#most people i’ve heard saying usa has no culture are only talking about white americans imo

[visenyaism]

“america has no culture” and yet when americans visit other states or regions of america they get culture shock. when I was in college, my group of friends loved to compare dialects, religions, and cultural practices because we were from very different places (New York City, Vermont, Texas)

well we’re easily startled but like. I hate many things about living in this country most of which have to do with our evil government and history of extreme violence and oppression that we continue to this day. but the amount of cultural diversity in terms of regional and immigrant cultures (and where those intersect!) is like. easily the best part of being here

[newcatwords]

who i mean when i talk about the white man

the beauty of the agent smith character from the matrix is that he can inhabit anyone, meaning that anyone can become him.

this is one of the ways i think about the white man.

usually, though, when i talk about The Man, i mean the high level operatives of the state & industry...judges, gatekeepers, bosses. but it also includes the more anonymous enforcers: cops, soldiers, etc... these are people who can bring the hammer of the state down on you if they so choose. they have chosen to become the hand of the state..the mouth of the state..acting on its behalf, doing its work, etc.

is america the white man’s state?

well it was founded by 100% white men:

it was founded for white men. it was not for white women (who couldn’t vote, etc.) or black people (who were enslaved, 3/5ths of a person). it was not for the people who were already living where these men were trying to form their country: native people weren’t even allowed to become citizens of USA until 1924.

you can argue that the white men who ran this place (and who started institutions like the major universities, etc.) have gradually let other people in - women, black people, jews, immigrants, etc. but the rules & values of the american government, of major universities, of news organizations, etc., are in almost all instances the rules & values of those original white people & the white people that have been running those places ever since.

even things like tech products (like this website!) that are meant to be for anyone to use, where technically anyone can work, are the white man’s tech..primarily built & founded by white men..primarily in the white, western tradition of high tech. almost every discipline you can get a degree in (like computer science) was invented & founded by white men working within universities run by white men. this is the most basic sense in which i mean these instutions belong to the white man. he founded them. they are his creations. he continues to create them - publishing the news, keeping the university running, keeping the government running.

you may want to become a part of those institutions - to be in government, to work for a major tech company, to be a cop or a teacher, to be recognized in the art or business world, to get tenure at a major university, etc. ..which is your business and you do you. right now i am writing in the white man’s language (english), using his technology (a computer, the internet, this website), and i, too, try to get my hands on his money (dollars) if at all possible lol.

not all white men are agents of the white man’s state, but most of them (especially if they’re straight and/or christian) can become a part of it. all of them benefit from it (you’re just not as likely to get killed by a cop during a traffic stop if you’re white. this is just reality.). 

almost anyone (with the right papers, with the right skin color) can become The Man...when you as a white person call the cops on a black person, in that moment, you are The Man. when you as a white person try to police someone else’s behavior..or question whether they are in the right place etc...in that moment, you are The Man. if you’re gatekeeping your favorite hobby or industry, in that moment, you are The Man. that’s the beauty of the agent smith character in the matrix - agent smith can execute the full power of the state (ie, visit death on you) and anyone can become him.

it’s much harder (in many cases impossible) for certain “others” to enter various parts of the white man’s world. but it’s possible! look at your black & women cops. look at your colin powells and condoleezza rices..look at all the queer people who are allowed to rise to the top. which is why i think of being The Man as a condition, not as something essential about who you are. of course some people really are The Man on the inside lol - they were born into it or have adopted it or really think they know better and can’t see any other way. waddaya gonna do.

many white people especially are confused about the things that make up white culture. it’s especially difficult to understand because part of white culture is insisting that its culture & ways are universal. so every time you’ve heard a white man say “this is human nature” or “all people do this”, that in itself is white culture. white culture claims to be a neutral culture and a universal culture. but the more you learn, the more you discover that things you might have thought were neutral or universal are actually historically, geographically, & culturally specific to whites/westerners..they are things that were invented by whites/westerners.

here’s one example: many people think that some form of jail/prison/confinement of a person who did a bad thing is universal, or at least very common throughout time and in many parts of the world. but jails/prisons were invented in the west and in fact through much of the west’s history, these were not the main or preferred ways to punish people. michel foucault’s book “discipline & punish�� is a good history of the invention of the prison.

when i say “a product of white culture” or "western culture”, the white reader might think “well i’m white and it’s not *my* culture.” that may be true! now imagine the whitest of the whites: your new england snobs, your english posh snobs, the good ole boys who run your town or state, your oppressive church leaders, an elected official who hates you & lies to you, a smug know-it-all educated technocrat (it might be you!), a karen, a cop, the trumpists, the polite skeptic liberals who are always telling you to temper your expectations, the shmucks who make the sexist, dumb hollywood movies, alllll the gatekeepers... their culture, the way they do things, the things they value, that is white culture. it varies. the white conservative’s culture is not the same as the white liberal’s culture, but they do have some things in common, like wanting to keep america going. both of their cultures are white cultures.

these whites are the people who make the culture that so many of us have grown up in - not just those of us in the west. the white culture machine includes academia (which produces scientific knowledge, histories, & the social theories & policies that many reforms are based on), tv, movies, the music industry, the art world, fashion, wall street, the tech industry, the news, professional sports, the politicians & cops (that are so often the content of the news), schools, white churches, most philanthropies, and all kinds of national (& many international) interest groups (ngo’s, advocacy groups, etc.).

these are institutions that (like the US government) were founded primarily by white men and have been run primarily by white men since their founding. they have all the money. they have power - whether it’s commercial power, political power, power to shape the national conversation, power to define what is true (only western science can say what’s true, according to western science!), power to give you a job or take it away, etc.

if you want to be “at the top of your field”, you are almost always meant to strive to join one of these white institutions (mostly white mens’ institutions). you might say “well there’s nothing particularly white about them..it’s just a news company..or an ad company. they’re just doing business.” but when i say white in this context, i mean that the people who founded them were either 100% white or mostly white. the people who have always run them have been either all white or mostly white, and the people who run them now are either all white or mostly white. in this sense, they are the white man’s institutions.

it can be hard to understand that because they are often the national or otherwise “official” thing: national news, or the biggest national/international companies, the top national/international universities. they certainly sell themselves as “the official thing” because it doesn’t sound great to say “the official newspaper of the white man.” and they want to be the official thing. they want to be the top x in the world. that’s an important white, western value as well - wanting to be the thing for everyone. the UN was not the dream of all peoples. it was the dream of some specific white, western people who created it.

here in america, a white man’s state, we grow up in that state’s schools, learning the history it wants us to learn. we watch its tv and listen to its music. we read its news and use its tech. we & our ideas..many of the things we think are true..many of the things we value..have been installed in us by that state and its various mouths (the ones who teach its desired history, tell you how you should look, what you should want out of life, what you should buy):

(above graphic from the movie “they live” (1988))

but we do all have a choice about which aspects of the white man’s culture we choose to adopt..we have choices about which of his values (progress, superiority of humans over nature & animals) we adopt..choices about which books we read & which movies we watch. is the matrix white man’s media? it used to be, but the wachowskis left the club ;). now it’s white trans women’s media :}

one final thing: is everything that white men do or think part of the white man’s culture? are all white men The Man? i hope that this post has made clear that i think the answer to both questions is “no”. i hope i’ve also made clear that non-whites and non-cis-het-men can very much be The Man or agents of The Man at times, or even their whole life. i’m not saying that it’s necessarily bad or necessarily good here, i just want us all to be honest with ourselves about who we are & whose work we’re doing.

a related question: if you start a club and you’re a white man, is it the white man’s club? i think it depends..it might be. do you work within the white, western tradition? do you accept its assumptions (capitalism is good, meritocracy is real, etc.)? do you further its culture? do you support its work? do you subvert it (by insisting that the club & its ways & rules are co-created with women, POC, etc., as real equal co-founders, for example)? do you use your position as someone the cops might believe, or someone the manager might listen to, to get your way & get what you want? ..to get someone else out of the way when you want? you might be The Man!

we can debate specifics - whether industry x or person y or instution z or cultural value n is white, but for me it comes down to this: was the value/government/institution founded by whites/westerners? has it been run & carried forward by whites/westerners? you can also ask whether it primarily benefits whites/westerners (who are allowed to rise to high positions or allowed to not be as likely to be killed by the cops, etc.) and whether it promotes the values/goals of The White Man. if a judge, a cop, an elected official, a principal, a high level church leader, a university president, and a corporate leader can all agree on it, then in my book, it promotes the values/goals of The White Man. an example of values that might fit this bill include an agreement that we should not try to dismantle america, for example. that one should work within the system...that industrialism is the way to go...etc.. primarily these are pro-establishment values. and “the establishment” is another way that i think many people talk about the white man’s culture & institutions.

anyway, this post has gone quite long. thank you for staying with me till the end. i hope it’s provided at least a rough sketch of what i mean when i talk about the white man or The Man and i hope it’s given you something to think about. i apologize for not going into the history of the usage of “The White Man” or “The Man”..i started writing this on a whim & haven’t done a historical dive. please forgive me for that. thank you.

[tkrr]

The Left isn’t as progressive as it thinks it is

So Taylor Swift is a fan of Kamala Harris, who, let’s hope, will be our next Vice President. I just wanted to acknowledge that, and it really does show that Taylor’s serious about her feminism, because Harris is an absolutely fantastic choice for VP. She was my favorite choice out of the gate for president, but she dropped out before primary season... but here we are. 

I didn’t come here to talk about Taylor though. 

One of the most disillusioning things in my life was working as director on a public access talk show where a bunch of old New Lefties from the 60s sat around and discussed issues of the day. I did this for a couple of years until the producer and I drifted apart, at which point the 2016 campaign was in full swing and I was getting sick and tired of the constant Hillary-bashing. (She was “ambitious”, you know.) They rarely discussed social issues, and when they did it was usually related to some kind of international relief operation (like the one in Haiti a few years back) or castigating Democrats for turning away from the labor vote. (I don’t think I ever heard the phrase “identity politics”, but...) When Obergefell v Hodges came down from the Supreme Court in 2015, their first show after it happened was yet another rehash of the Israel/Palestine issue. As I was in the early stages of planning my transition, this didn’t go over well with me, but I kept my mouth shut and put up with it for another year. They were of course very concerned with corporate influence, with a regular set decoration being an American flag with the stars replaced by corporate logos. This was not the left I thought I’d be working for.

See, I’d done a lot of work with another producer on a show covering issues relevant to the homeless in our area. That felt good. That was, and is, how I see progressivism -- my contribution might have bordered on slacktivism from the outside, but I was providing a link in a chain for people who actually needed help. Similarly, the producer of the show I was talking about before had used me as director on a show about local public school issues; progressivism to me involves listening to people at risk and helping them reduce that risk. That was what the Civil Rights Movement did, and what groups like the Black Panthers tried to do. Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, Amnesty international -- this is stuff that matters to people in their immediate, daily lives. I had kept the populist left -- call them Bernouts, fire baggers, the Green Tea Party, whatever -- at arm’s length, but I kind of assumed that these things were priorities for everybody claiming to be on the left. This... did not turn out to be the case. 

What I’ve learned, from that experience and from the last few election cycles, is that the populist left is not on the same page as the activists who are actually putting effort towards directly taking care of people. They talk about labor rights, which falls into that category, but they put other issues, especially civil rights issues, on the back burner. There’s a lot of emphasis on foreign policy, but usually in a very simplistic way that’s clearly still stuck in the Reagan era. (Which is jarring when you hear it from someone who was born after Reagan left office.) When Euromaidan happened in Ukraine in 2014, they bought the Russian government’s side of the story hook, line, and sinker, despite the people noting that the rhetoric came straight out of the USSR’s propaganda playbook. They treated Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden as gospel, but oddly enough I don’t remember them talking about Chelsea Manning much. (I wonder why. 🏳️‍🌈? Nah, can’t be...) The supposedly “progressive” populist left overall has this kind of tunnel vision, and I can’t help but notice they’ve been replaying the same scripts since the 1960s. The last time I looked at the Green Party USA’s platform, it was such a bizarre mix of things that actually make sense combined with things that were either wrong or outright insane that I realized I could probably never vote for a Green candidate. (That in and of itself is fodder for an article I do not have the time or the energy to write.) On top of all that, there’s the sheer self-destructiveness -- I can’t understand how someone can say that their conscience is clear for voting for third-party if the simple math means their vote made it harder to advance the agenda they say they want.

What it comes down to is that there are two “left”s, and they’re only just barely compatible. I wish I didn’t have to concede the word “progressive” to the populist side, because fundamentally, no matter to what extent they manage to diversify their own base, they wind up sidelining the concerns of marginalized people (particularly black and Jewish people; there’s a link at the bottom of the article written by a black writer for a Jewish audience that I found very enlightening) in favor of centering a “generic” narrative that ultimately comes down to “things white people worry about”. The scary part of this is that because they’re basically reactionary, they don’t realize that the economically-centered message they’re pointing out is not actually as helpful for all citizens as they think it is, and will never admit it. One particular point I’ve made occasionally -- the class narrative is irrelevant for most African Americans. Shows like “The Jeffersons”, “The C*sb* Show”, and “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” were all about wealthy, successful black families; there were working class black sitcoms as well (I wish “227″ had the same staying power as “Golden Girls”), but the ones we remember were all about black families that made it, and one of the stinger lines from the pilot of “The Jeffersons” was Marla Gibbs’ character Florence saying “How come we overcame and nobody told me?” Yes, I’m white. But this is stuff that other white people could find out if they bothered to look into it.

In the end, though, the worst aspect of all of this is the reductionism. It becomes an argument over who’s lefting better than all the other lefties, to the point where “liberal” has somehow become synonymous in some circles with “anyone right of Bernie Sanders”. (Which is really ironic given Kamala Harris’ voting record in Congress, running left of Bernie.) I don’t see too much of the crowd doing that going out and trying to do the things that make people’s lives better directly; it all amounts to telling people how much better things will be Come The Revolution™, but any efforts that fall short of total societal reform *right fucking now* are seen as worse than failure. Once in a great while, some will admit that they think that these are just bribes to the proletariat to stave off the revolution, but to be honest, I don’t think most of them have put that much thought into it. This isn’t the left I want to represent. If your plans don’t start with “first do no harm”, they’re going to have an opportunity cost far too high to be morally acceptable. And if standing on principle means giving up your opportunity to advance a progressive agenda, your “progressive” principles are worthless. 

(I had some other points to make involving cancel culture, but it’s 2:30 AM and this is already a rather long post. Maybe I’ll do a second one that includes it.)

The link I mentioned above: https://forward.com/opinion/435826/why-the-left-has-failed-with-black-voters/

[justtheendoftheday]

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

“They’re coming to get you, Barbra.”

When the bodies of the recently deceased begin coming back to life to try and kill and eat the living, a group of strangers take refuge inside an empty rural home.

—————————————

Fright: 1.7 / 5  Barbras

For me the most unsettling moments of fright are near the beginning when the attacks first start occurring. Sure, packs of the undead banging on your door is a creepy idea, but the potential for some stranger to suddenly attack you is just so much more real.

I feel like this was probably a very frightening movie when it came out, but time has dulled its blade a bit. For devotees of the genre Night of the Living Dead probably doesn’t even cause a blip on their fear radar. But for less desensitized viewers I think it probably walks a nice line between being spooky enough to creep you out a little, but tame and dated enough that it won’t keep you up all night.

It’s easy to look back on this one and not remember any big scares. But that’s probably just because the movie isn’t really into big scares. It prefers to charge the atmosphere of a scene with spooky tension. Who will live? Who will die? What’s going to happen next?

Gore: 2.3 / 5 Butcher Counter Scraps

This one is tough to measure. Old school gore gore rarely measures up to modern standards, and the whole movie is in black & white (which always makes things seem a little less visceral to me). So by modern zombie movie standards this one is pretty tame.

On one hand there certainly is a bit of gore, but on the other hand it is generally used to suggest that something rather gruesome occurred instead of actually showing it happening.

For instance, they never show anyone getting bit or pulled apart or anything like that. But they do imply that such things have happened and then show the ghouls eating “human flesh.” Yet it’s pretty obvious to an adult viewer that the actors are just creepily munching on a prop arm or some meaty bit acquired from a butcher shop.

There’s also a couple of quick shots of a slightly decomposed skull.

For the most part the only gruesome things you actually see being done to people are things like getting shot or stabbed.

Jump Scares: Very few

There are a couple of potential startle moments, but they are a bit tame by today’s standards. I didn’t notice any really aggressive jump scares to speak of.

Review:

Night of the Living Dead is a film that goes beyond the confines of its spooky premise to work as a powerful metaphor for its time. While its depiction of women is unfortunately quite bland, the way it deals with race is incredibly interesting. It’s a movie that delights in creating tension more so than going for aggressive scares. While certainly tame compared to modern zombie films, it remains a really fun movie that establishes the heart of a Romero-style zombie movie: a group of survivors who are forced to question whether the real terror is being alone outside with the zombies or inside together with the other survivors.

Thoughts:

Ah, Night of the Living Dead, one of those cinematic classics that everyone has at least heard of even if they’ve never seen.

Is it just me or is anyone else always wary of “classics?” So many of them turn out to be quite boring, or dated, or—worst of all—problematic. And sure, they might have made a big impact on the field, but that doesn’t mean they’re inherently great art, especially decades down the line.

And yet sometimes you’ll watch a so-called Classic and you totally get it.

Oh! Yes, this is why everyone keeps talking about this one.

One of my favorite things about the Horror genre is that so much of it is built up from a foundation of independent works and passion projects. And so much about what makes this movie a classic is because it was made by a bunch of film nerds who just wanted to make a movie. The only limitation placed on them was the scope of their imagination and the confines of their budget.

And that is exactly what allowed it to work outside the usual studio box and synthesize something new.

Here is a movie that has lots of gore (unusual for the time), was shot in black and white (also quite unusual for the time), and it cast a handsome black man as the main character and definitive hero of the movie (very unusual for the time).

Now keep in mind that movie was made in late 1960s America! A time where institutionalized racism was clashing against the force of a powerfully determined and ever-growing civil rights movement. To see a black man being portrayed as the hero—let alone one who heroically fights against white bodies—was almost unheard of in the cinematic pop-culture of the time.

Romero has said that his script hadn’t called for a black man to be cast in the role of Ben, but Duane Jones was chosen for the role simply because his audition had been the best. And while it’s easy to believe that Duane Jones aced that audition (because he’s friggin’ phenomenal in this movie), it’s hard to imagine that they would have even considered casting a white dude in the role. If they had gone that route it would have fundamentally changed the nature of the story (which is just a nice way of saying that it would have ruined everything).

But luckily for us the creators were open-minded enough to cast the role without race in mind. And because of that Night of the Living Dead was able to (inadvertently) tap into the energy of its time. It’s charged with this backlash against American racism. Ben is literally surrounded by white people that want him dead. They either want to ignore his humanity and simply consume him, like the hordes of ghouls do, or they want him dead for threatening the status quo (like Mr. Cooper does inside the house). And in spite of everything he still sticks his neck out to protect the people around him.

In spite of how well it’s held up over the years, for a modern audience one part hasn’t aged especially well: its depictions of women. Now don’t get me wrong, it never goes for the overt sexism that many horror movies manage to. And yet its female characters still manage to be the most bland characters in the film.

The lack of depth is on full display in their depiction of the film leading lady: Barbra. She starts out well enough, but for the vast, vast majority of the movie she is reduced to a hollow character. She is near catatonic most of the time and even when she’s lucid she tends to just ramble on, only partially aware of reality.

If that wasn’t bad enough there are only 3 other women in the movie and their characters almost never step outside the frameworks of The Wife, The Girlfriend, and The Daughter. All the female characters seem to exist only to add depth to the male characters who are the actual movers and shakers of the movie.

(Although in her defense I will say that Mrs. Cooper’s occasional scathing remark to her idiot husband are highly enjoyable.)

The first time I saw this film was in high school and I had heard it hyped up so much that I ended up thinking it was all a bit silly when I first saw it. While I’m sure it was more shocking to see during its time, by today’s standards it is a rather quiet movie. But when I ended up giving it another try, I found that the quietness is one of my favorite things about it.

One of the little details I love is how they use cricket sounds throughout the movie. In spite of all the horror and death we witness, nature continues unabated. It’s as if to say the world doesn’t care about these people’s situation. That little sound that evokes quiet peaceful summer nights is twisted here and it adds this brilliant extra layer of creepiness.

One of the things I’ve always loved about Romero’s zombie movies is that they are always focused on the survivors, not the zombies. The ghouls are slow and stumbling, their only real threat is if they catch you unaware or you let them overpower you with their numbers. The real source of danger is always shown to be the people you’re locked up with.

After all, in these modern times what is more frightening: the masses pounding on your gates or the people you find yourself locked in with?

—————————————

—————————————

Content warnings: I didn’t notice anything particularly triggering in this one, but let me know if I missed something!

After-credits Scene?: None.

—————————————

Directed by: George A. Romero

Written by: John Russo & George Romero

Country of Origin: USA

Language: English

Setting: Butler County, Pennsylvania, USA

Sequel: Dawn of the Dead (1978)

If you liked this you might also like: Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), The Last Man on Earth (1964), Shaun of the Dead (2004)

—————————————

Context Corner:

Night of the Living Dead may be the great grand-daddy of the modern zombie movie, but many might not know that plenty of zombie movies existed long before it was ever made. The first zombie movie being the 1932 film White Zombie starring Bela Lugosi as an evil witch doctor named Murder Legendre [100% serious. That really was his name].

However, these original zombie movies were very different things from what we consider zombies today. These pre-NotLD films were generally based around second-hand ideas of zombies as seen in Haitian folklore (and misattributed to the religion of voodoo). They featured dead bodies that were reanimated as mindless tools of their master or living people put into a zombie-like trance, not autonomous creatures on the hunt for living flesh.

The closest precursor to Romero’s vision of zombies was seen in the fantastic film The Last Man on Earth, a 1964 picture starring Vincent Price and based on the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. There a plague sweeps across the country and the infected dead return to life as a type of vampire-esque zombies.

Fun Fact: In spite of its influence on the zombie genre the word “zombie” is never used in Night of the Living Dead. The undead are referred to only as “ghouls.”

—————————————

“So long as this situation remains, government spokesmen warn that dead bodies will continue to be transformed into the flesh-eating ghouls. All persons who die during this crisis, from whatever cause, will come back to life to seek human victims.”

[jamsque]

Bitterness in the Age of Fighting

I was excited when the first episode of Fighting in the Age of Loneliness appeared in my youtube feed last Monday, I’m willing to watch anything Jon Bois puts his name on right now. Most of his content is centered around American football and basketball and baseball, which is great, those are all sports I have watched at least semi-regularly at some point in my life, but for the past few years I’ve followed Mixed Martial Arts more closely than any of them. Felix Biederman, the writer and narrator of the show, was a new name to me: I know Chapo Trap House by reputation but the most I have ever heard of it is a few clips out of context.

That first episode did some strong establishing work to set the tone and context for the series, and then got to work telling the fascinating story of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and the Gracie family. It’s a story I know decently well, I think Felix did a good job of picking out the interesting characters and especially the moments of class struggle, and of course his words are backed up by the datawave audiovisual stylings of Jon Bois that we have come to know and love. The political ideas were more familiar and less interesting to me than the bits about fighting but I was curious to see how the show was going to try to draw connections and parallels between the rise of MMA as a spectator sport and the socio-political environment in which that rise took place.

I was engaged and I watched each episode as it came out through the week and by the end of episode four on Thursday I was starting to turn a little on the series. In this era of Youtubers with healthy Patreon support and good microphones I’ve gotten used to clear, smoothly edited, well recorded voice work and for me Felix’s narration falls short there, especially for a project with a major media company behind it. More than that, though, I was no longer on board with where the show seemed to be going, and I was worried that it would end on a sour note. I found myself agreeing with Felix’s political commentary but disagreeing more and more with his thoughts on MMA and the way he was choosing to frame the history of the sport.

The final installment disappointed me more than I had feared it might, enough to motivate me to make some kind of response to or critical reading of the whole series. Re-watching it with that in mind I (unsurprisingly) found more things I disliked. Fighting in the Age of Loneliness does an excellent job of telling the story of the ancestry, birth, rise, fall, second rise and anticipated second fall of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, but along the way it makes some pretty big missteps and takes some positions that I strongly disagree with. I’m not going to break down each episode individually but I do want to lay out the issues I have with the series and in particular dig in to the problems with the last episode. Towards the end I think I might even call Felix Biederman a fascist.

First, I want to provide some context for my own thoughts about MMA, and make some inferences and assumptions about Felix’s history with the sport that I think go some way to explaining why we see it quite so differently.

*

I am absolutely not a long-time hardcore Mixed Martial Arts fan, until relatively recently I didn’t have any interest in combat sports at all. Growing up in the UK around the turn of the millenium I was aware of boxing but only from a distance, it was already well on its way to fading from the forefront of the popular sporting consciousness, and my pacifist socialist middle-class parents certainly weren’t watching Mike Tyson fights. The first contact I had with what I would later know as MMA was a grainy video I remember watching on some pre-YouTube video sharing site as a teenager: a highlight montage of a man wearing black, red and white shorts kicking various different people in the head in various different boxing rings, with the same concussive effect each time.

I became more aware of the modern sport of MMA when I started noticing the UFC in mainstream sports media headlines around 2014. Three names kept appearing in those headlines: Jon Jones, for running into things with cars, Conor McGregor, for running his mouth, but most of all Ronda Rousey, for running through every challenger the UFC put in front of her. I suspect that there are a lot of newer MMA fans who, like me, were swept up in the hype surrounding Rousey and McGregor during that time, and stuck with the sport after they finally broke their respective winning streaks and came back down to earth.

Three years later even though I watch MMA most weekends and even though I have become almost as fascinated as Felix Biederman seems to be with the history of the UFC, the people who have fought in it, and the things that they have done to each other, I still consider myself a ‘casual’ fan. This is at least partly because when I think of ‘real’ or ‘hardcore’ MMA fans, I think of people like Felix, who have been around the sport for a lot longer and are, at best, skeptical about the results of its most recent jump in popularity.

Felix doesn’t explicitly talk about the genesis of his interest in the sport but there are hints in the text. The general tone of the piece goes from being detached and historical in the first episode to personal and emotional in the last, which I think is both a deliberate choice on Felix’s part and a reflection of his own experience. The third episode, when his narrative reaches the mid-2000s, is when I think it transitions from learned history to memory, and it’s around here that Felix starts making frequent references to goings on in MMA fan culture. If I’m correct then Felix Biederman has been following MMA for at least a decade longer than I have really known what it was. He has had the time to become emotionally invested in fighters and even the UFC as an organisation in ways that I am not, and of course his initial views on the sport were formed a relatively long time ago. MMA fights in 2018 don’t look all that different than they did in 2005 but the UFC has certainly changed a lot in that time, as have public awareness of and attitudes towards a new generation of combat sports stars.

*

That decade and a half of change in the UFC is the real focus of Fighting in the Age of Loneliness, but it presents itself as something much broader. The first episode is titled ‘The Invention of Fighting for Money’ and in it Felix makes a lot of sweeping statements about the past that don’t hold water. He very much tells the winner’s version of history, the narrative favoured by the UFC and the Gracie family, who would have you believe that they invented not only the modern sport of MMA but somehow the very idea of fighting itself. Felix remarks on the marketing and promotional skills of Rorion Gracie in the second episode without seeming to realise quite the degree to which he has himself fallen prey to them, and he also comes across as having the slightly fetishistic attitude towards East Asian martial arts that has become common in the USA over the past half century or so.

As he transitions out of the prologue, Felix says “the true catalyst for MMA as a sport, business and spectacle go back to Japan”, and when he goes on to describe the spread of Jujutsu from Japan to Brazil he says “after hundreds of years, Martial Arts had finally broken containment.” At the end of the series he proclaims that the “fourth era of fighting itself” is currently beginning and that the previous two ‘eras’ only lasted a handful of years each.

These generalisations don’t stand up to even the lightest scrutiny. The history of Martial Arts or combat sports or fighting or whatever term you care to use goes back much farther than feudal Japan, and some of the other things Felix says imply that he is at least partially aware of this. As he is giving his starry-eyed take on the life of Judo’s inventor he says “As long as there are people, they will at some point want the ability to keep someone from kicking their ass, no matter how unlikely it is that they will ever get into a fight.” It strikes me as particularly American that his argument in favor of combat sports being inherent to human society is based on the concept of self-defence. I prefer a line of reasoning that is similar but based on competition: As long as there are people, they will at some point want to test their wits and skill and strength against each other.

Indeed, the story as we know it of unarmed combat sports is as old as recorded history: there are images of wrestling in four thousand year old Egyptian tombs, and the classical Greek Olympics included an event called Pankration, which could be roughly translated as ‘fighting with all of your power’, that had an almost identical ruleset to early Ultimate Fighting Championship events.

Felix oversimplifies the history of fighting as a whole, but even if we just look at what he says about Mixed Martial Arts he gets it wrong. In episode one he says “The entire sport of Mixed Martial Arts owes its existence to Mitsuyo Maeda” and then in episode two he alleges that “A world where proto-MMA existed outside of gymnasiums in Brazil seemed pretty unlikely in 1976.” A corollary of my earlier statement might be that as long as there are people testing their wits and skill and strength against each other, there will be other people who think they can do it better. People have been pitting different schools of fighting against each other and amalgamating them long before the Gracie clan existed.

A decade before the date when Felix claims that mixed martial arts were confined to Brazil, Bruce Lee was blending Wing Chun with other styles to formulate Jeet Kune Do. A decade before that a Japanese Karateka was devising a ruleset which would eventually become Kickboxing to facilitate competitions between karate and Muay Thai. In the 40s the Kajukenbo school was founded in Hawaii with the goal of rigorously testing multiple fighting styles against each other to determine which elements of each were the most effective. In the 30s a Czechoslovakian Jew was refining the boxing and wrestling he had been taught in gyms into Krav Maga in brawls against anti-semitic thugs.

In Victorian London the Bartitsu school taught gentlemen a blend of five different fighting styles from around the world, while in the music halls exhibition matches pitted boxing against Savate. Savate was itself developed over the preceding century by efforts to find a middle ground between the heavy-booted street fighting style spreading from French ports and the Queensbury rules boxing that was popular in England.

Even the legend of the birth of Muay Thai, a fighting style which has had arguably as much influence on the modern sport of MMA as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, is a story about mixed martial arts: when the Konbaung Dynasty of Burma captured a famous fighter during their battles with Siam in 1767, they offered him the chance to win his freedom if he could demonstrate the superiority of his Siamese boxing style against the Burmese school, which he promptly did by knocking out ten Burmese opponents.

Felix contradicts himself on this topic in the first episode when he describes Jigoro Kano studying western wrestling and sumo to augment his Jujutsu training and develop Judo. In the second episode when he says “In 1993 no one knew anything, and most people still thought that if you did karate the right way you could blow up somebody’s heart” he is obviously being facetious but he is also projecting his own ignorance outwards. There has always been fighting, all over the world, and there have always been evolving schools of thought about the best ways to fight and the best rules for fighting as a sport. The story of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and the Ultimate Fighting Championship is captivating but it is not, as Felix presents it, the only story about fighting. In this regard, as with others, he seems to have internalized the some of mystique that the UFC has cultivated around itself and its history.

*

Once the history lesson is over I think Fighting in the Age of Loneliness hits its stride and Felix’s passion for the Pride FC and UFC fights and fighters that drew him into the sport shines through in the writing and the narration. His criticisms of the ways that the UFC continues to underpay and otherwise mistreat its fighters are spot on and if anything he could have gone into its anti-union policies in more depth. Before I get to the final episode, there are a few smaller criticisms I want to get out of the way.

Firstly, I would like to have seen more about modern women’s Mixed Martial Arts in the show. I largely chalk this up to the difference in perspective on the sport between Felix and myself: a female fighter was what drew me to watch the UFC in the first place so my image of the sport is one that has always included women, whereas Felix got his start watching Pride, which had no female fighters, and an all-male era of the UFC. There were women competing in MMA at that time and a few exclusively female promotions but if Felix ever watched any of them he doesn’t mention it. In the end, Ronda Rousey gets a minute and a half, Joanna Jędrzejczyk gets about 30 seconds and Cristiane Justino gets a name check.

Rousey is the only female fighter to be mentioned outside of the quarantined WMMA portion of the show, and she comes up during a rather odd accusation of nepotism that Felix levels at Dana White, one which I have heard from other longer-standing UFC fans. I am no supporter of Dana’s and I’m not seeking to defend his character, but it seems far more likely to me that the reason the UFC put so many promotional resources behind Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor is not, as Felix supposes, simply because Dana White personally liked those two fighters, but rather because he saw the opportunity to make a lot of money off of them, which he did. Dana is a fight promoter, he is notoriously fickle in his affections and the warmness he displays towards any given fighter is directly correlated to their ability to drive pay-per-view buys for his promotion.

I also think that there are some more straightforward explanations for the UFC’s success than the poetic ones that Felix understandably focuses on. The ideas of the UFC as a refuge for outcasts and the alienated, both as fighters and as fans, and the honesty of single combat in an age of uncertainty are clearly very thematically important to Fighting in the Age of Loneliness as a project. For me the series places too much importance on the role those things played in the current popularity of the sport and doesn’t put enough emphasis on, or even mention at all, some more mundane but more significant contributing factors.

The vacuum at the top of combat sports that was created when boxing all but collapsed under the accumulated weight of decades of corruption and promotional malpractice, and the brief but significant success that the WWE had with a grittier presentation of professional wrestling in the late 90s both set the stage for the rise of modern MMA in the USA. That rise was helped along by things like the value of the walk-off head kick knockout and the fourteen second armbar victory in the age of the highlight clip and the animated GIF, and the mix of astuteness and good fortune that led the UFC to put out a reality TV show featuring actual physical conflict at a time when programming was being dominated by reality shows based on exaggerating and continually re-hashing interpersonal squabbles.

*

At the end of episode four, titled “As the world fell apart, the only magic was in the cage”, Felix’s rhetoric about the things that happen during UFC fights reaches its most florid, mythological heights. Against a montage of post-fight embrace photographs he says “The magic that we wish we saw everywhere else was in the cage [...] At least there was one place where unthinkable things actually happened, at least if you put two weird people with incredible abilities in front of each other their combined experiences and opposing martial abilities would create a beautiful, maddening story.” I am not criticising Felix for being more captivated by the emotion and passion of fighting than I am but the praise and reverence which he lavishes upon his favourite period of the sport’s recent history at the end of the fourth episode clashes brutally with the way he starts the fifth.

“No-one is ever content to just like something, especially not nowadays”, he says. “We’re not just fans of things any more. We declare our media consumption habits to determine the types of people we are [...] now if someone doesn’t like something we like they hate us” These lines and the visuals that accompany them are presented as a barb aimed at the legions of TV personality and pop star fans bitterly defending their territory on social media. Although there is a hint of self-deprecation about this segment I don’t read much self-awareness here, mostly just old fashioned middle-class punching down at the popular culture of the working class.

In the way he frames what he views as the best period of the UFC’s history, Felix is himself engaging in, as he puts it, “battles that our millionaire entertainers will probably never give a shit about or even find out about”. He has taken to the field of the culture war to defend his memory of a past version of a massive, sinister entertainment company against the changes that he perceives to be ruining it.

Here is where the bitterness begins to creep in, and build. Felix starts talking about the insecurity of modern MMA fans and the sport’s image problem, but then he abruptly dispenses with those concerns and starts arguing that MMA should remain insular and niche. A this point he also waves a huge screaming red flag by describing Jon Jones as a “weird person” who is “actually pretty fascinating once you get to know him” and who has “more depth than most would know”, but we’ll get to that later.

“Who gives a shit if we don’t have hundreds of millions of people watching with us every time, and why do we care if people think we’re fucked up or weird for watching it. We know what our sport is, and we know who we are [...] It’s our stupid violent insane spectacle sport for freaks and assholes that’s as legitimate or illegitimate as any other sport in the world. Well, at least it was ours at some point.”

I recognised this argument the moment I heard it. It sounds almost word for word like an insecure gamer defending video games as an art form and as a hobby that is just for real nerds and not the masses. I know that argument very well because I have been that insecure gamer in the past. In complaining that MMA is not “ours” anymore he has jumped from “if someone doesn’t likes something we like they hate us” to “if someone likes something we like for the wrong reasons they hate us”.

This is the tone that Felix adopts for the entire final episode, and he proceeds to decry three recent changes he thinks the UFC has made in an effort to bring the sport into the mainstream, changes that he declares as already being “to the detriment of the viewers, the fighters, and ultimately, [the UFC] themselves”.

The first is the Fox TV deal, of which his criticism is that it has led to too many fights and therefore too many fighters, but he doesn’t present any reasons why more fights has been a bad thing. He talks about how poorly the UFC compensates its rank-and-file fighters, which is a great argument for better fighter pay, but is not an argument for fewer paid fighters or fewer fight cards.

The second is the UFC’s apparel deal with Reebok, which he accurately assesses as a disaster for their fighters.

The third is drug testing, and for me this is where Fighting in the Age of Loneliness goes completely off the rails. The first thing he says in this segment is probably the only part of it I agree with: “the vast majority of your favourite athletes use steroids.”

*

Felix is right that the UFC asked the US Anti-Doping Agency to start testing its fighters more to provide an image of legitimacy than because they actually care about fair competition, but his main problem with the policy is that performance enhancing drugs are in fact cool and good. Earlier in the series he celebrates the way that Pride FC’s “loose medical oversight” and “pro-steroid policy” allowed its fighters to “consistently break laws of god and man,” now he gleefully exclaims that “Steroids are actually kind of amazing.”

“The human body is absolutely not designed to fight for 15 to 25 minutes, but steroids help make it work”. Felix provides no justification whatsoever for this claim, and it’s a ridiculous one that springs from the same myopic view of the history of combat sports that he expresses in the early episodes. To present just one counterexample, fighters in classical Greece did not have the benefit of modern nutritional science and training methods, let alone anabolic steroids, but the only time limit on Pankration bouts was sunset. Fights that last more than 25 minutes might not be the most fun to watch but they’ve certainly been happening since long before the steroid era.

Felix doubles down on this position. While he acknowledges that steroids “have their side effects” he asserts that “it is impossible to compete at the highest levels of fighting without some chemical help.” This is another absurd claim, he does try to back this one up but in doing so he immediately undermines it: “Talk to any retired fighter, and they’ll give a number anywhere from 75 to 90 percent of their former training partners juicing.” Rather than proving his point, this statement suggests that it is not at all impossible to compete at the highest levels of fighting without chemical help because at the very least ten percent of fighters are doing it. This scaled-back version of his original pronouncement does make the prospects of success seem pretty bleak for clean fighters, but Felix doesn’t care. He is happy to accept that if most fighters are doping then fighters need to dope to compete and therefore it is OK for fighters to dope.

USADA testing in the UFC has, in Felix’s opinion, fucked things up. There are a lot of very valid criticisms that he could make about the inconsistent way that the policy has been applied to different fighters or the odd ways it has conflicted and overlapped with state athletic commission testing policies or the lack of fighter engagement in the process of rolling out the program leading to confusion and uncertainty about the rules, but he doesn’t. Instead of talking about the massive unregulated supplement industry in the USA and the habit that some supplement brands have of ‘accidentally’ slipping a bit of the good stuff in their products to make sure that their customers get the gains they crave, he complains that fighters are being punished for “by-products of over the counter substances”. By-products and contaminants are not the same thing, I’m not sure if Felix just misspoke here or if he genuinely doesn’t understand the problem he is talking about.

He goes on to moan that the punishments for breaking the rules of the sport are longer under this new program. He doesn’t say why the longer bans are bad, just that the UFC has been ‘capricious’, and it seems obvious to me that the reason he disagrees with the longer bans is that he thinks PED usage is a good thing. Let’s address that idea.

There are two main reasons why I think performance enhancing drugs should be banned in almost all sports. The first is that PED use is bad for the long term health of athletes. We know that there are permanent negative effects associated with the use of anabolic steroids, and there are scores of other widely used PEDs that simply haven’t been around for long enough for the consequences of their use to be properly understood. It is possible to argue from this position for the regulation and standardisation of PED use in sports, and although I disagree with that line of reasoning I do think it has some merit, but there is no hint of this argument in Fighting in the Age of Loneliness.

I think the most practical way to prevent athletes from being incentivised to gamble with their future health for short-term gain, especially in a sport like MMA which already carries so much physical risk, is to ban the use of PEDs and enforce that ban with testing. Felix talks about steroids helping fighters to recover quickly from serious injuries, but I don’t think that is a worthwhile tradeoff to ask them to make, and I don’t think it would be a bad thing for the health of fighters if less prevalent PED usage meant that fewer of them had to endure the accumulated physical toll of fighting four or five times a year.

The second reason is a purely sporting one. The rules of all sports are arbitrary, but they usually constitute an attempt to delineate a competition that tests one particular set of skills and abilities in its competitors and excludes others. Chess is not designed to be a test of split-second reflexive reactions, 100 meter sprinting is not supposed to challenge your ability to predict the strategy your opponent is going to employ and prepare a counter-strategy, and as far as I am aware there is no sport that seeks to test its competitors ability to improve their bodies through medical intervention. I want the sports I watch to be fair competitions that are about what they are about, and Felix does too: he repeatedly praises the “truth” and “honesty” and “earnestness” of “what goes on in the cage,” but he fails to see how this contradicts with the idea of allowing the outcomes of fights to be heavily influenced months ahead of time by means of one fighter having access to less scrupulous, less restrained doctors than the other.

There is some nuance here around where you draw the lines between sports nutrition, necessary medical assistance and doping, but again Felix does not adopt a position so sophisticated. It’s been demonstrated in almost every popular sport that athletes with the help of an organised and scientific doping program have a significant advantage over clean rivals with similar levels of experience and training, and that’s not a contest I was ever interested in watching. Fighters shouldn’t use steroids any more than match sailors should use outboard motors, it is contrary to the very concept of the sport.

*

Felix isn’t just mad about USADA testing because he thinks steroids are nifty, though. He’s also mad that they took away one of his favourites. “At the absolute highest level of the sport, no-one was derailed by this as much as Jon Jones” This is another part of Fighting in the Age of Loneliness that emphasises the gulf between Felix Biederman’s perspective on the UFC and my own. He watched Jon Jones’ rise through the ranks and his multi-year reign as the consensus best fighter in the world, and was apparently completely captivated by it. In describing him Felix returns to the hagiographic tone of the third and fourth episodes, describing him as “a giant, freak athlete who did moves that he learned off of youtube to humiliate fighters we grew up with”, comparing him to Napoleon, calling him “a genius who can destroy world champions with stuff he saw in a movie, the equivalent to those savant kids who can hear a song once and instantly play it on a piano perfectly”

By the time I was starting to watch the UFC, Jon Jones had already sabotaged his career fairly comprehensively. I don’t know Jon Jones as a legend or a genius or the greatest fighter in the world because I’ve never seen the fights that earned him that reputation. Here are the things that I do know about Jon Jones, things that have happened or that I have learned about since I started following the sport:

Jon Jones is a homophobe. In 2012 Jon Jones crashed his car, plead guilty to driving under the influence, and received a slap on the wrist. In January 2015 Jon Jones tested positive for cocaine in an out-of-competition test and was issued a token fine. In April 2015 Jon Jones ran a red light and caused an accident involving two other cars that left a pregnant woman with a fractured arm, then ran away only to turn himself in after an arrest warrant was issued and eventually plead guilty to fleeing the scene of an accident, receiving 18 months of probation. In 2017 Jon Jones was given a one year suspension after testing positive for banned hormone and metabolic modulators, which turned out to be contaminants in an erectile dysfunction pill he had been given by a training partner. In 2018 Jon Jones tested positive for an anabolic steroid and was suspended again for 15 months.

On the front steps of courthouses Jon Jones is humble and apologetic, and in the immediate aftermath of being caught doing something he shouldn’t have he often talks about how hard the experience has been for him and how much he has learned from it and grown as a person. At all other times he acts as though the bad things that happen to him or around him are never his fault, that he has no responsibility to ever change or even reflect upon his own behaviour, as though in all these struggles he has been the victim of cruel circumstance and conspiracy.

The Jon Jones that Felix describes is not someone I recognise, and the way he describes him is concerning. “As we got to know Jon more, we saw his personal foibles, like his DUI arrest and rivalry with Rashad Evans” I don’t think that having a heated rivalry with a competitor is comparable with drunk driving at all, and in framing the incident this way Felix trivializes it. He does this again with Jones’ hit-and-run conviction, mentioning it in passing but quickly moving on to quip about how awesome Jones got at powerlifting in his year off. He calls Jones “a person with failings who sometimes acted like an asshole, got pissed off and said incredibly cutting things to his opponents”, reinforcing the impression that Jones’ main character flaw is simply being too fierce a competitor, instead of calling him, say, a person with failings who sometimes acted like an asshole, took drugs he shouldn’t and crashed cars.

Felix is constantly making excuses for Jon Jones in this part of the episode. When he gets to the second failed drug test, he says Jones “got popped by USADA”, a turn of phrase that subtly reinforces Jones’ own narrative of victimhood, especially since Felix has already established USADA as the bad guys who are fucking up the UFC. He wraps up the Jones segment with a ‘boys will be boys’ defence couched in another appeal to the glory of days gone by: “It used to matter less if you acted like an idiot. Everyone was a bit of an idiot in one manner or the other in life, but god forbid you now embarrass the sport”.

*

From here, Fighting in the Age of Loneliness whines to a messy conclusion. The segments get more disjointed, it’s at this stage that modern women’s Mixed Martial Arts gets all of two minutes of consideration, and then there is a rather reluctant summary of the UFC career of Conor McGregor, who Felix seems not to like. He certainly doesn’t describe him with close to the same kind of exaltation that he deploys earlier for fighters who had similar trajectories like Mauricio Rua, Anderson Silva and Jon Jones.

After that, Felix goes back to behaving like a fan of an indie band that has started making top 40 hits. He doesn’t like that the one of the UFC’s new part-owners is an asset stripping firm, even though in his golden age one of the UFC’s part-owners was an Emirati war criminal. Back in the first segment of the first episode he references “this modern era of fighting, where all of the things that used to make the sport unusual are mostly gone,” and now he returns to that idea and calls the supposed new “fourth era” of fighting “sanitized and oversaturated,” contrasting it with the “honesty of a fist-fight” and the “cultural haven for strange people” that the UFC offered ten years ago. He complains that there aren’t enough knockouts any more. When he brings up the recent long-anticipated fight between Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov he says “sometimes the dam of normalcy breaks and we get momentary bursts of how things once were,” which strikes me as a rather ‘what have you done for me lately’ attitude to take about something that happened the month before this video series came out.

Things drag closer to an end and Felix keeps returning to his golden age. “What was once a weird refuge for those who needed it is now eroding into just another thing that’s as formless and indistinct as everything else. Fighting has rid itself of so much of its magic. It does not transcend the world any more.” The way that he constantly makes references to a bygone era when everything was simple and pure and good and as it ought to be, and wishes dearly that we could return to that era instead of continuing to face the injustices of this current moment in time, reminds me a lot of an ideology that has has a big resurgence in the USA recently.

The episode wraps up with one final spasm of bitterness. “This will happen to everything that you love. Nothing you like will remain untouched, and it will get further and further monetized into meaninglessness. This isn’t just our problem in our idiotic bloodsport. You’re fucked too.” He’s not wrong about the commoditization of entertainment and sports-as-entertainment but he sounds once again like a whiny gamer stereotype or a disillusioned popstar fanboy of the kind he mocks at the start of the episode.

And then the episode doesn’t actually end. The sort-of epilogue about Donald Cerrone fighting Nate Diaz seven years ago is a good little segment, but it doesn’t do anything here. It doesn’t serve to illustrate or emphasise any of the things Felix has been talking about in the minutes leading up to it, it doesn’t follow from them in any kind of narrative. It feels like a piece that some combination of Felix Biederman and Jon Bois just liked too much to cut, even though they couldn’t find a place to put it, so they stuck it here at the end. Maybe it is intended to provide some sense of denouement after Felix’s angry ranting. Regardless, it comes at the end of such an unpleasant half hour that its attempt at poignance failed utterly on me.

*

Felix Biederman likes different fighters than I do, he has a perspective on the sport of Mixed Martial Arts that often seems parochial and outdated to me, and I am puzzled by his obsession with the idea that combat sports athletes are all strange, broken people, but none of these things would bother me if Fighting in the Age of Loneliness did not present itself as an authoritative, comprehensive history of fighting, instead of what it is, which is the story of Felix Biederman falling into and out of love with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Together with Jon Bois he certainly tells that story well, their collage of tales of societal fracture and political indifference with images of single combat is a powerful one, but in pursuing its thematic goals the series fails over and over to justify or interrogate the positions it puts forward.

If the UFC disappeared tomorrow, or if it had never been created in the first place, fighting would still exist, Mixed Martial Arts would still exist, the “one two path of a punch to a guy snoring on the ground” that Felix claims to adore will still exist. Fighting is exactly as magical and exactly as mundane today as it it always has been and always will be, even if Felix Biederman doesn’t enjoy watching it as much as he used to.

[berniesrevolution]

On the list of America’s irrational fears, Palestine is near the top. This is no small feat for a “country” with no actual territory and a population about the size of South Carolina. Despite its lack of an air force, navy, or any real army to speak of, Palestine has long been considered an existential threat to Israel, a nuclear-armed power with one of the most powerful militaries in the world and the full backing of the United States. Since there’s no military or economic justification for this threat, a more nebulous one had to be invented. Thus, Palestinians are depicted in the media as hot-blooded terrorists, driven by the twin passions of fanatical Islam and a seething hatred for Western culture. So engrained is this belief that the op-ed page of the New York Times can “grapple with questions of [Palestinian] rights” by advocating openly for apartheid, forced expulsion, or worse.

This worldview demands an Olympian feat of mental gymnastics. It can only be maintained so long as most Americans have no firsthand contact with Palestine or Palestinian people. Even the smallest act of cultural exchange is enough to make us start questioning the panic-laced myths we’ve been taught since birth.  

Of course, the best way to discover the truth about Palestine is to visit the country yourself, though most Americans don’t have the free time or financial resources to do so (this is not a coincidence). This means that those of us who are fortunate enough to visit have a responsibility to share what we’ve seen and heard, without lapsing into pre-fabricated narratives, even “sympathetic” ones. We can’t fight untruth by telling untruths from the opposite perspective. What we can do, however, is report what we saw and heard in Palestine. We can try to provide a snapshot of daily life and let people come to their own conclusions.

With this in mind, here’s what I learned during a recent trip to the Holy Land…

The Palestinian doorman of the Palm Hostel in Jerusalem is a large and friendly man who insists his name is Mike. My fiancée and I are skeptical, as we’d expected something a bit more Arabic. We ask him what his friends call him.

“Just Mike,” he says, and taps an L&M cigarette against the wooden desk. He’s sitting in a dark alcove with rough stone floors, nestled halfway up the staircase that leads from the fruit market to the Palm’s small arched doorway.  A pleasant, musty oldness floats in the air. You could imagine Indiana Jones staying here, if he’d lost tenure and gone broke for some reason. To Westerners like us, it seems too exotic to have a doorman named Mike.

Before we can ask him again, though, Mike pounces with a question of his own. “You’re from the States, right?” He speaks English with a thick accent and slow but almost flawless diction, an odd combination that is causing my fiancée some visible confusion, which seems amusing to Mike. I tell him that we’re from Minnesota, a small and boring place in the center-north of the USA. His grin gets bigger, which makes me self-conscious, so I also explain that Minnesota has no mountains or sea, and the winters are very cold.

“Yeah, I know,” says Mike. “I lived in El Paso for thirty years. Border cop, K9 unit. It was a nice place. Had a couple kids there.” Now it’s my turn to gawk, and I start to race through all the possible scams he might be trying to pull. Mike seems to guess what I’m thinking. “Really. I even learned some Spanish.” He scrunches his brow in mock concentration and clamps a hairy hand over his forehead. “Hola. ¿Como estás?Una cerveza, por favor.”  He opens his eyes and laughs. “Welcome to Jerusalem, guys. Damascus Gate is that way. Enjoy.”

I don’t know why I’m so surprised he knows a handful of Taco Bellisms, or why this convinces me of his honesty. However, now it’s impossible to walk away. We have too many questions. The first one: Why’d he return to Jerusalem? Mike looks down at his cigarette, smoldering into a fine grey tail of ash. He flicks it against a stone and a bright red ember blazes to life.

“This is my home. I had to.”

Later, as we sip sweet Turkish coffee outside a rug shop in the Old City, it occurs to me that Mike was the first Palestinian person I’d ever spoken with face-to-face. His life story seemed unusual, but I have no idea what’s “usual” when it comes to Palestinian lives. I’d never thought about them before, to be honest. The world has an infinite number of stories, and the days are not as long as I’d like. It’s not like I’d chosen to ignore Palestine. I just hadn’t chosen to be interested in it.

Which was odd, because Palestine has been all over the news since I was a kid. There isn’t a single specific story I recall, just a murky soup of words and phrases, like “fragile peace talks” and “two-state solution” and “violent demonstrations.” They all swirl together, settling under the stock image of a bombed-out warzone as the headlines mumbled something about Hamas or Hezbollah or the Palestinian Authority. I remember reading about rockets and settlements, refugees and suicide bombers, non-binding resolutions and vetoed Security Council decisions. Not a single detail had stuck. I could feign awareness of some important-sounding events—the Balfour Declaration, the Oslo Accords, the Camp David Summit—but I couldn’t say what decade they happened, or who was involved, or what was decided.

For years, I’d been under the impression that I knew enough about Palestine to be uninterested in what was happening there. This isn’t to say I felt any particular animosity toward the Palestinians. But it’s impossible to fight for every cause, no matter how righteous, if only for reasons of time. Every minute you spend feeding the hungry is a minute you’re not visiting the sick. Life is a zero sum game more often than we’d like to believe.

As we headed toward the Via Dolorosa, the road that Jesus walked on the way to his crucifixion, I began to feel uneasy. The Israeli police (indistinguishable from soldiers except for the patches on their uniforms) who stood guard at every corner still smiled at us, and they were still apologetic when they forbade us from walking down streets that were “for Muslims only, unfortunately.” Their English was excellent. Many of them were women. They were young and diverse and photogenic, a recruiter’s dream team. But all I could see were their bulletproof vests and submachine guns. Above every ancient stone arch bristled a nest of surveillance cameras. Only a few hours ago, I’d been able to block all that from my sight, leaving me free to enjoy the giddy sensation of strolling through the holiest city on earth.

The road ended at the Lion’s Gate. Just as we approached it, a battered Toyota came rattling through. It screeched to a halt and a squad of Israeli police surrounded the car. All four doors opened and out stepped a Palestinian family. The driver was a young man in his 20s, with short black hair cut in the style of Ronaldo, the famous Real Madrid footballer. When the police told him to turn around and face the wall, he did so without a word. It was obvious this was a daily ritual. The policeman who frisked him looked as bored as it’s possible to look when patting down another man’s genitals. Soon it was over, and the family got back in their car. One of the policemen pulled out his phone and started texting.

If I’d made a video of the search (which I didn’t) and showed it to you with the volume off, you probably wouldn’t find it very interesting. The Israeli police didn’t hurt the man, and he barely made eye contact with them. There were no outrageous racial slurs or savage beatings. The only thing you’d see is a group of people in camouflage battle gear standing around a small white sedan, with a middle-aged woman and a couple of young girls off to the right. Unless you have hawk-like eyesight and an exceptional knowledge of obscure uniform insignias, I doubt you’d be able to tell “which side” any of the participants might be on. All you could say for sure is that the police wanted to search the family’s bodies and belongings, and the family looked very unhappy about it, but the police had guns and cameras, and that settled things. It’s interesting what conclusions different people might draw from a scene like that.

Later that night, after we get back to the Palm, I tell Mike about what we saw. He asks what we’d thought. “It was fucked up,” we say.

Mike sighs. “You should see Bethlehem.”    

Jerusalem is so close to Bethlehem that you barely have time to wonder why all the billboards that advertise luxury condos use English instead of Arabic as the second language before you arrive at the wall.

The wall is the most hideous structure I’ve ever seen. It’s a huge, groaning monument to death. Tall grey rectangles bite into the earth like iron teeth, horribly bare, cold, sterile, a towering monstrosity. The wall makes the air taste like poison.

We’re in the car of Mike’s cousin Harun, who is Palestinian, but his car has Israeli plates so we aren’t searched at the checkpoint. We inch past the concrete barriers and armored trucks. Harun holds his identity pass out the window, a soldier waves us through, and a few seconds later we’re in Bethlehem, a short drive from where Jesus Christ was born. It feels like entering prison. I don’t say prison in the sense of an ugly and depressing place you’d prefer not to visit. I say prison in the literal sense: a fortified enclosure where human beings are kept against their will by heavily armed guards who will shoot them if they try to leave. This is what modern life is like in Bethlehem, birthplace of our Lord and Savior.

Looking at the wall from the Israeli side breaks your heart because of its naked ugliness. On the Palestinian side, the unending slabs of concrete have been decorated with slogans, signs, and graffiti, which break your heart for different reasons. One of the hardest parts is reading the sumud series. These are short stories written on plain white posters, plastered to the wall about 10 feet up. Each story comes from a Palestinian woman or girl, and most are written in English, because the only people who read these stories are tourists.

One in particular catches my eye, by a woman named Antoinette:

All my life was in Jerusalem! I was there daily: I worked there at a school as a volunteer and all my friends live there. I used to belong to the Anglican Church in Jerusalem and was a volunteer there. I arranged the flowers and was active with the other women. I rented a flat but I was not allowed to stay because I do not have a Jerusalem ID card. Now I cannot go to Jerusalem: the wall separates me from my church, from my life. We are imprisoned here in Bethlehem. All my relationships with Jerusalem are dead. I am a dying woman.

The flowers are what gets me, because my mother also arranges flowers at church. Hers is an Eastern Orthodox congregation in Minneapolis, about 20 minutes by car from my childhood home. That’s about the same distance between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, although there aren’t any military checkpoints or armored cars patrolling the Minnesotan highways. Until today, I would’ve been unable to imagine what that would even look like. The situation here is so unlike anything I’ve ever encountered in real life that all I can think is, “it’s like a bad war movie.” For the Palestinian people who’ve been living under an increasingly brutal military occupation for the last 70 years, an entire lifetime, I can’t begin to guess at the depths of their helpless anger. What did Antoinette think, the first time the soldiers refused to let her pass? What did she say? What would my mother say? There wouldn’t be a goddamned thing she could do, or I could do, or my father or my sisters, or anyone else. We’d all just have to live with it, the soldiers groping us, beating us, mocking us. No wonder Antoinette gave up hope. In her place, would I be any different? We walk in silence for a long time.

We end up in a refugee camp called Aida, where more than 6,000 people live in an area roughly the size of a Super Target. Here, the air is literally poison. Israeli soldiers have fired so much tear gas into the tiny area that 100 percent of residents now suffer from its effects. If they were using the tear gas against, say, ISIS soldiers instead of Palestinian civilians, this would be a war crime, since “asphyxiating, poisonous, or other gases” are banned by the Geneva Protocol. However, such practices are deemed to be acceptable in peacetime, since there’s no chance an unarmed civilian population would be able to retaliate with toxic agents of their own. Without the threat of escalation, chemical warfare is just crowd control.

Before we continue, there are three things you should know about Aida. The first is that there’s no clear dividing line between Aida and Bethlehem, so an unwary pedestrian can easily wander into the refugee camp without realizing it. The second thing is that it doesn’t look like a refugee camp, at least if you’re expecting a refugee camp to be full of emergency trailers, flimsy tents, and flaming barrels of trash. The third thing is that the kids who live there have terrible taste in soccer teams.

We meet the first group as soon as we enter the camp. There are five of them, all teenage boys. One of them is wearing a knockoff Yankees hat. They’re staring at us, and at once I’m very aware of my camera bag’s bulkiness and the blondeness of my fiancée’s hair. A loudspeaker crackles with the cry of the muzzein, and it’s only then that I realize how deeply we Americans have been conditioned to associate the Arabic language with violence and death. The boys exchange a quick burst of words, raising my blood pressure even higher, and cross the street toward us.

“Hello…  what’s your name?” The kid who speaks first is tall and stocky, wearing the same black track jacket and blue jeans favored by 95 percent of the world’s male adolescents. He’s also sporting the Ronaldo haircut, as are several of his friends. Two of the kids start to pull out cigarettes, so I pull out my cigarettes faster and offer the pack to them. Is this a bad, irresponsible thing to do? Sure, and if you’re worried about the long-term health of these kids’ lungs, you should call the American manufacturers who supply Israel with the chemical weapons that are used to poison the air they breathe every day.

I tell the kid my name is Nick, and he shakes my hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Shadi.” He’s carrying a rolled-up book, as are his friends, so I ask if he’s going to school. “Yeah bro, exams. We have three this week.” His friends laugh, and then engage in a quick tussle for the right of explaining that they’re heading to their math exam now, which is a boring and difficult subject, and I agree that it is, although at least you never have to use most of it after you finish school, a sentiment that earns me daps from Shadi and his friends, and we stand there giggling and smoking on the street corner of the refugee camp, though for a few moments we could be anywhere in the world.

My fiancée and I, both teachers by trade, start to pepper the kids with questions. Shadi says that he has one year left at the nearby high school, which is run by the UN refugee agency that was just stripped of half its funding by Trump. After he finishes, he plans to study at Bethlehem University. The other guys nod with approval, and speak of similar hopes. I ask them who their favorite footballer is, and they all say Ronaldo, at which I spit in disbelief, because everyone knows that Ronaldo sucks and Messi is much better, visca el Barça! Shadi and his friends break into huge grins, since few elements of brotherhood are more universal than talking shit about sports. Seconds later we’re howling with laughter as Shadi’s buddy makes insulting pantomimes about Messi’s diminutive size. A small part of my brain is loudly and repeatedly insisting that everything about this moment of life is batshit lunacy, that there’s no reason why I should be standing in a Palestinian refugee camp, yards away from buildings my country helped bomb into rubble, with my pretty fiancée and expensive camera, talking in English slang with a group of boys whose lungs are scarred with chemicals made in the USA, the exact kind of reckless young ruffians whose slingshots and stones are such a terrifying threat to the fearsome Israeli military, and the craziest thing of all is that here in the refugee camp, surrounded by derelict cars and rusty barbed wire and 6,000 displaced Palestinians,  we are not in danger, at least not from whom you’d think. Here, in the refugee camp, we can joke around with people who speak our language and know our cultural references and actively seek to help us navigate their neighborhood. None of this is to say that Aida is a safe, comfortable, or morally defensible place to put human beings, but only that the people who live there treated us with such overwhelming kindness and decency that I have never been more ashamed at what my country does in my name. I tell Shadi and his friends to take the rest of my cigarettes, but they smile and decline.

“We, uh, have to go now,” says Shadi, as his friends start to walk up the street. “Do you have Facebook?” We do, because everyone does, and as we exchange information, I wish him good luck on his math exam. “No way, bro, I suck at math,” he says. We both laugh, and I pat him on the back.

“Fuck math. But hey, you’re gonna do great, Shadi.”

“Thanks bro. Fuck math.”

I hope he gets every question correct on his exam. I hope he goes to university and wins a scholarship to Oxford. I hope he invents some insanely popular widget and it makes him a billion dollars and he never has to breathe tear gas again.

We continue walking through Aida camp. The buildings are square, ugly, and drab, but the walls are decorated with colorful paintings of fish and butterflies and meadows (along with a somewhat darker array of scenes from the Israeli military occupation). We meet a group of cousins, aged four to 10, all girls, who ask if we can speak English. When we offer them a bag of candy, they take one piece each, and run away yelping when a man limps out the front door of their house. “Thank you,” he says, his face a mask of grave civility. Cars, all bearing green-and-white Palestinian plates instead of the blue-and-yellow Israeli ones, slow down so their drivers can shout “Hello!” We meet another group of kids, boys this time, who grab fistfuls of candy and make playful attempts to unfasten my wristwatch. We make a hasty retreat from this group. The streets are scorched in spots where tear gas canisters exploded.  Narrow strips of pockmarked pavement lead us down steep hills and into winding alleys, and soon we’re lost.

This is how we meet Ahmed. He’s a tall man, about 40 years old, with a small black mustache and arms as thin as a stork’s legs. A yellow sofa leans against the concrete wall of the three-storey apartment building where he lives. Ahmed is sitting there with an elderly couple. He asks if we’d like a cup of tea, and although we’ve been warned about the old “come inside for a cup of tea” scam, we accept his offer. The elderly couple greets us in Arabic, and I try not to notice the large plastic bag of orange liquid peeking out from beneath the old man’s shirt.

While we climb the stairs to Ahmed’s apartment, he tells us that the old people are his parents. “They live here,” he says, pointing to the door on the first floor, “because they don’t walk very good. My mother has problems with her legs, my father is sick from the water.” He traces the pipes with his finger, and we see they’re coated in a thick reddish crust. “Here is the home of my big son,” he says when we reach the second floor. “He has a new baby.” We congratulate him on becoming a grandfather. “And I have a new baby, too! Come, I show you!” One more flight of stairs, and we arrive at Ahmed’s apartment.

It looks remarkably similar to a hundred other apartments we’ve visited. Framed photos of various family members hang on the living room walls, which are painted the same not-quite-white as most living room walls. There’s a beautiful red rug and a small TV. A woman is sitting on the sofa, nursing a baby as she folds socks. “My wife,” says Ahmed.

She speaks a little English too, and says that her name is Nada. She has a pale round face and long black hair. Her eyes are soft, kind, and completely exhausted. Yet if she’s annoyed or embarrassed by our presence, she doesn’t show it. She just hands the baby to Ahmed and goes to make the tea.

“I’m sorry for my house,” says Ahmed, cradling his son like a loaf of bread with legs. “We try to be clean, but…” There’s not so much as a slipper out of place, but I know what he means. “We rent this flat. And my son, and my parents. All rent. Before we have a farm, animals, olive trees, but now, we rent.” I ask about his job. He smiles and shakes his head. “I want a job,” he says, “I love to work. With my hands, with my mind. I love to work. But here, haven’t jobs.” For a second he looks like he’s going to continue this line of thinking, but he stops himself. “I help my wife, that is my job.” Ahmed laughs and passes his baby to my fiancée. “And he, he helps in the home?” She demurs while I protest in mock indignation. I do the dishes every morning before she even wakes up! Still laughing, Ahmed rubs his shins, and again it’s easy to forget we’re sitting in a refugee camp in Jesus’ hometown.

Then the baby wheezes. It’s a dry, scratchy wheeze. Ahmed squirms in his seat, looking embarrassed. The baby begins to cough. My fiancée rubs his back as the coughing turns wet and violent.  Machine gun explosions blast from his tiny lungs. As an asthmatic, I recognize the sound of serious sickness. The baby writhes in my fiancée’s lap, struggling to breathe. He’s gasping and it’s getting worse fast. At moments like these, personal experience tells me that a nebulizer can be the difference between life and death. I don’t insult Ahmed by asking if he has one, because it’s clear that he doesn’t. All I can do is rub the boy’s chest with my finger, a stupid and useless massage. He kicks and stretches as if trying to wiggle away from the unseen demon that’s strangling him.

Nada hurries back with the tea. “I’m sorry,” she says, picking up the baby. She coos to him in Arabic and rubs his back, both of which are comforting but neither of which can relax the inflamed tissues of her infant’s lungs. “My baby…” Unable to find the words in English, she looks to her husband.

Ahmed rubs his cheek. “When she is pregnant, one night the soldiers come. They say the children throw stones. They always throw stones. So the soldiers shoot gas in all the houses. In the windows, over there.” His voice gets quieter. “And she is very sick. When the baby is born, he is sick too.” I ask him if it’s possible to find medicine. “Sometimes yes,” says Ahmed, “but very, very expensive.” For the first time, there’s a note of frustration in his voice. “Everything is expensive here. You see this,” and he picks up a pack of diapers, “it cost me thirty shekels. 10 dollars, almost. And the baby needs so many things. It is impossible to buy. I haven’t money for meat, how can I buy medicine?” He points to a plastic bag with four small pitas. “This is our food. One bread for my two sons, and two breads for my wife. She must make milk for our baby.” When I ask him what he eats, he holds up his cup of tea.

Somehow Nada has soothed the baby out of danger. His breathing is almost normal again, just a quiet raspy crackle. She’s still staring at him, her big brown eyes wide with worry. I don’t know how many times she’s done this before. I don’t know how many times are left before her luck runs out. 

Somehow she’s keeping her baby alive with nothing but the sheer force of her love. I ask to use the toilet so I don’t have to cry in front of her.

(Continue Reading)

[mythos2]

If you’ve listened to our podcast, you’ve probably heard us say a million times that I and the other two Backloggers are originally from a state in the USA called West Virginia.  Huntington WV, to be exact, similar to some other good, good podcast boys.

Plain and simple, we love our home. While I left it a few years back, I’m always homesick for it. Growing up, I took for granted just how freaking beautiful the state was, and the amazing opportunities I was granted by being in a state where even the most major city was not even a mile away from massive forests and rolling mountains.  Camping, hiking, and many other things were second-nature to me. I’ve mentioned it before but Yuru Camp legit had me crying remembering what I had to leave behind for better opportunity.

I mean, that’s the capitol building for the state.  And that mountain right behind it is the start of the surrounding forest.  Nature be everywhere.

See, my home state is poor.  Very poor, by United States standards, anyway.  As beautiful as it is, West Virginia has been taken advantage of by hundreds of companies that mined it for its natural resources and then took all that money and ran.  We prospered while those companies were here, but they’re mostly gone and so has our fortune. The unemployment rate is higher than the national average and the state government is constantly misaffording funds.  However, we’ve always been a strong people. We were birthed out of a fighting spirit, seceding from the Confederacy and joining the Union in the American Civil War because we were against slavery.  We were the first ones to start the Railroad Riots of the 1870s because we weren’t going to lie down and let companies destroy the lives of their workers, and we continued that tradition of fighting for the little guys even this year, with the Teachers’ Strikes that started a national movement for better pay state by state for teachers.  We’ve always been a strong people, though we suffer a lot.

It’s because of this that I’ve found pride in the better aspects of my home.  Yes, we unfortunately still have many horrible racial and gender issues, brought on by years of physical seclusion from the rest of the world thanks to our mountains as well as decades of conservatives ruling our entire state government, but we also have so many wonderful people that may not always politically agree, but will always have you at the dinner table, no matter your views or the color of your skin. There’s a hospitality in my home state that I hold dearly. We’ll not only give someone the time of day, but if you strike up a conversation, we’ll also give you a free meal and place to stay, if you need it. So I think it’s such a shame that we’ve always been given a bad rep.

West Virginia is rarely known about.  Most people can find Israel on a map faster than they can find us, some of these people (no joke) living just a state over.  When people do know about us, we have notoriously been represented in American media for decades as the place of illiterate and idiotic hillbillies who couldn’t tell a door from a window.  We’ve been the butt of millions of jokes about how stupid and bigoted we are compared to the cultured and enlightened masses of the rest of the nation. This, coming from even those Confederate states who still to this day have some of the highest rates of police violence and racial discrimination in America.  But there’s nothing we can really do. We don’t have the funds or the media empires needed to try and change other’s minds, or even have them realize we exist. So we duck our heads, keep to ourselves, and try to get by with what we have, hoping America learns about the real us in time. We’re used to being the underdog because it’s all we’ve ever known.

That’s why this past E3 Gaming Conference absolutely shocked me.

“Virtual Roads… Take me home…”

Fallout, a game series about the horrors and effects of nuclear war, has always been in love with taking well-known places in America and depicting what their apocalyptic counterparts would be. The dev teams for these games take great pride and pain to represent some of the most famous places in America, whether it be our nation’s capital of D.C., the historical city of Boston, the infamous “sin city” of Las Vegas, and even larger swaths of land like California and the Midwest. The most recent games had their teams spend long periods researching even tiny little details of Boston and D.C., representing relatively accurately (if apocalyptically) the buildings and culture of these places. So imagine what went through my head when I suddenly see the player character of Fallout walking through the hills of my home, stepping over the ruins of many places I spent my childhood.

My neighbors probably heard an incredibly loud, “HELL YEAH!” upon me seeing the New River Gorge Bridge in the game.

This was unheard of.  West Virginia barely gets mentioned in a TV show now and again.  The only movies that mention us are usually horror films, like Silence of the Lambs, Silent Hill, and Tucker Vs. The Forces of Evil.  All good films in my book but terrible representation when the only thing we’re known for is bad cell reception and the perfect place to murder some kids.  Yet booming off the walls of this convention hall was the famous song about West Virginia by John Denver, and on screens altogether larger than my apartment was something completely different.  Positive representation.

In his well-known deep voice, Ron Perlman talked over that beautiful rendition of “Country Roads” in the trailer about a people that would open the door to their vault and travel out into a gorgeous landscape to rebuild, the trailer showing off beautiful mountains, dense forests, rustic towns, and unbridled opportunity.  There it all was.  The New River Gorge, Morgantown, The Greenbrier Hotel, and even later on in the show was Camden Park, an amusement park located not even ten minutes from my old house.  But to top it all off, after the dust had settled from seeing this trailer, the director and executive producer Todd Howard took the stage and stole my heart, giving these short and sweet words:

“Now most people don’t know West Virginia that well.  It is an incredible array of natural wonders, towns, and government secrets.”

It may seem like such a small thing, only two sentences, but for someone to speak so kindly even in this way about the place I grew up is so rare.  And he even knew our history enough to include the mystery of ‘government secrets’ in the mix, as we used to house the United States government’s secret emergency nuclear bunker.  Not only this but Todd stated soon after:

“And we even use the folklore of West Virginia to bring our Fallout [creatures] to life.”

A line stated while showcasing cryptids and monsters from our folklore and history, like The Grafton Monster, Giant Sloths from ancient times, and even allusions to The Mothman.  Pieces of the culture of my state were there, in all their strange and quirky glory. As the presentation went on, and Todd continued to talk, I just became even more giddy in my seat.  The millions of people who play the Fallout games would finally experience in even a small way this place that I loved.

https://twitter.com/mothmanbot/status/1015447901613514752Mothman is real, on Twitter, and will take what they want.

Representation is an important issue and there are many, many groups out there that desperately need it more than some straight white guy from the boonies.  Most importantly, I feel these groups of people need our time and attention first. However, this whole thing made me realize that there was more to representation than I had initially thought, and a smaller subset to it.  My visceral reaction to seeing some geological location like Charleston in a video game was because I associate with that place so much. It’s surprising how impactful where we grow up or where we call home can be to us. It incites a pride in us at times, something that is easily seen when going to sports games and watching the crowds cheer for their hometown.  It’s the feeling we get when after a long trip to other cities and places, we return exhausted and collapse comfortably in the safety and familiarity our beds.  Our homes speak to us deeply, and help to shape who we are in many ways.

And it’s more than just a place on a map.  To see a video game company try so hard to represent an underappreciated and oftentimes forgotten culture filled me with a joy I didn’t realize I could feel.  I spent a large amount of my time as a teenager just wanting to escape the culture around me. I hated the Appalachian accent, for instance, because it and its close cousin the Southern accent were the go-to accents in media to showcase someone as an ignorant idiot.  My father even spent years getting rid of his Appalachian accent to be taken seriously in his field, his doctorate of chemistry apparently not always being enough to prove his intelligence. However, as I got older, and the idea of moving away became very real, I realized how much impact the people and culture around me had.  I grew up with these hills and with these people, influenced by them, warts, accents, and all. I even started wishing for more of an accent, among other things I wanted to take with me, a reminder of where I came from and where I sadly had to leave.

West Virginia is one of many places that is rarely ever represented well, if represented at all.  I’m glad for those small bits of positivity we get, like the My Brother My Brother and Me television show, the wonderful film Logan Lucky, the respectful and loving episode of the late Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown television series, and other small claims to fame my state gets.  However, there are many other places that need some respect as well.  We all have places that mean something to us. We should celebrate where we call our home and share that love with others, talk about them, let them see where our hearts lie.  So that even if they aren’t always represented in some medium, we can represent them ourselves.

  And speaking of representing, here’s some of my favorite images I found of WV landscapes.  Hope you enjoy them.

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  Mythos talks about how amazing and important it is to have representation in media of where you call home. Even if it's a little nuked. If you’ve listened to our podcast, you’ve probably heard us say a million times that I and the other two Backloggers are originally from a state in the USA called West Virginia. 

[writingwithcolor]

POC Profile: Jewish Middle Eastern from Israel

I was born in Israel and moved to the United States later on. I’m of Yemen, Egyptian and Syrian descent but am 100% Mizrachi Jewish. My family all moved into Israel in or right after World War II, having gone through its affects in context of the Middle East. I am bilingual (Hebrew and English) so I may also point out some bilingual experiences. 

I see a lot of talk about Ashkenazi (European) Jews and the Arabic/Muslim community in the Middle East, but barely see any information about Mizrachi Jews (which is a huge ethnicity). 

Culture/Holidays: Even though Mizrachi Jewish culture is very similar to its surrounding Middle Eastern community it’s also extremely different. Because Jews were segregated from Muslim (and other goy religions) neighborhoods they grew their own cultures and traditions, and because they were far away from their Ashkenazi sisters the holidays are celebrated differently. Some even created new holidays! A good example of this is Mimuna, a Moroccan-Jewish holiday celebrating the finish of the intense Kosher within the Passover season. I’ve noticed that in my Grandma’s Yemen household we celebrate holidays differently than in my Ashkenazi friend’s households (also extremely differently than in American Jewish households). We read different parts of Magalas, sing different songs, and if we do sing the same songs they are probably set in different tunes. Simply, search up traditions for the specific area you’re writing about, because chances are they celebrate it differently than most Jews you see in the USA (or any European country) do.

Food: You know how people make jokes about white people food being bland? It’s the same in the Jewish community. Food is very different within the Jewish community. You heard of kugel? That’s an Ashkenazi food. So is defiltefish and chunt and matzabre (although matzabre does have a Yemeni equivalent called ftut where you soak the matza instead of fry it). Middle Eastern Jewish food is amazing! Although I can mostly only tell you about Yemen food, it’s such a great area to explore. Yemeni Jewish food is very filling and has a lot of dough based recipes (such as jachnun and malauach), and has amazing spice and sauces like schug and chilbe. A lot of the food is also pita based (the cuisine very rarely involve bread). And Just like how the shnitzel snuck into Ashkenazi food, goy Middle Eastern food became a common in the Mizrachi community, like shwarma, falafel and shakshuka. 

In Israel there are some really common food differences than in the USA. Falafel is the common street food (similar to getting one of those ham and egg bagels in a coffee shop in an inner city area in the USA). Almost every house is equipped with pita, and bread is of higher level than the usual pre-cut soft white bread that is found in Supermarkets in the USA. The Mizrachi and Ashkenazi cuisine gets really mixed (such as having Ashkenazi defiltefish with Yemeni chilbe as a spice) and there are some stables that everybody eats (like shnitzel with ptitim or spaghetti).

History: The main thing I want to say here is that yes, the Mizrachi community was affected by WWII. Just like with Trump, when a powerful nation f**** up, the whole world feels it. The Holocaust was not exclusive to Europe. The Mizrachi community was hunted for literally thousands of years in the Middle East (seriously, that’s what many of our holidays are about) and it absolutely did not end until we were able to move out. My Yemeni grandmother had to run away from Yemen and walk the whole way through Saudi Arabia to get to Israel because their community was being murdered in masses, the Jewish community in Yemen is practically extinct, everybody who could moved to Israel. My grandfather in Egypt faced the same causes to move into Israel, even though his family was powerful in Cairo back then they left all their belongings when his uncle was killed on the street by an anti-Semitic riot.

Identity Issues: Back in Israel my identity wasn’t an issue for me. I was Jewish (like everybody) and Mizrachi (like many). But when I moved to the USA it was different. All the Jews here were Ashkenazi (except for the small Sephardi community) and none of the Middle Eastern community here was Jewish. They barely even thought it existed. I still have people who are shocked when I say I’m a Mizrachi Jew, because they thought that Judaism was almost exclusively a white religion. Which I can’t blame them for when that’s all they see around them. But it’s still a problem. Middle Eastern meetups commonly wouldn’t accept me as a Middle Eastern person, and even more so shunned me for being Israeli even though I’m not anti-Palestine. I would still go to meetups like this even though I was commonly called a terrorist or would have to deal with anti-Semitism, because even though I was the only Jew there, these people still dealt with similar problems to which I did living in this which supremacist nation - I felt closer to them than I did to Ashkenazi Jews (and unlike in Ashkenazi communities I was not treated as a token POC).  I stopped going when my mom banned me from such meetings, because someone in the group threatened to hurt me. I’m not saying it’s not okay to be disgusted by Israels actions against the Arabic community around it (I am too), I’m just saying that shunning me from that community when I had no other community to go to because of something I could not and did not have any say in was not the right answer in my opinion.

Language: One aspect that the Ashkenazi and Mizrachi community have in common is the Holy language, Hebrew. In Israel that’s the main language that is spoken, other than minor communities who speak Arabic or Ultra-Orthodox communities who speak Yiddish. Still, the communities were separated for so many years that there are many alternate pronunciations and accents. As you may have noticed in the food section, Ashkenazi food names are a lot more European, while Mizrachi names are a lot closer to Arabic and other Semitic languages. 

Misconceptions: Judaism is not a white religion! That is not to say that Ashkenazi Jews aren’t white, but saying that Judaism is a white religion cuts POC Jews (or JOC? I’ve never seen that in use) out of their goy communities. Judaism is found all around the world, there are Latinx Jews, East Asian Jews, African Jews, Hispanic Jews, and Middle Eastern Jews. The only place I would be shocked to find a Jewish Ethnicity in would be Native American tribes. Also on a different note, bilinguals do mix up languages. I see bilingual people shunning monolingual authors for having characters accidentally answer in the wrong language, saying “whoops! I was thinking in my /other language/!” But I do this so commonly that my friends joke that I’m a badly written bilingual character. I’m just saying that the bilingual experience is vast, and not everybody thinks the same.

Things I’d like to see less of/Stereotypes I’m tired of seeing: Every Jewish family being written like the Maus family. All of them are white German Jews who’s family suffered through the Holocaust. Don’t get me wrong, Holocaust survivor’s stories are so so important. But all the Jews I see in media are Jewish studies professors in the upper middle class suburban area who adopted a kid of a different race and made them hilariously Jewish in an out of place way. It’s so boring. And nonrepresentational. Please stop creating stereotypical cookie-cut Jews. Also the idea that Jews are the extreme end of being white, where Jews can’t even start to understand people of color, or white Jews marking themselves as people of color. 

Things I’d like to see more of: More Mizrachi Jews! I’m telling you this is such a rad community, and it is barely explored in literature. Once when I tried to find any books or studies about Yemeni Jews in English, and all I found was one book about Yemeni-American second generation girls in Michigan (it’s called “All American Yemeni Girls” by Loukia K. Sarroub, and is an amazing study you should read). All I found was this one book! This tells me that both the Middle Eastern and Mizrachi communities are lacking in literature. 

Please just consider integrating different Jewish communities into your story if possible.

Shira’s Note:

Great post! I just wanted to add a note that I’ve seen a Native+Jewish blogger on Tumblr; I’m not sure if there was a conversion or intermarriage at some point but I would hate for that one blogger (whose URL escapes me at the moment) to feel erased. Another note about the bilingual thing: it is VERY, VERY important for people writing bilingual characters to understand that different languages treat their bilingual speakers different ways. The ways Yiddish sneaks into English are different from the ways Spanish sneaks into English and both are different from the way Mandarin sneaks into English. Don’t extrapolate the Yiddish-inflected English from TV sitcom Ashkies as the way Spanglish works, for example. This post is a testimonial as to why.

Third, lol: “All of them are white German Jews who’s family suffered through the Holocaust.” it me, so thank you for contributing this post so that my voice isn’t the only one on here. We all really appreciate it.

–Shira

[batterymonster2021]

The danger of a single story | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/the-danger-of-a-single-story-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-8/

The danger of a single story | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I am a storyteller. And i wish to inform you a number of personal studies about what I prefer to name "the hazard of the only story." I grew up on a school campus in japanese Nigeria. My mother says that I began studying on the age of two, even though I suppose 4 is mostly close to the reality. So I used to be an early reader, and what I read had been British and American kid’s books. I was once additionally an early writer, and once I started out to jot down, at concerning the age of seven, reports in pencil with crayon illustrations that my poor mom was once obligated to read, I wrote precisely the varieties of reports I was once reading: All my characters have been white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, (Laughter) they usually talked rather a lot in regards to the climate, how beautiful it was that the solar had come out. (Laughter) Now, this although that I lived in Nigeria. I had under no circumstances been outside Nigeria. We did not have snow, we ate mangoes, and we under no circumstances talked about the climate, for the reason that there was once no ought to.My characters additionally drank plenty of ginger beer, when you consider that the characters in the British books I learn drank ginger beer. In no way mind that I had no notion what ginger beer was. (Laughter) And for a long time afterwards, i’d have a determined desire to style ginger beer. But that’s a different story. What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and prone we are within the face of a narrative, exceptionally as children. On account that all I had read have been books wherein characters have been foreign, I had come to be convinced that books via their very nature had to have foreigners in them and needed to be about things with which I would no longer individually identify.Now, things transformed when I found out African books. There weren’t lots of them to be had, and they weren’t relatively as easy to search out because the international books. However on account that of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, I went by way of a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realized that men and women like me, ladies with epidermis the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair might not kind ponytails, would additionally exist in literature. I began to put in writing about things I famous. Now, I loved these American and British books I learn. They stirred my creativeness. They spread out new worlds for me. But the unintended final result was once that i didn’t know that humans like me might exist in literature. So what the discovery of African writers did for me was this: It saved me from having a single story of what books are. I come from a traditional, core-class Nigerian loved ones.My father was a professor. My mother used to be an administrator. And so we had, as was once the norm, live-in home aid, who would normally come from nearby rural villages. So, the year I grew to become eight, we obtained a new condominium boy. His name was once Fide. The only thing my mother told us about him used to be that his loved ones was once very bad. My mom sent yams and rice, and our historical clothes, to his family. And once I did not conclude my dinner, my mom would say, "finish your meals! Don’t you already know? Folks like Fide’s family have nothing." So I felt colossal pity for Fide’s loved ones. Then one Saturday, we went to his village to visit, and his mom confirmed us a fantastically patterned basket product of dyed raffia that his brother had made. I was once startled. It had no longer befell to me that any individual in his family could virtually make anything. All I had heard about them used to be how bad they had been, in order that it had grow to be inconceivable for me to look them as something else but terrible.Their poverty used to be my single story of them. Years later, I idea about this after I left Nigeria to go to college in the USA. I used to be 19. My American roommate used to be stunned through me. She requested where I had realized to communicate English so well, and was burdened once I mentioned that Nigeria occurred to have English as its authentic language. She requested if she could take heed to what she known as my "tribal song," and was once for that reason very dissatisfied after I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. (Laughter) She assumed that i did not comprehend how to use a stove. What struck me was once this: She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her default role towards me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-which means pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there used to be no likelihood of Africans being much like her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complicated than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals.I need to say that earlier than I went to the U.S., I did not consciously determine as African. But in the U.S., each time Africa got here up, humans turned to me. Never intellect that I knew nothing about areas like Namibia. But I did come to include this new identification, and in lots of methods I believe of myself now as African. Even though I still get really irritable when Africa is known as a nation, the most up to date illustration being my in any other case exceptional flight from Lagos two days ago, where there was once an announcement on the Virgin flight in regards to the charity work in "India, Africa and different nations." (Laughter) So, after I had spent some years in the U.S.As an African, i began to appreciate my roommate’s response to me. If I had no longer grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa were from preferred snap shots, I too would believe that Africa was a position of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible men and women, combating senseless wars, demise of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by using a type, white foreigner. I’d see Africans in the equal method that I, as a baby, had visible Fide’s loved ones. This single story of Africa eventually comes, I consider, from Western literature. Now, here’s a quote from the writing of a London merchant known as John Lok, who sailed to west Africa in 1561 and saved a fascinating account of his voyage. After regarding the black Africans as "beasts who don’t have any residences," he writes, "they’re also folks with out heads, having their mouth and eyes in their breasts." Now, I’ve laughed each time I’ve learn this. And one have got to admire the creativeness of John Lok. However what is major about his writing is that it represents the opening of a culture of telling African experiences in the West: A culture of Sub-Saharan Africa as a position of negatives, of difference, of darkness, of people who, in the words of the distinct poet Rudyard Kipling, are "half of satan, half of little one." And so, i began to realise that my American roommate have got to have throughout her life visible and heard specific models of this single story, as had a professor, who once told me that my novel was once now not "authentically African." Now, I was once particularly willing to contend that there were a quantity of things incorrect with the unconventional, that it had failed in a number of places, but I had not fairly imagined that it had failed at attaining something called African authenticity.In fact, i did not recognize what African authenticity was. The professor told me that my characters were an excessive amount of like him, an trained and center-type man. My characters drove cars. They weren’t ravenous. For this reason they weren’t authentically African. However I need to rapidly add that I too am simply as guilty within the question of the single story. A few years ago, I visited Mexico from the U.S. The political climate within the U.S. On the time was stressful, and there were debates occurring about immigration.And, as in general occurs in america, immigration grew to become synonymous with Mexicans. There have been unending reviews of Mexicans as people who had been fleecing the healthcare process, sneaking throughout the border, being arrested at the border, that kind of factor. I don’t forget going for walks round on my first day in Guadalajara, looking at the individuals going to work, rolling up tortillas in the marketplace, smoking, laughing. I recollect first feeling slight shock. And then, I was overwhelmed with shame. I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans that that they had become one factor in my mind, the abject immigrant. I had purchased into the single story of Mexicans and that i would not had been more ashamed of myself. So that’s how you can create a single story, exhibit a individuals as one thing, as just one thing, over and over again, and that’s what they grow to be.It’s unimaginable to speak concerning the single story with out talking about vigor. There’s a phrase, an Igbo phrase, that I think about each time I feel concerning the energy constructions of the arena, and it’s "nkali." it’s a noun that loosely interprets to "to be larger than one more." Like our economic and political worlds, reviews too are outlined with the aid of the principle of nkali: How they’re told, who tells them, when they may be told, what number of reports are instructed, are really stylish on power. Vigour is the capability now not simply to tell the story of a further individual, but to make it the definitive story of that character. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a persons, the easiest strategy to do it’s to tell their story and to start with, "secondly." start the story with the arrows of the Native americans, and no longer with the appearance of the British, and you’ve got an wholly one-of-a-kind story.Begin the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial construction of the African state, and you have an wholly unique story. I lately spoke at a tuition where a scholar instructed me that it was once the sort of disgrace that Nigerian men have been bodily abusers like the father persona in my novel. I informed him that I had just read a novel known as "American Psycho" — (Laughter) — and that it was such a shame that young american citizens were serial murderers. (Laughter) (Applause) Now, obviously I said this in a match of mild inflammation. (Laughter) but it could never have happened to me to suppose that just for the reason that I had learn a novel where a character used to be a serial killer that he used to be come what may consultant of all americans. This is not on the grounds that i’m a greater person than that student, but considering the fact that of america’s cultural and economic vigour, I had many experiences of the usa.I had read Tyler and Updike and Steinbeck and Gaitskill. I did not have a single story of the usa. Once I realized, some years in the past, that writers have been anticipated to have had relatively sad childhoods to be effective, i started to believe about how I could invent horrible matters my mum and dad had completed to me. (Laughter) however in fact that I had an awfully glad childhood, filled with laughter and love, in an awfully shut-knit family. But I additionally had grandfathers who died in refugee camps. My cousin Polle died considering the fact that he might no longer get enough healthcare. One among my closest friends, Okoloma, died in a plane crash when you consider that our fire trucks didn’t have water. I grew up below repressive navy governments that devalued education, so that oftentimes, my mom and dad weren’t paid their salaries.And so, as a youngster, I saw jam disappear from the breakfast table, then margarine disappeared, then bread grew to become too high-priced, then milk grew to be rationed. And most of all, a style of normalized political fear invaded our lives. All of those stories make me who i am. But to insist on best these terrible stories is to flatten my experience and to overlook the many other reviews that formed me. The single story creates stereotypes, and the predicament with stereotypes is just not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the one story. Of path, Africa is a continent filled with catastrophes: There are immense ones, such as the horrific rapes in Congo and depressing ones, equivalent to the fact that 5,000 humans practice for one job vacancy in Nigeria. But there are other reviews that aren’t about catastrophe, and it is vitally predominant, it is only as main, to talk about them.I’ve invariably felt that it is unimaginable to have interaction thoroughly with a place or a person with out attractive with all of the reviews of that place and that person. The outcome of the one story is this: It robs individuals of dignity. It makes our awareness of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are special as an alternative than how we’re similar. So what if before my Mexican trip, I had followed the immigration debate from all sides, the U.S. And the Mexican? What if my mom had informed us that Fide’s household was poor and hardworking? What if we had an African television network that broadcast numerous African studies far and wide the arena? What the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe calls "a balance of studies." What if my roommate knew about my Nigerian publisher, Muhtar Bakare, a great man who left his job in a financial institution to follow his dream and begin a publishing residence? Now, the conventional knowledge used to be that Nigerians don’t read literature.He disagreed. He felt that humans who would learn, would learn, should you made literature low-cost and available to them. Rapidly after he released my first novel, I went to a tv station in Lagos to do an interview, and a lady who worked there as a messenger got here as much as me and mentioned, "I rather liked your novel. I didn’t like the ending. Now, you need to write a sequel, and that is what will occur …" (Laughter) and she went on to inform me what to put in writing in the sequel.I was no longer only charmed, I used to be very moved. Right here was a girl, part of the traditional masses of Nigerians, who were not presupposed to be readers. She had now not best learn the guide, but she had taken possession of it and felt justified in telling me what to write down in the sequel. Now, what if my roommate knew about my buddy Funmi Iyanda, a fearless girl who hosts a television exhibit in Lagos, and is decided to tell the reports that we opt for to forget? What if my roommate knew in regards to the heart approach that was carried out within the Lagos hospital last week? What if my roommate knew about ultra-modern Nigerian tune, talented people singing in English and Pidgin, and Igbo and Yoruba and Ijo, mixing influences from Jay-Z to Fela to Bob Marley to their grandfathers.What if my roommate knew about the feminine lawyer who lately went to courtroom in Nigeria to assignment a ridiculous regulation that required women to get their husband’s consent before renewing their passports? What if my roommate knew about Nollywood, filled with innovative humans making movies regardless of nice technical odds, movies so widespread that they really are the excellent instance of Nigerians drinking what they produce? What if my roommate knew about my wonderfully ambitious hair braider, who has just began her own industry promoting hair extensions? Or about the thousands of alternative Nigerians who start corporations and typically fail, however continue to nurse ambition? Whenever i am residence i am confronted with the common sources of infection for most Nigerians: our failed infrastructure, our failed government, but in addition with the aid of the extremely good resilience of individuals who thrive regardless of the federal government, alternatively than for the reason that of it. I instruct writing workshops in Lagos each summer, and it’s potent to me what number of persons follow, what number of persons are keen to jot down, to tell studies.My Nigerian publisher and i have simply started a non-profit known as Farafina believe, and we have now massive goals of building libraries and refurbishing libraries that exist already and supplying books for state schools that should not have whatever of their libraries, and also of organizing tons and plenty of workshops, in reading and writing, for the entire folks who’re keen to tell our many reviews. Stories topic. Many reviews topic. Studies have been used to dispossess and to malign, but experiences will also be used to empower and to humanize.Studies can break the honour of a people, but studies may additionally repair that damaged dignity. The American writer Alice Walker wrote this about her Southern relatives who had moved to the North. She introduced them to a booklet about the Southern lifestyles that they’d left at the back of. "They sat round, studying the publication themselves, being attentive to me learn the guide, and a kind of paradise used to be regained." I want to finish with this inspiration: That after we reject the one story, once we comprehend that there’s on no account a single story about any place, we regain a style of paradise.Thank you. (Applause) .

[airoasis]

The danger of a single story | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/the-danger-of-a-single-story-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-8/

The danger of a single story | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I am a storyteller. And i wish to inform you a number of personal studies about what I prefer to name "the hazard of the only story." I grew up on a school campus in japanese Nigeria. My mother says that I began studying on the age of two, even though I suppose 4 is mostly close to the reality. So I used to be an early reader, and what I read had been British and American kid’s books. I was once additionally an early writer, and once I started out to jot down, at concerning the age of seven, reports in pencil with crayon illustrations that my poor mom was once obligated to read, I wrote precisely the varieties of reports I was once reading: All my characters have been white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, (Laughter) they usually talked rather a lot in regards to the climate, how beautiful it was that the solar had come out. (Laughter) Now, this although that I lived in Nigeria. I had under no circumstances been outside Nigeria. We did not have snow, we ate mangoes, and we under no circumstances talked about the climate, for the reason that there was once no ought to.My characters additionally drank plenty of ginger beer, when you consider that the characters in the British books I learn drank ginger beer. In no way mind that I had no notion what ginger beer was. (Laughter) And for a long time afterwards, i’d have a determined desire to style ginger beer. But that’s a different story. What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and prone we are within the face of a narrative, exceptionally as children. On account that all I had read have been books wherein characters have been foreign, I had come to be convinced that books via their very nature had to have foreigners in them and needed to be about things with which I would no longer individually identify.Now, things transformed when I found out African books. There weren’t lots of them to be had, and they weren’t relatively as easy to search out because the international books. However on account that of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, I went by way of a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realized that men and women like me, ladies with epidermis the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair might not kind ponytails, would additionally exist in literature. I began to put in writing about things I famous. Now, I loved these American and British books I learn. They stirred my creativeness. They spread out new worlds for me. But the unintended final result was once that i didn’t know that humans like me might exist in literature. So what the discovery of African writers did for me was this: It saved me from having a single story of what books are. I come from a traditional, core-class Nigerian loved ones.My father was a professor. My mother used to be an administrator. And so we had, as was once the norm, live-in home aid, who would normally come from nearby rural villages. So, the year I grew to become eight, we obtained a new condominium boy. His name was once Fide. The only thing my mother told us about him used to be that his loved ones was once very bad. My mom sent yams and rice, and our historical clothes, to his family. And once I did not conclude my dinner, my mom would say, "finish your meals! Don’t you already know? Folks like Fide’s family have nothing." So I felt colossal pity for Fide’s loved ones. Then one Saturday, we went to his village to visit, and his mom confirmed us a fantastically patterned basket product of dyed raffia that his brother had made. I was once startled. It had no longer befell to me that any individual in his family could virtually make anything. All I had heard about them used to be how bad they had been, in order that it had grow to be inconceivable for me to look them as something else but terrible.Their poverty used to be my single story of them. Years later, I idea about this after I left Nigeria to go to college in the USA. I used to be 19. My American roommate used to be stunned through me. She requested where I had realized to communicate English so well, and was burdened once I mentioned that Nigeria occurred to have English as its authentic language. She requested if she could take heed to what she known as my "tribal song," and was once for that reason very dissatisfied after I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. (Laughter) She assumed that i did not comprehend how to use a stove. What struck me was once this: She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her default role towards me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-which means pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there used to be no likelihood of Africans being much like her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complicated than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals.I need to say that earlier than I went to the U.S., I did not consciously determine as African. But in the U.S., each time Africa got here up, humans turned to me. Never intellect that I knew nothing about areas like Namibia. But I did come to include this new identification, and in lots of methods I believe of myself now as African. Even though I still get really irritable when Africa is known as a nation, the most up to date illustration being my in any other case exceptional flight from Lagos two days ago, where there was once an announcement on the Virgin flight in regards to the charity work in "India, Africa and different nations." (Laughter) So, after I had spent some years in the U.S.As an African, i began to appreciate my roommate’s response to me. If I had no longer grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa were from preferred snap shots, I too would believe that Africa was a position of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible men and women, combating senseless wars, demise of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by using a type, white foreigner. I’d see Africans in the equal method that I, as a baby, had visible Fide’s loved ones. This single story of Africa eventually comes, I consider, from Western literature. Now, here’s a quote from the writing of a London merchant known as John Lok, who sailed to west Africa in 1561 and saved a fascinating account of his voyage. After regarding the black Africans as "beasts who don’t have any residences," he writes, "they’re also folks with out heads, having their mouth and eyes in their breasts." Now, I’ve laughed each time I’ve learn this. And one have got to admire the creativeness of John Lok. However what is major about his writing is that it represents the opening of a culture of telling African experiences in the West: A culture of Sub-Saharan Africa as a position of negatives, of difference, of darkness, of people who, in the words of the distinct poet Rudyard Kipling, are "half of satan, half of little one." And so, i began to realise that my American roommate have got to have throughout her life visible and heard specific models of this single story, as had a professor, who once told me that my novel was once now not "authentically African." Now, I was once particularly willing to contend that there were a quantity of things incorrect with the unconventional, that it had failed in a number of places, but I had not fairly imagined that it had failed at attaining something called African authenticity.In fact, i did not recognize what African authenticity was. The professor told me that my characters were an excessive amount of like him, an trained and center-type man. My characters drove cars. They weren’t ravenous. For this reason they weren’t authentically African. However I need to rapidly add that I too am simply as guilty within the question of the single story. A few years ago, I visited Mexico from the U.S. The political climate within the U.S. On the time was stressful, and there were debates occurring about immigration.And, as in general occurs in america, immigration grew to become synonymous with Mexicans. There have been unending reviews of Mexicans as people who had been fleecing the healthcare process, sneaking throughout the border, being arrested at the border, that kind of factor. I don’t forget going for walks round on my first day in Guadalajara, looking at the individuals going to work, rolling up tortillas in the marketplace, smoking, laughing. I recollect first feeling slight shock. And then, I was overwhelmed with shame. I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans that that they had become one factor in my mind, the abject immigrant. I had purchased into the single story of Mexicans and that i would not had been more ashamed of myself. So that’s how you can create a single story, exhibit a individuals as one thing, as just one thing, over and over again, and that’s what they grow to be.It’s unimaginable to speak concerning the single story with out talking about vigor. There’s a phrase, an Igbo phrase, that I think about each time I feel concerning the energy constructions of the arena, and it’s "nkali." it’s a noun that loosely interprets to "to be larger than one more." Like our economic and political worlds, reviews too are outlined with the aid of the principle of nkali: How they’re told, who tells them, when they may be told, what number of reports are instructed, are really stylish on power. Vigour is the capability now not simply to tell the story of a further individual, but to make it the definitive story of that character. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a persons, the easiest strategy to do it’s to tell their story and to start with, "secondly." start the story with the arrows of the Native americans, and no longer with the appearance of the British, and you’ve got an wholly one-of-a-kind story.Begin the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial construction of the African state, and you have an wholly unique story. I lately spoke at a tuition where a scholar instructed me that it was once the sort of disgrace that Nigerian men have been bodily abusers like the father persona in my novel. I informed him that I had just read a novel known as "American Psycho" — (Laughter) — and that it was such a shame that young american citizens were serial murderers. (Laughter) (Applause) Now, obviously I said this in a match of mild inflammation. (Laughter) but it could never have happened to me to suppose that just for the reason that I had learn a novel where a character used to be a serial killer that he used to be come what may consultant of all americans. This is not on the grounds that i’m a greater person than that student, but considering the fact that of america’s cultural and economic vigour, I had many experiences of the usa.I had read Tyler and Updike and Steinbeck and Gaitskill. I did not have a single story of the usa. Once I realized, some years in the past, that writers have been anticipated to have had relatively sad childhoods to be effective, i started to believe about how I could invent horrible matters my mum and dad had completed to me. (Laughter) however in fact that I had an awfully glad childhood, filled with laughter and love, in an awfully shut-knit family. But I additionally had grandfathers who died in refugee camps. My cousin Polle died considering the fact that he might no longer get enough healthcare. One among my closest friends, Okoloma, died in a plane crash when you consider that our fire trucks didn’t have water. I grew up below repressive navy governments that devalued education, so that oftentimes, my mom and dad weren’t paid their salaries.And so, as a youngster, I saw jam disappear from the breakfast table, then margarine disappeared, then bread grew to become too high-priced, then milk grew to be rationed. And most of all, a style of normalized political fear invaded our lives. All of those stories make me who i am. But to insist on best these terrible stories is to flatten my experience and to overlook the many other reviews that formed me. The single story creates stereotypes, and the predicament with stereotypes is just not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the one story. Of path, Africa is a continent filled with catastrophes: There are immense ones, such as the horrific rapes in Congo and depressing ones, equivalent to the fact that 5,000 humans practice for one job vacancy in Nigeria. But there are other reviews that aren’t about catastrophe, and it is vitally predominant, it is only as main, to talk about them.I’ve invariably felt that it is unimaginable to have interaction thoroughly with a place or a person with out attractive with all of the reviews of that place and that person. The outcome of the one story is this: It robs individuals of dignity. It makes our awareness of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are special as an alternative than how we’re similar. So what if before my Mexican trip, I had followed the immigration debate from all sides, the U.S. And the Mexican? What if my mom had informed us that Fide’s household was poor and hardworking? What if we had an African television network that broadcast numerous African studies far and wide the arena? What the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe calls "a balance of studies." What if my roommate knew about my Nigerian publisher, Muhtar Bakare, a great man who left his job in a financial institution to follow his dream and begin a publishing residence? Now, the conventional knowledge used to be that Nigerians don’t read literature.He disagreed. He felt that humans who would learn, would learn, should you made literature low-cost and available to them. Rapidly after he released my first novel, I went to a tv station in Lagos to do an interview, and a lady who worked there as a messenger got here as much as me and mentioned, "I rather liked your novel. I didn’t like the ending. Now, you need to write a sequel, and that is what will occur …" (Laughter) and she went on to inform me what to put in writing in the sequel.I was no longer only charmed, I used to be very moved. Right here was a girl, part of the traditional masses of Nigerians, who were not presupposed to be readers. She had now not best learn the guide, but she had taken possession of it and felt justified in telling me what to write down in the sequel. Now, what if my roommate knew about my buddy Funmi Iyanda, a fearless girl who hosts a television exhibit in Lagos, and is decided to tell the reports that we opt for to forget? What if my roommate knew in regards to the heart approach that was carried out within the Lagos hospital last week? What if my roommate knew about ultra-modern Nigerian tune, talented people singing in English and Pidgin, and Igbo and Yoruba and Ijo, mixing influences from Jay-Z to Fela to Bob Marley to their grandfathers.What if my roommate knew about the feminine lawyer who lately went to courtroom in Nigeria to assignment a ridiculous regulation that required women to get their husband’s consent before renewing their passports? What if my roommate knew about Nollywood, filled with innovative humans making movies regardless of nice technical odds, movies so widespread that they really are the excellent instance of Nigerians drinking what they produce? What if my roommate knew about my wonderfully ambitious hair braider, who has just began her own industry promoting hair extensions? Or about the thousands of alternative Nigerians who start corporations and typically fail, however continue to nurse ambition? Whenever i am residence i am confronted with the common sources of infection for most Nigerians: our failed infrastructure, our failed government, but in addition with the aid of the extremely good resilience of individuals who thrive regardless of the federal government, alternatively than for the reason that of it. I instruct writing workshops in Lagos each summer, and it’s potent to me what number of persons follow, what number of persons are keen to jot down, to tell studies.My Nigerian publisher and i have simply started a non-profit known as Farafina believe, and we have now massive goals of building libraries and refurbishing libraries that exist already and supplying books for state schools that should not have whatever of their libraries, and also of organizing tons and plenty of workshops, in reading and writing, for the entire folks who’re keen to tell our many reviews. Stories topic. Many reviews topic. Studies have been used to dispossess and to malign, but experiences will also be used to empower and to humanize.Studies can break the honour of a people, but studies may additionally repair that damaged dignity. The American writer Alice Walker wrote this about her Southern relatives who had moved to the North. She introduced them to a booklet about the Southern lifestyles that they’d left at the back of. "They sat round, studying the publication themselves, being attentive to me learn the guide, and a kind of paradise used to be regained." I want to finish with this inspiration: That after we reject the one story, once we comprehend that there’s on no account a single story about any place, we regain a style of paradise.Thank you. (Applause) .

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

I know this blog talks a lot about dealing with intolerance from family/friends who are anti-LGBT+, but how do you talk to other LGBT people who are against the teachings of Christianity?

Hey there! This is a really good question, and I’m glad you asked it because I’ve been meaning to address this for a while.

To start with, I think few people in general are against the “teachings” of Christianity – the teachings of Christianity are things like service, love, and reconciling relationships, after all. Rather, non-Christian LGBT+ people are sometimes wary of or against Christians or the Church, as many Christians are in places of power that oppress LGBT+ people. So I’ll respond to this ask with that in mind instead.

Below, I trace out some suggestions for dialogue with non-Christian LGBT+ people about Christianity. 

1. Assess your own capabilities for dialogue. 

Since this tends to be an intense topic and can get very personal, it’s wise to enter this kind of dialogue with a good idea of how much mental, emotional, and spiritual energy you have for the conversation.

Talking about why you are Christian as an LGBT+ person, with LGBT+ people who have a problem with Christianity, can be emotionally exhausting and spiritually challenging. Think about whether you are in a place where you can deal with their questions and emotions without becoming too upset. It is important in these dialogues to keep calm and kind – not to respond to their anger with your own anger. Think also about whether you are spiritually ready to grapple with this difficult topic – it’s okay not to be ready.

You are not obligated to have these conversations! If a person tries to get you to explain yourself and you don’t feel you can, simply say so: “I respect how you feel, but I’m afraid I am not in a place where I can have this conversation with you. Do you mind if we talk about something else?” 

Another option: “I would like to have this talk with you, but I need to take care of myself too. Are you able to talk about this without directing your anger towards me specifically?” 

If they have a tumblr, you can even direct them to our blog; we are always happy to answer respectful questions. 

Be ready to back out of the conversation if it gets too much for you – it’s not “losing” to say you need to stop talking.

2. Approach them from a place of understanding. 

The most important thing to me when encountering other LGBT+ people who are against Christianity is to enter the discussion from a place of understanding. LGBT+ people have plenty of reasons to be wary of Christianity. Despite being a faith meant to worship a God who constantly aligns Themself with the oppressed and exploited, Christianity has all too often been taken and misused by oppressors to legitimize prejudice and injustice.

Here is the way I see a part of the issue: Christianity is so tangled up in certain “Western” ideologies that it is hard to pull them apart. To me, Christianity is not inherently homophobic/transphobic/etc. – but rather, because Christianity is so tied up in social systems that are heteronormative and LGBT-phobic, many people – Christian and otherwise – grow up assuming these ideologies are themselves Christian ideologies. Speaking from my perspective in the USA, heteronormative viewpoints are what have been normalized in our culture, and (quoting Black theologian Howard Thurman) “if normal, then correct; if correct, thenmoral; if moral, then religious” – religious here meaning Christian, because that is the religion of the people in power.

So many Christians who have absorbed LGBT-phobic ideology both in church and in society at large use their faith to legitimize that ideology – and therefore use their faith to harm LGBT+ people. When Christians are the ones in power constructing laws that deny LGBT+ people basic rights, when Christians so often claim that “God hates” LGBT people or that the Bible condemns being gay, how can we blame non-Christian LGBT+ people for steering clear of Christians, or for feeling anger or even hate against Christianity? 

Thus, when encountering these LGBT+ people, assure them that you understand why they feel the way they do. Acknowledge that Christianity has indeed caused harm – don’t deny it.

3. Be patient. But take care of yourself, too.

Remember that while you as an LGBT+ person are part of a marginalized group, as a Christian, you are (depending on your country) a member of a privileged religion. As such, it is good to acknowledge how we Christians often get to have the loudest voice – you do deserve a voice, but let them speak too. 

As touched upon earlier, the person you are talking with might be aggressive about how they feel, they might say things about Christianity that hurt you. Try to keep your emotions as calm as you can. Be patient and listen to what they have to say. Remember that they are not really angry at you specifically, or even about “all” Christians: they are hurt and angry with Christians who have enabled and enacted LGBT-phobia. 

That being said, if their comments do become too accusatory, too much like an attack on you personally, that’s not okay, and you have a right to tell them that’s not okay. Balance between listening to what they say and understanding their need to vent their hurt and taking care of yourself and not letting them step all over you and your feelings.

3. If you’re willing, share your side of things.

If you are LGBTA+, chances are you’ve been hurt by Christians too, even if you’re Christian yourself. Dealing with being told you’re sinning, struggling to overcome internalized homophobia, losing the support of Christian friends and family members, having to stay in the closet to protect yourself, losing the support of a congregation when you come out to them, having your own scripture be used against you – we know this hurt too. Tell them about it if you are willing to do so – that you know firsthand the hurt they’re experiencing. 

LGBTA+ people of faith face challenges from both sides – LGBT+ people tell us we are “betraying” the community; Christians tell us we need to give up important aspects of ourselves. You can try to explain this and the pain it causes you to be confronted by fellow LGBTA+ people. You deserve to be accepted in the community as much as non-religious LGBT+ people do.

4. Answering their questions.

There are common questions and comments non-religious LGBT+ people have for us; I’ll try to offer some answers you can use to discuss this topic with them.

“You’re sellouts / betraying the LGBT+ community by being Christian.” “You aren’t really LGBT+ if you’re Christian.” We are LGBT+, and we have every right to be active members of the LGBT+ community. Everyone has a right to intersecting identities, and we should not have to lose one part of who we are to satisfy members of another part of our identity. The idea that we have to “choose” one or the other is an argument used against way too many marginalized people – we do not need to pick a side. 

“You’re brainwashed into being Christian.” “You’re only Christian because you’re conditioned to believe in it.” – While it is true that many of us became Christian by being born into the faith, we as LGBTA+ people stay Christian in spite of overwhelming odds against us. If we were only Christian because of being “brainwashed,” it would be easy – we wouldn’t have questions or struggle with our own faith. On the contrary, to stay Christian as an LGBTA+ person means wrestling with hard questions and dealing with opposition from both Christian and LGBTA+ communities. Many of us have a rocky relationship with our faith for a while or forever. And that’s okay.

“Why bother be Christian when Christians have hurt you so badly?” Black Theologian Howard Thurman opens his 1949 book Jesus and the Disinherited with a question asked to him by a Hindu man: “How can you, a black man, be Christian?” – referring to the oppression inflicted by white Christians on African Americans. The long and short of Thurman’s answer is that, in spite of the pain and exploitation too often inflicted by Christians in positions of power, the oppressed have always been able to see past that misuse of the Christian message to the true message lived out by Jesus Christ: a message of liberation for all. In all places, in all times, God stands with the persecuted and marginalized, overturning unjust systems. In spite of everything humans can do to mar the name of Christianity, Christ’s truth shines through, and we believe that in following Jesus we follow a way that leads to a better world. 

“Well why not just follow Jesus on your own? Why bother with other Christians?” One cannot be a Christian in a vacuum – it is a religion of relationships. We are called to be in relationship with God and with human beings – as God’s love spills out from the Trinity into the whole world, so our love must spill over all boundaries built by hate and prejudice. Being a Christian involves building bridges between the oppressor and the oppressed, working to uncover injustice and bring about healing. It is our hope that by being an example of good fruit and glorifying God with our authentic lives as LGBT+ Christians, we can guide the Church as a whole into understanding that we too are an invaluable part of the Body of Christ.

If there are other comments or questions you’ve heard from non-Christian LGBT+ people that you’ve been wondering how to respond to, send them in and I’ll do my best to answer them! Or, if you have ideas for answers of your own, it would be great to share them.

Non-religious and religious LGBTA+ people are much more similar than we are different – we all face homophobia, transphobia, and denial of rights. It is important to engage in dialogue that leads to understanding so that we can work together to improve our world.

[jonjost]

Yellowstone National Park

Following a week of recording in Piangipane, Emilio Romagna, Italy, and a one day stop in London, I returned to the USA toward the end of October after an absence of a year and 8 months.  For me personally much had changed – a back operation, recuperation, a few friends no longer with us, and the usual thoughts that come with some many spins around the sun.  And America had likewise undergone a sea-change.  An election had been held, a new President had taken office, and it seemed as if for the social culture a long shadow had been cast, and a general air of gloom had taken hold, at least among the kinds of people I tend to know.  Others I understand are quite happy with the changes. On arrival my own immediate life was seized with mundane chores: grab the van, update the car insurance, new plates, head on to destination #1, and so on.  Hit the road, which was the plot and plan.

Charles Therminy, August 12, 1934 – March 9, 2017, my roommate in 1963

Sam Shepard, November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017

Dan Cornell,  Feb. 11, 1947 – April 7, 2017

The last time I’d returned to America in such a way was back in 2002, after 10 continuous years in Europe with nary a visit back in that decade away.  Then I was prompted by the post-9/11 words of friends who cautioned the air was thick with unhappiness and the steady encroachment of a police-state regime.  I wondered, and on return had to agree, except it seemed worse than what I’d heard.   America was down, riled up with old hat arguments which seem our fated history.   We were paranoid, unconscious, in endless denial.  Was 9/11 an inside job?  Why would an Arabic group attack us?  Were we safe anymore? And on and on.   The schism between urban and rural widened, Fox took hold across the heartlands, and two America’s seemed to struggle to emerge.  Not a happy time.

And now, a decade and a half later, the sour brew which had begun at the start of the Millennium has turned toxic.  A new President, not really elected by the people, but installed courtesy of an arcane system meant to reward slave-holders way back when, has done exactly what it was clear he’d do during the farcical election when with a childish petulance he revealed his Republican opponent’s vacuity with an infantile bullying BS, and they all caved, the hollow men of TS Eliot.  And then the DNC/Clinton Democrats were up, only to reveal their hubris and political deafness.  Since November 7, 2016, the nation has been in a state of shock, each day amplified by new waves of bull-in-the-china-shop actions taken by the Trump administration.  From the relative stasis of the long post-WW2/Cold War era, we’re now in a seeming terra incognita.

That we have arrived in this state should in reality be no surprise.  The underlying grounds have been more than visible for decades, if one only chose to look.  Most people instead preferred the comfort of denial or ignorance, or both.   Since World War Two, when America took on seriously its role of global super-power, wielding its nuclear weapons, its manufacturing base cranked up for war-making, intact in not having been bombed as all the other were in the war, we have lived in a perpetual condition of illusion.  And we have been lied to by our government chronically, again and again, in all that time.  From hiding and denying the evidence that our nuclear experiments in fact had seriously dangerous side-effects, on through our lying about covert operations through out the world, from Iran to Cuba to Vietnam, to Central and South America, the American government has paved the way both for our relative wealth, and for the corrosive effects of having lied to achieve it.  The JFK white-wash with magic bullets.  Gulf of Tonkin. The World Trade Center collapse.  WMD.  The story is long and full of government lies-as-policy.

“Globalization” has only served to exacerbate this process, loosening the regulations regarding corporate behavior which in turn sent jobs to the cheapest labor pools, and decimated middle-America, all under the rubric of neo-liberalism, promising great economic gains across the board while in reality culling the winners to the rich, and abandoning those lower on the totem pole.  All under the guidance of the government’s Brightest and Best, money sloshed loosely around the globe in a most un-benign manner. The whole process has resulted in an across-the-board corruption of our society – from the lowest to the highest.  From Wall Street to Main Street, from academic grade inflation to “safe spaces” for the coddled children of a misguided middle-class. The Trump administration is in fact a fair reflection of the society it represents, both “Conservative” and “Liberal” sides.   Like that society, it is corrupt – fiscally, socially, morally, politically. Trump could never have won office in a healthy society, but American society has been increasingly ill over the last 5 decades, or in truth far longer.   And the chickens are now home to roost.

I came back to the States in part to see friends for a probable last time, and to try to make a bit of money.  The latter is proving a hard go – screenings promised and then cancelled, inquiries unanswered and such.  You can see a few other posts regarding that topic.  I also came back for a perhaps last look at America – its cities and landscapes.  And also perhaps to make a final essay about America, Plain Songs, a companion for my previous two films on the US:  Speaking Directly (1972), and Plain Talk and Common Sense (uncommon senses) (1987).    I’ve been back now two months, and while I have taken a few shots which I imagined to be for this new film, I sense it will not be made.  The one shot I made was from Cape Flattery, far out on the northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula, the farthest west one can go in mainland USA.   Nestled next to it is Neah Bay, an Indian rez town, and like most of them I have ever seen, a sad place of derelict homes, signs against meth and alcohol, and an air of final desolation.  I thought to begin with a first segment called “The End of America,” as this end-point of America, like the “Center of the Nation” in Plain Talk, is ripe with ironic meaning.   I took a shot, and inside something curdled in my soul.

Each day here is greeted with an avalanche of “news,” whether it is of the machinations of the Trump administration or of an almost Biblical kind – hurricanes flattening islands in the Caribbean, or floodinng Houston, or fires decimating California, or the huff and puff of Kim Jong-un, or the unmasking of yet another sexist man in showbiz or politics, or yet another gun massacre or cop killing another black man.  Each day seems to shriek calamity, and the social atmosphere grows dark and fraught with fear.  Amidst this cacophony one feels an aura of irrational hysteria, a society caught in the throes of a major change, one which might easily slip any direction, but seems headed for the worst.   I can’t say I am surprised, after all it is exactly what I examined in the earlier essay films [as well as in numerous fictional films, [(Sure Fire, The Bed You Sleep In, Homecoming, Over Here, Parable, Coming to Terms)]  –  this decay of American society and the costs incurred by it out in the wide world, and inside, in the personal one.

  Last of the now extinct carrier-pigeons

So I ask myself, what might I add?  And, honestly, I imagine there is ample room in my thoughts to toss in my two-bits.  But then I ask, and who would it hear it and how would that happen?  And my answer is that while perhaps a handful or even some hundreds or thousands might see such a work, in the present political reality that is tantamount to no one.   It would amount to a nano-second blip in the vast ocean of noise and shouting which envelops us daily.  And while I, and perhaps a handful of others, might derive some pleasure or learning from such a work, it would surely do absolutely nothing in the face of the tsunami of media, money, and cultural leverage which our society wields each day, every day, all day.  Socially, politically, it would be simply nothing.  Of that I am utterly sure, just as I am likewise sure – and history shows it all too clearly – that the prior two films, along with all the rest of my life’s work, have done nothing politically or socially in any way I might have intended.  Yes, a very very small number of people may have been personally touched, and perhaps even a few saw their lives slightly deflected by it.  But, bottom line, in the real world of society and its mechanisms, zilch.  Really nothing.

  Perhaps these are the thoughts of a banged-up burned-out doddering old geezer. Perhaps  – I certainly qualify for some of that.  Perhaps it is time to turn my attentions elsewhere, and leave the transitory stuff of politics to itself.  Or perhaps it is just a transitory quiver of doubt, long over-due.  Or perhaps instead of a filmed essay it will morph into another form.  Written, or….  well, we’ll see.  For the moment though, the idea of Plain Songs as a video essay has gone dormant.

Back in the US, back in the US(SR) Yellowstone National Park Following a week of recording in Piangipane, Emilio Romagna, Italy, and a one day stop in London, I returned to the USA toward the end of October after an absence of a year and 8 months. 

[footballghana]

Jerome Boateng: 'No child is born a racist'

Following the death of George Floyd, Bundesliga players have spoken out against racism. Speaking to DW, Bayern Munich defender Jerome Boateng talks about the importance of education and the room for more support.

DW: As a German living in Germany, what are your thoughts when you see the current events in the United States?

The images shock me. Some of the things on social media at the moment are brutal. And unfortunately, the protests are also taking on a difficult form. Nevertheless, the case of George Floyd shows us just how widespread racism against black people is in America, and the role racial profiling plays. I find it extremely upsetting because I’m often in America myself and I like the country and the culture a lot. But it’s nothing new; it’s something which is omnipresent. Racism is found everywhere, but it is extreme in the USA.

I read a good quote recently: It’s as if racism is a dark room and, every now and then, someone turns the light on and everything is revealed.

When you think how much African-Americans have done for the image and culture of the United States, I find it inexplicable. And I’m only thinking of sport, fashion and music. Barack Obama as President was also a defining figure.

Do you see any parallels with Germany?

Of course, racism is a topic here as well, it’s very present. In recent years, we’ve seen attacks on foreigners and different religious groups in Germany. All in all, things are traveling in a certain direction where I think: we were once further along.

During my childhood in Berlin, I also had experiences with racism, of course. But I also remember my time on the football pitch, where it didn’t matter where you came from or what religion you were. We were Iranians, Africans, Turks, Germans. We didn’t really think or talk about it. It was all about being together.

Do you think that Afro-Germans are acknowledged and visible enough in Germany?

Generally speaking, people of African heritage are underrepresented in certain areas. Although, I often get the impression that sportspeople are the ones who do get the recognition.

But I don’t want to malign everything: fundamentally, I think Germany is an open country. Personally, I’ve had a lot of good experiences, too. There are countries in Europe where it’s a lot worse.

In today's world, do you think that athletes and sportspeople should be activists, too?

Our voices are heard, we have a platform and we have reach. But I think it’s important that it’s not just limited to social media. Initiatives like Black Out Tuesday are all well and good but what we really need is to really get stuck in and do something, be that working with children or supporting other integration projects. Everybody can help.

I personally would definitely like to do something in this area in the near future. There are already various suggestions and ideas.

His name was George Floyd. Say his name. Pray for his family. 👊🏽 I Can‘t believe it happened again, even in broad daylight and while being recorded. #BlackLivesMatter #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd pic.twitter.com/fDcsO3Cifx

— Jerome Boateng (@JB17Official) May 27, 2020

Many black footballers have spoken out about recent events. But what could your white colleagues do to support them?

Not every white athlete who doesn’t speak out right now is a racist. Of course not. When I watch videos of demonstrations, I see people of all skin colors. But of course, it would be desirable if they used their fame to support this cause. Many do, but I think there’s still a lot of room for improvement.

Is there anything that I have not asked, but which is important to you and which you would like to say?

Everything begins with the education of children. That’s the most important thing. No child in this world is born a racist. It's up to the parents and what they tell their children.

The worst thing that could happen would be for my children to experience such things. It’s vital that we teach them that racism isn’t acceptable and that, should they see someone being abused, they should defend them and speak up. That has to start in school. It has to be an integral part of the curriculum. Only in that way can we make progress.

Born in Berlin in 1988, the son of a German mother and Ghanaian father, Jerome Boateng honed his skills on the city's streets before coming through the ranks at Hertha Berlin, making his first professional appearance for the club in 2007.

Following spells at Hamburg and Manchester City, the central defender joined Bayern Munich in 2011, for whom he has since made 313 appearances and won seven Bundesliga titles, four German Cups and the 2013 Champions League.

Boateng was a mainstay in the German national team between 2009 and 2019, making 76 senior appearances and starring in the side which won the World Cup in Brazil in 2014. He was named German Footballer of the Year in 2016.

Source: Dw.com

source: https://footballghana.com/

[merelyrantsforu-blog]

the brandy melville mess

ah, brandy melville. if you've never heard of them, here's a laconic (i hope) tour d'horizon of brandy melville and their velitations:

• a pellucid lack of diversity among their models, if u would take a quick gander at their instagram feed @brandymelvilleusa

• tendentious sizing issues, to keep it succinct, it means that 99.9% of every brandy melville model is a size 0

first of all, let's talk about their incredibly erroneous lack of diversity. if we take a look at @brandymelvilleusa on instagram, we'd see 99.9% of these instagram models featured on their posts flaunting their newest pieces from brandy melville on, u guessed it! their white skin. so to keep it succinct, it means that most models for brandy melville are svelte and white. but we'll tap into the issues on their figures later (p.s there's no bodyshaming here whatsoever in case that sentence misled u).

sprinkled among their thousands of posts starring white women, there's the occasional chinese women with the same figure as the others, donning one of their latest pieces. u see, the matter at hand is that it is clearly tokenistic, to compensate for the very conspicuous lack of people of colour on their page. sure, some people have defended the successful italian brand, saying that since the page is named "brandymelvilleUSA", it'd mean that they'd only feature women from the usa. ah, but recognise that no other women of different skin tones are included in their posts. sigh, this is just like the 2019 white dotechella controversy all over again, except this time it has translated into an online medium.

we don't see black women, nor any asian americans in there because only the white girls catch their eyes. let's note for instance, their post on 8/6/19, featuring a chinese woman who's culture was definitely a salient part of her identity. but more crucially than that, she was surrounded by other posts of white girls, being the only anomaly in their feed.

2nd issue: the models' lack of what should be considered the norm such as ur average tummy pooch, love handles or a muffin top on an adolescent body who's growing conveys really egregious ideologies about what a female body should look like. there's no harm in being skinny, or being proud of ur body because u worked out <3 but because the brand's target demographic is petite girls, it alters a girl's perception of what the perfect body is (which is non existent bc ur all gorgeous 🥺) i've seen a few points of refutation circling around: they're catered to small sizes and get chastised, whereas when plus sized brands are created they get praised which = double standards. but even as a previous fond consumer of their products, i'd like to mention that there's a lot more stigma surrounding plus sized individuals, so even if this were to be considered "double standards", it wouldn't exactly be the case.

rihanna is a good example, she uses curvy mannequins at her fenty beauty pop up stores, and fans all over the world are all lovin that </3

@brandymelvilleusa we 👏 want 👏 black 👏 and 👏 asian 👏 representation 👏 ( at the very least because im still on the fence about the double standards idea)

[talikhar]

I AM WIDE AWAKE

WOKE AF- The mind opening inner ponderings, visions and realizations of a brain both blessed and cursed with second sight.

WRITTEN THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2017!  

FRIENDS I RESPECT THE FACT YOU ARE  ENTITLED TO YOUR VIEWS, YOUR FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND HOW YOU CHOOSE TO LIVE YOUR LIFE.  BUT I’VE SEEN LURKING OF EVIL SO SUBTLE, MOVING SO SWIFTLY, ENGULFING THE WORLD COMPLETELY AND CORRODING THE SOULS OF SO MANY.  IT WOULD BE CONSIDERED SINFUL TO TELL A PERSON DIRECTLY WHAT THEIR FUTURE IS,  HOWEVER WE HAVE THE POWER AND CAPACITY TO CHANGE THE CIRCUMSTANCES AND MOLD OUR LIVES DIFFERENTLY.  SO HOPING TO SPREAD SOME WISDOM,  SPEAKING  ALLEGORICALLY AND SHARING MY PERCEPTIONS AND CONCERNS IN A BOTH DEEPLY PHILOSOPHICAL  AND LIGHT HEARTENING HUMOROUS FASHION, HERE IT GOES...   OH, AND DISCLAIMER...  I AM NOT A WITCH!! THE FLAG/ ANTHEM ISSUE IS DRIVING ME NUTS!  WHY?

BECAUSE RIGHT NOW THERE IS MILLIONS OF PEOPLE SUFFERING AND DYING HORRIBLE DEATHS DUE TO NATURAL DISASTERS IN APOCALYPTIC SCALES, WE HAVE PLAGUES LIKE THE ZIKA VIRUS, VOLCANO ERUPTIONS, FIRES, DROUGHTS, HURRICANES, EARTHQUAKES AND TSUNAMIS, ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT MUTATING VIRUSES PLUS THAT LOOMING GIANT ASTEROID AND PEOPLE ARE GOING INSANE OVER A FLAG AND A SONG.  ONE IS AN INANIMATE OBJECT AND THE OTHER AND ABSTRACT IDEOLOGY THE OTHER HUMAN LIVES!!!!!!   LATER ON ANOTHER OCCASION WE'LL TALK ON THE THEORY OF HOW THE MAYAN CALENDAR WAS NOT ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD BUT THE TIPPING POINT WHERE IT WAS UP TO THIS GENERATION TO DETERMINE IF THERE IS GOING TO BE A FUTURE... THE BEGINNING OF A POTENTIAL END.

SO, MY TWO CENTS IS...(AND SINCE I'M SO BROKE I’M ALMOST DESTITUTE , I MOST DEFINITIVELY  GONNA NEED THOSE PENNIES BACK,TOO!) PEOPLE NEED TO GET WOKE AF BEFORE WE WIPE YOURSELF FROM THIS PLANET.  I KNOW YOU FEEL IT, TOO; THAT VORTEX OF DESPAIR IS SUCKING ALL OF US IN, SPINNING FASTER AND FASTER. 

       2.  THAT IF YOU WANT TO POST THAT THE NFL PROTEST IS DISRESPECTFUL AND YOU FEEL SO OFFENDED BY THESE BLACK MEN, TO THE POINT YOU WILL STOP GOING TO FOOTBALL GAMES... GO ON AND YOU DO YOU BU!    JUST PLEASE REMEMBER THAT THE FOUNDING FATHERS DID NOT SAY ANYWHERE THAT YOU CAN'T KNEEL AND FOOTBALL GAMES DID NOT EVEN EXIST BACK THEN!! BUT THEY DID SAY THE FLAG HAS TO BE PRESENTED AND DISPOSED IN VERY SPECIFIC WAY I BET NONE OF YOU FOLLOW.  THEY WERE TOTALLY ANAL ABOUT IT, BY THE WAY.   SO, NEXT FOURTH OF JULY MAKE SURE YOU RANT AND RAVE, POST ABOUT AND FEEL UTTERLY OFFENDED TO YOUR CORE ABOUT THE SALE AND MISUSE OF THE FLAG FOR PROFIT AND  BOYCOTT EVERY STORE THAT HAS PAPER PLATES AND NAPKINS WITH NOT ONLY THE FLAG BUT A REPRESENTATION OF THE FLAG SUCH AS COLORS, STARS AND STRIPES, EVEN IF IT IS A PARTIAL ONE!!!  HOW DARE YOU THROW THEM RED, WHITE AND BLUE SOLO CUPS REEKING OF STALE BEER IN THE GARBAGE RECEPTACLE AFTERWARDS TOO... SHAME ON YOU!   TSK, TSK,TSK  (LOL)  AND THOSE FIRE CRACKERS YOU SEEM TO LOVE SETTING ON FIRE AND EXPLODING ALL WEEK LONG UNTIL UNGODLY HOURS EVEN WHEN MANY FREAKED OUT DOGS, VETERANS WITH PTSD AND PEOPLE TRYING TO SLEEP ARE SUFFERING?  NEWSFLASH PATRIOT: YOU MIGHT HAVE BEEN BURNING HUNDREDS OF LITTLE USA FLAGS YOURSELF FOR YEARS!!  THAT GOES ALSO  FOR YOUR BEER CANS, BANDANNAS, THONG BIKINIS AND BOXERS (THE HUMANITY!), PAJAMAS, COUNTRY MUSIC T-SHIRTS, CAR STICKERS, BABY DIAPERS, EVEN YOUR DEBIT AND CREDIT CARDS.   DEAR JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH, THE OUTRAGE... WHAT BLASPHEMY IS THIS?!!  (JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, THE LATTER INTERJECTION IS PURE, UNFILTERED SARCASM).  NOWADAYS I AM DOING THE FACE-PALM AND SHAKING MY HEAD IN DISBELIEF SO HARD AND SO OFTEN MY COGNIZANT, VERBAL  AND MOTOR SKILLS ARE STARTING TO GET AFFECTED.  OKAY?  

     3. I NEED YOU TO BE AWARE OF THE REASON THE ANTHEM WAS CREATED, THE INSPIRATION FOR IT AND STAY OPEN MINDED TO BECOME WISER AND RELEARN OUR HISTORY AS IT HAPPENED, NOT LIKE WHAT WAS CONVENIENTLY LEFT OUT IN OUR SCHOOL BOOKS.  TRY AND DO THIS FOR THE BETTERMENT OF YOU AND FUTURE GENERATIONS, IF WE SURVIVE THE PATH THESE BIG HEADED LOONIES RUNNING NORTH KOREA, AMERICA, RUSSIA AND SAUDI ARABIA, VENEZUELA, AND THE REST ARE LEADING US UP  TO.  THE VERSE WE SING IS BEAUTIFUL, PROUD AND  STRONG BUT THE INSPIRATION FOR IT AND THE STORY BEHIND IT IS HORRIFIC AND SHAMEFUL... THE COMPOSER WAS TAKING GREAT SATISFACTION IN THE DEATHS OF SLAVES THAT HAD FREED THEMSELVES.   IT WAS ABOUT A LAND OF THE FREE, BUT THE FREEDOM WAS FOR THE IMMIGRANT WHITE MEN AND THEIR OFFSPRING ONLY, NOT FOR THE NATIVE AMERICAN WHO IS THE AUTHENTIC ORIGINAL AMERICAN.  THE ONES THAT  WANTED TO HELP THE WHITE MEN SURVIVE IN THEIR NEW WORLD AND SHARE ALL THEY HAD AND IN RETURN WENT THROUGH GENOCIDE AND BECAME VICTIMS OF COUNTLESS HORRORS.  THIS FREEDOM WAS ALSO NOT FOR THE AFRICAN SLAVES THAT WERE BROUGHT HERE AGAINST THEIR WILL OR THEIR DESCENDANTS WHO WERE ALSO TERRORIZED, TORTURED, RAPED AND MURDERED.   AND GENERATION AFTER GENERATION BLACK MEN AND WOMEN HAVE CONTINUED TO SUFFER COUNTLESS ABUSES AND DISCRIMINATION AND DESPICABLE ACTS OF VIOLENCE SO ATROCIOUS, IT EASILY COULD   HAVE LEFT MARKS EMBEDDED DEEPLY IN THE SUBCONSCIOUS LEVEL AND GENETICAL STRANDS .  MANY OTHERS HAVE COME FROM COUNTRIES ALL OVER THE WORLD AND EACH GROUP HAVE BROUGHT THEIR OWN COLOR AND TEXTURE TO THE FABRIC THAT HAS MADE THIS COUNTRY UNIQUE AND SPECIAL.  PUERTO RICANS THAT CAME TO USA AND WORKED IN EVERYTHING AND IN BETWEEN:  FIRST AGRICULTURE, THEN AS SOME BARRIERS WERE BROKEN AND WERE ABLE TO MAKE A LIVING AS POLICEMEN, TEACHERS, TAXI DRIVERS, NASA ENGINEERS.  THE ASIAN ALSO BROUGHT COUNTLESS CONTRIBUTIONS, WORKED IN THE FIELD BUILDING TRAIN TRACKS AND THEN EVERYTHING FROM FOOD SERVICE, LAUNDROMATS THEN TECHNOLOGY, MATH AND SCIENCE AS DID THE IRISH, WHO ALSO HAD SUFFERED A PERIOD OF SLAVERY AND DISCRIMINATION, THE JEWISH COMMUNITY THAT CONTINUES TO BE ATTACKED AS THE REASON FOR EVERYTHING THAT IS WRONG IN THE COUNTRY (WTF?!!).  AND I MEAN THE JEWISH RELIGION, NOT THE FAR-RIGHT ISRAELI LEADERSHIP COMMITTING THE GENOCIDE OF PALESTINIANS.  THE ITALIANS THAT ALSO HAVE SUCH BEAUTIFUL CULTURE AND WAS DISCRIMINATED AGAINST AND GENERALIZED AS MAFIOSO'S OR DUMB, LAZY,  I COULD GO ON AND ON, THE GREEK, THE HINDU, THE GERMANS.  WE ALL EXPERIENCED A LOT OF THE SAME TRIBULATIONS, BUT NONE AS SEVERE, CONSTANT AND PALPABLE AS THE AFRICAN AMERICAN.  PUERTO RICO WAS SOLD TO USA AND THERE WAS A LOT OF PEOPLE IN THE ISLAND THAT RIGHTFULLY PROTESTED BEING FORCED TO CHANGE THEIR WAY OF LIFE...THEY WERE LYNCHED. THEN VIEQUES WAS USED AS A MILITARY TEST SITE LEAVING BEHIND POLLUTION AND SICKNESS,  AND PUERTO RICAN WOMEN WERE USED AS GUINEA PIGS TO TEST BIRTH CONTROL PILLS.   MEXICO? THE SAME, TOOK THEIR LAND GUNS BLAZING AND NOW PEOPLE DARE TELL THEM TO GO HOME WHEN THEY WERE HERE FIRST.  HAWAII, ALSO THE SAME.. GOBBLED UP AND MADE INTO A CARICATURE AND THEIR LANDS PASSED ON GENERATION AFTER GENERATION  STOLEN AND SOLD.  WE ALL LEARNED TO ADAPT AND EMBRACE MOST OF THE CHANGES AND  WE CAN FORGIVE BUT CAN'T FORGET.   WE LOVE THIS COUNTRY DESPITE OF IT ALL, BUT WE ARE STILL WAYS TO GO TO BE RECIPROCATED IN THE SAME MANNER WHICH IS I THINK SO SIMPLE AND GOLLY, GEE... IT’S FREE: RESPECT US, OUR CULTURE, RELIGIONS AND LANGUAGE, AND LET US REALLY BE A PART OF THIS COUNTRY BY LETTING OUR VOICES BE HEARD... AND REALLY LISTEN.    JUST DON'T MAKE UNGODLY THINGS LIKE A SONG AND A FLAG INTO FALSE IDOLS AND LOOK INTO UNITING AND ACCEPTING EACH OTHER AS EQUALS.   CARE ABOUT THE REAL INJUSTICES  PEOPLE ARE LIVING STILL ON THIS DAY AN AGE, TRY TO WALK A MILE IN THEIR SHOES.   UNDERSTAND THAT THE NEGATIVE AND EVIL DONE IN THIS WORLD WAS MOSTLY DUE TO A MINORITY OF CHARACTERS THAT WERE ABLE TO SNEAK THEMSELVES IN TO THE LEADERSHIP POSITIONS.  THE MONEY TRULY HAS BEEN THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL.  IT IS MONEY THAT HAS ALLOWED THESE PEOPLE TO BUY MINIONS TO DO THEIR BIDING, MONEY TO BUILD AND BUY THEIR MUSKETS, RIFLES, CANNONS AND ROCKETS AND THE MILITIA AND MERCENARIES TO DO THEIR BIDING AND DESTROY AND ANNIHILATE EVERYTHING AND ANYONE THAT GETS IN THEIR IN PATH FOR MORE MONEY AND POWER.  INSTILLING FEAR AND USING CUNNING CHARMS, TWISTED LOGIC AND MISINTERPRETATION OF HOLY SCRIPTURES FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS HAVE CONVINCED SO MANY  THAT EVERYTHING THEY DO WILL BENEFIT THEM AT SOME POINT AND THAT IT’S ALL FOR LOVE AND COUNTRY.  THAT IS WHY IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT PEOPLE RESIST, PROTEST, RAISE THEIR FIST, MAKE A STINK, STOMP YOUR FEET...HELL NO,  WE NEED TO BECOME WISER AND OPEN OUR EYES WIDER.  BECAUSE I AM TIRED OF HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF.  BECAUSE THEY HAVE ALL OF US LOOKING AROUND, SIDE TO SIDE, PLACING BLAME ON EACH OTHER  INSTEAD OF LOOKING UP AT THEM, UNITING AND  HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE.  I AM WOKE AS FUCK... I PRAY MORE PEOPLE REALIZE THIS AND BECOME PART OF A SOLUTION BEFORE WE ALL PERISH.  LET US NOT FALL PREY TO WHAT REALLY IS GOING ON...  AGAIN, OPEN YOUR EYES WIDE, LISTEN, REALLY LISTEN.  DON'T BE LAZY AND RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH.  MAYBE THEN YOU'LL WILL JOIN US, THE ONES THAT ARE

#WOKEASFUCK

MY APOLOGIES FOR THE CRASSNESS OF THE  AFOREMENTIONED COLLOQUIALISM OR, URBAN LINGUISTICS, BUT IT MEANS REACHING A SUPERLATIVE SCALE OF AWARENESS IN THIS GENERATION, AND I PERSONALLY KIND OF DIG IT. BUT I DIGRESS...  THE BAD ONES ARE A MINORITY STILL, BUT THE EVIL IS SPREADING FASTER, AND AS WE ARE BECOMING A RETROGRADE SOCIETY IN MANY WAYS, EVEN WITH ALL THESE AMAZING TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGHS OF THIS CENTURY, THEY ARE PUTTING BLINDERS ON THE INNOCENT, ON THE IGNORANT AND CLOSE MINDED AND THEY ARE RECRUITING MINIONS THAT MORE THAN EVER  FOLLOW THEM NOT OUT OF FEAR OR BECAUSE OF POVERTY BUT BECAUSE OF GREED AND THE EVIL SATISFACTION THEY GET FROM CONTROLLING AND HURTING OTHERS AND HAVE CONVENIENTLY FOUND A SOULLESS LEADER AFTER THEIR OWN DARK HEARTS.   

SCHOOLS SHOULD HAVE HISTORY CLASSES THAT TEACH MORE IN A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE, EMPHASIZING ON EVERYBODY'S STRUGGLES, CONTRIBUTIONS AND TRIUMPHS AND HOW MUCH WE ARE ALL THE SAME AND OWE SO MUCH TO EACH OTHER.  SADLY WE ARE BASICALLY IN A PLATEAU. STUCK,  AS IN MANY  WAYS BEING UNDER THE SAME SOCIETAL STANDARDS THAT WE WERE IN THOUSANDS YEARS AGO. THE KING, THE CLERGY AND THE NOBLES... AND WE THE THE PEOPLE? WERE ARE THE PEONS, PLEBEIANS, THEIR SLAVE LABOR, COURTESANS, PERFORMERS AND BUFFOONS.  ONLY DIFFERENCE IS IN MODERN TIMES? THE NOBLES, WHICH ARE THE 1% ELITE AND THE CORPORATIONS ARE MORE POWERFUL AND IN CHARGE OF THE FATE OF THE COUNTRY THAN THE KING HIMSELF.  A KING THAT IS BROUGHT TO POWER NOT BY RIGHT OF BIRTH BUT BY THE NOBLES'  MONETARY DONATIONS TO THEIR POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS AND PROMISE OF FUTURE COUNTLESS RICHES IF THEY  STAY IN LINE AND THEIR BIDDING. REPUBLICAN LEADERS HIGHLY COMPLIANT WITH THEIR PATHOLOGICAL ALIENATION FROM REALITY OUTSIDE OF THEIR GREED FOR MONEY, POWER AND CONTROL IS A VERY COMPLIANT PUPPET.  

THE REPUBLICAN ALWAYS THE MASTER THAT ONLY THROWS THE DOG THE BONE ONLY AFTER THEY SUCKED OUT EVERY BIT AND MORSEL DOWN TO THE MARROW.  THE DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS WERE MORE OF A OPEN INCLUSIVE IDEOLOGIST BUT LATELY FALLEN VICTIM TO THAT CORPORATE DONOR SEDUCTION OF GREED.  SADLY MANY PEONS RECENTLY FAILED TO REALIZE THAT STILL THIS WAS THE LESSER EVIL AS THIS MASTER MAY STILL LEAVE ONLY THE BONE BUT IT AT LEAST WILL HAVE THE CARTILAGE AND SOME MEAT ON IT AND UNLIKE THE REPUBLICAN MASTER, IF YOU STAR CHOKING THE BONE THEY WILL TAKE YOU TO THE VET.  REPUBLICAN MASTER THROWS YOU IN THE BAG BEFORE YOU TAKE YOUR LAST BREATH AND DRIVES BY A FAST FOOD RESTAURANT WERE HE DISPOSES OF THE BAG SO HE DOESN'T HAVE TO BOTHER WITH DIGGING A HOLE IN THE YARD AND RUIN THEIR MANICURED LAWN OR DEAL WITH THE STENCH OF YOUR ROTTING BODY.  THAT'S WHY MY INCLINATION IS LIBERAL PROGRESSIVE.  I REALIZE MANY THINK LIBERAL MASTER WILL JUST GO CRAZY THROWING THE WHOLE CHICKENS TO THE DOGS, TO THE POINT THEY RUN OUT OF CHICKENS, BUT I'M CONFIDENT THEY CAN FIND A WAY TO FIGURE IT OUT PLUS THEY WILL SET UP FOR YEARLY WELLNESS CHECK UP AT THE VETS, AND GET US TREATS LIKE A BETTER EDUCATION SYSTEM, FREE COLLEGE AND MORE.  LIBERAL /PROGRESSIVE /INDEPENDENT MASTER AFTER ALL BELIEVES IN SOMETHING CALLED SCIENCE AND COMPLETE AND FAIR EQUALITY AND THOSE TWO THING ARE ESSENTIAL TO BREAK THIS CORRUPTED MOLD.   THE CLERY? THAT IS ANOTHER ISSUE TO BE ADDRESSED SEPARATELY BECAUSE EVEN JESUS ADVOCATED FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, THEY WANTED IN  DIBS ON THE LOOT AND MAINTAINING THE POWER OVER THE PEOPLE., BECOMING AND UNHOLY TRIFECTA OF EVIL TYRANNY AND GREED.

IN CLOSING, SPECIALLY AFTER THAT EXTREMELY WEIRD AND RANDOM "THROW THE DOG A BONE' ANALOGY...DON'T LET THEM CONTINUE TO KEEP US BLINDED BY THE PROPAGANDIST MEDIA LIKE FOX NEWS, ALL THE BRAINWASHING POLITICIANS, THE ZOMBIE TRANCE INDUCING WORLDWIDE WEB AND ALL THE FALSEHOODS SURROUNDING US AS WE ARE PINNED AGAINST EACH OTHER  OVER OUR DIFFERENCES OF CULTURE, RELIGION, SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND RACE.  THEY HAVE US RUNNING AROUND LIKE CHICKENS (GEE! AGAIN WITH THE FUCKING CHICKENS) WITH OUR HEADS CUT-OFF SO WE DON'T FIGURE IT OUT AND COME TO STORM THEIR CASTLES!

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Expert: A change in Quantity also entails a change in Quality. ― Friedrich Engels No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist. ― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer If it seems self-serving and pedestrian to chronicle my own slice of heaven called Working as a Precariat USA, then so be it. I have read so much lately on climate science, on the science around the toxic earth, around the political-billionaire-millionaire miscreants, both male and female (Trump commuted this Kosher Millionaire Rabbi, in jail for bank fraud, 27 years, today, so expect other chosen people of the white collar criminal variety to be pardoned, let go, praised), and the on-going Scarlet Letter Outing of Men, therefore,  coming down out of the ether of punditry and mainstream-and-not-so-liberal-media to get my own ground-truthing framed in what is dog-eat-dog predatory capitalism turbo charged seems like sanity to me. I could get all British Lit on my reader by quoting John Donne, since inherently I am an entrenched systems thinker, a giver in the Ishmael sense, and understand the principles tied to cooperative evolution: No Man Is An Island No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thy friend’s Or of thine own were: Any man’s death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind, And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. — John Donne And I could get all deep ecology on you, and cite a simple but profound set of laws tied to the notion of biomimicry by Janine Benyus: 9 Basic Principles of Biomimicry Nature runs on sunlight. Nature uses only the energy it needs. Nature fits form to function. Nature recycles everything. Nature rewards cooperation. Nature banks on diversity. Nature demands local expertise. Nature curbs excesses from within. Nature taps the power of limits. But my own little world coming into the Year 2018 (year of the dog) centers around my identity, or part of it, as assigned to me by Capitalists: my age, my gender, my sexuality, my race, my upbringing, my education, my wallet, my political affiliations, my religion, my abilities, my disabilities, my blind-spots, my enlightened self, my weight-height-strength, my IQ’s, my credit report, my military record, my criminal record, my work record, my health record, my belief system, and, well, my Google rating. There is no room in Capitalism for holism, seeing and talking about the “philosophy-ethos-spiritual me”! There’s so much more to us, most human beings, even deplorables, yet, in USA and the Matrix, it all boils down to what you do for a living, and what do you show materially from that living. I am still seething from a sacking, almost two months ago, which I have chronicled here and here and here, and part of that sacking was my questioning vaccine safety. My stories have gone viral, in a sense, tied to the educated and safety seekers looking at the vaccination movement. I am clumped into the realm of a large swath of people and organizations looking at the injuries, incapacitation and deaths caused by the forces of genetics in one’s self and vaccines. I am also connected vis-à-vis WWW to those groups doubting the legality and ethics of forcing people to get shot-up with drugs, from the US Air Force pilots protesting the so-called anthrax vaccine, to nurses against the latest flu shot, and those parents and advocates who do not want to be forced to have children pumped up with untested vaccines – 19 or more by age five (32 by age 15!). Many kids are getting shot up without parental (informed) consent. CDC’s dictum: The CDC has just launched a program that will calculate a catch-up schedule for children who were not vaccinated on schedule. A 5-year-old child who was not previously vaccinated would be required to receive 19 vaccines in one month, including 6 doses of aluminum-containing injections! This catch-up schedule was NOT tested for safety to determine the immediate or long-term risk of neurological or immunological damage. Let me back up. What happened to me, in a nutshell, is my right to free speech, my right to a safe, open and embracing classroom environment, and my right to be heard in regard to a complaint made by Planned Parenthood were ripped from my hands and vocal chords, so to speak, and ripped from myself as a human trying to do good as a social worker and make a living. I was in a class, at Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest in the city of Seattle, two bastions (sic) of liberalism and supposed respect for diverse opinions. I’ve lived and worked there, Puget Sound, Seattle, and I have chronicled that sometimes nauseating place and the select citizens I call “unpeople” here at DV and other places. It is not the nirvana of liberalism, and it’s a place overcrowded, full of citizens who are homeless, and more precarious than success stories, with the rich and the Amazon and Bill Gates groupies high on their own flatulence. That’s another story. Mine now, as I go to interview after interview since my termination, to get back in the saddle, to get a job to survive, goes like this: I was told I could not finish day two of this almost mindless 16-hour class (we practiced saying vulva and penis in a circle while passing around stuffed animals!), because of the supposed crime of not believing all the news fit to print from the PR/propaganda engines of Big Pharma, Western Medicine and the vaccination makers (I was so much more contrite and reserved in my statements in the classroom of 45 people, four men and 41 women, than maybe the reader can imagine, but it’s true . . . and I have coworker witnesses to attest to it). I was also told (not directly, but through my employer, a non-profit in Portland) by three Planned Parenthood teachers (sic) that my broaching of Chinese traditional medicine and native American and other cultural systems of healing in a brief aside solicited by the teachers was not just NOT allowed but inflammatory and dangerous to the other students. Finally, these three PP people (and I suppose several supervisors behind the scenes) labeled me as a disruptive force to the learning environment, which is obscene since I was the picture of comportment and low-key engagement! I expected some decency from my bosses to get my story and my coworkers’ stories, but instead, I was railroaded out of the job. I did not work for Planned Parenthood, it must be stressed. Imagine the conflict of interest tied to Planned Parenthood making millions off of giving boys and girls and young adults the HPV vaccine, Gardasil, marketed by Merck. Planned Parenthood’s $350 million yearly budget is fed through Big Pharma donations and, of course, taxpayer grants/funding. The sex ed classes Planned Parenthood delivers to my clients and to social workers is funded by public coffers. Planned Parenthood also has an international division, and teamed up with Bill and Melinda, Big Pharma and those killer philanthropists who want the great white hope of their messed up lives to be the every glowing smile of Third World victims of structural violence, agricultural rape, mass drug/vaccine experiments, and a new form of Facebook happy meal eugenics. Planned Parenthood also has a political arm, lobbying for their own special interests, some worthy, other nefarious. Even though I never got into a vaccine debate with Planned Parenthood, really, truthfully, the trainers took a couple of off-the-record anonymous comments written down by me around not appreciating Planned Parenthood taking the side of pharmaceutical hook-line-and-sinker as proof of my heresy and radical view. Hell, how hard is it to surf the internet and find peer-reviewed and millions of anecdotal stories about vaccine injuries and incapacitation and death, tied to the HPV vaccine? There are huge issues tied to the rotten lies of the vaccine makers and distributors here: Vaxxed Movie HPVVaxxed Movie Greater Good Movie Sacrificial Virgins – Not for the Greater Good – Part 1, 2, 3 Sacrificial Virgins. TV3 HPV Documentary Does anyone need Gardasil? Colombia 2017: “Fue el Gardasil” (Gardasil Did It) – Abridged version A hard look at the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the families desperately trying to navigate their way through it. The Vaccine Court looks at the mysterious and often unknown world of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP), the only recourse for seeking compensation for those who have been injured by a vaccine. The NVICP, better known as the ”Vaccine Court,” however, is not without controversy Medical Doctors Opposed to Forced Vaccinations: Should Their Views be Silenced? Bill Gates $10 Billion Vaccine Scam Mandatory Swine Flu Vaccination Alert The Washington Vaccination Ploy: Puerto Rico And The Zika Quandary Making The HPV Vaccine Mandatory Is Bad Medicine Supreme Court Pulls Up Government Of India Over Licensing And Trials With “Cervical Cancer” Vaccines Readying Americans For Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations Judicial Watch HPV Vaccine McCarthyism. What if the Vaccine Paradigm itself is Deliberately Flawed? Did 2014 Mark the Collapse of the Vaccine Establishment? Dr. Gary Null – Archive, Vaccines, Global Research This is the world we are in a nutshell – liberals attacking independent thinkers, radicals on the left like me. The Politically Corrective forces of the liberal class and the big businesses like those outfits run like Planned Parenthood have the power to tell my Portland, Oregon, bosses I am dismissed from a mandatory training, and then, my job as social worker ends in termination with a sham of an investigation. It’s easy to be resentful of the powers that be, in this case, Democratic Party females who wanted me shut up, shut down, out of social work! Two and two put together, in a simple sense, is that my few words voiced in a calm, respectful manner at a Planned Parenthood course (repeat, tax payer funded training) on the Fundamentals of Sex (sex ed) precipitated a termination, and now a bruise on my reputation is growing like a hematoma of gigantic proportions. Does anyone think finding a job, a replacement job, is easy now that I was terminated and now that I have voiced all of this on the worldwide net? Readers must know the particular nature of employment in the Portland, Oregon, area, which is now becoming Califi-cadia, and the fact many people from bigger cities, back east, too, have been coming out here for the evergreens, rivers, snowboarding, beer and (back a few years), more millionaire-affordable-friendly homes and income rentals. The competition for rare jobs with my background, and for someone like me – radical and dissident — is steep. I know a lot of writers who are more or less safe economically or job wise that could never understand and maybe empathize with my predicament. “Damaged goods, and why have you stagnated in this lowly field with so much going for you in your thirties and forties? Graduate degrees and writing awards. What’s up with that? It must be something about you – your big mouth, something.” Variations on that theme. Now in the scheme of things, I am reminded daily, I am not a head of a family in Yemen, or journalist in Myanmar, or working as a teacher in Mexico, or plying my trade as social worker in Honduras, or living the dissident’s life as a Palestinian activist in Gaza, so I should count my lucky stars. All of that goes without saying, for sure, and in the global scheme of things, this is merely a bump in my life inside the United States of Israel’s financial and surveillance hall of mirrors (read Robert Fisk’s smart take on the United States of Israel rather than the cartoon prophecies above linked) Yet, for me to have any traction on my thinking about how screwed up America is, from the towers of the three men who own half of all USA wealth, to the drone shops helping immolate wedding parties and sleeping babies, to the absurdity of the duopoly political class, to the ever-eviscerating communities from shore to shining shore, I have to go personal, in the now, as the idiocy and injustices unfold for me, from my pennyante perspective. I understand how to make those allusions and comparisons to my brothers and sisters in arms in much more dire circumstances. This bizarre situation at a Planned Parenthood training demonstrates the power of the forces of stupidity and lock step thinking running certain parts of America’s grand illusion kabuki show; and for me, a rare male in the business of social worker, this has been a reckoning with an upside-down world of social services run by women, some of whom are as uncaring and dictatorial and unethical as their male counterparts who they dis all the time. Here I am, on a second lawyer listening to me and contemplating the veracity of some wrongful termination suit, looking at whistle-blower laws, and positing possible gender-age-religious discrimination. The first legal outfit I dealt with is a non-profit and stated they were spread too thin to handle my case. “If only you were disabled, African-American, a veteran, homosexual, and living with PTSD and a speech impediment.” In so many words, that was the prognosis. The new lawyer says, “Look, you were terminated for being ‘argumentative’ and ‘aggressive.’ For a white heterosexual man, that’s a no-no. But, if you were a woman, and were ‘combative’, they’d see that as passionate and demonstrable of being a great advocate for her clients, as an honorable thing showing you are willing to be there fully supporting clients. They’d say ‘aggressive’ for a woman would be justified and more akin to being smart, focused, confident and ready to take on challenges and advocate for your clients and a worthy way to make real changes for the female gender. And, one man’s arguing is another woman’s opining. ” This coming from a female lawyer . . . The world according to the felons running the show, whether it’s political, private capital, big business, and big non-profit and big government, well, my mother told me at a young age, 16: “Your mouth and your passion and your sense of justice and your anti-authority character and constant questioning will get you fired . . . expect a lonely path to old age and a rocky series of rites of passage . . . make family important, friendships key, and follow that vision quest and obsession with putting nature right. As long as you continue understanding why you are where you are, why there are no laurels awaiting you, and why the powers that be do not want you in the same room, then you are possibly more realized and actualized than most.” Something along those lines, Mona from British Columbia used to say, but alas, the story is never ending, and the gifts that capitalism and elitism and Empire just keep on giving are those that really give it to us. Daily and second-by-second-by-nanosecond. As the daily diet of perversions and accusations of perversion, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and all things in between rape and coming on to a woman, it is a wonder anyone can think straight about what it means to be men and women working toward justice, toward universal human rights. I’ve read over at the World Socialist Website stories about how the #MeToo movement is a witch hunt, and while perusing the comments sections, I am feeling as if I am living in the 1950s, or in the Trump-Billy Bush-Howard Stern locker-room with the outward misogyny: All of this is being ignored in the campaign over sexual harassment. Class divisions are covered up beneath the claim that all women, regardless of their income, share the same “experience” of being oppressed by men, who, particularly if they are white, enjoy the benefits of the “privileged.” The sexual harassment campaign is right-wing, antidemocratic and politically reactionary. It has nothing to do with the interests of the workers, men or women. Some of WSWS writer Joseph Kishore’s points are well taken, like there has to be a delineation between something said versus something done, and that there has to be a fair airing of accusations, fairness, and of course, innocence before guilt and a fair answering to allegations. But, are there more important things in the world than a Saturday Night Live comic groping women at state fairs as his role as senator? Isn’t this what we have succumbed to, this cult of celebrity? And, are we really all crocodile teary about millionaires and multi-multi millionaires losing jobs in entertainment (who could count a Charlie Rose as a journalist, or a classical conductor as anything more than entertainer?). Lost in the entire defense, of course, is that having these creeps masturbate in front of you is a crime, really, public exposure, to say the least. How many of my clients, homeless, living in shit cities with no public restrooms or toilets, get arrested for public urination, and if seen by someone who complains, it’s three times and you are labeled a sex offender. Lost in this millionaires’ game of exposing genitals and spreading semen, is that who in hell would want their nieces, daughters, wives and sons and brothers put to this test: capitalist men in power, or some form of power stretched down the line far from the corridors of the political and arts and entertainment domains, exposing themselves in front of loved ones? Who wants some actor or director or editor grabbing their loved ones and friends, or mauling girls and women in public or private against their wills? Is this the nature of some of these so-called leftists rebuffing the calling out of the perverts? Any manner of stupidity tied to lecherous behavior in the workplace, and this power dynamic of keeping a job or getting one or a better position based on some male actor’s or journalist’s or CEO’s demented sexual game or worse, sexual assault, should be called out and dealt with. Is there presumed innocence? Come on, in an at-will state, in a world of precarity, we are all guilty, hence the mandatory background-credit-work history-drug-medical history checks, even before employment. The fact that these conservative money-grubbing outfits like PBS or NBC or Uber or Walmart are sacking people before a fair trial or investigation, it does speak to the power of Capitalism. All of that is unethical, and unfair, but I see no massive wave of people defending the rights of the worker, the rights of maids and hotel workers and fast-food workers and restaurant servers or anyone working in you-name-the-field to not only not have to live with sexual harassment and quid pro quo but also with unlivable wages, precarious jobs, wage theft, and lack of say in the workplace. But here, again, blaming the victims, as if women or men ever had the rights and backing to confront bad bosses and bad decisions and harassment and workplace dangers and on and on, but we have the “well if women are going to be Playboy bunnies, then all women are game . . . .” Kim Kardashian is famous for one thing – her opulent and well-televised derriere. Miley Cyrus has a music video where she swings around buck naked on a wrecking ball, Beyonce is applauded for her “daring feminine rights” song, during which she and her backup singers dress like strippers and dance around poles, the Russian group, Pussy Riot, who have done performances in which they use raw chicken parts to simulate masturbation, were invited to visit the US Congress and were given a standing ovation when they did so, rappers make millions with music videos where women are denigrated and used as props to dance around showing their behinds to the camera, hundreds of women in the US have participated in so-called “slut riots” where they stalk down major thoroughfares in their undergarments just to prove they can and they are lauded for their “daring bravery”, and tens of thousands of Americans routinely enroll their daughters in beauty pageants each year, where they will be judged on their physical attributes. And yet, anonymous decades-old allegations with vague references to some sort of “something offensive” (not offensive enough for the accuser to have taken action when the “something” occurred, however), are horrifying and can wipe out careers overnight. This is absurd, and we are also not in some revolutionary moment, some civil rights for women movement stitched into Hollywood’s obvious depravities on many levels. The stinking world I live and work in is all about political correctiveness, about demeaning HR folk, about top-heavy administrations, about supervisors who could care less about turnover of employees, who are there to berate or control. Daily, the stupidity of people in my profession – social services – belies a compliant field and brow-beater middling people in positions of authority. They will fawn over Obama or Hillary. Imagine, calling black youth “super predators” (Clinton, Trump). Imagine, bragging about being a good killer and laughing about using “drones on any of my daughters’ boyfriends that get out of line” (Obama). Imagine Madeline Albright saying a million dead Iraqis as a result of US-imposed sanctions was just the business (as usual) of the United States, LLC (collateral damage in keeping with the USA’s economic security). Imagine the bayonet rape of Libya both figuratively and literally with Qaddafi and the smirk from Mrs. Clinton! I get canned – kicked out of “liberal” Planned Parenthood’s Seattle offices and then fired from a female-run and largely female-staffed non-profit that pays marketing firms to PR their reputation as caring leaders in mental health services? I just mentioned briefly a vaccine and alternative forms of medicine. As brief as three sentences written and thirty spoken words. Sacked, frog-marched out of work, and my young clients, left hanging, many in crisis. We live in an upside-down world, where this Obama gets laughs and giggles joking about using drones on his daughters’ boyfriends if they get out of line, yet, if the great pretender Obama were to mention the bust and butt of Beyonce after her Super Bowl performance, Obama would have been derided, chided or worse, censored. Maybe! I think I started this post around what it means to be a man, a father, a son, a grandson, and, partner/significant other/husband. Man, in the 1980’s, I was teaching Robert Bly, Iron John, and got attacked on all sides of the issues around mentoring boys into men, around the general thesis Bly was impregnating that book with. He talked about the inner boy in a screwed up family may “keep on being shamed, invaded, disappointed, and paralyzed for years and years.” Bly talked about how boys and men in the USA feel like victims in that messed up family. Bly was attempting to close the door to that victimhood. He talked about the inner warrior to defend “their soul houses” from invasions. It was that warrior, for both men and women, people lambasted Bly, yet, come one, look at today, 2017, 13 years after the book was published. Talk about bad people! BAD PEOPLE A man told me once that all the bad people Were needed. Maybe not all, but your fingernails You need; they are really claws, and we know Claws. The sharks—what about them? They make other fish swim faster. The hard-faced men In black coats who chase you for hours In dreams—that’s the only way to get you To the shore. Sometimes those hard women Who abandon you get you to say, “You.” A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed. It doesn’t move on its own. Sometimes it takes A lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving. Then they blow across three or four States. This man told me that things work together. Bad handwriting sometimes leads to new ideas; And a careless god—who refuses to let people Eat from the Tree of Knowledge—can lead To books, and eventually to us. We write Poems with lies in them, but they help a little.” ― Robert Bly, Morning Poems What is it about American Men, about this country’s 70-plus approval of all soldiers, all military, all mercenaries in our armies and navies and air forces and marines? What is it about this country’s women either defending Hillary as the best role model for girls, or those women who voted in the Moore-Jones election, for Moore, of course? What is it about white women and loving Trump, those that do, and those who love Hillary? They have no inner warriors. What is it about the white males holding the purse strings, many of them Jewish, as the Jewish web sites and newspapers and columnists continue to glower over. Reading the Israeli and the Jewish voices in print, I am seeing how an untenable Zionism and Judaism is, more concerted and extreme in xenophobia than the ultra-Christians in this country. I end with this interesting look at father-son: The changing times are evident in the debate about a current piece of legislation that could be the biggest change to labor law since the days when Marcus’s father was working as a carpenter. The Employee Free Choice Act, which was introduced in both the House and the Senate in March, would change labor law from the 1930s in order to make it easier for unions to organize workers. Today, as in the ’30s, there are a number of influential Jewish union leaders supporting the legislation. But unlike in the ’30s, a few Jewish voices have surfaced as among the most influential opponents of the legislation. Marcus is frequently mentioned among the leading voices opposing the free choice act. In a famous phone call discussing the legislation with other business executives, he said, “This is how a civilization disappears.” That echoed the words of another child of poor Jewish immigrants, Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate and Jewish philanthropist who told The Wall Street Journal that EFCA is “one of the two fundamental threats to society,” along with Islamism. Marcus also has worked closely with the lobbyist leading the anti-EFCA charge, Rick Berman, who has waded into Jewish communal waters to make his argument that the current unions have no connection with the old ones to which Berman’s father belonged. Many on both sides of the current legislation say that a traditional sympathy for labor that existed in the Jewish community has given way to antipathy in a number of very prominent quarters, with sometimes complicated consequences. Amy Dean, who is active in both the labor world and the Jewish community, says she often encounters people “who have this very warm spot for the labor movement, but it’s sort of romantic and historical. They have these warm feelings for the role of the garment unions, but they think it’s not a modern movement that they want to embrace. We have a huge dissonance within the Jewish community about the labor movement.” For Berman, this dissonance has appeared in his own family: His son David Berman, a founder of the rock bands Pavement and the Silver Jews, has vociferously attacked his father’s stance on labor unions. “Jews should always identify with the disadvantaged,” the younger Berman (David) wrote to the Forward. “You cannot ‘graduate’ to a life of self-interest and exploitation.” Berman, Marcus and Adelson appear to have played a role in halting EFCA’s progress through Congress. While passage looked like a sure thing earlier this year, when Barack Obama took office, the bill’s prospects have dimmed as a number of key senators have announced their opposition to it. It is perhaps fitting that the senator whose opposition represented a turning point was Pennsylvania Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter, the child of Jewish immigrant parents. People such as Specter and Marcus do not see the issue of EFCA in Jewish terms, but they acknowledge that they are frequently contending with history when they take up the current legislation or any other labor issues. … This meant that rabbis would often mediate labor disputes between Jewish workers and bosses, and many of the most prominent Jewish business owners at the time — names like Macy and Gimbels — worked closely with unions. Back in 1935, when the National Labor Relations Act was passed, the influential, and heavily Jewish, garment unions in New York City rallied working men and women to provide crucial popular support for the legislation. Historians note that Jews had hardly any presence in groups that opposed the legislation; they were often barred from entering the national business associations. Since that time, of course, the Jewish community has largely followed the route of Marcus out of the tenements and into the business class. The 2001 National Jewish Population Survey found that 36% of Jewish households reported income above $75,000 — twice the percentage in the population at large. … Nowhere is the dissonance on these points more evident than in the rather personal battle being waged by Berman, the leading lobbyist against unions and EFCA in Washington. Berman has long been a lightning rod for criticism, thanks to the work that his firm, Berman and Company, has done on behalf of such corporate interests as the tobacco and alcohol industries. Berman’s recent work against unions — his firm has spent $25 million on advertisements against EFCA — has won him enemies not only within the labor movement, but also within his own rather prominent family. In January of this year, his son David announced in an Internet post that he was leaving his latest music project, the Silver Jews. He took the opportunity to launch an attack on his lobbyist father. “My father is a despicable man,” the younger Berman wrote in the January 22 post on the message board of his record label, Drag City. The first specific charge that Berman levied against his father was that he is a “union buster.” In an e-mail interview with the Forward, David Berman said that his father — and his father’s generation — had become disconnected from the hardship of their grandparents. Both of Rick Berman’s grandfathers worked in the New York garment industry. “My grandparents are good people, raised by good Jews,” the younger Berman wrote to the Forward, “but their children are just living lives of meaningless acquisition. Within two generations, all memory of injustice is forgotten.” What is lost in all of this sadism created by both parties, all the movers and shakers with millions stuffed in pockets, the billionaires like the following have set up empires of shame with their billions upon billions. Like Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg ($35.5 billion), Mark Zuckerbeg ($33.4 billion), Sheldon Adelson ($31.4 billion), and Shari Arison, like Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page ($29.2 and $29.7 billion); investors George Soros ($24.2 billion), Carl Icahn ($23.5 billion) and Len Blavatnik ($20.2 billion), and Dell Computer Founder Michael Dell ($19.2 billion);  like Larry Ellison ($54.2 billion), Russ Weiner, the founder and CEO of Rockstar energy drinks, Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner of the Chicago Bulls and the Chicago White Sox sports franchises, and Ken Grossman, a co-founder of the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. Weiner is the son of prominent conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage (born Michael Weiner); like Seth Klarman, an investor in the Times of Israel, is also on the list, with a net worth of $1.5 billion. Within two generations of those death camps, David Berman states, his family and tribal line have become despicable in many cases, taking advantage of power, tax dodges, military-pharmacy-finance-computing-legal-retail larceny on a very global scale. Those sins of the father, ugh? Daddy Sylvia Plath, 1932 – 1963 You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time— Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You— Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I’m finally through. The black telephone’s off at the root, The voices just can’t worm through. If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two— The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There’s a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through. http://clubof.info/