’m lucky. I still write a lot, because it makes me feel better about my sorta boring life. 

At some point, I dust off the old lacewing scroll and laugh at how bad it was. But the core idea of hiding oneself in another’s reflection has merit, so I rework it. Dredge up old textbooks to reference other ingredients of common potions, because Moste Potente Potions is still a restricted book so maybe not hinting at the recipe in a poem is a good call.  It’s eventually as done as this version’s going to be. I send it to him. 

It comes back around Christmas with the word “Better.” swirled in the corner. I tack it to the wall and write more. Sometimes they come back with tiny checkmarks by specific lines. I find myself quietly tallying those, like they’re gold stars and I’m back in primary school. And I have to stifle a gasp when one has a note saying he’d copied a version for himself. I can’t help imagining it pinned up on his fridge, him seeing it every day. That image is childish, but it gets me through bleak times. 

It’s a year before a poem I didn’t write comes back to me. It is so laughably bad that I’m in tears of laughter for half the night, but then, reading through it, they end up just tears. Who the fuck is this about, because none of the imagery fits me. It’s all flowers of the valley and gentle prey animals. Drawing from my name would be angels or wolves or birds of prey. Who the fuck, then, is this, and why am I sobbing. 

Printed at the bottom is a one-word question: Thoughts?

It’s all I can do not to crumple the stupid parchment and chuck it in the flames. Who is she. Who the hell would put up with such an obnoxious, icy, sneering, greasy, loser? I glance in the mirror. Who indeed. 

It’s a pathetic weekend spent balled up under a comforter trying to figure out how to rationally handle whatever the hell this is. But like I said, I’m impulsive. I have just enough Floo powder on hand, as well, and my head pokes out into a dingy flat. I think he nearly blacks out, he’s that startled. He does the many-blinking thing. 

I arrive swiftly at the point, which is to say that I sob inelegantly and the tears sizzle amid the flames. But I make my demands known through the mouthfuls of ash, both real and simply felt. Who is this other woman you’d write poetry to. 

Black eyes should be flat. His have too much depth at moments like these. There’s too much available to read. I don’t want to know that he knows I’m not crying on his behalf. He runs absent fingers through his hair as he looks at me, a gesture I’d forgotten to miss. Then he explains he wasn’t sure how to title it, which is why there wasn’t one. But it would have been an elegy. His way of burying the past.

I point out that repression isn’t healthy. At least, I think I do. Details are so hazy here in the fire. 

He kneels before me and says that is correct, if such be the case. But one must part with the past to allow for new beginnings. 

Lips brush there in the flames. And then I’m laughing. He pulls back, and I regret it just a little for how hurt those eyes are. Why do I laugh? “That poem sucked!” I shriek, before dragging myself back through the fires to my own hearth, where I lie laughing hysterically for quite some time. 

Years later, Elegy to the Valley is deemed complete. I walk with him as far as the gate, but let him enter the graveyard alone. It is summer, and I trace patterns in the warm metal, trying not to watch his shoulders shaking as he reads it to her. If he needs me, I can be there in a moment. But I would rather watch and mentally write my own poem of this moment instead. He will probably produce something about today as well. We will trade parchments and leave spare, biting comments. But our fingers will interlace at the end of the day. It suffices. 

The sky is tinged ruddy gold when he arrives back at the gate. We walk briskly to the end of the street. It’s not that we stand out; he still knows the Muggle ways. Still, this is a leonine place not meant for us. Time we made our excuses and left.

The corner is deserted. I see his eyes wander back over the church and the graves beside. I remind him he can always return. He shakes his head. “This is a parting of the ways.” He takes my hand, and we go twisting into the dark. 

so yeah, that’s what shipping me with snape looks like; any questions?

[maxeddyishere-blog]

Day 2 - Ties

Did you know that two teams can tie in an NFL game? Ties are by no means an omnipresent phenomenon in the NFL specifically (this past season had two ties, which was on the higher end historically) or in American sports generally (among the four largest sports leagues in the US, the NFL is the only one that has a true tie. In hockey, you can get some cred in the standings for losing in overtime, but that’s as close as any other league gets). So, now you know that football teams can tie. This means that you now know something about football that Donovan McNabb did not know about football in 2008. Donovan McNabb, a potential Hall of Fame NFL Quarterback, who had played football for the first 32 years of his life, upon tying a game with the Washington Redskins (or, as I like to call them, the Washington Dud PR Timebombs [seriously, DC is a pretty liberal place, how the fuck has that persisted]), replied to a reporter’s question that he did not know an NFL game could end in a tie. Like, if someone asked him, “Hey Don, you know your whole playbook?” He’d be like, “Fuck no, I don’t even know the whole rule book!”

While Mr. McNabb’s response to the question may be disheartening to the more intellectual football fans out there (they exist, don’t laugh), his response is not the worst I’ve heard from an NFL player regarding a tie. Bubba Smith, all pro-defensive end, played ball in the 60s, went on record, in a newspaper, in print, that he would rather lose a game than tie. Well, Bubba, I know you died in 2011 and I’m speaking to you rhetorically right now, but I feel like you wouldn’t have been singing that same tune if 10-5-1 would have gotten you into the playoffs but 10-6 wouldn’t have. A tie is, after all, effectively worth half a win, which is exactly one half win better than losing the game. (Math is important, kids.)

Now, Bubba was clearly suffering from two issues here. The first, repeated head trauma. Like, massive amounts of good ol’ American  pre-team-doctor football head trauma. (Smith eventually passed away after long bouts with alcoholism, issues with his heart and with his brain, namely CTE. If you actually would like to make a difference instead of laughing about other people’s degenerative issues, donate to fund research at Boston University’s CTE Center, you cynical asshole: https://www.bu.edu/cte/financial-support/). 

The second issue Bubba faced was an inability to handle America’s most important endangered species: nuance. It seems that Bubba should have preferred a tie to a loss because, as discussed earlier, math. But that (admittedly somewhat small) benefit of the tie versus the loss was outweighed in Bubba’s mind by the tonnage of having to have mixed feelings about the outcome of game. If Bubba wins the game, it’s a big “WOOHOO” moment, and he carries it into the next game. If Bubba loses, it’s more of a “BOOHOO” moment, but he still gets to get angry, get amped up, and carry that energy into the next game. If he ties the game, it’s a sobering moment for him - ambivalence doesn’t translate well into unadulterated emotion. 

I think this phenomenon is one that I deal with pretty frequently - it’s just so much easier to have a view of the world that’s rigid, that draws lines very clearly, and comments all over the internet whenever some guy named Milo crosses one of those lines. Gradients are so nice in theory - they provide flexibility when trying to understand the world around us. But it’s a whole lot easier to draw the rainbow with exactly seven solid brush strokes (especially because I can’t paint for shit. That part’s not a metaphor - I am awful at painting.)

The reason that folks like myself and Bubba prefer to think in terms of black and white (or, if we are referencing the races of the respective individuals mentioned, white and black) is that it takes conscious, active, tiresome thought. Take, for example, discussing the current leader of the free world, Donald J. Trump (highly topical, whether or not you think he’s the best example, this is the only way I have of getting this blog read by anyone who doesn’t know me personally). While those who support him and those who loathe him hold diametrically opposing viewpoints on many issues, there is one thing that many on both sides of the aisle share: their opinion of the man is dishearteningly lacking in nuance. I have heard plenty of Trump protesters suggest he is a devil, a demon Satan, Armageddon, the Apocalypse, a felon, a fascist, a neo-Nazi, a regular Nazi, Hitler Himself, and, of course, orange. While these attacks regarding his rhetoric, actions and skin tone have catalyzed many a high five and chortle between folks who dislike the man, none of these epithets categorizes the man in these somewhat more moderate terms: a human being with some pent-up anger, a lot of money, an uncanny ability to navigate the American media, and a lot of people who are buying what he is selling. While I believe that describing him in these terms better outlines the danger he poses to many groups in America, it takes a lot longer to type it out, and I’d usually rather type 5 letters than type three lines if I’m trying to get a point across.

On the other side of the aisle, the simple terms in which he is described are a bit longer character-wise, but just as lacking in moderation as those used on the other ideological pole: Trump is a businessman, he’s an outsider lookin’ to drain the swamp (short aside: a show called Swamp People on the History Channel just premiered its 8th season, and there has yet to be a single politician on the show [this fact is entirely unconfirmed, but they are documenting people who live in a literal swamp, so I am confident in my guess]), he doesn’t talk like those politicians who lie all the time. The main failing with this broad stroke is the failure to convey any further why an outsider would be better at a job than an insider in any industry (I’ve heard of an outside hire before, but should a real estate firm hire as its CEO someone who spent the previous 40 years as the Commissioner of the NFL? [Roger Goodell, it seems that you may have some serious prospects in other industries when you’re done.]) For many who support Mr. Trump, the characterization he has cultivated as a champion for running the government like a business crumbles under a simple question: do businesses have to make sure homeless people don’t die on the street? Because governments do.

I think this is all I’ve got to discuss on the matter for now, but it shall return again (blogs are like gyms - it’s a nice first step to get yourself into one, but you have to keep going back and working on the same stuff consistently if you want to feel good about yourself). In the meantime, try to avoid the pitfalls of Mr. Smith - try to find the tie, try to consider all sides of the issues with which you are confronted in your daily life, and...try to minimize head trauma.