#then acts shocked and horrified that the Republicans might be the ones to get to use it

[bameme]

Getting myself in the headspace for the coming four months of my feed to be:

"Kamala is a cop 😃🫡👮‍♀️🇺🇸🟦👩‍⚖️" vs.

"Kamala is a cop 😡🙅🐷🚨⛔🥓"

[whatwashernameagain]

The Dreamer - Chapter 2

Summary/prompt: The hero shows up at the villain’s doorstep one night. They’re shivering, bleeding, scared. There’s also a slightly dazed look in their eyes– they were drugged. They look like they were assaulted. Looking up at the villain, swaying slightly as they’re close to passing out, they mumble “…didn’t know where else to go…” then collapse into the villain’s arms.

Pairing: Logince

Word count: 7232

Notes: After meeting the terrible Utilitarianist and learning about his manifesto, we get to see the origin story of the Dreamer. (Without a beta. Sorry bout that) It looks like he has a long way to go if he wants to free himself from the propaganda he grew up with.

Warnings: internalized homophobia, republican brainwashing, manipulation, mentioned pedophilia, violence, threatened sexual abuse, critical comments on traditional values and capitalism

Previous Chapter

Chapter 2

Young Roman was shaking with righteous anger. How dare this – this fiend targeted the company of his father? He was the hardest working man in the world! His idol, his hero! He was donating to charity, pursuing a career in politics to support the attempts of the republican party to protect this great country’s safety and now he had to deal with an investigation into the state of his breeding facilities!

He could understand the wish to treat animals well, of course he wanted them to live a happy life, but his father was doing the best he could, he was a good man! The caramel colored Highland cow he’d given Roman for his twelfth birthday attested to that. It lived in a huge stable and was brushed daily and was still hand fed and braided by Roman himself. It showed how much his father loved his animals!

And now this upstart maniac was terrorizing his father and other facilities of hard-working Americans and instead of catching him, law enforcement investigated the outrageous claims this terrorist had made against his dear father. It was victim blaming!

Roman could not stand for this! It was gross injustice! He wanted to help, to support his father and show him that he could trust him! He was almost twenty now – a man – and it was time he finally managed to prove himself!

Admittedly, he hadn’t managed to do a very good job of it yet. He lacked the sense for business and asked the wrong questions about wages for the workers and made stupid suggestions about the wellbeing of the animals that embarrassed his father in front of his colleagues. Shame rose into Roman’s cheeks as he remembered his silly question about fencing in a meadow for their calves in their Laredo facility to play in with their mothers. He’d just remembered how much Nugget had always enjoyed jumping around with them. Of course he should have known they needed to be separated from their mothers after the first day to avoid losing the milk they sold. It was necessary, he guessed. So they’d said.

He really knew nothing about business.

His father had it hard with him. He was the only child of the family, the only hope to continue their empire, yet he lacked a sense of ruthlessness a strong man needed to improve the world. He was a bad hunter, had the wrong interests, sometimes he spoke too softly, sometimes too loudly, or too effeminately, and somehow couldn’t bring himself to fit in with his peers. All he wanted was to make his father proud, though! There must be something he could do to stop this maniac from causing more trouble! He’d shown up out of nowhere, disabling factories and leaving made up accusations behind and it looked like he was only getting started.

Roman had one thing going he was good at, though. He was strong, brave and determined. Someone needed to put a stop to this renegade liberal, and it might as well be him. It wasn’t like all the other things he’d tried and failed at. This time, he felt a calling to fight the war of the righteous!

Astonishingly, his father hadn’t scoffed at him as he’d passionately pleaded his case. The paper in his hands had been filled with speculations about the black clad silhouette barely caught on camera. The elderly republicans rightfully arguing against him had been banished to page eight, pushed aside by the intriguing puzzle the anonymous terrorist presented.

He’d looked at Roman as if he’d never truly seen him before. As if he was something of value. For the first time in years, the young man had his father’s full attention. It was like being in the spotlight he’d secretly dreamed of – bright and warm and exhilarating. He felt worth something for the first time as his father rose and walked around him, taking in his tall frame, filling in well from the workouts he tried to burn frustrated energy with, the sparkling, green eyes, the luscious curls, the strong cheekbones and attractive features. There was no denying that Roman was handsome. A figure to be displayed, as long as he kept his mouth shut. This time however, he’d found a tone his father wanted to listen to.

Over the course of the next months, the extremist’s deeds grew more frequent. The liberal media was lapping up his speeches, stilted and uncreative as they may be. He seemed to be gaining support online as well – lonely, misguided souls as his father put it. His destructive agenda was threatening to destroy the moral of this good society and plunge them all into anarchy.

There was no cause for fear, though! The good people of the greatest country in the world were once again showing why their resolve would not be stopped by anything. A revolution was on its way.

His father had created a community of wealthy, caring American patriots ready to sacrifice whatever it took to counteract the threat to their traditional values. Their researchers were using the latest, barely tested military technology to strengthen their soldiers for the fight for America’s future. It would be a great risk they were taking together, but Roman, their first (and only) courageous candidate, would not back down from the challenge.

They needed someone his fellow citizens could look up to. Someone who would stand up to the terror caused in these insecure times. Someone kind and strong and good to give them hope for a better future. A future Roman believed in with all his heart. Humans were amazing creatures! The feats they had accomplished awed the young man and deep down, he believed they could solve their problems together. He trusted their combined creativity, love and unity to save this planet in the end. There were problems his father always complained about they needed to face – terror and hostile foreign countries, leftist propaganda and the lying media trying to divide them, but he believed they could conquer the world and their fears if they could only work together instead of being torn apart by a monster like this terrible man! Roman wanted to unite the world. He wanted to give them something to believe in. He wanted them to know they needn’t be afraid, like he told them to. They could trust their government, their leaders, each other. Peace was a possibility if they only believed. And he knew he could give them this belief.

For months, he subjected himself to test, procedures and surgery with no complaints. He saw no daylight for almost half a year as his father’s and his partner’s scientists, the people who worked for the Conglomerate, did their best to make him worth putting their faith in. His bones were infused with crystallized carbonium, his muscles strengthened with steroids and drugs and his healing capabilities increased with experimental stem-cell therapy.

It was agonizing.

It was glorious.

Finally, Roman could be something his father could look at with pride.

As he saw him again, months after being sent to the research facility (his father was a busy man after all), Roman had become someone worthy of carrying the name Prince. His origin story had only begun, though. The moment he was able to walk without obvious pain, his grooming for the media began. He wanted to get out there and stop the villain from hurting people as soon as possible, but he was given to understand by Karen, the leader of his supportive team of experts, that the psychological damage he was inflicting on America’s soul was much greater than the wounds he tore into their economy.

Roman humbly accepted the choices of those smarter than him. He worked hard on his enunciation, his posture, his all-American accent, so they would deem him ready faster. The terrorist was growing more and more dangerous every day. His acts were growing more sophisticated, his public appearances increased from flashes of a tall, slender form caught by cameras, to manifestos read in a passionate, though clearly untrained voice over the internet. And now, he’d killed for the first time.

Roman could barely be held back. The man who’d been killed, Richard Snyder, had owned the largest chemical production company in the world and had been blamed for the death of a large amount of people in Vietnam due to a herbicide that had leaked into the phreatic water.

He’d also been a father of three girls and felt behind a grieving wife.

Roman had been upset about the news of the many deaths overseas, but he also grieved for the people this terrible crime had left behind. Accidents were a terrible thing and he was sure Mr. Snyder hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. People were good and cared about each other in his opinion. After the public blame the terrorist had put on his shoulders before – there was no other word for it – lynching the poor man, the media reacted to the crime in a manner that deeply shocked the sensitive young man. Instead of condemning the horrifying acts harshly, they discussed the accidents that had caused the unfortunate deaths in Vietnam and demanded consequences to avoid such accidents in the future!

Of course people needed to be protected, every life had value and had to be treasured, but to besmirch this victim’s life work, so soon after his execution – it left Roman angry and terrified for the state of the world he loved. He needed to stop this man, right now! He was strong enough to do it, why must they keep holding him back?

Tortured by grief and pressured by his need to prevent more loss of life, Roman pleaded to be allowed to do something, yet his team of intelligent, professional experts hired specifically to make him the best possible hero he could be, demanded he wait for the right moment.

“You’re just not quite ready yet, dear. We mustn’t risk making the wrong impression with a young stallion like you.” Karen had told him gently, patting his cheek.

He’d woken in agony after having his muscles cut open all over his body and suffered through a truly terrible withdrawal after a failed test of a drug that was supposed to improve his durability but had instead corroded the lining of this throat and stomach, yet nothing had ever been as difficult as enduring this waiting for Roman.

Finally, after more than a year of changing and preparing him, of whittling away at the inadequate shell that had been Roman Prince, the odd, weak disappointment of a son, a new man was revealed to the world. A man who was confident, brave and kind. A man who spoke clearly and showed the frightened society the way to a better world. A hero.

The terrorist was executing his greatest, and most terrible crime yet. He’d rigged a factory producing military equipment for the protection of their brave soldiers overseas with explosives. Painting himself as the vigilante and avenger of the suppressed masses in war-wracked countries, he’d given fair warning to the workers to escape, but had shown his true colors in the end after all. The board members of the armament manufacturer had been kidnapped and trapped inside the building to be executed for their supposed crimes of trading with dictators.

It had been the day the terrorist had stepped from the shadows into the light of the cameras to blame his victims in person before they met their end. He’d exposed their alleged crimes against the helpless, suppressed minorities the weapons were used against – lies and exaggerations as his team had assured the young hero – and had finally shown himself to the world. Part of him, at least. Like a true villain, his body had been clad in a skin tight, black suit and his face had been masked from the light of truth and justice. He’d named himself the Utilitarianist.

Yet, at his greatest moment of triumph, a hero rose to meet him. Stepping from the ashes of the detonated building, the Dreamer emerged, leading out the disoriented victims of the Utilitarianist’s terrible plan. Showing his handsome, young face to the camera, unmasked and alight with his passion for the defense of all that was right, he’s faced the other head on and finally gave the just and good Americans a hero to believe in. The time of fear and helplessness was over. He had risen from the dust of his nemesis’ destructive acts to beat him.

Their battle, caught from every angle in high definition, had been dramatic and terrifying. The Utilitarianist had grown into a formidable enemy while Roman had been prepared for him. He was lightning quick and fought dirty, twisting out of his hold like a snake. Narrowly, the villain escaped the young hero.

Roman had felt defeated even as he’d stood in the rubble to be celebrated. He’d been supposed to put an end to the terror and lead the world he loved so dearly to a kinder, better future where people trusted and supported each other once again. He knew it was possible, he wanted it so much he ached with the need to bring it about. Hadn’t he suffered so much so they wouldn’t have to anymore?

Yet he smiled bravely at the awed masses and aided their attempts to secure the scene and calm the frightened onlookers. A hero must never show his inner struggles. He wanted them to know they needn’t be afraid anymore. He would fight for them. He would bleed for them and die if he had to.

Karen had reassured him afterwards. He had done well. The tone in the newspapers had changed. Everyone was looking at him and listening to his voice. He could give them the stability they needed. Interviews were planned for him and he was briefed extensively for all of them. He was to portray a hero that had chosen to fight on his own volition, because it was the right thing to do to stand up and protect the suffering people. He would be there to shield them from this terrible violence. There was no need to worry and listen anymore. The good, hard working people of America could sleep calmly and focus on their lives and families again instead of getting involved in the danger the Utilitarianism tried to drag them into with his ruthless calls for action. He was a threat to the love and kindness their country was built on and the Dreamer would not let him get away. He would take care of it all.

Despite his wish to brag with his father’s great plans and the selfless efforts the other CEOs, lobbyists and republicans had invested, they asked him to never mention the Conglomerate that had created him and steered his actions. The public needed a legend to put their faith in now, they said. Not a bunch of old men bumbling about. Though he felt selfish when he claimed to be acting by himself with nothing but the help of volunteering patriots, he trusted their knowledge more than his own. Though the Dreamer was a great hero, Roman would not forget that he was just a young man trying to be good enough for his father’s love he’d failed to deserve before.

In the coming months it became clear to Roman that catching the Utilitarianist would be no easy feat. Many of his plans were carried out in secret or committed over the internet, where his brute force had no power. Whenever he managed to face the cowardly villain, he rudely evaded his demands to bring this rivalry to a dignified end and attempted to ignore him like a fly buzzing about his head. The outrage!

While his organization grew into a network over the globe, the Dreamer was left to calm the suffering public in interviews and entertain them with photo shoots for calendars and merchandise. Though he’d always dreamed for being a star and acting at a Broadway production as everybody’s darling as a child, he found the publicity work hard to bear at first. His team reasoned they needed to create a brand that represented the American values they tried to preserve. His fans would find it easier to act with the kindness he tried to preserve if they had an ever present, well defined idol. Saving the world in the age of Instagram and twitter worked differently than it did in his comic books.

Chastised, Roman had deferred to their expertise.

The Utilitarianist used Discord, Tumblr and the darknet the same way after all. Groups doing his dirty work popped up all over the web like toxic mushrooms. Roman was starting to worry there could never be enough magazine covers to keep up with his vile influence.

In the face of such inspiration, it was hard not to be discouraged sometimes. Yet, he preserved. Tirelessly, he tried to remind the world of what mattered, using bold words to paint a bright and colorful picture of the future he truly believed in. A future of unity. They mustn’t lose sight of what mattered – standing together, fighting the hate the Utilitarianist spread with his extremism that called to simple solutions. To violence. Being kind was harder, almost impossibly hard, but Roman would not lose himself in hate, and he knew his fellow Americans wouldn’t either. Breaking the law and turning to murder would not save the planet, it would turn them into monsters. Many people followed his example and joined what generation z called Team Dreamer, yet even as Roman got to shake the hand of the president, he felt he was not doing enough. He should be out there, fighting harder.

Even after chasing him for almost a year now, Roman felt those things as strongly as ever. He was right, gosh darn it! How could this irritating man not see the merit of a peaceful solution? Who didn’t want peace?!

Finally, despite having been cautioned repeatedly not to get involved in arguments where his scripts couldn’t help him, he confronted the other with his anger. The wind created by the rotor blades of the approaching helicopter whipping at their clothes on the roof-top almost carried away his words.

“Why must you be so impossible?” He’d cried, completely at the end of his patience while he tried to untangle his foot from the steel cable he’d caught Roman in. He wished he could stamp his foot in childish anger. The McDonalds headquarter? Seriously? This man would be the death of him! He’d kill him with exasperation. The unbelievably dramatic di- person had flooded the topmost floors of the almost finished new building with used frying oil through the sprinkler system and set it on fire. Roman smelled like fat and was covered in grease and ready to tear his own hair out.

Startled, the villain had stopped in his tracks.

Half turning to him and staring at him through the mask covering most of his pale features, he seemed to struggle to find the right words. His voice was as deep as he remembered from all of the horrifying videos put together by his team he’d watched obsessively, yet, it held an incredulous edge to it.

“You cannot be serious. How dare you refer to me as impossible, you simple fool?”

Deeply offended, Roman forgot about his struggles with the cable and instead flailed his arms in outrage.

“I am not the one constantly ruining everyone’s day by kidnapping people or setting things on fire or blowing up perfectly good structures or almost drowning me in frying fat!” He’d screeched. The ever-polite voice in his earpiece was quickly going from asking him to stop to begging him to.

Flabbergasted, the Utilitarianist fully turned from the helicopter hovering above him where he’d usually would have swung his body up gracefully to make his escape.

“I am not executing my plans in order to be a mere nuisance to you, you selfish welp. My organization is attempting to save the planet from the certain destruction our thoughtless actions are bringing about. You ought to return to your cameras to perform your monkey dance for the press and allow the adults to bring about the revolution we are in desperate need of.”

Monkey dance?

Never, in his whole life, had Roman been this insulted.

“You- you unbelievable, impossible, infuriating villain – how could you dare to- I am attempting to save the world! You are trying to destroy it!” He’d howled, flailing uselessly with frustrated energy.

His righteous claim seemed to rile up the terrorist even more. Taking a few steps towards him over the cement that was starting to heat with the flames beneath them, he jabbed his finger at him.

“How do you manage to be such an irritation while having no idea what it actually is I am doing? Your stupidity awes me!”

“My stupidity?! How is it not stupid to claim to want to save the world and then divide it by causing fear and hate? Don’t you know how to be nice or are you just pathologically evil?!”

“Are you seriously insinuating you believe I am the stupid one? You must have suffered a concussion during your infancy! I will not be lectured by a man who believes the world will be saved by selling topless calendars and who attempts to catch me in heeled boots!”

The villain’s rant was interrupted as a sneaker hit his head from above. His supporters were exasperatedly waving at him to climb into the helicopter they had been screaming over before the police managed to arrest them, just as Roman’s operator had frantically urged him to free his leg and catch the man standing mere feet from him.

Needless to say, Team Utilitarianist vs Team Dreamer was trending on twitter the next day, along with the hashtag #savetheworldtopless and #justpathologicallyevil.

Also, his poor operator quit.

Roman felt guilty for getting into an argument and behaving unprofessionally, but somehow, he felt like it had also gotten him closer to understanding the other man. He wasn’t a faceless monster but a person one could talk to – if a truly irritating and rude one – and people could be changed. Roman was good at convincing others of his position. His bright, attractive smile, warm and sweet manners and his polite reasoning had brought plenty of people around. Despite the continued threat of an escalation between the Utilitarianist’s supporters and his opposition, most people still liked Roman.

He brought the idea up at a team meeting, believing he’d finally found a way to work more effectively. However, he was turned down gently. They gave him to understand that he had misjudges the villain and that his attempts to negotiate with terrorists could have disastrous consequences. Chastised and feeling like a child make a dumb suggestion at the dinner table, he gave up. Still, despite his best intentions, he wound up arguing with the other again and again.

Their rivalry came to a crescendo when one of their fights once again distracted both of them. He had no idea why this man managed to make his blood boil this much with his talk about superior logic and necessity. Necessity his ass. (Roman would of course never say such a thing out loud, but still.)

They’d gotten caught in their argument about the effect of the Utilitarianist’s crimes on the families of the victims – a topic that made Roman especially passionate – when a heated pipe transporting steam from a coal-fired power station burst above the villain’s head, threating to burn his skin right off.

Acting on pure instinct, Roman had jumped the three meters separating them after the runway had been blown to bits and pushed the villain to the ground, shielding him with his body. He hadn’t even known he could jump this far, but he knew the painful burns over his back would heal on him. On the Utilitarianist, they would be fatal.

He’d regained consciousness in the ambulance, learning that the villain had apparently carried him there. His sneer had chased everyone away. Before the police was able to gather their courage to apprehend the man who had become more legend than person, he’d disappeared in the shadows.

They had been fighting each other for almost two years now.

While he recovered, his father visited him. He hadn’t seen him in months. Roman understood he was doing important work, though. It was alright. Sadly, his father had not been as pleased as he had so desperately hoped.

“Son, I want you to explain something to me.” He’d demanded. Despite being the strongest man in the whole facility and a beloved hero, Roman felt like a frightened child immediately.

“Of course, father.” He’d muttered, drawing his knees close in his sterile hospital bed. His back burned terribly, yet he showed no pain, like he’d learned.

“What on earth were you thinking when you saved this terrorist? You had him where you wanted him. This could all be over but instead you’re damaged and he’s running free.”

The rebuke hurt sharply. Swallowing, Roman tried to explain his reasoning he’d never thought he’d have to defend. The place was filled with people who were supposed to support him, yet he felt entirely alone.

“Yes, father. I’m sorry. But… he would have died. I- I mean- the Dreamer is supposed to be a hero. He has to save people and bring criminals to justice, not-”

“You’re not a police officer, son. You have one task to perform, and that is not to save random people but to stop the Utilitarianist. You can’t kill him – that would make you look bad, but if you can’t catch him, you’ll stop him another way. This would have been the perfect opportunity. You need to decide if you have what it takes or if you weren’t the right choice after all. Next time this chance presents itself, you let this god damn terrorist die instead of spreading his filth from a luxury prison.” His father had barked at him before leaving him alone to fear losing everything he’d bled for. Everything he’d become. Without the Dreamer, he had no idea who he was.

He’d hugged his knees to his chest and tried to breathe through the terror.

He couldn’t stop wondering, though. Was this really what the Dreamer was? He’d tried too hard to keep the peace and catch the Utilitarianist when there were other things he could be doing. They’d told him to leave the crime fighting to the police. His image was the most powerful thing about him. Superman couldn’t concern himself with petty thieves either, after all.

Wonderwoman would, he thought defiantly.

And yet, the Utilitarianist had made him think. He hadn’t left him to die either. Could he be a hero that allowed the villain to die when he’d saved him in return?

His doubts wouldn’t leave him alone until eventually, he chose to do what he was most afraid of. He went against the advice of his team.

He’d been sitting around for months, while the Utilitarianist had been busy attacking the Hong-Kong Stock market. Roman quietly wondered why he was never dispatched to other countries to help. His nemesis had stopped limiting himself to the States long ago. Just last week, he’d wrapped the Burj Khalifa in a huge, blood-red banner that apparently refused to come off as a statement accompanying his latest attacks against rich, emirate capitalists keeping immigrants as modern slaves and straining their buildings with their metaphorical blood. The following riots had filled the city for days.

Yes, he knew America’s intervention was not popular and had couldn’t cause a diplomatic mess, but there were people there who needed him too! Perhaps his team was worried he’d upset someone by remarking that the conditions of those workers truly were less than glittery.

He could keep his mouth shut though, if that meant he could help! For example the civilians stuck in a hostage situation in a bank in Mexico. There were children there, and a pregnant woman with her wife! The standoff with the police had lasted for two days already, with no end (or a bloody end) in sight. Finally, he proposed a tactical plan to his supervisors he was quite proud of. It would work, for sure! His ill-mannered, ill-tempered new operator Virgil had grumpily hacked the bank’s database and gotten him the floor plans as well as control over the security systems and cameras. He could be in and out in less than half an hour, dragging some hostage takers with him. The longer he’d uselessly chased the Utilitarianist, the more helpless he felt. His powers were growing every day Roman was idle. People coordinated and acted for him all over the world. Even without his interference, his idea was taking flight. Roman may be America’s darling, but he was growing more impotent and useless every day he spent as a glorified symbol of American values. This was the right thing to do, he felt it. He had to breathe new life into the idea of the Dreamer. He had to be a proper hero again.

The idealistic young man felt like he’d been punched in the gut when his plan was discarded like a child’s idea once again.  

Being denied was something he could handle, he was used to it, yet this time, there was something different about it. Instead of the usual, fatherly patience and kind amusement at his misplaced enthusiasm, he was told off curtly. Without results, Roman was losing their favor.

Feeling unsteady, he shuffled onto the cold light of the corridor of their underground base. Despite his terror of losing the place he called home, the reporting about the children held hostage would not stop replaying in his head. He’d been told watching the news would only upset him and he should rather rely on the updates they cut together for him, but he was starting to think he would only have found out about the situation far too late when irritated reporters would have asked him where he was when the children were shot. He couldn’t let it come to that!

“Slinking home with your tail between your legs?” The scathing voice of Virgil growled at him from the shadows. Roman jumped, startled despite his extensive training. He swore the emo acted like he was aiming to become a villain himself. He certainly disliked Roman enough. Despite trying not to show it, Roman had always dealt badly with being disliked. It made him anxious and insecure. He wanted Virgil to like him, despite his manners.

Puffing up his chest like a proud peacock, Roman readied himself to defend his honor, when he noticed the disappointed slump of the other’s shoulders. Though he’d complained, he’d worked hard on their plan. A new resolve warmed his insides.

“No. I’m not backing off. I’m taking a running start.” He’d promised, before striding down the corridor and grabbing a startled Virgil’s wrist on the way. He still needed that one.

Leaving the facility on his own, without planning or permission, felt oddly like breaking out of prison. They had a lot of sneaking about to do, but once they were safely over the border, he felt… freed.

*

The armed robbers were no match for the quiet, cat-like stride of the trained hero. He caught one after the other, knocking them out with ease. This was far simpler than fighting a man like the Utilitarianist.

Claudia, the pregnant woman, was in urgent need of medical attention, so Roman carried her out of the building in his arms. One of the little girls hung off his shoulder, pulling on his costume in awe, while the other hostages followed his tall form into the sunlight and flashing lights of the cameras. Surprised exclamations greeted them, before the crowd erupted in ecstasy. Roman barely managed to calm them. He hadn’t been greeted with such honest joy in so long, he was utterly baffled by their adoration. When he finally managed to speak, his voice was thick with emotion.

“Fellow citizens of the world, I have realized that the time for borders is behind us! In these frightening times we must understand that our differences are mere illusions, stand together and give each other hope. Our love and belief in each other shall prevail over evil!”

“Fuck yeah!” Virgil whooped in his ear. It was the first time he’d heard the other sound happy.

Real, honest pride filled him. Finally, he was what he was supposed to be.

*

The atmosphere in the underground compound changed. Roman felt the shift, the tension around himself clearly and suffered it with disappointment. It was like being home again. A child whose childishness was barely tolerated. Quiet and shy and feeling unwanted.

Despite the repeated attempts to impress the importance of following his team’s directions, he planned and executed more mission with Virgil. He was his one saving grace. Since he was actually starting to make a difference, the two men felt more at ease with each other. Though they were mostly bickering with each other, Roman had found someone to rely on. His fluttering nerves around the moody man calmed, allowing him to fall back on the safety of the Dreamer’s personality less and less. They were a team of two now, instead of the pride of the Conglomerate. It was alright. He was one more person than Roman used to have.

The success they had encouraged him further. The Utilitarianist had published information about a human trafficking ring and left the rest to the public to deal with. How irresponsible! People would take it upon themselves to play vigilante and get hurt!

Virgil ran the data through his clever programs and determined the most likely targets for Roman. Together, they rescued a group of Philippine women from an armed gang, saved a child from the hands of their parents taking money from strangers to spend time with her and captured a number of members of organized crime selling kidnapped women to the highest bidder. All but one of their targets were apprehended within the week.

The Dreamer became a hero again. His global popularity shot through the roof.

The renewed attention softened his team and superiors to him. Slowly, he could feel their mood changing. They tried to support him in his quests.

“You two have been doing such a good job on your own. But it’s about time we step up again and help guide you, dear. We can’t have you unintentionally support the Utilitarianist again and validate his message, can we?” Karen had told him kindly. Roman hadn’t considered the fact that he’d unwittingly cooperated with the Utilitarianist by acting on his intel. Already, people were taking up the idea of them growing to be a team. He was an idiot. His team could have prevented this mistake.

Discouraged, Roman tried to follow their advice more closely again. He was truly glad to be back in their good graces and have their support again.

“It’ll be alright, my gloomy friend.” He’d assured Virgil. “We convinced them of our ideas, now we can all be together again and avoid silly mistakes. We can do good things together!”

“We were doing good things, man.” He’d growled, hunching his narrow shoulders. Roman had sworn to himself to help him feel more accepted in the team. He’d never wanted anyone to feel as isolated as he had most of his life.

To his horror, the mistake he’d made was developing a life on its own, though. The Utilitarianist was already a favorite of the LGBTQ+ community and soon consolidated his place by rescuing a group of gay rights activists from a Russian prison. The images of him pulling a pink haired woman into his helicopter while an androgynous person proudly raised a large rainbow flag billowing behind him was taking over the internet by storm. The Utilitarianist was becoming a gay icon and he wasn’t doing anything to contradict the claim. The outline of his masked image painted in rainbow, asexual, lesbian or bisexual flag colors was sprayed on walls all over the word. And because Roman kept being drawn into discussions, because Roman had saved him and because he’d now acted on his behalf, following his direct call for action, a lot of people had started imagining them to be more than they were. They were publicly ‘shipping’ them.

Roman had been beyond horrified and humiliated as his sympathetic team had put together a dossier of the things people on the internet thought he’d do. They truly believed he’d subject himself to be the Utilitarianist’s pet or that the older man could overpower and capture him, tie Roman up and-

He’d been unable to keep looking at the pictures and horrible, humiliating stories published for all to see. How could he allow this to happen? This was what people saw in him after he’d allowed himself to be experimented on, cut apart and be put back together and worked so hard to give them something to believe in?

Deeply mortified, he’d fled to his room. The dossier of sinful, deprived actions people thought him capable of was saved on his tablet and seemed to burn a hole into his confidence even as it innocently sat on his desk.

A knock on his door made him flinch. He couldn’t be seen right now!

Virgil had never cared about politeness, though. Letting himself in despite the lack of a reaction, he’d settled on the bed next to the curled up hero.

“Hey. Um, so I saw the dossier.”

Roman groaned, hiding his burning face. He’d never even looked at porn, so seeing himself pictured on his knees, the villain’s hand in his hair, about to- oh god. This was out there. The Utilitarianist would see it and think- irrational fear of things he hadn’t ever considered the other capable of mixed with the humiliation and made Roman tremble.

“It’s not like that, dude.” Virgil promised softly, placing a hesitant hand on his shoulder.

“What’s to misunderstand?” Roman growled bitterly. “I know you all think I’m not smart enough to understand, but there’s really nothing to mix up this time!”

“Don’t say something like that, man! You’re much smarter than they make you believe! They just want you to stop thinking for yourself!” A frustrated growl escaped Virgil. Pulling uselessly on the powerful man’s shoulder, he tried to get him to look up.

“They showed you the worst of the kinky shit horny people come up with, but most isn’t like that. Shipping isn’t about subjugation and- and bondage porn. It’s about liking two people and rooting for them, despite any opposition. People just care about both of you, even if you’re on different sides. It just shows that most of them aren’t as black and white as they all say. They aren’t the perfect, traditional families on the cereal boxes and they aren’t the masked activists throwing Molotov cocktails either. They’re just people who like some of both of your positions and they like you and him and what they like most is the idea of you two burying this feud and stop fighting. They want what you want, when it comes down to it, dude. For the arguing to end and people to just get along. I’m not making this up, look!”

Finally, his energetic pulling made Roman have mercy on him and miserably and fearfully look at the tablet he was shoving in his face. If he had to see another drawing of himself struggling in chains while the Utilitarianist groped him he thought he might throw up.

It really wasn’t like that, though. The Ecosia search bar simply showed the search for Dreamer/Utilitarianist and the pictures were… cute, actually. Feeling his rabbit fast heart slow down, he tentatively scrolled through the images. There was a photoshopped argument of both of them before the rainbow flag under the caption #married.

Next to it, Roman spotted a dynamic he hadn’t found in the dossier at all. It was him, draw with glitter in his hair and perfect, gleaming smile, dipping the Utilitarianist in a dramatic pose. A flush was painted on the older man’s pale features under the mask.

Beside it, both of them were drawn out of uniform, dressed like ordinary people with Roman in a lovely shirt and scarf and his nemesis in an honest to god sweater vest. They were strolling through a park, holding hands.

Another picture showed Roman reclining on a couch, cuddling the other between his legs. The Utilitarianist was battling papers and a tablet and complaining about something while Roman was ignoring him in favor of the music playing on his headphones. His expression was indulgent.

A large, detailed full colored digital painting divided in two halves portrayed the Utilitarianist on one side obviously arguing passionately in front of a wall of pictures, maps and red string while Roman stood on the other side, gesticulating in front of an equally cluttered wall containing cute postcards and balloons and a unicorn pinata. Again, #married titled the picture.

He found an interpretation of their fights depicting them as a golden retriever and a sleek black shepherd, yapping at each other.

Then, a picture of himself standing proudly before a group of happy, butch lesbians next to his nemesis who was accompanied by cute, femme ladies giggling and holding onto his arms. #lesbian.icons was scrawled sideways between them. Roman felt a surge of protectiveness for these women immediately. He was awed that they actually wanted him to be there for them.

A little smile lit up his features quite unconsciously.

The pencil drawing on lined paper clearly made by a child showed both of them simply hugging.

A t-shirt was printed with photos of them cut together before a bright, starry universe.

Comic panels made their younger versions bump into each other at a college library, dressed as a football player and nerd respectively.  

There were screenshots on gray background about short, funny dialogues they never actually had.

Roman’s gaze got caught by a digital drawing in soft hues. It was him, leaning over the villain, his hand cupping the angular jaw, kissing the attractive, masked man as the other melted against him. Both of them were drawn with such attention to detail, almost lovingly.

None of the search result showed Roman degraded, captured, used.

Aside from the one where he was dangling upside down, flailing at the villain who was apparently attempting to show him a detailed power-point presentation about his plans. Roman laughed wetly through the tears he’d been suppressing. It looked like something the arrogant know-it-all would try.

“I don’t understand.” He muttered, glancing at his own tablet, filled with data carefully compiled for him.

Virgil’s gaze was worried.

“I guess there are things they’d rather you don’t see, for whatever reasons. Maybe you’ll let me double check the info they give you from now on, man. I get unrestricted internet.”

“Oh. I didn’t know the internet here was restricted.” Roman muttered softly. His head was buzzing. He huddled closer to Virgil, gazing at the images without really seeing them. He felt like everything he knew was shaken in its foundations.

‘****************************

Roman is starting to realize how much his information was manipulated, how exciting! The next chapter is promising to be a lot more fun (and angsty), actually! There will be bickering and romance! I already got started on it. Please let me know if you want to be tagged! And remember, reblogs help writers ;)

(Spoilers from after I wrote the next chapter - it wasn’t more fun. BUT it will be)

Next Chapter

[mom-of-today]

Let’s talk about yesterday, shall we?  Like everyone else I can’t stop following every single update, I can’t stop refreshing my twitter and seeing the insanity that is unfolding. Yesterday was absolutely heartbreaking. I was so shocked, I was glued to the livestreams of news and every political pundit and otherwise that I follow on social media. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing unfolding right in front of my very eyes.  The insurrection that was attempted on the Capitol Building yesterday was an act of domestic terrorism, the likes of which we haven’t seen in our time. It was an act that we simply cannot sweep under the rug and pretend like it never happened, we can’t ignore the reality that there are people like that out there. People who believe in the lies from Q so fully that they are willing to put people’s lives in jeopardy for the sake of attempting to overthrow the election. An election in which no fraud was discovered, while the Department of Homeland Security declared it to be one of the safest and most secure elections in history. Trump’s DHS, I should mention.  Everything that we have seen happening in the last 24 hours has been absolutely mind boggling. So much so that I couldn’t even really be properly happy that Ossoff won his race in Georgia. Which means Democrats have the majority in the Senate, which is exactly what we needed to happen. We owe all of that to the Black vote, and insane Black turn out, not to mention the incomparable Stacy Abrams who did so much work to get people back out and vote. Before the attempted insurrection by hard right, Q conspirists, I had a moment of joy that things might get done in Congress for at least the next two years.  What did this change? Well, it did prevent some of the Republicans who were planning to vote against the certification of votes in certain swing states from doing so. It made it clear that there was a need to be united, rather than dividing. Now we obviously saw more division in the house than we did in the Senate, which I think is impactful in many ways and speaks volumes for the next four years. We must deal with those who chose to still vote to disagree with the vote in those swing states. They must be kicked from the Senate, those in the House must not be elected again in the next round of voting when their term is over. But Democrats must take this chance, not to stomp on Republicans and create hostility, but we must attempt to draw closer.  Nothing is going to get done so long as we continue to fight amongst each other. I have heard that many are saying there is a huge war being waged within the Republican Party; as great as that might seem, we have to keep those Republicans who might be able to be swayed to a more centrist perspective to stay there. I am not anti-conservative, I am anti-insanity. I think everyone has a Conservative party in their country, and while I appreciate that much of what happened yesterday is also driven by this fear of a more liberal moving country, a fear that has been stoked buy the media they listen to, and the pundits they choose to follow, that doesn’t mean those people stand for all conservatives.  It’s also not an excuse. Your views might be on the outs, and it might feel threatening from a political point of view, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to storm the Capitol Building and put people’s lives in danger. Your conspiracy theories, your feelings of being threatened, will not be changed by putting people’s lives in danger. Instead, what you might have done, was make your problems much worse. You are allowed to live your personal life in whatever way you so choose, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the country must also live that way. That has never been the way America has been run, and it never will be. We are not a theocracy, we are a democracy. For better or worse.  Events of the last day was exhausting, it was stressful, and it created a sense of fear amongst so many. We must do something to address this issue, we must do something to stop these people from continuing to pursue these insane ideas and we must stop the failed, one-term, President from inciting these individuals even further. Being banned from social media is a good start, but we must stop giving him air time, we must stop talking about him now that he is gone. It is time to move forward without forgetting what happened. We cannot forgive these Senators and Representatives who are actively continuing to condone the conspiracies thrown around by their constituents. Those conspiracies that are inciting the violence and encouraging these people to risk their lives for some perceived slight. For imaginary vote fraud, tampering with machines and throwing out votes.  I hope that you are getting through this and you haven’t been glued to the media in the same way that I have been. I hope you’re okay, you’re safe, and no one you know was hurt or put at risk because of these people. If you were as scared as the rest of us, let me know. Let’s talk about this. It was scary, it was horrifying, and it cannot happen again. 

[dorkpool1701-blog]

A Rant About Mass Shootings

(Hey, read this in its entirety before you comment, ok?)

So, as you all know, there was a school shooting in Florida recently. A lot of people are truly horrified and surprised, but I have no idea why. Truth be told, when I first heard the news, my first thought was, “Oh, ok. I was wondering when another one of these would happen.” I’ve become numb to this sort of thing. I just figured mass shootings were something that happened now, and we had to get used to it. You know, sort of like the fact that they’re going to be putting out a new Star Wars film every year until the end of time. I’m honestly waiting for someone to shoot up a showing of Solo and yell, “Han shot first!” 

As you can tell, I’m a bit jaded about these things. And I’ve decided that instead of everyone acting shocked every time there’s a mass shooting, we should get used to it and have fun with it.

Hear me out: we make mass shootings a sport. ESPN runs coverage of them. If footage can be taken of the shooting itself, we can have it played back in slow motion. 

There will, of course, be interviews with the shooter after the shooting:

“So, Mr. Cruz, how do you feel after this shooting?”

“Well, Diane, it turns out I broke the record set by the Columbine kids, and I’m pretty proud of that.”

There will be rankings for the shooters, and commentators will discuss it:

“So, Ted, it looks like Nikolas Cruz did indeed break the record set by the Columbine shooters, killing about 5 more people than they did. Considering one guy did it, that’s impressive.”

“True, Bill, but Cruz is nowhere near the record set during the Pulse shooting.”

By the end of the year, whoever killed the most people wins. They get a $1,000,000 grand prize plus a free assault rifle, both of which are given to them by the NRA. Believe me, with all the money the NRA is putting the pockets of lawmakers, I’m sure they can spare a million.

It’s here that I’d say something like, “We can do that, or we can actually do something to stop these shootings.” But why bother at this point? We didn’t for Aurora, or Las Vegas, or Orlando, or Columbine, or even for Sandy Hook, where small children were mowed down. If the mass murder of small children won’t make lawmakers do something, nothing will. And besides, the House and Senate are presently controlled by Republicans, a decent portion of which are probably being paid off by the NRA. 

I’ve resigned myself to these facts, and suggested this idea because I think we all need some way to deal with these shootings outside of fake shock and disgust. And, honestly, this idea is somehow less disrespectful to the victims than Washington not doing dick to try and stop these mass shootings.

So, let’s take bets on the next shooting. We might as well make some money off of this. I know for a fact the NRA and various Republican lawmakers are.

[pokeeart]

The Misunderstanding that Melted Matthew

Act 1

Outside of the school, Matt and Kimberly sit together under a tree in the courtyard. Both are looking dejected and upset. Students mull about in the autumn weather. Kimberly clears her throat and Matt turns his attention to her.

Kimberly: Matt, there’s something I think we should talk about.

Matt: I’ve been thinking the same thing. And I agree.

Kimberly: What? Really? That makes this easier then...Matt, I’m glad you understand. I did really enjoy the time we spent together. (Kimberly stands up and offers Matt an apologetic smile before walking off and joining a large group of girls further down the courtyard.)

Matt: Uh. Wait what. (He stands and shouts after her) I thought we were talking about global warming! Kim?! Kim! (He goes to run after her but bumps into Gene)

Gene: Watch where you’re going mop-head! (He purposely sticks his leg out to trip Matt)

Matt: (falls) Ouch. (He watches as Kimberly struts off stage with her gal pals) Oh...I guess that’s that…

Gene: What? Your girl finally got the hint and left?

Matt: It’s not like that! We had a misunderstanding is all.

Gene: (disbelievingly) Really. What could you two have an intelligent conversation about that would be controversial?

Matt: (weakly and staggering to his feet) Global warming

Gene: Hawhaw! Everyone knows Global warming is a hoax mop-head. Get with the times. (Gene walks off stage)

Matt: Why is everyone ignoring this important issue...My girlfriend broke up with me! Over global warming! (screams)

(Mr. Keon quickly rushes on stage and heads to Matt)

Mr. Keon:  Matthew! What is the matter? Please stop screaming.

Matt: (has not stopped screaming) My girlfriend left me over global warming!

Mr. Keon: Kimberly left you over something so trivial? I guess the rumors are true.

Matt: (abruptly stops screaming and says curiously) What rumors? That she’s cheating on me?

Mr Keon: That she’s a republican. (pause) Matthew, I’m sure the two of you could work out some kind of compromise. Not everything has to be black or white.

Matt: I don’t think Gene would appreciate that, Mr. Keon.

Mr. Keon: And why not?

Matt: (matter of factly) He sure does know a lot about white stuff and would probably tell you that it’s the most important of things. He doesn’t like the color black too much.

Mr. Keon: (straightens up and looks around for Gene) Oh really?

Matt: Oh yeah. Gene knowns a lot about colors.

Mr. Keon: We’ll see, won’t we? (He speed walks in the direction that Gene disappeared to) Good luck with your relationship, Matthew.

Matt: Uh, thank you? (Mr. Keon exits) I wonder why Mr. Keon is in such a hurry. I thought he was all about the new art classes. Huh. (Matt looks around in hopes of seeing Kimberly, but spots his best friend, Miller instead)

Matt: Miller! My man! (jogs over to Miller) I need your advice.

Miller: Advice? What happened? Finally thinking of dropping that calculus class?

Matt: What? No, but I should do that. Kim left me! I got to get her back, man! Help me out.

Miller: Matthew, some relationships end because it’s time for them to. Everything comes to an end. (He sips from his coffee cup and gives Matt a snotty look)

Matt: Okay but like. It was a misunderstanding. Kim thinks one way about it and I think a different way and we totally got mixed up.

Miller: Is this about her cheating? Because I got to tell you man, you should have seen it coming.

Matt: (not listening to Miller at all) She just doesn’t care as much as I thought she did.

Miller: Exactly, Matthew. Lack of care is not healthy for the relationship.

Matt: I guess you're right. But I always thought just because we have different opinions doesn’t mean we couldn’t get along. Like, hearing other people’s opinions might help reunite our standpoint. I’d do anything at this point, I can compromise with her choice.

Miller: (perks up) So you’re saying that you wouldn’t mind if she heard other opinions with yours?

Matt: No, I think that would be great! Then maybe she would get what I mean when I talk about adaptation.

Miller: (smirking) I think I get what you’re saying.

Matt: That’s a relief. Nobody seems to get what I’m talking about.

Miller: Nah I hear you. Do you, uh, know where Kim is right now?

Matt: Probably with all the girls at the slushie place. Why?

Miller: I’m going to offer her my opinion, you know what I mean. (he nudges Matt) If that’s cool with you?

Matt: That would be amazing! Yes, go for it Miller.

(Miller exits and Matt walks around the courtyard think of what to do next)

Act 2

Matt sits in the lunchroom by himself. He looks around and notices how he is one of the only people to be sitting alone. He wonders where all of his friends went. Enter Mr. Keon, looking displeased.

Mr. Keon: Matthew. I very much need to speak with you.

Matt: Oh hey Mr. Keon. Sure, I’d love someone to talk to.

(Mr. Keon sits across from Matt)

Mr. Keon: This is about what we discussed earlier.

Matt: The color thing?

Mr. Keon: (unhappily) Yes, the color thing. I’m glad you brought the issue to my attention Matthew. After talking with Gene I realized that he isn’t the only kid in this school with a color problem.

Matt: I didn’t know people could have a color problem. That’s kind of strange don’t you think?

Mr. Keon: Yes, it is odd that people have such a hard time accepting different colors and treating them equally.

Matt: Yeah! Like yellow and brown. A lot of people think they're ugly colors.

Mr. Keon: (shocked) Wow, Matthew. You’re absolutely right. This is the kind of thing the school board needs to hear about. Would you be willing to stand with me and some other students about this issue? You’re insight would be very helpful to the cause.

Matt: Why, I’d love too! I’ve been meaning to join a club for ages, this is perfect.

Mr. Keon: It was a delight Matthew. (stands to leave) If Gene give you any trouble just come to me alright? (Matt gives a confused nod and Mr. Keon exits)

Matt: I didn’t know that the art club was protesting against the school board...Crazy world. (He continues looking around the lunchroom and spots Kelly, one of Kimberly’s close friends)

Matt: (yelling across the lunchroom) Kelly! Hey! How have you been? I haven’t seen you since that party last year.

Kelly: Oh yeah, great times. Look I can’t really talk right now, the girls have this amazing video to show me.

Matt: Video? Is it for a class? (standing up to follow her as she walks off)

Kelly: No, it’s a video of Kim beating the shit out of some guy!

Matt: (horrified) What? No! Kimberly wouldn’t do something like that!

Kelly: Well, she did. It sounded like the guy deserved it too. Talking to her about his creepy opinions or something.

Matt: (having a sudden dawning realization) Oh no. She’d really beat up someone over that? Maybe she’s not the girl I thought she was.

Kelly: When I grow up I want to be her. (Kelly exits and leaves Matt to fidget nervously in the hallway)

Matt: I can’t believe that Kimberly would so something so harsh. I mean I get not agreeing with global warming but beating someone up because they think different? That’s not right. (As Matt talks to himself students walk past him. Eventually Gene spots Matt and storms over to him)

Gene: Hey mop-head! What’s your damage? Sicking Mr. K on me for telling the truth? You don’t deserve Kimberly. Get over the facts.

Matt: Gene! Good. I need to ask you something. Is it right to beat someone up just because their different?

Gene: (a little startled) What do you mean?

Matt: I just mean, like hurting someone because their different is rude and discriminatory. I bet you can understand that.

Gene: (paling) I don’t know what you’re implying.

Matt: It’s like Kimberly didn’t even care to know me and my values. It’s like she didn’t even try to open any of my doors, like she locked me in a closet and forgot she had the key.

Gene: (gasps) Matt.

Matt: You get what I mean? I just feel like if maybe if I’d acted like a different person she’d like me more.

Gene: (outraged) Matthew, no! You’re perfect the way you are! You don’t need her to break down that closet door. Just bust it open, I’ve done it and you have no idea how good it feels. Don’t change yourself for other people, if they don’t agree with you they don’t agree with you. That’s that.

Matt: Jeez, Gene. You’re right! I just need to be myself! You’re the best!

(Gene smiles brightly and Matt returns the gesture)

Matt: Also sorry about that Mr. Keon thing. He super into art I guess. I thought the two of you would get along but what do I know about artists.

Gene: Hey don’t worry about it. You’ve given me something else to think about. (He winks) So really, thank you. (Gene exits. Matt smiles dazedly after him)

Matt: He’s such a great guy.

[veliusthewanderer]

White Supremacy, Charlottesville, and Trump...or Why I’m Disgusted With My Fellow White People

(READERS NOTE: This is NOT an attack on all white people in America. This is meant to be an attack against those sicko, deranged, and disturbed white people who not only had to show up in Charlottesville last weekend armed as if ready for World War III, but who also attacked the decency of the victim, Heather Heyer, killed by one of your kind with a vehicle in what is by all definitions a hate-inspired murder. To my fellow white people who have taken a stand against the racism and hate, as well as the murder, please continue to do so. To my fellow white people who have taken no sides, believeing that its not their problem, SHAME ON YOU for not taking a stand! What kind of moral lesson are you teaching your children by sitting on the sidelines??)

I probably said the bulk of what I wanted to say in just that little paragraph, but as it is my job to rant, rave, call out and shame the conservative establishment and especially the “too-far-right” or alt-right if it helps, then obviously I will do what I set out to do.But before I throw down on the alt-right and the various hate-groups out there who likely have members with Tumblr accounts, let me first review the events of the past weekend.

In Charlottesville, Virginia it was decided by a city council vote to take down a statue of a Confederate general, very likely moving it to a museum ground for display, though information about its ultimate destination have not been very forthcoming due to the recent episode I will go into. On the day the statue was set to be removed, three groups of protestors arrived on the scene, each for various reasons. I will not go into detail about the other two groups, as they were protesting in a nonviolent (or nonviolently threatening) way. The group who arrived, and who merits this rant, a motley mix of Neo-Nazis, Neo-Confederates, and militiamen, were the ones most threatening of violence, for they came armed for a major battle. You’d think World War III was just seconds from starting as you seen they walking, brandishing army knives, pistols, AK-47s, AR-15s and other semiautomatic and automatic weapons out in full view as if daring ANYONE to tell them they weren’t allowed to the site. This was the result of the previous night’s acts of violence near the Va Tech campus. There was the usual shouting protests and counterprotests, and there were name-calling, personal attacks, and shouts of derogatory and inflammatory rhetoric by the militiamen, and on several occasions this threatened to spiral into a full-blown bloodbath. Thankfully, law enforcement was there to keep the cauldron lid locked tight.

Fast-forward 24 hours later, to the scene of the nonviolent protestors, the militiamen who remained ready for a fight, then a single Dodge charged into the crowd of peaceful demonstrators. At least 29 people were injured, which was horrifying enough, but there was one fatality: Heather Heyer. The 32-year-old was crushed by the wheels of that Dodge, driven by a teenager who had been corrupted by the doctrines of the white supremacists and under the illusion that because their chief ally Donald Trump is now the 45th president of the United States, they could get away, literally, with murder. I refuse to use the individual’s name as I feel it would give him fame he doesn’t deserve. If you thought this story couldn’t get worse, then think again...

Within 12 hours of the incident, “President” Trump is informed of the situation in Charlottesville, including the death of Heyer and two law enforcement officers who died in a helicopter crash while trying to protect the demonstrators. Trump went before the cameras to offer his sympathies to the people who were injured, the families of the victims, and to condemn the acts of violence. BUT HERE’S THE THING, he did so in such a manner that it could best be described as “half-hearted, generalized, and ignorant of the entire situation”. In simple terms, he accused ALL SIDES of having a role in the violence and the deaths, while not even making any attempt to single out the white supremacists who were truly responsible. Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke even had occasion to remind Trump that his “election” couldn’t have been possible without the vote of loyal white Americans, i.e the very white supremacists responsible for the atrocity.

But even as Trump was sent reeling by the backlash from Democrats and even many Republicans for his lackluster condemnation, and as tributes to Heyer began pouring in thru facebook and Twitter, them damned white supremacists began to denounce Heyer as a 32-year-old “slut” who was “useless” because she was doing “what women were intended to do, reproduce”. I cannot go into more detail on the things they said about her because its just too f**king stupid to even want to relive even if for the benefit of writing this blog. Needless to say, they got a backlash almost as bad as Trump got, but the threats against family and friends of Heyer was so bad that a planned vigil at the location where she died had to be canceled out of concern those white supremacists might try and harm or kill more people. The vigil took place on facebook, though some brave people did go to the location despite the threats and hold vigil there. 

Without having this turn into a Family Guy style “What Really Grinds My Gears” foray, what actually grinds MY gears is both the way in which the white supremacists attacked the character of the person whose death by one of their own caused such outrage, and the fact that Donald Trump once again did a half-ass job of condemning the heinous actions by calling them out by name. Mike Pence (None The Smarter), Vice President of the USA actually DEFENDED Trump’s statements..or tried to at least. But the backlash had gotten so severe that in a rare moment of realization that he was in serious doo-doo with public opinion, Trump finally came out and condemned in full the actions over the weekend, even calling out the various hate-groups involved. But these facts remain: 1) an innocent person died, killed by an act of domestic terrorism more serious than anything ISIS could dream up for the very fact that the terrorist WASN’T EVEN A MUSLIM, he was as “red-blooded American” as you or I 2) Donald Trump is STILL taking flak for his abysmal condemnation Saturday despite his more straightforward Sunday statement, and 3) Alt-right shock-jocks like Alex Jones are STILL trying to convince Americans that the entire incident, including the murder of Heyer, was staged by Jewish agitators working for the liberal left and Hillary Clinton (why the hell is SHE being dragged into this horrible situation only Jones himself can answer, if you can stomach it).

So now you wonder why I hold Trump personally responsible for the incident and others like it that have happened in the last six months? Go back to the very day he started his presidential campaign, and follow it all the way through, and the answer should be as plain as the nose on your face (unless you’re such a fan of his that what he says wouldn’t matter to you at all. Hell, let him announce World War III. You’d still cheer his speeches). Many of his fans and sycophants would call that “tough talk”. There is a WORLD of difference between “tough talk” and inciting rioting on a grand scale. What Trump did was unleash the forces of racism which we’ve managed with some degrees of success to keep contained, and sat back and watched while America ripped itself to pieces. What’s worse? Many of my fellow white people either openly support Trump’s efforts because they believe it’ll “Make America Great Again” as his slogan goes, or are uncaring about the entire episode for the reason that “it didn’t happen here”, or “its not my problem.” Let me tell you something: IT IS YOUR PROBLEM! How long do you think it’ll be before that poisonous rhetoric spreads into your neighborhood? Your schools? Your communities? You do nothing by choice at the risk of doing nothing by inability because it became too ingrained to risk your own safety to speak out.

For those among my fellow white people who have gone out to protest racism, and the doctrines of Trump, I salute you. Continue to stand firm against bigotry, hate, and prejudice. For those of you who remain uncaring and/or unconcerned, maybe its time you become more caring and concerned because it could be the difference between a united America and an America torn asunder. And to those who support/agree with/endorse the rhetoric of the white nationalists, Steve Bannon and Donald Trump..I can only say...SHAME ON YOU. Maybe you should remove yourselves from this country and travel somewhere where you might be more appreciated....

...like perhaps Hell.

[shstings-blog]

details

Caleb Rivers saved Spencer's life, though she'd never admit as such to his face.

She met him the first night she moved into her new apartment, three days before her senior year at Columbia. And if Melissa hadn't been by her side, both of them soaked through with sweat and exhaustion and in need of a little relaxation, Spencer might have asked him home.

Instead, she simply found herself returning to the Bar on B at least once a week, always when he was there, always positioning herself near where he was set up. Sometimes she'd come early in the evening, before the crowds, the two of them talking and laughing. Her crush - originally just based on physical attraction - only deepened. He was funny, he was crazy intelligent, and he seemed more human than the boys her mother and sister picked out for her to date.

Hanna Marin was gorgeous, with long blonde hair and a wit that took Spencer by surprise. When she introduced herself as Caleb's girlfriend, Spencer couldn't help but be floored - he'd never mentioned it before, and the sheepish grin he had behind the counter and the love in his eyes as he took Hanna in only made her stomach twist uncomfortably.

It was a bad idea to date your bartender anyways.

By the time graduation rolled around, Spencer exhausted and worn down with her choices for law school, Hanna was out of the picture, and Miranda was in it. A former flame, she learned, all dark edges and dry humor to match Caleb's in a way that made a little more sense to Spencer. Still, it meant he was off the market, and while her attraction was still strong - her heart racing just a little faster when his shirt slid up as he reached up high, her breath stopping momentarily when he whispered in her ear - her crush was gone, mostly, and she was glad she at least could call him a friend.

While her parents pushed for Harvard, Spencer chose Columbia - she already knew the professors from her undergrad years, and she couldn't bear to leave the city she'd grown up in. With the last name of Hastings, she could have gone anywhere and followed in her grandfathers footsteps - but she wanted something more, something uniquely hers in a world where it felt like nothing else was.

Caleb continued to float between Hanna and Miranda, Spencer becoming less and less surprised when their plans were cancelled for one of his girlfriends, and Spencer tried to fall in love with those 'socially acceptable' men her family threw at her.

Find a wealthy man, follow his footsteps. It was the Hastings way, despite the strong, independent streak the women in her family had.

Spencer didn't want that life. Sure, her sister was happy with her new found beau - Ian Thomas, a Californian and a Democrat to shock them all, but he came from a wealthy family, worked stocks on Wall Street. Despite his political orientation, he was a good match.

They all assured Spencer she just hadn't found hers yet.

She was more worried she had.

The first time it happened was the night before Halloween her first year of law school; Spencer had agreed to meet up with a suitor at the bar, and it was uncomfortable right from the get go. He was painfully boring and on top of that, somehow misygonistic and xenophobic in the short time they were together, Spencer stirring her drink around in an effort to keep herself calm and focused.

"Hey babe," he'd announced, swooping into the booth beside her and kissing her cheek, "sorry I'm late. Who's this?"

Her actual date had been flummoxed, but Spencer was ecstatic. And when it was just the two of them again, laughing over the look on her dates face, Spencer had felt an overwhelming urge to kiss Caleb. To thank him, partially, for saving her. But mostly just because.

If Hanna hadn't walked in at that moment, she might have.

It was almost a year later, and somehow they'd fallen into a routine. The particularly horrifying dates, Spencer would lure to the bar, and in one fashion or another, Caleb would drive them away.

Scott, her date for the night, was perfect on paper. Republican to appease her parents, with 'liberal leanings' for the betterment of people, but Spencer saw through that with a deeper dive into his social media. He cared about himself only, trying to appeal to his latest conquest through their interests.

It was no wonder he needed his mother to set him up on dates.

"He's here," Spencer whispered when he walked in, a mouthful of french fries from Caleb's plate muffling her words. But he understood her well enough, surveying her 'date' and muttering something under his breath that sounded particularly like 'you do owe me'.

Spencer lay hidden in a dark corner, munching on the food she'd brought for Caleb as she watched.

"Oh my god," she snorted quietly, watching Caleb's fingers graze Scott's as he handed him a glass of scotch, the besmitten gaze he saved for his girlfriends in full force. If she didn't know better, she would have believed the act - and hopefully Scott would.

It took longer than Spencer anticipated, but after almost 45 minutes Caleb seemed to have enough of toying around, leaning close across the counter and brushing his lips against Scott's ear. Scott seemed taken aback, but even more so when Caleb stopped playing coy, taking Scott's face in his hands and kissing him dead on.

She didn't know who looked more shocked, her or Scott, but the laughter erupted as soon as Caleb pulled away, Scott fumbling with his wallet to throw money down and storm out.

"I'm outta here," Caleb announced when he cashed out, and Spencer gleefully joined him at the end of the bar, linking arms with him and kissing his cheek as they headed out.

"My hero," she cooed, and there was almost a faint pink across his cheeks, Spencer resting her head against his shoulder as they headed down the street to her place. "Let's pick up a bottle of wine and head home, deal?"

"I'm gonna need something harder than wine," Caleb replied dryly, allowing himself to be tugged across the street towards the liquor store. "I did you a huge favor. He was awful. Tasted like cheap scotch."

"You're the one who served him cheap scotch," she reminded.

"He was an asshole."

The whole night seemed to continue like that, their entire friendship based on quick quips and alcohol. A bottle of overpriced vodka, an order of too much Chinese, and it wasn't long before they were both drunk, sprawled out on her couch, pulled out with expensive sheets that she saved for Melissa's visits.

"Thanks for letting me crash," he slurred too late in the evening for it to still be considered 'night', dawn creeping in on them slowly and an abandoned classic kung fu movie playing silently on her television.

"You can always stay over," she promised, linking his fingers with hers, the only effort she could put into moving. Her own bed was across the room, but the alcohol and grease weighed her down, made moving impossible. And when Caleb's breathing evened out just inches from her ear, she let it lull her into an easy sleep as well.

[marcjampole]

If election proves country not ready for woman prez, we’re lucky to get Trump instead of someone on same page as Ryan & McConnell

I had the strangest dream last night. 

I was sitting on a bench against the wall in a large ballroom filled with people dressed in formal wear. I was watching the glitterati and listening to the band play swing music when Donald Trump sits down beside me, shakes my hand and starts to brag about what a great job he is doing to make the country safe. He stands erect, looking strong and in control in his blue silk suit, power red tie, large gold cufflinks and spit-polished black wing-tips. He’s friendly and self-assured. His eyes cast the kind of look people give to those with whom they have reached a complete understanding.

I start to rip him a new one. I tell him the country is already safe and that he is threatening the economy with his immigration policy, his threat of tariffs, his meddling in the Affordable Care Act and his desire to lower taxes on the wealthy. 

Trumpty-Dumpty looks shocked and embarrassed that someone disagrees with him. He winces at every fact I cite as if they were darts piercing his flesh. He tries to respond to me after I spout that all crime, violent crime, and terrorist acts have declined, but he can only manage to sputter weakly the words “carnage” and “Chicago,” then falls silent. His body, once projecting power, seems to soften and sink into itself.

I’m reciting a list of studies that prove public schools outperform private ones when suddenly he jumps on my lap and starts to cry. He bawls like a toddler, furiously kicking out his hands and feet, now suddenly short and stubby, and shaking his head. He turns to me, his lower lip protruding like a pregnant abdomen, his cheeks wet with running tears. 

That’s when I wake up. 

That’s the dream, exactly as I experienced it. 

The background to my nocturnal encounter with a Trumpian incubus was an epiphany I had earlier in the evening: that the country might be lucky that Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote. Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Mario Rubio or any other Republican would have been worse, because unlike Trump, all are vocal supporters of cutting back Social Security and Medicare benefits and all would have been happy to throw people off healthcare insurance or give them significantly worse coverage. Trump has said he is against cutting Social Security and Medicare and that his healthcare plan will give universal coverage at lower costs. Moreover, we already see that Trump’s unprofessional and chaotic style of leadership impedes legislative action. I imagine that Cruz or Bush would have taken a much more organized approach.

Trump has done many terrible things, to be sure, and is promising more. But other than immigration, we can be fairly certain that other Republicans would have done much of the same. Dismantling environmental and financial regulations, denying rights to transgender people, stopping investigations of police misconduct, building up the military, cutting social welfare programs—all the Republicans wanted these things. The difference is they were competently knowledgeable about how to get things done in government. They also seemed sane and therefore commanded more intellectual respect. 

The premise upon which I build my (completely facetious) case that Trump may be a blessing in disguise is that the United States is not ready for a female president and that any Republican—the oily Cruz, the mealy Bush, the self-righteous Kasich, the dim-witted Rubio—would have beat Hillary Clinton by virtue of the fact that they are men and she is a women. It’s a dismaying and horrifying thought—that so many men and women would refuse to vote for a woman, or would hold a woman to a much higher standard of conduct and achievement than they would a man. But how else to explain how someone with Hillary Clinton’s track record, beliefs, record of ethical conduct and obvious skills could lose in the Electoral College to an ignorant, inexperienced, erratic, racist, misogynistic and self-centered buffoon?

Large numbers of people voted against their best interest. They voted for their worst instincts. They voted for lies. All, so they could vote for a man.

Very depressing.

I think I’ll go back to sleep and verbally slap The Donald around a bit.                                                                                                                  

[thesteadydietofeverything]

RTJ3, Motherfuckers

The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in November came as a shock to sheltered white liberals who could’ve sworn that our country had moved past it’s fascist, racist, sexist past.  But Killer Mike already experienced a big disappointment earlier in the year when his buddy, the immortal Bernie Sanders, lost his campaign to under-reporting and DNC fuckery.  Likewise, El-P’s verses have never not sounded like they were incoming transmissions from some dystopian future.  In short, it feels like this was the moment these guys have been bracing themselves for since they first teamed up.  So while many Americans sat stunned at finally realizing the rampant criminality inherent in domestic politics and business, Run the Jewels put the finishing touches on their third and best album yet, the unsurprisingly titled Run the Jewels 3.  In the months following the election, concerned Americans have finally mobilized into groups large enough to do something, with the realization of what must be done when the government no longer represents the will of the people.  In the week since Trump’s inauguration, this mobilization has reached historic numbers in resistance to the President’s tyrannical executive orders and Republican’s attempts to dismantle the few supports the country maintained as an attempt to give a bit of equality to its stratified class system.  And RTJ3 has graciously provided the soundtrack to this resistance.

Weighing in at 14 songs in 52 minutes, RTJ3 is the group’s longest and heftiest record yet, and it’s all the better for it.  Run the Jewels 2 was my favorite album of 2014 largely for the visceral thrill that the majority of that record provided - it was a masterpiece of righteous shittalking and creatively bragadocious hyperbole that left practically no room for either rapper, let alone the listener, to take a breath.  This album proudly carries on that mission (often explicitly - “You’re running out of ways to go fuck yourself; I will innovate” El-P offers on “Oh Mama”) while at the same time opening it up to nuance that the duo has never showed time for in the past.  The first few songs are perfect examples of this, as “Down” opens the album in an uncharacteristically low-key way - low-key for the typically vicious duo, anyway, as the the track still simmers with barely contained existential rage, but keeps it under wraps enough to provide a newfound focus on melodicism and depth of production.  El-P’s tracks in the past have often intentionally felt like blunt weapons in the form of blown-out bass buzzes, and the lush synth orchestration here feels like a welcome evolution of the sounds the group is capable of making while barely mitigating the fury at the heart of their power.

That fury eventually gets unleashed, but even then the production remains thoughtful and detailed.  On “Talk to Me,” the beat cuts out for an entire half of El’s verse as a distorted guitar wail builds on one side, eventually reaching critical mass as the beat crushes back down.  On “Call Ticketron,” a pulsating synth loops remains just barely contained enough to be danceable, meeting its antithesis in the verse and they combine to impossibly echo Young MC’s “Bust a Move.”  Towards the end of “Thursday in the Danger Room,” Kamasi Washington’s sax solo blends gorgeously into the tender melody in a way that would have seemed entirely out of El’s production wheelhouse back in the beginning of RTJ’s run.

The raw emotion the duo shows on that track also comes as a surprise given their previous output, as El-P opens up with unprecedented vulnerability about his conflicted feelings during the process of his friend Camu Tao’s death, and Mike recounts a story of senseless violence.  Considering that their first collaboration came in the form of their consecutively released solo albums, both of which were produced entirely by El-P and contained a pretty serious blend of personal and political subject matter, it’s almost easy to forget that the first proper Run the Jewels album was mostly just a badass, fun exercise in the art of the hype track.  While there were some very standout political and personal moments on RTJ2 that solidified the group’s reputation as the best punk band that really wasn’t at all a punk band, it still felt fairly well grounded in the almost breezily ferocious style of their first record.  So it actually somehow feels like both an earned progression and a refreshing return to form that this album is their deepest dive into introspective and sensitive lyrical territory yet.

Of course, that comes with no shortage of the absurdist excursions into the equally hilarious and horrifying boasts that the duo’s made their signature.  Throughout the course of the album, moms get kidnapped during jazzercise, innocent animals get threatened, and scrotums get speed bagged, all for the look on their enemies faces, if there’s a single person left who isn’t in love with these dudes.  The chorus on “Panther Like a Panther (Miracle Mix)” repeats “I’m the shit, bitch,” just in case their thoughts about themselves weren’t quite clear enough.

But the best tracks are the ones that combine this formal mastery with heart-on-sleeve pathos that the group is becoming increasingly willing to indulge in.  “Thieves! (Screamed the Ghost)” opens with a Twilight Zone sample and ends with MLK’s declaration that “A riot is the language of the unheard,” perfectly encapsulating the headspace of both RTJ and the nation as the lyrics identify the violence that leads to violent acts.  “Hey Kids (Bumaye)” blurs the line between party and riot, especially when Danny Brown’s verse kicks in.  And “A Report to the Shareholders/Kill Your Masters” might be the best track RTJ has made yet, a song in which Mike and El simultaneously mourn for and issue a call to arms for a coming civil war.  They save the final verse for Zach de la Rocha, who mirrors the dystopian sci-fi and jazz he invoked with “Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck),” trading Blade Runner for Children of Men and Miles Davis for Charles Mingus, all the while giving perhaps the most rousing power-to-the-people declaration he’s mustered in his entire career as he seethes with threatening sincerity.  The last seconds of the track end with Mike’s entreaty to kill your masters, an official proclamation for revolution that stands as one of the most mobilizing moments in music I’ve ever heard.

10/10

[newstfionline]

Compassion fatigue in an age of 24-hour news

By Elisa Gabbert, The Guardian, 2 Aug 2018

In April this year, a woman calling herself Apathetic Idealist wrote to an advice columnist at the New York Times, asking for help in overcoming a sense of political paralysis. This condition, which was keeping her from engaging in “real action”, began in November 2016, when Donald Trump won the US presidential election. “I continue to be outraged by this administration,” she wrote. “But I’m struggling to summon a response.”

“I have no doubt that many people can relate to your letter. I can relate to it,” began the response from the columnist, Roxane Gay. “It is hard to expand the limits of our empathy when our emotional attention is already stretched too thin.”

This seems to be an increasingly common condition. Glance at Twitter or Facebook, and you’ll probably see someone say, “I’m so tired”. There is so much bad news that it feels like we’re running out of emotions. I can relate to Apathetic Idealist, too. For the past several months, I have experienced a creeping psychic exhaustion. “I’m in a numb period,” I tell my friends when they send me frantic texts about the day’s events or ask me how I’m holding up.

It wasn’t always like this. In the months after Trump’s election, my husband, John, printed out the phone numbers of our government representatives in Colorado, where we live, and stuck them on the fridge. We started calling them weekly, demanding, even begging them to fight on our behalf. They were supposed to be working for us, weren’t they? My heart would beat faster as I made these calls, trying to translate my anger and fear into something coherent.

Sometimes the public outcry seemed to work. A rushed Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act--a flawed but important step toward universal healthcare, established under Barack Obama--failed to find support. It felt like a victory. But a few months later, those same senators cut billions from government healthcare programmes under the guise of “tax reform”. I made a number of calls to my representatives about the tax plan, but it didn’t help; this time, the Republicans in Congress had enough votes to pass their plan into law.

I haven’t called my senators in months. It was starting to feel like a waste of time and energy. On most occasions, our Republican senator’s office doesn’t even answer the phone. Most of the time, outrage itself feels largely useless. Stay mad, social media activists like to say. How hard is it to stay mad, I remember thinking last year--just watch 20 seconds of any news clip. But it did, in fact, get hard to stay mad. The news is still horrifying, at home and around the world; I know this intellectually, but the physical feeling of horror is gone.

There’s a clinical name for what Apathetic Idealist and many of us are feeling: it’s called compassion fatigue. Psychologist Charles Figley defines compassion fatigue as “a state of exhaustion and dysfunction, biologically, physiologically and emotionally, as a result of prolonged exposure to compassion stress”. Symptoms include behavioural changes (becoming easily startled, a reduced ability to remain objective), physical changes (exhaustion, anxiety and cardiac symptoms) and emotional changes (numbness, depression, “decreased sense of purpose”). It is an important framework in professions such as nursing, where over-exposure to trauma can lead to health problems for the nurses and worsened outcomes for patients. But it can and has been applied to the general population, too, especially when we are saturated with pleas for attention.

Though the term is relatively new, the idea of compassion fatigue has been around for centuries. As historian Samuel Moyn recently put it: “Compassion fatigue is as old as compassion.” And the anxieties that come with our awareness of compassion fatigue go back just as far. According to Moyn, the 18th-century philosophers and moralists who “rooted ethics in sentiment and sympathy” were simultaneously troubled that “devoting oneself to an ethic of exposure and sensitivity to others’ suffering (or of engagement and action to relieve it) might lead to a numbed ethical sense”.

The debate around the value of compassion has continued into the 21st century. But the commonly held view today seems to be that empathy is vitally necessary, not just for direct human interaction, but as a spur to solve the world’s most pressing problems. Why would we come to the aid of people who are suffering, the thinking goes, if we don’t on some level feel their suffering, too?

If it is true that empathy is a necessary motivator for making the world a better place, what happens when we feel bombarded every day with the details of local and global disasters, with every shocking crime, political scandal and climate calamity here and abroad? The war in Syria. Refugee crises. Professionals on the frontlines of trauma are trained to watch for signs of “compassion fatigue”, but lately it feels as if everyone is at risk. After a year of news addiction that left me with insomnia and heart palpitations, I’m starting to detach. Is there any way around it? What happens when the world wants more empathy than we can give?

Not long after compassion fatigue emerged as a concept in healthcare, a similar concept began to appear in media studies--the idea that overexposure to horrific images, from news reports in particular, could cause viewers to shut down emotionally, rejecting information instead of responding to it. In her 1999 book Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death, the journalist and scholar Susan Moeller explored this idea at length. “It seems as if the media careen from one trauma to another, in a breathless tour of poverty, disease and death,” she wrote. “The troubles blur. Crises become one crisis.” The volume of bad news drives the public to “collapse into a compassion fatigue stupor”.

By Moeller’s account, compassion fatigue is a vicious cycle. When war and famine are constant, they become boring--we’ve seen it all before. The only way to break through your audience’s boredom is to make each disaster feel worse than the last. When it comes to world news, the events must be “more dramatic and violent” to compete with more local stories, as a 1995 study of international media coverage by the Pew Research Center in Washington found.

Advert-supported media channels survive on attention, and this leads to sensationalism and images meant to shock: starving, bloated children, cities ravaged by war. But these images, by design, are upsetting, and eventually we turn away--a form of self-preservation. And when a story isn’t hot any more--that often meant low newspaper sales in the 90s; now it would be judged by a lack of clicks--the media tends to move on. As Tom Kent, a former international editor with the Associated Press, tells Moeller: “We cover things until there’s not much new to say.” In other words, crises often get boring before they get better.

If we feel entitled to apathy, or even self-righteous about our apathy, it can become an easy excuse for moral laziness. In 2000, the New Yorker published a cartoon that showed two men in suits walking past a disgruntled-looking homeless man asking for money. One suit says to the other: “Here I was, all this time, worrying that maybe I’m a selfish person, and now it turns out I’ve been suffering from compassion fatigue.”

[nishantwap]

Lawmakers want to solve mysterious maternal deaths

New Post has been published on https://www.hsnews.us/lawmakers-want-to-solve-mysterious-maternal-deaths/

Lawmakers want to solve mysterious maternal deaths

Yvette Cravins knew something was wrong after her second baby was born. More than a week after leaving the hospital, she went to the emergency room and told doctors she was in terrible pain. They provided some pain treatment and told her she was just tired and should return home.

“My initial symptoms were dismissed and my health concerns were diminished,” Cravins, who is now chief of staff to Rep. Lacy Clay, D-Mo., said recently outside the Capitol.

The next time she returned to the ER she was on a stretcher, having suffered a stroke related to childbirth. It took her two years to recover, and then she had to search for a doctor who would help her safely deliver her third child.

Every year, 65,000 women have similar experiences when they almost die from pregnancy or childbirth. Hundreds more do die, and the fact that infants are being left motherless in the U.S. is drawing the attention of Congress.

“I do think that there is really a willingness on both sides to talk about this and deal with this,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill. “It’s a question of making sure it gets the right priority. I’m trying to highlight it and move it up in people’s priorities so that perhaps we can deal with this sooner rather than later.”

It isn’t clear why the deaths are happening, but the numbers appear to be rising — a trend not observed in other developed countries — and many are linked to conditions involving bleeding or high blood pressure. Many occur several weeks after women leave the hospital. Because so many questions exist, bills that have been introduced focus on spurring better tracking and investigations of maternal deaths, as well as coming up with ways to prevent them.

The House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee is planning to hold a hearing on maternal mortality after it finishes work on a massive legislative package related to the opioid crisis, which leaders hope can pass the House by Memorial Day. Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said she has been pressing for a maternal mortality prevention bill with 26 co-sponsors to be considered.

The Senate bill, the Maternal Health Accountability Act, would allow the federal government to support the creation of maternal mortality review committees in states, which study maternal deaths and make recommendations about how they can be prevented. The groups, which don’t exist in every state, are made up of epidemiologists, ob-gyns, social workers, nurses, and patient advocates, and make suggestions that include encouraging treatment for diabetes, obesity, or substance abuse disorder. Some hospitals are addressing maternal mortality by keeping carts in their facilities that contain medication and tools prepared for when women begin showing signs of trouble during or after childbirth, an initiative that has saved lives.

“There is no reason the United States should be the only industrialized country where maternal deaths are on the rise,” said Sen. Heidi Heitcamp, D-N.D., one of the bill’s authors. “That’s unacceptable, and we need to get to the bottom of why that’s happening — and fast — and find solutions.”

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the bill’s Republican co-author, said the data on maternal deaths is “shocking and sad” and that she hoped more states would develop committees as a result of her bill.

“Maternal mortality review committees like the one in my home state of West Virginia help look at the problem locally, illustrate trends nationwide, and hopefully, will help reverse these statistics,” she said in an email. “Unfortunately, 18 states still don’t have commissions.”

The Preventing Maternal Deaths Act is the House version of the Senate bill, and other legislation has been introduced in the lower chamber. The Ending Maternal Mortality Act would require federal health officials to develop a plan with the goal of cutting the rates of death in half over a decade, and the Mothers and Offspring Maternal Mortality Awareness Act, or MOMMA Act, would improve reporting, among a range of other measures.

Federal data suggests that the estimated maternal mortality rate in the U.S. increased by 26.6 percent from 2000 to 2014, even as pregnancies overall are falling. Health officials say that the rates of maternal death in the U.S. are the worst of any developed country. For instance, women in the U.S. are five times more likely to die from pregnancy or delivery than they are in England.

But it is difficult to know precisely to what extent rates are rising, as the numbers may be a reflection of better tracking. The World Health Organization also defines maternal deaths as occurring up to 42 days after birth, while the U.S. measures deaths up to a year. Still, more standardized information suggests the U.S. is behind.

“When there is data that is more comparable, it does appear that the U.S. mortality rate is higher than other developed countries,” said Dr. Lisa Hollier, the president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

It is estimated that between 700 and 900 women die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes, and that 60 percent are preventable.

“Right now our first real challenge is that we know the rates are climbing but we don’t have quality, uniform data to help us make better informed decisions on next steps,” said Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus’ Health Braintrust and one of the authors of the MOMMA Act.

Racial disparities are apparent in the available data. Even though women of all backgrounds are at risk, black women are three to four times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy or childbirth. Black women have reported that their concerns about their health go unheeded, and research reveals that racism produces stress, leading to pregnancy complications and preterm births. Black women also are more likely to have illnesses such as diabetes or hypertension that make pregnancy more dangerous.

“The numbers weren’t surprising to us, they are surprising to others who are just learning about it,” said Elizabeth Dawes Gay, steering committee chairwoman of the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, which advocates on reproductive health issues. “What’s more shocking is hearing from moms who have had recent experiences of utmost disrespect and borderline abuse from healthcare providers. When you hear what they experience trying to bring new life into the world it’s horrifying that in 2018 women are experiencing that kind of care in the United States because they’re black.”

One provision in the MOMMA Act would help doctors receive training on how biases can affect medical care, and the disparities are being recognized by doctor groups. The Council on Patient Safety in Women’s Healthcare, of which the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is a member, has recommended that health facilities reduce disparities partly by helping staff understand the role implicit bias can play in healthcare.

Experts also suspect other contributing factors may be attributing to the mortality statistics, including the high rate of C-section births that can lead to more complications after leaving the hospital. Because half of U.S. pregnancies aren’t planned, women who don’t seek treatment for chronic health issues before becoming pregnant face more risks during pregnancy and following childbirth. Women are delaying pregnancy until they are older, and doctors often don’t know how to recognize the early signs of life-threatening symptoms. Data from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also show that suicide and drug overdoses are playing a role.

“In different places I think it will be different things, but no one has put all that information together and compared it,” said Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., who introduced the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act creating commissions, which has 122 co-sponsors.

Hollier agreed. “By understanding the state-level detail, your solutions can be individualized to a state,” she said.

The MOMMA Act includes additional measures that include expanding the amount of time that new mothers could remain on Medicaid, a government-funded program that covers half of births in the U.S. The bill would extend coverage from 60 days to a year. The legislation also encourages healthcare facilities to develop better protocols when women need emergency obstetric care. Kelly has said she hopes her bill can go “hand in hand” with other proposals.

Herrera Beutler said she welcomed more interest in the issue but expressed some concerns over whether more wide-sweeping legislation might get tangled in similar healthcare debates that often play out on Capitol Hill.

“I certainly didn’t want to drag the whole healthcare debate into this because I want to see this pass soon,” she said of the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act. “I want to see it pass this summer.”

For Krishnamoorthi, who sponsored the Ending Maternal Morality Act setting a 10-year plan to reduce deaths, his concern is that few bills tend to advance during an election year, despite the growing support for action. The bill has 19 co-sponsors, led by Herrera Beutler.

“We should be able to deal with this,” Krishnamoorthi said. “And we can if we can just put some focus on it. If we do we will reduce maternal mortality significantly. I’m convinced of it.”

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[clubofinfo]

Expert: So in the Libyan fable, it is told, That once an eagle, stricken with a dart, Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft, “With our own feathers, not by others’ hands, Are we now smitten.”1 Sometimes it’s quite breathtaking to see just how far to the right British political opinion has been led. We really are just inches away from becoming a totalitarian fascist state – a situation that millions of our parents and grandparents fought and died trying to prevent in World War Two. And here we are, on the brink of sleepwalking into it. A recent report revealed that senior figures in both the police and army are pressing to have internment camps built in Britain where thousands of people could be locked-up indefinitely without charge or trial. In addition to losing their freedom indefinitely, inmates “would be made to go through a deradicalisation programme”. We already have the most draconian secrecy, censorship and libel laws in Europe, where so-called “D notices” can prevent the media reporting anything the state wants to keep secret. We already have secret courts, where people can be tried behind closed doors, and where they and their lawyers can be refused access to information about the alleged crimes they allegedly committed. Even Winston Churchill, who no one could rightfully accuse of harbouring left-wing sympathies, wrote that: The power of the executive to cast a man into prison, without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government.2 Mass internment camps would just about complete the creeping conversion into totalitarian government. The given reason for this institutionalised paranoia is, of course, “national security”, an excuse the 99% are far too quick to buy. Like the now routine destruction of distant countries, supposedly to save those countries, we are now supposed to meekly relinquish our right to liberty – habeas corpus – so that we may be free. It’s very easy to cite appalling terrorist incidents as justification for whittling away yet more of the freedoms that our forefathers and foremothers shed blood trying to win. But those appalling incidents are sometimes not what they appear to be, because all too often in the past the terrorists concerned have been agents for the state. I used to wonder why the IRA would often claim responsibility for carrying out some particular act of terror. I mean, why would anyone freely admit to being a terrorist? I still don’t know the answer to that, but I wonder if it’s because the IRA knew that Britain’s so-called “special forces” were sometimes causing the terrorist acts the IRA were accused of perpetrating. So if you quickly claim responsibility for the crimes you do commit, does it leave open the question of liability for the ones you don’t admit to? For example, the bombing of two pubs in Birmingham in 1974 was, at the time, the worst terrorist outrage on British soil since the war. Although the IRA was widely accused of the crime, and six innocent men were later imprisoned for it, the Provisional IRA never officially claimed any responsibility. The time gap between some terrorist outrages in the past, and the passage of new draconian laws – laws whose passage through parliament might otherwise be strongly resisted – is often amazingly short. The far-reaching Prevention of Terrorism Act, for example, was passed a mere six days after the Birmingham bombings, on 27th November 1974. Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their excellent study British intelligence and Covert Action also record that: Despite public embarrassment of their security authorities, the British government achieved its main objective: the passage of strong anti-terrorist legislation through the Dail. Two conveniently timed car bombs, which exploded in Dublin the night before the vote, produced an overnight switch of policy in the opposition Fine Gael and labour Parties, whose votes in favour carried the measures through the Dail.3 And the gruesome “Patriot Act” raced into US law a mere 6 weeks following the destruction of the World Trade Centre – an event whose full details are still deeply opaque. Now Prime Minister May has said, as part of her election campaign and in response to the recent terror events in Britain, “she will change human rights law” which would “restrict the freedom and movements” of those that present a threat. The fact that such laws already exist, where people can be imprisoned in their own homes, suggests that she thinks the concentration camps proposed by police and army chiefs are a great idea. Plausible deniability Evidence of cynical evil being carried out by our own trusted rulers, experts in the principle of “plausible deniability”, is obviously difficult to come by. But every now and then a brief flash of light is shone into this dark and murky world – when heroic whistle-blowers such as Manning, Snowden, and Assange, for example, provide the 99% with irrefutable proof – only to be rewarded not with honours, praise and glory, but with persecution, exile, imprisonment and death threats. Not only have previous British governments already used concentration camps – in South Africa, and Northern Ireland – the Brits have also specialised in false flag operations for centuries. The very expression comes from the days when the Royal Navy’s battleships would sometimes sail under the national flags of other countries in order to trick unsuspecting foreign vessels to allow the Brits to get close enough to attack them and capture them as “prizes”, or sink them: legitimised piracy, in other words. Today the expression “false flag” is used for incidents where terrorist outrages are carried out by one group of terrorists pretending to be another group of terrorists. In the 1970s, when Irish terrorism was at its peak, a unit of Britain’s so-called “special forces” was assembled under the name of the Military Reconnaissance Force. Their purpose was to pretend to be IRA terrorists and cruise the streets of Belfast murdering people. Such gems of proof of the cynicism of the British state are obviously rare, but because the proof is rare does not mean the practices are similarly uncommon. Far from it. Bloch and Fitzgerald, for example, recall the words of Kim Philby, the MI6 spy, who revealed the existence of: A ‘Special Political Action’ section set up in the mid-fifties with the various tasks of organising coups, secret radio stations and propaganda campaigns, wrecking international conferences and influencing elections.4 And Stephen Dorril, in his superb history of Britain’s MI6, writes about: The ‘false flag’ ploy, a favourite of MI6.5 Anyone who has ever had first-hand experience of the work of “special forces”, anywhere in the world, knows about false flag operations. For these people they’re almost routine. Yet for the 99% the concept is too far-fetched, and horrifying, to believe, and conveniently dismissed as “conspiracy theory”. But those who serve in the so-called “special forces” know the truth – as the rare Panorama programme about the MRF showed. There seems to be a slowly-growing awareness that our very own governments, no matter their apparent political ideology – Labour or Tory, Republican or Democrat – are directly linked to the massive rise in global terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain’s Labour Party, has been outspoken in his demand for radical reform of Britain’s foreign policy. He knows, as many of us do, that there is a direct link between Islamic terrorism and British support for illegal wars in the Islamic world. The connection is obvious to anyone with a properly functioning brain: if you deliberately hurt innocent people for no good reason or, even worse, to somehow profit from doing so, you will create a lot of anger, anger which, in the absence of justice, will demand revenge instead. British foreign policy has for many years been hurting innocent people for no good reason other than generating corporate profits. British governments have been warned many times about the likelihood that their foreign policy decisions would invite retribution, and warned by people who should know what they’re talking about. Eliza Manningham-Buller, for example, ex-chief of MI5, said that Blair’s illegal war in Iraq “increased the terrorist threat”; and Stella Rimmington, another ex-chief of MI5, talking about suicide bombers generally, said “to ignore the effect of the war in Iraq is misleading.” But misleading is what our trusted leaders do exceptionally well. Reaction to Jeremy Corbyn’s perfectly rational call for major changes to British foreign policy was met with a storm of self-righteous indignation from both the Tories, in the shape of Foreign Secretary Amber Rudd and leader of the LibDems Tim Farron, both of whom affected to be “outraged” that Corbyn could suggest such a thing. This appearance of shocked, wounded innocence to voices-in-the-wilderness such as Corbyn’s pointing out the blindingly obvious is, of course, the standard response of nearly all of those in positions of power, from government ministers to bemedalled generals and admirals to arguably the most cynical power-brokers of them all, the mainstream media. It doesn’t have to be like this Public opinion, which is real political power, is shaped by two main forces. Firstly, the education system, which is primarily responsible for training us how and what to think. Secondly, the mainstream media, which supplies endless information to the 99% about how our world appears to be working. These two powerful forces, increasingly controlled by the corporate business world, carefully shape and maintain public opinion so that it never strays too far from acceptable norms. A tiny fringe of outspoken criticism is tolerated, indeed even sometimes encouraged, to create the illusion of impartiality, free expression and “balance”; but such voices are rare and quickly and crushingly dismissed by the far more powerful faces of established respectability. The truly infuriating thing to understand is not only that none of the mayhem that’s unleashed around the world is necessary, but also that it could be easily remedied. The ceaseless and deliberate destruction of millions of lives, together with the catastrophic ruin of our life-sustaining planet – which right now is enduring the biggest mass extinction of species since the meteor strike at Chicxulub – is not only wholly unnecessary.  It could all be so easily stopped, and good, responsible administration of our planet quickly arranged – for the first time in history. That could be so easy to do. The biggest obstacle is now, and always has been, the people we mistakenly allow to lead us. Perfectly symbolised by the Occupy Movement as the 1%, they comprise a tiny fragment of society who wield almost absolute control over 99% of the rest of us. Edward Dowling once observed that, The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it. This chronic terror among the 1% is ever-present, and grows as their greed grows and increases the oppression of the 99%. The report that outriders of British power, senior police and army officials, want to build concentration camps is consistent with this fear. Such camps have never increased the safety and security of the general population, and they never will. They do, however, help to consolidate the grip of the super-rich over societies that they are systematically looting. The role of the education system and the mainstream media in maintaining this situation needs to be recognised and clearly understood. A better world is not only possible, it could be created with astonishing ease and rapidity – given that 99% of us would love to live in a better world. The problem lies not in visualising alternative and better models of society, it lies in breaking free from the vice-like grip the 1% have around the throats of the 99%. For the 1% the world could not be much better than it already is. For the 99% it couldn’t be much worse, and the desire of our trusted leaders to lock us up in concentration camps is dazzling confirmation of those facts. The fact that Theresa May can suggest, as a vote-winning campaigning proposal, law changes that could lead to building concentration camps in Britain shows the extent of the brainwashing of the 99%. With Muslims being murdered in their own homes in industrial quantities by Zionists, the US and Britain, Islamic rage is easy to understand; why British people continue to vote for the perpetrators of western terror is not. Muslims don’t need re-programming nearly as much as Tory voters do. * Aeschylus Frag. 135 * Essential Chomsky, Anthony Arnove, p. 89 * British Intelligence and Covert Action, Johnathan Bloch and Patrick Fitzgerald, p. 222. * British Intelligence and Covert Action, Johnathan Bloch and Patrick Fitzgerald, p. 39 * MI6, Stephen Dorril, p. 281 http://clubof.info/

[mdye]

He doesn’t want to be president, he just wants to play one on TV

The Donald Trump Show is getting stale, old, and frankly a little bit boring.

Donald Trump’s big speech before Congress on Tuesday night was the epitome of the show. There was the gross hypocrisy of “the time for trivial fights is behind us,” the campy propagandism of creating a Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office, the prepared remarks in all caps calling to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.

Trump knows a thing or two about publicity stunts.

Shorn of context, to witness a President of the United States deliver a speech so devoid of the customary humility or sense of America’s role in the world would be shocking. Just as it would ordinarily be shocking to see a president attacking the media as “enemies of the American people” or denouncing a “so-called judge” or any of the other dozen or so bizarre things that Trump does in a given week.

His campaign was, fascinating from state to finish — if at times horrifying — because of the litany of similar novelties. His business -- brand licensing and real estate — succeeded by the same attention-seeking. His reality TV career is the same story.

But Trump is no longer a novelty candidate, a branding magnate, or a B-List TV show host. He’s now the President of the United States. He’s the subject of constant, obsessive media attention. And like any over-exposed celebrity, he’s getting tiresome.

If you take any one moment from the Trump Show out of context, it’s striking. But together, Tump’s antics are now banal. He says, tweets, and does weird things. He gets attention. He pisses people off while thrilling others. Tonight, he even managed to attract attention and garner praise for slightly dialing it down. But speeches are supposed to be tools to help do the work of actually being president — learning about the issues, making decisions about tradeoffs, and collaborating to get things done.

Amidst the non-stop and increasingly tedious theatricality, Trump is only ever performing the role of the president, he’s never doing the job.

The Trump Show never stops

On the campaign trail, a politician gives speeches to energize supporters and to persuade the persuadable. The point of campaigning, for most politicians, is to try to win so they can govern.

When you take office, you continue to make speeches. But — especially if you are the president — the speeches then become handmaidens of governance. You give speeches to help put issues on the public agenda, to elevate a particular perspective in Congress, and to say something meaningful about priorities and tradeoffs.

Trump has, it’s clear, no interest in governing. He only just discovered yesterday that health care policy is complicated. He claims to be deliberately leaving political appointments unfilled as some kind of gesture of small government zeal, but in reality because he seems too lazy to come up with a properly vetted roster. He clearly had a blast campaigning, but had no expectation that he would actually win. That allowed him to campaign in an unusually irresponsible manner — tossing off incoherent or impossible promises with no consideration of how difficult, or downright impossible, it would be to deliver on them.

The surreal campaign that resulted from this — the Trump Show — was a thing to behold. But having won, Trump now faces the humdrum task of turning his nonsense into something workable. But while there are certainly people plugging away at this — Reince Priebus, Gary Cohn, Steve Bannon, Mick Mulvaney, and various cabinet secretaries — Trump is clearly still focused on the show. Given the chance to reboot and explain what he wants to do, Trump simply gives another campaign rally speech.

Congress needs some presidential leadership

There are a whole bunch of issues pending in Congress where it would be useful for the President of the United States to weigh-in and attempt to shape the debate.

One such issue is the Affordable Care Act, where Republicans would broadly speaking like to rescind its tax increases on the rich and pay for them by cutting spending on providing insurance to the poor and the middle class. Some Republicans have gotten leery about the practical implications of this approach, and are now talking about restraining their ambitions somewhat — leaving the Medicaid expansion in place, for example, or giving states the option to retain the ACA framework. Others are adhering dogmatically to the view that the spending must all go.

Some indication from Trump about what he is willing to accept and what he thinks should be done would be useful. Instead, he gave us — as he invariably does when he discusses the topic — vague platitudes about how “we should help Americans purchase their own coverage” with no word on how generous that help should be or how it should be paid for.

On tax reform, things are much the same. He claims that his “team is developing historic tax reform” but told us nothing of the tradeoffs it might entail or when a full plan might be available.

He talked, extensively, about trade as he always does. But he talked about it vaguely, as he always does. He said future deals would be “fair” without saying anything about what they would look like or they would be achieved. The infrastructure portion of the speech described to particular plan, and the reference to a more “merit-based” system for legal immigration likewise offered no details.

Nobody who’s watched anything Trump has said over the past six months learned anything new. In part because it’s rarely clear whether even Trump cares about the details of what he says.

You can’t parse a president who doesn’t sweat the details

In a normal address of this sort, the role of a policy reporter is to serve as a kind of a translator. Having spent days, weeks, and months following policy debates in Washington, we are able to catch the quick references in the president’s speech and understand them in fuller context. In that spirit, for example, I might note that Trumps’ reference to creating “a level playing field for American companies and workers” appears to be a move toward endorsing a controversial corporate income tax reform that big exporters like but retail chains hate.

The problem is, to draw that conclusion would require us to believe that the speech went through a traditional drafting process. That the Treasury Secretary and the National Economic Council director and the legislative liaison staff all briefed the president on the meaning of the line, and that he therefore made a coherent, deliberate effort to embrace this House plan.

I feel like I can actually hear the editing battles between Bannon and Priebus in this speech. The tonality really veers around.

— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) March 1, 2017

But here’s another theory. The speech seems to largely be the product of tensions between Reince Priebus’ traditional Republican Party ideology and Steve Bannon’s populist nationalism. Priebus is close to Ryan, who likes the controversial tax reform. But one interpretation of the tax reform idea is that it’s protectionist trade policy, which Bannon likes. So the two of them may have put the line in the speech even though Senate Republicans and the Trump administration economic team seem to think it’s a bad idea.

The premise of taking a close look at these speeches to read the tea leaves, in short, is that the president actually understands the policy issues facing him and cares about the words he’s speaking. With Trump that’s far from true. He doesn’t like to read briefing books or make hard choices. His words about clean air or infrastructure or anything else are completely meaningless until we see real plans. And there’s no real indication that we ever will. The show is an increasingly meaningless spectacle.

The real story is what’s happening in America

None of this is to say that the Trump administration, as a phenomenon, isn’t important. American politics and government are always important because they directly impact the lives of millions of people.

The Trump show doesn’t matter. What matters is that thousands of ICE agents in cities across America now feel that they have been “unchained” to start enforcing immigration law in a more random, more terrifying manner. Beyond the details of Trump’s executive orders, reports of Customs and Border Patrol agents at airports stepping-up their level of aggression in detaining and questioning harmless foreigners have been ubiquitous. Jewish Community Centers around the country are experiencing an unprecedented surge of bomb threats. The new Attorney General is openly dismissive of Justice Department inquiries into racism and abuses at police departments nationwide — meaning that misconduct issues are likely to become more severe.

At the same time, Trump’s victory has caused mobilization on the American left that is faster and more powerful than anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. From the millions who participated in Womens’ March events on Inauguration weekend, to the rapid-fire mobilization of people and lawyers to counter the first iteration of Trump’s travel ban people are active.

This resistance to Trump is flooding congressional town hall meetings, and has thrown the GOP’s health care strategy into disarray — taking the larger legislative agenda with it. Despite considerably lingering tensions between supporters of Hillary Clinton and supporters of Bernie Sanders, Democrats are, on a practical level, working together against Trump — exemplified by Keith Ellison taking Tom Perez as his guest to the speech.

The real-world consequences of Trump’s governance matters enormously, and so does the pushback that Trump is getting. The struggles between the forces Trump has empowered and emboldened and those he was frightened and energized will determine the future course of the country. But the Trump Show itself — the series of tweets, speeches, interviews, and provocations undertaken by the President of the United States in lieu of governing — is tedious and irrelevant. It’s time to start learning how to tune it out.