#like its a p white school so it never came up with race but re: feminism queer ppl mental illness etc ...

[inklingofadream]

I like. wasn't still upset about a couple awful professors I had freshmen year. like this was a funny story at this point

until ratemyprofessor let me know my reviews were deleted! they don't provide the TEXT of the deletions, or the reason. And maybe I did write something mean in a way that would conflict with their guidelines, i can't definitively deny name calling at this point though I don't remember doing so

So you better believe I replaced reviews of Only Art 1010 Professor At This School, Who Teaches His Opinion As Fact And Gets Nasty If You Disagree (likely removal reason: 50/50 chance of something along the lines of "masturbatory" was in there, because he also used HIS OWN ART as an "objective" example of good art) and the guy who 1) refused to believe I was absent due to a stomach bug, 2) was REAL sure it was a mental health issue, 3) decided it was His job to make sure it was dealt with (NO I'm not telling you what antidepressant I take or switching to a new one on your recommendation!), 4) got mean when I reiterated that it was a stomach bug and also, a music professor is not qualified to determine that in any way shape or form 5) reported me to the wellness center AFTER the semester ended (like a month and a half after the conversation happened) that I was suicidal (I was not, and I DEFINITELY didn't indicate such to him)

and i am actually angry about it again!

[heavenlymisa]

could we maybe get some first date hcs with,,, todoroki, bakugo, and kaminari?

an; of course!!! ty for the headcannon, anon!!! enjoy!!

now that im looking back at this- i just now realized that i confused karminari for kirishima- ill make a seperate headcannon for him! sorry for the confusion!

shoto todoroki, katsuki bakugou, and eijiro kirishima x female reader (seperate)

.・。.・゜✭・.・✭・゜・。.

masterlist

.・。.・゜✭・.・✭・゜・。.

Shoto Todoroki

⤷ he would ask the girls (execpt for you) what to do for a first date. you two have been dating for 1 month, but never had a first date because of school.

⤷ after hours of planning, stressing, and switching up the plan, he figures out what to do.

⤷ rollerskating rink.

⤷ he’s never been to one, but the girls were talking about what you like to do and rollerskating was the first thing that popped up (sorry if that isnt your favorite thing to do 🥺)

⤷ after figuring out what to do, he texts you to meet him in the common area afterschool after you change out of your school clothes. of course you said okay, but you were skeptical about this.

⤷ the next day, afterschool, you got dressed into a white graphic tee and a black skirt. you checked yourself in the mirror that in your dorm, went downstairs, and waited in the common area.

⤷ you waiting on him for about 5 minutes until you heard him behind you.

⤷ “sorry to keep you waiting. i couldn’t pick out what to wear.”

⤷ you turned around and was met with todoroki in a black turtleneck and black jeans. if you didn’t die the first time you saw im, you have officially died now. sorry, i don’t make the rules.

⤷ “you look beautiful.”

⤷ nevermind, you died now.

⤷ you thanked him and returned the compliment. he nodded his head, grabbed your hand, and he lead you out the door of the dorms.

⤷ “so... where are we going..?”

⤷ “you’ll find out.” he said with a smirk. f u c k

⤷ after 15 minutes of walking and small talk, you two finally made it to the skating rink. you two went inside and saw all of the strobe lights flashing everywhere and people skating.

⤷ you hugged todoroki and thanked him tremendously for taking you here. he of course hugged back and said ‘you’re welcome.’

⤷ todoroki went and paid for the general commission and two pairs of roller-skates (with endeavor’s debit card. make his pockets hurt😋). you two put on your roller-skates and went to the rink.

⤷ well, more like you went to the rink, todo was struggling to stand up. you went back to him and helped his to the rink. he thanked you and attempted to skate

⤷ keyword- attempted.

⤷ he busted his ass.

⤷ you snickered to yourself and attempted to help him up.

⤷ key word- attempted.

⤷ you busted YOUR ass.

⤷ now you both are on the floor looking like boo-boo the fool 😔👊🏽

⤷ but its okay! you two eventually got up and you helped todoroki with skating. he quickly learned how to skate and was skating like a pro on the rink.

⤷ you two raced and todoroki won majority of the time, but you were happy that you could teach your boyfriend something.

⤷ you grabbed todoroki’s hands and started to skate backwards while he skated forwards. oh god he loved when you did that.

⤷after you two were tired, the both of you went back to the dorms to be met with the 1-A girls pestering about the date.

⤷ you told them that you would tell them later because you were really tired, and they understood!

⤷ so you two and todoroki both took a shower (separately) and mysteriously not really ended up sleeping in todoroki’s room.

⤷ everyone was surprised when you and todoroki walked out of his room together.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✭・゜・。.

katsuki bakugou

⤷ i think kirishima would bully bakugou into taking you on a date when you two hit 2 weeks.

⤷ “i think bakubro is scared of taking dear old n/n on a daattee~”

⤷ “scared!?! i’ll shOW YOU SCARED-“

⤷ he snatches you from your room and drags you downstairs. literally everyone is watching you being dragged by bakugou and not doing anything.

⤷ “yall hear sum...”

⤷ “hm.. might be the wind.”

⤷ bakugou ignores your pleas and cries of him kidnapping you until you two make it on the train.

⤷ you two sit down on the train and bakugou covers your mouth before you even have the chance to talk.

⤷ “im taking you on a date, nerd. dont get too cocky.”

⤷ you pulled his hand down a little whispered, “where?” 🥺

⤷ “you’ll see! just.. shut up..” he looked away with the ᴛɪɴᴇsᴛ blush on his face. you decided to not pester him with it, so you just lay your head on his shoulders and closed your eyes.

⤷ holy fuck, he loves that.

⤷ when the train stopped, he grabbed your hand and walked out of the train. you two were walking for a good bit until you two stopped at.....

⤷ a carnival!

⤷ your eyes lit up as you looked at the bright lights, tents, and the P R I Z E S

⤷ you went behind bakugou, wrapped your arms around his waist, and buried the side of your head to his back.

⤷ “thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU!!”

⤷ bakugou patted your hands and hummed.

⤷ “alright loser,” he unwrapped your arms, guided you in front of him, rested his head on your shoulder, and wrapped his arms around your torso. “lets not waste my time. i got shit to do.”

⤷ you giggled as you both walked inside of the carnival.

⤷ you both first went to get some food. you got a funnel cake while bakugou got a hot and spicy turkey leg 😳

⤷ he kept on sticking it in your face and you kept on running away while he was hot on your trail, waving the turkey leg around 😔

⤷ after you two were done eating, you two played games!!

⤷ he won you many prizes 🥺 including an ugly ass bear that you B EG GED him to throw away.

⤷ he forces you to keep it 😔

⤷ on the plus side, you got a v cute panda bear ! you named him suki 💕

⤷ after that, you two went to the photo booth!!

⤷ he tried to back away from it, but you shoved him into the photo booth.

⤷ i wish i could draw so i didnt have to describe the poses

⤷ first picturee!!! : you made a peace sign and smiled while bakugou was in the back with his hands folded.

⤷ second picturee!!! : you and bakugou were both staring at each other

⤷ third pictureee!!! : your finger was stuck in between bakugou’s neck and head (youre tickling his neck 🤪👊🏽) while he has a smile on his face

⤷ fourth picturee!!! : he was staring at you while you had a cheeky grin on your face. #noregrets ✨

⤷ you two got out and you quickly grabbed the two print outs before bakugou even had the chance to rip them to shreds.

⤷ he stared at you for a little bit and snatch one from your hand.

⤷ the amount of ST RE S S you were under when he snatched it from you 😐

⤷ he stared at the pictures for a couple of seconds and shoved it in his pocket while grumbling about something and walking away from you

⤷ you smiled and ran up to him. you swear for a faint second he had a smirk on his face. oh well 🤪

⤷ when you came back, the bakusquad stared at you two.

⤷ bats eyelashes BLA N K S T A R E 👁👄👁

⤷ but mina completely took you away from bakugou and shoved you into the hallway.

⤷ “soo... how was it??”

⤷ you thought for a second before replying.

⤷ “best first date ever.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✭・゜・。.

eijiro kirishima

⤷ baby boy already had this day planned since he first SAW YOU

⤷ not tryna be on some yandere stuff but LOOK AT YOU!!

⤷ how could he NOT think about you!!

⤷ anyways, on the weekend, kirishima knocks at your door.

⤷ you answer it and he grabs both of your shoulders.

⤷ “are you free right now?”

⤷ “ye-“

⤷ congratulations, you are officially being dragged away by kirishima.

⤷ you decided not to question his frantic tactics and just let him lead you.

⤷ lmaooo yolo bitches 🤪

⤷ you guys have been running around town until you two arrived at a.....

⤷ arcadee!!!!!

⤷ he literally DRAGGED you in and got a shit ton of tokens.

⤷ “y/n, come on!! unless you feel like getting beat today!”

⤷ “ohh... this is war...”

⤷ and thus the war between y/n and kirishima started <3

⤷ you two played lots of games in the arcade and even ate some snacks as a mini truce.

⤷ you two were racing on the motorcycle next.

⤷ you got on the motorcycle and look to your right, waiting on kirishima.

⤷ then you felt a body behind you and hands wrap around your torso.

⤷ you jumped and looked back to be met with your dopey boyfriend having a big grin on his face.

⤷ “i was thinking that we could do this together.” 🥺

⤷ “if we’re doing this together, youre driving.”

⤷ diDNT HAVE TO TELL HIM TWICE.

⤷ he jumped up to the front and grabbed on to the handles. you wrapped your arms around his waist and rested your head on his shoulder.

⤷ holy fuck he loves you.

⤷ he let you choose all of the motorcycle styles, the person, and the location. what a manly thing to do 🥺

⤷ “i should get a motorcycle when i get my license!”

⤷ he crashed into a tree.

⤷ he completely ignores it.

⤷ but at the end he does get first place soo... 😎 yolo

⤷ but little do you know... he was recording you two!

⤷ he’s glad he did because he loved to look over to his phone and see you concentrating on the screen 🥺

⤷ he cant believe you’re his wtf.

⤷ anyways, when the competition was over, you were the winner by 14 points!! (kiri probably let you win but whatever 🤪)

⤷ you two decided to save up your points for the next time you come.

⤷ going back to the dorm was a peaceful walk. you two walked, hand in hand, and basked in each others presence. <3

.・。.・゜✭・.・✭・゜・。.

taglists!!

𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑠 <3

@wasting-away-on-the-internet

𝑏𝑎𝑘𝑢𝑔𝑜𝑢’𝑠 𝑏𝑎𝑘𝑢ℎ𝑜𝑒𝑠

𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑏𝑜𝑦’𝑠 𝑠𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠

let me know if you want to be apart of the taglist!! <3

[7r0773r]

Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Baldwin’s understanding of the American condition cohered around a set of practices that, taken together, constitute something I will refer to throughout this book as the lie. The idea of facing the lie was always at the heart of Jimmy’s witness, because he thought that it, as opposed to our claim to the shining city on a hill, was what made America truly exceptional. The lie is more properly several sets of lies with a single purpose. If what I have called the “value gap” is the idea that in America white lives have always mattered more than the lives of others, then the lie is a broad and powerful architecture of false assumptions by which the value gap is maintained. These are the narrative assumptions that support the everyday order of American life, which means we breathe them like air. We count them as truths. We absorb them into our character. (p. 7)

***

These, then, are the twined purposes at the heart of Baldwin’s poetic vision. He is not only motivated to transform the stuff of experience into the beauty of art; as a  poet he also bears witness to what he sees and what we have forgotten, calling our attention to the enduring legacies of slavery in our lives; to the impact of systemic discrimination throughout the country that has denied generations of black people access to the so-called American dream; to the willful blindness of so many white Americans to the violence that sustains it all. He laments the suffering that results from our evasions and refusals and passes judgment on what we have done and not done in order to release ourselves into the possibility of becoming different and better people. He bears witness for those who cannot because they did not survive, and he bears witness for those who survived it all, wounded and broken. (p. 40)

***

In the end, we cannot escape our beginnings: The scars on our backs and the white-knuckled grip of the lash that put them there remain in dim outline across generations and in the way we cautiously or not so cautiously move around one another. This legacy of trauma is an inheritance of sorts, an inheritance of sin that undergirds much of what we do in this country. (p. 46)

***

When we memorialize the Confederacy with monuments to Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson, what exactly are we commending? It’s never simply the military genius of a general. . . . The Confederate monuments are memorials to a way of life and a particular set of values associated with that way of life. To suggest they are not is just dishonest. The students at Princeton asked a similar question about Woodrow Wilson: What does the university’s uncritical celebration of him commend to us? Again, who and what we celebrate reflects who and what we value. This is why in moments of revolution or profound cultural shifts one of the first things people remove are symbols of the old values. Lenin’s and Stalin’s statues, for example, had to fall, but it is telling that Robert E. Lee continues to stand tall in parks across the United States—even in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Heather Heyer died. (p. 79)

***

An honest confrontation with the past had everything to do with the kinds of persons we understood ourselves to be and the kinds of people we aspired to become. Baldwin’s demand was a decidedly moral one: He wanted to free us from the shackles of a particular national story in order that we might create ourselves anew. For this to happen, white America needed to shatter the myths that secured its innocence. This required discarding the histories that trapped us in the categories of race. “People who imagine that history flatters them,” he wrote in Ebony, “are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become incapable of seeing or changing themselves, or the world.” (p. 82)

***

Even though Baldwin understood Black Power, its condemnation of white America, and its insistence on black self-determination as a reasonable and, in some ways, wholly justifiable response to the country’s betrayal of the civil rights movement, he never rejected the idea, found in this formulation, that we are much more than the categories that bind our feet. We, too, must never forget this insight.

“Color,” as he wrote in 1963, “is not a human or personal reality; it is a political reality.” Color does not say, once and for all, who we are and who we will forever be, nor does it accord anyone a different moral standing because they happen to be one color as opposed to another. But, again, Baldwin is not naïve. He understands history’s hold and the politics that make it so. As he wrote in The Fire Next Time, “as long as we in the West place on color the value that we do, we make it impossible for the great unwashed to consolidate themselves according to any other principle.” It makes all the sense in the world, then, that black people would look to the fact of their blackness as a key source of solidarity and liberation. White people make black identity politics necessary. But if we are to survive, we cannot get trapped there. (pp. 101-02)

***

Baldwin came to understand that there were some white people in America who refused to give up their commitment to the value gap. For him, we could not predicate our politics on changing their minds and souls. They had to do that for themselves. In our after times, our task, then, is not to save Trump voters—it isn’t to convince them to give up their views that white people ought to matter more than others. Our task is to build a world where such a view has no place or quarter to breathe. I am aware that this is a radical, some may even say, dangerous claim. It amounts to “throwing away” a large portion of the country, many of whom are willing to defend their positions with violence. But we cannot give in to these people. We know what the result will be, and I cannot watch another generation of black children bear the burden of that choice. (pp. 112-13)

***

To understand this is to see why the desire to distance oneself from Trump fits perfectly with the American refusal to see ourselves as we actually are. We evade historical wounds, the individual pain, and the lasting effects of it all. The lynched relative; the buried son or daughter killed at the hands of the police; the millions locked away to rot in prisons; the children languishing in failed schools; the smothering, concentrated poverty passed down from generation to generation; and the indifference to lives lived in the shadows of the American dream are generally understood as exceptions to the American story, not the rule. Blasphemous facts must be banished from view by a host of public rituals and incantations. Our gaze averted, we then congratulate ourselves on how far we have come and ruthlessly blame those in the shadows for their plight in life. Gratitude is expected. Having secured our innocence, we feel no guilt in enjoying what we have earned by our own merit, in defending our right to educate our children in the best schools and in demanding that we be judged by our ability alone. To maintain this illusion, Trump has to be seen as singular, aberrant. Otherwise, he reveals something terrible about us. But not to see yourself in Trump is to continue to lie. (pp. 173-74)

***

I have taken the title of this book from a passage in James Baldwin's last novel, Just Above My Head. In light of the collapse of the civil rights movement and the consolidation of the after times with the election of Ronald Reagan, Baldwin offered these words for those who desperately sought to imagine a way forward: “Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.” Begin again is shorthand for something Baldwin commended to the country in the latter part of his career: that we reexamine the fundamental values and commitments that shape our self-understanding, and that we look back to those beginnings not to reaffirm our greatness or to double down on myths that secure our innocence, but to see where we went wrong and how we might reimagine or re-create ourselves in light of who we initially set out to be. This requires an unflinching encounter with the lie at the heart of our history, the kind of encounter that cannot be avoided at places like the Legacy Museum. 

Irony abounds. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in 2018, in the middle of Donald Trump’s first term. As I have argued, Trump's election represents our after times; all that he stands for reasserts the lie in the face of demographic shifts and political change represented by Obama’s election and the activism of Black Lives Matter. Every day Trump insists on the belief that white people matter more than others in this country. He has tossed aside any pretense of a commitment to a multiracial democracy. He has attacked congressmen and women of color, even telling four congresswomen “to go back to the countries they came from”; scapegoated people seeking a better life at our borders; and appealed explicitly to white resentment. On top of the racist rhetoric, his judicial appointments and his policies around voting rights, healthcare, environmental regulations, immigration law, and education disproportionately harm communities of color. In every way imaginable, Trump has intensified the cold civil war that engulfs the country. 

But to view Trump in the light of the lynching memorial in Alabama is to understand him in the grand sweep of American history: He and his ideas are not exceptional. He and the people who support him are just the latest examples of the country's ongoing betrayal, our version of “the apostles of forgetfulness” When we make Trump exceptional, we let ourselves off the hook, for he is us just as surely as the slave-owning Founding Fathers were us; as surely as Lincoln, with his talk of sending black people to Liberia, was us; as surely as Reagan was us, with his welfare queens. When we are surprised to see the reemergence of Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and other white nationalists, we reveal our willful ignorance about how our own choices make them possible. The memorial confronts both Trumpism and those who would never imagine themselves in sympathy with it, with the truth and trauma of American history. It exposes the lie for what it is and makes plain our collective complicity in reinforcing it. 

In his introduction to his 1985 collection of essays, The Price of the Ticket, Baldwin noted that America had become quick to congratulate itself on the progress it had made with regards to race, and that the country's self-congratulation came with the expectation of black gratitude. (This was particularly the case with the election of the country's first black president.) As Baldwin wrote, “People who have opted to be white congratulate themselves on their generous ability to return to the slave that freedom which they never had any right to endanger, much less take away. For this dubious effort . . . they congratulate themselves and expect to be congratulated.” The expectation was that he should feel “gratitude not only that my burden is . . . being made lighter but my joy that white people are improving.” 

Baldwin viewed this demand for gratitude from the vantage point of someone who had lived through and was deeply wounded by the betrayal of the black freedom movement, someone whose recollection or remembrance of that moment involved trauma. In 1979, on the eve of the election of Ronald Reagan, for example, in a short piece for Freedomways, Baldwin wrote of the difficulty of recalling the past. “Let us say that we all live through more than we can say or see. A life, in retrospect, can seem like the torrent of water opening or closing over one’s head and, in retrospect, is blurred, swift, kaleidoscopic like that. One does not wish to remember—one is perhaps not able to remember—the holding of one’s breath under water, the miracle of rising up far enough to breathe, and then, the going under again. . . .” Here Baldwin captures beautifully the cycles of the after times that illustrate how horrific the white expectation of gratitude is. 

Baldwin believed the after times required that we look back in order to understand the choices we’ve made that have brought us to the moment of crisis. We don’t begin again as if there is nothing behind us or underneath our feet. We carry that history with us. In the introduction to The Price of the Ticket, Baldwin formulated his point about beginning again a bit differently. “In the church I come from,” he wrote, “we were counselled, from time to time, to do our first works over.” Here Baldwin invokes Revelations 2:5: “Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” In the mode of poet-prophet, Baldwin called the nation, in his after times, to confront the lie of its own self-understanding and to get about the work of building a country truly based on democratic principles. As he wrote: 

To do your first works over means to reexamine everything. Go back to where you started, or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it. Sing or shout or testify or keep it to yourself: but know whence you came. 

 America in the generality, he argued, refused to do such a thing because the exploration itself would reveal that the price of the ticket to be here in the United States was in fact to leave behind the particulars of Europe and become white. That transformation “choked many a human being to death,” because to become white meant the subjugation of others, an act that disfigured the soul by closing off the ability to see oneself in others, and to see them in oneself. Our task, Baldwin maintained, was to understand the history of how that disfiguring of the soul happened and, in doing so, to free oneself and the country from the insidious hold of whiteness in order to become a different kind of creation—a different way of being in the world. (pp. 193-97)

[aswithasunbeam]

Hi! I absolutely adore your blog and fanfics, and I've actually learned a lot from them. You're one of my favorite Hamilton blogs. As a HUGE fan of the musical who happens to be Native American (Chickasaw to be specific) I'm curious, what kind of relationship did the real A Ham have with the indigenous people of the US, if any? Also, was he really as much of an abolitionist as the show would have you believe?

Thanks so much! Great questions! Sadly, I think Hamilton’s going to disappoint you when it comes to his relationship with Native Americans. 

Policy regarding Native Americans fell more to Henry Knox and the War Department than to Hamilton at Treasury, so this isn’t a topic that tends to be touched on as frequently when studying Hamilton. Richard Harless of George Mason University wrote an article entitled “Native American Policy” for Mount Vernon in which he describes:

Washington and Knox sought to provide safe havens for native tribes while also assimilating them into American society. Washington and Knox believed that if they failed to at least make an effort to secure Indian land, their chances of convincing Native Americans to transform their hunting culture to one of farming and herding would be undermined. As the two reluctantly came to recognize, however, it was the settlers pouring into the western frontier that controlled the national agenda regarding Native Americans and their land. By 1796 even Washington had concluded that holding back the avalanche of settlers had become nearly impossible, writing that “I believe scarcely anything short of a Chinese wall, or a line troops, will restrain Land jobbers, and the encroachment of settlers upon the Indian territory.”

The Washington administrations’ policy goal of forcing Native Americans to abandon their cultures to assimilate into white society, and the inability of the federal government to stop white settlers from clashing with Native Americans and pushing them off their land were the foundations of later atrocities, such as Andrew Jackson and the infamous “Trail of Tears.” While Hamilton wasn’t at the center of crafting these policies, he did unfortunately support them.

Unlike some of his contemporaries, Hamilton didn’t subscribe to the belief that people of other races than white were somehow biologically or inherently inferior. (See, e.g. Hamilton to John Jay, 14 March 1779, in which he puts any distinction between Blacks and whites down to a “want of cultivation (for their natural faculties are probably as good as ours”.) However, his relationship with Hamilton-Oneida Academy (today Hamilton College) indicates he, like Washington, believed that Native Americans ought to be to “civilized” by encouraging them to assimilate into white society.

The Oneida Academy was originally the idea of Samuel Kirkland, a missionary who lived among the Oneidas in upstate New York. His goal was to establish a school for both white and Native American children. In 1793, he traveled to Philadelphia to meet with President Washington and Hamilton about his idea. In his diary, he recorded:

Waited on the President. He again expressed his approbation of the proposed Seminary, as well as the part of the Plan which has been adopted, for introducing and promoting agriculture among the Indians. Mr. Hamilton chearfully consents to be a trustee of the proposed Seminary, and will afford it all the aid in his power; which was requested by Good Peter and several other Indian Chiefs when at Philadelphia the last spring…. (Documentary History of Hamilton College, p.58)

Hamilton became a trustee of the school and allowed his name to be used. On the positive side, unlike the horrific boarding schools that tore children away from their families and induced trauma by forcing them to give up all their traditions and culture, Kirkland’s academy was voluntary. In fact, Hamilton College reports, “The academy… never came to serve Samuel Kirkland’s original purpose, which was to help the Oneidas adapt to a life in settled communities. In fact, few Oneidas came to attend the school, and its students were primarily the children of local white settlers.” The school was re-charted in 1812 as “Hamilton College,” offering a traditional classical education with particular focus on rhetoric and elocution, with a student body composed entirely of white men.

The Hamilton Oneida Academy was not completely without support among the Oneidas and other Native peoples, however. A letter addressed to Hamilton by the “Representatives of the Oneida Indians” on 15 January 1794 indicates that some of the Oneida hoped to use the school to strengthen ties not only between themselves and the white settlers, but also between themselves the people of other Native tribes:

Brother, attend to our words, We write to you in particular, because some of us know you. We have all heard that you are a friend of every body—Indians as well as White people. We rejoice to hear it. We always want friends among our Brothers the white people. But should the troubles which afflict the Nations over the great Waters reach this Country, we shall again, more particularly stand in need of the friendship of our Bretheren the people of the United States. No body can tell what may happen. We think it would be good, & we wish you Brother to recommend it to Congress, to advise the Senecas & Onondagos at buffaloe Creek, to send some of their Children to be educated at a School which is erected in our Neighbourhood1—where we have sent some of our Children to learn to read & write—and that provision be made for their Support. We think that such a measure would serve to strengthen & brighten the Chains of friendship with those Nations. Brother, We Salute you. This is all we have to say.

The Junto blog has a great article about Philip Schuyler’s relationship with Native Americans in New York I’d highly recommend reading if you’re interested: “Daddy” Schuyler, Hamilton, and the Dakota Access Pipeline.

As for the question of whether Hamilton was as much of an abolitionist as the show indicates, the short answer is that Hamilton was firmly anti-slavery, though he didn’t devote enough time and effort to the cause to necessarily earn the distinction of being an “abolitionist.” I wrote a more detailed post a while back on this question which you can read here.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet announced on Thursday morning that he is running for president on “CBS This Morning.” And while it won’t be easy for the Colorado lawmaker to win his party’s nomination, he’s been underestimated before, including in his first Senate bid in 2010 when he faced stiff challenges in both the primary and general elections. Bennet was also recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, but it didn’t discourage him from his presidential aspirations. Fortunately for Bennet, he just underwent a successful surgery and is not facing any further treatment as he wages his 2020 campaign. And although the field is crowded, there may yet be opportunities for him to break through, especially if he can grab attention like he did during the government shutdown earlier this year when he railed against Republicans and President Trump’s desire for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Bennet is now the seventh senator to enter the race, and he has been in that chamber since 2009, when he was appointed to fill the seat previously held by Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar, who had accepted a Cabinet position. Prior to his Senate appointment, Bennet had never run for office and was serving as superintendent of the Denver public school system, so his promotion came as a surprise to many observers. And in 2010, when Bennet ran to retain his seat, he first had to fend off a fellow Democrat, former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, who Bennet beat by 8 percentage points. Bennet then squeaked out a close general election victory, winning by less than 2 points against Republican Ken Buck (now a member of the U.S. House), who ran as a very conservative candidate, which likely helped Bennet survive in purple Colorado despite the 2010 Republican wave. In 2016, things were slightly easier for Bennet, as he won re-election by a more comfortable margin, 50 percent to 44 percent.

Bennet has generally kept a low profile as a senator. His most notable committee post is as a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, which has attracted some attention over its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. His biggest moment in the public eye was probably when his shutdown speech went viral in January, as he attacked Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for hypocrisy over funding the government — Cruz was arguing for a bill to fund the Coast Guard during the most recent government shutdown, but back in 2013, Cruz pushed for a government shutdown in an effort to defund Obamacare. Bennet said that the previous shutdown delayed flood-relief efforts in Colorado, and he condemned Cruz’s more recent interest in first responders as “crocodile tears.” Bennet also went after President Trump’s proposal to erect a “medieval wall” on the U.S.-Mexico border, proclaiming it was “ludicrous” that the government hadn’t been funded because of a campaign promise the president “couldn’t keep.” Clips of the speech were watched millions of times — C-SPAN said it was the most-watched congressional speech in the network’s history — and it got some attention in Iowa, where Bennet visited not long after. Perhaps Bennet can use this momentum to build support among party activists — at least a few have already said they would consider supporting him, according to FiveThirtyEight contributor Seth Masket’s April survey of early-state activists.

Which candidates early-state activists are considering

Share of respondents who said they were considering a candidate or had already committed to support a candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary

activists considering supporting Candidate Dec. 2018 Feb. 2019 April Harris 61%

–

54%

–

53%

–

Booker 45

–

49

–

47

–

Warren 24

–

40

–

35

–

Buttigieg —

–

17

–

29

–

Klobuchar 34

–

37

–

26

–

Gillibrand 21

–

23

–

26

–

Sanders 29

–

29

–

24

–

Biden 39

–

34

–

21

–

McAuliffe 5

–

14

–

15

–

Castro —

–

17

–

15

–

O’Rourke 34

–

14

–

15

–

Hickenlooper 21

–

23

–

12

–

Bennet —

–

—

–

12

–

Inslee —

–

—

–

12

–

Gabbard —

–

9

–

9

–

Yang —

–

—

–

9

–

Delaney 16

–

17

–

3

–

Source: Seth Masket, “Learning from Loss: The Democrats, 2016-2020”

But what else does Bennet have going for him? Well, he’s got a winning track record in a purple state, and he’s a moderate, both points he could use to sell himself as a good bet in the general election. Bennet was more conservative than 82 percent of Senate Democrats in the previous Congress, according to his DW-Nominate score, which measures politicians on a scale from -1 (most liberal) to 1 (most conservative) based on their congressional voting record. His career -0.208 score puts him relatively close to fellow presidential candidates like Sen. Amy Klobuchar (-.252) and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (-0.304), which could make Bennet’s path a bit harder, and former Vice President Joe Biden’s entry into the race has sucked up a lot of the oxygen for candidates running near the middle. But should Biden struggle, it’s entirely possible that the field could open up for someone like Bennet. Bennet might also benefit from arguments within the Democratic Party about “electability” and identity, given that white men often seem to get preference in those discussions. And his recent bout with prostate cancer gives him with a personal story to share with voters that can also double as a talking point about health care, a top issue for Democrats.

It won’t be easy for Bennet, of course. Besides being relatively unknown — a Monmouth University poll in March found that nearly half (48 percent) of Democrats had never heard of him and only 20 percent were able to form any opinion of him — Bennet will also have to contend with not even being the only Coloradan in the race. Former Gov. John Hickenlooper is running too, which might limit Bennet’s ability to get endorsements or raise money in his home state, and that will make it much harder to get his campaign off the ground. It’ll also be imperative that Bennet qualifies for the upcoming Democratic primary debates, which he could do by getting at least 1 percent support in three polls (he already has one) or by getting donations from at least 65,000 unique donors,1 which might be hard to accomplish before the first debates at the end of June.

It’s entirely possible that Bennet’s bid is more of a play for the vice presidency, or simply an attempt to bring more attention to issues that are important to him, such as government dysfunction and money in politics. But as his first run for the Senate shows, Bennet shouldn’t be underestimated.

[lady-divine-writes]

Klaine one-shot - “Dangerous Liaisons” (Rated NC17)

Blaine has a secret he's keeping from Kurt. During what should be a normal Friday night dinner with friends and family, Blaine plans something that might literally change everything. (2768 words)

A/N:  This is a re-write featuring contract killer!Blaine. Mention of blood and killing, but nothing too gory. It's funny in a dark sort of way. I hope you enjoy it <3

Notes:

Read on AO3.

The oven timer goes off just as Kurt positions a piece of lavender fondant over the second tier of a five tiered maple walnut cake – Burt Hummel’s absolute favorite. But this version Kurt made with only egg whites to cut down on the cholesterol and applesauce instead of sugar. This way his father can indulge without going off his diet.

Kurt, too.

“Blaine! Honey!” Kurt calls, carefully laying the fondant down. He frowns when all that answers him is silence. “Blaine! Can you come in here and help me please?”

Footsteps clamor down the staircase that leads from the upper level to the living room. Half a second later, Blaine races in, dressed for dinner in slate grey slacks and a white, button-down shirt. The door swings on its hinges as he crosses the kitchen and grabs a set of pot holders hanging off the knob handle of one of the cabinets.

“Upper oven or lower oven?” he asks, dancing in front of the glass doors.

“Upper.” Kurt sighs with deep, spiritual satisfaction as the fondant drapes perfectly. “The pinwheels are ready.”

“You made pinwheels?” Blaine giggles with childish glee. “You know they’re my favorite!”

Blaine slips the quilted pot holders on his hands and pulls the top oven door open. He breathes in as a wave of hot air sweeps over him, carrying with it the savory smell of filet mignon stuffed with feta cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, and spinach – a Kurt Hummel specialty. Kurt’s pinwheels are a linchpin in their relationship. They end fights and mend fences. Kurt and Blaine celebrate every birthday/(anti)Valentine’s Day/Christmas/Arbor Day with them. His pinwheels are one of the reasons Blaine fell in love with Kurt; not that Blaine hadn’t been completely head-over-heels the moment he saw Kurt on that fated subway ride in Manhattan more than three years ago, but this dish – this delectable, mouthwatering dish – played a big part in winning Blaine Anderson’s heart.

“Well, you said to pull out all the stops.” Kurt grabs a dish towel off the counter and wipes a sheen of sweat off his forehead. He watches Blaine balance the cookie sheet of pinwheels, looking left and right for a place to set them down. Kurt gestures to the burner covers on the stove top. “This has to be the most elaborate Friday night dinner we’ve ever planned.”

“Speaking of” - Blaine sets the hot tray down – “I have to run out really quick. I forgot to get something.”

Kurt cocks his hip and tilts his head, crossing his arms over his chest, and Blaine knows he’s in for it.

“Blaine Anderson! Everyone’s going to be here in a little less than an hour, and I haven’t even gotten dressed yet!”

“You’ll pull it off. You’re a miracle worker.”

Blaine winks. Kurt rolls his eyes and returns to his cake.

“Fine, but if I’m covered in fondant when everyone arrives, I’ll blame you.”

“Please do.” Blaine comes up behind Kurt and kisses down his neck. “Then they won’t argue when I carry you away and nibble it off.”

Kurt tries not to giggle, but he can’t help it, the image of Blaine eating lavender-tinted fondant off of his naked body both erotic and hilarious … though hilarious is winning.

“Fine, fine.” Kurt waves a hand to dismiss his boyfriend before he starts sucking on his neck and leaving marks Kurt will never have enough time to cover up. “Just be quick about it.”

“Super quick. I promise,” Blaine says, swatting Kurt on the ass as he backs away and heads out the door.

“And pick up another bottle of wine while you’re out,” Kurt calls after him.

“Red or white?”

“Red!”

Kurt sighs, looking down the length of his kitchen counter, piled high with half-decorated cookies, a pan of rising bread dough, and tray after tray of appetizers.

“Jerk,” he mutters under his breath, returning to his task with a grin growing hot on his face at the thought of what else he could get Blaine to eat off his body.

***

Blaine slips on black leather gloves as he rushes down Broadway, cutting through back alleys and keeping to the shadows to avoid being noticed. But the cloak-and-dagger stuff isn’t necessary. The sidewalks are packed with people too wrapped up in their own lives to notice another businessman in a long, black coat walking among the crowd. He keeps his coat collar popped and his eyes lowered as he weaves in and out of mobs waiting at the corners for the lights to change or huddled near a bus stop, gathered around the metal overhang to avoid the light rain that’s started to fall.

The crowd thins in the direction Blaine’s going, and he smiles.

Perfect.

He creeps behind a corner, ducking into a sheltered spot with a clear view of the store door. He sticks close to the brick wall and waits.

Any minute now, he’ll get what he came for.

His mark is a jewelry store owner – a suspected terrorist sympathizer with possible links to Al Qaeda. Blaine doesn’t know for sure. He didn’t ask questions. He’s not paid to know the details. Blaine accepted the job immediately when he heard about it. He felt it was offered to him as an act of providence. It answered a crucial question, one that he had been mulling over for months now.

This job gave him the perfect opportunity to get something that he needed.

Blaine stands stock still, eyes darting from the door, to the alley, to the street, to the buildings all around. He remains hyper-aware of his surroundings - the homeless man asleep in the alley across the way, the bodega owner on the corner sweeping his stoop, two kids riding bikes who seem way too young to be out so late. He hears the bells on the door jingle and he knows the time has come.

He counts in his head, ticking off the seconds, what’s left of his time here in the alley …

… what’s left of a stranger’s time on earth.

Footsteps approach, unhurried, shuffling slightly on the pavement, stopping for a second when the shop owner checks his pockets for his keys, and then starting again. Blaine sees an arm swing forward and he pounces, locking on to an elbow and securing a hand over his mouth before the startled man can even think to scream. Blaine drags him kicking and cursing down the alley till they’re far enough from the street to avoid being seen. Blaine isn’t too concerned with the tenants of the apartments nearby. From what he can tell, the decrepit buildings house immigrants, addicts, and elderly on fixed incomes - people who are rarely inclined to talk to the police.

Blaine tosses the man up against a brick wall, trapping him in a space between two large dumpsters. The man blinks into the darkness, and Blaine waits for his eyes to adjust so he can see his face clearly.

“Mr. … Mr. Smythe?” the man stutters in confusion. Blaine grins like the apex predator he is at the sound of his mark calling him by his pseudonym, the name of his nemesis in the game - an old friend from high school who Blaine is more than certain calls himself Mr. Anderson when he contracts out. “Was … was there something else you n-needed?”

“Yes, actually.” Blaine opens his coat. He pulls out his concealed Glock, taking a dramatic moment to fit a silencer to the barrel. The man swallows hard as Blaine stares at him amused, twisting the silencer slowly until it threads completely.

“I … I don’t understand.” The man looks from the gun to Blaine, and back to the gun.

“There’s nothing to understand,” Blaine says. “I’m going to kill you. You’re going to die.”

The man steps back, stumbling into the wall behind him, and his knees give way. He slides to the ground, his entire body shuddering uncontrollably, fear welling in his dull, brown eyes.

“P-please,” the man whimpers. “I s-swear to God, I did nothing wrong!”

“I don’t know your God,” Blaine says with a shake of his head. “But if I’m here, then chances are you did something to deserve it.”

Blaine aims his gun. The man makes a pitiful, choked sound.

“I have money,” he sniffles, bargaining with what little time he has left. “You can have it. All of it. Anything you want, I’ll give to you. I’ll …”

The man cowering on the filthy cement, pleading for his life, gets cut short by a high, lilting melody coming from somewhere in the vicinity of Blaine’s pants. Both men freeze and stare awkwardly at each other. The tune continues, then repeats, and in spite of literally looking death in the face, the shop owner chuckles.

“Is … is that from the musical Wicked?”

“Shut it!” Blaine snaps, reaching into his pocket with his free hand to find his phone. “That’s my boyfriend’s ringtone. It happens to be his favorite song.”

Blaine’s eyes flick to the screen. He notices the man on the ground out of the corner of his eye making moves to run. Blaine waves his weapon in the man’s face and points it at his head.

“Don’t get any ideas,” he warns, “I’m faster than you think,” and glances back at the screen.

From: Kurt

You’re the one that invited everyone we know in the world over here and you’re late! Where the hell are you? You’re in huge trouble, mister! Get your ass back here NOW!

From: Kurt

Don’t forget the wine.

“I won’t forget the wine,” Blaine grumbles, shoving his phone back in his pocket. The shop owner sees an opportunity. Using this distraction, he rushes Blaine and grabs for his gun. Blaine anticipates it. He knew the man would. They always do. Without flinching, Blaine fires, putting a bullet neatly through the man’s skull, right between his eyes. But instead of falling straight back, the man spins oddly, teetering on his heels. He lurches forward on twisted ankles and lands on Blaine, covering his neck and shirt in blood as he slides down Blaine’s body.

“Ugh!” Blaine groans, hopping out of the path of the dead man dropping to the cement. “Damn it!” Blaine looks at his shirt, the spatters and smudges of blood trailing down to his slacks. “Shit, shit, shit!” Blaine kicks the dead man’s shoulder in frustration. “How am I supposed to cover this up?” he asks, as if the corpse will suddenly wake and start brainstorming options.

“Fuck fuck fuck …” Blaine chants as he struggles with the body, lifting it into the dumpster with a grunt and tossing it inside. He’s not worried about the bullet lodged in the dead man’s skull. He knows the police will dig it out and trace it, and when they do, they’ll find it belongs to a Glock 23, just like his, owned by Clarissa Mildred Porter of West Fargo, North Dakota, an 89-year-old lady who passed away three years ago, and whose personal protection weapon was never recovered after her death.

Not that Blaine killed her.

No women or children – that’s a rule he lives by.

Diabetes and a long standing love of cigarettes and bacon killed her. He just ended up with her gun.

Blaine doesn’t leave the neighborhood the way he came. He still sticks to the shadows, but now he has to jump a few fences and cut through a couple of sketchy-looking backyards to make his way back to Kurt’s house in the East Village unseen.

Blaine loves Kurt’s little house. It’s more of a cottage, with vines trailing up the aging brick, its enclosed patio shrouded by the overhanging branches of a few large trees, completely obscured from the sidewalk not fifteen feet away. Blaine can’t even count the amount of times they’ve made love beneath those trees in broad daylight, outside the notice of parents walking their kids to the daycare down the street, and college kids rushing by on their way to NYU.

Blaine loves how turned on Kurt gets doing something taboo.

The house is nestled in a fairly exclusive neighborhood. Kurt swore once that he saw Michelle Williams walk by with her daughter Matilda, and even though both men agreed that they love her work in Brokeback Mountain, they were far too eager to get started on round two to throw on their clothes and find out.

Blaine looks at his ruined clothes and curses. How is he going to explain this to Kurt?

Blaine tiptoes to the back door, eyeing the sidewalk and the front of the house, watching for signs that their friends saw him approach from the side street and are running out to meet him. He opens the door and peers into the kitchen. Loud talking and boisterous laughter coming from the living room tell him that everyone they invited over for dinner tonight showed up. There’s no way he’ll be able to sneak past them without being seen. He opts for the stairs in the back of the house that lead up to the second floor balcony. They’re vintage - cast iron and in need of some repair, so they’re going to squeak like a motherfucker. But hopefully everyone is too distracted with catching up and Kurt’s delicious cooking to notice. He backs away, heading out of the kitchen on his way to the door as Kurt bustles in from the living room carrying an empty tray.

“Oh, great! Blaine!” Kurt gushes, putting down the tray on the nearest empty surface and rushing forward to greet his boyfriend. “You’re back! I …” Kurt stops dead, coming to a halt so suddenly that he trips over his own feet at the sight in front of him: Blaine -his clothes, his skin, his disheveled hair, spattered in blood. “I … I …” Kurt raises a hand to his mouth, his jaw dropped, eyes widening in horror.

“Kurt …” Blaine raises his hands, inching forward slowly, preparing for the chance that Kurt might run off “… I can explain.”

“You’re … you’re covered in bl-blood!” Kurt’s eyes rake over him from head to toe while, in his mind, he searches for the right words to express his feelings, his confusion, his anger. “You … you … you idiot! Blaine!” Kurt advances, icy blue eyes threatening to slice him apart. “You knew we were going to have a house full of people! Why did you have to go and take a job tonight?”

Kurt glares at Blaine’s soiled clothes, and the smears of blood around his collar, staining his neck. He recoils with disgust and a disapproving shake of his head.

“For Christ’s sake!” Kurt laments in a whisper harsh enough to cut glass. “Did you hit him over the head with a sledgehammer?”

Blaine opens his coat and lets Kurt see the Glock in his holster. Kurt tuts. He takes his dish towel and wraps it around Blaine’s gun, shoving it in the trash can concealed beneath the sink for the time being. He gives Blaine another once over, Blaine’s face fighting to look repentant, but darkening with lust at the way Kurt fusses over him. Kurt throws his hands up in exasperation.

“And you forgot the wine.”

Blaine snickers, leaning in to kiss Kurt’s neck, seeking out that spot that makes Kurt forgive everything.

“But I promise I brought home something better.”

Blaine’s lips barely brush Kurt’s skin when a hand to his chest stops him.

“Not now,” Kurt smirks. “We don’t have time. Go upstairs. I’ll cover for you.”

“What about my clothes?” Blaine asks, watching Kurt do a last second tidy in the kitchen, pausing to wash traces of blood off his hands.

“They’re ruined,” Kurt says definitively. “I don’t have enough pre-treater in the world to get all that out. We’ll stick them in the incinerator and get you a new outfit tomorrow.”

“Really?” Blaine asks, blown away even after all these years at how nonplussed Kurt can behave under pressure.

“Of course.” Kurt turns at the kitchen door and gives Blaine a wink. “You look hot in it.” He pushes through and returns to the gathering with not a single chestnut hair out of place.

Oh yeah, Blaine thinks, a smug smile on his face as he walks out the door and hurries up the stairs, patting his pants pocket and the tiny ring box it holds. He’s chomping at the bit for later tonight when he gets the chance to give it to Kurt. I am definitely marrying that man.

[bountyofbeads]

https://thedispatch.com/p/justin-amash-has-a-decision-to-make

This @declanpgarvey piece on @justinamash is well worth your time. A lot of good stuff. My favorite part though... https://t.co/Ziv3jTSshH

FreedomWorks, one of the country's most potent libertarian political groups, is distancing itself from Justin Amash. And this stat really tells a whole story. https://t.co/6idpEbEyoq

Justin Amash Has a Decision to Make

'Is there any better time to have a president who might be not from either party?'

By Declan Garvey | Published January 15, 2020 | The Dispatch | Posted January 15, 2020 |

Three weeks from the first votes of the 2020 election, the presidential race seems—finally—to be taking shape. Republicans, having blocked any serious attempts at a primary challenge, will field a candidate who brings passionate support from the hard-core GOP base, grudging acceptance from other Republicans, and intense opposition from everyone else. Democrats will likely field either a flawed candidate from the center—more accurately, the center-left—or an avowed leftist, maybe even an avowed socialist. 

There are millions of moments, and billions of decisions, that will ultimately determine the next president and the next four years of the American experiment. But few will be as consequential as the decision now looming before a reserved, quirky, classical liberal from south central Michigan.

The 2016 presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was decided by 77,744 votes, split between three states: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Rep. Justin Amash received nearly three times as many that year (203,545) running to continue on as the representative of Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District. After winning re-election in 2018, however, Amash’s frustration with the GOP and its current leader led him to leave the party he’d called home for more than a decade. And with his new independence came calls for him to make good on his criticism of both political parties with a third-party run for president. 

Amash hasn’t committed to a run. But he hasn’t ruled one out, either. And with the incredible volatility in American politics over the past two decades, marked by the record-low faith in Washington and the institutions of the federal government, taking such a leap seems less crazy today than it might have just a few years ago.

As Amash himself put it last week: “Is there any better time to have a president who might be not from either party?”

CEMENTING AN INDEPENDENT STREAK

The 39-year-old congressman had always had a bit (or more) of an independent streak. But since he emphatically left the GOP last summer, he’s truly been able to be himself.

“When you're in the Republican Party, like I was, there is a constant pressure to step carefully, to use your words more cautiously, when you are describing Republicans,” he said. “So, if you go onto TV and you're doing an interview, you don't necessarily want to throw the Republican leadership under the bus at every opportunity. Maybe you throw them under the bus, criticize them one time out of three times that you should. And most members of Congress will do it zero times out of three times. If there's three times they should, they'll do it zero times. Someone like me, I might do it once or twice, but really I'd like to do it three out of three.”

“As much as I would talk, and people thought, ‘Oh boy, Amash is so independent and he is really standing his ground, and he's making people on the left and the right upset about different things’ or whatever, I was actually holding my fire a lot on various things. And I did not like that.”

Few accused him of holding his fire then. No one does now.

Amash announced his newfound political independence in a Washington Post op-ed on, fittingly, the Fourth of July. “The two-party system has evolved into an existential threat to American principles and institutions,” he wrote. “Today, I am declaring my independence and leaving the Republican Party. No matter your circumstance, I’m asking you to join me in rejecting the partisan loyalties and rhetoric that divide and dehumanize us. I’m asking you to believe that we can do better than this two-party system—and to work toward it. If we continue to take America for granted, we will lose it.”

Allies will tell you Amash’s partisan metamorphosis was long in the making. 

“I interviewed him in, what was it, 2018 maybe?” Matt Welch, editor at large of the libertarian Reason magazine, told us. “And said, ‘okay, so, you know, you're a libertarian-leaning Republican.’ He's like, ‘no, just libertarian is fine, please.’”

But he also hoped to send a signal. “I spoke to Congressman Amash in Las Vegas in July, after his leaving the Republican Party,” Dan Fishman, executive director of the Libertarian party said. “And he had a very deliberate statement where he said, ‘The important thing is that I have left the Republican Party. And if I do anything else right now, that message is lost.’”

Amash’s message was not lost.

“Great news for the Republican Party,” President Trump, the man who perhaps had the most to do with Amash’s switch, announced on his favorite communications platform. “One of the dumbest & most disloyal men in Congress is ‘quitting’ the Party.”

Amash is not dumb—far from it. The son of two immigrants, he graduated high school valedictorian of his class and earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Michigan, sticking around Ann Arbor long enough to nab a law degree as well.

But he is disloyal—at least in the Trumpian sense of the word. Amash has voted in line with Trump’s position just 63 percent of the time according to FiveThirtyEight, a lower “Trump score” than any Republican save Walter Jones, who passed away last February, and Jeff Van Drew, who was a Democrat until about four weeks ago. Amash spent his final few months in the GOP calling for the president to be impeached, much to the joy of Democrats and some of his constituents, but much to the chagrin of everyone in his own party.

THE FALL OF THE FREEDOM CAUCUS

Amash isn’t any less libertarian now than he was when he rode the Tea Party wave to D.C. in 2010, just two years after being elected to the Michigan House of Representatives. He’d contend it’s those around him who’ve changed.

On January 26, 2015, Amash and a group of eight other Republican congressmen (all men) formed the House Freedom Caucus (HFC) to stand up to a House leadership—then helmed by Speaker John Boehner—that they believed wasn’t conservative enough. Amash wrote the mission statement.

“The House Freedom Caucus gives a voice to countless Americans who feel that Washington does not represent them. We support open, accountable and limited government, the Constitution and the rule of law, and policies that promote the liberty, safety, and prosperity of all Americans.”

On May 20, 2019, the bloc, now boasting more than 30 members,  unanimously condemned their co-founder when Amash determined—after the release of the Mueller Report—that President Trump had “engaged in impeachable conduct.” Three-and-a-half weeks later, Amash quit the group of limited-government stalwarts he helped create.

They “sanctioned him for coming out in favor of impeachment in the same week that like, they increased the debt by another trillion dollars or something,” Welch said, referring to a two-year budget deal that was floated at the time, but ultimately never came to fruition. “It's like, what is the use of this group?”

“As soon as you had a Republican president, and especially one who is fairly charismatic and entertaining and can rally a lot of people,” Amash said, choosing his words very carefully, “Republicans totally mailed it in. They said, ‘Look, we're just going to go with this guy on everything.’ And when I started to see even my House Freedom Caucus colleagues do that, it was really disheartening.”

“This is a group that had formed,” he continued, “for the purpose of standing on principle, standing up for the American people, doing what was right, ensuring that all voices were heard. And now, the group had moved more toward Trump cheerleading and that's not why the group was formed. And that was really tough.”

Not everyone in Washington would agree with Amash’s assessment of the caucus, which, once it grew large enough, wielded its influence to hold Republican leaders hostage and otherwise wreak havoc on the legislative process.

“Previously, groups of members on the right flank of the House Republican Conference operated under a version of the ‘Buckley Rule’: they fought for the most conservative legislation that could pass,” said Michael Steel, former aide to Speaker John Boehner. “The self-described ‘Freedom Caucus’ often seemed more about the fight than the result, and—when they chose not to get to ‘yes’ on must-pass bills—the House Republican leadership had to go to Democrats for votes, leading to worse policies and higher spending.”

When Trump was first elected, many wondered if the House Freedom Caucus would even continue to serve a purpose. After all, the GOP center of gravity no longer revolved around the speaker of the House. But the HFC made its presence known early on in 2017, scuttling the White House’s first attempt to overhaul the Affordable Care Act. 

“The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast,” Trump wrote at the time. “We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!”

Now? One of the caucus’s founding members, Mick Mulvaney, serves as Trump’s chief of staff. Another, Mark Meadows, is one of the president’s most enthusiastic advocates, and is rumored to be Mulvaney’s replacement in waiting.

Amash believes the co-opting of the Freedom Caucus was no accident. “I think that was intentional,” he said. “Whether it was the president's calculation or someone else's, to try to take some of the House Freedom Caucus members and bring them into the fold … I think this was a concerted effort by leadership and perhaps White House officials to pick off House Freedom Caucus members, to bring them in, to make them a part of the Republican team, in some sense, and then get them to stop battling Republicans.”

While his old Freedom Caucus buddies may have finally stopped battling Republicans under Trump, Amash was just getting started. But he claims his newfound independence has actually improved his connections on the Hill. 

“I have better relationships with Republicans and with Democrats. When you're a Republican and you break from the Republicans on a piece of legislation or you disagree with the president or whatever it might be, they tend to come down hard on you because it's like you're a family member who has betrayed the family,” he said. “Since becoming an independent, my colleagues are more trusting. They are friendlier, on both sides of the aisle, and it's certainly been an improvement on the Republican side.”

Efforts to talk to his peers about this bore little fruit. A spokeswoman for the House Freedom Caucus declined to comment for the story, and no individual members contacted responded to emails from The Dispatch.

PAVED PARADISE

“I think John Boehner is the best speaker that we've had since I've been here,” said Amash. “And I say that as someone who tried to oust him from the speakership!”

This sentiment doesn’t represent a newfound appreciation for the Republican establishment or hint at new moderation from Amash. Instead, it’s a reflection of his belief in having big, messy debates—not avoiding them.

“If I were to create, like, an ideal speaker in my imagination, it would not be John Boehner,” Amash said. But in retrospect, “his successors are not better than him.”

“Boehner would swear at me, he would curse me, he would criticize me in public,” Amash recounted with a grin, almost fondly. “But he also, in some sense, would listen. He didn't dismiss you totally. You could engage with him. You could have some back and forth. He might swear at you, but then also allow you to have an amendment vote.”

Amendment votes might just be—aside from his family, the Detroit Pistons, and Friedrich Hayek—Amash’s favorite thing. He grew notorious in his first few years in Congress for his attempts to attach riders to larger bills aimed at curtailing what he calls “the surveillance state,” prioritizing the deficit, and limiting the executive branch’s war powers. Most of them failed to gain majority support, but several passed. In the Michigan legislature, Amash once noticed a missing comma in a piece of legislation; he introduced an amendment to remedy the crisis. That one passed, too.

Sitting in his office in January 2019, Amash said he didn’t realize how good he had had it under Boehner, who, through a spokesman, declined to comment for this story. Paul Ryan—who finally gave in and took the speaker’s gavel from Boehner after weeks of telling colleagues he didn’t want it—“told us he was going to open up the process and then totally closed it down,” per Amash. “I was hopeful that the next speaker would be better. It looked like that might happen. But instead it's gone the other way.”

Ryan, he claimed, “was the worst in every respect. Worst on process. Worst on substance.” The typically understated Amash was growing more animated. “He didn't even like the president, disagreed with him on a whole bunch of things, but never stood up to him!”

Just a few minutes into our conversation, it was becoming clear: The seeds for Amash’s eventual GOP departure were planted in the fall of 2015, not with Trump’s victory one year later.

“When you get to Congress, your hope is not to enter Congress and then leave the party that you've been a part of your whole life. You try to change the party, and you try to improve it. And I tried that for a long time and I actually thought we did make progress in the first few years,” Amash said. “After a while you say, ‘Well, this is not the right approach.’ Trying to work within the party, and change the party, is not the right way to handle it. And I need to go out and change hearts and minds and change the way people look at representation altogether.”

THE END OF PARTISANSHIP

Since he became the House’s only independent member last July, Amash has thought a lot about the role of political parties.

“People aren't allowed to break,” he lamented. “Like, you literally have to stick with the party.”

Amash said he wasn’t surprised that none of his former House colleagues split from the president to vote for impeachment.

“Early on I thought someone would break, I thought maybe a few of them would break,” he said. “I thought the White House strategy and Republican leadership strategy was kind of effective, which was to mock and shame anyone who had a difference of opinion. In other words, just ridicule. And if they ridicule enough, it makes it very hard for anyone to step out of line.”

(Some Democrats have floated Amash’s name as a potential impeachment manager when the trial begins in the Senate: “I'm happy to discuss that with the speaker, but it's not something I've discussed with her, and not something I’d take a position on unless I had a discussion with her.”)

But Amash thinks the intense, partisan moment we’re in is a product of Washington, not America at large.

“Members of Congress have miscalculated,” he said. “I think they are making assumptions about how partisan their constituents are that are not correct. It is true that a small percentage of the population is very politically active and you know, will be either cheerleading for the president or opposed to the president on everything. But most people are pretty moderate.”

“If they could see themselves from my perspective,” Amash said, “as someone who's independent, and who has sort of had the ire of both sides at times and also the praise from both sides at times … they would see that there are actually a lot of similarities that they don't recognize.”

It’s unclear that polling and research bears that out. In October, Pew Research Center released a report  finding “the level of [partisan] division and animosity … has only deepened”: 79 percent of Democrats and 83 percent of Republicans gave members of the opposite party a “cold rating” on Pew’s “feeling thermometer.” Also,63 percent of Republicans said Democrats are more unpatriotic than other Americans, and 75 percent of Democrats said Republicans were more close-minded. Supporters of President Trump have attended his rallies wearing shirts that say they’d “rather be a Russian than a Democrat.” Democrats and progressives held massive protests the day Trump was inaugurated.

But Amash may have a point when he says “people care more about the character issues than they do about the particular positions or ideology of the representative.” And while Donald Trump’s character issues are something that would’ve given many Republicans pause in years past, his willingness to pick fights, and to mock and ridicule his opponents relentlessly, played a key role in his election. Trump won the Republican primary in 2016 campaigning on trade protectionism, friendlier relations with Russia, leaving entitlements alone, and withdrawing from global engagement. It remains an open question whether these positions were ever truly popular with the GOP base, but voters’ policy views can prove remarkably malleable to conform with the worldview of a charismatic leader.

Asked if he prefers to think of ideology as four-dimensional rather than two—with policy running along the horizontal axis and tone and temperament along the vertical—Amash nearly leapt out of his chair: “Yes, that’s right!”

AMASH HAS A DECISION TO MAKE

All of this makes Justin Amash one of the most interesting elected officials in the country. Does it make him a presidential candidate?

Since his personal Declaration of Independence, Republicans and Democrats alike have watched Amash carefully for signs he’d run for president. They’re unmistakable.

“I'll say what I've said before, I haven't ruled it out,” Amash said, the closest he came to sounding like a traditional politician. “But I'm running for Congress as an independent in my district. I'm very excited about that. I feel very good about that.”

He wants to be clear that he’s not abandoning his re-election bid—yet. “Just to be clear, I am running for office as an independent for, you know, my congressional seat. And I've filed for that, and you know, we're, we're doing what it takes to, to win that race.”

One more time. He begins to speak more cautiously.

“At some point you'll be at, we'll be at the point where I have to rule out, you know, running for president. And I'm not at that point yet. But, you know, we're probably getting closer to that point now. If you're going to run a campaign for president, you need enough time to run a strong campaign and you need enough time to win the campaign. I'm not running for president unless I believe I can win.”

If Amash doesn’t like the questions, he has no one but himself to blame. He’s long played coy with the idea, repeatedly, as he mentioned, refusing to rule out the possibility. When asked to describe the ideal Libertarian party presidential candidate at Students for Liberty’s LibertyCon last spring, he said that candidate would be wearing Air Jordans—coincidentally the shoes he had on at the time.

The current crop of candidates for the Libertarian crown shouldn’t instill any fear if Amash does want to run. Kim Ruff, who, according to Dan Fishman, “was certainly seen as a frontrunner,” dropped out last weekend. Lincoln Chafee—the former Republican senator, independent governor, and Democratic presidential candidate—is trying on a fourth party affiliation for size. Jacob Hornberger—founder of the Future of Freedom Foundation—and Adam Kokesh—an Iraq war veteran who has called for an “orderly dissolution of the federal government”—have thrown their hats in the ring. Fan favorites Vermin Supreme—the guy who wears a boot on his head—and John McAfee—the anti-virus software guy who wants to have sex with whales—are back for more.

“I think he would get the Libertarian party nomination,” Welch said. “He's very revered in the Libertarian world generally. If you had to name one person who people within the party would want to see run for that office, I think the name is Justin Amash.”

That’s not all. “[The Libertarians] have this great prize, right?” Welch said. “They're going to be on 50 ballots probably, and nobody else is going to come close to that. And all you have to do is win a majority of delegates of a thousand votes in Austin, Texas in May, and you get to be on 50 ballots. Who wouldn't want that?”

The Libertarian party oversees state conventions and primaries to select delegates for the national convention, but anything can happen at that point. Austin—with its “Keep Austin Weird” mantra—should prove an apt host this year. “No delegates are ever bound,” Fishman explains. “So, every delegate that comes to Austin has the opportunity to vote their conscience or vote the way they feel like the people who elected them as delegate would like them to vote. It's entirely up to them to interpret how they would like to do that.”

“Technically speaking,” he continues when asked specifically about Amash, “you don’t have to win any of the state primaries. But it’s a good idea for candidates to go to the state primaries and at least talk to the delegates that are being elected.”

Fishman didn’t explicitly comment on the quality of any one candidate over another, but when he told us that Ruff—one of the race’s front runners—had dropped out, he knowingly added: “Maybe that’s an opportunity for some other candidate who is thinking of jumping in.”

Welch isn’t sure Amash will go through with it. “Justin's a very competitive dude,” he said. “Running for something at the prospect of getting 3 percent of the vote doesn't seem like a thing that really excites him.”

“He's got this crazy challenge at home,” Welch continued, referring to the prospect of re-winning his Congressional seat as an independent. “He loves to prove people wrong about how to win elections in his congressional district … if he's able to win as an incumbent independent then that's an incredible thing to show and to prove people.”

In the race that he has filed for, Amash has plenty of competition, including businessman Joel Langlois, Michigan state Rep. Lynn Afendoulis, and Peter Meijer, an Iraq war veteran and member of the Meijer Grocery family. Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball considers the race a toss-up. The Cook Political Report rating for the district recently  changed from toss up to lean Republican, news Amash previously would have welcomed but these days does not.

“Amash is now his own island,” election analyst David Wasserman wrote. “It's doubtful there's a sufficient market for a pro-life/pro-impeachment independent in the district to allow him a path to a sixth term.”

If that’s true—and Wasserman is as smart an election analyst as there is—why not go bigger?

Amash has clearly entertained the idea of a presidential bid, and he makes the case without hesitation. “I'd say that most Americans probably do not feel very closely aligned to any of the candidates right now,” he said. “Any of the leading candidates on the Republican or Democratic side.”

“I definitely think that a strong candidate in the Libertarian party today can get more votes than any previous candidate,” Amash adds, building up steam before catching himself. “The best case right now for a Libertarian, no matter who it is, is that both of these parties have been disasters and have not really represented the American people well. Is there any better time to have a president who might be not from either party?” 

The Gary Johnson and Bill Weld Libertarian ticket in 2016 received  nearly 4.5 million votes, 3.27 percent of the popular vote. But veteran Republican political strategist Karl Rove doesn’t think that’s repeatable.

In 2016, Rove said over the phone, “one out of every six Americans, roughly, thought neither person was qualified to be president, neither Clinton nor Trump. So, there was a fertile field for third parties to fish in … I don’t think we’ll see anything close to the 18 percent who say both candidates are unqualified.”

But that doesn’t mean a Libertarian party candidate couldn’t play spoiler. “These things matter in close states,” Rove said. Ask Democrats what cost Al Gore the 2000 presidential race against Rove’s candidate, George W. Bush, and many will point to Ralph Nader’s near 100,000 votes in Florida —a state Bush won by 537 votes, delivering him the presidency.

A limited-government option might fare better in western states where “the vote for the Libertarian candidate in presidential election years traditionally is larger than the national average,” Rove said. “It's unclear whether or not Amash will specifically split the anti-Trump vote or whether he will have the ability to draw away people who might otherwise be inclined to vote for Trump. I think it's more likely that he would split the anti-Trump vote.”

Fishman, who himself ran for Congress in 2012 as a Libertarian, referenced his campaign’s internal polling in telling us that, depending who the nominees were, the split would likely be closer to 50-50. “We tend to pull evenly [from Republicans and Democrats],” he said. “But the other thing about it is that we find that we do a better job of activating the people who haven’t voted a lot … The apathetic voter is almost always the largest group.”

Trump campaign officials declined to comment on how they are thinking through third-party campaigns.

Rove is obviously a Republican through and through. But he doesn’t see a logical constituency for an Amash Libertarian Party candidacy. “What's his argument? Vote for me: I'm the guy who has no chance of getting elected, but I hate Trump? People are going to have a much better opportunity to vote for somebody who's anti-Trump than just Justin.”

Amash describes a “hypothetical” Libertarian campaign message as much more expansive than mere disdain for the president. America is “fundamentally within the classical liberal realm,” he said. “And you might call that constitutionally conservative or libertarian.”

But he thinks Libertarians are campaigning on their ideas in the wrong way. “This is a common mistake that a lot of Libertarian or Libertarian-leaning politicians make, in that they're under the impression that they have to persuade people of something that is a wholesale change to them,” Amash said, obviously having put some thought into the topic. “And that's not the case. When people ask me, ‘when has libertarianism ever been tried?’ I would say in the United States of America, this is the most libertarian country that has ever been known … Compared to countries throughout the world and throughout history, this is a very libertarian experiment, and most people are pretty comfortable with it.” 

“I think most Americans are already there,” he adds. “It's not a matter of persuading them of the principles. It's persuading them that you are applying the principles they already believe in.”

ON AN ISLAND

Whichever path Amash chooses, he won’t be able to rely on many of the deep-pocketed political organizations that have buoyed his various candidacies over the past decade. “He has access to national Libertarian network money that a lot of people don't,” Welch told us, “and he still will get some money within his district, but it's a real struggle.”

Were he to run for president, Amash could tap into a substantial network of Libertarians and disaffected Republicans. Fishman said “there are a lot of members who want to see the Libertarian party succeed,” adding that “the potential is there to raise more than what Gary [Johnson] and Bill [Weld, the Party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees in 2016] raised. It would have to be the right candidate. They would have to come in with a professional staff. But, the thing that Johnson/Weld showed is that the message does resonate and you can do a good job of fundraising among people who are concerned about the country.”

And there is little doubt that Amash, as an outspoken Trump critic and former Republican, would benefit from what campaign veterans call “earned media” coverage in the mainstream press. 

But on the congressional side, the powerful Michigan DeVos family pulled the plug on their support for Amash after he called for Trump’s impeachment. 

A spokeswoman for Americans for Prosperity—the Koch political network—said they “have nothing to announce at this time” regarding support for Amash.

The Dispatch reached a spokesman for the Club for Growth—a fiscally conservative advocacy group which itself spent millions in an attempt to defeat Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primary—and asked if the group would be supporting Amash, who in 2018 was one of only three congressmen to receive a perfect 100 percent voting score from the organization. The response? An indignant “no.”

Welch had guessed in our conversation that Americans for Prosperity and Club for Growth would abandon ship, but believed that a third limited-government advocacy organization would stand by their man. “FreedomWorks, I think, will probably be with him,” he said. And there was good reason to reach this conclusion. Amash has been given the FreedomWorks “Freedom Fighter” award every year he’s been in Congress. The group named him “FreedomWorks Member of the Month” as recently as June 2018, writing, “We recognize his remarkable consistency on all issues and admire his dedication to his job and his constituents. We hope he continues to be a steadfast voice for liberty in and out of Congress and that his unassailable principles will serve as an example to all aspiring future members of Congress.”

Visiting his office earlier this month, we noticed Amash proudly displayed his “Freedom Fighter” award prominently on his desk, alongside a Champion of the Merit Shop plaque, Small Business Champion certificate, a book called The ABCs of School Choice, and a three-foot tall Darth Vader figurine. (We probably should have asked about that last one.)

Reached on the phone, Peter Vicenzi, a spokesman for FreedomWorks, told us that he knew the group had supported Amash in the past, and that he has a very high FreedomWorks score, but that he was not sure if the group would be backing the congressman again in 2020.

A few minutes later, we got an email. “Amash has a very high score with us, but we don't have any plans to get involved in MI-03 at this time, seeing as we're focused on some other key races to help regain the GOP's House majority.” The spokesman said the group’s main initiative, “Dirty Thirty,” is aimed at “flipping the 30 or so districts that went for Trump in 2016, but blue in 2018.”

“So, you are only putting money behind Republican challengers in those 30 districts?” we asked. “Or are you supporting some incumbent Republicans financially as well?”

His response: “We're going to support some incumbents as well, mainly HFC members.”

In his near-decade of congressional service, Amash has voted against FreedomWorks’ wishes only three times, earning a 99 percent lifetime score. The first was on a budget resolution in 2017.

The other two?

“Agreeing to Article I of the Articles of Impeachment” and “Agreeing to Article II of the Articles of Impeachment.”

______

Photograph of Justin Amash by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images.

*********

[xottzot]

2018-01(JAN)-10th--Wednesday--in pain--and motorbike rushes to pedestrian walkway and rushes through at 6_68pm.

2018-01(JAN)-10th--Wednesday--in pain--and motorobike rushes to pedestrian walkway and rushes throught at 6_68pm.

In a LOT of pain.

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Around 6:58pm, a road? motorbike came rushing along the Kalara Way street then went illegally through the pedestrian walkway at the end of Kalara Road...AGAIN for the billionth time.

I don't know if it was registered or not, stolen or not, but it was in a LOT of hurry and chose to deliberately and actively NOT ride on the main roads but to dart in and illegally use the pedestrian walkway(s).

This goes on ALL the time.

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Then false calm.

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HOWEVER.......

Earlier today, I think it was the aboriginal screaming woman of recently came along and went into Fatguts abo criminal household around sometime 3pm today.

Also, at around almost 7pm, an abo youth came out of the same place wielding a long wooden? white pole (the one that was used against the crazed abo woman recently by a crazed male adult abo in the streets? who came out of and went back into the main abo criminal household of Kalara Way)...well this early evening in late daylight, one of the VERY criminal and VIOLENT male abo youths came out of Fatguts front yard and was wielding the same? thing as a spear weapon just like the abo adult thug had ben doing on that other night trying to attack the abo woman with it and wielding it like an abo spear in the Kalara streets.

This evening that youth was walking about wielding it like a spear, and he came out of Fatguts abo criminal household place, walked across Kalara Way street and was amking his way loosely across the road to to the main abo criminal household of Kalara Way street. He was prancing about and doing 'abo dancing' with the shaft of wood before suddenly hurling it at a white picket gate of the criminal household next door to the main abo criminal housheold of Kalara Way. Then he sauntered across, seemingly then gave up about the spear and just wandered ito the yard of the main abo criminal household of Kalara Way.

Thia 'wandering about' and being brainlessly violent is a constant trademark hallmark of the violent feral criminal abos of all ages, males & females, of Kalara Way, Koongamia, Western Australia and has been going on for well over 10 years.....

Earlier, there was several abo older youths congregating on the footpath right outside Fatgits criminal abo household. There also happend to be 2 younger abo criminal kids on the roads, one on a foot-scooter, the other on a small pushbike that had been painted over with solid white paint to conceal its identity of origin. (THAT criminal shit has been going on for YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS too....and countless stolen bicycles and other bikes have 'vanished' only to become 're-birthed' and used by the criminal aboriginals of all ages and also can be made up of odd parts cobbled together of several bicycles.)

An innocent car came along on the road and took a VERY wide berth around them (onto teh OTHER side of the road) because AS USUAL they refused to get off the road and in fact raced towards the vehicle in an intimidating manner making the young woman driver speed up and move off faster to go to the Koongamia shops area and get away from them. - Again, this is another hallmarkof the criminal abo's of the Kalara Way street and has been for YEARS AND YEARS.

ALL THE ABOVE is so VERY VERY typical and CONSTANT, even during ANY SCHOOL DAY and within SCHOOL HOURS, especially since the criminal younger aboriginals refuse to got to school, (depsite a lower school being across the road from where they live) and when they get old enough they are young criminals still young enough to evade arrests as 'adults' by Police and authorities, a state they use, and other abo criminals use, to all their criminal advantages.

The abo toddlers-in-diapers are of course being brought up in teh same criminal environment and will be exactly the same, to perpetuate the abo criminality forever.

Depsite EVERYONE having to wear bicycle helmets because it IS THE LAW, the criminal aboriginals of all ages NEVER EVER EVER wear them. - The ONLY time they would wear any helmets is to disguise their identities on motorbikes, stolen or whatever, or being 'passengers' on the backs of such illegal motorbikes doing illegal shit or on their way or back from doing illegal shit. - They do NOT ever wear helmets because it's so much easier to just get off any stolen bicycle or motorbike and then claim to any pursuing police who may be about that they are just 'walking about and are completely inncoent'....oh the bullshit and outright utter lies that gets accepted all the time.....even when you see it in front of you occuring you cannot believe how they CONSTANTLY get away with such shit.

Another reason for not wearing any helmets on illegal motrobikes is so they can go out walking in darkness or riding pushbikes and then retrieve stashed illegal motorbikes when it becomes dark, and use the same tactics again, illegally going through pedestrian walkways where Police cars and unmarked Police cars cannot follow them. -- AGAIN, this and these are common tactics that has been going on for YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS and has increased the last few years....

So far...its winding up to all that again.....alraedy had the 'traditional yearly out-of-control bushfire in late 2017.......but maybe it's grown back again and if it hasn't then perhaps a little bit of rain (we've had NOTHIG AT ALL SO FAR) despite the weather department bullshit reports and media bullshit we have had rain, there has been nothing, not a dop, just dust in the air all night and falling down in the day as well, but there's SUPPOSED to be rain AGAIN forecast to land here in the next several days...and once again weather forecasts for this hellhole can ever be relied upon one way or the other.

Hence perhaps, a reason for some of my great pain lately as well, but NO RAIN.

---------------------------------------------------

There has been a couple of Police sirens heard briefly today very closeby. They may be unmarked Police cars I suspect and not marked Police vehicles.

But despite Western Australian Police patrolling (a rarity in itself) in school hours even on school days (it's currently school holidays still), the Police usually (always) turn a huge blind eye to roaming abo kids who should be in school. And they totally believe any make-believe shit the abo criminal kids tell them to explain anything if they ever do stop and ask them anything. I've seen that with my own eyes. Even when the Police had a solid description of a criminal abo youth and had stopped them in the street in a patrol. They just accepted what the shithead lied to them about and drove on, not even bothering to get out of their Police vehicle despite the abo matching the description given to them earlier. - Utter madness abounds at this hellhole area.

Hence the criminal kids become even more bold as they grow up. They've been that way ALL THEIR LIVES.

It seems that only when they become older and adults, do Police actively take a role in apprehending them because it makes the Police 'look bad' in the media. So many times you will hear how abo kids/youths/young adults have been arrested on very serious criminal charges and then it might become known to the public JUST HOW CRIMINAL the individal has been ALL THEIR LIVES and HOW MUCH CRIME that criminal has been allowed to do and get away with for so very long. - And Police wonder why innocent people muse upon the idea that Police might be corrupt and so Police should not be trusted?

If an abo is arrested, esepcially younger ones, this is then the point where a well-paid for army of departmentals suddenly jump in and proclaim the aborigial is just a 'poor dear result of X'.....'X' being any number of amorphous bullshit they use to try to totally absolve YET AGAIN the criminals, just as they have been absolving them all their lives....and if all else fails, they ALWAYS draw on the get-out-of-jail-free cars of race issues, which scares authoroties into deciding always in the criminals favour, just as it has been doing so all their lives....just as it continues to do.....

Add in useless politicians and authorities who's self-serving actions destroys everything....and you have a state of utter shit.......

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As it becomes dark......there is false calm........

Then it's now become dark.

In a lot of pain.

Letting out poor dear Sam & dear Max for their nightly absolutely needed ablutions, (one of several), trying for us not to get bitten by hordes of swarming mosquitoes, and going with them to kep them safe from criminals and diseased utterly feral cats and their cat shit everywhere, fed by idiot people and abo's who lay out bowls of animal food as if they 'own' the feral cats and of course they do not, nor do they corral them or control them, and so the damn things wander all about day & night and kill helpless creatures, endangered Australian widlife, and foul all the area all about..........all exactly like the criminal abo's......and the non-abo criminals....and the abo crimnals who often call themselves anything but abo unless there is free money to be had and then suddenly they're magically calling themselves aboriginals all of a sudden.....get money, get ANYTHING they can....but carry on just as they have always been doing.......and authorities wonder why the 'aboriginal populations' suddenly increase upwards in census statistic populations without explanations too.........and all the government welfare money that was previously there to be used for so much and so many is suddenly decreased and nobody gets anything hardly, and so the needy struggle, the shitheads laugh and carry on just as they have always been doing, and the crime rates just forever are rising that has to to be lied about decreasing by authorities by any way they can....and all this is forced unto me to be considered 'normal'........

This is Western Australia.

This is Australia.

This is hell.

---------------------------------------------------

I love you dearest Fliss and want to be with you. - Poor Max got a bit vicious today. He was unharmed of course but he is in hell too. So is Sam. Sam was growling today too. There ARE reasons, some of which was the sounds of criminal aboriginals from Fatguts place today roaming about and more. - I love you dearest Fliss and so want to be with you just as you promised me. Take care dear Fliss. But do not wipe out your memories of what you KNOW is real and replace them with your terrible delusions and such. - If I drop dead one day, you will KNOW I have always been telling the truth no matter how much you lie to yourself and to others. - I love you dearest Fliss and forever want to be with you just as you promised me.

[xottzot]

2017-1(JAN)-14 & 15--Saturday & Sunday in this hellhole-2017.

2017-1(JAN)-14-Saturday & Sunday in this hellhole-2017.

Friday night into Saturday morning.....At 2am I was awoken terribly from a sleep I had only just struggled to obtain an hour before. I was awoken by a motorbike tearing LOUDLY along the roads and streets. (It was a 4-stroke, not a 2-stroke.) You could hear it travelling along the roads with total impunity.

Today, a magic-reset-button had been pushed for the criminal aboriginal household, and it is almost exactly as it was this time last year.....

Around 8:30am, an innocent man walking a dog on the streets as he was making his way to the shop, suddenly set off yapping dogs at the aboriginal criminal household.

Within a few minutes, out they start coming and travelling all about.....that heralded the 'start' of their 'day'.........

First out comes an adult aboriginal woman (the one who once badgered me and was lying as she tried to get me to give her money for some ficticious bullshit). She came out, and began walking to eventually stride off into Clayton Estate, Bellevue.

Then, moments later after she came out of the criminal household place, youths on pushbikes began to vomit out of the place and fill the roads, 1, 2, 3, 4 or so of them, like vintage film footage of emergency olde fire engines in a movie.

She yelled at them not to follow her.

Yes, that's all it takes, just one 'trigger event'....and then suddenly the shitheads are about.

And so she walked off. And the criminal (they are believe me) youths gathered on the road, then began all doing wheelies as they spread horizontally across the roads and slowly tavelling towards the shops. An innocent car came along but they ignored it.

A saw a Police wagon, go sedately along Clayton Street doing a patrol or whatever. It seemed to be just travelling along. It was not in any hurry.

All that in a space of a matter of minutes....all starting with the innocent action of an innocent man walking along with his dog past the criminal household. -- It acted as a 'trigger' motion, that roused the criminals from the criminal household.

I have not looked again. The SAME shit from the SAME criminals, just as they formulated it into being, a year or so ago. I can't stand it.

I know what is to come and even though I am writing this up offline in a text file, I will state it now...........MORE LOUD MOTORBIKES......MORE ABORIGINALS ROAMING THE STREETS, WITH MORE OF THEM ROAMING EVERYWHERE......

It is going to be a terribly HOT day, so says the pathetic weather forecasting for this hellhole area.

I am in a LOT of pain and despair.

THIS IS HELL.

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Then later, literally within the hour.....

Aboriginals have been gathering in the streets again on pushbikes.....this is yet another of the beginnings........

BTW, all the aboriginal criminals around here they use these pushbikes NOT as being 'owned' by anyone.......they interchange them at will at any time, all the time. They treat them as they would anything they have stolen. They truly, literally just drop them to the ground or road, anywhere. -- And please bare this in mind....that stolen pushbikes are extremely common around here with these criminals.

Then they all congregated on a driveway of an innocent resident, sat & laid down there despite them all knowing the resident has nothing to do with any of them at all.

One got on 'his' pushbike and darted into the yard of the household, and darted out again. Deliberate trespass. He came out of there. They yakked about shit and then all rode or walked off, one at least into a different direction and to the criminal household.

They dispersed ONLY after a resident had slowly reversed out of their driveway and saw them and stared at them. (and said something to them?)

I suspect that innocent resident knows only too well that their innocent residence would also be affected by them, as has happened in the past.

Monday EDIT:---I have subsequently been informed that this has indeed been the case above.

THIS IS HELL.

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9:55am........

Literally, within 10 minutes or so of the above.......I heard a VERY LOUD male adults voice yelling out, and so I dared look to see....

What I saw was that same group of aboriginals as before all racing off along the street and swearing and cursing at a adult male resident who had been shouting at them.

I don't know what that incident was about. I could not hear porperly what was being shouted at them but it was not nice. (as if you SHOULD be nice to criminals!?)

But this goes to show you what the hell happens here in this hellhole because of the aboriginal criminals.

They all rabidly rode off and went to the shops area, no doubt to cause shit there.

They are following their typical criminal behaviours.

THIS IS HELL.

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At 2:09pm......It's over 43C (104F) (outside in the brief time I had to take Sam & Max outside for ablutions they were literally whining to go outside for.

Came back in as quick as we could but I immediately noticed that although 'cooler' than the direct sun, it was no longer 'cool' inside this hovel.

There was a vehicle idling in the streets, just before the intersection, a small white one. I saw it then turn around, and go down the street and away. As it did so, several of those aboriginals passed it on pushbikes.

That's what happens. Any event that occurs here is an excuse for them to go all about and mill about, and be wary of, and report to others.

There was 5 of them on 4 bikes. And they all went straight into the criminal household.

The car saw them, but I have no idea what the occupant(s) thought. (other than...'geeez...this place really IS literally SWARMING with scum on the streets!')

Then the scum a few minutes later came out and was 'patrolling' all over the streets in the damn blazing heat.........and most of them are wearing black clothing.....

Oh Look! - at 2:21pm....out via the pedestrian walkway....out comes one of the unlicensable off-road-motorbikes with 2 of the aboriginals upon it, riding on the roads as if ALL roads were exclusively theirs and just theirs alone........

You see, they saw that vehicle go and I expect they thought it might have been an observation vehicle (Police), and so once they saw it travel away, they knew they (within 20 minutes), they could do whatever the hell they wanted......and they are doing so.....AGAIN....for coming into the 3rd week of SOLID EVERYDAY DAILY shit from aboriginal criminals on motorbikes in this hellhole.

And of course...they're all dressed in black......

It's the blazing heat of day and shitheads are all about......what's going to happen when the sun goes down and it's dark....?

THIS IS HELL.

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Earlier this evening between 5-7pm, I saw a mass of aboriginal youths gathering all about on the street verge outside the aboriginal CRIMINAL HOUSEHOLD. They acted like pack animals who were barely under control.

It's HOT here. VERY VERY HOT, but do you know what the majority of them were dressed in? - All BLACK clothing. And often long black clothing, stuff you'd normally be be wearing in winter.

They drifted off down to the school oval.

Then around 7:20pm I saw another group of them gathering about nearby. And a snippet of what they were saying was heard....from one aboriginal punk to a kid.......about having to have to fight in order to 'get into' some idiotic acronym for a street gang name. Utterly pathetic crap from kids who grow up from the youngest age possible (even a toddler literally on the street) to be criminals, and who embrace being criminal at every opportunity they can, and who try to pull in other kids to be outright criminals with them. But those newer ones are never on the 'inner circle'....they are ALWAYS on the outer. And they suffer. And they relish it. And they also complain to adults about it when they are pulled up to explain themselves for their shitty actions.

And I know for an absolute fact that, THAT kid was told last year NEVER to associate with any of the aboriginals, ESPECIALLY those from the aboriginal CRIMINAL HOUSEHOLD and the other shitty aboriginal households around. And he has been admonished by his mother and father countless times for the same thing.......but then the mother then freely associates with the criminals!? - What!?, for free or discounted priced booze & drugs? - Meanwhile their rented residence has been atttacked and its fence and gate destroyed numerous times, (they've given up fixing their fence....there's massive gaps in it now), their kids have been beaten up and been the target of thuggery, I've actually seen the mother herself had had rocks thrown at HER by the criminals,.....and yet the woman/mother STILL freely lets the kid asociate with the criminals!? - THAT is the level of shit around here. THAT is just one example of the extreme shit that the CRIMINAL HOUSEHOLD has created about here. -- Police come in and can't make sense of what the hell is going on. They KNOW what is happening and yet they still can't control it all because the single one source of so much shit going on, the CRIMINAL HOUSEHOLD is totally untouchable and immune and so much outright lies and false hopes are thrown at you whenever you dare to try to want someone to explain why nothing is getting done, the things that were promised many many months ago.....EVICTION to the criminals. Get back law and order and decency and safety and peace to live in........

And today, after that little gathering, they drifted off up the street towards the shops, and the overweight aboriginal woman (the same woman who lets a toddler in diapers walk in traffic on the roads by itself...that shows you how much mentality and responsibility SHE has and rolls in like a pig in shit)....she came along and started to roll her fists in the air over and over again as if goading, "Go on....hurry up and let me see a fight! I wanna see, I wanna see!"

The entire group of them, went to the shops direction where ordinary innocent people are.

And it is beginning to get dark.

THIS IS HELL.

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As I have previoulsy stated, all this entry is being done OFFLINE.

I will wait until later to post it online.

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SUNDAY:

3am-----Sam & Max fed early in the dark. in the cool of the night/very early am because they wanted to be fed, and I had to get up anyway because I was in a LOT of pain.

Outside, Sam & Max were doing their ablutions, and I could hear dogs barking off in the neighborhood. - Then I heard a TOO-LOUD (just shitty) car tear off somewhere nearby. Shortly afterwards, we came inside and.....THAT shitty illegal unlicensed motorbike returned and went thru the usual shitty way, once again not caring a fuck about anyone but riding slow so as not to be 'too' apparent and be 'tracked' travelling about despite it being loud anyway.

And I heard voices elsewhere from the minicriminals roaming about......

Funny that eh?

It's a full moon. But that is NOT an excuse. It just happens to be giving more light than usual that the criminals use in darkness. They travel around with hand-held flashlights which they flash everywhere and at houses any other time.

Out of the ordinary? No....it was just a daily rousing of the shitheads. The kind of thing that always wakes me up here and which none of the outside people believe.

Quiet nights.......I've long since forgotten about what they were like here....

A 'quiet' Sunday to come.....don't fucking believe it.

THIS IS HELL.

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Sunday at almost 4am.........I heard dogs yapping and I instantly knew who's THEY were........from the aboriginal CRIMINAL HOUSE.

They use yappers like that to act as their guard dogs....they only guard by making noise.

Are the dogs licensed or anything? - If anything of the past year is to go by, the criminals there don't give a shit about ANY laws, let alone having dogs registered, just like they had a dog in 2016 running around into everyones yards and fouling them. That shitty tactic caused Sam & Max no end of stress.........

Down the street, sitting under a streetlight in the dark, are at least 2 aboriginals 'camped out' there.

Those dogs of theirs just keep yapping and yapping non-stop.

I wonder if the local public school has been a target for attack yet again, or are are they just standing, awaiting criminal brethern to return, those staggering around on the streets drunk, drugged or both, or are they waiting for an illegal motorbike to go around yet again, or are simply standing watch keeping an eye out to spot any Police who may make a rare patrol?

You see, if a Police car DOES come along the long street, or on any streets here, the word gets shouted out there's cops around and the warning gets flashed around the neighborhood, which they then track the Police movements.....they do that either just by standing on street corners and yelling out to each other (I've seen THAT countless times), or they send mini-criminals on pushbikes out to follow Police (seen THAT countless times), and in any event they just travel about and dart into innocent peoples yards and properties to hide from Police (seen THAT countless times)...........

THIS IS HELL.

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For the rest of Suday, I'm not saying anything.

But I have been conferring somewhat with another of this hellhole and it is actually WORSE than I have been writing about in my blog!

Because......of the criminal aboriginals.

Without giving any details, in my blog you will have already seen that residents live here in fear and dread. I am the same. But I have also been privvy to know that that an innocent resident has in teh very recent past been physically attacked and required medical attention. And the injuries sustained were inflicted by the criminal aboriginals.

All stemming from the criminals of the CRIMINAL HOUSEHOLD.

THIS IS HELL.

The Police ARE aware how bad all this is, and they keep trying to maintain the belief that they have control of everything. -- NO!, they do not. -- All the Police are doing is acting like comic firefighters wandering around with a water pistol against a massive blaze of aboriginal crime but all they're doing is attending little spot fires created from sparks whilst being completely ineffectual against the main blaze.

And the Police and authorities keep going back to the main site and source of all this and mutter, "Dear me.....this is silly you fellows. You really must behave yourselves. Uhhhh, you'll behave yourselves for me won't you from now on....yes? Huh? Why are you shaking your heads......oh well, I'll see you next time. I'll bring some more toys and ice creams for all you to enjoy. Do you want some more pushbikes? Oh, that's right you can steal all you want. Oh well, that'll save some of our budget."

That above is ficticious by the way but it IS a true indication of what sort of shit is like here. I've seen it for myself.

My pathetic attempt at some levity above is just that.

And today, (Monday after this Sunday), there is the 'traditional' false calm from the aboriginal CRIMINAL HOUSEHOLD..................

And the scum have given up trying to be surreptitious about their stealing of neighbours rubbish bins and using them. They're are doing it outright. They don't give a shit about anyone or anything.

And as I keep saying....it IS A HELL OF A LOT WORSE THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE, and IT IS A HELL OF A LOT WORSE THAN IS BEING ADMITTED BY POLICE AND AUTHORITIES.

I wish I still had my guns.

I've had next to no sleep AGAIN/STILL.....and I'm in a LOT of pain.

P--@09:26am--16-Jan-2017---Fliss, you have NO IDEA how bad things are here and how everyone is suffering.