#only for some shooter to attempt to assassinate him on live tv

[tbob-enthusiast]

So I've been playing around with the (older) Robbie design for an AU of mine

This man has killed more people than he can possibly count 😭

He's part of my AU, which I call "The Zodiac": the premise is that here, Bill's Zodiac isn't a prophecy of people meant to defeat him, but rather a Pantheon of demigods whose power came directly from Bill after he died (long story). The power they received is more like a "seed" that grows according to the person who received them, rather than a direct pass down of one of Bill's powers. For example, Ford can access a mind, but not in the same way as Bill, because his power grew with him!

The Zodiac was created because Gravity Falls became the target of a war (cough, colonization 2.0 after the government became aware of the magic surrounding the town, cough cough) and Bill (who at this point had gotten attached to the place in a "how dare you mess with my freaks" kind of way) couldn't defend it anymore, due to his body not being made to last in the third dimension. He was already dying anyway, so hell, why not give his freaks a chance of surviving on their own?

Robert Robbie Valentino is extremely powerful when it comes to the undead. He can summon hordes upon hordes of zombies that are far more resistant than the ones summoned in Scary-Oke, which obey his orders in a hivemind-like manner, as well as having an easier time summoning and handling ghosts.

The most powerful state he has is one he calls "rapid decay", which is self explanatory. He only uses it on extreme circumstances, or when he's too emotionally unstable to stop that power from activating as his body's self defense system. It causes anything in a 1 to 1000 meter radius to rapidly decay, leading to the very quick death of pretty much anything. Higher Beings (like other Zodiac, The Oracle, Time Baby, or the Axolotl and his own pantheon) and bones are unaffected, however. He still doesn't know why bones specifically survive rapid decay, but he doesn't question it when it keeps his steed (sort of) alive.

His eyes are yellow now, due to overuse of his power. He is, after all, the one holding all of the military power of the town: raising armies of undead on their foes and promptly "recruiting" the dead foes as well.

Yeah, I also gave him a dead unicorn to ride to battle. Her name is unironically Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Neigh, and she's just as edgy as you'd expect her to be BWAHAH

He and Wendy grew apart after the loss of all of their mutual friends. He reacted to it like a perpetually open wound, raw and ugly and painful. A bleeding heart, one could say. She, however, chose the opposite direction: to freeze her heart away and numb herself from the pain. Such is fitting of Ice, after all.

These guys are immortal, and aren't on very friendly terms. Robbie thinks he lost Wendy, too, on the day their last mutual friend died.

Pacifica and Gideon, however, are a solid reason for him to still fight for the town. There's a lot of mutual respect and friendship going on between the three of them, and I think that's super neat, man!

[howlingwind]

01. what’s your name/alias you go by ??

my name is jeff !! lmfao (i don’t let memes die) it’s not my real name but i’ve gone by cody on tumblr for a long time

02. what’s your age ??

twenty. jfc i’m old. but also apparently a fetus??

03. what’s your zodiac sign ??

aries, which couldn’t feel further from correct lmfao

04. what’s your ethnicity ??

uhh mostly italian & sicilian, but you could probably point to any white place in europe and i’ll have a little bit of that in me. i’m also 1/16th native american but it’s such a small amount and sadly i don’t even know which tribe to learn more about them.

05. what’s your nationality ??

‘murican

06. what’s your favorite band and/or musical artist ??

i’m super indecisive about everything, so it’s difficult for me to pick faves (as you’ll see in a sec) but… mac miller,  post malone, johnny cash, eminem, tenacious d, colter wall, kehlani, bruno mars, snoop dogg, elvis presley, justin timberlake, sublime, the rolling stones, etc etc there’s probably a lot i’m forgetting tho. i like most types of music except country. well, modern country anyway.

07. what’s your dream job ??

uh, i don’t have one? i mean yeah, i’d love to be a writer, or game dev, or a narrative director on a game, or direct, write, or act in movies or television, but like…i could live without any of that stuff. i just want to make a decent living, be able to own a house, not completely hate my job. yknow, not a glamorous life but a good one.

08. what’s one place you would love to visit ??

idk there’s a lot of places i’d like to go, but i’d most like to visit alpha centauri, even tho that’ll never happen lol

09. what’s your favorite tv show ??

i can’t pick that! but i love a lot of shows. general hospital, lucifer, the 100, supernatural, stranger things, izombie, south park, legends of tomorrow, once upon a time, arrow (at times), dragon ball, big brother, riverdale, chilling adventures of sabrina, that 70′s show, the ranch, umm… i could probably keep listing forever.

10. what’s your favorite movie ??

hmmmm, again i’ve got a list but… joe dirt, the new guy, why him, the waterboy, 50 first dates, all the spider-man movies, thor ragnarok, man of steel, 21 jump street, 22 jump street ,and a fuckton more lol 

11. what’s your favorite song ??

constantly in flux, but the current faves are — creep by radiohead, stay by post malone, no below by speedy ortiz, unshaken by d’angelo, cruel cruel world by willie nelson, wanksta by 50 cent, shooter by lil wayne & robin thicke, stressed out by 21 pilots, self care by mac miller (along with practically everything on his final album), and i will always, un-ironically love only in america by riff raff. he’s not the greatest ever but that song is hilarious and always puts me in a good mood.

12. what’s your favorite sport ??

can i say rocket league? lol

13. what’s your favorite food ??

pizza, unquestionably. cereal is a damn close second tho. or pot stickers. damn, i’m hungry… 

14. what’s your favorite face claim to use ??

typically, i’ve always really liked using paul wesley, chris wood, and matt daddario. i’m using lindsey morgan for the first time now though, and i really like her as an fc too.

15. what’s your least favorite face claim ??

to use?? um pretty much any singer or model just bc their resources aren’t too great. i really didn’t enjoy using pete davidson as much as i thought i would, either lol

to see… uh probs emma roberts or andy biersack. emma for obvs reasons but also bc i once had a really bad experience with people using those fcs. idm people using whoever they feel like using tho.

16. what’s your favorite character of yours to play ?? which do you think you’re most like ??

oh man, uhh i really enjoy writing chrissy & theo. they both speak to me. but tbh i’m not much like any of my characters? i’m boring af so i tend not to make any like me lol. i am kinda like theo in the sense that i’m quiet, and really just try to be a good person. other than that i’m most like jason solely based on the fact we’re both human lol

17. what’s your sexuality ??

danversexual. attracted only to fictional danvers women, examples including carol, kara, and alex danvers.

lmfao but nah i’m just a boring straight boy. well, like 99.9% straight. jensen ackles makes me question shit.

18. what’s the last movie you saw in a cinema/theater ??

captain marvel (thanks to dani lol). only two months late but it was worth the experience haha.

19. what’s the worst injury you’ve ever had ??

thankfully i’ve never really hurt myself too terribly except for a broken wrist, but between the ages of 10-17 i’d occasionally hurt my back by sitting weird, usually in an attempt to play video games without the glasses i desperately needed lol. once when i was like 11 i laid belly down on the couch with my elbows up on the arm of it for like three hours, which messed me up for days, then a few other times i hurt myself, but another bad one when i was 17, i had my back curved while sitting and propping my laptop up on my knee, tried to move and literally just cried, crawled on the floor, and laid there all night until i forced myself to move in the morning. lol luckily it hasn’t happened since i lost a little weight.

20. what’s a random or interesting fact about you ??

uhm, nothing? i literally can’t think of one, i’m dull af. i uh.. i replaced my own cpu cooler once? lmfao

21. do you listen to music while you write ??

sometimes. a lot of time i just like the silence or ambient background noise, but if i’ve got a fitting playlist for the vibe of what i’m trying to write, i’ll use it!

22. are you a morning, day, evening, or night writer ??

i’m a never writer, apparently v___v but lol ideally a night writer, my best work is between the hours of 12am & 4am, but my sleeping schedule is so inconsistent, and so is my dad’s who spends literally every waking moment of his telling me different stuff he wants done, so it’s tough to hit that sweet spot. i write whenever i get a chance tho.

23. have you ever roleplayed intoxicated ??

lol nah i’ve never even had a drink. like what teenager doesn’t have a drink at some point?? i told you i’m lame.

24. what language or languages do you speak ??

english, barely. and assassin’s creed 2 taught me some italian swears. and ac: odyssey has had me occasionally dropping “malaka” bombs since the day i first played it haha.

25. how long have you roleplayed ??

officially, about 9 years. i started at 11 on myspace, rping dragon ball z stuff. but basically about 12 years, if you count how from the ages of 8-11 i’d put an anime pic up on my myspace, pretend i was older, and talk to roleplayers i didn’t realize were roleplayers lmfao.

26. favorite roleplay genre ??

i like pretty much anything, tbh. as long as it’s well thought out, has an interesting plot, or whatever. sometimes it doesn’t even need that, it just needs to catch my eye or line up with something i’m looking for. but yeah, supernatural, multi-fandom, sci-fi, romance, town rps, high school/college rps, anime rp (well, pokemon mostly), harry potter… i’ve done it all tbh and don’t particularly have a favorite.

27. one sound you hate & one you love ??

the sound of cotton stretching is the absolute worst thing to me. or scratching cotton. idk, it just sends chills up and down my spine and makes my hands feel weak lmfao. i’m weird. i really love the sound of rain, or fire crackling, or like “ambient” harp or ukulele music.

28. do you believe in ghosts ??

short answer, yes. long answer… i’m pretty sure i was friends with a ghost girl as a kid?? like no joke, even looking back at it through rational “adult” eyes, i’m still convinced. my fam moved into a new apartment, and pretty much right after that i started having dreams about a girl my age at the time (11-12). i’d never seen her before but the dreams would be like just conversations, like i was visiting a friend or something. i don’t remember them much, but i do remember the feeling of someone else in my room all the time, like you know how if someone else is around you just know even if you’re not looking at them? like that. there was even one night i was getting in bed, laid there a minute, and then i could have absolutely sworn somebody came in the room and sat down next to me on the bed because i felt the bed sink a little under their weight, but i looked and no one was there. i had a really vivid conversation/dream/thing that night. then a few nights later, for the first time since moving there i didn’t have one. the next morning my dad was really freaked out and said he fell asleep in the chair, but woke up and couldn’t breathe, and felt cold little hands over his mouth. he rationalized it as just waking up from a nightmare but i didn’t think so, so that night when i went to sleep and saw her i got really upset, yelled at her for it, and woke up right after. then i never saw or heard anything even remotely similar again, like she left or disappeared or something. it’s so weird, and i know how crazy it sounds, but yeah. don’t get me started on the topic of ghosts lmfao. THEN AGAIN, like a year later we had a carbon monoxide scare, but i really doubt the two were related because that would mean there was an entire year that we were breathing it in and the monitor didn’t do anything lol

29. do you believe in aliens ??

no alien story, thankfully, but it just makes no sense not to believe in them to me. like, we probably don’t have them on earth, and we’ve probably never encountered any, but it’s as close as you can get to a mathematical certainty that there’s some other life out there in the universe.

30. do you believe in true love ??

like, people who are just meant for each other, like romantic soulmates? nah not really. but i believe that two people can grow to truly love one another. whether it’s based off an initial attraction/infatuation, or a friendship, or both. i’d actually argue that’s a simple explanation of the biological science behind the feeling of love, but that’s an essay i’m not gonna write lol. but there’s apparently a lot of different types of love, so i guess “true love” is suggestive? 

also slightly unrelated but i don’t-quite-believe-in-but-am-open-to-the-idea-of soulmates, not necessarily as two souls who are just meant for each other romantically and always end up together, but more as two or more souls that gravitate toward each other to make up the important people in each other’s lives, like family members, lovers, or close friends. but that’s more of a theoretical idea/possibility than an actual belief of mine.

31. do you hold grudges ??

um, yes. lol i try not to, and i really do want everyone to be their best/happiest selves, but some people man… some people can take a long walk off a short pier lmao

32. do you have any obsessions right now ??

PO KE MON GOTTA CATCH EM ALLLLL. also… life is strange (thanks dani lol). supernatural. stranger things (thanks dani & steph) the 100 / clexa / becho  (thanks steph). lucifer. captain marvel (thanks dani). the song “creep” by radiohead and all its covers (tom ellis, haley reinhart, etc). cyberpunk 2077 (thanks dani). as you can see, i’m easily influenced lmfao.

33. do you drive & if so, have you ever been in a crash ??

nope i don’t drive, precisely because i’d definitely end up in a crash lol

34. do you like the smell of gasoline ??

uh that’s a big fat no from me, chief

35. do you prefer writing fluff, angst, or smut ??

i like it all equally, i think. i just really like writing & rp in general. i did run a smut rp once in the past tho. it gets old quick tbh and is the one of the three i can live without lol

36. are you in a relationship ??

bahahahahahahaha no.

37. grab the nearest book to you and turn to page 23, what is the 17the line ??

❝  “and why would that be?” kronos’s golden eyes glittered.  ❞

— the last olympian by rick riordan.

38. put your playlist on shuffle and list the first four songs that pop up:

1. season of the witch – donovan 2. riot van – arctic monkeys 3. busta rhymes – qveen herby 4. der kommissar – after the fire

also i gotta cheat because it’s too perfect that the next two are

5. stay – mac miller (one of my favorites ever that i forgot to mention above) 6. only in america – riff raff (i just love this ok. the video is hilarious but tw james franco for those that don’t like him)

[96thdayofrage]

United States Congress

During his time in Congress, Ryan went to Newfoundland with James Jeffords to investigate the inhumane killing of seals,[15][16] and he was famous for vocal criticism of the lack of Congressional oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), authoring the Hughes–Ryan Amendment,[17][18] which would have required extensive CIA notification of Congress about planned covert operations.[19][20] Congressman Ryan once told Dick Cheney that leaking a state secret was an appropriate way for a member of Congress to block an "ill-conceived operation".[21] Ryan supported Patricia Hearst, and along with Senator S. I. Hayakawa, delivered Hearst's application for a presidential commutation to the Pardon Attorney.[22]

Peoples Temple

In 1978, reports regarding widespread abuse and human rights violations in Jonestownamong the Peoples Temple, led by cult leader Jim Jones, began to filter out of the organization's Guyana enclaves. Ryan was friends with the father of former Temple Member Bob Houston, whose mutilated body was found near train tracks on October 5, 1976, three days after a taped telephone conversation with Houston's ex-wife in which leaving the Temple was discussed.[23] Ryan's interest was further aroused by the custody battle between the leader of a "Concerned Relatives" group, Timothy Stoen, and Jones following a Congressional "white paper" written by Stoen detailing the events.[24][25] Ryan was one of 91 Congressmen to write Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnhamon Stoen's behalf.[23][24]

Later, after reading an article in the San Francisco Examiner, Ryan declared his intention to go to Jonestown, an agricultural commune in Guyana where Jim Jones and roughly 1,000 Temple members resided. Ryan's choice was also influenced both by the Concerned Relatives group, which consisted primarily of Californians, as were most Temple members, and by his own characteristic distaste for social injustice.[26]According to the San Francisco Chronicle, while investigating the events, the United States Department of State "repeatedly stonewalled Ryan's attempts to find out what was going on in Jonestown", and told him that "everything was fine".[9]

The State Department characterized possible action by the United States government in Guyana against Jonestown as creating a potential "legal controversy", but Ryan at least partially rejected this viewpoint.[27] In a later article in The Chronicle, Ryan was described as having "bucked the local Democratic establishment and the Jimmy Carter administration's State Department" in order to prepare for his own investigation.[12]

Travels to Jonestown

On November 1, 1978, Ryan announced that he would visit Jonestown.[28] He did so as part of a government investigation and received permission and government funds to do so.[29] He made the journey in his role as chairman of a congressional subcommittee with jurisdiction over U.S. citizens living in foreign countries. He asked the other members of his Bay Area congressional delegation to join him on the investigation to Jonestown, but they all declined his invitation.[9] Ryan had also asked his friend, IndianaCongressman and future Vice President Dan Quayle, to accompany him – Quayle had served with Ryan on the Government Operations Committee – but Quayle was unable to go on the trip.[30]

While the party was initially planned to consist of only a few members of the Congressman's staff and press as part of the congressional delegation, once the media learned of the trip the entourage ballooned to include, among others, concerned relatives of Temple members. Congressman Ryan traveled to Jonestown with 17 Bay Area relatives of Peoples Temple members, several newspaper reporters and an NBC TV team.[31] When the legal counsel for Jones attempted to impose several restrictive conditions on the visit, Ryan responded that he would be traveling to Jonestown whether Jones permitted it or not. Ryan's stated position was that a "settlement deep in the bush might be reasonably run on authoritarian lines".[31] However, residents of the settlement must be allowed to come and go as they pleased. He further asserted that if the situation had become "a gulag", he would do everything he could to "free the captives".[31]

Jungle ambush and assassination

On November 14, according to the Foreign Affairs Committee report,[32] Ryan left Washington and arrived in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana located 150 miles (240 km) away from Jonestown, with his congressional delegation of government officials, media representatives and some members of the "Concerned Relatives".[33]

Jonestown

Georgetown

Kaituma

Jonestown, Guyana.

That night the delegation stayed at a local hotel where, despite confirmed reservations, most of the rooms had been canceled and reassigned, leaving the delegation sleeping in the lobby.[34] For three days, Ryan continued negotiation with Jones's legal counsel and held perfunctory meetings with embassy personnel and Guyanese officials.[35]

While in Georgetown, Ryan visited the Temple's Georgetown headquarters in the suburb of Lamaha Gardens.[36] Ryan asked to speak to Jones by radio. Sharon Amos, the highest-ranking Temple member present, told Ryan that he could not because his present visit was unscheduled.[33] On November 17, Ryan's aide Jackie Speier (who became a Congresswoman in April 2008), the United States embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Richard Dwyer, a Guyanese Ministry of Information officer, nine journalists, and four Concerned Relatives representatives of the delegation boarded a small plane for the flight to an airfield at Port Kaituma a few miles outside of Jonestown.[32]

At first, only the Temple legal counsel was allowed off the plane, but eventually the entire entourage (including Gordon Lindsay, reporting for NBC) was allowed in. Initially, the welcome at Jonestown was warm,[29] but Temple member Vernon Gosney handed a note to NBC correspondent Don Harris (mistaking him for Ryan) which stated, "Please help me get out of Jonestown," listing himself and Temple member Monica Bagby.[31]

That night, the media and the delegation were returned to the airfield for accommodations following Jones' refusal to allow them to stay the night. The rest of the group remained.[32] The next morning, Ryan, Speier, and Dwyer all continued their interviews, and in the morning met a woman who secretly expressed her wish to leave Jonestown with her family and another family. Around 11:00 A.M. local time, the media and the delegation returned and took part in interviewing Peoples Temple members. Around 3:00 p.m., 14 Temple defectors, and Larry Layton posing as a defector, boarded a truck and were taken to the airstrip, with Ryan wishing to stay another night to assist any others that wished to leave. Shortly thereafter, a failed knife attack on Congressman Ryan occurred while he was arbitrating a family dispute on leaving.[37] Against Ryan's protests, Deputy Chief of Mission Dwyer ordered Ryan to leave, but he promised to return later to address the dispute.[32]

Camera-shot by Bob Brown (NBC) of shooters.

The entire group left Jonestown and arrived at the Kaituma airstrip by 4:45 p.m. local time. Their exit transport planes, a twin-engine Otter and a Cessna, did not arrive until 5:10 p.m. The smaller six-seat Cessna was just taxiing to the end of the runway when one of its occupants, Larry Layton, opened fire on those inside, wounding several.

Concurrently, several other Peoples Temple members who had escorted the group out began to open fire on the transport plane, killing Congressman Ryan, three journalists and a defecting Temple member, while wounding nine others, including Speier.[23][38] The gunmen riddled Congressman Ryan's body with bullets before shooting him in the face.[39] The passengers on the Cessna subdued Larry Layton and the surviving people on both planes fled into nearby fields during and after the attack.[32]

That afternoon, before the news became public, the wife of Ryan's aide, William Holsinger, received three threatening phone calls. The caller allegedly stated, "Tell your husband that his meal ticket just had his brains blown out, and he better be careful." The Holsingers then fled to Lake Tahoe and later to a ranch in Houston. They never returned to San Francisco.[40]

Following its takeoff, the Cessna radioed in a report of the attack, and the U.S. Ambassador, John R. Burke, went to the residence of Prime Minister Forbes Burnham.[32]It was not until the next morning that the Guyanese army could cut through the jungle and reach Jonestown.[32] They discovered 909 of its inhabitants dead. They died in what the United States House of Representatives described as a "mass suicide/murder ritual".[32]

Conviction of Larry Layton

Larry Layton, brother of author and former Peoples Temple member Deborah Layton, was convicted in 1986 of conspiracy in the murder of Leo Ryan.[41] Temple defectors boarding the truck to Port Kaituma warned about Larry Layton that "there's no way he's a defector. He's too close to Jones."[42] Layton was the only former Peoples Temple member to be tried in the United States for criminal acts relating to the murders at Jonestown.[43][44] He was convicted on four different murder-related counts.[45]

On March 3, 1987, Layton was sentenced to concurrent sentences of life in prison for "aiding and abetting the murder of Congressman Leo Ryan", "conspiracy to murder an internationally protected person, Richard Dwyer, Deputy Chief of Mission for the United States in the Republic of Guyana", as well as 15 years in prison on other related counts.[46] At that time, he was eligible for parole in five years.[47] On June 3, 1987, Layton's motion to set aside the conviction "on the ground that he was denied the effective assistance of counsel during his second trial" was denied by the United States District Court of the Northern District of California.[47] After spending 18 years in prison, Layton was released from custody in April 2002.[48]

Memorial

In honor of Leo Ryan, Veterans for Peace Chapter 124 was named after him. VFP 124 Leo J. Ryan Memorial.

Burial

Ryan's headstone

Leo Ryan's body was returned to the United States and interred at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California. The official Congressional Memorial Services for Ryan were compiled into a book: Leo J. Ryan – Memorial Services – Held In The House Of Representatives & Senate Of The U. S., Together With Remarks.[49] Ryan's younger sister Shannon said she was surprised both by the number of supporters that attended the funeral, and by the "outgrowth of real, honest sorrow".[50]

Legacy and honors

In 1983, Ryan was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress, as the only member of Congress killed while in the line of duty; the bill was signed by President Ronald Reagan.[51][52] In President Reagan's remarks about the medal, he said: "It was typical of Leo Ryan's concern for his constituents that he would investigate personally the rumors of mistreatment in Jonestown that reportedly affected so many from his district."[51] Ryan's daughters Patricia and Erin had helped to garner support for the Congressional Gold Medal, in time for the fifth anniversary of Ryan's death.[53]In 1984, the National Archives and Records Center in San Bruno, California was named the Leo J. Ryan Federal Building in his honor, through a Congressional bill passed unanimously and signed by President Reagan.[54]Jackie Speier, Ryan's former aide, was elected in 1998 to the California State Senate. In 2008 she won a special election to the US Congress from California's 12th congressional district, much of it formerly Ryan's constituency.[55] After redistricting, since 2013 it has been designated as the state's 14th congressional district.

[theantisocialcritic]

This AntiSocial Life: Revenge of the Outsider

I’m furious today. I’m rarely ever mad but today I’m furious. In the light of the horrifying terrorist attack by an extremist in New Zealand that resulted in the death of 49 innocent people, I’m more furious than I’ve ever been in one of these public massacres. It’s easy to be cold and cynical and let the numbers pass by in the background at work while you move on with your daily life but today I’m stewing in my anger. 

Christchurch, New Zealand 

A monstrous white nationalist and self-described “eco-fascist” psychopath (and apparently three of his friends) sought to end the lives of dozens of innocent people and succeeded. What followed was the usual cavalcade of cynical bi-partisan political pandering. The side loosely affiliated with the attacker obfuscates any involvement and/or distances themselves from their actions. The other side begins pandering about how the violence proves their arguments right and tries to push legislation that goes nowhere. We’ve all seen this song and dance dozens of times at this point. 

What became more frustrating in the hours that followed was the slow realization of just how bad things had gotten. Even beyond the horror that was the Australian Senator blaming Islamic immigration for the massacre, it quickly settled over the situation that the normal debate and bi-partisan dehumanization was something the shooter was actively seeking to perpetuate. In the shooter’s own manifesto he stated that the entire purpose of the shooting was to be as politically calculated as possible to spark mutual disdain and purposely accelerate reactions. 

Beyond the obvious uncontionable violence he inflicted on an innocent house of worship, he did everything he could to make his event as infuriating as possible. He used weapons he knew would start firearms debates across the world. He namedropped contentious political and cultural figures like Candace Owns and Pewdiepie. At a time when the edgiest parts of the internet are hotly contested (in Europe, copyright laws are about to become so strict that they could effectively ban memes) he lined the weapons he used with memes just to draw attention to them. He did everything in his power to make sure his act of violence translated into vicious political discourse in a purposeful attempt to get contentious conversations about gun control and social media censorship rolling as a backdoor means of brewing hostility. 

We’re at the point in discourse where vicious politics are so predictable that psychopaths can read the room enough to direct the outrage to purposely make discourse of difficult topics more broken. He actually thought he could go as far as to start a race war with his actions. Remember, the second bloodiest war in human history was caused by one man being assassinated. It could’ve worked. We’re already so far beyond the pale already that there’s hardly been any discussion of the actual people who were victimized in the massacre. Nobody cares about the dead and wounded beyond how useful they are as tools for political gain. Ask yourself, what did you hear first: the names of the victims or calls for a political response? For all the discussions of gun control, far right extremism, far left extremism, radical Islam, toxic masculinity, mental health reform, overzealous media coverage and hate speech that spins every time these events happen there’s never a truthful discourse about the most important things that matter. What is causing young men to actually become so nihilistic and disenfranchised in the first place? 

The Revenge of the Outsider

I’m primarily a film writer but I do most of my writing for websites that primarily cover politics and religion. Outside of my Flawed Faith series, I very rarely talk about these issues outside of the venues in which I’m generally encouraged to do so. Simply put, I’m not a confrontational person and I don’t want to spend my entire life litigating contentious issues. My entire ethos as an entertainment writer and TV host has been that entertainment is the last bastion of shared culture in the modern world. There is a reason that films become hotly debated topics like Ghostbusters, The Last Jedi and Captain Marvel. People recognize the politicization of films is effective and either see it as useful or as innately divisive. Historically I’ve attempted to stay out of these conversations because they’ve seemed innately useless to me. Today however I need to make an exception. 

Prior to today, I’d been deliberating a lot about the messages of a number of recent films. I’d been thinking of it ever since I saw The LEGO Movie 2 last month. That movie crystalized an interesting idea in my mind about the nature of villainy in recent popular films. There's an undercurrent of satire that covers a number of the most popular films of the past several years. In this movie, I finally understood it in the character of Rex Dangervest. Spoiler for The LEGO Movie 2 but it turns out that Rex Dangervest is an older version of Emmet who was lost for several years and decided to take revenge on his friends for abandoning him to suffer alone for years without hope of rescue. In order to do this, he foments hostility between The Man Upstair’s children to cause the LEGO equivalent of the apocalypse as retribution. With this character, I suddenly began to realize how much this story is repeated in recent films. 

In Black Panther, we have a version of this with Killmonger, a man who was abandoned as a child by Wakanda after his father betrayed them and who was left alone to suffer in poverty now seeking his claim to the throne as a means of overthrowing the world and fomenting a worldwide revolution. 

In Star Wars, we see this embodied in the character of Kylo Ren, a young man once destined to inherit the ways of the Jedi who was failed by every adult and institution in his life except for the leader of the First Order who offered him the opportunity to blow up the system that betrayed him. His most famous lines in the recent movies have all been variations of letting the past die. The moment the power reaches his hands and he takes control of the Imperial Death Cult, all he wants to do with it is reign destruction down on the Galaxy and destroy every institution before him. 

Of course, the most famous example of this story is unquestionably The Dark Knight. In that film, the battle of the soul of Gotham City is literally played out by a battle of minds between symbols of order and chaos. It predicted the modern world of escalation and reactionary impulses that drive radical movements across the political spectrum. The Joker in that film doesn’t actually have a singular motivation for his impulse but that doesn’t matter in that film. He’s the embodiment of chaos, meant to call the hypocrisies of the world out as he sees them and create some semblance of equilibrium as he sees it. 

It struck me just how frequently this kind of story pops up in modern fiction. What’s interesting in these stories is that at the end of the day, the heroes facing off against these villains ultimately come to the conclusion that society itself is at fault for the disenfranchisement of the villains. The order they perceived in the world was a lie that could only be set straight by ending the circumstances that gave the ideologies of each of these characters are very different, coming from identity, abandonment, oppression of the minority at the fringe of society, etc. What’s important is what they have in common. Regardless of the ideology of the viewer, there is a shared collective sense that society is fomenting the forces that seek to destroy it unintentionally. These characters all share a combined desire to destroy order and rule over the ruins. 

Unfortunately, this is the very story we’re watching play out in Christchurch. 

The Crisis of Modernity

There is a term used In Christian circles known as the “crisis of modernity”. It speaks to the notion that despite the entirety of humanity’s social, economic, technological and ethical progress that people still aren’t happy. There is a sense in the world that something is amiss in spite of the fact that there has never been a more prosperous and free time to be alive as a human than this very moment. As a result, young people specifically are seeking out meaning in alternative avenues. Most dull their senses in enormous amounts of food, drugs porn or video games to make their senses feel less lacking. In the case of the latter with video games, young men don’t seem to be seeking out relief from stress but an artificial form of challenge. Video games provide an artificial sense of completion and journey for young men to hone a set of skills and exercise them at their needs. The same is true of pornography. The only alternative to this is for young people to see out meaning in radical ideologies. People become so attached to their narratives that the thought of losing causes them to radicalize. We fear for an uncertain future so badly that we come to the conclusion that we must win by any means necessary. We compromise our values and punching down on innocent people. Then the other side reacts and does the same thing and the world spirals. 

We see this crisis playing out in the zeitgeist across the world. It’s easy to write these anxieties off as toxic masculinity or unconscious bigotry but the problems go far deeper than mere anxiety or prejudice. There’s a more primeval issue at the core of modern life’s failures. People are unhappy. There is a reason why so many people resonate with these revenge of the outsider characters like Kylo Ren and Killmonger. People sense that the order of modern life is spiritually killing them. Modernity as we know it doesn’t feel normal to people. Modern life is unfulfilling and lacks meaning. It’s easy to become disenfranchised and look upon the greatest creations of man and find them wanting. At that point, what choice is there left but to burn the past? What choice is there but to accelerate political tensions to burn down the old corrupt order. In the Post-Christian world, where every ideology and institution from the church, to the government, the country, the family and even the individual has been so thoroughly deconstructed, laid bare and revealed corrupted, where is there left to find meaning in? 

These characters, these real-life men exist and they’re looking out into the void and desperately aching to lash out and cause as much damage as possible. We talk so much about abuse and broken men but we rarely talk about where these men are coming from. To quote C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man, “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” We’ve raised generations of young people who have been gifted with the spoils of history and yet who lack the inner strength to enjoy them. These problems begin with how we raise our children. These problems begin with what we teach our children to believe about the world. The only solution to the crisis of modernity, the epidemic of mass shootings and the bifurcation of American life is to resolve the meaning crisis. Until then, expect the worse. 

[politicalfilth-blog]

YouTube Openly Stifling Your Opinions While Promoting “Authoritative Sources”

We Are Change

Let’s be honest with ourselves. As an independent news organization, it’s been tough covering the latest developments that have been happening in Las Vegas. There’s been a lot of mass confusion, a lot of speculation, a lot of people making up facts and a lot of people playing the blame game.

You can watch this video on DTube and YouTube.

News organizations are citing unnamed sources, that supposedly fit the shooter in with their own political confirmation biases. We have been personally calling this out. Trying to give you the facts of the case with the latest developments. We will try again in this video to do it with integrity.

It’s going to become a lot more challenging to do. We’re getting alarming details from YouTube, who has just announced they will be tweaking their search results, as Las Vegas conspiracy theories rise to the top.

There are a lot of bat poop crazy conspiracy theories that muddy the water with disinformation and propaganda. They make it look like anyone who’s asking any critical questions of a major event is just a loony, crazy tinfoil hat wearing insane person. Those people do exist. The reason why this new YouTube policy announcement is frightening is not that it will stop those crazy people but because it will stop anyone asking any critical questions of any significant event in the future.

YouTube announced that it is accelerating the rollout of planned changes to its search engine. On Wednesday night the company began promoting more “authoritative sources” in search results especially for those about major news events. Who does the YouTube Google Alphabet monopoly view as an authoritative source of news? They won’t tell you, but most likely it’s the establishment voices of mainstream media corporations like CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC.

The mainstream media establishment has utterly lost their reputation with the American public. People are no longer watching TV news since they’re going online to get their information from unbiased, independent sources. Now those sources will be silenced, and they will be muted. They won’t be in the suggested videos, in the search engine results, and the won’t be in the recommended video lists.

These “authoritative” voices which previously lied about wars, lied about banker bailouts and so many other things those will be the institutions that now will control the narrative. While they continue silence, anyone, who is not a part of the establishment mainstream media particularly those that do not tow the status quo. This includes channels like WeAreChange and many other legitimate independent news channels on YouTube.

You the viewer are more critical than ever when it comes to sharing real legitimate criticisms of authority. YouTube will only allow the general public to see the authoritative voices which of course are all from mainstream media outlets. The mainstream media only regurgitates everything that the government and other authority figures tell them. Those who have been caught multiple times lying to the general public to hide either their incompetency or just criminal behavior.

The Washington Post has been mocking survivors off the Las Vegas Massacre. An example is there making fun of Instagram star Dan Brazilian who almost died that night. He saw a girl next to him get shot in the face. He lived through horror. The Washington Post has the audacity to make fun of him calling him a hypocrite and a coward. All because he fled the scene during a mass murder shooting.

What else are you supposed to do during a mass shooting? Making fun of a survivor of this horrendous event just really shows an all-time low for a discredited piece of rag that some people call a newspaper.

“Making fun of a survivor of this horrendous event just really shows an all-time low for a discredited piece of rag that some people call a newspaper.”

In reality, they are just a propaganda paper that has their own YouTube channel. A channel that YouTube will most likely see as an authoritative voice that will be pushed and recommended to everyone.

Let’s go over some of the details that have just emerged about this latest Las Vegas massacre. We are learning that the Las Vegas shooter transferred over $100,000 overseas in days before this attack.

His brother came out and said that there “wealthy people” and that $100,000 isn’t that much money for them.

We’re also learning that this Las Vegas shooter had fifty pounds of explosive materials in his car in addition to a couple of thousand rounds of ammo. This was sitting in the parking lot of the MGM Grand. He also had cameras set up inside and outside of his hotel room so he could monitor the entire situation as it went down.

We’re also discovering that he worked as a government employee for over a decade inside of the Department of Defense, IRS, and even the US Post Office.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that he was prescribed a psychotropic drug that can have serious side effects. It was prescribed several weeks before this incident. The medication is used as a sedative and a calming medication. However, the side effects can be confusion, hallucinations, unusual thoughts, or behavior; including unusual risk-taking behavior, decreased inhibition, no fear of danger, depressed mood, thoughts of suicide, or hurting oneself. They also include hyperactivity, agitation, aggression, and hostility.

The authorities say they have evidence that the Las Vegas shooter planned to survive and possibly escape this mass shooting. Photos leaked from inside of his hotel room apparently show a letter that he left. Authorities have since admitted to the presence of the letter but said it was not a suicide note. They have remained tight-lipped on the contents of it.

The discrepancies don’t just end there as there has been a room-service receipt leaked online that is leading many people to believe that there was a second person involved. The receipt lists that the room service was for two people and shows that the shooter was in the room on September 27th.

The hotel employee posted these receipts on his Facebook page before later deleting them. He wrote “I think. I talked to the Mandalay Bay assassin, and I was alone with him for several minutes.” The assailant’s name is on the receipt and directly contradicts the police reports of when this assassin checked into the hotel.

Supposedly the shooter had previously booked two rooms at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago overlooking the Lollapalooza event and had rented multiple rooms looking over two separate festivals in Vegas and Chicago.

One of the events being a rap concert which directly contradicts Infowars attempts to assert without any evidence that the shooter was an anti-Trump liberal with ties to Antifa and ISIS.

An Iraq war vet gave the exact location of the Vegas shooter and said that it took the police over an hour to respond. He said it felt like it took them too long to get over there to take him out.

There’s a lot of theories and speculation out there about what happened. What was the motive why did this happen. Some of which have been thoroughly debunked. This still leaves a lot of important questions that are not being answered. The authorities are being very tight-lipped, they even say that the motive remains elusive to them.

Whatever the truth may be it’s still important to ask the critical questions and not just participate in wild theories since I refuse to do that.

There are forces behind the scenes that are looking to benefit from this tragedy. Not only by politicizing it but by pushing other political agendas. This significant event will create changes for our way of life. We’ve seen the New York Times wrote an op-ed today calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment.

We’ve also seen a bizarre post on 4chan made three weeks ago by an anonymous poster who called themselves John. He wrote warning users to stay away from any gatherings or large groups of people in the Vegas area. He stated that he had insider knowledge of what he referred to as a “high incident project.” He even wrote that he couldn’t guarantee anything would happen but that Las Vegas is “on their minds.”

Then he went on to correctly name former head of the Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and casino owner and billionaire Sheldon Alderson. He felt these two men are set to profit most from the wave of new regulations set to spring up in response to this Vegas incident. This is just a random 4chan post so take that with a grain of salt. The fact does remain that people like Chertoff and those behind similar companies do stand to profit.

We’re already seeing the push by media organizations like The Huffington Post who write saying “Do U.S. hotels need metal detectors.”

Already metal detectors and body scanners have been placed in some Las Vegas hotels in response to this incident. Former chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security a former CIA agent now CEO of the Chertoff Group went on CNBC. He said, “In a free society there’s no way to eliminate this kind of risk.” So he said in a free society you will not be safe, freedom is bad, and then recommended: “in addition to Intelligence Sharing you can also do a number of steps to establish a secure perimeter using various types of screening technology.”

Screening technologies which refer to body scanners and metal detectors. Which the Chertoff group that he is CEO of manages. This security consulting agency includes a client that manufactures the machines. His company directly represents the companies that make the scanners. That’s why even Gawker put it in 2009 that “Why is Michael Chertoff is so excited about full-body scanners?”

A company that people described in effect is a shadow Homeland Security Agency. This group has recruited at least 11 top officials from the Department of Homeland Security as well as former CIA director Michael Hayden.

I think it’s important for the American people to understand that the same authoritative voices that are having representatives and CEOs of major companies pushing for body scanners are also the ones who are going to be selling them.

Let’s not jump to conclusions, let’s not speculate, and let’s stay with the facts. We’re going to be following this event very carefully on this independent news channel. We are not supported or backed by any authority figures but just you the viewer. Please consider donating at wearechange.org.

Your donations through PayPal, regular mail or Bitcoin help keep us entirely free and fully independent. That way we are fully open to give you this sort of news. If you appreciate it, please share it with your friends and family members. Let me know what you think in the comment section below and of course, stay tuned for more.

The post YouTube Openly Stifling Your Opinions While Promoting “Authoritative Sources” appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change https://wearechange.org/youtube-openly-stifling-opinions-promoting-authoritative-sources/

[politicaltheatre]

Who Prosecutes On Behalf Of Justice

The title of this essay isn't a question, but it should be. Our instinct is to make it one, and with good reason. It is, in fact, the motto of the United States Department of Justice: Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur. It is the Department that prosecutes. Its name is itself a bold claim. It is a promise. Nothing less will do.

Of course, the history of the Justice Department hasn't exactly lived up to that promise. The department head, the Attorney General, has always been a political appointee, a man or, recently, a woman serving at the pleasure of a president. There might be some justice, but federal prosecutions tend to be political, and if there isn't interference from the top, there most certainly is influence.

We could not have asked for a better display of this than the Senate testimony of former FBI Director James Comey followed by a rebuttal by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Comey, in the role of witness for the prosecution, gave compelling testimony against his former boss, each answer implicating attempts at obstruction of justice, if not success.

The president's defenders have attempted to undermine Comey's sworn accusations by focusing attention on whether or not Trump was directly involved in the collusion with the Russians, and, somewhat bizarrely, on his failure to obstruct Comey before firing him.

The most bizarre, and troubling, act of defense was that of Sessions. The sight of a seemingly dotty old man repeating again and again that he could not recall meetings and conversations to which he was a part, ones dating back only a few months, or even weeks, strained not just credulity but, if taken seriously, should cast doubt on his ability to do any job, let alone one of the most powerful in the country. This, we are told, is the defender of Justice, he who prosecutes on its behalf.

His memory, of course, is not in doubt. It's much worse than that. His clockwork loss of memory, much like his well practiced affectation of choosing the longest possible synonym for every drawn out answer, was half of Sessions' own attempt at obstruction. Coupled with his staunch defense of presidential confidentiality not apparently codified into law, Sessions' performance showed exactly why he was chosen for his job. He will gladly skirt the letter of the law whenever the spirit of the law gets in the way of what his boss wants.

Sessions' testimony was a tremendous example of the stark difference between the political Left and the political Right. To be of the Left, truly of the Left, is to believe that if one demands accountability of others one must be equally accountable to them. It is to believe that the ends must never be allowed to justify the means. To be of the Right, as Trump, Sessions, and the rest of the president's men are, is to believe that one must never be made to be accountable to others in spite of demanding accountability from them. To the Right, selfishness is a virtue. Ends always justify means.

To understand this is to understand what right wing politicians do and why. At the same time, it makes things such as the shooting of Republican House Whip Steve Scalise and those with him so confusing. The would be assassin was a vocal supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders and a vocal critic of the Right long before that. If he believed in the values of the Left and accountability to others, how then could he justify murder?

The answer is simple. Whatever cause he attached himself to in his public life and however he identified himself, in his private life, the one he kept to himself, he was aggressively selfish. He lived in fear and frustration, and he was impatient to get what he wanted for himself and no other.

Stalking Republicans gave him identity and purpose, but only so long as he achieved some sort of instant gratification. If he imagined anything beyond the short term, it was a vision of himself as a martyr for a greater cause, of others flocking to support and possibly copy his example. Mass shooters think this way. Terrorists do, too. It is what unites them, and what unites them with anyone who embraces violence for his own ends. It is what removes them from any discussion of whatever ideology and social group they claim to represent.

To them, violence is a means to an end. For one brief, last moment, in that flash of violent rage, they are satisfied, but the end they create is violence, too. Whatever talk of bipartisan civility filling the halls of the Capitol and the talking points of TV news in the days following the attack, It won't last. It never does. Politicians have been shot before.

Some have suggested leaving talk of motivation behind, as though policy differences between the Left and Right could be boiled down to simple, honest disagreements of how to proceed to a common goal. It's as desperate as it is ridiculous. You can't leave motivation behind. Motivation is everything, not just in politics but in all things.

What, for instance, was the motivation of the owners of Grenfell Tower? Last year, they added flammable siding to the building, siding which caused a small fire on a lower floor to engulf the entire building with such speed that at least 58 residents were trapped and died. We do know that the tiles used were illegal, and that a more expensive flame resistant variant was available, so the answer is pretty clear: it was greed. They chose not to be accountable to residents who had to be accountable to them, and they did it to save a little money. Those were the ends that justified the means.

The building had been subject to complaints and warnings for years before the renovations. Even with a fire racing up the outside of the building, residents should have been able to escape down emergency stairs, but there was only one set and they were blocked by the fire. There may also have been no fire alarms and no sprinklers, making it more a matter of when than if the fire would happen, and making the death toll a matter of what day of the week and what time the fire would start.

The landlords could not have done it alone. A culture of permissiveness, both in the community and in the government, allowed it to happen, as it does everywhere when the poor and disenfranchised are concerned. Just as a failure to denounce political violence offers tacit approval, so too does the failure to denounce fires and other abuses that kill poor tenants everywhere. They too often happen unseen and unheard by the media, keeping them safely off our radar.

The same would have been true of Philando Castile, yet one more unarmed, defenseless black man shot and killed by a police officer in Minnesota last year, true if his girlfriend hadn't live streamed the aftermath of the shooting on Facebook Live.

There is no question of what happened. The defense for the police officer, acquitted of Castile's murder last week, argued that he had been afraid for his life. Given that Castile was seated in the car, defenseless, and following the officer’s instructions, and the officer was standing with his pistol ready, that argument is, like Attorney General Sessions' testimony, both bizarre and troubling.

The permissiveness in this case and other killings of unarmed black men by police officers is a matter of deference to authority. We understand that being an officer is dangerous work and therefore accept not only the idea that their fear is more justified than the men they have killed but their word for having been scared at all. Being of more direct service to us, we value them more. Even in the face of irrefutable evidence, a Minnesota jury agreed.

That there was no justice in that courtroom can hardly be laid at the feet of the prosecution. The officer in question may legitimately have been scared, but that does not serve as justification for violence. No, it serves as proof that he should never have been allowed near a firearm, let alone allowed to carry a badge.

The man that officer killed was a man he had sworn an oath to protect. In demanding that Castile be accountable to him, that officer owed Castile equal accountability in return. That is the balance of the scales. Justice, true justice, is equal. It is equality. It is accountability.

- Daniel Ward