#i had political science and economics classes with all three of you... your asses are not running for senator

[vamptastic]

for real will never forget the conversation i overheard at graduation practice where these two trucker hat dudes were talking and one casually goes 'yeah idk what i want to do after high school. maybe ill go into real estate'. brother you and what capital.

[fukurodaze]

haikyuu!! third gym squad taking the ib diploma programme

ok... my friend and i got rlly stressed the other day and made headcanons for these guys if they were to take classes in the ib... it’s like a levels but like... a bit more death!

for my ib diploma folks you can just hop on over and read what i’ve hc’d but for my non-ib folks, lemme give you a bit of an introduction to the ib diploma programme.

characters included: bokuto koutarou, kuroo tetsurou, akaashi keiji, tsukishima kei, haiba lev, hinata shouyou

THE IB DIPLOMA PROGRAMME is a rigorous two-year pre-college program in your last two years of high school. a full programme consists of one class from each of the six required groups (totalling to 6 classes), which are G1 - first language; G2 - second language; G3 - social sciences; G4 - natural sciences; G5 - mathematics; and G6 - arts (though, arts is optional, and can be switched out with another subject from G3 or G4).

within these six courses, students are required to take at least three high-level (HL) courses and three standard level courses (SL), but some students may take four HL courses and have two SL courses (kind of a rough one tho). 

just to note: there’s two types of math courses - applications and interpretations (Math AI) and analysis and approaches (Math AA). MAA courses are known to be harder than MAI courses because students do more theory work and have non-calculator sections in exams, unlike MAI courses where calculators are required for every exam. also, it is possible for a person to take IB courses instead of the full diploma programme, but i’m not very well acquainted with that variation of the IB programme so we’re just going to assume all the boys got 6 courses.

okay. i am so sorry i just lectured you on a whole school curriculum. anyways. back to haikyuu!!

BOKUTO KOUTAROU : Japanese Language and Literature HL, Mandarin Ab Initio SL, Geography HL, SEHS (Sports, Exercise, and Health Science) HL, Math AI SL, Economics SL

ok so it’s canon that this dude is not doing very well in math but his parents made him do higher level math at first poor boy >:(

he started the year off in higher level and thought he was gonna be fine

no. he was not fine.

so he ended up switching his math hl to sl and his japanese sl to hl

IT IS CANON (special chapter in volume 19 titled “i just forgot” where bokuto has a wholeass crisis about words) that bokuto’s really one to actually really like to think about how words work and function as systems in the same way ib language courses do!!

actually having him do japanese ll hl is just an excuse for me to keep him in math sl sorry

i mean koutarou may be my fav tax evader but he really did sit through two years worth of econ classes... smh

mans is Not listening and has to rely on yukie for notes but he just memorises case studies for exams and does not do anything else

i feel like he just takes mandarin because he thought it was the easiest one... he also thinks the words sound similar so it’s easy to memorise

he’s a pretty good communicator so he practices his mandarin quite a lot. as in, he’s made friends to talk to in mandarin. we love to see it!!!

also. um. i hc that he’s pretty decent at memorisation so geography!! this goes for memorising all the kanji and mandarin characters too

i think SEHS is pretty self-explanatory. mans already known he wanna be a pro athlete might as learn about being healthy as an athlete

KUROO TESTUROU : Japanese Language and Literature SL, English B SL, Business Management HL, Chemistry HL, Math AI HL, Biology HL

now... we all know this mf been taking chemistry hl. it is CANON

and as per his career path... DEFINITELY business management hl

i feel like he’s so analytical in the way he sees things that he likes to explore many areas of knowledge where there are different ways of thinking

takes english as a second language because... whew.. aint it sexy when mans wanna be multifaceted in business

also takes higher level biology because he’d rather not with the languages... but later on i believe he ends up in a higher level language class because he might as well

i feel like kuroo’s classes just give me a vibe i know too too well... 

mans takes math ai. he does not wanna fuck around with a pencil proving a theorem he just wants the answer bro

like in volleyball, he’s a quick thinker. so he’s pretty g with math and business stuff

i literally know someone with this class combo ... it’s not very chill but it screams “you never see me do any course work but i always get at least a B+ in every subject”

AKAASHI KEIJI :  Japanese Language and Literature HL, French Ab Initio SL, Psychology HL, Chemistry SL, Math AA SL, Visual Arts HL

now... this subject combo radiates such pretty energy

pretty subjects for a pretty boy

he was originally going to do biology sl but then found out there is chemistry in biology so he just decided with chemistry. plain and simple.

we all know akaashi is both emotionally and academically intelligent

he’s logical and analytical, and when faced with a tough time he works through it well albeit going through a little bit of struggle

this automatically puts him in math aa... i just see him actually liking proving theorems??? 

but maybe he just thinks his calculator is a nuisance sometimes and would rather solve everything by hand 

also art boy! this dude likes graphic design more but when it comes to traditional art he does Not Hold Back

i like to think that he’s into painting backgrounds and mixed media

if he didn’t take VA, i’m pretty sure he would take economics. because. it’s quite systematic and i think akaashi would take a liking to it

as for japanese ll hl... we all know this dude was supposed to be a part of the literary section in a magazine/manga company but was moved to editor

goes hand-in-hand with psychology, likes to know how words convey meaning and how they affect people

he also thinks french is kind of a cool language. i feel like this guy just wants to do it because it sounds cool and novel for him

all in all, pretty solid subject combo!

TSUKISHIMA KEI : Japanese Language and Literature HL, French Ab Initio SL, History HL, Biology SL, Math AA HL, Instrumental Music HL

4 hl’s... here we are folks

honestly does it for colleges to go like “holy shit this dude is kinda crazy”

but does suffer... coursework tings :)

first of all this dude takes french (even though it’s a beginner’s class) because he just loves to sound cool huh

the summer before his courses started he would have had the basics down after looking through free ib textbooks

plus, being the guy that’s super good at a new language in the class is a huge ass flex and a big ass ego boost. and anyways, with language, he thinks it’s just a lot of simple patterns working together.

this also applies to japanese ll hl... finds writing essays and making arguments ez (at least that’s what he tells himself - he’s kinda nervous when it comes to japanese but he holds on anyway)

practices extra hard on pronunciation. sounds hot tho

math aa hl??? there we go. another crazy one. thought he could ace the class at first.... no. no he couldn’t 

thinks about moving down to sl. probably does. (at least it’s not math ai)

history and biology go hand in hand for him. he has significant interests in prehistoric times, and likes to learn about the origins of life - that’s a given

but he does get tired of the politics talk in history like... goddamn all these people making so many mistakes? just stop making them smh

and instrumental music was just something he got onto because he really would like to just have a course where he could enjoy himself while also learning about the stuff he likes

nobody knows what music he listens to... but i think he’s willing to listen to anything as long as it’s music and it has the kinds of vibes he digs

HAIBA LEV: Japanese Language and Literature SL, Mandarin Ab Initio SL, Psychology HL, Chemistry SL, Math AI HL, Theatre HL

i don’t know how to explain it but lev has such strong psych and chem energy

yes haiba lev’s classes are the ones i picked via roulette wheel

jk not really

here’s the thing though, lev takes psychology because he thinks econ, business management, history, ess, all that jazz is just... absolutely boring. like. super. mf-ing. boring.

so he’s like ooh cognitive processes!

kinda hates that he has to study research methods and research methods ONLY at first but when he gets the hang of it he really finds it one of his fav subs

i actually have no explanation for mandarin ab initio sl... he just seemed like the kind of guy who would wanna do the class solely because he thinks mandarin sounds cool with their intonations and everything

plus he heard that the teacher gives mooncakes every lunar new year ad he. loves. them.

okay now hear me out.

lev is good at math.

maybe not lightning speed analysis or calculations like akaashi, but he finds solving problems fun! except for when they’re without a calculator bc he HATES doing calculations by hand

he can get a bit clumsy with his hand calculations too so it’s nice to just have a calculator on hand

literally only does math ai for the sake of using a calculator at all times (a/n: i take this class, and this was the reason i took it too. COMPLETELY VALID)

and then does theatre for the fun of it!!! confidence levels high for presentations and performances... good fit

kinda thought that ib theatre would be his easy A but oh how he was wrong... hates the research tasks at first but he gets used to it

HINATA SHOUYOU: Japanese Language and Literature SL, Portuguese Ab Initio SL, SEHS HL, Geography HL, Math AI SL, Theatre HL

his classes are bokuto energy but with theatre and portuguese

MANGA SPOILERS! we all know he started thinking abt going to brazil in his second year of high school, and the ib diploma programme starts in the last two years of high school so it fits PERFECTLY

lowkey most of the boys take japanese ll sl because they just. have to.

this is also hinata’s case <3

SEHS HL!!! he has a vision for the future and it definitely involves him understanding health and sports and everything like that, especially after nationals in his first year :(((( still sad abt that

but he’s motivated for this higher level class because he’s really just gonna go all out with the research

math ai sl because... he prolly don’t give a fuck about numbers!!! (it hasn’t been made clear already, but math ai sl is the lowest level math course)

he also took theatre hl because even though he does get scared at first, he’s a natural when it comes to learning new cultures

he’s just so curious about it all and it makes him quite engaged in the class as well!!!!

also kinda took theatre because the other subjects were just not it for him

about geography... he hates memorisation but he also hates everything else in the social studies group so

he just gets by by trying to find the little details of the things he’s studying interesting because really... geography class is just the base of all the places on his bucket list

hinata’s def one of those dudes who picks his subs purely off of liking because we all know he’s going. any subject that isn’t based off of liking is usually a mandatory subject anyways

[sailorportia]

Femslash February 2020, Day 4

Fandom: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power Pairing: Glimmer/Catra Prompt: Punk/Pastel

approx. 2,100 words, rated T

also available on AO3

Summary:  Catra and Glimmer are forced to work together on a group assignment, and it's almost a competition to see who's more annoyed by this arrangement.

Tags: University AU, Swearing, Alcohol, Drunken Kissing

Catra was holding court in her corner of the student union building's cafeteria. "I can't believe Professor Prime stuck me with Sparkles for a group project!" She slammed her fist on the table, rattling everyone's lunch trays. "Anyone else would've been better than Sparkles!"

"I'm confused," Entrapta said, picking up tiny sandwiches from her lunchbox. "Who's Sparkles? Oh, do we have a new friend!?"

"Oh, um, that's what she calls Glimmer," Scorpia said. "Because, well, y'know," she leaned in and whispered, "Catra doesn't like her very much."

"Oooooooh!"

Catra ignored the exchange, lost in her own petty misery. "That girl is the worst. Total control freak. She never shuts up in class, always arguing with the profs and making everything a debate. She's not even that smart. I bet she only got in because her mother's got tenure." Her hatred toward Glimmer in no way stemmed from the fact that princess was now closer to Adora than Catra was. They were even roommates now. Not that it bothered Catra at all.

"Um, just out curiosity," Scorpia said, "this might not be important, but have you ever really talked to her? Like, other than insulting each other?"

Catra gave her a blank look. "Why would I need to do that? I don't need to learn her favourite colour to know I hate her." Knowing Sparkles, it was probably pink. Or worse, hot pink.

Entrapta frowned. "That's not a very scientific approach."

"I'm a political science major. Everyone knows that's a fake science."

"Okay," Scorpia said. "But she's one of Adora's friends. Isn't that enough reason to try to get along with her?"

"I don't want to get along with Adora's friends." Catra uttered the words as if they were a rule. If Scorpia and Entrapta had been feeling sassy, they could've pointed out that Catra was also one of Adora's friends, and that would explain why she didn't get along with herself.

"I'm just saying," Scorpia said with a shrug. "Maybe if you give her a chance, you'll find something you like about her. Or, uh, something you don't hate at least. Who knows? You might have more in common than you think."

"As if!" Catra and Glimmer couldn't have been less alike. First off, their appearances were complete opposites. Catra's punk style had attitude, conveyed through dark colours, unruly hair, spiked accessories, the patches on her jacket and other modifications to her clothing, such as stylish, strategically placed holes she tore with her own claws. Glimmer, in contrast, was a pastel disaster whose brightly-coloured outfits hurt to look at. Her hair was literally pink, like she was made of bubblegum or something. Secondly, Glimmer was a sanctimonious goody two-shoes, whereas Catra just didn't give a fuck. No way in hell were they going to get along.

"Well, you better figure out how you're going to talk to Glimmer," Entrapta said, "because she's headed this way."

A group of three approached their table: Adora and Bow, led by a pissed off Glimmer. Catra might have found it intimidating if she weren't wearing the softest possible shade of lavender. Her new haircut was something of an improvement. She was almost hot—but Catra wasn't into bossy girls.

"Hey, Catra," Adora said nervously as the group reached the table.

Glimmer cut Catra off before she could say her customary greeting. "If you screw up this assignment for me, I'm going ruin you."

Bow grimaced. "Glimmer! We literally just went over this!"

"You could at least pretend to be nice," Adora said.

"Why do I have to be nice?" Glimmer pointed at Catra accusingly. "If you heard the way she talks in class you'd get it. She's a war criminal waiting to happen."

Catra snorted. "Says the girl who's a shill for the monarchy."

Bow stepped between them. "Guys, guys, cool it. We don't want another fist fight on our hands."

"It was one time!" Glimmer protested. "And it was hardly my fault. Nyan Cat over here was being a belligerent drunk."

"Don't blame me for that incident," Catra said. "You threw the first punch after like six Shirley Temples."

"Who wouldn't punch you when you're so obnoxious?" Glimmer let out an agonized groan. "Just get your ass to me and Adora's dorm room tonight by six o'clock, or I'll come looking for you."

"Whatever." Catra stuck her tongue out as Glimmer stalked off, her friends running off after her. She didn't need any more proof that the two of them were incompatible at every level. Maybe she'd fail this assignment on purpose just to piss her off.

Glimmer was already regretting her decision to work on the group project in her dorm room. Her reasoning had been that she didn't want to be seen in public with Catra, but she hadn't anticipated how much having Catra in her living space made her skin crawl.

They were sitting on Glimmer's side of the room. Catra had attempted to make herself at home on Adora's bed, but Glimmer put that to a stop immediately.

"You don't shed, do you?" Glimmer asked, eyeing Catra's wild mane of fur. "I don't want to be picking your hairs off my clothes for the next month."

"That's an anti-cat microaggression," Catra said. "Not very politically correct of you. Besides, it can't be as bad as all the glitter you leave behind, Sparkles."

"That's not my name! And I do not wear that much glitter." Sure, Glimmer preferred sparkly eye shadow some days, and some of her clothes did have glittery details on them, but glitter wasn't her thing. "You're in no place to criticize how I look." She sneered at Catra's outfit, specifically the tears in her pants. "Nice jeans, were they 50% off?"

"Haha. Very funny. I'm sure you bought your clothes at 200% the price just to show off how bougie you are."

"Listen you—" Glimmer groaned through her teeth. She knew Catra was just trying to get under her skin. All she had to do was be the bigger person and let this go. "The sooner we start this assignment, the sooner we'll be done and out of each other's hair."

"Finally something we can agree on," Catra said. "What's the topic again?"

"We're supposed to pick one from this list." Glimmer retrieved the relevant paper from her desk and read them off. "There's one about arguments for and against raising the minimum wage."

"Eh? That sounds dangerously like math. Economics sucks."

"Fair. Next is one about the role of money in politics."

"Still too much math."

"Suggestions for electoral reform?

Catra laughed. "Maybe get rid of elections altogether? Then everyone's equally unhappy with the result."

Glimmer could've sworn she had some patience, but it was running out faster than she'd anticipated. "There's one about the ethics of torture."

"That one's easy. Whatever gets the job done is fine with me."

Never mind writing an assignment together, they were never going to find a topic they could agree on due to Catra having the moral centre of a Saturday morning cartoon villain. "Torture doesn't even work! The premise is flawed."

"Really? It's working on me right now."

Glimmer groaned. "Is this a joke to you? This assignment is for 10% of our mark! You might not care about your own future, but I do."

Catra smirked. "What's wrong? Afraid that Professor Mommy will be disappointed if her little princess flunks a class?"

"You don't have any idea what it's like studying at a college where your mother is one of the professors. Having to measure up to those expectations all the time."

"Hey, at least people expect something from you. You can't imagine what it's like to grow up in Adora's perfect shadow."

"Yeah, well now she's my perfect roommate, and I'm going to lose it if I have to hear one more time that Adora got on the dean's list last year and I didn't."

"Oh yeah? Well I would've gotten on the list too if I didn't have to deal with Professor Hordak's inferiority complex."

The conversation carried on way longer than it should've. It turned out the only way they could avoid bitching at each other was by bitching to each other instead. Before long they ordered a pizza and cracked open a couple of cold ones, the assignment lying forgotten on Glimmer's desk.

By the time they ran out of things to complain about, they were both a little beyond tipsy. They had moved to sitting on Glimmer's bed, leaning against each other. Glimmer was very aware of the fact that she had never been this close to Catra before, physically or emotionally. Not wanting to linger on those thoughts, she said the first thing that came to mind.

"Hey, is it true that you wore a tux to your high school prom?"

Catra smirked. She put her empty beer can down and got out her phone. "Feast your eyes."

Feast, Glimmer did. She was tempted to ask Catra to send her the pictures. "Daaaaaaaaaaamn," Glimmer said. "Adora's so lucky. I went to mine with Bow as a friend-date, but she got to dance with the hottest girl at the prom."

If they were any farther apart, she wouldn't have picked up on the other girl's reaction: a low, rumbling sound in her chest.

"Oh my god." Glimmer couldn't believe her ears. "Are you purring?"

"No!" Catra stuffed her phone back in her pocket and crossed her arms over her chest, as if that would cover up the sound she'd already made. "You're imagining things. All that glitter must've gone to your head."

"Oh, looks like someone isn't used to hearing people say nice things about her." This was too good. "So that's how I get under your skin."

Catra's face looked like it couldn't decide if she were furious or embarrassed. "Screw off, Sparkles."

"Aw, you can dish it out but you can't take it? That's so cute." Glimmer honestly didn't know why she was winding Catra up. Maybe she wanted to see what would happen when she finally sprung.

Catra stood up, but didn't step away from the bed. "Isn't Adora going to be coming back soon? I should probably go..."

Glimmer grabbed Catra's arm and pulled her back down. "We've talked enough about Adora. Let's talk about you."

"I don't want to talk," Catra said. "I don't want Adora to walk in and see me getting along with you!"

"You care too much about what Adora thinks. Are you that hung up on your old prom date?"

"I am not! Screw you! I'm always getting the girls. I don't need to chase after Adora. I've got pull!"

Glimmer smirked. "I'll believe it when I see it."

Catra had hit her limit. The cat finally pounced. "You asked for it."

In one swift motion, Catra pushed Glimmer down and pinned her to the bed. There was a moment's pause before their lips crashed together.

Oh my god, Glimmer thought as she tasted the alcohol on Catra's breath, is Catra kissing me? Am I kissing her back? Even being tipsy wasn't enough to excuse this. But Glimmer didn't really care. She needed to blow off steam, and making out with a bitchy catgirl serviced that need.

The kissing kept getting messier and messier, which was a nice analogue to their interpersonal relationship. Glimmer vaguely acknowledged that she'd never live it down if anyone found out about this, but it wasn't like Catra was going to brag about it either. They were in the clear—

"Oh my god. I didn't expect you guys to get along this well."

Glimmer and Catra sobered up instantly. They broke apart, Catra springing away as if she'd suffered an electric shock. In absolute horror they turned in unison to see Adora standing in the doorway, barely containing her amusement.

"This isn't what it looks like!" Glimmer said.

"It's actually exactly what it looks like," Catra said. "Kill me."

Adora laughed so hard she snorted. "Looks like you guys had a party," she said, looking at the empty pizza box and beer cans. "You guys must've finished up that assignment pretty quickly." She raised an eyebrow at the sight of the pair's blank looks. "You did work on the assignment, right?"

As if a switch had been thrown, Glimmer and Catra were back at each other's throats as if nothing had happened. "This is all your fault!"

[short-wooloo]

From the reviews section of ff.net A Thing Of Vikings chapter 87:

Every single “trump supporter” in these comments has immediately, without any consideration for any of the points made in this or the previous chapter, proved them entirely correct. I’m reading at least two death threats, multiple condemnations that are straight up lying about things Trump’s done and have misstated facts about the COVID-19 outbreak, etc. The Trump stuff is all politics, but essentially; He didn’t drag the economy up, somehow. Those are remnants of Obama’s economic policy combined with a small global uptick. Economic policy takes years to go into effect, so we won’t know how successful his policies were until at least another half a year or more. And we won’t even know that because COVID-19 exists. So far, though, doesn’t look like he’s done much. He’s completely decimated the robustness of the economy; fallback systems that were formerly in place for all sorts of emergencies, economic, health, and otherwise, including the CDC(which he cut the budget of), pretty much every single department with a relation to population and earth/climate studies(which, contrary to Trumpist belief, doesn’t just have to do with climate change but also with things like *how we can avoid viruses jumping between species like coronavirus did* and *how we can get maximum yield out of our agriculture*, and more), dismantled or attempted to dismantle or is in the process of dismantling pretty much the entirety of the US healthcare support system(slashing federal contributions to medical think tanks and regulatory organizations, scaling down operations of said facilities, cutting government spending on hospitals and hospital plans), etc. All of the above, whatever your opinions on their budgetary necessity, have for a fact caused one thing. You know what that is? The current COVID-19 crisis. Medical supplies; gone. Many hospitals; now underfunded. Medical plans for most people; kaput. Unemployment support for every class of unemployment, including temporary or transitional unemployment; nada. CDC; has been instructed to NOT do anything, it seems. Since, y’know...they haven’t done anything this entire crisis. Trump’s two biggest flaws, regardless of politics, are his impulsiveness and his ego - ie, his need to take credit for anything good that happens, essentially. That means disassembling the CDC so his task force can do everything and he can say, “Look! I did that!”. That means holding press conferences where he answers all the questions, instead of Dr. Fauci, or any other medical experts, or even Pence, who’s actually being the more reasonable one and letting medical experts do their work. That means going on Twitter, while hundreds of thousands have died, and peddling theories about the Democrats making up statistics about the COVID-19 outbreak, which directly contradicts the statistics provided by the very experts he appointed and approved. At the very least, Mr. Trump has been a font of misinformation that is stemming efforts to fight the disease. More realistically? His inaction is the reason the outbreak has spread so far in the US. His inaction is the reason why hospitals don’t have funding or supplies(enacting the DPA without using it? ️). His inaction is the reason there isn’t any cooperation on a state to state level to fight the outbreak; each state is going at it alone. His inaction has killed upwards of 20 thousand people, at this point; and it is slated to kill 60 thousand plus more, with how things are going. Not only that; the sheer misinformation here about the outbreak is stunning. The Chinese federal government actually took pretty direct action as soon as they heard about it; issue being, it was the inherent corruption of their own government that prevented the federal government from hearing about the outbreak. Records show the city government had blocked any efforts to try and communicate the severity of the outbreak - and even news the outbreak existed - from the federal government. The instant the federal government heard, they sent investigation teams and started making moves to shut things down - most likely a PR move for the most part, to get their own butts out of the fire, but ultimately still the most effective move they could have made at the time. They lie about stats, true, but their methods of controlling the outbreak are effective. The reason why it spread so fast is not just because of global inaction - it’s because China is China, and the disease is exceptionally infectious. If I remember correctly, it’s twice as infectious as the flu; kills on an order of magnitude more people; has an extremely long period of time in which patients are both infectious and asymptomatic; can jump between species, as already shown; has at least three strains jumping around; is completely new to modern medical science; and is a coronavirus, a class of virus that has very few actual treatments as of the modern age. SARS and MERS, the other two most similar coronaviruses, had basically no reaction in terms of medical development; they were too “small” and localized. Not enough time, or sample.a, to even effectively develop treatments. All these things combined caused the current crisis. It’s one of if not the most infectious disease we’ve seen in centuries, perhaps millennia, or perhaps even ever. And that makes it a lot more dangerous than a disease that kills 100% of those it infects, or anything that lethal. As for these responses and this story; Are you all really right-leaning Americans? Does freedom of fucking speech ring a bell? AToV is allowed to say whatever they want; as a more right leaning moderate, I agree with some of the things said(everything about Trump’s response to COVID-19 reeks of politics and not science), and I disagree with some of the others. But I can certainly see the point being made, that y’all are fucking toxic - and you know who I’m talking about. Death threats are unacceptable. The responses aren’t that bad, for the most part - even many of those disagreeing - but the disagreements with death threats and those complaining about the mere expressing of opinions need to stop. Y’all complaining about double standards, but in your fucking retarded self-righteousness you are applying a double standard. So you’re apparently allowed to express your opinions, not to mention for some in a way that’s illegal and can be investigated by law enforcement, but AToV isn’t on their own fucking story? Get a fucking life. To the few who disagreed and responded civilly, without the “WaaAh you’re NOT allowed to express your opinions if they disagree with me! Shitty person!” Or “Go die for having an opinion!”, kudos to you. Although, please. Stop spreading misinformation about the virus. What we need right now is a coordinated federal and international response, not each state hammering in different ways at the same problem, and each country following suit. If one state fights it off, and a single person crosses over from another state - outbreak number 2 happens, and it never ends. Trump needs to at the very least stop talking about an economic reopening, because now that’s completely infeasible because he reacted too late, and start coordinating a unified federal response. Companies are sitting on their asses not doing anything; the DPA is here just for that. Private individuals with fucking 3D printers are contributing to this fight more than some corporations with professional factories and injection molds for masks/equipment.

[startrekacademy2161]

Let It Be Me

Almost 3000 words of uncensored fluff

Requested by the Darling @schatzi-89

Based in Let It Be Me by David Guetta and Ava Max

A/N: Mild language and fluff overload

Leonard McCoy x Reader

Leonard was freshly divorced and joining Starfleet as a Cadet. You were an advisor working with all Science and Medical cadets in the academy; that’s how you met Leonard. He was always polite when he would come in. He had the same goal as his command track roommate; to graduate in three years.

For a year, you worked with Leonard going over schedules and clinical options. For a year you sat there and watched that kind soul walk around utterly crushed. You knew he went back to the dorms and buried himself in a bottle and more than anything you wished you could sit down and talk about it with him.

Maybe it was your training; after all, your main posting was to the Enterprise. Upon her maiden voyage, you were to become her Chief Counseling Officer. With that in the back of your mind, you went to your superior officer and requested a special allowance that granted you permission to be both advisor and counselor to Dr. McCoy, pending his acceptance of the offer.

Just as you had imagined, he declined the offer. He said something about getting over it himself and you argued back with a “but you don’t have to”. In the end, you were left as an advisor only and though you were disappointed, you respected his wishes to keep the arrangement as is. Though he had declined your offer, you had convinced him to take your personal comm information so that if there was an emergency, he could easily get ahold of you.

When you're faded and alone And need somebody on the phone Let it be me, let it be me

When he tucked your comm number into his uniform pocket, you hadn’t actually expected him to call. You expected it to get buried in a drawer, never to see the light of day again. Perhaps he was tired of dealing with everything alone or perhaps he decided that it was worth hearing what you had to say, because around 7pm on a Sunday night, Leonard McCoy broke down and called.

He didn’t sound like he really knew why he was calling, but he did manage to ask to meet the following day. You agreed on noon, a time you knew he was free and you wouldn’t have to rush. You knew from his file that he also had a doctorate in psychology, so whatever you had to say, he already knew and thought about it

You were going to have to adopt a new strategy with him. He was going to be resistant. Most guys were especially successful ones who knew what they needed to do but refused to believe it. You decided that what he needed most was a friend. Yeah, he had Kirk, who he pretended to tolerate, but you knew he would do anything for him. He was loyal like that. What he needed was a female friend who built him up in all the ways that his ex-wife had torn him down. You decided that tomorrows meeting was just to chat, even if it was about the weather; you wanted to gain his trust and let him talk to you naturally instead of clinically.

The next day, when you heard a knock at your door at precisely noon, you put all of your files away, your PADD, and anything else that might suggest a therapist meeting. You invited him in and offered him a seat. You didn’t have a couch or comfy chairs, the purpose of your office was academic advising, not counseling, so this would have to do.

“Good afternoon, Leonard. I must admit I was surprised to get your call. What can I help you with today?” You still didn’t know what he had called for, so you decided to go from professional to friendly if that was what was needed; it was easier than backtracking.

“Hello. Yeah, that makes two of us then. I don’t know why I called. I feel terrible like this is going to be a waste of your time, but I just wanted to talk. You had offered, so I figured I would take you up on it.”

“It’s never a waste of time. We can talk about whatever you would like. And you have as much time as you need.”

“Alright, well, I know you have access to my files, so you know about my ex-wife.” He paused, uncertain. He avoided eye contact like he had done something wrong.

“I do and I have read a bit about the situation. I know that she was having an affair and that she divorced you. She made it look like your fault and you have to pay. I also read that this was while you were finishing your fellowship. Those are horrid hours, Leonard. Whatever reason she gave to justify her actions was a load of crap.” You could see the surprise ripple through his body and for the first time he looked you in the eye.

“She told me that I was a waste of space and that I was out playing around with nurses instead of being there for her. I missed dinners, anniversaries, and holidays. I was never there for her.” A tear fell. You knew he believed every word she told him.

“What did she think it was going to be? Starting off as a doctor is rough. Actually, it’s downright brutal. Putting in shitty hours so you could provide for her later does not give her the right to accuse you of cheating or to call you a waste of space. Leonard, listen to me. I have seen more than my fair share of medical cadets come through this office. I was a medical cadet. I have never seen a cadet with as much drive and potential as you. I certainly have never seen one with your skills. As for all the things you missed, she knew that was a possibility going in, she just needed the excuse to justify her actions and she needed everyone else to believe it was all you.” He was looking down, you could see the tears falling freely. He looked at you and for the first time, it wasn’t pain I his eyes, but curiosity.

“Why do you believe in me so much?” His head was cocked to the side slightly. Even crying in your office, he was still a sight to behold.

“Because I was you. Not a day goes by that I don’t wish that I had someone there to tell me all the things I have told you. It took me a very long time to get over my stuff and I had to do it alone. My point is. I don’t want that for you. I am not here to be a counselor. I am here as a friend.” You would never admit it, but that is why you took such an interest in Leonard when his file first landed on your desk.

“As a friend?” His eyebrow went up.

“100%. My talents include drinking most people under the table, hustling pool, and starting outrageous barfights. I am also proficient in trash talking, listening, and kicking people’s asses when they come at my friends. I have been called fiercely loyal, somewhat scary, and adorable.”

“Was that your resume?” for the first time in a while, he laughed.

“I don’t know. Did I get the job?” You placed your hands on the desk, folded neatly like you would at a job interview.

“Yeah, I think you did,” He leaned back in his chair and finally got comfortable. “If we are friends now, I think it is only fair that you talk to me too.”

“How about we go get drinks tonight to celebrate a new friendship and to say goodbye to our exes once and for all.”

“I can defiantly drink to that.”

“9pm?”

“Sounds perfect, I’ll meet you there.”

 When she leaves you in the rain

You need a high to kill the pain Let it be me, let it be me

It had been several months since you became friends with Leonard. Most nights he would meet you at your office and walk you to your apartment that was on the other side of campus. You went out for drinks every weekend and you had gotten to be good friends with Jim Kirk as well.

If Leonard wasn’t in class or at the hospital, and if you weren’t in your office, it was more than likely you were somewhere together. It was comfortable and effortless. There were no expectations that were eating at the back of your minds; it was friendship, pure and simple.

When the distress call from Vulcan was received, you packed your bags and boarded the Enterprise for the first time. You were relieved to find that Leonard was a senior medical officer. It made this all the more exciting. He confided in you that he had smuggled Jim aboard, in spite of his suspension. You kept your mouth shut and went about your business.

You assisted Leonard in taking care of everyone that was on Deck 6 since they were short-handed. Just like that, he became the CMO. After Captain Pike was rescued, you assisted in the surgery as a nurse, aiding Leonard however he needed. For the first time, everyone saw in him what you had always known was there. He had made it.

Summer days, winter nights Ride or die, right by you side Killing time 'till you're ready to see I'm all you need You're a drunk, you're a fool I'm insane, so right for you When the ship goes down Look in your dreams, that's where I'll be

Neither of you could quiet tell when things changed. It had never come up in conversation and it was never verbally agreed on, it just sort of happened. You spent more time in his office than you did your own. You curled up on his couch together, you nestled securely in his side with his arm draped over you. If you were together, you were most definitely making physical contact somehow.

The first time you kissed, Scotty happened to be walking by. You thought for sure that he was going to have a heart attack. Jim knew about it fifteen minutes later and by lunch, everyone knew. Jim ceremonially declared it a thing and you just rolled with it. You loved Leonard McCoy. You had no doubt that he loved you too.

When Earthside, you decided that you should take things a bit further. Taking the more economically sound path, you got an apartment together. Two department chiefs could afford a nice place close to headquarters.

It was perfect for a minute, but it didn’t take Jocelyn long to hear that Leonard had moved on. As if the pain she had put him through wasn’t enough, she started again; this time with the goal of destroying both of you.

You knew her kind and there was very little that she could do that would cause you any grief. Leonard, on the other hand, was not handling her newest attacks well at all. He had gone back to drinking and all of the efforts you had put into helping him before seemingly went down the drain. He cut you off and it began to feel like you were living with a stranger.

You had just gotten back from your shift when you heard a knock at your door. You weren’t expecting anyone, and the odds of Leonard expecting anyone seemed slim. When you answered the door, you immediately wish you hadn’t. There stood Jocelyn in all of her stuck up glory. She sneered at you with vicious contempt and barged in without an invite. She’s lucky that this was her destination or that would have been very bad for her.

“Hey, Leonard, can you come in here please?” you could hear him shuffling about, and you also knew that he hadn’t worked that day. All you could do was pray that he hadn’t been drinking. You were relieved when he walked in with bedhead and a runny nose.

“What are you doing here?” a finely tuned ear would be able to tell that he was upset, but the prevailing sound of the common cold covered it up.

“I just thought I would swing by and see how the two most incompetent officers in Starfleet were doing on my way to headquarters. I have a meeting with your Captain and I am sure he will agree that you are both utterly useless on his crew.” She was so sure of herself that it seemed that it had slipped her attention that Jim was your best friend. You spoke before Leonard could:

“That is perfectly reasonable, Jocelyn. I am sure Jim would be fascinated by all that you have to say to him. You might want to leave before you miss him. He usually leaves his office at five sharp.” You could feel Leonard staring at you, but you didn’t want to break the standoff you were having with Jocelyn.

After she left, you turned to head to your shared room; wanting nothing more than to get out of that uniform and into some comfy clothes. You had a movie date with yourself and you would be damned if you were going to be late. Leonard followed you in and sat on the bed as you changed, still staring at you the same way as earlier.

You got changed without saying a word to him and you left just as silently and put on an old holo of “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. It was one of your go-to movies. About twenty minutes later, Leonard shuffled in. He came over and curled up beside you like a little kid and laid his head on your shoulder.

“Why did you let her go to Jim?” you could tell it took a lot of effort for him to ask you so you decided to answer.

“I thought that Jim could use the laugh. Whatever she had to say about either of us is bound to bring tears to Jim’s eyes.” He chuckled, but then you remembered that he was sick. “I’m not going to get sick am I?”

“I ain’t sick, Sweetheart. It’s withdrawals. I figured that I hadn’t been too fair to you and I finally realized that I am a dumbass for letting her get to me. Yours is the only opinion that bares any weight to be and I lost sight of that. So, now I am detoxing the bullshit out of my system and when I am over this nastiness, you and I are going on a very nice date.”

“Leonard, I love you. You know that right? And whatever horribly untrue things she has said to you lately, they will never be true of you.”

“I love you too, Sweetheart.”

You had settled into a comfortable silence for the first time since the whole unpleasantness with Jocelyn started. There was yet another knock on the door and this time Leonard was the one who got up.

“Fifty bucks says Jocelyn caught Jim.” Leonard laughed and agreed.

“Probably. That witch magically appears where ever she needs to be to ruin my life. It’s her God damned superpower.” Leonard opened the door and a very excited Jim hopped on in. He looked like he had been crying and he was still holding his sides.

“You will never believe who visited me today!”

“Jocelyn.” You answered in unison and monotoned to boot.

“You two are no fun. But, yes! If I didn’t know any better I would fire you two right now and let me tell you, that bitch can act. Don’t worry you still have jobs.”

“Great, now are you gonna tell us what was said or are you going to bore us with irrelevant nonsense?” Leonard was genuinely curious as to what she had to say this time.

“I want to know why you’ve been crying, Jim. Did Cupcake pick on you again? Or did Ny have enough of your nonsense too?” of course it was Jocelyn, but why pass up the opportunity to harass your Captain.

“Actually it was Jocelyn. When I laughed in her face about what she said about you, she started in on me. Naturally, that made me laugh harder. Now I know I have abs because they are absolutely killing me.” Jim was very proud of himself.

“That’s probably because you don’t have abs, Jim. That’s usually why that hurts.” Jim opened the door and Leonard slammed that shit shut.

“It’s true I don’t have abs and it kills.” Of course, you had to back Len up on this; even at the expense of your own image.

Jim huffed and then left, everyone was tired and there was no reason to stay or visit really. A phone call would have worked just as well.

“You have abs, why did you tell Jim you didn’t?”

“He doesn’t need to know I am in better shape than him. Which wouldn’t be an issue if he would lay off the cake.”

“That’s my girl.”

And I'll show you love the way it supposed to be

[awed-frog]

Hey, I am soon finishing school and I learned to really enjoy Latin in the past 3-4 years. Before, I almost failed my class every year but like in tenth grade it clicked and I started becoming one of the best of my class. Now my teacher has recommended studying Latin afterwards and I actually would totally like to. I just don't know how I can use it? Are there any other professions except for teaching?

Hi there! It’s such good news to hear you like Latin and you’re interested in pursuing that! Kudos!

Let me answer that by telling you what happened to me during my first ever job fair, back in the Stone Age. It was one of those classy events with rows and rows of tables, people in suits giving away pens and chocolate, and a general sense of ‘look at how much money you can make once you graduate - prepare for a life of gold-infused burgers and caviar cocktails, people’. Except that, well - I’d been talked into attending by a couple of classmates, but I’d lost them in the crowd and I couldn’t see a single advertiser who would be interested in me, because, whatever, these were old rich people working for consulting firms and I had an essay due on the role of witches in Greek society, so…? And then, disaster struck and I got trapped against one of the desks and a sleek and elegant Draper-like man started smouldering about banks and what a great future I’d have as an investor of dirty money on their behalf or something like that. I let him speak for a few minutes, surreptiously empting his bowl of complimentary cookies into my bag, and then I told him I was actually majoring in ancient Greek, and I wasn’t sure his company would be interested in me. And the guy - the guy fucking beamed. ‘Of course we’re interested,’ he said, doing something very manly with his tie. ‘You think we want to hire those idiots who learned an economics textbook by heart for the last three years?’. And he went on to explain that people who know about loans and interest rate - sure, there’s a lot of them around - but what banks actually want are people who’re smart, who can think on their feet and outside the box, who can see connections other people can’t, who can be fastidious but also see the big picture. ‘You know what teaches you that?’ he asked me, and he was standing so close by then I was afraid he’d look straight inside my bag and see about fifty individually wrapped cookies with his freaking company’s logo on them. ‘Linguistics. Mathematics. Classics. Philosophy. Foreign Languages. Those are the people I’m here to meet today.’

So, you know, that was surprising as hell and it forced me to reassess my view of the world, and even if I never called him back, because banks are evil and no thank you, over the years I heard the same thing over and over: how many companies prefer hiring a smart, creative, do or die person and teach them the basics rather than picking someone with the right degree who’s actually a moron.

All this to say, I don’t know what to tell you. I assume you’re eighteen or so, which means you’re perfectly aware of what kind of world we’re currently living in. If we’re talking university degrees, basically the only one left which will guarantee you a job in your field is engineering. Seriously - even my friends who’ve got PhDs in hard sciences are finding themselves forced to be flexible, switch specialties, learn the functioning of something completely different, and go with it or else. So no, a major in Latin isn’t particularly useful, but then again, neither is anything else. If you’re in absolute need of stability and a fixed income right after your studies, I’d point you towards a vocational degree - something like physiotherapy, nursing school, translation, accounting. But if you can, I’d say it’s better to take a risk and study something you’re absolutely, head-over-heels passionate about and rock the hell out of it. University is a good place to make friends and let down your hait a bit, sure, but it’s also a great opportunity to go above and beyond - to attend weird classes about subjects you know nothing about, to fall in love with books you never even knew existed, to interact with some of the brightest people on this planet and learn from them and challenge them. A major (or a minor) in Latin could help you get into any communication-related field, like advertising or journalism, but if you combine it with another subject (be it history, political sciences, Chinese or business) it will give you an edge over your competitors wherever you’re applying to next. Classics is widely considered to be a ‘smart’ option, after all - an elitist point of view that has the silver lining of helping along the assortment of goofy dorks who generally pick the subject as their major. Plus, it’s a good place to learn all those things fake Don Draper told me would be essential for his employees, because the language part - that will develop your memory, your logical thinking, your capacity to save your own ass by bluffing and improvising and guessing right (because come on, no one can learn all the words and all the grammar), but the culture part - there is where you’ll have heated debates about ethics and morals and politics and the stuff that still defines mostly everything our world is. There’s a reason if Classics are still a requirement in the 1% schools, and even in the top military academies. For good or for bad, classical culture shaped our world, and having some understanding of why and how will help you become an informed and independent thinker - and provide you with a good starting point for your professional life, whatever career you’ll choose to pursue.

Plus, the ancient world is cool as hell.

[wandering-muggle]

Let’s Talk About College!

For those of you who follow my blog but don’t know much about me, hello! My name is Meg and today a kid said something that pissed me off so I just want to sit the fuck down and tell you all the blessing and the curse that is having all of your college majors and minors be in the humanities.

For those unaware, I am currently double majoring in Russian History and International Studies (with a concentration in International Law) and double minoring in Spanish and Russian Language. AKA -  My schedule is packed full of humanities, I haven’t looked at genuine math since my junior year of high school (IB Math Studies is fake btw) and the only science-based courses I’ve taken in college deal with linguistics. I know that STEM Majors talk about 8am labs, Business Majors talk about their hour length presentations, etc. But I just want to elaborate to y’all what being a Humanities Major can entail because I feel like anyone outside of this realm just doesn’t understand just how hard it can be.

It is a common misconception that majors in the humanities are “easy” with “little to no work” involved, but let me tell you something, sweetie. When Humanities Majors say that they have homework/reading up to their eyeballs, they are not exaggerating. For example, this last weekend, I had FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY TWO pages of reading to do between my 6 classes. Add on top of that three worksheets, 4 online discussions, and 2 essays, you could say I was up to my eyeballs in shit to do. Sounds easy, huh?

This ridiculous workload every semester is the curse of being a Humanities Major, and it’s pretty universal. Ask anyone you know who has a major in history, philosophy, international studies, political science, etc. They’ll tell ya all about it. Something else that also really sucks about being a Humanities Major is that most schools want you to have at least one relevant minor and possibly a second major to complement your degree. Yay! 

The blessing of being a humanities major is all of the KNOWLEDGE you gain! I love the fact that my STEM and Business friends always come to me whenever they have a question about something history or policy related. For example, my friend Ryan randomly texted me today to ask what Catherine the Great’s relationship was to Peter the Great. After her economics class, my friend Syd wanted to get lunch with me so that I could explain to her (from a historical standpoint) why shock therapy was ever introduced as an economic policy in Post-Soviet Russia. I may not be good at algebra-based math, but I can give you the crash-course or hours long version of Russian History from 1917-present day. I can recite treaty names and what they accomplished like Christians can recite the Lord’s Prayer. I may not know much about Biology, but I can tell you all about the workings of the various organs of the United Nations. I’m also fluent in three languages, so that’s pretty fucking cool. 

I love Academia, I love knowledge. I mean, the dream is to become a tenured professor at a high ranking 4-year institution who wears turtlenecks and spreads knowledge to malleable minds, but I feel like the amount of heavy lifting that Humanities Majors do with their brains to become qualified in what they do is so overshadowed by STEM and Business Majors because, socially speaking, Humanities Majors are viewed as lesser, which is really fucking shitty!!! 

I send my love to all majors though because honestly college is wild, let’s just give each other all of the credit we deserve, okay? Thanks!

PS: Travis from the IU Kelley School of Business and his wrong ass opinions on how ‘easy’ Humanities Majors are can rot. 

[doctormead]

Death of a Conservative

I was born in June of 1974.  Two months later, Richard Nixon resigned from the Presidency.  The Cold War was in its final stages and would end before I graduated high school.  But its shadow defined my upbringing.

I was raised in a Evangelical Christian, conservative, Republican home.  And that is what I was raised to be:  a Christian, an Evangelical, a conservative and a Republican.  I was never actually told that you couldn’t be a good Christian and be a Democrat.  In fact, I was explicitly told the opposite…but there was this underlying attitude in everything every adult around me said and did that said otherwise.  I’m pretty sure that the adults in my life didn’t mean to come across this way, but this was the “logic train” that I absorbed over time.  

Here’s where the U.S.S.R.’s cold shadow crept in.  Russia was the boogieman for every churched kid in those days.  We were fed horror stories about religious oppression in the Soviet Union and inspiring sagas about good Christian people who held onto their faith in spite of the danger.  We were given pamphlets and Christian comic books about heroes who smuggled bibles behind the Iron Curtain.  We were told over and over that the Russians wanted to do that to everyone, and that the U.S. was the bulwark that kept them from grinding all of us under the heel of state-established atheism.

And, if that wasn’t bad enough, Russia wanted to impose its economic system on us.  “Socialism” and “Communism” were words to conjure demons by.  We heard tale after tale of how poor the Russian people were because of prices fixed by the state.  How nobody was motivated to do their best because there was no way to really advance.  That the lack of competition kept everything stagnant and miserable.   Then Capitalism was set up as the Aslan to Communism’s Tash.  Capitalism was why things were so much better in America!  Capitalism provides competition and incentive for people to get off their asses and work hard.  This creates better, cheaper products which makes everything better for everyone!

This was the dichotomy I grew up.  Russia/Communism = evil.  America/Capitalism = good.  Enter the liberals in general and the Democrats in particular.  They weren’t “tough” on the Russians.  Worse, they wanted to erode good Christian institutions like prayer in schools which would put us on the “slippery slope” (yes, that logical fallacy got a lot of play in school time lectures and political discussions around me ) toward outlawing Christianity outright.  This made them foolish dupes at best and collaborators at worst.  And, since no good Christian would stand by while the Evil U.S.S.R. and their liberal sympathizers in the U.S. pushed us down the road toward atheistic totalitarianism, you couldn’t REALLY be a good Christian and be a democrat.  Simplistic, I know, but I was a kid and, for an embarrassingly long time, even into my adult years, I held on to that simplicity even if it was only in the back of my mind.  To paraphrase John Fischer, this was something that I wasn’t so much taught as something that I “caught”.

But, as I got older, cracks started to appear in the facade of “Righteous Capitalist America”.  The benefits of the sweeping, upper level tax cuts and the repealing of economy-shackling regulations that were supposed to “trickle down” to everyone never seemed to reach us.  Looking back, we were doing pretty well, but I remember mom and dad seeming to constantly worry about finances.  Costs of living kept going up while wages were stagnating for the middle and lower class.  As corporations merged into virtual (and sometimes literal) monopolies, I learned that Capitalism doesn’t guarantee competition.  It is “good business” to eliminate your competition from the viewpoint of a corporate overlord.  Thus an in-theory “free market” can become just as locked in and stagnant as any State run economy.  This made it easier for hard-working people to fall into financial trouble and cutting of social safety nets in the name of “fiscal responsibility” and “not encouraging freeloaders” made it harder and harder to climb out of that trouble.  And the continual gutting of public education only exacerbated matters.

I slowly grew away from the Republican Party, because, well, they weren’t living up to their hype.  Take the War on Drugs.  You’d think we’d have learned something from Prohibition.  Yeah, they “got tough” on drugs with the “three strikes you’re out” policy and militarizing the police to a fare-the-well.  All they actually did was explode the prison population and didn’t really make a significant dent in drug trafficking and use.  Drug use is the same between white and black people, but black people are disproportionately arrested and convicted which exacerbates the issue of poverty in that demographic as families lose providers and young people get a black mark on their records that will bar them from many opportunities for the rest of their lives.  At the same time, they advocated (and followed through) with cutting assistance programs for inner cities and other impoverished areas, making drug dealing one of the few available means for having an income that is above subsistence level…and the cycle continues.  (And, then in the last year, I learn that the War on Drugs was pretty much started by Nixon to target his political opponents:  i.e. liberals and African Americans.  And this isn’t “fake news”.  One of his aides confessed to this.)  Then there were the incessant wars overseas (granted with strong support from Democrats in many cases) which, in the long run, only seemed to exacerbate the problems they claimed to be solving.  There was also the outright hostility to science.  I admit, I was a climate change denier to begin with, but then the evidence finally piled up to a point where I couldn’t deny it any longer and remain intellectually honest with myself.  Also, the stifling of research into areas that might hurt their platform (for example, preventing the CDC from even starting to research gun violence/fatalities).  The party was gradually adopting a stance that facts should be discounted and ignored when they are inconvenient.  Then, to put the cherry on the top of this toxic sundae, there was the courtship of racism  When hordes of angry, white southerners left the Democratic party over the party changing to support the Civil Rights Movement, the Republican party tried to bring them into their fold to bolster their voter support.  It was subtle.  So very, very subtle at first.  The used “dogwhistles” instead of obviously racist statements and/or policies to let them know they’d be welcome.  And, as they took root in the “Party of Lincoln”, they started throwing their weight around becoming more and more openly racist.  It finally came to a head for me half-way through Obama’s first term, when Republicans flat out refused to even try to work with the President or the people across the aisle.  Their entire policy was “obstruct everything”.  The Republican party no longer represented my ideals…if it ever in fact did.  After that, I no longer considered myself Republican or conservative.  I was an independent with increasingly “leftist” leanings.

I still considered myself an Evangelical Christian but “cracks” were starting to appear there as well.  Evangelical Christianity was the vanguard of conservatism and the Republican Party.  They led the charge against the “moral erosion” of our society.  As I got older I and got to know more people outside of the Evangelical bubble, I became more and more uneasy.  Many of the things that were being railed against by Evangelicals and the Moral Majority were…simply applying the rights of the 1st Amendment to everyone.  Prayer in schools?  Unless you’re going to give a service for every religion represented in that school, it’s not fair to people who aren’t Christian.  And, even if you could do that, it singles out members of minority religions to be picked on (and, if you think minority religions wouldn’t be picked on in school, you haven’t been paying attention).  You can make it “all right” in the rules for people to abstain from the opening prayer, but see what I write before about minorities being picked on.  When I was in undergrad at Bryan College, there was a program where our students would go to the local grade school to teach bible lessons in their classes.  I’m pretty sure they only got away with it for as long as they did because Dayton, TN was pretty insular.  Looking back, I cringe at the idea.  Yeah, kids weren’t “required” to attend the lessons, but the lessons were held in each of the homerooms.  It would be painfully obvious if you left and…minorities being picked on, etcetera etcetera.  Gay marriage?  Folks, homosexuality isn’t forbidden in all religions (and certainly not in any atheist or agnostic creed I know).  If you’re going to have a religious/legal hybrid of an institution in the first place, you have to let it be applied across all faiths or lack thereof across the board to be in sync with the idea of Religious Freedom.  I kept hearing respected voices in the church rail against Islam and the stifling theocracies its followers created…but, from the way they talked about other issues, they seemed to be longing for a Christian version of Sharia law: a theocracy where the outward behavior of one sect of Christianity was enforced by the government.

Then there was Evangelical Christianity’s increasing lack of compassion for the poor in our country.  Oh, Evangelicals had tons of compassion (and open wallets) for poor people as long as they were overseas, but, if you were poor in America, you were out of luck.  The attitude seemed to be that it wasn’t the fault of people overseas if they were poor.  After all, they didn’t have all the advantages of living in America - the land of opportunity.  But poor people in the U.S.?   Well, if they can’t bootstrap themselves up like the American Dream says, it’s their fault.  They’re too lazy or irresponsible or “not right with God”.  I overheard or participated in many discussions about kids growing up expecting to draw a check like momma or single mothers having baby after baby just so they could get a bigger welfare check.  I’m sure that some people abuse the system.  Some people always find a way to abuse systems, but it became increasingly hard to believe that so many did that it negated the good such safety nets do.  I’ve gotten to meet and get to know some people who had come out of a background like that and they were nothing like the “entitled, lazy welfare-queen” of the stories.  At the worst, the poor became scapegoats for the failure of “trickle down” economics.  If those leeches weren’t being supported by the rest of us, we’d have much more money, or so went the logic.  I heard several people advocate for getting rid of the welfare system entirely and “let churches and private charities take over that job”.  The thing was, churches and private charities were around when these programs were set up.  If they were doing such a good job of it, government wouldn’t have had to start them.  Quite frankly, I didn’t see these advocates for private and church based welfare giving anywhere near enough to the local poor to make the governmental programs redundant.  And the racial component of this kept getting more and more pronounced.  The “welfare queens” were increasingly cast as black or Latina.  Stagnant wages were the fault of all those illegal immigrants who would take pennies for hours of work.  The lack of well paying jobs in your area was because they were given to less qualified minorities to meet “racial quotas”.

And, finally, there was the demonization of the “other”.  People who didn’t agree with us weren’t just mistaken.  They became “The Enemy”, and somehow Jesus’ admonition to “love your enemy” didn’t apply to them.  They weren’t to be listened to.  They weren’t even to be tolerated.  They were to be shouted down and attacked.  Grace?  Who has time for grace?!  There’s a war on, so get down to the battlefield and hold the line at all costs!  

Now, I hear you Evangelicals out there objecting to this.  “We’re not all like that!”  you say.  I know, but THIS is the public face of Evangelicalism.  “That’s not fair!” you say.  “The liberal media just focuses on that minority!”  Folks, I know that argument.  I’ve MADE that argument for years to my friends outside the Evangelical bubble.  Over and over again and, after a while, it began to ring increasingly hollow.  I could SEE what was going on inside Evangelical churches.  I could hear what my fellow Evangelical Christians were saying and “liberal slant” couldn’t excuse all of that.  And, quite frankly, this last election year was the nail in the coffin for me because Evangelical Christianity (mainly WHITE Evangelical Christianity) as a whole showed its true colors for all the world to see.  Evangelicals were a major help in putting a mysogynistic, bigoted, entitled bully in the White House.  Numbers vary, but the figures I find most likely are 58% for Evangelicals as a whole and 80% for white Evangelicals.  Let me say that again.  Of the people who identified as Evangelical who turned out for the 2016 Presidential Election, over half of them voted for Trump and a particular subset had over three quarters vote for the Orange Anti-Beatitude.  Even if a large population of the Evangelical community stayed home, that’s a pretty damning percentage and no amount of yelling that liberal media is doing a smear job can overcome it.  And Trump *still* has strong Evangelical support!  I could forgive what happened on election night if it wasn’t for the fact that the majority of white Evangelical Christians still seem to support him in spite of everything he’s done and all the lies he’s been caught out in.  Top Evangelical voices like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham still staunchly support him in spite of the fact that he is the opposite of what they’ve been saying a Christian leader should be for years and years.  And, you know what?  I don’t care why they’re doing so.  Because I’m out.

I am a Christian, and it is because of that that I can no longer consider myself an Evangelical.  There are no doubt pockets in the Evangelical movement that haven’t been corrupted, but, when the rot is THIS far spread, I don’t see how I can do otherwise.  If Jesus and the current Evangelical movement are in conflict, then I must go with Jesus.  A huge chunk of Evangelicalism has sold its birthright of grace for a mess of political pottage.  And, let me give you a word of warning, Evangelicals.  I came to Christ in the age of Billy Graham, a man of grace.  If my introduction to Christianity was Franklin Graham and his ilk, I’d have run far, far away.  There is far too little of Christ in the lives of these Christians.  Think about that.  If I was growing up and seeking truth in this day and age, I strongly suspect that I would reject Christianity due to the hateful behavior of His servants.  Think about all the young people who ARE looking for truth in this day and age…and how you’re driving them away.

[jeroldlockettus]

Why Is This Man Running for President? (Ep. 362)

Andrew Yang supports a universal basic income (a “Freedom Dividend”), the use of “social credits,” and a White House psychologist. (Photo: Stephen McCarthy/Collision)

In the American Dream sweepstakes, Andrew Yang was a pretty big winner. But for every winner, he came to realize, there are thousands upon thousands of losers — a “war on normal people,” he calls it. Here’s what he plans to do about it.

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

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Hey there. Hope your new year is off to a good start. Hope you haven’t broken all your resolutions yet. A couple quick announcements. First: next week, we’ll be resuming our “Hidden Side of Sports” series with a look at the mental side of sports. But also: in a couple months, we’ll be participating in the famous M.I.T. Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which means we’ll have access to some of the sharpest sports analysts, coaches and owners, and athletes in the world. So: we want your questions for them. Send us the sports questions you’ve always wanted answered, on any aspect of sport whatsoever — the weirder the question, the better. Our e-mail is radio@freakonomics.com. Thanks.

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Andrew Yang is not famous. Not yet, at least — maybe he will be someday. But let me tell you his story. He’s 44 years old; he was born in Schenectady, N.Y., a city long dominated by General Electric, the sort of company that had long dominated the American economy. But which, as you likely know, doesn’t anymore. Yang’s parents had both immigrated from Taiwan, and met in grad school. His mother became a systems administrator and his father did research at I.B.M.; he got his name on 69 patents. Their son Andrew studied economics and political science at Brown, got a law degree at Columbia, and ultimately became a successful entrepreneur, with a focus on widespread job creation. In the American Dream sweepstakes, Andrew Yang was a pretty big winner. But along the way, he came to see that for every winner, there were thousands upon thousands of losers.

The economist Joseph Schumpeter famously described capitalism as an act of “creative destruction” — with new ideas and technologies replacing the old, with nimble startup firms replacing outmoded legacy firms, all in service of a blanket rise in prosperity. The notion of creative destruction has for many decades been part of the economic orthodoxy. And it’s undeniable that global prosperity has risen, and not just a little bit. But Yang — like many others — has stopped believing in the economic orthodoxy of creative destruction. As he sees it, there’s just too much destruction; and the blanket rise in prosperity isn’t covering enough people. We’re living through what Yang calls “a war on normal people” — a war that Yang fears is getting uglier all the time. And that’s why he has taken to saying this:

Andrew YANG: I’m Andrew Yang, and I’m running for president as a Democrat in 2020.

Stephen DUBNER: I can think of a million things that you personally, Andrew Yang — with your resources and abilities and so on — could have done other than running for president of the United States. And yet that’s the one you’ve chosen. So why?

YANG: So imagine if you were the guy getting medals and awards for creating jobs around the country and realizing that the jobs are about to disappear in an historic way. And all of the solutions involve really a much more intelligent, activated government than you currently have. And I went around and talked to various people being like, “Hey guys, anyone going to solve the biggest problem in the history of the world?” And I could not identify anyone who was going to run and take it on.

DUBNER: So you put your hand up and said, “I guess I will?”

YANG: Yeah. I’m a parent like you are. I’ve got kids who are going to grow up in this country, and to me just believing that we’re going to leave them this shit-show that I think is coming and not doing something about it struck me as really pathetic.

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The conversation you’re about to read is in many ways a continuation of conversations we’ve had in multiple episodes over the years. Episodes like “Is the American Dream Really Dead?” and “Is the World Ready for a Guaranteed Basic Income?” Episodes like “Yes, the American Economy Is in a Funk — But Not for the Reasons You Think” and “Did China Eat America’s Jobs?” You may want to give those episodes a listen for a deeper look at the economics involved. But first: who exactly is Andrew Yang? Years ago, he worked as:

YANG: A knife salesman.

DUBNER: A knife salesman?

YANG: Oh yeah, Cutco, I still know the sales patter.

DUBNER: Let’s hear it.

YANG: What’s really dangerous is not a sharp knife. It’s a dull knife, because then you start putting elbow grease into, and that’s when accidents happen.

DUBNER: So here’s how I would thumbnail your story: immigrant kid, smart, got a good education, tried a few things in the labor force, including high-end lawyer, then some entrepreneurship, got involved with a company that was sold. So you cashed out, then took the nonprofit route to try to inspire other people to become entrepreneurs in places where there wasn’t a lot of drive for that already. And then during that process you got exposed to the way the economy was failing in large parts of America. But then instead of just saying, “Wow, that’s tough. But I got mine and I’m going to go back to my coast and lead my comfortable life, and for the people who are not leading this life — I wish them well, but I’m out of here,” you disrupted your life in order to do something about it.

YANG: As an entrepreneur, I feel driven to try and solve problems, and this seems like the greatest problem that we face. And you think, “Hey, if I bust my ass for several years, I have a chance to potentially accelerate the eradication of poverty and helping my country manage through the most difficult transition in decades. And I think if I put my heart and soul into it, I have some chance of making that happen.” And then if you don’t do that, you must be an asshole.

When he was 24, Yang landed a job in New York at Davis Polk, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world.

YANG: I was making $125,000 plus a bonus of maybe another $25,000 or so. And I have Asian parents, so they were quite pleased with this state of affairs. And I thought, “Wow, this is really lousy job.” When I was growing up as a kid playing Dungeons and Dragons, I didn’t dream about being the scribe. I dreamt about going in the woods and killing something, which did not help my parents feel any better about my decision to quit the firm.

So yes, he quit what many people might see as a dream job. He got involved in an internet startup that combined celebrity and charity.

YANG: So we called it stargiving.com. And we got Hootie and the Blowfish and MTV and Magic Johnson to donate meet-and-greets with themselves to their nonprofits.

The launch of StarGiving coincided with the bursting of the dot-com bubble; the firm lasted just five months.

YANG: I mean, I was a very sad 26-year-old who still owed $100,000 in law school loans and had parents still telling people I was a lawyer even though I was not. And I joined another startup, and I was very worried that it was also going to go under. So I started throwing parties on the side as a side hustle. And then I also started teaching the GMAT on the side for a friend’s company. So I had three jobs during that time.

The job that stuck was the GMAT teaching — GMAT being the standardized test you take to get into business school. The company was called Manhattan Prep and Yang ended up becoming its C.E.O.

YANG: That’s right. So I personally taught the analyst classes at McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley. And so imagine doing that for six, seven years and then seeing the country go to shit during the financial crisis. And then think, Well, I know why that is — because the smart kids have been becoming Wall Street bankers and management consultants while the rest of the country was getting hollowed out.

In 2009, Yang’s company was bought by the testing firm Kaplan, which was owned by the Washington Post Company.

YANG: We were acquired for low tens of millions. So I walked away with some number in the millions.

He soon left the Washington Post Company to start a non-profit called Venture for America, modeled on Teach for America.

YANG: Venture for America takes a recent college graduate, trains them with various business skills, and then sends them to work at a startup or an early-stage growth company in Detroit, New Orleans, Cleveland, Baltimore, a city that could use the talent. Then you work at that startup for two years, helping it grow. And at the end of two years if you want to start your own business, we have an accelerator and a seed fund to help you do so. It’s going to create 100,000 jobs around the country. We’ve helped create over 3,000 jobs to date, and dozens of our alums have started companies, some of which have now raised millions of dollars and generated millions in revenue.

DUBNER: So you said you hoped to create 100,000 jobs, and then you just said you’ve created 3,000 jobs, so that sounds like you’re a little short.

YANG: Well, create 100,000 by a certain date.

DUBNER: What’s the date?

YANG: So we had 2025 as our target date.

DUBNER: Okay.

YANG: So we would need algorithmic growth.

DUBNER: I gather what you learned about how the world worked outside of the coastal corridors and outside the Ivy League, and so on, was an awakening. Yes?

YANG: Yeah, it was for sure.

DUBNER: What was different in Detroit, in Pittsburgh, and elsewhere that you went, from what you imagined?

YANG: Well, so some of the structural force, and I’ll describe this — a company, it had a couple of very bright founders out of Brown University, and they got started in Providence. And the company starts to do well, hits its strides, doing a couple of million in revenue, and then an investor in Silicon Valley says, “Hey, you guys should come out here, and we’ll invest $10, $20 million in you. But you should really come here.” So then the guys say, “Well I guess we have to take that.” So that company goes from 100 employees in Providence, R.I., to zero employees.

DUBNER: And I can feel the mayor of Providence and the governor of Rhode Island thinking right now, “No, no, no, please don’t go.”

YANG: They were there. I mean the mayor — they were saying, “Please don’t go.” And the guys were like, “Well, you’ve got to do what’s right for your business.” And they went out to Silicon Valley and now the company has 100 employees in San Francisco. It becomes this really unfortunate dynamic that if you are an entrepreneur who’s succeeding in a place like Detroit or Providence or St. Louis, the goal is to get sucked up to the big leagues and wind up in San Francisco or Boston or New York.

DUBNER: But the other part is that what we used to think of as the backbone jobs of this country, the nature of that is changing really, really fast, due to technology and particularly automation. How much of that were you starting to see up close, and how surprising was that to you?

YANG: Yeah, so my thesis was that if you started a tech company in a place like Detroit that it would create additional jobs in that community that were not necessarily skilled jobs. But what I learned was that these companies, in order to be successful, did not need to hire huge numbers of people. That right now, the way businesses grow is that businesses grow lean and mean. They’re not going to hire the thousands of employees that industrial companies used to employ in a place like Detroit or Cleveland or St. Louis.

And it became clear to me that as much as I was excited about and proud of the work I was doing, it felt like I was pouring water into a bathtub that had a giant hole ripped in the bottom. Because we’re blasting away hundreds of thousands of retail jobs, call-center jobs, food-service jobs, eventually truck-driving jobs. And so my army of entrepreneurs, doing incredible work, starting companies that might employ 20, 30, 40 people, was not going to be a difference-maker in the context where that community was going to lose 20, 30, 40,000 retail jobs, call-center jobs, transportation jobs, etc. And I was horrified. I was flying back and forth being like, “What the hell are we doing? We are blasting communities to dust and then pretending like we’re not and pretending like it’s their fault, and pretending that somehow it’s unreasonable to be upset about your way of life getting destroyed.”

I had a wakeup call, a reckoning as you said. But then when Donald Trump became president in 2016 I was convinced that the reason why he won the presidency is that we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri. And we’re about to triple down on that by blasting away millions of retail jobs, call-center jobs, fast-food jobs, truck-driving jobs.

David AUTOR: I think if we had realized how traumatic the pace of change would have been, we would have at a minimum had much better policies in place to assist workers in communities that suffered these very severe and immediate consequences.

That’s the M.I.T. labor economist David Autor from our 2017 episode “Did China Eat America’s Jobs?”

AUTOR: And we might have tried to moderate the pace at which it occurred. And we also had a huge trade deficit and that meant we simply did a lot less manufacturing. So that meant that workers had to make a tougher transition out of manufacturing, into something altogether new. And I think that upped the challenge.

I think the other thing that we have to recognize, and that economists have tended not to emphasize, is that jobs aren’t purely income. They are part of identity. They structure people’s lives. They give them a purpose and a social community and a sense of relevance in the world. And I think that is a lot of the frustration that we see in manufacturing-intensive areas. And I think that that’s costly even beyond the direct financial costs.

It’s been tempting, especially from a political view, to blame all this job loss on global trade, immigrant labor, and offshoring. But Autor and most other economists agree that the much larger driver of job loss is technology and automation in particular.

YANG: So we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs.

Back to Andrew Yang.

YANG: This is like the auto-manufacturing plants, a lot of the even consumer-goods, like furniture manufacturing in North Carolina, a lot of that stuff has gotten automated away. Now, I studied economics. And according to my economics textbook, those displaced workers would get retrained, re-skilled, move for new opportunities, find higher productivity work, the economy would grow. So everyone wins. The market, invisible hand has done its thing.

So then I said, “Okay, what actually happened to these four million manufacturing workers?” And it turns out that almost half of them left the workforce and never worked again. And then half of those that left the workforce then filed for disability, where there are now more Americans on disability than work in construction, over 20 percent of working-age adults in some parts of the country.

DUBNER: So the former manufacturing workers, a lot of them are on disability a lot of them are also especially if they’re younger men, they’re spending 25–40 hours a week playing video games.

YANG: Yeah so it did not say in my textbook, half of them will leave the workforce never to be heard from again. Half of them will file for disability and then another significant percentage will start drinking themselves to death, start committing suicide at record level, get addicted to opiates to a point where now eight Americans die of opiates every hour.

So when you say, “Am I for automation and artificial intelligence and all these fantastic things?” of course I am. I mean, we might be able to do things like cure cancer or help manage climate change more effectively. But we also have to be real that it is going to displace millions of Americans. People are not infinitely adaptable or resilient or eager to become software engineers, or whatever ridiculous solution is being proposed. And it’s already tearing our country apart by the numbers, where our life expectancy has declined for the last two years because of a surge in suicides and drug overdoses around the country.

None of this was in my textbook. But if you look at it, that’s exactly what’s happening. The fantasists — and they are so lazy and it makes me so angry, because people who are otherwise educated literally wave their hands and are like, “Industrial Revolution, 120 years ago. Been through it before,” and, man, if someone came into your office and pitched you an investment in a company based on a fact pattern from 120 years ago, you’d freakin’ throw them out of your office so fast.

The Industrial Revolution is a textbook example of creative destruction. Old technologies giving way to new; the rising tide lifting all boats. But history doesn’t actually happen that smoothly …

YANG: If you look at the Industrial Revolution, there was massive social change. Labor unions were originated in 1886 to start protesting for rights. There were massive riots that led to dozens of deaths and caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage that led to Labor Day becoming a holiday. Universal high school got implemented in 1911 in response to all of these changes. And it was a tumultuous time. I mean there was a whiff of revolution the whole time. And according to Bain, this labor-force displacement, this time, the fourth Industrial Revolution, is going to be three to four times faster and more vicious than that Industrial Revolution was.

So even for those lazy-ass people who are just like, “We’ve been through this before, Industrial Revolution,” be like, “Well, the Industrial Revolution was hellacious and it’s going to be three to four times worse according to Bain, who presumably you respect because they’re good at figuring this stuff out.” I mean if you look at government-funded retraining programs, the efficacy level, according to independent studies, is between 0 and 15 percent. And only 10 percent of workers would even qualify for these programs anyway. So we’re talking about a solution that will apply to between 1 and 2 percent of displaced workers. And that’s the kind of lazy crap that people are putting out there as a solution.

DUBNER: So if a revolution happens, how does it start, and what’s it look like?

YANG: So to me the rubber hits the road with the truck drivers. I mean there are 3.5 million truck drivers in this country, only 13 percent of them are unionized. The odds of there being a collective negotiation are very low. Eighty-seven percent of them are part of small firms of let’s call it 20 to 30 truckers, and 10 percent of them own their own trucks.

So think about that. If you borrow tens of thousands of dollars to be your own boss and be an entrepreneur and then your truck cannot compete against a robot truck that never stops — the odds then of these truckers showing up at a state capitol saying, “Fuck this, let’s get 30 guys together with our trucks and our guns” and show up and protest the automation of their jobs. So we’re disintegrating by the numbers. You can see it in our political and social dysfunction. Expecting that disintegration process to be gentle would be ignoring history.

DUBNER: Well even though revolutions do happen and armed violent revolutions obviously have happened, most bold predictions turn out to be wildly wrong. And usually there’s a lot less deviance from the past than predictors predict. So what makes you think you’re not wrong on this one?

YANG: I don’t know thousands of truck drivers, but I do know some. And they do not strike me as the sort who will just shrug and say, “Okay, I guess that was a good run. I’m going to go home now and figure out what job is there for someone who’s a 50-year-old former truck driver.”

But you also are going to see call-center workers, fast-food workers, retail workers — I mean there are 8.8 million people working in retail in this country. The average retail worker is a 39-year-old woman with a high-school degree who makes $11 to $12 an hour. When 30 percent of malls close in the next four years, what is their next opportunity going to be? So we have to start being honest about what’s happening where the market does not care about unemployed cashiers or truck drivers or fast-food workers.

And the biggest issue to me is that we’re measuring economic value in a very narrow, archaic way. We invented G.D.P. almost 100 years ago during the Great Depression. The government’s looking around saying, “Things are going really badly, we need a number for this.” And then Simon Kuznets comes up with G.D.P. and says a few things: He says we should not use this as a measurement for national well-being because it’s really bad for that. We should include parenthood and motherhood in the calculation because it adds so much value. And we should not include national defense spending in the calculation because—

DUBNER: If I remember my history, all three of those were ignored then, yes?

YANG: Yes, yes, yes. We’re like, “That’s great, Simon.” And now it’s our end-all, be-all. My wife is at home with our two boys right now, one of whom is on the autism spectrum. And what is her work valued at?

DUBNER: I’m guessing $0.

YANG: Yeah, about $0. And I know that she’s working harder than I am and the work she is doing is more important.

DUBNER: So your wife doesn’t really factor into G.D.P. In fact, she’s probably kind of a drain on it really, right? Because she could be out there where there’s opportunity cost of her not working.

YANG: She might be able to be a management consultant somewhere and that would be a much more valuable use of her—

DUBNER: So management consultants and the finance industry, financial services, banking, real estate. You argue that many of the most remunerative occupations in America are rent-seeking activities. Rent-seeking as economists use it to describe, basically, extracting value from transactions without really adding value. And you argue that many of the most beneficial-for-society jobs — teaching, nurturing, caring, creating, etc. — are the least remunerative jobs. How can you rail against that disparity while also wanting to bask in the benefits of the capitalism that set up those incentives?

YANG: Capitalism is a wonderful, magical, powerful thing. But it optimizes for capital efficiency and capital gains above all else, really. And that worked well for a long time, because in order for capital efficiency, workers needed to benefit, the consumer economy needed to benefit, the middle class needed to benefit. It’s like Henry Ford and his, “How can my workers buy my car?” But we’re now at a point where Ford does not need those humans to build that car and they can have markets all over the place and don’t really care what’s going on in their own backyard.

There are just these big changes afoot, and the question is how we’re going to manage them as a country. And that’s what I’m trying to answer. That’s why I’m running for president.

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Until recently, Andrew Yang was running Venture for America, a non-profit that tries to persuade young, would-be Wall Streeters to launch startups in places like Cleveland, Baltimore, Detroit, and St. Louis. In 2014, he published a book about this effort; it was called Smart People Should Build Things. While the book pointed out the need for a dramatic overhaul of the American economy, it was for the most part an optimistic book. Last year, Yang published another book, called The War on Normal People, and it is not remotely optimistic. He argues that the American economy has failed most Americans, and that the American political class has failed them again by refusing to focus on the underlying fault lines in the economy.

This collapse in Andrew Yang’s optimism is what led him to run for President. He’s already been to Iowa and New Hampshire several times but, let’s be honest: he’s a very long shot in what’s expected to be a very crowded field. Let’s use Twitter followers as a proxy for the viability of some other possible Democratic candidates. Joe Biden has 3 million followers; Cory Booker, 4 million; Elizabeth Warren, 4.7 million; Bernie Sanders, 9 million. Mike Bloomberg has 2 million Twitter followers and over 40 billion dollars. Andrew Yang, meanwhile, has raised about $600,000, and has roughly 27,000 Twitter followers. But he also has ideas that he thinks will compensate. There’s one idea in particular that he’s banking on.

YANG: My first big policy is the freedom dividend, a policy where every American adult between the ages of 18 and 64 gets $1,000 a month, free and clear, no questions asked.

DUBNER: So the freedom dividend is your phrase for what most of us know as a universal basic income, yes?

YANG: It’s a rebrand of “universal basic income” because it tests much better with Americans with the word “freedom” in it.

DUBNER: Right, as nomenclature. The idea is the same.

YANG: So “universal basic income” tests great with about half the country. And then the other half of the country do not like it.

DUBNER: Because…

YANG: Because there’s—

DUBNER: It’s got welfare connotations?

YANG: Something along those lines. We tested a bunch of names and then when you had the word “freedom” in it, then all of a sudden testing shot up among self-identified conservatives. They hated “universal basic income,” hated “prosperity dividend,” all of a sudden “freedom dividend” is like “ding ding ding!”

DUBNER: What about progressives, liberals, Democrats?

YANG: Progressives, liberals, Democrats liked it no matter what the name was.

DUBNER: What were some of the other names that didn’t work?

YANG: “Citizens’ dividend,” “future dividend,” “prosperity dividend.” We had a lot of dividends.

DUBNER: I think of a dividend as a payout on an investment. What does it mean in this case?

YANG: Well, it’s a payout to ownership and we are the owners and shareholders of this, the most wealthy and advanced society in the history of the world. So this is a dividend for us. And there’s nothing stopping a majority of shareholders, a majority of citizens, from voting themselves a dividend. It’s been law in Alaska and it’s wildly popular in a deeply conservative state, where a Republican governor said, “Hey, who would you rather get the oil money: the government, who’s just going to screw it up, or you, the people of Alaska?” And the people of Alaska now love it, wildly popular, has created thousands of jobs, has improved children’s health and nutrition, has lowered income inequality, and it’s untouchable through many different regimes.

DUBNER: The Alaska dividend comes from oil revenues from the state, whereas the freedom dividend that would go to every person in the U.S. would be funded how?

YANG: So the headline cost of this is $2.4 trillion, which sounds like an awful lot. For reference, the economy is $19 trillion, up $4 trillion in the last 10 years. And the federal budget is $4 trillion. So $2.4 trillion seems like an awfully big slug of money. But if you break it down, the first big thing is to implement a value-added tax, which would harvest the gains from artificial intelligence and big data from the big tech companies that are going to benefit from it the most.

So we have to look at what’s happening big-picture, where who are going to be the winners from A.I. and big data and self-driving cars and trucks? It’s going to be the trillion-dollar tech companies. Amazon, Apple, Google. So the big trap we’re in right now is that as these technologies take off, the public will see very little in the way of new tax gains from it. Because if you look at these big tech companies — Amazon’s trick is to say, “Didn’t make any money this quarter, no taxes necessary.” Google’s trick is to say, “It all went through Ireland, nothing to see here.” Even as these companies and the new technologies soak up more and more value and more and more work, the public is going to go into increasing distress.

So what we need to do is we need to join every other industrialized country in the world and pass a value-added tax which would give the public a slice, a sliver of every Amazon transaction, every Google search. And because our economy is so vast now at $19 trillion, a value-added tax at even half the European level would generate about $800 billion in value.

Now, the second source of money is that right now we spend almost $800 billion on welfare programs. And many people are receiving more than $1,000 in current benefits. So, we’re going to leave all the programs alone. But if you think $1,000 cash would be better than what you’re currently receiving, then you can opt in and your current benefits disappear. So that reduces the cost of the freedom dividend by between $500 and $600 billion.

The great parts are the third and fourth part. So if you put $1,000 a month into the hands of American adults who — right now, 57 percent of Americans can’t pay an unexpected $500 bill — they’re going to spend that $1,000 in their community on car repairs, tutoring for their kids, the occasional night out. It’s going to go directly into the consumer economy. If you grow the consumer economy by 12 percent, we get $500 billion in new tax revenue.

And then the last $500 billion or so we get through a combination of cost savings on incarceration, homelessness services, health care. Because right now we’re spending about $1 trillion on people showing up in emergency rooms and hitting our institutions. So we have to do what good companies do, which is invest in our people.

DUBNER: So what persuades you that that number, $2.4 trillion, could even be close to justified through the menu of savings that you just described? I guess more broadly, why should someone believe that this Democratic-inspired version of higher taxes — or new taxes, with a V.A.T. — and more income redistribution, why should someone believe that any more than Democrats disbelieve the Republicans’ idea of lower taxes and trickle-down economics?

YANG: Oh man. I mean, if you put $1,000 into the hands of a struggling American, it’s going to make a much bigger difference not just to that person but it’s also going to go back into the economy. If you give a wealthy person $1,000 they wouldn’t even notice. You could just slap it into their account and it would be a non-event. Everyone knows that putting money into the hands of people that would actually use it is going to be much more effective at strengthening our economy and society.

DUBNER: One easy argument against a U.B.I. is that if you give everyone a dividend like you’re proposing, $1,000 a month per person, all that new money in the economy will cause the kind of inflation that will render that $1,000 much less powerful. What’s your argument against that?

YANG: Yeah, so I looked into the causes of inflation that are making Americans miserable right now, and they are not in consumer goods like media or clothing or electronics.

DUBNER: Those are all still getting much cheaper.

YANG: Yeah, and a lot of that is being made more efficient by technology and supply chains and everything else. The three things that are making Americans miserable in terms of inflation are housing, education, and health care. And each of those is being driven by something other than purchasing power.

Housing is being driven by the fact in some markets people feel like they need to live in let’s say New York or Seattle or San Francisco to be able to access certain opportunities and then there’s not much flexibility in terms of their ability to commute like a long distance. Education, it’s because college has very sadly gotten two-and-a-half times more expensive even though it has not gotten two-and-a-half times better. And then the third is health care, which is dysfunctional because of a broken set of incentives and the fact that individuals aren’t really paying in a marketplace.

So if you put $1,000 into the hands of Americans, it’s actually going to help them manage those expenses much better. But it’s not going to cause prices to skyrocket, because you can’t have every vendor colluding with every other vendor to raise prices. And there’s still going to be price sensitivity among every consumer and competition between firms.

AUTOR: I think people should have a guaranteed minimum income.

That, again, is the M.I.T. economist David Autor.

AUTOR: Essentially, our system of income distribution is primarily based on the scarcity of labor, right, the most valuable asset you own is your human capital. And if all of a sudden, there was a machine that could do exactly what you did it wouldn’t be clear what skills would you sell to the market.

The idea of a universal basic income has been around for a long time, and you might be surprised by the political diversity of its supporters. In the 18th century, founding father Thomas Paine argued for a universal payout, representing our collective share of America’s natural resources. In the 20th century, the economist Milton Friedman pushed for a different version, called a negative income tax. Then and now, there is a common objection:

Evelyn FORGET: If you give people money for nothing, why won’t they just quit their jobs?

The economist Evelyn Forget studied the effects of a small Canadian experiment that paid out a universal income. Her finding?

FORGET: The finding was that primary earners really don’t reduce the number of hours they work very much when you offer a guaranteed annual income.

YANG: A neuroscientist in Seattle said something to me that really stuck with me. He said, “The enemy of universal basic income is the human mind.” And what he meant by that is that people are programmed for resource scarcity. They think, “Hey, there is not enough to go around. If you get it, I don’t get it. And then if we all get it, it’s somehow going to harm us.” And that’s what we have to overcome. We have to overcome this knee-jerk sense of scarcity that is baked into, in many ways, the way we’re trained to perceive value in money.

So that’s big policy No. 1.

Alright, and what’s big policy No. 2 for would-be President Yang?

YANG: No. 2 is digital social credits.

Which are what?

YANG: Digital social credits are a new way to reward behaviors that we need more of in society. So right now, the monetary market does not recognize things that we know are crucial to humanity, like caregiving and raising children, volunteering in the community, arts and creativity, journalism, environmental sustainability. We’re getting less and less of those things because the market does not care about them. What I’m proposing is we create a new currency that then maps to various activities that we want to see more of.

DUBNER: Give me a for instance of how it would work. Let’s pretend that I am a 58-year-old laid-off carpenter. Maybe you, President Yang, are already giving me a freedom dividend, which I appreciate. So talk to me about what digital social credits would do for me and how it would actually work.

YANG: Right. So you get a message on your phone saying, “Hey, a neighbor has had a shelf break and they could use some help repairing it.” And then you click on your phone and say, “Yeah, I’ll do that.” Then you drive over, repair the shelf, and then the person thanks you, gives you a hug. Takes a picture of it. And then you then get this digital social credit. Let’s say call it 300 points. So you have these 300 points and you’re like, “Okay that’s good.”

And then you get another ping, it’s saying, “Hey, your neighbor needs a ride and they don’t have a vehicle,” and you do. So you give them a ride and then you get some more points and then at the end of the week you say, “You know what, if I go to Cabela’s, I can trade those points for hunting gear or camping gear. I could use it to go to the local ballgame.”

DUBNER: Okay. And then the vendors who are giving their goods or services to you for those social credits, what did they do with the social credits?

YANG: They can take the social credits and go to the government and then the government can exchange it for money.

DUBNER: And what’s funding the money for the social credits from the vendors?

YANG: So,  the U.S. government would be backing it, or foundations or various companies, because if you are a company you respond to this. I mean you’d enjoy the heck out of it and it would drive business to your establishments. But the great thing about this is you could induce hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of social activity at a small fraction of the cost. Because right now if I have 100,000 American Express points, how much does that cost American Express?

DUBNER: A thousand dollars maybe?

YANG: Zero, because I haven’t done anything with it yet. Before I redeem it, it costs them nothing, but I love my points. I look at them. They seem to have value. I could trade them in whenever I want. What you’d see is you’d end up building up a parallel economy around people doing things for each other. This is based on a practice called time banking that’s in effect in hundreds of communities around the country.

DUBNER: Time banking is one of these ideas that’s been around for a while now, and it’s met with some success in some places, but it’s certainly never been scaled up the way that you’re talking about. What makes you think that it’s attractive enough for enough people to want to use it and that it is ultimately scalable?

YANG: Time banking holds that everyone’s time has intrinsic value and that if I do something for you for an hour, I then get a time credit that I can then give to someone else to do something for me for an hour. And everyone can do something — watch your kids or walk your dog or move some trash or whatever the task happens to be.

So the obstacle to more widespread adoption of time banking has been the administration, because you need a person in each community who is tabulating and keeping track of transactions. And now with technology—

DUBNER: This sounds like a job for the blockchain.

YANG: Yes, you could have a public ledger on the blockchain. You could make this happen much, much more easily, much more cost-effectively. And there are people I’m happy to say who were working on technical solutions for this.

People like this:

Anitha BEBERG: My name is Anitha Beberg and I am the C.E.O. of Seva Exchange Corporation, which is an A.I. and blockchain startup that’s reinventing volunteerism using time banking.

The chairman of Seva is Edgar Cahn, who helped launch the modern concept of time banking and wrote a book about it, called No More Throw-Away People.

BEBERG: He came up with this in 1980, when he was actually given a diagnosis after having a heart attack at 46. And he was only given two years to live and maybe two hours a day to do anything. So what he was thinking about was, Hmm, what can I do in this world to still be useful? So he came up with the idea of time banking, where you give an hour of your time within a community and you’ll receive a credit of that hour, redeemable for something you need. So it’s a give-and-take system rather than a one-way volunteering.

Edgar Cahn obviously lived on, and so has time banking. It exists in a few dozen countries, usually at quite small scale; one of the larger exchanges, similar to what Andrew Yang is proposing, is a British organization called Tempo. It found that nearly 60 percent of its participants had rarely or never volunteered before. Beberg’s time-banking group, meanwhile, Seva Exchange Corporation…

BEBERG: Seva actually means volunteer in Sanskrit or service, to serve.

The Seva app is a spinoff of Timebanks.org.

BEBERG: What we’re doing is trying to create the largest volunteer exchange network.

How would it work?

BEBERG: We offer powerful motivators to retain volunteers.

Motivators like gamification.

BEBERG: It’s a lot more exciting to run up a score and earn badges especially if you’re doing good.

Also: skills-matching.

BEBERG: Whatever you’re passionate about or you’re highly skilled at and willing to offer, you get matched to the critical needs of either an organization or a person.

And rewards, via the blockchain.

BEBERG: Our digital social credits is called Seva coins. And they will be redeemable for more time. Or you can donate them. We’re also working with colleges for loan forgiveness and micro-scholarships for students.

Beberg and Seva have gotten some pushback from religious institutions.

BEBERG: They’ve said, “Oh, we volunteer for the sake of volunteering.” And I said, “That’s wonderful. The more people like that, the better, because now they can just donate those to an institution in need or give it back to the church for hours.” So every hour you give, another hour can go to someone else in need.

Those are the micro components of how Seva’s digital social credits would work. But it’s the macro view that makes this idea particularly attractive to a would-be politician like Andrew Yang.

BEBERG: We’re redefining work. So there are some forms of work that money will not easily pay for building strong families, revitalizing neighborhoods, making democracy work, advancing social justice. Time credits were specifically designed to reward, recognize, and honor that work that most people never valued before or felt valued for.

Andrew Yang believes that injecting all that undervalued work into the “real economy,” would solve a couple problems at once: it would give people access to more of the goods and services they need and can’t afford; and it’d boost morale by revaluing skills that the market no longer values.

YANG: Yeah, that’s right.

DUBNER: I don’t mean to be a skeptic or a cynic, but what makes you think that the best overseer of a big scaled-up time banking or digital social currency is the government itself?

YANG: I don’t think so. I mean one thing I’ll say, to quote my friend Andy Stern: the government is terrible at most things but it is excellent at sending large numbers of checks to large numbers of people promptly and reliably. The government would not be administering this at all. The best the government would be doing would be allocating social credits to various communities, who could then have the credits flow through nonprofits and NGOs and organizations that are closer to the ground that could administer it more effectively.

DUBNER: But ultimately, when all those vendors want to take in their DSCs, their digital social currency coins, whatever, and cash them in for real cash, it’s the government they’re coming to, it’s the Treasury they’re coming to, yes?

YANG: Yeah, yeah. So there is a government budget allocation. But the government budget allocation would be essentially proportional to population and then each community would be doing different things with it. Because something that would be effective in Mississippi would not be necessary in Montana or Missouri.

So digital social credits and a universal basic income, these are Andrew Yang’s two most prominent proposals in his Presidential campaign. There are, of course, many others, most of which align with a standard Democratic platform. You can see them all at Yang2020.com. I’d asked him his most outlandish position.

YANG: We should have a psychologist in the White House that’s looking in on the mental health of the executive branch, because it doesn’t make any sense to me to have that much power and responsibility without some sort of mental-health professional monitoring.

DUBNER: Did you have this idea before the current presidency?

YANG: I always thought so. I mean, my brother’s a psychology professor. I think it would also help destigmatize mental-health issues and anxiety and depression around the country, and just say, “Look, we all have struggles.” That includes people at the top of the government.

Another thing I think is really important is that right now we expect people to be sort of martyrs if they enter into government service, and then they turn around and become lobbyists to make a lot of money. We need to take advantage of the fact that the government can pay much, much more, and then just require people to not go back to industry afterwards. Because if you’re a human being and your stint is going to end in two or three years, you don’t want to be too harsh on the companies that could end up paying you and giving you lots of money later.

DUBNER: So you’re arguing for a $4 million salary for the U.S. president.

YANG: Yeah, because it’s true for presidents too. I mean, if you’re going to get paid a quarter of a million by some company after you leave office just to show up and schmooze and give a speech, then human nature is like, “Maybe I shouldn’t be too harsh on this company.” And I’ll say, this raise can go into effect for the president after me. I do not give a shit how much I get paid. But the president after me should get paid enough so that we know that they’re just looking out for us and not going to just speech it up afterwards.

DUBNER: You happen to be the Democratic-entrepreneur-as-would-be-President who happens to be running after the successful campaign of a Republican-entrepreneur-as-President who a lot of people agree, his entrepreneurship and CEO-ship have not contributed to a stable presidency or to a business-like presidency, etc. Does that not strike you as potentially terrible timing?

YANG: Well, the reason why Donald Trump in my mind won — aside from the fact that we’ve blasted away all these manufacturing jobs — is that many Americans are desperate for some kind of change agent. And if you look at it, there has been a thirst for that not just with Donald Trump but with Bernie Sanders’s outsized success, even to some extent with Barack Obama winning in ‘08, where the citizens of the United States have been casting about for some kind of change because they know that our government is failing us.

Donald Trump is a terrible president because he’s a terrible president. He’s not necessarily a terrible president because he was not steeped in our government for decades. And genuine entrepreneurs like myself regard Donald Trump as a bullshit marketing charlatan. So he gives us all a bad name. And the goal is to show what real builders and entrepreneurs would do to solve some problems.

DUBNER: If you were a bookmaker, what are the odds that you’re laying off for Andrew Yang winning the presidency in 2020?

YANG: I think the latest odds I saw were like 200-to-1.

DUBNER: Let’s pretend for just a second that you don’t win the presidency. But that you do impress a lot of people with your energy and ideas and vision. And you are invited to run as V.P. on the Democratic ticket.

YANG: One of the fun things about running for president is you spend time with other candidates on the trail. I have some ideas, but my vision is that there is a set of patriots that are all heading to D.C. to try and save this country. I plan to be in that group. And if it’s as president, fantastic, if it’s as vice president, also fantastic.

I just want to solve problems, man. I don’t really care about the seating chart. And someone said to me, “Hey, what if Joe Biden takes all your ideas?” I would say that’s fan-freaking-tastic. I’m not some freaking crazy person who has been measuring the drapes since I was 16 or any of that jazz. I just want to keep this country together for your kids and mine.

*      *      *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Harry Huggins. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Alvin Melathe, and Zack Lapinski. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Anitha Beberg, c.e.o. of Seva Exchange.

Evelyn Forget, economist at the University of Manitoba.

Andrew Yang, entrepreneur and Democratic candidate for president.

RESOURCES

“Labor 2030: The Collision of Demographics, Automation and Inequality,” Karen Harris, Austin Kimson and Andrew Schwedel, Bain & Company (February 2018). 

No More Throw-Away People by Edgar Cahn (Essential Books 2004).

Smart People Should Build Things by Andrew Yang (HarperBusiness 2014).

The War on Normal People by Andrew Yang (Hachette Books 2018).

The post Why Is This Man Running for President? (Ep. 362) appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/andrew-yang/

[viralhottopics]

A human rights activist, a secret prison and a tale from Xi Jinping’s new China

Peter Dahlin spent 23 days in a black prison in Beijing, where he says he was deprived of sleep and questioned with a communication enhancement machine. Here he tells the story of his incarceration and expulsion from the Peoples Republic

Some nights Peter Dahlin says he tucks a big-ass knife under his bed in case intruders come for him as he dozes; others he cannot sleep at all.

Theyve kidnapped people several times here before, says the 36-year-old Swedish human rights activist, chain-smoking Marlboro cigarettes as he remembers the 23 days he spent in secret detention in China.

It has been a year since Dahlin became one of the first foreign victims of President Xi Jinpings war on dissent.

On 3 January 2016 Chinese security agents encircled the activists Beijing home and spirited him and his Chinese girlfriend, Pan Jinling, off to a covert interrogation centre he now calls The Residence.

Months have now passed but the memories of that spell in custody have proved hard to shake. These facilities are built to break you, the campaigner says during a seven-hour interview at a home in Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand where he and Pan have lived since he was deported from China amid one of the most severe crackdowns in decades.

The story of Peter Dahlin, told here in unprecedented detail, offers a rare and troubling snapshot of Xi Jinpings China, where an unforgiving offensive against civil society is now unfolding.

Peter Dahlin speaks on camera in a still from video released by China Central Television. Photograph: AP

In the four years since Xi became Chinas top leader in November 2012, feminist campaigners, journalists, academics, bloggers, publishers, human rights lawyers and even foreign non-governmental organisation workers such as Dahlin have all been targeted in what experts suspect is a coordinated Communist party push to prevent the development of organised opposition to the regime.

The political situation, which some call the most dire since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, has deteriorated so fast under the current leadership that one scholar claims Xi has built the perfect dictatorship an ever-more repressive system that nevertheless avoids major international censure.

During his stint behind bars the Swedish activist says he was given a firsthand taste of the harshness with which that battle for control is being waged.

He claims he was blindfolded and confined to a cell with expressionless guards who refused to engage in conversation but noted down his every move; was for days deprived of access to his embassy, the right to exercise or even to sunlight; was forced to endure exhausting late-night interrogation sessions conducted by hectoring inquisitors determined to paint him as a spy; subjected to a lie-detection machine intended to extract information about his work; and suffered periods of sleep deprivation that he believes were intended to weaken his resolve.

Dahlin, who until his detention had run a Beijing-based rights organisation called the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group or China Action, said during the seven years he lived and worked as an activist in China friends and diplomats had always considered him an optimist about the countrys future.

Those illusions have been shattered by the things he witnessed in the lead-up to his incarceration at The Residence.

For the first time I am not optimistic any more, he says. This is how China will operate for the next 20 years. Now its a new hard line.

The underground activist

Peter Dahlin arrived in China from his native Sweden in the summer of 2004, a 23-year-old political science graduate keen for a taste of the world outside a lecture theatre.

I was just there to backpack and learn, recalls Dahlin, whose travels took him through Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen, the south-eastern port where Xi served as vice-mayor in the 1980s.

Three years later he returned, throwing himself into human rights work alongside Hou Wenzhou, a Chinese activist he had met online.

Dahlins first project was a report denouncing the existence of an illegal nationwide network of secret detention facilities called black jails. It identified eight such prisons in Beijing.

About the same time Dahlin met Wang Quanzhang, a crusading civil rights lawyer known for his defence of Chinas downtrodden and outspoken criticism of the government. Together, in 2009, they founded China Action, a non-profit advocacy group dedicated to supporting human rights defenders in the one-party state.

Increasingly draconian laws make it effectively impossible for such non-governmental rights organisations to operate legally in mainland China. Instead the pair registered their group as a company in Hong Kong and decided they would strive to operate in the shadows so as to avoid attracting attention.

I decided we had a shot at doing something quite special, Dahlin says of the groups creation. The Swedish activist says he was partly driven by middle-class guilt but also a conviction that people should be the masters of their own destinies.

Ive never been particularly political, he says. Ive never paid attention to Tibet and these issues very much. I just believe in the idea of self-determination.

Whether it is Scottish people, the Catalan people, the Tibetan people or even just a village somewhere in China; that the people there should be the ones that have an influence, whether it is by forming an organisation, a labour union, their own media, whatever.

Guided by those beliefs, Dahlin set about building China Action into a small but potent force for social change.

With grants from institutions that included the European Union, the National Endowment For Democracy and the Norwegian Human Rights Fund it ran training sessions for human rights lawyers and investigative journalists and offered support to young Chinese campaigners traumatised by run-ins with the security services.

Just as China Action was ramping up its operations, however, the human rights situation in China took a turn for the worse.

The crackdown begins

Many accuse Xi of initiating the current chill but some trace it back to around 2008 when anti-government protests rocked Tibet just as China was preparing to host the Summer Olympics.

Deadly riots the following year in Chinas far west left authorities even more convinced that it was time to step up their controls over society.

In Beijing Dahlin sought to fly under the radar, moving into a one-bedroom studio hidden in the alleys around the 13th century Drum Tower and disguising his trueline of work with a series of legends.

He told some he was the son of a wealthy Swedish businessman who was in China researching the electric bicycle industry; to others he introduced himself as a legal researcher or expat English teacher, just to see the way the conversation dies.

Even my close friends didnt know about my work, he says. They knew I did something to do with an NGO and human rights but that is about it. I always operated with a cover.

A self-professed history geek, Dahlin adopted the surname Beckenridge an allusion to John C Breckinridge, the vice-president of the Confederate states but he maintained his first name. Any effective cover story has to have 90% truth and then 10% misleading you always keep your first name to avoid mistakes.

For a while the subterfuge paid off. Dahlins visas were renewed by public security authorities, despite the fact that his human rights work was officially illegal, and he sensed that police were happy monitoring the group from afar.

Were not a political organisation, he says by way of explanation for why his group was able to keep operating for so long. We dont deal with democracy issues.

President Xi Jinping: turned his country into a controlocracy. Photograph: Petr David Josek/AP

But by 2013, the year Xi became president, the climate had begun to change. First came a sweeping crackdown on Chinas already tightly controlled internet; outspoken bloggers were detained and publicly humiliated in an attemp to curb the wanton defamation of the Communist party.

Next came the obliteration of the New Citizens Movement, a collective of liberal scholars and activists who had been pushing for moderate social and political change. The groups leader, a respected lawyer called Xu Zhiyong, was jailed for four years. Another prominent member fled into exile in the US.

It was the start of what many describe as a concerted clampdown on civil society designed to extinguish organised opposition to Beijing at a time when Chinas fading economic boom threatened to undermine its political legitimacy.

Stein Ringen, a political scientist whose new book, The Perfect Dictatorship, examines the dramatic political tightening, said he believed that after a period of steely and foresightful analysis, Chinas top leaders had concluded they must tighten their grip over the population now that the era of mega-economic growth was over.

There is an absolute determination that the regime will persist and continue. That is number one for everything: the perpetuation of the regime.

Ringen, an emeritus professor at Oxford University, said that in just a few years Xi had turned his country into a controlocracy where an ingenious mix of hard and soft measures were used to ensure the partys rule went unchallenged.

It is so smooth that in some respects it doesnt even look dictatorial, he said. Most dictatorships are very clumsy, raw, inelegant. But this one isnt. They have it sussed.

The arrest

As Xis crackdown unfolded up and down the country, agents from Chinas ministry of state security, a mysterious spy agency tasked with snuffing out political threats to the party, began to move against Dahlins group, trying to recruit his assistant as a mole.

We were well aware that from at least 2013 state security and not just police were actively monitoring us, he says.

Dahlin began taking extra precautions, memorising the night flights out of Beijing and filling a brown leather satchel with bundles of cash, hard drives, documents, a change of clothes and his passport.

In the summer of 2015 the situation deteriorated further still. A sweeping police offensive against Chinese human rights lawyers the so-called 709 crackdown began, sucking in a very large number of people directly linked to China Action, including Dahlins friend and partner Wang, who was seized near the eastern city of Jinan on 3 August.

With those detentions Dahlin sensed the noose was tightening. Maybe there will be no more China,he remembers thinking.

Then on 3 January 2016 the end came. At about 2pm Dahlin realised China Action was under intense scrutiny when a Chinese associate reported being summoned to meet security officials who had grilled him about a Swedish man named Peter.

Shortly before 4pm the Swede sat down at his computer and began to type an email to a group of close colleagues with the subject line: Situation.

There now seems to be an active investigation, he wrote, adding that he planned to flee the country and might not return to China if things get bad.

Clear all papers, USBs, computers, phones, pads etc, Dahlin instructed his workmates. These things need to be done ASAP.

Dahlin spent the afternoon tying up loose ends: shredding documents, saying goodbye to his girlfriend Pan, and taking care of the couples cats, Poopi and Dou Gonggong.

He booked a seat on a 3am Cathay Pacific Flight to Hong Kong and from there planned to take another flight to Thailand.

The arrest of Peter Dahlin, as described to the Chiang Mai-based Mexican-American artist Nicolas Luna Fleck

But at 9.45pm just hours before he had planned to set off for the airport there was a loud bang on the door.

Are you Peter Dahlin? said one of the uniformed agents packing the alleyway outside. Well, yeah, the activist replied.

The Residence

About 15 miles south of Dahlins hutong home, not far from Beijings Nanyuan military airbase, is a drab, four-storey office block used for the interrogation of those deemed enemies of the Chinese state. Basically, it is a secret prison, says Dahlin.

In the early hours of Monday 4 January a convoy of police vehicles pulled up in the ground-floor garage of the U-shaped installation. Blindfolded, the activist was led out of one of the cars, into a lift and then along a corridor into a second-floor interrogation room.

You sort of just freeze It was sort of expected but still you realise that this could end badly or this could end very badly.

Dahlins first interrogation began about 2am that winter morning, as temperatures outside The Residence plunged to six degrees below zero.

Two male inquisitors sat opposite the prisoner, who says he was seated in a hard wooden tiger chair with leg shackles that were left splayed out on the floor. Metals bars crisscrossed the rooms only window.

The initial questioning was less intimidating than the surroundings might have suggested. It started fairly innocuously. They were just trying to get a sense of me. Who am I? What am I doing in China? Very basic questioning.

Dahlins ties to three persons of interest seemed of particular concern: the human rights lawyer Wang; Xing Qingxian, an activist from south-west China; and Su Changlan, a womens rights campaigner who had been detained months earlier for offering online support to Hong Kongs 2014 pro-democracy protests.

But it was a gentle introduction to life in The Residence for the sleep-deprived activist: three hours later, about 5am, the session was terminated and he was led into a rectangular cell across the corridor with beige padded walls and two small windows that were also covered by metal bars. Thick blackout curtains made it impossible to tell the time of day; three fluorescent lamps hung from the ceiling, including one directly above the bed. Even the toilet seat was suicide-padded, Dahlin recalls.

Also inside were two guards, part of a team that remained there and watched over Dahlin 24 hours a day and recorded every move or sound he made in a notebook but never uttered a word.

They would often stand up and go and stand and look when you take a piss, you take a shit, you take a shower. Its a bit odd, Dahlin says, adding with a laugh: Luckily Im Swedish and Sweden has a rather relaxed idea of nudity.

The following days were a blur of interrogations. They made it clear that they had followed me, surveilled me intently for a while and were well aware, they said, of what I had been doing.

Dahlin claims his captors demanded a map of who his group had been working with and became very, very angry after he refused to talk unless he was allowed to see officials from the Swedish embassy.

The activist says his interrogators then refused to let him sleep until he offered them detailed information and only relented after he protested to the centres boss a woman who gave her name as Mrs Zhang that his treatment violated the UN convention against torture, which China ratified in 1988.

She was very upset, Dahlin says of her reaction. And went on about how nicely Im being treated.

Eventually he was allowed to sleep.

As the questioning sessions continued, often lasting up to six hours at a time, Dahlin, who correctly suspected that Pan and several colleagues were also being detained in the facility, decided his best option was to avoid incriminating others by painting the officers a big picture with nothing in it.

But the interrogators hit back, telling the activist his friends and colleagues were turning against him. This is your only chance, they said. They are blaming everything on you. If you dont strike back it is over for you.

Dahlin says he held firm, telling his captors China should be proud of its human rights lawyers and flatly rejecting repeated demands for him to surrender information about them or passwords for email accounts and encrypted hard drives that had been seized from his home.

As night fell on the covert prison, unnerving sounds found their way into the activists cell from other parts of The Residence, which Dahlin estimated had been built to house about eight prisoners. I could hear raised voices. I could hear muffled sounds of what I assumed would be someone slammed against the wall and floor.

I was quite prepared that there was going to be six months of this. That was my timeframe. I was counting the days in my head.

As Dahlin floundered in the secret jail the world outside went on. Exactly one week after he was seized, on 10 January, David Bowie died in his New York flat, news the Swedish activist only received after his release.

Two days later, on 12 January, the first reports of Dahlins detention began to emerge in the international media. Having initially denied knowledge of the activists disappearance, the Chinese government now admitted coercive measures had been taken against him.

Three days later, on 15 January, a state-run newspaper published an editorial accusing the activist of funding radical political activists who were seeking confrontation with the Communist party.

Friends and relatives called for his release, warning that without access to his medicine, Dahlin, who has Addisons disease a rare hormonal disorder also suffered by John F Kennedy could die.

Cut off from the world in this hidden jail, Dahlin knew nothing of what was going on outside. He used music to help him cope with the boredom and stress, attempting to alleviate the tedium by remembering the lyrics of songs by REM, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

You think through everything. Not once or twice but 100 times for each thing. Every friend you had. Every relationship you had. Every date you had If you sit there for weeks on end with nothing to do you start having weird thoughts because there is nothing left to think about.

About 10 days into his captivity Dahlins ordeal took an Orwellian turn when interrogators told the activist they wanted to use a communication enhancement machine a species of lie detector to assist with their inquiries.

Peter Dahlin faces his interrogators. Illustration: Nicolas Luna Fleck

Electrodes were attached to the activists fingertips and small cameras trained on his pupils while he was asked questions. Dahlin suspects it was a clever psychological play to make him reveal details of his groups work and sponsors but the device appeared to fail.

They seemed to have some problem with the fact that my fingertips would sweat so they couldnt get good readings, he says. I dont think they got much from it.

On about day 13 of Dahlins stay at The Residence the omens improved. He was granted a visit from two Swedish consular officials who inquired if he had been given any fruit Only one small bite of an apple, the prisoner replied then left.

Two nights later came a second positive signal. At about 3am a group of officers came into his cell and one, whom he knew as Mr Zhang, perched on the edge of his rock-hard mattress. I realised something was happening, Dahlin says.

The confession

Zhang told the activist he would need to pen a self-criticism in which he confessed to a series of crimes.

Crucially, Dahlin should admit that the human rights lawyers with whom he had worked were criminals and taking money from the National Endowment for Democracy, a US-funded non-profit which has been demonised in countries such as China and Russia as an instigator of colour revolutions.

Even though they were not among our biggest funders, that was a very core point, says Dahlin, who believes the attempt to link China Action to the endowment group was intended to help paint his group as a hostile foreign force that had been plotting to undermine the Communist party.

The following night Dahlin received a second visit. We need one more thing, the officer told him. Lets make a video.

Dahlin knew immediately what was being suggested.

Since Xi had taken office apparently forced televised confessions had come back into vogue, used to humiliate a range of government foes including Gao Yu, a veteran journalist who was jailed for leaking a politically sensitive document, and Charles Xue, an internet celebrity known for his online outspokenness on social and political issues.

Within hours Dahlin had been ordered to remove his prison uniform, don his normal clothes and was seated in a room opposite a glamorous female correspondent from the China Central Television, the state broadcaster. He was handed a set of seven or eight pre-written answers that had been typed on to a sheet of A4 paper.

Prime time! the activist says he thought as the camera began to roll. Great!

Dahlin, who had lost nearly 6kg since his detention began, says he immediately agreed to the recording, knowing it would accelerate his release and, more importantly, that of his girlfriend.

I have been given good food, plenty of sleep and I have suffered no mistreatments of any kind, he told his interviewer. I have no complaints to make. I think my treatment has been fair.

The confession of Peter Dahlin

Dahlin says he tried to deflect blame from his Chinese associates by shouldering responsibility for his groups activities.

He refused to label the Chinese lawyers he had worked with as criminals but admitted: I have violated Chinese law through my activities here. I have caused harm to the Chinese government. I have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.

I apologise sincerely for this and I am very sorry that this ever happened, he concluded before the camera was turned off.

The next day those comments were splashed across Chinas party-controlled media with Xinhua, the countrys official news agency, using the interview to prove police had smashed an illegal organisation that sponsored activities jeopardising Chinas national security.

Dahlin, Xinhua claimed, had been planted in the country by western anti-China forces bent on stirring opposition to the regime.

As a reward for his video confession Dahlin says he was given a cup of Nescaf instant coffee and a couple of cigarettes. Less than a week later he and Pan would be free.

Dahlin says the final stages of his three-week stint in a secret jail were among the hardest, even though he sensed his release was imminent. I would go from a sense of serene contentment to being exhilarated to being incredibly despondent and thinking, Fuck, this is it. Im dead.

Goodbye to China

On the morning of 21 January he was told he had been granted medical parole and would soon be deported. Four days later, after being allowed a fleeting meeting with Pan, he was blindfolded and escorted back downstairs into The Residences garage.

Flanked by four burly guards in marital arts clothing, Dahlin was driven north towards Beijings international airport where he was told he was being expelled under the espionage act.

Stay out of trouble now, he recalls being told by one of the security agents, who escorted him on to Scandinavian Airlines Flight 996 to Copenhagen.

Peter Dahlins last view of China and his security minders

Onboard the passenger jet Dahlin turned on his phone and snapped one final photograph of China: asurreptitious shot of the security officers who had placed him on his last flight out of the country.

The flight attendant in first class police officials had used cash confiscated from Dahlins home to buy his ticket handed him a glass of champagne.

I killed it, Dahlin says. And then I had another glass. I had wine. I had a whisky. I had a beer and I had a coffee. All of the things I hadnt had.

Since touching down in Thailand in May, Dahlin says he has been gradually trying to rebuild his life.

After the trauma of 23 days in secret custody and seven years living with the daily stress of concealing his work, he says he is struggling to adapt to a more mundane routine and fears he may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Ive gotten so used to living a lie. It takes time to break that habit down.

I get weird-ass dreams that I never had before; anxiety; never being able to relax properly. I can deal with it but it takes time, he says. Your mind plays tricks on you. You hear things by the gate at night.

One afternoon Dahlin remembers suffering a panic attack when he lost sight of Pan, who moved with him to Chiang Mai, in a supermarket and concluded she had been snatched by Chinese agents as appears to have happened to a wave of Thailand-based dissidents and Communist party foes.

On another occasion Dahlins heart leapt when a group of Chinese men surrounded the couple at a local hotel. I thought, Fuck, is this it? Are they here to do something?

The here and now

Back in China, the situation is even gloomier. Recent weeks have seen a fresh round of detentions that suggest the crackdown on human rights lawyers has yet to run its course.

Dahlins former partner Wang remains in police custody awaiting trial. It is not a happy story, Dahlin says of his friend. I think he would rather die than admit defeat in this case [by confessing to crimes he didnt commit]. He is ready to be a martyr.

Stein Ringen said he believed the world had failed to grasp the scale of the repression now playing out in China, still viewing the country as a benevolent autocracy when in fact it had mutated into a very, very hard dictatorship which manages to look better than it is.

Peter Dahlin near his home in Thailand. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

The academic said he envisioned no change of direction while Xi, who will reach the halfway point of his anticipated decade-long term in late 2017, was in power.

Regrettably, I think the best we can hope for is that it doesnt get worse My money during Xi Jinpings tenure would be that what we have now is pretty much what we are going to get that is a hard dictatorship that is nevertheless tempered by some pragmatism Im completely bleak.

The alternatives I think are chaos that the control breaks and that China falls again back into chaos which it has done again and again over the last couple of centuries or that Xi Jinpings tightening of controls continues and pulls the system into one of fully fledged totalitarianism.

On the veranda of his new home, surrounded by wind chimes, hanging planters, and the soothing sound of bird song, Dahlin reminisces about happier times.

He speaks of his admiration for the Chinese campaigners still willing to sacrifice their freedom to promote change and fondly recalls nights spent at his favourite Mongolian whisky bar in Beijing.

You miss a few things because my exit consisted of going from solitary confinement into an airplane, he says. I left Beijing with a small bag, three books, two changes of clothes, some hard drives and a laptop.

You do seven years of something and now it is all gone: your work, whatever you have accomplished, your clothing, your furniture, my cats, my friends.

But with no political thaw in sight the activist said he doubted he would ever be able to return to the country he once dreamed of transforming.

I see no reason why they would ever give me a visa to go back. Why would they?

I think the only reason I go back is after the government falls. And Im not sure that is going to happen in my lifetime.

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A human rights activist, a secret prison and a tale from Xi Jinping's new China

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Some nights Peter Dahlin says he tucks a “big-ass knife” under his bed in case intruders come for him as he dozes; others he cannot sleep at all.

“They’ve kidnapped people several times here before,” says the 36-year-old Swedish human rights activist, chain-smoking Marlboro cigarettes as he remembers the 23 days he spent in secret detention in China.

It has been a year since Dahlin became one of the first foreign victims of President Xi Jinping’s war on dissent.

On 3 January 2016 Chinese security agents encircled the activist’s Beijing home and spirited him and his Chinese girlfriend, Pan Jinling, off to a covert interrogation centre he now calls “The Residence”.

Months have now passed but the memories of that spell in custody have proved hard to shake. “These facilities are built to break you,” the campaigner says during a seven-hour interview at a home in Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand where he and Pan have lived since he was deported from China amid one of the most severe crackdowns in decades.

The story of Peter Dahlin, told here in unprecedented detail, offers a rare and troubling snapshot of Xi Jinping’s China, where an unforgiving offensive against civil society is now unfolding.

Peter Dahlin speaks on camera in a still from video released by China Central Television. Photograph: AP

In the four years since Xi became China’s top leader in November 2012, feminist campaigners, journalists, academics, bloggers, publishers, human rights lawyers and even foreign non-governmental organisation workers such as Dahlin have all been targeted in what experts suspect is a coordinated Communist party push to prevent the development of organised opposition to the regime.

The political situation, which some call the most dire since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, has deteriorated so fast under the current leadership that one scholar claims Xi has built “the perfect dictatorship” – an ever-more repressive system that nevertheless avoids major international censure.

During his stint behind bars the Swedish activist says he was given a firsthand taste of the harshness with which that battle for control is being waged.

He claims he was blindfolded and confined to a cell with expressionless guards who refused to engage in conversation but noted down his every move; was for days deprived of access to his embassy, the right to exercise or even to sunlight; was forced to endure exhausting late-night interrogation sessions conducted by hectoring inquisitors determined to paint him as a spy; subjected to a lie-detection machine intended to extract information about his work; and suffered periods of sleep deprivation that he believes were intended to weaken his resolve.

Dahlin, who until his detention had run a Beijing-based rights organisation called the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group or China Action, said during the seven years he lived and worked as an activist in China friends and diplomats had always considered him an optimist about the country’s future.

Those illusions have been shattered by the things he witnessed in the lead-up to his incarceration at The Residence.

“For the first time I am not optimistic any more,” he says. “This is how China will operate for the next 20 years. Now it’s a new hard line.”

The underground activist

Peter Dahlin arrived in China from his native Sweden in the summer of 2004, a 23-year-old political science graduate keen for a taste of the world outside a lecture theatre.

“I was just there to backpack and learn,” recalls Dahlin, whose travels took him through Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen, the south-eastern port where Xi served as vice-mayor in the 1980s.

Three years later he returned, throwing himself into human rights work alongside Hou Wenzhou, a Chinese activist he had met online.

Dahlin’s first project was a report denouncing the existence of an illegal nationwide network of secret detention facilities called “black jails”. It identified eight such prisons in Beijing.

About the same time Dahlin met Wang Quanzhang, a crusading civil rights lawyer known for his defence of China’s downtrodden and outspoken criticism of the government. Together, in 2009, they founded China Action, a non-profit advocacy group dedicated to supporting human rights defenders in the one-party state.

Increasingly draconian laws make it effectively impossible for such non-governmental rights organisations to operate legally in mainland China. Instead the pair registered their group as a company in Hong Kong and decided they would strive to operate in the shadows so as to avoid attracting attention.

“I decided we had a shot at doing something quite special,” Dahlin says of the group’s creation. The Swedish activist says he was partly driven by “middle-class guilt” but also a conviction that people should be the masters of their own destinies.

“I’ve never been particularly political,” he says. “I’ve never paid attention to Tibet and these issues very much. “I just believe in the idea of self-determination.

“Whether it is Scottish people, the Catalan people, the Tibetan people or even just a village somewhere in China; that the people there should be the ones that have an influence, whether it is by forming an organisation, a labour union, their own media, whatever.”

Guided by those beliefs, Dahlin set about building China Action into a small but potent force for social change.

With grants from institutions that included the European Union, the National Endowment For Democracy and the Norwegian Human Rights Fund it ran training sessions for human rights lawyers and investigative journalists and offered support to young Chinese campaigners traumatised by run-ins with the security services.

Just as China Action was ramping up its operations, however, the human rights situation in China took a turn for the worse.

The crackdown begins

Many accuse Xi of initiating the current chill but some trace it back to around 2008 when anti-government protests rocked Tibet just as China was preparing to host the Summer Olympics.

Deadly riots the following year in China’s far west left authorities even more convinced that it was time to step up their controls over society.

In Beijing Dahlin sought to fly under the radar, moving into a one-bedroom studio hidden in the alleys around the 13th century Drum Tower and disguising his true line of work with a series of legends.

He told some he was the son of a wealthy Swedish businessman who was in China researching the electric bicycle industry; to others he introduced himself as a legal researcher or expat English teacher, “just to see the way the conversation dies”.

“Even my close friends didn’t know about my work,” he says. “They knew I did something to do with an NGO and human rights but that is about it. I always operated with a cover.”

A self-professed history geek, Dahlin adopted the surname Beckenridge – an allusion to John C Breckinridge, the vice-president of the Confederate states – but he maintained his first name. “Any effective cover story has to have 90% truth and then 10% misleading … you always keep your first name to avoid mistakes.”

For a while the subterfuge paid off. Dahlin’s visas were renewed by public security authorities, despite the fact that his human rights work was officially illegal, and he sensed that police were happy monitoring the group from afar.

“We’re not a political organisation,” he says by way of explanation for why his group was able to keep operating for so long. “We don’t deal with democracy issues.”

President Xi Jinping: turned his country into a ‘controlocracy’. Photograph: Petr David Josek/AP

But by 2013, the year Xi became president, the climate had begun to change. First came a sweeping crackdown on China’s already tightly controlled internet; outspoken bloggers were detained and publicly humiliated in an attemp to curb the “wanton defamation” of the Communist party.

Next came the obliteration of the New Citizens’ Movement, a collective of liberal scholars and activists who had been pushing for moderate social and political change. The group’s leader, a respected lawyer called Xu Zhiyong, was jailed for four years. Another prominent member fled into exile in the US.

It was the start of what many describe as a concerted clampdown on civil society designed to extinguish organised opposition to Beijing at a time when China’s fading economic boom threatened to undermine its political legitimacy.

Stein Ringen, a political scientist whose new book, The Perfect Dictatorship, examines the dramatic political tightening, said he believed that after a period of “steely and foresightful analysis”, China’s top leaders had concluded they must tighten their grip over the population now that the era of mega-economic growth was over.

“There is an absolute determination that the regime will persist and continue. That is number one for everything: the perpetuation of the regime.”

Ringen, an emeritus professor at Oxford University, said that in just a few years Xi had turned his country into a “controlocracy” where an ingenious mix of hard and soft measures were used to ensure the party’s rule went unchallenged.

“It is so smooth that in some respects it doesn’t even look dictatorial,” he said. “Most dictatorships are very clumsy, raw, inelegant. But this one isn’t. They have it sussed.”

The arrest

As Xi’s crackdown unfolded up and down the country, agents from China’s ministry of state security, a mysterious spy agency tasked with snuffing out political threats to the party, began to move against Dahlin’s group, trying to recruit his assistant as a mole.

“We were well aware that from at least 2013 state security and not just police were actively monitoring us,” he says.

Dahlin began taking extra precautions, memorising the night flights out of Beijing and filling a brown leather satchel with bundles of cash, hard drives, documents, a change of clothes and his passport.

In the summer of 2015 the situation deteriorated further still. A sweeping police offensive against Chinese human rights lawyers – the so-called 709 crackdown – began, sucking in “a very large number” of people directly linked to China Action, including Dahlin’s friend and partner Wang, who was seized near the eastern city of Jinan on 3 August.

With those detentions Dahlin sensed the noose was tightening. “Maybe there will be no more China,” he remembers thinking.

Then on 3 January 2016 the end came. At about 2pm Dahlin realised China Action was under intense scrutiny when a Chinese associate reported being summoned to meet security officials who had grilled him about a Swedish man named Peter.

Shortly before 4pm the Swede sat down at his computer and began to type an email to a group of close colleagues with the subject line: “Situation”.

“There now seems to be an active investigation,” he wrote, adding that he planned to flee the country and might not return to China “if things get bad”.

“Clear all papers, USBs, computers, phones, pads etc,” Dahlin instructed his workmates. “These things need to be done ASAP.”

Dahlin spent the afternoon tying up loose ends: shredding documents, saying goodbye to his girlfriend Pan, and taking care of the couple’s cats, Poopi and Dou Gonggong.

He booked a seat on a 3am Cathay Pacific Flight to Hong Kong and from there planned to take another flight to Thailand.

The arrest of Peter Dahlin, as described to the Chiang Mai-based Mexican-American artist Nicolas Luna Fleck

But at 9.45pm – just hours before he had planned to set off for the airport – there was a loud bang on the door.

“Are you Peter Dahlin?” said one of the uniformed agents packing the alleyway outside. “Well, yeah,” the activist replied.

‘The Residence’

About 15 miles south of Dahlin’s hutong home, not far from Beijing’s Nanyuan military airbase, is a drab, four-storey office block used for the interrogation of those deemed enemies of the Chinese state. “Basically, it is a secret prison,” says Dahlin.

In the early hours of Monday 4 January a convoy of police vehicles pulled up in the ground-floor garage of the U-shaped installation. Blindfolded, the activist was led out of one of the cars, into a lift and then along a corridor into a second-floor interrogation room.

“You sort of just freeze … It was sort of expected but still you realise that this could end badly – or this could end very badly.”

Dahlin’s first interrogation began about 2am that winter morning, as temperatures outside The Residence plunged to six degrees below zero.

Two male inquisitors sat opposite the prisoner, who says he was seated in a hard wooden “tiger chair” with leg shackles that were left splayed out on the floor. Metals bars crisscrossed the room’s only window.

The initial questioning was less intimidating than the surroundings might have suggested. “It started fairly innocuously. They were just trying to get a sense of me. Who am I? What am I doing in China? Very basic questioning.”

Dahlin’s ties to three persons of interest seemed of particular concern: the human rights lawyer Wang; Xing Qingxian, an activist from south-west China; and Su Changlan, a women’s rights campaigner who had been detained months earlier for offering online support to Hong Kong’s 2014 pro-democracy protests.

But it was a gentle introduction to life in The Residence for the sleep-deprived activist: three hours later, about 5am, the session was terminated and he was led into a rectangular cell across the corridor with beige padded walls and two small windows that were also covered by metal bars. Thick blackout curtains made it impossible to tell the time of day; three fluorescent lamps hung from the ceiling, including one directly above the bed. “Even the toilet seat was suicide-padded,” Dahlin recalls.

Also inside were two guards, part of a team that remained there and watched over Dahlin 24 hours a day and recorded every move or sound he made in a notebook but never uttered a word.

“They would often stand up and go and stand and look when you take a piss, you take a shit, you take a shower. It’s a bit odd,” Dahlin says, adding with a laugh: “Luckily I’m Swedish and Sweden has a rather relaxed idea of nudity.”

The following days were a blur of interrogations. “They made it clear … that they had followed me, surveilled me intently for a while and were well aware, they said, of what I had been doing.”

Dahlin claims his captors demanded a “map” of who his group had been working with and became “very, very angry” after he refused to talk unless he was allowed to see officials from the Swedish embassy.

The activist says his interrogators then refused to let him sleep until he offered them detailed information and only relented after he protested to the centre’s boss – a woman who gave her name as Mrs Zhang – that his treatment violated the UN convention against torture, which China ratified in 1988.

“She was very upset,” Dahlin says of her reaction. “And went on about how nicely I’m being treated.”

Eventually he was allowed to sleep.

As the questioning sessions continued, often lasting up to six hours at a time, Dahlin, who correctly suspected that Pan and several colleagues were also being detained in the facility, decided his best option was to avoid incriminating others by painting the officers “a big picture … with nothing in it”.

But the interrogators hit back, telling the activist his friends and colleagues were turning against him. “This is your only chance,” they said. “They are blaming everything on you. If you don’t strike back it is over for you.”

Dahlin says he held firm, telling his captors China should be proud of its human rights lawyers and flatly rejecting repeated demands for him to surrender information about them or passwords for email accounts and encrypted hard drives that had been seized from his home.

As night fell on the covert prison, unnerving sounds found their way into the activist’s cell from other parts of The Residence, which Dahlin estimated had been built to house about eight prisoners. “I could hear raised voices. I could hear muffled sounds of what I assumed would be someone slammed against the wall and floor.

“I was quite prepared that there was going to be six months of this. That was my timeframe. I was counting the days in my head.”

As Dahlin floundered in the secret jail the world outside went on. Exactly one week after he was seized, on 10 January, David Bowie died in his New York flat, news the Swedish activist only received after his release.

Two days later, on 12 January, the first reports of Dahlin’s detention began to emerge in the international media. Having initially denied knowledge of the activist’s disappearance, the Chinese government now admitted “coercive measures” had been taken against him.

Three days later, on 15 January, a state-run newspaper published an editorial accusing the activist of funding “radical political activists” who were seeking confrontation with the Communist party.

Friends and relatives called for his release, warning that without access to his medicine, Dahlin, who has Addison’s disease – a rare hormonal disorder also suffered by John F Kennedy – could die.

Cut off from the world in this hidden jail, Dahlin knew nothing of what was going on outside. He used music to help him cope with the boredom and stress, attempting to alleviate the tedium by remembering the lyrics of songs by REM, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

“You think through everything. Not once or twice but 100 times for each thing. Every friend you had. Every relationship you had. Every date you had … If you sit there for weeks on end with nothing to do you start having weird thoughts because there is nothing left to think about.”

About 10 days into his captivity Dahlin’s ordeal took an Orwellian turn when interrogators told the activist they wanted to use a “communication enhancement” machine – a species of lie detector – to assist with their inquiries.

Peter Dahlin faces his interrogators. Illustration: Nicolas Luna Fleck

Electrodes were attached to the activist’s fingertips and small cameras trained on his pupils while he was asked questions. Dahlin suspects it was “a clever psychological play” to make him reveal details of his group’s work and sponsors – but the device appeared to fail.

“They seemed to have some problem with the fact that my fingertips would sweat so they couldn’t get good readings,” he says. “I don’t think they got much from it.”

On about day 13 of Dahlin’s stay at The Residence the omens improved. He was granted a visit from two Swedish consular officials who inquired if he had been given any fruit – “Only one small bite of an apple,” the prisoner replied – then left.

Two nights later came a second positive signal. At about 3am a group of officers came into his cell and one, whom he knew as Mr Zhang, perched on the edge of his rock-hard mattress. “I realised something was happening,” Dahlin says.

The confession

Zhang told the activist he would need to pen “a self-criticism” in which he confessed to a series of crimes.

Crucially, Dahlin should admit that the human rights lawyers with whom he had worked were “criminals” and taking money from the National Endowment for Democracy, a US-funded non-profit which has been demonised in countries such as China and Russia as an instigator of colour revolutions.

“Even though they were not among our biggest funders, that was a very core point,” says Dahlin, who believes the attempt to link China Action to the endowment group was intended to help paint his group as a “hostile foreign force” that had been plotting to undermine the Communist party.

The following night Dahlin received a second visit. “We need one more thing,” the officer told him. “Let’s make a video.”

Dahlin knew immediately what was being suggested.

Since Xi had taken office apparently forced televised confessions had come back into vogue, used to humiliate a range of government foes including Gao Yu, a veteran journalist who was jailed for leaking a politically sensitive document, and Charles Xue, an internet celebrity known for his online outspokenness on social and political issues.

Within hours Dahlin had been ordered to remove his prison uniform, don his normal clothes and was seated in a room opposite a glamorous female correspondent from the China Central Television, the state broadcaster. He was handed a set of seven or eight pre-written answers that had been typed on to a sheet of A4 paper.

“Prime time!” the activist says he thought as the camera began to roll. “Great!”

Dahlin, who had lost nearly 6kg since his detention began, says he immediately agreed to the recording, knowing it would accelerate his release and, more importantly, that of his girlfriend.

“I have been given good food, plenty of sleep and I have suffered no mistreatments of any kind,” he told his interviewer. “I have no complaints to make. I think my treatment has been fair.”

The ‘confession’ of Peter Dahlin

Dahlin says he tried to deflect blame from his Chinese associates by shouldering responsibility for his group’s activities.

He refused to label the Chinese lawyers he had worked with as “criminals” but admitted: “I have violated Chinese law through my activities here. I have caused harm to the Chinese government. I have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.

“I apologise sincerely for this and I am very sorry that this ever happened,” he concluded before the camera was turned off.

The next day those comments were splashed across China’s party-controlled media with Xinhua, the country’s official news agency, using the “interview” to prove police had “smashed an illegal organisation that sponsored activities jeopardising China’s national security”.

Dahlin, Xinhua claimed, had been planted in the country by “western anti-China forces” bent on stirring opposition to the regime.

As a reward for his video confession Dahlin says he was given a cup of Nescafé instant coffee and a couple of cigarettes. Less than a week later he and Pan would be free.

Dahlin says the final stages of his three-week stint in a secret jail were among the hardest, even though he sensed his release was imminent. “I would go from a sense of serene contentment to being exhilarated to being incredibly despondent and thinking, ‘Fuck, this is it. I’m dead.’”

Goodbye to China

On the morning of 21 January he was told he had been granted medical parole and would soon be deported. Four days later, after being allowed a fleeting meeting with Pan, he was blindfolded and escorted back downstairs into The Residence’s garage.

Flanked by four burly guards in martial arts clothing, Dahlin was driven north towards Beijing’s international airport where he was told he was being expelled under the espionage act.

“Stay out of trouble now,” he recalls being told by one of the security agents, who escorted him on to Scandinavian Airlines Flight 996 to Copenhagen.

Peter Dahlin’s last view of China and his security minders

Onboard the passenger jet Dahlin turned on his phone and snapped one final photograph of China: a surreptitious shot of the security officers who had placed him on his last flight out of the country.

The flight attendant in first class – police officials had used cash confiscated from Dahlin’s home to buy his ticket – handed him a glass of champagne.

“I killed it,” Dahlin says. “And then I had another glass. I had wine. I had a whisky. I had a beer and I had a coffee. All of the things I hadn’t had.”

Since touching down in Thailand in May, Dahlin says he has been gradually trying to rebuild his life.

After the trauma of 23 days in secret custody and seven years living with the daily stress of concealing his work, he says he is struggling to adapt to a more mundane routine and fears he may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I’ve gotten so used … to living a lie. It takes time to break that habit down.

“I get weird-ass dreams that I never had before; anxiety; never being able to relax properly. I can deal with it – but it takes time,” he says. “Your mind plays tricks on you. You hear things by the gate at night.”

One afternoon Dahlin remembers suffering a panic attack when he lost sight of Pan, who moved with him to Chiang Mai, in a supermarket and concluded she had been snatched by Chinese agents – as appears to have happened to a wave of Thailand-based dissidents and Communist party foes.

On another occasion Dahlin’s heart leapt when a group of Chinese men surrounded the couple at a local hotel. “I thought, ‘Fuck, is this it? Are they here to do something?’”

The here and now

Back in China, the situation is even gloomier. Recent weeks have seen a fresh round of detentions that suggest the crackdown on human rights lawyers has yet to run its course.

Dahlin’s former partner Wang remains in police custody awaiting trial. “It is not a happy story,” Dahlin says of his friend. “I think he would rather die than admit defeat in this case [by confessing to crimes he didn’t commit]. He is ready to be a martyr.”

Stein Ringen said he believed the world had failed to grasp the scale of the repression now playing out in China, still viewing the country as a “benevolent autocracy” when in fact it had mutated into “a very, very hard dictatorship which manages to look better than it is”.

Peter Dahlin near his home in Thailand. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

The academic said he envisioned no change of direction while Xi, who will reach the halfway point of his anticipated decade-long term in late 2017, was in power.

“Regrettably, I think the best we can hope for is that it doesn’t get worse … My money during Xi Jinping’s tenure would be that what we have now is pretty much what we are going to get – that is a hard dictatorship that is nevertheless tempered by some pragmatism … I’m completely bleak.”

“The alternatives I think are chaos – that the control breaks and that China falls again back into chaos which it has done again and again over the last couple of centuries – or that Xi Jinping’s tightening of controls continues and pulls the system into one of fully fledged totalitarianism.”

On the veranda of his new home, surrounded by wind chimes, hanging planters, and the soothing sound of bird song, Dahlin reminisces about happier times.

He speaks of his admiration for the Chinese campaigners still willing to sacrifice their freedom to promote change and fondly recalls nights spent at his favourite Mongolian whisky bar in Beijing.

“You miss a few things because my exit consisted of going from solitary confinement into an airplane,” he says. “I left Beijing with a small bag, three books, two changes of clothes, some hard drives and a laptop.

“You do seven years of something … and now it is all gone: your work, whatever you have accomplished, your clothing, your furniture, my cats, my friends.”

But with no political thaw in sight the activist said he doubted he would ever be able to return to the country he once dreamed of transforming.

“I see no reason why they would ever give me a visa to go back. Why would they?”

“I think the only reason I go back is after the government falls. And I’m not sure that is going to happen in my lifetime.”

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