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raisingsupergirl · 4 years

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They Could NEVER Do That These Days…

So, I watched the movie Airplane the other day for the first time in at least a decade. And, well, it was an experience. First off, I laughed more than I have in a long time. The attention to detail, the quick wit, and the non-stop banter left me nearly breathless. But because of the sheer volume of jokes—which included plenty of physical comedy, prop comedy, puns, play on words, and jabs at contemporary issues (of that time)—I found myself frequently thinking, "They could never do that these days." In fact, I probably laughed the hardest at the scenes where the little old White lady acted as a "jive" translator for two Black men, but I knew something like that would never fly in our current culture. Which, of course, left me wondering if I'm an awful person. And I've been thinking about contemporary morality ever since then, most of which has included the "cancel culture."

You've probably heard about the death of Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss recently, right? Gender norms and racial sensitivity are hot button topics right now, and the "cancel culture" seems to be wielding them like flaming swords. At least… that's what I've heard, anyway. It's entwined in conversations with my patients and plastered all over my Facebook feed. And to be honest, it's my gut reaction, too. But do you know what's great about being a grown adult living in a first-world country? I have the freedom, time, and resources to unpack those gut reactions—to dig deeper into the facts until I can form a sober-minded opinion that reflects a little more truth. And it took me all of ten minutes to stop being afraid of the leftist childhood killers.

No, I'm not a liberal. Soooo far from it, in fact. But that doesn't mean I'm sitting on the right side of the isle, either. In fact, if there IS a left and right side of the isle in whatever political building we're talking about, I'd probably be outside said building, chasing butterflies and rolling in the grass, blissfully unaware of the crazies locked inside on such a beautiful day. But anyway, now that you know just how UN-political I am, let's talk about politics. First off, Fox news is bonkers. Their stories and debates are laughably biased. I can't listen for more than a few seconds before rolling my eyes. Then again, so is EVERY other news channel! Why? Ratings! A network that vowed to only report facts without opinions would go bankrupt in a week. And what is politics without taking sides in a debate, anyway? The way I see it, it's all just Jerry Springer with a facelift.

But if that's really my stance toward politics, what business do I have talking about any of this at all? Why do I even care? Well, I care because I have kids. And those kids have to grow up in this world. Their thoughts and opinions will be impacted by this world. And because I think the way I grew up is the best way, my knee-jerk reaction is to be afraid of change that could rob my little girls of the pearls of happiness that shaped MY childhood. So who has more authority to determine the future of Mr. Potato Head—hypersensitive justice warriors or apolitical parents? My answer? Honestly? I don't really care. And let me tell you why.

It's a freaking toy! Hasbro, the owners of the Potato Head brand (one person tweeted that they should drop the "bro" and just be "Has," which I think is downright hilarious), decided that it would be a good idea to rebrand their marketing to be more inclusive to non-traditional family units. But do you know what they DIDN'T do? They didn't kill Mr. Potato Head or his lovely wife. They're still flying off the shelves. It's only the marketing that has changed. The argument could be made that outrage from outlets like Fox helped retain some of this traditional packaging, but… still… It's a hunk of plastic being sold at huge margins for mild entertainment. I wouldn't be sad if they burned the whole product line to the ground. It's lame anyway.

And what about Dr. Seuss? Decidedly NOT lame, and I don't trust anyone who thinks he is. So how in the would could "they" pull his books from all of our schools!? Lolol. Okay, thirty seconds of Googling clears up the situation. Dr. Seuss Enterprises has decided to stop printing six (6… SIX) of their books because of insensitive material. But they're still printing almost SIXTY other Seuss books. They've decided that ten percent of their material, which stretches back to before World War 2, is no longer culturally relevant. Honestly, that's amazing. Especially considering one of the earliest works was titled, "The Pocket Book of Boners.”

Book production is halted all the time. Usually it's because people lose interest. Sometimes it's because the book includes material that promotes racism in a positive way… to our kids. But it's always because the publishers want to continue making money. That's capitalism. If you don't like it, you're a communist (j/k… kind of). And besides, if you can tell me which six Seuss books are being "canceled," I'll eat my words. Every single one of them.

I guess what it all comes down to is that I've got bigger problems. I had to spank my daughter this morning because she was screaming (like, I'm surprised the neighbors didn't call 9-1-1) about the injustice of not being able to bring the "right" toys to her soccer game. The soccer game in which she would be playing soccer. Not playing with toys. Priorities. Materialism. Limited worldview. She won't miss six random Dr. Seuss books. She won't notice the rebranded Potato Heads. She will know that it's not appropriate to cry and wail and kick and flail (eat your heart out, Dr. Seuss) about toys when her teammates will be depending on her. She will know that Daddy is firm but loving, that he would do anything to keep her safe, that he only disciplines to prepare her for the best possible future. She'll know that, above all else, our purpose in life is to love God and to love others. She will know to choose people over things and to never give into misplaced fear.

Because, in the end, fear is at the root of this whole topic. We're afraid of losing control, losing our childhood, losing our freedom. But all of that melts away when we lean into something that can never be lost—our freedom to love and be loved. It's a simple fact that some will never lean into, and that makes me more sad than anything. More sad than the loss of a few toys or children's books. Even more sad than if the big, bad "cancel culture" came after some of the things that I love. Sure, the world wouldn't be the same without Airplane, but I probably wouldn't miss it. Lord knows I've got more than enough slapstick chaos in my daily life already.

#cancel culture #mr. potato head #potato head #dr. seuss books #book banning #social equality #gender norms #momblr #dadblr #mumblr #capitalism #politics

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megashadowdragon · 4 years

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Antifa Riots ERUPT And Smash Democrat Headquarters, 4200 People Die From COVID And Biden Is PARTYING

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Wait, Antifa was rioting AFTER Trump was ousted?! Someone needs to hold Biden accountable for inciting this far left terrorist violence!

When you want to “end the war”, Civil or Uncivil, by coming “uniting”, it is unlikely to happen when the only path to peace you offer the other side is unconditional surrender and total rejection of their views, acceptance of theirs and requiring approval of those ideas by your vote at bayonet point. See Reconstruction USA, roughly 1865-1885.

ANTIFA is just an idea” -Joe Biden “They should not stop” -Kamala Harris “ANTIFA is just a myth” -Jerry Nadler ANTIFA smashing the DNC.. POETIC JUSTICE

Biden celebrated his win. America did not.

As a Canadian I though Biden would be bad, but I didn’t think his leftist policies would affect us all that much, (other than the economy obviously) then day one he fucks us over. Thanks Joe

So then Joe Biden literally says Native Americans have" torn us apart" with his "Nativism" comment. He literally said that.

it always gets me when Dims talk about open borders, and say this land is stolen anyway. So their logic is that that gives them a right to bring even more people onto stolen land. I doubt they ever asked Native Americans for their permission.

Trump said it in the debate. “What are you going to do about antifa joe?”

We need to unify" So are you going to tell your Democrat friends to stop trying to impeach Trump and stop all the censorship of conservatives? "No, I mean unify as in you will do what we tell you to"

There is a "caravan" formed in Honduras. Many of these migrants chanted Biden. Biden stopped border wall construction. Looks like a super spreader event to me Joe. Mexico may stop this.

I bet the media is gonna call them extremists now that they don’t like Biden anymore

Meanwhile the Harris / Biden Administration is Handing the country back to the Big Multi Billion dollar corporations who just do not care about you. Its America's wealth they want.

Y’all remember when Biden told Trump in that debate that “Antifa is just an idea” when Trump asked him to denounce them? Me too

Well, Joe did say that "I will treat the people who voted for me just like those who didn't vote for me." And the Truth of American Politics: Republicans get rich and go into politics. Democrats go into politics and get rich.

Trump does care about Americans, and I've heard this from the people around him, including low level workers. He also wants American to be great. He also wanted to have record numbers, prosperity etc so he could take credit for it. Biden is a life long politician that hasn't had to live in the real world, and abuses the system to enrich himself amd his family

Litmus test for “caring”... Did a politician’s worth skyrocket or go down?? Check out the net worths of Dem politicians gong back decades, all skyrocketed!!! T gave away his salary for four years and his brand’s worth went DOWN due to the constant attacks and degradation from the media. He GAVE UP money to be president, while the rest of the establishment GETS RICH off the people

As someone else commented on another post: I look forward to the seeing a repeat of conditions that led to Trump being elected in the first place. Seems like it's already begun... People have such short memories.

Much like Barack blamed all of America’s issues on “the previous administration” (George W. Bush) for eight years. Expect Biden to blame all of his faults and problems on Trump.

If Biden dares try touching the 2A because "we don't need weapons of war", he'll spark a civil war. Blm & Antifa constantly rioting & destroying property is scaring ppl into buying firearms & rightfully so. We have a right to defend ourselves & we will turn against our Gov't if they try taking those rights away & siding with domestic terrorists

We’re living in an amalgamation of the movies: Idiocracy, The Death of Stalin & GroundHog Day. This obscene reality is going to cause society to create the movie Fight Club. How sad is it that my statement is as true as any reality that can be foreseen for our future and likely more probable than any that can be dreamed up.

Trump is not necessarily a Nacisist. Narcissists undeservedly hold themselves to be better than others. A narcissist does not try to earn your accolades because they already "know" you are below them.

they should celebrate indeed - they managed to literally cheat their way into the highest office. unless of course you believe that biden is more popular with blacks than Obama, without doing basically any campaigning in relevant areas beyond 'if you don't know that your going to vote for me, you ain't black

They screamed fascist for four years meanwhile biden's acted like a stereotypical dictator in his first day.

Everything Trump did surprised everyone, typically in a positive way. Nothing Joe Biden will do will surprise anyone, and it’ll all be shit. Return to the status quo of chiseling away our civil liberties and further bankrupting the American people.

#antifa #timcast #joe biden

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bambooastronaut · 4 years

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Regarding the anon ask about voting for Biden simply bc it isn't as bad a choice as Trump....

Couldn't you guys just select the NOTA (none of the above) option? Wouldn't that be better?

Or does the US not have that option? 🤔🤔

voting is not mandatory in the US, and as a result a large portion of the country just doesn’t vote at all. it’s possible to go to the polls and just not select anyone in a category. We also have write-ins and third party candidates. third party candidates take in (I believe, on average) usually less than 5% of the vote.

it wouldn’t be better because Trump has a huge following of dedicated voters who are always going to vote for him. this following largely consists of racists and white supremacists and the like yes, but it also consists of people who live in the rust belt who have been largely ignored by politicians for years on end. the rust belt is where primarily mining jobs dried up and no industry ever came to replace it, leaving many families in poverty with no resources or jobs. Trump catered to these people during his first campaign, promising to reopen coal-related jobs and bring resources back to people who have been hopeless and ignored. it makes total sense that these people would vote for him. and even though it was a total lie and coal will not be coming back as a job source, they still feel heard by him.

overall Trump has the following to win again, and it’s going to depend on leftists to defeat him. the democratic party threw all their weight behind eliminating Bernie Sanders, who in my opinion was the only candidate who was actually capable to doing any good, because democrats would rather cater to moderates than progressives. it doesn’t benefit them financially to listen to leftists, and yet that failure to consider progressives is imo the primary reason Clinton lost, although she was a poor candidate for other reasons. there is also a lot of gerrymandering and voter suppression that didn’t help democrats either.

so while yes, every leftist and anti-Trump person could just refuse to vote for either of them, many people on the right believe Trump is going to give them what he promised. (he isn’t, of course. but that’s irrelevant.) and they WILL vote for him. at this point it’s going to be Trump if it isn’t Biden. and frankly while I find them both to be bad candidates, I’d have to be willfully ignorant not to see that Trump is objectively a worse leader and a worse person.

to other leftists: if Trump wasn’t such an immediate threat to trans people, to immigrants, to marginalized groups, I would very likely not vote Biden. but the fact is that he is a direct threat. there are kids in cages. forced hysterectomies. reduced rights and protections for trans people. I don’t know if Biden will fix any of these things, or how he’ll do it. but I know for a fact that it will only get worse if Trump stays. and I can’t allow for that. I hope you can’t either. please vote.

of course, that’s not to say leftists are at all at fault for Trump winning the first time. no, the issue is that the Electoral College exists. Clinton did win the popular vote in 2016 after all, but we live in a country where some votes are worth more than others depending on where you live. We need to get rid of the College for anything to start being fair when it comes to presidential elections.

that being said, Biden has a poor history of supporting immigrants and Americans of color, especially Black people. The entire democratic party does. Every election they come in to talk about what a great job Democrats have done helping Black people and it’s horseshit. So honestly? I’m not sure Biden can win. I think as a party the democrats may have burned far too many bridges, jailed far too many people, destroyed far too many families. Democrats are incapable of learning from their past mistakes, and I won’t be at all surprised if Trump wins again. I certainly won’t blame anyone for refusing to vote for Biden. I’m just so fucking tired.

#Nicole replies to things #asks #politics #long post #Anonymous

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didanawisgi · 5 years

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Virginia: Let’s get down to the heart of the Issue.

by The Culpeper Minutemen

“As we sit here on Christmas Eve, we can reflect on the overwhelming groundswell response across Virginia, to the threats of tyranny from Richmond. The MSM is carefully not mentioning any of it. Yet the vast majority of counties and towns have declared themselves as either 2A Sanctuaries, or Constitutional Counties. This has resulted in more rhetoric from Richmond, including threats of violence against the citizens of Virginia.

None of this is complicated. You do not need to be an attorney to understand the Constitution. In regards to the 2A, it says right there:

“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed…..”

This is really a struggle about rights, although focused at this time on the Second Amendment. It is about the rights of the citizens in opposition to the increasing tyranny of the leftists. However, the mindset of those tyrants in Richmond is fascinating: They do not appear to see the predicament they have put themselves in. They are doubling down. You see, they believe their own propaganda. It is clear to any sensible citizen that they are preparing to enact a huge tyranny across Virginia. But the left does not see it that way; they twist the meaning of ‘Constitutional’ and believe that they can pass ‘laws’ that are in fact repugnant to the Constitution, and have them validated by black-robed leftists in a corrupt court system. There have already been statements that any law enforcement officer, not enforcing these proposed new laws, will be fired. Even threats of raising the National Guard for employment in violence against the Citizens of the State. I won’t bore with a full summary, most of you know what is going on.

However, the real reason I decided to sit down and write this article was something I am tracking in comments across the board. It is fear. What do I mean by that? Essentially, it is your normalcy bias not registering the seriousness of our situation. This forces you to act in what you see as a ‘rational’ way, but that in fact is an advantage to the leftists in Richmond.

You see, you are in fear of ‘the authorities.’ You are in fear of saying something that may get you in trouble. You don’t want to cause a fuss. You are a ‘law abiding citizen.’ The usual response to these sort of gun ‘laws’ coming down the pike, as seen in other States, is for people to scuttle and run, and look to ways they can ‘sort of’ get around the ‘laws.’ But God Bless Virginia! Things have gone differently here, and we have a chance. We have a chance to push back on this tyranny, and maybe even create a wave going back into other lost States where they may be able to stand and reclaim their Liberty. Because make no mistake, the leftists are playing for keeps, and if We (The People) lose this now, we will lose it forever, for our kids and grand kids, forever.

The whole Virginia thing has been great so far. However, it may seem to you to be a political / Facebook struggle right now. Making some noise to hope to avoid the promised plans from the Democrat majority in the 2020 session. Posting a meme is fairly low effort, low risk. But make no mistake, this is EXACTLY the kind of tyranny that the 2A is there to prevent. Do not sit in denial. Thus, it is possible that on July 1st 2020, you may become a felon, for standing by your natural and enumerated right to self-defense. It is your duty as a free citizen to NOT ALLOW THE 2A TO BE INFRINGED.

We mostly don’t want to think about it, but there may come a time, and it may be soon, where we face an armed struggle for our rights. If this happens, it will be absolutely because Richmond tried to enact tyranny and force it down our throats. Don’t be duped by the way they talk about ‘laws’ and having them obeyed. Any Virginia Citizen knows their Constitution, and knows what is right and what is wrong. Be absolutely clear in your mind that if this comes to violence, it will be the fault of Richmond. This is why I am writing this article – because I don’t think many of you are there yet. You need to get your mindset right. You need to have your kit packed and ready to go, in case Richmond sends armed men against us.

We are not here making threats. Chest beating is pointless. I’m not one for spurious rhetoric. We are standing by as free citizens, and you need to get your head in the game in terms of what it may mean depending on what comes down the pike from Richmond. To me, there is no course of action other than to ensure that YOUR RIGHTS are not infringed. As such, you will very likely need to be prepared to ACT in SELF-DEFENSE should Richmond send armed men against you. That this may happen is totally un-American, and seems almost impossible in our times of peace and prosperity. But it appears we are there, on the very cusp of that tyranny. If we do not stand, then we lose it for all that come after us. It is a civic duty as free American citizens.

Reminder: If a right is not defended, then it is not a right, and is lost.

Here in Culpeper, we are doing all that we can to avoid such a situation. Through the Culpeper County 2A movement (and Facebook page) we succeeded in having Culpeper voted as a Constitutional County by the Board of Supervisors. We are working on the Culpeper Town Council. We are working on campaigns and rallies, because becoming a Sanctuary is just the beginning.

I have created, as a subsection of Culpeper County 2A, a Facebook Group called Culpeper Volunteers. No, it isn’t a militia, but a pro-bono community outreach of Max Velocity Tactical, where will put on some free training. Nothing we are planning involves violence, or terrorism, or civil disorder of any kind: we simply want to lawfully improve the readiness of County residents to protect their family and community should the need arise. As part of this, I am creating specific threads on the MVT Forum, posted to the Culpeper Volunteers group, in order to address specific issues such as equipping the Patriot etc.

But despite all this, what happens if you, as a law abiding citizen, become a felon in 2020? Because it seems these leftists in Richmond are hell bent on passing these laws, they have the majority, and they think they are in the right. I would not even be surprised, if due to the possible attendance at Lobby Day on January 20th 2020, that something (false flag?) happens to create a situation. It may even go hot. What happens then? That does not give us the six months to campaign that we currently think we have. What if, at some point, a state of Insurrection is declared in Virginia?

It may even be that once the laws are enacted, nothing specifically happens. However, as I stated above, what you need to do is not scuttle and hide. You need to stand up as a responsible Citizen. What could this mean? Perhaps business as usual with going to the range, wherever that is, even in your backyard? Do not acknowledge that any ‘laws’ have even been enacted. Carry on as normal. Particularly if your County has already declared itself a Sanctuary. It may be the case that raids are conducted by armed men in the employ of the State in order to create an example – I would suggest the creation of mutual support groups in your area, in order to make that impossible.

I personally am sick and tired of the laws in this Country being corrupted in the name of tyranny, so we now have a situation where even writing what I have written today is something that will be avoided, for fear of consequences. I would like to see some Federal support for Virginia from the Trump Presidency, perhaps even stopping Governor Northam’s proposed raising of the National Guard to enforce his tyranny. But this is where we have the essential issue – we have a Deep State and elites who are forcing this upon us, and a corrupted government security apparatus. Anyone working for the sort of Agency that will read this, should have sworn an oath to the Constitution. To act against normal American citizens who are only standing for their Constitutional rights is criminal. This has got to stop. There are many things that standing up to this tyranny from Richmond may achieve – and throwing off the yoke of Tyranny is perhaps the most noble. This may be our one and only chance. Put the middle finger up to Richmond!

I advise you to work on your preparations. Physical fitness, equipment, and training. You have to understand that what is happening in Virginia is not the normal way of things. It has not gone this way in other States; normally, the tyranny is simply enacted. In Virginia, the people are reacting and saying NO. This is unique. However, in that unique way, it may lead to places not normally contemplated in our affluent and lazy society. When the Regulars marched to Lexington, they were faced by people who were certainly terrified of the consequences of defying the tyranny of the Crown. And recall, at that time they DID NOT EVEN HAVE the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to hang their hats on; simply an idea of Liberty that must be defended. Whoever fired that shot, it was certainly heard around the world. In our case, we must not fire any shots first, but we must be prepared to act in self-defense should the State act in tyranny and send armed men against us.

1859. Tick-Tock.”

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zamancollective · 5 years

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The Constructive Agony of Talking Politics at Shabbat (Or How to Survive a Debate with Your Relatives)

By Gabriella Kamran

Illustration by Sophie Levy

I wasn’t yet 20 years old and I had already forgotten what it felt like to join my relatives for Shabbat dinner and eat brisket without a side of political commentary. Was that a new phenomenon? Was I too busy spitting tomatoes into napkins as a child that I didn’t notice the moral axioms being thrown above my head? Regardless, charged conversation after charged conversation gradually emerged from background noise while I chewed to a dynamic that captured my interest and charted the course of my intellectual development.

It seems accurate to say that I entered the fray around the same time I started buying my own clothes. These were the early teenage years: I was testing the waters of feminism, experimenting with political Facebook posts, and learning that not everything I believe to be true is, in fact, the truth. Every young person has a moment of realization that adults can sometimes be profoundly wrong. Mine took place gradually over a series of weekly dinners, as my male relatives argued and I felt an arsenal of my own opinions weighing in my chest.

I will say with no qualifiers that it is difficult for a fourteen-year-old girl to wedge herself into a conversation with several adult men. First, there is the issue of a quiet voice, not yet amplified by the support of social affirmation. Then there is the matter of being taken seriously — that is, the unspoken surprise that I was not in the living room talking to my girl cousins about nail polish.

(The aunts, for their part, either ladled soup in the kitchen or listened at the table, inserting a comment when appropriate. For a long time, I interpreted their disinterest as ignorance or resignation to gender norms, but with maturity one gets better at recognizing weariness. I remember once my jaw dropped when a cousin’s grandmother expressed a political opinion out loud- something about Hillary’s foreign policy. I hated myself for being so shocked that she’d have something to say.)

I learned quickly that family debate is rocky terrain. The post-meal discussion usually unfolded as follows:

Man 1: This ObamaCare is going to put doctors out of business, I’m telling you.

Man 2: Just awful. The liberals are pushing us towards socialism. Aunt: We’re just giving more and more money to the lazy bums. Me: What about the majority of poor people who aren’t lazy and were born into poverty? I don’t think anyone genuinely wants to be on welfare.

Man 2: Oh, no. We send our kids to the conservative schools and they still get brainwashed by liberals.

Man 1: Question everything your teachers tell you, Gabs. They have an agenda. An agenda.

Alternatively, the “elders” card was pulled and the conversation stopped short:

Me: I don’t think you should call people _____

Relative: You can’t speak to me like that. How can you disrespect your family?

The more politically conscious I became, the more these dinners began to wear on my nerves. At school, I was learning so much I could almost feel my mind growing into itself. The classic teenage practice of finding oneself was in full force for me as I wrote school newspaper op-eds in my successive editor positions and defined myself in the lines of my rhetoric. Dinner with relatives sucked this pride out of my chest and pulled the plug on my budding confidence. I oscillated between righteous indignation that prompted me to sit firmly in place when the political debate started during our meal and outright fear that anyone would ask me at any point in the night about something of more import than my week’s activities. Family dinners became a matter of fight or flight.

I took refuge in journalism and books. They seemed to possess more certainty than my relatives’ armchair sociological analyses. I read Betty Friedan, Ta Nehisi Coates, Ari Shavit… and the fact that I considered these all to be radical texts is indicative of how intimidated I felt in political terms. My progressive ideals were no longer inclinations; I could use words like “neoliberal” and “reactionary” to match my relatives’ rhetorical skill. Vocabulary aside, however, a gulf persisted between me and some of the men in my family.

What was this gulf, exactly? Was it a generational gap? Surely an ideological divide existed between every new crop of cousins, fathers and daughters, uncles and nieces. Common wisdom dictates that naïve youth will always be more progressive and open-minded than their older counterparts. It seemed to me, though, that something more was at play here. These Shabbat dinners meant more than a blasé tidal shift in opinions, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

The time came for me to go to college, and I was surrounded for the first time by a collection of politically conscious people who had enough intellectual acuity to rigorously critique the elder generation’s values.

I met friends who told me their grandparents were “hella liberal” and still smoked weed on the weekends, and I beheld these friends in awe. This must have been the diversity they extolled in admissions brochures, the expansion of horizons — but which one of us was living in a bubble? Then there were the students who seemed to have swallowed their relatives’ platitudes like pills, rolling their eyes when they passed a student protest or snickering at T.A.’s requests to state our preferred gender pronouns. These students made me the most uneasy.

Mostly, though, college brought me a network of friends who shared my experience. By this time we had all developed standby strategies to deal with opinionated table talk: some blocked out the rhetoric and ate their khoresht in peace, and some, like me, often ventured back into the weekly scuffles like moths to a partisan flame.

But, of course, it was more than righteous indignation that pulled me back into the tides of argument. The supposed radical leftist hegemony on college campuses gave my relatives plenty of dinner table fodder on the nights when I made the ten-minute journey from my dorm to their dining rooms. They particularly liked to raise an issue with my chosen minor, Gender Studies, which they denounced as man-hating. As they prodded me about my professors in order to attack their liberal agendas, I felt the familiar nagging anxiety: Was the leftist haven I found in college making me tone-deaf, insular under the pretense of high-minded morality? I felt obligated to listen to every dismissal of Hillary Clinton, every racial slur, and every condemnation of Islam. This was my internal protest at their accusations of narrow-mindedness.

I still wondered what was really new in our political conversations. Topics had changed — Obama and McCain became Hillary and Trump, Al Qaeda became ISIS, gay became LGBTQIA+ — but the emotions I had as a young progressive facing several elder conservatives were constant. What were we all feeling during those semi-heated exchanges? We one-upped each other and attacked arguments at weak points, but what was the seed of all this debate? Perhaps it was a sense of familial betrayal.

We swear to keep family and business separate but there is no such promise when it comes to politics, although we know they are equally divisive. “The personal is political” is also true in reverse — to disparage someone’s worldview is an affront to their world. Political standpoints are currents that run deeper than the surface waters of opinion. Debate is healthy and insult is not, and the line between them is fine.

One August night before my freshman year of college, one family member reminded me once again to question everything my professors would tell me.

“These are a different kind of people. Really liberal. They don’t think like us.”

I wondered briefly what he meant by “us,” considering our often radically divergent opinions. He had been at the dinner table all these years — could it be that he never truly listened to me?

My cousin leaned toward me, interrupting my thoughts.

“Or you could come back from college a flaming liberal, and we’ll still love you.”

I was struck by the resonance of my cousin’s joke, and I still think about it often. By the very merit of calling one another family, we make an implicit promise to stand by one another and love unconditionally – that is, regardless of ideology. When we sit across the dining room table, embroidered white tablecloth stretching between us, and launch attacks intended not to teach, not to strengthen, but to change, there is a sense of combat that doesn’t belong in a family. These mealtime political debates are not a leisurely pastime but a battle driven by an attempt to win, and to win means to vanquish. Hovering over the platters of chicken and tadig is an intention to change one another, and the promise of loyalty feels contingent upon your next comeback.

Isn’t that what families do, though? We change each other. Any amateur psychologist will tell you that our personalities begin at home. Parents, and to an extent other relatives, are charged with the responsibility of edifying their children. It takes a village, and a large part of this is the admonitions and proverbs of the villagers. Perhaps my relatives feel this weight of social obligation propelling them forward as they critique my beliefs. They crave my confirmation that they are succeeding in their efforts. Maybe when I push back and hold my own, they feel some kind of failure.

There’s a Jewish parable in which a sage, faced with a crowd of scholars who disagree with his judgment, asks God to determine who is correct. God declines to comment. The wise men debate and eventually move forward with a decision. From heaven, God laughs with joy: “My sons have defeated me!”

The goal of true mentorship has never been indoctrination. Young people look to their beloved elders to create some kind of safe space to learn to walk, to stumble, to mess up. The goal is that eventually, the pupil becomes the teacher. A student who recites their teachers’ talking points is a student lost.

Through the ages, a 7 p.m. roundtable over plates of freshly-cooked dinner has been the family’s classroom. The curriculum is set by the routine inquiries of “What did you learn at school today?” and, “How was work?” Some families study in groups of three, and some are lucky enough to learn alongside dozens. I should hope that men in my family take enough interest in my growth to stretch my mind and challenge my thinking. So, too, should they hope I prove them wrong sometimes.

#nonfiction & opinion #gabriella kamran #sophie levy

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kalula-illychina · 5 years

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Shalom! I am coming to you with great news for the Israeli people. You may have noticed but Israeli elections were last night, and mazel tov, we succeeded in bringing the right wing to victory and our glorious King Bibi is here to stay! You know, we're Likud, the same right wing that brought you Miri Regev, the loud mouthed and basically unpleasant woman who wants to create a cultural monopoly on Israeli arts and culture, such as instituting a Loyalty check on any speech that threatens our dear right wing Zionism and basically fucks over free speech, the same people who brought you the insane incitement since 1993, which lead to Yitzhak Rabin's assassination for even trying to reach peace with those Arab neanderthals (serves him right for betraying our country ), the basic free market economy which has not only jacked up housing prices, but also blatantly leaves the underprivileged of Israel in dire straits to where some family's can't put food on the table for their kids (But screw them ammirite?). We're also known for bringing about the nation state law, which has not only relegated our Arab and Druze citizens to second class citizenship, but we are also known as the people who still drag their feet in the sand for coming up with a two state solution to where Israeli and Palestinans can live apart and in peace. You know, instead of giving the Palestinians their own land to live in, we have been doing other things that are quite wonderful! You know, cutting off aid and electricity to the Gaza strip, bulldozing homes, praising IDF soldiers who shoot unarmed Palestinans, and even prosecuting a little girl for giving one of our soldiers the bitch slap! Not only that, we are also the government that bows down to the needs of our lovely Ultra Orthodox and far right partners, such as Naftali Bennett and Eli Yishai, who basically refuse to share any of the burden of running and protecting the country and instead sit on their asses and leach off the taxpaying Israelis. Good deal, is it not? Not only that, we allow these far right wingers and Ultra Orthodox to influence out policy, including not drafting them into the IDF, or basically rolling back and preventing any rights to the LGBT+ community, including preventing any Gay couple in Israel from having children through a surrogate, while brazenly praising Israel's pro-LGBT rights to the international stage. Yes, you can have your cake and eat it to! Not only that, we are also bringing you our glorious leader, who will not waver in the face of danger! Who cares whether he let the Gaza war of 2014 drag on, basically doesn't give a flying shit about the rise of white supremacy in our closest ally's Country, and openly embraces racist leaders like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro! It's all about the money, right? Not only that, who gives a shit about his numerous accounts of corruption and his crazy wife having a ball abusing the household staff and the lay-about- lazy shit of the son who posts antisemitic memes to get at leftists and hits up strip joints? They're the family who protects the country, so let's let them do whatever the hell they way! Of course, we need your help. We need your help to stay in power. You can do this by three steps:

Act surprised when someone calls the right wing out about incitement and racism. As long as you see nothing, there is nothing!

Make sure to spread the word. It always helps people when you tell them openly why you are letting this government dramatically transform Israel from a pluarlistic democracy to an almost apartheid hell hole state. They're just Arabs, so what difference does it make?

Make sure to always remain loyal to Bibi. Make songs about him to sing with your kids, or make it to where only the right wing has the right to talk. Make sure to openly brand anyone who says anything ill of Netanyahu and the right wing as an "arab lover," or a "traitor." Words are power you know!

Of course, Israel is heading towards a bright and glorious future! Make sure that we are all part of it, as long as you're a right wing Ashkenazi Jew or Settler! Shalom!

(Authorized by the Department of see nothing say nothing.)

NOTE: In case you all didn't notice, this is obviously sarcastic and in the form of TheJucieMedia's honest government ads

#israel #israeli politics #israeli election #israeli election 2019 #politics #political cartoon #political cartoons #political satire #benjamin netanyahu #bibi netanyahu #corruption

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theliterateape · 3 years

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The Therapeutic Approach to Nationalism

by Don Hall

When it came to Chicago Thanksgivings, I could be a real cunt.

Sure, Jen and I would host Orphan's Gatherings—Thanksgiving for people stuck in Chicago and unable to travel to their family's homes over the holiday. I would drop a couple of hundred bucks and make a huge spread of food but the transaction for coming was to have to listen to me bitch about how shitty the holiday was.

"Enjoy the turkey. Afterward, I'll be providing each of you blankets covered in small pox and steal your property. I mean, I'm thankful for a lot but I'm mostly thankful I wasn't native to this country because, man, then I'd be fucked, amiright?"

This screed went all day long and became more and more incessant as I drank Scotch and beer and cooked. Depending on the year, it would spread out from the genocide of Native Americans to the American military industrial complex, the woeful state of our civil rights, and how evil the Republicans were.

"Here's some food and some vitriol as gravy. Happy Fucking Thanksgiving!"

What an asshole. It's hardly a surprise that most of those people in those early days don't bother to talk to me today.

I used to think that blunt honesty was always the best approach to all situations. It's, well, honest, and it's mildly therapeutic to simply air your truth to those around you. I used to believe that until I lived with Alice.

Alice was like me at Thanksgiving but every day of the year. Her inability to accept less than exactly how she wanted things was maddening. She was always brutally honest about her feelings (unless it was something she decided needed to be kept a secret and then it was as if she locked it away in a trunk she bought at a yard sale and hid under the stairs).

"I hate your hair." "This is a stupid Christmas gift." "I can't believe you're wearing that to dinner." "Wow. You're really getting fat." "Don't embarrass me by talking politics with my University friends, OK? You're practically right wing."

After a few years of this constant honesty, I found myself walking around like Eeyore, head down, eyes on the ground, feeling a sense of dread overcoming me with the now drilled-in idea that nothing I did could possibly be enough or correct. If Alice wasn't happy it was because I was inadequate. She now had someone to blame for her disappointments in life.

What I learned from Alice was that for blunt honesty to be effective and useful rather than merely a bludgeon of self importance leveled upon those who are willing to put up with it, it was about seeing how that honesty could be used by them.

If the criticism couldn't be utilized for the betterment of someone or something, it was just noisy, pointless bitching. Childish complaint and attempts to beat down those around into some aspect of submission. Looking for someone to blame as if the recipient's guilt and subsequent anguish could be healing in some way.

Common wisdom suggests that by thoroughly revisiting our traumatic experiences to understand why they happened and how to move past them is therapeutic. Unfortunately, like the movies in the 1980s subsidized by the Pentagon to help recruit kids with a Top Gun drumbeat of "How Cool is War, Right?," the therapy industry proliferates this constant vomiting of pain and search for who to blame for it is in contrast with new research.

"New research is showing that some people only get worse by continuing to brood and ruminate,” Stanford psychologist Mischel said. “Each time they recount the experience to themselves, their friends or their therapist, they only become more depressed."

SOURCE

It's quite possible that I have had uniquely bad therapy experiences. A few when I was younger felt pointless, the couple's therapy I went through with my first and second ex-wives felt disingenuous. While skewed for maximum satire, the talk therapy groups in Fight Club ring more true than anything else—sad, busted up people sitting in a circle complaining about how hard their life has been next to another room with another circle complaining about theirs next to another.

Talking about your problems to be heard seems fine but it also a cul de sac of constantly re-opening the wounds over and over without any sort of solution provided. Even if one discovers an abuser in their past to pin the blame upon, even if there is some sort of reckoning and accountability, neither talking about it or understanding your place in the grievance hierarchy manages to solve the inability to move past the trauma.

That's the goal, right? Move past it? It may not be an easy task but, at the end of the process, learning to get on with things, heal the pain, live with the scars is the goal, yes?

It is the same when it comes to big picture items as well.

As someone decidedly Left in political views, I can't say I've ever been in a huge Bitch Session of Truthtelling with anyone right wing. Not my monkey, not my circus. On the hand, I can't count the number of Leftist circle jerks I've been mired in, often contributing more than my fair share of discourse and blockading to the mix. It is the Choir Preaching to the Choir so that One Solidifies Membership in the Freaking Choir.

So many of these sessions amount to telling the truth and identifying who is to blame for that truth.

"There is no reason for the evil that is represented by the Billionaire Class. How much money does anyone need? And at the expense of everyone else? The System is rigged by the wealthy, for the wealthy."

"The systemic racism in the country's policing stems from its racist beginnings and that's why so many black men are indiscriminately killed by cops. How many videos do we have to endure before things change?"

"Fossil fuels are the source of climate disaster. Everyone can see that. If we don't change course, the planet is going to be destroyed in our lifetime!"

All true, I'd think. But I heard that last week and the week before and the week before that. Sort of like my Thanksgiving rants.

Who’s to blame? The rich. The police. Big Oil. Where are the solutions to the problems?

Playing the blame game never works. A deep set of research shows that people who blame others for their mistakes lose status, learn less, and perform worse relative to those who own up to their mistakes. Research also shows that the same applies for organizations. Groups and organizations with a rampant culture of blame have a serious disadvantage when it comes to creativity, learning, innovation, and productive risk-taking.

Harvard Business Review

Blame, beyond personal accountability, is likewise pointless without a plan and “Hold Those to Blame Accountable!” isn’t a great plan.

Truth without pragmatic action is meaningless.

And so … the birthday of the nation comes up. The therapeutic gripe sessions begin. Instead of celebrating the country’s progress, the ideals it is founded upon, any sense of national pride, we have a host of Thanksgiving Don Hall’s pissing and moaning about the missteps and outright horrors committed by those long dead.

There is a lot of blunt trauma truth tossed out just before, during, and after our national day. Things like the fact of indoctrinated worship of the Founders without some serious views upon their flaws as human beings. Like the intentional absence in our collective history of the contributions made by those not in the majority. As I would've said on a typical Thanksgiving, an absence of any genuine reflection on the near genocide of the natives.

Not so much the next step of how to fix the issues or even the simple truth that most of the problems in the past cannot be fixed rather the recurrent results modified for a more just and equitable nation. Lotsa bitching. Not lotsa solution building. Tons of blame. Ounces of creative problem solving.

A whole bunch of Thanksgiving Cunts holding court and demanding that if you want to shoot of fireworks, wave the flag, eat some grilled meat, and get a bit drunk in celebration of the enduring experiment in democracy and multi-culturalism America strives to be, you are forced to listen to them piss all over the parade.

The thing about Alice was that for all of her brutal honesty, none of it made me want to change my hair, I stopped buying her gifts altogether, I intentionally wore things and said things that would embarrass her and the only reason I lost weight was because the gym was a place I could escape her for a few hours. Her mean spirited honesty accomplished the exact opposite of what she was aiming for.

The United States ain't so united and maybe it never has been but wallowing in the painful trauma of the past only has value if the next step is to focus on what we can do together to avoid the mistakes made by our elders. That's the entire point of America in the first place.

So, Happy Birthday, America. Let's keep trying to improve.

#July 4

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mikhalsarah · 7 years

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Leftists Ruin Everything (Pt 12)

So, I joined up FB again...(I know, I know)... partly in order to get on some Gaelic learner’s groups so I could practice. And I ended up? Never wanting to speak another fucking word of Gaelic, ever again.

It began with a Trump meme. It’s not that I care so much about him of course, but it did offend some people. Proof, in case anyone wanted it, that Liberals are not the only people offended at the drop of an amount of criticism of their idols that would fit on a pin and leave plenty room for the angels to dance. But I said nothing, because they had not yet come for me. I couldn’t say much at the time, I was laughing. Complaints were, however, made and knuckles were rapped.

But it did not end there. Oh no.

Eventually a core of interfriended Leftists slowly began to take over all the Gaelic learner’s sites. After the aforementioned knuckle-rapping they steered clear of Trump and other overtly political topics but this was not an improvement. Instead they began to compile a list of grievances against certain groups....the English, of course, topped the list (no great surprise there) but eventually all English-speaking people, wherever they are in the world, and indeed the entire English language, became the symbol of all that is incorrigible and wrong with the world. So, basically they spent much of their time online on the Gaelic sites attacking other Scottish people who speak English.

In English.

Yeah, I’m gonna leave that as it’s own paragraph to give the irony time to trickle down from on high. None of these Gaelic Social Justice Warriors are actually native Gaels. All of them are native English speakers. Most of them are Americans. Few are functionally fluent.

Did this complete them? No, it did not. It was insufficient to just attack random Scottish people who didn’t give a toss...in part because they never bothered joining up a Gaelic site in order to hear what the newbie-wannabe Gally-Gaels were saying about them behind their backs...it became necessary to start attacking everyone who had the slightest interest in Gaelic culture but for whatever reason had not yet begun learning Gaelic. Pipers took quite a few shots here, on the grounds that these people who had never put mouth to chanter were dead sure that it was a literal impossibility to learn how to play pipes properly without first becoming fluent in Gaelic. Never mind that prosody and music are (normally) in opposite hemispheres of the brain and not necessarily connected to the semantics of any given language at all. In fact, the prosody can be learned quite independently, while the semantics can be hugely dependent on the prosody.

Eventually it was necessary to start attacking people who were learning, but were not achieving sufficient results, mainly because they had....well, lives. You know, jobs, families, pets and shit. They couldn’t just take off for a sabbatical to go to Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, and they didn’t have endless money and time for this or that book, or this or that new e-learning program because most of them were living off-campus, in what some of us like to call, “The Real World”. I swear to god, the one guy posted so much about some faddish new miracle course that I am now certain it’s one of those pyramid-scheme/cults where they both pay you AND brainwash you to hawk their product.

In the end, there was just so much sturm und drang, and so little of it in Gaelic that I told everyone they’d gone fucking bonkers and could shove the whole language suas an tònan aca. If it wasn’t dying before, it will be dead as the proverbial herring once that lot is through with it. This is what happens when you don’t really give a toss about a language or culture but love it only for what you think it can do for you. For these people, Gaelic is an escape route from the Unbearable Whiteness of Being. In their books, to be “White” is the worst of all possible sins and here, by a miracle, they have found themselves to be “Gaels” instead; members of a despised and downtrodden minority colonised by a strong, yet morally inferior, adversary. Hooray!

The fact that the actual traditional Gaelic culture might be quite conservative would never occur to them. In their minds Gaelic culture, like Spanish culture or Islamic culture can simply be stripped of all that inconveniently distinguishes it from the American activist mileu of a Cultural Studies lecture. But now that they have returned from civilization back to their tribe, they can infect it....I mean, impart to its simple members all the great wisdom that a degree in Post-Colonial Marxist Hermeneutics can bestow.

#gàidhlig #gaelic #leftists #sjws #sjws are cancer #you ruin everything #gaelic is the new black #anything but white

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thecoroutfitters · 7 years

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Arguments have gone back and forth about whether mass killings are on the rise or not. A lot depends on how you define a mass killing. Leftists use more liberal definition (of course), allowing them to qualify more killings as “mass killings” or “mass shootings” than what the FBI uses.

Based upon the FBI’s definition, there isn’t any rise, but based upon the leftist definition, there is.

But there’s should be no question in anyone’s mind about the last week. Three mass killings in one week is way too much for any nation, even one as large as ours is. First there was the terrorist attack in Manhattan, where a supposed ISIS supporter drove a truck down a bike path, killing and maiming in his wake.

Then there was a shooter in the Denver Metro area, who entered a Wal-Mart and shot three people, before making his escape. Finally, there was the Sunday shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, leaving 26 dead and about 20 others wounded. All this, just a month after the Las Vegas shooting.

The Texas shooting is still a breaking story, as I sit here writing this. Little is known, other than the name of the shooter and a few other details. Motive, the most important thing for the investigators to try to uncover, is still at doubt. But it is interesting to note that the church he attacked was attended by his ex-wife and her family.

Devin Patrick Kelly, the Texas shooter, apparently has a history of violence, having been court-martialed for domestic violence in 2012; a crime that led to his incarceration, loss of military rank and a bad conduct discharge, as well as his wife divorcing him. This raises the questions, could this have been nothing more than a grudge killing?

Obviously, more details will come out as time goes on and the investigators look further into his life. One glaring fact stands out right now; that is, because of his history with violence, he should not have been able to buy a firearm legally. Yet somehow he did.

The Flaw in the System

One of the first things that investigators track down in a case of this type is where the murder weapon was purchased. In this case, the gun he used, an AR-15, was purchased over the counter in an Academy Sporting Goods store in the city of San Antonio.

Having bought firearms in an Academy store before, I can assure you that they follow the law explicitly when selling firearms. So what went wrong?

There are three basic steps required for buying a firearm in the United States.

The first is filling out an ATF form 4473, Firearms Transaction Record. There are several questions asked on this form, mostly involving things that would deny one the right to purchase a firearm. Obviously, the killer in this case lied on that form, or he wouldn’t have been able to make the purchase. But then, there’s really nothing to stop people from lying on such forms, any more than there is to keep them from lying on their taxes.

The second required step is to prove that you are who you say you are. This is easily accomplished by presenting a driver’s license, or other acceptable form of picture ID, preferably a government-issued one. Obviously, he was able to do that.

Finally, the seller has to contact NICS, the National Instant Criminal Background Check system, a sub-agency of the FBI. This computerized database is supposed to have records of all crimes committed by anyone in the country. Since he had assaulted his wife and child in 2012, there should have been records of that in the database, denying him the ability to buy the gun he used in the crime. Yet, somehow, he did.

Adding a touch of confusion to the case, Kelley was denied a Texas Concealed Handgun Permit, which would make it seem that he couldn’t pass the NICS background check. However, the background check for the Concealed Handgun Permit is much more extensive than that for purchasing a firearm. So it is possible that the NICS database didn’t have all the data that was used in the Texas Concealed Handgun Permit background check.

This brings to light a major flaw in the background check system that is currently in use. The “loophole” in the system isn’t the non-existent “gun show loophole” that gun grabbers love to talk about. Rather, it’s the loophole created by the simple fact that not all the information seems to make it into the NICS database.

Here we have a man who was convicted of two counts of assault in a military court-martial and served time incarcerated for it. Yet that felony didn’t keep him from buying a firearm, even though it should have. We don’t need more gun laws; we need the ones on the books to be enforced.

One of the problems with the system is that there is no federal law requiring that states send mental-health information to the NICS, only state laws; and those only exist in 38 states. Even then, the states only send records on those who have been judged to have mental health issues in a court of law. Most people with mental health issues don’t end up there.

Some are calling for doctors to be able to make that judgment call, without a court order. But that denies people the right of to defend themselves before the judge’s bench. If a doctor can claim that someone is mentally incapable of owning a firearm, then anti-gun doctors could literally say that of all their patients, without the patients having any recourse.

But while there is a mental health element to this particular shooting, that’s not the big concern; at least, not as far as him buying a firearm. His conviction for assault should have been enough for that. Does this mean that there are crimes committed in the military, which are not being reported to NICS?

For that matter, how many federal cases, state courts and municipalities are really reporting all crimes to NICS? I would venture to guess that there are a lot. If that’s the case, there are massive holes in the system, holes that are making it possible for criminals to legally buy firearms, just as we see in this case.

But with no penalty to states or municipalities for not reporting, there is no way to enforce this law.

Is This Like Other Mass Shootings?

The motivation behind the killing isn’t just of interest to investigators, but to all of us. Is this another mass shooting, in the style of Sandy Hook and Columbine? Is it a terrorist incident like San Bernardino? Or, could there be another motive behind the shooter’s actions?

Until investigators uncover the motive behind the killer’s rampage, there is no chance of learning anything to help prevent any future such incidents.

While little is known at this time, first indicator fit the model of other mass killings. The killer has been described as “creepy,” “crazy,” “weird,” “negative,” “quiet” and “depressed.” He was also an avowed atheist, which may have something to do with his choice of targets. All of this lends credence to the possibility of some sort of mental disorder; although no real evidence has been brought to light, other than anecdotal evidence, to show any true mental disorder.

The other thing that appears to follow the pattern of other mass shooters was his obvious preparation. While it is still very early in the investigation to have any idea of how long he has been planning this killing spree, he bought his rifle back in 2014, three years ago. Could he have been thinking of this for that long?

Even if he didn’t, this clearly wasn’t a spur of the moment action. He showed up at his target area in full tactical gear, including a ballistic vest. That alone shows that he took the time to prepare. He clearly went to that church with the intent of committing mass murder and didn’t want to be stopped before he could complete his objective.

This has led investigators to look into the possibility of Kelley being a member of a local militia group. Most militia groups are conservative, although since Trump became president, there have been some liberal ones that have risen up.

I would not be surprised if the investigative team finds extensive evidence in Kelley’s home, showing how he had planned this crime. That would follow the pattern of other mass killers and show that this crime was more than one of passion, but rather another such crime caused by mental illness.

A Good Guy with a Gun

A common trait of mass shootings is that the killer ends their own life, as the culmination of their act. The exception to this rule is when someone else ends it for them.

Video first seen on BP Network.

In this case, the shooting spree was ended by a good guy with a gun, a local resident, who heard the shooting and engaged the shooter with his own rifle, hitting him in the side, through a gap in his body armor.

This caused Kelley to drop his rifle and take off in his SUV, with the man who shot him and another man in pursuit. Whether this was necessary or not is yet to be determined, as the killer ran his vehicle off the road, hitting a tree. When police arrived, they found him dead.

Whether the killer was finally done in by his own bullet, by the bullet fired by the local hero or by the police is something that we won’t know until the autopsy is completed. But one thing is clear; as horrific as this crime was, it could have been worse, if it had not been for a good guy with a gun.

While leftists won’t admit it, guns are used to stop crimes hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of times per year. One study puts the figure at 2.5 million. Statistics for this are hard to collate, simply because most of the time when an individual uses a gun in self-defense, it doesn’t get reported.

There is no requirement to report a crime that didn’t happen, and 70% of the time that lawful gun owners draw a gun in the face of a criminal, that’s enough to cause the criminal to flee.

So, What Can We Do?

Ultimately, the big question for all of us is: How can we stop gun crime?

Those on the political left want to blame the crime on guns, outlawing them. They want to eliminate guns entirely and if they can’t eliminate as many as they can. But unless they can find a way to repeal the physical laws that make guns work, they can’t eliminate them. All they can do by passing laws is make it harder for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves.

But as long as there are evil people in the world, there will be crime, even violent crime. The earliest recorded crime in human history was when Cain killed his brother Abel, and he didn’t need a gun to do it. So until we can eliminate all problems with human morality (which is obviously impossible), people will continue to kill, maim and otherwise harm each other.

What we can do is to quit sensationalizing murder… or rather, the news media can. Mass killers are looking for their moment of glory, as a way to end their otherwise unremarkable lives. Going down in infamy may not be the best option, but in their minds, it’s better than ending their lives as an unknown.

There is also a strong mental illness factor in mass murder, which has never been dealt with effectively. Over and over we hear of these cases, only to find that the murderers were either on psychosomatic drugs or should have been. That alone should be enough to legally deny them their rights to own firearms, by court order. Yet it isn’t happening.

As a society, we need to figure out a better way of diagnosing and treating those with these sorts of mental illnesses. That part has to be done by medical professionals. But we also need to make the general population aware of who these people are, regardless of any privacy laws. We currently deny this right of privacy to sex offenders and I really can’t see a whole lot of difference.

Will we ever be totally successful in diagnosing and treating the mental illness behind mass murder? I doubt it. But we can and should do a much better job than what we are doing now. It’s time for Congress to take action, not to eliminate our Second Amendment rights, but to make these mental health issues a priority and fund them appropriately.

The Real Answer

But the real answer is the one I mentioned earlier… the good guys with a gun. While I hope to never have to kill one of these mass murderers, I live every day as if I have to be ready to do so. I carry concealed from the time I get dressed in the morning, to the time I go to bed at night, even at church.

Sunday, before hearing about the Sutherland Springs shooting, I was talking with a member of our church, a retired police officer, who has a concealed carry license. Although he is licensed and was a firearms instructor while in the police department, his gun was in his car. So had this event happened in our church, he would not have been able to help.

There are four of us who carry concealed in our church, and I can guarantee you we will be meeting together to discuss strategy, should such a thing ever happen in our church. While I realize the likelihood of that is slim, I also realize that it is not impossible. So we will be ready, should it ever occur.

Ultimately, our safety is in our own hands. If you don’t carry concealed, I’d like to recommend you start. Get your license, go to the range and practice, and be ready, should this ever happen to you.

While I would rather not have to kill a killer in my church, neighborhood store or anywhere else, I’d rather be part of the solution, than just stand their wondering if I’m going to become a statistic instead!

This article has been written by Bill White for Survivopedia.

Refernces:

http://www.abc15.com/news/data/mass-shootings-in-the-u-s-over-270-mass-shootings-have-occurred-in-2017

http://www.shootingtracker.com/

from Survivopedia Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies? #SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag

#SHTF #TEOTWAWKI #MARTIALLAW #BUGOUT #PREPPERBAG #USAF #USSOCOM #ARMY #NAVY #SurvivalFirestarter #Sur

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encephalonfatigue · 5 years

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radical theodicy: another withering is possible

this is a review of Engels’ “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” that i again couldn’t fit in goodreads. i have been wrestling through leftist history the past few months trying to garner a basic sense of the landscape and form some of my own thoughts out of the deluge that is this messy constellation of politics. i have come full circle, in some sense, and am rather convinced that i identify with some sort of libertarian socialist politics, but still believe that the ‘sober-minded’ analysis of more traditional tendencies of the left (such as those from ‘really existing socialism’) cannot be simply ignored. they are a central part of figuring out the tasks ahead.

This was very short. More a pamphlet than a book, but densely packed with many interesting things, such that I had to re-read sections numerous times. Even still, Engels writes with a clarity that Marx’s writings do not have for me, and so I appreciate that he does have his own body of work, which I seem to have read more of than Marx's.

One of the portions I actually enjoyed most from this text was its 1892 introduction, written by Engels almost precisely a century before I was born. It’s a fascinating glimpse into Engels’ views on religion. Near its beginning there are a number of successive excerpts from “The Holy Family” that Engels takes from Marx’s portions of the book. Marx outlines a fascinating history of materialism, tracing his way through the medieval theologian Duns Scotus (who he calls a ’nominalist’, a philosophical rejection of universals, more associated with Ockham of ‘Occam’s razor’), onto Bacon, then Hobbes. The Holy Family is an interesting book because it is mostly Marx shit-talking his doctoral thesis advisor — the liberal theologian, Bruno Bauer, and his circle. I think this was actually the first book Engels and Marx collaborated on. Engels had left Marx with something like fifteen pages, before he departed from Paris. By the time Marx was finished with his portions, the book totalled almost 300 pages.

Anyway, following these excerpts from The Holy Family, Engels then goes on in this pamphlet to denounce agnosticism as a disguised and embarrassed form of atheism/materialism. This was likely one of the most unconvincing parts of this text, but lots of interesting stuff to chew on still. Its thesis is Goethe’s “in the beginning was the deed”, a materialist inversion of John’s Gospel “In the beginning was the word”. Marx’s materialist thesis, at least if one ignores his unpublished works (e.g. Grundrisse), is that material conditions are the primary causal force — much more so than ideas. In other words, the Base determines the Superstructure. Or the 'productive forces' and 'relations of production' determine the 'dominant ideology'. Engels then moves on to a critique of Kant’s ‘thing-in-itself’, an old Aristotelian retort of sorts to Platonic ideals. Aristotle gets his mention in the second chapter. Which leads to 'historical materialism' which Engels defines in fairly clear terms:

"The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange."

Before I do move on from this point, I only want to place here a quote I found from an essay by Czeslaw Milosz, included in NYRB’s publication of Simone Weil’s “On the Abolition of all Political Parties”:

“And the problem is: who can justify the suffering of the innocent? Albert Camus, in The Plague, took up the subject already treated in the Book of Job. Should we return our ticket like Ivan Karamazov because the tear of a child is enough to tip the scale? Should we rebel? Can God exist if he is responsible, if he allows what our values condemn as a monstrosity? Camus said no. We are alone in the universe…

But perhaps if not God, there is a goddess who walks through battlefields and concentration camps, penetrates prisons, gathers every drop of blood, every curse? She knows that those who complain simply do not understand. Everything is counted, everything is an unavoidable part of the pangs of birth and will be recompensed. Man will become a God for man. On the road toward that accomplishment he has to pass through Calvary. The goddess’s name is pronounced with trembling in our age: she is History.

Leszek Kolakowski, a Marxist professor of philosophy in Warsaw, states bluntly that all the structures of modern philosophy, including Marxist philosophy, have been elaborated in the Middle Ages by theologians and that an attentive observer can distinguish old quarrels under new formulations. He points out that History, for instance, is being discussed by Marxists in the terms of theodicy — justification of God.”

What I find fascinating is that Marx’s teleological convictions can only be described as religious in nature from twenty-first century eyes. It’s hard to find anyone who talks about history in such a manner. Because History really is deified in the Marxist conception of the world, and it comes through in Engels here too. This is an example of Marx commenting on British colonialism in India:

“England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindustan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England, she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.”

Marx almost speaks of this horrible situation as a necessary stage that India had to endure to ‘fulfil its destiny’. This is the sort of thing Edward Said critiqued Marx for in Orientalism, and Said quotes this precise passage, commenting on it in this way:

“The quotation, which supports Marx's argument about torment producing pleasure, comes from the Westdstlicher Diwan and identifies the sources of Marx's conceptions about the Orient. These are Romantic and even messianic: as human material the Orient is less important than as an element in a Romantic redemptive project. Marx's economic analyses are perfectly fitted thus to a standard Orientalist undertaking, even though Marx's humanity, his sympathy for the misery of people, are clearly engaged. Yet in the end it is the Romantic Orientalist vision that wins out…”

Said goes on to quote Marx again:

“England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating—the annihilation of the Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia.”

Edward Said again:

“The idea of regenerating a fundamentally lifeless Asia is a piece of pure Romantic Orientalism, of course, but coming from the same writer who could not easily forget the human suffering involved, the statement is puzzling. It requires us first to ask how Marx's moral equation of Asiatic loss with the British colonial rule he condemned gets skewed back towards the old inequality between East and West we have so far remarked. Second, it requires us to ask where the human sympathy has gone, into what realm of thought it has disappeared while the Orientalist vision takes its place.”

It is this redemptive action of History (as a deity) that Said critiques here in my view. Back to the Engels text at hand, the next portion of the introduction was maybe my favourite part of the whole book. It was a fascinating glimpse into Engels’ take on the Protestant Reformation. I had known Engels had grown up in a Calvinist family, and of course Marx’s family was nominally Lutheran (even if ancestrally Jewish). So this perceptiveness might have been expected, but even still it was surprising for me. I will just leave the excerpts of interest here, because I feel that it is worth reading, even if long:

“every struggle against feudalism, at that time, had to take on a religious disguise, had to be directed against the Church in the first instance… The long fight of the bourgeoisie against feudalism culminated in three great, decisive battles.

The first was what is called the Protestant Reformation in Germany. The war cry raised against the Church, by Luther, was responded to by two insurrections of a political nature; first, that of the lower nobility under Franz von Sickingen (1523), then the great Peasants' War, 1525. Both were defeated, chiefly in consequence of the indecision of the parties most interested, the burghers of the towns — an indecision into the causes of which we cannot here enter.

…The Lutheran Reformation produced a new creed indeed, a religion adapted to absolute monarchy. No sooner were the peasant of North-east Germany converted to Lutheranism than they were from freemen reduced to serfs.

But where Luther failed, Calvin won the day. Calvin's creed was one fit for the boldest of the bourgeoisie of his time. His predestination doctrine was the religious expression of the fact that in the commercial world of competition success or failure does not depend upon a man's activity or cleverness, but upon circumstances uncontrollable by him. It is not of him that willeth or of him that runneth, but of the mercy of unknown superior economic powers; and this was especially true at a period of economic revolution, when all old commercial routes and centres were replaced by new ones, when India and America were opened to the world, and when even the most sacred economic articles of faith — the value of gold and silver — began to totter and to break down. Calvin's church constitution of God was republicanized, could the kingdoms of this world remains subject to monarchs, bishops, and lords? While German Lutheranism became a willing tool in the hands of princes, Calvinism founded a republic in Holland, and active republican parties in England, and, above all, Scotland.”

I just want to interrupt this excerpt by saying that it was this part about Republican revolutions that got me to look into John Knox as a revolutionary. I believe it was Knox who said “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God” which found its way into one of Emma Goldman’s essays, though she attributed it to a founding father of the United States, most often it’s associated with Jefferson. Roland Boer has an entire book about the revolutionary implications of Calvin, which I hope to read one day, having been raised in the Calvinist tradition.

“In Calvinism, the second great bourgeois upheaval found its doctrine ready cut and dried. This upheaval took place in England. The middle-class of the towns brought it on, and the yeomanry of the country districts fought it out. Curiously enough, in all the three great bourgeois risings, the peasantry furnishes the army that has to do the fighting; and the peasantry is just the class that, the victory once gained, is most surely ruined by the economic consequences of that victory. A hundred years after Cromwell, the yeomanry of England had almost disappeared. Anyhow, had it not been for that yeomanry and for the plebian element in the towns, the bourgeoisie alone would never have fought the matter out to the bitter end, and would never have brought Charles I to the scaffold. In order to secure even those conquests of the bourgeoisie that were ripe for gathering at the time, the revolution had to be carried considerably further — exactly as in 1793 in France and 1848 in Germany. This seems, in fact, to be one of the laws of evolution of bourgeois society.”

I think an important aspect of Engels commentary on religion is the sort of thing you might expect, but it’s really important anyway. It’s the way religion is used to control people. I think this realization came to me when I read Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale for the first time in an undergraduate literature course. Atwood has actually had quite an interesting influence on my theological education. Anyway, the relevant quotes from Engels on this:

“…he was not long in discovering the opportunities this same religion offered him for working upon the minds of his natural inferiors, and making them submissive to the behests of the masters it had pleased God to place over them. In short, the English bourgeoisie now had to take a part in keeping down the "lower orders", the great producing mass of the nation, and one of the means employed for that purpose was the influence of religion.”

“If the British bourgeois had been convinced before of the necessity of maintaining the common people in a religious mood, how much more must he feel that necessity after all these experiences? Regardless of the sneers of his Continental compeers, he continued to spend thousands and tens of thousands, year after year, upon the evangelization of the lower orders; not content with his own native religious machinery, he appealed to Brother Jonathan 1), the greatest organizer in existence of religion as a trade, and imported from America revivalism, Moody and Sankey, and the like; and, finally, he accepted the dangerous aid of the Salvation Army, which revives the propaganda of early Christianity, appeals to the poor as the elect, fights capitalism in a religious way, and thus fosters an element of early Christian class antagonism, which one day may become troublesome to the well-to-do people who now find the ready money for it.”

Fascinating that Moody gets a mention by Engels, haha. He’s still being mentioned in my family’s evangelical church, though certainly not as often as Calvin.

Ok, that was just the introduction. Now onto the first chapter, haha, I’ve already written a book chapter myself. Engels starts by mentioning some folks I’ve been growing deeply fascinated with over the past year or two:

“…in every great bourgeois movement there were independent outbursts of that class which was the forerunner, more or less developed, of the modern proletariat. For example, at the time of the German Reformation and the Peasants' War, the Anabaptists and Thomas Munzer; in the great English Revolution, the Levellers; in the great French Revolution, Babeuf.”

I’ve been very interested in Munzer and the early Anabaptists lately (in fact, that is what got me really into the intersection of radical politics and religion in the first place), as well as Winstanley and the Levellers. (Is it a sin to listen to Chumbawamba???)

Then Engels moves on to engage the Utopian socialists:

“Then came the three great Utopians: Saint-Simon, to whom the middle-class movement, side by side with the proletarian, still had a certain significance; Fourier and Owen, who in the country where capitalist production was most developed, and under the influence of the antagonisms begotten of this, worked out his proposals for the removal of class distinction systematically and in direct relation to French materialism.

One thing is common to all three. Not one of them appears as a representative of the interests of that proletariat which historical development had, in the meantime, produced. Like the French philosophers, they do not claim to emancipate a particular class to begin with, but all humanity at once. Like them, they wish to bring in the kingdom of reason and eternal justice, but this kingdom, as they see it, is as far as Heaven from Earth, from that of the French philosophers.”

I’m not sure if it’s worth noting that Engels does not mention Cabet, who is alluded to indirectly in the Manifesto when “Little Icaria” is mentioned (there are all sorts of these vague and oblique references throughout the Manifesto, that I had no way of understanding when I first read it; I’m always surprised when people find it a simple read). But I have mentioned these utopian socialists many times in various reviews here. I mentioned Fourier when talking about the protagonist of the 1990 film “Metropolitan” who identifies as a Fourier socialist (it’s a funny film, worth your time, I feel). I recently found out Nathaniel Hawthorne spent some time at a Fourierist commune as an agricultural director and received visits from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Elizabeth Peabody. I’ve also mentioned that there was a radical wing of the early Republican party that had Fourier socialists in it like Horace Greeley, the editor at the New York Daily Tribune who published hundreds of articles by Marx. In fact, it is said that Marx was contemplating moving to Texas, and in fact applied to do so. There was a famous Fourierist commune in Dallas called La Reunion, and I wonder if this was the destination Marx had in mind. I’ve mentioned Sant-Simon when talking about George Sand and Franz Liszt, both involved in Sant-Simonian politics at points of their life. And I’ve mentioned Robert Owen in my previous review of Engels, “The Conditions of the Working Class in England” and talked about how Owenite socialism as well as the Chartist movement were some of the animating forces behind William Lyon Mackenzie’s politics here on Turtle Island. I thought the section on Owen was actually the most interesting part of this chapter. Engels describes how even with all the reforms, far ahead of any other industrialist around at his time, Owen still felt his workers lived in miserable conditions and all his philanthropy was not enough, even with all the adulation he received from visiting statesmen and diplomats.

I was particularly interested in Engels comments on Saint-Simon:

“Hence, to Saint-Simon the antagonism between the 3rd Estate and the privileged classes took the form of an antagonism between "workers" and "idlers". The idlers were not merely the old privileged classes, but also all who, without taking any part in production or distribution, lived on their incomes. And the workers were not only the wage-workers, but also the manufacturers, the merchants, the bankers. That the idlers had lost the capacity for intellectual leadership and political supremacy had been proved, and was by the Revolution finally settled. That the non-possessing classes had not this capacity seemed to Saint-Simon proved by the experiences of the Reign of Terror. Then, who was to lead and command? According to Saint-Simon, science and industry, both united by a new religious bond, destined to restore that unity of religious ideas which had been lost since the time of the Reformation — a necessarily mystic and rigidly hierarchic "new Christianity". But science, that was the scholars; and industry, that was, in the first place, the working bourgeois, manufacturers, merchants, bankers. These bourgeois were, certainly, intended by Saint-Simon to transform themselves into a kind of public officials, of social trustees; but they were still to hold, vis-a-vis of the workers, a commanding and economically privileged position. The bankers especially were to be called upon to direct the whole of social production by the regulation of credit.”

The second chapter on Dialectics was actually very fun. It reminds me of post-structuralist philosophers like Manuel de Landa, Deleuze and Guattari. This wide field of STS inquiries into non-linear mathematics and science as well as chaos studies, that pay homage to the work of Prigogine and Stengers, has much in common with the stuff Engels explores here. I think it is worth mentioning that the economic historian Immanuel Wallerstein was greatly influenced by the work of Prigogine. An example of something Engels says in this chapter:

“This primitive, naive but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away.”

I think it is worth noting that Marx actually did his doctoral dissertation on pre-Socratic philosophers of the Epicurean and Demicritean traditions, and while Heraclitus is only mentioned once, I think there is an interesting line from thinkers like Lucretius to Marx’s materialism. Another relevant excerpt from Engels:

“The perception of the the fundamental contradiction in German idealism led necessarily back to materialism, but — nota bene — not to the simply metaphysical, exclusively mechanical materialism of the 18th century. Old materialism looked upon all previous history as a crude heap of irrationality and violence; modern materialism sees in it the process of evolution of humanity, and aims at discovering the laws thereof. With the French of the 18th century, and even with Hegel, the conception obtained of Nature as a whole — moving in narrow circles, and forever immutable, with its eternal celestial bodies, as Newton, and unalterable organic species, as Linnaeus, taught. Modern materialism embraces the more recent discoveries of natural science, according to which Nature also has its history in time, the celestial bodies, like the organic species that, under favorable conditions, people them, being born and perishing.”

There were lots of interesting comments on economics and basic analysis of capitalism, but the last comment I want to make is simply Engels comments on the state:

“The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property.

But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinction and class antagonisms, abolishes also the State as State. Society, thus far, based upon class antagonisms, had need of the State. That is, of an organization of the particular class which was, pro tempore, the exploiting class, an organization for the purpose of preventing any interference from without with the existing conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited classes in the condition of oppression corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage-labor). The State was the official representative of society as a whole; the gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But, it was this only in so far as it was the State of that class which itself represented, for the time being, society as a whole:

in ancient times, the State of slaveowning citizens; in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords; in our own times, the bourgeoisie.

When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not "abolished". It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase: "a free State", both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific inefficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand.”

What I’ve found fascinating is that both anarchists and communists both share the same ideal, a society where the state no longer exists. The main difference is the path required to reach there. Whether it is a sort of sudden abolition of the state or a ’withering’ away of the state. This is something I understand Lenin talked about in “State and Revolution” one of the few texts by Lenin that Chomsky has some esteem for, though he’s of the opinion that it was a left libertarian text written opportunistically at the time to gain power. I’m not the sort of person to take Chomsky at face value regarding these things. I realize the sectarian discrepancies here can become very intense over these sorts of things.

What I do think leftists should focus on are the shared ideals they have. That state hierarchy is ultimately something we both want gone. I think old ideas about any immediate abolition of the state or some organic withering away of it merely after some proletariat seizure of state power and private property are both reductive and underestimate the enormous task that such an endeavour involves, and ongoing vigilance it would require even if it were to happen any time soon (which it won’t, if I’m honest). It is a task with so many facets. I think most leftists recognize there are no easy answers about how we are to achieve an egalitarian society without class distinctions. And in most cases, communist states have not withered away but only grown closer in resemblance to capitalist states, citing the ongoing presence of global capitalism as the central reason. And like Fredric Jameson once reiterated: “it’s harder to imagine the end of capitalism, than the end of the world.”

I don’t think it’s naive to continue asserting that the power of the few over the many, whether by way of state or capital, is not sufficiently justified. That something can be done about this, and that another world is possible. We have to learn carefully from the many failures from those before us trying to realize this other world. We must never allow the same atrocities to be committed again in the name of achieving such ends. While prefigurative politics may not be enough, it is a vital part to realizing this other world. We must examine with unwavering self-criticism, the narratives of redemptive suffering used to explicate the errors made at the expense of other workers in the past. We are in no position to determine who can be sacrificed in the name of this cause. We cannot be Abraham binding Isaac because History demands such a faith of us, in fear and trembling. We must recognize the enormous failure of raising class-consciousness and putting forward a plausible framing of 21st century political economy that most people can understand as true and correct, beyond the current capitalist mode of production.

It’s 1:35 AM and I have no idea why I’m writing this terrible manifesto. I’m going to put an end to this now. Thanks for the provocative thoughts Engels. I have lots to think about. I need some sleep. I’m glad it’s daylight savings time, and I have an extra hour to smooth things out. Cheers.

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fapangel · 7 years

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With Hurricanes, Jihad, North Korea and other shit going on, why do people give a fuck about some football players?

The usual leftist obsession with pushing and enforcing their narrative at every turn is present, but absent that (and/or my REEEEservative biases regarding such,) this is an example of the culture wars moving into red state/rust belt blue state home turf. NASCAR is mostly a southern fixation, but the Rust Belt and its many union democrats take football very seriously - in Michigan, the week of the MSU vs. UM college football game is damn near a state holiday, complete with the ritual weekend-long excommunication of family members that back the Other Side. (Michigan takes college football more seriously than most - if your team was the fucking Lions, you would too.) It’s also significant because conservatives have been pretty vocal about left-wing censorship of people who dared to express a political opinion and were fired for it - some of them are taking it as a chance to “get their own back” with retributive REEE (with a healthy dose of throwing leftist rhetoric back in their faces,) and a good many others, with the shoe now on the other foot, are now discussing just where the line lies on things like this, and what the appropriate response is vis a vis free speech.

But above all, the issue in question is big - it strikes at the idea of patriotism itself. Few things highlight how tone-deaf and ideologically blind the left is than this issue - they’re trying to tell people that disrespecting the National Anthem is really a protest about racial issues. The National Anthem is a symbol of our country - it has fuck-all to do with race, as the President has tweeted himself - and no matter how many impassioned screeds full of twisted bullshit logic the leftists pen, it’s not going to convince anyone that disrespecting our National Anthem is anything but disrespect for the nation itself. Colin Kaepernick, they guy who started all of it, said as much himself: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color.”

That’s the most essential leftist sentiment, in as many words - America, as an idea, philosophy and nation - isn’t the enabler of those who’d destroy the evils of racism and oppression. They consider America to embody racism and oppression; so publicly shitting on the flag, the concept, the idea, the philosophy that many thousands of people have given their lives to defend from all enemies foreign and domestic comes naturally to them. They’re the purest form of racist, people who’s entire worldview revolve around dividing people into different groups based on skin color (“identity politics,”) so the tendency of their arguments to always return to “black people versus America” isn’t surprising - or even new. This is just a rare example of it surfacing in a public fashion.

Trump’s certainly jumped into this imbroglio tweetfeed-first, but he’s following on this one, not leading. His success as a politician owes entirely to his keen understanding of the public consciousness; especially the Rust Belt - he knows how blue-collar democrats feel about some asshole calling America itself an inherently evil, racist, oppressive monster. Kaepernick isn’t calling racism un-American - he’s calling America itself racist. The Reagan Democrats actually do believe in America, to their core - it’s no surprise that such an open and egregious insult has them too damn mad to see straight. Trump obviously knows where the people’s feelings lie - the only ones that don’t are the racist media goons who think the same badly worn, eternally tractionless racism narrative is going to stick on something near and dear to the Rust Belt’s hearts, both personally (sports as a pasttime) and philosophically (patriotism and America.)

It certainly doesn’t help that the media is increasingly inept, and the President increasingly skilled at dancing circles around the dumb bastards. With a few 140 character tweets he deftly turns arguments the mass media spent tens of thousands of words arguing across dozens and dozens of articles. When many players linked arms during the anthem - in a move the media spun as if it was a protest against Trump - he simply praised it as a laudable show of unity, and restated that kneeling during the national anthem is disrespectful. He’s also repeated what everyone already knows; that there’s nothing race-related about the National Anthem, tweeted/retweeted about combat veterans who sacrificed to defend all that flag and anthem stand for, and called for a boycott by fans, casting it as The People versus the NFL, instead of Courageous Black Protesters versus The Man, like the media keeps trying to do. This isn’t 4D chess or anything - it’s just Trump being intelligent and the media being that stupid. That their convoluted narratives and attempts to reframe the argument with race-baiting are so easily parried demonstrates just how overextended they are on this issue.

Final note: Alejandro Villanueva of the Steelers; a combat veteran who served three tours in Afghanistan and made a point of walking out of the dugouts to stand for the Anthem - has seen his jersey become the number-one bestselling NFL memorabilia item almost overnight. The Steelers themselves were apparently standing to the man in the dugout - they were protesting Trump’s twitter statements alleging that NFL players ought to respect flag and country or lose their jobs. Villanueva himself has eloquently and properly defended their right to do so as their expression of free speech, and made it clear that his fellow players were disagreeing with Trump, not insulting the Anthem or nation.

He’s right, of course - everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, whether it involve standing, kneeling or doing cartwheels. When most teams linked arms - and the Steelers stayed in the dugout - they were rebuking Trump for saying otherwise, and it’s a rebuke Trump accepted - note how he stopped with the “these bums should be fired” gut-feel expressions and started calling for NFL fans to express their own opinions in turn, with their feet and their money.

Which they have. So far they seem to be backing Villanueva - and the flag.

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ryankelley · 6 years

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I really had high hopes for Trump's economic policy. Early on, I felt we needed some protectionist measures and some gutting of our governments profligate spending--particularly by the DoD. Some good things are happening according to indicators of employment and wages. But honestly, my working-class family is now paying more taxes than before, and I suspect this market growth is largely short-sighted gorging, PR-fueled and wishful thinking. Of course rah-rah nationalism is going to draw some positive speculation and investment, but it's not real growth.

Eventually the chickens will come home to roost. Our R&D funding is decelerating and becoming more centralized. We're trapping more money at the top, increasing inequality, continually squeezing dwindling natural resources without incentivizing environmentally-sustainable technology development. Trickle-down economics has its merits. It's wise to make rich people and business owners comfortable so they store money in your banks and invest more capital your nation. Unfortunately, we haven't done that. We've made them richer at the expense of the working class while they've continued to move their funds overseas into more liberalized nations. We gave their corporations control over markets like airlines, telecommunications, health insurance, bankings--eliminating competition and creating ineffeciencies.

What we should be doing is cutting taxes for the working-class. They actually take their savings and reinvest large portions of it into the local economy--via openning new businesses, purchasing more goods and services etc...One thing the working class does is work--so it makes sense that putting extra money in their pocket will result in extra money being reinvested into the economy.

The working class is the most productive segment of the economy per dollar. Unfortunately, they're already loyal tax payers, so the bureaucrats and crony businesses don't need to focus on them when campaigning. Instead, they offer sops of bread to the poor masses in order to get their policy across. This is why inner cities have stayed poor despite being dominated by leftists over the last 40 years, and why the welfare state is so inefficient. The aim is to pacify their desperation with some small gift in the short term, like a needle exchange or more money into a bad public school. In return, the leftist demagogue gets their vote and passes more policy funneling money into the businesses they're affiliated with. Wall Street loved Hillary, not Trump.

Thus, we've actually squeezed the working class more in recent years. While some tax cuts and some positive PR has led to economic growth and higher wages, it hasn't done so in a sustainable fashion. Furthermore, middle-class homeowners are now enjoying less tax cuts under Trump, the Drug War is now being waged against veterans wrought with chronic pain and health insurance has increasing per capita. Illegal immigration persists, and there's now policy on the ballot proposing that felons and illegal aliens will vote. Meaning, net resource takers will be given more power vis a viz tax-paying citizens. The middle class will effectively pay more for the same amount of public goods they received before under this policy. While this policy comes from the left, I suspect it is here because the left has been inflamed in hysteria over Trump's rhetoric. After all, every action has a reaction. The left is only becoming more radical and desperate with every loss. The cyclical nature of politics and economy leads me to believe the next president will be a democrat.

My ballot was red in Florida, but honestly, I regretted watching Rick Scott shut down sewage treatment plants, pollute the everglades and Tampa Bay, and drill offshore...He traded some short-term growth for long-term economic health--also sacrificed the beauty of the area. This is the typical conservative policy prescription. Keep doing what you're doing until it stops working. Well, it's going to stop working--we're overpopulated, our natural resource stores are quickly dwindling and the earth is telling us we're in trouble with a more extreme climate. Worse, it's economically irrational to trade tourism—e.g. clean beaches--and real estate—e.g. clean water and fertile land--for his friends at the oil companies. Tourism and real estate, most likely, are sectors that have far more growth potential and offer long-term stability in a state like Florida. Jeopardizing these sectors along with commercial fisheries to drill off shore is unlikely to be a net gain.

Unfortunately, I just didn't see any more promising options on the left side of the ballot. Frankly, I'm not surprised. That side has become the anti-science side. They're waging a war against the entire field of economics. They feel bought, and in every policy prescription are attempting to take away our individual freedoms. They want our right to self-defense, they want our free speech, they want our free markets and they want control over our critical goods--safety, telecommunications, water, arable land...Simply put, while the right may be misguided, the left has become dangerous to the citizen's future. I work in STEM, and I worked very hard to get there. I got a degree in economics (hard!) and I have spent the last 6 years working tirelessly as a software engineer (hard!). In response to the high wage I"ve earned while their voters chose easy, liberal arts degrees that have a poor return in the work force, they're forcing policy that funnels STEM jobs away from me and towards less-qualified people because of their race or gender. 51% of the US population is female--the law of supply and demand means my wage will fall if we're hiring less-qualified women just because they're women. And can I speak out? No. They're the party against free speech--they despise so-called "Hate Speech". In essence, they despise any non-polite speech, and therefore, free speech. Their rhetoric increasingly aligns with authoritarian police states that have total control over the populace.

Because they suffered a loss, the left is becoming more tyrannical. Essentially, anyone they can draw votes from they want voting. Most recently, they started pushing policy to allow felons and non-citizens to vote in elections. I saw this on my ballot in Florida. Already, they want illegal aliens sharing public goods despite so many impoverished and homeless US citizens not having enough access to them.

Both sides have become out of touch with our nations' needs. We might've had a few sops of bread under Trump, but ultimately, the inflammatory rhetoric from his regime will undoubtedly lead to a harsh reaction in the opposite direction.

#trump economics government policy politics

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catsnuggler · 6 years

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Long, heavy rant. About abuse, particularly of the emotional variety; the depths of my anger, my love, and my self-pity; and the relationship between my abuse and why I'm a leftist. Again, it's long and heavy.

Yknow, it may come as a surprise to one of my two most recent ancestors, but it turns out if you yell and curse up a storm at, not to mention insult, my little sister, angrily yammer at me to get on your side, GROWL about how "they" (being my siblings and I) should all be hurt, and immediately walk into the room I'm in and PUNCH a file cabinet that's right next to me, I won't want to be around you!

Who'd have thunk, right? That's just too surprising! I'm obviously too sensitive and weak! It isn't like I'm a traumatized abuse victim that is terrified of you and hates you! No, because if I WAS , then that could only mean that you have FAILED to live up to the obligations my mother expected of you when she married you, when she birthed your children, when she tragically died in 2005, broken-hearted in knowing she would not be able to help you care for us! And if you DID happen to fail my dearly departed mother, then you would deserve DEATH, wouldn't you? But you can't die, no, because as much as you hate yourself, as much as you acknowledge the weight of your sins against my brother, my sisters, myself, you have to be better than us. You have to be GOD over us, as you said. And over anyone and everyone else. You don't even hate Nazis for their violence, really, do you? You hate them because they aren't as "civil" as yourself. Oh, yes, civil! Like throwing plates! Like berating my mentally disabled brother! Like turning your children against each other and breaking their minds and hearts! Civil! But at least you aren't a Nazi, because you only say all these slurs, express all these allegedly legitimate grievances against marginalized groups behind closed doors, only talk about how Antifa - the Anti-fascists - have to be destroyed just as much as Nazis behind closed doors. Because Anti-fascists are uncivil. And you are civil. Of course. Somehow, Anti-fascists are as bad as fascists. Somehow, Anti-fascists are bad at all! You don't even hate fascists for the right reasons, you jackass. You would collaborate, I'm sure you would.

I hate this man. I hate this man. I hate this man! I hate how I feel what seems to be genuine closeness to him! I know it's the damned cycle of abuse, but I keep getting trapped into it all! I hate it! And I hate the politico-economic systems that enabled, even encouraged, myself and my siblings to live under this for so long. I'm so glad my older sister is out and has been out for years, but I need out. My other siblings need out. And Helheim or High water, my cat will come out. She'd better. I'd better get her out. But I hate the systems that trapped us so long, that led to these abuses happening in the first place! If misogyny was dismantled, he couldn't be misogynist to my sisters. If homophobia and other LGBT-phobias were gone, he wouldn't be panphobic to my older sister. If these ideologies stopped existing, unless he reinvented these entire ideologies, it would be impossible for him to use those against my family! And if society were more free and more socialistic, support networks would have prevented him from ever becoming abusive, and removed us from his presence if necessary, without worry of want for us. Hell, the nuclear family would already be gone, so it wouldn't even be strangers doing it, it would be our neighbors, who would actually know us and interact with us constantly!

I hate this so much. Capitalism must die. The state must die. Bigotry must die. I guess at least my abuse taught me that. That's about the only thing I can be grateful for about being an abuse victim. It made sure I would care about others, because I feel so broken and angry and alone and I know others feel far worse because they've suffered far worse things than abuse, they've suffered family members executed on the street by police or killed by drone strikes, so I desperately want to finally be in the arms of friends who will love me and care about me and not abuse me and hate the man who abused me, to the point I, in turn, am utterly revolted by the unspeakably worse crimes they face and want those who kill them dead much more than my own father, which is definitely saying something. Not like I'm going to. I know how bad that would end up being, especially since I've admitted how much I hate him. It would be utterly foolish, as well.

I love because I hate. I hate because I love. I want to be away from everything and everyone. I want to be in someone's arms, loved by a community, never let go. I want to kill, gruesomely, until I fall from exhaustion, a knife, a bullet, or a bomb. I want this rage to die so I'm never a threat to anyone, and for us all to live in peace.

Damn the state. Damn the capitalist system. Damn bigotry. Damn my father.

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libertariansunitedagainstfa-blog · 8 years

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Response to fascist provocation and entryism at ISFLC

This post is best viewed on WordPress. It is saved on archive.is and archive.org. Videos are on Vimeo.

Introduction

On February 18, 2017, a small group of crypto-fascists calling themselves The Hoppe Caucus [archive] brought Richard Spencer, an open white supremacist, to the International Students for Liberty Conference (ISFLC). The conference organizers did not allow him inside the conference itself, so the provocateurs put him in a bar at the hotel where the conference was held. They deceptively set up a makeshift sign saying that the event was Richard Spencer’s appearance at ISFLC. Shortly thereafter, they were confronted by conference attendees. After about 45 minutes, the fascists were expelled by the bar’s owner.

vimeo

Although Spencer was ultimately removed, this show of force should cause concern to any anti-fascist or libertarian. Why do fascists feel emboldened enough to crash a libertarian conference? There are many reasons that we cannot exhaustively address, but one major factor is that libertarians are ignorant to the history and methods of fascism. Unfortunately, by and large, libertarians do not recognize the need to confront fascists when they show their faces in public. This — at best — neutrality has allowed for the proliferation of ideological racism and far-right elements within libertarian ranks. We aim to change that.

Spencer’s attempt to appropriate the auspices of a libertarian conference shouldn’t come as a surprise, and the caucus responsible should be understood as the tip of the iceberg. In this document we provide information on the people immediately responsible for the event. Expelling them from libertarian organizations is the starting point from which we can begin to secure an explicitly anti-fascist libertarianism. Many of the responsible parties have already been banned from Students for Liberty, but continue to operate unchallenged within a more conservative group also focused on organizing libertarian students called Young Americans for Liberty (YAL). We hope that this document will provide some of the tools and evidence that antifascists in both organizations and across the libertarian movement need to identify and resist fascist entryism.

A note to readers on the left: we use “libertarianism” here out of convenience to refer specifically to the movement popularly known by that name in the United States, but please understand that it is an ideologically diverse umbrella. We are ourselves individualist anarchists of various stripes. Despite what some disingenuous demagogues on both the right and left would claim, libertarianism is far from synonymous with fascism, and it would behoove other anti-fascists to recognize how critical it is that the libertarian movement not be ceded to fascists. The libertarian movement is large and fertile ground for radicalization and desperately needs help and solidarity. In fact, the movement is polarizing, with many members moving leftward. This leftward movement has been received hysterically by the few remaining reactionaries:

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Lies and Violence

A common misconception among libertarians and liberals is that modern fascists are peaceful. Many take them at their (occasional) claims to support only voluntary means to achieve their decidedly non-libertarian ends. The logic goes that as long as they are polite, fascists should be accepted civilly and allowed to recruit. The events of ISFLC weekend expose the delusion of such an approach, both through the fascists’ words and their actions.

One of the lies continually promoted by the fascists is that The Hoppe Caucus had no intent of disrupting ISFLC and only invited Spencer in the interests of “free speech” (a very peculiar form of free speech that requires everyone to encourage fascists to speak in their hotel). In their own words [archive]:

The Hoppe Caucus hosted Richard Spencer at #ISFLC_ not because we were trying to start some kind of commotion, but rather an important dialogue. Hans-Hermann Hoppe invited him to his own Property and Freedom Society Conference several years ago for that very reason.

It’s clear from their own words — said off-the-cuff, not typed later to fit their narrative — that this is an outright lie. As Subervi so nicely puts it, they held the event in order to “trigger the fuck out of these faggot libertarians”:

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Their denial of agreement with Spencer is selective at best:

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, for that matter, is a primary influence on crypto-fascists within the libertarian movement. He is famous for his assertions, among others, that homosexuals are predisposed toward shortsightedness, and that a libertarian society would necessarily exclude non-white immigrants, queers and other non-traditionalist individuals as threats to its continued existence. Fascists cite him when they wish to wrap immigration restrictions in libertarian language. Spencer is not the first white supremacist that his Property and Freedom Society has hosted either. His motivations for doing so are as transparent as those of the Caucus that bears his name.

One of the libertarians in attendance at the conference, John Lindley, was actually attacked twice by someone who claims to be a peaceful “ethno-nationalist”:

Myself and others went in and immediately began disrupting the event. We called them bigots and Nazis and told them if they wanted to use violence they could start on us. It was our intention get them kicked out. The manager came over and said people need to quiet down. So the Hoppe people said “hey you guys, free speech” so that's when I said “oh why you might get kicked out? Good fuck you." So management came and we all dispersed which is when Spencer left. That night after the social I came back to the hotel. I confronted the hoppe caucus who were all sitting there drinking. I yelled and then debated for a bit but they weren't even good intellectually. (Obvs) I left to go to a room and had to come back. They confronted me about stealing beer and then Cesar [Subervi] grabbed me from behind. There was a scuffle and I punched him as we were pulled apart. This morning Rocco was on my feed and I let everyone know I was still there and not afraid of them. So I saw some of them and called them out and they walked by and then walked by Cesar because I had ran into one of the girls from the ancap group and we were talking. Anyway he turned around and came up and said "you don't just get to talk shit and walk away" and attacked me so I punched him and then we fought for about 30 seconds. We were pulled apart and then I left because we were told the cops were on the way. He tried to confront me again and I just walked away. I don't regret and would do it again. Anyone who would have the state control lives based on something as arbitrary as race then you are in no way a libertarian. You are a violent threat and you should expect people you want the state to marginalize to defend themselves. Giving fascists a platform is the same as being a fascist at this point. They are the ones who started this war but we will defend ourselves. And I will defend my friends and family because that's who is being threatened.

Lindley made us proud by resisting fascists on both fronts - words and fists. He gave Cesar Subervi a hell of a black eye, too.

This violence has, of course, been misrepresented [archive] by The Hoppe Caucus as an unprovoked attack by an anti-fascist “thug.” In the words of Jeffrey Tucker, fascists are liars. In the aftermath of the second fight, other students can be heard remarking that Subervi “fights with everybody.” In fact, his entire activist career seems to consist of instigating fights, getting his ass kicked [archive], and then running away [archive] crying [archive] that he was victimized [archive]. More on him below.

This group clearly intends to do physical harm, both immediately and in the future. For all his protestations that the ethnic cleansing he plans will be “peaceful,” when asked directly by a supporter, Spencer admits that it will not be:

vimeo

The fantasy of a nonviolent white nationalism, put forward by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and his adherents in the Caucus, is so absurd a lie that even Mr. Peaceful Ethnic Cleansing will not play along with it.

Liberals and libertarians are often duped into this notion that we should wait to resist fascism until there are jackboots marching down the street and loading people into train cars. They don’t seem to recognize the connection between fascist organizing and fascist violence. But fascists make themselves perfectly clear. The far-right “libertarians” who invited Spencer admit as much:

vimeo

The reference to helicopters is an allusion to Augusto Pinochet, a Chilean dictator who murdered dissenters by throwing them from helicopters. They clearly state their intent to commit acts of aggressive violence against those they disagree with as soon as they have obtained the means to do so, yet without a shred of self-awareness they conclude that leftists are the truly intolerant ones. Spencer, you might note, finds the whole idea hilarious.

Despite all of this, some go so far as to deny Richard Spencer is even racist at all, not just that he is a nonviolent racist (aka a unicorn). Belying that notion is this footage of Spencer making the incredible claim that it’s better for a white person to be destitute in a desolate white city in Wyoming than rich in the bustling and eventful Beijing, simply because Beijing has Chinese people.

People

This problem didn’t occur for no reason and it can’t be fixed without effort. As noted earlier, a great many of the instigators of this stunt continue to be welcomed into certain libertarian circles, and even perform leadership roles. Websites like The Liberty Conservative serve as de facto mouthpieces of fascist propaganda, whether wittingly or not. Prominent libertarian icons [archive] encourage the use of movement resources to promote fascist speakers.

Besides standing up to extreme expressions of fascism, like John Lindley et al. did at ISFLC, we have to stand up to casual ones. We can’t just condemn Richard Spencer, we have to condemn every helicopter meme and “All Lives Matter.” We can’t just yell at boneheads, we also have to pressure friends who keep silent as their organizations rot from the inside. There is a disturbing volume of collaborators in libertarian and libertarian-adjacent organizations, as evidenced by the number of Young Americans for Liberty members who espouse fascism. These people must be expelled and a firm standard of anti-oppression established. This is libertarianism, people! That comes from the word liberty!

To that end, this section documents what we know about the folks responsible for the Spencer trolling. Most of them are from either the Macomb Community College or Transylvania University chapter of Young Americans for Liberty. The information presented here was obtained easily from their web presence; most of them seem to think that fascism is a harmless game and have taken no precautions with their information.

Mitchell John Steffen

Born 07/1995 5010 Pebble Creek East, Apt. 5 Shelby Township, MI 48317-4899 [email protected] Facebook [archive] Twitter [archive] • old Twitter [archive] • older Twitter [archive] Instagram [archive] • old Instagram [archive] • older Instagram [archive] YouTube [archive] • old YouTube [archive] Ask.fm [archive, full screenshot] Vine [archive] Foursquare [archive] Snapchat: Mitchistall

Steffen lives with his parents and attends Macomb Community College, where he is a member [archive] of their YAL chapter [archive]. Steffen founded the Hoppe Caucus, according to an article in The Liberty Conservative [archive] and has even posted now-deleted pictures of himself to their Facebook page:

Before beginning his career as a fake libertarian, Steffen tried to become a professional violent nationalist:

After narrowly failing in this pursuit, Steffen created The Hoppe Caucus_. _Now, he spends his time posting fascist memes espousing violence:

Ironically, he is anti-libertarian on abortion on the basis of opposing all forms of murder, and seems to endorse police violence against black people:

In between all the fascism, he attends Hope Lutheran Church and finds time to run his campus’s libertarian group:

Cesar Alfonso Subervi

Born 11/24/1995 32 Blue Ridge St. Warrenton, VA 20186-2303 [email protected] Facebook [archive] Twitter [archive] Instagram [archive] iEmoji Feed [archive: page 1 • page 2 • page 3 • page 4 • page 5] SoundCloud [archive] MySpace [archive] “Millenial Patriots” (sic) YouTube [archive • video 1 • video 2] WordPress [archive]

Subervi lives with his parents and works as a conservative activist and professional antifa punching bag. His penchant for getting his ass kicked is ironic given his long history [archive] of athleticism [archive]. He is one of the few people on this list who has no documented involved in YAL, opting instead for the even further right Turning Point USA, where he is a member of the Latino Leadership Caucus [archive]. He enjoys driving slightly over the speed limit [archive], financially supporting other fake libertarians [archive], attending Warrenton Presbyterian Church, and making incredibly douchey YouTube videos. A few days after ISFLC, he showed up at CPAC [archive], once again as a Spencer toadie.

He has filed a public contract for a business [archive] at Calle Palo Hincado 177, Zona Colonial., Santo Domingo., which is associated with the phone numbers 809-687-7607, 809-689-8366, and 809-617-2176. He once ran for president. Subervi’s old Facebook cover photo depicts Francisco Franco, Spain’s former fascist dictator, in a heroic light.

Shane Gregory Trejo

Born 11/1987 299 Lake Meadow Dr. Waterford, MI 48327 [email protected] Facebook [archive] Instagram [archive] Reddit [archive: 01 • 02 • 03 • 04 • 05 • 06 • 07 • 08]

In 2011, Trejo attended Michigan State University. Trejo now lives with his mother and writes propaganda [archive] for his friends (pictured above with Steffen) in The Hoppe Caucus, along with a variety of other mostly right-wing publications. Trejo likes a large number of fascist Facebook pages [archive]. He used [archive] to be [archive] a juggalo [archive]?

He wrote a terrible article [archive] linking libertarianism with the alt-right. Discussing the article on Reddit, he acknowledged Richard Spencer is a nazi [archive]:

Trejo spends much of his time on Reddit being a racist, misogynist dick:

Theodore “TJ” Joseph Roberts

Born 02/23/1998 2271 Teal Briar Ln. Apt. 208 Burlington, KY 41005-8386 Facebook [archive] Twitter [archive] • old Twitter [archive] Instagram [archive]

Roberts is a core member of The Hoppe Caucus and can be seen at the beginning of video footage of the Spencer event introducing himself and shaking hands. He is president [archive] of the Transylvania University chapter [archive] of Young Americans for Liberty and serves as YAL’s Kentucky state chair — a paid outreach position. In his photo above, he poses with the president of YAL, Cliff Maloney Jr.

Roberts is a former Students for Liberty campus coordinator who resigned [archive] in the wake of his attempt to bring fascist entryist Augustus Sol Invictus to ISFLC.

Roberts is on the editorial board [archive] for another far-right organization called The Revolutionary Conservative — alongside his pal Auggie. When The Hoppe Caucus attempted to raise funds for the Invictus stunt, donations were directed to The Revolutionary Conservative.

Evidently, after the plans for Invictus fell through, The Hoppe Caucus settled on Richard Spencer as the next best fascist.

Roberts also writes [archive] for perhaps the largest website working to promote fascist entryism into libertarianism, Liberty Hangout. An ardent Christian and opponent of abortion rights [archive], he attends 7 Hills Church. His internet presence makes his ideological commitments very clear.

Joel Thomas

Born 07/1991 41310 Dogwood Dr. Sterling Heights, MI 48313-4425 (586) 628-0471 [email protected] [email protected] Facebook [archive]

Thomas is the former vice president of the Macomb Community College YAL. Despite professing an ardent libertarianism, he helped bring Spencer to ISFLC.

His misguided approach to free speech may not be entirely malicious, but it is actively dangerous.

Taylor James Ragg

Born 09/25/1995 70 Nicholson Boulevard Harlan, KY 40831-7131 [email protected] Facebook [archive] Instagram [archive] YouTube [archive]

Ragg previous attended Eastern Kentucky University, but currently attends Transylvania University, where he is a member of Young Americans for Liberty [archive]. He attended Trump’s inauguration. He can be seen sitting next to Richard Spencer for the duration of the event, staying silent until eventually making finger quotes and talking about free speech.

Carlo Angelo Maiale

22300 Thomson St. Clinton Township, MI 48035-4914 [email protected] Facebook [archive] Twitter [archive] Instagram [archive]

Maiale is yet another member [archive] of the Macomb Community College YAL. His degree of involvement with the Spencer stunt is unknown; however, he can be seen wearing a red Trump hat, is friends with the rest of The Hoppe Caucus, and hails from one of the two YAL chapters who are primarily responsible.

Harry Albert Turkington IV

Facebook [archive]

Turkington is a YAL member and former SFL campus coordinator.

He attends University of Wisconsin-Green Bay where he is a member of Sigma Beta Delta [archive] and serves as grand treasurer for the Upsilon-Eta chapter of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. He is another entry whose degree of involvement is unknown. His Facebook likes [archive] are full of fascist pages and he can be seen wearing a red Trump hat at the Spencer event.

James Maier

Facebook [archive]

Maier can be seen in a photo posted to The Hoppe Caucus’s Facebook page with Steffen and Trejo. He also has a history of posting Facebook comments suggesting fascist sympathies. That said, he reportedly strenuously denies any involvement with the Spencer event or connection to the perpetrators and claims to have had a change of heart; multiple sources say he spent the weekend attempting to distance himself from his Hoppe Caucus roommates. There is a dearth of evidence implicating him relative to the other list entries. We include him here in the interest of transparency and as proof that people can change.

If you have any tips on further fascist attempts to co-opt libertarianism, please email [email protected].

#libertarianism #anarcho-capitalism #ancap #antifa #fascism

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