#i'm so fucking sick of this thing right now

[grison-in-space]

So this isn't necessarily true, and upon a considered pass over American history, I think this is actually a really bad talking point. It is absolutely possible to recover our infrastructure way, way faster than that, because we did it once before. We can do it again.

IF WE RECAPTURE CONGRESS. WHICH MEANS FUCK 2028. WE NEED TO TACKLE 2026 FIRST.

This thing where left leaning folks ignore midterms in favor of the presidency must end now. There isn't even a chance of any of this good shit unless you have control of both houses of Congress (achievable but very hard) as well as the presidency and you hold that long enough to really impose some consequences on bad faith actors. If you can do this, we can actually fix things pretty quick. It would help if we can get someone charismatic to openly campaign on doing so, which is a large part of what worked the first time. I'm speaking here of FDR's New Deal.

It's a good idea to talk in detail about the timeline that the New Deal actually took, because a lot of it is much faster than I expected before I went to take a look. The first 100 days of FDR's administration were every bit the whirlwind this one is—except his priorities were "getting Americans back to work, protecting their savings and creating prosperity, providing relief for the sick and elderly, and getting industry and agriculture back on their feet." And he didn't use executive orders to do it, which creates unacceptable weaknesses in the fabric of our structure of separate powers. Doesn't that sound nice?

The key is that the electorate—that's us, folks—came in clutch and got him Congress to work with. That does not start in 2028. It starts right the fuck now, building towards 2026. So you don't need any damn notes telling you to dream smaller! Let's talk about how he did it.

Here's the story. FDR is first elected in 1932, right in the midst of the Great Depression (started in '29). (That one lasted almost a decade, folks, and we are absolutely gearing up for another one as a result of these fucking tariffs.) He wins in a landslide: Hoover didn't want to interfere while almost everyone was suffering, but Roosevelt's plans were at least supposed to do SOMETHING, and at the very least he wasn't the other guy who led us straight into Black Tuesday. Importantly, while his popular vote margin isn't that tight, his appeal is broad after so much suffering, and his election comes with landslide changes in Congress. In the House, Dems pick up 101 new seats*, giving him control of slightly more than 75% of the House. In the Senate, he picks up 28 of a total of 34 races, giving the Dems a 59 to 41 majority.

That is what a mandate looks like, folks! It's not what poor Obama got saddled with, it comes with Congressional power. Because of this, FDR is able to move just about as hard and fast with his executive orders as Trump did this cycle. The first hundred days of his first term are a whirlwind: he calls Congress to attention in a special three month session with no recess, and he presents to his party (who quickly pass) 15 bills that:

Dedicate 500 million dollars to relief for the poor in the form of schools, soup kitchens, blankets, and employment schemes. For the record, that's $12 billion in today's money. We actually can pay that without blinking if we empower the IRS, though, and it would be one hell of a stimulation to the economy: poor people who suddenly aren't as poor buy things. They don't have the luxury of shoving money into savings accounts. And that means more money for everyone. (By the way, that legislation invented a brand spanking new Federal Emergency Relief Administration to implement these programs. In 1935, that agency split into the Works Progress Administration and the Social Security Administration. The WPA was wound down in the forties to help funnel labor into the war effort, but the SSA was until recently considered the Golden Cow of the American budget and, as of my writing on March 29 2025, continues to exist.)

Stabilized the banks: declared a national four-day bank holiday to prevent runs on banks, created a system of banking insurance to depositors so that if the bank got robbed or failed you don't lose your money, and then delivered the first fireside chat over radio to personally explain this to the American people. This is generally seen as ending the runs on banks to withdraw money in a terror of loss that created the Great Depression.

Ended Prohibition by immediately federally legalizing the sale of wine and beer with alcohol content no greater than 3.2%, contingent on states adding their own legal approval for the sale of these beverages into their state law. This was the equivalent of declaring marijuana an unscheduled drug would be today and wasn't just super popular with drunks: it served to immediately undercut the black market in alcohol and organized crime that had been bubbling since 1919 and Prohibition hit. It also fixed a public health crisis as adulterated alcohol designed to repel illegal use had actually been large-scale poisoning and often killing or disabling Americans who drank the alcohol anyway. (For more on that, Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook is excellent.)

Established the Civilian Conservation Corps, an agency designed to both create useful infrastructure for all Americans and also provide jobs and job training for young men in particular (although there was eventually a women's version) who had had difficulty finding jobs. Most famously, the CCC built a huge swathe of our current infrastructure and roads. It was an enormous morale builder that helped bring dignity and pride in the nation for the approximately three million people who were part of it during the nine years it was in action. Like the WPA, it was later wound down during the buildup to the war effort of WWII.

Implemented the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which subsidized farmers and also paid some to not plant on parts of their land--allowing crop prices to rise and keeping farmers in work. This also helped to boost the economy by keeping farmers able to farm while making a living and preventing grain prices from tanking if there was a surplus. This was another major factor in the Great Depression that was related to widespread hunger and collapsing crop prices: if no one can afford to farm, food availability actually shrinks.

Revitalized the particularly impoverished Tennessee River Valley by creating a Tennessee Valley Authority that (you may be sensing a theme) hired many people in a particularly ravaged part of the country and set them building a giant electrical utility that would be a powerful source of, well, power in the area. This one is still running today and providing power to folks in the southeast.

Created the Farm Credit Administration to provide a network of "friendly credit" that farmers could use to lean on in the event of economic or ecological disaster. This had also been an enormous problem prior to this, with bank foreclosures frequently disrupting or closing farms, leaving the farmers destitute.

Ended "gold clauses" in contracts, which largely serve to communicate distrust in federal currency because they specify that signatories can pay in gold or gold equivalent rather than in dollars. These have now returned, but distrust of the dollar hasn't--this was a bid to shore up trust in the economy, which had been badly tattered.

Invented the fucking SEC, which is designed to reduce corporate corruption and in particular discourage the kinds of bullshit corruption practices that keep fucking over the economy.

Instituted the National Industry Recovery Act, which--sorry, I'm getting tired--created two more bodies of workers where the government was paying people to build industry and training new workers in various industries again. This created the WPA --another major source of investment in the American worker -- which served to create jobs to invest in American infrastructure -- and the NRA, which was a new agency designed to create regulatory standards for American industries, with an eye to creating a better class of product.

Again, he did this all in 100 days. That's what you could expect with a solid Senate and House to back up an effective Democratic president. You can solve a lot of problems by throwing money at them, it turns out!

(Vote in the fucking midterms. I am not saying this again. And to be clear, I am expecting levels of voter suppression that we really have never seen outside of African-American communities and indigenous American communities. Now is a great time to start sharing and reviving those stories, especially about the fights for civil rights in the 60s because we still have some veterans of those in our midst to ask. It's going to be very bad. But we did this once before, and this time there are more of us. Listen to our BIPOC leaders, here.)

Here is the thing. We can do this again. In terms of turnout, Biden saw higher turnout in 2020 than any other election after women received the vote in 1919. (I'm using that cutoff because it's harder to hit very high numbers with universal suffrage, since the more people who can vote, the harder it is to get everyone to the polls.) Even 2024 actually had higher turnout than any other post-theoretically-universal-suffrage election. And in terms of actual numbers of humans showing up to the polls, both elections saw about 15 to 20 million more people voting than ever before.

The trick is getting up the collective momentum to do it. And for that to work, we can't be pre-emptively telling people to dream smaller. Dreaming smaller is the thing that is tempting to Democrats because the Democratic Party was badly traumatized in 1984 over Adlai Stevenson and has never recovered its confidence. Well, it's time for the party to suck it the fuck up and learn, because I am thirty five goddamn years old and that happened before I was born, and we could use some fucking demagogues that give a shit about the little guy.

But we can't do that if you are pre-emptively telling people to lower their standards. We have to promise people something to get excited about. And if we can get Congress, we could actually achieve something to get excited about. Why cede ground in advance?

*I am counting the Farmer-Labor Party, a small socialist party from the Midwest who exists today in the form of Minnesota's Democratic Farmer Labor Party, as Dems. They're like Bernie Sanders: technically independent, functionally they caucus with Dems. They picked up four of those seats from their initial one federal seat.

Hey. Look at me. Please leave yourself a note somewhere you'll see it later that says "it is going to take years if not decades to get the United States government to the level of functionality it had in November of 2024." If we elect a democrat in 2028, we are not going to be up and running by 2032.

Please make sure you have a reminder in your phone reminding you to not look at 2028/32/36 Democratic candidates and say "why are they not promising/delivering Cool Shit?" because you are going to understand that to get Cool Shit we must have competent people running a decently funded government, and we are not going to have that.

We are not getting UBI. We are not getting single payer healthcare. We are not getting free college or free preschool. We are not redistributing wealth on a large scale. We are not getting free internet. We are not getting ranked choice voting.

If we are lucky, we are going to get an IRS that can collect taxes, qualified schoolteachers, research grants, Social Security, and a government that thinks maybe it should be a priority for people around the worlds to not have AIDS, malaria or TB.

[suzukiblu]

WIP excerpt for Waywren Truesong behind the cut, who asked for either Timkon or Timberkon and interdimensional shenanigans and is getting “weird amnesia Timberkon”.  (( chrono || non-chrono ))

Yeah, Bernard very much needs to actually do something here, if he’s legitimately the only person that Superboy’s found who even remembers he goddamn exists. But he also doesn’t exactly have the kind of connections that Tim would, or that Superboy should, so like . . . trying to convince the guy to take the credit card and trying to convince him to eat are still the only things that are coming to mind so far. 

“Super-speed, right? So if you need somewhere to crash between, uh . . . whatever you’re looking into right now or whatever, you can hit me up whenever,” he tries, because he has no damn idea what else to offer. Like–his couch is not exactly a big offer, but at least he could make sure Superboy actually eats that way. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Superboy says into his hands, his voice still all choked-up in a way that physically hurts to hear. “I–I couldn’t find anybody I’d usually ask, except for the ones who–who the fuck could I even ask? What am I even supposed to say, ‘hey, I realize this is gonna sound insane and also don’t worry about whose DNA I have in me or whatever, but like, can you do me a solid and fix reality for me?’ Who the fuck even would I ask?” 

“I honestly have no idea whose weight class that would even be,” Bernard admits with a grimace. “Justice League, I guess? Like, probably the Justice League, right? Maybe the Titans, I guess, they’ve got Raven over there, she might be able to do something.” 

“I tried to talk to Raven,” Superboy says. “I don’t think she could see me.” 

“What?” Bernard startles a little, then stares at him. Superboy drops his head lower and digs his fingers into his scalp. 

“I tried to talk to Raven,” he repeats roughly. “Took me two fuckin’ weeks to even find her, but I tried. She didn’t even, like, look at me. Her heart rate didn’t change, her eyes didn’t even refocus–she like, literally did not even know I was there. So you know, that was fucking terrifying or whatever. I don’t even know if it was because of the reality fuckup or if I’m actually just, like, some fake fucking thing and she could see right through me and maybe I'm not even real, maybe I’m literally just some bullshit trick or trap or stupid fucking–” 

“One time I heard you disassembled every gun in LA at once,” Bernard cuts in quick, and Superboy drops his arms to the table and drops his face into them with a sob so hard that it makes Bernard’s throat hurt. “You used to run with this group called the Ravers, and you started up Young Justice with Robin and Impulse. You guys had a bike you called the Super-Cycle, I dunno if you won the coin flip there or what, kinda just always assumed?” 

“That was just its name,” Superboy says, and then lets out a sobbed, cracked laugh. “Imp was so fucking annoyed. It liked him and Rob better anyway, though. And then Slobo.” 

“Was that the guy who looked like a mini-me version of that Lobo dude and desperately needed to eat his Wheaties?” Bernard asks, frowning briefly to himself, and Superboy laughs again, or sobs again, and Bernard is uncomfortably aware of just how much he can not tell the difference. 

“He was sick,” Superboy croaks. “Genetically–like, flawed, or whatever. Degrading. S’why he looked like that. Stopped, like–developing or whatever. Otherwise he’d have been Lobo. Like–if he’d survived all the other ones trying to kill him, anyway, it was–he was just sick. I don’t think he even existed here, though. Didn’t find anything about him when I looked. Not sure if Empress or Secret exist here either, but like, maybe Secret’s just still in some shitty DEO lab or something or on Apokolips or–I don’t know. Nobody remembers me and I can’t even find half of them and even Superman–I don’t know what I’m doing, man. I don’t know how to explain myself without sounding like a fucking supervillain plot or what the fuck ever and I don’t know how to make anybody even believe me and if they–if they don’t believe me–I don’t know what I’m gonna do, if I try to explain and they just don’t believe me.” 

“Oh,” Bernard says, feeling that nauseous knotting sensation in his stomach get a whole lot worse. That . . . does not sound like the way a mentally-healthy person would be talking right now, no. Like not even a little bit does it sound like the way a mentally-healthy person would be talking right now. 

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” Superboy chokes again, fisting a hand in his hair so tight his knuckles whiten. It’s pretty much the only thing in the entire shop he could grip that tight, Bernard’s gonna bet, because if Superboy is gripping something tight enough to make his knuckles white . . . 

“You’re gonna take my credit card and go get some lunch or at least a friggin’ snack or something,” Bernard replies as matter-of-factly as he can while he feels this friggin’ useless, digging his wallet back out to rifle through it for a spare receipt or piece of scrap paper or something. He never cleans the thing out enough anyway, there’s gotta be something he can use somewhere in the mess of old rewards cards and punch cards and ticket stubs and whatever. Though actually the ticket stubs’d probably work if he can find one with enough empty space on it, so like–fucking there they go, he thinks as he turns up a folded-up index card that he’d scribbled a grocery list on a couple weeks ago. He fishes it out and shakes it open, then digs through his pockets ‘til he finds a pen and scribbles his address and his apartment building’s door code down on the back of it as he just as matter-of-factly continues: “And then you’re gonna crash at my place, at least for tonight. I’ve got class ‘til six but I’m assuming the TTK can handle a basic civvie-level lock if I’m not back by the time you get there, so just let yourself in if you gotta.” 

“I seriously don’t get you, man,” Superboy says helplessly, his head still down and fist just as white-knuckle tight in his hair. “I just–why do you even give a fuck where I’m sleeping, much less if I’m fucking eating enough?” 

“I mean, this is maybe unfair of me to say or whatever, but I think Tim would literally never forgive me if I did not,” Bernard says, because he not only thinks that, he just straight-up knows it. “Like, if he were currently operating with all the relevant information, obviously. Also probably Wonder Girl and Impulse would hold grudges, and I am not brave enough to risk incurring the wrath of a chick who rolls with literal Amazons or a guy who could dump me in the Alaskan wilderness on a whim without even needing to block out a full minute of his day to find the time to do it.” 

“They literally do not even remember I exist,” Superboy says helplessly into the table. 

“I really feel like you’re underselling how objectively insane you guys all are when you’re rolling together,” Bernard replies frankly, then peels the index card back up off the table and sticks it in the rolled-up cuff of one of Superboy’s sleeves, due to a lack of pocket-reachability at the moment. Whatever, TTK; it’s not like Superboy’s gonna drop it or whatever. “Because you were all clearly objectively insane, so like–congrats on surviving to adulthood, I guess? Honestly very impressive any of you managed it, considering, much less all four.” 

“Technically I didn’t,” Superboy mutters. “And Impulse only did because of, like, weird Speed-Force aging shit.” 

“If it didn’t stick it doesn’t count,” Bernard lies, putting on a dismissive expression and waving him off. “So really you’re all killing it, far as I’m concerned.” 

Superboy sobs again, or laughs again. Bernard really, really wishes he could tell the difference either way.

[quintessenceofdust88]

Fuck it Friday Saturday

I was tagged by my lovely @bidisasterevankinard (Diana you're the love of my life thanks for tagging me, it makes my heart warm every time ♥) Soooo I'm kinda cheating a bit, cause I posted this as snippets of make me write, but now I've organized it into a whole thing that shall be finished and posted soon (hopefully!). It's from New Tides, ch. 1!

Buck is, there is no sugarcoating it, freaking out. 

There’s fifteen minutes left until Tommy is supposed to pick him up, and Buck still isn’t completely sure he won’t call and pretend he is sick and can’t go after all. Because he’s about to go on a date with a dude, and although that isn’t weirding him out at all (he is an ally, for Christ’s sake!), he’s so nervous it feels like his heart will fall out of his mouth. 

He’s halfway to reaching for his phone when it rings on its own, and Buck is so worried that it might be Tommy canceling on him (and despite of what he was thinking five minutes ago, he’s sure he’d be devastated if that were the case) that he doesn’t even look at the caller ID before answering. 

“Hello?!” He answers, checking his hair on the mirror for what has to be the tenth time in as many minutes.

“Stop freaking out, Buck” Maddie’s voice answers from the other side, and Buck, despite himself, feels a little calmer at hearing his older sister’s voice.

He hadn’t initially planned on telling Maddie about his date with Tommy, at least not until he was sure of what was going on. But Chim had blabbed to her about the whole ‘asking Tommy out while on painkillers’, and Buck had ended up telling her about Tommy showing up at his loft. To his relief, his sister had been completely supportive, the only teasing coming from the fact he had to be high to finally admit that guys were hot.

Right now, though, he’s extremely grateful that Maddie knows, because she’s the only person who might be able to talk him out of his mental spiraling. 

“I am not freaking out!”, Buck exclaims, but he knows there’s no fooling Maddie. “Okay, I am, but Maddie! What if this is a mistake?”

“Why would it be a mistake? Don’t you want to go out with him?”

“Of course I do! But what if I mess it up? You know that’s very likely to happen.” Buck says, pacing up and down his living room. He hears Maddie sigh very audibly on the other side. 

“Buck. Don’t let your head keep you from having something nice. Please? You deserve it after the last few months.” She says, almost pleadingly, and Buck’s heart skips a beat. 

He does deserve something nice after having his leg crushed by a firetruck, then spending his whole summer trying to get back on his job only for an embolism to ruin his plans, and then being in the middle of a literal tsunami. Tommy Kinard is the first really nice thing to happen to him in a long time, and he’s already finding a way to Buck it up. 

“You’re right”, he admits to Maddie. “I… I need to get out of my head about it. It’s just dinner, right? No big deal.”

“Definitely not a big deal”, Maddie agrees emphatically, and Buck takes a deep breath, his heartbeat slowing in his chest. “Go, have fun with your hot pilot. I love you”

“Love you too, Mads”, Buck tells her, and then they hang up. 

He’s still not totally calm, but he’s feeling better. This is something he’s always been good at; flirting, dating, getting to know someone (getting them to stay is where you run into trouble, a treacherous part of his brain tries to add, but Buck is determined to ignore it for now).

It won’t be any different just because Tommy’s a man, he reasons as he sprays on his favorite cologne. Buck still wants to flirt with him, get to know him. Definitely kiss him again. So why was he getting all nervous about it? He’s totally got this. 

There’s a knock on his door. Buck’s heart plummets all the way down to his knees. 

He doesn’t got this, in fact. But it’s too late to back out, and Tommy is waiting for him outside his door like a perfect gentleman, and Maddie raised him right. So after a deep breath and a slight wiping of his sweaty hands on his dark jeans, Buck opens the door. 

To find Tommy Kinard with an honest-to-God bouquet of sunflowers in his hand and a sheepish adorable smile on his face.

Np tagging @agentpeggycartering @laundryandtaxesworld @dum-amo-vivo9 @jamieroyjamieroy @unhingedangstaddict and whoever else would like to join! (if you want you can consider this your tag for Inspiration Saturday since Friday is over for a lot of folks already!)

[write-something-new-again]

Kotoha & Sakura ROLE SWAP AU

Okay so I love, love, LOVE Kotosaku. Romantically sure but even MORE SO platonically. They are just so great for each other. And one day I was at work and this came to me in like a flash of golden light: role swap. Literally what if they swapped roles tho.

Kotoha doesn't NEED people to believe in her. Not that they ever would, but she's strong and she doesn't need a hype squad to prove it. People have always looked down on her for being a girl, so she's going to fight her way to the top of Furin to show that she can be on top regardless of her damn gender

Then, on her first day there, a group of guys seem to be crowding around something. While Kotoha doesn't have a romance radar, she definitely does have a bullshit sensor, and it's going off right now.

Upon closer inspection, a quirky-looking but casually dressed boy is pressed up against an alley wall, surrounded by obvious ne'er-do-wells bugging him to drop his grocery bags, cooing that he'd be better off just dropping his wallet so he can keep his face intact, lame shit. She slugs them into next weekend.

"Ooooh, Furin high!!!" Muses the cafe owner, after all but dragging her into his quaint little diner with promises of free food as his thanks. "That's sick as hell! I'm rooting for you," he tells her, his two differently colored eyes twinkling in awe.

Cue Kotoha's face going strawberry red, because why?? "Rooting for me? Aren't you supposed to tell me to stay in the kitchen? Tell me I'll make a great stay-at-home mom?"

"Why would I do that? You just beat up 5 whole guys in front of me without breaking a sweat, you're obviously strong. You'll do great at Furin, I'm sure."

"I mean," he shrugs, and it's with that action Kotoha realizes this boy is wearing earrings. Cherry blossom earrings. "Look at me! I'm two different colors, and the people here are nothing but kind to me. I think you'll find everyone here a lot more accepting than you might be used to."

Kotoha can't help but grimace down at the bowl of ramen she's been gifted. She doesn't need 'rooting for'. Let alone a man cheering her on, after all of the cruel things the opposite gender has tried burning into her. This path is hers alone.

"Not hungry? This ramen is completely original, you know! I make it totally from scratch."

And damn, he must be doing something right, then. It's the best fucking ramen she's ever tasted

Honestly may be adding more to this 👀I'll take it as kotosaku role swap!! <3

[cookingwithroxy]

Hey. Hey Morlock. Morlock you absolute fucking cunt. Do you mind NOT reblogging from me specifically to reply to someone else and in the process ignoring anything and everything I said? Now, I'm writing this down before I even read your fucking reblog, because this has been the running fucking thread of your shit where I've seen, many fucking times, you ignoring the things WOMEN say to address only things MEN say and I was sick of it half a fucking DECADE ago. Am I right? Let's see...

YES. YES I FUCKING AM RIGHT YOU SEXIST PIECE OF SHIT.

But hell while NONE of this was addressed to me I actually can answer some of these things.

"pacifism is trafficking with the enemy" = Silence is Violence!

Like this is absolutely the easiest one to go to because it's the most common refrain, where not enacting the political side's agenda is aiding the opposition in their harm.

"individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will." = is one that's at least SOMEWHAT harder to pithily respond to, but mainly because it is a bit of an extremely vague and indecipherable phrasing. Considering that it starts with individual rights not existing, but the continuation is the 'People' as a vague entity of a common viewpoint? Yeah those do not actually fucking connect together.

"the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler." Is really fucking easy, because you can just replace 'force' with 'lies' or any other way in which someone doesn't actually gain their position legitimately and immediately the remainder follows, that the people who believed said lies deserve to be lied to for not being smart enough to see through them.

I'm not going to address the rest, this is a thing posted to Brazen not me, and you're full of your regular bullshit right here anyway, but at least I get to sit back and know you're still tha sexist piece of shit I grew to hate. Please, do still suffer in your day to day life, you deserve it.

A lot of mutuals and people I see on my dash read Umberto Eco's essay "Ur-Fascism" in a very hostile way, such that I have now re-read it several times, because frequently I read criticisms, and go, "Wait, that doesn't seem to match the essay I remember" and I go back to check.

What's basically at stake in the essay is that Eco asserts that Italian fascism was extremely contradictory and incoherent when you try to view it as an ideology:

Italian fascism was the first right-wing dictatorship that took over a European country, and all similar movements later found a sort of archetype in Mussolini’s regime... Nevertheless, historical priority does not seem to me a sufficient reason to explain why the word fascism became a synecdoche, that is, a word that could be used for different totalitarian movements. This is not because fascism contained in itself, so to speak in their quintessential state, all the elements of any later form of totalitarianism. On the contrary, fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions. Can one conceive of a truly totalitarian movement that was able to combine monarchy with revolution, the Royal Army with Mussolini’s personal milizia, the grant of privileges to the Church with state education extolling violence, absolute state control with a free market? The Fascist Party was born boasting that it brought a revolutionary new order; but it was financed by the most conservative among the landowners who expected from it a counter-revolution. At its beginning fascism was republican. Yet it survived for twenty years proclaiming its loyalty to the royal family, while the Duce (the unchallenged Maximal Leader) was arm-in-arm with the King, to whom he also offered the title of Emperor. But when the King fired Mussolini in 1943, the party reappeared two months later, with German support, under the standard of a “social” republic, recycling its old revolutionary script, now enriched with almost Jacobin overtones. There was only a single Nazi architecture and a single Nazi art. If the Nazi architect was Albert Speer, there was no more room for Mies van der Rohe. Similarly, under Stalin’s rule, if Lamarck was right there was no room for Darwin. In Italy there were certainly fascist architects but close to their pseudo-Coliseums were many new buildings inspired by the modern rationalism of Gropius.

The question for Eco is essentially, how did the fascists decide who was fascist and who wasn't? The Italian fascists were hardly tolerant, they blatantly and aggressively destroyed their enemies, and yet at the same time people who almost certainly would have been liquidated by the Nazis were counted as good, proper fascists in Italy.

So what is it that made observers both inside and outside the ideology look and go, "Italian Fascism and Naziism are both forms of Fascism" and also, how did the Italian fascists decide who was a fascist and who was an enemy of fascism to be ruthlessly destroyed?

Because it does not seem to have been any kind of coherent ideology or intellectually consistent philosophy or standard.

Rather, to Eco, and to a lot of people, it seems to have been more of a kind of psychological/emotional approach to the world; certain emotional reactions characterized the fascists, and Eco attempts to illuminate what those emotions were.

I don't think there's much point in saying "Well, pretty much any ideology that includes an enemy must conceive of the enemy as strong enough to do damage and yet weak enough to be worth fighting, so having an enemy which is both too strong and too weak isn't really meaningful in an analysis of fascism"

First of all, Eco himself already says,

"I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism."

Bolding mine.

But besides that, there is, as I said earlier, a genuine importance in drawing a distinction between the psychology that animates "We're going up against the best team in the league, but we've been improving all season and we're going to go out there and show them what we are made of" and "Damn Jews always stick together and help themselves, they don't care about the country."

Or, for that matter, between "Someday, you won't have power over me anymore." and "Someday, I'm going to put you back in your place."

The rebuttal, I suspect, would be to focus on the political organization of the fascist nations, how they organized and delegated political power. But part of that has to be how the fascists made decisions about who was in and who was out.

I've been thinking a lot recently about how radicals and conspiracy theorists relate to each other.

Donald Trump is a staunch ally of Israel; his son, Eric, has spoken at the Reawaken America tour, a tour that has hosted multiple holocaust deniers as speakers. Like, flat out sympathizers with Adolf Hitler who say that the holocaust never happened but that Hitler was right to try to "defend" Germany from the Jews.

So what is it that allows tour organizer Clay Clark, and Eric Trump, and holocaust deniers like Ian Smith to say, "Yeah, we're all on the same side here"?

I don't think it's a coherent ideology, I think it is closer to a shared set of emotional reactions to the world.

[disdaidal]

The moment I think I'm finally getting the hang of this thing, I don't. And it puts my mood down instantly.

[darklight-owl]

Sorry I'm about to ruin Eternal Diva for y'all but the whole Melina thing genuinely haunts me every day like. Melina is dead right but she doesn't die at the end of the movie where she willingly supresses her consciousness. That isn't Melina that is a copy of Melina that genuinely believes she is Melina. Because the Detragan didn't take her out of her body or anything it just made a backup of the data stored in her brain so if the "original" is unusable then it doesn't matter because you have another one right there. Melina never actually got another chance at life because her consciousness never actually left her body. Oswald probably knew that but he was so desperate and so unwilling to accept his daughter's fate that he pretended he had saved her. He wasn't even using these young girls' bodies as a vessel he was modifying their personalities for them to imitate his daughter so he could PRETEND she was still alive like what the fuck.

Anyway when you notice that the movie just gets a whole lot more depressing.

[ocelotlesbian]

OH MY GOD SO FUCKING TRUE.

yes the fact that these things are seen as feminine is made up by society, but guess what? GENDER AS A WHOLE IS MADE UP BY SOCIETY. *ALL OF IT* IS SOCIETY. and that doesn't make it any less real!! if people see something as feminine, well guess what, that's what's feminine now. because that's all gender & the feminine / masculine dichotomy as a whole is, what people percieve. that's literally the entire fucking point. that's the entire point of the queer movement, to say that none of this is set in stone and that it can easily be played with & turned into something that everyone can enjoy. *that's the entire fucking point.*

also honestly i'm 99% sure the "he hates being seen as feminine" thing comes from the scene where mitsuba explained how he got bullied and when kou went "ahhhhh" he went "could you not agree??" and it's just. those two things are not the fucking same?? at all??? disliking the fact someone agrees with the reasons why you were fucking bullied because it reads as justification of said bullying =/= disliking being feminine. it would be fucking stupid if that's what aidairo meant!! because, again, *the entire point of the mitsuba arc is that those bullies were wrong and mitsuba had every right to express himself the way he wants.* and the funny thing is, he wasn't even just bullied for being feminine!!! he was bullied for being generally annoying along with his femininity, which they decide to completely fucking ignore because despite hating the fact he's queer so much to the point of denying it entirely, it's apparently all they can fucking focus on. BECAUSE THEY'RE HOMOPHOBES. THAT'S LITERALLY ALL THIS IS: HOMOPHOBIA. it's both hatred of queerness and ignorance about queerness, which allows them to completely ignore the existence of queerness even when it's right in front of their fucking faces because they're ignorant enough to be able to deny it for their own sick heteronormative comfort. it's fucking gross

and unfortunately i can actually understand the "femboy" issue, it is used to be demeaning very frequently, and if not that, then for what's essentially a porn category. so i understand why people don't want to call him that, it's why i don't either even if it's by definition true

anyway that's your fault for using pinterest lololol

rant time again:

i have noticed this awful, discreet little plague within the jshk fandom where some, and i'm sorry (not) for saying it this way but it's true, dumbass fans will see anyone even merely suggest that mitsuba is feminine or genderqueer or would like wearing skirts or just isn't some perfectly masculine boy, and say "no that's not true he hates being seen as feminine," even spreading outright misinformation that he said this in the manga (no he fucking didn't) and it's just.... bitch *what*? that is not fucking true. just because he was bullied for looking feminine doesn't mean he hates looking feminine as a result. the ENTIRE POINT of the mitsuba arc is that those bullies were *wrong* and he should've just been himself instead of sanding down his personality to cater to the people who hate his true self. and mind you, this is the boy that actively wears his medium length bright fucking pink hair in a ponytail & brags about how cute he is 24/7. he actively presents himself as feminine, someone who hates the idea of being percieved as girly wouldn't fucking do that. he *enjoys* his femininity, you dumb fucks.

and while we're here, let me get to the *real* point. why do you automatically assume that a character who is percieved as feminine, and more broadly, a character who is percieved as QUEER, has to hate themselves? why do you assume this despite evidence to the contrary, despite *the story itself* telling you otherwise? why do you assume that? is it because you see someone breaking free from gender norms & heteronormativity as inherently negative and something they *must* hate deep down? is that the reason? tell me, what is your fucking reason? why do you see this beautiful little boy being openly queer and *happy about it, loving who he is* and assume he must hate himself, that him being queer is a flaw he must want to "fix"? why the *fuck* do you think that? it's horrible. do fucking better oh my god i hate you people so much

[nevermeanttoknow]

ok I thought about things and started feeling evil so it's bed time now

[icewindandboringhorror]

sometimes looking at like Self Help Strategies lists for the symptoms I'm having is always just like:

thing that I already do

thing I have tried 10 times

thing I already do

thing that I don't have the money to do

thing I already do

thing I've been doing since I was 10yrs old to no avail

thing that is impossible given my situation

thing that doesn't apply to me

thing that I already do

thing I have already tried

hrmm, oh wait, maybe finally- OH, yeah.. okay. thing that I already do but it was just phrased slightly differently

thing I have already done

[essektheylyss]

I was personally assaulted (honorific) by this essay on ambition. It's very good.

[things-arent-what-they-seem66]

But those things take time, it's not like Eden was yesterday. Adam would take his time and do it right, it would be easier now that Lilith has fucked off to go be bronzed on the beaches of Heaven.

Not that she deserved to be there. But she didn't deserve Lucifer, or the kid they have. When Charlie wasn't spewing about redemption she wasn't so bad.

Adam finished up the pancakes and handed the plate back.

Lucifer: Do you have an idea as to why you get that angry?

Adam: I don't know, it's not like they have therapy up in heaven.

Right, cause everything was supposed to be perfect.

Lucifer: Well, I'm here to help okay? Maybe get some rest.

Adam looked down at the hand he had cut, it was healed now but it made him sick knowing that there was no longer golden blood pumping through his veins.

Adam: ...... Yeah okay.

Hypnosis Au

Lucifer needed to find Adam, the angel had fallen and he wasn't adjusting well to life in Hell. He acted like it was a mistake, that he didn't belong here and that heaven would right the wrong.

But as time passed and Adam remained in Hell the gravity of the situation set in and he started to actually freak out.

Like today for example, Adam had been doing some prep work for dinner, staying at the hotel meant he had chores. He didn't like that one bit, Adam felt like he should get to do what he wants during the day said that's what Angel does.

Charlie explained that Angel has a job and he doesn't. All he did was roll his eyes and stomp away.

It was when he cut his finger showing that he had deep red blood instead of golden angelic blood in his veins did everything click for him.

Adam freaked out, when Charlie checked on him he pushed her out of the way and ran out the hotel's front door.

That's what Lucifer was doing now, looking for him. He was going to check the only place he could that Adam would go.

Heavens Embassy.

Sure enough when he got there the lobby was trashed, raging was going on in the other room.

Adam: PETER YOU COCK SUCKER!! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME GET SERA ON THE FUCKING LINE!!!!!!

Sera wasn't going to take his meeting request, she was too busy but Adam was too worked up.

Lucifer: Adam? Hey, calm down okay?

Adam turned and glared: YOU!! STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!!

He started throwing things at the devil and Lucifer knew he wasn't going to listen to reason. So he resorted to the last thing he could do, he'd have to grab ahold of Adam and look him in the eyes.

Lucifer would have to hypnotize him.

Lucifer: Adam, look at me.

Adam was in the midst of throwing something across the room when he heard the command, he felt the urge to listen to him.

Adam: Ok.

Lucifer: Good, now put that down and relax.

Adam did so, truthfully Lucifer felt bad doing this. But Adam was so upset and it upset to see him like this.

Lucifer: Let me hold you.

Lucifer held out his arms to Adam and the fallen first man just went into Lucifer’s arms as Lucifer hold him. He knew that he wasn’t going to use the hypnosis to make Adam do something sexual or violent. Just to calm him down.

Lucifer: Tell why you were so upset.

Adam looked up with tear filled eyes.

Adam: I didn’t think I would ever fall. I thought I was doing good. Everyone said I was doing good and then I fall like this.

Lucifer couldn’t help but feel bad hearing Adam talk like this, he just to not fail the people he cared for. He could even see that Lucifer’s opinion of Adam still mattered to him.

Lucifer: You are still good.

Adam: Then why did I fall?

Lucifer: Because others failed you.

@things-arent-what-they-seem66

[bonestrouslingbones]

also i hate to admit it and i swear i DO understand the importance of them but fellas i fear i may be steadily morphing into a humanities hater

[majoris]

hi hello im just gonna complain in the tags so don't worry about that hope you're having a nice time a good day cozy soft day to you my friend ✨

[chipistrate]

People really need to give Steel Wool a break sometimes, man- They messed up with Security Breach and now people act like EVERYTHING wrong with modern fnaf is all exclusively their fault when it's really not.

[vaguely-concerned]

I was just ambushed within the turbulent halls of my own mind by some headcanons about rye ingellvar's childhood that did 15000000 points of psychic damage to me and my heart personally and also made me almost sure of how I want to play it all at the end (very very differently from how I imagined going in!). some 'oh holy fuck this changes everything' rocking my own world bullshit going on in my neurons right now I'm reeling