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earthly--truth · 4 years ago

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What I believe in

These are my beliefs as someone who aligns with democratic socialism and progressivism. Feel free to critique it, challenge it, even just a few sections, whatever, but this is what I believe will make the world a better place, because people (and animals) deserve to live the best possible lives they can live with the only chance at life they got. This is going to be super general and long, and not get into nearly everything, but I hope it sheds a positive light on leftism.

Strong unions so that workers (the majority of people in society) have the ability have better footing to negotiate better wages, work hours, vacation days, benefits, etc. I also believe that in instances where it’s pragmatically viable that there should be a push for more worker co-op’s, in which every employee has a stake in the company they work at, and the ability to give their input (all companies should strive for more democracy). Both of these contribute to healthier, happier, and, and better payed people.

Raising the minimum wage in the U.S to $15 an hour. The current wage of $7.25 is way too low. It’s just not a livable wage. There’s a reason why McDonald’s and Walmart are called corporate welfare queens, and it’s because they’re employees require welfare to survive, despite being the biggest corporations on the planet with multi-billionaire CEO’s. The richest in society should also pay more in taxes.

Stop investing so much in the American military, cut it by a third if you can. (Firstly this frees up a lot of money for other things) Get the military out of the middle east, and create other more peaceful avenues to ensure it doesn’t crumble like every single time the military pulls out and doesn’t try to actually fix the mess they created. The people in the middle east deserve to be able to rebuild and they’ll need help to do that (just not the type of help where america installs their own leaders).

Healthcare should be universal, paid for by taxes. Every developed nation is capable of doing it. Many developing countries are doing it. Americans pay more in taxes for healthcare than so many other countries, yet a trip to the hospital still can put you in debt for the rest of your life. That is inhumane, and people shouldn’t have to choose between crippling debt and their health.

There’s also an argument to be made for free/way cheaper university, since countries like Canada or America force people to get a degree if they want to live a decent life, yet in order to do that you have to pay $15,000 a year for university. A system like that either forces people to skip out on uni, or again go into major debt. If Europe can figure it out, I think the U.S and Canada can figure it out too.

Black Lives Matter. To be more specific, I want police/criminal justice/prison reform. I want police de-militarized and to stop acting so abusive towards to civilians and real justice for the police that do, I want an end on the war on drugs (this helps drug addicts get help and delivers a blow to gangs and the cartel). I want an end to mass incarceration and laws that make it easier to throw people in jail for years for basically nothing. I want an end to for profit prisons. I want an end to the policy of retribution rather than rehabilitation for inmates (countries who rehabilitate are way more successful at non-returning inmates). I want an end to treating prisoners like slaves so corporations can get cheap labour. I also want the government to actually start caring about the poorest communities, many of which are predominantly black and latino (in cities anyways). (Also the indigenous in Canada). Better infrastructure, better public works programs. These all contribute to the proliferation of these communities and helps lessen the potential for criminality by making their lives better.

The dismantling of gender norms and roles, and de-stigmatization of LGBTQ+ people. I want people to be whoever they want to be. For far too long we have expected men and women to act a certain way. Women have come a long way, but there are still remnants of the old way of looking at things. We still have a lot of social stigma about how women should look, and that they are not worth even paying attention to if they aren’t conventionally attractive. We still have social stigma about sexuality and sex work. We hyper sexualize women in the media, yet shame women as sluts if they have a lot of sex. We shame women who choose abortion as murderers, yet don’t offer any support for the mother once the child has arrived. On top of that, the positions of power are still predominantly very old men. I also believe in helping men. Men are lonelier, men are increasingly staying sexless (not by choice), men are getting more suicidal. I want to address this two ways. One, by tackling toxic masculinity (not masculinity itself, just the bad parts). TM is telling men to man up and not to cry, TM is telling men not to act feminine or gay. TM is telling men to bottle up their emotions and resolve their problems through violence. The second way to address this is through my beliefs about workers. Men are the most suicidal in countries where there is a heavy work culture, like Japan and South Korea. Where they can’t have lives, and live to make money for the company they work at. That isn’t good.

When it comes to LGBTQ+ people, we need more positive representation in the media. We need people to see gay, trans, and non-binary people as normal people. When it comes to trans people specifically, we need to end the constant wars against them. Whether you’re talking about bathrooms, or sports, or children/teens receiving trans affirming healthcare. Let trans people be the gender that they say there are in the places they want to be, and allow them to receive the healthcare they need which is just the overwhelming medical consensus. This, combined with more supportive parents. all goes a long way to reducing the suicide rate amonst trans people.

The proliferation of the developing world. I want developing countries to be more autonomous, and to stop being under the boot of western corporations. I want an end to sweatshop labour or borderline sweatshop labour. I want the west to stop treating these actual people like their robots for pennies to produce our ungodly amounts of junk, and to actually pay these people decent wages. I want the world bank to stop giving money in an exploitative way to poor nations so that they cave to western business interests. These are people, human beings, and they deserve to develop and live good lives just like us. I also want them to fight for democracy in their countries.

Environmentalism. To go off the last section, 100 Corporations are contributing 71% of greenhouse gases. That needs to change. Corporations are participating ungodly amounts of devastations to eco-systems and the atmosphere. Ecosystems destroyed, and the exacerbation of the climate crises. I want a green and blue earth, and that can start by a) changing to green energy as much as humanly possible; solar, wind, and even nuclear (and whatever we come up with in the future) are far better than the fossil fuels we use now, which we’ll run out of anyways. And second we need to hold corporations accountable for destroying the planet. If we don’t do this, we risk the climate crises getting really bad. Oceans rising which will flood coastlines, creating millions of refugees, more periods of extreme dry (no water/bush fires) and extreme cold (look at what happened to texas). Something needs to be done about it.

Finally, veganism, for many reasons. One, the switch to veganism will be a big contributor to saving the planet. Whether you’re talking about the devastation we do to places like the Amazon Rain forest and other ecosystems to clear the way for animal farming, or whether you’re talking about reducing emissions. Most emissions and waste from agriculture are from the production phase of animal farming. So much food, water, and energy is wasted by giving it to billions of animals that we purposefully breed into existence, then slaughter, rinse and repeat, every single year, when we could just grow food and give water to people and skip out the middle man (think about how many people are hungry and without water in the world).

Philosophically, it is also wrong to kill a living creature that desires to live, that is able to connect with other living things and it surrounding, to form bonds. A cow, pig, chicken, lamb, sheep, are no different than a dog, cat, or rabbit, and they should not be killed, exploited, and tortured (confinement, abusive conditions in industrial farms) for pleasure. I know it’s pleasure for most people, because vegans are living proof that you can live happy and healthy lives without animal products. Vegans are statistically healthier than non-vegans, and we can get all the nutrients we need, even on an inexpensive diet. There are exceptions of course. A very small portion of people literally cannot eat plants and can only eat meat, and the developing world doesn’t have the same access to vegan products as the developed world does. Those people are valid, but many many people can make the switch and they should, especially in the developed world

All I see from this is making the world better. Hopefully you can too.

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jumin-deserves-better · 4 years ago

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👏 MM fandom, I really want to talk about this 👏

《 Big rant ahead!》

I am damn sure most part of the mystic messenger fandom perceives Jumin like this 🚶‍♀️:

But whatever....

Let's get into the real matter that I wanted to say to the fandom in general.

The prejudice we, Jumin Han fans have to face, is a LOT ! . I mean, I am not even exaggerating, it is a LOT , LOT 👁👄👁

I am tired of it seriously, and as a Jumin fan, I want to justify some things, the statements and judgy things that I have to see on a daily basis 🤐, so here it goes....

•"Jumin is a manipulative & an abusive person who doesn't even care about MC's well being, what a jerk! " ( just to be clear here, this was in my asks, which I don't want to post, she was a 'someone' fan, and started saying reasons why that someone is much better than my fav, I don't tolerate this attitude ) So, this person was okay with 'someone' who treated them like a pain in the ass for 'protecting' them, totally covered it up by saying he was just being a 'tsundere', and gave him a free pass because he had a 'tragic past' and has much bigger problems than my fav ( when did people start measuring problems haha ? ) . I have told this a million times, but I will say it again,JUMIN ISN'T AN ABUSER , he does care about MC's well being and why do you think he makes MC to stay with him, for her safety. I know my man has problems and I can deal with it , so leave my man alone 👀

( ⚠️ no hate towards 'someone' fans, as long as you recognize his flaws, I wouldn't mind. I am talking about the toxic ones who love to show that their 'someone' is a much better choice , and others are not , by twisting some of their actions into something vile ⚠️ )

•"Omg, Jumin is so creepy, he kidnapped me, he is a borderline YANDERE and is not leaving me alone, I really want to go back to the apartment"....um, logically speaking, MC goes to his penthouse on her OWN ACCORD,not because Jumin invited her and his penthouse is much safer when compared to that apartment. Like, imagine living in a stranger's house knowing nothing about your safety, if I were MC ,I wouldn't mind staying at Jumin's penthouse , until the whole 'unknown hacker' thing is resolved, and you may say that he himself is a stranger to MC, but he starts caring for you as soon as you get his attention , he never lays a finger on you unless you want to, so he seems to be safe for me . If you really wanted to go to the apartment, then go ahead, say all the rude things u want to, a surprise will be waiting for u there, which you claimed to be 'safe', so Chile, anyways-

• " Jumin is a bad boss, jaehee's route says it all 💀, he made her cut her hair, over worked her. That guy is a soul less demon who doesn't care about his employees welfare "....alright.., the classic excuse, I see, Jaehee fans, u guys get a free pass for this, he was a jerk in that route, but calling him a bad boss? Hmm....I don't think I have ever seen a boss who wouldn't mind seeing their assistant shitting on them , but he leaves Jaehee to do that. That hair cut part pissed me off, but he only did this, with the aim to protect her from his father. Jaehee could have communicated her difficulties before hand, instead of not doing her work properly (with regards to jaehee's route) , there is always a option called 'resignation', u knw, jaehee ^^ moreover , he did not under pay her at all, she was a well paid employee, he even a gives a vacation for her in his route, what boss would do that? . And, for your kind information, no one in the whole RFA, not even MC, were concerned about jumin when he took seven's car and went on for a ride eventhough he doesn't even knw how to drive, like isn't this is a warning sign? . He himself had a hard time in jaehee's route, so just like how jaehee stans understand her part of the story, I understood Jumin's part of the story despite playing jaehee's route BEFORE Jumin's route.

• "Jumin han fans seems to love abuse, what the hell is wrong with them?!" As a person who had an abusive friendship , I can totally confirm, that, he is a bit controlling, but not ABUSIVE , please stop throwing the word abuse just like that , i have already seen a number of fans victim blaming.

• "U like Jumin Han from Mystic messenger ? Then, you must have daddy issues 💫?! haha...". I have a healthy relationship with my dad, who is my role model and admire him a lot so I don't think you can judge me just because i love a guy who looks dominant to you 👀

• "Oh wow, u love Jumin, that means you are into kinky stuff ?" 😐 again, People with kink, I don't have anything against you, you enjoy ur thing! It's just that I don't like it when some people generalize other fans.

I did miss a statement, we all know the infamous " 50 shades of Jumin Han" duh....🥴

I sometimes feel uncomfortable to even say that my fav character is Jumin Han, cuz all the replies would be like, "OMG! DADDY, 50 SHADES OF JUMIN". I have to say this, if you are a fan of Jumin only because of that infamous BE2 and not because of his character, u r not even a fan of Jumin, I am sorry if I offended any fans of that end but the fact that some of us are glorifying it too much pains me.

This is how Jumin really is to us, (i. e, real fans of Jumin), whether u believe it or not :

• He had a hard time connecting with people which in turns made him look unempathetic and selfish because of his familial issues.

• He yearns for someone who can understand and love him just the way he is , I mean ,what do you expect? his 'friends' doesn't even give a shit about him, his first love & his best friend, has 'gone' far away. This is the biggest reason he even clings to you like anything.

• He definitely isn't a daddy dom material, he is that soft loyal hubby type who gets very serious when it comes to work. Actually he is like a mirror, he gives back to you, what you give it to him, be it love , lust ( in context with his BE2 ) or whatever it might be

• He literally begs MC to stay with him at one point, only because he thinks that she can understand him much better than his 'friends', or his cat, Elizabeth the 3rd.

• Jumin isn't perfect , so obviously he made a number of mistakes too..especially in jaehee's route . He has done some good and bad deeds and I acknowledge both as it is 💯

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Jumin wants love and he deserves all the love just like other characters and Please stop generalizing all the fans , even if you hate that character, it's always better to ignore it rather than hating on it .

Fin !

Thank you for reading this, it means a lot to me 💕

Sincerely, from a Jumin Han fan 💜

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gammacousin · 3 years ago

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Okay. I’m ready to real talk Black Widow. I don’t want to but as an activist there’s an obligation I have to share and educate. I nerd to forget but I suppose it shows the power of this movie if it brings something real into the light.

*Spoiler Warning. Trigger warning for everything.*

There are some things I want to say that could potentially spoil aspect of the Black Widow film. I also would advise you to skip this post if you have a darker past, if you aren’t interested in getting serious, or wish to skim by, I’m sincerely not judging! I come on here to avoid the universe as well. You do you, I totally still love you if you don’t read this and want to move onto something nerdy or more fun. This isn’t the post for you.

It’s taken me a while to process and organize my thoughts. Skip if you don’t want to hear deep, raw stories.

Okay. Nerd review first.

The level of girl power and any and all glass ceilings… There is SO much left to do. So much that needs to still be addressed. But seeing 3 women run this show: Yelena, Natasha, and Melina was an absolute joy to observe. This isn’t the end of some hard waged war, it’s the beginning and I beg you; Disney/Marvel. Please give us more of this? It’s so important for young girls to see other girls kicking butt and winning. Quick summary of nerd feelings; Losing Nat still burns. Yelena is a boss.

Okay…Real talk.

I have to get a little deeper here now. My personal story absolutely played into how I felt about this film and I wish I saw some trigger warnings about the material covered. Do I know Black Window’s story? Yes. In and out. I can read it, I can write my FF on it. However. Little to no one knows my story and so absolutely no one is to blame for not warning me. I was not expecting to come out this shook.

I’m sharing this because it’s happening now, today. In the real world. I doubt the film makers had this mind over other social issues, but after feeling like it’s irrelevant, that my pain is somehow less than, I’m realizing through my activism it’s not.

I grew up in a cult where women are not relevant. You matter up to a point. You are useful, to a point. If you’re giving 24/7, you’re not giving enough. If you’re not smiling as you’re doing cult stuff, you’re complacent. In addition to why I’m about to share, my house growing up was not a safe space which is a story for another time. So it’s a stack…this janga-ish game that eventually just comes crashing down.

My trigger started moments after the film started the handing over of the kids. When Alexei chooses the job over the welfare of the girls. Alexei put his two “daughters” in danger to save ‘face��. To put the job ahead of two children…it hit home. In the group I’m from, fathers, mothers, grandparents, siblings will absolutely choose the group over blood. You are nothing and you mean nothing if you ‘defect’. If you break a rule. If you complain. If you say ‘no’. If you put in a bad review for a leader, if you have anything bad at all to say about the organization as a whole. You can confide something deep in someone you trust and it absolutely will come back to hurt you.

The title song shook me completely. This collage of video and images of brainwashing, treating these girls like absolute objects is disgusting in itself. But when you’re raised in this other world, there’s a level of brainwashing that is absolutely unmatched. Videos, books, quizzes, 12 hour lectures, weekly meetings.

People are unified to the point where you lose your own identity. There’s a language- a literally language- words you start to misuse. Verbiage only people in the cult use. Kids of any age will watch any rated film. Frequently the themes are about obedience and or cooperation and the consequences if you do not cooperate/obey. Death is a such a common theme that either you become petrified of your own shadow, petrified of breathing wrong, or turn completely numb. In sharing these videos, the goal is to instill this fear that you will never be enough. That you will die- turn into a charred hot dog of a figure if you do not obey 8 white men - the leaders, in New York. That your friends, classmates, neighbors, family will die if they don’t believe what you do. That you’re held accountable if you can’t bring them to your side.

The song for the credits hit me. I cannot listen to it. I have no idea what it was about.

When I watched the film, I couldn’t focus at this point at gosh barely 15 minutes in. I had already checked out. I heard keywords. “Entertainers,” “I feel stupid and contagious…”

In my world, I did not matter. What mattered was, what was presented to the public. To your group. Meeting some checklist of this perfect family at any cost. You’re not an individual, you’re a number. Literally. Your records are documented by men in the back room- your actions, your track record. But ultimately? You’re part of a numeral equation reported to headquarters. And if you’re a woman, you do not have a say in how you look, dress, act or in what you say. You are as the title song says, …“Entertainers”. You smile. You do your job, and you are ‘happy’ about it. Your job is to dedicate x amount of hours cleaning the room you gather in, and in recruitment of other members…

There’s a ‘job’ in the cult called a “pioneer”. Okay. No, we might not have been trained assassins. But you are trained to manipulate emotionally. To prey on the weak. You get books, magazines, movies, speeches, lectures- you rarely get a free Saturday. Oh and the job isn’t paid. So make sure you’re working (part time because full time secular work isn’t acceptable) at a desk job (because college and getting an education is not allowed). Don’t make friends with the people who work with you, they’re out to get you. Back at the club; You answer questions like it’s some schoolastic quiz every week and quote what your reading. It’s a brainwashing tactic. If you say something enough times, you remember it. You start to believe it. You spend hours reading these things, training… Your job is to target people who have lost- and have lost a lot because they’re vulnerable. You learn to go to cemeteries, and literally stalk people who are grieving. Like Val. If you can catch someone when they’re weak, senses are dulled. They’re desperate. And you bait them with this false promise. This idea that all THEY have to do is change all that they are, join you, and they’ll see their dead loved ones again. That they are doomed if they don’t change. Most pioneers draft 2-4 people per lifetime. If you’re a great saleswoman, you can draft more into this horrific world. And I regret the hours I spent lying, torturing people. For some cult that doesn’t give two cents about me.

I 100% believed of I didn’t convince my classmates, neighbors, to join my side they would either turn me in or they would be killed by a divine being. From 2 years old I was supposedly handing out pamphlets. The doom is not a quick painless death, no. You have visuals. You have men getting up to talk in detail about what your ‘friends’ will look like as corpses. Visually descriptive to the point where I still feel a bit numb to it all. That you will have to bury their bodies after the whole divine destruction. That you will have to “clean up” the earth. You are numb- convinced- bullied to the point where you believe this is true.

If you’re hurt as MANY WOMEN AND CHILDREN ARE, and you don’t have two people to testify and say they saw it- it never happened. Abuse is the norm. And if you speak up about it? You’re called a liar. Your friends cut you off. They think you’ll die along with everyone else if you put in a ‘bad review’ or leave. You’re bullied into submission and taught from a young age that you are not in control of your own decisions. You relinquish yourself under the pretense that the men you have such reverence toward are under some divine being’s control.

Your parents hurting you is acceptable. And don’t you dare speak against your father if he’s deeply involved. Don’t even think about approaching if he’s on a phone call. If you’re hit you take it- because you “deserved” it. And you smile. You shove that pain deep down. You hide the bruise, the cut lip, the depression, the bottles of pills you’re swallowing the whatever….You’re screwed if you faint, throw up, pass out, because you’ve missed a meeting. You better be dying for that to happen…

The idea that is portrayed in the movie (IMO) is that you can forgive family who hurts you. I see people forgiving Alexei and what’s her name. Look- that’s great. It’s a fun film. Alexei is funny. Here’s what I saw; it’s a toxic man- nay- father who can’t accept responsibility. He takes pride in what the girls have become- monsters. Not in who they are at their core. He has no idea who they are. And the mom has this photo album…I’m tearing up. She remembers this a certain way, a wishful thought. I’ve confronted my own mother about our past and had an album thrown at me, “We were happy. You were happy.” The fact is I was told the smile. You’re forcing this perception that everything was normal. That it’s okay to go back. (I’m not taking away Yelena’s view that everything was real to her, that’s fine for the sake of the story, and sweet. The moment between her and Alexei..fine. Milena turns and takes their side at the end, great.) The problem with how I saw this, is that’s not how the real world works. I don’t owe my parents forgiveness when I didn’t mean shit to them. When people leave the cult they’re cut off. Treated like they’re dead. I didn’t find these moments cute, I found them horrific. Hugging me, saying he’s proud of me is the toxic sh** my father would pull. Ignoring the holes in the wall, in my skull, the phony impression he gives to the rest of the group. Hugging me…after sweeping everything he did not only to me, but countless others under the rug because the cult…because 8 men in NY will protect him. Legally. Or otherwise.

I don’t need to forgive my parents. If you’ve been mistreated, you don’t owe anyone anything. They can “try” to do the right thing, that doesn’t somehow block out years of mistreatment. Years of trauma. Sheetrock only patches the surface of the broken walls. Wounds heal but some scars stay with you forever. Metaphorically or otherwise.

‘Entertainers’ was a trigger word because if you’re high enough in the ranking system you’re asked to “testify” or share a story. It’s in front of a couple thousand. It’s an “honor”. What it really is, is a three ring circus. You will only see women on the sidelines reading from the cards while only men stand at the main podium. They’re reading what they have told them to say. Stories are manipulated, cut, changed to fit a narrative that better suits the group of a couple thousand members.

Dreykov. I hate this. But I have to go there. I’m neck deep already, might as well. I think the worst part of all of it is that you can’t touch the person who made you this way. Those 6-7-8 leaders are untouchable. It doesn’t matter what you try. What legal entities, ex groups have tried. There’s a term for us and we are considered ‘mentally diseased.’ Members are told to avoid us. And in case you were curious, no, they can’t just break their nose on a table to be free- if only it were that simple. Gosh that got me. I would cut a limb, split my skull open, if it meant I could just cut a chord. It takes years of therapy and I still have nightmares. Urges to just, go. I’m OKAY. But most escapees are not. If you manage to escape with your life and don’t end it because the pressure, guilt, abuse that comes with leaving is too much. (This is sadly the fate of MANY LBGTQ+ members.)

The only hope is either the group eventually runs out of money or they’re taken down legally. Both of which are impossible since many older members will leave all they have to the group rather than to their family. It’s a complex billion dollar publishing company that plays monopoly with people’s investments, homes, and lives.

If you speak up, you’re the liar. So you cannot free your friends, who have turned on you, already cut you off, and discarded you the day you walked out and didn’t come back.

Watching Natasha, and Yelena free their sisters made me think of every woman who is stuck in this cult. For every woman, child, currently being sexually/physically abused and can’t say sh** because they literally believe god will kill them. If I say anything to them, they block me. If I expose what’s happening they will lie in court. That’s what is happening. And it’s not in the news, it’s not talked about. Because you can’t. You’re forced into silence. There’s a block. A literal legal force field that you cannot penetrate. They have their own lawyers. You can’t break into it. You’ll lose every, single, legal battle you try to fight.

Was this a decent movie? Yes. Was I expecting to share this days after release, no. I’ve been forced into silence for so long, told that people have it far worse and that I shouldn’t talk about it. But just today I saw a grown ass couple in an escapee group, talking about how one trigger word sent them into a depressive spiral. Wondering if some god damn lightening will come out of the sky and knock them dead. And we frickin struggle in silence. People will just shrug and go “oh it can’t be that bad,” while my gay best friend can’t catch an effing break. While someone else suffers at home because god wants it that way. Someone else will bury their kid today, maybe not even hold a funeral for them if they were ‘mentally diseased.’

For people like that couple I met today, like me, if you don’t just see a fun film but a darker past or maybe it’s brought up some memories for you, I’d honestly love to chat!!! Message me! I feel like for as painful as this is to hash out not too many people know about what goes on behind a group of smiling, well dressed woman who come knocking on your door. “It’s just a religion.”

I guess I didn’t realize…the criminal aspect of what happened to me. You’re so ingrained to keep quiet. To smile. To ignore, to suppress. I can smile, joke laugh, but visualizing…inadvertently seeing this mirror was so unbelievably uncomfortable. I would always rather help someone else because it takes me out of my head. Live in a bubble where I can call my trauma a ‘fantasy’. What’s real is when someone like me has a bad day? Lol! Look, my husband literally checks his phone to make sure a conversation never touches a couple hundred trigger words that will absolutely send me into the closet with a gallon of ice cream or a bottle of whiskey. I can’t imagine what someone else, what some other traumatized individual goes through. (Maybe that’s why the Bucky stuff makes me all angry She-Hulk too..)

Look, talking people ex members of this group, out of suicide is a daily endeavor to the point where it’s borderline on autopilot. But having this, I suppose, brilliant, piece of cinema turn the camera around left me raw and writhing and angry. Not for me, but for everyone else still stuck. With every year you spend in that cult, add ten more to therapy.

If you feel like me at all, you’re not alone. Not anymore. We were raised to feel alone in the world. That the universe is somehow out to get us and that’s simply not true. You don’t need the people who raised you if they were absolute shit bags. And you DO NOT have to forgive them for keeping you in that environment. Family isn’t family if they’ve hurt you. You owe them nothing. It is healthy to feel your feelings (and you and your feelings are valid. )

Anyways! I hope to be able to talk about more fun Marvel topics soon. But this felt important so thanks for listening. I’m really not hating guys, this is just…it’s heavy. And I beg you to do your research into cults and to help out where you can.

Love and light,

-M

#black widow film #black widow #cult #cult life #cult escapee #ex jw #apostate #mcu #jw #jwfamily #jwfacts #marvel

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seeking-sanity · 4 years ago

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looking back

its funny, how when you’re immersed in a situation you cannot see anything but your current emotions. rational thought and understanding are superseded by those heat of the moment emotions.

i never once realized the power that man had over me... the control he took advantage of because i was naive and loved him. i never saw a single manipulation for what it was... not in the moment, and not for months and months afterwards.

when he was discharged from the psych hospital, i still didn’t see it. i saw a man that i believed was hurting, deeper than i could imagine. i still very much held him responsible for his pain, as it was him that chose to leave... but i still wanted him to heal and find happiness. i truly believed that it was depression and regret, and that with medication and therapy, he could begin the process of moving forward.

except, that was never his intention. his intention was to take advantage of my fix it all personality. to exploit my desire to help everyone, selflessly, all of the time... his intention was to guilt me into wanting to fix our marriage; because couldn’t i see how lost he was without me? his intention was to use his therapy and his coping skills to make me believe he was getting better... that all the heartache and issues of all the years was a culmination of untreated mental illness, and that he was going to be better...

and i wanted to believe at least part of it... i wanted to believe that there was some reason that stopped the endless questions of what i did to deserve all this... i wanted to believe that there was some resolve within him to be better for himself, his children, and the next person he would share his life with...

little did i know that this was his long con... that when i didn’t decide that his improvement made everything ok, and want to pick up a broken marriage and pretend it was never flawed... that he would re-enact the same events, the same behaviors. over and over and over.... that if passive guilt to make me love him wasn’t going to work, aggressive guilt might.

this is where he gave up all facade of respecting me... this is where he belittled me to nothing, trying to convince me that everything was my fault and that i ruined his entire life. that i do this to him... this is where the well thought out games come in to play...

when his texts implying suicidal idealizations were worded just obscurely enough that there wasn’t enough proof to intervene. there would be indefinite goodbyes. there would be apologies for things left undone. there would be enough text and then turn off the phone, but deny any depression or issues when confronted with a welfare check... he would tell the police i was over reacting, that i just wanted to take away his freedom...

and then he would simply wait until they left and tell me how i would never “have him locked up again”, that i don’t care about him anyways, and then proceed to tell me how horrible i was. but he loved me.

for so long, i was so far down the spiral of endless crazy, that i truly didn’t see that it was a calculated action, a pre-meditated behavior... that everytime he was going to attempt, he made absolutely sure he had my attention first... he knew that i would call 911. he knew there was someone on the way to save him... and i struggled with his brother’s nonchalant answers of “i love my brother, but i don’t think i can save him”... his cavalier approach when i would call him to reach out to his brother...

i finally decided that i wasn’t going to call anymore. his brother, the police. none of them... i was wasting my own time and no one else seemed to care. i made it known i wasn’t calling anymore. to everyone...

that was my first step in taking away the power of the guilt of his life being my responsibility...

but even then, sometimes even now, i can’t wrap my head around how a person can justify holding someone emotionally hostage...

i often look back, on some of the events of our marriage and wonder how many moments i can recall that i allowed his behaviors to dictate the direction of situations... how he would cause a situation and then somehow turn it around to degrade me into submission...

and i allowed it. at times i begged him to stay... i spent a decade trying to hold the frayed ends together at any cost... and looking back the only cost was always me. my self worth, respect. how i allowed myself to be treated.

in all the years of marriage, i was never the one that wanted to break up, or divorce. he literally “left” me, broke up with me, or talked about divorce at least once a year... and yet i stayed... i heard the terrible things he would say, and yet i wanted him to stay. i wanted him to love me...

for every different marriage counselor he walked out on- saying it wasn’t worth it... i should have listened. for every time he said he wanted to leave, i should have let him... for every time he would throw his wedding ring, and say it meant nothing... i should have listened... for every time he chose someone or something else over my needs, i should have realized...

i didn’t listen. i bought new rings. i apologized. i found new therapists because he felt unheard with the current one... i cleaned the messes. i unpacked the bags. i took new pictures to replace the ones he destroyed. i bought new frames. new dishes. i stopped having a life outside of our marriage. i stopped talking to anyone that might help me realize sooner what a cycle it had become. i worked and paid the bills, and begged for him to stay...

i never was able to step back and realize that i had done all i could to fix my flaws and faults. i couldn’t step back far enough to see that there were so many more broken pieces that i would never be able to fix... i was never able to stop the spinning long enough to see that i did more for that man than anyone ever would, and yet i still wasn’t worthy of his love, respect, or time...

the feelings i have now are so bitter... so angry. and yet peaceful? i do not look at him and see a good memory, although i do admit there must have been some. i don’t look at him and have a single ounce of desire to even wonder if or how we could work anything out. i don’t look at him and see someone that i am grateful for the time with, regardless of the outcome...

i look at him and see wasted years. literally my best years.

i look at him and see pure evil that allows you to try to destroy someone so you can keep them on the shelf you feel like they deserve... my stomach turns at the idea of the vulnerability and trust i gave him...

my heart breaks with the innocent and honest intentions i had going into building a life with him; and the skepticism that remains in its place. the deep seeded mistrust, and guarded sense of reality- that maybe there was truth in that reality... maybe no one will ever see my worth. maybe no one will ever love me. maybe i am the problem... maybe i won’t ever see it...

some days, rage consumes me... and i rationalize what i would give to be able to undo the past... to go back and walk right by him that first night... never give him a second look...

i would. i would do anything to erase all those years... i would start over. i would start with nothing, if i could just be free of the baggage. free of the entire existence...

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cannabisrefugee-esq · 5 years ago

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(via The Welfare Gnome! It's Like a Sock Gnome Except This One Can Actually Kill You. Ft. Joker (Again))

The Welfare Gnome! It’s Like a Sock Gnome Except This One Can Actually Kill You. Ft. Joker (Again)

Cannabis Refugee, Esq.

Advertising / Media / Cultural Conversation

Capitalistic Patriarchal Medicine

Crohn's Disease Stories

Euthanasia / Suicide

Law / Legal / Benefits

December 20, 2019

According to the internet, a “sock gnome” is a mythical creature that pilfers socks. Presumably it lives in or around the dryer where you put an even number of socks in and get an odd number out. Sometimes it gets tricksy and spits out an even number but the pairs don’t match (meaning it’s pilfered one from more than one pair) but the usual evidence that you’ve had a sock pilfered by a gnome is that there is one left over that doesn’t have a mate and the missing sock never reappears ever. This is a real thing (if not a real gnome) and everyone knows what this means.

Well, there appears to be a similar creature that lives at Social Services and pilfers sick and poor people’s applications for welfare benefits. Or something, idk. I assume these creatures are related but maybe not since this gnome doesn’t play games: it’s goal seems to be to drive you insane before it literally kills you. I wrote here before about an application for benefits that went missing, along with a half a dozen other boondoggles that have wasted my spoons and left me scrambling to repeat some administrative process I was barely able to complete survive the first time.

Because while a sick person’s literal inability to jump through bureaucratic hoops is actually the best evidence that someone is extremely ill, someone has decided that only those who are well enough to sing for their supper (or pursue benefits) deserve to eat, as it were. The first application that went missing was for food stamps, while today I found out that my application to get on a 4 month waitlist to see a doctor went missing 2 months ago and has not been since heard from: although my disability advocate hand-delivered it, the application was never received.

I didn’t know it had never been received since I was instructed to wait for 2-3 months for a phonecall from them whereupon they would then tell me that I had to wait another 4 months to see a provider. Now I get to start the whole process over again. Of course, the clock starts, again, from zero: 2-3 months for the application to be processed and another 4 months before I will be seen. And as both Crohn’s disease and high functioning Autism are untreatable and incurable, the only reason I’m even trying to get in to see a doctor is that I need up to date records of medical compliance (not actual therapeutic medical care since none exists) to support my claims for disability. As if sick people have the time and energy for that.

Just “apply for benefits” then keep applying indefinitely or forever! Just get showered, dressed, don’t eat or drink anything though because Crohn’s, get somehow transported across town, pretend to act human for a several hours while you are being humiliated, interrogated, starved and otherwise tortured in public, then somehow get a ride back home. And do all of that without “acting” sick. Easy peasy.

And truly, bureaucratic incompetence (or a welfare or Social Services gnome) isn’t even worth writing about and I wouldn’t bother writing about it except that it had an unsettling effect on me: I literally wondered, if only for a second, if I had hallucinated the whole thing and therefore wondered if my new disability advocate who had hand-delivered the applications himself, Dave, was even real. Jesus Christ that was disturbing. Around Halloween of this year, Dave had helped me complete numerous applications, some online, while he mailed some hardcopies out of town and hand-delivered the rest; the 2 applications that were both hand-delivered were supposedly never received. One would be understandable, if not acceptable, but both of them? I was shook.

Very shortly thereafter I realized that the only proof I even have that Dave came to pick me up several times, completed applications for/with me and took me home again is that one application we did online was actually received and has his name and information on it. Much to my chagrin, they initially returned that “online” application to me in hardcopy to review, sign and return (WTF) but as it turns out, that bit of bureaucratic fuckery actually saved me from something awful — a literal break from reality — and was the only proof I had that Dave and our interactions were even real. Also, my old disability advocate told me about Dave in front of another person and they both remember it. (!) So yeah, I’m legit losing my mind by now but at least I’m not delusional (that I know of). Everything about this is fucking terrifying.

Wait. Is Dave even real? Let’s review.

At some point, I know my readers are going to get sick to death of hearing about this shit and I wouldn’t blame them. Hearing about how the system truly victimizes people is unpleasant and predictably leaves those who don’t have to deal with it (yet) with the strong impression that disenfranchised people are “victims” experiencing “victimization” which is always, always read as a character flaw, or it is eventually, especially if it goes on for a long time and it often almost always does. And this material is about as appealing to read as…idk, a book of vintage recipes where the first and second ingredients in every dish are Jello and fake mayonnaise? Maybe. There’s a trainwreck quality that’s hard to look away from, it’s interesting (at first) to see how all the various parts fit together (or ultimately don’t) and I suppose it’s possible to have compassion for the vintage cooks who were trying so, so hard to be resourceful and whatnot.

But eventually that person’s judgement will probably come into question and the blame will fall squarely on them if they consistently choose to participate in such insanity, in that case, preparing and serving Spaghetti-Os and sliced hot dogs suspended in savory Jello, or a canned ambrosia Yule log. (I just watched a video of someone making a canned ambrosia Yule log from a vintage recipe, you can watch that here). Or in the case of a vulnerable person seeking benefits, choosing to consistently be relieved of their dignity and even being (seemingly) willingly neglected and abused. The comparison is kind of a reach but what I’m getting at here is that it’s not pretty. The things I discuss on this blog aren’t pretty.

So do I have an actual point? Actually I have 2. The first point I will make via another anecdote and is something I learned as a young attorney who was becoming seriously ill: I had been seeing a chiropractor/nutritionist for months to attempt to treat what was becoming unbearable chronic pain and GI issues when my health insurance company started denying his claims. The “doctor” wasn’t being paid but I was still in disabling pain and his treatments were working. Kind of. Until they stopped. We had to have “the discussion” which drew out our competing interests: my interest in continuing treatment without a lapse versus his interest in being consistently paid. (Really, this is where the myth of the compassionate Western healer is always undone: the issue of money. But that’s a post for another day.) This discussion is never pleasant and as I learned, is absolutely meant to be ugly.

As a seasoned provider with decades of experience in the insurance game, the “doctor” calmly explained to me that part of the game is to pit the doctor and patient against each other so that they can’t provide a united front against the real enemy: the insurance company. The goal is to have the doctor and patient part ways angry so that there is no reason to pursue an appeal and the treatment — whether it’s medically necessary or not — simply ends. From the insurance company’s perspective, the problem (of exposure to liability) just goes away: if the doctor and patient part ways it doesn’t have to expend resources reviewing appeals and no further claims will be made, their exposure drops to zero, and they win.

Get it? Bad guys 1, good guys 0. And this, I think, is the dynamic playing out when people get fed up (and fired up) with hearing about what sick and disabled people go through — regular, relatively powerless people blaming and judging other regular, relatively powerless people for being “victims” instead of providing a unified front against our common enemy. In this case, against our corporate and governmental overlords who spend billions if not trillions annually on “corporate welfare” and destructive black budget programs while reducing, eliminating or otherwise making inaccessible benefits that real people need to live in this shithole they created, not us. And Big Medicine torturing sick people and deliberately (or leastwise predictably) making us worse.

We all have a choice, don’t we, to pick the correct side and to not fall into this deliberate trap set by the elite, to not go against our own interests, to decline the invitation to support our oppressors while undermining ourselves and our ilk, our own people. Choose correctly. It matters.

My second point is this. I can only speak for myself when I say that I absolutely never wanted to be a “victim” and I spent my entire life and literally everything I had to try to ensure that didn’t happen. I have written about that before if anyone wants to revisit that part of my journey, but what I haven’t directly said is this: once I had exhausted every resource I had accumulated over a lifetime (which wasn’t much), after I had asked everyone I knew for help and they all declined, after I had failed to cure myself of an incurable disease, I knew what was coming for me because I had spent my entire life trying to avoid it.

My experience as a benefits attorney only underscored what I already knew, which is that there is nothing there to catch most people when they fall, and there is no bottom to the abuse and neglect one will suffer, and literally endless opportunities to be victimized, once anyone, especially an unresourced, unsupported female, is no longer able to control her outcomes and sick women can no longer reliably control their outcomes. I knew the benefits system would be inaccessible or inadequate, I knew I would be abused and neglected by doctors if I let them, I knew I could end up sick and homeless at the same time, I knew I could end up sick and homeless and raped and pregnant at the same time if there was nothing I could do to stop it, and I knew that once I got sick there was, in fact, little or nothing I could do to stop it. I knew there would be no end to my suffering as a sick woman under capitalism and patriarchy.

I saw this coming a mile out, and to avoid that outcome I knew I didn’t want and knew I couldn’t handle (and shouldn’t be expected to) and to fulfill a lifelong promise I had made to myself to never “allow” myself to be victimized in this way, I attempted suicide. 4 times. Four fucking times I took action against myself that was so incompatible with life that by all rights I should have died at least once if not every time but I didn’t die. Each time I woke to this nightmare that won’t end and I had to go on, dealing with the same shit and with the same hideous constraints only even more sick and even more traumatized than I was before if that was even possible. And it is possible, isn’t it — it is bottomless. There is no end, there is absolutely no end to how bad this can and will get for me and for everyone in my position.

And to be clear, I started this blog after what ended up being my final (well, most recent) suicide attempt which was 2 years ago by now. Get it? Every single post on this blog was written after that and therefore was very nearly not written at all. What I am documenting here, I think, is a fairly common experience that is almost always lost to time and tragedy: what it’s actually like to be this seriously, hopelessly ill, how “the system” works against sick people and sick women at every turn, and what it really looks like to have no options. And while this surely happens all the time, every force in the universe, it seems, is working against most people actually knowing about it. In fact, the most relateable thing I’ve ever read, the only thing that I have ever seen address these points and describe an experience nearly identical to my own was left behind by an activist/writer/seriously chronically ill woman in a suicide note. I wrote about that woman, Anne Örtegren, and her suicide note here.

In my own case, and this is the only reason you are hearing about it, I happened to be a seasoned researcher and writer with a specialized interest in dissecting the insane system of patriarchy, I had a preexisting platform on which to advertise this project and an audience that was open to hearing about it, and despite my best intentions and efforts, and those of everyone and everything else for that matter, where those intentions and efforts were not compatible with life, my life, I didn’t fucking die. Not yet anyway. I suspect that many women who experience what I and Anne Örtegren and others have experienced go down for the third and final time before anyone even hears them scream. And if any of this sounds a little crazy to you, that’s only because it is. It is completely, completely insane.

#joker #christmas #xmas #friends #family

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snowy-weather · 5 years ago

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You know, I always feel like I have to apologise and feel bad about being on welfare. Because of how other people talk about people on welfare and how they react when they find out I’m on welfare.

Though honestly, I shouldn’t? So what, I’m not able to work full-time so I get a little bit of money from the government so I can at least live comfortably and don’t have to either rely on my parents 100% or live on the streets? Is that really something I have to constantly feel bad about?

I remember being at a workshop about tolerance towards people. Everyone was super agreeable and though that intolerance wasn’t good, you shouldn’t judge people just like that, etc... until the topic switched to people on welfare. Then it was all ‘yeah but they’re just being paid to do nothing’ ‘they don’t deserve it’ ‘they should just get a job and not complain’ ‘they’re just lazy’ etc.

You can imagine I was really shocked. Literally me and the people who organised the workshop were the only ones who thought being on welfare wasn’t a big deal. And that people who are on welfare probably have a good reason. Even if they just seem lazy.

I mean... that ‘lazy person who only plays video games’ might have depression. Or some other kind of condition or handicap. You don’t know them.

Sorry for the rant. I just hate when people are intolerant like that.

#Snowy rambles #welfare #mental health

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idemandoolong · 6 years ago

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Three wars and some presidents couldn’t convince America that Blacks are people, too. So you won’t, either. Oh, and Italians and Asians have blood on their hands. Happy MLK Day!

Ok, so we’re going to begin with the “abolition” of slavery. And the reason I put it in quotes is because the 13th Amendment slyly states “…except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted…”

Why is that important? Because that’s the loophole courts used to basically continue slavery. They would charge Black men with crimes, give them unfair trials, then sentence them to jail. From 1865 to 1964, states could (and would) legally deny people employment solely based on race, and until 1968, states could (and would) legally deny people the right to housing solely based on race. So slavery was over on paper, but contrary to many people’s beliefs, things didn’t magically become better for Blacks overnight.

So think back to the days when slavery has just ended. Former slaves were illiterate and unemployed. Many remained in their hometowns because they didn’t really have any other place to go. They took whatever jobs they could, and these were often the jobs the Whites didn’t want. And yes, they were severely underpaid. As a result, Whites would deny them decent employment and housing, charge them with vagrancy, then throw them in jail. This went on for decades. And was perfectly legal.

But let’s back it up to the end of the Civil War. The Department of War established The Freedman’s Bureau, which was an agency to help former slaves and poor Whites as the Civil War was coming to a close and the South’s defeat was imminent. It was officially founded on March 3, 1865, the South surrendered on April 9, 1865, and Lincoln was shot six days later.

Though the Freedman’s Bureau had good intentions, of course, many Whites opposed it. Including President Andrew Johnson. Some of the things the Bureau did were to establish schools (which later became Historically Black Colleges & Universities), help families that were separated during slavery reunite, provide job training, establish hospitals, and help Blacks with legal cases since the chances of them of getting fair trials were slim.

By late 1872, just seven years after being founded, Congress’s support of the Bureau had been waning and all of its efforts were discontinued. Five years later, the Reconstruction Era ended. This was an era in which the US attempted to literally reconstruct itself after the Civil War. The Freedman’s Bureau was a large part of the era, as were the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Additionally, Blacks were elected to state and federal positions during this time.

Now, this time is very important, as this is when the South began to identify with the Republican Party, and the North began to identify with the Democratic Party. Until then, Republicans would be what we would consider “liberal,” and Democrats were what we would consider “conservative.”

During the Civil War, when Northerners were Republicans and Southerners were Democrats, the North spent a lot of money to support the Union, and this in turn made many businessmen there wealthy. Because they were wealthy, they were then able to influence and to take part in the government. These wealthy White men were not too interested in supporting Black rights, because they did not believe government spending money to help such a small number of people would help them to maintain their money and power. As this is happening, as stated before, the South (Democrats) are opposed to the efforts of Reconstruction--especially the Freedman’s Bureau.

The federal government’s role in people’s lives began to diminish as wealthy White men helped to pass laws to make sure they themselves had as much freedom as possible to do as they wish with their money. See how this is tied to the dissolution of the Freedman’s Bureau?

And what’s even more sinister, more and more land in the Midwest and West of the country was being carved up and given to Whites (after it was taken away from the Native Americans), but Blacks were not allowed to have any of that land, let alone jobs, healthcare, education, and housing.

Now that we’ve got established, let’s fast-forward to WWI. After the War ends, Black soldiers return home and expect to be treated much better than when they left. I mean, they did put their lives on the line for the country…no, for the world. They return to the United States and realize very little has changed. As a result, the Great Migration ensues. Thousands upon thousands of Blacks leave the South and head North (and some went to California) where things aren’t exactly paradise, but they were a lot better than the South. This in turn is the catalyst for the Harlem Renaissance. Blacks had a swell of pride and their culture flourished. Angry White Southerners tried to stop Blacks from getting information about the North, and they even passed laws to make it difficult for Blacks to leave.

Now we’re in the 1920s. The economy is doing exceptionally well, but then the Great Depression happens. Republicans are blamed, so people began voting for Democrats. In fact, Blacks began to switch from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party because Franklin D. Roosevelt established programs to help those affected by the Depression—and as we all know, Blacks were affected a lot worse than Whites were.

So how did the Italian-Americans play into this? Well, let’s put this on pause and rewind. It’s before WWI, but after Reconstruction. This era is referred to the Gilded Age. During this time, may Europeans immigrated to the United States for a better life. Fine. Nothing new there. Well, as the United States has always done, it discriminated against them. The Irish were discriminated against. The Polish were discriminated against. The Eastern Europeans were discriminated against. And of course, the Italians were discriminated against—especially those from the southern part of Italy, because they tend to have darker skin due to the Moors settling there for thousands of years. But I digress.

The dark-skinned Italians are being discriminated against in the United States. To combat this, many of them began to point to Columbus as proof that they did not deserve the poor treatment they were receiving. This is around 1892…the 400th anniversary of Columbus landing in the Caribbean. While America is celebrating the anniversary, Italians are saying, “See? We Italians aren’t so bad after all!” This is despite the fact that Columbus sailed for Spain…not Italy. And this is despite the fact that the establishments in the New World made Spain richer…not Italy. Now I’m not saying Italian-Americans deserved to be mistreated, but to use Columbus as proof to show that Italians can do wonderful things is…specious, at best.

But at any rate, Italian-Americans used Columbus to escape discrimination, and it basically worked. But they were about self-preservation. They saw that other people (especially Blacks) were being mistreated, but it was more of a “Well as long as the Whites aren’t mistreating me, I don’t care.” This sort of established racial tension between Blacks and Italian-Americans in places like New Jersey and New York City which, unfortunately, continues to this day.

Let’s bring it back to the Great Depression and the Democrats. The Republicans are blamed because people are saying, “If you Republicans hadn’t been so greedy over the last several decades, none of this would’ve happened. We need the federal government to make sure this doesn’t happen again!” The Democrats take over and establish social programs to help pull people out of financial ruin. Those who are for social programs tend to be Democrats, and those who are for limited government tend to be Republicans. Which is where we are presently.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Great Depression is happening, World War II breaks out, the United States enters, and the economy does well because of the social programs, and because people cut back on spending to help the war effort. The Axis is defeated, and Black soldiers return home thinking, “Ok…THIS TIME the White people have to respect us.”

Wrong.

Enter the Civil Rights Movement.

We’re now in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Keep in mind, racial discrimination is still perfectly legal. And also, this is where the Black family begins to crack. Before this time, as with all races, it was much more common than not to have an intact nuclear family: married parents and their children living together. However, during the 1960s, things for Blacks began to shift as far as their families are concerned. With the establishment of welfare, if there was an adult male parent in the home, families could not get welfare benefits. This was not just for Black families, but it happened more often for Black families because the men were, as stated before, being removed from their families for various reasons—and all of those reasons stemmed from the lack of opportunities Black men faced.

It’s virtually impossible to take care of your family if you’re not allowed to have a job, live in certain neighborhoods, or vote. Black women were literally being paid by the United States government to remain single mothers. Their daughters went on to become single parents, and then their daughters, then their daughters, and so on, and so forth.

What does this have to do with Asian-Americans? I’ll tell you.

As the United States began to reform its laws about race, it began to relax its immigration laws. Up until the mid-1960s, Asians were practically prohibited from entering the country and becoming citizens. Once those laws were repealed, they began trickling in. Now is it a coincidence that the United States began to actively improve its relationship with East Asia and Southeast Asia as tensions between it and Russia began? Maybe…but it’s also mighty convenient.

In other words, some (including myself) would point that the United States did not want to have tension with Russia and pretty much all of Asia as Cold War tensions escalated during the 1960s. With the immigration restrictions of Asians lifted, the United States conveniently began saying such kind things about Asians—hence the “model minority” stereotype. Americans would say things like, “Oh, Asians are so smart. And so polite. And so clean. And so hardworking. Please, come to this country.” Because Asian-Americans weren’t really established in the country before the 1960s, they missed all the discrimination that Blacks and Europeans faced. They didn’t really begin coming until most civil rights legislation had already passed.

This isn’t to say Asian-Americans aren’t discriminated against—it’s more to say they didn’t (and do not) face the type of mistreatment Blacks face.

Also, keep in mind, when Asians were allowed into the country little by little, only the best and brightest were allowed. This helped the United States to seem correct when they would point to them as the “model minorities.” It’s easy to be seen as the best when you’re only allowed to send your best over.

With Asian-Americans settling in the country, many of them wanted to fully integrate and be accepted by Whites. Families would encourage their daughters to marry White men, as this was seen as the paragon of acceptance. To this day, many Asian-American women “prefer” to date White men. They’ll openly say this, but then also say, “But I’m not racist.”

Yes, you are.

Also, Asian-Americans would discriminate against Blacks to gain White acceptance. Remember, they weren’t really around to witness slavery, Reconstruction, the Great Migration, and the Civil Rights Movement. Instead, it was like, “Hey…if I want Whites to accept me, all I have to do is do what they do. Hmmm…looks like they don’t like Black people for whatever reason. Fine. Neither do I.” This is also why there tends to be underlying tension between Asian-Americans and Blacks in many parts of the country.

Allow me to point out what happened to Latasha Harlins. On March 16, 1991 in Los Angeles, a 15yr old girl named Latasha Harlins went into a convenience store owned by a Korean-American family, the Du family. She put a bottle of orange juice in her backpack and held the money she planned to pay for it in her hand. The matriarch of the Du family, Soon Ja, accused her of trying to shoplift despite the fact that Harlins was at the counter with money in her hand. An argument ensued, and Du grabbed Harlins and tried to snatch her backpack off. Harlins hit Du three times, causing Du to fall back. Du then threw a stool at Harlins. Harlins picked up the orange juice botte and set it on the counter, and Du snatched it from her. As Harlins turned to leave the store, Du reached under the counter for a handgun and shot Harlins. The bullet hit her in the back of the head and she died instantly.

You can look up the security footage on YouTube.

During the trial, Du stated she killed Harlins because she feared for her life, so it was in self-defense. Two eyewitnesses disputed this, and so did the fact that Harlins was shot from behind as she attempted to leave. Du was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, but rather than getting the 16yrs of prison, which was the maximum sentence, she was sentenced to probation for five years, given a $500 fine, (approx. $920 today), and told she had to complete 400 hours of community service.

The trial was overshadowed by the infamous Rodney King beating, which occurred two weeks later, which in then turn led to the 1992 LA riots after the police officers were acquitted after being videotaped beating him. Some believe (including myself) that the riots were also inspired by the outcome of Du’s trial.

Ok, you got all that? Let’s take it back to the late 1960s. The Civil Rights Era is coming to a close, and something called The Kerner Commission is published. Never heard of it? That was intentional.

Basically, The Kerner Commission was an investigation to figure out why Black people were the way they were. Moreso why they were rioting every so often. But it also answered why were their families falling apart? Why was their income so low? Why were they less educated than everyone else? Why were their neighborhoods violent?

You’d think it’d be obvious…but sometimes, people don’t like to admit they had a hand in creating a problem. A lot of White people would say, “Well slavery and all that is over. They’re just lazy. That’s why things are the way they are for Blacks. They’re not trying hard enough.”

But the Kerner Commission debunked all of that. Federal agents investigated the circumstances Blacks were in and concluded, “This is America’s fault. We’ve been screwing them over literally since the day they got here, and now we’re pretending we don’t know why things are so bad for them.”

Why are they poor? Because they’re denied jobs.

Why aren’t they educated? Because they’re denied education.

Why are they criminals? Because they can’t get jobs or go to school.

Why are their families broken? Because we paid their mothers to be single.

And what did the government do once the Kerner Commission was complete?

Nothing.

They just said, “Oh…well…ok…” and that was that.

What the government wanted to hear was: “Black people are lazy. They’re naturally move violent than everyone else. They don’t want to work. They hate school. They like drugs. They like to break the law.” But when that didn’t happen, the report was shelved.

Now it’s the 1970s, and Blacks are experiencing another swell of pride and culture. They’re letting their hair grow without altering it in any way, the “Black is Beautiful” slogan is popularized, and Black fictional characters in media are standing up to White people...which was unheard of before. This led to the 1980s where Blacks and Whites were slowly integrated in mainstream TV shows and films. You didn’t really see racially mixed casts before then. It was either virtually all black, or virtually all white.

Once Hollywood realized Blacks actually are marketable on their own, Blacks were able to produce their own projects with Hollywood’s help. From the mid-1980s up until the late 1990s, you saw many Black sitcoms and films doing quite well, and for the first time ever, the Black middle class was getting attention. Before this time, Blacks were typically depicted as working class or upper class in the media. People did not really think a Black middle class existed.

Unfortunately, even today, Hollywood is not too comfortable with Blacks who don’t “act Black,” so to speak. Those who run the media believe the only Black person who is marketable is one who portrays some sort of stereotype. And what happens is people believe these stereotypes are true while ignoring the millions of Blacks who aren’t in the service industry, who aren’t drug addicts, who aren’t criminals, who aren’t poor, who aren’t violent, who aren’t entertainers, etc.

Whenever a Black person comes along and says, “Actually, most Black people aren’t like that. And I’m living proof,” the response is, “Well you’re not REALLY Black, though. You act White.”

Presently, these attitudes continue. Many people still ignore history and say the reason Blacks are the way they are is because they’re not trying hard enough. Many still say, “You’re not really Black if you don’t [insert stereotype here],” and many discriminate against Blacks in order to subconsciously gain approval from Whites.

And even present-day Freedman’s Bureau tactics are reviled. Many non-Blacks think Historically Black Colleges & Universities are racist and unfair. They think anything specifically designed to help a Black person is unfair. They think if a Black person is successful, then he/she doesn’t really deserve it and must’ve had some unfair advantage nobody else had. But when you actually do your homework, you’ll see these “advantages” don’t really help Blacks as much.

Whites were given land, loans, jobs, healthcare, education…and this has helped them to prosper for generations. Asian-Americans benefited because they largely came after racial discrimination was outlawed. But Blacks? Soon as they get a scholarship, it’s “not right,” and it’s “reverse racism.” Do you honestly, truly believe a $5,000 NAACP scholarship will boost all Black people beyond the ramifications of slavery and legalized discrimination which lasted from 1619-1968? Do you know how long that is? That’s 349 years. That means Blacks have had complete freedom for 51 years now, but have been in the country for 400 years.

So don’t sit there and get upset that a Black kid got into Harvard although his SAT score was a little bit lower than a White kid’s. Don’t call it “unfair.” Don’t have a fit because the BET Awards exist, but the WET Awards don’t. And don’t call your state representative to complain that the black girl got the job over you despite being a little less qualified when you’re literally benefitting from the fact that her family wasn’t allowed access to basic necessities for 349 years.

Do your homework.

Well, you don’t have to, because I just did it for you.

Black people have a long way to go, and sadly, those alive today will not live to see the day where the consequences of slavery and discrimination are long gone. A scholarship here and a job there is a step in the right direction, but it’s not the end.

And it’s definitely not “unfair” considering what Blacks have had to endure just to get it.

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zookeep15 · 7 years ago

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So most people know I am leaving the zoo field.

I know.

It’s crazy.

And right now my life is a whirl of sad thoughts, what ifs, and an overall sense of “why am I doing this?” since my last day is Tuesday. It’s oh so easy to forget the dumpster fire that has led me here when I’ve had a good couple of weeks due to lack of fucks to give anymore.

Well sit tight kids as I drop a truth bomb on the nature of the zoological industry.

First. Let me say that up until about two years ago I LOVED my job. Like head over heels in love with the position. Had very few bad days, grew quickly as a trainer and keeper, and found myself surrounded by people who seemed to share the same enthusiasm I had.

Everything was great. I was living in my “dream job”. That’s right. My DREAM. JOB. The ultimate career. The top of the top. Starting at age 22.

(Hashtag blessed am I right?) *IM NOT RIGHT*

But I started to notice a trend. Over the last few years, I’ve watched person, after person, after person who I have loved and respected pick up their things, close the door and say goodbye (okay some were pushed out the door and some needed a swift kick in the ass out the door but I digress.)

I didn’t get it. How could someone leave this job? It’s a dream right? I was told I was LUCKY to have this job. So lucky that in fact there were twenty more people just like me that could replace me in the blink of an eye. I should be grateful for whatever they give me because I am LUCKY to have this job. There might not be some great things but if I work REALLY hard they’re bound to notice and make those problems and not great things go away right?

*pause for laughter at that naive notion*

I mean sure... the pay is literally the worst considering I’m required to have a four year science degree and two years paid experience to get a part time job at the zoo, and my work environment is a literal and figurative mine field that is exhausting to navigate daily, and my boss is a manipulative micro manager that refuses to listen to any of the staff members, and I spend my entire day manually laboring for 13$ an hour and come home emotionally and physically exhausted so much so that every relationship that I’ve been in has crumbled because I have nothing left to give, and I spend my weekends in a state of depression because I have to catch up on sleep but sleeping too long is bad but I’m so tired and I just cant catch up, and I can’t save money because I’m already living paycheck to paycheck with my parents helping me every month, and I work over a thousand programs a year and no one seems to want to reward that even when you go in and ask for a raise because ten cents IS NOT A FUCKING RAISE and you ask and get told “that’s not in the budget” but hiring two new worthless VPs (to bring that grand total up to 17) whose starting salary is 100 grand is, and you can never actually grow here because even if your supervisor left you’d only make two dollars more an hour and be expected to work ten times harder with more responsibility and have everything get blamed on you, and no one can help you with continuing education or professional development because “it’s not in the budget” but ordering 65$ worth of ceramic “stations” was because they felt like it, and sometimes questionable decisions get made regarding welfare and you can’t say anything at all because youre boss has no interest at all in your opinion if it doesn’t agree with theirs and if you voice that opinion they go talk about you behind your back to other coworkers, and you’re expected to do more, and more, and more, and more and....

Wait a second.

Why does all of that not align with what I want in life? Why is my dream suddenly not what I thought it’d be? Why did everyone tell me “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life?” which is absolute bull shit because ITS STILL WORK AND WORK SUCKS SOMETIMES.

What do I love about zoo keeping you might ask? The animals. They’re incredible. Those training breakthroughs? I’d rank it somewhere between eating the best coconut cream pie you’ve had and a decent orgasm. And those programs I get to do? Occasionally there’s one that just reminds me how important it is for kids to see these kinds of things. And I will immediately be the most interesting person in almost any bar I walk into because I am a zookeeper.

But at the end of the day, I’m a 26 year old woman. Who is not making enough money to support herself. Who doesn’t have the time to do the things she loves outside of zookeeping. Who had an identity crisis when she finally decided this is not the dream she dreamed.

So Tuesday. My last day. I’m sad. Of course I’m sad those animals have a piece of my soul forever.

But man am I ready to be able to see my family. To have weekends. To have time off. To make a livable wage. To have a life outside of my job.

I won’t recommend zookeeping to the average person. Because the lifestyle that comes with it is borderline unhealthy if you don’t navigate it perfectly. And I know that might come as a surprise to some people but the zoo field has a serious problem that is not looking to be fixed anytime soon. And so I won’t tell other people to make that their life.

For those that follow me and are zookeepers I have nothing but the utmost respect for you. I would never want you to think that I am shitting all over your job that you continue to love and do. You’re circumstances are hopefully vastly different than mine! I hope your boss is wonderful and treats you with the respect you deserve. I hope your zoo offers livable wages and good cost of living raises. I hope your voice is heard and listened too. And I hope you’re dream stays true to what you thought it’d be! But just know that if the day comes that you find this post to be describing your situation? Don’t panic. You will be alright.

All those thoughts of “you quitter. You failure. You giver-upper of dreams and letdown to all those who say “you have the coolest job ever!”” ARE WRONG.

I’m going to say that again.

THOSE THOUGHTS. ARE. WRONG.

You magnificent human being who chased down their dream of a zookeeper. Who achieved the goal they set out on and grew and learned and prospered. You son of a bitch you did it.

You lived your dream. And hopefully it was a good dream for as long as it could be. And then. Once you achieved your goals. You found another dream. A new horizon. A bigger adventure. You successful, wonderful human being. Life is too short to stand still, afraid to run headfirst down a new path that could end in a cliff, and stay rooted knowing that if you stand still you can’t fall.

Because if you do that, you will never. EVER. fly.

Go fly my friends. Take flight and believe that your life is a wonderful adventure only defined by the limits you put there yourself. Take the leap of faith into the great unknown for what lies on the other side might define your life.

So. Tuesday. May 15th. I’ll see you in the skies.

Thanks for listening tumblr friends (if any of you ACTUALLY made it this far down kudos 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼)

*end emotional zoo rant that ended in philosophical motivational speaking*

#zookeeperlife #truth #rant over #newadventures #behappy #valueyourself #reality #are these corny yet?#asking for a friend #startover #leapoffaith

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winterscream4 · 4 years ago

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No Works and No Days (Part 1)

“Love me a good mystery! Tra-la-la!”

The toy soldier advanced forward, climbing over a cake of burned out Pal-Mals, layered with a crust of ash at the top.

“No one can stop me now! I am at the top! And the New York Ripper will soon be in my gr…”

“AHAH!”

Another toy soldier landed from the sky, his spruce green face crudely washed over with pigments of white. Black circles enveloped his eyes and red paint was smudged round his lips.

“No, my dearest Marlowe! The world belongs to me! You better Hyde up or play dead! Not even the devil himself, can save you now!”

“Damn you Hyde! Run back into the gutter where you dragged your stinking ass from! Pew! Pew!”

A third soldier figure arose from behind the ashen pile. Threads of black cloth had been crudely sewn round his torso, ending in a double tail meant to resemble a 19th century frock.

“Time for you both to face the Music! Your Meister has arrived! Your pathetic strife shall serve as fine material for my new sonata! Ha-hah-hah-hah! John Martin, you are nothing but a hack! As for you detective, I shall strike you on the back! KABANG!”

Ding-Ding!

Marlowe dropped his toys and rushed to the microwave. White fumes and the scent of crackling meats met his nostrils, as he dragged out what some may called a club-sandwich but what most cardiologists would call the back road to an early grave.

Six slices of bread, the first filled with bacon and cheddar cheese, the second with barbeque sauce and potato fritters, the third with tomato, pork sausage and ketchup, the fourth with mayo and chicken nuggets, the fifth with beef and sour sauce and the sixth with grated parmesan and two fried eggs. A gruesome pile of carbohydrates and animal fat, self-humorously named by and after its inventor.

The Marlowe Sub. Also known as the shortest possible route to the emergency room.

With that monstrosity in hand, Marlowe hauled his newly acquired twenty-pound-extra beer-belly to the dining table, where he rested on a night-sky themed chair, made in 1924 as a gift from Clara Winter, to her son Robert, a few months before she perished from pneumonia. Marlowe, had spent the last two years of his life in the Winter manor, first setting in the Fall of 2018, when he attended the funeral of Christopher Winter’s housekeeper, James Krumphau.

James was diagnosed with liver cancer the previous year but kept it a secret from everyone he knew, including Marlowe. Yet again the people James knew count scarcely be counted in the fingers of two hands. James was never exactly the socialite, having spent half of his life serving the Winter family and the other half, being Christopher’s right hand man during his Music Meister years.

The housekeeper was always nice to him, albeit a little distant. Marlowe had garnered suspicions, that there were certain dark spots in James’ private history, albeit he paid no regard to them for long. After all, since his 2012 brush with Martin and the Black Glove, the classic detective novel mystery of “Who’s the criminal” had been reversed into “Who isn’t?”.

Even if James had claimed his literal pound of flesh, by the time they met, he had become one of Marlow’s handful of allies. In retrospect, James was the one to inform him that Christopher had willed him the Manor and half his fortune on that 2013 night that came to be known since as The Storm of the Century. James was also the man, who facilitated Marlowe by providing him with the passwords for all the Winter-family bank accounts and trust funds, including the house in Wilbraham, where Marlowe discovered the existence of the Black Glove and the spawn of their abandoned experiments. In the ensuing years, Marlowe would even receive letters from James once in a blue moon, typed in a code they had pre-agreed upon. James would share a few notes about his routine, but for the most part he inquired on his welfare and progress in rooting out the organization that had destroyed the life of Winter and Marlowe alike. Upon hearing the news in 2018, Marlowe rushed back to Midvintersville, where he made arrangements for James’ inhumation. Marlowe was not surprised to find himself alone during the ceremony, lest for James’ Asian-American nephew Lee, who had apparently visited his uncle a few times during Marlowe’s hunt for the Black Glove. Meanwhile, James had apparently spent his last years in prosaic retirement, tending the Winter manor and its grounds, interrupted only by a short adventure involving a Pleistocene fossil, his nephew had drawn him into. Upon its closure, Lee had gifted his uncle with a Chinese pine Bonsai, that James never failed to prune and water and love as if it was the child he never had.

No tears were shed during the funeral, just a merciless silence occasionally interrupted by the uncanny echoes of the maple leaves dancing in the wind, before collapsing on the freshly mowed cemetery lawn. A single line from Homer’s Iliad was read by the Catholic pastor, before the mahogany casket with James in it, was swallowed by the dirt.

Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.

In the following day, when Marlowe read James’ will, he couldn’t do otherwise but take a moment to weep for James but maybe more so, for himself. James had bequeathed his share of the Winter fortune to Marlowe and Lee alike, although the Winter Manor was left entirely under Marlowe’s custody. His sole request was for Marlow to care for the tree and be there for Lee should the need arise.

The little pine now rested against the oval window of the Winter Manor’s second floor ballroom. Marlowe would remind himself to water it each day, even when his ruminations became too self-consuming to let him rise from bed, he’d still force himself up to tend the Bonsai before burrowing under the sheets once more. Marlow had even employed the tree in reenacting vignettes from his life, using a vintage toy-soldiers set he had unearthed from the Manor’s old storage, that since 2008 had become the Music Meister’s center of operations. Under its upward pointing branches, lay three soldiers whose faces he had charred against the hearth’s embers and then placed in horizontal position, each marked with the label: Prospero, Driskull, Boisette. Three powerful men who sought immortality, and left mountains of bodies in their efforts to achieve it. And yet the last beheaded the rest and he was in turn penetrated to death by the very man whose cruelty he envied. A much coveted eternity, cut short by the razor-sharp fangs of a monstrous always.

Marlowe often starred at the pine’s, fallen needle-sharp foliage, drying and dying and rotting over the toys representing the inhumane leaders of the Black Glove. And he would often take pleasure in the thought, that his actions, in part, made sure that men like them deserved to have no place on earth, or beneath it.

Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.

The once detective, now close-to-obesity recluse, however had little clue on how to care for anything living. Youtube channels on botany and gardening tutorials came to be of great help, teaching him the delicate arts of trimming, soil enhancing and of course, the spiritual and medicinal value of plants across human history.

In his early days at Winter manor, Marlowe attempted to dig deeper into plants, immersing himself into books about foraging and gathering as well as the transcendental aspects of the natural world, he found in the pages of Henry Thoreau’s Walden. Marlowe even attempted to conduct Thoreau’s experiment for a while.

In early 2019, he had moved to a tightly-spaced lodge not far from the Manor, where he spent his days, wandering across the forested lands surrounding the property, ensuring the well-being of James’ child as well as the much larger: mountain planes, black spruces, white oaks, balsam firs and the bonsai’s towering cousin, the white pine. His diet consisted solely of wild apples, grains, dried nuts and a variety of fungi, weeds and berries like the newly sprouting cattails he’d heat and serve with dandelion and purslane toppings, and the salty morels he’d sizzle on the campfire with elderberries and meadowsweets. Sumac and dog-rose teas became his daily refreshments, while his wonderings provided daily inspiration in the shape of new discoveries of various shapes, size and species.

Alien-looking British Soldier lichens, multicolored lady-slippers and processions of various insects and parasites growing out of severed tree stumps were but a few of the curiosities he’d encounter as the woods themselves seemed to come alive throughout spring. Vireos, wobblers, whippoorwills and the occasional grouse, would often surround his lodge for scraps, while in the still of some King’s Country summer nights, a barred owl would descend like a shadow of times long past, a demon-winged silhouette against the silver moon, snatching the avian visitors away from the camp and into scalpel-like talons that promised an one-way trip to the spectral realm. Marlowe witnessed it in full only once, yet he did not fail to see the semblance between the majestic and terrifying grace of the ancient bird and the thing he had seen John Martin transform into, a few years ago.

Reflecting upon that night’s experience, Marlowe started putting bizarre sketches into paper. While finishing the lines of two shadows, facing together at an endless ocean formed of teeth, gloves, hats, scarves and corpse-baring owls, he felt a sharp pain cutting across his stomach. At first, Marlow lifted his flannel shirt, glancing at the ten-centimeter line of still healing flesh, outlining the area below his ribcage. Marlowe gnarled as memories of Stephen Boisette slicing right through him with a double-edged saber, gifting him a scar the size of a pencil, were returning. The Alchemist, the Black Glove’s personal bulldog. The man that framed him for the murder of a girl at Cambridge all those years ago, turning him into England’s scapegoat for a decade. The man who gloated after his mother’s death from cancer. The man that got an inch away from sending him to join her. Now dead, by Martin’s dick and teeth. Served him well.

But the ache returned, stronger now, more penetrative.

His gut began turning ferociously as Marlowe crawled on his knees, pushing himself to and fro against the moss-covered stump of a severed birch.

The last thing he remembered when he woke up in the E.R., was dialing 991 and watching a cauldron of bats with a barred owl, savagely screeching at their tail, breaking away from the canopy and into the evening sky.

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xtruss · 5 years ago

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TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION RULE IS CRUEL AND RACIST—BUT IT’S NOTHING NEWS

The “public charge” exclusion in immigration law goes back to the middle of the 19th century, and the underlying fear that newcomers will take what is rightly “ours” predates the policy by centuries.

— By Masha Gessen | Wednesday January 29, 2020

The “public charge” exclusion in immigration law goes back to the nineteenth century, and the fear that newcomers will take what is rightly “ours” predates the policy by centuries.

On Monday, the Supreme Court lifted a lower-court stay on a Trump Administration rule that will deny permanent-resident status to legal immigrants who are deemed likely to become “public charges,” because they have in the past—or may in the future—receive public assistance, such as Medicaid or Social Security supplemental income. The rule has been called a humanitarian catastrophe, an act enabling racist and classist cruelty, and a throwback to the darker days of rejecting the neediest immigrants, be they Irish, Jewish, queer—or nonwhite. It is all of those things, but it is not, contrary to many comments, a drastic change in immigration policy. Like much that is Trumpian, the new rules, and the Supreme Court order allowing them to go forward, build logically on the last few decades of the American political conversation on immigration, race, and class.

In August of last year, Ken Cuccinelli, then the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, quipped in an NPR interview that the guiding principle of American immigration policy is “give me your tired, your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.” He was telling the truth. U.S. policy has always hewed closer to his rendering than to the original Emma Lazarus poem that adorns the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The “public charge” exclusion in immigration law goes back to the middle of the nineteenth century, and the underlying fear that newcomers will take what is rightly “ours” predates the policy by centuries.

The immediate precursor of the Trump Administration rule is the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the welfare-reform law signed by Bill Clinton, in 1996. Clinton had run on the promise to “end welfare as we have come to know it,” and he did. On its way through Congress, the reform package acquired provisions that effectively threw most noncitizens, present and future, off most federally funded public-assistance programs. Clinton opposed these amendments. In his speech heralding the passage of welfare reform, he said:

I am deeply disappointed that the congressional leadership insisted on attaching to this extraordinarily important bill a provision that will hurt legal immigrants in America, people who work hard for their families, pay taxes, serve in our military. This provision has nothing to do with welfare reform. It is simply a budget-saving measure, and it is not right.

These immigrant families with children who fall on hard times through no fault of their own—for example, because they face the same risks the rest of us do from accidents, from criminal assaults, from serious illnesses—they should be eligible for medical and other help when they need it.

Then Clinton signed the bill into law. Of course he did: it was his signature legislative achievement, which had taken years to craft and pass. The fear of spending too much money on immigrants, meanwhile, had become a matter of bipartisan consensus. (In the years leading up to welfare reform, California residents voted for a bill that would strip noncitizens of public benefits.) In the end, most of the money that the Treasury actually saved on welfare reform came from cutting benefits to noncitizens.

The thinking that underpinned the anti-immigrant amendments was fundamentally indistinguishable from the thinking that drove welfare reform in general: that undeserving people would somehow take advantage of the system, getting something for nothing. The spectre of the “welfare queen” haunted America. Viewed through the prism of this fear, immigrants are the least deserving people of all, because they haven’t paid their imaginary dues.

One could point out that noncitizens pay taxes. (Notably, many noncitizens pay Social Security taxes even though they may never attain the status that would entitle them to benefits.) But arguing about taxes misses the point. The basic idea behind the welfare state is that it’s best for a society when all its members lead lives of dignity. Not only those who have paid taxes, not only those who have worked, want to work, or will work, not only those who were born here, but all people who inhabit this wealthy land ought to have a roof over their heads and food on the table, have basic medical care, and be free of fear that they will not have any of these things tomorrow. Precisely because this is the foundational principle of a welfare state, in most welfare states noncitizens are eligible for public assistance, and, indeed, public assistance is seen as an essential element of integrating immigrants into society.

After welfare reform became law, the number of noncitizens receiving public assistance decreased precipitously—more drastically than the law required, in fact. Many people who were still eligible, such as citizen children of noncitizens, stopped receiving benefits, not because they were thrown off the rolls but because they stopped seeking the help. Some of the provisions of the law, such as those stripping benefits from people who were already in the country and receiving aid, were never enforced, but people complied with them anyway. Scholars called this a chilling effect: immigrants, fearful of repercussions, went into the shadows.

Of course they did. Another of Clinton’s signature legislative achievements was the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (I.I.R.I.R.A.), which created the framework for the mass deportations of immigrants who broke the law in the United States. The law was rooted in thinking that we have now normalized: that noncitizens and citizens should be punished differently for the same crimes—citizens by incarceration, fines, and community service, and noncitizens by removal, often in addition to the standard penalty a citizen would have received. It also reified the image of immigrants as criminals, and it laid the groundwork for mass deportations, for which the Obama Administration, which removed hundreds of thousands of people a year, still holds the record. In addition, the I.I.R.I.R.A. mandated the construction of a physical barrier on parts of the southern border, laying the literal foundation for Trump’s wall. The I.I.R.I.R.A. became law the same year as welfare reform, as did the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which created expedited procedures for deporting “alien terrorists.” This was five years before 9/11, and two decades before Trump conjured the image of immigrants as terrorists in his 2016 campaign.

Trump’s spin on these long-standing policies and fears takes them to an entirely new level of hatred and cruelty. But, to reverse them, we will have to do much more than return to the way things were before Trumpism.

Masha Gessen, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is the author of ten books, including, most recently, “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” which won the National Book Award in 2017.

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thecreepysensei · 6 years ago

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Wow, that was 6 minutes of my life I'll never get back. So essentially he's complaining that the wealthy people who created all of the innovation, all of the jobs, all of the new opportunity, should be giving away all of his money to the employees because they're working on his behalf.

Now I've been on many parts of the spectrum, I'm not even on the rich side of the spectrum yet and I still see through this. I've been poor, I'm well off now, and in a few years I'll have put in enough work and built enough of a foundation to be considered "rich". I'll say this, I used to feel sorry for my situations, cried about how life wasn't fair, but that didn't help me grow as a person. And I'll also say this, I think corporations should pay their workers a higher, more livable wage, working a 9-5 for chump change while getting mentally abused by shitty supervisors and bitchy customers is no fucking joke. That being said, I still see passed this bullshit. You wanna get paid more? Demand more pay and if your employer feels that the work you provide is worth it then they will accommodate you. If not that, then make your own company. Don't bitch at the people who literally created the foundation upon which you work to split their profits with you.

Like I said before, I want to see higher paying low level jobs in the future, something that makes getting on your feet and living life easier for the people of today. Even so, that doesn't mean I want them getting paid better at the expense of those whose work is more valuable than there's, that makes no sense. And neither does it make sense for them to make more money than the creator of the company. Just because they've set up things so they no longer have to work all the time, that doesn't mean they shouldn't enjoy the fruits of their initial labor. Without Bill Gates, there is no Windows and everything good that came from Windows. He deserves to never work again after all of the value that was produced through his actions, and is still being produced today as he calls the shots from behind the scenes. People ignore the fact that before things were set up to where he could sell his products vicariously through hiring others, he was a one-man army. He literally built that shit from the ground up.

The people that complain about the owners of businesses have likely never tried to get an idea off the ground so that it's both profitable and sustains itself over a long period of time. It's not easy to create something of value while also competing against others who are trying to destroy your foundation. You all cry over not getting equal checks to the CEO but don't feel a thing when competition bests a company. Nobody said shit when Netflix killed Blockbuster, think of all of those low-tier jobs lost. And even then, nobody thinks of the costs of running and maintaining a business. Nobody thinks about how business owners are expected to bleed profits into CSR, and on top of that anyone passed a certain tax bracket has to give up nearly half of what they make by default to taxes, paying literally more than The Middle Class and The Low Class combined.

But no, you guys are too busy calling people selfish for not giving away money they've rightfully earned when most of it is going to not only sustaining advertisements and new innovation when competition ensues, but charities, your own jobs, and the entire country through taxes. And that doesn't even mean just the tax money needed to run a functioning society, that money is going to unnecessary funds as well, like War and Welfare. Literally killing people over things that probably don't matter and paying people to sit on their ass and not add value to the economy. There's nothing wrong with sitting on your ass, be homeless if you want, just don't complain about it if you're literally doing nothing to change the situation you're in. And if you're going to be homeless or jobless of your own volition, maybe stay out of the tax-payer's wallet. A broke person with a job is so much more respectable than a leech of society, I can understand if you need the help but so many people play the "woah is me" card while doing nothing to better themselves or their situation. Just taking free money from the government each month and being content living in poverty. Don't just live and siphon funds like that's okay. When shit like that becomes the norm, soon the rich peoples money you're leeching off of runs out, and everyone starves to death (i.e Communist Russia).

The efforts people put in to keep up a company is very much appreciated but the value of the work is still a factor, this is why socialism / communism makes no sense. You can't honestly expect someone whose created thousands of jobs through providing value to the masses to get paid as much as a janitor. Nor can you claim that for the same person whose managing the company's finances, handles PR, creates infrastructure, designs and manages their websites, etc, to get paid the same wage as The Greeter, whose only job is to smile and say "Thank You, come again!". The people who subscribe to this whole Socialism Philosophy where we're all supposed to be happy sharing poverty are only hearing the what sounds good and not actually thinking about what they're being told. Have you seen The Salaries in countries like Communist Russia for Doctors? You wanna talk about "unfair"? Imagine going to school for 10 years just to make the equivalent salary of a Walmart Greeter. That's bullshit and many of these Pro-Socialism people know it, but they're likely either too sold on what sounds like a good idea or they don't know how to fix their financial situations and want others to suffer with them.

Anyways, if you were the reason millions of people had an iPhone in their hand would you feel that they were all entitled to an equal share of Your Bank Account? I highly doubt it. So the bottom line is this. You didn't risk your livelihood on a pipedream, you didn't go bankrupt several times, you didn't take out the loans, you didn't learn how to market, you didn't hone your craft, you didn't innovate, you didn't Invest, you don't own stock, you didn't work sleepless nights trying to make a dream become reality so don't complain when someone does and they're rewarded for their efforts and the rights they own to their idea and business model. The world doesn't owe you shit. Okay I'm done, let me get off of this side of Tumblr before I have an Aneurysm from witnessing any more idiocy.

youtube

Wealth Inequality in America, please watch this, it explains what Bernie means when he says the term

I find it super helpful that someone put all this information into visuals!!

#capitalism #antisjw #economy

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devinsena · 7 years ago

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How Fetal Patienthood Spells Trouble For 'Pro-Choice' Arguments

Anyone who has attempted to engage a pro-abortion advocate might have heard lines like, “It’s just a clump of cells in my body, so what’s wrong with killing it?” It is true if the fetus were really nothing more than a clump of cells in the mother’s body, abortion would be justifiable. After all, what is wrong with her choosing to dispose of a few of her own cells?

Through rapid advancements in prenatal technology, however, we have come to learn even from the embryonic stage the preborn is not a mere clump of cells; at least they do not behave that way.

Rather, they resemble independent living organisms with the capacity to grow, adapt, react, and even repair themselves, right from the earliest stages. These technological advancements repeatedly expose pro-abortion arguments as shoddy efforts to rationalize attempts at playing God by arbitrarily assigning value to human lives. One such development is the treatment of the fetus as a patient.

According to The Code of Federal Regulations of the United States of America, a “patient” is “an individual who is receiving needed professional services that are directed by a licensed practitioner of the healing arts towards maintenance, improvement or protection of health or lessening of illness, disability or pain.”

Does the fetus, then, qualify as a patient under this definition? Fifty years ago, the answer would have been ‘no.’ But today, the tide is overwhelmingly turning towards a resounding ‘yes,’ as recent medical advances have led to the development of diagnostic tests and other procedures which allow for the fetus to be treated as a patient.

Take for instance the First-Trimester Fetal Echocardiography Program, a diagnostic test for congenital heart defects during the earliest stages of pregnancy.

It involves an ultrasound exam between 11 and 14 weeks, and can help diagnose conditions like abnormalities in the fetal cardiac axis, reversed blood flow, or fetal heart rate. Fetal MRI testing can also be done to check for the presence of pulmonary lesions, renal or genitourinary abnormalities, or merely to check brain development.

In these and similar cases, the fetus is quite literally a patient being subjected to diagnostic testing dedicated to the assessment of fetal welfare.

Further evidence of the rise of fetal patienthood can be found in the rapid development of medical procedures to prevent or treat prenatal disorders. Suppose it is discovered, due to a fetal anomaly, it is expected the baby will be unable to breathe independently after delivery. A technique called ex-utero intrapartum treatment is used to intervene and save the life of the baby by establishing a functional airway before being separated from the placenta.

Similarly, in the case of severe renal abnormalities, fetal shunt placement is performed to drain the fetal bladder. Other procedures include open fetal resection to remove tumors in the case of sacrococcygeal teratoma, and surgery to treat bladder outlet obstruction, thereby preventing serious damage to the bladder and kidneys, and ensuring normal pulmonary development.

Once again, it is evident these procedures (and others which have not been mentioned) are performed by “a licensed practitioner of the healing arts towards maintenance, improvement or protection of health or lessening of illness, disability, or pain.” In other words, in every one of these procedures, the fetus is the patient.

It might be possible to argue a fetus who is treated as a patient or recipient of medical care must also be given the same right to life as any other patient. I shall, however, argue for something simpler: that the granting of patienthood to the fetus deals a fatal blow to at least two of the most common pro-abortion arguments, namely, “My body, my choice,” and “Abortion is healthcare.”

‘My body, My choice’

As I said at the outset, if the fetus is a mere clump of cells and a part of the mother’s body, she has every right to undergo a medical procedure and have it removed; after all, a person has every right to remove a mole, a wart, or an appendix.

The problem, however, is if the fetus were just another part of the female body undergoing a medical procedure, why do we treat it as a distinct patient? Do we consider a woman’s heart as a distinct patient when she undergoes cardiac surgery? Do we consider her bones to be individual patients when they undergo diagnostic tests or orthopedic surgery? Of course not! In both cases, it is the woman who is the patient; the organs can never be considered to be patients in their own right, for their treatment is aimed towards the overall physiological welfare of the woman.

Yet we have seen several tests and procedures aimed at the overall physiological welfare of the fetus. A fetus cannot be a mere ‘part’ of the female body, for mere parts and organs are not patients. And if this is true, then abortion is not merely a medical procedure like an appendectomy where a woman chooses to have part of her body removed, but a deliberate elimination of a distinct organism who is a potential patient at the time of elimination.

The ‘my body, my choice’ argument, at least as it is used today, collapses on its face, for it relies on an equivocation between the fetus and the parts of a woman’s body; and our granting of patienthood to the former and not the latter indicates any such equivocation is false. Mind you, my argument is not all fetuses are patients and hence ‘My body, my choice’ fails; rather, it is the fact every fetus has the capacity to be treated as a distinct patient right from the first trimester, hence one cannot treat it like the rest of the female’s organs.

‘Abortion is healthcare.’

The second argument has become a refrain on Planned Parenthood’s social media. “ABORTION IS HEALTHCARE,” they write repeatedly, as if tweeting a baseless proposition in all-caps somehow transmogrifies it into a cogent argument. The question is, is that statement even remotely true? Let’s get something out of the way: abortion, if performed to save the life of the mother, is a life-saving procedure which I would grant to be healthcare.

Most abortions, however, are done for reasons of convenience, and not when the life of the mother is in imminent danger. Reframing the question, are the vast majority of abortions healthcare? No, they are not. Given the potential patienthood of every fetus, it is absurd to argue eliminating it simply because another potential patient feels her well-being will be improved by its elimination somehow transforms murder into ‘healthcare.’ Would it ever make sense for me to ask my physician to end the life of a healthy human, a potential patient, because its elimination is what I consider will make my life more convenient? I always thought this was what paid assassins do, and that is certainly not healthcare.

I can imagine the pro-abortion side attempting to make up all kinds of criteria to deny the potential patienthood of the fetus at the point they wish to allow for abortions. But as Ben Shapiro points out, every time you draw a line before which abortion is justified, you are drawing a false line which can also be applied to those in later stages of life; whether it be an argument from dependency, location, or physiological functions like heartbeat or brain function.

Allowing the mother to bestow patienthood to the child when she wishes does not help either, because wantedness is too subjective a criteria to determine whether another human life deserves to keep its legal rights or have them taken away.

Hence, as long as the fetus is a potential patient, abortion-on-demand is not healthcare. Chemotherapy is healthcare because cancer is an ailment. Psychotherapy is healthcare because depression is an ailment. Abortion is not healthcare because life is not an ailment. The purpose of healthcare is to maintain and improve the health of patients and not to eliminate one patient for the convenience of the other.

After all, I presume that is implied when a doctor swears to “not play at God.”

Unless, of course, the Babylon Bee was not being satirical when it said that certain doctors (allow me to name-drop Willie Parker, self-styled ‘Christian’ and abortion-provider extraordinaire) think they actually swore a “hypocritical oath” rather than the Hippocratic Oath, thereby allowing them to swear to save people and then turn around and kill them. Now that is something that wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.

source http://humandefense.com/how-fetal-patienthood-spells-trouble-for-pro-choice-arguments/

#prolife Christian Bible LoveBoth abortion prochoice

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whiiiplaash-blog · 8 years ago

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Hey guys! Sorry I’ve been away for a while there’s...a lot going on, it’s all under the cut because like I said, a lot. The TL;DR is: Everything is on fire, nothing’s gone right, I’m literally barely making ends meet financially and that’s only because my parents offered to help cover the cost of fixing my car so it’d pass inspection, except that cost like 8x as much as we thought it would so now I feel like I really have to pay them back for it when I can. Also I’ve cried pretty much once a day since June 17th because of how fucked everything is

Okay, so y’all know I started a new job for the government as a welfare worker back in May, I gave you a schedule for expecting replies. I think last you heard I went to Dorney Park on the 10th. The weekend after that my girlfriend and I toured some apartments and put in our application for one (good news, we got it! A little over budget, but no cat deposit and no cat rent because and I quote “We love cats!”). Also went to the drs and got put on a new ADHD medication. Sunday, Father’s Day, June 17th, we went to Philly Pride and on the way back to her place I realized I lost my wallet. Called, canceled my cards, the whole deal. Paypal was like “We’ll send you a replacement in 5-7 business days”, bank was like “You need to come in and do this, we don’t care that you can’t come in until next weekend.” Found my wallet Monday thanks to the wonderful Park Rangers at Independence Hall’s Visitor’s Center.

Tuesday I found out that an order I placed almost a week previous with Target was fucked to heck and no one knew what was going on. It got to the point where they processed the order as complete so they could refund the missing items only for the missing items to show up on Wednesday which is when...

I found out I didn’t close my paypal card correctly, so I changed the backup funding to my bank account and had money again! And then promptly lost my monthly SEPTA pass, had to buy $34 worth of tickets to get me through the rest of the week. OH and we had a freak rainstorm come through, so trains were delayed upwards of 60 minutes. I finally got on a train at 6:45 after sitting on the platform since 5:50. Then I sat on the train approximately a mile from a station where apparently they were kicking everyone off the trains again because the trains could go no further (and not arranging alternate transportation to get us to our actual stations) until almost having a panic attack and leading a rebellion in which 50 people got off the train and started walking. this was at...probably 8:10, we walked a half hour, I met up with my girlfriend at the station we were near, she took me back to my actual station to get my car. I didn’t get home until 10:15. Also my girlfriend and I got accepted for the apartment we applied for, yay! (We each have to pay $1070 at the lease signing which I’ll have if I stick to budget except...)

Thursday the train was a half hour late getting to the station and I was 10 minutes late for work. The first time ever that I’ve been over 1 second late (I’m still mad at Nordstrom for counting that as late and giving me a quarter point).

Friday was payday but I had to buy a weekly pass AND my July monthly pass and SEPTA raised the rates on both so it was more expensive. I also found out my inspection and registration were a month out of date. So I had to pay the unexpected cost of re-registering my car and find out how much the inspection would be.

Saturday go to the bank, order a new card. My girlfriend and I went to the Celtic Fling because I deserved it. She picked out a Griffin Drabbit and I found a Toothless inspired all black drabbit and we put down deposits to hold them until Faire. Because we deserve it. Girlfriend and I decide to cut Colossalcon East out of our plans because we can’t afford the deposit for the hotel room. Decide to take a trip to a near by beach, Long Beach Island, that weekend instead for about...oh a third of the price.

Sunday was Lancaster Pride and we went to the mall to chill after buying her cat lots of catnip.

Monday scheduled the car for an inspection

Tuesday dropped it off (note, it’s now been 7 business days since I canceled my paypal back up credit card instead of my actual paypal card. Should have gotten it in the mail.) Took my drs advice and took 2 pills for my ADHD medication because one did jack shit and made me pissy. 2 actually works but only for about 10 hours and then I get pissy again. Called my dr, reported on it, she wasn’t in, I’ll get a call for proceeding on Thursday.

Today: Found out that no, paypal will handle the card in 5-7 buisness days, it’ll take another 7-10 days for the information to actually reach me. Put in a service request to have it linked back up to my paypal debit card ASAP (should be done tomorrow morning). Found out that my high beam light bulb hadn’t burnt out, what had actually happened was the casing got fucked (might have been pep boys fault now that I’m thinking about it since they worked on that part of the car back in January replacing my left turn signal light bulb). Found out it would cost $300 to fix it. I only barely have the $43 to cover the emissions test. Call my parents. They end up covering the entire bill of $405. Mentally promise to pay them back ASAP.

So basically I’m on week 2 of running around like a chicken with my head cut off, nothing’s actually better, things are worse, I don’t get paid for another week, I barely have enough money for gas for next week. I backed out of going to the beach for a weekend with my family in order to actually relax instead of worrying about driving down and back separately. Also I’m packing...okay I’m not packing, I’m deciding what I don’t need for the next month and leaving the rest in the living room and my sister, who had knee surgery a month ago and is now bored out of her mind since she’s mostly recovered but doesn’t have a summer job because of her injury, is packing for me.

And that’s why I haven’t been on.

#dude don't even #so many warnings #money tw #out of control #kind of like my life

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