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max1461 · 4 years ago

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

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

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

To massively oversimplify:

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

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

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

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

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

So what do I think about all this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

lol, we live there.

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

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

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

The post concludes with Alexander writing

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

And uh, yeah. Indeed.

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

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

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

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

#society #for posterity

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evilelitest2 · 5 years ago

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Why do fascists hate capitalism?

Good question. About half the reasons they hate capitalism are the same reason most leftist do, bad people are still likely to be annoyed at a bad thing that hurts them. Here are the other reasons

1) Fascists don’t believe in social mobility. Capitalism core tenant is “social mobility’, that somebody can work hard and become a billionaire, blah blah blah. Now this focus on social mobility is and always has been mostly a lie, but even rhetorically capitalism values the notion of social advancement. fascists do not, in fascist ideology, your birth determines your place in the world, and is part of a “natural order”. The only way to improve yourself is through war, and even that is more fulfilling your existing destiny rather than creating your own. Thus Fascists despises any form of social advancement outside military leadership, which is a major reason why they hate liberalism, socialism and communism, but its also a reason why they hate capitalism (though they usually prioritize the left wing ideologies first). This is even more true for them when somebody they think is “inferior” advances ‘above their station. Fascists aren’t aristocratic, but they hate capitalism for much of the same reason that the feudal aristocrats and monarchs hated it. It brings change and challenges the caste system

(Speaking of which)

2) On that note, capitalism is rarely…ideologically racist. Now capitalism is racist, it promotes and enforces existing racial hierarchies, and much of the damage of colonialism can be laid at the feet of capitalism. However capitalist ideology rarely buys directly into blood purity or “The Volk” style race theory that fascists so love. Capitalism in the US makes it super difficult for a black man to advance compared to his white counterpart, but if a black man does manage to become a billionaire, capitalism is basically cool with it. If you look at a demographic breakdown of the 1%, it is mostly old white men (and almost all people who at least partially inherited their wealth) but it also includes a lot of non white people and women. its a minority and many of them come from dictatorships (Saudi Arabia, China ect) but the ‘richest people in the world club isn’t entirely monochromatic. To leftists, this doesn’t seem especially impressive, but to fascists it is way too much diversity. Because capitalism is at its heart…amoral, the system will keep going even if the 1% are majority non white, gay or women, but to fascists that is terrifying. they barely tolerate capitalism because the ruling class are mostly straight white dudes, but the thought of the ruling class not overlapping with their belief in racial science to them is terrifying

3) Capitalism is ultimately an amoral system. It doesn’t really believe in a larger ideology beyond “make a fuck ton of money” and “innovate…somehow.” It does evil things because it believes that doing so will make them money, if doing the right thing will make them more money, they will. Capitalism is just an utterly mercenary ideology, and will gladly pretend to support progressive causes if it turns a profit. Again, leftists (rightly) aren’t big fans of this, but fascists hate it for the same reason we do honestly.

Like you know the whole “Woke capitalism” thing that gets leftists worked up. its doing something good but you know they don’t care and so they will abandon us the moment they feel like they can get away with it and all that. That is how fascists feel about the racism in capitalism, they like it but because it is not ideological, they don’t trust it.

Again this seems weird to leftists, but yes, fascists don’t like capitalism because it isn’t racist enough. We tend to interact with capitalism more than fascism, so people often don’t realize how much worse it can get

4) Capitalism doesn’t care about the spiritual, except as something to sell. ironically for all the hatred capitalism and communism have for each other, the two ideologies actually share a lot in common, they are super secular, materialist, and basically assume that everything in the world is nothing more than simply products. Communists and capitalists disagree on what should be done with these goods, but neither of them believe there is anything beyond this world.

Fascists utterly reject this world view, they hate it, they hate it with a thousand suns. I know that there current image is a sort of ironic racism chanboard nonsense, but in terms of their actual beliefs, Fascists take everything super seriously. The entire argument of Nazism is that they value symbols more than actual human life, and they are fiercely attached to various “spiritual” political issues even if they are officially atheists. I mean capitalism doesn’t give a damn about “degeneracy” because it isn’t actually a material thing, its just an aesthetic preference, there is no like “measurement” of degeneracy. same goes for honor, the family, purity, and their approach to art, fascism is in many ways about finding meaning in otherwise mundane things. So at fascist rally to them is this transcendental almost religious experience, while a capitalist would be more It interested in trying to find a way to make money off it. Fascism is a highly Romantic movement, which doesn’t play well with the cynical wordy perspective of capitalists, who believe in nothing.

Fascists also dislike aristocracy, but they love the myth and romance that is necessary for aristocracy and monarchy. They basically want aristocracy of the skin.

5) Fascists kinda…hate the idea of money. Like Capitalism emerged from the merchant classes and is basically came about with the argument “all of your aristocratic concerns over honor, titles, and god are stupid, what matters is who has the money and how you use it” And Fascists just hate that worldview, one of their defining traits is their love of war and conflict, in fact fascists prioritize war over almost everything else. It has been noted by smarter men than I (I recommend Ur Fascism) that Fascism is basically a death cult, they want effectively an endless war that they can die gloriously in destroying their enemies.

Consistently by the way, fascists will prioritize destroying the people they see as inferior over securing their own material best interest. Hitler probably could have run his dictatorship in Germany on his own for quite a long time and lived in luxury, but he wanted a giant war because that is what they care about.

in fact actively seem to indulge in self destructive short term ideologies. The Nazi economic policy was an absolute joke, with the economy serving as nothing more than something to keep the war effort going. Stephen Miller, the most fascist like person in trump’s administration, is hyper fixated on a brutal immigration policy, even though it actually hurts the economy. Fascists oppose freedom of movement and free trade, even though those are policies neoliberal capitalism supports. The reason is that Fascists value the preservation of “The Volk” over profits, and would rather their people suffer than have to live alongside other races (these people are deeply stupid)

6) Fascism doesn’t enjoy having fun. I know for most of, our experience of capitalism is misery as we work, to earn the right to work, to earn the right to give, ourselves the right to buy, ourselves the right to live, to earn the right to die. However the way that capitalism sells itself is basically “buy lots of shit and that will make yourself happy”.

Fascism doesn’t really…like being happy. As i said before, they like war, they like conflict, they like having an enemy who they can destroy. To fascists, what matters most is how you kill and how you die, rather than enjoying life. Fascism is about fetishistic death. Pink Floyd was right that Fascism is almost a form of intellectual suicide.

If you look at Japanese fascism, there is big fixation on aesthetic purity focus, with the only thing mattering being conflict

7) Capitalism tends to value the urban, the industrial, and the technology, while fascists, like the Confederates before them, are enamored with the rural and the pre-industrial. This might seem surprising, but there are a lot of fascists who are into environmentalism, Nazis Germany was one of the first states to pass laws banning animal cruelty and limiting smoking. Fascists are really into this sort of “Clean earth, clean people’ aesthetic which always serves as the breeding ground for cruelty.

8) Capitalism tends to be leery of state control and fascists are all about that shit

9)Finally….we need to be frank. A lot of the ways we talk about anti capitalism actually can fit really nicely into the antisemitic narratives that so dominated fascist thinking.

so the Marxist says

“Hey the entire world is controlled by a tiny elite of rich greedy parasites who are making us fight each other in order to benefit themselves”

And the Fascist says

“Yeah….they are Jewish”

its actually really hard to depict the rich as a class without accidentally wandering into anti Jewish sentiments, because the last 2,000 years of anti Jewish racism has been about creating conspiracy theories where they secretly control the entire world. A lot of what fascism does is taking existing issues of capitalism and being like “oh yeah…that is the fault of the Jews. Or migrants/African Americans/Muslims/feminists ect. Gamergate is a good example of this, they are pissed at corporations, but they blame feminists rather than you know…the inherently predatory nature of capitalism. Many of the things we don’t like about capitalism are things they also don’t like about capitalism. This is a major thing they do in terms of recruiting, they focus on getting people pissed at capitalism but then make it be secretly run by Jews rather than you know..Jeff Bezos.

(nazi properganda and below are soviet Images of capitalism )

(and sometimes both)

This is why btw, I am less anti capitalist than most leftists, because talking to fascists makes you appreciate things about them. Hitler was destroyed by both a communist dictatorship and a capitalist democracy working together.

Its worth noting that while fascists do hate capitalism, they hate socialism a lot more, and tend to ally with capitalist to kill leftists, as we see from the Weimar Republic. Fascist are often ok with certain types of corporate authoritarianism, but in the same way the left can be ok with somebody like Obama.

(Frank Miller’s Batman is if Libertarian and Fascism had a baby)

The lesson I would take from this is that just because somebody hates the thing you hate, doesn’t mean they are necessarily your ally, they might in fact be even worse. Yet another reason to distrust the dirtbag left

#ask EvilElitest #Fascism #capitalism #adam Smith #Communism #Marxism #Nazism #Political theory #Liberalism #Imperial Japan #Nazi Germany #Fascist Italy #Alt Right #Gamergate #Dirtbag left

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sosation · 5 years ago

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On the Passing of Michael Brooks

I only relatively recently became aware of Michael, less than a year ago. In that time he has impacted my life more than any other media personality, more than anyone I’ve never met.

Even though the first time I voted was for Obama in 2008, my political consciousness really began during my 2nd stint of college at UTA circa 2014/15. My history undergrad was waking me up to the power dynamics and hegemonic systems that exist in our society. I was beginning to understand geopolitics under the tutelage of Dr. Joyce Goldberg and getting really wrapped up in 20th century diplomacy. The Snowden leaks had happened and the Michael Brown demonstrations in Ferguson were drawing attention to the militarization of our police forces and their tactics on US citizens. I began to see capitalism as consisting of, and causing and contributing too, countless problems. Then, the 2016 election cycle stoked my already burning interests.

During this time, there was little “left-tube” to be found. Since 2012, streaming on our X Box has been my wife and I’s primary means of entertainment. Slowly more and more of our time was being spent on YouTube. The Young Turks was really the only progressive voice on Youtube, to my knowledge, at that time. (I wasn’t yet aware of Pakman, Kulinski, Seder and Brooks.) And even though they were my primary source of news, I wasn’t crazy about the hyperbolic presentation, Cenk’s ego, or some of the attitudes expressed by various hosts at various times. That being said, I learned a lot. I was exposed to many many great journalists and they certainly helped me solidify and articulate many of the arguments I had been thinking and feeling during this time. I even became a Texas Wolf-Pac Volunteer right after Trump’s election.

I ended my bachelor’s and master’s programs under the Trump presidency. (May ‘17, Dec ‘18 respectively.) During this time I read and wrote more than I ever have in my life. Under Dr. Christopher Morris, Dr. Patryk Babiracki, and Dr. Pawel Goral, I read Marxist historical theory and studied the history of the Cold War from the perspectives of the US, USSR and Europe. I also began watching less and less TYT and more Secular Talk, David Pakman, and David Doel. While these shows are great, there was little to no international perspectives or geopolitical discussions happening. (Doel being Canadian accounts for something but, IMO, anyone who lives in the 5 Eyes is hardly a non-western perspective and therefore significantly less valuable in regards to gaining the insight of the peripheries of the globe. As the hegemonic “leader” of the world, Canadians, New Zealanders, Aussies and Brits, can point and laugh at the US all they want but they are taking our lead-systematically and economically.That’s not to say that their perspective is unimportant, just not the same as those outside the western sphere) Furthermore, there is still even less of a historical perspective being represented in regards to current events anywhere on YouTube. No one seems to have a long dureé, an understanding of how history plays out- again and again, and how capitalism is responsible for much of our recent history. Marx did. Michael did.

I began my teaching career in earnest last summer, 2019, as a Geography teacher. First time I’ve ever had a salary and the first time that I didn’t have to wear a hat (or hairnet) to work. My lunch was 2nd lunch, 12:35-1:15. Here in Texas, The Majority Report was live and it began showing up consistently on my youtube feed so I began watching them while I ate my sandwich and apple, before students from guitar club would show up for a quick lesson before 6th period. I had watched TMR before, particularly live streams on twitch during the first few primary debates this cycle. They reminded me a little too much of an east coast morning talk show for me to take them too seriously at first but I eventually began to see that while Sam is--well-- Sam, the others on the show had quite a lot to say and clear, logical and articulate reasons for their positions...especially this guy Michael. Once I heard that he had his own show it quickly became the most listened to podcast in my feed. (This in itself is no small feet. I’ve been listening to podcasts for hours a day (sometimes 8) since 2012. It, too, no doubt contributed to my education and understanding of our world during this same time period but that is another blog all itself.)

Michael was everything that I was looking for. He was unabashedly a Marxist. He was intelligent and enjoyed rigorous thinking and leftist theory. He was hilarious and did fantastic impressions. He also was compassionate, kind and empathetic. He was a humanist, in the truest sense of the word and he understood, and articulated to me, that Socialism is a humanist movement. After I became a patron, I once asked him on Discord what his credentials were and he said that his Bachelor’s was in International Relations, which explained so much. Again, he was the only media personality that I was aware of that was knowledgeable and curious about the same things I was. He understood history. He valued history and its importance, so much so that he dedicated a separate Sunday show just to “Illicit Histories” where he would invite Historians from all over the world to discuss leftist movements in their own countries and how we could apply those lessons here and vice versa. This was it. This is what was missing from our national discourse--an international perspective and voice, and a historical perspective and voice. Michael was both and he was damn good at it.

The Michael Brooks Show was an inspiration. Michael, Matt Lech and David Griscom were smart, eloquent, young men who articulated the systemic failures of our time, who critically discussed and analyzed our current political discourse and who pondered possible solutions based in history. The guests of TMBS, the network Michael created, really were the shining feature. Ben Burgis, Artesia Balthrop, Molly Webster, Glenn Greenwald, Adolf Reed, President Lula De Silva, Slavoj Žižek , Noam Chomsky, Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Richard Wolff...the list goes on and on and on. These people brought so much insight to the state of our world. Professors, Journalists, people who have spent their lives working on the cause, a cause for a better future, one based in humanity and empathy. Michael was able to bring his own empathy for humanity into his interviews, asking thoughtful direct questions that got to the heart of the issue-- while simultaneously bringing levity to a serious topic by making jokes in the voice of Gandhi, Mandela, Obama, or Bernie, to name a few. He, fucking, got it man. He understood how the world was connected. He understood that we are ALL humans, and that we all deserve to be treated with dignity, and he understood that Marx was right about a ton of shit and he wasn’t scared to remind you of that.

Michael, for me, was an exemplar. He was a role model. I looked up to him. I had no idea he was only 13 months older than me, I thought he was probably in his early 40’s just based on the amount of shit that he knew. My personal 10 year goal was to be on his show. I wanted to either become a writer or go back into academia. I even wrote into a show a couple of months back and asked him which was a better choice. He was honored to be asked such a heavy question but didn’t feel comfortable giving that kind of life advice and I don’t blame him. He recommended that I continue teaching high school if that’s what I enjoy doing, and I do, and I likely will. He has shown me how to speak up for ideals that are right, regardless of what people think. Like, I understood that in the abstract, but watching someone do it multiple times a week really put it in my head that I need to advocate for my position publicly. I tell people that I’m a marxist- which in Texas is unheard of, even among leftists. Mostly due to people not understanding labels and what that even means. So I tell them. Thanks to David’s weekly recommended readings I haven’t stopped reading leftist theory even though I finished grad school over a year and a half ago. If TMBS never existed I never would have had the opportunity to read any of that.

My heart bleeds for Matt and David. I can’t imagine what they’re going though. I want them to continue, to keep the community alive in his name. But I completely understand if that is just too painful.

I was thinking earlier, trying to find an appropriate historical comparison to his passing. There are many but as a North Texan, the one that I ended up landing on was the passing of Dimebag Darrell Abbot. He did a lot. He accomplished a lot in a short amount of time. He inspired many to do things like him. It was entirely unexpected and not one person, not one, has a bad thing to say about the guy. Dimebag was adored. He listened to people, strangers, fans. He was kind and open-hearted and treated everyone with respect. Which made it extra hard when he passed. The same can be said for Michael. For Michael, since Socialism is more than just music, he inspired us to educate ourselves, to ask questions, to remember the periphery-Latin America, Africa, and Asia,-- to remember history and value it, to be compassionate, to educate others and to be active in our own communities.

He will be sorely missed. The one thing I keep telling myself is that his death has the potential to bring even more attention to his message-- to help further catapult this movement into something undeniable. To bring more awareness to how power works and to finally activate us to become, as Michael said at Harvard on Feb 1, 2020: machiavellian.

“...we still have to put work into reminding everybody that (Dr. MLK Jr.) was on the left. He wasn’t a guy who came out once a year and said ‘everybody should treat each other nicely. ...The other thing I loved about this speech was he talked about the fallacy- that certain Christians misunderstand love as a seeding of power. And then Nietzsche came along and rejected christian morality because he thought it was denying someone’s vitality- the will to power in a healthy sense, and he said ‘Love without power is sentimental and anemic. And power without love is abusive and corrosive’ I’m paraphrasing. And that was when I saw, I thought, ‘well here, ok, we know the left-wing Dr. King. Well here is the machiavellian Dr King, and I love it.’ I want the left to have Machiavelli, so we can have the strategy, the ruthlessness, the clarity, to actually win these battles. And be ruthless with institutions. And then I want us to learn how to be really kind to each other, welcoming of a broad set, and actually have a movement that has the capacity to do that.”

Let’s do the best we can to make that happen. Educate yourself about power. Educate yourself about ideologies. Read Marx and Engels. Read Slavoj Žižek and Adolf Reed. Read Michaels book Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right. Don’t get caught up in identity politics. Never lose sight of class dynamics. Use this knowledge to educate others and make informed decisions. Register to vote. Run for office. Effectuate real change. Do the intellectual rigor that was happening on TMBS every week, multiple times a week. Thank you for all that you brought to us Michael, you will be sorely missed and I hope to see you at the clearing at the end of the path.

Anthony Sosa

7-21-20

#Michael Brooks #TMBS #History #Geopolitics #International relations #humanity #compassion #humanist #Socialsim #marx #economics

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unscramblingtheliberalarts-blog · 7 years ago

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Aydelotte’s Social Media Weather Report: Niche in Small Liberal Arts Colleges

I’ve been compiling posts that contribute to popular discourse about the insularity of small liberal arts colleges. Their “nicheness” has for the most part on Tumblr received praise. For some, the liberal arts college “bubble” ensures a safe space that galvanizes, not stymies, spiritual growth:

oceansofbliss:

I just want to go back to my liberal arts college where everyone is nice and no one is very discriminatory and I live in a happy bubble of accepting joy

(emphasis added)

gryffindored:

the family that i created through my theatre degree in a small, liberal arts school in new england will never cease to amaze me. in times of tragedy, we are always pulling together and making magic happen.

(emphasis added)

theprettypatriot:

But my private school of less than 2000 is where I learned who I was and what I stood for. I figured out that life was absolutely what you made it, and that at the end of the day you are solely responsible for your happiness. I learned that losers quit when they’re tired and winners quit when they’ve won. Most importantly, I learned that it wasn’t your failures, but how you responded to them that defined you.

(emphasis added)

dandelionbreaks:

“The purpose of a university is to engage in dialogue, debate, and exchange ideas in order to try and come to some meaningful conclusion about an issue at hand. Not to shut ourselves off from ideas we find threatening.” — Charles Negy, Professor, Says Students Showed ‘Religious Arrogance And Bigotry’ In A Letter Later Posted On Reddit, emphasis added

Other students spoke of how liberal arts college’s insularity and small class size was a real and significant factor in the college decision-making process:

sunnystrong:

When conducting my college search, I looked for small liberal arts colleges (because I prefer smaller class sizes, and more interactions with professors) with a strong biological science or neuroscience programs (because I want to study those subjects), and Mount Holyoke ended at the top of my list. (emphasis added)

whatcomesnextisstrange:

Calvin’s general population tends to be the sheltered kind that don’t get out enough to really understand the real world, though as they spend time on Calvin’s campus I hope that that is changing. The students that come that don’t have the Dutch CRC background are slowly making differences, whether it be because the discussions they get into tend to be more political or philosophical, or that the general population of the United States is just getting more and more depressed and therefore hopefully more and more introspective.

... I’ve found great people here, not necessarily the people my parents thought I would find of course, their idea of a good friend is basically a robot anyways.

(emphasis added)

marilyns-child:

Then one day, while I was struggling with my decision between the two, I asked my mom for advice... She told me to apply to our local state university for two years and then I could transfer to a liberal arts college. We fought for days over it, but I eventually gave in.

I never made it to the liberal arts college.

...

I lasted a year and a half in college, following everyone else’s dreams for me. I took sixteen credit hours, worked two jobs, and started on a downward spiral that ended with me crying in a professor’s office, telling him I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t continue on. I was drunk, my hips were bleeding from having cut myself, and I hadn’t eaten in two days. By then, I had changed my degree to English ( “You can be a teacher!”) and there wasn’t a second of college I liked. I was miserable in a state school of thousands of students, being taught by professors who didn’t know me, and studying something I didn’t want to.

...

Sometimes, most of the time, following the money isn’t the answer. Following your heart often is.

(emphasis added)

Several posts delved into how the culture of insularity allowed for more open discourse about sexuality and pornography:

chongthenomad:

the awesome thing about the college I go to is that during one of my classes we were playing two truths and one lie and one girl was listing off the facts about herself and the last thing she said was that she was a stripper, and it turns out she actually was one but the thing is no one had any weird or disgusted or creepy looks on their faces, everyone just smiled and nodded and our amazing teacher even asked her where she worked and then she smiled at her and told her how convenient her job was since the strip club was not too far from campus and wow i really love my school

cyandie:

not being in the insular bubble of liberal arts school for several months now has made me even more vitriolicly opposed to porn because i forgot how average ppl really just talk about it and are so unopen to negotiating why [the industry is] heinous! ...

On the other hand, the same “nicheness” that was praised for bringing about a close-knit community also garnered criticism. Some posts touched upon the “liberal,” “left-ist,” “socially mindful/sensitive” stereotypes of people in liberal arts colleges:

surfcommiesmustdie:

one of my brothers teaches poli-sci at a small liberal arts college in illinois and my dad was telling me he went full cultural marxist. he used to focus on latin american politics but now he’s knee deep in gender stuff and other assorted social justice crap.

i advised disowning him

snout:

person: *holds elevator door open for me*

me: lmaoooo wow, virtue signaling much…? i bet you think youre just SUCH a good person. Oh sorry, did i trigger you? LOL. tough shit, the real world isn’t just a big liberal arts school. uhhh yeah, I’ll take the stairs, THANKS. 😏

Other critiques possessed a less facetious vein, noting the ironic social alienation that such insularity produced:

no-identity-land:

Honestly I’d so love to try and find some new friends or something more through an app or site like Her or Tinder or something, but my campus is ridiculously small and in the middle of nowhere, and my self-esteem can’t handle the thought of rejection (and the inevitability of having to see one of these people all the time on campus) so I’ll just pretend that I’m the one choosing to stay single and save myself the embarrassment lol

(emphasis added, Tagged: lgbt, gay, lesbian)

man-of-prose:

“This is what the real, no-bull- value of your liberal-arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out.” - David Foster Wallace, emphasis added

Another crucial criticism was the lack of access to the general public about academic theory that such insularity inexplicably reinforce:

hedevitoanditsown:

college/academia and various sub-cultures (punk, metal, regional cultural destinations like Portland, etc.) should not be the only avenues for which we recruit people into radical spaces. ... put your theory into practice and teach people the value of solidarity, mutual aid, etc. these people won’t take communism seriously until you divorce the cold-war rhetoric from the reality. starting up food not bombs in your liberal arts college town full of upper middle class liberals isn’t going to get us very far (not that feeding people who are vulnerable is a bad thing).

...

i think in order for the left to succeed, we need to overcome two major hurdles:

we need to make our theory less confusing and more accessible (breaking news: academia isn’t appealing to a lot of people and neither is theory that’s barely comprehensible. people have more important things going on in their lives, like putting food on their table and caring for their kids/families, than to try and figure out wtf derrida was saying)

we need to actually put our theory into practice (at least the stuff we can immediately, like we don’t need a full-scale revolution to practice mutual aid and democratic decision-making, etc.) and use it to HELP people who actually need it. think black panthers pre-COINTELPRO. because as we’ve seen the political elites of BOTH parties have left the working classes out in the cold to starve, they’re scared and irrational, so fascism is a logical leap for these people.

(emphasis added)

inqilabi:

Women participate in their own silencing. That’s the tragic part. Our own self regulation. We are raised to silence ourselves, become smaller, less visible. Then when women become feminists, you see the same crap… Except it’s got some name of some theory attached, and it’s taught in liberal arts schools or what have you.

Insularity is clearly a multi-faceted topic in discourse about liberal arts college culture on Tumblr. Small class sizes are praised for fostering an often intimate, sympathetic community and opening academic discussion about publicly stigmatized subjects, such as sexuality and porn. Yet, the “nicheness” generated from a tightly knit population does not prevent experiences of social exclusion or loneliness, which students (in this case from the LGBTQIA+ community) have found themselves struggling with. Nor does it solve the issue of general inaccessibility to sociopolitical theory and academics taught in higher education.

#liberal arts education #Swarthmore #liberal arts college #liberal arts #Aydelotte #Aydelotte foundation #Swarthmore College #weather report #Amy #insularity #nicheness #social alienation #small class size #sexuality

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renaroo · 7 years ago

Text

The Search (9/16)

Disclaimer: Red vs Blue and related characters are the property of Rooster Teeth. Warnings: Language, Canon-typical violence, Psychological manipulation and trauma Rating: T Synopsis: [Canon Divergence - Alternate S15] The Reds and Blues saved Chorus, but it has been a year and they are still missing. A motley crew has been gathered with the common goal of finding the war heroes, though the road is more troubled than anyone seems to realize.

A/N: Well, while I’ve fallen more than a little behind when it comes to keeping up with the current season of RvB I’m pretty happy with continuing this story, especially since we’ve only got seven chapters left after this!! (oh my gosh, right?) It’s been a blast writing these characters all together and I hope you all enjoy it as well!

Special thanks to @theshadowlord, @analiarvb, @cobaltqueen, @secretlystephaniebrown, and Yin for the comments and feedback!

The Common Goal

Things were getting so redundant that Kaikaina could have just about screamed. Washington was arguing with FILSS, Carolina was arguing with Andrews, Junior was honking his little head off to the point that Kai wasn’t even sure who he was honking toward. It was the suckiest turn a road trip had ever taken in her life and she kind of was beginning to hate everyone.

Which was why Dex had always told her, growing up, that they didn’t travel when taking vacations. Because they’d end up hating each other on the way there.

“Fuck, I never thought Dexter would be right about anything in my life,” Kai groaned, throwing her arms in the air and rolling her eyes. “But here we are, six abortions later and fucking hating everybody on a tiny ship.”

“Grif, we don’t have time for whatever you’re complaining about!” Wash yelled over his shoulder almost reflexively.

“Fuck you! What’re you? The monologue police now?” Kai cried out in return. “I mean, fuck you, dude. I thought we had a whole moment or something back there on the prison planet! Where the fuck’s that, Wash? Or are you one of those Johns who only like a girl when she’s crying?”

Washington turned and stared at her. “We’re trying to save the Reds and Blues, do you have something productive to suggest?”

“Yeah, take it out of your ass already, jesus fuck,” Kai replied.

Before Washington replied, Carolina held up a hand as if to silence Kaikaina immediately. “We don’t have the time, Li’l Grif!”

“Dude, fuck all of you,” Kai snapped, finally getting out of her seat and marching past the arguing group. “And I’m not just saying that because yesterday I would have fucked you all. I mean like, I would absolutely push you off the fucking ship without helmets on right now.”

The reporter immediately stiffened. “Private Grif — Kaikaina — I’m not sure what’s the proper address for you… We need you flying the ship!”

Kai let out a long groan and looked up to the ceiling where the speakers for the cockpit were secreted away. “Sheila?”

“I am the Freelancer—“

“Yeah-yeah-yeah I don’t give a fuck!” Kai screeched in return. “Autopilot for now and tell me when these assholes figure out what direction we’re going in so that I can come and fly them without wanting to smash in any of their heads!”

“Understood, Private Kaikaina Grif,” the ship returned in a content tone.

“Fucking. Hell,” Kai snapped before going through the cockpit doors and heading toward the tight ship’s bunking area.

She had never needed stress relief like she did right then at that moment, and there were about five ways off the top of her head that she could think of relieving some of that pressure. And since being as pissed at Wash and Carolina as she was at the moment took threesome off the table, she was just going to go straight toward dildo.

Looking around the room, Kai was attempting to remember which mattress had been the last one she masturbated on when she realized that her running internal monologue wasn’t the only voice that she was hearing.

Rather, in low tones across the room, Doctor Grey was muttering.

Kai glanced over to that side of the room and noticed a bright light illuminating from something in Doctor Grey’s lap and was also making sound. Immediately Kai began to get defensive and absolutely shocked that someone else was using her glow in the dark electric vibrator without at least asking permission when she finally caught onto what Grey’s actual words were.

“I’m afraid that the only window I can give you is twenty-four hours, Doctor,” the device said in a voice that was even less familiar to Kaikaina than the reporter’s.

“I was only going to ask you for twelve, Vanessa,” Grey replied. “Chorus will need an immediate defense to these charges, and… Our people have suffered too much and come much too far to withstand further slander on this level. We’ll do what we can but…”

“You’re right,” the device said with a long sigh. “It’s just… I know your assessment of the situation must be right, but that only makes what we have to do that much harder. They saved us. All of us. I don’t want to repay that with a stab in the back.”

“Our decisions are sometimes made for us, President Kimball. You’ll have to come to accept that in your position now as much as you had while you were a general,” Grey replied almost coldly. “We move forward for Chorus.”

“For Chorus,” Kimball replied before the device turned off and the glow disappeared.

Doctor Grey sighed and closed her device, continuing to sit on the bunk in the corner with some kind of defeat visible in the way she held her shoulders.

A few solid seconds passed by as Kai just stood in the door of the bunk room with her eyebrow raised and hand on her hips. But when that was obviously not enough to catch attention, she shrugged and cried out “What the actual ever fucking hell?”

Surprised, Grey turned and looked at Kaikaina almost stunned. “Private Grif, I hadn’t… How long were you—“

“You’re about to get all back stabbing on us? What the fuck?” Kai demanded.

“I am not backstabbing you,” Grey said calmly, methodically getting to her feet and holding up her hands as if to calm Kai down.

“The hell you’re not! I just heard someone on your little computer say stab in the back and you’re fucking talking about us!” Kai glared at Grey. “Also all that shit like For Chorus? Are you… are you infiltrating us for some kind of Glee Club Cult? Because I swore off anymore cults after the last one wanted everyone to eat this bitch’s placenta. Like no fuck you if I’m not eating my own why the fuck would I eat yours?”

Doctor Grey stared at her in shock. “Wait, what?”

“You heard me!” Kai snapped. “You’re going to kill us for some kind of cult!”

“I am not in a cult!” Doctor Grey squeaked out so high pitched that Kai actually reached up and held her ears.

“Okay, ow,” Kai hissed in pain.

“I am not in a cult,” Grey repeated, lower. “Chorus is my planet, the one your brother and the other Reds and Blues saved. I was speaking to our planet’s president and briefing her on what’s going on so far. And about how the UNSC is framing this situation against us and them.”

Kai squinted at Grey. “You mean how my brother and friends said some bullshit no one on this ship believes?” she asked.

Grey hesitated, which Kai had absolutely no patience for.

“Oh my fucking god it is because of that! Don’t blame my bro and everyone for that bullshit! We don’t know what’s going on with them, so don’t be a fucking stupid bitch about it—“ Kaikaina went off scathingly.

“I don’t appreciate being called that,” Grey said quite temperamentally.

“Fucking tough,” Kai snapped, turning to leave the bunks. “It’s probably the nicest thing that’ll be said to you after I tell Officer Washington and Carolina what you’re doing!”

She was already one step out the door when Grey called out for her.

“Kaikaina! No, please�� wait,” she said desperately, crossing the bunk room quickly to grab onto Kai’s shoulders.

Immediately, Kai spun around on her heels and slapped off Grey’s hands. “Don’t go in for the stab! Ugh! I fucking hate backstabbers! You always go for the back when people aren’t looking!”

“I’m not going to backstab you, metaphorically or else,” Grey assured her.

“Oh, going for the ol’ front stabby work, fine with me,” Kai snapped before pulling off her gauntlets to unleash her manicured nails. “You better watch it, Doc! I went to public school for fourteen whole years!”

“No stabbing at all! Just… I have a question for you, and I need it to be answered,” Grey said seriously. “Why are we here, Kaikaina?”

Kai got into brawling stance, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Now you’re trying to confuse me with metaphorical puzzles. Well fuck you, I’m a Marxist!”

“No, I don’t mean metaphorically, I mean why are we here on this mission?” Grey asked desperately.

Letting up some, Kai squinted suspiciously at the doctor. “To save my brother and friends. Duh.”

“No, Private Grif, that is why you’re here,” Grey answered somberly. “Tucker Junior is here because he is looking for his father and will hopefully be able to continue preventing further war between our races. Agent Carolina is here because she, as former leader, feels responsibility for her troops, and especially for the Epsilon AI. Agent Washington is probably most like you, here for all the Reds and Blues, but his primary motives will always rest with his own team — the Blues over the Reds. And Miss Andrews… well, she’s here for the truth, she says, but I believe she’s here for a story.”

“Right,” Kai replied, more than a little confused by the rhetoric. “We’re all here for the same thing.”

“No, we’re all here for different things that lead to the same goals,” Grey emphasized. “Kaikaina, your brother and friends… they’re also my friends, and I owe them not only for my life countless times over, but for the entire existence of my planet. Of my people.” She took a breath and folded her hands together. “And I have done terrible things for my people before. I don’t regret doing them. I just did them. Because they were things which needed to be done. And I will continue to do anything in the name of my people first before anyone else.” She finally met Kai’s eyes. “I want to save my friends. But I will save my planet at all costs.”

Taking a step back away from Grey, Kai couldn’t hide her disgust. “Including turning on my brother?”

“Just like deep down you know it’s true that you’d give up all the rest just to save your brother,” Grey assured her.

At first, Kaikaina opened her mouth to fight back, but there were no words to express how she felt. Or, at least, the words that were there did not entirely dispute Doctor Grey. She audibly snapped her mouth shut and just glared at the doctor instead.

“It’s fucking shitty,” Kai spat out.

“I agree,” Grey replied.

“And we’re not really a great team if we’re all thinking the same things but don’t agree who we want to save the most,” Kai continued.

“That… remains to be seen,” Grey assured her before stepping forward. “If you must tell Carolina and Washington, I can’t stop you. And I won’t apologize to them just like I’m not apologizing to you. But if there’s a chance — any chance at all — that we can all get everything we want, then having me with you in the upcoming battles and aftermath is going to be very useful. And the best way we can work together, is if none of us are fighting.”

Lowering her guard entirely Kai exhaled deeply. “You’re a sneaky bitch, y’know that?”

“Still don’t like that phrase,” Grey replied with a forced smile.

“Fine, but I’m not giving up suck my clit as a one-liner,” Kai warned her.

“I would never dream of taking it from you,” Grey assured her.

For as long as Junior had grown up around human languages, for as much as he understood when humans spoke, for the life of him he could not understand a single reason everything was so difficult between his father’s friends at the moment, leaving him to sit in his seat and watch the conversation bounce back and forth between everyone like an extremely long volley.

“Are you trying to tell me that you can’t narrow down UNSC outposts more than twenty locations?” Carolina demanded from Andrews. “I could google a list of UNSC outposts and get that as a lead. Other than telling our story how exactly are you helping us out?”

“You need to calm down and listen to what I’m saying, Agent Carolina,” Andrews said, hands up defensively. “We’ve been nothing but honest with each other thus far and there’s no reason to think that I’m going to undo the civility and respect we’ve maintained.”

“My patience wears thin even for my friends, Miss Andrews, and my trust of this situation has been cut nearly in half after realizing that your next big story is probably going to be on how you escaped the monsters of Project Freelancer!” Carolina shouted.

“That is not my next story, I report the truth, and until right this minute I have not seen anything monstrous from the two of you,” Andrews fought back viciously.

“Okay, I think that’s enough,” Washington said, literally getting between the two women.

“Bow chicka honk honk,” Junior hummed to himself boredly, knowing full well that no one else would hear or understand the context.

“Carolina, narrowing down to twenty outposts in the entire UNSC galactic territory is a big deal,” Wash reminded her steadily. “And we can have FILSS develop a route so that we can hit all of them as quickly as possible.”

“It would be my pleasure!” the ship-lady said, causing Junior to look up to the speakers. It didn’t matter how many times the ship talked to them, it still caught the young hybrid off guard.

“And, Miss Andrews, there’s no disregarding the fact that your career is based almost purely off brokering information as needed,” Wash continued, looking toward the reporter. “I can respect that. But I can also distrust it since we have no idea what information you’ve not given us that could seem like nothing to you at the moment but can be instrumental to finally finding and saving our friends from whatever is happening now.”

“I’m not trying to treat your concerns as invalid,” Andrews assured them both. “Believe me, I understand that… missteps in ethics by my profession have made a terse relationship between ourselves and the military just by default. But at the moment, neither of you are military. You’re wanted fugitives who need their names cleared as much as they need their friends helped. Hopefully fulfilling one will help you fulfill the other. Otherwise… this will get increasingly difficult for all of us.”

“In what way?” Carolina demanded.

“In that two wanted Freelancers, a Chorusian doctor, and a missing alien messiah hitting the specific UNSC bases that have been upgraded from FPCON Normal to FPCON Delta in just the last week without any known terroristic or military action in their area is not the easiest cover to keep under,” Andrews explained steadily.

“Then give us something to narrow it down with,” Wash begged.

“Like what exactly, Agent Washington?” Andrews demanded.

Wash sighed, running a hand through his hair and looking stressed beyond his years. “I… I don’t know. But there must be something which can be plugged into FILSS—“

“Bow chicka honk honk,” Junior yawned.

“—that can help her statistically better our chances,” Wash concluded before rounding on Junior. Judging by his expression, he had forgotten the young alien had even been in the cockpit with them. “What have I told you about doing that, Junior? You’re too young to even know what it means!”

In response, Junior stuck his tongue out and clicked his lower mandibles together for added effect.

“Then tell me something about Hargrove, something that only your experience with him and the UNSC Subcommittee would reveal,” Andrews answered sternly.

“I can’t believe you’re actually playing into the whole quid pro quo assholery,” Carolina snapped, arms crossed.

“Don’t take it personally,” Wash assured Andrews, turning from Junior again. “Carolina getting snappish and angry with someone without throwing them through a wall is usually a sign of affection.”

“Who’s side are you on?” Carolina demanded.

“The side of getting our friends back,” Wash reminded her firmly.

“This isn’t quid pro quo, per se,” Andrews assured them. “What this is, is those statistical variables you’re looking for, Agent Washington. The more we can get an idea of what exactly it is that Hargrove wants besides covering his own ass here, the more we can figure out which of these UNSC bases are likely to feed into his interests.” She glanced around the room. “The more likely it is that he and your friends would be there. He wants something more than he’s telling. But we need inside his head to know more.”

“Fine, we can do that,” Washington said quickly before looking toward Carolina. “What do we know about Hargrove’s motivations?”

Carolina folded her arms and stared at the floor for a moment before glancing back up to Wash. “He was interested in artifacts. In alien artifacts — that was why he was on Chorus, and that’s how he had Felix and Locus paid. Not to mention how all the weapons for the pirates were a combination technology that he was selling on the black market.”

“Would he be so bold faced as to use UNSC assets for his personal wealth on their own bases?” Wash asked critically.

“Why else would he give up so much of his corporate freedom in order to get a position within the government to begin with?” Carolina demanded. “My… The Director once said that the only inhibition to progress worse than government oversight was corporate oversight. Which is why he worked through the UNSC to begin with.”

“Oh, well then, if the Director’s words are what we’re going by now,” Wash muttered angrily.

“No, it makes perfect sense,” Andrews spoke up, walking toward the map FILSS provided on one of the cockpit’s scenes. She looked toward the markers. “If we could just narrow this down to alien artifact sights that would be available to Hargrove through UNSC bases… It could—“

Before Andrews could even finish, the twenty green pens highlighted on the galactic map flashed, half of them switching from blue to red, then the map enhanced so that only the remaining blues were left.

“Thank you, FILSS,” Carolina said, stepping up to the map. “This is a start.”

“We could begin by going to Orion-113, it’s the closest site, and the smallest so easiest to comb,” Washington offered.

Recognizing the name, Junior let out a long sputtering sigh and clicked his mandibles together. in a chatter. Been there, done that.

To the youth’s surprise, though, that seemed to catch his companions’ attention, having them turn to look his way — or at least, Carolina and Washington did. Andrews joined them belatedly.

“What do you mean? You’ve been to Orion-113?” Wash asked.

Junior nodded.

“That’s right,” Carolina said, snapping her fingers. “Tucker and Junior served in the Peace Corps after the war ended, right?”

“Specifically, they were working with Sangheilli representatives at various artifact and religious locations, overseeing peaceful division of assets,” Washington agreed.

“Blargh” Junior reminded them.

Wash stared at Junior. “What do you mean, turning them on? Your dad was turning them on?”

“Bow chicka honk honk—“

“Wash, it’s just like what Tucker did on Chorus,” Carolina reminded him. “Hargrove could be using his control over the Reds and Blues to switch on alien weapons just like Tucker did before.”

“Which would mean going to sites where Tucker and Junior hadn’t already done that,” Wash marveled. “Junior! Come up here — of these bases, tell us which ones you remember going to! It’ll narrow things down for us even more and mean we can find your father faster!”

Amazed, Junior got to his feet. I can help? he called out through honks.

“You can,” Washington assured him.

Junior’s chest filled with pride and hope like he hadn’t felt since the start of their long search.

The reporter looked around the room a few times and then put away her notepad. “You realize that I am fluent in Sangheilli in order to help my field reporting and nothing that comes out of the child’s mouth is Sangheilli, right? I have no idea how any of you know what he’s saying.”

“It’s one of life’s great mysteries,” Wash hummed with satisfaction on his face like Junior had never seen. “Now come on, Junior, let’s find your dad.”

“Blargh!” Junior shouted excitedly.

#writing #rvb fic #RvB: The Search #Kaikaina Grif #Tucker Junior #Agent Washington #Agent Carolina #Dylan Andrews #AI: FILSS #Emily Grey

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irregularjohnnywiggins · 8 years ago

Text

My Pitch for how to rewrite Arrow.

So, a while back, after me and my brother had a chin-wagging session on why Arrow was a legitimately terrible show after Season 2, I decided to do a little think piece: say I was tasked with rebooting Arrow a couple of years down the line. How would I do it? What would I change (a lot)? What would I keep the same (not a lot)? I decided to sit down and write out a basic outline for a rewritten Arrow Season 1.

...two weeks, 2000+ words and another basic outline for Season 2 later, I am pleased to present my pitch for Arrow Season 1 under the cut to anyone who might give a shit.

WARNINGS for: discussion of violence, mental health and swearing.

The first season is almost exactly the same as Arrow, but with a few not that big rather large differences

1. First off, no Felicity. You could probably bend her characterization into something likeable, but it would just be too much work for too little payoff.

Seriously, if we need someone to do hacker bits? Oracle is right there, you guys.

2. More overtly a Robin Hood story-Team Arrow are the Merry Men, Malcolm Merlyn is the Sherriff of Nottingham, some episodes are entirely ripped from lesser-known Robin Hood stories, etc. (Full disclosure: this is mainly because I love Robin Hood, and will fight to the death to have another good Robin Hood show for this generation)

3. Have Oliver be explicitly an SJW. I say this because Arrow really lost something the instant it turned Oliver into just another Batman clone. If I may reference a comic I haven’t read (yet) I think one of the most interesting (and easily incorporated) elements of the Rebirth story is Oliver coming to terms with the idea that he can’t really ‘fuck the man’ if he is ‘the man’, and it could also give Thea something to do besides be all ‘self-destructive teen’-and also it’s a great way to introduce Roy.

4. In addition, have Merlyn be an actual morally opposed antagonist. Maybe have Tommy bring up that Merlyn could do anything to help the people of the Glades and be more faithful to his mother’s memory, but it’s easier for him to pretend that he’s ‘curing’ the city by getting rid of the poor people.

5. And for God’s sake, don’t have Oliver open up a nightclub in the middle of a dilapidated area that needs literally anything except another fucking nightclub. Like… anything. Hell, have him open up a soup kitchen that also gives out really expensive clothes he doesn’t need any more, and have Moira be all ‘but charity? What is the SJW bullshit?’

Thus Thea’s whole ‘I work at a law firm except now I run a nightclub aren’t I a caring soul?’ becomes ‘I worked at a law firm and now I run a soup kitchen because this will actually help people.’

6. But the biggest change has to be to Black Canary.

So, when Oliver returns from the island Laurel is… different. For one thing, she’s going by Dinah now. She’s also got a new personal trainer (Wildcat), and… that scene in episode 2 when China White attacks them? Dinah kicks ass.

But that’s not the only thing that surprises him.

See, when he goes to strike the first name off the list-a name, I may remind you, that Dinah is suing in court to no real effect-he runs into complications.

Complications in the form of an apparent thief named Black Canary.

See, Dinah’s been doing this Daredevil shtick for a while now. Apparently she compulsively activated her meta-gene in grief after her sister’s death, and the Canary Cry is actually effective in this-the Canary Cry in the comics can take out Wondy if she’s not prepared, so we’re talking that level of effectiveness.

Why she decided to be a vigilante is up for debate-maybe she actually has a Daredevil-esque ‘I trusted in the law, and it screwed everything up, so fuck it, I’mma do it myself!’ or maybe she found out her mother was the first Black Canary and took up the mantle (or both. Both is good)

Regardless, she’s here to hack into Hunt’s computers and release a ton of info onto the web to use in her case against him. Oliver’s here to hack in and give the money Hunt stole back to the people.

Neither of them mention this.

They fight.

Dinah wins (of course)

And thus, for more or less the first half of the first season, both of these dorks are convinced that they’re having a ‘Batman/Catwoman’ style romance, with the other one as Catwoman.

They arrive in more or less the same area, they trade witty banter, they both somehow get what they want despite the other person opposing them, rinse and repeat.

Even better, Oliver goes to Dinah in her civilian identity in like Episode 3. So Dinah starts thinking ‘maybe he’s not so bad after all’. So she starts pulling her punches. Which results in Oliver sometimes winning (rarely, but sometimes). Which results in him thinking that it has more to do with his skills than it probably does.

Meanwhile, out of costume, Oliver and Dinah exchange as much flirty banter as in costume. Like, sometimes it’s the exact same flirty banter.

Diggle, after he joins Oliver, immediately susses out who Black Canary is based purely on the flirty banter, and spends the rest of the first half of the season constantly going HOW HAVE THESE TWO NOT FIGURED IT OUT YET?

7. The mid-season finale has GA and BC fighting Merlyn, wherein a) they both discover who the other is and b) Oliver gets sure-fire proof that Moira is involved in the Undertaking

8. This leads to Dinah and Diggle both telling Oliver to give the evidence to Lance (who has been hunting for both of them, but keeps on hinting that he knows who Black Canary, at least, is) but Oliver is all ‘but she’s my mom.’

9. And because Diggle and Dinah are having none of that shit, Dinah goes to her dad and he starts investigating Moira.

Oliver is not happy.

They fight.

Dinah wins (of course)

10. Oliver spends about three episodes brooding about this, until Diggle, Thea (unknowingly) and Dinah kick his ass back into gear (This is also where we get the majority of the island flashbacks, which, btw: almost the same, but no Slade and more Yao Fei and Shado.)

11. Tommy finds out who GA and BC are (how I’m undecided on. Maybe Dinah tells him, maybe Oliver does, maybe he figures it out on his own, idk) and agrees to help investigate his dad, because Team Arrow figure that Malcolm has to be involved.

Btw, Tommy’s been working in the soup kitchen because Oliver’s paying him and he, at least at the start, thinks he can convince Ollie to give up this weird SJW thing he’s got going on and go back to being a partyer

This all changes when he meets one Roy Harper, because Roy is basically him but with no money and an even bigger chip on his shoulder (also Native American cos I’ll be fucked if anyone gets whitewashed in my fucking Green Arrow show)

Basically for every scene the show devoted to that fucking love triangle I want a scene of Tommy and Roy being bros.

12. Moira isn’t convinced to out the Undertaking by Oliver tricking her, but by Oliver confronting her at the same time as Tommy confronts Malcolm, and the two giving more or less the same speech eviscerating the notion that the Undertaking is good for anyone.

Seriously, I want full on Marxist, socio-economic and class-based ideas being raised. I want this to be so overtly political that newsgroups will be talking about it for years. You wanna prove comic books aren’t just for kids anymore? Have an adult conversation about the world comic book Green Arrow would want us to live in, and see the conservative nerd sites explode.

For a bonus, have Malcolm talk like a commentator on Fox News, all ‘entitled poor people’ and ‘benefit thieves’ and ‘they shouldn’t be born poor if they didn’t want to get killed by an earthquake machine’.

13. Ultimately, the speech convinces Moira that she needs to turn over everything on the Undertaking to the authorities, and convinces Malcolm that Tommy just doesn’t understand his plan, and that he needs to start it right away.

14. From then on, the finale goes more or less as it goes in canon, with one major exception: Oliver and Dinah are both there when Tommy dies.

15. But before we get on to that, a word about the Green Arrow and killing:

Now, straight up front, I prefer my heroes to not kill if they can help it.

I do have caveats to that belief (e.g. I am in general agreement with @bluefall-returns‘ stance that Superman and Batman’s ‘killing is okay as long as it’s not humans’ ethos is… problematic, to say the least, and Wondy’s whole ‘don’t attack until you first talk, but if someone is a proven threat and killing is your only option, make sure they aren’t getting up afterwards’ is such a refreshing concept that I even incorporated it into the morality of one of my main characters) but on the whole, a superhero like Green Arrow, who stands for a specific set of real-world beliefs, shouldn’t kill unless absolutely necessary, and certainly not admit that he enjoys doing it (seriously, wtf Guggenheim?)

That being said, I will acknowledge that Oliver should kill at the start of the series. That only makes sense. He’s got fucking PTSD for fuck’s sake. Of course he’s reacting the way he did on the island.

But – and here’s the key thing – YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THE PTSD!

YOU DON’T HAVE YOUR ‘LOVE INTEREST’ MAKING JOKES AT YOUR EXPENSE ABOUT FUCKING ‘FANTASY ISLAND’!

YOU DON’T HAVE HER ACTING ALL CLUELESS AS TO WHY YOU’RE OPPOSED TO KILLING NOW!

YOU DON’T HAVE PEOPLE BEAT YOUR MAIN CHARACTER DOWN FOR MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES AND CALL HIM AN ASSHOLE IF HE RESPONDS NEGATIVELY TO TRIGGERS!

I APPARENTLY HAVE TO TELL PROFESSIONAL WRITERS THAT PTSD ISN’T SOMETHING THAT CAN JUST SOME AND GO AS IT PLEASES

I’S SO FUCKING STUPFOWRBUORVN PNFWEONVOEWVN OWRENVORENVREO

…

…sorry

Anyway, have Oliver go to Dinah for help, because hey, she took an elective in psychiatry in college, maybe? (I don’t know how American school works)

(That may seem a bit too Mary Sue for some of you, but I say that if Batman can be a detective/ninja/billionaire/whatever else, and TV!Ollie can be a member of the Russian Mob before he even comes back to the city and no-one questions it, the fucking Black Canary can be a therapist if I want her to be. Also, at the very least it’s from a piece of comic book media (Young Justice) and associated with the right character, which already puts it ahead of anything Error has done with its female characters.)

So Ollie stops killing people after a while (which, for bonus points, removes a lot of the ‘WHAT WERE YOU THINKING’ from the Huntress episode)

(Yes, episode, because the second episode was pointless and I hate it.)

16. So, anyway, that happens. Thus, when Ollie fights Merlyn, it’s less external ‘will Tommy forgive me if I kill his dad’ and more Batman style ‘if I kill him, will I be able to stop/will I go back to what I was before?’

I still haven’t figured this out, btw. If Oliver kills him, then events proceed as they do in the show and Oliver is left with the realisation that killing Merlyn didn’t do anything except add another casualty to this insane plot. If Oliver lets Merlyn live, everything Merlyn does in later seasons are things Oliver could have stopped in this moment.

17. Where’s Dinah during this fight? Simple: she’s helping the evacuation of the Glades, because she may be able to help with the fight, but both her and Oliver know that’s secondary to getting the people to safety, and Merlyn’s all kinds of right wing shite, so it’s reasonable to assume he’s also sexist (he probably isn’t, but they assume he is) and so more willing to fight just Green Arrow than just Black Canary.

18. But, yeah, back to the angst.

19. So, Tommy dies. More importantly, Tommy does not die propping up Green Canary, because killing off people and having their final moments be about propping up another ship is a terrible idea. So, no, Tommy dies exactly as he does in canon, but with Oliver and Dinah there, and they both get closure.

20. The result is Oliver doesn’t just go fuck off to Lian Yu, but instead walks up to Dinah after Tommy’s funeral and is all ‘This city is going to go down the shitter. Thousands of people are now homeless, the rich bastards (Dinah ‘you know it’s not healthy to speak about yourself in the third person’) are gonna be trying to get as much of the opportunity pie as they can, and on top of all of that, we need to find out just how many of them were involved in this. It’s gonna be a hell of a job. You up for it?’

21. Dinah smiles. It’s simultaneously beautiful and dangerous.

22. ‘I thought you’d never ask’ she says.

So, that’s my idea. I’ll freely admit this isn’t complete, nor is it perfect - I didn’t really have many ideas for Detective Lance other than ‘Commissioner Gordon meets Sam Vimes’, which doesn’t really come across here, and my lack of knowledge about Roy Harper beyond Arrow and Young Justice (both of which I’ve been reliably told by @oathkeptroxas are not good representations of his character) lead me to be unsure of what to do with him, but I just wanted to get this idea off my chest. Thanks for listening to my rambles, and if you have any questions, ask what you will.

#green arrow #anti arrow #anti olicity #rewrite #fanfic #black canary #tommy merlyn #roy harper #morality #heroism #sjw superheroes #fixing arrow

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anthromapss · 7 years ago

Photo

Chicago’s First Snow was about two weeks ago, and I was truly overjoyed for the day, before it was shattered upon receiving my perspectives midterm back. My preceptor said at the outset before passing them back in the discussion group that “most people got a B+, which isn’t terrible, but there is room for improvement.” Thanks, preceptor, considering that anything less than a B in graduate school is actually considered failing, making a B+ the equivalent of a C or C-. It was particularly infuriating because the thing that everyone had failed to do was define specific terms from different perspectives; e.g. “superbase/structure” or “alientated” if discussing the Marxist perspective. The reason none of us--including myself--did not define these terms is not for lack of good writing skills, but because we were explicitly told to write the paper *FOR* the preceptors/MAPSS audience! We only had 6-8 doublespaced pages (which means only 3-4 pages of actual writing) to flesh out THREE perspectives AND make an argument for an interpretation of the piece we were given to apply these perspectives to. They even told us not to worry about proper citation, or a bibliography, because that’s how tailored to the audience it was. So none of us defined terms, and the entire cohort was marked down for it. Out of 270 people, only 17 people got an A or A-. The course is seriously set up for failure; I think it’s some way of creating a use for themselves. It truly is the most useless course I’ve ever taken. The amount of hand-holding that is done is also embarrassing- just when I thought I had shaken off this ridiculous course/my preceptor group for the quarter, I’ve learned that in addition to the three classes I will be taking for the winter quarter, I have to attend a 2 hr discussion group AGAIN with my preceptor group as a workshop for our MA proposals. I didn’t pay 50k to attend this school to be forced to help other MA students craft a good idea/proposal. Why on earth this is required is completely beyond me.

The funny thing is that I am actually doing extremely well in my other two courses, despite some depression I’ve been experiencing. In my Food & Cuisine course I actually wrote a prospectus that will double as my MA proposal for MAPSS and I earned a solid A on it, and the attention of a well-known Anthro faculty member. In Cultural Psychology we have five total papers over the quarter to submit in addition to the midterm, and I’ve earned solid As on all four I’ve turned in at this point. We get the grades for our midterms back tomorrow, which I’m really nervous about. I definitely took advantage of the soft guidelines and went over the ten page expectation, which I hope didn’t hurt my grade or my ability to be thorough and precise.

I definitely was having a rough go of things for most of October and bleeding into the beginning of November as well. It is very difficult to remember why I’m here, sometimes, especially when it’s so lonely. I feel as though I lose my grip on things easily when I’m overwhelmed. I tend to constantly keep the future and my chances of being happy in mind, and view every decision i make in the present as having a disproportionate amount of bearing on my future. I tend to think in “all or nothing” terms, and my world comes spiraling down daily.

I’ve been slacking off on a lot of readings lately, for all my courses. For perspectives, I just don’t see the point, being that I know what to expect of the final now that the midterm is over. If the discussion group was any good it would be incentive enough to do the reading, but the discussions are not very fruitful, so why bother? I still do what I can for Food and Cuisine, but the class is structured in a way that students actually present every single class on the material and try to stoke seminar-style conversations which never works. I get a good summary from them on the readings, and because the final is going to be research paper based on my own topic, the readings aren’t absolutely essential to me, though I wish I had the time to read them for my own interest and intellectual growth. I still do the readings for cultural psychology, mainly because it’s so fascinating and contentious that I can’t help but want to read these works.

The most salient thing I’ve learned so far in my short time at UChicago is that, like always, things are never what they seem. All the hype around UChicago being such a brutal and intense place just isn’t the case. It might be more stimulating or require more reading than other universities, but the people here aren’t any different than people I’ve met anywhere else; we’re all the same. As long as you’re able to rise to the occasion, you can do it. I’ve often overestimated other things in my life, like prestigious jobs and social statuses. I’ve always been a nervous kind of person to think that I won’t be smart enough or capable enough to handle various things, including UChicago. While it’s intense and deserves credit where credit is due, it’s doable.

I recently completed an embroidery project (above) where I sewed/beaded four constellations on a wool beret I purchased. It took probably 20 or so hours to complete, but I think it’s pretty, and gave me an excuse to shirk more readings. The constellations are: Pegasus, Ursa Major, Perseus, and Cetus.

Finals are coming up and thankfully I’ve only got two to worry about, Perspectives and Food and Cuisine. Cultural Psych doesn’t have a final, likely because of the five papers (4-5 pages each) due throughout the quarter. I know what to generally expect out of the Perspectives final, but I’m nervous about the Food and Cuisine final because it’s a research paper based on the prospectus written for the midterm. The prospectus was essentially just my MA proposal, so the research paper would be a mini version of my MA, which is daunting to complete within one week. I have a few sources already lined up, I just don’t know how to properly condense and tailor such a huge project to such a tiny space (really, it’ll be five pages of writing, which is nothing).

My boyfriend is driving down from Ithaca to visit me this week, which will be a lovely respite. He’s also forcing me to go to San Diego for a week during the Christmas break, which I’m not really looking forward to. For once in my life, I wanted a real-life snowy Christmas, and here was finally my chance. Now I’ll be in 70-degree weather as usual.

I’ve got the perspectives lecture in about three hours, so I’m going to do some reading! Enjoy the photos!

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the-record-columns · 7 years ago

Text

Oct. 4, 2017: Columns

Come to the fair...

By KEN WELBORN

Record Publisher

Once again we are blessed here in Wilkes to have a busy week of entertainment for the entire family.

The Wilkes Agricultural Fair, which is sponsored by the Rotary Club of North Wilkesboro, is going on all this week at the Rotary Fairgrounds off West D Street in North Wilkesboro. There are more than 25 rides on the midway along with plenty of good food and fun games. It truly is a family event with an amazing array of 4-H exhibits, a wide variety of entertainment, and even a hay bale decorating contest. Really, you have no idea how cool a big round hay bale can look! Also, children can enter the N. C. Department of Agriculture Scavenger Hunt to win a bicycle or a smart tablet computer.

The fair opens each weekday at 5 pm and Saturday at 1 pm. An added attraction n Saturday is the last Lawn Mower Race of the season. Gates open at 2pm, practice begins at 4:30 pm, and racing begins at 6 pm. An admission to the fairgrounds includes admission to the Lawn Mower Race as well.

If you are reading this piece on Wednesday morning, it is about the time that the Rotarians are enjoying their highlight of the fair. Because it is on Wednesday each year that the gates are opened at 10:00 am for what has become the most anticipated event of the year—for both Rotarians and their very special guests--the Exceptional Children and Adults from throughout the county. The parking area of the fairgrounds is literally covered with buses and vans, and the squeals and laughter can be heard across the midway.

The carnival's operator, Bill and Donna Inners of Inners Shows, open up their rides to these very special folks, and the other vendors and acts do the same. These include the E-Z Ride Petting Zoo, NoJoe's Clown Circus, and the ever popular music of Buffalo Barfield and his wife, the lovely Bumadean. To top it all off, there will probably be some of the N. E. W. Extreme Wrestling stars roaming the fairgrounds in full costume, posing for pictures and doing their part to make this very special event even more fun.

While all the Rotary guests and their caregivers are being entertained on the midway, a group of Rotarians, aided by our friends at the Brushy Mountain Smokehouse and Creamery in North Wilkesboro, will be preparing to serve lunch to nearly 600 people. This is no small undertaking, but is cheerfully accomplished by a small army of members, spouses, and other volunteers who always show up to work for this special project. Believe it or not, 600 people will be served hamburgers and hotdogs, with all the trimmings, along with a cookie and a cold drink in 45 minutes or less.

Just to watch the interactions between these children and adults and their caregivers is a blessing in an of itself. It is not uncommon to see tears in the eyes of the people serving the food as they watch the line move along in front of them as everyone prepares to enjoy their lunch and enjoy even more entertainment.

The dedicated people who take care of this myriad variety of special needs children and adults tell us that they look forward to their day at the fair almost like another Christmas.

I know the Rotarians do.

One year it rained every day except for the five hours of the Wednesday Exceptional Children time. Over and over I heard it said,, if that had to be the only clear weather for the week, that was fine with them. One of our past presidents, Tim York, put it best when he said, “Wednesday's special day for the children at the fair is the only Rotary project we never have to send around a sign up sheet for--they just come.”

They get to ride, they get to laugh, they get to see their friends, and they get to enjoy a great picnic lunch; all the while surrounded by people who love and care about them. Clearly, on this day these special children and adults are the rule, not the exception.

And, Rotarians are all the better for it.

Trust

By LAURA WELBORN

Sometimes it seems that life is just about surviving, but after listening to Rev. Anne Dieterle this Sunday I was reminded of the words my mother used to say: “We can’t do everything but we can do something.”

Anne talked about going beyond survival and adding beauty and joy through play and creativity. If God is in our lives and we really believe that then we must live like we trust we will not just survive but thrive. I find myself living like a functional atheist- I want to trust and to believe yet I work like I don’t believe things will be ok. What we do every day defines us so we need to be intentional in our actions and act like we mean it…

1. It is about showing up every day with the intention to be your best self, and to do the best you know how, without expecting life to go a certain way. Focus on what matters—what moves you forward today—and let go of what does not.

2. Most of us don’t want to be uncomfortable, so we run from the possibility of discomfort constantly. The obvious problem with this is that, by running from discomfort, we only do activities and opportunities within our comfort zones. And since our comfort zones are relativity small, we miss out on most of life’s greatest experiences. We keep doing what we’ve always done, and thus we keep getting the results we’ve always gotten. Instead go to environments that expand your mind. Spend time with people who inspire you to stretch yourself. Take time to do the fun things be creative and play more.

3. Remind yourself to take a deep breath when things don’t go your way. Your results in the long run—good or bad—are always the byproduct of many small decisions, outcomes, and events over time. The truth is we all fail sometimes. The greater truth is that no single failure ever defines us. Learn from your mistakes. Grow wiser. Press on. Character and wisdom are sculpted gradually. They come with loss, lessons, and triumphs. They come after doubts, second guesses, and unknowns.

4. Calmness is a human superpower. The ability to not overreact or take things personally keeps your mind clear, your heart at peace, and yourself moving forward. Take constructive criticism seriously, but not personally. Listen to others, and then operate with your own intuition and wisdom as your guide.

5. Do your best to focus inward whenever you need a moment to refocus. Time spent focusing inward doesn’t just help you—your mind is powerful and your thoughts create ripples in other people’s lives. When you bring clarity into your life, you bring the best of yourself into everything you do—you tend to treat yourself and others better, communicate more constructively, do things for the right reasons, and ultimately improve the world you’re living in. This is why praying, or just meditating on positive mantras, on a daily basis can actually make a real-world difference in your life.

Start taking the next small, insignificant step (one at a time, every day) and you might be surprised where you end up. (inserts from Marc and Angel Hack life blog)

Laura Welborn, Mediator, LCAS. Contact [email protected]

State’s Secrets and the Swamp that Needs Draining

By EARL COX

Special to The Record

President Donald Trump blocked a recent State Department effort to force Israel to return $75 million in military aid, the department’s most recent attempt to erode the U.S.-Israel military alliance. State’s demand was shocking, but it shouldn’t be surprising.

Rex Tillerson's State Department has been embroiled in a power struggle with the White House, thwarting its efforts to remove Obama holdovers - and Trump nominees from filling open staff positions.

But long before Obama appointees clogged Trump's efforts to drain the swamp, previous administrations dealt with State Department undertow. Generally conflicts between DOS and the White House, Congress and the courts, are turf wars over who controls foreign policy. This dynamic has plagued several administrations - and impacted U.S. relations with Israel.

Anti-Semitism has lurked in State’s corridors for decades, and under the guise of diplomacy, has used subversive or covert tactics to manipulate foreign policy. Despite pressure from his State Department, Herbert Hoover defended the concept of a Jewish state; and under Franklin D. Roosevelt, DOS-mandated immigration policy “severely limited” German Jewish immigration during the Holocaust, and visas for Jewish refugees in Vichy France, according to Rafael Medoff, founding director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. Harry S. Truman stood against his State Department by supporting Israel’s establishment in 1948—while behind his back an undersecretary threatened to “foment anti-Semitism that could destroy the fledgling Jewish government’s support base in the U.S.” unless Zionist leaders caved to his demands, Medoff said.

The State Department is still working to undermine and intimidate Israel. Recently, it hosted the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, an umbrella of American Muslim groups such as the anti-Israel, pro-BDS, American Muslims for Palestine. The meeting’s announcement on AMP’s website expressed “concern” about “Israel's denial of religious rights for Muslims and Christians.” Israel is the sole country in the Middle East that protects the rights of all religions—Muslims, Christians, Jews and Druze. USCMO secretary general Oussama Jammal remarked the group was encouraged by “the constructive dialogue at the State Department.”

The Center for Security Policy warned in 2015 that USCMO leads the Islamic Movement in the United States “in pursuit of Civilization Jihad.” Jammal, who has a track record of seeking out strategic relationships with the U.S. government on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood, is connected to Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation, a Marxist-Leninist organization “dedicated to revolution in America,” CSP said. Another nip at Israel’s heels is the just-released State Department 2016 Country Reports on Terrorism. The report blames Israel for Palestinian terrorism against Israelis, citing the Palestinians’ “lack of hope” in the peace process. Tillerson’s report whitewashes Palestinian Authority leaders’ incitement of violence and financial support for terrorists. It also defines PA calls for terrorism and violence against Israelis as "rare,” and says the PA leadership “does not generally tolerate it.”

In response, Rep. Peter Roskam, co-chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus, sent a letter to Tillerson noting “harmful mischaracterizations” in the report that impair the peace process. “To effectively combat terrorism,” he wrote, the United States must “accurately characterize its root cause—the PA leadership … and clarify … Palestinian support for terrorism as the leading impediment to Israeli-Palestinian peace."

In a strike against the heart of its own republic, a senior State Department contracting officer tried to silence two security contractors disturbed by deteriorating security at the U.S. Embassy in Libya prior to the tragic 2012 attack, a recent Fox News report revealed. The officer also asked the contractors to publically agree with State that “guards should not be armed at U.S. embassies” and “they weren't required in Benghazi.” Those responsible for the lapses and cover-up in Libya are still in place, the contractors said.

The State Department has more than 300 embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions around the world. In a healthy democracy that’s not under siege, this would be an indicator of positive national influence thrin a government divided against itself, it’s dangerous—not only for the U.S.-Israel alliance, but also for the future of American foreign policy

This mammoth organization endangers the democratic process by collaborating with a Deep State—reminiscent of dictatorships with democratic facades. By breaching public trust with secrecy, veiled threats and disregard of human life—including its own—it demonstrates moral compromise and disregard for the democratic process. Unless the Trump Administration can rein it this rogue department, it endangers America and puts our allies at risk. Trump must unclog and drain the swamp before another debacle—or tragedy—occurs.

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muzaffar1969 · 8 years ago

Link

http://ift.tt/2rO3sBl

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

After the Manchester suicide bombing only two weeks ago I warned my readers that the repetition of terror attacks is breeding complacency within the public, in Europe most acutely. It is not uncommon now for attacks killing dozens to be forgotten within a week of the event. The news feeds are awash in distraction, and of course, sometimes these events themselves act as distractions.

In a recent newscast of MSNBC's “Morning Joe”, BBC anchor Katty Kay stated:

“Europe is getting used to attacks like this, Mika. They have to, because we are never going to be able to totally wipe this out...”

To me, this attitude is rather indicative of the European victim-culture mindset. Many in Europe (not all, but many) seem to enjoy a steady routine of self-flagellation. Countless centuries of the feudal serf system will do that to a society. The British still pay taxes to maintain a royal family, after all. I also think that the results of the Brexit vote in the UK might mislead those of us in America into thinking that the the British are turning over a new leaf in terms of liberty and conservative-like values. While I do think there is a fierce underlying drive to protect sovereignty of the British nation, the British individual has all but abandoned any hope of their own personal sovereignty and self determination.

In mainland Europe the self-loathing natural born citizen has become a bit of a mainstay and has been exploited quite successfully by the globalist establishment. In particular, the great fear among predominantly liberal Europeans is a return to the nationalist fervor that they believe spawned the rise of Nazism and the Third Reich (I have written numerous articles outlining the involvement of the corporate and banking elite in funding and supplying vital technology to the Nazis before and during WWII). It is this “guilt” of association with the Nazi legacy that has left Europe vulnerable to manipulation from the other end of the political spectrum – the socialist/Marxist end.

It is also this mindset that allowed globalists to forcefully inject millions of Muslim immigrants through open border policies and refugee policies into EU nations without proper vetting procedures. The majority of Europeans that saw the policy as irrational and dangerous were afraid to say anything for fear that they would be labeled “fascists”.

The greatest threat is not only the conditioning of the population to accept cultural invasion without assimilation. Nor is the greatest threat the pacification of the populace in the face of rampant terror attacks. No, the pinnacle threat is what will inevitably come next – the apathy of a nation in the wake of incremental martial law and the death of personal liberty.

This past week, a team of three Muslim men struck pedestrians with a white van, then emerged wielding hunting knives in a rampage through a crowded London night spot. This is only one attack in a steady stream that have plagued Europe ever since the Cloward-Piven program of Muslim relocation allowed millions of “refugees” into the EU's borders. The vaporous ISIS terror group has since claimed responsibility.

In response, Prime Minister Theresa May has declared “enough is enough”, and demanded a review of the UK's counter-terrorism strategy. London police have been asked to adjust to new tactical conditions, patrolling streets heavily armed and utilizing surveillance helicopters with the aid of special forces units.

NOTE - After finishing this article on Sunday, I find this quote from Theresa May on Tuesday:

“We should do even more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they present a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court."

"And if human rights laws get in the way of doing these things, we will change those laws to make sure we can do them..."

The deployment of over 5000 British troops at strategic locations by Theresa May is all part of a plan established in 2015 called “Operation Temperer”. The plan calls for the deployment of troops within the UK border in response to “major terrorist threats”. Essentially, it is a martial law program that acts incrementally, rather than overtly. Once implemented, Temperer would be difficult to reverse. As UK military chiefs warned when the operation was publicly exposed, troops would likely not be pulled back after commitment unless the terror threat was “reduced”, leaving the definition of the “threat level” open for rather broad interpretation.

Operation Temperer is now in full swing as police departments ask for military aid. The prime minister has obliged, replacing officers in numerous locations with military units on patrol. So, is this “martial law”? Perhaps not quite, but it is damn close to the line, and this is how tyranny is commonly implemented; not all at once, but a stepping stone at a time.

First, I would point out that May introduced Temperer measures after the Manchester bombing, and they do not seem to have done much to disrupt the latest attack in London. Second, I would also point out that the UK general elections for parliament are only a today, and it is highly likely that the latest attacks will solidify Theresa May and her Brexit base.

The timing is rather interesting...

Many in the Liberty Movement would say that this is a good thing; that finally the British will be able to reverse the forced cultural invasion of an incompatible Muslim mass. I would say that this is all part of the plan.

As I have argued since before the Brexit vote last year, we are witnessing perhaps the largest 4th Gen psy-op in history. The globalists have deliberately engineered conditions by which European nations in particular will either be enveloped by an alien ideology with no protection from their own governments, or, they will have to respond with overarching countermeasures. Meaning, Europeans have been given a false choice between the ideological cult of multiculturalism, or, martial law conditions.

In my view, the UK has been slated for the latter measure, and this makes perfect sense if you understand the game plan of the globalists.

Brexit and by extension the rise of Donald Trump in the US has been ALLOWED to happen. Despite the delusions of some in the liberty movement, the so-called “deep state” is perfectly positioned to take advantage of both events. They are not opposed in the slightest. Why? Because this is about destroying the name of sovereign nationalism and conservative principles. This is about the long game.

The UK appears to be first in the line-up. Terror attacks are mounting, May has already initiated Operation Temperer, and the attacks have continued anyway. The solution they will present will be MORE militarization, not less. It is my prediction that after a year of incrementalism and continued attacks, the entire UK will be in the midst of what many would define as full spectrum martial law. The UK government might not openly call it that, but that is what it will be.

While I personally find Muslim based societies to be abhorrent in their attitude towards individual liberty, I do see a disturbing trend developing on the other side of the coin. Western nations like the UK and the US have every right to defend their borders, to deny immigration from ANYWHERE for any reason, and to deport illegal immigrants and immigrants with provable ties to terror groups. However, the line that should not be crossed but probably will be crossed is the persecution or deportation of people merely for holding particular ideological views.

Even if the majority of citizens don't necessarily support an outright broad brush response towards all people that hold Muslim views as potential terrorists, the temptation will be overwhelming, and our respective governments will oblige it. Once we step into the world of thought crime, there is no turning back.

And, what this does is paint conservative/nationalist movements as monstrous in the eyes of future generations. They will be taught that the globalists “warned the world” about the dangerous “racist” populists and alt-right groups, and look what happened when they came to power; they vaporized the economy (see my previous articles on the Trump scapegoat narrative) and rounded up innocent people because of their belief system even though they committed no specific crimes. My fear is that what is happening here is that conservative movements are going to be driven to such madness in the name of security that we will actually make the globalists look like “good guys” by comparison.

So, what is the solution? Well, look at the choices the British people have been given: Accept multicultural sublimation without question, or, initiate complete military oversight and sacrifice personal liberty. Are there no other options available?

What about this: The UK citizenry DEMANDS the return of their right to self defense and the legalization of firearms ownership for those without a criminal background? The real solution is for UK citizens to begin providing their own security, not handing over their country to militarization because they are all disarmed and afraid.

Will this happen? I seriously doubt it. But, I do want to point out that there is clearly another path far superior to the two being offered.

Again, I believe the UK will be under martial law in a year's time. Unless the people of the UK do something NOW to assert their right to determine their own security, they will fall to a complete totalitarian framework. And, in the long run, they will only be helping the very globalists the Brexit movement in particular sought to fight against. They will do this by trampling the image of nationalism and sovereignty with the jackbooted philosophy of externalized security and government dependency, making globalism, the offered antithesis, look pleasant and tolerable in retrospect.

June 08, 2017 at 09:38AM http://ift.tt/2rNE9Q4 from Tyler Durden http://ift.tt/2rNE9Q4

#Business

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