#not immediately going ‘this leftist doesn’t agree with me so I get to say they’re not a leftist because I dictate their personal values’

[crypticarchivist]

The largest obstacle to modern leftism in my country is that modern Socialists and Communists actively hate interacting with other people and refuse to compromise on anything to the point that they are not social and refuse to participate in a community.

Like some of y’all will preach radical acceptance and human rights but the second someone is marginally different you start talking like a cop

Hell I am guilty of that shit during my highschool years. But you fuckers need to learn how to talk to people like you don’t have a screen and two states between the two of you

[cattles-bians]

the 'um. are our exes dating' damie thread

post directory

em: unfortunately i have ‘rebecca as jamies old flame’ brainworms and ‘viola as danis old flame’ brainworms bc lesbians sure be forming these intricate webs of exes

obsetress: bestie the best part of this is that, like all exes, dani and jamie end up together, but so do rebecca and viola, yes this is canon and no i will not be taking questions

em: holy SHIT now THAT is a rarepair!!!!!!!

em: i mean they have a lot of free time stuck in that lake.......

obsetress: so what if i made custom discord emotes specifically so it would look like they were on a date

em: WHAT IF

em: viola: on her nightly wander through the grounds

me twirling my hair: haha do you come here often

obsetress: sometimes i just like to think about how viola is a taurus and rebestiecca is a virgo and they have the swankiest flat in london together with marble countertops and stainless steel appliances and rebecca is a high powered attorney and viola buys all the designer clothes she wants and dani and jamie will come into the city to visit them but then rebecca and vi immediately start fighting and dani and jamie are like "uh owen can you come pick us up they're fighting again" but he's too busy taking hannah out to a nice dinner so they just end up getting a hotel instead and then show up to brunch the next morning and rebecca and viola are there smiling pleasantly like nothing happened and viola didn't throw a box of biscuits against the wall just last night and when dani can't control her big mouth and asks about it (jamie elbowing her in the ribs as she takes a big gulp of bloody mary) viola and rebecca just look confused and rebecca furrows her brows and is like "what fight?" and dani and jamie just look at each other and jamie shrugs and slings an arm over dani's shoulder and then they order another round of drinks but like i said i only think about this sometimes it's not like it's a full-blown headcanon or anything)

em: there is so much to process here hannah but: taurus viola is such a god tier take & i can’t believe i never thought about it?? earth sign queens

obsetress: thank you i agree and i promise you this is not my taurus ass projecting, viola is actually a textbook taurus and in this essay i will––

em: i love typing a response and by the time i send a reply there is a full fic in my mentions

obsetress: like i said! not something i think about all the time or anything!

em: yeah viola is a little volatile sometimes but they always talk abt it after and most importantly they never go 2 bed angry! violas workin through some stuff n rebecca doesn’t let her push her around

em: i MEAN or they’re totally dysfunctional but i’m dying at damie like ‘ah owen cna u pick us up the girls are fighting again’

obsetress: rebecca sits her down and makes her talk about it and she gently steers vi towards "i feel" statements, focuses on stating "you did x, and it made me feel y," and when she covers vi's hand with hers, gently stroking her thumb over her knuckles, all the tension leaves vi's body

obsetress: and viola's willing, just for a minute, to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, rebecca was right. but only this one time

obsetress: (rebecca does her best to hold back a smirk, because "only this one time" seems to happen every time, but she's not about to say that to viola's face, not now, when vi's leaning into her and nuzzling against her cheek)

em: oh this is Tender

em: damie sitting in the restaurant completely baffled makes me Lose It like yeah ok we all wanna be gentle emotionally intelligent lesbians dani clayton or jamie taylor but some of us aren’t quite there yet!!

obsetress: viola, staring at jamie's arm slung over dani's shoulder and the way dani's beaming over at her, tangling her fingers with jamie's: do you two... need to be doing that? why are you doing that

obsetress: rebecca: they're in love, babe

viola: i don't feel the need to do... that, and i love you just fine

rebecca: i love you just fine, too

dani and jamie: (staring, horrified, across the table as their waiter serves them their eggs benedict)

em: @ dani @ jamie some people aren’t on the cusp of fucking at Any Given Moment

obsetress: you: (that)

dani: i don't understand the question

rebecca: it... wasn't a question

obsetress: they're just tryna be cottagecore and vi and rebecca are out here all big city earth sign power lesbians fighting in their penthouse apartment and dani's just like "wow you two have a dishwasher???? how neat"

em: vi constantly answers the door in expensive dressing gowns that show way too much leg and the first couple times dani and jamie are suddenly v interested in the wall paper but eventually they’re just like congrats on the tits maam can we have a spot of tea

em: violas like, gloating about some business investment or properties or a lucrative deal she was ruthless enough to land and danis like oh cool :) i’ve been making a lot of jam lately. would u like some jam

obsetress: inflated property value ex-gf and homemade jam ex-gf

obsetress: meanwhile, their respective gfs, won over the jury in closing arguments ex-gf and successfully integrated a new bee colony and harvested her first jar of honey ex-gf, are sipping their whiskey and watching, enamored, as it all plays out

em: viola cannot understand they’re perfectly happy in their cosy little apartment above the shop n she’s like ‘i have some gorgeous new properties if you ever want to-‘ and rebecca and dani have to figure out how to change the topic before jamie goes off w her Kill Landlords polemic

obsetress: jamie, later: i will tolerate her, dani, i will tolerate her because you love her and because rebecca loves her, but i swear to GOD if she "not all landlords" me one more time i'll––

em: jamie ‘card carrying socialist’ taylor cannot fucking stand viola half the time n eventually she half jokes that dani ‘downgraded’ to her drop out working class ass n danis like ??? oh babe. baby cmere. me and vi broke up for like 1000 reasons but the class difference didn’t Help

em: way later dani mumbles something like ‘i said the $2 aldi wine tasted perfectly drinkable and she didn’t speak to me for days’ and jamies like ‘pardon?’ but danis already Zonked Out

obsetress: ldkjfslkdfjlsj this part SENT me just. the idea of dani's final, dozing thought being viola pressed over the two dollar aldi wine

obsetress: sometimes jamie doesn't understand how dani could've dated viola at all, but then they'll be at dinner and rebecca will make some comment about some case and dani and viola's hackles will raise in the exact same way and they'll start popping right tf off down the same lane

obsetress: and jamie's like "oh, right. that"

obsetress: (it also doesn't hurt, jamie begrudgingly admits to herself next time viola answers the door Tits Out™️, that viola's hot. super hot)

———

bonus:

audacity: just. the chaos of capitalist vi and socialist jamie being in the same fucking room

audacity: liberal versus leftist ding ding ding round one fight

obsetress: i’m crying liberal vs leftist that’s literally it

obsetress: “of course i’m a leftist, jamie, i’m gay” “that’s not—“

audacity: i love you vi but my money’s on jamie HSKDHSKDHSJSH

audacity: GOD

audacity: VI NOT EVEN KNOWING LIB IS NOT LEFTIST I—

obsetress: “it’s not like i’m a conservative just because i have money, please”

audacity: jamie looking at vi’s ostentatious new dress and going “how many renters did you make homeless for THAT”

[max1461]

Just read Scott Alexander’s post on “conflict theorists” vs. “mistake theorists” and, hmm. I have several thoughts. First, to summarize the concept for anyone who hasn’t seen it before: Alexander links to a reddit post by user u/no_bear_so_low, who originated the idea, saying

There is a way of carving up politics in which there are two basic political meta-theories, that is to say theories about why different political ideologies and political conflict exist. The first theory is that political disagreements exist because politics is complex and people make mistakes, if we all understood the evidence better, we’d agree on a great deal more. We’ll call this the mistake theory of politics. For the mistake theorist, politics is not a zero-sum game, but a matter of growing the pie so there is more for everyone. The second theory is that political disagreements reflect differences in interests which are largely irreconcilable. We’ll call this the conflict theory of politics. According to the conflict theory of politics, politics is full of zero-sum games.

u/no_bear_so_low claims that both the far left and far right are more amenable to conflict theory than liberals are, who lean more towards mistake theory. Alexander seems to agree, though in his own post he’s speaking mainly about Marxists in particular. He summarizes the concept as follows:

To massively oversimplify:

Mistake theorists treat politics as science, engineering, or medicine. The State is diseased. We’re all doctors, standing around arguing over the best diagnosis and cure. Some of us have good ideas, others have bad ideas that wouldn’t help, or that would cause too many side effects.

Conflict theorists treat politics as war. Different blocs with different interests are forever fighting to determine whether the State exists to enrich the Elites or to help the People.

In addition, Alexander subdivides the categories further into “hard” and “soft” versions:

Consider a further distinction between easy and hard mistake theorists. Easy mistake theorists think that all our problems come from very stupid people making very simple mistakes; dumb people deny the evidence about global warming; smart people don’t. Hard mistake theorists think that the questions involved are really complicated and require more evidence than we’ve been able to collect so far [...]

Maybe there’s a further distinction between easy and hard conflict theorists. Easy conflict theorists think that all our problems come from cartoon-villain caricatures wanting very evil things; bad people want to kill brown people and steal their oil, good people want world peace and tolerance. Hard conflict theorists think that our problems come from clashes between differing but comprehensible worldviews.

So what do I think about all this?

Well, it seems to me that this framework is (a) a fairly reasonable descriptive dichotomy, in the sense that, yes, a lot of people do genuinely seem to fall into one of these two camps, and (b) a horrible dichotomy on which to base any prescriptions about political meta-theory, in that these are both awful (and obviously wrong) ways to think about the world. Now, Alexander doesn’t explicitly give any such prescriptions, but he does describe SCC as “hard mistake theorist central”, and generally speaks of mistake theory in approving terms, while speaking of conflict theory in disapproving ones. I think this is bad.

At a base level, my problem with both these “theories” is that they’re, in some sense, just too optimistic.

I agree, for example, with the hard mistake theorist sentiment that the world is full of extremely challenging technical problems, that these problems can be the source of real human suffering, and that the only way to address these problems is through data collection and empirical analysis and hard technical work. And I agree that this will often produce unintuitive conclusions, that run against people’s gut sense of what the right policy might look like. I agree that the state is diseased. I do not agree that “[w]e’re all doctors, standing around arguing over the best diagnosis and cure.” People, it turns out, often do have genuinely different and irreconcilable values, and genuinely do envision different ideal worlds. In addition to that fairly mundane observation, there genuinely are a lot of bad actors, who are just in the game for their own benefit. The world is full of grifters, schemers, and petty (or not so petty) tyrants; on an empirical level that’s just not something you can deny.

On the other hand, I agree with the easy conflict theorist sentiment that, e.g., “bad people want to kill brown people and steal their oil.” There’s plenty of pretty immediate proof of that to be found if you look into the history of colonialism¹, or the slave trade, or US foreign election interference in the twentieth century. Actually, just so I’m not pissing anybody off by only mentioning “western” examples, I’ll include the Khmer Rouge and the Holodomor and comfort women and uh, you get the picture. For god’s sake, the Nazis really existed, and yeah, they really believed all that Nazi shit. In retrospect they may seem like implausibly evil cartoon villains, but in fact they were real flesh and blood humans, just like the rest of us. You think that was just a one-off?

And on a much more mundane note, sometimes (actually, very very often), ordinary people just have incompatible ethical axioms. Sometimes people have genuinely different values, and there are no rational means to sort out which value-set to choose. I suspect this is at least part of the reason for the rationalist community’s skew towards mistake theorizers, in that their favored intellectual tool has more-or-less nothing to offer when it comes to selecting your values (=ethical axioms, =terminal goals, etc). I mean, of course rationality is good for diagnosing contradictions in your value set, but it can’t tell you how to resolve those contradictions. That’s the domain of intuition, empathy, and aesthetics, were data cannot light your way.

However, I do not agree with the conflict theorists’ underlying sentiment that if “the good people” were just in charge, everything would be better. After all, there are all those pesky technical problems with unintuitive solutions getting in the way, requiring all kinds of expertise and thorough empirical study and uh, plenty of them might not even be solvable.² This is a huge deal. It’s incredibly easy to have the best of intentions and still make horrible mistakes by virtue of just... happening to have the facts wrong. Not through malice, or self-interest, or even some nicely-explainable sociological bias like white fragility or whatever. Just because problems are hard, and sometime you will fail to solve them. Even when people’s lives and livelihoods are at stake.

Here’s a handy latex-formatted table for your comprehending pleasure:

lol, we live there.

So this all sounds a bit pessimistic and, well, I suppose it is. I think we have a responsibility to acknowledge the gravity of our situation. We could, conceivably, live in a world that was structured according to either the conflict theorist’s vision or the mistake theorist’s vision, but we don’t. We live in a much scarier world, and if we don’t face that terrifying reality head-on, we’re not going to be able to overcome it.

Now, in general, I’d say I spend a lot of my internet-argument-energy-allowance trying to persuade [what I perceive to be] overly conflict-theorizing leftists in the direction of a greater recognition of the genuine technical difficulty of the problems we face. It's probably worth making a separate post about why I think a “denial of unintuitive solutions” is so common on the left, but I’ll just mention here that I think it relates to what I once jokingly called the “Humanistic gaze”. That is, the bias to view everything quite narrowly through the lens of the humanities, and to view all problems as fundamentally sociological in nature. When the world is constructed entirely by humans and human social relations, there’s a level at which nothing can be unintuitive. After all, an intersubjective world must ultimately be grounded in subjective experience, and subjective experience is literally made of intuition.

I usually don’t spend much time pursuing the dual activity (trying to argue liberals out of [what I perceive to be] an overly mistake-theorizing perspective). This is largely because, well, I think the optimistic assumption that mistake theorists make —that most people have basically compatible goals, and that relatively few people are working out of abject self-interest or hatred or whatever— is so obviously false that it doesn’t warrant as much genuine critique as it warrants responding with memes about US war crimes. The principal of charity is best extended to ideas, not people or institutions. You can take the neocons’ arguments seriously without extending charity to the neocons as agents.

The post concludes with Alexander writing

But overall I’m less sure of myself than before and think this deserves more treatment as a hard case that needs to be argued in more specific situations. Certainly “everyone in government is already a good person, and just has to be convinced of the right facts” is looking less plausible these days.

And uh, yeah. Indeed.

So, in conclusion: is politics medicine, or is it war? No, it’s politics.

There are disagreements, and conflicts of interest, and coalition building, and policy-wonkery, and logistics. There is, as with anything involving the state, the implicit threat of violence. (That’s where the state’s power comes from, remember? Whether it’s their power to tax, or their power to enforce individual property rights to begin with. Their power to regulate or build infrastructure or legally construct corporate personhood or whatever. There’s more than a bit of game theory involved, sure, but the rules of the game are set through the armory.) Every scholarly technocrat with double-blind peer reviewed policy suggestions still ultimately just decides who the guns get pointed at, if at several layers of abstraction. Every righteous people’s vanguard is still bound by the mathematics of production and the dynamics of a chaotic world. There are no easy solution, not conceptually easy nor practically easy. And unless we recognize that on a very deep level, we have no chance of fixing anything.

[1] I’d quote my go-to example here, of the truly ghastly stories relayed to linguist R. M. Dixon by the Dyirbal people of Australia about their subjugation at the hands of white settlers, but unfortunately I don’t have his book with me at the moment. Also this post would require several additional trigger warnings.

[2] I mean, after all, there are only countably many Turing machines, and the set of all languages with finitely many symbols has cardinality 2^(aleph_0)!

[theofficialvincenzo]

I don’t know what to do with this observation or what direction it’s pointing, but I’ve noticed that there is definitely a correlation between somebody’s subconscious social leaning, and their opinion on robots/aliens. 

Whenever I talk to somebody about the idea of “AI Robots” or “Alien Visitors,” I take note of their gut reaction to the concept. A lot of the time, people react with “There’s going to be a robot uprising!” or “This is why the aliens won’t land” “If other species are watching us, they hate us” etc. Usually it’s just a joke but they’ll still get irritated if I counter it with “Yeah but what if they were friendly, though?” as if my take was definitively less realistic. 

It finally clicked for me that the “Robot/Alien” conversation is actually a thought experiment about xenophobia. If you ask anybody about their opinion on a real-world peoples and their rights, they will largely be more sympathetic to them because they're real human beings that they might find themselves interacting with. (And if not, they’ll at least try to make a whole thesis defending their dumb opinion)

But in this thought experiment, you’re presenting someone with a cultural “Other” that doesn’t actually exist. No filters. You’re saying “This person is from a world so different from yours that they are not even the same species. All you know is that their brain is comparable to yours, and might feel the same emotions. What do you do?” And the response is often “I would be afraid, because they would be dangerous, because they would hate us, because our way of life would be harmful to them, so I will be defensive before trying to earn their trust.”

(I don’t know where that almost instinctual mindset comes from but I’m sure that “the them will always hate the us because the us is evil” probably comes from generations of colonialism and capitalism. Thanks, whites.)

On the other hand, most of my very left-leaning friends will jump at the opportunity to have a larger conversation regarding relationships with brand new types of peoples and what that experience might look like. From them, I usually get things like “If we ever needed to start making AI that could feel emotion for x task, the very first thing we should focus on is cultivating an environment where they are appreciated and respected for doing the task and given the opportunity to leave if they want/pursue other things” or “The idea that a machine cannot produce a work of art is immediately contradicted if that machine has artistic intent and is not doing it procedurally” or “Arrival’ is my favorite sci-fi because instead of raising their guns, the humans decided that the best first-contact move was to work with the aliens to try learning their language.”

So yeah. Don’t know what to do with that observation or how useful it is, but I have noticed that it’s consistent throughout the people I’ve talked to. Maybe it’s something about respecting theoretical strangers being a sign that somebody is already willing to help real ones. 

tl;dr: I’ve noticed that hardcore leftists have an easier time agreeing with social rights for people that don’t even exist than centrists have admitting that those groups would even be people in the first place. 

[morrigansmuses]

3 Golden Rules.

On Ethical disappointments. 

I was raised to be tolerant. To consider the views and opinions of others, to keep and open mind. I was a social outsider (homeschooled due to racism in the local school.) I vowed I wouldn’t ever exclude people for being different to me or having different values. I was desperate to make and keep friends. More than anything.

I was 15 in the late 1990s. Lonely as hell. I decided that I would befriend absolutely anyone who would have me. Essentially anyone who wouldn’t beat me up on sight for being foreign.

I decided that I had 3 and only 3 dealbreakers in terms of friendship.

RULE 1. They couldn’t be cruel to animals.

RULE 2. They coudn’t sexually abuse children.

RULE 3 They couldn’t be a card carrying Nazi.

If anyone in my life did any of those things I couldn’t associate with them anymore. But barring that I would try to accept them as individuals. 

Thats a pretty low bar right? I mean how could anyone fail to meet those insanely low standards?

See back then I didn’t know that shades of grey existed. I knew in theory that we were all imperfect beings, but I didn’t know what that meant yet in reality.

So I began to make friends. With normal kids. Actually probably nicer than average kids because they were sweet and sensitive enough to accept me for who I was when no one else would.

So the first hurdle I came across was that some of these people I was friends with enjoyed hunting. They would say for meat. I get that. Better than factory farming right? less cruel, less wasteful.

“You shouldn’t eat meat unless you’re willing to kill it yourself” They’d say virtuously.  

But then I saw them in action. Delighting in the act of killing in a way that I knew wasn’t healthy. Laughing at the kid goat’s head bursting in a shower of gore or the way an animal screamed upon being shot. Killing more than they needed… That’s an impulse I don’t believe humans should engender in themselves.

But it was for food. Right? So I overlooked it and silenced the voice in my heart.

One day my best friend shot a stray cat with his bb gun just for the laugh. It didn’t kill the cat or anything but the animal yelped and ran away. I was so upset and shocked that I burst into tears and it all came pouring out. Was he training himself to become a sociopath? I asked him.

He apologised. He never did anything like it again. He was very kind to animals, especially cats, ever since and doesn’t hunt them anymore for any reason.

I forgave.

That’s the first time I remember compromising a core value. It was like a tooth being pulled from my 15 year old head. 

I don’t regret it.

We’re still best friends. 

The second hurdle that started to crack my young heart was the undeniable fact that in the early 2000s almost every guy I knew in his early 20s had a girlfriend between that ages of 12 and 15. NEVER OLDER. I can’t stress this enough. They would vomit in disgust at the thought of a crone of 18 or 19. They were also VERY vocal about their desire and right to have sex with children after a few drinks. By the time I was 20 I knew I had aged out of the 20s dating pool. I wasn’t attracted to older men. 

No matter. I’m asexual and prefer platonic relationships anyway.

To this day I’ve never had a romantic relationship with a man. Because once I realised that Rule 2 wasn’t one any of them could keep, the trust was broken.

It wasn’t only men either. My closest girlfriend was a 26 year old substitute teacher who fucked one of her 15 year old students on a drunk night out once…

So they both had fun and boys that age are up for anything right? I mean. He probably still boasts about it today…

Right?

Plus… She was all I had. Like the only one I had at the time. I was so scared of losing her.

I turned a blind eye and ear. I tolerated. I didn’t have to approve of their teenage girlfriends did I? After all there were so many of them that if I cut them out of my life I’d have no friends ever again. Because the whole of society looked like them…

Thats the truth.

People in my extended family have dated 17 or 18 year old girls and encouraged them to drop out of school to have their children. People I love have done that.

I once knew a handsome, intelligent and charming man. He was dating a family member for a few months. He often defended the right of adult men to date teens. “Girls mature more quickly than boys.” He’d argue. Everyone would agree. After all hadn’t my great grandmother been 12 years old when she met my great grandfather and married him on her 16th birthday (with parental permission)? He was in his 20s. Just a boy himself surely? “We all know what children boys in their 20s are right?” Said my Mother… Whom I love very much.

Excuses were made.

Years later I discovered the the handsome, intelligent and charming man had been raping a 6 year old the entire time we’d known him. He is still wanted by the police today.

My father tells that when he was a boy of 18 back in the 70s he had kicked an older German man, a respected family friend, out of his car because the man had asked him to pull over, he had something important to tell him. When he did so, the man said that the Holocaust was a myth. An exaggeration, a Zionist hoax.

My Father was dating my mother at the time. She’s Jewish. So is his uncle, a Holocaust survivor.

He yelled at the man not to talk shit and made him walk home.

I am not my father.

The first time a Holocaust denier (a respected local businessman) voiced their opinion to me I froze. Then laughed. Surely he must be kidding... I argued briefly before realising that he’d made up his mind.

My well meaning people said I’d made a mistake. It was my job, they said, to change his mind. To educate him. Otherwise how would he learn?

I didn’t speak to him again but I still nod at him in the street because he employs a few of my friends and I wouldn’t want to make things awkward for them.

And also I don’t want him to yell at me. 

I have worked with Holocaust survivors and have survivors in my immediate family and I still nod in the street at a Holocaust Denier because we are raised to be polite aren’t we? Let’s not make a scene. 

We’re mature adults.

Aren’t we?

People are starting to turn weirder than they used to be. Politically.

My Leftist friends are in a secret facebook group... Strenuously defending China’s Uyghur genocide because Communism can do no wrong… And at the same time saying all the Israelis need to be killed for what they’ve done to the Palestinians. One suggests a biological weapon tailored to Jews.

My Centrist friends are suggesting we “Hang up democracy for a while” in order to combat global warming and welcome a global police state and stop “kicking off” about our rights all the time. “Maybe we need a jackboot up the arse” one of them says.

And the ones that aren’t on the Left?

My facebook feed these days is getting awfully full of Rothschild memes.

“We own every bank in the world and funded both sides of every war since Waterloo.” They say, next to a grinning caricature of Jacob de Rothschild. Reminiscent of a Nazi cartoon of a “Rat Jew.”

Even a hedge fund billionaire prick doesn’t deserve that, does he?

I don’t comment. What’s the point? They’ve watched all the youtube and don’t read history books on principal.

My Brother is getting into Qanon. So is my Sister in Law.

She follows the medical teachings of a man who thinks the Jews invented Chemotherapy to kill the Germans after the war. Apparently he is becoming more and more popular.

Eccentrics.

Thats all.

I’m half Jewish. Like My Brother.

One of the Survivors I know said that 3 weeks after the Nazi propaganda came into the school he attended, he was in Bergen Belsen and half his family was dead.

His neighbour was jealous because his father had 2 more cows than he did.

I hear Marine Le Pen is neck and neck with Macron to win France.

A good friend of mine said it's because by 2030 Muslims will outnumber white people in Europe. He won’t read the articles I send him. But he sure sends me a lot of YouTubes.

I ignore them because I don’t want to hate him. Maybe he ignores my articles for the same reason.

Hey 15 year old me…. You, skinny thing with the ethics, the braces and black eyeliner…

Those compromises I made were made out of love... And also fear. 

Please stop looking at me like that little girl.

“It’s true” writes my friend. They’re trying to breed us out. It’s all an elite Zionist plot.”

I close Whatsapp.

Here I go again I guess…

[qqueenofhades]

Can you please explain why you like Warren more than Sanders? I was too young to vote in 2016 but I would've voted Bernie in that primary, and I plan to do so this year(I'll vote whoever the Democrat party chooses in the real election, I understand the dangers of not doing so). I don't know much about the differences in their policies except that Sanders is slightly more leftist and a relatively simple comparison between the two would help. And how big of a factor should his age play in my vote?

Thanks for asking!

I think the best place for you to start, if you want everything explained in depth on each issue far more eloquently than I can, is to simply read the Political positions of Bernie Sanders and Political positions of Elizabeth Warren pages on Wikipedia, which outline their positions on pretty much everything you could think of. The main difference in how people perceive them lies in the fact that Bernie has been a democratic socialist for his entire political career, while Warren became a Democrat in 1996, and is viewed by the hard left as still being too pro-capitalist and/or pro-military and/or too ethically suspect and/or untrustworthy and/or could change her mind and betray them again. For a certain subset of people for whom purity of ideology and/or the strength of conviction is only ever demonstrated by never changing your mind and only ever having held the right positions, the fact that Warren’s political positions have changed over time seems dangerous, and that she isn’t as purely “socialist” as Bernie means that she is, in their eyes, a lesser candidate. As I said in the earlier ask, we will never have an American president who is completely free from the toxic elements of American ideology. There are things that I don’t fully agree with Warren on, absolutely. But lashing into her as a secret spineless corporate shill who would completely betray the progressive movement if she was elected has nothing to do with reality, certainly nothing that reflects her actual rhetoric and voting record, and once again demonstrates the tendency of a certain subset of Bernie supporters to completely refuse anything less than their candidate no matter what, and that is… frustrating.

Let me be clear: Warren and Sanders are my top two choices. Policy-wise, they’re the only candidates proposing anything I want to actually see enacted. I completely support anyone who wants to vote for either of them in the primary, and indeed, I ended my last post by strongly urging the anon (and anyone else who identified ideologically with Bernie) to vote for him in the primaries. I myself get a cold shudder at the idea of having to vote for Biden or Buttigieg as the Democratic nominee (even if I don’t think it’ll happen). I don’t want to have to do it, which is why I keep urging progressives to turn out in droves and vote their conscience in the primaries: that way, we won’t even end up in a situation where we have to hold our nose and vote for a nominee we don’t really like, don’t support, and who will continue more ineffective centrist policies that don’t address the real problems in the country. If progressives vote in sufficient numbers, we will get a progressive nominee that we can actively vote for and feel good about, rather than one that we can barely stomach. If we sit home and only let the moderate/centrist white Democrats vote in the primary, that is the nominee that we will end up with. Gross. 

So in other words, I am not here to stoke the worrying and self-inflicted factionalism ongoing between Sanders and Warren supporters who have to outdo each other with My Ideology Is Better Than Your Ideology. That was exactly what I was critiquing in the earlier answer. I think both candidates align well with my values, I would vote for either one of them without qualms, and I think they are proposing policies that broadly target the major issues at hand. Destroying one to try to advance the other is unnecessary, counterproductive, and doing half the Trump/GOP machine’s work for them. It is a hollow moral victory in shouting echo chambers on the internet that has no real-world value and helps no one at all in the long run, except for feeling smug that you have The Most Pure Doctrine. Yay. Still not helping us get rid of Trump. So vote for whichever one you want in the primary, and then vote for whoever wins in the general. Like I said above, if progressives turn out in sufficient numbers, we won’t end up with a terrible candidate in the first place.

I like Warren because she has shown a consistent willingness to learn, grow, to take feedback and adjust her policies accordingly, to engage with community leaders, and, frankly, to demonstrate a more nuanced awareness of intersectionality and identity. Bernie has a tendency to struggle with differentiating class and race, dismisses “identity politics” and can confuse it with tokenism, and still holds the position that, essentially, socialism and economic justice will fix everything. Even the left-leaning The Guardian has found some grounds to criticize him on how he has handled this. I think that Warren is more aware on some levels as to how multiple factors inform an individual’s politics, not just economics and social class. But guess what: these are still minor quibbles and the kind of nitpicking that I get to do at primary stage! I’m still completely happy to vote for the man in a general election! Nothing that I say about Bernie here disqualifies him from my support if he’s the progressive candidate that comes out on top! And none of what I say below about Warren should be read as some sort of insidious attempt to prove that Bernie doesn’t hold these positions too/passive-aggressive slam on him, etc. etc. I’m simply explaining what I like about her particularly.

I like Warren because her plans are detailed, workable, based on extensive research, highlight multiple values that I have in common with her, and give practical recommendations as to how to implement them within the existing framework of the American political system (as well as, where needed, changing it radically). Her policy documents specifically highlight the African-American maternal mortality crisis, valuing the work and lives of women of color, protecting reproductive rights and access to care/abortion services, funding, respecting, and supporting Native Americans and indigenous people, supporting the LGBTQ community on many fronts, cancelling all student debt on day one of her presidency (as an academic with a lot of student debt, this is a big issue for me), confronting white nationalist terrorism, getting rid of the electoral college, regulating and breaking up market monopolies, taxing the shit out of billionaires, holding capitalism accountable, fighting global financial corruption and “dark money” in international politics, introducing immediate debt relief for Puerto Rico, overhauling immigration policy to make it more fair and welcoming, fighting for climate change especially as a racial justice issue, ending private prisons and federal defense budget bloat, recognizing that just throwing endless money at national security issues has not fixed them, drastically revising and ending a foreign policy currently based on endless money and endless wars, breaking up Wall Street economic monopolies and misbehaviour, transitioning to 100% clean energy and Medicare for All, reinvesting in public schools, and… I could go on, but you get the gist. She is a lawyer, professor, and senator with public and professional expertise in many relevant fields. She used to teach bankruptcy law and economic policy. She is smart and tough, but can break complicated concepts down and explain them clearly. She has earned the endorsement of black women’s groups and over 100 Latino leaders. And: yes. It’s time for us to have a female president. It just is. I feel strongly about it.

Warren was recently attacked for putting out a plan related to how the U.S. military could drastically reduce its wasteful carbon footprint and help combat climate change, as this was clearly proof that she was in fact just a lip-service progressive and didn’t want to, you know, apparently abolish it entirely and pretend it didn’t exist and personally tell everyone in the military what a bad person they were. I am not a fan of anything about the U.S. military-industrial complex. But if you don’t recognize that it’s largely composed of poor, working-class people of color and/or economically deprived people who have no other career option, that veterans are discarded instantly the moment they’re no use to the war and propaganda machine and that any politician is going to have to reckon with this, and that you can’t snap your fingers and make it go away, then that’s also not helping. Warren has also been attacked for not wanting to get rid of capitalism entirely, as if that is a remotely feasible or workable option in 21st-century America. She has voted for and suggested regulations and wealth taxes and major restructuring and everything else you can think of, she proposed and founded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and so on. But for some people, this still is Just Not Good Enough. Which…. fine. You don’t have to vote for her in the primary if she’s not ideologically the closest candidate to you. Once again, the point of the primary is to pick whichever candidate you like the most and to do everything to help them win, so you aren’t stuck with a bad choice when it comes time for the general. But acting like this is a huge and horrible disqualifier and that she’s an awful corporate hack who will just be terrible (her main crime not being Bernie/competing against him) has nothing to do with reality, and everything with having to win internet woke points and ideological militancy arguments. It’s not helpful. 

Since the earlier post went viral, I am now getting random hate or completely bizarre misinterpretations of my argument or whatever else, none of which I will answer and all of which will be deleted out of hand, because I am just not interested in trading insults about this and/or engaging in pointless arguments with people who have already made up their mind. But for some people, it’s apparently really threatening to say that if you only vote for the best ideology in the primaries and then quit in a snit fit before the general election, you’re not helping. You’re not doing anything useful. Everyone who was reblogging the post and agreeing with me was around my age or older; everyone who was reblogging it to slam me was usually a lot younger. And I’m glad that 21-year-olds feel that winning the ideology battle is more important than having a functional government, but: sorry. I’m old and I don’t have to listen to that, and I’m not going to. Perfect cannot be the enemy of good, or even better than what we’ve got now. And let’s be clear: anything would be better than what we have now. It would directly save lives and impact policies, and if you can’t admit that because you’re too hung up on how Elizabeth Warren might Be A Capitalist Pig Who Likes Billionaires, please, please get off the internet and go outside.

Would Warren, Sanders, or even Buttigieg or Biden lock immigrant children in cages and concentration camps at the border and commit deliberate slow-motion genocide by denial of care and access? No. Would they actively roll back Obama-era regulations protecting LGBTQ rights, the environment, climate change activism, and anything else you remotely identify as a progressive cause? No.  Would they start a needless war with Iran, build a border wall, stoke Nazis and white supremacists, pander to all the worst parts of American insularism and xenophobia, collude with Russia, lie about everything, destroy all regulations and policies that don’t benefit anyone but the rich, white, and male, fill their administration with convicted felons and homophobes and people who want to rob us blind, and be aggressively incompetent, unprepared, malicious,  stupid, angry, and dangerous to both the country and the world? No. So the various attempts to claim that there is “no real difference” between the presidency of a non-Sanders Democrat and Trump are… please, please sit down for a moment and think about what you’re saying. I realize this is, again, a hard position to hold when you depend completely on having The Right Ideology, and nuance, complexity, evolving positions, and willingness to be open to new ideas are not things that are valued in zealots on either the right or the left. I don’t know what fantasyland these people are living in, when they act like not voting for a non-Sanders Democrat against Trump would be a great moral victory or proof that they’re too good for the world that the rest of us have to live in, or think that the election into being about some magical chance to make the entire capitalist global military-industrial system vanish. It won’t. It won’t even if Sanders wins the presidency. Change only comes slowly and systematically.

This is once again, long. So to summarize:

1) If you want to understand the differences between Bernie and Warren from a place outside just what I say, go and read their policy summaries on Wikipedia and elsewhere. Look on their websites, compare their plans, do your own research, and don’t fall into the ideology-war trap just for the sake of looking better on internet arguments.

2) Vote for Bernie in the primary! Please! We want a progressive candidate who will make genuine change! We don’t want one who is just a moderate Republican but has to be a Democrat because moderate Republicans no longer exist!

3) I like Warren for many reasons and will be voting for her in the primary, but will vote for Bernie (or anyone else) who wins the primary and emerges as the nominee. I only wish that all Bernie supporters would give the reciprocal guarantee. There is a subset – again, not all – who are only loyal to him and nothing else, and who seem to feel that if they can’t have him, not voting is a better or more “moral” choice, even if the alternative is Trump.

4) For me, Bernie’s age is an issue. I can’t answer for what it might be for you, but he would turn 80 in the year he was sworn into office. He also did have a heart attack and would have a year of grueling campaigning to go.

5) Factionalism and ideology wars and loyalty to one person, rather than even trying to consider the lives and people that are at stake, that have already been lost, and that continue to suffer from Trumpism, is not helpful, not empathetic, and not more moral. You can sit and feel self-righteous all you want, good for you. People are dying. Refusing to make a change because it can’t be all the change, all at once, is not and will never be how this works.

Anyway. I hope that helped you. 

[xxladylovexx]

What cheeses me off is, if you want to be free, if you want to live “off grid” without government, if you want to grow your own food and barter hens and nanny goats for potatoes and butter, go do it. What’s stopping you? It’s a big world and easy to get lost in. Sure, there’s never any guarantee that you’ll be safe from the long arm of the state—Randy Weaver found that out the hard way when he and his wife made the logical decision to drop out of society rather than try to change it to suit their beliefs—but still, living off grid (which I’ve done several times in my life) is way easier than getting 300 million people to agree in unison, “We’re going to dismantle government and live as medieval farmers and tradesmen.”

The anti-government ideologues act like they can’t go and “be free” until they’ve persuaded the rest of us to follow suit. Essentially, they’ve made their freedom quest dependent upon me coming along for the ride, even though it’s a trip they could easily take solo.

And that, right there, is why trannies annoy the hell out of me. A tranny is someone who claims, “I was ‘assigned’ the wrong gender at birth, and I need to be the real me.” Okay, fine. Go be whatever the hell you want to be! Go be a chick with a dick, or a man with a cooter. It’s absolutely none of my business how any adult decides to express him/her/itself sexually. But the thing is, these days trannies are not content to just go be trannies; they insist that we become accomplices to their fantasy. We have to pretend to see what they see. We have to use pronouns that we know are misapplied. We have to allow dudes with dirlywangers to shower, change, and go to the bathroom alongside our daughters. We have to foot the bill for sex change surgeries. To even suggest that sex change operations are elective and not a “medical necessity” is to challenge the tranny illusion. This is at the heart of the controversy surrounding President Trump’s announcement that trans folk will no longer be allowed to serve in the military. Trannies, their leftist allies, and “moderate Republicans” think soldiers are as entitled to state-funded sex change operations as they are to first aid on the battlefront.

In Sweden, the trans lobby has been able to bully the medical establishment into changing the official term for sex change (or sex reassignment) surgery. The new authorized term is “könskorrigering”—“gender correction.” A perfectly healthy organ (a penis) is now seen as a congenital defect to be surgically lopped off, no different from when doctors are forced to remove the left atrial appendage to save the life of someone with a congenital heart defect.

“Sorry, but you can’t make your mental health dependent on everyone else seeing you as you see yourself.”

Tranny-mania is an assault on language, common sense, and science. It’s also an assault on the very concept of aesthetics, and the right of every human being to have sexual preferences (an irony, considering that queer activism used to be all about championing the individual’s right to sexual preferences). Straight men are now told that it’s “transphobic” to prefer their women penis-free. The tranny argument is “If I think I’m a woman, you need to see me as one, even if I have a wiener.” Straight men are no longer allowed to find penises sexually unattractive, because trans activism is about changing human nature itself. It’s nothing more than the newest iteration of the New Soviet Man, that 20th-century fallacy in which communist ideologues claimed that with enough reeducation and coercion, mankind could overcome every natural instinct the state considered counterrevolutionary. Well, New Soviet Man is back, now wearing a skirt and fighting for trans acceptance rather than an end to self-interest and private property.

I have absolutely nothing against trannies. Honestly, there’s no “phobia” here. What I don’t like is the compulsion, the insistence that I play along. With the gay marriage issue, wherever you stand on it, the fact is it really doesn’t affect non-gays. Oh sure, Christian conservatives and “traditionalists” will make the “slippery slope” argument (“If you allow gays to wed, it might not impact your life immediately, but over time it will erode the moral fabric of our nation and one day a satanist cannibal will eat your sister”), and there have indeed been individual cases of compulsion involving wedding cakes, but still, it’s just a fact: Two men in Miami tying the knot has absolutely zero bearing on my life or yours. What’s odious about the tranny agenda is that it’s all about affecting non-trannies—you, me, your neighbor, your child, your unborn child, hell, even your pets. The tranny agenda is nothing but intrusiveness.

Why do trans folk so obsessively insist that the rest of us have to feed their fantasy? Recently, the LGBT community successfully lobbied the American Psychiatric Association into changing how it refers to trans folk in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Previously, trannies were said to have gender identity disorder. In 2012, “disorder” was dropped in favor of “dysphoria.” This is not a small difference. Gender identity disorder made clear that trans people have a condition. Gender dysphoria (GD) merely indicates that they suffer discontent. The change was primarily made in order to separate trannies from people with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). People with BDD see themselves as fat even though they’re skinny, or they see their face as hideous when in fact it’s fine. They may see a particular limb, like an arm or a hand, as disfigured or “alien,” and they’ll either hide the limb or try to remove it.

Regarding the latter, medical science considers it unethical to assist in the removal of a healthy limb or organ if the patient has BDD. By removing the “disorder” from transgenderism, by defining it by the symptom (dysphoria) rather than the cause (a disorder), the APA has essentially decided to normalize a mental illness via creative wordplay (people with BDD experience dysphoria as well, but that doesn’t change the fact that they also have a disorder). In attempting to explain the difference between body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria, trans activist Austen Hartke states, “Body dysmorphia causes someone to believe their body is a certain way, while gender dysphoria is a sense that the body should be a different way.” But that’s simply not true. People with BDD also believe that their body should be a different way (skinnier, for example, or minus an offending hand or arm). At the core, people with BDD and GD are in the same boat: They view themselves in a way the rest of us don’t (a skinny person saying, “I’m so fat,” a man saying, “I’m a woman”).

To be clear, if BDD and GD are both disorders (an opinion still held by many experts in the fields of science and pediatrics), BDD is much more severe than GD. Starving yourself to death because you think you’re too fat is much worse than wanting to live like a member of the opposite sex. But having the freedom to live like the opposite sex is never enough; trannies continue to suffer from dysphoria because, subconsciously, they know they aren’t the thing they’re trying to be, and they know that the rest of us see that. Hypnotherapy is often used to treat people with body dysmorphic disorder. And whether they admit it or not, people with gender dysphoria are essentially forcing us to use hypnotherapy on them. We, the non-trannies, are expected to reinforce their false reality by soothing them with a steady stream of positive reinforcement. We’re expected to shower them with false pronouns, undress next to them and pretend that we don’t see genitalia that obviously belongs in the other locker room, and rewrite science books because the old ones hurt their feelings. Trannies want to turn the entire world into one huge hypnotherapy session for their benefit, a world in which we’re reluctantly cast as the therapists.

[politicallyinvolvedpandabear]

Why I hate it when people say “voting doesn’t work”

I know the situation is nuanced and all and I hate the Democrats as well because they only really care about maintaining the status quo, also have blood on their hands, and apparently immediately tried to profit/fundraise off of the Roe v. Wade situation instead of directly doing anything about it (not to mention the blatant voter suppression during the election where Bernie was a candidate), but whenever people say stuff like “voting doesn’t work”, it really freaking pisses me off because that’s such a horrible thing to say. 

First of all, people DIED for the right to vote. Black people were killed for daring to go to the polls to vote, there were literacy tests/other methods to prevent them from voting once they actually got there, the voter ID laws in the US targeted black people with surgical precision to prevent them from voting, people who are felons/have a criminal record can’t vote (it’s called felon disenfranchisement) and guess who gets disproportionately represented in prisons and arrested for things like drugs even if white people carry/use the same amount? Black people/people of color. And women had to fight for their right to vote as well. Unfortunately I didn’t learn about women’s suffrage in that much detail in my classes (I learned about the horrible things the US did to black people in my Race and Slavery class), but I do know that the Suffragettes in Britain for example were very violent. The key takeaway is that having a say in the government is not always a given, and lots of people DIED so that you could vote. 

The second reason why I hate it when people say “voting doesn’t work” is I usually hear it from people on the left: people who I’m on the same side of and usually agree with. The right are really good at mobilizing their people and they often are told/get the message that they should go to the polls and vote, but what I hear from the left is usually stuff like “voting doesn’t work” and “it doesn’t matter” or “I’m only one person”. Every person’s vote counts, and this is why people say the left can’t unify and we’re all divided. I literally had an argument with a fellow leftist a while back and he kept insisting that he “tried voting” and “it simply doesn’t work” and “you’ll understand.” But after seeing the horrible shit Republicans condone and accept and do, I feel even more strongly that saying “voting doesn’t work” is almost tantamount to giving up and letting evil people do as they like in the seats of government. If you say “voting doesn’t work” and you don’t vote and subsequently influence other people not to vote, you’re almost doing nothing and it’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course it won’t work if you don’t use your power to vote, dammit. 

Not to mention if voting didn’t work/matter, the right wouldn’t try to engage in voter suppression so much, such as the use of misinformation/Russian bots during big elections, the aforementioned voter ID laws that tried to prevent black people from voting (since they usually vote against the right’s interests), the removal of voting stations in more progressive areas while allowing voting to stay accessible/easy in more conservative areas, the fact that “gerrymandering” is a phenomenon that exists...

Now I want to fully admit that this is in response to the Roe v. Wade situation and there are definitely people more informed about the situation and system than me (it’s not just an issue of voting and is an indictment of the whole system, etc. etc.), but whenever people say “voting doesn’t work”, it feels incredibly irresponsible to me... 

Someone that I followed on twitter expressed feeling discouraged about voting because “no matter what I do, old rich white guys in the government are going to ruin it”, but that’s giving into hopelessness and despair. It’s true that they’re doing everything they can to crush us and make us give up (because they have a lot of power), but that doesn’t mean we should let them. Voting is one of the most legitimate ways of exercising your power/voice, and although I know some people don’t vote because they don’t believe in the system/want to change things through other ways (like revolution or spreading awareness and so on), I don’t think you have to pick between the two. If we want things to change, we should at least vote (as a minimum), but it doesn’t have to be the only thing we do. 

Burn down the system if it has to be burned down, but if we don’t try to change things at least through the legitimate way, then that could set a horrible precedent and lead to a lot of problems down the road. The system may suck, but the reason it was put in place was to prevent violent takeovers whenever people were dissatisfied. (*cough* Jan 6 *cough) Like, I don’t like the Founding Fathers either, but they at least put some thought into it, so don’t just discard things/throw everything away. 

[lookwhatilost]

some feelings on leftists who got all of this wrong:

a massive number of progressive public figures, some of whom, by the way, i have some degree of respect for, have been exceeding wrong about this. and let me be clear here, my problem isn’t that people didn’t read the future perfectly, in terms of not having accurate predictions about how the russia and ukraine thing would play out. 

but like, alright, all the people who are falling for russian propaganda on this are doing the iraq war thing. they fell for propaganda that was manufactured to be used as pretext for an invasion that did nothing good and had no justification. i don’t know what would lead a single person on the left to trust the russian government. every negative criticism you could make about bias in the american media is indicative 100 fold of bias in russian state media. it is overwhelming. russian state propagandists are telling incompatible stories. their getting direct orders from their bosses to lie about this stuff. they’ve been doing this for decades. 

if you’re a leftist and you genuinely believe the russian government’s motivations should be taken straightforwardly, i have no idea what you’re doing. i don’t know how else to phrase this: believing that america is bad does not make you a leftist. that’s, like, tier zero political analysis. it’s nothing. “america bad” and “america do military war crime imperialism” is just about as foundational to a good political analysis as understanding that it’s morally wrong to kill innocent people. it’s a piece of information that, without anything else built up on top of it, is essentially worthless, because depending on who’s saying who’s innocent, anyone can use that information to their benefit. moral pretexts are worthless unless properly supported.

in this case, is it true – is it factually correct – that america is an imperialist hegemon that lies to support its interests? yes. objectively correct. but here’s something else that’s equally objectively correct: that fact has nothing to do with the situation. it’s a total non-sequitur and bringing it up constantly when you’re talking about russia invading ukraine is literally just doing a geopolitical “all lives matter”. “oh yeah well sure, russia is killing ukranian civilians over nothing, but did you know that america is also bad?” oh really? actually, i didn’t know that. how about you repeat it in every single statement you make for your entire life because you’re insecure about being conflated for a neocon because you disagree with something russia did?

it is insecurity, fundamentally, and it’s one of the things i’ve been talking about when i’ve complained either here or on twitter – an aesthetic obsession with leftism. saying “america didn’t do anything wrong in this instance” doesn’t feel like a leftist thing to say. it doesn’t vibe with that aesthetic. so insecurely, they feel the need to reaffirm the sincerity of their leftist positions but just inserting it at all times. in this case, it’s not only pathetic, but harmful because a key component of russian propagandizing here is that nato extension was what led to them invading.

first of all, nato has clearly said that they’re not going to let ukraine in, given the situation going on there at the time, and russia has been funding paramilitary groups in ukraine for eight years now. so the idea that this is the pretext which they’re basing this one here – absolutely not. you’re falling for russian propaganda. the only thing nato is doing is saying they’re not going to make an agreement with another country to prevent a third country from entering it. which is totally reasonable! why would a defensive alignment agree with a country that’s outside of it to not include a third country? that’s not how this works. russia’s demands here are obscene. if russia actually wanted this with ukraine, how about, like, actually following the minsk agreements? you know, the accords they signed and immediately didn’t follow?

all you do by talking about nato like it’s even relevant to this conversation is just bolstering russian propaganda, which then increases war support for russian behavior domestically and abroad, which then leads further to the death of ukranian citizens. it really is the same as saying america’s fears of wmds was legitimate.

putin’s explained why he’s invading ukraine: he did a blood and soil speech. he talked about how lenin made a mistake to give ukraine back to ukraine and he wanted to rebuild the borders of the russian empire. that is explicitly, directly, blood and soil.

if you listen to a leader give a blood and soil speech and are still playing defense for their expressed, propaganda-based reasons for why they’re doing an invasion, you can’t be a leftist. i’m sorry. it’s too big of an issue. would you guys accept people into the left who mostly shared your domestic positions, but were really aggressively in favor of the iraq war? personally i would consider that quite disqualifying.

[innuendostudios]

The next video in my series on Alt-Right rhetorical strategies. You can help this series come out regularly, as well as support my other work, by backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, there's this feminist media critic whose work you respect. Being an internet-savvy human in the information age, you sometimes share your opinions of her work on your various social media platforms. And you've noticed, whenever you speak positively of her, many different people come out to yell the same handful of things at you.

It usually starts with, "How can you support that conwoman after she stole thousands of dollars from people?"

And you say, "No, she didn't steal anything, she ran a crowdfunding campaign that people contributed willingly to, and overwhelmingly those people seem satisfied with their donations."

And they say, "Yeah, she asked for a hundred thousand dollars for a shitty little project."

And you say, "No, she got a hundred thousand, because people got excited about her work and gave her more than she asked for, but the original pitch was only 10k. Also, how many times have you given that number to people without looking it up?"

And they say, "Yeah, she asked for 10k and then never finished anything."

And you say, "No, she finished the project earlier this year. Of course it took longer than it was originally pitched, you get ten times what you ask for you’re kind of obligated to make a bigger project, because, if you didn't, that would be running away with ninety grand..."

Now, by this time you’ve noticed your interlocutor's position has changed from "she stole from people" to "she asked too much to begin with" to "she took too long to deliver" as though these are all the same argument. You also notice the pattern of the conversation: he says something short, quippy, and wrong, you give a detailed correction, he says something else short, quippy, wrong, and only tangentially related to his last point, and the cycle repeats itself. This goes on and on.

And it's not, you've noticed, just this discussion; you find this manner of argument often whenever you express left-of-center beliefs. You talk about the election, someone says you vote Democrat because you must have a conservative father you hate; you talk about polyamory, someone says if you have more than one female partner you must be a sexist; or they just say you're faking a non-regional accent. (I don’t understand that one, either.)

The running theme here is all these people who ostensibly want a frank exchange of ideas spend a lot more time making accusations than asking questions. Because, why ask what you believe when they can tell you what you believe and make you correct them? And if you ever don’t correct them, must be because they’re right.

And you're not naive; you see what's going on here. This isn't about conversation, it's about boxes. When you say something cogent that they don't agree with, and they get the sinking feeling that you might start making sense, they need a reason not to listen to you. So they reach for a box to stick you in: dishonest feminism, fake progressivism, daddy-issue liberalism. No one in those boxes is worth listening to, which means, as long as they've got you in one, they're not at risk of having their minds changed. This isn’t even an argument with you, not really; their presenting themselves with arguments for why they don't have to listen to you.

So your first reflex is to defy their expectations. "Actually, my dad was a draft-dodging hippie who told me he loved me every day." "And I never said what genders my partners are but I promise they're all feminists." "As for my accent- actually, I don't know what to do with the accent thing." But the point is, “I refuse to fit in your box.” And if they can't put you in one, if they can't dismiss you outright, they'll have to engage with your argument.

But if you've spent any time arguing with angry dudes online you know what I'm about to say: They don’t. This accusatory, condescending attitude never falters. Because a technique that has permeated anti-progressivism is to Never Play Defense.

Now don't get me wrong, what I said about the Right fitting the Left into simplified boxes as a way of preserving their own egos, I do think that's a thing, at least for many people much of the time. And I think the reassurance it brings is why the technique stays so popular. But that framing is about how individual people are feeling in isolated moments, and leaves out the larger game that's being played. Because there is a long-term strategic value to never playing defense, and it's less to do with arguments than with attitude.

From your perspective, this debate about the feminist is a joke. This guy doesn't know what he's talking about, he comes in hot without confirming any of his assumptions, the whole conversation is you repeatedly schooling an ignorant dipshit. But that's only if you’re the fool who listens to what’s actually being said. Never Play Defense is a strategy that looks past language to posture; the tone, word choice, even the expressions on your faces. If you half-focus your eyes and look not at the words but the flow of the conversation, you can see the dynamic at play:

He says his short, quippy statement, and you give your detailed rebuttal. He then picks a single point from your response and attacks that as the new subject. Now, to an onlooker, the logical brain would register that he's leaving 90% of your argument on the table, and that, by changing positions, he's conceding he lost the first round. But the lizard brain notices that he's always making the accusations, always in the dominant position, that he's always acting and you're always reacting. Regardless of what is said, he displays all the outward signs of winning. So, on a purely emotional level, he leaves the impression of being right.

I have never had an argument look like this that wasn’t in public. This is a technique that means speaking not so much to the other person as to the people watching. Liberals tend to operate as though voters are beings of pure reason, and neglect that rational people still have emotions, and those emotions factor into what they believe. And that long after this argument is over, when people only half-remember what was said, what lingers on is what impressions the speakers made.

Ronald Reagan coined the phrase, "If you're explaining, you're losing." The trick is, if he's always accusing, then you're always explaining.

This technique of winning by looking like you’re winning is not new, and, historically, it's been used by both parties. But modern liberals seem especially susceptible to it because it plays on one of their big weaknesses, which is - and I say this with love - the liberal fantasy of putting someone in their place.

Any time a free speech warrior gets the Bill of Rights quoted to them, when a racist gets "historical accuracy" explained by an actual historian, liberals take screencaps. We put it on Storify. We pass that shit around like theater popcorn. We live for the day an ignorant prick gets dunked on.

I remind you: this was the central conceit of an entire TV show. [West Wing clip.]

But let me ask you: in all these scenarios, who's doing all the explaining?

The reason scenes like this are so satisfying is precisely because they activate the emotions. Everyone wants to be Joseph Welch telling off McCarthy, where an appeal to reason looks like winning. But the Right has learned that, if you never look like you’re losing, you can convince a lot of people that you’re not. And, if you keep your statements short and punchy, people will remember what you said better than they remember the long explanation of why it’s untrue. If done correctly, you might even convince yourself you know what you’re talking about.

Now, again, this is not exclusive to the Right - this is how most teenagers argue regardless of their politics, where it’s less important to be right than it is to be better than someone. But mixed with Control the Conversation - see previous video - the Right has a full-bodied cocktail for manipulating how the Left argues.

But where it gets dangerous is in how the Alt-Right has capitalized on this.

This argument isn’t just about sticking a woman in the Lying Feminism box so she doesn’t have to be listened to, it’s also signaling to anyone watching what box they should stick her in. Even if an onlooker recognizes that she literally did not con anyone out of their money, the idea that how much she asked for and how long she took to deliver are relevant to her credibility is still planted in their heads. It subtly suggests that, the next time they feel threatened by a female media critic, maybe they should look at how much money she makes, how long her work takes to produce; maybe they don’t have to listen to her, because they’ve got this handy box.

So what’s most valuable to the Alt-Right is not who wins or loses any individual argument, it’s the mechanics of the argument itself; it’s the boxes. Over the last several years the far Right has pushed hard on a number of reductive categories: the Cultural Marxism box, the Reverse Racism box, even terms like “beta” and “mangina” are just shorthands for the Failed Masculinity box. The Alt-Right is a box factory, putting huge swaths of Leftist rhetoric, most especially that that would rebut their core positions, into categories where they can be summarily ignored.

These myths have power if and only if they are immediately recognizable to a lot of people. One function of this aggressive posturing is that they want to provoke an argument, to be so pompous that you’re itching to publicly take this asshole down, which gives that asshole access to your followers. It’s about them introducing a myth to your audience and reinforcing that myth for theirs. And that myth gets spread even when you feel like you’re winning.

I can’t tell you the best way to deal with this, but I do know one way, which is to keep control of your own story. When someone comes out the gate with accusations, it’s a big red flag that they are not arguing in good faith. You are not required to argue with them. When someone says something untrue, you can just tell your audience what the truth is without acknowledging the lie or the one repeating it. A detailed explanation lands a lot better when it’s not being contrasted with a sound bite. Decide for yourself how your audience gets acquainted with a popular fiction, and never be too proud to delete a comment.

In this political climate, these debates have real impact on real people’s lives. They’re not, in fact, a game of football. So if someone tries to force you to play defense, you don’t have to play.

[selphplusplus]

Forgotten

This time last year still sick form COvID

I can remember the fever dreams vividly.

We were microorganisms, defending our puddle from invaders. It was very dynastic-conquest-esque.

As we fought survival wars, there as a class of shaman that could manipulate genetic matter and cause our people to evolve, a mix between Ender’s Game and Spore, the evolution and civilization emulation.

I was very baby leftist at the time and had no theoretical understanding of what an epidemic could do to a society. I still thought Bernie could change things, that we could just vote all this away. We had yet to see how utterly abandoned America was going to leave the poor.

But the dream did trigger a curiosity. I was frustrated often in that dream, my people were at war with an Other we didn’t understand. I was like a leader of a batallion, not one of the higher ups that had us fighting. And being there felt very much like real life. It reminded me of high school football. As cliche as that sounds, the close bonds I formed with teammates battling it out against a far superior team. Only it wasn’t touchdowns we were giving up. It was our lives. Watching someone you’ve grew up with die right beside you and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Hell, you don’t even know why you’re fighting.

Even though it was “just a dream” it wasn’t unusual to wake up with tears, or utterly dejected.

Why were we fighting anyway. Later this would become a metaphor for class war. But last March I didn’t understand those dynamics.

It lasted 3 days. Recurrent I wasn’t even keeping track of time and I slept most of those 72 hours only waking up to use the bathroom and get some fluids. The dream world was the only thing my subconscious kept returning to. And it was a weird but profound experience. I’d never dreamt consecutively of the same thing like that, and never so lucid and impactful that I could remember it when I woke up.

So I was stuck on the question of protecting society from a biological threat. How apropos that it coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic.

A few months later I reread the Communist Manifesto. It hit different that time.

Having just come out of 7 year disconnect from society proper, living as a lumpenprole (though I didn’t have that concept yet), having just got out of my first real stint of jail time that was thankfully cut short with a COViD inspired plea deal (do 1/3 of your time, plead guilty, no fees, no probation, just go—and seeing the judge just a day before that agreed release, it was an easy “here’s my signature, I’m not guilty of these trumped up bullshit charges, I was having a drug induced psychosis and needed a hospital not a jail cell, but OK I’d rather be not in jail...Fine, I’ll plea out.”) bit I digress—

In the coming months I went from liberal “left”

progressive by American standards to guillotine Bezos, but unironically, today, unapologetic communist. A tankie, and a badge I wear proudly. When I say COVID-19 radicalized me, I mean literally. It was the combination of the futility of individualism that was instilled by the successive failures of my Avatar in the dreamworld to save my people. For a fantasy land, the emotions of rage and sadness and loss left a lasting imprint.

And then i got to see it play out in real time. To my actual people, the poor and marginalized in the US. The forgotten—or intentionally ignored—the most vulnerable told to fuck right off.

Told to go die for to keep making the bosses rich.

Told what they already felt about themselves, that their lives didn’t matter.

And we heard that loud and clear. The George Floyd cold blooded murder by a sociopathic pig (daily “Fuck the police” mantra by the way). That was a catalyst. That they tried to excuse it by painting the man as a fentanyl abuser, as an addict and a criminal, enraged us even more.

How the fuck do you think we survive in a system that demonizes us, shuns us because we fell into the spiral of addiction!?

Of course we fucking do crime. No one will hire us. Medical help only exists for a select few who win the lottery of the bare bones funding for social work.

And not just that, but you gotta get an addict in for help immediately. When they ask for it, they’re at that rock bottom place, probably suicidal, and the intake process is “wait three weeks” and by then, if they’re still alive they probably don’t wanna do to rehab. And that’s the reality of the cycle. (Unless you have money of course and you can pay your way in same day. But let’s keep acting like class doesn’t exist.)

Then it’s to the revolving door of the recovery industry, enriching the parasites that have found a way to profit off of misery. They deserve a special place in hell in Dante’s fourth circle: greed. Ain’t late stage capitalism grand?

So a black man who happens to be caught in this terrible maelstrom of tragedy and somehow deserves a cop standing on his neck, wailing in agony in his final moments, because he may have been a drug addict!?

Fuck you.

Fuck you entirely.

If this what you think, that an addict’s life is some how lesser or less than, I hope you kids die of an overdose; I hope someone trying to get their fix snatches your purse, steals your car, robs your house. I want you to understand the real gravity of the situation. We’re not abstractions. And we deserve a dignified life and a society that gives us a chance.

But instead, when things weren’t so dire, and you could just forget about us, and we could scrape out a meager existence funding out habit to escape a society that’s already written us off, we just thought as long as we stayed invisible your opinion about us was indifference.

When we saw a pig murder a man, on repeat. Replayed over and over on national fucking media outlets and social media—

When the state sanctioned a killing and we saw people debating a man’s life as he begged for mercy—

After he had done noting wrong, it’s quite audacious that you’re upset about a few burned buildings.

We heard you loud and fucking clear. You don’t see us as forgotten. You see us as unwanted.

And here we are a year later. $1800 dollar puttiance. (Be happy with what you have, peasants) yet we saw other countries, even capitalist countries, shut down, lockdown, pay people’s salary, protect their workers.

Vaccines that favor the rich. (Yet a the socialist nations developed their own, even exported them with no strings attached because that’s the right thing to do.) and here’s American companies like Pfizer, trying to manipulate South America for USA imperialist conquest. promising vaccines for trade, just a no-fault contract “so we’re [Pfizer] is indemnified if we fuck you over, oh and a military base. Or your people can just for from COVID, no pressure.”

Business owners bailed out. And the poor having to go literally risk their lives to make some money rich fuck with a yacht richer. Nah. The answer to my dream-prompted questions, it turns out we’re already answered by a German philosopher and the thoughts and societies built by his predecessors. Socialism has given us a real life

example on how to take care of my people. And that together, with revolutionary love. That’s why we do this.

“When it’s our time, we will not apologize for the terror.” You wrought this on yourself.

[science-fiction-is-real]

Lmao you assume that working class people actually care about their interests vs making sure people they think are lesser are worse off than them. My family is paycheck to paycheck conservative. They are exactly the people that will see those scary buzzwords and immediately tune out. There will never be a conversation because they have already been told what to think about those Scary Words. You're overestimating the average american and thinking that only well off people think leftist shit is bullshit and crazy, you're so wrong it's funny. The poorest people will stay poor if getting them help would also be getting the black, latino, lgbt, etc people they hate help as well. The cruelty is the point. You're never going to get your foot in the door with anyone that isn't already in your circles. We already have to explain why all our stuff isn't scary after we say it using our vocab, why is using their vocab to start the conversation and then explaining what we just said in our words so they actually understand before the ronald reagan conditioning even has time to kick in in their minds. You're literally the exact person OP was talking about. You don't even want to think about compromise EVEN FOR EXPLANATIONS and are hurting yourself, your cause, and everyone else that would benefit from actual conversations on these topics.

First of all, historically speaking, even people with rather backwards political consciousness can turn extremely radical in the blink of an eye, when they realize their material interests are at stake and that they actually can win victories for working class people.  

Once again, let me remind you of some examples.

--The significant number of people met while doing political polling who liked both Bernie Sanders AND Donald Trump.

--The fact that “Red” states in this years election also supported very progressive legislation even though they swung for trump.  For example, Florida passing a 15$ minimum wage.

--The 2018 teachers strikes.  Working class teachers, mostly in red states, many of whom were republican, participated in a mass movement for the purposes of working class empowerment.  

Also, in my experience, working class conservatives are not necessarily as unreachable as people seem to think.  If you ware polite and engage people in conversation about material real world problems, many people are curious.  They’ve never met a communist before.  They will especially become more curious when they realize you are 1) not a typical liberal, and you agree with them on things like “democrats suck” and “gun control bad.”  And 2) when you address legitimate concerns of theirs such as distrust of government and the establishment, and genuine economic pressure they are experiencing.

Yeah, you do have to meet people where they’re at, but meeting people where they’re at doesn’t mean hiding your agenda or compromising on your positions. 

I also don’t believe people are quite as mean hearted as you seem to think.  I think people have been exposed to a large amount of bourgeois propaganda about “muslims bad” “mexicans bad.”  But real world experience that comes with realizing they have common interests as people they’ve been taught to hate, or even just EXPOSURE to people they’ve been taught to hate, can go a LONG way.  

Is everyone going to be open minded and give you the time of day, no.  But in my experience talking with conservatives, you meet a rather surprising number of people who genuinely are willing to engage you in a conversation.

My main problem with OP is that basically what I got from that post was that we need to hide our radical politics instead of explaining it, and also that our goal should be to pander toward “moderate” upper middle class suburbanites instead of fellow working class people who actually CAN be won over to our side.

[beesandwasps]

How To Complain More Effectively, With An Example Of How Not To Do It

This is going to kind of long, so I’m putting it below the fold.

A few days back, I made an extended comment on a post about Prohibition (which you can find here). In passing, since I was bringing up the public health crisis which England faced when distilled liquor was introduced, I mentioned for those who don’t know that distilled liquor was invented by Muslim chemists. I felt that this was necessary to mention because a lot of people on Tumblr are young and often don’t know much history, and might appreciate knowing some context. As far as I know, the actual history of alcohol distillation is not a particularly controversial subject — there are well-attested accounts, trustworthy primary sources, the whole nine yards.

So: sometime today (I was away for most of the afternoon) some idiot DMed me claiming that I only mentioned that because I was a brainwashed PC leftist who wanted to… uh… make a dig at the English, I guess? (I’m still not 100% certain what, exactly, was the point they were trying to make.) In the course of some brief conversation, they came out with the following claims:

It doesn’t matter what actually happened, we shouldn’t credit Muslims with this invention (or, it was implied, anything positive at all)

The idiot I was talking to was Palestinian, so they’re automatically right about Muslims and disagreeing with them means condoning genocide of the Palestinians

“Muslim” is a political stance, not a religion, and it’s right-wing (speaking as an atheist: the latter might be debatable as to a statistical majority across the whole world, but it certainly isn’t just flat-out “true”)

Distilled liquor was independently invented by others, look at vodka! (This claim is actually outright false; even the briefest research shows that vodka was allegedly invented centuries later, and by people who already had distilling equipment — which means that they did not invent the process.)

Mohammed had a (political marriage to a) child bride so he must have been a pedophile and therefore admitting that Muslims have ever done anything at all noteworthy is encouraging pedophilia

There was probably more, but I blocked the idiot before it occurred to me to take screenshots so this is all paraphrased from memory. (Tumblr won’t show DMs from somebody who has been blocked, for which I am mostly thankful.)

The first point that should probably be made is: regardless of whether you think the Muslim invention of distillation deserves celebration or not, trying to deny that it exists because you don’t like it, or don’t like Muslims, is wrong. Wanna tear down statues because the subjects are problematic? Fine! As a Person Currently Living Today, you deserve a voice in who and what our society celebrates — and it’s even okay to say “let’s not have statues which honor anybody because we can’t agree who deserves it”! But when it comes to actual history? We should record what actually happened, to the greatest degree we can. Even in the modern era, with video, there can be ambiguity, but that does not mean it is acceptable to deliberately falsify things. We may never reach the ideal, but we should strive for it as much as we can.

Now, given the weird succession of claims, this was pretty obviously a right-wing wackjob, but once again, a lot of people on this site are young and may not know how to not be like this, so as a public service, let me lay down

A few guidelines for more effective complaining

Think seriously in advance about what you want your complaint to accomplish, and make sure you say it. Do you want an apology? (And do you want it privately or publicly?) A published correction and/or retraction? An acknowledgement of the issue with no correction? Is this a public performance to show how angry you are, not really directed at the recipient? Or are you just letting off some emotional steam and the consequences aren’t important? You should make it clear what you want, and depending on what it is, you should adopt a different tone. It is (or at least can be) okay to be angry! But unless you’re just yelling for the sake of yelling, you probably want “angry but collected” rather than “screaming everything that crosses your mind”. My idiot more or less jumped straight to the latter, and although they never actually said what they wanted me to do about it, you may notice that not only am I not issuing a retraction or an apology, I’m using them as an example of what not to do in a whole dedicated post and calling them an idiot. This is probably not the outcome you want.

Consider, as well, the relative importance of the thing you’re complaining about to the person you’re complaining to. Is this a major focus for them? Something they mentioned in passing? Were they sneering, or showing enthusiasm, or just talking about it? Obviously you may have to make a judgement call to some degree, but it’s important to remember that other people’s focus may differ from yours. If the issue isn’t very important to the other person, you probably want to be less demanding. (Once again: “being less demanding” is not the same as “not being angry”! “I demand that you issue an immediate public apology for saying something as terrible as [fill in the blank]” is a different approach from “I understand you only said [fill in the blank] in passing, but that is actually a terrible thing to say, it made me horribly angry to see such a statement even as an aside, and you should apologize unless you really intended to be that offensive”.)

Be careful about assuming hostility. Sadly, even people who try to be deliberate in all their actions fail to actually do so. Equally sadly, having good intent does not guarantee that you do no harm. (And people can even have good intent and be so completely wrong that they do harm while trying to be helpful.) Obviously, there’s a limit to how much slack you cut people when deciding whether they “meant” what they were doing, but there should be some slack if possible. And no, this does not mean “you should be happy to be a human doormat” — but the fact that you are complaining, all by itself, already demonstrates that you are not.

At a minimum, you should check your facts on Wikipedia. Even Wikipedia might not be enough, but if you’re going to make claims in your complaint which any random person with an Internet connection can disprove in 10 seconds, your complaint invalidates itself immediately. My idiot made the vodka claim, and the instant the search results came up for “vodka invention” I knew that this was a person who was not motivated by any kind of concern for the facts.

Don’t pull in irrelevant things. My idiot was probably doomed to fail anyway, but the minute they brought in “I’m a Palestinian” they were fighting a very definite uphill battle — even without the ridiculous claim of “you can’t disagree in the slightest with me, personally, without condoning genocide”, it’s irrelevant to a question of historical fact! The Muslims invented distilled liquor and it became a serious social problem in England whether my idiot is Palestinian or Saudi or Israeli — or English, for that matter. And the weird claim about pedophilia very definitely sank any hopes the idiot might have of convincing me for good. “Irrelevant” has different meanings in different contexts — had I been saying something about Palestinians, particularly something subjective, then it would have been at least slightly relevant that my particular idiot was Palestinian. Context matters, so consider it.

You don’t have to be polite, but it can be useful — and it’s a good idea not to be the first person to be outright rude. At this point, nobody owes Donald Trump civility — but when people express anger at him in public, remaining polite about it emphasizes how much better they are than he is. (And since it’s clear that he’s incapable of anything like a sincere apology, the only reason anybody would complain to him is as theater.) If you’re anti-TERF, then you don’t owe J. K. Rowling civility any more, because she has already made it clear she doesn’t respect you and doesn’t care what you think. But when there’s ambiguity? If the person is sympathetic then being polite may tip the scales, and if they aren’t it gives them one less excuse to dismiss your complaint. You will have to use your judgement, but if you stay calm and polite, no matter what the outcome is, you will have done a better job of maintaining your dignity, and that is always useful. In addition, in the event that the recipient gets angry and does something in retaliation, rudeness might be legally considered provocation, and leave you and not them on the hook.

Remember that your complaint is public if either you or the recipient wants it, and potentially “forever” like the Internet. If your complaint is a public performance, then this may work in your favor — but if not, remember that no matter how private your complaint is, the recipient might choose to make it public. That might be with benign intent — they’re publishing your complaint so they can apologize — but it might be malicious if publication would make you look bad. This is another good reason to remember the previous point and try to stay polite. (There’s also another factor: if your complaint is public, anybody in the future who looks you up on the Internet will probably find it. I hate to admit it, because it’s unfair, but this is a good reason to pick your battles.) (And this is why I’m not giving the account name of my idiot — they may have been awful, but if they want to remain anonymous that’s up to them.)

Make sure you’ve seen/read/heard enough to know what you’re talking about. This is the only point I can think of which my particular idiot did not fail on, but it’s common enough to deserve a mention. Before you issue a complaint, make sure that it’s justified. All of the following are things I have seen happen (or read about happening): (A) an offensive thing is the focus of a drama, and people issue complaints because it is offensive and should not be shown in a positive light — except that the whole point of the drama was to point out how offensive it was; the complainers only saw the name of it in the first sentence of a plot synopsis and assumed the drama must be defending it. (B) an acronym has multiple very distinct meanings; one of these meanings, which became attached to it after the other(s), is objectionable; the acronym shows up in a text where it obviously has the earlier, unoffensive meaning, but people see it and complain assuming it has the offensive meaning even though that would make absolutely no sense in context. (C) a character in a work of fiction does something which is morally offensive; people complain that this character’s existence is an attempt to defend the action, when in fact the action is used to show how terrible the character is. Try not to be the sort of person who does any of these things.

[ramon-balaguer]

#AllLivesMatter

All Lives Matter from Beginning Time till our present day to our Independence we're about to celebrate in 3 days until Jesus' Return.I was reading and praying this morning for our country. Yesterday we had a wonderful Celebration of our Ecumenical Church & University's 24th Graduation & Ordination Ceremony on-line with Zoom, of many people of many colors representing many nations... and interestingly enough the issue of colored Lives did not come up, no prayer for BLM or racial discrimination and disparities, nothing on White Power or Supremacy. The Focus was on Jesus and Whom He Called. The way it should always be, but isn't... so I believe our country and our state need a lot of prayer right now. As a Christian, my go to Book on everything is God's Word of Truth, the Holy Bible. It Is The Good News and has the answers I am looking for. It has always guided me and comforted me personally; though I must admit, I didn't always follow as directed. And even now as a minister of the Gospel have to shoot an azimuth to get back on the Right track to Him and His Kingdom. The Holy Bible’s Principles addresses more than Holiness, Morality, and Salvation; it also addresses the Political and Legislative issues our country and state currently face.Did you know that God settled the issue on which lives matter over 2,000 years ago?…Why do you suppose that is? Because many of the same issues that we face today are the very same challenges society was having to work through then. Sure, we’ve advanced in many ways, but the same current social issues and disputes are all historically recorded.One issue that seems to be dominating is the issue of Life or Lives. Whose Life Matters the Most? Presidential debates are even talking about it….Yours, his, hers, mine, theirs…The question on the internet is: "Is it All Lives Matter or Black Lives Matter?"Black Lives Matter is a Leftist Lie. If you believe like I believe that Black lives matter, then ALL Black lives matter because All Lives Matter, and Not Just the ones into the whole LHBTTTABCDIFNQPPZ or killed by White or Blue lives, Not just the ones on the Left or Democrat Party...You can’t just pick and choose what’s politically convenient.I have said All Lives Matter, which literally means I support Black lives matter the same way I support Red, White, Blue, Brown, Yellow and everyone in between; not to mention all the other "Labels" that so easily besets US the One Race, the Human Race.I agree with it, I agree with its values, but I distinguish those values from the Organization that's been hijacked by Leftist Liberal Idealist Idiots using the mantra or slogan BLM to reflect their narratives to Destroy Everything we represent as a Capitalist Christian nation to install themselves as the New Order of Socialist Doctrine. I’m a Christian, I believe we’re all made in the image of God and that we’re all made equal, so that’s my starting point when talking about this whole issue.So I think we have to distinguish between a "Political Movement" and the "Legitimate concerns that many people in society are disadvantaged.”But I don’t believe that a "Them vs US" approach is the Right way to deal with it. I don’t believe in the Black Lives Matter campaign or movement, and what they’re saying in the headlines in their Leftist mainstream media, I don’t think this is all they’re about and you'd be wise to do your own research and figure it out. Follow the money...Their manifesto talks about the End of the Western Nuclear Family and about defunding or Disbanding the police. We can see that in New York city – $1bn has been taken from the police. We can see that in other protests, we can see that in Minneapolis where a Black man was killed by a Blue man, the council there has voted to defund the police and possibly disband to replace with community policing like California is trying to implement.So is it BLM or ALM? Thankfully, the Bible settles that issue. The answer is: It’s “ALL Lives Matter.” It’s not one life being more important than another, nor is it one race being more important than another.Colossians 3: 10-11 says:“You are living a brand new kind of life that is continually learning more and more of what is right, and trying constantly to be more and more like Christ who created this new life within you. In this new life one’s nationality or race or education or social position is unimportant; such things mean nothing. Whether a person has Christ is what matters, and he is equally available to all.“ <———- ALL! Your nationality, race, education, social position are not to be exalted above mine. Nor is mine to be exalted above you. The more important question is do you and I have Christ? You see, if you truly have Christ dwelling in you, then you will value ALL lives and not elevate and extol the color of your skin, language, job, or economic background (whether poor or rich) over others as Terry eluded to by @Twitter yesterday on Not allowing #BlackLivesMatter to morph into #BlackLivesBetter and of course the backlash ensues. And those same Black Lives Matter along with the Left will Blackball him, because his Black Life Doesn't Matter to them. Did you get that?Saints & Sinners, ALL means ALL! Christ in you is what Matters. Christ in you! And, He is equally available to ALL!He’s all Inclusive. Every life. He gave His Life to die for ALL! So if you’ve been getting all caught up in the movements of whose life matters, then you’re part of the problem. You’re actually fueling the division. You see, we ALL matter. You have to realize that God literally created every skin color. He fashioned us with the beautiful diversity of colors, nations and languages. Revelation 7: 9 says…“I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from all nations and provinces and languages, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb…”ALL means ALL!I know there will be folks that will immediately come and slam this post. The naysayers…But, that’s their choice to respond with Hatred.Because I believe what God says,ALL means ALL! You, me, him, her, them, US…Every color.Every nation. Every language.#AllLivesMatter 🙏❤️🇺🇸REBTD😇

[evilwickedme]

I'm not Jewish but I had a question about anti-Semitism. If you're not up for the emotional labor of answering that's cool but I saw a post that compared seeing the Wonder Woman movie to supporting facism and that seemed wrong to me, but I'm not sure I know enough about the nuances of the situation to express why. I was wondering if you could help me understand if that's a bad comparison and why? If not I totally understand.

hey anon, great question. short answer: yes. long answer: abso-fucking-lutely. longer answer:

hell yeah, comparing seeing the wonder woman movie to supporting fascism is terrible. here are a list of posts I’ve seen in this context:

a literal blood libel on gal gadot, comparing the way she looks at chris pine to the way she might look at palestinian children before she eats them

the amount of times I’ve seen people say she supports killing palestinians because she opposes hamas, or saying she was a combat soldier, if I had one cent for every time I’d probably get a seven-digit check along with my actual paycheck on monday

comparing israel to the apartheid, fascism, or the nazis isn’t new, but hey, it’s always good to see it on my dash, ffs

so here’s why all of that is fucking bullshit.

1. we’re going to start with the convenient timing of all of this. see, you may not remember this, but gal has already been wonder woman before - in the dc film batman vs. superman. arguably, one of the worst films of all time, but she still had a relatively large part in it, appearing in at least a quarter of the movie’s scenes if not more. she also had a large part in a fast & furious movie, which I haven’t watched, so I can give no commentary on it. and in that movie earlier this year, keeping up with the joneses. all of these movies had moderate to starring roles by our favorite amazon, gal gadot. all of them went unbanned in arab countries, unprotested by palestinians and tumblr and the antisemitic left. would you like to guess why?

see, here is this movie, starring a woman, who is good, and strong, in that order, who saves the day, who isn’t sexualized, who is a goddamn hero, who isn’t joss-whedon “strong” but rather compassionate AND goddamn powerful. and imo - and other people on this agree with me - that fucking scares people.

people don’t want to support wonder woman. but since there’s nothing wrong with the movie itself - sans the car that appeared out of nowhere - they have to find something else to latch onto. and oh, how convenient, gal gadot is in this movie, and she’s jewish and israeli, so she’s double evil, let’s get people to avoid this movie that way.

to clarify, I don’t think everybody doing this is doing it maliciously. I think it’s understandable for a palestinian to not want to go see a movie with an israeli in it. especially if they’re told that gal gadot was a combat soldier who killed palestianians herself, who wanted to join and joined willingly. it’s understandable if somebody who doesn’t actually know much about the situation - who gets all their information about israel from tumblr and other leftists gentiles - hears the literal lies and antisemitic bullshit and believes it, because, funnily enough, the sjw movement has completely skipped us and many times fucked jewish people over. so again, it’s understandable. but there’s a reason the controversy is only surrounding the movie led by a woman who is actually everything tumblr claims to want - and that is plain old sexism.

2. let’s address the idf, mmkay? the idf is mandatory service for all citizens. that’s right! every 11th and 12th grader in israel misses at least a dozen days of school to go to various army bases till they decide where you’re going to go once you enlist. some people, like myself, get a special permit not to enlist - but it is very, very rare, and very difficult to obtain even if you have good reason for it - they dragged me around for a whole year, from city to city, until they finally issued me mine. not enlisting means jail otherwise. so gal gadot enlisted in 2004 when she was 18, like the rest of us, sure. but she didn’t choose to. and she didn’t join the combatant forces. she didn’t even go to the ever-popular intelligence units. she was a fitness instructor. she helped people get in shape. (sidenote: גל, אם את רוצה לעזור לי להכנס לכושר, תשלחי לי הודעה.) in addition, gal gadot is a fierce feminist, who shows up to premiers in flats cause her back hurts, who posts pictures of herself with her husband wearing no make up, who became wonder woman for her daughter.

but what about that three year old facebook post???? you mean, the one where she writes she supports the israeli troops in their efforts against hamas? people write about it as if it’s one of many posts she’s written about killing innocent palestinians. and just to clarify: that’s the only fucking post. and hamas is internationally recognized as a terrorist organization. it uses human shields and schools as centers for their activity on purpose. saying you’re angry at her for supporting her troops - as if you’d say anything like that to a retired american soldier for saying they support their troops, as if you’d dare - in the face of a battle with a literal terrorist organization - what could possibly go through anybody’s head that would make that sentence logical.

not to mention, she’s said repeatedly that she wished there was no need for the idf, that she wished that there could be peace. hey, I feel the same way. but the political situation doesn’t work like that. and so she supported eliminating hamas, a terrorist organization, and people actually hated her for it. literally what the fuck.

3. is israel apartheid or fascist? no. does it have problems with racism, and serious problems at that? hell yes. but we’re not fucking apartheid.

4. and finally: the antisemitism. because… dear god, the antisemitism. I’m going to break this down from the most “innocent” to the absolute worst.

wonder woman is white feminism - jewish. people. aren’t. white. they can be converts, or identify as white for other reasons - but antisemitism is racism against jews, aight? is that clear? the white/poc dynamic that is the common theory in america right now doesn’t work with jewish people. pale ashkenazis like gal gadot are not poc, but not white either, because white people were our oppressors for literally thousands of years, they raped us and killed us, and equating us with our oppressors is fucking antisemitic. see the first link for more detail on that.

a blood libel is a blood libel is a blood libel. for those of you who don’t know, blood libels are among the oldest forms of antisemitism. a blood libel is an accusation, specifically against jews, of killing non-jews, with little to no evidence, as an excuse to prosecute jewish people and kill them. the most common form is the claim that jewish people kill children, either to serve the devil, to use their blood for a matza or otherwise religious sacrifice, or even for fun. when searching for the blood libel I had seen - which thankfully, I couldn’t find - I found this post. this is an example of a blood libel torn apart. and just to clarify, ffs: yeah, claiming she killed palestinians and put notches on her gun is fucking antisemitic, especially when she did none of the above. it’s a classic blood libel, it’s literally garbage, and don’t fucking perpetuate it.

my personal favorite antisemitic trope is the elders of zion. saying every jewish person or israeli has connections to the people who secretly control everything!!!!! we’ve never been oppressed, we’re just pretending to be while secretly running the antisemitic media, the antisemitic american government, and of course, the ever popular antisemitic idea we run the banks!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yay!!!!!!!!!! here’s a secret: gal gadot, beyond voting, has no connection to the israeli government, or to any policies it has, racist or otherwise. she’s an actress, for god’s sake.

and the worst of it. comparing israel to nazis. comparing jews to nazis. comparing the magen david (aka the jewish star) to a fucking swastika. all the height of antisemitism. people on this site so conveniently forget that the nazis targeted jews more than any other group, that we still haven’t reached pre-wwii numbers, that around half of all jews worldwide live in israel, and that, ffs, we aren’t a fascist government, we’re the only true democracy in the middle east. call it pinkwashing or brainwashing, call it whatever you like, I call it antisemitism, because we’re not fascist, and we’re definitely not fucking nazis.

and once again, I’d like to remind you that even though I myself am open to talking about my opinions cause I can’t fucking shut up, asking every jewish person to talk about israel and its actions is fucking racist as fuck.

tumblr: don’t ask every muslim person to immediately denounce isis, a terrorist organization that literally kills other muslims!!!

jews: aight, don’t ask us to denounce the only place where it’s even a little safe to be jewish - 

tumblr: what???? no!!!! no way!!! here’s a jewish person, if you’re not explicitly for the destruction of israel and extremely vocal about it, you’re literal garbage!!!!

essentially.

anyway, so to summarize: yes, anon, your instinct was right. wonder woman is feminist as fuck, intersectional as fuck, and a great fucking movie which I’ve already seen twice, and not going to see it because of gal gadot, who is a literal sweetheart, makes me go:

[zoobus]

why are you friends with ranmaofficial? you're a black girl and he's an infamously combative white dude with a god complex and fascist dreams so like what are you doing lmao

Ranma is not a dude

True answer: I don’t remember why but Ranma came into my messages with three 15-page length peer researched articles for me to read with no respect to whether I understood the jargon used and then started discussing the concepts and ideas as if I already understood them which was extremely jarring and very obviously above my head but I didn’t want to admit defeat and read one piece about how full of shit the marshmallow experiment is and how we can extrapolate on that shittiness to address the alleged discrepancies in intelligence between races or the correlation between med students and eating disorders (for the former it was along the lines of “interesting that white supremacists love harping on how the children of Black-American/Black-American and Black-American/White-American children statistically have lower IQs than just White-American children but not the fact that Black/White-European raised in Europe children don’t have this discrepancy…Almost as if black children in America face a distinct consistent and constant degradation throughout their lives that negatively impacts their mental state that other races do not deal with🤔”).                                                                         It was a great essay even if it took me three days to get through it and nobody ever lets me talk in-depth about a topic before getting bored and cutting me off except ranma, sometimes. So hypothetically, if anyone wanted to talk to me, you’re better off ransacking my inbox with a long article about something you’re passionate about with follow-up questions rather than small-talk because I’m incompetent at chitchat

I’ve actually had a couple people come to me about this so FYI, Ranma is not a fascist, not a right libertarian, not alt-right, not a conservative. They’re Russian, raised in the immediate aftermath of the USSR’s demise, which is going to have a strong impact on one’s opinions of communism, regardless of whether you consider it “true” communism or not. Not liking communism does not inherently indicate a liberal or someone on the right. Also,

Ranma is a Rorschach kind of person. It’s more important for them to be correct than to only hammer on right-wingers being stupid. I think more than few people take them attacking leftist posters (and also, I’ll admit, penning some…touchy replies about sexism that I’ve vocally disagreed with) as evidence of being right-wing which, again, is wrong. If someone/thing on the left is incorrect, they see it as crucial to loudly disparage incorrectness rather than trivializing it as non-important which is why you might see “actually [MAGA avatar’d twitter user] is correct, leftists know jack shit about alt-right politics.” That’s them saying “leftists need to learn more about the particulars and nuances of alt-right conventions to better destroy it” not “you fucking commies know shit about my /pol/itics lmao” but I can understand why some would conclude the latter. I do not think Ranma’s is bad reasoning to be [infamously] combative. 

I’m fully aware of their reputation and regardless of it they have a multitude of great qualities, hold certain similar interests that are difficult to find, and has a comparable online history which means we share a lot of background.                                                         Let me self-drag a second and admit I don’t have friends irl and it’s difficult for me to make them online as well. Due to my upbringing, I’m super socially stunted, very immature and shy, and I worry a lot about coming across as a creep. I could write an entirely separate post about how often posts about “creepy men,” “mansplaining,” “dudebros,” or just posts starting with “I hate men” and end in something I do but didn’t know bothered others make me so nervous despite my being a girl, and make it very difficult to talk to people without feeling I’m inadvertently making them uncomfortable or pissing them off. I responded to a “mutuals post a number and I’ll describe you” ask and immediately felt like a manipulative freak when my mutual said something really sweet about me like I do not know how to handle normal people.                                                 In comes ranma who straight out the gate doesn’t give a shit about being perceived the wrong way which means I don’t have to worry either. I can relax, I can finally “be myself.” Bluntness can be a virtue.

It’s easy to get caught in an echo chamber but ranma often drag me out by the hair. Ranma is literally the only person who fully explained the dangers of "punching nazis” rhetoric to me without relying on You Are What You Hate, just-as-bad logic. Anyway, my point is that instead of riding the coattails of a smarter users’ posts like brett or taxloopholes or memecucker by adding a dumb quip like I often do, I am coerced into questioning my own beliefs and even though sometimes I wish it said with a little more kindness, ranma’s post often make me do my own research, if they haven’t already sent me the dissertation themselves (literally Ranma has never sent me something to read that was less than five pages, not once). Sometimes even when I agree with the subject matter, I’m pushed to think more critically, to understand why beyond gut instinct

contrary to whatever your opinion is, I’m not a Stepin Fetchit blindly Yes-Suh!ing everything that comes out of their mouth and I’ve publicly argued with them multiple times. It’s with them I’m without fear that disagreeing will be held against me or used to disregard anything else I say. Please don’t weaponize my identity, it’s hard enough to voice opinions antithetical to accepted thought in marginalized communities without you aggressively asking what the hell a black and a white could have in common. 

they’re very strangely more knowledgeable about my country than I am. Like about us still having Columbus day because of Italian-American pride, I really had no clue and about the southern strategy which is sadJust one of those types who seems to know something about everything and well-read in a way that makes me feel a bit guilty. Rattling off their favorite Mark Twain books they’ve read when I vaguely remember that Tom Sawyer painted a fence

it’s very difficult to find a friend who enjoys anime/manga and isn’t ashamed about it at this age

reblogs my selfies with comments

Come off anon you coward don’t lmao me in my inbox