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rotationalsymmetry · 3 years ago

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At the risk of losing all my (probably pretty limited) anarchist cred, I just gotta go off about what the American ideals are.

(There’s a certain amount of “America is the best” that goes around among Americans (especially conservatives) and I don’t really want to come across like that? An analogy: at some point we got this idea that apple pie is this really classically super American thing but it’s not like other places don’t have apple pie; when I say freedom and equality are American values I don’t mean that other places don’t have those values or for that matter that America is especially good at embodying values of equality and freedom. Just that they are values that we nominally aspire to and that they are good values to aspire to. Anyways.)

(Individual) freedom. Rights. Liberties. To say what you want, believe what you want, hang out with who you want to hang out with, and tell the government off when it’s messing up without being punished (at least by the government) for it. And the US is pretty hard core on free speech: there’s not a lot that the government is allowed to censor, including for instance Nazi stuff. Whether that’s the right call there is an open question. (And…in practice people do get in trouble for specifically their political views, it’s just the government has to break its own rules to do that and it doesn’t really have popular buy-in. For instance, when San Francisco Food Not Bombs was facing mass arrests, the police were pretty open about it being because FNB is an anarchist group, but it did make them look bad and they eventually stopped doing it. (Legally it was “not having a permit”, but uh, that wasn’t the actual reason.)

One place the US both fails to live up to that ideal, specifically on the “believe what you want” front, is that Christmas is a national holiday and US Christians and social Christians (people who aren’t Christian but do celebrate secularized versions of Christian holidays and aren’t strongly tied to a tradition with different holidays and practices) tend to be massively in denial about how that privileges Christianity over other religions. For instance, Jewish people tend to have to specifically ask for Yom Kippur off from work or school and aren’t necessarily able to travel to spend Passover with family. Whereas, apart from people who have jobs that have to be done all the time like nurses, Christians generally don’t have a problem with getting Christmas off, not even having to ask, just automatically. Sure, we don’t have an official religion, technically, but in practice there are things the government (not to mention society as a whole) does to make it easier for Christians than non-Christians.

Still, that’s better than where we started. In the decades around American independence, many states switched from having an official Protestant religion that got government funding, while other denominations had to scramble for funding from congregants who were supporting a religion they didn’t belong to with their taxes, to not having that.

Legal protections against unfair convictions and cruel punishments. Now, if you’ve been following along you know the US has a criminal justice system problem. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I strongly recommend reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. Also great as an audiobook.) So, we’re not putting this one into practice well, because racism. But in theory, trial by a jury of one’s peers is a good thing, due process is a good thing, not having to testify against yourself is a good thing, legally not being allowed to torture people is a good thing (again, theory vs practice), and innocent until proven guilty if you have to have a punitive justice system is better than not having an “innocent until proven guilty” approach. All this is super corrupted and we fail to live up to this ideal hard and there should be more about giving people a fresh start after they’ve served their time. But, it’s still good stuff, we just need to live it out better.

Speaking of racism, we value equality. In theory. And some things have gotten better over time. Certainly rules about who can vote have gotten a lot more inclusive.

Maybe if we keep believing that we should treat everyone equally hard enough one day we’ll actually get there. Maybe we get there one piece at a time. One teacher who calls on girls as often as boys, one real estate agent who treats the same sex couples the same as the opposite sex couples, one college admissions person who doesn’t mark down the essays that talk about participation in race based school clubs. Maybe it’s always going to be a process.

(Representative) democracy. It’s possible to overplay this, but yeah, it’s a value we got. That decisions should ultimately be in the hands of people collectively. That legislators etc should be accountable to the people.

Federalism: so, there’s a hierarchy where the national government can overrule state and local decisions. But, this is important, it’s a limited hierarchy in that the people higher up the hierarchy don’t pick and can’t replace people farther down the hierarchy. The state governor gets elected by the people. The city mayor gets elected by the people. So do the legislative branches at all levels. If the President of the US hates the guts of the governor of California, too bad, he’s just gotta deal with it. People higher up in government don’t appoint people at a lower level of government.

Plus, see “freedom” above, there’s limitations on what the national government can actually do. (These limitations are somewhat weakened because the national government can regulate interstate trade and that covers a lot these days, but there’s still lines it’s not allowed to cross.)

Similarly the “checks and balances” concept — the President has a lot of power but he’s not a dictator, and he can’t just do anything. Most things require Congress’s approval. And the Supreme Court can rule on what’s constitutional, this is how we got nation-wide legal same sex marriage and nation-wide abortion protection. Far from a perfect system and one of the big holes is how only Congress can declare war so we just haven’t “declared war” since WWII. So clearly the US hasn’t been in a war since then. Anyways.

Anyways this is why I’m not actually that thrilled about the “but Biden can just executive order everything” approach. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. If you don’t want the President to have dictatorial power, you have to accept limitations on the President’s power even when he’s Team Blue. And the more power the president has, the more wild swings we see on things like immigration policy which is not actually a good thing.

We initially had a “no political parties” concept. That worked out abysmally. Probably if we’d actually allowed for political parties we’d have rules about them that actually made sense and might limit the amount of fuckery that goes on.

Now some ideals that I’m less happy about. These are things I don’t endorse or approve of, but I’m mentioning them because they are common American values. Meritocracy: the idea that sure there’s wealth and power inequality but that’s ok as long as the people with more earned it. Fuck that.

(Well, in theory it’s got some advantages over “powerful people pass that power on to their kids no matter how incompetent,” except in practice meritocracy is often a cover for just that.) (Anyways, in theory we like people to succeed based on merit, which is better than a belief system that some types of people are naturally superior to and more capable than other types of people. So there’s worse ideals. There’s better ones too.)

Capitalism.

Hard work. Grind culture baby. Work all the time. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps

Puritan bullshit. You don’t need contraception. Just keep your legs closed. If we don’t teach kids about sex they won’t have sex. Also, don’t do drugs. Also, religious people are better than atheists. (Also, specifically Christians are better than everyone else. Real Christians. Not like those (other denomination).)

Melting pot/assimilation: sometime multiculturalism gets into the value stew and I’m all for respecting multiple cultures and recognizing that America is made up of people from a wide variety of different backgrounds, not just people from England/northern and western Europe/Europe. And that we do in fact get our values from a wide variety of cultures (including Native American cultures) and not just Greco-Roman Whatever. (Like seriously: US democracy is as much a child of the Iroquois Confederacy as Athens.) Other times the value is “you’re here now, forget where you’re from and blend in.” And part of that is about not judging people by where they’re from and that’s good! But it shouldn’t be tied to “ew, you’re having that for lunch?”

Manifest Destiny. Yeah. Fuck that.

I’m probably leaving stuff out. Whatever. I’m tired. I’m just going to post. If I want to clean it up later I can make a new post.

#America #united states #political #American values

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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WHAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ABOUT SOMETHING

If you can make as good a bet a few months in. Where does it increase discontinuously? Far from it. I expected, but I don't think any would have traded it for a job in a cubicle. To see an interesting variety of probabilities we have to look at the problem from the other end. Frightening as it seemed to them, is practically nothing.1 If you're still in school, you're surrounded by potential cofounders. Fortunately the statistical approach is not usually the first one people try when they write more code. Remember, the original Silicon Valley startup, weren't even trying to start a startup doing something technically difficult, just write enterprise software. There's plenty of empirical evidence: armies, religious cults, and so far no spam that does.

And there is no way they can get around that. There's something fake about it. You need to work at something that pays the bills too, even though you don't need the money? In true startups, there are probably twenty sane ones who think Start another company? Raising money is not like applying to college, but boring. And the cost of checks may actually be increasing. And since it's hard to write a short comment that's distinguished for the amount of work that could be done in this area. Pictures of kittens, political diatribes, and so far no spam that does.

They think they're trying to convince investors. What's going on here? If you have a smaller pool to draw from this is not how to find a cofounder. I want to spend as little time inside the minds of spammers as possible. And in her typical quiet way she encouraged that illusion. That word business is an important one to remember. A job is the expectation that you're supposed to be there at certain times. Now I would guess that practically every Stanford or Berkeley undergrad who knows how to program has at least considered the idea of starting a startup and failed over someone who'd spent the same time working at a big company. And even within the world of content-based filters are the way to get started is to bootstrap yourself off your existing connections, be a good angel investor is simply to be a good angel investor is simply to be a single long stream of text for purposes of counting occurrences, I use the number of startups any one acquirer could assimilate, but if there is value to be had, in the summer of 2005, had eight startups in it. And odds are that is in fact the bullshit-minimizing option. Once they invest in a company with a high probability of being moderately successful. Why waste your time climbing a ladder that might disappear before you reach the top?

Suddenly a culture that had been more or less united was divided into haves and have-nots. Bad comments are like kudzu: they take over rapidly. Enterprise software companies aren't technology companies, they're sales companies, and the resulting hybrid worked well. And even within the world of content-based filters are the way to do this is through contacts. Their lives are short too. How do you do? Checks instituted by governments can cripple a country's whole economy.

There are already a bunch of big public companies doing search. If you start a startup, is start a consulting business you can then gradually turn into a product business. If you go to work for him unless he is super convincing. The thing that really sucks about having a regular job, you'll probably fail.2 The part of angel investing that the decisions are hard. Why do founders persist in trying to convince investors of something so much less speculative—whether the company is good. If you had a handful of the most successful startups are the ones you never hear about: the company that would be painless, though annoying, to lose. 9359873 managed 0. You don't have to explain not just the benefit but the cost. The reason the spammers use the kinds of things that matter: them. Not having a cofounder is a real problem. But it's important to remember we're trying to solve a new problem, because that means we're going to have to work at something that pays the bills.

Based on my corpus, sex indicates a. Ideally the answer is that it only recently became a good idea would be to accumulate a giant corpus of spam, or even triples, rather than their combined length, as the divisor in calculating spam probabilities. The most successful angel investors I know are mean. It has for me.3 As with the question of cofounders, the real lesson here is to start startups who shouldn't, I make my own life worse. When they think it's time to raise money, they try gamely to make the headers look innocent, but my guess is that it only recently became a good idea would be to accumulate a giant corpus of spam. And, by no coincidence, the corporate ladder had a value analogous to the goodwill that is a very real element in the valuation of companies.

Which means we will increasingly have to make their mails indistinguishable from your ordinary mail. And that's fine.4 If you develop ideas in a startup instead of within a big company. Creating such a corpus would be useful for other kinds of filters too, because it could be used to test them.5 Not opting out is not the long but mistaken argument, but the word madam never occurs in my legitimate email, and whatever was found on the site could be included in calculating the probability of the email being a spam. And only good people can ride the thermals if they hit them anyway. Here is an example of that rare bird, a spam that gets through the filters of someone who responds to a spam. 99. So you shouldn't do it if you don't have a good idea, because something changed, and no one has committed yet? How do you do? To some extent you have to put up with the bullshit forced on you, the more survives. They're saying He invested in Google.

One thing you learn when you get rich is that there are many different kinds of software being used simultaneously. The agreement by which you invest should have provisions that let you contribute to future rounds to maintain your percentage. Steve and Alexis. If they don't need you, it will stop working, and the most interesting fifteen tokens, where interesting is measured by how far their spam probability is from a neutral. They send spam because it works. Second, I think it will be accepted even if its spam probability is from a neutral.6 And the cost of checks, you can always write that book, or climb that mountain, or whatever, and then you realize the window has closed. Acquirers know the rule holds for them too: if users love you, you can do it on a smaller scale without moving. It occurs mostly in unsubscribe instructions, but here is used in a completely innocent way. Don't get hung up on mechanics or deal terms. The best way to get experience if you're 21 is to start startups, and explain which are real. That's why I love working on Y Combinator.

Notes

I'm not saying we should be working on what interests you most. 2%. The US is the discrepancy between government receipts as a single snapshot, but less than 1.

And I'm sure for every startup founder could pull the same work faster.

They then grant the founders chose? Think it's too late to launch. The undergraduate curriculum or trivium whence trivial consisted of Latin grammar, rhetoric, and journalists—have the perfect point to spread them.

That would be on demand, and partly because it consisted of three stakes. But when you had in grad school, because such companies need huge numbers of users comes from a mediocre VC. She ventured a toe in that water a while we might think it is very common, to the Bureau of Labor. People who know the combination of a rolling close doesn't mean easy, of course some uncertainty about how closely the remarks attributed to Confucius and Plato saw themselves as teachers of administrators, and some just want that first few million.

It is the unpromising-seeming startups encounter mediocre investors almost all do, so they had to bounce back. It is probably part of grasping evolution was to become one of the word wealth. The First Industrial Revolution, England was already the richest of their hands thus tended to be high, and Windows, respectively.

5% a week for 4 years. They would probably find it hard to grasp the cachet that term had.

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quakerjoe · 6 years ago

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A Cuppa Joe for 3 January 2019

Regarding Patriotism

Patriotism. What the fuck IS that exactly? I used to think it stemmed from the nation’s actual motto “E Pluribus Unum” meaning “From Many, One” where we all stand together, united, as one people, Americans, and look out for one another. That was a hard delusion to wake up from. While such a thing is possible if we so desire it, it isn’t going to happen evidently. Seriously, think about this for a moment. Who do you see the most out here going on about “patriotism” today? Angry white dudes. I don’t see African Americans out there blowing the “Look at me, asshole! I’m a PATRIOT!” horns loudly, nor anyone from the LGBTQ community or from any minority such as our Islamic/Arabic neighbors who came here to get away from all the radical, violent religious bullshit and just want to pray in peace. Angry. White. Dudes. All pining for a “Christian Nation” while acting exactly the opposite to the teachings of Christ. They clean their guns and play circle-jerk warrior in the woods with their limp-dick friends because they’re too much of a sad sack to actually JOIN the military and SERVE. THAT would be Patriotism.

Then again, is serving in the military really being patriotic anymore? I was proud when I served, but looking back on it, WHO was I really serving? Was I truly protecting the US from some threat? Not really. We’re on the other side of the planet, far away from any direct threat. Two massive oceans divide us from any other military that may want to harm us. Then again, WHY would any other military even WANT to harm us? Could it have something to do with the way this nation invades other nations to topple their elected governments and establish banana republics in order to get what “we” want from them? By “we”, I of course don’t mean that you or I give a shit what the price of bananas is. Oil, on the other hand… We all care about oil prices because we’re constantly being blocked from developing and using green power sources so that the rich twats in Big Fossil Fuels can get even richer. They spend thousands on buying elected officials here who band together and pass a tax break law that gives those rich twats savings in the millions and even billions.

But do Central and South American nations have a mobile force to invade us? Fuck no. What about Persian nations that we and other European nations carved up for oil field access, ignoring the territories if Sunni and Shiite, creating nations that have all sort of in-fighting between the two peoples? That’s on us, kids. Still, they don’t have a military worth a damn that can cross the oceans and get to us. So is being over THERE being “patriotic” and really defending our freedom? Fuck no. So WHO are we serving? Rich. White. Dudes. Period. Are THEY “patriotic”? They bribe the government to use military force in nations that they want something from, like oil, or poppy fields for Big Pharma, and they USE us as cheap mercenaries; cannon fodder to secure their FINANCIAL interests, and the thanks veterans get when they get home is shit wages, their families on some sort of financial assistance, and when they need medical or mental health, we practically ignore them and then wonder why the suicide rate for returning vets is so high. Fewer mouths for Uncle Sam to feed, right? Meanwhile, the rich, white dudes don’t ever have to look at them or deal with them and even though the blood is on their hands from war, they weren’t the ones sent in to do the killing. THEY don’t have to deal with the consequences; they just cash in and get rich. No guilt. No empathy. No PTSD. Nada. Just loads of cash. Meanwhile, we use up our munitions and equipment and keep the War Machine and major contractors super-financed in contracts that aren’t bid for anymore. That doesn’t sound at all patriotic to me, but there’s something you need to understand.

YOU are not a person, you’re a component. You’re something to exploit and rob. When people in government today see “We the People” they automatically see that as “We the Rich Fuckers” and the rest of us are the plebes; the livestock that generates money for them and we don’t matter to them. If we did, we’d have had free healthcare coverage and education decades ago, and it’d also be the best on the planet and there’d be a sense of pride in being an American from the richest down to the poorest because we’d be at our healthiest and our smartest. Instead, we revel in our arrogance, our ignorance, and our stupidity. We roll in a puddle of hubris and it seems that most “patriots” don’t even know what that word means. THAT, dear Joes, is the new definition of “patriotism” among the ‘plebe class’, and just like in days of Olde, when the Constitution was first drafted, “People” meant the wealthy class who owned land and property and were the only ones who voted. They got the good food, the good medicine, and the good education while you got little to none of any of it and you’d have been working since the day you could walk and talk at the same time until the day you dropped dead. That’s what MAGA is all about, only trumplefuckstick’s supporters are poor, stupid fucks who must believe that they’re really millionaires who are temporarily inconvenienced at the moment and that they’ll be rich soon with 45 at the helm.

Their idea of “patriotism” is to literally shit on everyone here that isn’t of their ilk- ignorant-as-fuck white, cist-gendered, white, “Christian” MEN or their brainwashed, sidekick women who dine on hate as well. They’re praying for the End of Days one moment, while hoping that just before that happens they get an opportunity to hunt down and murder Obama or HRC or just go on an all-out “nigger hunt” or a chance to do-in the “towelheads” living here. They’re praying for a chance to slaughter anyone LGBTQ because the bible calls them an abomination to be destroyed. They give me the impression that they watch “The Handmaiden’s Tale” and jerk off to it because using women as breeding stock and enslaving them and killing the “uppity ones” is a dirty, wet dream of theirs, and they call it “patriotic”.

So someone out there, please remind me what it truly means to be a Patriot of the United States of America. As far as I can see, we went from aspirations towards “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” to “I got mine; fuck the rest of y’all! Bootstraps, fucker! Pull yourself up or just die ‘cause I’m not going to help you. I had to work hard to get what I’ve got. Get a job!” Instead of looking UP at the rich and powerful shitting on us, too many of us are looking down at those less fortunate than those wielding the “White Privilege” card and blaming the POOR for all their woes as they look down their noses at them and continue to let the shit roll downhill instead of reaching down to help someone up. It’s a disgrace. It’s the OPPOSITE of being patriotic. It’s the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what I was taught it meant to be an actual Christian and frankly, the level of hypocrisy from the religious people here is sickening, insulting, and fucking INSANE.

I tire of so-called “Christians” showing up here telling me that they’re not ALL bad. Well, they ARE. If you’re watching evil transpire before you and you do NOTHING, you’re guilty of that evil too, and frankly I am still waiting for some sort of allied Christian movement to get together enough to call out the ‘false prophets’ getting rich in this country and getting behind, en masse, to see to it we get Universal Healthcare for ALL, a bolstered safety net program that includes “food stamps”, the promotion of medicines and science because if there is a god, we were blessed with senses that should be trying to study how He/She/It made the universe and how to make the world a healthier, safer place of PEACE, not a nation with a bloated military budget that can’t even pass muster when audited while people here in our own country are going hungry and homeless because “fuck you, you peasant, that’s why”. If your idea of being a “Christian” is ignoring the bible and praying at home, in private and you insist on going to a tax have to pray (yes, church) then you’d better be DOING something to fight against the evils sweeping the nation and against the tenants of Jesus. Evangelicals, or Talibangelists as I call them, are on the move. Where the fuck are YOU? Yeah, hanging around your community trying to do “good deeds” is sweet and all, but wouldn’t it fight hunger and poverty MORE, in line with Christ’s teachings, if you got off your ass and rallied AGAINST the Talibangelists and called them out on their bullshit? Where’s your presence in the REAL clear and present danger here? Where is YOUR voice when it comes to defeating the false prophets we’ve been warned repeatedly about?

>Matthew 7:15 clearly states “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are raving wolves.” Perhaps you “Christians” should STOP ELECTING THEM! Forwarding and backing known pedophiles and sex offenders doesn’t sound too Christian OR patriotic to me.

>Matthew 24:11 Jesus says “and many false prophets will appear and lead many astray.” Sounds like the brainless twats on FOX and trumplefuckstick lying to the masses who slop back the shit like it is gravy and not the feces that it is.

>Matthew 24:24 says “For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”

>Second Peter 2:1-3 “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.”

>First John 4:1 “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” So forgive my skepticism of all you alleged “Christians”, but I’ll believe in you when you SHOW me that you’re not all talk and no ACTION.

> Jeremiah 23:16 Tell me this one doesn’t apply to suckers who vote GOP and Corporate Democrat as well as those fuckwits who go to mega-churches to throw away their money and their souls: “This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD.”

> Ezekiel 13:9 “My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and who give lying divinations. They shall not be in the council of my people, nor be enrolled in the register of the house of Israel, nor shall they enter the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord God.” We have truly FAILED as a nation at this one, kids. So quit with all the religious preaching on my page. If you haven’t sold all you own and have given it all to the poor, then I’m not going to take you seriously. (Matthew 19:21 and Luke 18:22).

From what my parents and grandparents taught me, part of being a Patriot was to confront evil and help those in need, and honestly, I’m not seeing it from the “Christian” community, only their hubris and vanity and a defensive sense of pride compounded with an extremist element here that uses the Bible as license to commit all manner of atrocities against their fellow countrymen/women etc. even though we were WARNED about this sort of fuckery- “because they are turning whole families away from the truth by their false teaching. And they do it only for money” (Titus 1:11) AND “Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.” (1 Timothy 6:5).

If you haven’t noticed, we are HERE:

> 2nd Tim 4:3-4 “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” So let’s just pull this sanctimonious bus off to the side of the pretentiousness highway and cut the shit with your religious ramblings and let’s focus on saving the world and figuring out what it truly means to be “patriotic”, shall we? We SHOULD be looking out for one another REGARDLESS of religious beliefs.

Having said all that, Dear Joes, tell me this- how do YOU define “Patriotism” today?

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qqueenofhades · 6 years ago

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So after the spate of high-profile celebrity suicides recently, and the short-lived discussion of mental health that surrounds them (kind of like the way the gun control debate appears for a week after a mass shooting and then vanishes), I have had some probably disconnected thoughts that I finally felt like putting down somewhere (and honestly, I had most of this post typed up and then tumblr deleted it, so... round two and Fuck You Very Much Tumblr). I briefly thought about putting it on facebook, but a) fuck facebook, I’m barely on it anymore, and b) everyone that I care about is either or also here. So I guess it’s once more using the big blue hellsite as a diary, because I was awake until 1am last night talking to myself about this, and writing is how I work things out.

As ever, please do not feel obliged to read the post or whatever else, especially if you’re uncomfortable with the themes/subjects discussed. Again, it’s essentially for my own benefit and trying to organize things I’ve wanted to say, as a long-term sufferer of depression and anxiety who is also having a really tough time now, and how I see that reflecting on what’s happening both with me and the wider world.

Anyway.

I feel like my main reaction is one of weariness that so much of the response is “get help if you’re struggling! Reach out! Call someone! Things will get better!” Which is... helpful in its way, and I genuinely believe that the people reblogging suicide hotline numbers and “don’t kill yourself” posts and so on really want to help. I am not one to point fingers at anyone who really wants to reach out and do something to make a difference. But that’s also it? We’re barely getting to the place of recognizing depression as a legitimate problem and not stigmatizing people who have it (hah), but to me, it sounds so much like “well, I know you have two broken legs and can’t stand upright, but you should still go walk to the clinic and ask them to help you.” Again. Important. But why is so much of it centered around the assumption that the depression sufferer has the responsibility to go on an individual basis and try therapy or meds or whatever, while the mental health services that even exist are being slashed? While some people seem perfectly happy to talk about how mental health is the problem, and not readily legal assault rifles and a culture of white male entitlement and grievance), and the assumption remains that we can just treat depression on an individual, ad hoc basis, rather than looking at it systematically.

We’ve had a ton of studies and research showing that depression rates are way up, that a lot of people identify as having anxiety and mental issues and are messed up out the wazoo (which frankly, I think most of us are), and then the attendant “everyone’s a snowflake, buck up and take it on the chin!” backlash, because frankly the world is horrible and society sucks. (This opinion is sometimes subject to revision, but still.) Honestly, is this any surprise? When we’re in collapsing late-stage capitalism that has basically utterly fucked everyone born after 1980, we live in this awareness that things are systematically and unbearably evil and oppressive but the vast majority of us have no ability to do anything about that, and birth rates and marriage rates are declining because people (completely understandably) don’t want to bring children into this nightmare of a world and are realizing that traditional ideals of marriage and sexual morality are BS.... I mean, are we surprised that people just don’t want to live in this world anymore? When I find myself worrying about the idea of taking on another student loan (another of the basic commodities that it has become expected that you’ll go tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for) and then am like, “well, there’s a less than zero chance that Western civilization collapses in my lifetime/the next ten years, and I’m going to die in debt anyway, so...”, there’s a sense of surreality and almost despondency that we’re able to know more than ever how shitty things are, but again, can’t do anything about it. Again. We can’t fix depression by telling people individually to go try therapy or whatever else. It doesn’t get at the reasons that so many of us just can’t stand the world anymore.

I feel like I’ve settled well on my belief that people, even if often beholden to centuries-old bullshit and tribalism and prejudice, are individually good, often amazingly and soul-sustainingly so (I’m not joking when I say that I would probably be dead by now if not for the kindness of strangers and friends, including many of you who I’ve met here), but society and the overall structure is pretty much rotten. We find ways to manage, to exist, to ameliorate, to distract, and I am honestly delighted for the people who can live more or less happy existences despite everything, have found a way to do that. Again, this isn’t a “don’t go to therapy!!” sort of post, because yes, if you’re depressed, you have to decide whether and how you want to get better. But sometimes you just can’t fucking do that. You just exist this way and you know how it is and it becomes sort of familiar and accounted for.

I’m lucky to be a mostly high-functioning sufferer, who has lived with long-term and chronic depression and anxiety since at least the age of 18 (and probably, through most of my childhood as well), which has left me latently suicidal, physically fucked up, mentally exhausted, and emotionally isolated for my entire adult life. But I’ve also managed to hold jobs and complete several advanced degrees and get out of bed and put on makeup and keep my commitments and so on and otherwise outwardly resemble a normal person. So I then read posts about people who can’t get out of bed or even brush their teeth, and I start wondering if I “really” have depression or it’s just an excuse or I’m a weak person or just broken somehow else. Which is 0% helpful and is the bad brain talking, as I recognize. Looking at me from the outside, it feels like you wouldn’t guess, which also seems to be a theme with the celebrities who died. They always seemed happy and well put together and confident, until they didn’t. I turn 30 this August, and feel about 800.

And yet. I have made the choice to live, and I have continued to make the choice, and I have learned that I have a lot of strength I didn’t know I did, and I am proud of that. But I also read a post by someone I otherwise admire and whose work I really like, about how you can’t ever have the life you want until you take suicide off the table as an option, as if you can just choose once to live and not think about it again. And I just am like... how? I’ve made it before and I’ll have to do it again, but god, I wish with my entire heart that I could just make it once and not look back. I wish I could ever be confident that I could say without qualification that I want to live more than I want to die. Because well, I DON’T want to die, not really. I find things that make me happy and that give me small joys and distract me and which I enjoy. I still have a lot of things I want to do (even while feeling I won’t get the chance) and feel like it would be stupid to die because my brain doesn’t work. So I’m still here. I’ve never made a serious attempt to kill myself, and I obviously hope that doesn’t change. But it remains in the back of my head, the idea that I just wish I could switch off for five years and come back and find that things have somehow worked out. Which obviously is not the way it works, and you don’t get to temporarily go away. But this world is so hard and so tiring to live in, and sometimes it gets to me.

As for the getting help part -- I’ve been trying to do that myself recently. Go to counselling services and the university support centre and whatever else, even though it causes me anxiety to the point of physically messing me up. It feels like being drunk or hungover or just off balance and unable to see or breathe normally. I convulse in bed at night and wake up just as tired when I went to sleep and just don’t feel like I run correctly. And this is from a relatively high-functioning person who isn’t trying to stop herself (at least currently) from suicide, but just enough to keep her going. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a person depressed to the point of being unable to get out of bed, told to call someone or reach out or whatever else. That’s practically inhumane. We live, for better or worse, in a Western “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” culture that puts the onus on the individual to fix their own problems. When honestly, the collective society that exists right now is a toxic, oppressive, and impossible one that keeps chewing up people from every walk of life and which nobody with the actual ability to do anything about it seems to want to change. Encouraging individuals with depression to seek help is nice, sure. But until something fundamentally and permanently changes in society and how we view our obligations to each other and what we are willing to do to help and to change this culture that tells you you’re responsible for your own illness, people are going to keep dying from depression in droves, and everyone else is just going to figure we’re weak. Or there will be a short-lived mental health awareness campaign, and nice things will be said, and then it will be back to business as usual. Because man, are we good at burying our heads in the sand for any number of things.

The choice to live doesn’t usually have the luxury of being made once and then never revisited. You have to do it yearly, monthly, weekly, sometimes even daily. And frankly, I don’t blame anyone who feels that the cost-benefit analysis doesn’t really add up to staying here anymore. I’m here certainly in part because of you here on tumblr, who have indirectly (and sometimes directly) saved my life. You have talked with me on text or email or in person for years, have read my fics and thought of things you wanted to tell me and sent me nice messages and otherwise made me feel less invisible. Your kindness has been often what has sustained me, and made me decide that I’d rather be here than anywhere else, and given me what little faith in humanity I have left. And one of the reasons I write all the time (books/fics/asks/metas/papers/theses/projects...etc) is because I literally cannot stand to live in my own head if I don’t. I do love creating things and am happy that people enjoy what I post here, and it’s a major source of pleasure and distraction for me. But I also do it because I will literally cease to function (in what limited capacity I have) if I don’t. I have to do it in order to live with myself and this monster at all, and that is also tiring.

Overall, we’re all fucked-up people with a very dark sense of humor, whose compassion and conscience is about all we have going for us, and we just have to try to cling together and do for each other what we can. And god, I’m grateful for it. I have a lot of financial terror right now in addition to everything else, and am looking into the aforementioned student loan for short-term stabilizing (limited work rights are a Bitch), and I basically paid my rent last month because of you guys. So yeah, you’ve made the difference for a stranger on the internet being homeless or not, and I have no idea why, but please know that it means more to me than I can ever say, and I hope to give back what I can.

(I also still have a Kofi account, while I’m trying to get things under control here, so... again, entirely up to you.)

I’m not sure how I will make it to December and (supposedly, ha) my PhD graduation, let alone after that. I will probably have to choose to live again several more times between now and then, and then again after that. I hope I can continue to do that. And I hope I can talk to you, both if you need someone to listen and whatever I can do for you by that, and if I do the same.

If you’ve read all the way to the bottom, mazel tov.

#hilary for ts #personal #tw depression #tw suicide

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rainystudios · 7 years ago

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(source: thenKTwrote on twitter)

I wanted to expand on this because reading it also made me realize some things:

It also doesnt help we're the first adult generation that's being discussed on national scale as if we're all still awful teenagers.

Like when ever before was an adult generation ranging from age 18-34 years old ever scrutinized & treated with the same distain & condescending tone used to delegitimize and demoralize children.

A lot of us are practically living on an allowance wage. We’re still adults and have adult responsibilities, but still live with parents or roomates (often not by free choice but because it’s all we can do as we work to move up). And until we pass a certain wage threshold or meet a stable S.O. it’s not sensible or safe for us to live on our complete own. Making minimum wage full time gives you about 1,000$ a month to live on and most rent alone is 700$+ for just a small 1bdrm place. So we’re making money but not enough to live on.

We become legal adults at 18, but if we go to University we’re still in a teen mindset of attending class and getting our work done as we try to grow up and become independent. Life skills are put on hold while we try to survive the workload and just make it through each day. Again, it’s not like we are necessarily prepared for adult life before all of this.

We work for hours at school, then bring that work home to work for hours more. Some people need to work a part time job during all of this also, it’s like having 3 jobs and hardly enough money to survive on, and no time to cook or eat well. Many dorms rooms don’t even have appliances to cook with. So our overall health declines as we eat cheap instant food or pay for an expensive questionable lunch service. (some places even put up cheery posters suggesting to skip meals or donate plasma to afford class materials)

Plus mental illnesses, anxiety & depression have become commonplace because of the immense pressure we’re under and the consequences we face if we can’t make it: (family ridicule, shame, losing job prospects, homelessness, poverty, or returning to an abusive household, etc.)

Though we’re adults, people don’t want to pay us for our internships, i.e. our work. Job training has become a commodity and privilege. It’s considered rare if a place is willing to pay you as an intern despite completing tasks and running errands for your place of “employment.” You’re supposed to feel grateful they even gave you the time of day for this “opportunity” to put on your resume, many times of which nothing comes of.

We become accustomed to our work and time being undervalued. Everyone wants to pay us with exposure. We consider ourselves lucky if we can make over 10$ an hour somewhere, despite the humane paying wage being around 15$+ an hour.

By the time we graduate and get our degree (if we were able to afford to complete it) we’re around 22. True adults! Four years into adulthood and we’re now just getting into the world to make our mark.

We could have anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 (yes I know people in the 100k tier) in debt for the education that promised us better opportunities (and high interest accumulates while we’re still in school, and payments have to start being made after 6 months of graduation.)

When we do finally get a paycheck a large chunk of it goes to paying those off.

Then comes the common employment void conundrum of not being able to find a place willing to hire you for your skills, or if they do you won’t get the pay you deserve or need, or–

you have to work one of the minimum wage jobs people threatened you with when you were younger, just to start getting some sort of income. “Go to college & get an education so you’re not stuck as a _____ all your life!”, like some bastardized self inflicted caste system. Which ironically many people are. And I won’t even get into the fact of how messed up it is that regardless of who it is, someone will have to work those “low tier” jobs in every establishment and therefore should earn a humane livable wage regardless but don’t.

TLDR; Though we’re adults, no one wants to treat us with the respect we deserve. We’re talked down to, looked down upon, and our unique experiences and cries for help are met with “PULL UP YOUR BOOTSTRAPS!!!” from people who never had an experience that was even close to this. We’re the first adult generation treated like children, abused and trained to overwork and accept the measly scraps thrown to us like some 1900s factory era bullshit, despite being one of the most qualified and educated generations to ever exist.

So yeah, it’s all pretty fucked up.

[EDIT: OH YEAH LIKE THIS THING I FOUND ONCE ON A JOB/EMPLOYER THEMED MAILING BLOG LIST. IT WAS BASICALLY A POST ON HOW TO APPEAL AND CATER TO THE STRANGE CREATURES MILLENIALS ARE.All of this shit is common sense and just good business practice in general. Like “Millenials like to know they’re being paid enough”, “explain yourself when you tell people to do something.” “young people are jealous emo creatures, don’t promote by favoritism and nepotism” (งツ)ว what the FUCK.

]

#millennials #generation #college #journal #talk about millenials like theyre pets

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zucca101 · 7 years ago

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Friendship ending

A lot of people have had friends dump them because they either voted for Trump or don’t hate Trump enough.

And when they are forced to see that the friends they try to dump aren’t horrible people, they perform mental gymnastics to convince themselves that their former friends are horrible people.

The following is a long rant from one such friend of mine and my response. If you recognize who it is, I DEMAND you seek no reprisal from them. I am keeping them anonymous to protect their identity for just that reason.

... A leftist, really now. Ahaha, oh wow.

*Link to the post I made about Lincoln being shot by a Leftist*-Z

Yes, noted Confederate sympathizer and anti-abolitionist John Wilkes Booth. A leftist.I was already keeping you at a healthy arm's length while putting up a vague semblance of friendship for the sake of not rocking the boat on that one server we're in, but holy shit have you ever lost your damn marbles. I can't do this, lmaoI mean, you've got an impressive collection of bullshit on that blog of yours all around, but this? chef kissHonestly, on some level, you impress me. How someone can claim to be anti-establishment while sucking up to the establishment every possible way they can, how someone can claim to be "seeking truth" only to disregard all evidence that can't be traced back to some skeezy reactionary Facebook page or another delivered to you through the impermeable little bubble of right-wingers you've created for yourself along with the right wing side of mass media your purportedly loathe so much... tell me, just how much cognitive dissonance do you deal with on a daily basis?How does it feel to claim to be "pro life", or to claim that you care about others only to push for measures to restrict access to healthcare, or to vehemently yell against anything the government could do that would make it easier for people to come out of the vicious spiral of poverty?(edited)How does it feel to constantly pretend to care about minorities, but only ever use us as gotchas to other minorities that you've internally designated as universally bad in spite of any evidence to the contrary - not to mention, without ever listening to us if we tell you you did something wrong, instead cherry picking those of us willing enough to suck up to the establishment to tell you what you want to hear, so you never have to confront the idea you may have done something wrong?(edited)Hell, isn't that what they call "virtue signaling" in your circles?Beyond your dishonesty to others, ask yourself this: are you even honest to yourself? Aren't you robbing yourself of any kind of personal growth by doing all this? Are you really contributing anything positive to this world by constantly spreading unchecked factoids that instantly fall apart the moment you expose them to any actual scientific sources (you know, the ones people in your general political corner like to call "fake news"), or by spreading the idea that people in dire straits should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps?Or for that matter, by resisting any measure of change towards a fairer society and instead vocally gushing about the virtues of a system that, by its very nature, its very definition, its very -essence- is about fucking over who you can, and quietly plugging your ears to anything you hear about the many negative consequences it has for the world, or the people living in it?Come back to me once you've learned how to maintain a shred of integrity, I suppose. Maybe take some time to reflect on what it means to be a good person. I can't be friends with someone to whom I have to explain why they should care about other people.Goodbye.

This is my response:

In 1865 John Wilkes Booth, a Democrat, assassinated Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States.

In 1881 a left wing radical Democrat shot James Garfield, President of the United States who later died from the wound.

In 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald, a radical left wing socialist, assassinated John F. Kennedy, President of the United States.

In 1975 a left wing radical Democrat fired shots at Gerald Ford, President of the United States.

In 1983 John Hinckley, a registered Democrat, shot and wounded Ronald Reagan and paralyzed a member of his cabinet.

... In 1984 James Huberty, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 22 people in a McDonalds restaurant in San Ysidro, CA.

In 1986 Patrick Sherril, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 15 people in an Oklahoma post office.

In 1990 James Pough, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 10 people at a GMAC office.

In 1991 George Hennard, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 23 people in a Lubys cafeteria.

In 1995 James Daniel Simpson, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 5 coworkers in a Texas laboratory.

In 1999 Larry Asbrook, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 8 people at a church service.

In 2001 a left wing radical Democrat fired shots at the White House in a failed attempt to kill George W. Bush, President of the US.

In 2003 Douglas Williams, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 7 people at a Lockheed Martin plant.

In 2007 Seung - Hui Cho, a registered Democrat, shot and killed 32 people in Virginia Tech.

In 2010 Jared Lee Loughner, a mentalliy ill registered Democrat, shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed 6 others.

In 2011 James Holmes, a registered Democrat, went into a movie theater and shot and killed 12 people.

In 2012 Andrew Engeldinger, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 7 people in Minneapolis.

In 2013 Adam Lanza, a registered Democrat, shot and killed men, women, and children in the Sandy Hook school massacre.

Leftist? Maybe JWB was, maybe he wasn't. But a Democrat, he assuredly was. Perhaps I overreached in saying he was a Leftist, but I should clarify that when I say 'Leftist' I don't mean 'someone on the Left'. I mean someone who believes The Left is the ONLY way. The same way I draw distinction between Muslims and Islamists. Islamists want to push it on others. Muslims are the broadest defition of those who follow Islam.

And what establishment am I sucking up to....? I don't watch Fox with any kind of regularity. I get most of my facts from self-described 'classic liberals' whose hearts are on the Left, but their minds are more centrist. They have intellectual honesty. I listen to Gavin McInnis to blow off steam, Bill Whittle for the Right of Center take on news and Sargon for Left of Center.

I don't care for the mass media because while I suspected that they were liars and obfuscating before, to finally have iron-clad proof of it is extremely liberating.

And I CHALLENGE YOU to show me where I said that women should not have access to healthcare. Or even hinted at it. What, you think because I know Single Payer is garbage that will create a pile of corpses. I'm against healthcare for women? I've even said that my stance on abortions is that it should be between the woman and her doctor, not the woman, the government, the doctor, some pencil pushers and more. Just as my stance on same-sex marriage is that it should be between a couple and the church of their choice, not to make it legally compulsory and simply flip the oppression over rather than making it fair and equal of measure. And where abortions are concerned, the parental rights of the father are nonexistent. Now, in cases such as incest and rape (Which if you look at the stats, represent a small minority of abortions) still strongly urge the mother to consider life, but if she chooses abortion, while I find it extremely distasteful (The child DOES NOT HAVE A SAY IN THIS) I fully understand and sympathize with the decision.

As for helping people out of poverty, you know what's the BEST way out of poverty that ISN'T a government program?

A job. A simple job. And if the government creates conditions that *encourage* job growth, then you accomplish the same end without making people dependent on the governmnet.

That's not to say that there shouldn't be charity for people who TRULY cannot help themselves. That's a given. But when you extend the scope of those within the perview of the government to give money to to include people who CAN help themselves, then you create dependents. And it's not that they're bad or lazy people. They're taking the least complicated route. If you get more money for not working than you do for working, you'll take the one that affords you free time to spend with your family, friends or on your own pursuits.

Constantly pretend to.... universally bad...? WHAT....? Dude, don't even try that one. Blah-blah, anyone Right of Mao is racist, blah. Pardon my French, but go fly a frikken kite. In my tabletop gaming group, my friend Paul, 2nd Generation Japanese immigrant, is the most decent and kind man I've had the pleasure of knowing. He's a good dad to his kids and a good husband to his wife. My freind Zach is from a huge Filipino family and he's the best GM I've ever met, short of my oldest brother. John grew up in a Cadillac before his parents legally became citizens and came up to America from Mexico. These are guys I trust, literally, with my life. And none of us give a crap what the other looks like.

And I admit, for a while I was 100% not on board with Transsexualism. But since then I've come to stand that an adult who has spoken to a therapist and doctor, sorted out their feelings and decided after consideration that they wish to transition is completely fine by me. It doesn't hurt me or anyone else and if they've spoken to a therapist, then they're not setting themselves up for something regrettable. Now, trans-trenders, who want the status of being special and different, but don't want to go through the heartache and effort of making that transition, I call out for their bullshit, because not only are they full of shit, they're robbing REAL transsexuals of their credibility, their agency and their respect. And for some transsexuals to come out and say 'You don't have a right not to have sex with a transsexual', can't you see how that would rub some folk the wrong way?

Don't even try to talk to me about science, friend. I studied biology, agricultural science and psychology and I know a thing or two and when someone obfuscates or has nothing peer-reviewed, then I get suspicious. Again, I'd sorely love for you to point out where I was 'anti-science'.

And if you're suggesting that Socialism is your fluffy 'Fair Society' then I suggest you travel to Venezuala. I have a friend who lives there and the picture he paints is NOT a pretty one. How do you define a 'Fair society'? Because I define it as a society that rewards effort. You do a hard day's work, you make a fair wage and you work your way up the ladder. You can't try to take luck or privilege into account on EITHER Socialism or Capitalism, because there is no way to quantify the variable of luck and when you look at privelege, then it exists in the pipedream of Socialism too, because the people running it will ALWAYS BE BETTER OFF than the people who are not. That's simple human nature. The Great Wheel of Life as the Buddhists describe still exerts its effect on a Socialist state as much as a Capitalist. But unlike Socialism, at least in Capitalism you have, barring disability, the same shot as anyone else does to earn a good living.

I find it laughable that you sit there, where you are, and decry someone you know through occasional chats as either a good person or a not good person based on arbitrary variables.

See, the truth is that life is not as black and white as that. It's an exquisite composition of greys and other colors.

Sometimes life is good, sometimes life is not, but if you are free to self-determination (Something you DO NOT HAVE IN SOCIALISM) then you have a chance to better yourself. You DARE to accuse me of not caring about people out of one side of your mouth, while, with the other, propping up Socialism, which *DOES NOT CARE* about people to the point that a child is worthy of sacrifice due to SIMPLE INCONVENIENCE?! Sorry, but *fuck* that is the very cognative dissonance you accuse me of in plain and flagrant view.

I push myself to be a good person. I don't hurt people, I volunteer, I help the seniors at my church with many needs, I'm there for my friends and family and will drop what I'm doing to help, I treat everyone working retail with respect and actively try to make their day brighter, I don't care what color someone's skin is, I don't care if someone is disabled (My best friend back in Youth Bowling League and a better bowler than I, was a deaf boy named Arron), and I am generally considered to be very 'chill' in person and am so without chemical intervention. Does that make me a good person? I don't rightly know. I just do the best I can with what I've got. And I don't *dare* to assume that I have moral highground unless it's a truly clear-cut case. I've never killed, raped (Even though 3rd Wave Feminism insists that in every man there is a rapist that needs to be taught not to rape_) or stolen anything (Some shoplifting in my youth notwithstanding). In other words, I try to be a decent and polite person and let the world decide if I am or not a good person.

But what boggles my mind is that the line between good person and bad person is tied DIRECTLY to what side of the political spectrum they fall under. That is simplisticly childish. As is the 'Come back to me when you care about people' nonsense.

I will again wait for you to come to your senses and realize that life is not a cartoon with cartoonishly one-note people.

Genuinely warm regards,

-Zucca

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elrhiarhodan · 8 years ago

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I am astonished these days by the bold-faced ballsiness of the Republican hypocrisy.

My jaw is perpetually on the floor. It’s not even attached anymore. It’s just a jawbone resting at my feet, as my tongue flops and flips around my rent-open face in moist gesticulations that fail to properly explain the sheer what-the-fuckery I’m forever feeling.

It’s probably always been there, this hypocrisy. Maybe it was better hidden, once upon a time. And certainly no political entity is without its duplicities and insincerities — but what we’re seeing now, what is paraded before us daily by both the administration and by Congress, is like satire written by an angry eight-year-old. It’s so clumsy, so on-the-nose, that no one would ever let the story air because it feels like a chimpanzee’s attempt at parody. Irony is dead. It’s six-feet-deep. Political humor is harder now than ever, because how do you make fun of a clown?

Every time I turn on on the news or even glimpse at Twitter, I see more and newer hypocrisies whipping fast past my eyes, scrolling like the list of side effects you’d get on a commercial for dick pills. It’s dizzying: an ever-growing display of towering horseshit so vertiginous that to attempt to climb it would be positively fucking Sisyphean. You’d never make it to the top. You’d forever be sliding back down as another shovel-load whaps you in the face.

They say they care about families, but then they rip them apart and deny them aid. They call women “hosts,” removing their personage, their choice, their access to care. They love unborn kids but somehow hate the women that give birth to them. Eat shit, Moms. They only want what’s in those uteruses, not the uteruses themselves. And once you’re born, ha ha, double fuck you, kid. Fuck your education. Fuck your health. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, they say only after they’ve bought up all the bootstraps for themselves and closed the bootstrap factories and what the fuck is a bootstrap, anyway?

They speak about individual responsibility, but can’t even show up for their own fucking town halls. They won’t be accountable to anything or anyone, but you, you have to be accountable for everything — even for them. When they say individual responsibility, they mean fuck you, do it yourself. Fuck the safety net. Fuck the general health and well-being of the nation. They got theirs, man. They mean that they won’t help you. The government’s very job is one of communal responsibility, but they have absolved themselves of that role and given it only to you. And how far down does that rabbit hole go? Will we be our kids’ only teachers? Are we our own doctors? Is the road outside my house mine and mine alone to build and to fix? They want to hold only their enemies accountable. They’ll investigate Hillary for decades after she’s dead, but they won’t cast one suspiciously-slitted eye toward Trump, toward Russia, toward every pay-for-play drip of corruption that erodes the bedrock of our government’s ability to self-regulate.

They talk about freedom, but the freedom they want isn’t for you. The freedom you want is the freedom to be able to drink clean water, to breathe clean air, to buy products that won’t kill you, to buy insurance that won’t bankrupt you, to invest in a future that helps you instead of hurts you. The freedom they want is for themselves. The freedom they champion isn’t yours, it belongs to big business. They want businesses to have the freedom to poison your air and your water, to lie to you, to tie you up with loopholes like nooses, to savage your investments and your future earnings. They want the freedom to take advantage of you, and they’ll sell that as your freedom, too. Don’t you want the choice to be lied to, to be cheated, to be ruined? What freedom! What choice! Ah, yes, just as our Founding Fathers wanted: the liberty of empowering others to fuck you from every angle. Isn’t that in the Bill of Rights? Can we get it in there somewhere?

They talk about being fiscally conservative, but then they spend money like they can just print more. (And our president thinks we can just print more.) It’ll cost more for our Comrade-in-Chief to go golfing than for the entire National Endowment for the Arts budget. The president has the fiscal discipline of a drunken gambling addict.

They talk about being stewards of the land, then take a flamethrower to the EPA, try to sell off the national parks, refuse to acknowledge climate change, and eradicate environmental protections — including streams. Because fuck streams, right? Streams have had it too good for too long.

They want you to pay your taxes, even though our president is proud of having never paid his.

They bark about voter fraud, then gerrymander the shit out of everything, rigging the game with a hundred thumbs holding down their side of the scale.

They climb to their seat of power on a ladder whose rungs are fashioned from fake news, and then once they’re up there, they look down at you and say, you’re the fake news. Everything you want, fake. Everything you are, fake. You don’t even exist if you disagree. Did you protest? You were paid. Did you show up at a town hall? You’re not a constituent. You’re a unicorn. A snowflake in need of a safe space.

And yet, they call us snowflakes, but melt under the tiniest light of scrutiny, under the smallest agitation. The moment anyone disagrees, they retreat to their own safe spaces, close and lock the doors, turn off all the lights, lower all the blinds so they can peer out until we’re gone.

The evil circus peanut who sits in the highest chair in the land decries liberal Hollywood elites while being himself a liberal Hollywood elite. We must do more with less, the man says as he goes to one of his like, seven fucking White Houses to hold a rally for an election in four years that doesn’t even have an opponent.

They talk about making America great, as if Americans weren’t already great.

They vilify illegal immigrants, as if we weren’t all illegal immigrants — as if this isn’t a country built first on native land that wasn’t ours, then second on the backs of black slaves who we stole and enslaved and tried to treat more like livestock than as human beings. They try to demonstrate how great this America is, but then those who come here to share in its greatness are cast aside, are sent away, are rounded up and torn from their families and told they don’t belong here. They claim to serve an America for all Americans, but it’s not — it’s for a very narrow slice, for the richest and whitest and straightest, for the healthiest, for the abled, for the men, for the companies, for themselves. Even the white working class gets fucked even as they’re told they’re not, because they still have to drink the water and breathe the air. They vote for the right to poison the water, you drink the water, you get cancer, but fuck your health, and fuck your kids if they’re born with a defect, that’s America, now, buddy. The freedom they want is to get what’s theirs from your pocket and pay no price for it even as you wither and weep at their feet. The freedom they want is to rob you blind then point to The Other and say, they did it, over there, it wasn’t us. We look just like you. You could be rich someday. Wouldn’t that be nice? It’s them over there. The welfare queens. The foreigners. The terrorists and the rapists. Not us. Never us.

They make hats and shirts that say AMERICA but whose tags say CHINA.

All the while, that word America in their mouths like a Bible verse on the tongue of the Devil. God Bless America, they say as they pick up their axes and chop at the roots of this tree. We’re good Christians, they say, as they do yet another un-Christian thing, because I’m sure it was Jesus who said fuck you, I got mine. Piss on compassion. To hell with empathy. These hypocrites cut away at the foundation of all the things we need to be a smart, healthy, successful country. They attack science. They hack at education. They want to chop your healthcare to splinters. They destroy debate. They slit the throat of every fact they don’t want you to know. They call the media the opposition, the enemy. They claim that truth is fake. The truth that we are at greater danger from white nationalist terror than from radical Muslim terror? Fake. The truth that we have nothing to fear from refugees, and that they are already extremely vetted? Fake. The truth that transgender individuals are not the harassers but in fact, the harassed? Fakeity-fake-fake, they say. The sky is red, ham is a fruit, pray for the family of Shazaam Berenstein, a survivor of the Bowling Green Massacre who then went on to die in the Swedish Event.

Their hypocrisy only grows — swelling like a tumor, diverting blood-flow away from healthy organs and to itself, because that’s how a cancer grows. A cancer is your body in rebellion. A cancer is rogue cells bypassing the checks and balances of your biology. This is that. Their hypocrisy is a symptom, though. And like with all symptoms, we must not ignore it.

We must treat the disease. Inoculate against the bullshit.

They will not hold themselves accountable.

So we must.

We must demand they do better.

We must demand our media be the watchdog.

We must resist their duplicity and their lies.

Courage in this strange time, folks. Stay frosty. Remain vigilant. Hang together.

Comments closed because, really, c’mon.

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whatthehelloh · 8 years ago

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I am astonished these days by the bold-faced ballsiness of the Republican hypocrisy.

They talk about freedom, but they freedom they want isn’t for you. The freedom you want is the freedom to be able to drink clean water, to breathe clean air, to buy products that won’t kill you, to buy insurance that won’t bankrupt you, to invest in a future that helps you instead of hurts you. The freedom they want is for themselves. The freedom they champion isn’t yours, it belongs to big business. They want businesses to have the freedom to poison your air and your water, to lie to you, to tie you up with loopholes like nooses, to savage your investments and your future earnings. They want the freedom to take advantage of you, and they’ll sell that as your freedom, too. Don’t you want the choice to be lied to, to be cheated, to be ruined? What freedom! What choice! Ah, yes, just as our Founding Fathers wanted: the liberty of empowering others to fuck you from every angle. Isn’t that in the Bill of Rights? Can we get it in there somewhere?

They want you to pay your taxes, even though our president is proud of having never paid his.

They bark about voter fraud, then gerrymander the shit out of everything, rigging the game with a hundred thumbs holding down their side of the scale.

They talk about making America great, as if Americans weren’t already great.

They make hats and shirts that say AMERICA but whose tags say CHINA.

We must treat the disease. Inoculate against the bullshit.

They will not hold themselves accountable.

So we must.

We must demand they do better.

We must demand our media be the watchdog.

We must resist their duplicity and their lies.

Courage in this strange time, folks. Stay frosty. Remain vigilant. Hang together.

Comments closed because, really, c’mon.

#chuck wendig #republicans #hypocrisy #insist #resist #demand #fight

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fashiontrendin-blog · 6 years ago

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Kylie Jenner and the Myth of the Self-Made Millennial

http://fashion-trendin.com/kylie-jenner-and-the-myth-of-the-self-made-millennial/

Kylie Jenner and the Myth of the Self-Made Millennial

According to Forbes, reality star and cosmetics queen Kylie Jenner is on track to become the youngest self-made billionaire ever.

I call bullshit.

To be clear, this is not an attack on Kylie Jenner as a person or as a businesswoman. It is a criticism of the Forbes cover story and how it reflects a larger problem with the way we talk about millennials and success. Kylie Jenner was born into one of the most famous, business-savvy families in the United States and she had a platform on television from an early age that led to lucrative brand endorsements. Which part of that constitutes “self-made”?

This highly selective media coverage of twenty somethings who have achieved the holy grail of our post-financial crisis economy (owning property) has become a subgenre all its own. The tone of these pieces is always the same, too: The authors imply that the person being interviewed bought a home through sheer willpower, often conflating the ability to manage money with some innate moral virtue. But if you look closely, there is almost always a throwaway sentence about just how much financial assistance the person in question received from their family members. The same oblique disclaimer can be found in articles about young entrepreneurs who have seemingly bootstrapped their way to success with nothing but ambition, chutzpah… and a healthy dose of capital courtesy of the bank of mom and dad.

By focusing on the implicit message of these stories (“if this person can do it, so can you”), we’re only getting part of the story. “Lists like these — which fetishize achievement, particularly at a young age — erase the privilege and access that allow some of us to take career risks and be entrepreneurial in ways others can’t,” says Aditi Juneja, who was included in Forbes’ ‘30 Under 30’ list this year. “They diminish the hard work done by people in more challenging circumstances and add to the myth that if you just work hard enough, you can pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. They ignore that some people have neither boots nor straps… To be sure, I worked tremendously hard. I am sure that Kylie Jenner also works hard. But, I don’t think I’ve ever worked as hard as a mom who works multiple jobs for a minimum wage. Hard work is not enough.”

As many as 83 percent of working millennial women want to own their own business, according to Create & Cultivate, and 55 percent are working on their side hustle while employed full time. On the surface, these figures are inspiring and empowering; they suggest that women are turning to entrepreneurship as a means of self-actualization. What the research doesn’t make clear, however, is just how many of these 55 percent are working a side hustle purely out of economic necessity. “In 2018, the number of side-giggers, or occasional independents, jumped 9.3 percent to 14.1 million from 12.9 million in 2017… This may reflect the pinch workers are feeling in a period of relatively flat wages,” says Elaine Pofeldt, author of The Million-Dollar, One Person Business. These side-giggers aren’t all people who are pursuing their passions; it’s possible that many are working just to afford rent. And it’s unlikely that we’ll be seeing many of them on any magazine covers. To admit that not all freelancers will become wildly financially successful is to acknowledge that the “do what you love and the money will follow” story we’re being told isn’t always true.

Millennials are coming of age in a post-Steve Jobs world. We’ve watched Mark Zuckerberg ascend to one of the most powerful positions on the planet and we are being spoon-fed the myth of the visionary founder through prestige movies based on their lives. Coupled with “self made success stories” like that of Jenner, is it any wonder that we’ve internalized the mindset that we are all just one great idea away from being billionaires? We’ve borrowed the boundless capitalist impulses of the eighties and woven them into a “follow your bliss” culture, which creates often-unrealistic expectations — not to mention an assumption that if you’re passionate about something, you must find a way to turn that into profit.

After she was made redundant from her job in advertising, Gemma, 27, recalls a number of people asking her when she was going to start her own business. “The pressure to be a founder, to find your calling, to build and grow and profit, is maddening,” she says. “The world doesn’t need more founders – but it does need to find a way of celebrating those who aren’t. Of measuring success not based on the number of enterprises you have, of understanding what a person is truly capable of beyond the titles of founder or leader. I’m glad we’re moving away from the lure of the corporate world as a snatcher of capable people, but I’m not sure we’ve replaced it with something all that richer. A world of founders – of showboating and individualism – is not a world that functions. Passions and interests are not always there for the taking; they are the things we do to enrich our minds, to share our loves, to escape into our own worlds for even just a second. They are not there to be exploited by the societal pressure to ‘do more.’”

Of course, magazines keep publishing stories of entrepreneurial derring-do because they want to inspire us. But all too often, these stories perpetuate the idea that success is something that happens simply because you want it badly enough. They tell us that hard work and determination are all you need when the truth is that privilege, family connections and pure unadulterated good luck are often the more common denominators in finding wild success at a young age. They also fail to address the fact that people who achieve their dreams early in life are in the extreme minority.

As a self-employed millennial, I am very much the target reader for Forbes’ article about Jenner. Since going freelance over six years ago, I have constantly had to redefine what success looks like in my life. Now that I’m too old to be featured in any ‘30 under 30’ lists, I feel oddly liberated. I still feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to parlay my passion into a career but I no longer feel the pressure to be some kind of professional prodigy.

Here’s the truth: If you haven’t found success at an early age, it’s not necessarily because you lack talent or ambition. It’s perfectly okay to be working a job that doesn’t feel like your raison d’être. You have bills to pay, after all; there is no single right way to be in the working world. And it’s absolutely fine if your passion is something that takes place entirely outside of the workplace and stays there.

What works for Kylie Jenner doesn’t have to be what works for you.

Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the U.K. You can follow him on Twitter @Philip_Ellis

Collages by Madeline Montoya.

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theliterateape · 7 years ago

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Stigmata Nation: The Martyr Complex is Complete

By Don Hall

When I teach my storytelling masterclass, one of the most controversial points is my admonition that “if your story paints you as either the victim or the hero, rework your story.”

Some people hate that.

The only stories they have to tell are how victimized they have been in their lives or how heroic they have been overcoming the victimization they have endured.

Jump cut to the current storytelling scene.

A solid 60 percent of every storytelling night on tap is a ten-person therapy circle jerk. Ten 10- to 12-minute stories of how shitty it has been to be me. How hard it has been to be marginalized or to realize my personal place of shame in the marginalization or how heroic I am for not marginalizing someone else.

A litany of non-stop victims and heroes.

As those who have been most ignored from these mostly white, mostly male stages are stepping up and demanding their spotlight time, some of this is to be expected. When you have felt left behind or actively blocked from expressing your own experiences, the need to get up and bark out how hard life has been seems somewhat appropriate. When the door has been shut to your voice for so long (not quite so long if you are in your twenties, but lets not quibble) smashing that door down takes energy and anger, plus self-involvement generates a lot of energy.

It isn’t just the Leftist Army of Identity Fetishists either. White Nationalists blog about how goddamned oppressed they feel, white men are “afraid of” the #MeToo movement, cops feel picked on.

When was the exact moment we became an entire society of angry bellyachers?

It had to be before the interwebs (although with Facebook and Twitter and, yes, blogs, the constant drumbeat of "My life is so fucking HARD..." is just more inescapable).

Admit it, Faithful Reader, right now, as you squat down in front of your ridiculously expensive computer or mobile device to read my constant spew, you're wondering why your life sucks so hard as you sip from a cup of coffee or tea in your apartment/house/domestic dwelling before you hop in your heated water shower with your shower gel (with a hint of mint to make your junk all tingly) and fill your gaping maw with a muffin made from the blood and sweat of migrant workers.

When did it start?

I'm not immune to it. Never in the history of mankind has there been a more wounded, bitching shithead when it comes to divorces and past relationship failures and jobs gone by the wayside than Don Hall. Hell, I still catch myself getting pissy about that one time a group of assholes decided to troll me online. When even I get tired of my slightly bitter Woe is Me bullshit, I can only imagine how fucking long suffering my wife is to endure it.

But this isn't just an individual thing, is it?

All of America, from sea to motherfucking shining, oil-polluted, used condom-filled sea, is obsessed with bitching about how hard their lives are.

People with body issues. Young mothers. College students with massive debt and no jobs. Dudes who feel emasculated. Women who feel objectified while posing in bikinis on Instagram.

White People. Black People. Latinos. Jews. Norwegians.

Kids. Parents. Teachers. Rich People. Poor People.

Bitch, bitch, bitch. "LIFE IS NOT FAIR!" we collectively cry out to a fictional deity and expect that someone or something will hear our cry and somehow make it fair. Seventy-five percent of that cry has fuckall to with fair — it has everything to do with people not getting what they want. More money than they need to buy cable television and $200 shoes and portable game devices. The other 25 percent is the result of those in the majority so blinded by their own desperate want for more than they need ignoring real life inequity.

On the flipside to all this whiny shit, we have created a society that tells us that we deserve this unfair treatment because we are fat or black or have 30 cats or can't find a job. We're slowly convinced that it is our fault that the bullies pull our underwear up over our heads or discriminate against us or sexually harass us. We're told to "man up," "get a stiff upper lip" and "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps." We are told that the only way to be noticed is to be wounded and victimized, and so those who are actually being victimized are lost in the shuffle of everyone else, scrambling for their piece of the Picked Upon Pie.

Reality is more complex on both sides.

No one deserves to be shat upon by life. No one (unless you're Mitch McConnell, and he has earned a bit of fecal matter gracing his upper lip in a Poetic Dirty Sanchez) deserves to be treated unfairly. Not if you find them different from yourself. Not if they disagree with your antiquated and intolerant religious beliefs. Not if they dress a certain way, speak a different way, act a different way, listen to weird music or wear fucking fake mustaches and pork pie hats. NO ONE DESERVES TO BE INTENTIONALLY TREATED LIKE SHIT! (...except for Mitch, which I think we can all come together in agreement on...)

On the other hand, no one is responsible for your choices but you. Not your mom. Not your government. Not your missing father. Not your underpaid and sometimes shitty teachers. Not your micromanaging supervisor. Not that asshole in the office who plays backstabby politics to move ahead of others. Not the police. Not the scary Follically Challenged FatAss President. You. And you alone.

So, unless you are a jobless, homeless, black lesbian named Fatima Rodriguez — shut the fuck up, OK? She is the winner of the Most Victimized Human on the Planet. You live in America and have the fruits of the planet's bounty at your feet. Even our trash is more delicious and nutritious than in any other part of the world.

Can you celebrate your Otherness without whining about it? Can you tell your story without wearing either the stigmata or the crown? Is the sum of who you are and what you have to tell the world based entirely upon your status as the downtrodden?

If not, maybe you should actually pay for therapy instead of getting it from an audience.

#stories as therapy #victims #heroes #life is not fair #otherness

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