#old time strongmen

[jefkphotography]

Me, a strongman with handbend metal in my left hand.

[bigdvmnhero]

relationships: dick & bruce

word count: 5,406

summary:

On the 96th day Bruce didn't call, Dick remembered their old game. Three things he knew: 1) In three months, it would be Dick's death anniversary; 2) Bruce was still missing his check-ins; 3) Here Dick was, persisting. Imagine the things I'd survive, Dick thought distantly, if I loved Bruce less.

Or: Agent 37 and his various crises of faith, on Day 277 at Spyral, Day 150, and Day -0.

"Imagine: to ask and to be answered. Even the son of god knows what it is to beg and be met with silence. —Passiontide, L.T.

i.

On the 96th day Bruce didn't call, Dick remembered their old game. There were two kinds of faith, Dick had tried to tell her—the one children had, and the tired, worn thing you held onto like balloon string long after the POP; the helium-high; the bright yellow of it in smithereens over your good shoes.

Dick had smiled as if to say, Guess what I got.

Her file read: Abigail, ex-military. Current head of the Sisters of the Ascended Veil. Her sneer said: unbeliever. Around her neck, the cross-shaped security pass that would allow Dick's team and several concussed Hadrian girls access to the bunker below the missionary outpost.

Through his in-ear, Helena barked over gunfire, "Get us shelter, Grayson. We'll handle Chang."

Chang, the rampaging meta in the sky. The ground shook with each distant blast. Tiger grunted, "Allah have mercy—" then came a staticky CRUNCH, a sound of which could've been anything from a tungsten rifle or a body, flattened like a sad, watery diner pancake.

Nerve strike, grab the pass, get it over with, Grayson. But Holy Head Honcho had taken one look at Dick and announced a bankruptcy of faith. Like Dick wasn't fluent in the daily death-defying act that was his life. Sure, his Catholicisms were a little rusty. His Talmud, worse. He had a pocket rosary from his mom that was missing two beads. Some of the old Bludhaven PD were severe Protestants, from whom Dick stole a fun Jesus fact he liked to pull out during parties, which was that when Jesus cried out at the ninth hour, a time for the regular ol' lamb sacrifice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?—which of course meant, My God, my god, why have you forsaken me?—did you know it wasn't the pain of crucifixion that freaked Jesus out so much, but abandonment? Of separation eternal? How the sin of man, cast on his shoulders, had blackened his soul, cutting him off from his beloved father/brother/self in one?

Your "fun fact" is kind of a buzzkill, actually, Roy told him once. So Dick's experience with religion was a little slapdash. Sue him. It was just funny, was all. The Sisters, serving only God and various iron-fisted strongmen of the south, were said to possess a faith so absolute they could give Lanterns a run for their money—and even then they'd never know the scale of the miracles Dick had seen: 1) In three months, it would be Dick's death anniversary; 2) Bruce was still missing his check-ins; 3) here Dick was, persisting.

Closer now, the orange blitz on the horizon. Abigail stood before the imposing door of the outpost and did not budge. "You insist on entering holy ground with your… polluted soul. Even if what you say is true, Man With No Face, and there is a hidden bunker beneath this land, only the Lord's handmaiden may—"

"Enter holy ground, yes, yes, of course." Dick peered over her purple habit, into the black eye of the CCTV camera. Waved for the whole congregation watching. "Is it the whole… me being a dude thing? Fair enough, but you'll take my girls, won't you? They're just children." Children behind him groaned in a heap of limbs. Stowaway stalkers, really, but under Dick's protection, like all kids by default; a fact that would continue until the end of time. "You love children."

His Hypnos spasmed as Abigail blinked, rebuffing the mental suggestion of care-love-cute aggression.

"Or not?" Dick rubbed the baby fever from his eyes. "Huh. Guess having a maternal instinct's totally passé now."

"Your wicked offspring have no room here, outsider. Adopting strays is not the work of Handmaiden."

"So you'll let me do it for you? Good idea." One more time: the illusion whirled hot behind his eyes, bright as confetti. "You've wanted help for so long. I'll make it easy. I raised a few strays myself, y'know, they turned out great." Dick winced and did not think of Damian, the cold damp square of earth in the ground. "Wow, you're so relieved I'm here, huh? I clean, I cook, I make a kickass French toast—"

Sister Bitch put her hand in his face. "We do not gorge ourselves on the Sabbath. Enough, I can feel your… evil, in my head. Whispering, testing me. But my will is strong, as all my handmaids are." His earpiece crackled again: "WHERE'S MY EVAC, GRAYSON," boomed Tiger's voice, ornery and magnificent, and Dick almost broke character with relief. Abigail moved behind the door to bolt it closed. "If God wills you to die today, Man With No Face, then so be it."

Dick shoved a Hadrian crossbow into the gap. Good metal; vanadium. Dick could kiss it.

"Sorry, God, not dying today."

"You claim to know God's will!"

"Not God's." Dick grinned at her fury-blotched face. "Just a man's."

Earlier, while she'd monologued about his apocryphal nature, Dick had noticed the discoloration on her crucifix. It was the kind that could only come from restless hands. Skin bitten off, nailbed raw and cracked. Was this kinship, then? There was no gun, no gauntlet or secret spy gizmo that could rival the intensity of her conviction, Dick knew that now, except for what he always had, inexplicable and ordinary as his own hands. A battle of devotion was a battle Dick was always going to win.

"Remember? That day, you were careless. You lost everything, in front of so many people, and they—they just watched. But that man… he saved you. Took you in." Dick edged his foot into the door. "You've been falling for so long, Abigail, but he caught you. He caught you."

Abigail's face went slack. Dick felt bad for turning the crankshaft all the way; now her irises began to whirl in time with his—lazy at first, then fast, faster; trenchant like bloody pinwheels.

"Hasn't been easy, huh? Yeah, I hear ya. It breaks you up inside, to be away from everything you love, you even turned to religion. But he hasn't forgotten you." This would never get old: seeing the false memory annex the room in a person's mind, shuffling the furniture, slapping new paint on the walls. "C'mon, Abbie. Don't you remember? How good it all was?"

The early years—warmth traded under a heavy cape—a steady weathered hand on his back, like a new limb, a new wing—careening down dirt highways, soft rock on the radio—wind and rain; tinsel and dazzle—learning to divine the city's thousand moods, its metals—Gotham's rooftops unfolding beneath their feet, a pop-up picture book, and they were the kings of this land—they were winning the games, shooting threes, giving the people what they want—they were burning—burning something holy—

Abigail whimpered. Clutched her head. Dick felt several nerves burst; his or hers?

"He was just one man, but he—" What was he saying now? "He changed the world for you. He changed, for—for—"

Finally, Abigail staggered back, like whatever she saw was unbearable. "Dear God."

Dick reached for her. Panicked, he realized his Hypnos was still churning, memory after over-saturated memory, an engine with no kill switch. He fought a wave of tinfoil-flavored nausea. Found his feet. He'd been abridging the images as they streamed out of him—cutting Bruce Wayne out of The Batman to spare his identity—only for his feelings to cloud the system, a poison agent too sticky and hot and impossible to delineate. All he wanted, dammit, was to make her like the man, the way socialites and fanboys did—or at least dip her finger in the pool of Dick's great unpayable debt—so she'd open the bunker gates once Dick asked. Blood sprang up his eyes; the world lurched Looney Tunes-style. Imagine the things I'd survive, Dick thought distantly, if I loved Bruce less. Too late now, anyway; the Hypnos was still free-wheeling—an infinite carousel ride from hell where Dick was both the prancing horse and its white-knuckled passenger; he was in all the horses, all the seats; in one, he was swearing a candlelight oath—in another, nine years old, dying on a gurney—he was choking on radioactive fumes—he was watching Bruce as he suffocated by Lex's hand and saw the naked, childlike terror on his face, and even then Dick loved him; his wrong god, always too late—

Abigail reached out, seeing in threes. "Batman—"

"Yeah, he—" Another wave of sugary rust, pastel bile. "He's—even after everything that's happened—despite what you feel, he's—worthy. Of your loyalty. Of your—" Dick caught himself on the doorframe. "He has a mission for you."

Fingers clawed at her habit. "I can't—"

"You can. You will." Something too thick to be tears trickled down Dick's cheeks. It stained his teeth when he smiled. "Robin," he said, "that's you."

Abigail collapsed to her knees like someone shot.

The first symptom of Hypnos overuse was a fucked up vestibular system. Leaky Ear, Helena called it. Left was right and up was down was all around. Eventually, Dick made his way through the gap in the door and reached her.

"Oh God—how do—b-but if—" she stammered. "I'm Robin—"

"Yeah," Dick agreed, then with more enthusiasm, "Yay."

"What have I—?" She grabbed his shoulder like it was a ledge she was falling from. "I'm failing him."

"Not yet. There's still time. There's a meta out there, hurting your good neighbors. My friends are taking care of it, but they'll all need evac eventually. They're gonna come knocking, and you're going to let them all in. They'll need food, medical attention. You won't turn anyone away, Abigail, every life is precious, and we don't—what the hell. You know this part already."

"Food, shelter, yes," she mumbled. "I catch people, yes. I'm Robin."

"That you are, and that you do, so now—"

"I'm his partner, yes. His best friend. His—"

"Robin, focus." Dick shook off a dumb hot flash of irritation. "Aren't you gonna tell your ladies to open the bunker?"

In minutes of memory-planting, thirty feet of military-grade steel gates surrounding the outpost slid belowground, revealing the bright green manicured lawn of The Ascended Veil. The Hadrian girls cheered then fainted again. At least Tiger wasn't bellyaching on the comms anymore.

"Great job, Rob," Dick said. Then he blacked out.

(read the rest on ao3)

[mariacallous]

In the 1990s, the feel-good first decade after communism’s implosion, headlines in Central Europe were dominated by the likes of Vaclav Havel, the charming playwright-turned-Czech president who championed civic democracy. Yet, from the start, extreme-right rabble-rousers and brooding nativists lurked in the margins. Decades of Soviet rule had reinforced illiberal attitudes that surfaced in my discussions with ordinary people as I crisscrossed the region as a young correspondent, eventually writing a book about the far right in post-communist Central Europe.

At the time, I believed that Central Europe’s entry into the European Union, which was still far off and uncertain, would nullify the region’s most destructive tendencies. After all, the bloc had accomplished this for postwar Germany, Greece, Portugal, and Spain—all of which had emerged from radical dictatorships to become healthy democracies. Countries didn’t revert to despotism after acceding to the EU. Right?

But in Hungary the unthinkable happened: A state that jumped through all of the hoops to join the EU in 2004 commenced a rapid decline into authoritarianism just six years later. Other member states have endured stretches of democratic backsliding, including Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, and, notably, Poland during the 2015 to 2023 Law and Justice government. But their political systems and societies were resilient enough to fight back and depose strongmen. Hungary did not rise from the mat.

Two new books grant us vivid insight into Hungary’s descent into dictatorship—a feat pulled off so skillfully by Prime Minister Viktor Orban that it inspires awe—and uncover the mechanisms that made the regime’s rise possible, even as the undemocratic country has remained in a bloc designed to promote and deepen the liberal character of its members.

In Embedded Autocracy: Hungary in the European Union, Hungarian political scientists Andras Bozoki and Zoltan Fleck dissect the many-headed hydra of the Orban regime. Orban’s Hungary isn’t an old-school dictatorship that snatched power by a coup or jails opposition figures. As this astute book details, it possesses all the trappings of democracy, including regular, monitored elections; a multiparty opposition; and thus far, the peaceful transfer of power. Today, non-Fidesz mayors rule in the largest, western-most cities such as Budapest, Szeged, Pecs, and Gyor. For most Hungarians, this is evidence enough that their country is a democracy, regardless of the diagnosis of political scientists. This achievement is Orban’s magic, which relies not on spells but rather on the ruthless application of power.

Born in rural Hungary in 1963, Orban—a self-proclaimed “illiberal” politician—was once a liberal activist. He became an anti-communist student leader in the 1980s while studying law in Budapest and even took up a research fellowship at Oxford University on George Soros’s dime. Along with other activists, he founded the Alliance of Young Democrats (Fidesz) in 1988 as a Western-minded movement to promote freedom and democracy. (Bozóki was formerly a member of Fidesz but left the party in 1993.)

Orban has orchestrated every Fidesz twist and turn since, his keen populist instincts charting the course rather than any ideology. Between 1993 and 1994, he jerked the rudder to the right, and in 1998, Orban and Fidesz took the country’s highest office for the first time at the head of a center-right coalition. The Orban government, offering a taste of what the future held, stretched propriety to the limit by rallying the media to its cause, promoting loyalists in the state apparatus, and ingratiating itself with deep-pocketed bankers and industrialists.

In 2002, Orban committed a rare gaffe that resulted in defeat: playing more forcefully to the emerging middle class than to the much larger pool of older, uneducated, poor, rural voters—those ravaged by International Monetary Fund (IMF) and EU-driven market reforms. This group either shied from the polls or voted socialist left. It was not a mistake Orban would make twice.

Fidesz was out of office for the next eight years, and by the late aughts, Orban had transformed it from a conservative party to a populist vehicle that appealed not to a class but to a nation. He purged Fidesz of critical minds, centralized it around himself, and polarized Hungary’s discourse by casting political opponents as the nation’s enemies.

By 2010—six years after Hungary secured EU membership—Orban was raring to pounce. Bozoki and Fleck, though critical of Fidesz’s first turn at governance, argue that the descent into autocracy fell into place that year when Fidesz staged a spectacular comeback with a supermajority in parliament. Orban wasted no time in employing this mandate to hollow out the judiciary, rewrite Hungary’s legal code, and promulgate a new constitution. New laws made it harder for upstart parties to win seats and even easier for a large party, like Fidesz, to capture a legislative supermajority with less of the vote. And the refashioned legal code saw to it that Fidesz’s cronyism and subsequent amassing of power fell close enough within the law that it would not be sanctioned domestically.

Today, Hungary is a flourishing dictatorship. The regime has curtailed press freedom, marginalized the opposition, dismantled democratic checks and balances, controlled civil society, fixed election laws, and neutered criticism—ensuring that only extraordinary events, not elections, could oust it from power.

In Bozoki and Fleck’s telling, Orban’s genius was that he intuited exactly how Hungary was susceptible to this turn. The country possessed next to no democratic tradition before 1989. After the Soviets’ brutal crushing of the 1956 uprising, when Hungarians challenged the Stalinist regime, they fell in line again—in contrast to the Poles who fought communism’s enforcers tooth and nail. These “deep-seated attitudes” continued into the 21st century and contributed to Orban’s ability to entrench authoritarian rule.

“He could change the regime because society was not much concerned with the political system,” the authors write. “What people learned over decades and even centuries was that political regimes … were always external to people’s everyday lives.”

Rather than heavy-handed repression, Orban relied on self-censorship, suppliance, and patronage to keep his subjects in line. Those who toed the line were rewarded with jobs, directorships, and contracts. And, of course, he leaned on his own special cocktail of nationalist rhetoric: “He has provided identity props for a disintegrated society using tropes in line with historical tradition: a Christian bulwark against the colonialism of the West, the pre-eminent, oldest nation in the Carpathian basin, a nation of dominance, a self-defending nation surrounded by enemies,” the authors write.

Fidesz received a tremendous windfall in the aughts when the left-liberal government botched an economic transition based on neoliberal principles, rashly introducing free-market conditions to a society that was woefully unprepared for their fallout. The government created ever greater wealth disparities as it followed the “shock therapy” prescriptions of Western institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, as well as the EU. In 2007, Hungary’s own debt crisis sent the country into a tailspin, a meltdown that the global economic crisis turbocharged the next year.

The socialist-liberal coalition of those years heaped blunders on top of blunders—such as the prime minister’s recorded admission that he lied to win the 2006 election—before crumbling. So thoroughly did the liberal partner in the coalition self-destruct that for a decade afterward, Hungary fielded no liberal party at all.

In the eyes of many Hungarians, the economic collapse discredited market capitalism, and liberal democracy with it. They understood it as one bundle that foreign actors had foisted upon them. Twenty years after democracy’s debut, the population welcomed a strongman who claimed to cater to “Hungarian interests” rather than those of elites in Brussels and Washington.

It is in the name of “national unification,” Fidesz’s blanket legitimation for nearly all of its reforms, that the party re-nationalized much of the industrial sector, as well as banking, media, and energy. Over the 2010s, Bozoki and Fleck write, Orban would decimate civil society and end “autonomy in public education, universities, science, professional bodies, and public law institutions.” Under these conditions, it is impossible to call any election free or fair, even if ballot boxes aren’t being stuffed.

Bozoki and Fleck’s fine book is buttressed by David Jancsics’s narrower Sociology of Corruption: Patterns of Illegal Association in Hungary, another work that understands egregious corruption as integral to the regime. At the book’s start, Jancsics, a Hungarian-born sociologist at San Diego State University, makes a simple observation: that corruption in Hungary today is on a scale unthinkable in the Soviet era.

This is quite a claim—in the 1990s, one of the most repeated reasons for Central Europe’s disgust with the Soviet system was its prevalent corruption. But the author backs it up. Although graft is still despised in Hungary today, because most people don’t benefit from it, Jancsics makes the case that it has once again been accepted as the way things are done.

Since 2010, Jancsics writes, “the Fidesz regime has effected a radical transformation of grand corruption patterns … in which complex corrupt networks are professionally designed and managed by the very top of the political elite.” Networks dominated by members of Orban’s inner circle now control not only political institutions, but also the economy, and “uninterruptedly siphon off a huge amount of public resources from the government system.”

These networks of Orban’s cronies and relatives are protected by a thick layer of shell companies that disguise the real owners of the businesses that profit from their proximity to government, Jancsics writes. And like the changes to Hungary’s political structure, the regime has fashioned laws to make its corruption legal.

Jancsics uses the example of the country’s $2.5 billion tobacco industry to illustrate this stripe of corruption. In 2012, the rubber-stamp Hungarian parliament passed a law that turned the sector into a state monopoly—purportedly to stop underage smoking—and decreed that all cigarette sales must occur under new concessions contracts. The government then created the national Tobacco Nonprofit Trade Company to oversee the distribution of new licenses. The company doled these out to members of networks close to the government. Two years later, another law passed stipulating that shops could only buy tobacco products from a state-owned intermediary. According to Jancsics, investigative journalists revealed that one person—Lorinc Meszaros, the then-mayor of Orban’s hometown—stood behind much of this scheme, which more than 500 shell companies helped obscure. Today, Meszaros is Hungary’s wealthiest man.

The crumbs of this hugely lucrative operation trickled down to lower-level party clientele. “It seems the legislators used the restructuring and reregulation of the whole tobacco market not only for the benefit of a few powerful oligarchs or proxy oligarchs but also for rewarding a large number of party clientele,” Jancsics writes. “Family members, spouses, siblings, parents, in-laws, friends, or even neighbors of people linked to the governing party won several concessions.”

The EU has not only watched this level of corruption unfold. As Bozoki and Fleck show, Brussels has been complicit in Hungary’s metamorphosis, supplying the funds to grease the regime’s operations. Like all of the EU’s Central European members, Hungary has profited immensely from EU cohesion funds, which are designed to bring the economies of weaker member states up to scratch. Between 2014 and 2020, Hungary received around $34 billion in EU funds, which Bozoki and Fleck argue has only solidified the ruling elite’s hold on power.

The EU finally got tougher in 2018, when it sanctioned Budapest for breaching the bloc’s core values. The following year, the European People’s Party, the European Parliament’s grouping of center-right parties, finally expelled Fidesz from its ranks. Over the past three years, the EU has frozen more than $31 billion to Hungary, including COVID-19 recovery funds, over rule of law deficits.

But this hasn’t forced Budapest to significantly modify any of its most flagrant abuses. Although there were loud objections from within the European Parliament, Hungary took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union in July. Orban has continued to veto EU aid to Ukraine and increased its reliance on Russian fuels at a time when the bloc is striving to quit Russian imports. Perhaps more than any moves Hungary has made as council president, Orban’s friendliness to the Kremlin in exchange for cheap energy has weakened the EU as a foreign policy actor.

The EU is paying an enormous price for indulging Orban, not least by sanctioning a template for populist takeovers elsewhere in Europe. The bloc’s clout in terms of its ability to shape commerce, values, and policy coordination is obviously not as great as I once imagined. Hungary’s brazen disrespect and power plays have weakened it even further.

Now, the EU as we know it is under siege across Europe, where Orban allies hold or share power in the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Slovakia, Austria, and Croatia. These rightists want an EU with fewer powers and less centralization—a Europe of nations—and many look to Hungary for leadership. Even U.S. President-elect Donald Trump pays homage to Orban, whom he has called “fantastic” and a “great leader.” These other pretenders will hopefully come and go—as ruling parties and their leaders do in democracies—but history teaches us that Hungary’s embedded autocracy will not disappear anytime soon.

[tanadrin]

Tjungdiawan on the Collapse

(Read on tanadrin.de)

The Collapse, of course, refers to that period in the late 21st century and early 22nd when the world began to gradually turn inward on itself; when pandemics and war intensified, when environmental upheavals reached their peak, when we saw the first proof that the ancient democracies could falter and fail, and when old ideologies began to crumble in the face of a new history. This is a time doubtless known well to most of my readers, but which I will nonetheless briefly retread, both for those who may need a reminder and because there are three lessons which we must extract from it, which will be indispensable in understanding all that has transpired since.

The first lesson stands before us, and is apparent at once. The period before the Collapse was famously one of optimism and hope. Even as the first signs of trouble appeared on the horizon, it was felt that these were but the last spasms of the conflicts of the 20th century working themselves out and they would soon be put right. It was not imagined that they were in fact the first of the lurking tensions and contradictions of the 21st century beginning to bear their poisonous fruit. In the imagination of these hopeful souls (with whom I find no fault greater than I might in any soul that ventures to dream of better things), the long road of history was now on a decisive upward ascent, to the sunlit highlands of peace and prosperity, a new plateau which would set a standard for all ages yet to come, and mark a decisive dissolution of the want and fear and hate of the primitive ages past.

It was not so. The road descended; darkness followed. This is the first lesson: there is no final redemption in the affairs of men. There is no glorious sunlit highland awaiting us; there is no utopia to which we grope, however distant. There are dreams of such, and they are mighty dreams: they impel the soul of mankind forward with the fervent knowledge of what is possible, despite all grievous ruin that stands about us, and these dreams are good and right and noble. And they are true, in the sense it is true that such aspirations may work great wonders. But the moment we are waiting for, the knowledge that the time of redemption is here, that the messiah is come, that the kingdom is restored, that all darkness is banished forever and suffering and sickness and time are at an end--that does not exist. And in the wanting and the waiting for that moment, we may find the dusk has been gathering for a long time, and we have not been watchful against it.

So it was in first decades of the 21st century, and in the first years of the Collapse. Those who hoped for the last triumph of liberal democracy, or the great socialist revolution, or the redemption of humanistic values, were all bitterly disappointed, and none were watchful. There was no battle: optimism gave way at once to despair, as if defeat had been ordained by the heavens. In North America, a long struggle ensued against resurgent reactionary politics. Successive civil conflicts disrupted the elections of 2032, 2038, and 2044; simmering unrest in Mexico and the western United States at times rose to an intensity characterized as a de facto civil war, but this was a war of masked men in the night, of disappearances and murder and terror. The California Anarchy of 2041-2055 spread as far north as British Columbia and south into Baja California; until the 2070s, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and western Texas were de facto independent states, ruled with bloody repression by regional strongmen whom the Mexican and United States governments were happy to ignore so long as they paid the required tribute in taxes.

In Europe, pressure from Russia and from local nationalist movements caused the weakly-integrated eastern states of the EU to fall one by one from the Union's sphere of influence. Britain flirted with its own form of authoritarian politics, aligning itself with the reactionaries in the United States and with the Committee of Public Safety that had seized control of the government of Australia. The remnant of the European Union, led by the Berlin-Paris axis, became paranoid and militaristic, and political factions in member states that flirted with secession were unofficially suppressed.

More openly fascist governments, of a type thought extinct since the Second World War, blossomed in Indonesia and Australia. The former's ideology of a "Greater Indonesia," coupled with the weakening of the unipolar world order, resulted in a series of wars across the Malay Archipelago and Southeast Asia. The Fifth Indo-Pakistani War turned briefly nuclear in the 2050s, and the aftermath of this conflict resulted in famines and epidemics across South Asia. Episodes of terror now relegated to dismal footnotes by the other catastrophes of this era include the Chinese invasion of Taiwan and the subsequent "Special Administrative Procedures" that resulted in the death or deportation of 10% of that islands population; the Palestinian, Yemeni, and Second Armenian Genocides; the Second Korean War, which also saw the use of nuclear weapons; the Third Congo War; and the Brazilian Brush Wars.

Laid out together, it is a dismal catalogue of death and destruction, well worth the term "Collapse," especially against the future that had been longed for. Is it little wonder then, that in the 2060s a writer who had been young and hopeful in the first years of that century, had lamented that he was living in the last age of the world? K.P. Barstow wrote, in his final novel *Mariner,* "Now nothing is left, save the epilogue, in which we will not have even the comfort of a summing-up of all our sorrows." Every generation of our species since the first has produced pessimists who feel the world is about to end, that nothing can be rescued from the chaos that lies around them, and that nothing fair in their youth will ever flower again; and of those generations which endured the Collapse, perhaps, this is a more understandable sentiment than most.

I, too, understand it. I, too, was born in a springtime of the world, when the sorrows of past ages seemed distant and fading quickly, when the future seemed boundless and full, and the joys of my species seemed like they must only increase, forever. And I, too, have drunk deeply of the bitter draught of grief in seeing this future destroyed. I saw the pillar of atomic fire that rose above Jakarta with my own eyes. I saw how easily the bright cities of Sunda and Sahel were swept away. When the traitorous servants of that awful prince burnt the coasts of Java and Sumatra, they annihilated the little village I had once called home. I have kept the names of all whom I loved who I lost in those days close to my heart, and I repeat them still: the names of my mother and father, of my brothers and sisters, of my nieces and nephews. Each of whom deserved everything of the future that we dreamed of then, each of whom deserved to know that one day the stars would be open to us and we would build palaces in the sky; but now all of whom are lost, and who live on only in my memory.

In those awful and grief-filled days, when I fled with the other survivors through the burning ruins of Serang and Cilegon, hoping that there were still ships at the coast that might take us to Sumatra, or Kalimantan, or Sulawesi, when my skin was red with burns and my eyes clouded with ash and tears, when my belly was empty and my legs were weak, I remembered Barstow's words, and I thought to myself that he had only been off by two hundred years. Nothing is left, I whispered to myself, except for our sorrows.

In the morning we came to the docks and we fled far away; first to Manila, until by some mysterious grace we were granted passage to Shenzhen. In a hastily-erected outside the city I lay in a delirium of weariness and despair for three days. And for three days the sun rose and fell; for three days my companions brought me water and food; and for three days my life and the world and time all stubbornly refused to end.

And this is the second lesson, the lesson that in the end the children of the Collapse, and I, and all others who have endured unendurable loss have learned: there is always a tomorrow. There is no Yawm ad-Din awaiting us, no catastrophe so great that *something* will not remain in the aftermath, and if you find that you are among the fragments that have been shored against the ruin, you will find also that you must learn how to live again in the world that you now inhabit. After three days I arose from my cot, and went out into the sunlight, and began to think about what to do next. They were no great plans: I had hope that some of my family was still alive, and that I could find them. I had hope that I could book passage east, to friends I had in Canada. I wept. I had suffered far less than most. But still I wept, for the pain I felt then at being alive, and the pain of still having hope.

There is no period of darkness in human history so absolute that something does not flourish in unlooked-for places, and so too it was during the Collapse. While Europe fragmented, and the Americas struggled against the teratoid issue of authoritarianism and reaction, new growth bloomed in Africa, in Argentina, in central Asia, and even in the burned-over lands of southern and southeast Asia. Abuja, Nairobi, and Gaborone were flourishing; the East African Community was quickly becoming the most dynamic economy on the Indian Ocean, and the West, exhausted by conflict and anachronistic politics, was beginning to look south for new ideas, and found itself invigorated. Just as the "dark ages" were also the age of the Carolingian Renaissance, and the Second World War was also the engine of a new spirit of international community and cooperation, the Collapse was simultaneously the decay of an old world and the beginning of a long project of building a new one. Even amid the chaos, the seeds of the Second Space Race, of the Genetic Revolution, of the Pacific Conclave and the Renewalist movement, were all being sown.

The Collapse ended, not in a single cathartic event, but gradually and in different times in different places. The New Federalists came to power in the United States as the result of decades of careful political maneuvering; the European Union was reformed, and began to expand again; new constitutions were adopted in India, China, and Indonesia, and in Canberra the surviving members of the Committee of Public Safety were hung by a mob from the spire of Parliament House. In the uneven and insufficient compromises which allowed the world to begin looking to the future again, it is true that many deep injustices persisted. Many conflicts remained unresolved; many would rise to the surface again in paroxysms of violence, including (though we did not know it) the Solar Fitna and the Thousand Days' Strife.

Even in those uncertain days the distant stars awaited us, and here we come to the third lesson of the Collapse. For we have carried with us into the stars all our hopes for the future, and all our faults and vices. War, we still have with us; and want, and hate. Man is, as William Godwin might have it, perfectible but never perfect. All our past sins and suffering may be granted meaning only if we remained determined to use them as the foundation of a better future. I am a stranger now in those islands that once I loved so well, and the world of my youth, and the future that I hoped for, is now gone--as lost to me as the happy world the children of the twentieth century once hoped to inaugurate in the twenty-first. A different world awaits us now, and be our burdens ever so heavy and our grief ever so great, it is within our power, even if only a little, to determine what it will be.

--Tjungdiawan's Historical Reader, 3rd Edition

[democratthatlovesguns]

Putin's Folly

For all his intelligence and military training, Putin has misunderstood his strength. He believed, erroneously, that a small demonstration of violence would convince a free and sovereign nation to submit to his will. He believes himself an exception (an anomaly); that is, he believes he will be the first strongman/dictator in the history of the world to abuse his power freely and not be undone by it.

Everyone has the power to take life; yet no one has the power to give life. It is a lesson every dictator eventually has to learn.

Putin, like many before him (including Hitler), believes he alone can give life to a people zealously loyal to his vision of a free and happy society. He believes he has the answer to the meaning of life - and by it, that he is given the right to tell any other human being how to live his or her life (they/them) purposefully.

He has created so much bad blood, that in his absence (not that many years from now) Russia will fragment itself even more than any other time in history. All his fellow Russian strongmen will feel equally entitled to the throne - many of them will die tragic deaths trying to consolidate power - and none will succeed.

The result will be a full restoration of the Ukrainian territory and Russia partitioned into north and south, east and west.

The world will know yet again, that this story is as old as time - just ask the Romans, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Mayan, the Spanish, the British, etc.

[wrishwrosh]

re: tags on labor in historical fiction post, would be very interested to hear what the four examples you mentioned are!!

ok u know what that tag WAS bait, thank you for taking it. technically speaking these aren't works dealing strictly with labor in historical fiction, they are my four treasured examples of BUREAUCRAT FICTION (so not NOT about labor in history?) i was gonna try to make this post pithy and short but then i remembered how extremely passionate i am about this microgenre i made up. so sorry.

bureaucrat fiction is not limited by genre or format but criteria for inclusion are as follows: long and detour-filled story about functionary on the outside of society finding unexpected success within a ponderously large and powerful System/exploring themes of class and physicality and work and autonomy and what it means to hold power over others beneath the heartless crushing wheels of empire/sad little man does paperwork. also typically long as hell. should include at least one scene where the protagonist is unironically applauded-perhaps for the first time in their life-for filling out a form really good. without further ado:

soldier's heart by alex51324. the bureaucracy: british army medical corps during wwi. the bureacrat: mean gay footman/new ramc recruit thomas barrow. YEAH it's a downton abbey fic YEAH it's a masterpiece. i've talked about it before at length, my love has not faded. the crowning moment of bureaucracy is a long interlude where thomas optimizes the hospital laundry (this actually happens twice or maybe three times)

hands of the emperor by victoria goddard. the bureaucracy: crumbling fantasy empire some time after magical apocalypse. the bureacrat: passionate late-career clerk from the hinterlands cliopher mdang. i reread this book every winter bc it is as a warm bath for my SAD-addled brain and every time i neglect all my responsibilities to read all nine billion pages in three days. it puts abt 93% of the worldbuilding momentum into elaborating all of the ministries and secretaries and audits necessary to run a global government and like 7% into the magic and stuff. there are also several charming companion novellas and an equally long sequel that dives more into the central relationship between cliopher and the emperor which i highly recommend if you like gentle old man yaoi and/or magic, but there's more bureaucracy in HOTE.

the cromwell trilogy by hilary mantel. the bureaucracy: court of henry viii. the bureaucrat: thomas cromwell, the real guy. curveball! it's critically acclaimed booker prize winning rpf novel wolf hall! mantel is really interested in particular ways of gaining and maintaining power in delicate and labyrinthine systems like the tudor court, specifically in strongmen who use both physical intimidation and metaphysical manipulation to succeed. under these conditions i do think my best friend long-dead historical personage thomas cromwell counts as Bureaucrat Fiction (as do danton and robespierre in a place of greater safety. bonus rec.)

going postal by terry pratchett. the bureaucracy: fantasy postal service of ankh-morpork. the bureaucrat: conman, scammer, and little freak moist von lipwig. this is definitely shorter and lighter than the other three entries on the list, sort of a screwball take on the bureaucrat. but the mail is such a classic bureaucracy thing? who doesn't love thinking about the mail? also contains a key genre element which is a fraught sexual tension with the person immediately above the protagonist in their hierarchy, who is also their god-king and boyfriend-dad. you can't tell me vetinari isn't torturing moist psychologically AND sexually.

anyway sorry about all this. if you've read any of these come talk to me about them. bureaucrat fiction recs welcomed with the openest possible arms.

[shivunin]

I LOVE PROMPT TIME

"Death, she is cunning and clever as hell." - for Maria

Thank you!! It took a bit for this idea to come together, but I am really pleased with it c: Also requested by @vanmarkham -- thank you, too!

Here is an AU with Maria as Death c:

The Last Gambit

(Fenris/Hawke | 2,063 Words | CW: nongraphic references to death)

Fenris first met Death in a dark alley somewhere in Lowtown. 

He’d been hiding from his pursuers near the alienage. It had made sense, of course; he could not help but stand out, but at least anyone looking for an elf would have no shortage of false leads here. It was not forever; only long enough for him to recover and slaughter all who sought him before he decided what to do next. At least, that’s what he’d told himself when he’d finally made it to Kirkwall. 

A fever had taken hold of him nearly a week ago, shaking him ceaselessly between its jaws, and that night—the night they first spoke—he hadn’t even the strength to make it back to the hovel he’d been hiding in. He’d collapsed here instead, in the rain and the muck. It was a shameful thing, and it made him angry. Surely there were better ends than this; surely he had not escaped his captors to find his death in a filthy alleyway, shaking with ague. 

“Hello there,” Death said, standing abruptly before him.

Fenris had not heard her approach; he had not seen her coming. Perhaps the fever had stolen his senses from him. It was the only explanation that could justify missing something so obvious. 

“Not much of a talker, I see,” she said, and crouched before him. She wore a cloak, thick red velvet, and the hood obscured all but her chin and mouth. “Most aren’t. Others talk too much—I was one of those.”

Fenris found his limbs curiously light, his head abruptly clear. He propped himself against the wall and looked at her, placid and waiting before him. 

“I can see that,” he told her, and coughed more out of habit than because he needed to. For the first time in eons, his chest felt clear. 

“Ah, he speaks,” she said. Her lips curled into a smile. 

Fenris glanced at the hem of her cloak where it met the cobblestones. She had stopped beside a puddle, but it did not dampen the fabric. 

“We’ve seen one another before,” she went on. “Perhaps you recall.”

“I do,” he said. 

He’d tucked himself away in a corner of Darktown his first night, rightly guessing that few would bother him there after he’d knocked out one of the strongmen in the lower levels. Sometime after midnight, he’d felt a touch of—something, some otherworldly presence against his skin. He’d peered through the cracks in the wooden wall beside him and watched a red-cloaked figure take the hand of an old woman huddled against the far wall. After a moment, the woman had laughed, joy carving new wrinkles in her cheeks. Moments later, the woman in scarlet had vanished and the old woman had lain limp and unbreathing until someone came to search her pockets for loose coin. 

The woman in the cloak had turned to look at him before she’d gone. Her hood had been down then, and her hair had shifted in the dim torchlight like living night. He had thought that she’d looked at him then, but it had been difficult to say. The next morning, he’d found someplace else to sleep. 

“Will you kill me?” he asked her. She smiled and lifted a hand to tap her lower lip. 

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “You’re on rather a razor’s edge, aren’t you? Balanced neatly between life and death.”

He watched her, trying to summon the will to fight back. For the first time in a very long time, it eluded him. 

“People die all the time in Kirkwall,” she went on. “You’ve seen it. But I can’t make the effort for everyone. You have only seen me twice before tonight, haven’t you?”

No; Fenris was certain he’d only seen her once. He nodded stiffly anyway and watched her mouth curl into a smile. 

“You’re rather a special case. Of course you are; just look at you. Handsomest fellow I’ve ever seen. You’re dying, of course, but you might not. We’ve time enough for a little chat, don’t you think? Maybe a game of cards to pass the time.”

Handsomest—what? 

Fenris coughed and leaned back against the wall. 

“Cards?” he asked. There was a trick to this. There was always a trick to such offers. If he listened closely enough, he would catch her in a lie. 

“Wicked Grace,” she said, producing a deck from within her voluminous sleeve. “If you lose, you take my hand and leave this rather unfortunate alley behind.”

There—the trick. Take my hand, she said, as she’d taken the hand of the old woman in the tunnels. 

“And if I win?” 

There was a small table between them now. It stood only a foot off the ground, old and lopsided as it was. Old stains marred the surface, many of them criss-crossing circles. A crude drawing had been scratched into the corner nearest him. 

“If you win, you’ll wake up right as rain, of course,” she said. When she shuffled, the cards cracked against each other. He could not say why, but the sound reminded him of logs crackling in a fire. 

“And if I will not play?” 

“Time will take its toll, I’m afraid,” she said, and her voice was not without compassion. “I can do nothing to save you.” 

She dealt two hands, sliding both stacks to the center of the table one by one. When she’d finished, she rested her fingertips on the edge of the table and waited. 

Lose and die. Refuse to play and die. Win and live. It was a deceptively simple game. 

What choice did he have?

Fenris reached for one stack of cards and slid them across the table. 

|

Fenris could not say how long the game went on. It felt like hours, though the rain never stopped falling and the sun never rose. Death was clever. If nothing else, he had to give her that. There was no gambit he made, no clever maneuvering of hands, that she did not counter at once. He might accuse her of hiding cards in her sleeves if she hadn’t rolled them up long ago. 

Then again—she had produced the table from nothing. Surely if she wished for a card, she could simply do the same. 

“Oh, I never cheat,” she told him pleasantly, tapping a stack of cards on the table and replacing them in the center.

“Did I say you do?” he asked, drawing a card and frowning down at his hand.

“No, but I’ve always been rather good at reading faces,” she laughed, “though I will admit that yours is harder to read than most.”

Fenris grimaced and selected a hand to discard. He’d nearly gathered the hand he would need to win; she had frustrated every attempt at an advantage, but if he was lucky…

“Cheating would defeat the purpose of the game,” she went on, drawing a card.

Her hands were brown and freckled, the nails neatly rounded and clean. Faded scars ran up the length of her forearm, rising and falling—a hundred small slashes, burn scars, and more. Fenris did not look at them. He focused on the cards in her hand, as fresh and crisp as if they’d been printed the moment before she used them. 

One more card; one more card and he would…well. He would see another day. Perhaps that was enough. It was the farthest he’d seen ahead for years and years. 

She dithered over her turn, humming and tapping the cards with her fingernails. Fenris held very still, frowning down at his hand as if dissatisfied with his options. After what felt like an eternity, she sighed and discarded one, folding her fan of cards back into a neat pile in her hands. 

One more card. One card was all he needed. Fenris reached for it, breath catching in the back of his throat. His hand seemed to move slower than was possible, as if he stretched infinitely for the uppermost card in the deck. Then, all at once he held it in his hands. 

The Angel of Death did not look as it usually did; this one wore a cloak of red, blood dripping from one hand and blue light emanating from the other. This mattered little to him. He only needed the card. 

“Game,” he said, laying his hand on the uneven table. 

Death’s mouth pursed into a small o, and for a long moment she did not speak.

“Well, it certainly isn’t something I see every day,” she said at last, folding her hand into one neat stack and resting it face-down on the table. “Congratulations, ser. You’ve beaten me. You shall live another day at least.”

All at once, the old heaviness returned to his limbs, as if his illness rushed to meet him. Death pulled one sleeve down, then the other. She smiled at him. 

“You’ve been awfully pleasant company,” she said. “What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t,” he said. The urge to lie down again rose, ceaseless and inexorable. She patted his hand once, fingertips ice-cold against his fever-hot skin. He shuddered at the touch, 

“Fair enough,” she told him, and rose, dusting some imaginary dust from her cloak. “Neither did I, I suppose. Turnabout’s fair play, after all.”

He ached, down to his bones. His hands fell away from the table and it vanished immediately, as if it had never been there at all. Death stood over him, still smiling her strange smile. She would vanish in a moment. Perhaps he would not see her again. He certainly hoped so.

“I’m Fenris,” he told her. His strength failed him and he slid down the wall, catching himself on an elbow before he landed in the same muck he’d fallen into before.

“A strong name,” she said, smiling. “Some once called me Hawke. You are welcome to do the same. Do feel better, Fenris. It was a pleasure to meet you. Forgive me if I tell you I hope it doesn’t happen twice.” 

There were no footsteps on the stone, no swish of her cloak as she turned to go. She was one moment, and then she simply wasn’t again. Fenris slumped back against the stone, exhausted, and his eyes closed against his will. 

Hawke, she’d said. He was certain he’d heard the name somewhere. Before he could catch the tail of the thought, his consciousness faded from him. 

|

When Fenris woke, blinking in the watery dawn, the alleyway still dripped with rain and the muck still clung to his hair. Despite this, no cough rattled his throat. No fever clutched at his temples. He was, against all odds, well. 

Fenris rose carefully, testing his limbs for residual weakness, but he found none. His eyes lifted to the brick across from him. 

There, burned into the red brick, was the faintest outline of something. He peered through the dim light for several moments before he could make it out. 

“A hawk. Of course,” he said aloud, then grimaced. 

Whatever had happened to him, lying in this alley only invited attention he could do without. He would make his way back to his hovel and hide away today. Tomorrow, he would make better plans. 

Absently, he rubbed his hand as he stood. He could have sworn that he felt the burn of her touch for a moment, but of course he could not. 

Hawke. Death. Whatever she was, he too wished that they did not see each other twice. 

Fenris hurried away down the alley, shoulders hunched against the rain. He did not see the woman standing plain before him, head angled as she watched him walk away. She held a deck of cards in her hands, absently running a fingernail along the edge. Tiny, almost imperceptible marks along the edge of each card caught against her fingers as she went.

Without looking, Hawke slid the Angel of Death from the deck, pinching it between her fingers as if any residual warmth might linger in the paper. It never did, of course. Death was a cold thing. 

“Good luck,” she told Fenris, words carried away by the wind as soon as she spoke them. Without any further noise or a gesture, she too was gone. 

Soon, all that remained was a slightly disturbed puddle of much and the hawk burned into the bricks of an alleyway few rarely noticed and most quickly forgot.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

With his spectacular political instincts, directly after the assassination attempt on his life, Donald Trump told the Secret Service agents surrounding him, “wait, wait”, and raised his fist to the crowd, creating one of the more powerful visual effects of recent times. Right before being swept off stage, he mouthed the words, a message to his supporters, “fight fight.” Fascism is a cult of the leader, who promises national restoration in the face of the supposed threat to the nation of humiliation and destruction by liberals, feminists, LGBT, and immigrants. Treating democracy and its institutions – the press, schools, and the courts - as decadent, weak, and controlled by Marxists, a fascist leader promises to replace them with loyalists to him and his party (a process the Nazis termed “Gleichschaltung”). Despite creating disorder and being themselves utterly lawless, the fascist leader promises to crack down on crime (whether the crime wave is real or imaginary). In the vital framework of Ruth Ben-Ghiat, fascists leaders are typically “strongmen”, whose appeal depends on the desire of the public for a macho leader, who protects the nation’s families from these illusory threats.  Since the inception of the theoretical literature on fascism, theorists have connected this politics to the appeal of the ideology of patriarchy. It is exactly what we are witnessing today. The world has recently seen the situation America faces before, and it should serve as a warning. One month before Brazil’s 2018 presidential election, Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right candidate for the election, was stabbed at a campaign rally. Like Trump, Bolsonaro’s candidacy was based on a politics of strutting masculinity, taking as its targets LGBT and crime, promising to place weapons in the hands in the hands of many more Brazilians. The stabbing increased Bolsonaro’s popularity, and made explicit criticism of him difficult for some time. The U.S. election is further away, but we can expect the dynamics to be similar. As always, the rules are different for Democrats than they are for Republicans. Republicans have directed incendiary rhetoric at former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for years. When Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband, was beaten on the head with a hammer by a far-right extremist, it was a source of amusement and fun for some Republicans, including Trump himself. The rules may be different for Democrats and Republicans, but those are the ones by which this game must be played. If Trump is to be defeated, it can only be by honestly adhering to norms and principles that Trump has long since torn down. The Democrats must make the case to voters that the election is a choice between these norms, and permanent rule by an explicitly fascist political party. [...] The nation’s media has been busy normalizing fascism, speaking of a second four year term as if Trump eventually stepping down is not just a possibility, but a certainty. The Democrats must make the case, against a Supreme Court committed to the election of Donald Trump, and a press largely already aligning itself to serve, that the allure of dictatorship should be resisted. Violence only makes this task more difficult.

Jason Stanley for Zeteo News on how the assassination attempt on Donald Trump will make the task of stopping Trump and his fascist regime much more difficult (07.14.2024).

Jason Stanley writes in Zeteo News that the assassination attempt against Donald Trump makes stopping him and fascism much more difficult.

[i-smoke-chapstick]

'DON'T BLAME ME, [PART SIX]

-GOTHAM!JERVIS TETCH X READER-

⋆ 𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐒 ; Reader and Lee get tied up in a revenge plot.

⋆ tags/warnings. GOTHAM!jervis x female reader. SLOW BURN!!! Not sure how many chapters this will be yet! LOTS OF PLOT SET-UP!! AGE GAP ROMANCE! (reader is Jim and Barbara's daughter) Is reader really young and naive, or is she just young and angry? Lack of Jervis in this one, I apologize. I love Lee and Readers dynamic. The slow burn is slow burning. She fell first, he fell harder. More of reader dissociating. AU where The Ogre's still alive. Reader and Lee being mortal frenemies. Writing this kind of artistically and as character studies for everyone. Small time skip. Reader continues to reference Jervis as "Mr. Tetch." Just you guys wait...they'll get there. I'm taking canon out back and beating it with a stick until it stops twitching.

⋆ tag list (tell me if you want to be removed!) @adalwolfgang @jervis-tetch-my-beloved @honestmrdual @moonlightnyx @all-things-fandomstuck @killingboredom @sweetlimeharvest

⋆ 'PART ONE, - 'PART TWO, - 'PART THREE, - 'PART FOUR, - 'PART FIVE, - 'PART SIX, - 'PART SEVEN, - 'PART EIGHT, - 'PART NINE, -'PART TEN, - 'PART ELEVEN, - 'PART TWELVE, - 'PART THIRTEEN, - 'PART FOURTEEN,

♫ “I once was poison ivy, but now I'm your daisy.” Don't Blame Me by Taylor Swift

Nothing seems real anymore.

You'd heard of the crazies running around in Gotham. Whether that was from your father, mindlessly ranting over a stack of police files. Or your mother, who frequently talked to said crazies on a daily basis.

Prior to Mr. Tetch, you'd only ever dealt with one first hand. At least, one that was actively trying to murder your family. And that was none other than Jason Skolimski. The Ogre. You feel your body involuntarily shake when you even think about him.

You're unsure what happened to him, exactly. You were just thirteen when everything got turned on its head. But you do know one thing. His body was shipped to Indian Hill. Your mother and father never mention it. You wonder if your mother ever thinks about it. The small possibility...that man could still be alive.

She'd probably thank him. It was because of him that she embraced her "true self".

You bite your lip, lost in your head. Somethings been missing ever since Mr. Tetch turned out to be...whatever he is. Ever since he left, Tabitha’s seemed happy. Your mom hasn’t. Appearently his hypnotism act was attracting a bunch of publicity to the club.

You should've been thankful, like Tabitha. Good riddance. That should've been the end of it. But you had begged Jim to take you to the GCPD, to ask Alice questions. You needed answers. More than he did.

You always hated the GCPD. The last time you went to the department, you were young and naive. It was ‘take your child to work day.’ You watched a serial cannibal try to bite Harvey Bullock's finger off. Tale as old as time.

It didn't matter, regardless. Jim didn't let you go again. You remember the vague shouting match between you two. Good thing, maybe. Judging by the fact Mr. Tetch hypnotized a family of strongmen to kill everyone in the place. And then Alice impaled herself on a pole. All in the papers.

What does it matter? You're not sure why you let the whole situation get under your skin.

A few dreams, a few encounters, a few shared looks. You find yourself scoffing at your own blind idiocy. Maybe you are still young and naive.

You've been taking your rightful place at the bar, next to Butch. You two have been tossing back shots of tequila, mindlessly ranting at the same time to one another. Again, there’s comfort in knowing you both want to speak to someone that you can’t have.

"I don't understand. She doesn't even look at me anymore. I mean, she just looks at Barbara. Sorry, I know she's your mom, or whatever."

"Don't apologize. I don't understand either. Where the hell even is he?"

"Your dad?" Butch furrows his eyebrows.

No, you think. Mr. Tetch. You don't vocalize that though. You lie with a nod.

Maybe the alcohol caught up to you. You should've known better. Day-drinking never ends well. You cringe, remembering Harvey slurring his words, knocking on your dads apartment door. Either way, you aren't in control of your own body. Before you know it, you're leaving the club, tossing a wad of cash to Butch. He wolf whistles and takes it gladly.

You're just walking down the street. Maybe drunkenly. Kicking loose pebbles on the sidewalk, swinging around streetlamps. You'd expect a weird look or two from bystanders. But you realize no ones on the street except for you.

It's Gotham. You should be more concerned by the fact your alone. But it's broad daylight. Surely nothing could go wrong-

Before the thought can be fully thought out, a pair of arms grabs you from behind. You find yourself kicking and screaming, being dragged by a heavy-set man. Yay.

Huffing through the set of hands over your mouth, you're shoved into a trunk, light significantly dimming as it's closed. You hear the lock click, and you stop fussing. Attempting to calm yourself, you search your pockets for your phone. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Your mom is a crime lord. Your dad is a cop, or rather, was one. You'll be fine.

You can't seem to find your phone in your pockets though. You feel your heartrate speed as you frantically start to search. The bar. You left it at the fucking bar. Nice fucking job Y/N. You definitely wouldn't survive in a horror movie.

You give up. You're defeated. Maybe they'll be a pair of nice human traffickers. Take pity on you. You sigh and throw your head back for the rest of the car ride. Squeezing your eyes shut, you manage to accept whatever fate is in store for you.

You had a good run, champ. A voice that sounds an awful lot like your fathers praises in the back of your mind.

Like a ragdoll, you're roughly placed on the floor. Eyes still trying to get used to the bright light, you feel both dizzy and discombobulated. Your head is pounding from any alcohol you had prior. Picked a great day to drink.

Blinking wildly, the first thing you manage to digest is being chained to a bathtub.

"Y/N?" A voice asks, and your eyes snap up. Staring wide eyed at you, just tied up as you are, is Lee Thompkins.

A million thoughts rush through your head. The first one you promptly register is what is this bitch doing here?

"Lee?" You mumble. You think this might be a hallucination, but if you were going to hallucinate someone, it wouldn't be her.

You two stare at each other for a moment. Tense, awkward. The last time you saw her was when your father witnessed her having moved on. You still remember the feeling, standing on your tiptoes to look through a window. Seeing your fathers heart break before your eyes.

You never really talked to her. She always tried to talk to you though. A lot. Too much. But she could never be the Barbara you used to know. No matter how hard she tried.

"What the fuck is going on?" You whisper yell. Lee looks at you, swallowing.

"Tetch blames Jim for Alice, and we're his means for revenge."

At the mention of his name, your blood runs cold. You didn't expect to ever see him again. Let alone see Lee. You watch, petrified, as Lee fidgets around through the bathroom cabinet.

For the most part the room is silent, other than the clanking of items being searched through.

"Leave it." Is all you say, watching her look uncontrollably for something to pick the lock. She sighs.

"You expect me to just sit here and die?"

"Yes." You hiss. She doesn’t turn to look at you, but you can imagine her face, disappointed and irritated. You don't care. You get mean when you're nervous.

"…It's not my fault. Jim is who he is, Y/N. I can't change that. Neither can you."

The truth stings harder coming from her of all people.

"Oh, give yourself some credit, Ms. Thompkins," You say the name snappish. "Without you, I hardly doubt we'd be in this mess."

That makes her perk up. Her nostrils flare, and the clanking sounds louder.

"You don't seriously blame me for this?" She still doesn't make eye contact with you, but she motions wildly to the locks on your ankles. You give a nonchalant, bitter shrug.

"If you didn't leave him, he wouldn't have become a bountyhunter."

"You don't know that." Her eyes soften in hurt. It fuels you.

"No. But I know you're a whore." The words escape your mouth before you internalize them. There's a long beat of silence before she finally turns to look at you, still sitting on the ground. She huffs.

"Maybe you're just really scared and this is your way of coping," She starts, "Or maybe you're just insanely committed to taking care of your father. Either way, all I'm interested in is getting out of here."

You look at each other with a mutual mix of regret.

"Try a cuticle pusher." You finally say, smiling humorlessly. "My dad's was a cop, after all. Taught me how to pick locks. I can walk you through it."

She nods. You nod. It's not the same feeling of understanding you get when talking with Butch. But...it's not too far off either.

"You really are his daughter." She sighs, snatching a cuticle pusher up from the counter.

"Thanks."

"It's not a compliment."

"Remember you have to-"

"I got it." Lee cuts you off, fiddling with the lock. You put your hands up in mock defense. At least your humors returning back to you.

"Can I ask you something?" You start off, slow. She glances at you for a moment, before returning to her chains.

"As long as it's not about why I left your dad." She mutters.

"Not exactly," You pause, looking for the right words to say. "Why did you return to Gotham? You looked all cozy down south."

"It's really none of your business."

You let out a loud scoff at that.

"You were ready to become my stepmother less than a year ago," You continue. At this, her movements falter. "You could've chosen any city. Any job. But you chose Gotham."

"You realize we both might die today, right?"

"Yes. And I don't want to die not knowing why you left us, just to come back and dangle it in front of my dad."

Her movements stop completley.

"I didn't come here for James Gordon." She's firm in her stance. In one last fluid moment, the lock unclicks before our eyes. She heaves a small sigh of relief.

She offers you the cuticle pusher. You take it. About three seconds in, it breaks. Shit.

Not the worst fate in the world, you think. You'd be able to see Mr. Tetch again. Ask him all the unanswered questions. That is, if he doesn't immediately kill you. Maybe you’re a fool to think a part of him enjoyed your company.

"You can still escape." You nod to Lee, hopeful she'll leave, hopeful she'll stay. With what you said to her earlier, you wouldn't blame her.

"I'm not leaving you here," She speaks. Her tone is gentle. Somewhat motherly. The sentiment actually makes guilt bubble up inside you. "There's got to be something else."

Looking around the room madly, you two are interrupted in your searching's.

"My, my," A voice drawls. You know that voice. "You two have been busy."

There he is.

Jervis stands tall, looking down at the both of you. You meet his gaze. For the first time in quite awhile, that feeling of electricity shoots through you again. You want to tear yourself apart. Find whatever part of your brain is fascinated with the idea of this man. Cut it out of you, examine it, and throw it away.

"Now, if you'd kindly join me in the dining room?" He speaks. You notice his eyes are focused solely on you, effectively ignoring Lee. He still looks relatively angry though.

Despite his demeanor, he offers you a hand to help you up. Lee watches his movements. You take his arm without question. That seems to spark something in his eyes. In Lee's eyes, too.

...You're unsure if that's a good or bad sign.

[corporationsarepeople]

“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections, and will do anything possible, they will do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”

—Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate, Nov 12, 2023

Since the fascists, authoritarians always want to do two things — they want to change the way that people see violence, making it into something necessary and patriotic and even morally righteous, and they want to change the way people see their targets.

And so they use dehumanizing language. And former President Trump is doing both. He's been using his rallies since 2015 to shift the idea of violence into something positive. And now he's starting to use dehumanizing rhetoric, all these groups who live like vermin. And this is what the original fascists did. Hitler started talking about Jews as parasites in 1920.

So by the time he got in, in 1933, Germans had been exposed to this dehumanizing rhetoric for 13 years. And Mussolini literally talked about rats. After he had become dictator in 1927, he said, we need to kill rats who are bringing infectious diseases and Bolshevism from the east.

This matches up with Trump talking about immigrants bringing disease and other such things. So this is very dangerous rhetoric with a very precise fascist history.

…

There's a two-part thing that authoritarians do.

First, they change the view of violence. And Mr. Trump, since 2015, he started saying at his rallies, using his rallies and campaign events for radicalizing people. And he started saying, oh, in the old days, you used to hurt people. The problem is, Americans don't hurt each other anymore.

Now he's going into a new phase of openly dehumanizing his targets so that will lessen the taboos in the future. And we see that, in 2025, he's got plans for mass deportations, mass imprisonments and giant camps. So you need people to be less sensitive about violence, either committing it themselves or tolerating it.

And I see that as the reason he's using this dehumanizing rhetoric now, to prepare people.

…

This (being a proud election denier) is part of being much more overt about becoming an authoritarian and transforming America into some version of autocracy, because the endgame of election denial is actually to convince Americans that elections shouldn't be the way they choose their leaders, they're too unreliable.

And we're beginning to see this with his allies. Michael Flynn said we shouldn't — elections, we might not even have one. Tommy Tuberville, the senator, said let's not even have elections, or the talk about America is never — pure democracy doesn't work. All of this is part of a campaign of, you could call it mass reeducation of Americans to want forms of authoritarian rule that Trump will give.

…

In all cases of history that I have studied in my book "Strongmen," people did not take the various Hitlers and Mussolinis seriously until it was too late.

—Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Nov 13, 2023

[odinsblog]

National broadcast and cable networks are barely covering Trump’s recent gaffes and incoherent statements

Trump: “Viktor Orban... he's the leader of Turkey.”

Fact: Viktor Orban is Hungary's authoritarian leader.

Yet Trump’s gaffe received less than three minutes of total coverage across all three major cable news networks.

National broadcast and cable networks are failing to cover a series of verbal gaffes and incoherent statements recently made by disgraced former President Donald Trump, the front-runner to win the Republican nomination again in 2024.

As Media Matters has already extensively documented, media outlets have repeatedly obsessed over President Joe Biden's age since he announced his campaign for reelection. The same attention has not been given to his likely challenger, former President Donald Trump, even though the two men are nearly the same age. In fact, in just the last two months, Trump has made a number of nonsensical statements: He has mixed up the authoritarian leaders of Hungary and Turkey; confused his former Republican opponent Jeb Bush and Jeb’s brother, the former president George W. Bush; mixed up a number of his Democratic opponents with former President Barack Obama; and made a garbled statement accusing President Joe Biden of leading the country into “World War II.”

On Monday, a New York Times article finally brought some much-needed attention to the dichotomy between Trump’s own attacks on Biden, compared to Trump’s actual behavior:

But as the 2024 race for the White House heats up, Mr. Trump’s increased verbal blunders threaten to undermine one of Republicans’ most potent avenues of attack, and the entire point of his onstage pantomime: the argument that Mr. Biden is too old to be president. Mr. Biden, a grandfather of seven, is 80. Mr. Trump, who has 10 grandchildren, is 77.

An analysis by Media Matters found that TV broadcast news has given no coverage to these false and incoherent statements from Trump, and cable news has barely covered them. Overall, MSNBC has covered the four recent Trump gaffes the most, still just 35 minutes, and the majority of this coverage has come from just one program, Morning Joe. CNN has covered the gaffes a mere 9 minutes. Fox News, meanwhile, mentioned the gaffes just twice for less than a minute total in the periods studied.

Mixing up Hungarian, Turkish strongmen

Trump commented on October 23 during a campaign speech in New Hampshire: “You know, I was very honored — there’s a man, Viktor Orbán. Did anyone ever hear of him? He’s probably, like, one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world. He’s the leader of Turkey.”

Orbán is the authoritarian prime minister of Hungary; autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is president of Turkey. This remark also could have brought renewed attention to Trump’s long-established affection for dictators.

Media Matters reviewed transcripts from October 23 thorough 29 and found that the comment received less than 2 minutes of TV news coverage, mostly spread across MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and Deadline: White House, plus a single comment on Fox News’ The Five lasting 6 seconds. Broadcast news didn’t cover it at all.

Warning that Biden might start “World War II”

During a September 15 speech at a right-wing event in Washington, D.C., Trump claimed that Biden was “cognitively impaired” and “in no condition to lead,” while warning that his leadership could imperil the United States in “dealing with Russia and possible nuclear war.” Trump then added: “Just think of it. We would be in World War II very quickly if we’re going to be relying on this man.”

World War II happened 80 years ago, a detail Trump missed while he was calling Biden “cognitively impaired.” During the same speech, Trump also seemed confused about whom he is running against in 2024, and whom he ran against in 2016.

(continue reading)

[jefkphotography]

Grip strength. Stone lifting.

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

Nov. 14, 2024

Donald Trump has demonstrated his lack of fitness for the presidency in countless ways, but one of the clearest is in the company he keeps, surrounding himself with fringe figures, conspiracy theorists and sycophants who put fealty to him above all else. This week, a series of cabinet nominations by Mr. Trump showed the potential dangers posed by his reliance on his inner circle in the starkest way possible.

For three of the nation’s highest-ranking and most vital positions, Mr. Trump said he would appoint loyalists with no discernible qualifications for their jobs, people manifestly inappropriate for crucial positions of leadership in law enforcement and national security.

The most irresponsible was his choice for attorney general. To fill the post of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, the president-elect said he would nominate Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida.

Yes, that Matt Gaetz.

The one who called for the abolishment of the F.B.I. and the entire Justice Department if they didn’t stop investigating Mr. Trump. The one who was among the loudest congressional voices in denying the results of the 2020 election, who said he was “proud of the work” that he and other deniers did on Jan. 6, 2021, and who praised the Capitol rioters as “patriotic Americans” who had no intention of committing violence. The one whose move to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023 paralyzed his own party’s leadership of the House for nearly a month.

Mr. Gaetz, who submitted his letter of resignation from Congress on Wednesday after his nomination was announced, was the target of a yearslong federal sex-trafficking investigation that led to an 11-year prison term for one of his associates, though he denied any involvement. The Justice Department closed that investigation, but the House Ethics Committee is still looking into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, improper acceptance of gifts and obstruction of government investigations of his conduct. Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker, blamed Mr. Gaetz for his ouster, on the grounds that Mr. Gaetz “wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old.”

This is the man Mr. Trump has selected to lead the 115,000-person agency that he has called the most important in the federal government, a position whose enforcement role could cause the most trouble for any president with corrupt intent. Even for Mr. Trump, it was a stunning demonstration of his disregard for basic competence and government experience, and of his duty to lead the executive branch in a sober and patriotic way. It will now be up to the Senate to say he has gone too far and reject this nomination.

Mr. Trump’s list of appointments is just getting started but already includes two other unqualified nominations that he announced this week: former Representative Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, and Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense.

Ms. Gabbard, who previously represented Hawaii in the House and regularly appears on Fox News, is not only devoid of intelligence experience but has repeatedly taken positions in direct opposition to American foreign policy and national security interests. She has appeared on several occasions to side with strongmen like President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Mr. Hegseth, a co-host of “Fox & Friends,” is perhaps even more unqualified, given the gravity — not to mention the budget — of the post he would assume. He enjoys some support from enlisted service members and veterans, but outside of serving two tours as an Army infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as time in Guantánamo Bay, Mr. Hegseth has no experience in government or national defense.

“He’s never run a big institution, much less one of the largest and most hidebound on the planet,” the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal wrote Wednesday. “He has no experience in government outside the military, and no small risk is that the bureaucracy will eat him alive.” The board went on to call Mr. Hegseth a “culture warrior” at a time when there are much bigger security issues for the Pentagon to be focused on.

It’s far from certain Mr. Hegseth could even obtain the security clearances required for the job. He has said he was one of a dozen National Guard members removed from service at President Biden’s inauguration in 2021 because of concerns that he was an extremist — possibly because of a tattoo he wears that is popular among white supremacists.

These are some of the most consequential roles in government, protecting the country from military and terrorist threats, investigating domestic criminal conspiracies, and prosecuting thousands of federal crimes every year. Yet to fill them Mr. Trump has resorted to people whose only eligibility for office is an apparent willingness to say yes to his every demand.

Mr. Gaetz in particular has joined Mr. Trump in expressing a commitment to exacting vengeance against anyone they believe has done them wrong. Mr. Trump began his campaign by saying “I am your retribution,” and Mr. Gaetz broadcasts nothing so much as that. He has no business leading an agency with the role of combating crime, fraud, violations of civil rights and threats to national security, among many other things.

In Mr. Trump’s first term, the department was protected by career prosecutors and other civil servants who understood that their primary obligation was to the dictates of the Constitution, not to the whims of the president. But Mr. Trump has promised to purge people like that from his second administration.

The possibility of extreme appointments like these was the reason the Constitution gives the Senate the right to refuse its consent to a president’s wishes. Last week, Republicans won control of the chamber. Now they will be confronted with an immediate test: Will they stand up for the legislative branch and for the American system of checks and balances? Two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, have already expressed strong skepticism of Mr. Gaetz’s nomination, and others have declined to express their support.

Mr. Trump clearly expects the Senate to simply roll over and ignore its responsibilities. He wants to turn the leaders of major important agencies into his deputies, remaking the federal government into a Trump Inc. organization chart entirely subordinate to him. He recently demanded that the Senate give him the ability to make recess appointments, a way of bypassing the Senate’s consent process when the chamber is adjourned for 10 days or more.

Even Republican senators refused to consent to that demand during his first term, to preserve their constitutional role, and on Wednesday Senate Republicans voted to reject as their leader Rick Scott of Florida, who said he would have no problem allowing recess appointments. Instead they chose John Thune of South Dakota, who is far more likely to uphold his chamber’s right to refuse consent of president nominations.

In Mr. Trump’s second term, senators will immediately be confronted with an extreme set of appointments even worse than those of the first term. That makes all the more important that they preserve the ability to say no.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/opinion/editorials/matt-gaetz-nomination-senate.html

[mariacallous]

The murder of Alexander Navalny and the advance of Russian forces ought to compel the West to unite to defend democratic freedoms.  

As Ukraine runs out of shells and soldiers, it is clear that Europe needs to find the resolve to sustain its war effort.

And as the American far right follows the instructions of Donald Trump and deprives Ukraine of aid, it is equally clear that stopping a Trump second-term is the objective that overrides all others.

Not just for the West in general, but for the United States in particular, whose democratic freedoms Trump threatens.

Surely these simple statements of political reality should not be so hard to grasp. Surely there ought to be an anti-fascist alliance from California to Kyiv.

Tens of millions of people should be putting aside their differences and uniting against a common enemy.

Our times are so frightening because they are doing nothing of the sort. Or, rather, not enough people are prepared to compromise to defend themselves and the best of their societies.

The pro-democracy alliance feels weak and unsure of itself.

Often now, it can seem as if the Kremlin is right, and that all it needs to do is to hold on in Ukraine until Western resolve crumbles.  Often now it also seems to be the case that all Trump needs to do is to count on the US warped electoral system and divisions among his opponents to deliver him power.

Anti-fascism sounds almost a romantic cause as it conjures up images of men and women uniting in the 1930s to defeat the Nazi enemy.

In truth, there was little romantic about anti-fascism in the past, and there is nothing romantic about it now. Putting aside your differences sounds well and good, but in practice it means you must abandon pretty much every principle you have.  You must ally with people you normally oppose, and choke your protests about ideas you normally abhor.  

The underexplored truth is that tyranny and the threat of tyranny remove choice. Alliances against today’s strongmen fly against the central belief of the consumer society that the market will meet our preferences down to the smallest of our whims. Most do not want to abandon their parochial concerns for the greater good.

Two groups make my point for me: US leftists and British Conservatives.

Leftists are the first to shout “fascism”. And yet with Trump making no secret of his desire to install a quasi-dictatorship, they cannot oppose him.

Or rather they cannot lift their eyes and accept that the only way to beat Trump is to vote for the compromised Democrats.

Writing in the current issue of the Nation, a left-wing US journal from the old school, D.D. Guttenplan goes through the reasons why leftists may let Trump win by default.  A little too discreetly for my taste, he refuses to say whether he believes letting Trump win by default is the right thing to do. (“Choosing the lesser evil is never inspiring,” he concludes with a touch of lawyerly caution, “Still, it’s a choice all of us will have to face.”)

Yet Guttenplan is clearly right that disgusted left-wing voters may put their purity before the necessity of stopping Trump’s return to power.

In the swing state of Michigan, American Arab voters are infuriated by Biden’s support of Israel.  "Vote for Palestine. No Biden," say the fliers being handed out at Detroit mosques.

In a tight race it would not take many staying at home or voting for a minor candidate to hand the state and possibly the presidency to Trump. More broadly, and across the US, disgusted left-wing voters have plenty of candidates looking to lure them away from the Democrats.

Cornel West, a leftish academic calls Biden a war criminal and says Israel and the US are “intertwined in genocide”. You could say that Robert Kennedy Junior was a left alternative to Biden. His conspiracy theories appeal to sections of the youth and black vote, who might otherwise have gone Democrat. And once again in tight races, it won’t take many switchers to hand swing states to Trump.

Launching her campaign Jill Stein, the Green candidate, and yet another leftist looking to take votes from Biden, declared there was no difference between Republicans and Democrats .

“The political system is broken. The two Wall Street parties are bought and paid for.”

In normal elections, the radical left can just about get away with pretending there are no differences between the major parties – it’s never true, but they can get away with it.

But the whole point about totalitarian parties in the 20th century and the anti-democratic strongmen of our day is they are not like other democratic parties because they do not accept democracy.  The failure to face the obvious means that a significant minority in the US can believe two contradictory thoughts at once

They believe that Trump will bring fascism and white supremacy back to power in the US.

And yet and at the same time they say that they are entitled to indulge their secondary political interests, even if they help the fascist white supremacist return to power as they do it.

Put it like that they sound like silly and spoiled hypocrites. You feel the need to tell them that Biden’s industrial policy represents a decisive break with neo-liberalism and that a Trump presidency would be a disaster for Palestinians.

But in truth you miss the point if you go off into policy debates.

In normal times, the position of American leftists would be defensible.

Politicians do not own voters. If you are an Arab-American, who objects to the US supporting Israel, why should you vote for Biden?

If you are a US socialist, who damns the Democrats for not being socialists, even though they never promised to be socialists, you are entitled to say that they have failed to be radical enough for your tastes and cannot expect your support.

At a visceral level, you may well feel a greater hatred for centrists, who have diluted progressivism, than for the right, who say what you like about it, is at least honest by its own lights.

The lesser of two evils is still evil, and is not a great choice to offer those who want nothing to do with evil in any of its manifestations.  

The problem with this argument in a crisis is that it fails to capture the choices, or lack of choice, when democracy is in danger. The question is not which version of American policy towards Israel you should vote for but whether you will still have an effective vote if Trump wins again.

The only realistic way out of this dilemma for US leftists would be to argue that a second Trump presidency would not be so bad, and that mainstream American liberals were descending into hysteria when they talked of a potential dictatorship.

Funnily enough they could have said that during Trump’s first term. Trump and the Supreme Court judges he appointed did some terrible things but democracy itself was not in danger.

But by refusing to accept the result of the 2020 presidential election, storming Congress, trying to get crooked election officials into key posts in state governments where they might rig the ballot, and embracing anti-democratic doctrines from Orbanism to Christian nationalism, the US right has made it very clear that it is a threat to democracy this time around.

I have not seen a single prominent figure on the US left try to deny it and argue it is OK to boycott the Democrats because Trump poses no danger.

After watching the far-right storm the capitol, no one can seriously make that argument. But the worst of the US left cannot go on to accept the grim, anti-fascist conclusion that they need to abandon their dearly held principles and do whatever it takes to stop Trump regaining power.

Nor can the worst of the the UK right.

Last week the British had to endure the spectacle of Liz Truss, a former prime minister, no less, endorsing the far right propagandist, Steve Bannon.  At his urging, she declared that this country is not in visible decline because of her policies and the policies of her Conservative party but because of “friends of the bureaucratic establishment and…friends of the deep state” who “work together with the bureaucrats…to keep things the same”.

Truss has come out for Donald Trump. As has Boris Johnson. What an extraordinary moment we are living through. Two British prime ministers are backing a man who organised a coup against his own country’s constitution and stands every chance of being condemned as a criminal by a succession of courts.

The double think of some US leftist is repeated on the British right

Conservatives say that they absolutely believe in resisting Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and defending the wider security of Europe.

Yet they also cheer on Donald Trump, whose supporters are already sabotaging the Ukrainian war effort, and who has made it clear that he will undermine NATO if and when he returns to power.

They are doing it for the same reason as US leftists. They cannot tolerate breaking with their side in the culture war. They cannot aid their opponents. They would rather carry on as before than accept the need to change.

Fight fascism. It sounds so easy. But the compromises required to defend our societies from authoritarian threats at home and abroad are too much for too many people to bear.

[whereistheonepiece]

The fun thing about having OCs is they just pop up in your head at random times to tell you the most random things about them. Things likely too mundane and insignificant to put in the story.

Like "If I Were a Boy" plays on my playlist and Casey pops up and I see him singing it with the girlies during a hangout sesh. Or the early era Ariana Grande song "Break Free" comes on and Casey tells me how if he were to be a drag queen for a night, that would be his song. (He actually appeared in my dreams once singing that song. I was at a grocery store and he was in an aisle over, singing it.)

Or Juno tells me about her hobbies like pottery and making mosaics out of broken glass, and how she cans things and makes preserves and pickled foods, and how she played chess with an old neighbor on one of her old islands, and about her personal shrine to a goddess from her first home island/deities from Arden's and Castor's home islands/a goddess from Dev's home island, and how ducks exposing their tail feathers when they dunk their heads underwater gives her cuteness aggression.

And this isn't random or mundane, but Casey's dads Arden and Castor are gradually revealing their backstories to me. Can't say. Spoilers. I probably have to learn the more serious stuff before the mundanity comes out.

Or how Juno's husband, Dev, who still has yet to make his first appearance, has revealed to me that he has this anger within him that he's ashamed of because he's been assigned the role of the ray of sunshine in people's lives, and he feels obligated to live up to that.

Or Cara, the mother of Buggy's daughter in my now discontinued story, told me she plays the harp.

And I have an old OC from high school, whom I haven't used in years, who still occasionally pops up in my head to tell me gorillas sometimes freak him out and remind me that he loves dinosaur nuggets, and commentate that some Tweets represent his tweeting style and sense of humor about him and his wife.

And yesterday I passed by a business that had Esperanza's name in it and I joked to myself that she broke out of Impel Down with the rest of the people and Luffy, and that's what she's doing now.

And then there's fucking Braden. He's a tough nut to crack, like his and his siblings' bio mom. I still don't know much about him other than he and his wife work out but are like strongmen and prioritize strength over physique, and that I forget the spelling of their names all the time. The most random thing he's told me is his main in Mario Kart is Bowser bc Bowser is big, has red hair, and is a dad like him.

But that's the fun part about OCs. They're little guys in your head and sometimes reveal random things to you when you're out living life.

[growthgoddess]

The Biggest Hit Attraction

Daisy had always dreamed of being a clown in the carnival. From a young age, she had been fascinated by the bright lights, the exciting performances, and the joy that it brought to people's faces.

So, when she finally landed a job at the carnival, she was over the moon. She worked hard, practiced her routines, and put on her makeup with care.

She was always punctual on the podium. Eager to welcome guests into the carnival and hand them balloons to hype up the attendees.

But despite her best efforts, she could never seem to win over the crowd. They would snicker at her clumsy moves, poke fun at her oversized shoes, and toss her withering looks as they passed by her booth.

Daisy would try her best to brush it off and carry on with her performance, but every insult she received chipped away at her self-esteem.

When the carnival master gave her a letter to reconsider her position as the carnival's front mascot, she began to wonder if she was really cut out for this job.

One day, as she was wandering the carnival grounds, feeling low, she came across a mysterious fortune teller's tent. The fortune teller was an old woman with a kind smile, who listened patiently as Daisy poured out her heart to her.

"I just don't know what to do," Daisy said. "I feel like I'll never be good enough."

The fortune teller nodded sympathetically. "I have just the thing for you," she said, reaching into a small box and pulling out a shiny gold coin. "This coin will give you the confidence and energy you need to be the best show this carnival has ever seen!"

Daisy took the coin, feeling a little skeptical, but also hopeful. She rubbed it twice and slipped it into her pocket, she thanked the fortune teller and went back to her tent to prepare for her performance that night.

The grand tent was silent with anticipation. The drumroll kicked in and a spotlight shone upon the ringmaster.

"Ladieeees and gentlemen, boys and girls! I have for you a show that will leave you gasping in awe and wonder. Tonight, we bring you a spectacle of gigantic proportions, an extravaganza that will astound and amaze even the most seasoned circus-goers. Get ready to witness feats of strength and skill that defy the laws of physics, performed by the most talented and daring performers in the world. Prepare to be transported to a world of excitement and magic, as we unleash an unforgettable show that will leave you breathless. So hold on tight, because the show is about to begin, and trust me, it's going to be big!"

The crowd went wild and the show began. Strongmen lifted barbells and threw them in the air. Elephants stood up and performed feats of wonder. With every show, the stakes went higher and higher!

Soon, it was time for Daisy's intermission to calm the crowd down for the next big show. She was just supposed to go there and act silly to make the crowd laugh and renew their wonder.

However, as she began her act, the audience laughed and jeered with insulting tones at her. They threw tomatoes at her as she was juggling balls. Daisy felt dejected, but the show had to go on.

Suddenly, she accidentally juggled the coin given to her, and with the chaos, swallowed it as it fell. Daisy choked and circled around the stage looking for help, the ringmaster had to stop the crowd and check up on Daisy's condition.

Then it struck her. It was like a sudden surge of power, and she felt more confident than she ever had before. Her eyes widened after swallowing the coin, she stood up straight and smiled.

The silent crowd was at awe at the change in tone.

"Daisy, are you alright?" Asked the ringmaster. And Daisy simply nodded and gave him a thumbs up. The elderly man smiled at her and patted her back.

The fanfare continued and she continued her performance. It was still far from perfect, but she found herself laughing at the jeers and heckles that came her way, and responding with quick-witted retorts that made the crowd laugh even harder.

But then, in the middle of her performance while balancing atop a giant ball, she felt a little sick, could it have been the coin she swallowed?

Something strange began to happen to her body. Daisy felt a rumbling in her stomach, and then she felt her clothes shifting around her form particularly around her chest and hips. She tried stay balanced atop of the ball, but she felt an additional weight around her bosom and thighs that she fell off.

Her impact on the ground tore her colorful costume top open as she started to grow. Her already feminine form emphasizing further with every spurt.

Mothers had to cover their cheering children's eyes at the sight of the growing woman onstage. Daisy was confused when she saw her perspective of the crowd and her carnival friends rose higher and higher.

Share barely felt the tight cling of her tightening clothes around her as she grew and grew until she was towering over the crowd, and her costume couldn't contain her anymore.

The crowd gasped and cheered, thinking this was all part of the show. They watched in amazement as Daisy lifted tore the carnival tent apart to use to cover herself. She lifted people and animals up to gauge her newfound size and strength.

Daisy was elated. She had never felt so powerful and alive. She struck poses and did feats of strength such as lifting elephants and bending entire steel bars.

The ringmaster improvised a show and a costume for her to keep things decent. He let her be the highlight of tonight's circus and allowed people to interact with her after the show.

She would let them slide across her giant body, or have them sit in ferris wheel cars as she'd carry them around. She was no longer just a performer of the carnival, but also a ride!

The formerly meek Daisy had become the carnival's biggest attraction, and people came from far and wide just to see her perform and take pictures with her.

She has become the carnival's iconic mascot - Dazzling Daisy!

And yet, even as she basked in the glow of the crowd's adulation, she couldn't forget the fortune teller who had given her the magic coin.

She went back to the tent, hoping to thank her, but found that the tent was empty. In fact, the fortune teller had disappeared without a trace.

Daisy looked around, feeling a little bewildered. But then, as she looked down at her massive form, she realized something. She had been given a gift, not just of size and strength, but of confidence and self-respect. And even though the fortune teller was gone, she knew that she would always carry that gift with her.