#this poll has been made before but the person who *i* saw post it disable rbs with like 4 days left on the poll??

[phroyd]

WASHINGTON — President Trump has selected Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the favorite candidate of conservatives, to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and will try to force Senate confirmation before Election Day in a move that would significantly alter the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court for years.

Mr. Trump plans to announce on Saturday that she is his choice, according to six people close to the process who asked not to be identified disclosing the decision in advance.

As they often do, aides cautioned that Mr. Trump sometimes upends his own plans. But he is not known to have interviewed any other candidates and came away from two days of meetings with Judge Barrett this week impressed with a jurist he was told would be a female Antonin Scalia, referring to the justice she once clerked for.

“I haven’t said it was her, but she is outstanding,” Mr. Trump told reporters who asked about Judge Barrett’s imminent nomination at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington after returning Friday evening from a trip to Florida and Georgia.

The president’s political advisers hope the selection will energize his conservative political base in the thick of an election campaign in which he has for months been trailing former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his Democratic challenger. But it could also rouse liberal voters afraid that her confirmation could spell the end of Roe v. Wade, the decision legalizing abortion, as well as other rulings popular with the political left and center.

The nomination will kick off an extraordinary scramble by Senate Republicans to confirm her for the court in the 38 days before the election on Nov. 3, a scenario unlike any in American history. While other justices have been approved in presidential election years, none has been voted on after July. Four years ago, Senate Republicans refused to even consider President Barack Obama’s nomination to replace Justice Scalia with Judge Merrick B. Garland, announced 237 days before Election Day, on the grounds that it should be left to whoever was chosen as the next president.

In picking Judge Barrett, a conservative and a hero to the anti-abortion movement, Mr. Trump could hardly have found a more polar opposite to Justice Ginsburg, a pioneering champion of women’s rights and leader of the liberal wing of the court. The appointment would shift the center of gravity on the bench considerably to the right, giving conservatives six of the nine seats and potentially insulating them even against defections by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who on a handful of occasions has sided with liberal justices.

Mr. Trump made clear this week that he wanted to rush his nominee through the Senate by Election Day to ensure that he would have a decisive fifth justice on his side in case any disputes from the vote reached the high court, as he expected to happen. The president has repeatedly made baseless claims that the Democrats are trying to steal the election and appears poised to challenge any result of the balloting that does not declare him the winner.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, has enough votes to push through Judge Barrett’s nomination if he can make the tight time frame work. Republicans are looking at holding hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee the week of Oct. 16 and a floor vote by late October.

Democrats have expressed outrage at the rush and accused Republicans of rank hypocrisy given their treatment of Judge Garland, but they have few options for slowing the nomination, much less stopping it. Instead, they have focused on making Republicans pay at the ballot box and debated ways to counteract Mr. Trump’s influence on the court if they win the election.

Mr. Trump met with Judge Barrett at the White House on Monday and Tuesday and was said to like her personally. While he said he had a list of five finalists, he never interviewed anyone else for the job and passed over Judge Barbara Lagoa of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, who appealed to campaign advisers in particular because of her Cuban-American heritage and roots in Florida, a critical battleground state in the presidential contest.

Despite Mr. Trump’s penchant for drama and the intrigue that surrounded his first two picks for seats on the Supreme Court, the selection process since Justice Ginsburg died last Friday has been fairly low-key and surprisingly predictable. The president has long signaled that he expected to put Judge Barrett on the court and has been quoted telling confidants in 2018 that he was “saving her for Ginsburg.”

If confirmed, Judge Barrett would become the 115th justice in the nation’s history and the fifth woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court. At 48, she would be the youngest member of the current court as well its sixth Catholic. And she would become Mr. Trump’s third appointee on the court, more than any other president has installed in a first term since Richard M. Nixon had four, joining Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Judge Barrett graduated from Notre Dame Law School and later joined the faculty. She clerked for Justice Scalia and shares his constitutional views. She is described as a textualist who interprets the law based on its plain words rather than seeking to understand the legislative purpose and an originalist who applies the Constitution as it was understood by those who drafted and ratified it.

She has been a judge for only three years, appointed by Mr. Trump to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017. Her confirmation hearing produced fireworks when Democratic senators questioned her public statements and Catholicism. That made her an instant celebrity among religious conservatives, who saw her as a victim of bias on the basis of her faith.

Judge Barrett and her husband, Jesse Barrett, a former federal prosecutor, are reported to be members of a small and relatively obscure Christian group called the People of Praise. The group grew out of the Catholic charismatic renewal movement that began in the late 1960s and adopted Pentecostal practices like speaking in tongues, belief in prophecy and divine healing. The couple have seven children, all under 20, including two adopted from Haiti and a young son with Down syndrome.

In a 2006 speech to Notre Dame graduates, she spoke of the law as a higher calling. “If you can keep in mind that your fundamental purpose in life is not to be a lawyer, but to know, love and serve God, you truly will be a different kind of lawyer,” she said.

But during her 2017 confirmation hearing, she affirmed that she would keep her personal views separate from her duties as a judge. “If you’re asking whether I take my faith seriously and I’m a faithful Catholic, I am,” she told senators. “Although I would stress that my personal church affiliation or my religious belief would not bear in the discharge of my duties as a judge.” She was confirmed on a 55-to-43 vote, largely along party lines.

As a law professor, Judge Barrett was a member of Faculty for Life, an anti-abortion group, and wrote skeptically about precedent in Supreme Court rulings, which both sides in the abortion debate took to mean she would be open to revisiting Roe v. Wade.

“I tend to agree with those who say that a justice’s duty is to the Constitution and that it is thus more legitimate for her to enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a precedent she thinks clearly in conflict with it,” she wrote in a Texas Law Review article in 2013.

She later criticized Chief Justice Roberts for his opinion preserving Mr. Obama’s Affordable Care Act, saying he went beyond the plausible meaning of the law. As an appellate judge, she joined an opinion arguing on behalf of an Indiana law banning abortions sought solely because of the sex or disability of a fetus, disagreeing with fellow judges who struck it down as unconstitutional.

Conservative and liberal interest groups did not wait for Mr. Trump’s announcement to open the battle over Judge Barrett’s confirmation. Each side prepared multimillion-dollar campaigns to introduce her to the public and frame the debate to come in the Senate, with an eye on the November contest.

Several polls over the past week have shown that most Americans, including many Republicans, believe the next justice should be selected by the winner of the November election, not by Mr. Trump in the meantime.

A survey released Friday by The Washington Post and ABC News suggested the fight may drive Democrats even more than Republicans to the polls. About 64 percent of Mr. Biden’s supporters told pollsters that the vacancy made it “more important” that the Democrat win the election, while just 37 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters said the same for him.

Phroyd

[nothingman]

>

Voters wait in a long line on the first day of in-person early voting for the Georgia Senate runoff election in Atlanta on Dec. 14, 2020.

Photo: Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag

“We just celebrated Bloody Sunday, and we’re fighting the same battles,” said Helen Butler, executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, likening the legislative changes advancing through the Georgia General Assembly to civil rights-era trickery.

Georgia’s Republicans lost a game of inches in the elections in November and January. Rather than admit to themselves that they were outworked, Republican legislators have instead decided to play with the rules.

Some of the changes are profound. Some seem perfectly petty.

The bill that passed the Georgia Senate on Monday night, SB 241, criminalizes “ballot harvesting” activities like helping people fill out absentee ballot applications. It also requires an applicant to either upload a picture of a photo ID or submit photocopies of an ID. In combination, the two rules create impossible conditions for some voters, Butler said.

“How is a blind person going to upload that form into an email process and send it in?” she asked. “People don’t have copiers in rural Georgia. They don’t always have internet access. They don’t always have email or fax.”

Absentee ballot boxes are apparently too convenient when placed outside, so now they must be indoors and only available during business hours. No more private buses would be able to take early voters to the polls.

Other changes seem simply absurd. Consider the criminalization of line warming, the practice of offering food or drink to people standing in line to vote. It seems something awfully minor. But combine it with substantial reductions to early voting and absentee ballots and the inability for local elections boards to expand polling locations, and suddenly you have long, thirsty lines.

Melody Bray, co-founder of the Georgia 55 Project, saw lines around the block for early voting in the primaries last year. She and some friends eventually banded together to organize relief for line-stranded voters. They partnered with local restaurants like Atlanta’s beloved Dancing Goats Coffee Bar chain, using funds from their partners to pay for the coffee rather than ask for freebies while companies are laying people off. It was grassroots civic participation. If the Senate bill is passed by Georgia’s House and signed into law, it will be illegal.

“Amongst ourselves, we have disparate political views,” she said. “It was hard to be nonpartisan, actually. But we all love Atlanta. … I think that losers can be very bitter about losing, and winners can be very bitter about winning. It would be very hard with data to show that line warming somehow affected Republicans getting voted into office.”

“I think it’s cruel. There’s no purpose other than trying to suppress the vote.”

And yet in elections decided by half a percent, all it takes to win is for one in 200 people — the right people, of course — to choose comfort over democracy.

“This is un-Christian. It’s inhumane,” Butler said. “I think it’s cruel. There’s no purpose other than trying to suppress the vote. They’re hoping that people will get out of line and not vote. People see the viciousness of this.”

Vicious, perhaps, because many Republicans believe this is the last stand. Democrats have spent years fighting to expand voter turnout, and that’s been a major contributor to Georgia tipping blue. The midterms have been cast as an existential contest for control of the state between the probable Democratic nominee for governor, Stacey Abrams, and the survivor of a brutal Republican primary to come between Gov. Brian Kemp and whoever becomes former President Donald Trump’s anointed champion. This week, ousted Sen. Kelly Loeffler launched Greater Georgia, the Republican answer to voter turnout.

“We are at war, fighting to protect our democracy from domestic enemies at this moment,” Abrams told Anderson Cooper, invoking the threat of the January 6 Capitol attack. “Those domestic enemies should be renounced.”

I see no real rationale for the changes aside from protecting statewide officials from defeat by a Democrat. So there’s no virtual fig leaf covering legislators’ immodesty.

“Because of the posture and the timing of this legislation, everyone agrees that no one has seen anything like this,” said Pichaya Poy Winichakul, voting rights staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “What we do know is that they’re making it very difficult to track this legislation. Every operative iteration of this bill has never been made available to the public in time for a hearing and public testimony on that bill. It’s been difficult for us as voting rights activists to track this bill and exponentially more difficult to track for voters.”

SB 241 passed the Senate 29-20 on a party-line vote. It needed 29 to pass; leadership decided to protect the seven most vulnerable seats from having to cast a vote. Now the Senate bill is going to the House, which already passed its own bill implementing voting restrictions a week ago, and then will land on the governor’s desk to be signed into law.

Today, virtually every eligible adult in Georgia is a registered voter, in part because registration is automatic when acquiring state-issued ID. SB 241 would end automatic voter registration.

Even before the pandemic, more than half of voters cast votes early, either in person or with an absentee ballot. In November, about 80 percent of voters cast early votes. But the Senate bill would restrict absentee ballots to people 65 or older or to those who have a physical disability or can show that they’re out of town.

Consider that about 73 percent of Georgians over 65 are white, compared to 54 percent of residents overall. Older white voters traditionally break for Republicans 3 to 1 in Georgia.

Under the Senate bill, Georgia’s secretary of state would cede much of the office’s authority to a state board. It would administer a hotline for anonymous complaints about voter fraud, which it would be obligated to investigate. The secretary would also be unable to enter into a consent decree with the federal government without approval from both chambers of the General Assembly. The sheer cynicism of it: The law essentially predicts that a Democrat will win the seat and prevents that Democrat from cooperating with a Democratic president as long as a gerrymandered state Senate can hold power.

“Souls to the polls” events for Sunday early voting were initially to be eliminated entirely. After an outcry and national attention, the authors amended the bill, allowing that counties can pick one Sunday for early voting. The bill passed the House along party lines last week and will be taken up by the Senate.

The American Civil Liberties Union testified that the proposed laws probably violate both the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act. That may be beside the point: It will cost progressives time and money to fight in court. Even if and when organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center prevail in court, their coffers will be lighter. During the civil rights battles of the ’50s and ’60s, legislators pursued similar strategies knowing that they would fail in court. The Voting Rights Act required Southern states with a history of discrimination to submit proposed changes to election laws to the Department of Justice for pre-clearance review for that very reason: so that they couldn’t continually game the courts.

In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court held some of the pre-clearance provisions of the act as unconstitutional. Since then, a parade of laws suppressing voting have marched across the South, from onerous voter ID requirements in Texas — which took five years in court to reverse — to laughably discriminatory disenfranchisement of Black voters in North Carolina. Georgia by and large escaped this campaign, until today.

Passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore pre-clearance to states with a history of discrimination. Georgia came to the Democrats’ rescue, giving them control of the U.S. Senate. The question is whether the Senate will return the favor.

The post Jim Crow Rises: Desperate Georgia Republicans Scurry to Pass Voting Restrictions Law appeared first on The Intercept.

via: https://ift.tt/38qqVPv

[vox]

I voted for Donald Trump, and I already regret it

I remember the precise moment that I realized I regretted voting for Donald Trump.

It was during his 60 Minutes interview after the election. I was, like everyone else, shocked that he had won. It seemed so unlikely based on the polls and the confidence the media had that he would lose. It was a pleasant surprise, and I went to bed on election night thrilled that he would be our president.

But sitting on my couch, sipping coffee as I watched the interview, I saw with my own eyes who Trump really was as a person. He backtracked on one of his signature campaign promises: pursuing an investigation into the Clinton email scandal. It’s not that I want Clinton to be crucified or “locked up” — it’s the nonchalance with which he went back on his word after hammering it repeatedly during the campaign. The ease and quickness with which he reversed his position shook me to my core. I realized in that moment that I had voted for a demagogue. And it was sickening.

I didn’t want to vote for Trump or Clinton — but I had to make a choice

I’m a former law enforcement officer in my 50s, originally from Texas but currently living in a small Midwestern town. I’m a real political junkie, spending much of my day reading news and watching C-SPAN, and issues like immigration enforcement, pro-life laws, and health care are important to me. Though I tend to fall on the conservative end of the political spectrum, it’s important to me to remain open-minded, and I’ve cast my vote for Democratic candidates like Al Gore in the past.

Last year was a particularly tough choice. I hated both candidates, wishing every day that Washington had offered up different options. I would have voted for Marco Rubio or Bernie Sanders any day over those two. I swore I would sit out on this election, unable to vote for either Trump or Clinton in good conscience.

Most of my decision came down to my poor experience with Obamacare. In the ’90s, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a chronic illness that causes fatigue, memory loss, physical aches, and soreness. I found myself increasingly unable to perform my duties in law enforcement due to these symptoms, and eventually had to leave the job completely. After a stint working part-time for the government, helping to distribute food stamps and other services, I eventually was unable to work at all. I lost employer-based health insurance when I left the workforce and had to pay my health care costs out of pocket.

When Obamacare first came into effect, I was excited to get what I thought would be financial help with my costly medicine and treatments. But when I signed up, my premium came back at an astronomical price, more than my monthly mortgage payment. This happened because I had to declare my husband’s salary as part of our household income, which put me in an earning bracket too high to qualify for any financial assistance. My husband works for a small business, and while he gets paid fairly, his company does not offer spousal insurance. I’m left with a premium of $893, so high that I can no longer afford the cost of my medicines and treatments on top of the monthly premiums. I wish I could opt out completely, but the penalty for not signing up is much too great.

In the end, I voted for Trump because he promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, and that was the most important issue to my own life. Looking back, I realize what a mistake it was. I ignored the pundits who repeated over and over again that he would not follow through on his promises, thinking they were spewing hysterics for better ratings. Sitting on my couch, my mouth agape at the words coming out his mouth on the TV before me, I realized just how wrong I was.

Trump isn’t even president yet, and already he’s not keeping his promises

Since that 60 Minutes interview when Trump went back on his promise to investigate Clinton, I haven’t been able to look at him the same way. Witnessing his open admittance that he made promises simply because they “played well” during the campaign was disturbing. He has shown himself to be guilty of all of the same things he accused Hillary of — lying to the public, refusing to do press conferences, putting himself and his business interests above the American people.

Since the election, Trump has repeatedly spat in the faces of those that cast their ballots for him. I did not cast my vote for his Cabinet members, many of them rich millionaires and billionaires, despite Trump’s lambasting of Hillary Clinton on her association with Wall Street. I did not cast my vote for his sons who sat next to him during his meeting with tech titans, potentially representing the vast business interests of the Trump company that they now run. I did not cast my vote for Ivanka, whose clothing brand was working out an ongoing deal with a Japanese clothing company when she sat in on a meeting with her father and the Japanese prime minister. I did not cast my vote to enrich the very swamp that Trump promised he would drain.

News that the Republicans in Congress are prioritizing the repeal of Obamacare is a step in the right direction. But Trump’s lack of clear plan to replace the system is troubling. He doesn’t seem to be showing any interest in the mechanics of a new policy — he’s just out there making promises to the public with nothing to back it up. It doesn’t do much to offer me faith that he really wants to fix the problem.

Trump’s retaliatory and impulsive behavior, which I think I assumed was a campaign tactic, have carried over into his actions as president-elect. He now has the power to reward companies or countries that flatter him and destroy those that don’t with a simple tweet — just look at how he praises L.L. Bean and criticizes Boeing, causing their stock values to swing like yo-yos. His tweets about foreign powers lack restraint, and his treatment of the press whenever they say something he doesn’t like shows his vengefulness. He promised that he would be a president to all Americans, but all he has done is divide us.

As I witnessed the first rally of the post-election Thank You Tour, watching him soak up the praise and applause from the live feed on my computer, I felt my heart fall into my stomach. These supporters, many of whom populate my small town and my Facebook feed, have invested so much hope in him. They believe he has their back and will put them first. But all he cares about is himself. And he will betray them, as he has already done.

I know I’ll be ridiculed for voicing my regret

It’s not easy for me to come forward and say all of this. I feel humiliated already, and I know that going public with my story will open me to ridicule. But I don’t know what else to do to try to oppose him and his actions. I’m too sick to participate in peaceful protest. All I can do is try to spread the word, publishing editorials, signing petitions, and posting on Facebook, trying to do what I can to change the minds of my friends and families who continue to support him.

I hope that by coming forward, I can encourage other Trump voters who feel the same regret to speak out as well. Together we can send a message to Washington: All of you Republicans in Congress, I know that you are excited to pass your legislation, but you need to reign in this dangerous cult of personality or I will begin advocating against your party. I’m ready to switch sides to stop him.

My peers who voted for Trump still don’t get it. They tell me to give the man a chance, that it’s still too early to tell and that I shouldn’t listen to the media. They aren’t willing to let go the hope they have that he will keep their best interest in mind. They tell me, what were they going to do, vote for Hillary, of all people?

I wish I had. I wish I had done anything else but vote for him. I know my one small vote doesn’t make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things, but this one feels so personal. The decision haunts me every day. And I’ll do whatever I can to help reverse it.

—as told to Karen Turner

Sherri Underwood lives in the Midwest with her husband, three cats, and one dog. She began her career in law enforcement shortly after high school, working her up from a dispatcher to county jailer and then peace officer before changing her career to social services as a disabled adult jobs counselor, state JOBS program case worker, and eligibility specialist, assisting clients in applying for public assistance programs. Sherri is a self-described “news junkie” and an avid reader. When her illness allows, she pursues her hobbies of painting, writing poetry, and crocheting and treasures time with family. She encourages other regretful Trump voters to visit the Facebook group I Regret Voting For Trump in 2016 and tell their story.

[ponyatta]

A (soon) comprehensive list of replies to antis when you have too much to do and can’t argue

I thought this would be nice to do for fans especially with all the goodies we are getting for 3B and anti’s are already coming with their negativity quickly. Its isn’t completed yet but you can still take a read, save it for future, use some of the arguments and tell me what I can add to improve it. I will leave this one up with a link to the updated one before the read more. There are links I haven’t found yet/arguments I haven’t added yet.If there are any mistakes then tell me. For example I can’t see if somethings that should have a link does thanks to the new layout so message me if they don’t. If there could be a point in an argument that isn’t as well then message me also.

Enjoy

Viewers/I don’t dislike Iris because she is black/she makes up an interracial couple/I want my white faves to be together

Interracial marriages were not legalized in the united states until 1967 so on June 12, it will be 50 years since our version of Iris being Iris West-Allen was even legal in a significant portion of where the show is set.

Even with 50 years passing there is still a large issue many have with interracial relationships.

In 2013 there was the huge amount of racist backlash to a cheerios commercial involving an interracial couple and their child to the point that the company had to disable comments from said video on youtube (but you can still see the gist of how terrible it was in the link).

May of 2016, there was an old navy ad on twitter featuring an interracial couple and it also got a flurry of racist comments with many saying they would never shop there again because of the image and just at the end of 2016 there was another incident with a State Farm ad on twitter collecting a large amount of racist comments with people saying how the image disgusted them and making the black man out to be a predator.

A couple was evicted because the landlord found out they were interacial while another were stabbed by a man after they kissed in public.

This is not just your neo-nazis, trolls on twitter and youtube or violent racist. There are also studies which have been done on the way people claim to be okay with interracial couples but may hold subconscious bias.

I/Viewers are not racist for not liking WA/Iris

How would you know? Here is a nice little paragraph from here that gives you an insight on why I ask.

“The problem with asking people to report on their own attitudes about sensitive topics like race and gender, however, is that people are often either unaware of their own biases or unwilling to report them. For example, although most white Americans self-report little to no racial bias against black people, they’ve been shown to possess robust implicit, or nonconscious, biases.”

Why are you attacking me for expressing my opinion?

The same way you are allowed to express your opinion, I am allowed to express mine on yours. You must remember that freedom of speech means that the government is not allowed to retaliate of censor you but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us cannot correct/argue. Attacked is a very strong word that carries a lot of implications. It is unlikely that anymore is happening than people expressing their own opinions about yours to you.

You said something that was wrong and you are being corrected. There is no need to get defensive about it. Realise a mistake and take to correction

Or

You stated an opinion as fact thus denying others theirs/said a blanket statement that doesn’t represent everyone involved.

Or

You said something that has racist undertones and you should acknowledge that then endeavour to fix that.

*Insert anger or defensiveness about the possibility of one being racist/acknowledging their racist action or tendencies*

“White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation.”  A quote from this journal.

WA have no chemistry

Chemistry is subjective. That is why we have experts (in the form of casting directors, producers and critics) that bring together people or acknowledge those who have the best chemistry. David Rapaport casted most of The Flash’s main characters. When talking to buzzfeed, he said the following:

“That was a really hard role to cast,” Rapaport said. “We had seen Candice initially, but I think we were too early on in the process to cast her so we ended up testing Keke Palmer and this other girl, but they felt a little too young next to Grant. When building an ensemble, you have to do those chemistry reads to find out who works best together. We went back and looked at the tapes and Candice shines — when she smiles, it’s out of control — so we thought, Let’s do another chemistry read and we’ll bring Candice and one other girl in and it was just magic. Everyone in the room and looked at each other and we all just knew it. It just made total sense.”

So not only was she picked based on her chemistry with Grant, they went through a lot to make sure she was the right people and still after all that EVERYONE (which undoubtedly included the executive producers) in the room knew her chemistry with Grant was magic. To say that everyone in that room (including Grant who said once she left the room that Candice was the Iris West they were looking for LINK NEEDED ) somehow is so incompetent at their jobs that a subset of fandom knows better than them is rather insulting and very far fetched.

Furthermore the WA ship or their scenes have won almost all polls taken on various sites when polling the flash so even with how subjective chemistry is a large percentage enjoy the one WA has the most.

Various publications have put WA as one of the best relationships in one way or another. Also for the season 3 premier their chemistry was one of the highlights as noted in many articles. (add link to master post or individual ones) (Add tweets from write who loves westallen)

Even the cast and the people who work on the show love westallen with directors talking openly about how epic the relationship like Kevin Smith and consistently stating that their scenes are the best out of the episodes they direct. Executive Producers have said how much they enjoy writing westallen and Geoff Johns talk about the two of them almost anytime he brings up the show on twitter. (add links)

I like their platonic relationship more

How because they never had one. From the very beginning of the show We know that Barry Allen is hopelessly in love with Iris. During the pilot, He is trying to ask her out. The next episode he confessed his love for her but she just couldn’t hear it and in that same episode she admitted that Barry was one of the reasons that she had never had a real boyfriend before. We see her insinuate in flashbacks that she wouldn’t have dated Eddie if Barry wasn’t in a coma and especially if she knew how he felt about her. And in episode 13 we see that she had been unable to stop thinking about him after his love confession then we learn in the next episode that she always has had/still has these feelings but they just need something to make them come outwords. They literally went on movie, bowling and multiple coffee dates together. They have never had a strictly platonic relationship in the first place. They’ve always had a secretly in love relationship.

Moreover, they are still each other’s best friends while dating. They will still always be the most important person is each others lives. They can love each other in multiple ways at the same time.

Lastly why are you so against them becoming anything more than that? Might it be because you would like her to fall into the strong independent black woman who doesn’t need no man trope (x) (x)/mammy figure (x) (x)? This link is about the boxes that black women are thrown into in fandoms (written before The Flash even aired) and although there are many tropes and roles notice how so many have the prerequisite of her not having any romantic relationship and if she does it isn’t shown on screen more than necessary but can never have one with the main character. Have you fallen for this as well?

Barry doesn’t deserve her

Barry makes mistakes like any human being and she has forgiven him for them. Still it is still understandable to be angry at him but it doesn’t change the fact that he loves her and he makes her happy which is what you should want for her. As noted in this post Barry supports her a lot. We also see that Barry has been described to be willing to do whatever it takes to keep Iris alive in 3B so I think she is lucky to have someone like that.

This sentiment easily fall into the strong independent black woman who doesn’t need no man trope (x) (x). This link is about the boxes that black women are thrown into in fandoms (written before The Flash even aired) and although there are many tropes and roles notice how so many have the prerequisite of her not having any romantic relationship and if she does it isn’t shown on screen more than necessary but can never have one with the main character. Have you fallen for this as well?

Finally if you support an opposing Barry ship and you feel this way then why do you want to him to be with your fave if he doesn’t even deserve Iris. In fact why would you want to watch a show where the protagonist isn’t even good enough for the love of their life.

Iris doesn’t really love him: she’s just following destiny.

Here is a good post that explains why this is not true. Also in season 1 episode 15 “Out of time” Iris says how she was unable to stop thinking about him after his love confession in episode 9 and kissed him. Much before she saw anything about them being together. So we know she had been thinking about her romantic feeling for him since he confessed hers. This can be seen here. https://youtu.be/lbtn_KZmDWU. Also Fake!Wells told Barry in the next episode that she still had those feelings for him but that they were deep in her subconscious so needed something big to force them to the surface as seen here https://youtu.be/2MTzYDFxcYA?t=2m57s and asking her out at a coffee shop while she was still dating her boyfriend probably pushed them further down. So she we have known for absolutely sure that Iris has had feelings for Barry since 1x09. Linda only needed one conversation with Iris about Barry for her to figure out they were in love with each other. Even with, before the show had even started Cisco had only ever heard Iris talk to a comatose Barry/his social media page and already knew that Barry and Iris had was indescribable and was enough for Felicity to know she had no chance as seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gd4V2UiaT0. (add Eddie’s “It’s not about the future its about here and now speech)

In addition to what was said in the previous paragraph about Fake!Wells explaining that Iris’s feelings needed something big to make them conscious rather than subconscious. We also see that she keeps them subconscious so thats he doesn’t mess up the great relationship she already has with Barry because as we have seen, she doesn’t do well without him in her life. So she uses them being married in the future and Earth 2 to reassure herself that if she did try it out it wouldn’t end with them hating each other and never talking again. The same way that his possibly dying was enough for her to have the feeling coaxed out of her in 2x20.

Moreover, we can see that both Candice Patton, Grant Gustin, other members of the show/DCTV and the executive producers do not agree with this. They have all expressed in interviews that that Iris West does love Barry Allen. Aaron Helbing said in an interview “She just moved in with Barry, she’s madly in love with him…” recently in fact. And last year he also said “Barry Allen and Iris West are an iconic relationship. We set it up, at the end of Season 2, that they were going to get together, and then he undid it. But, these two are destined to be together. I would say to keep watching. As with destiny, things end up playing out the way you hoped they would.”

Finally if you don’t believe she doesn’t love him maybe you should look at this gif series which has tags that are a goldmine for understanding  their early relationship from valeriemperez also here are their scenes to gether in season 1 and season 2.

Iris doesn’t really love him: she loves the flash.

In season 1 episode 15 “Out of time” Iris says how she was unable to stop thinking about him after his love confession in episode 9 and kissed him. Immediately after that she found out he was the flash. So we know she had been thinking about her romantic feeling for him since he confessed hers. This can be seen here. https://youtu.be/lbtn_KZmDWU. Also Fake!Wells told Barry in the next episode that she still had those feelings for him but that they were deep in her subconscious so needed something big to force them to the surface as seen here https://youtu.be/2MTzYDFxcYA?t=2m57s and asking her out at a coffee shop while she was still dating her boyfriend probably pushed them further down. So she we have known for absolutely sure that Iris has had feelings for Barry since 1x09. Linda only needed one conversation with Iris about Barry for her to figure out they were in love with each other. Even with, before the show had even started Cisco had only ever heard Iris talk to a comatose Barry/his social media page and already knew that Barry and Iris had was indescribable and was enough for Felicity to know she had no chance as seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gd4V2UiaT0.

It wasn’t until he had lost his powers that she next confessed her feeling for him. She told him then that she didn’t care if he was the flash or not but wanted to be with him - Barry Allen. In season 3 she even tried to keep him being the flash out of their love life and told him he was perfect without his powers. What more do you want from her?

Candice Patton, who plays Iris West has spoken about how the reason we saw such intense attraction between Iris and The Flash was because The Flash was everything Barry was but more confidently. Also it allowed her to explore her feelings for Barry without her having all the restriction in her mind of her relationship with Barry Allen i.e. best friends she would never want to lose because without him she is miserable. I REMEMBER THIS BUT I CANNOT FIND WHEN SHE SAID THIS.

Finally if you don’t believe she doesn’t love him maybe you should look at this gif series which has tags that are a goldmine for understanding their early relationship from valeriemperez also here are their scenes to gether in season 1 and season 2.

Iris’s feelings came out of nowhere

In season 1 episode 15 “Out of time” Iris says how she was unable to stop thinking about him after his love confession in episode 9 and kissed him. So we know she had been thinking about her romantic feeling for him since he confessed hers. This can be seen here. https://youtu.be/lbtn_KZmDWU. Also Fake!Wells told Barry in the next episode that she still had those feelings for him but that they were deep in her subconscious so needed something big to force them to the surface as seen here https://youtu.be/2MTzYDFxcYA?t=2m57s and asking her out at a coffee shop while she was still dating her boyfriend probably pushed them further down. So she we have known for absolutely sure that Iris has had feelings for Barry since 1x09. Linda only needed one conversation with Iris about Barry for her to figure out they were in love with each other. Even with, before the show had even started Cisco had only ever heard Iris talk to a comatose Barry/his social media page and already knew that Barry and Iris had was indescribable and was enough for Felicity to know she had no chance as seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gd4V2UiaT0.

Even her boyfriend and her father knew that there was something more between them with Eddie knowing that he couldn’t never compete with it. It was his own words when he said that “There were always three people in this relationship.” MAY BE PARAPHRASED The show finds it hard to deal with the point of views other than white men but we see their more-than-friends-but-don’t-realise-it a lot in season 1. We see her struggle with her feelings for Barry a lot in with his confession, as she asks him if she should move in with Eddie and so much more that valeriemperez highlights so much better in these series of gifs called westallen by scene and the tags are a goldmine for understanding their relationship. You can see all of their scene that season here.

In season 2, their scenes are less especially before the winter break because they were selling Barry/Patty and she was grieving her dead fiance while Barry was feeling guilty about Eddie’s death as well. Still we see Iris parallel her response to him dating Linda in the way that she responds to finding out he is going on a date with Patty. She trusts him with her life enough to jump out of a skyscraper when he tells her to. She talks about her doppelganger having sex and them possibly getting married with him at a club. She tells him to come home (which we learn later meant to her) before going to earth 2. He helped her get closure with Eddie. She stopped seeing her rebound guy to spend time with him. She went to him about her brother first and he relied on him to tell her father about him. You can see these scenes and more here. And even them it wasn’t until next season that they became a couple.

ALSO ADD THE ARGUMENT ABOUT HOW IT MAY BE DIFFICULT FOR PEOPLE TO EMPATHIZE WITH PEOPLE OF COLOUR. I’M LOOKING FOR A STUDY SO IF ANYONE COULD PROVIDE THAT WOULD BE GREAT. Therefore it might have been difficult for you to see her feelings manifest.

They are siblings/Iris and Barry are incest

It if very rude to people who have actually experience incest for people to be using their trauma wrong for petty fandom fights. Like incredibly disgusting. Like don’t do that. Ever. Stop. You don’t like them. Fine. Don’t call incest.

Why aren’t they siblings? Well a large number of reasons. One is that they never saw each other that way. In the very first episode they explains that they are not brother and sister but they just lived together. This is the narrative of the show that was set up at the very pilot of the show. They did not start their relationship from when they lived together like some who many believe to be in comparable situations but rather had a preexisting relationship as friends that they simply built up on. They were raised as friends - not siblings. We see how Barry treats Iris and how it is different to how Wally and Iris treat each other as to further highlight how they are not siblings. Nobody in the narrative has a problem with their relationship. In fact Joe was very supportive of them throughout season 1.

They do not share the same father as one of Barry’s storylines was him getting his father out of jail which was not Joe. We see him call Joe “Joe” or “your dad” when talking to Iris constantly. The only reason that Joe took in Barry was because he was his daughter’s best friend and when Barry was growing up they were not all that close because the only other person that believed that Henry Allen didn’t kill Nora Allen was Iris West before the particle accelerator accident. We can see how strained their relationship actually was before Joe started to help him find his mother’s killer in the pilot. Joe is Barry’s father figure and all of team flash is a family and especially so the west-allen clan but that doesn’t make them siblings. We’ve seen Iris interact with Barry’s father as well as she brought him in to help Barry and tried to get his medical license back. 

Moreover, they aren’t siblings full stop though because Barry wasn’t adopted by the West or his name would have changed to Barry West. So they aren’t related. They made it very easy to see the difference between them for the sparse viewer by making one black and the other white, ergo making them look nothing alike. On this note I should add that SB shippers sometimes use the argument that Grant and Danielle look so similar to each other as a reason why the ship should happen but outside small fandom circles that fact is never used against the relationship.  Legally there is nothing wrong with Barry and Iris’s relationship as noted in more detail in this post here. So the claim that they are sibling is wrong. The claim that they are “kinda” or technically siblings doesn’t make them that. It  is also wrong because you can either be someone’s sibling or not. It is a discrete variable. A yes or no. And the answer is no. There is no inbetween. You tick boxes to be yes not the ones you make up and they are legally, genetically and interpersonal connection. They don’t tick any of them. 

The cast see nothing wrong with their relationship and Grant and Candice don’t see them as siblings also. And the people who are making the show feel that there is nothing wrong with it either. In fact they have stated many times that they love writing their relationship evolve into a romantic one. And many other DCTV starts like Violette Beane and Caity Lotz have said that they love their relationship as well. Even the child that played young Barry loves their relationship as well. Directors that come for an episode at a time have also spoken highly of the two of them and their scenes together.

So not only are they not siblings as in line with the narrative of the show and nobody has a problem with their relationship in the world of the show but that they are legal and people who work on the show and make it have no problems with them and even love them as a couple.

I would also want you to note why you stick with this claim after almost 3 seasons? Could this be because of race? This link is about the boxes that black women are thrown into in fandoms (written before The Flash even aired) and although there are many tropes and roles notice how so many have the prerequisite of her not having any romantic relationship and if she does it isn’t shown on screen more than necessary but can never have one with the main character. Have you fallen for this as well? We see that Brotp or the exclamation that two people are like siblings is seen disproportionately with characters of colour as noted by many people here, here, here and here. So you many want to critically analyse your intentions of shouting this wrong claim.  

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: December 2019

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of December 2019 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

There’s something wrong with the British electorate when they look at nine years of austerity, massive layoffs in police and NHS staff, outright persecution of the disabled, the country’s economy and standing being completely tanked and housing safety reports being sat on until Grenfell went up and their thought is “I want five more years of that!”

...although nobody should overlook how Liberal Democrat supporters refused to accept any responsibility for the result, in spite their party being directly responsible in handing control of Kensington to the Tories by 150 votes, as well as splitting the votes in Tory marginals Cities of London & Westminster and Finchley & Golders Green

...while Blue Labour crawled out of the woodwork to say the reason why Labour lost was because they weren’t indistinguishable enough from the Tories (which makes so much sense...) while saying the party should have listened to Caroline Flint - the same Caroline Flint who said that Labour should shut up and fall in line with the Tories...and lost her seat as a result

Nothing sums up Laura Kuenssberg better than how, the day before the General Election, she appeared on Politics Live to either blatantly lie about seeing postal votes or casually break electoral law by discussing postal vote results she claims to have seen - which is a direct violation of the The Representation of the People Act 1983

...although with Laura Kuenssberg being Laura Kuenssberg it wasn’t long before yet another example of gross unprofessionalism reared its head when she forgot her job is to report the news and not create it according to her own personal bias when she said history would condemn all Remainers who tried to undo Britait, which not only happens to be a direct violation of the BBC’s editorial guidelines but also betrays a remarkable failure to understand history

...and she was hardly the only example of this, not when Suraj Sharma was putting up anti-Corbyn posters outside polling stations across Merseyside on election day in spite doing so being illegal

It shouldn't surprise anyone that proven liar Boris Johnson broke his election promises within a week of duping the electorate, with him binning off pledges on workers rights, raising minimum wage and taking No Deal off the table - yet somehow the ignorant foghorns defend this by saying something about four legs being good

...soon afterwards proven liar Boris Johnson also reneged on the campaign pledge to raise the national living wage to £10.50 and instead raised it to £8.72 - and of course the BBC tried to spin that as a good thing, crowing about the percentage that it had increased by instead of how the Tories have been pledging that figure since the 2015 election

Smirking halfwit Priti Patel decided she too wanted to exploit the London Bridge attack for political gain and was quick to claim that the laws that saw the attacker released were implemented by a Labour government...in spite the obvious issue that he was released due to laws passed in 2012, i.e. when the Tories were in government and Theresa May was serving as Home Secretary, but that’s not important right now...

...soon afterwards Godfrey Bloom also decided the best course of action was to go on the offensive against the deceased’s family, going so far as to say that as the deceased believed Jihadists should be released early he reaped what he sowed and, by the way, could the deceased’s father pipe down and stop saying nasty things about the Tories

Australians were happy when their Prime Minister Scott Morrison responded to the widespread wildfires torching the country by...not being there as he’d rather bugger off to Hawaii on holiday, and having begrudgingly cut his holiday short his next suggestion was to try and withhold compensation for the volunteer firefighters that were combating what had become the most widespread wildfires in decades

Tory donors Alan Howard and Jeremy Isaacs showed how committed the two are to the party and to Britait by...paying millions of their own money to buy Cypriot passports so they don’t have to leave the EU like the plebs who voted to Leave will have to

It’s not even a surprise that the BBC somehow mutated a story of fact-checkers revealing that 88% of Tory Facebook ads contained lies compared to 0% of Labour’s into a headline saying both parties had been warned about publishing untruths during the campaign as opposed to just one of them

...although ITV were not far behind with their reimagining of Stormzy saying “Yes, 100%” as an answer to the question “Do you think Britain is racist?” into the headline “Stormzy says Britain is ‘100% racist’” which (predictably) got those who get far more riled up by the suggestion that they’re racist than they ever are by the existence of racism to kick off on social media

Nobody was surprised that Allison Pearson responded to the photos of the four year-old boy sleeping on the floor of Leeds General Infirmary was to claim the photos were staged...and being the coward that she is, she played the usual “I was hacked” card as if she doesn’t have a track record for shit like this

Among the wave of inept tactical voting guides The Guardian published the most inept of them all, telling their readers to vote Lib Dem in seats held by pro-Remain Labour MPs - which worked out marvelously in Kensington, didn’t it?

...and right before the year ended Jeremy Gilbert further aided The Guardian’s credentials of not having a clue by writing a hit piece saying that if Labour want to win elections they need to not be Labour, as if Clement Atlee or Harold Wilson didn’t exist - or, more likely with the usual centrist idiocy, the belief that Labour didn’t exist until Tony Blair came along and made them Labour In Name Only

Of course the dogwhistling boneheads would find some excuse to foam at the mouth about Diane Abbott during the election campaign, and this time it was her wearing two different shoes, which begs just one question: “...and?”

In a remarkable act of cowardice Arsenal responded to the Chinese state broadcaster pulling a broadcast of their match of their match against Manchester City due to Mesut Ozil’s criticism of the country’s treatment of Uighur Muslims by...throwing Ozil under the bus and claiming he doesn’t represent the club

In the mind of Patrice Désilets the reason why Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey got remarkably average Metacritic reviews isn’t because the game has a boring gameplay loop and unintuitive controls, but because a couple of reviewers spoke about features that weren’t in the game (although he neglected to say who those reviewers were, as they don’t appear to be on Metacritic) that obviously mean that all reviewers didn’t play the game and just decided to be negative for the sake of it

As if going full Pravda wasn’t reason enough to doubt anything the BBC say ever again, the fact that they ran a story about Cats receiving glowing reviews further showed just how uninterested they are in reporting an actual story compared to their own interpretation of it

When it emerged that Caroline Flack had assaulted her partner by cracking him in the head with a lamp while he was sleeping her response was to come out swinging with a bullish attitude that she wouldn't leave Love Island really worked in her favour...for about a day, until ITV announced she’d been replaced, and it wasn’t as if they had to look too hard for a replacement

It’s the time of year where Kevin Spacey posts a video of him totally in character as Frank Underwood from House of Cards...which was the creepy side of weird last year, but this year weird’s gone out the window

Somebody opened the crypt in which Michael Howard sleeps his eternal slumber, meaning we had to hear him venture his opinion about how judges should not be allowed to use their knowledge or judgment and instead shut up and fall in line with what the government tells them to do

Somehow a story about how Jo Maugham killed a fox in his back garden with a baseball bat while wearing his wife’s silk kimono on Boxing Day morning wasn’t a headline from Guido Blog designed to whip up their readers into indignant and/or ignorant rage, instead something that Jo Maugham himself tweeted on Boxing Day morning having done just that

Of course Tom Watson crawled out the woodwork to say it;s terrible how Labour members hated him...while at no point mentioning his years of backstabbing or how he tried to disqualify Labour members from voting in a leadership election so he could install the centrist option that nobody wanted

Nobody was surprised to see Darren Grimes taking to Twitter to bemoan the lack of funding in public infrastructure in the north...just as nobody was surprised to see the penny clearly hadn’t dropped with him that he was campaigning on behalf of the people who slashed public service infrastructure funding in the north for the past nine years

Hard centre extremist Andrew Adonis thought it was a smart idea to say that Corbynism needs to be “eradicated” from the Labour party.  Just a hint: that’s what Tom Watson thought was a bright idea

It’s one thing for Youtube to play it safe with this year’s Youtube Rewind after last year’s downvote prison romance, but making the 2019 Rewind little more than a WatchMojo list video without the commentary goes beyond playing it safe and into being downright lazy

For a brief moment Giles Coren thought he was Rod Liddle, judging by his Times column where he spoke about Owen Jones getting a peerage and preying on the anal virginity of young researchers

There’s something pathetic about various WWE wrestlers taking to Twitter to mouth off about a badly-performed spot on an episode of AEW Dynamite that can either be explained by them being ordered to tweet that crap out by Vince McMahon or by their suddenly feeling threatened, which only served to make them look like the pro-WWE trolls that howl about everything AEW-related in a manner which stopped being amusing and started being concerning a couple of months ago

And finally, because of course, is Thanos wannabe Donald Trump and his belief that Justin Trudeau is “two-faced” because he said nasty things about the Orange Overlord - but of course, there’s no record of Trump ever saying nasty things about any nation’s leader after pretending to be all buddy-buddy with them

[pardontheglueman]

The Corbyn Crisis

The attempted Coup d’etat against Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn presently being carried out by his supposedly panic-stricken colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party, spooked, so the story goes, by Britain voting (as the polls had more or less predicted for some weeks) for Brexit  is, in reality, the manifestation of the worst kept secret in British politics - the long-planned overthrow of a democratically elected leader by a troop of MPs utterly out of touch with its own electorate and wholly dismissive of its democratically expressed view. The coup, as has now been made transparently clear, had already been abandoned at the last moment on no less than three separate occasions.  With Labour performing way better in the Oldham By-election, the Local Council elections and the London Mayoral election than the intelligentsia had predicted, the gunpowder had had to be kept dry a little longer than anticipated.

Indeed, Corbyn doing reasonably well in electoral test after electoral test, undermined, somewhat, the right-wing’s case that he could never, under any circumstances, win a general election. It’s worth pausing, here, to consider the PLP’s track record in the star-gazing business; such as voting for the Iraq War, endorsing Tory de-regulation of the financial sector which led to the collapse of the banks and the consequent global crisis of 2008, failing to spot the rise of UKIP taking place on their own doorsteps, failing to spot the rise of ISIS, failing to spot that the change to One Member, One Vote (OMOV) for Labour leadership contests might actually result in a left-wing victor. Still, the 172 Members of the PLP who supported the motion of no confidence in Corbyn, are certain that he’s an electoral liability. So, who are we, the members who do all the dirty work to get these diamonds elected to Parliament in the first place and who voted overwhelmingly in favour of Corbyn to disagree?

The coup, now planned to imperfection on the laughable basis that Corbyn was the man to be blamed for Brexit, by the Blairites / Brownites / technocrats/careerists and grandees of ‘New Labour’, just at the precise moment that the Conservative government, minus one Prime Minister, had led Britain into an economic and political cul-de-sac. With the obvious potential for Labour to reap huge electoral advantage as buyer’s remorse set in across a country coming to terms with the collapsing pound, a steep rise in reported incidents of racist abuse and a disjointed Out leadership already rowing back on its cast-iron promise to re-invest the post-Brexit dividend into a crumbling NHS, the witless assassins decided to strike down the Labour Party leader.

David Cameron, the P.R man with a penchant for pig-pumping and playing the race-card, who had needlessly called a referendum to quell a little local difficulty in the Tory ranks and, of course, to shoot UKIP’s eurosceptic  fox , was, unbelievably, being given a get out of gaol free card by Hilary Benn and his motley bunch of co-conspirators . Sadly, it came as no surprise.

Even on the very day that Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party, securing an incredible 59.5 % of all votes cast in the contest, it would have been clear to anyone with a cursory knowledge of internal Labour Party politics that his historic victory and his unrivalled democratic mandate would count for nothing in the minds of the Blairite / Brownite factions that had reigned supreme in New Labour for the last twenty years. They hadn’t ruthlessly purged the party of democratic socialism just to allow a small thing like a landslide victory for a left-wing candidate to bring their New Labour project to a permanent close.

Party activists knew that Corbyn would be subject to a hate campaign in the Murdoch press the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the heyday of Arthur Scargill and the Miner’s strike, what they perhaps could never have anticipated was the untrammelled bias of the BBC and the daily onslaught that Corbyn was subjected to in the opinion columns of the supposedly progressive and Labour-friendly (Manchester) Guardian. Corbyn was completely friendless in the mainstream media, hardly surprising given that another mild-mannered Labour leader Ed Miliband had been systemically crucified by the tabloids throughout his period in office. Who can forget the Mail’s scurrilous campaign against Miliband’s deceased father, or indeed the Conservative smear in the 2015 election that he would ‘stab his country in the back’. Corbyn knew what he was in for (he’d been subjected to a degree of hateful press in the past) and he was bloody brave to take the job on! To see Ed Miliband join the ranks of the plotters, many of whom were the very people that had constantly poisoned the well when he himself had been Labour leader, is to truly understand the depths the Labour party establishment can sink to.

The writing was on the wall, of course, even before Corbyn took up his position as party leader, with many of the big beasts in the Party ruling themselves out of serving in a Corbyn cabinet before the votes had been counted. Quite how the likes of Liz Kendall, Yvette Cooper, Harriet Harman and Alan Johnson were content to draw their substantial salaries while steadfastly refusing to pull their full weight in the fight to protect the sick and the disabled one can only guess?

As the strength of Corbyn’s candidacy became clear there were ominous signs of the undemocratic tactics that the right was prepared to pursue in their attempt to short-cut democracy, with thousands of potential Corbyn voters disbarred from joining or re-joining the party because they had had the temerity to support other progressive parties in the past! The Andy Burnham team (holed below the waterline by his now notorious decision to abstain on the 2015 Welfare Reform Bill) even briefed the press that they were about to lodge a judicial review to halt the contest.

Right from the moment he took up his new job, Corbyn was subject to verbal bullying and a range of filthy smears that amounted to an ongoing character assassination from his colleagues, often in the full glare of the T.V cameras. In which other workplace in the country would this not involve the dismissal of the gang of hooligans responsible?  Let us quote M.P John Mann (last heard of labeling Ken Livingstone an ‘apologist for Hitler’ live on national T.V) who leveled accusations that Corbyn had failed to respond to concerns about child abuse in his Islington constituency in the eighties-

‘The reason that your response and inactions to these matters is worthy of specific scrutiny is that unlike others who did not see what was happening, or as we saw with Saville, kept their suspicions to themselves rather than speak out or investigate, you are wishing to lead the Labour party during the period of the Goddard Inquiry into child abuse and are seeking to become prime minister’.

Rosa Prince, in her lukewarm biography Comrade Corbyn dismissed the smear, citing an article in the Islington Gazette quoting Corbyn asking for the council to hold an inquiry and demanding that Virginia Bottomley, then Health Secretary, investigate.

It’s worth remembering, at this point, that the verbal abuse that MPs who oppose Corbyn have been subjected to on social media (which Corbyn has rightly condemned time and again) isn’t something confined to the internet or, indeed to some of Corbyn’s out of control supporters.

Jess Phillips, M.P for Birmingham Yardley, was only too happy to brag in a T.V interview how she would tackle a leader who was hurting her party boasting ‘I will knife you in the front’. An utterly charming way to speak to a 66-year-old gent who has spent the best part of 50 years fighting for social justice here, and around the world, and who, it is widely accepted, doesn’t himself ‘do personal’. Other MPs who delighted in tormenting Corbyn included the now discredited Simon Danczuk (a would-be stalking-horse who subsequently ended up in the glue factory) tweeting the ludicrous suggestion that Corbyn hadn’t bowed properly when laying the ceremonial wreath on Remembrance Sunday, thereby disrespecting the war-dead. Another constant thorn in Corbyn’s side was Wes Streeting, the young M.P for Ilford North, who is a leading light in Progress, a right-wing faction deeply embedded in the Labour Party which continues to promote Blairism.

Streeting made a perfect fool of himself earlier this year when attacking the Party’s principled decision to deny McDonald’s, a multi-national company that refuses to recognise Trade Unions and employs its staff on zero hour contracts, a stall at its annual conference. ‘Do we really want to give a snobby impression to a company which employs 100,000 people and whose food is enjoyed by millions?”

Oh, and lest we forget, Corbyn has been routinely branded as a terrorist sympathiser and an anti-semite by many of his political opponents, both within and without of the party. In fact, the PLP carried out a ceaseless campaign of guerrilla warfare, designed to overthrow Corbyn, from the very beginning of his incumbency.

Now, after three appalling days of hectoring, belittling and bullying its leader, the PLP has finally accepted that he will not be browbeaten into standing down. And they tried everything – even labelling the biggest party mandate any Labour leader has had in its history as no more than a personality cult (now this really is skating on thin ice given that Tony Blair defended his decision to launch an illegal war with Iraq by declaring – ‘If you believe in God, the judgement is made by God’). Now, there’s a good old-fashioned cult for you!

It’s worth examining, too, the alternative candidates that the PLP are proposing as challengers. Angela Eagle voted for the Iraq War and the toxic Tory Welfare Reform Bill, she came 4th out of five candidates in the 2015 Deputy Leadership contest and her Constituency Labour Party has declared its support for Corbyn in any leadership re-run. So, Angela’s in touch with the views of her members then! The other candidate to come forward is Owen Smith, the M.P for Pontypridd. Here I can speak from personal experience, as Mr. Smith is my own M.P, indeed he stands just a few blocks down from me on the terraces of my beloved Pontypridd RFC most Saturday afternoons.

A couple of years ago I was part of a small delegation that approached Mr. Smith with a view to enlisting his support in a campaign to save our local library in Rhydyfelin. Despite swingeing local authority cuts, the Library had not originally been earmarked for closure, mainly as a result of an Equality Impact Assessment that the Council was legally bound to carry out (the Library was serving a disadvantaged, Communities First area with terrible school results, etc) but, at the last moment, the library was switched to the council’s intended closure list (50% of Rhondda Cynon Taf’s libraries subsequently closed). Despite the clear evidence of a breach in its own legal requirement to take note of the EIA (the decision was indeed later rescinded by the council under threat of a judicial review and following a wonderful community campaign which involved octogenarian borrowers chaining themselves to the bookshelves on the day of its closure) and the clear moral argument to provide a Library for the poorest residents in his constituency Mr. Smith was not at all keen to lend his weight to our campaign

Saving Rhydyfelin Library - a documentary by Craig Oates

As we were leaving his office, I made a final attempt for him to look to his conscience. Emphasising, again, the poverty-stricken nature of the neighbourhood, the low percentage of homes with internet access and private transport (which made our local library such a lifeline to opportunity in the outside world) and his position as a Labour M.P duty-bound, one would have thought, to assist those desperately struggling under a savage Tory austerity programme. It was all to no avail, though, ‘need doesn’t necessarily determine where resources are spent’ explained our worldly, would-be Prime Minister. Hard words, indeed, and ones that might just as easily have escaped from the lips of a notoriously extremist Conservative Prime Minister, one who couldn’t quite bring herself to believe in society! Now, I wonder, what a certain Jeremy Corbyn might have said in response to our plea for solidarity?

Much of the campaign, at least on the 24hr News Channels, has featured the return of the once omnipresent Alastair Campbell. I was puzzled by this – his appearance, like that of Mandelson, or Blair, is guaranteed to stiffen the backbone of any Corbynista wobbling at the thought of imminent political Armageddon. However, an investigative piece on the behind the scenes organisation of the coup at http://www.thecanary.co/ sheds an interesting light on the mystery and, indeed, Campbell’s central role in it.

For the Parliamentary Labour Party (the clue really is in the body’s title) to disregard the democratic process should be unthinkable, but here we are. As I write, there are ongoing attempts to actually keep Jeremy Corbyn, the preferred choice of 60% of Party members less than one year ago, off the ballot paper by exploiting a legal loophole. This is a tactic straight from the Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, and, indeed, Oswald Moseley playbook.

During the run-up to the last General Election, when the polls (I know, I know) were predicting a hung Parliament, and where there was every likelihood that Ed Miliband would be able to form a Government that could command a majority in the House of Commons in circumstances where David Cameron could not, the Conservative Party began to promote the idea that this would be unconstitutional. The BBC, day after day, had constitutional experts appear to discuss the question (they all dismissed the Tories’ claim, citing past precedent, but that didn’t dissuade the Beeb) and there was a distinct whiff of extra-parliamentary activity polluting the air as opinion columns started to appear in the broadsheets suggesting that David Cameron would sit tight in Downing Street if the Conservatives had received more votes than Labour.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/06/tories-coup-legitimacy-democratic-ed-miliband-government-labour

What unholy prospect could have driven the establishment to the brink of abandoning parliamentary convention – apparently, it was Ed Miliband’s Mansion Tax! Imagine the scenario (massively unlikely now that the party has reduced him to a laughing stock, I accept) of a victorious Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn with a manifesto that enabled him to close down tax havens, repeal anti-trade unions laws, re-nationalise the energy companies and, perhaps, scrap Trident. Does anyone really think that, in post-Brexit Britain, he would be able to take a leisurely drive to Buckingham Palace (past the foot soldiers of UKIP, the EDF, the Armed Services and the massed ranks of poverty-pleading celebs like Mylene Klass and Sol Campbell) to inform the Queen of his plans to implement a Socialist programme? Sadly, on the evidence of the past nine months the PLP wouldn’t have had his back, they’d have sold him and his democratic mandate out in an instant, saving the fascists the trouble of overthrowing him!

I rejoined the Labour Party (I’ve voted Labour all my life) immediately after last May’s general election defeat and long before Jeremy Corbyn declared his candidacy. For a while I was torn between voting for Corbyn, whose views were similar to mine, or Andy Burnham, the consensus candidate. Burnham immediately took a big step back in my estimation with his ‘business hero’s speech that he decided to launch his leadership campaign bid with and, of course, his unprincipled decision to abstain on the Tories’ squalid Welfare Reform Bill lost him my vote as well as tens of thousands of others (to his enormous credit he served in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and has spoken out against the coup).

I wasn’t naive enough to think it would be plain sailing for Corbyn - one look at the faces of his fellow parliamentarians as the leadership results were being announced told its own story. And, I’m no stranger to the left betraying its own either. When I was a teenage activist I went to see the red-haired socialist firebrand and then Shadow Education Secretary Neil Kinnock deliver a tub-thumping speech at Sardis House (home of the N.U.M, in Pontypridd). It was red-blooded, revolutionary stuff (I exaggerate, here, only slightly) that sent shivers down the spine. After the speech, Kinnock bought five or six of us a pint in the Criterion and hoovered up our votes for the future. Three or four years later he was selling the miners down the river, and as it turned out, the whole Trade Union and Labour movement with them. No surprise, then, that Lord Kinnock’s (yes, that’s exactly how his kind of sad story always ends) son Stephen, plunged his own dagger into Corbyn’s back. Just goes to show that the hereditary principle may not be the best method for choosing your member of Parliament!

Here’s the dilemma that I and other Labour voters face now; if Jeremy Corbyn stays in post Labour won’t be able to govern until the best part of 172 MPs are deselected and replaced by Members of Parliament who represent the values and principles of the Labour Party of 2016 and not those of 1997, which, in effect means Civil War. On the other hand, if Corbyn is driven out of office, it would signify the end of meaningful democracy in the Labour Party for generations to come. There really would be no point in turning up at CLP meetings to vote for party policy or casting your vote for a party leader knowing all the while that it can all be undone by your Member of Parliament because he, or she, is from a different wing of the party and a bloody sore loser to boot!

When casting your vote in any forthcoming leadership election it’s worth remembering that Governments over the past two decades have run the British economy on the neo-liberalist lines first espoused here by Margaret Thatcher and that the Labour Party was in power for thirteen of those years on the back of absolutely huge parliamentary majorities. The marginalisation, the disenfranchisement, the disconnection and the rage felt by the wasted industrial heartlands of Great Britain, expressed in no uncertain terms in the Brexit vote, owes as much to the discredited ‘third-way’ mantra of New Labour as they do to Conservative obsession with neo-liberalist monetary policy.

The Labour Party faces a choice, right now, that will determine its identity for decades to come. It can either become an anti-austerity alternative to the prevailing policy of neo-liberalist economics or it can renew its vow to the Thatcherite orthodoxy that’s got it into this bloody mess in the first place!

Of course, we have been brought to crisis point by the PLP, who’ve been running around T.V studios for 48hrs or so screaming at the top of their collective voices that the Party faces an existential crisis that threatens its very being, whilst somehow forgetting to mention that it has been a crisis wholly manufactured in the Westminster bubble. Added to which, they have the bloody gall to try and blackmail Corbyn from office on the grounds that his intransigence risks splitting the party!  

For decades, when the position of Labour leader was decided by means of an Electoral College, which included Trade Unions, CLPs and MPs, the centre-right of the party, aghast at the very idea of trade unions and party activists having a role in the selection of a Labour leader, long fantasised over a future rulebook; one slimmed down to a single, ultra-democratic principle - One Member, One Vote. Last year Ed Miliband, keen to rid himself of his ‘Red Ed’ (if only!) image, finally obliged and delivered them the holy grail of OMOV.  How times have changed since, no sooner have the PLP taken possession of their new rulebook than they decide to burn it!

[vaner93-blog]

Audiences, everywhere we go we’re a part of them

There are so many different types of audiences that many people often don’t even realize they’re a part of one. Pretty much anytime you experience any activity or event, whether as a participant or merely as an observer, you’re a part of the mass audience. Over the course of my life I’ve experienced flash mobs, protests, rallies, various outcomes of sporting events, fights, crimes and tragedies. Some of which I witnessed firsthand, and others I was a part of the global audience watching things unfold before me through a cellphone, computer or television screen. The ways in which we become audience members has changed greatly over the years. In the 19th century, audiences (or crowds) were thought of as people who came together at specific times and places to experience some form of routinized behaviour (Sullivan, 2013). This notion differs greatly from what we consider them to be now, but still resembles what many people consider to be the limitations of the term “audience”. When I mention being an audience member to someone I know, they’re likely going to assume that I was watching a show, newscast or movie, or that I attended a concert or other type of performance event. The difference being that many people don’t realize that everything they experience amongst their peers or in any type of mass or crowd is an audience experience.

I’d like to begin by discussing something that occurred the other day when I was taking the Go Train into Toronto to visit my good friend that I found heart wrenching for a great many reasons. Being the type of person that I am, it’s no surprise to anyone that knows me that I found myself sprinting out of the parking garage down and under the tracks to barely make it onto the train before the doors closed and as a result of this, I found myself on the rail car deemed to be accessible for those with disabilities. Now because it was morning rush hour, the train was completely filled mainly by morning commuters rather than those who require the assistances offered on that particular car. Where an issue arose was when the conductor requested that a group of students give up their seats to an elderly couple that boarded a few stops down the road. Within 10 seconds, a confrontation between the conductor and the students had quickly turned into upwards of 10 people screaming at them along with the conductor, while the rest of us sat there watching all of this occur. All of us made a conscious choice not to intervene in any way and some people even had their phones out recording the incident to either share it with their friends or online. At that moment, we made a collective decision to behave passively in response to the clear wrongs that were going on in front of us and none of us made any attempt to mitigate the issue by offering to give up our own seats on the train or speaking up in any way. We simply sat there taking in what was happening directly in front of us, a captive audience within the lower level of a train car travelling rapidly toward downtown Toronto. The decisions people made that morning are an example of uses and gratifications theory in action. Various people were presented with the same situation in front of them and had the same options available to them. Some chose to sit there quietly and enjoy a little unplanned excitement on their morning commute, others seized the opportunity to do their good deed for the day by standing up for two people who weren’t in a position to stand up for themselves, some might have simply been having a bad morning and saw the student behaviour as an outlet for them to unload their built up stress before heading to work, and others sat there texting their friends or taking videos so they would have something to discuss when they’re on break or out for lunch later that afternoon. Regardless of how we chose to behave in that scenario, people inevitably will choose the outcome which they feel will benefit them the most either through feeling good about themselves or gaining something from the experience which they can take with them when they reach their destinations.

The next thing I’d like to discuss is one which many of us have grown extremely tired of hearing about over the past two years, though we’ve all become so drawn in to the global audience that reacts and responds to every crazy thing that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth or through his tweets which many people often find so ridiculous that they can’t help but to think about them and discuss them with others. When I think of the phenomena that is the rise of Donald Trump, the first question that comes into my mind is “why and how did we let this happen?”. I say “we” in this context because, though I made a choice I now regret by not exercising my right to vote, I am a legal citizen of the United States of America and could have gone across the border to exercise my right to vote in the election. The answer I always come up with when I think about this is that we as a global audience, gave him exactly what he needed to achieve his goals. By constantly talking about him and so much exposure in the public eye, he was actually able to gain the attention of so many people that he almost became a running joke. What absurdity would come out of his mouth next? Who would he attack on social media for reasons we will never be able to understand? By placing these questions in our head, and continually discussing them, we became his most valuable asset in the election. It reached a point where he truthfully could’ve sat there silently during debates and there still would’ve been millions of people watching with their phones in their hands waiting for what’s to come. His very active global audience, even though many members off it hated him and everything he stood for, were spreading his message and his name throughout the country without him having to do so much as get out of bed. The results of the election showcase exactly what Plato was referring to when he stated that the common people hold all the power to make very important decisions within a democracy but often lack the wisdom to make the decisions that are in their own best interest or that will lead to the creation of a morally sound state (Sullivan, 2013). The press also, by presenting stories about Hillary Clinton’s possible wrongdoings, made the public aware of state issues that they would have had no other way of knowing. This did so much damage to her campaign that even retracting the story days later had still led to the whole thing being a huge boost for Trump’s campaign. It was a perfect storm, that led to a prime example of the fact that giving the people the power to make such crucial decisions can often lead to unfathomable circumstances. We now have a president who’s offending more people daily, and will potentially have to make decisions about how to proceed with serious world issues where a misstep could lead to war. The saga will only continue as more people continue to protest the anthem and we’ve only begun to see the havoc the president can wreak on social media, as he will soon have twice as many characters at his disposal.

Another topic that must be looked at when evaluating Trump’s election from an audience studies perspective is how shocked everyone who makes their living from tabulating public opinion could’ve misjudged the results so blatantly. Now forgetting about the various conspiracy theories about rigged polls and so on that we’ll never be able to prove or disprove through any amount of discussion, there are several explicable factors that could have contributed to this. The first of which is the notion of the Spiral of Silence, which proposes that many people feel oppressed or ashamed to speak about their views, beliefs or opinions when their opinions clash with what they perceive to be the public opinion on the topic. When pollsters acquire their data, they ask people for their opinion on various topics and where they stand overall, it could quite simply be that many of the people surveyed didn’t reveal who they truly supported because they were ashamed to be a member of the “minority” and didn’t want others to look down on them or have confrontations due to their opposing views on something as controversial as an election involving Donald Trump. Most of the people out there want nothing more than to fit in, and after hearing nothing but negative opinions and publicity about him on most of the mainstream media, they may have felt more comfortable lying about their position and simply expressing it on their ballot and only on their ballot. Another issue with the polls may simply have been that they failed to acquire a proper sample of the opinion of the American people by failing to incorporate enough people from the various demographics, or that a much higher percentage of people from certain demographics showed up at the voting booths than others. Regardless of the cause for this, the U.S. election is a prime example of how difficult it is to properly gauge public opinion, and that even once we feel we understand what the general consensus is, it can change just as quickly through the influence of the media.

The last thing I wanted to discuss was the amount to which people, including myself, now use social media as their primary source of relevant information about anything that’s going on in the world or for important news relating to just about anything. Now while this is quite convenient in many cases such as last night, when we switched our TV over to the channel showing the NBA opener and we couldn’t figure out why all the players appeared so visibly upset and found the answer in various twitter posts from the past two minutes detailing the gruesome injury Gordon Hayward had just suffered. There are also many cases where fake news, not Donald Trump’s version but actual fake news, is spread over social media and countless people take it at face value and contribute to its spread throughout the realm of the internet. For example, I’m sure every single one of us can recall at least one example of the internet proclaiming the death of a famous actor or singer only to have them step in and inform us that they are in fact alive and well. Social media platforms are a great asset with so many potential benefits to society and so many great uses, for example JJ Watt’s social media campaign that raised millions to help repair the city of Houston after it was decimated by hurricanes. Journalists, or those perceived to be journalists that post stories online, are expected by the public to be objective in how they present their stories. However, the stories we end up reading are anything but objective as it is incredibly difficult for a journalist to avoid adding their slant, or their network or newspapers ideologies and agendas, into their writings. Therefore, we as an audience must read things for the information within them while filtering out the biases or opinions that are in there with it. By doing so, we’re able to limit the influence of the media and be fully certain that we’re forming our own opinions and not allowing other to shape them for us. We live in a world where the media still has some control over what we know, but will you allow them to tell you how to think?

Works Cited:

Sullivan, J. L. (2013). Media Audiences: effects, users, institutions, and power. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

[ponyatta]

A (soon) comprehensive list of replies to anti when you have to much to do and can’t argue

I thought this would be nice to do for fans especially with all the goodies we are getting for 3B and they will be coming with their negativity quickly. Its isn’t completed yet but you can still take a read, save it for future, use some of the arguments and tell me what I can add to improve it. I will leave this one up with a link to the updated one before the read more. There are links I haven’t found yet/arguments I haven’t added yet.If there are any mistakes then tell me. For example I can’t see if somethings that should have a link does thanks to the new layout so message me if they don’t. 

Enjoy

Viewers/I don’t dislike Iris because she is black/she makes up an interracial couple/I want my white faves to be together

Interracial marriages were not legalized in the united states until 1967 so on June 12, it will be 50 years since our version of Iris being Iris West-Allen was even legal in a significant portion of where the show is set. 

Even with 50 years passing there is still a large issue many have with interracial relationships. 

In 2013 there was the huge amount of racist backlash to a cheerios commercial involving an interracial couple and their child to the point that the company had to disable comments from said video on youtube (but you can still see the gist of how terrible it was in the link). 

May of 2016, there was an old navy ad on twitter featuring an interracial couple and it also got a flurry of racist comments with many saying they would never shop there again because of the image and just at the end of 2016 there was another incident with a State Farm ad on twitter collecting a large amount of racist comments with people saying how the image disgusted them and making the black man out to be a predator. 

A couple was evicted because the landlord found out they were interacial while another were stabbed by a man after they kissed in public. 

This is not just your neo-nazis, trolls on twitter and youtube or violent racist. There are also studies which have been done on the way people claim to be okay with interracial couples but may hold subconscious bias. 

I/Viewers are not racist for not liking WA/Iris

How would you know? Here is a nice little paragraph from here that gives you an insight on why I ask.

“The problem with asking people to report on their own attitudes about sensitive topics like race and gender, however, is that people are often either unaware of their own biases or unwilling to report them. For example, although most white Americans self-report little to no racial bias against black people, they’ve been shown to possess robust implicit, or nonconscious, biases.”

Why are you attacking me for expressing my opinion?

The same way you are allowed to express your opinion, I am allowed to express mine on yours. You must remember that freedom of speech means that the government is not allowed to retaliate of censor you but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us cannot correct/argue. Attacked is a very strong word that carries a lot of implications. It is unlikely that anymore is happening than people expressing their own opinions about yours to you. 

You said something that was wrong and you are being corrected. There is no need to get defensive about it. Realise a mistake and take to correction

Or

You stated an opinion as fact thus denying others theirs/said a blanket statement that doesn’t represent everyone involved. 

Or 

You said something that has racist undertones and you should acknowledge that then endeavour to fix that. 

*Insert anger or defensiveness about the possibility of one being racist/acknowledging their racist action or tendencies*

“White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation.”  A quote from this journal. 

WA have no chemistry

Chemistry is subjective. That is why we have experts (in the form of casting directors, producers and critics) that bring together people or acknowledge those who have the best chemistry. David Rapaport casted most of The Flash’s main characters. When talking to buzzfeed, he said the following:

“That was a really hard role to cast,” Rapaport said. “We had seen Candice initially, but I think we were too early on in the process to cast her so we ended up testing Keke Palmer and this other girl, but they felt a little too young next to Grant. When building an ensemble, you have to do those chemistry reads to find out who works best together. We went back and looked at the tapes and Candice shines — when she smiles, it’s out of control — so we thought, Let’s do another chemistry read and we’ll bring Candice and one other girl in and it was just magic. Everyone in the room and looked at each other and we all just knew it. It just made total sense.”

So not only was she picked based on her chemistry with Grant, they went through a lot to make sure she was the right people and still after all that EVERYONE (which undoubtedly included the executive producers) in the room knew her chemistry with Grant was magic. To say that everyone in that room (including Grant who said once she left the room that Candice was the Iris West they were looking for LINK NEEDED ) somehow is so incompetent at their jobs that a subset of fandom knows better than them is rather insulting and very far fetched. 

Furthermore the WA ship or their scenes have won almost all polls taken on various sites when polling the flash so even with how subjective chemistry is a large percentage enjoy the one WA has the most. 

Various publications have put WA as one of the best relationships in one way or another. Also for the season 3 premier their chemistry was one of the highlights as noted in many articles. (add link to master post or individual ones) (Add tweets from write who loves westallen)

Even the people who make the show love westallen. Executive Producers have said how much they enjoy writing westallen and Geoff Johns talk about the two of them almost anytime he brings up the show on twitter. (add links)

I like their platonic relationship more

How because they never had one. From the very beginning of the show We know that Barry Allen is hopelessly in love with Iris. During the pilot, He is trying to ask her out. The next episode he confessed his love for her but she just couldn’t hear it and in that same episode she admitted that Barry was one of the reasons that she had never had a real boyfriend before. We see her insinuate in flashbacks that she wouldn’t have dated Eddie if Barry wasn’t in a coma and especially if she knew how he felt about her. And in episode 13 we see that she had been unable to stop thinking about him after his love confession then we learn in the next episode that she always has had/still has these feelings but they just need something to make them come outwords. They literally went on movie, bowling and multiple coffee dates together. They have never had a strictly platonic relationship in the first place. They’ve always had a secretly in love relationship. 

Moreover, they are still each other’s best friends while dating. They will still always be the most important person is each others lives. They can love each other in multiple ways at the same time. 

Lastly why are you so against them becoming anything more than that? Might it be because you would like her to fall into the strong independent black woman who doesn’t need no man trope (x) (x)/mammy figure (x) (x)? This link is about the boxes that black women are thrown into in fandoms (written before The Flash even aired) and although there are many tropes and roles notice how so many have the prerequisite of her not having any romantic relationship and if she does it isn’t shown on screen more than necessary but can never have one with the main character. Have you fallen for this as well?

Barry doesn’t deserve her

Barry makes mistakes like any human being and she has forgiven him for them. Still it is still understandable to be angry at him but it doesn’t change the fact that he loves her and he makes her happy which is what you should want for her. As noted in this post Barry supports her a lot. We also see that Barry has been described to be willing to do whatever it takes to keep Iris alive in 3B so I think she is lucky to have someone like that. 

This sentiment easily fall into the strong independent black woman who doesn’t need no man trope (x) (x). This link is about the boxes that black women are thrown into in fandoms (written before The Flash even aired) and although there are many tropes and roles notice how so many have the prerequisite of her not having any romantic relationship and if she does it isn’t shown on screen more than necessary but can never have one with the main character. Have you fallen for this as well?

Finally if you support an opposing Barry ship and you feel this way then why do you want to him to be with your fave if he doesn’t even deserve Iris. In fact why would you want to watch a show where the protagonist isn’t even good enough for the love of their life. 

Iris doesn’t really love him: she’s just following destiny. 

Here is a good post that explains why this is not true. Also in season 1 episode 15 “Out of time” Iris says how she was unable to stop thinking about him after his love confession in episode 9 and kissed him. Much before she saw anything about them being together. So we know she had been thinking about her romantic feeling for him since he confessed hers. This can be seen here. https://youtu.be/lbtn_KZmDWU. Also Fake!Wells told Barry in the next episode that she still had those feelings for him but that they were deep in her subconscious so needed something big to force them to the surface as seen here https://youtu.be/2MTzYDFxcYA?t=2m57s and asking her out at a coffee shop while she was still dating her boyfriend probably pushed them further down. So she we have known for absolutely sure that Iris has had feelings for Barry since 1x09. Linda only needed one conversation with Iris about Barry for her to figure out they were in love with each other. Even with, before the show had even started Cisco had only ever heard Iris talk to a comatose Barry/his social media page and already knew that Barry and Iris had was indescribable and was enough for Felicity to know she had no chance as seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gd4V2UiaT0. (add Eddie’s “It’s not about the future its about here and now speech)

In addition to what was said in the previous paragraph about Fake!Wells explaining that Iris’s feelings needed something big to make them conscious rather than subconscious. We also see that she keeps them subconscious so thats he doesn’t mess up the great relationship she already has with Barry because as we have seen, she doesn’t do well without him in her life. So she uses them being married in the future and Earth 2 to reassure herself that if she did try it out it wouldn’t end with them hating each other and never talking again. The same way that his possibly dying was enough for her to have the feeling coaxed out of her in 2x20.

Moreover, we can see that both Candice Patton, Grant Gustin, other members of the show/DCTV and the executive producers do not agree with this. They have all expressed in interviews that that Iris West does love Barry Allen. Aaron Helbing said in an interview “She just moved in with Barry, she’s madly in love with him...” recently in fact. And last year he also said “Barry Allen and Iris West are an iconic relationship. We set it up, at the end of Season 2, that they were going to get together, and then he undid it. But, these two are destined to be together. I would say to keep watching. As with destiny, things end up playing out the way you hoped they would.” 

Finally if you don’t believe she doesn’t love him maybe you should look at this gif series which has tags that are a goldmine for understanding  their early relationship from valeriemperez also here are their scenes to gether in season 1 and season 2.

Iris doesn’t really love him: she loves the flash. 

In season 1 episode 15 “Out of time” Iris says how she was unable to stop thinking about him after his love confession in episode 9 and kissed him. Immediately after that she found out he was the flash. So we know she had been thinking about her romantic feeling for him since he confessed hers. This can be seen here. https://youtu.be/lbtn_KZmDWU. Also Fake!Wells told Barry in the next episode that she still had those feelings for him but that they were deep in her subconscious so needed something big to force them to the surface as seen here https://youtu.be/2MTzYDFxcYA?t=2m57s and asking her out at a coffee shop while she was still dating her boyfriend probably pushed them further down. So she we have known for absolutely sure that Iris has had feelings for Barry since 1x09. Linda only needed one conversation with Iris about Barry for her to figure out they were in love with each other. Even with, before the show had even started Cisco had only ever heard Iris talk to a comatose Barry/his social media page and already knew that Barry and Iris had was indescribable and was enough for Felicity to know she had no chance as seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gd4V2UiaT0. 

It wasn’t until he had lost his powers that she next confessed her feeling for him. She told him then that she didn’t care if he was the flash or not but wanted to be with him - Barry Allen. In season 3 she even tried to keep him being the flash out of their love life and told him he was perfect without his powers. What more do you want from her? 

Candice Patton, who plays Iris West has spoken about how the reason we saw such intense attraction between Iris and The Flash was because The Flash was everything Barry was but more confidently. Also it allowed her to explore her feelings for Barry without her having all the restriction in her mind of her relationship with Barry Allen i.e. best friends she would never want to lose because without him she is miserable. I REMEMBER THIS BUT I CANNOT FIND WHEN SHE SAID THIS. 

Finally if you don’t believe she doesn’t love him maybe you should look at this gif series which has tags that are a goldmine for understanding their early relationship from valeriemperez also here are their scenes to gether in season 1 and season 2.

Iris’s feelings came out of nowhere

In season 1 episode 15 “Out of time” Iris says how she was unable to stop thinking about him after his love confession in episode 9 and kissed him. So we know she had been thinking about her romantic feeling for him since he confessed hers. This can be seen here. https://youtu.be/lbtn_KZmDWU. Also Fake!Wells told Barry in the next episode that she still had those feelings for him but that they were deep in her subconscious so needed something big to force them to the surface as seen here https://youtu.be/2MTzYDFxcYA?t=2m57s and asking her out at a coffee shop while she was still dating her boyfriend probably pushed them further down. So she we have known for absolutely sure that Iris has had feelings for Barry since 1x09. Linda only needed one conversation with Iris about Barry for her to figure out they were in love with each other. Even with, before the show had even started Cisco had only ever heard Iris talk to a comatose Barry/his social media page and already knew that Barry and Iris had was indescribable and was enough for Felicity to know she had no chance as seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gd4V2UiaT0. 

Even her boyfriend and her father knew that there was something more between them with Eddie knowing that he couldn’t never compete with it. It was his own words when he said that “There were always three people in this relationship.” MAY BE PARAPHRASED The show finds it hard to deal with the point of views other than white men but we see their more-than-friends-but-don’t-realise-it a lot in season 1. We see her struggle with her feelings for Barry a lot in with his confession, as she asks him if she should move in with Eddie and so much more that valeriemperez highlights so much better in these series of gifs called westallen by scene and the tags are a goldmine for understanding their relationship. You can see all of their scene that season here. 

In season 2, their scenes are less especially before the winter break because they were selling Barry/Patty and she was grieving her dead fiance while Barry was feeling guilty about Eddie’s death as well. Still we see Iris parallel her response to him dating Linda in the way that she responds to finding out he is going on a date with Patty. She trusts him with her life enough to jump out of a skyscraper when he tells her to. She talks about her doppelganger having sex and them possibly getting married with him at a club. She tells him to come home (which we learn later meant to her) before going to earth 2. He helped her get closure with Eddie. She stopped seeing her rebound guy to spend time with him. She went to him about her brother first and he relied on him to tell her father about him. You can see these scenes and more here. And even them it wasn’t until next season that they became a couple. 

ALSO ADD THE ARGUMENT ABOUT HOW IT MAY BE DIFFICULT FOR PEOPLE TO EMPATHIZE WITH PEOPLE OF COLOUR. I’M LOOKING FOR A STUDY SO IF ANYONE COULD PROVIDE THAT WOULD BE GREAT.Therefore it might have been difficult for you to see her feelings manifest. 

 They are siblings/Iris and Barry are incest

It if very rude to people who have actually experience incest for people to be using their trauma wrong for petty fandom fights. Like incredibly disgusting. Like don’t do that. Ever. Stop. You don’t like them. Fine. Don’t call incest. 

Why aren’t they siblings? Well a large number of reasons. One is that they never saw each other that way. In the very first episode they explains that they are not brother and sister but they just lived together. This is the narrative of the show that was set up at the very pilot of the show. They did not start their relationship from when they lived together like some who many believe to be in comparable situations but rather had a preexisting relationship as friends that they simply built up on. We see how Barry treats Iris and how it is different to how Wally and Iris treat each other as to further highlight how they are not siblings. Nobody in the narrative has a problem with their relationship. In fact Joe was very supportive of them throughout season 1. 

They do not share the same father as one of Barry’s storylines was him getting his father out of jail which was not Joe. We see him call Joe “Joe” or “your dad” when talking to Iris constantly. The only reason that Joe took in Barry was because he was his daughter’s best friend and when Barry was growing up they were not all that close because the only other person that believed that Henry Allen didn’t kill Nora Allen was Iris West before the particle accelerator accident. We can see how strained their relationship actually was before Joe started to help him find his mother’s killer in the pilot. The West did not adopt Barry. Joe is Barry’s father figure and all of team flash is a family and especially so is the west-allen clan but that doesn’t make them siblings. 

Moreover, legally there is nothing wrong with Barry and Iris’s relationship as noted in more detail in this post here. 

The cast see nothing wrong with their relationship and Grant and Candice don’t see them as siblings also. And the people who are making the show feel that there is nothing wrong with it either. In fact they have stated many times that they love writing their relationship evolve into a romantic one. And many other DCTV starts like Violette Beane and Caity Lotz have said that they love their relationship as well. Even the child that played young Barry loves their relationship as well. Directors that come for an episode at a time have also spoken highly of the two of them and their scenes together. 

So not only are they not siblings as in line with the narrative of the show and nobody has a problem with their relationship in the world of the show but that they are legal and people who work on the show and make it have no problems with them and even love them as a couple. 

I would also want you to note why you stick with this claim? Could this be because of race? This link is about the boxes that black women are thrown into in fandoms (written before The Flash even aired) and although there are many tropes and roles notice how so many have the prerequisite of her not having any romantic relationship and if she does it isn’t shown on screen more than necessary but can never have one with the main character. Have you fallen for this as well? We see that Brotp or the exclamation that two people are like siblings is seen disproportionately with characters of colour as noted by many people here, here, here and here. So you many want to critically analyse your intentions.