#to rhetorically capture the power of the state you sort of end up just talking about god

[communistkenobi]

I know being like “communism is religious” is an extremely annoying thing to say but I’m reading a book called red demiurge which is about the legal history of the soviet union and honestly that title is not hyperbole

[armsinthewronghands]

Avonelle Wing’s “Mad Mystics” Thread

https://plus.google.com/100315432818170150233/posts/eb9ZGxgWz8m

Avonelle Wing (Avie) Public Nov 14, 2016 This has been a very clarifying year for me.

Shortly after +Living Games Conference, I was in a conference with a fellow key-noter where the phrase "tending our mad mystics" got stuck in my head. and it stayed there.

I've been rolling the idea around and around in my head.

Along with my sudden burst of motion where hygiene boxes  at our conventions are concerned, I've been sorting out what parts of our community I consider the most vital, the most vulnerable, the most in need of my energy and protection.

I had a conversation with +Mark Diaz Truman before Gen Con, right after The Post, where he infuriated me by dividing my world into "my constituency" and "his constituency". but again, he forced me to clarify my position, and to rethink my actions, my position, my purpose.  (Mark and I have fought viciously a couple of times since The Post. Our current peace has been hard-won and isn't because I think he has made right on the fallout of The Post, so please don't misinterpret me acknowledging his pushing me to be better as anything other than that.)

Then, I went to Hive (hive.org) - while it was nothing like I thought it would be, it was also clarifying and galvanizing.

Before Hive, I told +darren watts that one of my panels for this year's Metatopia would be "Tending Our Mad Mystics..." and Vinny said "WHAT DOES THAT MEAN???"

after wrangling back and forth, I was able to state clearly that our community excommunicates people with big, messy, inconvenient or uncomfortable emotion, with a disproportionate burden placed on women to keep their reactions tidy.

And if our community is going to be truly intersectional and to support all gamers (game designers, game artists, game professionals, game verbers), that we had better start building better responses and developing better mechanisms for coping and redirecting the damage inflicted by a mad mystic, and fast.

At Hive, I was able to state clearly that my life's work is to redistribute entrenched, toxic power structures to protect the most vulnerable and most under-served of our community. That includes our mad mystics especially.

In an earlier post tonight, I mentioned that I saw an online community burned to the ground - it went down in flames because there wasn't anybody who was prepared to catch and redirect the energy behind the fury, and to help us navigate the field of hurt feelings, backlash, *shame* and conflict that happened during and after that scorching. We weren't any good at tending our mad mystics.

Since then, I've been able to help ease at least one community through the fraught early days and to sidestep the "BUT MY FEELINGS ARE BIG AND THEY HURT!!" test to validate the feelings and put responsibility back onto the person feeling them. It's terribly important for us to learn how to support somebody who is emotionally compromised, and to help them interact with the world in a way that protects them and the possible recipients of that energy.

Treating our mad mystics like damaged goods and pushing them out the door abandons our most vulnerable community members, and that isn't acceptable to me. It sets a precedent for punishment over rehabilitation, for excommunication over reconciliation. That is not acceptable.

What does a mystic do? They connect to the divine. They see the world in ways the rest of us don't. They're unbridled joy and enthusiasm when they aren't a whirling vortex of other emotions. They test us and push us to do better, to be better, to be more patient and more thoughtful. They bring an intrinsic value to my world, and the idea of them being shut out by the community because we're not willing to learn how to work with them devastates me.

(This thread WILL be tightly moderated. No picking fights with me. I'm not in the mood for anybody unloading their baggage onto me.) 54 plus ones 54 no shares Shared publicly•View activity Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) +10 Somebody has asked me if MDT is a mad mystic in this context.

No, this post isn't about him, even though I mentioned him as another influence in my path. He pushed me to clarify my position on who my "constituency" is, if we're carving the world up into "my problem" and "not my problem". (as if. Anybody who knows me knows that isn't my style.)  

This post is about everybody who gets shamed for mental illness or processing disorders. Mark's post was something else and maybe one day I'll be ready to talk about THAT in public, but I doubt it. Nov 14, 2016 Christo Meid's profile photo Christo Meid +2 Probably I'm tired --- I usually understand your posts right away, but I'm not sure who exactly fits into the category of mad mystics. I'm thinking the mystics are emotional, creative types, who by their nature might periodically hurt others obliviously with their outbursts, but then they probably apologize when the outburst passes.  And yet in this community, excommunication happens easier than accepting apologies? I hope I'm getting at least part of this right... Nov 14, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) +1 that's the overall gist of it, yes. Nov 14, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) +1 I see where the confusion came in. I rewrote the section that starts with "And if our community is going to be truly intersectional" to clarify with some verbs and a complete thought. I think I'm the tired one here. Nov 14, 2016 Misha B's profile photo Misha B +2 Sub Nov 14, 2016 Gretchen S.'s profile photo Gretchen S. +1 I wish to subscribe to this newsletter. Nov 14, 2016 Jason Pitre's profile photo Jason Pitre +1 . Nov 14, 2016 Cam Banks's profile photo Cam Banks +1 Potent. Nov 14, 2016 Chris Shaffer's profile photo Chris Shaffer +1 . Nov 14, 2016 Rob Donoghue's profile photo Rob Donoghue +2 Pre coffee, but that have been wrestling with some things adjacent to this, so very much listening. Nov 15, 2016 Josh T Jordan's profile photo Josh T Jordan +3 As a mentally ill creative person of faith, I am listening with interest. Nov 15, 2016 Anna Kreider's profile photo Anna Kreider +7 So I'm confused by "coping and redirecting the damage caused by a mad mystic", because on the one hand it sounds like you want to care for mad mystics as a vulnerable population with valuable contributions to make, but on the other hand saying that you need to redirect their energy to prevent damage sounds like the sort of rhetoric that is used to shame and excommunicate them in the first place.

Am I misunderstanding? Because tbh, as a mentally ill creator who got pushed out of doing something I love because it was unsafe for me to continue, it hurts hearing things that sound like the rhetoric that was used against me. But I know I'm in a sensitive place right now. Nov 15, 2016 William Nichols's profile photo William Nichols . Nov 15, 2016 Rob Donoghue's profile photo Rob Donoghue +3 The rhetoric is going to be tricky, because walking the line between "I acknowledge harm has been done/is being done" and "I don't want to simply excommunicate/demonize perpetrators" is hard.  We have no shortage of examples of both denying harm and zero tolerance, so there is no way that seeking an alternative is not going to touch live nerves. Nov 15, 2016 Dymphna C.'s profile photo Dymphna C. +5 +Anna Kreider :  As someone with skin in the game, I don't percieve it that way (but I understand why you feel cagey about it).

I think most tactics (including validation) can be used in bad faith in order to silence someone.  But I 100% don't believe that that's what Avie is doing, and I think that, in the long run, gaining a more complex understanding of human interaction (and of humanity) is a good thing. Nov 15, 2016 Dymphna C.'s profile photo Dymphna C. +2 When Avie is talking about "mad mystics," I don't think she's talking about everyone who acts in a way that causes other people hurt.  She's not talking about schoolyard bullies, or people who make calculated PR moves in order to gain status at someone else's expense, or everyone who's having a shitty day and says something that they probably shouldn't, etc. Nov 15, 2016 Dymphna C.'s profile photo Dymphna C. +3 In other words, you know a mad mystic when you see one, and they are largely people who know that they are "crazy" and they censor themselves a lot because they are profoundly invalidated by their environments.

For example:  I am seriously considering just deleting this entire chain of posts because I have a hard time telling if I'm being crazy or being crazy like a fox. Nov 15, 2016 Dymphna C.'s profile photo Dymphna C. +6 If you think "well it's really hard to find hard-and-fast rules," then I also think you're right, because these people don't fit into society well, and there's a reason why we all went to the madhouse or the convent or lived on the tops of mountains and spoke only words of dire prophecy or whatever.

I know that people who can't fit into neat categories or be dealt with by using extremely clear-cut rules make gamers and lawyers sad but

this is an art and not a science. Nov 15, 2016 Josh T Jordan's profile photo Josh T Jordan +5 +Dymphna C. Thank you. I feel like this sums up how I feel, even though I think I present myself as fairly high functioning. I can see the madhouse from here. I can see the mountaintop from here. And if I have a bad month of self destruction, I hope my friends will still be my friends at the end of it. Nov 15, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) +4 +Anna Kreider - It isn't my intention to hurt you. In fact, I want the people around me to get better at handling anger and hurt, and to learn to listen, not to take it personally when it isn't personal. I can't change your past path, but maybe I can help make an easier path for the next person to come along.

+Dymphna C. does a good job of capture the essence of what our roundtable on the topic resolved before I got called away by an emergency at Metatopia.

It is absolutely NOT my intention to silence anybody; I want to validate in healthy ways, to listen and learn what there is to learn, and apply that learning productively. I feel like being better about listening would reduce the damage done by people who are expressing well-earned anger to themselves and their connections.

If we create filters for receiving and processing anger and/or hurt, or other "crazy" experiences, we support people having those experiences rather than "othering" them.

Is that making any sense? If we don't practice, and don't practice mindfully, we won't ever get better at it. (for some value of 'it' covered above.)

Nov 15, 2016 Anna Kreider's profile photo Anna Kreider +1 I hear you. Thank you for taking time to clarify. Nov 15, 2016 Eric Duncan (Dragonsong)'s profile photo Eric Duncan (Dragonsong) . Nov 15, 2016 Jay Treat's profile photo Jay Treat . Nov 15, 2016 Brie “Brie” Sheldon's profile photo Brie “Brie” Sheldon . Nov 15, 2016 J Li's profile photo J Li +13 Having been pushed out of a community for being a mad mystic, this resonates with me.  I have done harm with emotional outbursts-- but usually it was the type of harm that can be transmuted with processing skill.

As a result, I really hold that communities have the responsibility to gain that processing skill.

It's a neurotype privilege differential.  Everyone reacts when hurt, and does something nonstandard-- shouting, accusing, moping, grieving, talking about their feelings, changing the energy level, etc.  Most communities are vastly more equipped to handle the neurotypical people's responses than neurodiverse people's responses.  This results in a situation in which neurotypicals are "allowed" to have a wider, healthier, and more complete range of feelings than others.

Learning to tend your mad mystics becomes a matter of handicap access.  Is this a community that I can interact to a normal degree in because there are accommodations if I am disrupted to a normal degree (either by outside circumstances or the community itself)?

Part of the difficulty for me is that, prior to community I was pushed out of, I belonged to a community of exclusively mad mystics.  We were all mad in different ways.  But we had elaborate scaffolding to support how all of our unique components interacted; and a lot of automatic protocols on coordinating about needs without making assumptions or judgments.

It was, therefore, a deep culture shock to land in a place that didn't have those things.  That moments of disruption, instead of prompting everyone into an opportunity for collaboration and closeness, were actually a cliff to fall off of alone.

The other day, I accidentally fell off of one of those cliffs (a very short one) with a lovely and influential designer in our community.  Even though the differential was minor and ultimately well repaired, the event shook me deeply, as it was the first time I'd felt so unsafe in this community.  Suddenly, all around me, I started to see cliffs instead of friends for a while.

The point is that we need to be very careful.  Refusal to talk about or negotiate social conflict can either be a healthy act of boundary setting, or a profound act of neurotype privilege.

How do you tell a mad mystic from an asshole?

My specific advice is that, if someone does something that bothers you, try to communicate about it ONCE.  A responsible mad mystic will immediately respond to try to stop hurting you.  Depending on what's up with that individual, we may or may not find the path the first time, and if it's really complicated we may need your help, but we know what to do to get started.  

An actual asshole will brush off your concerns.

Considerateness is actually pretty universal across neurotype.  Access to data about how to interface with you is not.  By giving your mad mystics the data we need, you give us the chance to be considerate-- and thereby also give the relationship the chance to connect based on what we have in common instead of what sets us apart. Nov 15, 2016 Mark Richardson's profile photo Mark Richardson . Nov 15, 2016 Zak Sabbath's profile photo Zak Sabbath +3 If the line between a "mad mystic" and a "harassing broken stair bullies" is the mystic addresses your concerns and admits their mistake, I've never seen a mad mystic. Just people who have friends who value their other contributions and so don't admit it in public and so have a double-standard about what is "acceptable behavior" because they value them more than their victims do. Nov 15, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) There are other lines too. I don't  think it's as simple as recognizing and acknowledging harm when harm has occurred. Nov 15, 2016 Zak Sabbath's profile photo Zak Sabbath +2 No matter what the lines are I think the failure of anyone to articulate those lines before supporting said Mystic leaves victims of the Mad Mystic looking for all the world like they are being judged by a double-standard. And until someone articulates those lines clearly, they functionally are--because the victim can follow all the rules a community articulates and still be attacked. Nov 15, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) +4 The necessity to respond compassionately and with grace when faced with the powerful emotions of somebody who has dysregulated or is experiencing some other dissonance IS a double standard. Absolutely.

It sucks to be implacable when somebody's having strong emotions about, at or to you. But it's what adults and responsible community members do.

The hope is that if I'm able to be a steady presence today when somebody is a whirlwind of emotion, they might be able to anchor me and/or offer forgiveness for a sharp tone or harsh rebuke at a later time when I'm not MY best self. Nov 15, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) +5 Frankly, the internet makes it SO MUCH easier for people to tear into each other and be utterly vile. The same people, in person, would find it much harder to do the same sort of damage.

It's easier to respond with fury and vitriol, in my experience, when somebody is typing at me than it is when they are clearly experiencing distress in my presence.

Internet anger is so very toxic and learning to stop and go do something that isn't connected to a keyboard is a key element to learning to respond appropriately when somebody is causing undue harm. Nov 15, 2016 Anna Kreider's profile photo Anna Kreider +8 +Avonelle Wing​ there's a reason why I wrote about acceptable versus unacceptable expressions of anger about marginalization. As mentally ill people, we need to be accountable to not harm others to the extent that we are capable.

But there are people who aren't okay with ANY expression of anger, however righteous, careful, moderated, or responsibly directed. And that's a problem. Nov 15, 2016 Jay Treat's profile photo Jay Treat +1 I want to weigh in, because I have lots of feelings about things being discussed here, but I'm reluctant to because the subject is sensitive and I'm sure I don't fully understand it. Can Avie or others provide concrete examples, preferably fictional? Nov 15, 2016 Oli Jeffery's profile photo Oli Jeffery . Nov 15, 2016 Chloe CD's profile photo Chloe CD . Nov 15, 2016 Blair Fitzpatrick's profile photo Blair Fitzpatrick +7 I'm mentally ill, and I find the label "mad mystics" in poor taste to say the least; dealing with these conditions is not some new-age "prestige class." Nov 15, 2016 Tobias Strauss's profile photo Tobias Strauss +5 +Blair Fitzpatrick is right.  The language here is incredibly offensive to me.  I'm not someone's conduit to god because I have a medical condition.  And I don't want special delicate princess treatment for it.

I don't have the spoons to engage in this right now beyond that. Nov 15, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) I'll work on better language. Message received. Nov 15, 2016 Avonelle Wing (Avie)'s profile photo Avonelle Wing (Avie) +1 Also, I leave for  a con tmw. So I'm closing comments until I'm back and can moderate responsibly.

[kirstymcneill]

Effective Activism in a Time of Coronavirus: what are we learning six months in?

This post first appeared on Global Dashboard on the 8th of July 2020.

Nothing I’ve read has captured our times and our task better than this essay from Western States Center ED Eric K. Ward: “leading in easy times is, well, easy. But these times are not them”. Leading in difficult times is unbelievably hard, but we will all be better at it if we share what we’re learning and invite others to challenge our thinking and contribute their own. In that spirit, here are the four things that I think are emerging as lessons about effective activism in a time of coronavirus.

In a fight between a rewind and a revolution, revolution’s gonna lose

My timeline is still going nuts for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s powerful “Message from the Future”. The bit that gives me pause comes in at the 3 minutes mark, “the world’s leading climate scientists told us we had 12 years left to cut our emissions in half, 12 years to change everything”. It was released, of course, before the coronavirus crisis, but the pandemic has given prominence to a similar rhetoric elsewhere.

Here in the UK, for example, the Build Back Better coalition argue we are in a similarly transformative moment: “let’s not go back to normal … what we do next could change everything”. And the crisis has seen a new lease of life for the slogan “we won’t go back to normal when normal was the problem”,  first used in protests in Chile towards the end of 2019 but now turning up everywhere from graffiti in Hong Kong to the fridge doors of activists to university research programmes.

That positioning is understandable – many of our missions face an existential threat from climate change and the need to dismantle white supremacy and racism could hardly be more urgent. But it is precisely because the stakes are so high that we have to focus on winning big rather than talking big.

How should we respond to the evidence that many people are absolutely desperate for a “return to normal” and not sure if they’d like to change very much, never mind “everything”? Roger Harding’s essay here charts that the crisis has seen a big spike in demand for nostalgic television and music, and it may not be an accident that the BBC’s coming of age drama Normal People is the breakout success of lockdown. If what’s happening in popular culture is any guide, people want to look back before they move forward. We need to accept that in a fight between a rewind and a revolution, revolution’s gonna lose.

Likewise, publics may not recognise the two separate worlds that Arundhati Roy charts so beautifully in her “The Pandemic is a Portal” essay. In Roy’s telling, we are faced with “a gateway between one world and the next” and the choice before us is whether we “choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us” or whether we “walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it”.

I wonder how many people see the pandemic in quite this way, with a clear delineation between the old world ‘yesterday’, the crisis ‘today’ and the recovery ‘tomorrow’. Some may also see today’s pandemic as merely what journalist Ros Wynne-Jones called “a grim dress-rehearsal” for the emergencies to come. For that constituency there will be a real premium on immediate strategies for securing recent gains, starting with the list George Graham lays out here.

Fighting campaigns that can deliver immediate and tangible change isn’t a substitute for bolder transformation, but it is a necessary precursor to it, because strategies which confuse a public appetite to build back better with one to build back completely different just aren’t going to attract a big enough base. As one union organiser told me, “there’s no point asking people to trust you to organise a revolution if you can’t get a microwave in the staff canteen”.

‘Don’t mourn, organise’ is the wrong mantra for our times. We need to do both

I’ve written before about the work we’ve been doing to defend aid and development in the UK. It’s good work – innovative, strategic and delivered with discipline. I’m proud of it, and of our success in defying political gravity to maintain support for aid in the face of sustained attacks. We have, however, just suffered a huge defeat, with the Prime Minister choosing to abolish our world-leading development department in the middle of the biggest humanitarian crisis for 100 years and on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the “great generation’s” Make Poverty History campaign.

It isn’t hard to see what is going on here. A ‘new front in the culture war’ is opening and it’s increasingly clear that “retoxification” is not a by-product of the strategy, it is the strategy. At the end of 2019 I felt that identifying models that could galvanise but not polarise was the core strategic campaigning question of the decade, but I now feel it’s a much more insistent one that should dominate our summer.  

Professor Tim Bale’s excellent research into the divergent attitudes of voters, activists and political leaders shows where we are headed, at least in the UK. The voters who have ‘lent’ their votes to the government on the basis of values alignment and economic competence are going to start peeling off fast as soon as furlough ends, unemployment climbs and the government’s reputation for economic competence takes a battering. At that point, this research implies, there’s no strategy available to the government other than dialling up the cultural campaign. We can expect to see more, and not less, of “the war on woke” and an increased push from the ‘Britannia Unchained’ generation in the cabinet to do away with regulations and protections.

If that analysis is right, activists have a strategic choice to make and only a matter of weeks to make it: are we here to win a culture war, or to end one?

Of course we need to spend this period re-strategising, including asking ourselves the question campaigners most hate to answer, but need to: if you’re so smart, how come you’re getting beaten so badly? But more than that, we need to give ourselves the time to mourn what we have lost.

We have literal grieving to do – for all the people who have died before their time, the pain compounded by the knowledge that structural racism and poverty have done as much damage as biology here. And we have grieving of the more abstract sort to do too – the kind of coming to terms with loss we all need to do when something we truly value, not just desire, has gone.

The Collective Pyschology Project’s “This Too Shall Pass” report gives us a toolkit for how to grieve but it is actually earlier work by its founder Alex Evans that tells us why activists have to learn to grieve. If we don’t work through denial, anger, bargaining and depression properly, we’ve no hope of getting to acceptance and, therefore, to a place where we can see clearly what our next move should be.

I’ve written elsewhere about the power of Andrew Tenzer’s “The Empathy Delusion” report but his latest research, “The Aspiration Window” should also give activists pause for thought. If we, like our colleagues in communications, also score highly on a sense of personal agency, that can be a tremendous source of resilience and optimism in normal times. It is, however, a recipe for burn-out and guilt in these times. We have to accept we can’t campaign our way out of a pandemic, and we can’t always beat overwhelming political odds.

“Don’t mourn, organise” is the wrong mantra for now. Let’s do both.

Think global, act local has come of age – but we need to buttress it

Many of us have spent many years desperately trying to generate a sense of global citizenship, recognising that global problems need global solutions, but global solutions need global constituencies to push for them. The pandemic has helped illuminate that like nothing else in our lifetime – and events like the Global Citizen #TogetherAtHome concert have given our sense of interconnectedness a public expression.

While some governments have pushed a sense of national exceptionalism (and certainly benefitted in the short term from a ‘rally around the flag’ effect), there’s actually limited evidence that people are identifying particularly fervently with the nation state, despite its prominence in everything from paying our wages to dictating when we can get a haircut.

Instead, counter-intuitively, we seem to be feeling simultaneously more local and more global than ever before. This will be welcome news for community organisers and internationalists alike, but we shouldn’t take it for granted that this feeling will be permanent.

Here in the UK, British Future’s Sunder Katwala’s careful reading of the polls throughout the crisis gives him a cautious optimism – we feel that we are likely to come out of this crisis more connected and kinder than we went into it, but this effect is much more pronounced about people with whom we have direct social contact. The more we know people, the more we trust them, and the street or estate where we live is now full of people we newly know.

Likewise, findings from the team at the Neighbourly Lab suggest a new sense of connection is powerful at a micro-local level, but it will need permanent infrastructure to be instituted quickly if the new neighbourliness is to be maintained. “The Moment We Noticed”, from the Relationships Observatory, makes a similar case, pointing to how “ten million willing citizens have chosen to spend at least 3 hours a week caring for one another” and inviting us to consider what we can do together to sustain new relationships into the future.

Both reports also contain some interesting watch-outs about what might happen when we move from the ‘honeymoon’ to the ‘disillusionment’ phase that is often seen in the aftermath of an emergency, and encourage us to recognise that communitarian feeling is often rather fragile and dependent on a sense that others are doing their bit.

Certainly our thinking when we put together the “#OurOtherNationalDebt” essay collection was that a focus on repaying those who’ve made an outsized contribution (or paid an outsized price) at this particular time was more likely to command sustained public support than anything that felt like a reheat of long-held pre-pandemic positions. Society might have changed a bit but in general it’s still the case that we quite like the people we’ve got to know, but we’re also alert to any signs of free-riding or, worst of all, queue-jumping.

Elsewhere in Europe, the European Council on Foreign Relations call both the idea that there has been a sudden surge in belief in an expanded role for the state and one in nationalism “illusions that could lead European governments to fall foul of public opinion as they plan the recovery”. Instead, they show “that the overwhelming majority of people want more EU cooperation”, but recognise that this is motivated more by a sense of wanting collective insurance than a rejuvenation of a sense of common ideals.

At the same time, the OECD predict that it’s at least possible that global aid flows will be maintained or even increase in coming years, pointing to some successes in securing debt relief, multilateral funding for Gavi and an increase in support for humanitarian efforts.

Part of what is going on here is the public’s sophisticated understanding of the coronavirus – that the experience might be universal, but it is it not uniform. We understand that there are people in precarious employment in every country, parents struggling to put food on the table in every country, children trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide in every country. Lockdown and school closures in particular have been near-universal experiences, but their effects have been far from uniform between countries or inside them. People get that both local neighbourliness and multilateralism can provide particular protections, mitigating catastrophe and smoothing out vulnerabilities a bit.

Support for both local mutual aid efforts and international solidarity efforts is, in other words, conditional. We instinctively feel the local and the global are the right levels to deal with different elements of the pandemic and its effects, but we want to be sure everyone is pulling their weight, and we’re getting enough out of it for what we’re willing to put in.

That means we need to be planning now for campaigning infrastructure that can turn the new neighbourliness into the new normal, while helping people draw connections between their new local involvement and the need for active citizenship at a national and global level.

The Dignity’s Project’s research on the mutual aid movement suggests there are foundations already in place, but activists will need to be careful not to over-interpret the data, with 57% of respondents saying “mutual aid groups like mine have nothing to do with politics”.

So if we want people to move towards more active civic involvement, to make what the New Citizenship Project calls the big shift “from consumer to citizen”, we need to introduce the idea of political activism as something that sits in service of, and not in a separate realm to, people’s individual moral choices and willingness to muck-in locally.

The new National Health Team is one attempt to operate at these three levels – individual, local and political. The coming months are likely to see a flowering of these kinds of efforts, as we increasingly recognise that none of individual behaviour change, local volunteering or traditional advocacy-led campaigning will be enough on their own.

An imperfect message that gets heard is better than a perfect one that doesn’t

The social change sector globally is currently producing a large number of really superb messaging guides around coronavirus and there are some brilliant research projects on the go about attitudes about everything from climate change to regulation to social security. The challenge for our movements is whether we can do enough with the insights once we have them.

Two barriers present themselves. The first is that research which shows how to communicate for one purpose (for example, to shore up support for aid, in the case of our Public Insight 2020 project) will not necessarily be widely adopted by people with a brief to communicate for another important purpose (for example, recruiting donors or promoting an organisation’s brand). That’s not just the case for international issues – the tension plays out around storytelling efforts on domestic poverty too. Organisations with enough marketing budget or media reach to make a dent in public opinion are, almost by definition, also likely to be delivering frontline services under the extraordinary pressure of rising demand and falling income.

Meanwhile, many of the organisations which are nimble enough to internalise the insight lack the reach to make it count. Across our fields we’ve got a lot of money being spent crafting narratives no-one is going to hear. It’s time to get much more serious about thinking about our routes to market when we embark on insight work and we need to be willing to pay for the distribution as well as the design of the messages.

Serious strategic communications efforts cost money – and mobilisation efforts which can actually leverage the latent political power of the people who agree with your message even more so. At Save the Children we’ve introduced a strong organising flavour into our campaigning work (as Tom Baker lays out here) and in the Aid Campaign we’ve focused on building local ‘power postcodes’ groups in the places that matter most. We will be spending the summer thinking about how to scale that work.

While it’s massively welcome that we’ve seen a big uptick in the amount of insight work big NGOs and funders are investing in, it’s all pretty academic if we’re not overlaying it with an understanding of political geography and overlaying that in turn with investment in local power.

We are only six months into the coronavirus crisis and don’t yet know when – or how – it will end. What we do know is that activism is unlikely to be what speeds our exit from the crisis, but it is the single biggest determinant of whether that exit is equitable. This moment demands our best ever work and we won’t do it without plans to deal with the biggest strategic challenges in front of us. This list of four may be incomplete, but it’s where I think we should begin.  

[downtroddendeity]

[9:18 PM] [redacted]: pls opine about the various religious stances of the RH characters

[9:18 PM] [redacted]: and/or nations

[9:18 PM] [redacted]: on tumblr, if you please 

Didn’t see this on Discord at first, and then it got long, and then sleep happened, and then it got longer. Oops.

Anyway.

The game is surprisingly lean on information about religion for a story heavily featuring a theocracy, but what we know from canon, pretty much in its entirety, is:

Alistel is super-big on ~the Prophet Noah~, they believe he’ll provide them with mystical protection, and an NPC calls him “the only saintly being in this world”

Noah’s teachings have never actually been written down, but he led a rebellion at a young age and started a magitech theocracy in the mountains

Hugo talks about “the mountains where the high gods dwell”

A lot of people from Granorg seem anywhere from confused to dismissive about Alistel’s religiousness and don’t really know who Noah is

Shamans have the power to communicate with and guide dead souls to “the heavens” and Aht tells Stocke “only you can meet God, anyway”

The royal family are descended from the Imperial high priests

The Boundary Tree in Celestia is considered sacred and some Satyros NPCs complain about the fact that Rosch has parked there

A Beast Mark (whatever the hell it is) is a “ritual tool,” the Gutrals have a religious ritual of stringing beast claws onto a necklace, Holff Ruins are considered a holy place, and fetching a Beast Mark out of the ruins is a ritual to prove the tribe can trust you

Past this is where I get into headcanon:

Granorg doesn’t have an official state religion, but bits of the religion of Empire have stuck around in a few institutions, and the royal family has a handful of religious duties of a “go out to this place and do this thing once a year and everyone parties” nature. Some monarchs have taken things like “make an offering of wine and flowers at the family catacombs at midwinter” seriously spiritually, others have just kind of done it because people would get mad if they didn’t. There was a lot of debate when Protea took the throne about whether she was required/allowed to do various rituals because she wasn’t royal blood; she threw a tantrum when she found out and insisted on doing all of them for a while, then settled into a routine of doing only the ones that seem like fun and ignoring anything that sounded boring. When Eruca offered to take over those, Protea threw another tantrum and forbade her from doing it, because she decided it was an attempt to undermine her. (Eruca’s been doing as many as possible on the down-low anyway. The palace staff pretty much all know and collectively look the other way.)

Noah’s sect grew out of what was essentially an Empire cult. It held that the Empire was brought to power by the favor of the gods, and its fall was a punishment for losing respect for them. The usual formulation was that the royal family’s line was spared due to their devotion, and therefore they, and through them the nobility in general, have been blessed to carry on the Empire’s legacy. Some monarchs have encouraged this belief because it served their ego or because it was a useful political tool. Noah, however, said that he’d been contacted by the gods, and they told him that the nobility had failed and grown decadent, oppressive, and complacent, and it was his duty to restore humanity’s divine legacy to the people. His movement attracted a mix of the most disaffected, plus a bunch of scholars and researchers who were angry at the monarchs’ broad research bans on thaumatech and anything that looked like a related scientific or magical field.

Noah’s highest tenant was “all people are equal, unless appointed by the gods,” so Alistel was established with no noble orders and a ban on slavery. Noah himself was the only person universally agreed to fall into category 2, though Viola and Hugo were also often included. (Hugo considered having “Noah” announce Hugo as his divinely-appointed successor, but felt that would be too likely to draw suspicion and make people demand to hear Noah say it himself.) They also consider the pursuit of knowledge, especially the pursuit of lost knowledge from the past, to be a holy duty, which has caused their tech level to skyrocket (even if Fennel’s mad because he’d rather branch out into more interesting thaumachine designs than “humanoid” but nobody wants to let him because the Empire used humanoid ones). Hugo’s rhetoric started from places Noah’s might have, and then bent it in directions Noah never intended it to go, sometimes to the point of outright reversing it. (Hugo’s various “I am a god” rants were basically the ultimate blasphemy in Noah’s worldview.)

Cygnus is a hodge-podge of basically every religion on the continent, since it has such a high refugee population. A lot of people who live in Cygnus for long enough end up with a grab-bag of superstitions, rituals, and beliefs from a dozen different cultures.

The Satyros are the culture with the most widespread knowledge of the actual mechanics of mana and souls, since Granorg’s rulers kept a lot of information about that difficult to access as part of the thaumatech ban. Their religion is somewhat pantheistic; all living things have souls, all souls are a part of God descending to the earth, experiencing a lifetime, and then returning to the heavens, and dead souls trapped on the earth suffer until they’re led back home. As mana is the stuff of life, it and the parts of nature that produce it are sacred.

Gutral religion is very focused on grand gesture rituals where you have to do a difficult task to prove something; lots of tests and ordeals and coming-of-age ceremonies and “make this thing to mark your change from one state to another” and different rules for what you’re allowed to do before and after.

As for some of the characters:

A whole lot of Stocke’s experience of religion in Alistel has consisted of him trying as hard as possible to not look like he's really uncomfortable and doesn’t want to be here. On a completely non-spiritual level, he respects Noah’s leadership ability and many of his principles, but he’s just not a religious person. As this is not a good way to make friends in the Alistel armed forces, especially when you have an accent, he mostly tries to be as quiet about this as possible and pretend he knows the prayers and songs everyone else grew up with. Rosch has a pretty good idea, but was surprised to discover while maudlin-philosophical-crisis-of-faith drunk that Stocke is absolutely sure of the existence of souls that persist after death, is kind of confused by the idea that anyone could not think that, and does his BSOD blank-out thing when asked why he’s so convinced of this.

Rosch grew up in Alistel, but he was never Kiel-level devout, and his interactions with the reality of military life and Alistel’s internal politics have also taken the edge off a lot of the “WE ARE THE BEST AT EVERYTHING” that a lot of Alistellians end up with, as well as dampening enthusiasm for “NOAH WILL PROTECT US.” Not that he disbelieves, but he feels divine protection probably has an easier time if you help it along by not being an idiot, and he’s been through enough to recognize Hugo as a manipulative demagogue and suspect there was probably some spin-doctoring going on. The fact that Hugo had been making it up whole cloth was still a shock, though.

Sonja’s family has been researchers for a couple of generations, and while she can say all the words, she mostly got the “SCIENCE IS AWESOME” side of things from her parents and a lot less of the “oh and also divine mandate, blessings of the gods, holy legacy, I guess.” She and Stocke have exchanged more than one exhausted look behind the backs of people who won’t shut up about “PRAISE NOAH.”

Eruca I mentioned above: she’s latched on a little to her family’s spiritual traditions both as a form of connection to everything about her family that’s she’s lost and as a part and reminder of her duty as a princess.

Aht’s young enough to not entirely understand Satyros theology, but she can parrot the basic tenants if asked. Even though she’s a shaman, she hasn’t been pushed into any sort of major spiritual study, both so she has time to just be a kid and because there isn’t currently another shaman who has time to mentor her.

Raynie's your classic Cygnus kid- she’s got a lot of superstitions that she doesn’t really know the original justification for or meaning behind, but a lot of people around her followed them when she was a kid and they still make her feel better.

Marco is from way out in the countryside, in an area that technically changes hands regularly but has enough fertile farmland that nobody actually wants to march an army through it and ruin the entire reason they’re trying to capture it, so mostly all that changed for them when it changed hands was which direction the merchants they sold food to in the next town over drove their carts. His town had its own set of traditions, but they were heavily agriculture-based and he didn’t particularly like his town, so he doesn’t observe those, and his reaction to most new beliefs so far has been “academic interest.”

[protoslacker]

I remember Nixon

Gregory Bateson gave a lecture in 1966-- when he was about my age-- entitled “From Versailles to Cybernetics”--a digest of the lecture here, and audio of the lecture   at the Internet Archive.

 Bateson observes, “the important question about history is: Has the bias or setting been changed? 

I was loading some stuff into a customer's car and noticed his bumper sticker:

I miss Reagan (hell I miss Nixon)

I remember Nixon and Reagan, but not with longing. But  at least from my perspective the ground seemed to shift with  each of these elections. Although our politics are different, my customer and I  seem to agree that Reagan made a difference and that Reagan was in  heir to the difference which Nixon wrought. Constructing credible memories can be tricky remembering what we know now that we didn't know then.  In the case of Nixon for people of a certain age there's an emotional intensity to reckon with too that tends towards exaggeration.  Of course powerful people matter, and stuff like someone getting up on the wrong side of the bed personal foibles maybe more determinative in how history plays out than we may wish to admit. But my hunch is that when it comes to Bateson's question there are broader patterns in play than individual personalities.

In the breakroom at work talking with young colleagues my age came up. One guy, nineteen years old, did a quick mental calculation: "Oh my God! You were born in the Fifties!" Another colleague wore a Reagan-Bush  tee shirt, an administration finished years before he was born. At my age, it seems to me that the election of Richard Nixon signaled a change of the sort Bateson thought important. My gut tells me that the election of Donald Trump signals a change in bias too.

My interest is to better understand the shifting ground that the election of Donald Trump presents. Like the lyrics of an old song, “something's happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear,”  I'm feeling old and unsteady, entrenched in an old setting. What follows are some personal memories and links to articles about the election of Richard Nixon.  I'm trying to think about what's happening now by looking back and wondering what it was like the last time something like this happened.

 I was just 13 years old in 1968, a mediocre suburban kid.  But so much happened that year that shaped me. Anyhow, the winds of change blew strongly in 1968. Here’s a page of 1968 photos in The Guardian which appropriately begins with the iconic Earth rising over the Moon photo from Apollo 8. A global view is part and parcel of the significance of 1968 to history.  I am old enough to remember when we first got a TV as a kid, so it's not easy to exaggerate how significant TV was to me as a kid.

Matt Taibbi wrote a blistering obituary in Rolling Stone, Roger Ailes Was One of the Worst Americans Ever.  In 1968 records were beginning to be published in stereo and more folks were getting color TVs. A TV program called Laugh In debuted in January of 1968. The show presented a “youth-culture” aesthetic, but as  Kliph Nesteroff noted in a brilliant essay at WFMU's Beware of the Blog, The Comedy Writer That Helped Elect Richard M. Nixon: “It was, in essence, an establishment show, profiting from the anti-establishment sentiment running through America.” It's interesting how much Ailse's theory or philosophy for Fox News is visible in his work for Nixon. Nesteroff writes about how Ailse used Marshall McLuhan's treatise Understanding Media to shape a more likable television image of Richard Nixon. 

Nixon is remembered for the Southern Strategy.  The link is to a 1970 New York Times profile of Kevin Phillips by James Boyd. It's useful to remember that Nixon's southern strategy succeeded his election in 1968. And that Phillips developed the theory as an outgrowth of looking at New York City politics. A thumbnail picture of the theory is presented in the article as, “political success goes to the party that can cohesively hold together the largest number of ethnic prejudices.” Nixon won in 1968 without winning the Deep South, those state went for George Wallace, the Independent Party candidate.

Democratic party politics certainly weren’t my area of expertise at 13. But the story was a national drama. When Robert Kennedy entered the presidential race, Lyndon Johnson went on TV to say: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President." Opposition to the war in Vietnam came center stage. Hubert Humphrey avoided the primaries, but some young people got clean for Gene to support McCarthy in the primary elections because of McCarthy’s stance against the war. In June Robert Kennedy was assassinated. His assassination rattled me in my boots, making me feel very unsafe. By the end of August I was aware that young people would show up in large numbers at the Democratic convention.  The convention was a catastrophe played out on national television.

Here’s an iconic photograph by Fred McDarrah of young people at Grant Park (Getty Images). McDarrah was a photographer for The Village Voice. (A quick Google Image Search for McDarrah is worthwhile.) Getting my hands on an occasional copy of The Village Voice was important to me as a kid. In the classifieds were addresses to send away for information--often taping quarters to index cards. I don’t have an overall picture of the underground press at the time, but I think the stuff I sent for would qualify. News in print was important, but television news mostly informed my sense of the Democratic Party convention. What stood out  was the police wanted to be seen and shown mercilessly beating young people with clubs. It was shocking.

The convention debacle was devastating for Hubert Humphrey. Young people found it hard to support Humphrey because he wasn’t speaking out forcefully against the war. Huber Humphrey’s political career was built on the issue of Civil Rights. In retrospect it’s so significant that the Democratic Party stood firm in support of Civil Rights. And it’s hopeful because it show how positive change can be effective without a solid majority pushing a position.

More significant to the election than youth support for Eugene McCarthy was George Wallace’s campaign. Wallace won five Deep South States in the election. Wallace’s rhetoric heightened the already charged emotions of the time. It was easy to feel there was a war against young people and Wallace contributed to this perception. Wallace seemed antagonistic to young people outside his bastion of support. Nixon in contrast went on Laugh In. Nixon  adopted much of Wallace's platform but with different rhetoric, and a deft use of wedge issues.

I lived in Greenville, South Carolina in 1968. In February three young people were killed and twenty-seven wounded when police fired into a crowd which gathered at South Carolina State University, a historically Black institution, to protest the segregation of a local bowling alley. The event became known as the Orangeburg Massacre. In April Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Both events deeply disturbed my youthful sense of justice. I was a kid longing for acceptance, so it’s noteworthy that being called  a “nigger-lover” for my reaction to King’s death I didn’t flinch.   It feels true my reposte should have been “Well, yeah!” And one way to understand why is this top 100 list of R&B and Soul songs from 1968. At thirteen my idols were Black. I don't imagine I was too exceptional.

Coming home from work I listen to the radio. Over that weekend the  station WYEP was playing album sides at the beginning of each hour and on my ride home the side was from Allman Brothers Live At The Fillmore East an album I hadn’t listened to for years.  The next day Greg Allman passed away.  Richard Gehr’s obit for Allman in Rolling Stone captures in a way how popular music of the sixties provided a vision of society with Black and white people together. And perhaps to a reason why it’s so hard for so many white people to grasp our racism.

There are many reasons why the election of Richard Nixon and his administration might feel exceptional, per Bateson, for a person my age.  Watergate, the escalation of the war in Indochina, and the fundamental changes to the money system seem good candidates for reasons why. But the story that seems to emerge as I've reflected and sought links for is about media and the shift from the linear world of print to the electric tribalism of TV that NIxon’s election heralded.  It isn't at all clear that Nixon himself grasped the radical implications of media theory, but it's evident that those who sought to advance Nixon certainly did.

[violentruin]

A part 2 to this 

I wanted to talk more about Dazai, Mori, Higuchi, and Akutagawa because they’re all connected. I have not read the manga, so there might be things missing, feel free to contribute or something.

In S1, EP 11, Mori is underhandedly berating Higuchi for failing the mission. His comments are sarcastic while seeming encouraging and understanding:

Akutagawa is seen as an important asset to the Port Mafia, Mori states that Akutagwa’s potential for violence exceeds what’s needed to be a part of the Mafia. Still, Akutagawa is seen as dead weight as soon as he’s severely hurt.

The groups that Akutagawa crushed in his attempts to capture Atsushi are coming together to get revenge on him. But Mori deems it none of his business because of the hassle, and Akutagawa is useless in his condition. Akutagawa’s life is nothing more than a pawn.

Mori doesn’t want to spend money or take the risk of trying to protect Akutagawa. He throws a valuable person away, someone who has devoted his life to the Mafia, because he’s damaged goods.

Higuchi, the wonderful and devoted kouhai (subordinate) she is, tries to vouch for Akutagawa, not understanding why one failed mission should result in his (would be) termination from the Mafia.

Now, it’s obvious this train of thought that if you aren’t successful on missions, and thus “battle”, you aren’t worthy have been passed down from Mori to Dazai, and then to Akutagawa.

We all know the episode where Dazai beats, humiliates, and tries to shoot Akutagawa after making the mistake of killing one of their hostages needed for a job. He does this in front of a dozen or so other men from the Port Mafia. But when Akutagawa is finally able to successfully swallow the space between he and the bullets:

Dazai gives Akutagawa feedback, gives him his opinion (a positive one). He thinks Akutagawa should be able to protect himself, too. It kind of shows that Dazai believes in Akutagawa and his ability. Mori probably did the same for Dazai while training him, it runs in the family I guess. 

Dazai congratulates Akutagawa, albeit in a way that might be rhetorical sarcasm (like Mori did to Higuchi).

And here: 

We see Higuchi being punished for almost the same exact mistake Akutagawa made when under Dazai’s wing. He doesn’t rearrange her face the way Dazai did to him, but the slap is still ruthless. She tries to make up for her mistake (she’s using her gun recklessly, forcing Akutagawa to harm Tanizaki, and bringing more attention to the area), but he doesn’t allow it. 

Higuchi is as loyal to Akutagawa as he was to Dazai. She makes it her mission to rescue Aku on her own when no one else would help, not even Gin at first. The Black Lizard doesn’t intervene until Higuchi is about to be killed. She isn’t even an ability user, putting her in a position to be easily killed. No one else seems to be willing to do this for Akutagawa.

Akutagawa wakes up and stops her as she’s about to wipe a bit a blood from his mouth, even as she herself is severely injured, and apologizes to her. Something he never got from Dazai, talk about self-growth. Akutagawa is seen keeping her out of harms way and doesn’t abuse her the way Dazai did him. He recognizes things he could do differently from Dazai while still training Higuchi, but traits do bleed in. 

Look at that sad face. Anyway, Akutagawa’s self worth is based upon who and what he can conquer. He does say to Atsushi that he shouldn’t be earning permission to live from anyone, advising Atsushi that there is no one out their who can “stamp a form certifying” that you deserve to live. The only hypocritical thing is that that’s exactly what Akutagawa is doing. Whether it be indirectly, those accomplishments in battle are what he’s using as a ticket to get Dazai’s stamp of approval. Who can blame him? When they first met, Dazai did tell Akuatagawa he’d give him a reason to live.

Onto the next melancholy part: 

Atsushi fucked up here because that’s not Akutagawa’s goal at all. Not completely, and we’ve got to remember that the people who killed Akutawa’s friends were just that, men trying to flaunt their strength.

Here it’s revealed that Akutagawa is probably really lonely, sees his “gift” as a burden, and has been rejected by the person he’s living for. Power and status is nothing compared to friends, a gift that is seen as useful and pure and strong, and family. All those people in the Port Mafia and Akutagawa feels like he has no one. We all know what it feels like to put in a 100% and see someone else put in less and get a greater result. 

Onto Dazai:

Here, Kunikida is talking about Akutagawa’s ability and how dangerous he is. Right before this, Dazai states that all they know is that Aku is a mafioso. As Kunikida is saying all of this about Aku, Dazai seems to be lost in thought here, maybe a bit regretful and nostalgic. He was a catalyst in making Akutagawa out to be what he is. 

But he knows Akutagawa better than the person people think him to be. Akutagawa is loyal (when his friends die, even though Akutagawa doesn’t necessarily care about them, they made a pact to always protect each other and to go after anyone that messed with them, he was willing to die for that promise) and he tends to shield those he cares about (Higuchi, Gin, Dazai, and does help Atsushi). I’m sure Dazai watched Akutagawa grow as a person and helped him do so. 

Dazai also had someone he kind of looked up to and couldn’t save. Oda was a mentor of sorts to Dazai. He even wears a coat like Oda’s when he leaves the Mafia instead of the one Mori got for him, which in hindsight, says a bunch. His new way of life follows the wishes and ideals Oda had before he died.

I think Dazai’s face as Kunikida speaks about Akutagawa speaks volumes, and the fact that after the rest of the Agency knows that he worked for the Port Mafia, and how much they know about Aku, Dazai never mentions that he trained Akutagawa himself. How would his colleagues view him if they knew? To raise (kind of) someone like Akutagawa you’d have to be just as, or more so, merciless as him. 

At the end though:

Dazai seemed surprised that Akutagawa called out for him and demanded his attention brazenly. He approaches him with a jesting air about his words, teasing Akutagawa, coming up to him in more of a friendly way.

The way Dazai’s voice is both soft and proud gets me in the gut. Dazai knows he might have messed up a bit with Akutagawa, but there’s no taking that back. All he can do is show how pleased he is with Akutagwa’s growth. By helping defeat the guild, Aku followed the same path Dazai did. He joined the side that saves people.

I’d be proud of this corpse flower, too.

Bonus:

[madamlaydebug]

American Psychosis By Chris Hedges January 30, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - "Truth Dig" - Reality is under assault. Verbal confusion reigns. Truth and illusion have merged. Mental chaos makes it hard to fathom what is happening. We feel trapped in a hall of mirrors. Exposed lies are answered with other lies. The rational is countered with the irrational. Cognitive dissonance prevails. We endure a disquieting shame and even guilt. Tens of millions of Americans, especially women, undocumented workers, Muslims and African-Americans, suffer the acute anxiety of being pursued by a predator. All this is by design. Demagogues always infect the governed with their own psychosis. “The comparison between totalitarianism and psychosis is not incidental,” the psychiatrist Joost A.M. Meerloo wrote in his book “The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing.” “Delusional thinking inevitably creeps into every form of tyranny and despotism. Unconscious backward forces come into action. Evil powers from the archaic past return. An automatic compulsion to go on to self-destruction develops, to justify one mistake with a new one; to enlarge and expand the vicious pathological circle becomes the dominating end of life. The frightened man, burdened by a culture he does not understand, retreats into the brute’s fantasy of limitless power in order to cover up the vacuum inside himself. This fantasy starts with the leaders and is later taken over by the masses they oppress.” The lies fly out of the White House like flocks of pigeons: Donald Trump’s election victory was a landslide. He had the largest inauguration crowds in American history. Three million to 5 million undocumented immigrants voted illegally. Climate change is a hoax. Vaccines cause autism. Immigrants are carriers of “[t]remendous infectious disease.” The election was rigged—until it wasn’t. We don’t know “who really knocked down” the World Trade Center. Torture works. Mexico will pay for the wall. Conspiracy theories are fact. Scientific facts are conspiracies. America will be great again. Our new president, a 70-year-old with orange-tinted skin and hair that Penn Jillette has likened to “cotton candy made of piss,” is, as Trump often reminds us, “very good looking.” He has almost no intellectual accomplishments—he knows little of history, politics, law, philosophy, art or governance—but insists “[m]y IQ is one of the highest—and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.” And the mediocrities and half-wits he has installed in his Cabinet have “by far the highest IQ of any Cabinet ever assembled.” It is an avalanche of absurdities. This mendacity would be easier to repulse if the problem was solely embodied in Trump. But even in the face of a rising despotism, the Democratic Party refuses to denounce the corporate forces that eviscerated our democracy and impoverished the country. The neoliberal Trump demonizes Muslims, undocumented workers and the media. The neoliberal Democratic Party demonizes Vladimir Putin and FBI Director James Comey. No one speaks about the destructive force of corporate power. The warring elites pit alternative facts against alternative facts. All engage in demagoguery. We will, I expect, be condemned to despotism by the venality of Trump and the cowardice and dishonesty of the liberal class. Trump and those around him have a deep hatred for what they cannot understand. They silence anyone who thinks independently. They elevate pseudo-intellectuals who adhere to their bizarre script. They cannot cope with complexity, nuance or the unpredictable. Individual initiative is a mortal threat. The order for some employees of several federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research service, the National Park Service and the Department of Health and Human Services, to restrict or cease communication with the press or members of Congress, along with the attempt to impose 10-year felony convictions on six reporters who covered the inauguration protests, signals the beginning of a campaign to marginalize reality and promote fantasy. Facts depend solely on those who have the power to create them. The goal of the Trump administration is to create an artificial consistency that conforms to its warped perception of the world. “Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself; in which, through sheer imagination, uprooted masses can feel at home and are spared the never-ending shocks which real life and real experiences deal to human beings and their expectations,” Hannah Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” “The force possessed by totalitarian propaganda—before the movements have the power to drop iron curtains to prevent anyone’s disturbing, by the slightest reality, the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world—lies in its ability to shut the masses off from the real world.” Trump’s blinding narcissism was captured in his bizarre talk to the CIA on Jan. 21. “[T]hey say, is Donald Trump an intellectual?” he said. “Trust me, I’m, like, a smart persona.” “I have a running war with the media,” he added. “They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth. And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number one stop [in the new presidency] is exactly the opposite—exactly. And they understand that, too.” He launched into an attack on the media for not reporting that “a million, million and a half people” showed up for his inauguration. “They showed a field where there was practically nobody standing there,” he said about the media’s depiction of the inauguration crowd. “And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well. I said, it was almost raining, the rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech.” He has been on the cover of Time “like, 14 or 15 times,” Trump said in speaking of his criticism of the magazine because one of its reporters incorrectly wrote that the president had removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. “I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine. Like, if Tom Brady is on the cover, it’s one time, because he won the Super Bowl or something, right? I’ve been on it for 15 times this year. I don’t think that’s a record, Mike, that can ever be broken. Do you agree with that? What do you think?” [Editor’s note: Photographs or drawings of Trump were on the cover of Time 10 times in the last year and a half and once in 1989.] Trump’s theatricality works. He forces the press and the public to repeat his lies, inadvertently giving them credibility. He is always moving. He is always on display. He has no fixed belief system. Trump, as he consolidates power, will adopt the ideology of the Christian right to fill his own ideological vacuum. The Christian right’s magical thinking will merge seamlessly with Trump’s magical thinking. Idiocy, self-delusion, megalomania, fantasy and government repression will come wrapped in images of the Christian cross and the American flag. The corporate state, hostile or indifferent to the plight of the citizens, has no emotional pull among the public. It is often hated. Political candidates run not as politicians but as celebrities. Campaigns eschew issues to make people feel good about candidates and themselves. Ideas are irrelevant. Emotional euphoria is paramount. The voter is only a prop in the political theater. Politics is anti-politics. It is reality television. Trump proved better at this game than his opponents. It is a game in which fact and knowledge do not matter. Reality is what you create. We were conditioned for a Trump. Meerloo wrote, “The demagogue relies for his effectiveness on the fact that people will take seriously the fantastic accusations he makes, will discuss the phony issues he raises as if they had reality, or will be thrown into such a state of panic by his accusations and charges that they will simply abdicate their right to think and verify for themselves.” The lies create a climate in which everyone is assumed to be lying. The truth becomes suspect and obscured. Narratives begin to be believed not because they are true, or even sound true, but because they are emotionally appealing. The aim of systematic lying, as Arendt wrote, is the “transformation of human nature itself.” The lies eventually foster somnambulism among a population that surrenders to the magical thinking and ceases to care. It checks out. It becomes cynical. It only asks to be entertained and given a vent for its frustration and rage. Demagogues produce enemies the way a magician pulls rabbits out of a hat. They wage constant battles against nonexistent dangers, rapidly replacing one after the other to keep the rhetoric at a fever pitch. “Practically speaking, the totalitarian ruler proceeds like a man who persistently insults another man until everybody knows that the latter is his enemy, so that he can, with some plausibility, go out and kill him in self-defense,” Arendt wrote. “This certainly is a little crude, but it works—as everybody will know who has ever watched how certain successful careerists eliminate competitors.” We are entering a period of national psychological trauma. We are stalked by lunatics. We are, as Judith Herman writes about trauma victims in her book “Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror,” being “rendered helpless by overwhelming force.” This trauma, like all traumas, overwhelms “the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.” To recover our mental balance we must respond to Trump the way victims of trauma respond to abuse. We must build communities where we can find understanding and solidarity. We must allow ourselves to mourn. We must name the psychosis that afflicts us. We must carry out acts of civil disobedience and steadfast defiance to re-empower others and ourselves. We must fend off the madness and engage in dialogues based on truth, literacy, empathy and reality. We must invest more time in activities such as finding solace in nature, or focusing on music, theater, literature, art and even worship—activities that hold the capacity for renewal and transcendence. This is the only way we will remain psychologically whole. Building an outer shell or attempting to hide will exacerbate our psychological distress and depression. We may not win, but we will have, if we create small, like-minded cells of defiance, the capacity not to go insane. Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

[libertariantaoist]

Reality is under assault. Verbal confusion reigns. Truth and illusion have merged. Mental chaos makes it hard to fathom what is happening. We feel trapped in a hall of mirrors. Exposed lies are answered with other lies. The rational is countered with the irrational. Cognitive dissonance prevails. We endure a disquieting shame and even guilt. Tens of millions of Americans, especially women, undocumented workers, Muslims and African-Americans, suffer the acute anxiety of being pursued by a predator. All this is by design. Demagogues always infect the governed with their own psychosis.

“The comparison between totalitarianism and psychosis is not incidental,” the psychiatrist Joost A.M. Meerloo wrote in his book “The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing.” “Delusional thinking inevitably creeps into every form of tyranny and despotism. Unconscious backward forces come into action. Evil powers from the archaic past return. An automatic compulsion to go on to self-destruction develops, to justify one mistake with a new one; to enlarge and expand the vicious pathological circle becomes the dominating end of life. The frightened man, burdened by a culture he does not understand, retreats into the brute’s fantasy of limitless power in order to cover up the vacuum inside himself. This fantasy starts with the leaders and is later taken over by the masses they oppress.”

The lies fly out of the White House like flocks of pigeons: Donald Trump’s election victory was a landslide. He had the largest inauguration crowds in American history. Three million to 5 million undocumented immigrants voted illegally. Climate change is a hoax. Vaccines cause autism. Immigrants are carriers of “[t]remendous infectious disease.” The election was rigged—until it wasn’t. We don’t know “who really knocked down” the World Trade Center. Torture works. Mexico will pay for the wall. Conspiracy theories are fact. Scientific facts are conspiracies. America will be great again.

Our new president, a 70-year-old with orange-tinted skin and hair that Penn Jillette has likened to “cotton candy made of piss,” is, as Trump often reminds us, “very good looking.” He has almost no intellectual accomplishments—he knows little of history, politics, law, philosophy, art or governance—but insists “[m]y IQ is one of the highest—and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.” And the mediocrities and half-wits he has installed in his Cabinet have “by far the highest IQ of any Cabinet ever assembled.”  

It is an avalanche of absurdities.

This mendacity would be easier to repulse if the problem was solely embodied in Trump. But even in the face of a rising despotism, the Democratic Party refuses to denounce the corporate forces that eviscerated our democracy and impoverished the country. The neoliberal Trump demonizes Muslims, undocumented workers and the media. The neoliberal Democratic Party demonizes Vladimir Putin and FBI Director James Comey. No one speaks about the destructive force of corporate power. The warring elites pit alternative facts against alternative facts. All engage in demagoguery. We will, I expect, be condemned to despotism by the venality of Trump and the cowardice and dishonesty of the liberal class.

Trump and those around him have a deep hatred for what they cannot understand. They silence anyone who thinks independently. They elevate pseudo-intellectuals who adhere to their bizarre script. They cannot cope with complexity, nuance or the unpredictable. Individual initiative is a mortal threat. The order for some employees of several federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research service, the National Park Service and the Department of Health and Human Services, to restrict or cease communication with the press or members of Congress, along with the attempt to impose 10-year felony convictions on six reporters who covered the inauguration protests, signals the beginning of a campaign to marginalize reality and promote fantasy. Facts depend solely on those who have the power to create them. The goal of the Trump administration is to create an artificial consistency that conforms to its warped perception of the world.

“Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself; in which, through sheer imagination, uprooted masses can feel at home and are spared the never-ending shocks which real life and real experiences deal to human beings and their expectations,” Hannah Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” “The force possessed by totalitarian propaganda—before the movements have the power to drop iron curtains to prevent anyone’s disturbing, by the slightest reality, the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world—lies in its ability to shut the masses off from the real world.”

Trump’s blinding narcissism was captured in his bizarre talk to the CIA on Jan. 21. “[T]hey say, is Donald Trump an intellectual?” he said. “Trust me, I’m, like, a smart persona.”

“I have a running war with the media,” he added. “They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth. And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number one stop [in the new presidency] is exactly the opposite—exactly. And they understand that, too.”

He launched into an attack on the media for not reporting that “a million, million and a half people” showed up for his inauguration. “They showed a field where there was practically nobody standing there,” he said about the media’s depiction of the inauguration crowd. “And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well. I said, it was almost raining, the rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech.”

He has been on the cover of Time “like, 14 or 15 times,” Trump said in speaking of his criticism of the magazine because one of its reporters incorrectly wrote that the president had removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. “I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine. Like, if Tom Brady is on the cover, it’s one time, because he won the Super Bowl or something, right? I’ve been on it for 15 times this year. I don’t think that’s a record, Mike, that can ever be broken. Do you agree with that? What do you think?” [Editor’s note: Photographs or drawings of Trump were on the cover of Time 10 times in the last year and a half and once in 1989.]

Trump’s theatricality works. He forces the press and the public to repeat his lies, inadvertently giving them credibility. He is always moving. He is always on display. He has no fixed belief system. Trump, as he consolidates power, will adopt the ideology of the Christian right to fill his own ideological vacuum. The Christian right’s magical thinking will merge seamlessly with Trump’s magical thinking. Idiocy, self-delusion, megalomania, fantasy and government repression will come wrapped in images of the Christian cross and the American flag.

The corporate state, hostile or indifferent to the plight of the citizens, has no emotional pull among the public. It is often hated. Political candidates run not as politicians but as celebrities. Campaigns eschew issues to make people feel good about candidates and themselves. Ideas are irrelevant. Emotional euphoria is paramount. The voter is only a prop in the political theater. Politics is anti-politics. It is reality television. Trump proved better at this game than his opponents. It is a game in which fact and knowledge do not matter. Reality is what you create. We were conditioned for a Trump.

Meerloo wrote, “The demagogue relies for his effectiveness on the fact that people will take seriously the fantastic accusations he makes, will discuss the phony issues he raises as if they had reality, or will be thrown into such a state of panic by his accusations and charges that they will simply abdicate their right to think and verify for themselves.”

The lies create a climate in which everyone is assumed to be lying. The truth becomes suspect and obscured. Narratives begin to be believed not because they are true, or even sound true, but because they are emotionally appealing. The aim of systematic lying, as Arendt wrote, is the “transformation of human nature itself.” The lies eventually foster somnambulism among a population that surrenders to the magical thinking and ceases to care. It checks out. It becomes cynical. It only asks to be entertained and given a vent for its frustration and rage. Demagogues produce enemies the way a magician pulls rabbits out of a hat. They wage constant battles against nonexistent dangers, rapidly replacing one after the other to keep the rhetoric at a fever pitch.

“Practically speaking, the totalitarian ruler proceeds like a man who persistently insults another man until everybody knows that the latter is his enemy, so that he can, with some plausibility, go out and kill him in self-defense,” Arendt wrote. “This certainly is a little crude, but it works—as everybody will know who has ever watched how certain successful careerists eliminate competitors.”

We are entering a period of national psychological trauma. We are stalked by lunatics. We are, as Judith Herman writes about trauma victims in her book “Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror,” being “rendered helpless by overwhelming force.” This trauma, like all traumas, overwhelms “the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.”

To recover our mental balance we must respond to Trump the way victims of trauma respond to abuse. We must build communities where we can find understanding and solidarity. We must allow ourselves to mourn. We must name the psychosis that afflicts us. We must carry out acts of civil disobedience and steadfast defiance to re-empower others and ourselves. We must fend off the madness and engage in dialogues based on truth, literacy, empathy and reality. We must invest more time in activities such as finding solace in nature, or focusing on music, theater, literature, art and even worship—activities that hold the capacity for renewal and transcendence. This is the only way we will remain psychologically whole. Building an outer shell or attempting to hide will exacerbate our psychological distress and depression. We may not win, but we will have, if we create small, like-minded cells of defiance, the capacity not to go insane.

[gibsongirlselections]

Hillary Was Right About BLM

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, you may have noticed that some of your white friends and family members engaged in an odd ritual: They filled their social media pages with confessional screeds acknowledging their white privilege and vaguely promising “to do better,” to listen more, and so on and so forth ad nauseam.

The idea that the nation’s problem with overpolicing of poor and working-class neighborhoods originates from some place of internalized white supremacy and that the problem is not going to get fixed until white Americans acknowledge their sins is nothing new. It had been making the rounds on the fringes of political discourse for years, until recently it spilled onto the world stage and was hastily adopted by said white friends and family members of yours.

Look, for example, how this young white woman reacted recently when asked why she was berating black police officers:

White woman yelling at black officers. pic.twitter.com/dEdfTf0Dgw

— Henry Rodgers (@henryrodgersdc) June 23, 2020

“Racism is a white person’s problem,” she shouts. “Racism is my problem. I need to fix it.” Talk about a white-savior complex.

It’s worth remembering that Hillary Clinton was once faced with the same idea. Her response was admirable and no doubt the correct one.

At a primary campaign event in 2015, Clinton met with the Black Lives Matter activists Daunasia Yancey and Julius Jones during a backroom meeting that was captured on video. You can find the fullest available recording of the conversation here (the pertinent moments are between time codes 1:19-3:41 and 8:50-14:20):

Yancey and Jones were there to confront Clinton on her role in promoting the 1994 Crime Bill that contributed to the explosion of America’s prison population over the last thirty years (a trend that has since somewhat changed and, hopefully, with the recent passage of the First Step Act irreversibly so). The intervention was definitely necessary, as Clinton was largely getting a pass for her former tough-on-crime posture, while Bernie Sanders was getting hammered for being somehow blind to the plight of black Americans.

Clinton promised that she now held different views on criminal justice issues, but Jones remained unconvinced. And so, he asked her: “What in your heart has changed that’s going to change the direction of this country?”

The question might on first sight appear reasonable, but it also strangely confines the matter to the realm of feelings.

Clinton would have none of it and put the ball back in the activists’ court, a rhetorical tour de force that deserves to be quoted at some length:

You’re gonna have to come together as a movement and say, here’s what we want done about it. Because you can get lip service from as many white people as you can pack into Yankee Stadium and a million more like it who are gonna say: Oh, we get it, we get it, we’re gonna be nicer. That’s not enough. At least, that’s not how I see politics. So the consciousness raising, the advocacy, the passion, the youth of your movement is so critical, but now all I’m suggesting is, even for us sinners, find some common ground on agendas that can make a difference right here and now in people’s lives.

[…] But at the end of the day, we can do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them to live up to their own god-given potential, to live safely, without fear of violence in their own communities, to have a decent school, to have a decent house, to have a decent future. So, we can do it one of many ways: You can keep the movement going, which you have started, and through it, you may actually change some hearts. But if that’s all that happens, we’ll be back here in ten years having the same conversation.

Christopher Hitchens once remarked that Hillary Clinton’s record is so full of lies “that it can only hope to stay alive on the podium by quacking out the clock […] and saying nothing testable or original or courageous.” This was not one such moment.

To be sure, during her exchange with the activists, there was the fair share of Clintonian prevarication, too (“I’m not sure I agree with you. I’m not sure I disagree.”) But the imagery of Yankee Stadium full of guilt-ridden white liberals is highly amusing, and her insistence on concrete policy proposals around which the nation can gather is absolutely spot-on. Just changing someone’s heart, she argues, is a meaningless exercise. It falls below the threshold of the political because at the end of the day nothing of value will have been done to improve the lives of the poor. Economic well-being and safety from crime will always trump the hollow gestures of contemporary anti-racism.

On these points at least, Clinton had outwitted the Black Lives Matter activists. They, in turn, were right, of course, in reminding her of her central role in promoting the sort of policies that led to a general decline in the quality of living for many of America’s poor.

It also needs reminding that Clinton-style neoliberal politics had a profoundly disempowering effect on civil society. The social and political work that used to be done by trade unions, churches, parent-teacher or neighborhood associations are now monopolized by professional NGOs and non-profits with deep ties to the state and corporate donors. If the Black Lives Matter activists should have probed deeper for any possible change of heart in Clinton, it would have been to find out whether she now believed that voluntary citizen associations should wrestle away power from managerial elites. But that was when Black Lives Matter still existed in somewhat germinal form. Now, it’s a richly endowed non-profit in its own right.

But instead of insisting on any of these points, Jones somewhat haplessly replies to Clinton that, “if you don’t tell black people what we need to do, then we won’t tell you all what you need to do […] This is and has always been a white problem of violence. There’s not much that we can do to stop the violence against us.”

In a brilliant New York Times op-ed from 2017, Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote that identity politics ironically enough gives whiteness a near-mystical power to mold and control the course of the world in such a way that “those deemed white remain this nation’s primary actors.” White people act, black people are acted upon. This is the way it’s been and, if you ask the likes of Ta-Nehisi Coates, this is the way it’s going to remain for a long, long time. It was unfortunate that Jones fell into the same fatalistic way of thinking.

But what felt like an argumentative misstep then is now the law of the land on the left, by which activists like the indignant white woman from the Twitter video above reveal their actual racism. It’s the same sentiment informing those horrid Facebook posts by your friends.

What will be left to the wayside as a result is any meaningful attempt to tackle the issues of overly aggressive policing, unemployment, low growth, dwindling incomes, existential despair, and the skyrocketing homicide rate that’s been haunting our cities since the recent riots and the subsequent retreat of police forces. Black lives are getting lost at staggering rates, and no one who holds the public microphone seems to care.

There was a real moment for genuine reform in the air recently—that is, at least, in the briefest sliver of time right after the brutal killing of George Floyd and right before the looting broke out (with plenty of entitled white progressives stoking the flames, some of them literally). Since then, things have degenerated toward ahistorical acts of iconoclasm against the author of the Declaration of Independence or the Union general and later president who brought the rebellion to its knees and then crushed the KKK. The target in all this is not so much some perceived historical injustice that occurred in the distant past but the belief that “whiteness” has wiggled its way through time, swallowing and destroying all that has stood in its way. It’s the stony memorials to this mythic, all-pervasive whiteness that therefore need to be toppled first before anything else can change. And voila, we’re way past addressing the real problems affecting our country. 

(Perhaps, it’s the advance guard of Joe Biden’s presidency. After all, didn’t he promise a room full of megarich donors that under his administration “nothing would fundamentally change”?)

Far from taking advice on how to fix our problems from the Clintons—they’re the last ones we should consult on literally anything—Hillary’s response to the Black Lives Matter activists remains prudent on its own. Whether she truly meant it and whether she as president would have followed through on her words (she wouldn’t have), it should still be seen as a compassionate plea to black Americans—really, to all Americans— not to feel like the deck is forever stacked against them. True change requires us to engage in meaningful civic activity in order to regain a sense of agency that our corporate-sponsored anti-racist figureheads insist remains confined to the hearts of entitled white progressives.

Otherwise, “we’ll be back here in ten years having the same conversation.”

Gregor Baszak is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a writer. His articles have appeared in The American Conservative, Los Angeles Review of Books, Platypus Review, Public Books, Spectator USA, Spiked, and elsewhere. Follow Gregor on Twitter at @gregorbas1. 

The post Hillary Was Right About BLM appeared first on The American Conservative.

[richmeganews]

The Fall and Troubled Rise of a Ukrainian Populist

SLOVIANSK, Ukraine—Yulia Tymoshenko is nothing if not a crowd-pleaser. Running to be Ukraine’s next president, she has promised to triple pension payouts and halve heating-fuel charges; pushed to impeach the incumbent president, Petro Poroshenko, weeks before the presidential election; and said that immediately after being elected, she will close the country’s airports to stop corrupt officials from fleeing.

In many ways, these policies signify the anti-establishment mood here ahead of the first round of presidential elections this weekend, which will narrow the field to two candidates before a final vote next month. Just 9 percent of Ukrainians have confidence in their government. A full 39 candidates will appear on the first-round ballot. Tymoshenko, a former prime minister, was once the front-runner, but her populist credentials have been eclipsed by those of Volodymyr Zelensky, an actor with no political experience who plays Ukraine’s president in a hit television program.

But while this frustration with the powers that be has driven many of Tymoshenko’s populist policies, and meant that the election has largely focused on domestic issues such as rooting out corruption or reforming the economy, it also has implications internationally. Tymoshenko has voiced doubt about the Minsk agreements, a 2015 cease-fire of sorts that remains the only existing road map for peace in a years-long conflict with Russia.

With a strong possibility that the pair will face off in the final round—Zelensky is in the lead, with Tymoshenko and Poroshenko neck and neck for second place—the biggest issue for world leaders is how Ukraine’s next president will defend a country situated on a global geopolitical fault line. Russia and the West are clashing like at no time since the Cold War, with officials in Washington, London, and elsewhere pointing fingers at Moscow over a litany of issues, from meddling in their elections to carrying out poisonings on their soil.

[Read: Ukraine is ground zero for the crisis between Russia and the West]

None of those conflicts or disputes is more important to Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, than the one in Ukraine. And if Ukraine’s next leader tries to revise the current peace deal—one that no side is completely happy with, but which is the only one on the table—that raises the prospect of escalating the violence now relatively contained to certain areas of the country.

When Russian-backed separatists began their offensive in eastern Ukraine, it was here in Sloviansk that they scored an early success. In 2014, it became the first city they took over. Led by a former Russian intelligence officer, they seized control of Sloviansk’s city hall, a Soviet-era cement block that at the time still had a statue of Lenin out front. They then kidnapped the mayor, and reinstated a Stalinist decree that ordered death by firing squad for looters, as food deliveries ceased.

After a three-month standoff, the Russian-backed separatists retreated to the nearby city of Donetsk, allowing the Ukrainian military to retake Sloviansk. Today, the Ukrainian flag flies over city hall once again. Life, however, remains bleak. Industrial buildings lie empty, few jobs are available, and banks charge crippling interest rates for loans, blaming Sloviansk’s proximity to fighting that the United Nations estimates has killed some 13,000 people since the start of the conflict.

It was in that same central square, in front of city hall, that Tymoshenko addressed a crowd of voters this month. Gone were the iconic braids from the days of the Orange Revolution, when Tymoshenko was among those who led Ukrainians into the streets to invalidate a falsified presidential election in 2004. About half the crowd, bused in from nearby towns, cheered Tymoshenko, holding signs that read Tymoshenko = Peace and Donbass for Tymoshenko, a reference to the region where Sloviansk is located. The other half stayed farther back, curious to see a celebrity of her caliber in their city, but seemingly still unconvinced.

“I know you didn’t believe that a single presidential candidate would come visit you,” she told the crowd in an effort to establish herself as a voice for their plight. Then, in a nod to Sloviansk’s struggles since 2014, she added, “We will return to normal life.” (Tymoshenko declined multiple requests for an interview.)

It is Tymoshenko’s third, and possibly last, time running for president. In 2010, she lost to Viktor Yanukovych, the man who was stopped from taking the presidency in the 2004 sham election. Tymoshenko later served two terms as prime minister, but spent two and a half years in jail on charges of abusing her office, a sentence considered “unlawful and unjustified” by the European Court of Human Rights. When popular protests led Yanukovych to flee to Russia in 2014, Tymoshenko was released from prison and rushed to Kiev’s central square to deliver a speech from a wheelchair. But things did not go according to her plan. She was greeted with placards that read Freedom for Yulia but not Power and audible boos. She lost the 2014 presidential election, receiving fewer than 13 percent of the vote.

[Read: Ukraine’s successful courtship of Trump]

The rest of her recent speech in Sloviansk, furthermore, spotlighted why her candidacy has troubled Western governments. For an hour and a half, Tymoshenko took jabs at Poroshenko over continued unrest in eastern Ukraine—“Someone at the highest level doesn’t need peace or doesn’t benefit from it,” she said—while also blaming Germany, France, and the United States for failing to negotiate peace.

As election day draws closer and Tymoshenko’s onetime lead has evaporated, her rhetoric has grown more and more populist. But beyond budget-busting economic policies and promises of clamping down on graft, it is her remarks about the Minsk deal that have raised worries. The agreement is unpopular with many Ukrainians, who see the accords with Russia and its proxies in eastern Ukraine as unable to bring peace while also granting legitimacy to Moscow’s control over part of Ukrainian territory. Western countries, however, fear Russia might never sign on to another agreement.

Tymoshenko has said that she “didn’t accept the Minsk agreements from day one,” and that the negotiations had been carried out “behind Ukraine’s back.” Trading on the fact that she is well known abroad and previously negotiated a gas deal with Putin as Ukraine’s prime minister, she has sought to convince voters that she can bring conflict with Russia to an end.

According to Hryhoriy Nemyria, the deputy head of Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party, the presidential hopeful wants new negotiations on the basis of a 1994 agreement, signed by the U.S., Britain, and Russia, under which Ukraine gave up its Soviet nuclear arsenal. (Zelensky, the election front-runner, has followed Tymoshenko’s lead and committed to pursuing new negotiation formats, though he has provided few specifics.)

[Read: Putin’s playbook: The strategy behind Russia’s takeover of Crimea]

So far, Tymoshenko has stopped short of saying that the Minsk agreements should be scrapped—publicly, at least. Kurt Volker, the U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, told me that when he met with all the major candidates, Tymoshenko included, they committed to maintaining the Minsk accords. Yet at the same time, two Western diplomats and the former representative of an international NGO, all of whom requested anonymity in order to discuss internal conversations, complained that Tymoshenko in private is more equivocal, leaving them guessing about what she would actually do were she elected.

She might not know the answer to that question. “She doesn’t get international politics,” Taras Berezovets, who was an adviser to her 2010 presidential campaign and the deputy manager for her 2014 campaign, told me. Berezovets, now a host of a news program on a pro-Poroshenko television channel, continued: “She’s always had a vague international agenda.”

The costs of any change to the status quo, however, could be significant. For one, as Volker noted, American and European Union sanctions against Russia over its adventurism in Ukraine are based on the Minsk deal. And near the conflict zone in recent months, the precarious nature of Ukraine’s security situation has become more and more clear. In November, Russia fired on and captured 24 Ukrainian sailors attempting to enter the Sea of Azov, which is jointly controlled by Ukraine and Russia. According to Volker, Russia has refused to discuss the prisoners’ release until after the Ukrainian presidential election, when it hopes it will be dealing with different leadership in Kiev.

In eastern Ukraine, worries about those sailors, and about conflict more broadly, weigh heavily on voters. Vira, a 60-year-old retired factory technician, came to Tymoshenko’s rally and even had her sign an election flyer. She said she wasn’t sure she would cast her ballot for Tymoshenko, but was certain she would not vote for Poroshenko.

“I don’t like Putin, but he says he will talk to a new leader,” she said. “That matters, because it will stop boys from being killed.”

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[newssplashy]

Politics: 'Truly just devastating stories': The bleak outlook from inside Venezuela's deepening crises

Venezuela's embattled President Nicolas Maduro still appears to have a tight grip on power — here's the outlook from inside the country amid its deepening humanitarian and political crises.

Venezuela has been riven by protracted political and economic crises that have prompted mass protests and sparked a wave of migration. Venezuelans have fled throughout the region, with some going as far afield as Spain.

The many who remain live in a deeply divided country, where President Nicolas Maduro maintains power — solidified in a May 20 presidential election granting him another term amid widespread doubts about its legitimacy — in spite of rampant shortages, high rates of crime and violence, and a deteriorating economy.

Geoff Ramsey, the associate for Venezuela at the Washington Office on Latin America, a Washington, DC-based research and advocacy group, spent April in Venezuela, meeting with members of the public, the government, the opposition, civil-society groups, and others.

Ramsey spoke with Business Insider in late May, describing the conditions Venezuelans face at home as well as the political outlook fora situation that has frustrated the region and the world.

The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.

'It's one thing to hear about them and another to see them firsthand.'

Christopher Woody: Being on the ground [in Venezuela] ... was there anything that was unexpected, that surprised you, that wasn't in line with what you'd heard before you got to the country?

Geoff Ramsey: It was not my first time in Venezuela, or actually in any of the three countries, and I've certainly been following the reports of the humanitarian situation on the ground and talking to people about it, but it's one thing to hear about them and another to see them firsthand.

It was really just heartbreaking to meet with people over and over that are reeling from this economic crisis. I met people that lost their savings due to hyperinflation. Elderly people that ... waited in line for their regular pension, and it amounts to essentially pocket change. It's truly devastating. And I think the best sense of the scope of the crisis that I've gotten so far was in speaking to people who have been fleeing, because I got a much better sense of how bad it is outside of Caracas, in the interior of the country.

In Brazil in particular, I was struck by the fact that I saw one guy standing on the side of the road selling oranges to passing motorists, and he was in a bright red PDVSA jumpsuit, a uniform. I went up to him and I spoke with him and he told that his state salary, working as a technician for PDVSA, just simply didn't allow him to make ends meet or support his family, so he now makes more money essentially living in the streets in Boa Vista [in Brazil] and selling odd fruits, cigarettes, candy in the streets, and he's able to support his family with a greater income doing that than he did working in the oil sector.

And I heard stories like that over and over. I met with one woman in Cucuta [in Colombia], I believe, who has a thyroid condition, and her husband also is a public employee, and she was saying that his monthly salary barely covers a week — essentially five or six pills — of the medication that she needs to take for her thyroid condition. So it's truly just devastating stories.

'Cash is worthless, but at the same time, nobody has any cash.'

Woody: You mentioned hyperinflation, and that has obviously destroyed people's ability to save and to buy things. At the same time, shortages are rampant, and that makes it impossible to get essential items like food and medicine. From what you saw, what are the processes people have to go through to buy basic things they need to meet basic needs or to get cash to make those purchases?

Ramsey: The interesting sort of irony of the situation in Venezuela is that there is hyperinflation, so cash is worthless, but at the same time, nobody has any cash. So ... most economic transactions are done with credit and debit cards, and in a country where the electronic infrastructure is crumbling, you can imagine that that presents serious logistical problems.

People routinely have to deal with their bank's electronic systems not working or the cash points, their readers of cards, not working correctly, so even something as simple as buying a cup of coffee can take an hour trying to go back and forth and slide your card multiple times, call up your bank, that sort of thing.

"'Eh, what's the difference.'"

Woody: I know in the run-up to the May 20 elections, there were still government supporters [backing Maduro], and Maduro maintains around 20% support, which is not nothing. What did you hear from them? How did they view the situation? How do they reconcile what's going on in the country with their support for the government?

Ramsey: I met with several government supporters, and I heard some sort of people straying from the official discourse, but not much. In general, I think there is acceptance of the idea that Venezuela is under what they call a "bloqueo financiero" or a financial blockade, and that the country's economic problems are the result of the collusion of the opposition with the international community in its sort of imperialist desire to get rid of Maduro.

Obviously we know that's not the case, but I think the government has, through state media, been particularly effective in pumping that message to its base.

However, I did talk to people that supported the government, but were, like most Venezuelans, not at all enthused about voting for Maduro, and so you had this interesting dynamic where I spoke to people that would go on about Chavez's legacy and how Venezuela is suffering from some international conspiracy and then ... I would ask them, 'So are you going to vote in these elections on May 20?' And what I heard in many cases was, 'Eh, what's the difference. what can I really expect to come out of that?'

'I think he continues to try to cast himself as a son of Chavez.'

Woody: For Maduro himself, it seems like a trend over the past couple of years is something of a shift from Chavismo [referring to the governance of Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez] to what could be called Madurismo, and now he has this party, Somos Venezuela, so ... are we seeing kind of a shift from the party of Chavez to a government that is built in Maduro's image? Is he assuming that kind of stature?

Ramsey: I think that that's certainly a play that Maduro wants to make. He, I think, would love to be able to capture the same crowds that Chavez did and command that same loyalty, but I think ultimately he hasn't been terribly successful at that.

There was a lot of speculation that the creation of this new party, Somos Venezuela, would amount to the herald of a new era of Madurismo, and the government did create this new party, and it certainly avoids using the traditional symbols of the ruling party, and it does espouse rhetoric that's more openly Madurista, but it actually didn't get that much support in the election.

If we're to believe the election results ... candidates for municipal councils of Somos Venezuela received less votes than [opposition candidates Javier Bertucci and Henri Falcon's] parties. So I think that that's definitely what Maduro would like, but I think it's easier said than done.

And I was watching his, whatever you want to call it, his swearing-in ceremony, [on Friday], I listened to his speech, and as much as I'm sure he would rather not have to rely on it, he invoked Chavez's name multiple times, and I think continues to try to cast himself as a son of Chavez.

'Blind to the problems within their coalition.'

Woody: The vast majority of Venezuelans are unhappy with the situation, so in terms of the opposition, people who are opposed to the government, what attitudes did you pick up from them. Is there resignation? Do they see any signs of change? What's their mood generally?

Ramsey: I spoke to people at different levels in the opposition. I think if you speak to opposition leaders, they're convinced that this is a government that's in its final days and that change will come any minute now, and I think they're probably, I mean, essentially blind to the problems within their coalition and their internal divisions and the fact that they've struggled to put together some kind of agenda or some kind of alternative to Venezuelans coming out of these electiosn.

I think the result of infighting within the opposition can be seen in speaking to Venezuelans who oppose the government. Everyday Venezuelans that I spoke with told me that, 'Yeah, I identify with the opposition. I certainly am no fan of Chavismo, but I feel that the opposition isn't representing me or my best interests.' I actually went to a rally that was convened by mothers who lost their children in the round protests that we saw last year and the repression [of them], and I was struck by the fact that I spoke with three separate mothers ... of students who were killed in the protests last year, who told me, each one individually, that they felt like the opposition had sold them out and that they didn't feel they could trust the opposition leadership.

'Extremely disorganized and sapped of morale.'

Woody: Regarding the May 20 election specifically, the impression I got in the run-up to that is that many assumed Maduro's victory was a foregone conclusion. On the ground there, did you see that attitude present, and in the aftermath of that election ... has that mood changed?

Ramsey: Very much so. Nobody was expecting any kind of meaningful change to come out of these elections — or I should say the people that were expecting something to come out of them were a very, very slim minority. People that I spoke with, even the ones that said that they were planning on voting, didn't really have much faith that it would produce any kind of change.

I do think it's interesting though, because these elections have been the main stumbling block for the opposition over the last five months, and ... they've divided the opposition between people who believe in some kind of electoral solution to the crisis and those who don't, and I think now those divisions are somewhat irrelevant.

I think even Falcon and Bertucci came out and criticized the government and its handling of the electoral process. Falcon said he wouldn't recognize the results, which puts him on the same side as the traditional opposition, and I think we can hope to see more unity among the opposition moving forward, but again I'm crossing my fingers on that. Everything we've seen so far suggests that they're extremely disorganized and sapped of morale.

'This government has been so effective at isolating and silencing dissent.'

Woody: It seems like a trend within Maduro's government is ... trying to rein in what appears to be some signs of dissent within the security apparatus, especially in the military. In your conversations and in your travels, did you get the feeling that divides were opening up in the security services in regard to their support for the government?

Ramsey: Well, I think it's no secret that ... there's plenty of discontent with the current state of affairs and with Maduro among the military, but I think ultimately the government's just been extremely effective at purging dissidents from the ranks.

Before I got there in early April, or rather I should say this occurred in March, there was a coup attempt, led by [former Interior Minister Miguel] Rodriguez Torres and other officials in the security forces. There were plans. There was a date already set for an attempted overthrow of Maduro, led by the security forces, and that fell through. The people who were involved in that were rounded up and put in jail, and I think we've seen the same thing this week. There were reports ... [military] officers had been arrested. ...

I would say people I spoke with in government were open about the fact that there is discontent with the current situation in government and among the security forces, but I didn't get the sense that they truly fear an imminent military-led coup against the government, and I think ultimately that's just because this government has been so effective at isolating and silencing dissent.

source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/05/politics-truly-just-devastating-stories_28.html

[chaldeluxe]

LONDON: CHAPTER 7.

____________

Mashu: Senpai--- are you alright? You’re looking a little pale.

[CHOICE]

1. I’m sleepy. 2. It’s still early, that’s all.

Mashu: … that’s true. It’s not as if a morning patrol is necessary, either.

Mashu: Still, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Mordred-san’s conduct. Events like the one last night are still possible.

Mashu: Uhm… I wouldn’t want you to become excessively fatigued in the process, so…

[CHOICE]

1. I’m fine. 2. You don’t have to worry about me so much.

Mashu: … Okay.

Mordred: Masters are so inconvenient. Though I guess you can’t help being human.

Mordred: Anyhow, it’s not like anything we’ve faced up ‘til now have been more than small-fry. All you really need is me anyw---

Mashu: … …mechanical reverberations verified. It’s a big one!

Mordred: Speak of the devil. Haha, so I’m finally gonna fight a Helter Skelter again!

Mashu: Excuse me, Master! We’re going into battle. Your orders, please!

// BATTLE. //

Dr. Roman: … I’ve got some pretty bad news. I’m sorry, but I need you to listen. It concerns your surroundings.

Dr. Roman: Oh, you already heard? Okay. Business as usual, eh.

Mordred: No problem. I’ll smash ‘em in as many times as I have to! Getting to rip into some oversized hunk of junk sounds like a good time to me!

Mashu: I’m so sorry, Master… ! It’s just one battle after the other. Your orders, please.

// BATTLE. //

Mordred: … that was a bit tiring, as expected.

Mordred: It’s about time we head back to Jekyll’s.  I don’t really need sleep. I want to recharge my magical energy, at least.

Dr. Roman: Ah--- …. well, I wish I didn’t have to say this, but…

Mordred: … I know. I get it, so don’t bother telling the rest of them. I felt it a while ago. There’s a lot.

Mashu: …mechanical reverberations. It’s several large-scale enemies! I’m anticipating a whole mass of them!

Mordred: We might as well fight them in Hyde Park if there’s gonna be this many! I’ll blow them to smithereens with my Noble Phantasm there!

Mashu: Please contain yourself. Fire-power on a scale like that would be dangerous for the whole city!

Mordred: I’ll watch it! As best as I can!

[CHOICE]

1. Do your best!

2. I’m starting to feel better about this!

[ANSWER 1]

Mashu: Okay!

[ANSWER 2]

Mashu: S-Senpai?

Mordred: Looks like the enemies in this quarter of the base are starting to get serious! All right, I’ll fight you bastards to the bitter end!

// BATTLE THEN SCOOBY-DOO ZOOM TO JEKYLL’S APARTMENT. // 

Jekyll: … I see. So that’s what happened.

Jekyll: Anyhow, good work. You did well. A bit of rest might do some good for everyone, myself included.

Mordred: Ahh--- I feel alive again… phew…

Jekyll: Seizing my personal sofa again… well… right. Like I said last night, you’ve worked hard.

[CHOICE]

1. I’m dead tired. 2. I’m exhausted.

Mashu: Don’t overdo it, Senpai. I’ll be managing your vitals from here-on.

Dr. Roman: Wait, I thought that was my job… ?

Dr. Roman: Y-Yeah. It’s fine. I’m sure you’d be happier if someone close by were nursing you...

Jekyll: Still. I didn’t think mass production of the Helter Skelters was possible. I see. Our situation has turned grave...

Jekyll: I fear that it’s likely they were created solely because you defeated Paracelsus, one of the three masterminds behind the “Demon Fog Project”.

Jekyll: The enemy recognizes you as a threat. They’re building up reinforcements in order to make certain they capture newly manifested Heroic Spirits.

Jekyll: It’s merely food for thought. I wonder what sort of Heroic Spirit it is they’re looking for… ?

Mordred: Who knows. Thinking’s your job, not mine. I’m…beat.

Mordred: ... Oh, yeah. Speaking of thinking, we managed to snag that talentless good-for-nothing. Two of them now, even.

Mordred: Jekyll. What’re they doing? They’re in the study, right?

Andersen: You called?

Shakespeare: Perchance you called?!

Mordred: … sigh. I’m regretting this hard. Me, of all people, opening the Ark with your hand.

Shakespeare: Ark? By Ark, could you refer to the Holy Ark? Hahaha, so harsh, how exaggerated!

Shakespeare: ‘Tis true I pride myself on my ability to enthrall and my sumptuous rhetoric never ceases from the moment I open my mouth...

Shakespeare: It cannot compare to such a box of calamities! Regardless, a box like that is nonsense to begin with.

Andersen: Right. Nonsense. As if such a thing exists. How would one even use it?

Andersen: An unsatisfactory end-of-the-world anecdote like that is unthinkable. If you want to die that bad, do it alone.

Mashu: ... …uhm, Senpai.

[CHOICE]

1. … let’s just keep quiet about the Ark.

2. The Ark exists. I’ve seen it. 

[ANSWER 1]

Mashu: …right. It’s obvious they’re fond of it, despite all the denial.

Mashu: I believe it’d be best to say nothing for now.

[ANSWER 2]

Andersen & Shakespeare: For real?!

Shakespeare: Hm. I beg pardon, I was swept up in Andersen's wake and raised my voice.

Shakespeare: That aside, esteemed Gudako. Your words pique my interest!

Shakespeare: Come now, where and when did you see the Ark? Why were its contents laid bare?

Shakespeare: To wit, how mirthfully tragic was it, and what sort of foul denouement overflowing with comedy arose from it?

Andersen: … …hm. （← calming listening with the deepest attention.）

Andersen: … …hm.（←silently preparing black tea.）

Andersen: … ...hm.（←spreading jam on his scones.）

Mordred: … Idiots. Dredging up something that doesn’t even matter. I don’t get it.

Mordred: Gudako, Mashu. Let them talk about that in the study until they’re content.

// IN THE STUDY. //

Mashu: Dejected…

Jekyll: Thank you for your work. Perhaps we should consider that a break in itself?

Mordred: Ha. As if you can take a nap in front of a goose pond. Look at Gudako’s face. She looks like she’s been poisoned.

Andersen: Ah, I’d almost forgotten. You wanted to know what we were up to, correct?

Andersen: All that playwright cares about is jotting down the plot of our current predicament. I’m another matter entirely. I’m not planning on doing any work, period.

Andersen: But there’s something that concerns me. In particular, the details of your journey thus far… and those seven singularities.

Andersen: ....No, to be precise, there's something that gets triggered in the magic ritual we call the Holy Grail War .

Andersen: … I don’t have enough material to form a proper opinion. To be frank, I’m at a dead end.

Mordred: …. hmmm. Even you can act like a Caster sometimes. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re a good-for-nothing, though.

Dr. Roman: Ah, sorry. Can we return to the topic at hand? That is, confirming our current situation and what our plans are from here-on out.

Dr. Roman: We’re fortunate that the enemy’s attention is focused on the Demon Fog. If they meant to wipe us out, they’d be going around destroying buildings too.

Dr. Roman: As far as the city goes, the enemy's influence only reaches as far as the streets where the Demon Fog is present.

Dr. Roman: There’s got to be an opening---

Jekyll: … Is there?

Dr. Roman: At least, I hope there is. No… I wonder… I mean, it’d be nice… real nice…

Mordred: You can deal with troublesome stuff. Up until now it wasn’t irrational to spend a long time outside.

Mordred: Wandering about thoughtless in battle’s just gonna whittle down our magical energy.

Mordred: If we could disable those Helter Skelter there wouldn’t be a problem, but…

Jekyll: It's hopeless. It's a fix, being locked in such a stalemate.

Fran: … u … …U, uu…

Andersen: Alright. How’s this for a suggestion?

Andersen: While those Helter Skelter are being mass produced, gather materials to support my investigation.

Andersen: In short, you’ll be my dogs. Fetch is the perfect game for those of you with muscle.

Dr. Roman: Roaming around outside will be pretty tough with so many Helter Skelters around, but…

[CHOICE 1]

1. Let’s give it a shot. 2. Let’s work together with Andersen and the others.

Mashu: Got it, Senpai. Though not in response to the current state of affairs.

Mashu: While this apartment feels like somewhat of a cage, things should start to improve soon.

Fou: Fou!

Dr. Roman: Well, if there’s anything we can do at this point, trying our hand at it is better than sitting around.

Dr. Roman: Still, asking us to gather material for you--- where we even find it?

Fou: Kyu, fouuu…

Andersen: Come, now. This is London. Your destination should be glaringly obvious.

[CHOICE]

1. Glaringly obvious?

2. The Mage’s Association, maybe?

[ANSWER 1]

Dr. Roman: Hmm, I wonder.

Jekyll: Perhaps he means the Mage’s Association--- more commonly known as the “Clock Tower”.

[ANSWER 2]

Andersen: Precisely. That enormous academy at the core of magus society--- the Clock Tower, where the Mage’s Association resides.

Dr. Roman: Ah!!!

Andersen: That’s right. A giant university in the center of London that unravels the world's mysteries. Think you can make use of it?

Dr. Roman: We should be able to… b-but, it might be hard with the way London is. We should... b-but with the way London is, it might be hard.

Dr. Roman: Though if the Mage’s Association--- Clock Tower is still in good shape, wouldn’t our Mr. Jekyll have brought that to our attention?

Mashu: That’s true. And Jekyll-san hasn’t mentioned a single thing about the Clock Tower.

Jekyll: … I didn’t think it was necessary.

Mordred: The Mage’s Association is, what. That place running underground from Regent’s Park up until Westminster?

Mordred: It was the first thing I checked up on when I manifested and met Jekyll.

Mordred: The British Museum, yeah? That’s around where I heard the entrance was, so I went to take a look.

Mordred: But the entrance was totally trashed. It’s just a bunch of rubble now.

Jekyll: That’s right. It was rather remarkable, actually, how the building itself had been completely wiped out.

Jekyll: Thinking back on it now, that could’ve possibly been the masterminds behind the “Demon Fog Project” trying to squash any future rebellion.

Andersen: I don’t care about the destruction nor the rubble.

Andersen: The shut-in magi being alive would be joyous news, indeed. Though it’d be of no use to me or my motives.

Andersen: All I want is records. Materials.

Andersen: There should be an unmistakably remarkable warehouse protected by a rather hefy incantation. Bring me there.

Fou: Kyuu… Fou….

Shakespeare: Allow me to accompany! An academy of such mystique as that shall be a spectacular source of inspiration!

Dr. Roman: Looks like be operating with a larger crowd… wait, hold on.

Dr. Roman: Having more firepower for when we encounter the Helter Skelter isn’t such a bad idea. Yeah. Not bad at all.

Fran: … …u… … Uu… … ??

[CHOICE]

1. You should stay here, Fran. 2. It’s risky out there, so stay and watch the house, Fran.

Mashu: Right.  Currently, the streets of London are too dangerous for you. You should stay here, Fran-san.

Fran: … U, uu…

Andersen: Let's depart, then. And investigate the time of the mysterious academy's former glory.

Andersen: Also, Saber. Be sure to protect us frail and delicate Casters.

Mordred: Huh? Protect? Tell that to shield jerk over there, not me.

Mashu: Ah, uh, uhm---

Jekyll: All right. I’m going too. Let’s head off!

Mordred: Huh?

Mashu: Eh?

[thegnasticious]

Barnstock

The General was well known amongst his men. His men being a conglomerate of drop-outs, criminals, former war vets, and generally displaced people. Some viewed as a saint, some as a martyr, and some even thought of him as a fake. Today he sits in his aging cloth throne watching the flicks of an old television. Something seems to have bothered him though, particularly in the WVN Networks news broadcast. A report from I-66 showed a car that caused a pile-up overnight, the car had hit something the size of about a deer at full speed, it flipped over the car in a lo-fi phone filmed video. In the video broadcasted you see it flip at least 3-5 times whilst the car careens into oncoming traffic. Then it gets up and runs away, completely unscathed. The TV flickered a bit at the end of the broadcast. The General then un-pinned his medal of honor and looked at it in a trance-like state. He then looked up at his TV to see himself, about 20 years younger in the jungles of Vietnam. 

At that time it was Lance (soon to be The General), Corporal Johnson, Lance Corporal Blackball (that’s what they called him), Rifleman Davis, and Squidchewer. They all got drafted from the boredom of suburban homes, other then Squidchewer, he beat a guy up real bad and it was either prison or the service, so I guess he took the latter. They were a late deployment, and most of the napalm had well burned out by the time they arrived an vietnamese soil. Many of them came with the expectations of an organized battle, more glamorized in Hollywood renditions of jungle battles, The reality was quite the opposite. We were a specialized unit, so we didn’t see alot of the full frontal combat. In the case of Vietnam we came by the time most of the corpses were burning, the decrepit smell of flesh putrefying the air. You could find piles of arms, Children, Men, Women, all failed inoculations. The war you saw at home was much different, it was the guns and explosions, but not the blood and gore that followed that. My job was to capture this, as hard as it might be, and make sure The General’s mission was followed through. I had 3 or so Nikkon cameras fitted with different lenses, they were standard issue for the operation. My codename was and still is, Stryker. I got to know the General very personally on this operation. He was a man of his job and duty, but if you crossed him in the wrong way, he had no problem blowing a gun off right next to your ear to ring you out for a bit. He had done it to me a few times after deployment, I would always smart mouth his patriotic rhetoric in some odd way, and it would end with a gun going off right besides my head. At night, when we’d sit around the fire, he finally let out a bit of details about the operation.

“You know we ain’t here to kill gooks”,

“What are you talkin’ about Lance?”, I said to him.

“The gooks are all dead, not one bullet by fired of any of you. What do you suppose we’re here for, a jungle adventure? There ain’t nothing to clean up. What they have us hunting my friend, is an evil deep in the forest. You see all this death and blood and burning. Who the fuck do you think cleans it up and shuts it up? Us. And we don’t even get informed that’s what we’re doing here. These old temples we’re burning, they have demons deep in the wood. I thought it was funny, but I was deployed around Kwai before all of you were even in basic. They outfit you boys with cameras because the war is over, the only thing left to catch around hear is a glimpse of a ghost that’ll be turning one of our boys to the VC. Oh it starts with a minor disagreement with the abiding power then it ends one night in your sleep by the hands of someone you thought you could trust. Dragons and shit, I tell you, it’s a lack of patriotism, a lack of understanding most parent’s beat into their children, but you just got a few rotten eggs”, The General said.

I nodded in agreement, but that was just to avoid argument. He seemed to know more than me and I would not stand a chance against him. You could tell he was a man of power, and keeping his men in line was of the utmost importance, the slightest dissidence towards him would be routed right away. In my heart I knew though, he lived by his gun and man like him should, but when the time came that I would have to kill, I would have to do it with my heart, I was not ready like him to do it with my head. He would work the killing before it was even in front of him. It was like he was always 2 steps ahead of everyone else.

So what frightened him so, 20 years after the war on an old TV? In his own words years after the war. He explained that one night these demons possessed him. The day before he was reported to have been in an argument with Squidchewer, I heard parts of it whilst I was fishing nearby. 

“I don’t like this ‘Where the red fern grows’ shit you’re pulling Lance. We know you know why were here. That story you keep telling about your old dog, being the howling we hear. What the fuck is that howling really Lance? Every goddamned night”, Squid said.

“I tell you guys the story of ‘Where the red fern grows’ every fucking night to keep you calm. But you know what, that story of my old dog’s ghost following me around, that’s a damn true story. And I’ll tell you what it’s what put me in this damn service. Parents told everyone I ingested chemicals and I put my dog down with my daddy’s pistol. That’s not the case, the bastard near broke my hand, pulling my finger to the trigger so I could see that dog’s brains splattered out on the wall. And ever since that damn dogs spirit comes back as a demon, I’ll be damned if the day my Daddy’s truck was flipped and his head smashed in, that there was one of those damn dogs fixed to his grill. I saw the scene, he hit something, but nobody saw or said, it left before it could be reported. I even had this foolish thought we were all here to find that exact demon, because something told me it was just that, Simon. I called him”, Lance responded.

“I’ll tell you what, since we got off the boat, I think you’re losing it Lance. Day by day you’re getting worse, and when you fully believe we’re hunting your dead dog’s ghost, I’ll be leading this company, because you’ll be bat-shit crazy”, Squid said and smiled and Lance. Lance did not return the expression, and fixed his gaze on him like a hawk as he walked away. 

The next morning we awoke to the warm Vietnam sun. As we exited our tents, a horrifying sight was strung out in the tree above. Squidchewer was hung from a tree. Somebody had hacked at him a few times with a machete so blood was splattered about. The cuts were to the bone, and his face was frozen in a horrible expression of terror. I did unfortunately take a picture of it that would be more recognized than any of my other work. Lance had left without a word to any of us and we lost our leader. From that point on, I made a solemn swear to myself, that I would find the truth, and I would find Lance. Try as I might, throughout the war, I never did find him. It wasn’t until long after the war I found him, a now promoted General living in the forests of Colorado. Supposedly still on a government operation. I found him with the help of a government friend, and some deep searches in databases. Lance Parsons was as he was now listed.

I walked through the screen door of his house to find him, sitting, looking at his war medals, and crying. 

“I knew you’d come, the TV told me. It’s the only thing that talks much to me, these days, you want the end of the story I’d assume. The one with ‘the red fern’. Well, the boy puts the dogs down. But the one I was trying to tell you was a different fern. The fern I read, had a dog which came back. It’s furless corpse growing from the soil from the care and love which lead it to life. This thing is not a fable, it can kill men, and some men, they don’t even know it’s their pet. It comes when they are unconscious and fills itself with the flesh of your friends and loved ones. My father was the only one who was honest. You just have to shoot the damn thing, you can’t think about why. Otherwise it grows, and you have accidents like the one on I-66. Squidchewer was an accident just like that, the man was doing acid out in Vietnam, and that LSD it attracts those suckers in droves. I saved our whole company that night, but I had to put Squidchewer down. I woke up with his pistol to my head, it was sheer luck I pulled it back on him quick enough to defend myself. The work with the hanging and Machete was VC, as a sort of threat to you guys I’d assume”, The General said.

“Why wouldn’t they of killed us then and why did you leave?”, I asked.

“Fucking gooks. Who knows? I had it with the company long before someone in it threatened my life. I figured it was a mutiny, so I wanted out as quick and silently as possible. I was on other orders from the start. Usually it’s not so sloppy, we’d get a boy like Squid where he needed to be, slipped the dose then let the rest play out, but that night when those things came. Well they work like a parasite to host, if I didn’t kill him they would of surely killed you boys by the morning. What concerns me now, is these things are back, and out here. It was the same thing in the news report, and I bet you can’t find that footage anywhere now as it was live”, he said.

“So what are you doing now?”, I asked.

“I’m still hunting those fuckers. Just like before. I try to go into retirement then there is always some damn story of another Ungatu as I call them. Nobody knows how to hunt them, But just like with Squid, I do. I host this event where we get alot of the teenagers, about the age you and I were drafted, to micro-dose. but the trip is, is that they are all pre-selected for this event. So it’s basically completely legal and usually  a requirement to avoid jail-time or possible persecution. If we can save these kids, and we do, we do it mainly in the shadows now. Keeping things what they should be, American. That’s what I’ve always stood for. Thats why I run Barnstock, I have a whole team of specialists who not only bring in the goods but oversee the events from possibly becoming violent or volatile. Barnstock is at an actual Barn my family inherited, out somewhere in Dubuque, I keep the location undisclosed until I’m sure business is viable. Next week I’ll be skinning that fucker that caused the pile-up, already got it narrowed down to an Alex Horn who attracted that damn shadow in the first place. When he gets there, we’ll get some cute girls to suck him in, even offer the dose for free. 

The thing is, if he refuses, we’ll slash his tires, drain his battery, make sure that he remembers that night and the nights to come. The smart ones come back at that point.

All of this is to thank the glory of social media. Oh how modern Vietnam looks through an internet browser”