#just entirely too many fucking people are like fuck democrats for never doing anything and then they also dont do anything

[anotherpapercut]

I think one of the most frustrating parts of trying to be active in organization is how many people claim that they want to be a part of it and help make change and then refuse to put in any effort whatsoever. everyone's pro union and all about organizing their workplace til it comes to showing up to meetings and having conversations with their coworkers. we all have things we'd rather be doing. I don't like doing this either. I just know that nothing will ever change if I don't do ANYTHING about it

[qqueenofhades]

I think the Aaron Sorkin fic people are writing about the convention to be extremely silly. It's going to be Biden. And if Biden's health takes a downturn and he feels the need to step down its going tk be Harris. This fantasy where we skip over her to whip up two random white guys(or like maaaybe Witmer) and somehow cruise to victory instead of fragmenting the party months before the election is simply not going to happen.

Look, I'm just saying, I got an email from the Biden campaign this morning where they seemed pretty darn happy with the actual (i.e. not-bloviating media) results of the debate: $38 million raised in 4 days ($30 million from individual small-dollar donors), 10K new volunteers in a week, 3x surge in campaign volunteers for battleground states, essentially no change or even a modest boost in the polls. So I think at this point, we can cautiously conclude the following things:

The debate looked bad for Biden, perhaps, but doesn't seem to have hurt him nearly as much the incredibly bad-faith BIDEN NEEDS TO STEP DOWN NOW takes being pumped out by the NYT and its other compatriots would suggest. Especially when these same media outlets have been gleefully sabotaging Biden at every turn for years already and whose fake-sanctimonious hand-wringing "for the good of the nation" pieces honestly should get them dropped into Superhell for Bad Journalists;

Biden went to Raleigh NC right after the debate and gave a fiery rally speech that was very well received. Now, I don't know why we didn't have that Biden at the debate, but it was the same night and there clearly was not any "cOgnItiVe dEcLinE" happening there (also Biden has a stutter and has for literally his entire life, and had a cold on debate night, so it was just an unfortunate confluence of factors)

There are very few actually undecided voters in this election (once again: HOW???) and those who tuned into the debate were largely already convinced of which candidate they were voting for and this didn't do much to change their minds. Just like, you know, pretty much every other debate in the history of presidential elections.

Ordinary voters, and not mainstream media outlets with BIDEN IZ BAD goggles clamped over their eyes, were able to see Trump's insane Gish gallops, lies, and full-blown dementia; this isn't going to get any better for him when he's already lost 20%-25% of GOP voters in every state primary and still is going to be sentenced in his criminal trial;

The D.C. political elite screaming about how Biden should step down (FOUR MONTHS BEFORE THE ELECTION) and leave the Democrats to start from scratch with some Star Chamber-selected candidate with no money and no incumbency record and no organization apparatus and a divided party are either fucking weapons grade morons or working secretly for Trump, because that IS in fact the best way to lose the election;

Such speculation seems to fall chiefly on Gavin Newsom, who (to his credit) has shut down any and all suggestion that he should try to step in and take the place of an incumbent who has won every state primary with 90% or more, because he's remotely sane and understands that this year is too important to fuck around with;

I've somehow never seen any suggestion that Biden should step aside for the duly elected (brown, female) Vice President, because everyone seems to think some Young Miraculous White Guy is coming and/or should step in;

All this while SCOTUS is clearly so confident of Trump getting back in that it's willing to grant him Absolute God King status pre- and post-emptively;

Yes, Biden needs to up his game before the next debate (though that's on Fox News iirc, blargh), but I think it's far enough post-debate that we can say it was bad but did not sink him, and if anything, reinforced the fact to many ordinary, non-brainwormed voters that Biden is old (which has been the number one chief theme of news coverage for four years and is no surprise to anyone) but is a decent and principled man doing a good job, while Trump is an absolute gibbering insane orange shitmonger fascist. I don't think he did himself any favors in that regard.

....anyway. The point is, do not be fucking insane people, Biden is not going to step down and frankly shouldn't, don't read the NYT (as noted, they've openly admitted to sabotaging him for personal ego reasons so I don't know why the hell anyone would listen to what they have to say about him), this is still an eminently winnable election, and let's go get those motherfucking fascists. I want Trump in jail and all of SCOTUS and the MAGAGOP fucking crying over it because they fucking suck. Let's go.

[psychotrenny]

There's a real unearned confidence to the way that Social Democrats talk about their ideology, like they've cracked the code and found the perfect way forward and the only reason people disagree is because they're misguided or evil. Like they'll correctly point out problems within Neoliberal Capitalism before spouting some absolute nonsense about how uniquely evil and dysfunctional Communism was (nearly always in the past tense too; they take it for granted that the end of the USSR was the end of all Communism) and then going "Don't worry though, there's a third way; a mixed regulated economy. We can have a free market in consumer goods while making sure that corporations pay their fair share in wages and taxes that can fund the welfare that looks after everyone". And like putting aside the fact that such a model relies on the super-profits of imperialist exploitation to actually function, and the inherent instability of an arrangement where the Bourgeoisie make concessions even while maintaining ultimate control of the economy, there's the simple fact that much of the Imperial Core did indeed had Social Democracy but does not anymore.

Like these Social Democrats never think about why that might be, why their ideology failed and what they can learn from it going forward. They just act as though some dumb individuals (i.e. Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman etc.) managed to slip into power and make bad decisions and like the best way to fix this is to vote good people in who'll change it back. Like hell a lot of these people take the previous existence of these policies as like a good point, the whole "We had them before so we aren't being radical by wanting them back. We don't want anything crazy we just wanna bring back The New Deal or Keynesian Economic policy or whatever". There's never any thought about why those policies failed (how often do you hear these people even talk about "stagflation" or "the oil crisis" let alone the impact of the fall of the soviet union) and what implications this might have on the viability of bringing it back. They also love talking about how Social Democratic institutions are still largely intact in the Scandinavian countries, but rather than even consider what specific factors in their political-economic situation led to this these people just go "Damn isn't Sweden great. Why aren't we doing exactly what they do?"

And sure some people might compare this to Marxism-Leninism, the whole "trying to bring back a defeated ideology", but for one it's stupid to treat the dissolution of the USSR as the end of Communism as a global political force. It may have been a major blow, but even if you write off like Cuba and Vietnam as too small and insignificant to matter you can't just fucking ignore that over 1/6 of the world's population continues live under a Marxist Leninist party. Whatever concessions these countries may have made to global Capitalism, it's just plain ignorant to act as though Communism suffered anywhere near the humiliating loss of global power and credibility that Social Democracy has. Sure the latter may be more politically acceptable to toy with in "The West", but "The Western World" ≠ The Entire World. Also, nearly every ML on the planet is painfully aware that Soviet Communism collapsed and that it collapsed for a reason. There might be plenty of contention about why exactly it died and what exactly we can learn from this, but nearly everyone agrees that we need to learn and ideologically grow. No serious Communist wants to "bring back the USSR" in the same way that many Social Democrats want to "bring back The Welfare State". Far from being a form of "best of both worlds" mixed economy, Social Democracy is nothing more than a flimsy tool to stabilise Imperialist Capitalism at its moments of greatest strain. And if people are still gonna promote it wholeheartedly as the best possible solution, I wish they'd be a little less arrogant about it. It's not as though they have history on their side

[hertwood]

"I do find it interesting that ppl will ignore the many many times Taylor Swift has publicly supported democrats just because she was friendly to her boyfriend's coworker's wife"

the "many many times" in question being an entirely self-serving activism kick in 2019 and 2020... she hasn't even spoken up about this year's (arguably more consequential) election Imao if normal ass people can cut off their own relatives for being bigoted then white woman of the year can certainly avoid snuggling with a loud and proud racist. i'll also remind you that the "political arguments" in question that occur between trumpies and normal people directly affect the lives and safety of millions of people both in the States and abroad but okay! sure! not everyone has enough empathy to care about that! whatever!

if you want to believe taylor swift is a bad person, or not progressive enough, or a performative activist thats fine!! you don't have to like her and you also don't need to justify it with any "good enough" reason!!! you can just hate the bitch you're allowed!!!

the point i was trying to make is it is weird as hell to be making polls and speculating if she's a republican when she's endorsed joe biden in 2020 and many other democrats since 2018, it really seems like a bad faith fucking conversation to me 🤷 i think the people who are having these discussions have already decided that she's a bad person and are discounting very significant data points to present their opinions like they're reality. if you think it was self-serving activism, that is actually just your opinion :) that you are allowed to have but that does not change the objective truth that she has never been vocally anything other but liberal in her political views.

i also think its fucking weird that people who hate her so much won't shut the fuck up about her TBH!!!!!!!

also acting like i, a disabled nonbinary dyke don't know how politics affect real people?????? bitch i'm one of them. and you're right, not everyone has enough empathy to care about everything wrong with the world all the time. not everyone has the capacity to argue with every bigot they meet 100% of the time without getting burnt the fuck out. it is not sustainable and also not very effective to do! most of these crazy assholes are not gonna have their minds changed with an argument. caring for vulnerable members of our communities is a far more valuable way to spend your energy. getting young leftist people registered to vote is gonna be a much more viable strategy for change than arguing with trumpies.

i have also, for the record, been kind to bigots. so fucking cancel me too i guess. i've said hey i'm not gonna start an argument bc my siblings deserve a christmas without all that. i've heard coworkers say bigoted things and said hey i'm exhausted from the work day i dont have a capacity to deal with this right now. and if you think i'm a bad person for that? dont worry you can unfollow me i will still sleep easy at night :)

i also think it's worth mentioning that taylor swift recently had to cancel a show bc of a real terrorist threat. i personally think it's very likely she's being advised not to say anything in order to not increase risk of another tragedy like the manchester ariana grande attack. if this is true and you still think that taylor swift prioritizing the safety of herself and her fans dying over speaking up politically, thats your right to think so!! but i don't expect my faves to be activists 24/7 personally, for any reason. i dont think thats fair to expect of people who aren't politicians.

but that's just me!!!

[bakafox]

Having to unsubscribe from more and more 'leftist' Youtubers who are committing to the bit that it's more important to bash the Democratic party and Joe Biden as if they're just as bad as Trump than it is to just focus on the fact that Trump and the GOP are the absolute fucking worst.

Especially since they keep pulling the 'Biden is senile and a drooling zombie' card since the fucking debate. Biden's fucking speech impediment has always been known about. He's always had pauses and problems finding words sometimes because of it, like friends of mine who struggle with that sort of shit do. 'Debating' someone like Trump on live TV isn't something a president needs to be able to do, but they'll focus on that gleefully and still never bring up all the left-leaning policies the Biden Administration has successfully pushed over the last 4 years or that were blocked by the fact Dems don't control congress, senate, or the supreme courts and

I am just begging people who haven't recently refreshed themselves on how the US system even is supposed to work to watch some stuff and refresh themselves.

Like, is the system pretty busted and rooted in shitty racist and classist shit? Yes, but it's not going to be fixed before this election, just like it isn't fixed before other elections because not enough people are willing to work for things like ranked choice voting in between election cycles.

But the system also isn't completely dead yet, and right now there's game plans and blueprints on how to at least survive within it- and how to push for changes in between big election cycles by voting the right people in during even smaller election cycles.

Those are the times you beef up third party ideals or whatever, because yes, right now, when the presidential election happens the only two choices that mean anything numerically for the electoral vote system are Republican and Democrat.

If you want to call that 'not a real election' or whatever, fine, but even if there's only two choices, one choice is still actively less harmful than the other, and if the only applicable choices in a shitty election have differences, and electoral results actually have a chance of being honored even if the less awful side wins it's still actually an election that matters. Is it a shitty choice? Is it not much of a choice? It's still a choice, and it's still a difference that can be made.

Of course with Project 2025, the Republicans plan to finish gutting and rearranging the US government to suit their desire for a theocratic dictatorship, which means they are actively working to make elections completely irrelevant or end them entirely. There will no longer be even a map or blueprint for anyone who isn't a white heterosexual Christian (of the kinds of Christians they approve of, I will bet five dollars that once in office the evangelical protestant type Christians are going to start throwing other denominations under the bus, because five dollars is all I even have right now,) to follow.

All of the between-election activism and community support and service that needs to be done is already hard, too, yes, but it will be much harder if Trump, a guy who has literally talked about having protestors on college campuses shot or deported as Hamas sympathizers, and people who think like him and will unequivocally back him takes over.

There's no real choice, but if the Democrats control senate, house, and presidency, there's actually room for a choice to grow if people don't just give up the minute the election is over and actually seek and work towards the reforms that are desired.

If the GOP gets any more seats and the presidency, I cannot stress enough that we are probably going to be living in an actual, literal, dictatorship, which by all definitions, the US is currently not, despite what I see people trying to twist definitions around to say it is because a 2 party system isn't great.

I am just so tired right now, the lives of so many people, including those of people I know personally, are on the line with this vote. I've only just gotten to celebrate things the Biden administration has done for disabled Americans and yet I know that if Trump is elected, we're going to go immediately at least back to shit like 'people buying you food can reduce or stop your SSI' if not worse since the GOP are pretty open about wanting to axe Medicaid and disability with social security.

Biden's administration has put protections for LGBT people in at the federal level, and it is remaining state's rights shit that's keeping it bad in red states, which is complicated as fuck, but if the GOP get their way, their stripping out the idea of state's rights will go after the states that are sheltering trans people or providing abortion care and asylum.

Project 2025 and Trump have made a VERY big deal out of wanting to deport millions of people and have ICE raiding churches and schools. (Oh hey remember what I said about even other Christians are gonna get shat on if maybe they're inclusive or whatnot?)

And for that single issue: Yes, Trump will be worse for Palestine. Also worse for Ukraine, Sudan, and pretty much everywhere else there is a genocide happening.

There isn't a 'real' choice, is the argument, but there still is a choice, and it's one that has to be made to try and reduce harm and keep the boot from being so firmly on everyone's neck that no one can breathe well enough to fight it.

There also is not going to be a glorious revolution formed if Trump wins, there's going to be concentration camps, deportations, increased incarceration for profit, no social safety net at all, and more and more deaths including state-sponsored violence and murders. Facists like Putin, Bibi, etc will be emboldened and given more actual weaponry and support.

On paper maybe it sounds like something that makes a revolution happen in the US, but in reality it is far more likely that it further divides and crushes people into inaction.

Also in reality the US has a fucking huge military with drone strike capabilities and the Republicans will not hesitate to make the poor neighborhoods of any US city into craters, and groups of actual revolutionaries will be very scattered and isolated and much more poorly armed because the US is a big space- and there can be no counting on Canada, Mexico, or any other nations in the world for help. That'll be the start of WW3.

If there is a revolution against a GOP dictatorship it is not going to be glorious, it is not going to go well. It should not even be being considered as a preferred option by anyone who claims to be 'for the people' compared to harm reductive voting and then community activism and pushes for voting and government reform in a setting where there is still some freedom to do that.

[paulic]

Something that always bothers me is how people talk about Paul taking the role of the manager after Brian's death.

Yes, Paul took the initiative and managed a lot of the projects like MMT etc. and especially John and George were pissed off by this, but when you think about it for literally two seconds, you realize why Paul did it. He's always said how important the Beatles were to him, has called them his second family. He never expressed any interest in managing the band while Brian was still alive and after the Beatles broke up, his focus was always on making music, not the managing part of his job. Everyone makes him seem like this power hungry demon who was just waiting for his turn at the steering wheel, but there are so many things that point to him just trying to literally save what was most important to him: this band.

He's been known to throw himself into projects when grieving, mourning by not mourning. John was devastated by Brian's death and (I assume) in no fit state to think about what project would make the most money or whatever. While everyone was sitting on their asses (I know this is a mean way to put it, but I'm pissed off), Paul actually took matters into his own hands.

"He was too bossy". Was he bossy? Probably, yes. But someone fucking had to be, or the Beatles would have crashed and burned. I do understand why everyone wasn't happy with how things were going, George who already felt like the little brother who was sort of tagging along but not being taken seriously enough was obviously pissed that this "power dynamic" for lack of a better word was only increasing, and John, who had always been equal to Paul in literally anything didn't like the idea of Paul having power like that and being "above" him. But really, what would have been the better scenario? John managing the band? The same person who pissed off entire countries in like every second interview and had to make public statements and apologies about half the things he said? I think John was very smart and I find his wit and candor very endearing, but if he had been the one in charge, chances are the Beatles would have blown up. He's a fantastic artist, but not very smart about money etc etc, so not exactly the perfect fit for the role of a temporary manager. George? Perhaps he’s smarter about money (although he apparently didn’t understand the importance of paying taxes?) and publicity, but at that time he was completely infatuated with India, Hinduism and meditation and so on. I don't mean to say that was inherently bad, but I think Paul was the one with the most common sense. He knew how to charm the press to keep from getting into scandals (I mean, even when he was arrested for weed, he managed to sort of wiggle out of it. Nobody gave a shit). If Paul hadn’t been born a musical genius, I think being a manager would be a good fit for him. As for Ringo, I love the guy more than I can say but half the time in Get Back while decisions were being made he was completely zoned out, staring at walls. I honestly don't think he was very much interested in managing. So, perhaps a democratic regime where everyone gets a vote? Sure, if you want to get absolutely nothing done at all you let many people decide. I don't mean to sound like a monarchist, but I very much doubt an anarchistic management would have worked.

Now when you look at the years that came after, everyone was half in love with Allen Klein, but Paul was weary and didn't want to back down. And who turned out to be the Judas in this Bible? Allen fucking Klein. I don't mean to say Paul should have become the official manager, but I just find it baffling when people make it seem like he was trying to gain power over his best friends or whatever. There was no ideal outcome of this situation, because Brian was fucking dead. Of course it wasn't all peaches and cream. But there weren't (m)any scandals and they got a few albums done. That's, in my opinion, more than what would have happened if Paul had sat back and watched.

[chokovit]

I'm gonna rant and vent

I'm gonna rant and vent about people I consider my brethren, my comrades, and my peers. I'm 100% not interested in debating or arguing with anyone at all so don't expect that if you message me.

I fucking hate election year. Every 4 years it's the same god damn song and dance and every other election it's worse and worse. And I'm not talking about some shitty pat ourselves on the back, circle jerking feel good about yourself garbage where I preach to the choir and we all sing "Yeah I feel that way too!"

I'm talking about Leftists, specifically, American Leftists (as I am American this will be therefore be from the point of view of one and my grievances will henceforth be specifically about "AMERICAN" Leftists so foh with your "That's an american centric view" shit).

I'm gonna preface what I'm about to say by stating the obvious. I am a leftist. Whether you fucking like it or not, whether you agree with me being one or not, I am. I don't hate leftists, as hard as this rant will make that easy to believe. I'm just very bothered by trends I see among them. They bother me because, unlike conservatives, I actually want leftists to "win". I actually want us to succeed. But in case your world view is black and white to the point you need me spelling it out for you, yes I am a leftist, I agree with leftists, and I am absolutely repulsed by Conservatism.

Now let me get into the meat and potatoes of what I want to bitch about. Basically, in the past, whenever I saw people bemoan that leftists are largely signal virtuing, morally uptight, jerkasses I thought of it as nothing more than the typically reactionary pant shitting rhetoric we've come to expect from Right-Wing discourse. And to be fair, back than, in the early-mid 2010s it probably was. But now? I don't fucking know anymore, it really does seem like at the very least a worryingly large amount of leftists think they're a part of some clique or social group and don't understand both the implications and power of their own standing. Particularly and most especially when it comes to voting. Let me tell you something, something really fucking important. You have nothing, you are nobody, and you are mostly powerless to do anything at all...EXCEPT for one thing, and that's voting. Yes, you can call your senator and congressperson but even thats only really gonna work if your congressperson or senator is one that'll even consider your interests. Do you think people in Lauren Boebert's district feel confident calling her to complain about trans issues? Yeah no. Every single fucking vote, every single god damn one matters and you can fuck off with your "both parties are the same" and "voting doesn't matter" bullshit. One party is waging a culture war on our entire nation, one party wants to make sure you're following a rigid social hierarchy, one party wants to turn Christianity into state law, one party wants to drape everything in repugnant Christian Nationalism and it's not Democrats.

Yes, yes it sucks that we can only pick from the two. No, no voting third party is not an option, we do not get the privilege of living in a country with a multi-party system. The DNC and the RNC both respectively own the two whole halves of the media industry in the United States, and no I'm not making that up. As cool and based as you think you look here on tumblr preaching about how we'll all vote for some super sick Ultra-Commie Socialist Dream party it's not going to happen. How many people will be inspired by you organizing on tumblr? in public even? on campus? Do you know the statistics you'd need? 2020 had an election turn out of 154 MILLION people! over 81 Million of them voted for Biden, and 74 Million of them voted for Trump! Now let's do a hypothetical, and lets be god damn realistic about it okay? REALISTICALLY, you and your lefty friends will never, ever, in all your attempts and rhetoric and debate, will ever be able to convince a MAGA Trump supporter from 2020 to vote for the Green Party. It will. Not. Happen. So that 74 Million? That stays, you get none of that. But, you could probably convince Progressives and Liberals who voted for Biden to do so (you know, if you actually want to shut the fuck up for 10 seconds and stop crying about how much you claim you hate them so all your friends nod and clap at you for being a super cool edgy leftist). So okay, let's be REALLY optimistic, let's say you convince like 20 million of those people who would've voted for Biden to vote for you, lets be even more optimistic and say you started with a base of 2 million people. I want you to keep this in mind that 2 Million people alone would be a record for the green party. In 2020 they had a popular vote of 406,000, literally less than half a million. But I digress. You're at 22 Million people, now lets consider people who didn't vote in 2020. That's 80 Million people, but, BUT, that's not a big pool of 80 million for you to grab from. We need to consider statistics first. Out of that 80 Million only roughly 30% of them didn't vote specifically because they either were undecided or didn't like the candidates. Therefore your actual pool of candidates interested in voting for you is 56 Million people. If you were only able to convince 20 million Biden voters, chances are you'd convince even less undecided voters. Realistically you should only get a hairs fraction of voters but, I'm trying to make a point here so lets say you get the largest share of Undecided Voters, somehow you're just super cool and based and you convince 30 million to vote for you. Not you have 54 Million votes. Congratulations, you have made US History by being the most voted for third party in the history of the US. You have beaten the previous record set by Jo Jorgensen in 2020 by a whopping 52 Million Votes (yes, really, that's the most a third party has ACTUALLY ever gotten before, just shy of 2 million votes). Despite your epic feel good win, the Orange piece of shit running against you, who has been galvanizing his base and everyone from the most fervant of maga's to your needle dick co-worker you kind of get along with despite voting republican for "fiscal" reasons, has surpassed his previous record by a little bit, he only really pooled in about a million more....which is 75 Million voters. Which is over 20 million people more than you.

Now I get it, I hear you barkin' big dog, we don't decide elections on popular vote, it's decided on the Electoral College. My point here is showing you how unfeasible third parties really truly are. This isn't a movie, this isn't like someone's gonna make some grand speech and everyone claps and comes to their senses and all of a sudden votes for "the right candidate". No, for a party that's NOT Libertarian to get even 10 million people to vote for them would be a historical precedent. And you don't need me to tell you that 10 million people is not nearly enough people spread across 50 states to make up for the electorate you'd need to win an election.

So why is this important? Why is it important we vote against republicans instead of voting for whatever helps us sleep at night, makes us feel good, and makes us look super "in" with our buddies online? Uh, because republicans will continue to do the things they're doing so long as they see it as a means to make themselves electable. Sure, some people say "well it's not MY fault it's the dems faults for not being GOOD enough for me to vote for them" and to that I say pbbbbth, you fucking KNOW better. You KNOW better, because you're a leftist, how dangerous fascism is, how bad and poisonous and terrible Traditionalism is. Consider this, another hypothetical okay? Everyone is so disgusted by the perils of conservatism they unite, as they did in 2020, to vote against them. They do it again in 2024, They do it again in 2028, and a 4th time in 2032. You've now had two full term presidents in the United States, will that make the conservatives go away? no. But will it swing the pendulum back? Yes! YES IT WILL! Politicians only give a shit about one thing and thats GETTING ELECTED. And if those mother fuckers start to realize that conservatism is an UNWINNABLE position, than they will, at the least, begin to abandon Conservatism as a platform for their party.

At the moment, that's NOT what's happening. Instead, we have Conservatives emboldened by 40 years of Reagan Rhetoric slowly shifting the pendulum ever more right. They've been doing it for 4 god damn decades okay, and you think 1 term from a dem president is going to start shifting it back? Fuck. The Fuck. Off. Dems are, from a global perspective, a centre-right party. When and if they do anything to "shift" the pendulum left, it's going to be shifted less to the left and more toward the "centre". Right now THAT IS WHAT YOU WANT!!!! YOU WANT THAT!!! HAVING THE PENDULUM FARTHER AWAY FROM THE RIGHT IS A /GOOD/ THING BECAUSE RIGHT NOW ITS DANGEROUSLY FAR TO THE RIGHT.

This shit doesn't make me liberal, this shit makes me pragmatic. I DONT. LIKE. CONSERVATIVES. I'm guessing if you've read this far /YOU/ probably don't either (or at least you claim to). But I don't hate them because they're rhetoric is bad, because they act like bigots or say mean/offensive things. I hate them because I genuinely hate their ideology, I hate their beliefs, I think everything they want for you and me and society at large is a fucking POISON to us as a modern, progressive society. And that's for obvious reason, they don't WANT us to be a modern, progressive society. If you've hated conservatives this entire time because of any "shocking" or "apalling" things you've seen or heard from them or that MSNBC or your lefty friends have shown you (including me) than I'm sorry but you're hating them for the wrong reasons. I mean, not that it isn't valid to hate someone for being a dick head. But your repulsion, your disgust should run deeper than that. You should be terrified and stop at nothing to want to crush Conservative ideology from the grip it has on American society. The vast majority of conservatives want to kill you, do you understand that? Whether that's because of their bigoted views, or because of LITERALLY CENTURY LONG WORTH OF PROPAGANDA AGAINST LEFTIST AND SOCIALIST VALUES they see you as a threat and want you dead. As much as they point and ridicule "libs" and "liberals" like you do, the liberals will be fine. It's YOU who won't be, it's YOU who should be hating them the most. And from what I see, you don't. Because if leftists truly felt threatened by conservatism they'd be stopping at nothing to rid it from our system. Instead, Leftists are more concerned with policing themselves, more concerned with having some super cool "hot take" on whoever the current president is. Leftists are more comfortable being the edgy outcasts, and if they're successful, they're not outcasts anymore. Fuck that. I haven't claimed leftism my entire life since I was 13 (I'm 30 now) just cuz I wanted to be edgy, and different. I didn't want to "look smart" and prove some "moral superiority" over people. You can do that shit with literally any political ideology. I claimed Leftism as my political ideology because it is, to me, the most pragmatic to ending universal suffering. And with that, I want leftism as an ideology to prevail and succeed. Not remain in the fucking shadows, ever caught on the side-lines of a worsening tug-o-war between Liberals and Fascists.

And most importantly of all, I want this to succeed, it NEEDS to succeed. And to do that we MUST unify, divide, and conquer. Yes, that means at least for a while we have to unify with Liberals. Our battle right now should be with the scourge of Fascism. The Soviet's didn't turn their guns mid-way through fighting the Nazi's cuz "erm actually the Allies are cringe too" no, they fucking united against a common, worse enemy. In fact, let me dive into the Nazi's cuz there's an interesting tid bit here. The Weimar republic, pre-Nazi rise, was composed of like 3 "left" wing parties. Needless to say by US standards all 3 of these parties would be considered left of Democrats but I digress. The refusal of all 3 of these parties to unite and caucus together created fractions in the political system of Germany at the time. This made it way fucking easier for the Nazi's to come in and sweep things up afterwards. There's many reasons WHY they were fractured, but those are beside the point of what I am trying to say here. It's like, that one part from Sun Tzu's Art Of War that people actually remember: "Divide and Conquer" with political division, the Nazi's easily just swept in and destroyed them. Do not forget, Fascism is an inherently authoritarian ideology. It is therefore organized and demands rigid conformity. If we do not unite, we will be easier to break apart and fall victim to it's clutches.

Finally, and lastly, I think this last part just comes from our horrible education system in the US. I understand many people probably didn't take Civics in high school, to those people I am sorry. As there's no way you could get how our system works because the system itself failed to educate you. If you did take civics in high school, or god forbid college, than you fucking know better. YOU! WILL NOT! CHANGE ANYTHING! IN A MEASLY 4! FUCKING! YEARS!

I know what we want, I know because I share a lot of the same values as you, even if I don't share your methods. I also know them because I've been reading you people post about them for the better part of like 15 years! NOTHING YOU WANT TO SEE IN GOVERNMENT, NONE OF THE CHANGES YOU WANT TO SEE HAPPEN! NONE OF THEM ARE GONNA HAPPEN IN ONE PRESIDENCY! Need I remind you that the current state of affairs has been shifted to the Right over a process that has taken FOURTY! FUCKING! YEARS!? and you think somehow that you'll just come in with some super cool epic revolutionary spirit and change shit in a couple years? That's not realistic! IT's just! NOT! But that doesn't mean we CANT change things. Yes, it does mean we have to change things slowly, it DOES mean we have to play the long game. But guess what, the Conservatives have been playing the long game since that shit bag Reagan leaked poisonous venom from his gunshot wound in DC. In fact they've probably been doing it longer, from 1965.

You wanna know if things can get worse? You already know the answer to that, yes. Yes things can get worse. Yes a society can advance forward, only to move backward. This literal exact fucking thing happened once in modern history, and it took 3 major super powers to defeat it.

Leftism isn't a fucking club, it's not a circle jerk for all of us to feel good about ourselves for being intellectuals and morally upright people. It's a fucking political ideology, that's it. It's not one of your fandoms. So no, you don't need to spend all the energy spent arguing with and debating with every other leftist and YES I know how that sounds coming from me. As much as this rant will have you assume otherwise I don't really spend much time debating other leftists. Mostly because a good chunk of leftists are way too reactionary to give me a charitable and honest platform. Anyone you disagree with is a fascist. And yes I've ACTUALLY had people call me this before. You dilute the term, you HELP the fascists this way. Fascism is a very specific evil, it's not just people who disagree with you. Sometimes, you will feel uncomfortable about the views other leftists have. That's normal. That doesn't mean they're "Liberal" or "Fascists". Again, this isn't a little pow wow where we sit around and agree with each other and get super psyched together about our favorite piece of political theory, and than if someone says something we disagree with we just kick them out of the circle. That's not how that works. That's not how any functional political movement succeeds. Right now, you and I have ZERO seats at the table, we don't exist on the grand political spectrum, as much as the GOP tries to fear monger that we do. So yes, we will have to unify sometimes with people we don't like. We will have to agree to disagree and come together for a common enemy.

I know this will change literally nobody's mind but I just really needed to get all of these thoughts out. I want them out and I want people to read them so that they can at least SEE the perspective of leftists outside their fucking echo chamber. Our division is NOT conducive to our success. We are going to /FAIL/ because the pendulum will keep going to the right. It'll fail cuz we are more concerned about making a choice that makes us feel morally vindicated than one that is pragmatic. I have nothing else to say anymore. Fuck Americans. Fuck all of them. Fuck all the American Conservatives. Fuck all the American Liberals. Fuck all the American Leftists. And Fuck all the undecided pieces of shit who couldn't decide whether or not they want to vote against fascism or let it slip on in. Fuck all of you, you uneducated, feel-good, self-satisfying, non-communitarian, individualistic, pigs of society. I sincerely wish I was born in literally any other country because at least than I wouldn't have to deal with being around some of the most inane, vapid, superficial fucking human beings on the planet. American Society is a god damn joke. Only above Israel. And that's not a bar you should be proud of.

[anarchistettin]

why do so many tumblrs praise and fight for the norm?

if you're normal about queer people, get all the fuck of the way away from me.

has normalizing anything ever worked out to goodness? did we normalize? are we normal?

all too fucking normal.

did the karens stop attacking? did the magats? or hasn't normalizing things alerted thom & karen magat to new objects of hatred they couldn't name before you normalized them? have the good democrats responded to your norms? oh, they have. :(

wtf is this obsession with normalcy? lauding of lowness and "nuanced" bigotry, as if it's aspirational? are you not just normal people already? onside with the cops?

I don't find a reasonable excuse for it. Especially now, when you've been treated to the dire outcomes of your crusades already several times, and had to face being a big part of the "sudden" erasure of reproductive protections, and the flat-out genocidal warfare against trans people. Your attempt at speech policing, alone, has caused So Much Damage and Harm. I don't know that it's possible to recover the generational link. We aren't safe trusting you because we speak in terms that, much like the real world-entire, itself, defy your moral constructs.

Normalizing terfs command of queer spaces was a catastrophe. Why keep doing this??

The call to Be Normal About Whatever is not only reprehensible, but deadly dangerous.

if the normal people don't love you you might actually turn out to be one of the few GOOD people. None of those? are normal.

If you've uttered this bullshit, it's on you to apologize personally and individually to every single person in your life. You can't skip one because you will never know who is or isn't Normal. "I am very sorry about what I said concerning being normal. I didn't think through what I was communicating and I'd come under the influence of online fascists and racists. I promise I am going to work hard from now on to undo some of the damage I've caused. I'm really sorry."

Will you be normal about it? If so: get the fuck out until you can control yourself.

[therealvinelle]

I've always wondered this, but what do you think the Cullen's political viewpoints would be, given their individual backgrounds? if vampires don't change after they turn, then surely they would all be extremely racist (especially Jasper). would this not come up at some point? they aren't like the Volturi because the Volturi are too old to care, but the Cullens are young enough that they have been brought up with opinions on stuff like sexism, racism, homophobia and the like.

Oh fuck.

You get an early answer because otherwise I'll just chicken out and delete this one, pretend I never saw it.

UMMM.

Since I'm guessing you meant American political viewpoints, we need a disclaimer. I am not American, and not too knowledgeable about your politics. Not just in the sense that I don't follow the day-to-day drama, but as I am not an American citizen there are several things I don't know, can't know because I've never lived in your country and therefore can't know what the effects of living in a country ruled by American policies is like. What I do know is based off of the news in the foreign section, social media (by which I mean tumblr posts), and Trevor Noah's Daily Show.

I am an outsider looking in.

Which is really rather appropriate, since the Cullens are too.

The Cullens go to high school and college, Carlisle works, they pay taxes, they own real estate, and submerge themselves in American culture. Esme, Edward, Rosalie, Emmett, and Bella are young enough that this is in many ways their world, and apart from timeouts they've more or less spent their entire lives, human and vampire, integrated into American society.

Not fully integrated, mind you, they do what they need to to fit in and get to school or, in Carlisle’s case, to work. They go no further. No extra-curriculars for the kids, no book clubs for Esme, no game nights for Carlisle. They walk parallel to humans, not among us.

In addition to this they're obscenely rich, which puts them another thousand miles from the experiences of your average American. They won't deal with the health system, which means healthcare is a non-issue, they're not going to need welfare or other social programs, unemployment is another non-issue. Name your issue, and the Cullens don't have personal stake in it. Even the climate crisis won't be a problem for them the way it will for us.

What I'm trying to say is, American political issues are a concept to them, not a lived reality. Just like they are for me. So hey, you made a great choice of blog to ask.

I'll also add here that you say the Volturi are too old to care, and I agree- from an ancient's point of view, racism is a matter of "which ethnicity are we hating today?", and it all looks rather arbitrary after a while. Same with every other issue - after a while it all just blends together into "what are the humans fighting over today? Which Christian denomination is the correct one? Huh. Good for them, I guess."

I can't put it any better than this post did, really. The Volturi are real people, humans are nerds and tumblr having Loki discourse. Aro thinks it's delightful and knows entirely too much about Watergate (and let's be real, Loki discourse as well), but the point I wanted to get at is that politics really don't matter to vampires.

And I don't think they matter to the Cullens either.

So, moving on to the next point while regretting I didn't put headlines in this post, I'll just state that I don't think vampires' minds are frozen. Their brains are unable to develop further, and they can never forget anything, but... well, this isn't the post for that, but in order for this to be true of vampires they would barely be sentient. They would not be able to process new impressions, to learn new things, nor to have an independent thought process. Yes, we see vampires in-universe (namely, Edward, who romanticizes himself and vampires) believe they're frozen and can never change, but there is no indication that this is a widespread belief, or even true. Quite the contrary - Carlisle went from a preacher's son who wanted to burn all the demons to living in Demon Capital for decades and then becoming a doctor and making a whole family of demons. Clearly, the guy has had a change in attitude over the years. Jasper, in his years as a newborn army general, slowly grew disenchanted with his life and developed depression. James initially meant to kill Victoria and hunted her across the earth, then became fascinated and changed his mind about it.

Had these people been incapable of change, Carlisle would still be hating demons, Jasper would be in Maria's army, and James would still be hunting Victoria.

It goes to follow, then, that they are able to adapt to new things.

The question is, would they?

Here I finally answer your question.

So, we have these people who don't really have any kind of stake in politics, who keep up to date all the same (or are forcibly kept up to date because high school) and are generally opinionated people.

Where do they then fall, politically?

(And this is where you might want to stop reading, anon, because I'm about to eviscerate these people.)

Alice votes for whoever's gonna win. She also makes a fortune off of betting each election. Trump's 1 to 10 victory in 2016 was a great day to be Alice. MAGA!

The actual policies involved are completely irrelevant, she does this because it's fun. Election means she gets to throw parties. Color coded parties for the Republican and Democratic primaries, and US-themed parties for Election Night! (Foreigner moment right here: I at first wrote "Election wake" before realizing that's not what y'all murricans call it.)

Alice loves politics. Doesn't know the issues, but she sure loves politics.

Bella votes Democrat. She actually knows about the issues, and cares about them. This girl is a Democrat through and through.

Carlisle doesn't vote. I can't imagine it feels right. Outside of faked papers he's not a US citizen, this is meddling in human affairs that he knows don't concern him.

More, this guy has never lived in a democracy.

In life, Carlisle lived under an absolute monarchy that, upon civil war, became an absolute theocracy. From there he learned that vampires live under a total dictatorship.

For the first 150 years of his life, democracy was that funky thing the Athenians did in history books thousands of years ago, no more relevant to him than the Ancient Egyptian monarchy is to me. Then the Americans, and later other European countries started doing this.

Good for them.

There's this mistake often made by those who view history from a... for lack of a better term, a solipsistic standpoint. A belief that the present day is the culmination of all of history. “My society is the best society, the most reasonable society; all the others had it backwards. Thank god we’re living in this enlightened age!”

The faith in our current system of government is one such belief. We (pardon me if this doesn’t apply to everybody reading this post) have grown up in democracies, being told this is the ultimate form of rule, and perhaps that is true - but remember the kings who have told their subjects they had were divine and the best possible ruler based on that. Remember also that most modern democracies haven’t actually been democracies for very long at all, America is the longest standing at some 230 years (not long at all in the grand scope of things) and they have a fracturing two-party system to show for it.

Every society, ever, has been told they’re the greatest, and their system of government the most just. Democracy is only the latest hit.

This is relevant to Carlisle because he’s immortal and decidedly not modern. Democracy has not been installed in him the way it was the rest of the Cullens, Jasper included. To him- well, it’s just not his world. He has no stakes in our human politics, and as he is older than every current democracy and has seen quite a few of them fall, he’s not going to internalize the democratic form of rule the way a modern human has.

I think the concept of voting is foreign to him.

It requires a level of participation in human society that he’s simply not at. He does the bare minimum to appear human so he do the work he loves, but nothing more, and I find that telling.

As it is I think he'd be iffy about his family doing it. He won’t stop them, but in voting they’re... well it’s kind of cheating. They’re not really citizens, none of this will affect them, and by voting they’re drowning out the votes of real human voters. He does not approve.

Edward votes Democrat. He's... well he’s the kind of guy who will oil a girl’s bedroom window so he can more easily watch her sleep without being discovered, justifying it to himself as being okay because if she were to tell him to get lost he’d stop immediately. Same guy is so sure that he’d leave and never return again if she wanted him to, except this is the man who returned to Forks to hang around his singer, knowing there was a significant chance he might kill her. To say nothing of his Madonna/Whore complex, or of the fact that he tried to pimp out his wife twice, and was willing to forcibly abort her child.

This guy is very much in love with chivalry, with being an enlightened and feminist man who supports and respects women, while not understanding the entire point of feminism, which is female liberation.

He votes Democrat because he’s such an enlightened feminist who cares about women’s rights.

Emmett doesn’t care to vote, but if he has to he votes Republican. The guy is from the 1930′s, and has major would-be-the-uncle-who-cracks-racist-jokes-if-he-was-older vibes.

Esme doesn’t vote, that would require getting out of the house.

More, I just... can’t see it. I can’t see her being one to read up on politics and The Issues, period, but if she has to then I doubt she’d be able to decide.

Jasper doesn’t vote. Alice can have her fun, he does not care.

There’s also the whole can of worms regarding the last time he went to bat for American politics.

I imagine he stays out of this.

Renesmée doesn't vote. She has no stock in the human affairs. Who would she vote for, on what grounds? When Bella tries to pull her to the urns, she points out that she's three years old.

Rosalie, guys, I’m sorry, but that girl is definitely gonna vote Republican. Perhaps not right now as it’s become the Trump party of insanity, but the Mitt Romney type of Republicans? Oh yes.

And for the record, yes I imagine she does vote. To step back from politics would be another way she was relinquishing her humanity, and that’s not allowed to happen. So, yes, she goes to the urns, less for the sake of the politics involved and more because like this, she’s still a part of society in some way.

Now, onto why I think she’s Republican, I think it’s both fiscal and social.

This girl was the daughter of a banker who somehow profited off of the Depression, and who then became part of a family with no material needs that would soon become billionaires thanks to Alice. Poverty to Rosalie is a non-issue, as it is I imagine she views it as a much lesser issue than what she’s had to deal with. The humans can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, Rosalie’s infertility is forever.

Rosalie’s empathy is strongest when she’s able to project onto others, and she won’t be able to project onto the less fortunate at all.

Then there’s the fact that the Republican party is all about traditional family values, and pro-life.

Rosalie, a woman from the 1930′s who idolizes her human life and who‘d love nothing more than to get to live out this fantasy, is down for that. And as of Breaking Dawn she’s vocally pro-life, so there’s that.

This all being said I don’t think Rosalie cares to sit down and fully understand these politics she’s voting for, the possible impact they’ll have- that’s not important. What’s important is what voting does for her.

TL;DR: I bet anon regrets asking.

[young-dumb-and-vaccinated]

The Cult Girl (Hannibal x Female!Reader) pt. 13

Hello friends we have come to the end of Cult Girl. Thank you all for hyping me up throughout this story and giving me the confidence to actually post my work. Y/n and Hannibal throw a dinner party.

The sunlight streamed in through the window, illuminating the entire kitchen in that homey mid-morning glow. You were enjoying your coffee and scrolling through an article on your phone.

"Senator Hatch reportedly coughed up his late wife's toe on the floor of the precinct." You read out loud. "Huh. Wonder how that could have happened."

You side-eyed Hannibal, who was contentedly sharpening his knives. Placing a rather large meat cleaver to the side, he met your gaze. "I have my ways."

You finished off your coffee and brought the mug to the sink. "There was no way Theresa was going to survive that night, was there?"

"Clever girl." Hannibal praised.

"You were going to kill her if I didn't, were you?" You felt a smile coming on. "Did everything turn out as expected?"

"Darling, this all went much better than I could have ever hoped for." He smirked. "See, I had the whole evening mapped out. I was hoping you'd be the one to deliver justice and kill her, but I had to prepare for the possibility that you wouldn't."

You folded your arms and leaned against the island. "Is that why I was so sick that day?"

You could have sworn you saw some hesitation in Hannibal's face. Maybe even a touch of regret. "Yes. You needed an alibi. It was as easy as removing a single birth control pill from your packet. You'd see it was missing and think you'd already taken your medicine-"

"So I'd neglect to take my focus meds." You cut in. "Yeah, I knew something was off."

"By the end of the day, you'd be experiencing full withdrawal symptoms." Hannibal nodded. "I don't take any pleasure in upsetting the delicate balance of your brain chemistry, and for that I am sorry. I did what I had to."

"Yeah, don't ever do that again." You ordered, no disarming smile in sight. "I need those meds to function."

"I promise you, darling," Hannibal said, sincerely. "I would never keep you from being anything but your very best. I was just looking after you."

"I suppose now that all this is out in the open, you won't need to pull any shit like that again." You muttered. "But I'm still going to keep my pills at my apartment."

"That reminds me." He said. "Would you like to invite your roommates for dinner tonight? I've prepared a wonderful Spanish-inspired menu that's perfect for entertaining."

"I'd love for you to meet my friends, but, they all keep such weird hours I doubt they'll all be free tonight." You shrugged. "I'll give them a call though."

"Wonderful." He smiled. "You make arrangements while I prepare the kitchen."

You stepped into the office and called up Pilar. She answered within the minute.

"[F/N]!" She near shouted. "Holy fuck, how are you doing?"

"I'm actually doing..." you looked back into the kitchen, watching your beloved Hannibal in his element. "Really well."

"I heard about your cousin." Pilar cut in. "One down, two to go."

You snorted. "No fucking shit."

"Sorry, was that okay for me to say?" She apologized. "I know you said Theresa was a bitch, but it's your trauma and I-"

"No, you're fine." You laughed. "She was a bitch. Hey, do you have any plans tonight?"

"Uh, no. I don't think so." She answered. "Why?"

"Hannibal wants to invite you all for dinner tonight." You said with an audible smile. "Y'know, to celebrate the bitch's death."

"Yo! Steph!" Pilar shouted across the room. "Wake Randy up! We're having dinner at [F/N]'s rich boyfriend's house!"

You could make out Stephanie's voice in the background. "It's about damn time. We've been waiting for her to redistribute the wealth."

"She means thank you for the invitation." Pilar corrected.

"It's not like I had to twist his arm or anything. It was his idea." You chuckled. "He loves having guests. And excuses to dress up."

"Oh so we're getting fancy, huh?" Pilar's voice turned up in excitement.

"Hey [F/N]!" Randy snatched the phone from Pilar. "Text me the menu for tonight. My girlfriend'll steal a nice bottle of wine to pair. She's a pro, she works over at Cavatappi's wine and spirits."

"Much obliged, Randy." You said. "I'll see you guys at seven."

You returned to the kitchen with a smile. "They're coming."

"Well, we don’t have a moment to lose, then." Hannibal placed something wrapped in butcher paper on the counter. "Come now. Let me show you how to properly prepare a heart.

You and Hannibal spent the rest of the morning and the whole afternoon preparing a bountiful meal. You reveled in the irony of finally finding a space for Theresa in your life. That space just so happened to be on the stove.

Seven came far too quickly, but your friends were always a welcome sight. You greeted them at the door with hugs, Hannibal watching with stoic adoration.

"Guys, this is Hannibal Lecter, my partner." You introduced. "Hannibal, this is Pilar, Stephanie and Miranda."

"It is a pleasure to meet you, ladies." Hannibal greeted. “Please, make yourselves comfortable.”

"Here you go, Dr. Lecter." Randy handed him a bottle of wine. "Thank you for inviting us."

Hannibal examined the bottle. "Yes, this will pair quite nicely with our meal. Thank you very much. [F/N], could you show our guests to the dining room?"

You nodded and accepted the bottle, given the extra responsibility of pouring. You led your friends to the dining room and wasted no time distributing the alcohol.

"A toast." Stephanie rose her glass. "Too many of history's worst have had the privilege of dying on their own terms. Today, we celebrate the death of one who didn't: Theresa [L/N]."

"She will join her sisters Nancy Reagan and Madame Nhu in hell tonight." You concurred, tapping your glasses together with a series of satisfying clinks.

"Okay, you need to spill." Randy scooted her chair up and leaned towards you. "How the hell did you get away with it?"

"Well, it helped a lot that her husband was already a felon." You teased. "If I didn't kill her, he was going to eventually."

Pilar made a face. "I can't believe it took actual murder to get that latter-day lump thrown in prison."

"Well, the LDS church is a very influential organization with a stronghold on all of Utah." You explained. "There's a long history of legitimizing sex abuse there."

"We know, cult girl." Stephanie laughed. "You remind us every time your pedophile cousin-in-law comes up. Relax and take your victories where you can get them.” 

“Ladies,” Hannibal entered. You rushed to his side to help him with the dinner plates. “Have we ever tried organ meat before?” 

Everyone’s eyes found Pilar. 

“Braised liver is delicious and you guys are just cowards.” Pilar protested. “I will die on this hill.” 

Hannibal smiled and presented your friends with their plates. “You are a woman of good tastes, Pilar. Our first course is Riñones al Jerez.” 

“Kidneys.” Randy translated. “Who’s kidneys are we eating today, Dr. Lecter?” 

He tilted his head. “Theresa’s, of course.” 

“I don’t care whose organs you harvested.” Stephanie said, her eyes rolling back into her head. “This is delicious.” 

You and Hannibal shared a glance and a smile. 

You and your roommates devoured the Riñones al Jerez, then dug into the next serving of heart stewed with chickpeas and olives. You finished off the evening with natillas de leche and a bottle of Sauternes Hannibal just happened to have lying around. 

“This is the first time since like, Keith Raniere got sentenced that I’ve seen [F/N] happy-drunk.” Stephanie observed.

“Or even just... happy." Pilar said, looking at Hannibal. "I'll have some of whatever she's having, please."

"My pleasure." Hannibal poured her another glass of wine.

Your phone began to buzz on the table, capturing the attention of your guests. You didn't even need to look at the caller ID to know who it was. Nobody else in the world had such horrid timing.

"Shit, you've got to answer it here!" Stephanie pleaded. "So we can all give her a piece of our mind!"

You looked over to Hannibal, who you knew was just as curious.

You dragged the answer icon across the screen and put it on speaker. You gestured for your friends to be quiet. "Yeah?"

"Well look who finally decided to pick up." Grandma said. "Thank you for gracing me with your attention. I know you have so much going on right now, you're just too busy to pick up the phone and talk to your grieving grandmother."

"For your information..." you stumbled over your words. "I was interrogated by the police yesterday. I think that counts as having something going on."

"Are you drunk?" Her voice was laced with a disproportionate level of disgust.

"I'm grieving too, Beatrice." You counter. "What, suddenly you're the only one who can drink the pain away? That's not very democratic of you."

"In your state, you shouldn't even be thinking of alcohol!" Grandma scolded. "You of all people should know the effects alcohol has on an unborn baby."

You smacked yourself on the head. Of course Theresa would plant a seed to fuck you over one last time. "Did Theresa actually tell you I was pregnant?"

"It was her last message to me, actually. Anyway, you're coming home." Grandma said, without so much as waiting for a response. "I won't have my great grandchild living in that dangerous city that your cousin was killed in."

You exchanged looks with your friends, who were going through the same combination of emotions as you were. Grandma's words just seemed to fade out as you shared an entire nonverbal conversation with the people around you.

"And you're leaving that terrible, terrible man."

Hannibal raised an eyebrow and looked at you, waiting to see how you'd respond. You knew what you had to do. It was finally time. You did something you should have done a long time ago.

"No." You said, your nerves loosened by the wine.

"What?"

"No. And I mean it." A big smile crossed your lips. "Theresa lied to you. I'm not pregnant. And you have to live with the fact that your granddaughter's last words to you were a blatant lie."

Hannibal looked at you with pride and your friends began to silently gas you up with encouraging gestures. "

"...And that you're the only one to blame for her deception." You continued. "You raised her in your own image."

"This is why I refuse to let you raise my great grandchild with that man!" She wailed. "He's twisted your mind against me! He's made you cruel!"

"Hannibal made me see clearly that you made me cruel." You said with absolute certainty. "You'll never see me again."

"Don't be like your mother, [F/N]." Grandma snarled. "Don't cut people out for trying to help."

"You'll never see me again." You repeated and decided to leave it at that. You ended the call and blocked the number, joined by an eruption of excitement from your friends.

It was finally over. Your life could truly begin.

[qqueenofhades]

It's definitely a refusal to engage with or truly understand politics. I'm 24, I was in middle school during Obama's second term and 17 in 2016, and I feel like a lot of my peers just continue to be appalled at how bad things have gotten with the Republicans and why Democrats can't do anything to stop it. What's missing from their understanding is how long it took for the Republicans to get here. It didn't start in 2016. They worked for decades to do all the nightmarish shit they're doing now, and Democrats just haven't been able to do the same (because people refuse to vote consistently and give them the power to do those things). I feel like that's where the "both sides are the same" bullshit comes from - the idea that if the Dems wanted to stop the GOP, they would. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of how anything works, and often relies on downplaying how bad the Republicans actually are in order to support their 'Dems are just as bad' stance.

Things did get catastrophically worse when Trump was elected, and he broke things way more than they ever had been, but he doesn't exist in a vacuum and it took the Republicans a lot of fucking work for him to do what he did. The only way the Dems can counteract that is by having a party of people willing to put in a similar level of work, and that requires understanding our structures and how things work (executive orders are only temporary fixes and actual legislation takes time, compromise, and work), and a lot of these people just aren't willing to do it.

The thing is, yes, I absolutely do get the feeling that everything is terrible and we are doomed. I went through it when GWB was re-elected in 2004 and then again in 2008, worrying about whether Obama would get elected and end that particular run of Republican-induced misery (when John McCain looks like a fucking saint compared to the GOP candidates we are being offered now), and obviously plumbed the depths of despair in 2016 with Trump. But I don't remember ever thinking that I should just give up trying, stop voting, or any of that, and I don't think it was because I was some kind of special person who was just so tenacious. I obviously have not been a teenager in the present era and yes, that means I have different views on things from the next generation, but also: this has always happened. Moments of total political despair and feeling that everything is fucked are also not a new thing. We are going through it with Trumpism, the previous generation went through it with Reagan/Thatcher, the previous previous generation went through it with Nixon/Vietnam, the previous etc generation went through it with the Cold War, the previous etc. etc. generation went through it with World War II -- and so forth. There has never been any one point when everything was great and there was no work left to be done, because, y'know. That is not how either history or human nature works.

Hence, that is why I'm trying to figure out what in the fuck is going on right now, and whether it's just social media that have made things so bad (entirely possible). Critical thinking is a shambles, yes, but that's not necessarily something young people have chosen for themselves. The current world is a late-stage capitalist dystopia run by four or five trillionaire oligarch cartels and corporations, and obviously public education, basic civic responsibility, the teaching of any "controversial" history, and everything else that might threaten that setup has been systematically and methodically dismantled, politicized, or so infiltrated with false information that it's basically useless. That in itself is not young people's fault. They have genuinely been dealt a terrible hand in many ways, and I don't blame them for being angry about it. I too am angry about it! I do question, however, when the overwhelming sentiment became "well we should just give up and let the bad guys win, either because it's too much work to change it or because that will spark the Great Revolution and that's the only way to fix things ever, and doing anything else at all in the meantime is wrong."

Once again: I do not blame young people for being angry at the shitty situation they are currently facing. I do not blame young people for being disillusioned with the system and thinking that it can't solve everything at once. But yet again: there has never been any government, country, or organization in the history of ever anything everywhere that was able to do that, and the ones that tried, or insisted that they could do it, were infamously murderous bloodbaths, because breaking society (even with all its flaws) into a thousand pieces and thinking this will make My Preferred Ideological Utopia Now Appear is probably the deadliest belief in all of time and space. The world is flawed and has been for all time because humans are flawed and probably will be for all time. Being a grownup requires coming to an understanding of that fact and seeing what you can do in spite of that. People in every era have had gaps and biases and blind spots and other things that hobbled their understanding or made their efforts for change less perfect or complete than they would have wanted in an ideal world, and they have had to move past those anyway. The current generation is no different. Not to sound like a boomer, but even despite the mess they've been faced with, they need to figure out how to engage with it anyway and not just completely absolve responsibility because they can't fix it all at once. Which I don't think most young people do! There are plenty of them who really do get it and are engaged and idealistic and working for good change, and that's great! It's just the other part that worries me, and which is not as small as we would like to think.

And yes, part of this is just flat-out bad information and the stubborn lack of any desire to change it if it conflicts with pre-existing beliefs. (This is by no means exclusive to young people of this current generation, as it's another bad habit of humanity, but yes.) In the aforementioned "you're driving young leftists away :(" ask I got yesterday, there were also plenty of dubious and just-flat-wrong claims, such as that Democrats keep moving to the right "especially economically." That is just not true. In the last four years, the Democrats have moved the most economically leftward in all of American history and have finally and flatly rejected the Great Reagonomics Myth. Just because Clinton did Reagonomics-lite in the '90s (when most of the current generation of Online Leftists weren't even born), that is thirty years ago and in wildly different circumstances. These things are not difficult to look up. Do it. Try to educate yourself, even if the system doesn't want to do it. You can't just throw up your hands and insist that nobody taught you, so how could you know??? Put that "instant access to all of human history and knowledge" to use, even just a little. It'll be good for you!

Likewise, there was also the anon's befuddling insistence that I was "patronizing" or "shaming" anyone "further left than Biden," which reflects their apparent feeling that telling people to vote for Biden is a "personal attack" on their cherished beliefs, or whatever. I'm unsure how many times we have to keep repeating that voting for a candidate does not mean you are canonizing all their beliefs exactly as your own, and that it's just one tool to do the bare minimum to not live in a fucking fascist theocratic dictatorship, but yeah. I can guarantee you that I personally am well left of Biden. I can guarantee you that most people on Tumblr voting for Biden are probably well left of him as well. That does not negate the fact that Biden is the most progressive president America has ever had, regardless of how much Online Leftists shriek otherwise. It also does not negate the fact that this is by no means true of America as a whole (witness the large faction that still thinks Biden is a godless far-left evil socialist). It does not negate the many complex historical, political, social, cultural, religious, racial, etc reasons that have collided to produce the America where this is the case. Therefore, if I do not want to live in a society ruled by Trump and his orange Nazi minions, which is the case due to how badly the last 10 years have been fucked up, I will use the tool of voting for Biden! He can be successfully pressured to create positive change in the direction that I would like! Trump cannot and will not under any circumstances, regardless of the wild fantasies that suddenly he will transform into a perfect progressive on Gaza or whatever other issue! THIS IS NOT THAT FUCKING DIFFICULT!!!!!!!

Anyway. All of this is obviously complicated. Obviously things are bad and frightening and we want a solution that fixes all of it at once, instead of slowly, badly, and piecemeal. But as I said: that has never, not once, been the case in all of history, and we know what happens when people and/or governments with delusions of psychopathic grandeur try to do it. We do not want the "Final Solution" (which is infamous as what Hitler literally called the Holocaust). We do, in fact, want the careful step by step, we want things to get better and not just explode in a mountain of nihilistic doom, and that does take work, from everyone. So unfortunately, there is no real choice except to do it.

[kineticpenguin]

Larry Correia's fans love it when he "fisks" articles, blog posts etc. ("Fisking" is Larry's term for picking apart a post and making fun of it). So, now that he's had his brain fully melted by grifters like Jack Posobiec and Dinesh D'Souza, maybe he deserves a taste of his own medicine.

There’s a red wave coming because normal voters are fed up with democrat bullshit. They suck at governing and they cater to their base, which is psychotic.

There's this weird notion that Republicans and centrist Democrats have that the Dems lose elections every time they're not basically Diet Republicans. That the party has gone too far to the left courting the lunatic fringe. This doesn't really hold up if the last election was any indication; centrist dems actually lost seats compared to more leftist candidates. What's actually happening here is that the Democrats over-promised and under-performed, as they've done for the last 40 years. They don't lose elections because they're not far enough to the right. They lose because they don't deliver.

But the GOP has a history of being lame, cowardly, corrupt squishes, so our government keeps sucking. 

How do we fix it?

Right-wingers keep doing this thing where they vote for people who promise to bring the government down from the inside like Samson, are shocked to find that this only makes the government suck more, and conclude that the only reason we don't have a capitalist utopia is because these rich assholes don't have the balls to give themselves and their cronies even more money. Since they've repeated this cycle for the last 40 years, they just keep getting angrier and angrier that it hasn't paid off.

This is my opinion, based upon working as an accountant/contractor for the most efficient part of our stupid government, which was still a fucking clown show when compared to the corporate world (or at least the non-woke corporate world)

Larry likes to lean heavily on his experience as an accountant regardless of whether it has anything to do with the subject at hand. Y'know how there wasn't any actual evidence of election fraud? He made a bunch of posts talking about vague "red flags" in the election because... something something, he likes doing audits. Did you know he used to be an accountant?

A well known, yet denied, truth is that most government employees are entrenched and don’t do shit. They’re utterly useless. Depending on the department you could fire a ton of them and all it would do is free up parking spaces.

Now, there are some government employees who work their asses off. Good. There are some government functions which are necessary. Great.

A great many don’t work, or the work they do is utterly pointless.

Y'know, you say that, and yet every time an office or department downsizes, it tends to go to shit and they wind up having to pay contractors. See also: literally every military branch trying to save a few bucks by reducing their aircraft maintenance personnel.

As any honest gov employee. They will admit this to you in private. If they say no, everything we do is vital and everyone here is vital, they’re a liar protecting their budget, or one of the useless ones. Most places, if there are 5 employees, 2 do 90% of the work.

Source: No shit, there I was. Trust me, bro.

Pournell’s Iron Law says that as it grows over time any bureaucracy’s purpose will change from its original mission, to a new mission of protecting and growing the bureaucracy.

So now our Department of Labor by itself is bigger than LBJ’s entire federal government. This stuff never shrinks. It only grows. It’s an endless leviathan.

That is a weird comparison for a few reasons. First, it's plainly false unless you take the DoD out of the equation. The military was rapidly expanding during LBJ's administration to deal with that whole "Vietnam" thing. The Department of Labor currently has around 17,450 employees. Under LBJ, the USMC alone hit its peak of over 300,000. But if you throw out everything but "civilians employed by the executive branch" when you say "entire federal government," you can consider yourself technically correct, as 2,900 is quite a bit smaller than 17,450. That's some creative accounting, though.

Now I get that Larry is talking to an audience of knee-jerk "government getting bigger = government getting more badder" types that probably have Thin Blue Line punisher skull decals next to their Molon Labe ones, and they will absolutely eat this shit up without question, but still. Nice little truisms ignore the fact that bureaucracies can expand and contract over time depending on improvements in efficiency and the demands placed on it. Check out the Air Force since 1955.

Yeah yeah I know it's because the Democrats hate America and the GOP is too spineless to give us a strong military blah blah fuckin' blah. "Pournelle's Iron Law" still doesn't hold up. It's all a bunch of circular logic that nobody ever questions because It Is Known.

(And if you think military branches don't count as "bureaucracies" you have no business citing experience working with them.)

The leviathan needs to grow and protect itself against all threats, which is how you get super evil shit like the CIA and FBI meddling in US elections…

More circular logic with no basis in reality. The FBI is extremely conservative as an organization and treated both Clinton and Trump with kid gloves to avoid even the appearance of meddling in elections. The CIA waited until after Trump was President-elect to make up their minds whether the Russians were trying to help him or not. Before that it was "we know they're up to something, but we don't know what it is exactly."

Or constantly expanding its powers into new places, like the #MinistryOfTruth

If you're not familiar with Twitter, this is probably incomprehensible. There's a right-wing conspiracy theory that the Democrats are trying to take over social media under the guise of stopping misinformation. Right-wingers also have a complete victimhood mentality about their posts being moderated, believing that the people running those sites have it in for them. There is no evidence for this; every empirical study into Facebook and Twitter shows that right-wingers are typically allowed to post whatever the hell they like, with only the most egregious TOS violations resulting in suspensions, bans, etc. Anything that pisses off the old and middle-aged tends to drive up engagement and is thus good for the site's bottom line.

And that's when they're not just being cowards. Facebook deliberately lets Breitbart violate its policies just to keep people like you happy. But yeah, you're right, being given a time-out from shitposting is just like 1984.

This leviathan will find allies which help it expand in size and power. The more power/money you give it, the more it can bribe and co-opt other institutions. Academia, media, corporations, etc. 

Funny you should mention that, Larry. Most of the people you like to cite are propped up by billionaires like the Koch brothers and Peter Thiel. It's almost like the "leviathan" you should be worried out isn't the bureaucracy so much as the extremely wealthy guys with their arms up the ass of those puppets you live to listen to.

As the leviathan grows in power, it will become more malicious, spiteful, and controlling. Dissent is crushed. Freedom dies. 

@elonmusk  is currently a speed bump in this, which is why the control freak contingent is super pissed at him.

...Elon Musk tried to create his own "#ministryoftruth" called Pravduh, remember? You're talking about a guy who tried to get a kid's bot shut down for reporting on the movements of his private jet, which is publicly available information. He called a dude a pedophile for calling his stupid submarine idea stupid. He is not a free speech advocate. He's not remotely a "speed bump" for the censorious. He's just another stupid, rich asshole who wants to control the narrative.

The big question is, do the people own their government, or does the government own its people? If we are just assets of the gov, we can be spent freely, and bad assets get eliminated.

Look, either the government loves keeping useless people around, or it ruthlessly eliminates anyone not contributing to its goals. Make up your mind.

The leviathan is compelled to own EVERYTHING.

Again, I think you've misidentified your "leviathan."

Slowing the leviathan down isn’t enough. If you concentrate on stopping one part, others keep growing. Then when our bipolar country elects a new leader, those parts start growing again. Repeat forever. And it just keeps getting bigger. 

So we’ve got to shrink the whole thing

If the GOP had a brain/spine (lol) they’d slash the shit out of everything. They’d starve the beast. They usually don’t, because they are total chickenshits. They’ll pay lip service to this, do nothing, or feed their favorite parts. 

The DNC gleefully feeds the whole thing.

This is how you know you've given up describing anything besides a The Blob. You don't need to think about anything besides a malevolent Something that consumes everything, and then... then that'd be real bad. Also, the idea that the GOP hates spending is nonsense. They hate taxes. They LOVE spending. Especially if it's on the military. But only for tanks the Army doesn’t want, not cost-of-living raises for the troops.

Trump’s biggest weakness was he surrounded himself with people who loved government, and loved expanding government. Of course all of those fucked him at every opportunity. 

HAH! He surrounded himself with nuts like Steve Bannon and oil barons like Rex Tillerson. And his own children. The only people standing in his way were trying to stop him from fucking up. It's why nobody lasted long: they either got caught doing crimes for him, or realized that being anything other than a yes-man was getting them frozen out.

We need somebody who actively HATES the government to run it.

We need a Lucy who's going to HOLD the football! Christ, how do you dipshits keep falling for this?

if I was President (ha!) I would only create a single new executive branch entity. The Department of Fuck Your Job Security.

The DoFYJS would consist of surly auditors, and their only job would be to go into other government agencies to figure out-

A. do you fuckers do anything worth a shit?

B. which of you fuckers actually get shit done? 

Then fire everyone else.

Someone's got fantasies of being Steve Jobs. (Supposedly, he'd ask random employees what they did for him. If they couldn't answer immediately to his satisfaction, he'd fire them on the spot. This was completely ineffective because most of the people they reported to actually used them and would immediately re-hire them.) Trying to do this only gets you surrounded by yes-men who know how to tell you what you want to hear. See also: Joseph Stalin.

Right now it is pretty much impossible to fire government employees. The process is asinine. It is so bad that the worst government employees, who nobody else can stand, don’t get fired. They get PROMOTED. It’s easier, and then its somebody else’s problem.

If you think that's bad, you should really be a Defund the Police guy. Federal desk jockeys have nothing on cops when it comes to being impossible to fire. And they generally make a lot more money!

But the DoFYJS don’t care. If your job is making tax payers fill out mandatory paperwork and then filing it somewhere nobody will ever read it? 

Fuck you. Gone. Clean out your desk.

That's not a government job so much as an Intuit and H&R Block job. It absolutely does not have to be this way and you don't need your fantasy Chekas to do it. All you have to do is reform how taxes work like a functional country. But that would go against the whole "taxes should hurt" concept, which conservatives love! Thanks, Reagan!

We need to get rid of entire agencies. Gone. WTF does the Department of Education improve? NOTHING. 

Gone. Fire them all. Sell the assets.

Ah, we're going the "everything was already figured out in the 1860s" route, I see.

Any agency that survives this purge, move it out of DC to an area more appropriate to its mission. Do we need a Dept of Agriculture? Okay. Go to Kansas.

This will also cause all the DC/NOVA power monger set to resign so I don’t have to waste time firing them

Yeah, let's gerrymander federal agencies and make it harder for them to coordinate with the president, there's no way that could backfire. Besides, I'm not sure you could bore an Iowan like Tom Vilsack away from the job by sending him to Kansas. And that guy tried to bore himself away from the job.

Oh, and right wing pet causes, you’re not safe. I worked for the Air Force. We all know that we could fire 1/3 of the GS employees tomorrow and the only noticeable difference would be more parking available on base.

The only reason the military has so many GS employees is that some penny-pinching genius already eliminated the positions normally held by enlisted personnel, only to find out later it actually needed the guys they RIF'd and had to hire them back on as more expensive WG, GS or contractors because otherwise readiness would be destroyed. The attempts at slimming down and privatizing military services has been a slow-motion catastrophe for awhile now. Don't build base housing, that's expensive. Oh wait, now we have to increase housing allowances to keep up with soaring rent, burglaries are driving everyone insane, off-base incidents go up, and gate traffic is a Lovecraftian nightmare. Oops.

The responsible thing to do would be stop over-missioning the military and reorient our strategies around less intervention, but that'd mean no longer being the World Police, and might get you assassinated by LockMart.

Cut everything. We never do, because somebody might cry. Too bad. They’re called budget cuts because they’re supposed to hurt. Not budget tickles. Fuck you. Cut.

Cute. Utter nonsense, but cute. Pain is a sign something is wrong. If your cuts actually hurt, you fucked up and are going to spend even more money fixing the damage later.

And yeah, we're at "Megamind arguing with Metroman" levels of tortured analogy here but this whole thing was stupid from the start.

Shutting off the money faucet will also destroy the unholy alliance between gov/media/academia/tech.

It absolutely will not. Media's gonna do whatever gets ad revenue, as they've always done. Academia's gonna do its own thing. By "tech" I assume you mean social media sites, since reducing manning will in no way stop the government from blowing billions on new toys. Oh, but we gotta keep the A-10 around. Right. Better order 2000 more replacement wings for 'em.

Anyway, you're still gonna see all the people with money trying to control everyone under them. They can absolutely do it without the government.

Right now there is a revolving door, government job, university job, corporate board, think tank, the same crowd who goes to the same parties and went to the same schools and all that other incestuous shit just take turns in the different chairs. 

Sell the fucking chairs.

See, that's the thing. Those people, the moment your auditors come after them, are either going to sue the shit out of your administration, or simply bring your auditors into the club. Hell, they probably wouldn't even be in a position to be one of those auditors if they weren't already in the club or club-adjacent. In any case, this is the part where your simpleminded strategy gets you so tied up in red tape and litigation that you look like the Michelin Man in a spider's web.

Every entity that gets tax money inevitably turns into a pig trough for these people. Cut it all off. All of these money faucets ALWAYS cause some kind of financial crisis later anyway.

Oh boy, you're really not gonna like how you could actually do that.

See the student loan crisis caused by the government, here is free money, oh college has become expensive and useless, so now we need more government to solve it. You dummies get to pay for it. Have some inflation.

Hey, you asked what the Department of Education is for? I mean, maybe you could use it to do something about that? Like, maybe end the giveaway to banks that the entire system is and fund higher education and trades through the government. But then, I dunno, that sounds kinda communist.

It’s all bullshit. 

Quit pretending any of this makes sense.

Oh, believe me, I'm not.

The only way the leviathan shrinks is we elect people who actively hate the government to the government, and then only let them stay there long enough to fuck the government without getting corrupted by it.

People who actively hate the government don't participate in government. It's simple as that. As long as you keep telling yourself that this is possible, you're going to keep electing liars who put on a big show about how government isn't the answer, cuts things you don't like, but ultimately contributes to the actual problems and makes us all worse off. They'll be sure to keep jingling keys in front of you about migrant caravans, and Dr. Seuss, and Mr. Potatohead, and how the green M&M isn't fuckable anymore, and critical race theory in schools. So you won't notice until they get replaced and you'll be mad that you've once again been fooled by your "spineless" candidate.

The instant you see the small government crusader you sent to DC going “Oh, well maybe an unholy alliance between the state and OmniGlobalMegaCorp to develop a mind control ray is a good thing” FIRE HIM.

That won't happen, because it means letting a Democrat take his place. You can see the opposite thing happening now with the Democrats and Sinema. Democrats are furious with her for not doing what she was elected to do, but the centrist refrain is, "and what, let one of those REPUBLICANS win? Then we'll lose the Senate!"

So there you have it. That’s my platform if you elect me president. Fire fucking everybody. And only give me one term. Thank you. 

Four years of President Lawsuit. Or at least until you get so sick of spinning your wheels, you get filmed smashing watermelons on the white house lawn with a tetsubo and your ticket-balancing veep invokes section 4 of the 25th amendment.

Oh wait… why did I just get these hot insider stock trading tips in my inbox from Blackrock? I guess a second term is cool.

See, that's the thing. You wouldn't even be a serious contender if you weren't already playing that game. Money is Speech, after all.

Seriously though, something has to break. We can’t afford the loss of money or more importantly, freedom. The government either has to start cutting off parasites and control freaks, or stuff is going to get way way worse. 

I dunno man. Try burning down a police precinct or something.

[0l0x]

Anonymous asked:

What do you think of the state of America at this point? Personally I’m disgusted, enraged, and scared shitless! Blue states cities being burnt to the ground and filled with homeless refugees while the democrats do absolutely nothing to solve these issues. Red states having been overtaken by literal fascist and are actively stripping away human rights while the rest of the republicans do nothing to stop them. The climate crisis is now fully here and nothing can be done to stop it, not that  Where doing anything about it anyway. And a nuclear world war with China and Russia now seem enviable.

The illusion of hope is gone and I’m struggling to not completely give into nihilism in the face of immediate doom. The only thing I think that could solve anything now is if a revolution happens that kicks out all these inept, corrupt fools that are destroying America from the inside! Sorry for my own mini rant, feeling super stressed about everything and needed to vent. What are your thoughts

On everything? Is their any hope left or do believe where all doomed!

Hey Anon. I don’t know where you’re located or how much current events personally affect you, but I’m sorry you’re going through all this stress. I used to worry myself inside-out about current events too. I did this because my mom was super bad about it, she’d have the news on literally 24/7 and rant to me about how the world is so awful. It turned me into a miserable, anxiety-riddled pessimist for half my life. It took many years of therapy to dig myself out of that mindset.

I’ll just say that the older I get, the less I worry about things I can’t control. I stopped reading the news years ago when I realized it was just a bunch of agenda-pushing, clickbait, sensationalism, and outright lies. There is absolutely nothing of value in the News(tm), it’s made purely to scare people and get clicks/eyes on the screen. If an event is really important thing that’s going to affect me, I always hear about it without ever glancing at news sources.

There’s no sense wallowing in the misery that news pushes onto you. Corporations WANT you to have a bleak, hopeless worldview. They WANT you to be scared so you’ll continue consuming more news. I watched my mom go through this cycle of consuming news every hour of every day, because it gave her a false sense of control. She had insanely high blood pressure from all the stress she caused herself by worrying about the entire world’s problems, and now she’s on her deathbed in her 60s because of it. Her blood pressure was so high for so long that it destroyed her heart.

Instead, ask yourself “What CAN I change?” and focus on that. The truth is, a single person can’t fight a tidal wave of shit, so don’t even bother putting that kind of responsibility on yourself. Let it go. It’s not your job to carry the entire world’s problems on your shoulders.

I can’t change the world or control anyone else’s behavior. What I CAN control are my own decisions and the space around me. I choose to be kind to people I interact with. I choose to vote for causes I believe in. I choose to ignore the media circus. I choose to pick up trash off my street every weekend. I choose to write and make art and take care of my mental and physical health. I choose to help my friends and family out when I can, and let it go when I can’t.

If we were all living in primitive, isolated tribes, it wouldn’t matter what another tribe was doing half-way around the world because we’d never hear about it. This 24/7 news cycle is a fucking curse, it’s unnecessary and horrible for human mental health. If another tribe’s actions will destroy us, then that’s the way it’s going to be. If a meteor is going to strike the earth and kill us all, then that’s the way it’s going to be. Volcano blows, Pompeii turns to ash. Sometimes it just be like that. I refuse to waste my time and energy worrying about doom and destruction that I can’t stop anyway. I watched my mom do that my whole life and now I’m watching her die from it.

Like, I literally live within the blast zone of an active volcano that only becomes more active with time. I’ve lived here all my life, and they’ve said it’s overdue to blow since I was a kid. I used to worry about the volcano erupting constantly when I was young, but not anymore. I realized if it’s gonna blow, it’s gonna blow, and no amount of worrying is going to prevent it. I choose to live my life as if the volcano wasn’t there at all, because it may as well not be until it blows.

I also live in an area that experiences frequent earthquakes (probably because of the volcano...). I’ve survived several major earthquakes in my life. The thing about earthquakes is, there is NO warning before they happen. They just happen, and god help you if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve been lucky so far. No buildings have collapsed on me yet. No bridges have fallen out from under me yet.

I attended school in a valley shaped like a bowl, where we would have flood drills every year in case the dam broke. The dam could break any time and that valley would fill up with water faster than most people could evacuate. I used to worry about the damn breaking, but again, I realized that it was a waste of my time and energy because there was nothing I could do to prevent it. It was totally out of my control.

Maybe these things have just conditioned me to take things one day at a time, I don’t know.

Just my two cents. I’m not sure if any of that is helpful to you. Thanks for opening up to me though, I’m honestly flattered that you would share your feelings with me. Try not to worry about things outside your own backyard, it’s seriously a waste of time and life is short. That’s my advice to you.

[cblgblog]

Imagine Mildolyn, "Illicit Affair", Modern AU. Where Gwen's campaigning for Congress and all the meet and greets, showing up for charities for publicity, her 'cause'. At one for special needs children and their foundation she meets a very young CNA named Mildred and sort of falls head over heels in the dumbest of ways, both just love struck. Except she's campaigning to be in Congress, she's a politician, she cannot be queer and chasing after 19 year old ex-foster kids whos brothers are set to be the youngest executed on Death Row in California in decades for appalling crimes. But there she is, in hotel rooms her supporters pay for, with someone she shouldn't be with, trying to find ways to overturn cases that turned stomachs with their brutality, because a pretty girl smiled at her and called her 'ma'am' while showing her around the foundation/care home she worked at with children no one else had the time/patience to care for. Of course it goes terribly with 'dirty little secret' vibes, the breast cancer diagnosis announced on twitter before she tells Mildred in person, even if it's such a minor case ('so they say') and caught so early that it'll barely leave a scar, radiation won't be much of a deal at all. She doesn't get to tell Mildred that, she just gets to hear on Fox news about how the democrat's gonna die a horrible death and panic.

Mildred who has no patience for politicians and their fake concern, using patients as photo ops. It’s manipulative, it’s distracting to the staff, it’s awful, okay, she hates it. She is, in fact, a tad bit rude to Gwen when they meet. Gets her a death glare from Betsy Bucket, gets Gwen intrigued.

“Republican?” only half-joking.

“No.”

“Is it the suit? Should I have worn a different suit? I wanted to, but I’ve been told this one tested better.”

“The suit is fine.” It’s more than that, actually, but Mildred will not be saying that aloud, nope, uh-uh. “I don’t much care for politicians.”

“Ah, we have that in common then.”

“I doubt we have much of anything in common. Ma’am.”

And look, Gwen doesn’t usually go in for the chasing, the hard to get. She’s got enough trouble chasing votes. But this woman is so good with the kids on her ward, so patient. She’s got Disney scrubs on and as much as she’s got no time at all for Gwen, she seems to have infinite amounts for those kids. She stays with them individually, longer than any of the other staff Gwen sees, but she still manages to get a dozen things done in half as many minutes. And she’s also gorgeous, there’s that.

And Gwen has no good reason to ask her out for lunch. Honestly, none. Nothing good can come from this. Mildred asks if the citizens of California will be paying for this meal and Gwen swears that isn’t the case, no, absolutely not. Even still, Gwen doesn’t expect Mildred to say yes. She doesn’t think Mildred expected Mildred to say yes.

But she does. Tells herself it’s for Edmund, maybe this’ll be the one politician who listens, who’s willing to look past the surface facts, willing to help. Except she gets there and they don’t talk about Edmund. It’s not because Mildred doesn’t know how to bring it up, she’s made her case dozens of times. She just…they don’t talk about him, and that feels like a betrayal, but Gwen’s kind and funny and fascinating (much to Mildred’s annoyance), and she just…doesn’t feel like getting into it.

Meanwhile Trevor, Gwen’s campaign manager/law school buddy/best friend/lavender marriage soulmate, if they were in a different time, is like bitch, what’re you doing? Yes, everyone knows you’re gay as hell, but you can’t be chasing girls right now, you can’t afford to be distracted. You especially can’t afford to look distracted. And you can’t be robbing the cradle while looking distracted.

“She’s not that young.”

“Uh-huh. She wears Winnie the Pooh clothes.”

“Scrubs, those are scrubs. Scrubs aren’t clothes.”

“Uh-huh.”

“She works in a children’s ward, Trevor.”

“Uh-huh. I really wish you wouldn’t do this, but since you care nothing about me and my mental state and all the hours and hours of hard work I’ve put in for you—”

“After badgering me into hiring you over someone more qualified.”

“Hey! More qualified. I resent that. Anyway, if you insist on ruining my day, at least wear that face cream I gave you. Should make you look less like you’re robbing the cradle.”

“Go to hell.”

“And don’t do the oyster thing. Not on a first date, in the middle of the campaign.”

“It’s not a date, it’s just lunch.”

“Uh-huh.”

Gwen doesn’t do the oyster thing. Not on the first date, which neither of them acknowledge as a date, for entirely different reasons. But then there’s a second and a third, and sex, lots of sex, and it’s harder to pass off as just friendly.

And yeah, the sneaking around that Gwen hates. That Mildred says she doesn’t mind, and she actually doesn’t seem to all that much, which Gwen finds slightly concerning. Mildred’s good with secrets though, she’s good with being kept a secret. Mostly. Which again, Gwen finds concerning.

There’s pillow talk and Mildred admitting more about herself than she has to anyone, ever. Which still isn’t nearly as much as what Gwen admits, but it’s a relative thing. And still, Mildred doesn’t talk about Edmund. Gwen finds that one out on her own, stumbles across some old photos, a scrapbook of Edmund’s crimes. Gwen’s briefly concerned that Mildred is one of those people who’re deeply attracted to serial killers, but the truth is…something else.

Mildred tells her things. Some of the deeper, darker stuff, but not much, not yet. Tells her how she’s written to everyone she can think of because he’s a boy, okay? He was in an impossible situation, they both were, no one ever helped them, so Edmund decided he had to die. No one helped them before, no one helps them now. There’s anger and tears and Gwen holding her and she can’t help asking why Mildred didn’t talk to her sooner, if she’s had no problem asking for help from strangers.

“Because you aren’t,” Mildred says in a way that makes it clear she’s figuring this stuff out as she says it. “A stranger, you aren’t. You never were and I couldn’t…I didn’t want to become one to you. I didn’t want you to look at me like that.”

“Oh Mildred…”

Mildred doesn’t actually ask her to help. She doesn’t want Gwen to think that’s what it’s all been about. It was supposed to be, but it isn’t. She doesn’t ask. Gwen digs into things herself, digs into this kid who was barely double-digits when he did these things. Made all the headlines at the time, but that was over a decade ago, he’s been locked up ever since. Most of Mildred’s money goes to him, one way or another.

Gwen hides it from Trevor—the murderer, not the sex, he knew about the sex before she ever said anything—for as log as she can. But he’s always been nosy, and now he has a paid excuse to be nosy, and he nearly has an aneurysm when he hears why it is that Gwen’s suddenly digging into this case instead of kissing the babies of gay couples, like she should be.

Gwen cannot do this. Nope, absolute no. She cannot be sneaking around with the younger sister of the kid they’ve made all the documentaries about. Doesn’t matter that she’s running on a platform of prison reform, especially as it pertains to juveniles, this is not the case to start with, especially when she hasn’t won yet.

And Gwen knows. She knows. She argues with Trevor about it until he decides they both need to stop because Gwen has a speaking engagement tomorrow and she can’t sound hoarse. There are many further arguments, arguments about principles over politics, but Gwen knows he’s right. She cannot, should not, be doing any of this, at least not yet. It’s dangerous, it’s selfish, Mildred deserves better than being someone’s secret again. Gwen should break it off, at least until the election. She’s not being fair to either of them like this. They should stop, at least for a few months.

Except it’s Mildred and she’s totally hijacked Gwen’s everything, and the thought of stopping makes her ill, and everything about this is terrifying, the most terrifying thing ever.

And then there’s the checkup and the routine mammogram. Gwen started those earlier than most because somebody’s aunt on somebody’s side of the family got sick, somebody’s cousin on the other side did too.

Scratch that, there’s a new winner for most terrifying thing ever.

It’s good, they say. She started early, they caught it early, this is good, they have treatments for this. Good, they say, while Gwen damn near passes out. She’s got a campaign to finish, she can see the Too Sick to Serve headlines already. A bald look would not test well, she’s sure it wouldn’t. She talks to Trevor about that, about the campaign, until he tells her to shut the fuck up, yanks her into a crushing hug. He cries, damn him, and that makes her cry.

She’s glad he’s there.

She wishes Mildred was.

She is also relieved as hell that Mildred isn’t, that they’re on opposite sides of the state right now. No point having Mildred see her like this, having her worry. She’s got enough to worry about, enough to hurt about.

Not that Gwen isn’t planning to tell her. She is. It’s only been a few whirlwind months, but Gwen knows enough to realize that a lie of omission would be a bad, bad, bad idea where Mildred’s concerned, regardless of intention. Gwen doesn’t think of hiding it anyway, not really. Mildred deserves better then that. When and how to tell the public…that’s a completely different clusterfuck of a situation, but Mildred, Gwen just wants to tell her in person. That way Mildred can see her face when she promises it’s no big deal (hopefully without seeing how terrified she actually is), and Gwen will have all the paperwork and things she knows Mildred will want to see, and they can hold each other, and it’s just, it’s not phone call news.

Except then it’s headline news, because somehow it’s leaked. Fox News is having a field day, certain corners of the Internet are already gleefully writing her obituary, and she’s missed literally hundreds of calls by the time she gets a look at her phone. At least half of those are from Mildred. Mildred who actually sounds hysterical for the first time since Gwen’s known her, that bastard on the news with the hair, he says you’re dying, why aren’t you answering, how long have you known, please, please pick up the phone, just pick up the phone god dammit.

She’s managed to keep Mildred a secret for months. This? This doesn’t last three days before it’s everywhere. Gwen does get an I love you for the first time ever, but seeing as Mildred’s sobbing over her voicemail when it happens, the joy is somewhat muted.

[oscopelabs]

‘America’s Not a Country, It’s Just a Business’: On Andrew Dominik’s ‘Killing Them Softly’ By Roxana Hadadi

“Shitsville.” That’s the name Killing Them Softly director Andrew Dominik gave to the film’s nameless town, in which low-level criminals, ambitious mid-tier gangsters, nihilistic assassins, and the mob’s professional managerial class engage in warfare of the most savage kind. Onscreen, other states are mentioned (New York, Maryland, Florida), and the film itself was filmed in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, though some of the characters speak with Boston accents that are pulled from the source material, George V. Higgins’s novel Cogan’s Trade. But Dominik, by shifting Higgins’s narrative 30 or so years into the future and situating it specifically during the 2008 Presidential election, refuses to limit this story to one place. His frustrations with America as an institution that works for some and not all are broad and borderless, and so Shitsville serves as a stand-in for all the places not pretty enough for gentrifying developers to turn into income-generating properties, for all the cities whose industrial booms are decades in the past, and for all the communities forgotten by the idea of progress._ Killing Them Softly_ is a movie about the American dream as an unbeatable addiction, the kind of thing that invigorates and poisons you both, and that story isn’t just about one place. That’s everywhere in America, and nearly a decade after the release of Dominik’s film, that bitter bleakness still has grim resonance.

In November 2012, though, when Killing Them Softly was originally released, Dominik’s gangster picture-cum-pointed criticism of then-President Barack Obama’s vision of an America united in the same neoliberal goals received reviews that were decidedly mixed, tipping toward negative. (Audiences, meanwhile, stayed away, with Killing Them Softly opening at No. 7 with $7 million, one of the worst box office weekends of Brad Pitt’s entire career at that time.) Obama’s first term had been won on a tide of hope, optimism, and “better angels of our nature” solidarity, and he had just defeated Mitt Romney for another four years in the White House when Killing Them Softly hit theaters on Nov. 30. Cogan’s Trade had no political components, and no connections between the thieving and killing promulgated by these criminals and the country at large. Killing Them Softly, meanwhile, took every opportunity it could to chip away at the idea that a better life awaits us all if we just buy into the idea of American exceptionalism and pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps ingenuity. A fair amount of reviews didn’t hold back their loathing toward this approach. A.O. Scott with the New York Times dismissed Dominik’s frame as “a clumsy device, a feint toward significance that nothing else in the movie earns … the movie is more concerned with conjuring an aura of meaningfulness than with actually meaning anything.” Many critics lambasted Dominik’s nihilism: For Deadspin, Will Leitch called it a “crutch, and an awfully flimsy one,” while Richard Roeper thought the film collapsed under the “crushing weight” of Dominik’s philosophy. It was the beginning of Obama’s second term, and people still thought things might get better.

But Dominik’s film—like another that came out a few years earlier, Adam McKay’s 2010 political comedy The Other Guys—has maintained a crystalline kind of ideological purity, and perhaps gained a certain prescience. Its idea that America is less a bastion of betterment than a collection of corporate interests, and the simmering anger Brad Pitt’s Jackie Cogan captures in the film’s final moments, are increasingly difficult to brush off given the past decade or so in American life. This is not to say that Obama’s second term was a failure, but that it was defined over and over again by the limitations of top-down reform. Ceaseless Republican obstruction, widespread economic instability, and unapologetic police brutality marred the encouraging tenor of Obama’s presidency. Donald Trump’s subsequent four years in office were spent stacking the federal judiciary with young, conservative judges sympathetic toward his pro-big-business, fuck-the-little-guy approach, and his primary legislative triumph was a tax bill that will steadily hurt working-class people year after year.

The election of Obama’s vice president Joe Biden, and the Democratic Party securing control of the U.S. Senate, were enough for a brief sigh of relief in November 2020. The $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passed in March 2021 does a lot of good in extending (albeit lessened) unemployment benefits, providing a child credit to qualifying families, and funneling further COVID-19 support to school districts after a year of the coronavirus pandemic. But Republicans? They all voted no to helping the Americans they represent. Stimulus checks to the middle-class voters who voted Biden into office? Decreased for some, totally cut off for others, because of Biden’s appeasement to the centrists in his party. $15 minimum wage? Struck down, by both Republicans and Democrats. In how many more ways can those politicians who are meant to serve us indicate that they have little interest in doing anything of the kind?

Modern American politics, then, can be seen as quite a performative endeavor, and an exercise in passing blame. Who caused the economic collapse of 2008? Some bad actors, who the government bailed out. Who suffered the most as a result? Everyday Americans, many of whom have never recovered. Killing Them Softly mimics this dynamic, and emphasizes the gulf between the oppressors and the oppressed. The nameless elites of the mob, sending a middle manager to oversee their dirty work. The poker-game organizer, who must be brutally punished for a mistake made years before. The felons let down by the criminal justice system, who turn again to crime for a lack of other options. The hitman who brushes off all questions of morality, and whose primary concern is getting adequately paid for his work. Money, money, money. “This country is fucked, I’m telling ya. There’s a plague coming,” Jackie Cogan says to the Driver who delivers the mob’s by-committee rulings as to who Jackie should intimidate, threaten, and kill so their coffers can start getting filled again. Perhaps the plague is already here.

“Total fucking economic collapse.”

In terms of pure gumption, you have to applaud Dominik for taking aim at some of the biggest myths America likes to tell about itself. After analyzing the dueling natures of fame and infamy through the lens of American outlaw mystique in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Dominik thought bigger, taking on the entire American dream itself in Killing Them Softly. From the film’s very first second, Dominik doesn’t hold back, equating an easy path of forward progress with literal trash. Discordant tones and the film’s stark, white-on-black title cards interrupt Presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s speech about “the American promise,” slicing apart Obama’s words and his crowd’s responding cheers as felon Frankie (Scoot McNairy), in the all-American outfit of a denim jacket and jeans, cuts through what looks like a shut-down factory, debris and garbage blowing around him. Obama’s assurances sound very encouraging indeed: “Each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will.” But when Frankie—surrounded by trash, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and eyes squinting shut against the wind—walks under dueling billboards of Obama, with the word “CHANGE” in all-caps, and Republican opponent John McCain, paired with the phrase “KEEPING AMERICA STRONG,” a better future doesn’t exactly seem possible. Frankie looks too downtrodden, too weary of all the emptiness around him, for that.

Dominik and cinematographer Greig Fraser spoke to American Cinematographer magazine in October 2012 about shooting in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans: “We were aiming for something generic, a little town between New Orleans, Boston and D.C. that we called Shitsville. We wanted the place to look like it’s on the down-and-down, on the way out. We wanted viewers to feel just how smelly and grimy and horrible it was, but at the same time, we didn’t want to alienate them visually.” They were successful: Every location has a rundown quality, from the empty lot in which Frankie waits for friend and partner-in-crime Russell (Ben Mendelsohn)—a concrete expanse decorated with a couple of wooden chairs, as if people with nowhere else to go use this as a gathering spot—to the dingy laundromat backroom where Frankie and Russell meet with criminal mastermind Johnny “Squirrel” Amato (Vincent Curatola), who enlists them to rob a mafia game night run by Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta), to the restaurant kitchen where the game is run, all sickly fluorescent lights, cracked tile, and makeshift tables. Holding up a game like this, from which the cash left on the tables flows upward into the mob’s pockets, is dangerous indeed. But years before, Markie himself engineered a robbery of the game, and although that transgression was forgiven because of how well-liked Markie is in this institution, it would be easy to lay the blame on him again. And that’s exactly what Squirrel, Frankie, and Russell plan to do.

The “Why?” for such a risk isn’t that hard to figure out. Squirrel sees an opportunity to make off with other people’s money, he knows that any accusatory fingers will point elsewhere first, and he wants to act on it before some other aspiring baddie does. (Ahem, sound like the 2008 mortgage crisis to you?) Frankie, tired of the crappy jobs his probation officer keeps suggesting—jobs that require both long hours and a long commute, when Frankie can’t even afford a car (“Why the fuck do they think I need a job in the first place? Fucking assholes”)—is drawn in by desperation borne from a lack of options. If he doesn’t come into some kind of money soon, “I’m gonna have to go back and knock on the gate and say, ‘Let me back in, I can’t think of nothing and it’s starting to get cold,’” Frankie admits. And Australian immigrant and heroin addict Russell is nursing his own version of the American dream: He’s going to steal a bunch of purebred dogs, drive them down to Florida to sell for thousands of dollars, buy an ounce of heroin once he has $7,000 in hand, and then step on the heroin enough to become a dealer. It’s only a few moves from where he is to where he wants to be, he figures, and this card-game heist can help him get there.

In softly lit rooms, where the men in the frame are in focus and their surroundings and backgrounds are slightly blown out, slightly blurred, or slightly fuzzy (“Creaminess is something you feel you can enter into, like a bath; you want to be absorbed and encompassed by it” Fraser told American Cinematographer of his approach), garish deals are made, and then somehow pulled off with a sobering combination of ineptitude and ugliness. Russell buys yellow dishwashing gloves for himself and Frankie to wear during the holdup, and they look absurd—but the pistol-whipping Russell doles out to Markie still hurts like hell, no matter what accessories he’s wearing. Dominik gives this holdup the paranoia and claustrophobia it requires, revolving his camera around the barely-holding-it-together Frankie and cutting every so often to the enraged players, their eyes glancing up to look at Frankie’s face, their hands twitching toward their guns. But in the end, nobody moves. When Frankie and Russell add insult to injury by picking the players’ pockets (“It’s only money,” they say, as if this entire ordeal isn’t exclusively about wanting other people’s money), nobody fights back. Nobody dies. Frankie and Russell make off with thousands of dollars in two suitcases, while Markie is left bamboozled—and afraid—by what just happened. And the players? They’ll get their revenge eventually. You can count on that.

So it goes that Dominik smash cuts us from the elated and triumphant Russell and Frankie driving away from the heist in their stolen 1971 Buick Riviera, its headlights interrupting the inky-black night, to the inside of Jackie Cogan’s 1967 Oldsmobile Toronado, with Johnny Cash’s “The Man Comes Around” providing an evocative accompaniment. “There’s a man going around taking names/And he decides who to free, and who to blame/Everybody won’t be treated all the same,” Cash sings in that unmistakably gravelly voice, and that’s exactly what Jackie does. Called in by the mob to capture who robbed the game so that gambling can begin again, Jackie meets with an unnamed character, referred to only as the Driver (Richard Jenkins), who serves as the mob’s representative in these sorts of matters. Unlike the other criminals in this film—Frankie, with his tousled hair and sheepish face; Russell, with his constant sweatiness and dog-funk smell; Jackie, in his tailored three-piece suits and slicked-back hair; Markie, with those uncannily blue eyes and his matching slate sportscoat—the Driver looks like a square.

He is, like the men who replace Mike Milligan in the second season of Fargo, a kind of accountant, a man with an office and a secretary. “The past can no more become the future than the future can become the past,” Milligan had said, and for all the backward-looking details of Killing Them Softly—American cars from the 1960s and 1970s, that whole masculine code-of-honor thing that Frankie and Russell break by ripping off Markie’s game, the post-industrial economic slump that brings to mind the American recession of 1973 to 1975—the Driver is very much an arm of a new kind of organized crime. He keeps his hands clean, and he delivers what the ruling-by-committee organized criminals decide, and he’s fussy about Jackie smoking cigarettes in his car, and he’s so bland as to be utterly forgettable. And he has the power, as authorized by his higher-ups, to approve Jackie putting pressure on Markie for more information about the robbery. It doesn’t matter that neither Jackie nor the mob thinks Markie actually did it. What matters more is that “People are losing money. They don’t like to lose money,” and so Jackie can do whatever he needs. Dominik gives him this primacy through a beautiful shot of Jackie’s reflection in the car window, his aviators a glinting interruption to the gray concrete overpass under which the Driver’s car is parked, to the smoke billowing out from faraway stacks, and to the overall gloominess of the day.

“We regret having to take these actions. Today’s actions are not what we ever wanted to do, but today’s actions are what we must do to restore confidence to our financial system,” we hear Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson say on the radio in the Driver’s car, and his October 14, 2008, remarks are about the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008—the government bailout of banks and other financial institutions that cost taxpayers $700 billion. (Remember Will Ferrell’s deadpan delivery in The Other Guys of “From everything I’ve heard, you guys [at the Securities and Exchange Commission] are the best at these types of investigations. Outside of Enron and AIG, and Bernie Madoff, WorldCom, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers ...”) Yet the appeasing sentiment of Paulson’s words applies to Jackie, too, and to the beating he orders for Markie—a man he suspects did nothing wrong, at least not this time. But debts must be settled. Heads must roll. “Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still/Whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still/Whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still,” Cash sang, and Jackie is all those men, and he’ll collect the stolen golden crowns as best he can. For a price, of course. Always for a price.

“I like to kill them softly, from a distance, not close enough for feelings. Don’t like feelings. Don’t want to think about them.”

In “Bad Dreams,” the penultimate episode of the second season of The Wire, International Brotherhood of Stevedores union representative Frank Sobotka (Chris Bauer), having seen his brothers in arms made immaterial by the lack of work at the Baltimore ports and the collapse of their industry, learns that his years of bribing politicians to vote for expanded funding for the longshoremen isn’t going to pay off. He is furious, and he is exhausted. “We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy’s pocket,” he says with the fatigue of a man who knows his time has run out, and you can draw a direct line from Bauer’s beleaguered delivery of those lines to Liotta’s aghast reaction to the horrendous beating he receives from Jackie’s henchmen. Sobotka in The Wire had no idea how he got to that helpless place, and neither does Markie in Killing Them Softly—he made a mistake, but that was years ago. Everyone forgave him. Didn’t they?

The vicious assault leveled upon Markie is a harrowing, horrifying sequence that is also unnervingly beautiful, and made all the more awful as a result of that visual splendor. In the pouring rain, Markie is held captive by the two men, who deliver bruising body shots, break his noise, batter his body against the car, and kick in his ribs. “You see fight scenes a lot in movies, but you don’t see people systematically beating somebody else. The idea was just to make it really, really, really ugly,” Dominik told the New York Times in November 2012, and sound mixer Leslie Shatz and cinematographer Fraser also contributed to this unforgettable scene. Shatz used the sound of a squeegee across a windshield to accentuate Markie’s increasingly destroyed body slumping against the car, and also incorporated flash bulbs going off as punches were thrown, adding a kind of lingering effect to the scene’s soundscape. And although the scene looks like it’s shot in slow motion, Fraser explained to American Cinematographer that the combination of an overhead softbox and dozens of background lights helped build that layered effect in which Liotta is fully illuminated while the dark night around him remains impenetrable. Every drop of rain and every splatter of blood stands out on Markie’s face as he confesses ignorance regarding the robbery and begs for mercy from Jackie’s men, but Markie has already been marked for death. When the time comes, Jackie will shoot him in the head in another exquisitely detailed, shot-in-ultrahigh-speed scene that bounces back and forth between the initial act of violence and its ensuing destruction. The cartridges flying out of Jackie’s gun, and the bullets destroying Markie’s window, and then his brain. Markie’s car, now no longer in his control, rolling forward into an intersection where it’s hit not just once, but twice, by oncoming cars. The crunching sound of Markie’s head against his windshield, and the vision of that glass splintering from the impact of his flung body, are impossible to shake.

“Cause and effect,” Dominik seems to be telling us, and Killing Them Softly follows Jackie as he cleans up the mess Squirrel, Frankie, and Russell have made. After he enlists another hitman, Mickey (a fantastically whoozy James Gandolfini, who carries his bulk like the armor of a samurai searching for a new master), whose constant boozing, whoring, and laziness shock Jackie after years of successful work together, and who refuses to do the killing for which Jackie secured him a $15,000 payday, Jackie realizes he’ll need to do this all himself. He’ll need to gather the intel that fingers Frankie, Russell, and Squirrel. He’ll need to set up a police sting to entrap Russell on his purchased ounce of heroin, violating the terms of his probation, and he’ll need to set up another police sting to entrap Mickey for getting in a fight with a prostitute, violating the terms of his probation. For Jackie, a career criminal for whom ethical questions have long since evaporated, Russell’s and Frankie’s sloppiness in terms of bragging about their score is a source of disgust. “I guess these guys, they just want to go to jail. They probably feel at home there,” he muses, and he’s then exasperated by the Driver’s trepidation regarding the brutality of his methods. Did the Driver’s bosses want the job done or not? “We aim to please,” Jackie smirks, and that shark smile is the sign of a predator getting ready to feast.

Things progress rapidly then: Jackie tracks Frankie down to the bar where he hangs out, and sneers at Frankie’s reticence to turn on Squirrel. “They’re real nice guys,” he says mockingly to Frankie of the criminal underworld of which they’re a part, brushing off Frankie’s defense that Squirrel “didn’t mean it.” “That’s got nothing to do with it. Nothing at all,” Jackie replies, and that’s the kind of distance that keeps Jackie in this job. Sure, the vast majority of us aren’t murderers. But as a question of scale, aren’t all of us as workers compromised in some way? Employees of companies, institutions, or billionaires that, say, pollute the environment, or underpay their staff, or shirk labor laws, or rake in unheard-of profits during an international pandemic? Or a government that spreads imperialism through allegedly righteous military action (referenced in Killing Them Softly, as news coverage of the economic crisis mentions the reckless rapidity with which President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq after Sept. 11, 2001), or that can’t quite figure out how to house the nation’s homeless into the millions of vacant homes sitting empty around the country, or that refuses, over and over again, to raise the minimum wage workers are paid so that they have enough financial security to live decent lives?

Perhaps you bristle at this comparison to Jackie Cogan, a man who has no qualms blowing apart Squirrel with a shotgun at close range, or unloading a revolver into Frankie after spending an evening driving around with him. But the guiding American principle when it comes to work is that you do a job and you get paid: It’s a very simple contract, and both sides need to operate in good faith to fulfill it. Salaried employees, hourly workers, freelancers, contractors, day laborers, the underemployed—all operate under the assumption that they’ll be compensated, and all live with the fear that they won’t. Jackie knows this, as evidenced by his loathing toward compatriot Kenny (Slaine) when the man tries to pocket the tip Jackie left for his diner waitress. “For fuck’s sake,” Jackie says in response to Kenny’s attempted theft, and you can sense that if Jackie could kill him in that moment, he would. In this way, Jackie is rigidly conservative, and strictly old-school. Someone else’s money isn’t yours to take; it’s your responsibility to earn, and your employer’s responsibility to pay. Jackie cleaned up the mob’s mess, and the gambling tables opened again because of his work, and his labor resulted in their continued profits. And Jackie wants what he’s owed.

“Don’t make me laugh. ‘We’re one people.’”

We hear two main voices of authority urging calm throughout Killing Them Softly. Then-President Bush: “I understand your worries and your frustration. … We’re in the midst of a serious financial crisis, and the federal government is responding with decisive action.” Presidential hopeful Obama: “There’s only the road we’re traveling on as Americans.” Paulson speaks on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, and various news commentators chime in, too: “There needs to be consequences, and there needs to be major change.” Radio commentary and C-SPAN coverage combine into a sort of secondary accompaniment to Marc Streitenfeld’s score, which incorporates lyrically germane Big Band standards like “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries” (“You work, you save, you worry so/But you can’t take your dough”) and “It’s Only a Paper Moon” (“It's a Barnum and Bailey world/Just as phony as it can be”). All of these are Dominik’s additions to Cogan’s Trade, which is a slim, 19-chapter book without any political angle, and this frame is what met so much resistance from contemporaneous reviews.

But what Dominik accomplishes with this approach is twofold. First, a reminder of the ceaseless tension and all-encompassing anxiety of that time, which would spill into the Occupy Wall Street movement, coalesce support around politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and fuel growing national interest in policies like universal health care and universal basic income. For anyone who struggled during that time—as I did, a college graduate entering the 2009 job market after the journalism industry was already beginning its still-continuing freefall—Killing Them Softly captures the free-floating anger so many of us felt at politicians bailing out corporations rather than people. Perhaps in 2012, only weeks after the re-election of Obama and with the potential that his second term could deliver on some of his campaign promises (closing Guantanamo Bay, maybe, or passing significant gun control reform, maybe), this cinematic scolding felt like medicine. But nearly a decade later, with neither of these legislative successes in hand, and with the wins for America’s workers so few and far between—still a $7.25 federal minimum wage, still no federal paid maternity and family leave act, still the refusal by many states to let their government employees unionize—if you don’t feel demoralized by how often the successes of the Democratic Party are stifled by the party’s own moderates or thoroughly curtailed by saboteur Republicans, maybe you’re not paying attention.

More acutely, then, the mutinous spirit of Killing Them Softly accomplishes something similar to what 1990’s Pump Up the Volume did: It allows one to say, with no irony whatsoever, “Do you ever get the feeling everything in America is completely fucked up?” The disparities of the financial system, and the yawning gap between the rich and the poor. The utter lack of accountability toward those who were supposed to protect us, and didn’t. And the sense that we’re always being a little bit cheated by a ruling class who, like Sobotka observed on The Wire, is always putting their hand in our pocket. Consider Killing Them Softly’s quietest moment, in which Frankie realizes that he’s a hunted man, and that the people from whom he stole would never let him live. Dominik frames McNairy tight, his expression a flickering mixture of plaintive yearning and melancholic regret, as he quietly says, “It’s just shit, you know? The world is just shit. We’re all just on our own.” A day or so later, McNairy’s Frankie will be lying on a medical examiner’s table, his head partially collapsed from a bullet to the brain, an identification tag looped around his pinky toe. And the men who ordered his death want to underpay the man who carried it out for them. Isn’t that the shit?

That leads us, then, to the film’s angriest moment, and to a scene that stands alongside the climaxes of so many other post-recession films: Chris Pine’s Toby Howard paying off the predatory bank that swindled his mother with its own stolen money in Hell or High Water, Lakeith Stanfield’s Cash Green and his fellow Equisapiens storming billionaire Steve Lift’s (Armie Hammer’s) mansion in Sorry to Bother You, Viola Davis’s Veronica Rawlings shooting her cheating husband and keeping the heist take for herself and her female comrades in Widows. So far in Killing Them Softly, Pitt has played Jackie with a certain level of remove. A man’s got to have a code, and his is fairly simple: Don’t get involved emotionally with the assignment. Pitt’s Jackie is susceptible to flashes of irritation, though, that manifest as a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and as an octave-lower growl that belies his impatience: with the Driver, for not understanding how Markie’s reputation has doomed him; with Mickey, for his procrastination and his slovenliness; with Kenny, for stealing a hardworking woman’s tip; with Frankie, when he tries to distract Jackie from killing Squirrel. Jackie is a professional, and he is intolerant of people failing to work at his level, and Pitt plays the man as tiptoeing along a knife’s edge. Remember Daniel Craig’s “’Cause it’s all so fucking hysterical” line delivery in Road to Perdition? Pitt’s whole performance is that: a hybrid offering of bemusement, smugness, and ferocity that suggests a man who’s seen it all, and hasn’t been impressed by much.

In the final minutes of Killing Them Softly, Obama has won his historic first term in the White House, and Pitt’s Jackie strides through a red haze of celebratory fireworks as he walks to meet the Driver at a bar to retrieve payment. An American flag hangs in this dive, and the TV broadcasts Obama’s victory speech, delivered in Chicago to a crowd of more than 240,000. “Crime stories, to some extent, always felt like the capitalist ideal in motion,” Dominik told the New York Times. “Because it’s the one genre where it’s perfectly acceptable for the characters to be motivated solely by money.” And so it goes that Jackie feels no guilt for the men he’s killed, or the men he’s sent away. Nor does he feel any empathy or kinship with the newly elected Obama, whose messages of unity and community he finds amusingly irrelevant. The life Jackie lives is one defined by how little people value each other, and how quick they are to attack one another if that means more opportunity—and more money—for them. Thomas Hobbes said that a life without social structure and political representation would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” and perhaps that’s exactly what Jackie’s is. Unlike the character in Cogan’s Trade, Dominik’s Jackie has no wife and no personal life. But he’s surviving this way with his eyes wide open, and he will not be undervalued.

The contrast between Obama’s speech about “the enduring power of our ideas—democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope”—and Jackie’s realization that the mob is trying to underpay him for the three men he assassinated at their behest makes for a kind of nauseating, thrilling coda. He’s owed $45,000, and the envelope the Driver paid him only has $30,000 in it. Obama’s audience chanting “Yes, we can,” the English translation of the United Farm Workers of America’s slogan and the activist César Chávez’s iconic “Sí, se puede” catchphrase, adds an ironic edge to the argument between the Driver and Jackie about the value of his labor. Whatever the Driver can use to try and shrug off Jackie’s advocacy for himself, he will. Jackie’s killings were too messy. Jackie is asking for more than the mob’s usual enforcer, Dillon (Sam Shepard), who would have done a better job. Jackie is ignoring that the mob is limited to “Recession prices”—they’re suffering, so that suffering has to trickle down to someone. Jackie made the deal with Mickey for $15,000 per head, and the mob isn’t beholden to pay Jackie what they agreed to pay Mickey.

On and on, excuse after excuse, until one finally pushes Jackie over the edge: “This business is a business of relationships,” the Driver says, which is one step away from the “We’re all family here” line that so many abusive companies use to manipulate their cowed employees. And so when Jackie goes coolly feral in his response, dropping knowledge not only about the artifice of the racist Thomas Jefferson as a Founding Father but underscoring the idea that America has always been, and will always be, a capitalist enterprise first, the moment slaps all the harder for all the ways we know we’ve been let down by feckless bureaucrats like the Driver, who do only as they’re told; by faceless corporate overlords like the mob, issuing orders to Jackie from on high; and by a broader country that seems like it couldn’t care less about us. “I’m living in America, and in America, you’re on your own … Now fucking pay me” serves as a kind of clarion call, an expression of vehemence and resentment, and a direct line into the kind of anger that still festers among those continuously left behind—still living in Shitstown, still trying to make a better life for themselves, and still asking for a little more respect from their fellow Americans. For all of Killing Them Softly’s ugliness, for all its nihilism, and for all its commentary on how our country’s ruthless individualism has turned chasing the American dream into a crippling addiction we all share, that demand for dignity remains distressingly relevant. Maybe it’s time to listen.

[kumawrites]

hi!! idk how requests work but coffeeshop au with oikawa as the flirty barista and you're just trying to find a place to study okay bye 😶😶

iced vanilla bean latte

☆ oikawa tooru x reader ☆

☆ - 1.7k words

☆ - a/n: i based this 100% in a local coffee shop in my area that i frequent except i h8 coffee

☆ - taglist: @miceonmars

//

“Y/N, Obama was the last president of the United States, not the third.” Kiyoko looked at you with a pitiful gaze in response to your answer.

“Oh.” You blinked once. Twice. A third time for good measure. So your American Politics class was needless to say, not going very well. Honestly, you didn’t even know why you were taking an American politics class when you lived in Japan. Actually, you knew why. Because of your horrible habit of procrastinating literally anything that can be procrastinated, you foolishly waited until the very last day that you could to register for classes. And unsurprisingly, most of them had been completely filled, leaving American Politics to be the only history class that you were able to take. Which would have been just fine, had you not procrastinated studying and even taking notes.

You stared blankly down at your notebook that was barely a quarter full. Instead of taking notes and actually paying attention in class, you either skipped or distracted yourself playing games on your phone. Your professor never notified you since you sat right in the middle of the lecture hall, not drawing much attention at all. Maybe, that wasn’t a good thing, however. You had no connection to your professor at all, and asking for help this late in the game just didn’t feel right, which is extremely irrational but you really didn’t care.

Your problem would really just have been solved if you did care. Too bad you didn’t. However, you’re stuck in a bit of a pickle now, not knowing even the basics of the class, with midterms coming up and a frighteningly fast rate. You were bound to fail, and your parents would not be very happy about that. So, you decided that it was finally time to actually study. Except studying really meant learning all of the material that you had covered for half of the semester in about a week.

Luckily for you, you had great friends who were super smart and actually studious to help! Kiyoko had already taken the class, being a grade ahead of you, and had graciously blessed you with her notebook full of her beautiful notes. It was truly astounding how notes could be so pretty. Yachi, on the other hand, gave your studying tips and ways to actually study well. Without those two, you would have failed the midterm for sure, and most likely the course all together.

You were currently studying with Kiyoko in the library, well trying to at least. Apparently, you knew less than you actually thought.

“Wait, what’s a Conservative? Is that a branch of Congress?” You weren’t doing too hot.

“It’s a political party. They’re a more extreme version of a the Republican Party.” You nodded your head, slowly understanding. Why were politics so complicated?

“Oh, okay. I think I get it. So, Liberals are Democrats but more extreme?”

“That’s right.” Kiyoko nodded her head as you scratched down some of her notes into your own notebook. Kiyoko’s phone pinged and she grabbed it from the table, turning it on. She read the message, sighed, replied, and began packing up her things. “Sorry, Y/N, but my boss just messaged me. I have to go in tonight, Hana got sick.” You nodded and gave Kiyoko a slight smile and a wave as she left. Now it was just you, left to your own devices. You were half tempted to close your books and play Fire Emblem, but that seemed like a poor long term choice.

You kept at it for a surprisingly long amount of time, around an hour, until a rowdy group came in. Even though it was a library, it wasn’t the most quiet of places on campus, and many groups liked to come in to work on group projects. You had no problem with them, until they set down their bags and their bodies at the table right next to yours, still chatting loudly. Unfortunately for you, you didn’t bring your earbuds with you. Since you assumed you would just be studying with Kiyoko the whole time, you didn’t bother to pack them. The one moment in your life when you needed them the most. A tragedy.

You sighed and packed up your things, considering giving up studying for the day, until you realized you were running out of time and were still extremely confused. And tired. You yawned as your left the library, wondering where to go from there. Going back to your dorm would only lead to you playing video games and ignoring everything else, so that was off the list. Every other place you could think of would be far too noisy to actually study. You were in quite the pickle.

You were really close to giving up for the hundredth time until you passed by a coffee shop that you had never seen on campus before. Was that always there? No, it couldn’t have been. It was in the middle of a route you used all of the time to get across campus. But how did you never notice that this was there? The shop had large windows that you could peek through to see a very classy interior. Everything seemed to be made of a walnut coloured wood, excluding the black chairs and stools. There weren’t too many people in the shop, just a small crowd. It looked peaceful. You stood there for a bit before deciding to walk inside. Maybe this is where you could study in peace.

As soon as you opened the door, you were greeted with the smell of fresh roasted coffee beans. You stopped a vacant table and placed your belonging on it and took a seat. The chairs were surprisingly comfortable, even though they seemed to be made of metal. The vibe in the entire shop was very calm. You could get used to this.

You took your notes out and began to study, creating flashcards and making your notes a bit cleaner and more cohesive. This was the kind of productivity that you needed to have on a daily basis. Too bad that this energy was for sure going to leave your body once you finish your midterm. Another yawn left your body, and you turned your head towards the counter. You could buy a coffee. That wasn’t going to break your bank account. Yeah.

You stood up and headed towards the counter, staring at the menu. Everything on the menu sounded fine, but you didn’t know exactly what you wanted.

“Hey! What can I do for you today?” A cheery voice broke you form your thoughts and you brought your eyes back down to look at who was speaking to you. The barista that greeted you had a charming smile on his face, one that you knew just drew people in. He was pretty, for sure, but you didn’t have time to think about pretty boys, too focused on trying to pass your class.

“Hi there. I’ve never been here, so I’m not too sure what to get. What would you recommend?” You have him a polite smile in return, and shifted your gaze back to the menu. There were so many options that you were a bit overwhelmed with choices

“Hmm..” The barista tapped his chin and scrunched his face a bit. “What about the vanilla bean latte? It’s really good iced!” He suggested and you nodded your head.

“Okay, sure. I’ll have that as a 24 ounce, then.” You ordered such a large drink since you assumed that you would be here for a while, having so much material left to study.

“Oh, it’s Y/N.” You replied and he hummed, typing it into the tablet on the counter. Your total came up and you handed him your card, making sure to leave a tip.

“That’s a cute name, just like you!” You stared at him. It was like someone had just stopped a record right in the middle of a song. What? Did you hear that right?

“Sorry, um, what?”

“I just think you’re super cute. We’ll have that vanilla bean right out for ya, Y/N.” He winked and walked over to his coworker who was making your drink. You vaguely remember his coworker scolding him, telling him to ‘stop flirting with the customers shithead’, but you really weren’t listening. Were you just, flirted with? Is that how this works? You for sure were not expecting that to happen.

You returned to your seat and opened up your notes, trying to forget the flirting(?) and focus on your studies. That’s what you came here to do, not flirt with a cute barista that you would for sure go on a date with. But, he was probably just a flirty person, you figured. If his coworker scolded him like that, it was probably a common occurrence, meaning you shouldn’t take it to heart or anything. He was just super cute.

Only a few minutes after you began to actually focus in on your work, you noticed that a large plastic cup full of iced coffee and a plate with a muffin was placed down at your table. Looking up, you saw the cute barista with a beaming smile on his face.

“Here you go, Y/N. Hope you like it.”

“Oh, I didn’t order a muffin.” You tilted your head up at the man who chuckled in response.

“I know. It’s on the house.” And with that, he gave you a tiny wave and disappeared into the back room, leaving you shook. Was this protocol? No, definitely not. Was this protocol for him flirting with every female customer? His boss wouldn’t let him give out that much free food. Was he really, for sure, actually, flirting with you? Was this real? Are you real? Okay, not time for an existential crisis.

You picked up the muffin on the plate, and noticed a small note that was placed under it.. It read, ‘text me!!!! :) xxx-xxx-xxxx - oikawa’. At this point, you were pretty damn sure he was flirting with you. Holy shit. He was flirting with you. Oikawa, you assumed his name was, still hadn’t come out of the storage room, so you couldn’t gauge his reactions or anything. You stared at your phone that you picked up like it was an explosive, ready to detonate. Were you actually going to text him? Was this actually a good idea? You know what, fuck American politics, you had something far more pressing to deal with at the moment.

y/n: hey is this oikawa? this is y/n

oikawa: hey cutie!! ;)