#this dreadful fascist country has done nothing more than prove to me that they do not deserve my vote

[aishabellasbigblogofeverything]

Let me put your ass on blast you fucking dumbass monster.

"I pick the slow one" you fucking idiot how about don't pick ANY ONE. Acting like it's your place as a NON-Palestinian to decide which type of genocide is "okay". It sounds like you've just accepted that this genocide is going to happen, and would rather it take its time than end as soon as possible, and you think that's "caring" for the Palestinians.

You and every other "always vote blue" monster are disgusting sick in the head little weirdos and I hope you all catch pneumonia and die alone crying and terrified with no one around to soothe or console you. The fact that you could even CONSIDER saying this shit much less typing it for the world to see, much less POST it, you are truly horrendous and sick and have no soul, and I hope that every time you look in the mirror you are plagued with so much guilt and shame and disgust that you puke all over your clothes.

honestly even if biden got down on his knees and apologized (with tears) and devoted the rest of his life and his wealth to humanitarian causes, what hes done to palestine is beyond forgiveness. hes crossed the point of no return for me. you paid for children to die, for their deaths to be cruel and undignified, you paid to starve them and bomb them and you spread lies to justify that. youre not coming back from that! youre done!

[arcanalogue]

ON TYRANNY - An Unsolicited Tarot Tour, pt. III

I didn’t intend for these posts to be a catalog of how fast the world can change, but last week the UK officially left the European Union, and the GOP-led Senate voted to end the impeachment trial without calling a single witness, ending this week in acquittal.

From inside my home, you can’t tell the difference; walking around in my neighborhood, nothing seems to have changed. That’s the curious nature of trying to stay well-informed, isn’t it? All of the bad news has an atmospheric quality; we receive it digitally and then project it around ourselves like a vaporous envelope, the opacity of which we can adjust at will.

As I twiddle with the settings of my own envelope, I try to ask myself: am I remembering to rest and enjoy my time at home, or am I using the privacy as cover for tormenting myself? Am I a being a true neighbor and citizen as I scuttle about in the world, or am I merely perceiving others as obstacles, intruders, unwelcome distractions, and blocking them out? 

Am I embodying my fear? As I struggle to process and contain all the bad news, do I become the bad news? 

It often feels like I end up overcompensating in order to prove I’m not adversely affected. Sometimes that’s impossible, and the envelope around me is fully opaque. If I’m lucky I can ride my bike down to the river and sit for a while, dial it back, absorb a broader perspective.

If I’m lucky.

The book ON TYRANNY presents a series of tasks aimed at challenging our own perceptions while also tracking changes in the world around us. A historian, Timothy Snyder seems to appreciate the sort of mental hygiene that regular people must use to cope with the dread and futility that become our constant helpmeets as dangerous forces rise to power. We grow attached to their presence, and come to trust them more than the wild interlopers that sometimes come galloping through, such as, say, hope. Or bravery, which requires the possibility of great sacrifice. 

Dread and futility require nothing of us, except to observe, and to hurt. Oh that’s handy, I can do that! But these become such all-consuming preoccupations that we mistake them for activity. Sharing a news story is like bearing witness: I was here, I heard about it, I grieved, I passed it on. A complete cycle we can repeat until we’re limp with exhaustion.

Hope less comfortable, and harder to pass along. It requires one’s spirit to run counter to the movements of the tide. That’s why it’s so valuable, and why it’s a distinctly anti-fascist instinct. Hope represents everything about a human that simply can’t be predicted, or controlled.

Where do you go looking for it in your home, or in your neighborhood? That’s what drives me out into the world most days: I’m looking for hope. When I remember to look, I usually find it.

If I’m lucky.

Alright, enough of that. Having already combed for parallels between Snyder’s chapters and The Magician, The High Priestess, and The Empress, it’s time to soldier on and see if the next few cards offer anything illuminating. 

As I wrote before, The Empress and The Emperor represent the interior and exterior aspects of one body: their empire.

Snyder’s fourth chapter begins: 

“Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices we make are themselves a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future. In the politics of the future, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much.”

When you go out into the world, you may not be fully in charge of your surroundings, but that doesn’t mean you’re powerless to make important changes. You can use your presence and privilege to protect others. You can counter the hatred that arises spontaneously, or intercept the message. 

The nastiest people are often the most cowardly, counting on the elements of shock and surprise and a quick getaway. This is always the case when people shout or hurl things at me out of car windows. Slurs scrawled in graffiti are basically the same — it’s a low-risk gambit that hurts many. And when people encounter something unpleasant, they tend to just quicken their pace, pass on by. It’s not “their job” to deal with it.

I totally understand that well-meaning people don’t want to risk a confrontation, or compound a victim’s embarrassment by drawing attention to what happened. But I tell you, as someone who has been harassed and physically attacked in public: the message this ultimately sends to victims is that they’re truly on their own. 

You may not be the Emperor of our nation, but you can go about righting some of the smaller wrongs, helping people feel as though it matters to someone. 

Like when I noticed that someone else had painted over the “NO FAGS” graffiti which had recently appeared on a wall in my neighborhood, and my very first thought was: Well shit, why didn’t I do that?

I think I know why. I wanted to prove that it didn’t bother me. I wanted to assume it wasn’t aimed at me directly, that it was none of my business, and that it wasn’t so easy to trigger my outrage. And here’s a big one: I really, really wanted someone else to care enough to do it. It wasn’t “my job” to deal with it.

But what about the kids who walk past there to get home from school? I hadn’t thought of them. Should they have to grow up with the same fear that I did? Do I want the people who did this (or those who weren’t bothered by it) to imagine this sort of thing will be tolerated here? 

Let’s take responsibility for what others are subjected to in life’s “common areas,” including the internet. May we ride as The Emperor, acting swiftly and according to the most benefic principles.

Authority is tricky: it asserts that some protocols simply must be followed because we say so, that’s why. Within certain professional institutions, there are many things that “just aren’t done,” or are done “just so” — often for good reason. 

We run smack up against this kind of thinking when it’s time to make way for better systems. This is by design. It’s supposed to be hard to revise certain standards, they’re meant to evolve slowly, if at all, to preserve a sense of continuity throughout our progress. And yes, this has conveniently allowed certain privileged parties to leverage their position across generations, and profit from the results. But it also prevents any johnny-come-lately demagogue from overturning or erasing standards to suit their particular will. 

Or at least, it used to!

The widely-lamented demise of expertise has led to corners being cut left and right, and somewhere along the way the concept of authority itself seems to have been atomized. 

Snyder writes: 

“Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional. Then there is no such thing as ‘just following orders.’ If members of the professions confuse their specific ethics with the emotions of the moment, however, they can find themselves saying and doing things that they might previously have considered unimaginable.” 

Many of us aren’t in professions where these decisions wield real power, but our decisions still affect others. And there are doctors, lawyers, teachers, business executives, and civil servants all across the country who are grappling with these distinctions as we speak, and we must perpetually remind them how much our collective fates depend on their adherence to professional ethics.

Everyone wants to cut the line. Everyone wants to be the exception to the rule. Everyone wants to just give up and take it easy. Writ large, this turns our entire civilization into a contest to see who can be the biggest cheater, who can cover up the grossest incompetence. And who does that sound like? 

It sounds like, for starters, a chiropractor in South Dakota who wants to decide which treatments medical doctors may offer to trans children. 

Did you know The High Priestess and The Hierophant are a partnered set, a duality, just like the Empress and Emperor? Writing about The Priestess and defending institutions, I invited you to “reflect on the mental architecture” that produced your own mind. 

This chapter asks you to examine how certain decisions end up contributing to others’ architecture, defining their experiences. You may be more powerful than you know! The Hierophant is part of a lineage of teachers and students, influencers and influenced, each of them just one link in the chain.

How many broken links does it take for our world to stop recognizing itself in recollections of the past? 

Of all the card/chapter pairings so far, this one admittedly seems like the biggest stretch...  and yet, if this isn’t a snapshot of the pro-leader paramilitary making nice with the official police/military, then what is?

Snyder writes about how paramilitary forces first challenge the police and military, then penetrate them, and finally transform them. There’s an undeniable courtship at work here, a sort of debauched mating ritual. 

FYI, this exact courtship was the subject of the recent Watchmen series on HBO — a truly excellent one-season arc that involved crisscrossing ties between military, police, and paramilitary factions, all tangled up in relationships between friends, lovers, and families. 

What Snyder warns about here is the recurring love affair between armed "freedom fighters” and those tasked with maintaining civil order. First they discover that they’re more alike than different... and then, eventually, there’s no telling the difference between them whatsoever.

Let’s keep these Lovers star-crossed, shall we?

This is Part III in a series of posts about Timothy Snyder’s ON TYRANNY, which can be purchased via your local bookstore, and also here.