#where is the oligarch aid?

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[qqueenofhades]

I don’t have any words right now for what’s happened. Where in the fuck do we go from here?

I don't know. I really, truly don't know. We can't sugarcoat how bad things are going to get, and we can't pre-emptively give into it anyway. This is going to be an unprecedented time in American history (if, sadly, not world history) and the forces conspiring to make you obey will gain much of their power from you doing so in advance, without a struggle. It seems fair to say that America as it has always been historically constituted is over, and may not return in our lifetimes, but we also do not know that for a fact. If nothing else, the fascists will find it very hard to cancel competitive elections, and we cannot sit back, throw up our hands, conclude that voting is clearly meaningless, and let them do that. There are a lot of other things that we need to do, but that's one.

There are various postmortems to be written and nits to pick, but Harris was thrown into an impossible situation and did the best she could in 100 days. Even her critics agree she ran a pretty much flawless campaign. But this country simply decided that a well-qualified black woman could not be preferred over the most manifestly and flagrantly unfit degenerate to ever occupy the office. They decided this for many reasons, not least because large swathes of the country now live in curated misinformation bubbles that, under Government Czar Musk, will only get much, much worse. They were helped by the cowardice and complicity of the "mainstream media" that could have ended Trump's career exactly like they did to Biden after the first debate, but chose to preserve the profits of their billionaire oligarch owners and did not do so, giving Trump the benefit of the doubt and normalization at every turn. They also hounded Biden relentlessly over the four years of his presidency, never reported on the good things he did, and drove him to the historically bad approval ratings lows for a president who was by any metric, quite successful (and will quite possibly be our last ordinary American president for a very long time). Along with the searingly ingrained racism and misogyny and misinformation, Harris could not overcome that.

Democrats clearly had a messaging problem, but it's also true that the country, quite simply, does not care about "democracy" when the economy is perceived to be at stake. Not to over-egg the Hitler parallels, but yeah. This is how Hitler returned to power in 1933 -- on the backs of widespread economic collapse of the Weimar Republic; voters decided they just didn't care about the overtly fascist stuff, which he then proceeded to you know, do with genocidal vigor. Except the American economy in this case was actually doing well, which makes it even more baffling and indefensible. Enough people simply memory-holed Trump's crimes (aided at every turn by SCOTUS, Mitch McConnell not convicting him after January 6, Merrick Garland being far too slow and timid, the corporate media), liked the racist fascist behavior or felt that it wasn't a dealbreaker, and decided that in this election, he was the "change" candidate. It's insane by any metric, but that's what happened.

The country is deeply sick. We do not know what will happen. It's going to get bad. Barring a miracle, we will not have federalized abortion rights again in my lifetime, and there will be widespread attacks on public health, women's rights, immigrants, transgender people, and other vulnerable people. Even and especially the ones who voted for Trump. Never Thought Leopard Would Eat My Face, etc. Alito and Thomas will swiftly step down and allow their seats to be replaced by 40-year old wingnuts hand-selected from the worst the Federalist Society has to offer. SCOTUS is gone for the next generation at least. There is very little prospect of it being ever fixed in the foreseeable future.

Trump will never face a scintilla of consequences for his previous crimes; all the open federal cases will be closed as soon as he takes office and fires Jack Smith. The best we can hope for is that he dies in office, but then we get Vance and the cadre of alt-right techno billionaires ruled directly from the Kremlin. Putin is celebrating this morning and with good reason; he's gotten everything he wants. Trump will egg on Netanyahu in Gaza and abandon Ukraine. Democracy across the world will remain even more fragile and badly under threat. Authoritarians will be empowered and American withdrawal from international systems will percolate in very dangerous ways that cannot and will not be fixed in the short run. I really hope all the leftists who celebrate this as the "defeat of the genocide candidate" will enjoy all the genocide and suffering that's about to come. And yes, I do think the Israel-Palestine war fucked us in a large way. Jewish voters perceived the Democrats as insufficiently pro-Israel due to the presence of far-left antisemitism, even as the far left attacked the Democrats relentlessly and never targeted the Republicans. Arab voters abandoned them, possibly deservedly. What would have happened without the war? We don't know. You get the historical period that you get. Netanyahu and Trump can now do anything they want. Hope it was worth it.

As I said, I can't sugarcoat it. We are going to be paying for this in some form for the next decade, and probably longer. I'm not as absolutely shattered as I was in 2016, but I am much, much angrier. We all thought, we all hoped, America was better than this. It isn't. That, however, is something that has also happened before. What we decide to do next will shape how the next chapter unfolds.

This would be a great time to stock up on needed medicines, renew your passport online, and anything else you need to do in preparation for next year. Many of us simply do not have the wherewithal, whether financial or otherwise, to leave the country. I don't know what will happen with me. I don't know what will happen to any of us. This was utterly avoidable and yet, America didn't want to avoid it. At some point, there's nothing else you can do. You can point to media cronyism, Russian influence, etc etc., but the fact that two of the most qualified presidential candidates who happened to be women have now lost to Trump twice makes it unavoidable. The virulent rightward shift of young men (of all races) in particular paints a grim picture as to how the reactionary misogyny of the 21st century is going to essentially undo most of the progress for social and gender equality in the 20th. The patriarchy has been a problem for most of human history. Doesn't really seem like it's going to change.

The end result of this, however grim: we're still here. We are still living within our communities. If (and this is a big if) Democrats can retake the House, they can put some checks on the process for the next two years. At this point, we are in full-out buying-time, trying-to-prevent-the worst mode. We could have continued fixing things, but we won't be doing that. We will only be trying to preserve ourselves and our friends and our smaller spheres of influence. It sounds very trite to say that we have to have courage, but we do. There's not much else.

It's going to be an awful winter. We have two and a half months to see this coming and know how bad it's going to be, and... yeah. I don't know how soon the buyer's remorse will inevitably set in, but it will. Tough luck, people. You voted for him. You get the country that you decide to have. But the rest of us are also here, and what Gandalf says is still true. We wish the Ring had never come to us, we wish none of this had happened, but we still have to decide what to do with the time that is given to us.

I don't have a lot more. I'll probably be logging off for a while. I don't need to look at the internet for.... yeah, a long time. (Will I do it anyway? Probably.) I don't know what else to leave you with, aside from again:

Do not obey in advance. Do not act as if everything is foreordained and set in stone. Fascist regimes end. They always do. We are going to have to figure out how, and it will suck shit, but the alternative is worse.

Take care of yourselves. I love you.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

They are trying to illegally fire tens of thousands of Federal workers at the worst possible time of year. These are middle class to lower middle class people in DC and probably about a third or so of them voted for Trump. Contrary to publican opinion nobody gets rich working for the Federal government, especially in a major city where the cost of living is very high as are mortgages and rents. A disproportionate number of them are African-American, women, and other marginalized people since government employment is a safe haven for them with the added safety of being largely Unionized. To be honest there aren’t a lot of jobs open in the DC area with the pay and benefits of a unionized government job.

Musk is trying to run the government as if it were a business and that model does not apply. Government is not supposed to make a profit or pay dividends to shareholders. The primary purpose of government is to SPEND money to improve the lives and safety of all Americans.

Mass firings will not only ruin the lives of those removed from employment but it will have a ripple effect throughout the greater DC, Virginia, and Maryland area. All retail outlets will suffer immediately from lost business. Community and social services will be strained to the breaking point by hordes of people becoming unemployed all at once. The housing and rental market will collapse. Banks and Credit Unions will be stressed by loss of revenue. Families will dissolve and suicides will increase and so on. For those of you who don’t have sympathy for Federal employees, wait until the inconvenience of having almost no government services available to you strikes home. Think of the benefits that will be cut off. Think of the aid you won’t be able to receive when something goes wrong in your. Wait until you try to call a government agency to correct something to find out it doesn’t exist or is run by a skeleton crew.

You can look up the salaries of the rank and file workers and see it’s not great especially for one of the priciest markets in the country. This is a cold and heartless move which will have a devastating impact on large numbers of real people. It won’t just be in DC because they plan on spreading to field offices around the country so the pain will begin to seep into every county in the nation.

Government is not as simplistic as a business and can’t be run like one or by business people, entrepreneurs, oligarchs, CEO’s etc. Republicans, and other thoughtless people, need to separate themselves from the notion that someone who runs a business can run a country, or even a government agency. Diplomacy for example is much more complicated than a simple business deal. Diplomats spend lifetimes working on treaties and international agreements that will be in effect for decades or even centuries. It takes detailed knowledge of the past, current demographics and their needs, and years of forethought to play out every possible outcome of a treaty. Each word and phrase is excruciatingly analyzed for months or even years to achieve the desired effect and avoid any misinterpretations, misunderstandings, or vagaries of translation.

Treaties and national policy can’t be rationally drawn up by amateurs over a drunken round of golf, or a drunken steak dinner, or an amateurish conference call with the complexities of foreign languages which required highly skilled diplomatic translators who know the particularities of not only the mother tongue but each regional accent and dialect to avoid any posssible faux pas.

Trump and his henchmen are arrogant, poorly educated, unqualified, and often inebriated bigots and racists trying to run the world’s largest and most complex governing body as if it were a chain restaurant franchise.

Have you noticed yet nobody is talking about cutting aid to big energy companies, airlines, big pharma, or virtually any big corporate enterprise. Felon Muskrat says he’s uncovered billions in corruption and waste at every federal agency, in only a week. Felon hasn’t offered one scrap of documentation or proof though and neither had Trump. The media reports their claims of billions in waste and the Republican voters accept it as true. After a few weeks of hearing it in the news many of you will accept the lie as truth simply because you’ve heard it so often.

They are deliberately trying to overwhelm you, distract you, and wear you out. Democratic lawmakers trying to enter the very Federal agencies they fund have been locked out and kept at bay by armed private security wearing no identification and unwilling to state their names. Unwilling to say anything except you can’t enter.

They are pushing back but most of you seem to have forgotten that they became the minority party in both houses of Congress and the minority doesn’t have the ability to win a vote and pass anything or do anything other than protest and try to delay. Fortunately majority labor unions are out protesting in front of all the major agencies being targeted so far. Protests are also happing in some big cities but you’d never know it because it is virtually ignored as always by tv news.

[riflesniper]

spent enough time cooking up this guy behind the scenes and now i feel like i can toss him out here now. this big boy is aegis :3 a sapient mech that ran from his makers to a resistance militia, who plopped a gay little pilot (green) into his hands. more details below the cut

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his storyline takes place a few centuries in the future, where a small-scale war has kicked up between a newly socialist canada and a dystopian oligarchical US. aegis comes from a particularly powerful corporation called valkyrie machines, who definitely pioneered sapient AI tech some hundred years prior and definitely didn't just steal the tech from somewhere else before stealthily bribing the actual inventors into a silence or death deal

on the other side of the border is the canadian shield alliance, though most people just call it the alliance or the shield. they've played a lot of roles since their inception that was also some hundred years prior, notably aid programs, disaster assistance, fighting for land back/secure human rights/immigrant protections, scaring corporations into NOT being shitty, better economic policies, etc.

unfortunately the US did NOT like any of that. when canada's economic system is officially changed from mixed to socialist, the oligarchs of the states kick off a race to try and see who can annex it the fastest. fortunately, the shield doesn't give them an inch.

aegis is one of valkyrie's newer warden models; nimble, fleet-footed mechs with sapient AI cores to enhance battle prowess. valkyrie is Very strict about what their mechs and pilots do and don't know, and are not above both executing pilots who try to rebel and wiping AIs whose thoughts stray too far. aegis and his last pilot were able to keep sneaky about their plans to escape, but said pilot was disposed of before it could be carried out, aegis made a break for it on his own, racing from the montana base he was stationed at to the albertan border.

despite broadcasting a plea for the shield to find him, he didn't get out unharmed; valkyrie's air fighters were eventually able to catch up to him before he scaled the wall. they plucked at him for a couple hundred kliks until the shield managed to find him near a small town. a skirmish broke out to claim him, ending with one shield mech being non-fatally damaged and all of the valkyrie fighters being shot down.

aegis, battered from the run, was hoisted to a shield base near calgary for major repairs before being shipped to the edmonton for external repairs and retrofitting. it's here that he's assigned a new pilot; green reinhart, a skilled, kind man with a underlying justice-driven rage to match the heart on his sleeve. a man who would not be killed so easily, not with the transhuman tech that's available. it's here that aegis would actually get his name, and so much more that he never would have had back in the states.

the world was opening up to him now. his pilot wasn't the only one talking to him like he was a person anymore. green gets him a proxy frame to explore with. the two of them spend hours together, on and off the field; perhaps this is the best thing that's could've happened for either of them.

(first image is when they've already been partners for a long while; green's organic body does eventually get killed in a battle, and his transhuman body is activated. im still kinda fleshing out the details, unsure if i'll get much deeper into the socio-political-economic shitshow behind the worldbuilding, since i originally made this guy to just have a gay mech/pilot thing w/ green, but its kinda feeding off the current shitshow of the US wanting to annex canada in this day and age. i gotta focus more of that energy on makin characters WAUGH

if anyones got suggestions for like. videos or audiobooks that Could help add onto the worldbuilding though, im all ears. just keep in mind that i struggle with text only stuff, so audiovisual is heavily preferred)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Iowa's starvation strategy

I don’t really buy that “the cruelty is the point.” I’m a materialist. Money talks, bullshit walks. When billionaires fund unimaginably cruel policies, I think the cruelty is a tactic, a way to get the turkeys to vote for Christmas. After all, policies that grow the fortune of the 1% at the expense of the rest of us have a natural 99% disapproval rating.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/19/whats-wrong-with-iowa/#replicable-cruelty

So when some monstrous new law or policy comes down the pike, it’s best understood as a way of getting frightened, angry — and often hateful — people to vote for policies that will actively harm them, by claiming that they will harm others — brown and Black people, women, queers, and the “undeserving” poor.

Pro-oligarch policies don’t win democratic support — but policies that inflict harm a ginned-up group of enemies might. Oligarchs need frightened, hateful people to vote for policies that will secure and expand the power of the rich. Cruelty is the tactic. Power is the strategy. The point isn’t cruelty, it’s power:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/25/roe-v-wade-v-abortion/#no-i-in-uterus

But that doesn’t change the fact that the policies are cruel indeed. Take Iowa, whose billionaire-backed far-right legislature is on a tear, a killing spree that includes active collaboration with rapists, through a law that denies abortion care to survivors of rape and forces them to bear and care for their rapists’ babies:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/us/politics/iowa-kamala-harris-abortion.html

The forced birth movement is part of the wider far-right tactic of standing up for imaginary children (e.g. “the unborn,” fictional victims of Hollywood pedo cabals), and utterly abandons real children: poor kids who can’t afford school lunches, kids in cages, kids victimized by youth pastors, kids forced into child labor, etc.

So Iowa isn’t just a forced birth state, it’s a state where children are now to be starved, literally. The state legislature has just authorized an $18m project to kick people off of SNAP (aka food stamps). 270,000 people in Iowa rely on SNAP: elderly people, disabled people, and parents who can’t feed their kids.

Writing in the Washington Post, Kyle Swenson profiles some of these Iowans, like an elderly woman who visited Lisa Spitler’s food pantry for help and said that state officials had told her that she was only eligible for $23/month in assistance:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/16/iowa-snap-restrictions-food-stamps/

That’s because Iowa governor KimReynolds signed a bill cutting the additional SNAP aid — federally funded, and free to the state taxpayers of Iowa — that had been made available during the lockdown. Since then, food pantries have been left to paper over the cracks in the system, as Iowans begin to starve.

Before the pandemic, Spitler’s food pantry saw 30 new families a month. Now it’s 100 — and growing. Many of these families have been kicked off of SNAP because they failed to complete useless and confusing paperwork, or did so but missed the short deadlines now imposed by the state. For example, people with permanent disabilities and elderly people who no longer work must continuously file new paperwork confirming that their income hasn’t changed. Their income never changes.

SNAP recipients often work, borrow from relations, and visit food pantries, and still can’t make ends meet, like Amy Cunningham, a 31 year old mother of four in Charlton. She works at a Subway, has tapped her relatives for all they can afford, and relies on her $594/month in SNAP to keep her kids from going hungry. She missed her notice of an annual review and was kicked off the program. Getting kicked off took an instant. Getting reinstated took a starving eternity.

Iowa has a budget surplus of $1.91B. This doesn’t stop ghouls like Iowa House speaker Pat Grassley (a born-rich nepobaby whose grandpa is Senator Chuck Grassley) from claiming that the cuts were a necessity: “[SNAP is] growing within the budget, and are putting pressure on us being able to fund other priorities.”

Grassley’s caucus passed legislation on Jan 30 to kick people off of SNAP if their combined assets, including their work vehicle, total to more than $15,000. SNAP recipients will be subject to invasive means-testing and verification, which will raise the cost of administering SNAP from $2.2m to $18m. Anyone who gets flagged by the system has 10 days to respond or they’ll be kicked off of SNAP.

The state GOP justifies this by claiming that SNAP has an “error rate” of 11.81%. But that “error rate” includes people who were kicked off SNAP erroneously, a circumstance that is much more common than fraud, which is almost nonexistent in SNAP programs. Iowa’s error rate is in line with the national average.

Iowa’s pro-starvation law was authored by a conservative dark-money “think tank” based in Florida: the Opportunity Solutions Project, the lobbying arm of Foundation For Government Accountability, run by Tarren Bragdon, a Maine politician with a knack for getting money from the Koch Network and the DeVos family for projects that punish, humiliate and kill marginalized people. The Iowa bill mirrors provisions passed in Kentucky, Kansas, Wisconsin and elsewhere — and goes beyond them.

The law was wildly unpopular, but it passed anyway. It’s part of the GOP’s push for massive increases in government spending and bureaucracy — but only when those increases go to punishing poor people, policing poor people, jailing poor people, and spying on poor people. It’s truly amazing that the “party of small government” would increase bureaucratic spending to administer SNAP by 800% — and do it with a straight face.

In his essay “The Utopia of Rules,” David Graeber (Rest in Power) described this pathology: just a couple decades ago, the right told us that our biggest threat was Soviet expansion, which would end the “American way of life” and replace it with a dismal world where you spent endless hours filling in pointless forms, endured hunger and substandard housing, and shopped at identical stores that all carried the same goods:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/

A society that can’t feed, house and educate its residents is a failed state. America’s inability to do politics without giving corporations a fat and undeserved share is immiserating an ever-larger share of its people. Federally, SNAP is under huge stress, thanks to the “public-private partnership” at the root of a badly needed “digital overhaul” of the program.

Writing for The American Prospect, Luke Goldstein describes how the USDA changed SNAP rules to let people pay with SNAP for groceries ordered online, as a way to deal with the growing problem of food deserts in poor and rural communities:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-04-19-retail-surveils-food-stamp-users/

It’s a good idea — in theory. But it was sabotaged from the start: first, the proposed rule was altered to ban paying for delivery costs with SNAP, meaning that anyone who ordered food online would have to use scarce cash reserves to pay delivery fees. Then, the USDA declined to negotiate discounts on behalf of the 40 million SNAP users. Finally, the SNAP ecommerce rules don’t include any privacy protections, which will be a bonanza for shadowy data-brokers, who’ll mine SNAP recipients’ data to create marketing lists for scammers, predatory lenders, and other bottom-feeder:

https://www.democraticmedia.org/sites/default/files/field/public-files/2020/cdd_snap_report_ff.pdf

The GOP’s best weapon in this war is statistical illiteracy. While racist, sexist and queerphobic policies mean that marginalized people are more likely than white people to be poor, America’s large population of white people — including elderly white people who are the immovable core of the GOP base — means that policies that target poor people inevitably inflict vast harms on the GOP’s most devoted followers.

Getting these turkeys to vote for Christmas is a sound investment for the ultra-rich, who claim a larger share of the American pie every year. The rich may or may not be racist, or sexist, or queerphobic — some of them surely are — but the reason they pour money into campaigns to stoke divisions among working people isn’t because they get off on hatred. The hatred is a tactic. The cruelty is a tactic. The strategic goal is wealth and power.

Tomorrow (Apr 21), I’m speaking in Chicago at the Stigler Center’s Antitrust and Competition Conference. This weekend (Apr 22/23), I’m at the LA Times Festival of Books.

[Image ID: The Iowa state-house. On the right side of the steps is an engraved drawing of Oliver Twist, holding out his porridge bowl. On the left side is the cook, denying him an extra portion. Peeking out from behind the dome is a business-man in a suit with a dollar-sign-emblazoned money-bag for a head.]

Image: Iqkotze (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iowa_State_Capitol_April_2010.jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Vanity Fair's Wild About Harry Mea culpa for launching MeGain Markle & publishing her propaganda

"Inside Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Big Business Ambitions, 5 Years After Their Royal Exit | Vanity Fair"

FEBRUARY 2025 ISSUE

Inside Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Big Business Ambitions, 5 Years After Their Royal Exit

Ensconced in their cozy Montecito mansion, the Sussexes are living the American dream. By all accounts, the love is real. But their foray into moguldom has not always been a smooth ride.

BY ANNA PEELE

JANUARY 17, 2025

The house proved it: The Duke and Duchess of Sussex could have it all. Their Montecito home offered all the fresh promises of a 21st-century California mansion and the cloistering of a gated neighborhood from which they could emerge on their own terms. In the house’s 13 fireplaces, described as “mostly centuries old examples brought over from France,” there was even some European history, stripped of any potentially uncomfortable context.

At $14.65 million for more than 18,000 square feet, half the current median price per square foot in Montecito, Rockbridge was a steal. The oligarch owner’s romantic relationship had deteriorated to the point where he was compelled to offload far below market value, according to a source with knowledge, and the property seemed just right for the duke and duchess, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. It was the perfect launchpad for Archewell, their nonprofit and entertainment studio—an approximation of a part noblesse oblige, part aspiring independently wealthy mogul model, one that Elizabeth, Charles, and William rejected by fiat during the January 2020 “Sandringham Summit.”

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex during the Royal Salute Polo Challenge, to benefit Sentebale, at the USPA National Polo Center in Wellington, Florida, on Friday April 12, 2024.PA IMAGES/ALAMY.

This January marks five years since that failed parley. Leaving the royal family has brought tests for the couple—legal, financial, reputational, personal, and practical. Going from divinely chosen (or at least chosen by someone else who was divinely chosen) members of a 1,200-year-old institution to start-up founders in exile is a tough adjustment. But there has also been opportunity. Over many months, Vanity Fair spoke with dozens of people who have worked with and lived alongside the couple to understand the impact they’ve had on their new coastal California community, the challenges of enacting the ambitions of two first-time CEOs, and how their experience with the monarchy foreshadowed some of their current difficulties. (Harry and Meghan declined to be interviewed for this article.)

Harry still works closely with the charities he founded: the Invictus Games Foundation and Sentebale, an organization focusing on “mental fitness” and the impact of poverty and HIV/AIDS in southern African countries. “He has real gravitas when he speaks about his work in Africa,” says someone inside the couple’s circle. And he is free from “Willy,” as well as the future king’s supposed dominion over that continent, as Harry confessed in his 2023 memoir, Spare. “Africa was his thing,” Harry said. Archewell also encompasses Meghan’s efforts to empower and educate young women, like the 40x40 initiative, where for her 40th birthday she asked 40 well-known friends, such as Melissa McCarthy and then first lady of Canada Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, to each spend 40 minutes on Zoom mentoring a woman returning to the workplace in the wake of the pandemic. On March 14 of last year, the fourth anniversary of their flight to California, Meghan rejoined Instagram to announce American Riviera Orchard, a home goods and sundries line. The Sussexes have announced Meghan’s second podcast, though not the title or premise of it. Archewell Productions also recently produced two high-profile Netflix series—a docuseries called Polo, which premiered December 10 and features the world of Harry’s buddy Nacho Figueras, and the reality show With Love, Meghan. The latter is a hospitality endeavor that, according to the Netflix promotional language, “reimagines the genre of lifestyle programming, blending practical how-to’s and candid conversation with friends, new and old.” Three days before her show’s scheduled premiere date of January 15, Meghan announced that the series would be pushed to March 4 “as we focus on the needs of those impacted by the wildfires in my home state of California.” The couple has been volunteering amid the crisis in Los Angeles and donating to people displaced by the fires, as well as taking in friends who had to evacuate their own homes.

“They have this naivete and their hopefulness about what’s possible in terms of storytelling and good works and all those things,” says producer Jane Marie, who collaborated with the couple while they developed audio projects at Archewell and later produced a podcast with Michelle Obama. “I wish I had that kind of optimism.”

Optimism abounded as the couple embarked on their Spotify deal in 2020, both for them and for those who were coming in to help do the work. “I thought that I had the role of a lifetime,” says a person who worked in media projects, who was a “fan” going in and eager to make the type of life-changing content Harry and Meghan seemed to want to create. “I thought I was gonna be besties with Meghan and Harry and we were gonna, like, run around the world saving people.”

Interest in the couple was unslakable. But it remained to be seen whether they were actually interesting, beyond Harry’s uniquely difficult upbringing and Meghan’s years of defending herself from shoddy treatment and racism, whether in the British press or from members of her husband’s family. As one former Spotify employee put it, “The thing you’re escaping is the reason you’re compelling.”

Those stories would be meted out in different media: breathless reports of a $20 million Penguin Random House contract (Spare) and $100 million partnership with Netflix (Harry & Meghan). (According to a representative for Netflix, “We don’t disclose our financial deals with talent, but I can confirm to you on the record that the $100M figure is not correct.”) On the August 2022 cover of The Cut Meghan did to promote her first—and only—Spotify podcast, Archetypes, she said, “I’m, like, so excited to talk,” and “It’s like I’m finding—not finding my voice. I’ve had my voice for a long time, but being able to use it.” When repeatedly asked by the interviewer what she wanted to say with her newly free voice, Meghan demurred. “I have a lot to say until I don’t. Do you like that? Sometimes, as they say, the silent part is still part of the song,” she said, noting, “I’ve never had to sign anything that restricts me from talking. I can talk about my whole experience and make a choice not to.” (One of the people who spoke with VF for this story says they signed a nondisclosure agreement to be employed by Harry and Meghan.) A person who worked closely with the couple and “loves them” says, “I have no idea what [Harry’s] interests are beyond polo. No clue what his inner life is like.”

The development process was challenging. The former Spotify employee says, “They had this idea to do a podcast because they knew celebrities did them,” a category differentiated between celebrities who get a lot of money to begin podcasting, like Harry and Meghan, and celebrities who get large deals after proving themselves to be capable podcasters, like Smartless’s Will Arnett, Sean Hayes, and Jason Bateman. The former Spotify employee says Harry and Meghan “didn’t do what celebrities do on podcasts, which is turn on the mic and talk. They wanted a big theme that would explain the world, but they had no ideas.” Someone who worked closely with them on audio projects disputes this version, lamenting that because of Meghan and Harry’s insistence on silence from employees and their own reticence, the public doesn’t know about good projects that had to be abandoned for practical reasons. “It feels like the only story is ‘They didn’t satisfy their contract,’” she says. “It’s not like work wasn’t being done.”

As time passed—it would be nearly two years between the couple’s deal being signed and the premiere of Archetypes—Spotify began applying pressure to produce something (anything!) that people might listen to.

People involved with production say the couple did trial runs on some big ideas, like a This American Life–style show where Harry and Meghan took turns hosting and talking to interesting civilian guests. As Bloomberg reported, Harry wanted to host a series where he interviewed powerful men with complicated stories, like Mark Zuckerberg, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump. The concept wasn’t just that the men shared challenging early lives; it was that their experiences made them into sociopaths, or so Harry envisioned, one person familiar with the ideation process says. (The person who worked in media confirms there was a “sociopath podcast.”) The person who worked closely with the couple on audio projects recalls Harry saying, “I have very bad childhood trauma. Obviously. My mother was essentially murdered. What is it about me that didn’t make me one of these bad guys?” To implore a season’s worth of world-famous sociopaths to talk about how they developed sociopathy would be what is referred to in access journalism as “a booking challenge.”

As time passed—it would be nearly two years between the couple’s deal signing and the premiere of Archetypes—Spotify began applying pressure to produce something (anything!) that people might listen to. The former Spotify employee says Harry came to the Los Angeles office once and asked for a cup of cocoa. There was none in the office, so employees scrambled to obtain some. An idea was pitched to Harry—what if he reviewed a hot chocolate every week while chatting with a different friend?—which he and his team considered and rejected. Another concept was that Harry would “fix” something every week, ranging from a flat tire to global warming. “He wanted to do a podcast about disabled people who compete in the Invictus Games,” the former Spotify employee says. “But there’s no crossover between the audience who would listen to that and people who want to hear about Harry’s life.” (Harry and Meghan did produce a 2023 Netflix docuseries called Heart of Invictus, which significantly underperformed Harry & Meghan.)

The former Spotify employee says it was challenging to engage Harry, and a person who interviewed for a job with the couple says, “I just felt like he kind of didn’t want to be there doing that at this time.... My expectation was ‘charming receiving line.’ And it was clear he wasn’t that person. At least that day.” And at least in the context of a hiring manager: A person who worked on an event during Harry’s book tour says he has the “greatest manners I’ve ever seen. Hands down. Like I can’t believe his knees are as supple as they are. He was getting up and down anytime somebody walked into a room.... He was unfailingly kind and friendly to everyone.”

During the interview, the potential employee says, Harry’s attitude was either “Well, why should I do this?” or “Why are we doing this?” The interviewee says they wondered, “Didn’t Spotify pay you a lot of money to do this?” The person inside the couple’s circle says, “He looks like the kind of guy who would, frankly, happily work for charities for the rest of his life and would be very happy if Meghan made all the money and he didn’t need to.”

On his self-titled podcast, Bill Simmons described his own experience working with the Sussexes at Spotify. “The Fucking Grifters. That’s the podcast we should have launched with them,” Simmons said. “I have got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories.… Fuck them. The grifters.”

Harry and Meghan became increasingly nervous about how their content would impact them. Marie says, “I can say that they had really great ideas for shows, interesting pitches, interesting guests. But them as the deliverers or either of them as the hosts of these more kind of edgy ideas would have been like…they would have had to move again. I think it’s a combination of self-censorship for good reason and the corporate powers that be that run podcasting that don’t know what that is [to create valuable shows]. In combination, those things make it really hard to make good stuff.” The person who worked in media projects imitates the thought process behind any decision about the couple’s projects: “Well, he has a million things that he has to protect, and he has the book, and they have the documentary, and they don’t want to make the queen upset, and their public image.…”

That source says the idea for Archetypes came from another employee—not Meghan—though the employee didn’t own any of the intellectual property. Archetypes began production in January 2021. Though the former Spotify employee says the initial expectation was that Archewell would handle production for the series, the process took so long that Spotify’s studio Gimlet was called in. A source familiar with the production of Archetypes says this required additional cost to and resources from Spotify, though a current Spotify employee refutes that the extra support was a burden. (Virtually the entire Gimlet team would be laid off in the year following Archetypes’s release, but employees blame mismanagement at Spotify rather than any individual project.)

The former Spotify source says, “Archetypes was complicated as a podcast concept. You had to explain what the archetype was, then why the woman embodied it, but also how it wasn’t true about her. Every episode was like, ‘This is my friend who has been called that archetype but is not that archetype.’” These archetypes—actually stereotypes—included diva (Mariah Carey) and bimbo (Paris Hilton and Iliza Shlesinger). As for those “friends,” there was an expectation that Meghan would be able to use her personal Rolodex to book the show, the way hosts like Simmons and the Pod Save America guys do. The person who worked in media projects says the assumption was, “Meghan’s gonna be on the phone with the pope tomorrow.” The former Spotify employee says in addition to Taylor Swift, they heard rumors that Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion were asked to come on the show and declined. (Other people who worked on the podcast also say they heard those names mentioned, though a source close to the situation says Megan Thee Stallion’s team knew nothing about any request.)

According to the source in media projects, Meghan would agree to provocative ideas and then walk them back. In one episode, she wanted to actually say the word bitch because, as the source remembers Meghan saying, “You hear it all the time.” It ended up with Meghan calling it “the B-word.” An episode titled “Slut,” intended to center on how trans women’s sexuality is used against them, was retitled “Human, Being” by Meghan and had to be completely reimagined late in production. “Every episode got more and more watered down and further away from actual conversation,” the source says. “It felt like very Women’s and Gender Studies 101 taught in 2003.” (Though the Spotify contract has widely been reported as worth $20 million, two sources told VF such deals are generally not paid out in lump sums; in other words, the couple would not likely have received the full amount without meeting benchmarks beyond making one 12-episode season of a podcast. Spotify does not comment on deal terms.)

The issues extended into the actual workplace. Terry Wood, an executive vice president at Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions, was brought in to be what Meghan would later call her “right hand” when Archetypes won a People’s Choice Award in 2022. The source familiar with the production of Archetypes describes Wood’s anger, saying that she yelled at Spotify staffers when Meghan changed her mind about episodes. (Wood did not respond to VF’s request for comment.)

The source who worked in media projects says Meghan’s own relationships with employees tended to follow a familiar pattern. She would be warm and effusive at the beginning, engendering an atmosphere of professional camaraderie. When something went poorly, often due to Meghan and Harry’s own demands—such as a teaser for Archetypes being released five months before the show premiered and before there was any tape to promote—Meghan would become cold and withholding toward the person she perceived to be responsible. The source says it was “really, really, really awful. Very painful. Because she’s constantly playing checkers—I’m not even going to say chess—but she’s just very aware of where everybody is on her board. And when you are not in, you are to be thrown to the wolves at any given moment.” In practice, they say, that manifested as “undermining. It’s talking behind your back. It’s gnawing at your sense of self. Really, like, Mean Girls teenager.” Marie had a different experience with Meghan: “She’s just a lovely, genuine person,” she said.

The person who worked in media projects read stories in the tabloids about Meghan “bullying” palace aides and couldn’t imagine such behavior actually happened. After working with her, though, this person realized, “Oh, any given Tuesday this happened.” While it beggars belief that Meghan actually shouted at a palace aide, as has been reported, a person who interacted with her professionally says, “You can be yelled at even if somebody doesn’t raise their voice. [It’s] funny that people don’t differentiate between the energy of being yelled at and literally somebody screaming at you.”

Two sources say a colleague with ties to Archetypes took a leave of absence after working on three episodes, then left Gimlet altogether. Several others described taking extended breaks from work to escape scrutiny, exiting their job, or undergoing long-term therapy after working with Meghan. The person who interacted professionally with her says, “I think if Meghan acknowledged her own shortcomings or personal contributions to situations rather than staying trapped in a victim narrative, her perception might be better.” They added, with the soggy laugh of a plebe rendering judgment on the Duchess of Sussex, “But who am I to criticize Meghan Markle? She’s doing great.”

It’s hard to imagine how someone who seems so earnestly intent on being kind and engaging in world-improving (if also brand-building) activities could wind up engaging in revanchism with people so below her in status. A partial answer might be found in an episode of Archetypes in which Meghan interviews Mindy Kaling, who assumed Meghan was popular as a child. While attending Immaculate Heart Catholic school in Los Angeles, Meghan tells Kaling, “I never had anyone to sit with at lunch. I was always a little bit of a loner and really shy and didn’t know where I fit in. And, and so I just became, I was like, okay, well, then I’ll become the president of the multicultural club and the president of sophomore class and the president of this and French club. And by doing that, I had meetings at lunchtime. So I didn’t have to worry about who I would sit with or what I would do because I was always so busy.” (It brings to mind Swift’s “Mastermind” lyrics: “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid / So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since / To make them love me and make it seem effortless.”)

In other words, Meghan was a good person trying to do good things in spite of—and at times because of—unkind people. The person familiar with the production of Archetypes says at least one employee who had a terrible experience got a handwritten thank-you note and gift from Meghan. Is it any surprise that a sense of victimhood and righteousness could continue to exist in a person who had been treated so horribly by the press and her husband’s family? (Not to mention those little B-words at Immaculate Heart.) That people whom Meghan may have perceived as enemies or interlopers—members of the loathsome media, or insiders at the palace, or people who actually knew how to make a podcast, or her pitiable father and half sister selling her secrets and history to tabloids for cash—might have seemed more powerful than her in some way, despite her immense fame and wealth and privilege? And then whatever happened to them, well…they shouldn’t have gotten between Meghan and her good work. As Harry knows, trauma can warp your perspective.

Spare, Harry’s best-selling and beautifully written (by J.R. Moehringer) memoir, chronicles the prince’s lonely former life with MRI-level self-examination—if not always top-tier self-awareness. Harry recounts an anti-poaching trip to Namibia in which he insisted on sleeping outdoors despite his team telling him, “We just saw proof that there are lions out here, boss.” Harry claims everyone with him—including a bodyguard, local police, a ranger, and Namibian soldiers who were all there to protect him—went to bed in their tents or trucks rather than staying up to ensure he wasn’t eaten by lions in the night. The book also discusses in great detail Harry’s issues with his family, opening on his reunion with now King Charles and Prince William, who in addition to “beloved brother” Harry describes as his “arch nemesis,” possessing a “familiar scowl” and “alarming baldness.” It doesn’t get more flattering for Willy in the ensuing pages.

At an event in 2023, someone privately asked Harry if he’d heard from his family. He said he hadn’t. This person asked Harry if he thought he was going to, and he said he hoped so. “That’s sort of what made me so sad,” the source says. “His hope seemed very genuine. And I was just kind of like, ‘Oh, no.’ ” The source believed Harry hadn’t absorbed the gravity of what it would mean to sell millions of copies of a tell-all book about a famously insular and circumspect family in the middle of a years-long public relations crisis. “The power of the written word, and the power of the narrative…” this person went on. “I don’t know if that’s something he understood while he was doing it.”

In addition to painting Dorian Gray–style personal portraits of family members, in Spare, Harry accuses the offices of his brother, father, and Camilla of briefing the press against Harry to distract from or trade away negative stories about themselves. Harry sued the publisher of the Daily Mail for libel for publishing an article in 2022 that said Harry tried to conceal his efforts to obtain taxpayer-funded security, but the prince ultimately dropped the case, and a judge ordered Harry to pay the Mail’s publisher nearly 50,000 pounds in legal fees.

Harry is currently involved in two other lawsuits that further alienate him from his home country and its tabloid media. He is moving forward with an invasion of privacy case against Sun publisher News Group Newspapers, which follows a settlement from Mirror Group Newspapers for a phone-hacking charge. But more isolating is the suit regarding state police protection for him and his family when they are in Britain, which Harry, Meghan, and their older child, Archie, were stripped of when they left the UK in 2020. There are clear dangers to the family’s safety—a person who worked closely with them says strangers take Lyfts to their house, and in 2023 the couple was involved in what a spokesperson called a “near catastrophic car chase” with paparazzi. (There were no injuries, collisions, or charges filed.) The person who interacted with Harry in 2023 also described a “very scary paparazzi situation” after employees at the hotel where Harry was staying allegedly tipped off photographers to his presence. Nevertheless, the High Court in London twice struck down the UK lawsuit. Harry is appealing.

According to someone familiar with Harry and Meghan, the legal case was at least part of the reason Harry didn’t attend the June wedding of his longtime friend Hugh Grosvenor, ​​Duke of Westminster. The source says if he’d come back for the event, it could have imperiled his claim that he needs government-funded protection. “‘Well, you were here in May and you were absolutely fine attending a wedding,’” the source says, imagining the response in court. “So I’m sure a lot of the decisions about time in the UK are also being made based on how it looks for the case.”

Of course, there’s also Willy. The source says that after invitations went out, Harry and Grosvenor had a conversation. (Vanity Fair has also reported that Harry may not have formally been invited.) The source says they discussed Harry’s discomfort at the thought of being re-mired in the familial claustrophobia of Windsor turf. “It suddenly becomes all about the brothers, and did they look at each other, and how close were they stood?” the source says. Which is exactly what happened at Charles’s 2023 coronation and their uncle Lord Robert Fellowes’s funeral in August.

You can imagine the Zapruder-footage-level scrutiny by the press. The source says they miss Harry, or at least the person they pretended he was in their papers. “I think with a lot of the reporters they like the version of Harry that they helped create,” they say, describing how they would reminisce about when Harry would come over and pal around with them. “Yes, but he also, when you left, would make fun of you all behind your backs and hated you guys.”

“They are so hot for each other,” according to a person who worked closely with the couple. “Like, you know how you meet those couples where you’re like, the way they’re looking at each other, I should probably not be here right now?”

But who is the real Harry, now that he’s been released from the zoo in which he was raised? By one telling, the person who interacted professionally with Meghan says he’s socially marooned beyond his nuclear family. “She was up-front about the fact that Harry hadn’t made many friends yet,” the source says of Meghan’s assessment of her husband. The person who worked in media projects with the couple also has a guess. “I think Harry doesn’t know what he wants because he grew up in a fishbowl, and so he doesn’t know what real life really is,” they say. “I think he probably wants to be left alone and be able to go kiss babies every once in a while but not have to worry about money. I don’t think he wants to be famous the way Meghan wants to be famous.”

Harry and Meghan are, in the estimation of everyone Vanity Fair spoke with, deeply in love. “They are so hot for each other,” the person who worked closely with them said. “Like, you know how you meet those couples where you’re like, the way they’re looking at each other, I should probably not be here right now?” When Harry is solo, the person inside the couple’s circle says, “he’s very personable, he’s very at ease with people, quite like Diana... he just has this way of, like, making people feel very comfortable.” When he’s in public with Meghan, “there is a circus,” the source says. “He’s so protective of her because people are so nasty to her.... It’s a whole different experience.”

Harry has explicitly drawn parallels between his wife and his late mother. “My deepest fear is history repeating itself,” Harry wrote in a 2019 statement about Meghan’s treatment by the press. “I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditised to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person. I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.”

While Harry is vigilant about Meghan’s safety, the person who worked closely with them says Meghan’s role in their dynamic is caregiver and facilitator; she’s the one who makes things happen. “Pre-Meghan,” says the person familiar with the couple, “Harry would just pop in [to the palace press office], ask a few questions, and leave, like he was a little bored but also very keen.” It’s almost impossible to imagine today’s Harry willingly engaging with the media in search of purpose. The source who worked with Harry and Meghan says, “I can picture him meeting Meghan and being just a deep breath of, like, ‘I’ve been so exhausted, and you make everything so easy.’... I don’t want to be like, oh, it’s an Oedipus thing or whatever, but it kind of feels like she’s reparenting him in a way.”

It’s easy to imagine a folie à deux emerging from the singular blend of circumstances: a need to believe in each other and the primacy of their relationship in the face of shared trauma and the real obstacles they encountered as they idealistically endeavored to break the wheel, while occasionally breaking the spirits of those tasked with executing their shared vision. “You don’t” tell them no, the person who worked in the couple’s media projects said. “I left because I couldn’t live with myself anymore.”

This intracouple permission to stray from other people’s realities may have led to some of the points of contention that people bring up when questioning Meghan’s fidelity to emotional truth above literal truth: her assertions that she neither googled Prince Harry nor looked up the etiquette for meeting the Queen of England and didn’t know she was supposed to curtsy until the ride over.

“Meghan is the type of woman who would check a menu out online before going to a restaurant to pick what she was going to eat,” says Tom Fitzgerald, a fashion and cultural commentator who, with his husband, Lorenzo Marquez, comprise the brand Tom and Lorenzo. (A resident of Montecito who ate lunch in the same restaurant as Meghan said the server told her Meghan had called ahead to ask about the privacy of the seating arrangement.) “So the idea that she didn’t know she was supposed to curtsy for the queen, I just didn’t find it particularly believable, because [based on] everything she ever told us about herself, I cannot imagine that she went into meeting the royal family completely cold, with no research whatsoever.” Fitzgerald also points to Meghan’s repeated claims that she was forced to wear neutrals during her time in the palace in order to avoid upstaging or competing with Queen Elizabeth and other senior members of the family, noting that Meghan’s wardrobe is now primarily composed of that palate.

A royals reporter believes that Meghan assumed her husband’s vision rather than researching the job of being a royal, and the reporter has a more positive view of the folie. “Oh, that’s such a good idea for a successful marriage,” the reporter says. “It’s a terrible idea for a job, but...if you’re joining this big network of people, you’ve got to see this through your husband’s eyes, be your husband’s advocate in it. And it’s no wonder this relationship works, even if the family business part of it fell apart.”

It’s a charming (if Freudian) dynamic—a husband and wife who organize each other’s lives and well-being, who flirt and hold hands and want the world to be a better place, even to the exclusion of evidence that suggests their well-meaning way of disrupting institutions is not always the best approach. That instinct to do things as Harry and Meghan believed they should be done, rather than how they are typically accomplished, was exacerbated during their time as senior working royals. It led to conflict with Harry’s family and palace staff, the reporter says, because Harry “doesn’t understand himself. He doesn’t understand a monarchy. His family didn’t do a very good job of inculcating him into the family legend partially because he didn’t care; partially because he was just kind of abandoned at the age of eight.”

However, the couple’s regal charisma while effortlessly changing the world has been showcased to great effect on their most successful reimagining of monarchy x Markle: Harry and Meghan’s common royal tours, to Nigeria in May and Colombia in August. “Invictus Games for sure is a very clear product, a brand, an organization that Harry spent a decade building, which is why in many ways I think the Nigerian tour worked,” says Elaine Lui, the celebrity commentator behind Lainey Gossip. “When they appear together in non-Invictus circumstances, that’s when people are like, I’m not really clear what they’re representing here.” That’s contrasted with an actual royal tour, when individuals are acting on behalf of the sovereignty and its various causes; or, as Lui points to, an independent actor like Angelina Jolie, who went to places like Afghanistan and Ukraine with the backing of the United Nations Refugee Agency. (In September, Harry appeared in front of a small group at the United Nations in New York to highlight issues in Lesotho, one of the countries where his charity Sentebale focuses its efforts.) Lui says, “She could leverage the history and the reputation of a very established philanthropic organization to say, ‘Hey, I’m lending my celebrity to this cause and in raising this awareness, we can actually attach the effect or the results to the UNHCR.’ ” With the gauzier parts of Meghan and Harry’s tours—what Harry called the “reasons to meet the people at the heart of our work”—Lui says the question is how are they helping anyone, and how is Archewell distinguishing itself from any other foundation? After raising more than $13 million in 2021, according to public disclosure forms, the charity grossed $2 million in 2022. The nonprofit has not yet shared its 2023 or 2024 revenue. “Yes, it has them as spokespeople,” Lui says. “But they haven’t had yet—because it’s still quite new—a track record of being able to make philanthropic achievements independent of the palace.”

How complete that independence is is another point that rankles people about Meghan and Harry. If you still use a title and descend upon commonwealth or developing countries and let little girls curtsy to you, as one did to Meghan in Colombia, it doesn’t seem like you’ve totally left the monarchy behind. It also doesn’t give you a lot of room to critique it.

The Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan litigates in painstaking detail Harry’s and Meghan’s mental health declines as she was bullied at the very least in sight of, and by many accounts at the behest of, an imperialist establishment. Yet this doesn’t seem to sour them to the idea of participating in a hereditary bloodline. In the doc, Harry says that during their last week as working senior royals, the couple, ruing the circumstances of their exit, kept telling each other, “We would have carried on doing this for the rest of our lives.” When Charles ascended the throne after Elizabeth’s death, the couple’s children became Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. Some people familiar with the production of Archetypes and Harry’s book tour said they were instructed to address the couple as sir or ma’am, though the request was dropped in one instance after the person pushed back. (Other people say they were encouraged by Harry and Meghan to call them by their first names.) “I think ultimately it’s cachet and sets them apart as different and special,” the source familiar with the couple says. “In the US, success, money, fame, all of that stuff exists out here. But a blood title, it’s few and far between.” (Many members of Meghan’s current inner circle—which includes Kaling; Figueras’s wife, socialite Delfina Blaquier; Tracy Robbins, the fashion designer and wife of Paramount Global co-CEO Brian Robbins; and parenting influencer and activist Kelly McKee Zajfen—are basically living by the rules of “American aristocracy,” according to Lui. They “stay behind the scenes…wield their power quietly…[and] look down on people who are very public, too thirsty.” On the other hand, all of the aforementioned are slated to appear on With Love, Meghan.)

A Black studies scholar who is also an African American woman noted the way racism is discussed in Harry & Meghan: as the one-off actions of Princess Michael of Kent wearing a blackamoor brooch to a brunch where Meghan was present, or the distant colonialism that still furnishes the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster and the jewels in the family’s tiaras, or Harry saying that the royal family merely had “unconscious bias.” “It’s a very common discursive move,” the scholar says. “Locating racism in individual bad actors or locating it in the past.... Queen Elizabeth becomes a kindly grandmother. She’s in the back of a car [or] her carriage, under a blanket. There’s that story, which is really kind of sweet that Meghan tells in the documentary, but [it] can’t connect that with the larger ideology of England—and thereby Queen Elizabeth—being like, ‘We are the natural rulers of the world.’ And that includes the segregation of people of color.” The cultural critic says this framing makes it so Meghan and Harry “can tell the story of being victims of the system, but it’s all about them being disenfranchised from whiteness and white privilege.”

The couple repeatedly expressed frustration in Harry & Meghan that Meghan wasn’t tapped as an asset for upholding the crown’s international interests in an era when Prince William was tasked with expressing “profound sorrow” for the “appalling atrocity of slavery” during a tour to Jamaica. As historian David Olusoga says in the docuseries, “Part of what makes the inability of the palace to defend Meghan an even bigger disaster is that the center of the argument for the monarchy in this country is the commonwealth. The commonwealth is 2.5 billion, mainly Black and brown people. Here was a woman who looked like most of the people in the commonwealth.” Harry speaks shortly after and says the palace and its denizens “have already missed an enormous opportunity with my wife and how far that would go globally.” The source familiar with the couple says it’s important to note that Harry isn’t an anti-monarchist. “He just didn’t like the way things were run within the institution,” he says. “His issues are about people and behaviors, not tradition.”

The source, who is also a person of color, defends Meghan’s right to want a piece of the empire for herself. “If I was in the same position and I was treated the way I was by the institution, it wouldn’t stop me from still feeling that that title is mine and deserved,” they say. “If anything, it would feel like you’re giving in to the pressure to exclude you in the first place. So actually it would probably make me want it even more. Damn well I’m going to slap it on my kids’ names too.”

Natalie Portman, Jeff Bridges, John Carradine, Kirk and Michael Douglas, Jonathan Winters, Gwyneth Paltrow, Adam Levine, Jimmy Connors, T.C. Boyle, Leonardo DiCaprio, Neil Young and Daryl Hannah, Michael Keaton, and of course Oprah are among the many celebrities who have peacefully coexisted with other locals in Montecito, an unincorporated part of Santa Barbara County. When a Montecitan’s labradoodle ran up to a child and licked their ice cream, the kid’s father—Kardashian affiliate Scott Disick—ran up to the pet owner with concern; not because he was upset that the cone was ruined but to reassure the person that the ice cream was vegan and wouldn’t upset the dog’s stomach. Katy Perry has, per usual, had some legal real estate issues, and Ellen DeGeneres has become unpopular for her immaculate, usually off-market flips that have supposedly driven house prices up. “I think everyone, including the A-list celebs, would prefer that it’s not on the map like it is,” the Montecitan says. It’s a place where no one would ever “bother” a famous person beyond saying hello at the coffee shop, as they would to anyone else. One resident says Montecito’s defining characteristics are “quiet” and “neighborliness.”

The prince and “the starlet,” as the Montecitan calls her, have become local villains, according to several people who spoke with VF. They attribute the increase in housing prices to them as much as DeGeneres and point to out-of-towners coming in, driving too fast, and taking up all the street parking by local trails like the one Meghan was photographed hiking on while Harry was in the UK for Charles’s coronation. You can’t just walk into Lucky’s for dinner anymore. While the Montecitan says neither he nor his friends have ever met the couple (two others mentioned Harry biking in town), they popped up in the video for DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi’s vow renewal, and the Montecitan saw photos of Harry playing polo at a nearby field, which will also be featured in Harry’s Netflix docuseries. Meghan’s Netflix project was filmed at a house near theirs.

American Riviera Orchard—which on Instagram has a logo styled with a royal-looking crest and written in Meghan’s perfect calligraphy and is known internally as ARO—is located in Montecito. Though an 1898 book published by the Southern Pacific Company rail line states, “The Montecito is known as the American Riviera,” today that honor is understood to belong to Santa Barbara; no one Vanity Fair spoke with had ever heard Montecito referred to by the name. “It’s such a kind of hucksterism,” one resident says. “It’s just finding every way she can to monetize something.” And in doing so, bringing more attention to the place where the Sussexes say they want to be left alone. “I still think they’re the most entitled, disingenuous people on the planet,” the Montecitan says. “They moved away from England to get away from the scrutiny of the press, and all they do is try and get in the press in the United States.” Lui says the most common criticism she hears about Meghan (though she notes it’s true of Harry as well) is “you can’t cherry-pick the good parts and leave out the bad parts” of fame. However, she points out, “all celebrities do this. ‘Don’t take photos of me. Oh, but here, let me step out, conveniently, and get papped. Only give me good reviews of my movie or my album. And if you don’t like my music, I’m gonna post on Instagram that you’re so shitty as a reviewer.’ ”

Whether American Riviera Orchard will be well-received—or received at all, at least in name—remains to be seen. On August 31, the US Patent and Trademark Office rejected the trademark application: “Registration is refused because the applied-for mark is primarily geographically descriptive,” the response read. In other words, you can’t claim a place. (Tell that to Queen Victoria.) The same day, according to the New York Post, the office reportedly received a complaint from storied pear purveyor Harry & David regarding the similarity in name to its Royal Riviera line. As far as the substance of the brand, Lui says Meghan’s first lifestyle effort, The Tig, was popular in Lui’s circle in Toronto while Meghan was filming Suits there. However: “American Riviera Orchard to me is giving 2014. It’s not giving 2024,” she says. “Fame arrests you at the moment it arrives. And I wonder if that is your health-and-wellness-lifestyle version of that, where she had to suspend The Tig and quit it the moment that she became Harry’s girlfriend, then fiancée, and then his wife. American Riviera Orchard is maybe picking up from where The Tig left off.”

The source familiar with the couple says, “I think there’s one thing that no one could take away from Meghan is how hard she works, how much effort goes into everything that she does. Ultimately that’s all she needs. And I think that’s why American Riviera Orchard probably will be a massive success. Even if in two years’ time it doesn’t exist anymore and she’s on to the next, it will have that moment. There’ll be no way that you can say that it wasn’t successful.”

A few years ago a rumor began circulating around the book world about another prospective project for Meghan. This story, which a person with knowledge confirms the broad details of, was that Meghan’s team had a conversation with a publishing house to gauge interest in the idea for a potential book. The concept, for which there was no written or formal proposal, was post-divorce. Not a general book on life after marital dissolution, or one about Meghan’s past experience. (She was married to producer Trevor Engelson from 2011 to 2014.) This book—this notion of a book, really—might center on a post-Harry divorce. Not that there was actually one in the works! Just…if this a priori divorce ever came to be, would this publisher theoretically be interested in a book that took place in its aftermath? Another source with knowledge says, “If that’s true to any degree, she would have been approached and not vice versa.” No offer was ever made, and no manuscript was produced. After all: There was no divorce.

The source familiar with the couple says Meghan’s metabolism for campaigns that she can move on from—Archetypes, the ephemeral 40x40 mentorship program, the forthcoming lifestyle line and show, the wisp of a possible book about a divorce that might never happen—are part of why she’s better suited to celebrity outside the palace. “The royals don’t work like that,” the source says. “How many years has Kate been talking about early childhood development, like 11 now, 12? We still haven’t really seen anything.” (Princess Catherine launched Shaping Up, a campaign focused on “increasing public understanding of the crucial importance of the first five years of a child’s life.”)

In that time, Meghan has gone from star of a syndicated cable series to paradigm-changing princess to her husband’s conduit out of royal life to the founder of a hybrid charity–Hollywood start-up. She has earned as much faith in her own force of will as a sovereign might have from believing that they were anointed by God to lead.

As for what she’ll do with that power, look at what it means for her to make the world a better place, which she and Harry genuinely seem to want to do. Jameela Jamil, Chrissy Teigen, and Omid Scobie, the author of Finding Freedom (about Harry and Meghan’s time in and departure from royal life) and Endgame (about the ensuing years within the Windsor dynasty), have all publicly discussed Meghan unexpectedly reaching out during difficult times in their lives and offering solace, even though they weren’t close. Lui sees it as something Meghan took from her royal years, just as Harry has taken his impeccable manners and the ability to patronize the fuck out of a charity. “That’s what they do,” Lui says. “They bless you with their royalness, and that’s the gift. It’s not like Princess Diana was ever best friends with all the people that she visited in the hospital.”

“I think that they don’t know what ‘change the world’ means,” says the person who worked in media projects. “They want to be people who are looked at as people who want to change the world.” Maybe that’s why Meghan has continued—on Nick News, in The Tig, on panels, on Archetypes, in Colombia in August—to bring up the story of writing a letter to Procter & Gamble about a sexist soap ad, taking credit for them changing the spot so that it no longer suggested women should be the ones doing dishes. Procter & Gamble declined many requests from VF to confirm that Meghan was the impetus for the switch, and in 2021 the company partnered with Archewell with the goal of “elevat[ing] the voices of adolescent girls to ensure their point of view and lived experience is heard at the tables where decisions are made.” Whether or not Meghan’s letter is what prompted the change, the fact that more than 30 years later she continues to speak up about having spoken up suggests it’s the kind of mission she aspires to. Marie, who has worked with many celebrities, says of the Sussexes’ aspirations, “I think it’s actually better than where most people start out.”

To point out the modesty of that world-bettering feels like contributing to the essential problem of Harry and Meghan: No matter what they do, they just can’t win. (If, I guess, you don’t count the overwhelming portion of their beautiful lives that exists outside of Daily Mail headlines and blog comment sections.)

If Harry’s burden is the soft oppression of no expectations, Meghan’s might be the opposite: the betrayal of not living up to an unachievable ideal. “I think the whole world was waiting for her to be that person, and then she never jumped,” the source who worked in media says. “Diana walked amongst land mines. Meghan couldn’t even say the word slut.”

Anna Peele is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Her culture writing looks seriously at subjects that are sometimes considered frivolous. Anna spent the first eight years of her career as an editor at men’s magazines, where she wrote a widely read Esquire cover story of Miles Teller

© 2025 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.

[lactodebillus-bulgaricus]

I just realized something regarding hetalia bulgaria (this gets dark, check tw before clicking on keep reading)

y'know, he's portrayed as skinny and lacking muscles in hetalia

irl, bulgaria is the country with fastest declining population in the world, largely due to emigration and low birth rate, as well as one of the countries with highest death rate

so maybe he's suffering from cachexia, a medical condition where you lose weight & (mainly) muscle mass even though you don't want to, and perhaps it's due to his population decline

maybe it started in 1989 when the communists lost power, the borders opened and the economy became worse than before for several years, prior to this, in 1989, the population of bulgaria was 9 million, now, in 2024, it's 6,5 million

in humans, cachexia is most common with people who have late stage cancer, or aids, or untreatable chronic diseases such as copd or chronic kidney failure, maybe the corrupt politicians & the oligarchs & mafia are something like cancer or another severe disease to him?

[darkmaga-returns]

President Joe Biden sat down with MSNBC propagandist Lawrence O’Donnell for an Oval Office exit interview, where he persistently lied about major initiatives of his presidency and the state of politics during his term.

Along the way, Biden was aided by the dangerously uncurious bootlicking of O’Donnell who never once pushed back on anything Biden said, and at times praised him and made emotional appeals to his decades of failed public service.

‘An Oligarchy Is Taking Shape’

In the interview, O’Donnell referenced a portion of Biden’s farewell address where he warned of an “oligarchy” taking shape.

“You issued the warning about the power of the tech-industrial complex, an echo of President Eisenhower in this very room in his farewell address, warning about the military-industrial complex,” O’Donnell said. “And you said that an oligarchy is taking shape that threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. How does this oligarchy affect people out there who’ve never used the word ‘oligarchy’?”

“If the decision is made that the multi-billionaires — the super, super wealthy, the wealthiest people in the world — begin to control all the apparatuses from the media to the economy, then who do I get to fight back for me?” Biden replied.

But Biden’s response displays a clear misunderstanding of whose political allies are run by oligarchs — even though Biden himself was on the receiving end of their wrath.

[lurkiestvoid]

This Is So Much Worse Than Last Time

Why Democrats and the media are struggling to capture the insanity—and danger—of the new Trump administration.

Alex Shephard

February 5, 2025

There is practically no way to describe what is currently happening in the United States without sounding hysterical, or like some sort of crank—or, maybe, insane. But here goes!

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has seized control of the Treasury Department. He is deciding who the government pays and who it doesn’t. The federal payment system he has access to contains the Social Security numbers and even the bank account information of nearly every American. It also has information about Musk’s private-sector competitors that he can now use for his own self-enrichment. Musk has given a handful of inexperienced young coders control over this sensitive system, where they can—and reportedly have—started to mess with its code. At least one of them is not even old enough to drink. This is a hostile takeover of the finances of the U.S. government. It’s blatantly unconstitutional. It’s a coup. It sounds like the treatment for a Gerard Butler action flick.

That’s not all! Trump and Musk have shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development and cut off nearly all foreign aid. This will have devastating consequences for global health, global democracy, and the future of American soft power. Speaking of: Trump has spent the early days of his presidency threatening 25 percent tariffs against Mexico and Canada for no real reason, other than that he thinks a tool that worked more than a century ago will work now. (It won’t.) Even if he doesn’t end up enacting these tariffs—which would likely be a form of economic suicide—he has already likely damaged the future of any trade agreement between the U.S. and its closest allies. He has also pardoned over a thousand violent insurrectionists and now seems ready to fire hundreds of FBI agents who helped prosecute them.

But there’s more! The administration is freezing funding for climate and infrastructure spending despite numerous court orders. Trump just released a ton of water into California’s Central Valley in a publicity stunt. All he accomplished is screwing over farmers who will likely need that water in the summer; it did absolutely nothing to fight the (mostly contained) fires that devastated the state last month. His administration is waging an all-out war against trans people and seems on the verge of all but ending gender-affirming care for minors. As I write this, American planes are flying migrants to Guantánamo Bay, where they will be held in a concentration camp. Secretary of State Marco Rubio—supposedly one of the normal people in this administration!—just reached an agreement with El Salvador where it will accept deportees of all nationalities, including Americans.

I have not mentioned confirmed Cabinet members like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (problem drinker who has been credibly accused of sexual assault) or those who seem on the verge of confirmation, such as Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy (conspiracy theorist, had a literal brain worm, no experience, looks and sounds like a beat-up pleather recliner). Even then, this is just a fraction of the horror that has been unleashed over the last two weeks. As TechDirt’s Mike Masnick put it, the past fortnight has been like “a distributed denial of service attack on people who believe in reality.”

This is all very bad. Saying that it is very bad feels like an understatement. There is an ongoing oligarchic takeover of the U.S. government. Donald Trump’s authoritarian project has never been more threatening and fully realized. Things are already so much worse than his first term. The first time around, the president was stymied by legislative checks, particularly by a handful of congressional Republicans who occasionally emerged to block him, a still embryonic political project that had a dearth of apparatchiks to fulfill his (often insane) requests, and a bureaucracy that often frustrated his unconstitutional overreach and general authoritarianism.

Now the Republican resisters have been replaced by lackeys and cowards (sometimes a combination of both) and his administration is being staffed by fascistic loyalists eager to do his bidding; these loyalists are now engaged in a project aimed at destroying much of the existing civil service, particularly any part of it that was deemed insufficiently pro-Trump. (USAID, for instance, is under fire in part because of the perception that it is a hotbed of Commies; the FBI, famously not a hotbed of Commies, is under fire because it investigated Trump’s attempted coup after he lost the 2020 election.)

All of this (and the litany of horribles I haven’t mentioned) has happened over the course of two weeks. Most of Trump’s nominees aren’t even confirmed yet. There are no signs of a brewing rupture between Musk and Trump. Every sign points to the fact that this is going to get a whole lot worse. Many signs suggest that there may be no coming back from this.

Despite all the full-frontal fascism, the response has been oddly and frustratingly muted. The story of the first Trump administration was one in which the president constantly embarrassed the country and himself. But it was also about a clear manifestation of anger and pushback over his avowed plans (usually tweeted at odd hours) or his trying to implement them and being met with resistance. That resistance hasn’t really materialized yet. If Trump merely talked about building a moat filled with alligators at the southern border in his first term, now there’s a non-zero chance he’ll just do it.

Why has has the response been so muted? There has been a sense since his reelection that much of the public is simply exhausted by an wearying decade of Trump and is doing what it can to tune him out. It’s hard not to blame the populace for taking a break from the daily grind. If you were born toward the end of the last century, it’s possible you’ve never voted in a presidential election without Trump on the ballot. That’s a hellish quarter-century to live through.

Meanwhile, the Democrats, who ostensibly don’t get to take a break from this, have, in characteristic fashion, taken the wrong lessons from his reelection and seem to have spent much of the last two months paying the same consultants who lost the election to tell them how they can be more like Trump. Despite the takeover of the Treasury they are, incredibly, still voting for some of his nominees. (Chris Wright, a former fracking executive, was confirmed as energy secretary with seven Democratic votes on Tuesday.)

In some quarters, a fighting spirit is stirring, and members are starting to sound like the #Resistance Dems of old. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ron Wyden, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have taken on the administration and publicly condemned Musk’s role as a shadow president perpetrating an ongoing takeover of the U.S. government; on Tuesday evening, there was a large protest at the Treasury Department attended by two dozen members of Congress.

Media coverage has somehow been even less inspiring than the Democratic response. During Trump’s first term, the press struggled to find a way to deal with Trump’s admittedly difficult to describe mix of extremism and incoherence. The speed of all of this and the enormity of it is, to be fair, difficult to capture. But there are bigger problems emerging in the ongoing coverage. One is simply that Trump and his cronies are taking direct action against the press, threatening to shut down via lawsuits (or, in the case of National Public Radio, defunding) any outlet that they deem as being critical, and appear to be serious about it. ABC has already settled one lawsuit, while CBS seems ready to settle another—settling both would essentially amount to paying Trump protection money.

But there’s also been the return of an old malady: The mainstream press’s wholesale inability to grasp the magnitude of Trumpian misrule and capture the existential threat he poses. There is also the standard illiteracy and dysfunction among many major outlets that fails to rise to the moment: Over the past two weeks, for example, New York Times headlines have argued that the plain text of the Constitution is actually a matter of partisan argument and that the Treasury system Musk and his Muskrats have taken over is a legitimate means of deficit reduction; Bloomberg somehow found the only liberal legal scholar willing to say that the constitutional order has been resilient against Trump and for some reason published his take, despite it very clearly being incorrect.

Worse still, all of these old problems have been exacerbated by an emerging consensus that the media’s intelligentsia somehow extracted from Trump’s reelection campaign, which is that much of the public thought that their coverage was too sensationalist. And so there has been a palpably strenuous effort to dial things back, at the very moment when Trump and Musk are escalating their war on American life. No one is crying wolf, but the wolves have arrived.

These are facts, I’m afraid: Over the last two weeks, the incoming president has disabled most of the federal government as he figures out how to purge the federal bureaucracy and remake it into an instrument of personal revenge and self-enrichment. To do this, he has empowered the richest person in the world to take control over the federal government’s financial machinery and given him permission to refashion it at the source-code level. To say that seems hysterical. To experience it seems insane. But that’s precisely what’s really happening.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 44 – The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

Alright, first full novel I’ve read entirely due to it getting a Hugo nomination. In retrospect that fact that there was absolutely no wait list for it at the library was perhaps a sign I should have paid attention to. I’m not sure it’s a bad book, exactly, but my god is it just chock full of little things that grated on me (which more or less tracks with my very vague memories of casually perusing The Calculating Stars when it first came out, so probably just a sign Kowal’s not for me, really.)

The story’s set in a fairly grounded space age future, on an ultra-lux cruise liner taking its passengers from Earth to Mars in speed and style. Tesla Crane, heiress, celebrity, and generally incredibly famous and unfathomably wealthy, has booked one of the nicest suites in the earth-gravity section of the ship under a false name to enjoy some anonymity on her much anticipated honeymoon cruise. Things of course take a drastic turn as a woman is murdered outside their sweet, and her spouse is framed for the crime. The shipboard security is obstructive and suspicious, bodies keep piling up, and it’s largely up to Tesla to solve the murder and clear his good name.

So first off – this is largely a style thing that grates on me far more than it should, and it probably effects my overall reading experience to an entirely unjustified degree, but – the standard etiquette in the story’s future is for everyone to use the gender neutral Mx. Using gendered terms like wife, husband, sir, m’am, or similar is also called out as being somewhere between archaic and offensively retrograde. Also, it is totally standard courtesy to list someone’s pronouns in any case where you’d their full name. In which case what is the point of taking so much care to be gender neutral of everything else. (In a sense this actually inspired worldbuilding, insofar as it’s exactly the sort of stupid language games high aristocracy or its equivalent tends to love, but the reading experience kind of grated).

The society’s generally very consciously progressive in a way that kind of calls attention to itself. It really wasn’t a surprise to see in the acknowledgement’s section that all the mentions of courtesy masks being a thing were edited in as covid happened. This is all mostly just background noise though, as far as narrative focus the only things that really occupy the story’s attention are its portrayal of disability and its bizarre class politics.

So, a key point of her backstory is that some years before the story, a lab disaster (during a demonstration of a personal assistance mech, which is actually some incredibly bitter dramatic irony I’m surprised the story doesn’t call any attention to?) killed six people and left Tesla with permanent spinal damage, chronic pain, and PTSD. Medical science doesn’t seem to have made many innovations on a cane or breathing exercises as far as mobility aids and PTSD treatment goes, but it does provide the absolutely incredible wish fulfillment device of a switch in your brain that lets you turn your pain sensitivity up or down at will. Tesla’s disability is a recurring thing throughout the book and generally the portrayal seemed fine to me? A couple conversations that bled into ‘giving the reader an important message’ territory, but only slightly and hardly the worst in the book.

The book’s attitude to class and wealth though, woof. Like, okay, the story is clearly a bit of a pastiche, a sanguine attitude to vast inequality and social hierarchy are necessary for the whole fantasy to work, but my god in that case please stop calling attention to it. The book so badly wants to simultaneously be progressive and have Tesla’s life be as maximally glamorous and exalted as possible that it gets twisted into this incredibly awkward spirals showing that she’s a good hyper-elite oligarch which really only call attention to the issue without doing anything to resolve it. Her internal monologue including some variation of the line ‘normally I hate just using money as a bludgeon to get what I want, but” happens a few too many times for it to not make un less likeable than an aristocrat who owns it.

Like, this is potentially uncharitable, but the book seems to take it as read that I find the idea of demanding to speak to a manager and having them grovel and apologize for how I’ve been disrespect far more alluring than I do? Not being that customer is a subject Tesla ruminates on at some length, and at the same time calling up her high priced lawyer and threatening to bury the whole cruise line in lawsuits while they rush to provide apology gifts is definitely portrayed as this thrilling power fantasy. It all left me actively rooting against her, at least a bit.

The actual mystery itself honestly wasn’t much to write home about – a bit confused, red herring introduced blatantly and too late, the obviously suspicious and personally unlikable character was the villain – but in a similar vein it did seem…telling, that the guy who’d been positioned as the unlikable asshole oligarch in opposition to Crane was secretly a murderous gold-digging imposter all along! Also, the fact that this was proven by a photo showing the oligarch to have been a dog guy, and the imposter being quite literally the only character in the entire book who didn’t adore Tesla’s emotional support dog. Like, c’mon.

Speaking of the dog – the book had a few recurring beats which I’m sure I’m supposed to have found funny or endearing but just overstayed their welcome with me several times over. The entire cast’s brains leaking out whenever they saw Tesla’s westie like it was some sort of platonic ideal of canine cuteness was one of them, along with like, Tesla and her spouse making out at a moment’s notice because a plot point meant that their encrypted tele-chat required skin-to-skin contact, and the book doubling as a cocktail guide. All things that if I’d liked the book I could have easily overlooked, but as is were just extra straws on the proverbial camel’s back.

Anyway, yeah, didn’t work for me.

[meret118]

— taken $66 million from Russian intelligence services via Putin-friendly oligarchs,

— helped Russia install their own puppet government in Ukraine in 2010,

— was paid $1 million a year to help the corrupt dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), solidify his relationship with Moscow,

— forced his party to remove references in their platform to defending Ukrainian democracy,

— gave a Russian intelligence agent top-secret insider campaign information about voters in 6 swing states so they could run an ultimately successful micro-targeted Facebook campaign to help the candidate,

— offered to run the campaign for free because he’d been well-compensated by Russian intelligence services,

— and then repeatedly lied to the FBI about his connections to Putin and Russia, leading to his being charged, convicted, and imprisoned until that candidate pardoned him.

Imagine that candidate had visited Moscow with his Soviet-citizen wife — whose father was a Soviet agent — and been groomed all the way back in 1987 by Russian intelligence (then Soviet intelligence, the KGB) to run for president.

— That he came back home from that 1987 trip to Moscow and spent $100,000 to run full-page ads in three major US newspapers urging America to abandon and leave defenseless its allies in Europe and Asia.

— That he then went to New Hampshire a month later and did a campaign rally to see if there was enough support for him to run for president.

— That US intelligence officers reported that the 1987 ad and campaign for president led to a champagne-laced celebration in Moscow, with Russian intelligence calling it one of their most successful infiltration/influence campaigns in decades.

Imagine if during his campaign for the White House that president — when only a candidate — had inked a secret deal with Russia to earn hundreds of millions of dollars by putting a hotel with his name on it in Moscow, and kept it concealed from the American public throughout the campaign.

Imagine that he made extensive use of his opponent’s emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence services, who then ran a Facebook operation hyping that same information that reached 26 million targeted Americans in 6 swing states, helping him win the Electoral College vote.

Imagine that during the 2016 campaign an insider with Russian connections learned that Russia had successfully hacked this candidate’s opponent’s emails on behalf of the candidate before the hack was revealed on Wikileaks during the Democratic National Convention where his opponent was nominated for president…and that information came to you via an informant.

Imagine that candidate became president 29 years after his first Moscow trip and in his first weeks in office, presumably as thanks for their help, invited the Russian ambassador and the Russian foreign minister to a covert meeting in the Oval Office and gave them top-secret information on a spy about whom Russia had been concerned; that spy was then “burned.”

their help, invited the Russian ambassador and the Russian foreign minister to a covert meeting in the Oval Office and gave them top-secret information on a spy about whom Russia had been concerned; that spy was then “burned.”

Imagine that this was nothing new for that president’s party: that two presidents before him had gained the White House by treasonous collaboration with openly hostile foreign powers (North Vietnam in 1968 and Iran in 1980). That congressional members of his own party would then go on to vote against compiling information about war crimes committed in Ukraine by Russia. That a senator from that party by the name of Rand Paul made a private trip to Russia to hand-deliver possibly stolen sealed “documents” to Putin’s intelligence service given him in confidence by that president.

Imagine that president had a series of nearly 20 secret telephone conversations with Putin (for which the records of what was said no longer exist) and then unilaterally — in defiance of both Congress and the law — blocked military aid to Ukraine while Russia was massing troops on its borders. And then followed those up with a years-long campaign to destroy NATO, which was Russia’s top military concern. And openly praised and deferred to Putin while trash-talking American intelligence services.

Imagine that the FBI worked with a special prosecutor named Mueller to determine the extent of Russian involvement in the 2016 election and:

— Found that Russian interference in the 2016 election was “sweeping and systemic.”

— Brought indictments against 37 individuals including six Trump advisers and 26 Russian nationals, secured seven guilty pleas or convictions, and found “compelling evidence” that the president himself had stonewalled or lied to investigators and “obstructed justice on multiple occasions.”

— Referred 14 criminal matters to the Justice Department, where the president’s hand-picked Attorney General — who’d helped President George HW Bush cover up the Iran/Contra Treason Scandal

— ignored them and let them lapse.

— Uncovered five specific examples of the president criminally obstructing justice in ways that could easily have been prosecuted.

Imagine that when that president ran for re-election Russia again came to his aid by hacking his 2020 opponent’s family members, both looking for and trying to plant damaging information suggesting his opponent’s family was corrupt. That Russia then spread rumors across social media to that effect on the candidate’s behalf in the months before the election.

Imagine that when he nevertheless lost, Russian intelligence officers used social media to amplify his claims the election was stolen, leading to an attempted coup conspiracy involving the assassination of the Vice President and Speaker of the House.

Imagine that the FBI — in part, during that president’s time in office — compiled material for a report concluding that:

“Throughout the [2020] election, Russia’s online influence actors sought to amplify mistrust in the electoral process by denigrating mail-in ballots, highlighting alleged irregularities, and accusing the Democratic Party of voter fraud.”

-----

Wouldn't you say he's a russian agent?

According to Trump’s former real-estate partner and other sources who are familiar with the internal workings of the Trump Organization, his post-’90s revival may have really begun in the early 2000s with the Bayrock Group, which rented offices two floors down from Trump’s in Trump Tower. Bayrock was run by two investors who would help to change Trump’s trajectory: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on seemingly bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia.

[gnome-minion]

Thinking about how much disability is a core theme of Insignia. The four most plot important characters (Tom, Wyatt, Blackburn, and Vengerov) are all disabled, or are implied to be.

Blackburn's pretty obvious. He's a paranoid schizophrenic. And though that's mostly under control, the experience and the trauma of that sticks with him. And the entire series he views himself as an irredeemable monster. He's caught in what he did when he had that psychotic break.

(Also as a segue, it impacts the way he treats other mentally ill/neurodivergent characters, he even warns Wyatt before she receives her processor that it would change the way she thinks.)

Wyatt's is also pretty obvious. Although not directly stated, Wyatt is obviously autistic. She's canonically neurodivergent, as confirmed in Allies. For the most part, her arc is growing confident in herself, and comfortable with who she is. And also learning more social skills, while never becoming something different. Wyatt's autism is probably my favorite portrayal of autism I've ever seen.

Tom's disability is more subtle. The obvious thing about him having no fingers is explored. How it can aid him (like how the cybernetic fingers can move even if he's in the process of dying), and how they hinder him (they can be taken away, they lack sensitivity, and they're not his actual finger

But also Tom is clearly mentally ill. Even before Catalyst confirmed he was- he shows symptoms of a trauma disorder as early as Insignia. And in Vortex and Catalyst it's pretty blatant.

Catalyst is where all of his erratic behavior gets more explanations. His brain had the same problems that led to his mom developing psychosis and delusions. And while he had a neural graft to enlarge his frontal lobe, I don't think that would be a cure to whatever he's got, like most psychiatric treatments, it just helps with the symptoms .

Also regarding the fact that he wouldn't pass a military psych eval, he generally lacks empathy, and has been generally implied to be a "psychopath", i think it's probable that he's cluster B as well.

Thats not even mentioning him having OSDD or DID considering he has an alter. I'm not throwing out the possibility of him having DID just cause no other alters besides Vanya are shown, cause there is some evidence he could have it in previous books.

And of course- Vengerov.

Major catalyst spoilers up ahead. But Vengerov as a child is heavily implied to be developmentally disabled in some way. After the processor was given to him around the age of 7-8ish he changed completely. Being able to recognize the pain being pushed upon him, and his own ambitions. I'll be honest I can't wrap my head around why this is, outside of a mashup of what happens when you give a young young child a processor, and the computer filling in for Vengerov where his brain wasn't developing as much.

This could easily be used to villainize Vengerov, to show he is an unfeeling, uncaring monster. But Neil's theory at the end of Catalyst changes that. Cause he points out that Vengerov was trying to basically take over the world, yes, but because he lived in a world full of awful evil people in power - he became the worst of them. If he lived in a world run by pacifists? He would be a saint. He would change the world for the better. It's not his, or anyone's nature to be evil. It's their nurture.

It's a really poignant moment. Not only for the political messaging but I think for the explicit sympathy it gives to Vengerov. It never diminishes or undercut how awful what he does is. But also acknowledges how the creation of such an evil person is a product of the system and the world around them, rather than the person's inherent "evilness"

It so wonderfully shows how much of a feedback loop this oligarchical system is. And how the world shapes people into monsters. Only getting worse and worse as time goes on.

Insignia is great, you guys.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 26, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 27, 2023

On December 26, 1991, the New York Times ran a banner headline: “Gorbachev, Last Soviet Leader, Resigns; U.S. Recognizes Republics’ Independence.” On December 25, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned, marking the end of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, often referred to as the Soviet Union or USSR.

Former Soviet republics had begun declaring their independence in March 1990, the Warsaw Pact linking the USSR’s Eastern European satellites into a defense treaty dissolved by July 1991, and by December 1991 the movement had gathered enough power that Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine joined together in a “union treaty” as their leaders announced they were creating a new Commonwealth of Independent States. When almost all the other Soviet republics announced on December 21 that they were joining the new alliance, Gorbachev could either try to hold the USSR together by force or step down. He chose to step down, handing power to the president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin.

The dissolution of the USSR meant the end of the Cold War, and those Americans who had come to define the world as a fight between the dark forces of communism and the good forces of capitalism believed their ideology had triumphed. Two years ago, Gorbachev said that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, "They grew arrogant and self-confident. They declared victory in the Cold War." 

The collapse of the USSR gave the branch of the Republican Party that wanted to destroy the New Deal confidence that their ideology was right. Believing that their ideology of radical individualism had destroyed the USSR, these so-called Movement Conservatives very deliberately set out to destroy what they saw as Soviet-like socialist ideology at home. As anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “For 40 years conservatives fought a two-front battle against statism, against the Soviet empire abroad and the American left at home. Now the Soviet Union is gone and conservatives can redeploy. And this time, the other team doesn't have nuclear weapons.”

In the 1990s the Movement Conservatives turned their firepower on those they considered insufficiently committed to free enterprise, including traditional Republicans who agreed with Democrats that the government should regulate the economy, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure. Movement Conservatives called these traditional Republicans “Republicans in Name Only” or RINOs and said that, along with Democrats, such RINOs were bringing “socialism” to America. 

With the “evil empire,” as President Ronald Reagan had dubbed the Soviet Union, no longer a viable enemy, Movement Conservatives, aided by new talk radio hosts, increasingly demonized their domestic political opponents. As they strengthened their hold on the Republican Party, Movement Conservatives cut taxes, slashed the social safety net, and deregulated the economy. 

​​At the same time, the oligarchs who rose to power in the former Soviet republics looked to park their illicit money in western democracies, where the rule of law would protect their investments. Once invested in the United States, they favored the Republicans who focused on the protection of wealth rather than social services. For their part, Republican politicians focused on spreading capitalism rather than democracy, arguing that the two went hand in hand.

The financial deregulation that made the U.S. a good bet for oligarchs to launder money got a boost when, shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Congress passed the PATRIOT Act to address the threat of terrorism. The law took on money laundering and the illicit funding of terrorism, requiring financial institutions to inspect large sums of money passing through them. But the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) exempted many real estate deals from the new regulations. 

The United States became one of the money-laundering capitals of the world, with hundreds of billions of dollars laundered in the U.S. every year. 

In 2011 the international movement of illicit money led then–FBI director Robert Mueller to tell the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City that globalization and technology had changed the nature of organized crime. International enterprises, he said, “are running multi-national, multi-billion dollar schemes from start to finish…. They may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military…. These criminal enterprises are making billions of dollars from human trafficking, health care fraud, computer intrusions, and copyright infringement. They are cornering the market on natural gas, oil, and precious metals, and selling to the highest bidder…. These groups may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called ‘iron triangles’ of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat.”

In 2021, Congress addressed this threat by including the Corporate Transparency Act in the National Defense Authorization Act. It undercut shell companies and money laundering by requiring the owners of any company that is not otherwise overseen by the federal government (by filing taxes, for example, or through close regulation) to file with FinCEN a report identifying (by name, birth date, address, and an identifying number) each person associated with the company who either owns 25% or more of it or exercised substantial control over it. The measure also increased penalties for money laundering and streamlined cooperation between banks and foreign law enforcement authorities.

But that act wouldn’t take effect for another three years. 

Meanwhile, once in office, the Biden administration made fighting corruption a centerpiece of its attempt to shore up democracy both at home and abroad. In June 2021, Biden declared the fight against corruption a core U.S. national security interest. “Corruption threatens United States national security, economic equity, global anti-poverty and development efforts, and democracy itself,” he wrote. “But by effectively preventing and countering corruption and demonstrating the advantages of transparent and accountable governance, we can secure a critical advantage for the United States and other democracies.” 

In March 2023 the Treasury told Congress that “[m]oney laundering perpetrated by the Government of the Russian Federation (GOR), Russian [state-owned enterprises], Russian organized crime, and Russian elites poses a significant threat to the national security of the United States and the integrity of the international financial system,” and it outlined the ways in which it had been trying to combat that corruption. “In light of Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine,” it said, “we must redouble our efforts to prevent Russia from abusing the U.S. financial system to sustain its war and counter Russian sanctioned individuals and firms seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system.” 

The collapse of the USSR helped to undermine the Cold War democracy that opposed it. In the past 32 years we have torn ourselves apart as politicians adhering to an extreme ideology demonized their opponents. That demonization also helped to justify the deregulation of our economy and then the illicit money from the rising oligarchs it attracted, money that has corrupted our democratic system. 

But there are at least signs that the financial free-for-all might be changing. The three years are up, and the Corporate Transparency Act will take effect on January 1, 2024.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[tomorrowusa]

Ukraine is hitting Russia where it hurts – in its fossil fuel industry.

Ukrainian drones have attacked several oil refineries in Russia, hundreds of kilometres from the frontline in regions including Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Leningrad. The continuing attacks are part of a strategy to hurt Russia’s economy. The Ryazan oil refinery, Rosneft’s biggest refinery, was set ablaze, a regional governor said on Wednesday. It shut down two damaged primary oil refining units. Rosneft did not comment. The plant handles about 5.8% of Russia’s total refined crude, according to industry sources. A fire broke out at Norsi, Russia’s fourth-largest refinery, after a Ukrainian drone attack, Russian officials said on Tuesday. Its main crude distillation unit was damaged, which means that at least half of the refinery’s production is halted, according to industry sources. Norsi handles nearly 6% of Russia’s total refined crude. Before the latest drone attack, one of its two catalytic crackers had already been put out of action. The governor of the Leningrad region, Alexander Drozdenko, said a Ukrainian drone targeted the Kirishi refinery. It is one of the top two refineries in Russia, handling 6.4% of Russia’s capacity, according to industry sources. And the Novoshakhtinsk export oil refinery in Russia’s southern Rostov region had to suspend operations on Wednesday after a drone attack.

Russia's economy is about the same size as that of Italy which has maybe 40% as many people as Russia. And much of that economy is centered on fossil fuels. Putin and his oligarch buddies skim off graft to enrich themselves; those superyachts, palaces, and prime real estate properties abroad are all ultimately paid for by countries which import Russian oil and gas. Meanwhile, Russians outside the big cities live in poverty; imagine a 1920s standard of living but with censored internet and state TV.

Ukraine is doing the climate a big favor by indirectly encouraging importers of Russian fossil fuels to look for cleaner replacements.

Some other bits of good news for Ukraine...

EU agrees to €5 billion boost in Ukraine military aid

European Union member states agreed Wednesday to provide Ukraine with an additional  €5 billion ($5.5 billion) in military aid. Belgium, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, said ambassadors from the bloc's 27 nations had agreed "in principle" on the plan to support arms supplies to Kyiv in 2024.  The contribution of €5 billion will go on EU-managed fund called the European Peace Facility. The fund operates as a giant cashback scheme, giving EU members refunds for sending munitions to other countries. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called it a "powerful and timely demonstration of European unity."

White House announces $300 million military aid package for Ukraine

With new aid for Ukraine stalled in Congress since December, the White House on Tuesday announced it had cobbled together another $300 million in military assistance to use as a stopgap measure. "The package includes munitions and rounds to help Ukraine hold the line against Russia's brutal attacks for the next couple of weeks,” President Joe Biden said in a meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk at the White House, adding, "we must act before it literally is too late.” National security adviser Jake Sullivan detailed the package at White House briefing, saying that the aid comes as Ukraine "does not have enough ammunition to fire back." "So today, on behalf of President Biden, I'm announcing an emergency package of security assistance of $300 million worth of weapons and equipment to address some of Ukraine's pressing needs," Sullivan said.

French National Assembly approves bilateral security agreement with Ukraine

The 10-year security pact with Ukraine includes commitments by Paris to deliver more arms, train soldiers and send up to 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion) in military aid to Ukraine in 2024. Macron has also adopted a tougher stance towards Russia, urging Ukraine's allies to urgently do more. He also did not rule out the presence of Western troops in Ukraine which has created a backlash among some Ukrainian officials had told Reuters they were worried that a vote not overwhelmingly in favour of Kyiv would be negative symbolically and could hurt President Emmanuel Macron's efforts to ramp up his country's support in the coming months.

AOC says Democrats must take advantage of ‘razor-thin’ House margin after Ken Buck steps down

In an unexpected Tuesday evening announcement, Mr Buck — a Republican from Colorado — said he would leave Congress next Friday, rather than retiring at the end of his term as originally planned. Afterwards, Republicans will hold just 218 seats out of 435 in the House, leaving Democrats one step closer to clinching the majority. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York and member of the progressive Squad, told The Independent her party must take advantage of Mr Buck’s early departure. Ms Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats “have to make sure that that we see that do the best we can to navigate how razor-thin the situation is.”

That last item is rather interesting. Ken Buck, a never-Trump Republican, is stepping down early. His seat in a deep red district will be vacant until late June when a special election is likely to take place. His departure will leave the House GOP (for now) with 218 seats – the bare minimum for a majority. This will make it easier for Democrats to persuade several remaining anti-Putin Republicans to defy Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson's wishes and support President Biden's aid package for Ukraine.

[mariacallous]

Matt Gallagher’s new novel Daybreak, set amid the churning horror of Russia’s war against Ukraine, has been marketed as a love story. Yet it is ultimately a book less about romance than about the love of stories—and in particular, the stories we tell ourselves, and others, so that we can survive. Daybreak is a work of art, a gleaming, fanged nightmare of a book by a major American author who himself is an Army veteran.

Its hero, a U.S. veteran of the global war on terrorism named Luke “Pax” Paxton, ostensibly travels to Ukraine shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 to search for an ex-girlfriend named Svitlana. Pax appears to also be searching for absolution. His time as an Army infantryman has disassembled him, and he is unable to adjust to civilian life. His internal monologue is full of self-recrimination. He struggles to simply act normal in the company of civilians, let alone hold down a regular job. Clumsy in his speech and his emotions, fumbling, eager, and frequently angry, Pax has one North Star, which is his desire to be useful.

Many veterans have struggled to adjust to the civilian world in recent years, and a number of them have turned to Ukraine in order to feel useful once again. At least 50 Americans have so far been killed in Ukraine, and the overwhelming majority of them were veterans. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, U.S. veterans have volunteered to train Ukrainians, while others have organized donation drives and supply runs.

Some emerged as wasteful, scandalous figures—the inevitable consequence of the largest European conflict since World War II attracting its share of lowlifes—but the majority have put their lives on the line for a noble ideal, the chance to repel an obvious and perilous evil.

This evil is nothing new, of course. Ukraine has suffered from barbaric wars before, and those wars each created their own ghosts, leaving dark marks on the beautiful landscape. Even people who don’t believe in apparitions can recognize Ukraine as a profoundly haunted place, where the uncanny nature of armed conflict has seeped into the bones of the land, its history, and its society. Gallagher’s writing captures how rich and strange my native country is while layering the monstrousness of the new war on top.

“What … could be up there?” Pax wonders of the sky as an air raid siren blares, suddenly aware of the fact that while Americans controlled the sky in Afghanistan, the situation is vastly different in Ukraine. That sense of vulnerability, the sense of being skittering prey to missiles and killer drones and mortar shells, is unfamiliar to Americans, even many of those who served, but a reality for many people elsewhere.

In a macabre but satisfying way, I found Daybreak to closely match the night terrors I have suffered from since Russia invaded Ukraine, the result of long nights of staying on the phone with friends and relatives as the sky exploded above them. There is a loss of control there, the feeling of being trapped in a screaming vortex, even as you try, like Pax, to be useful.

A pivotal scene in Daybreak occurs at a gathering of Lviv society, comprising not the gangsters and oligarchs whom Americans too often associate with Ukraine but cultured people shocked by the arrival of full-scale war. Pax gets to tell an inspiring war story to the assembled, a story that is also a lie. But, as the narrator points out, “It was the kind of war story people wanted. Tenderness in devastation. It was the kind of war story people expected. Fellowship amidst ruin.”

The idea of merciful lies runs throughout the book. In light of how aid to Ukraine is hotly contested by slippery demagogues in the halls of U.S. power—not to mention how disastrously the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was executed—the political ramifications of these lies are almost unbearable to analyze.

Gallagher’s handling of Svitlana, the ex-girlfriend whom Pax seeks to protect, is particularly noteworthy. Far from the pliant sex kittens many American men hope to encounter in Ukraine, she is a strong-willed and prickly woman. Gallagher could’ve turned her strengths into another caricature—think a Ukrainian Valkyrie, a popular theme for memes and pageant costumes. But Svitlana’s inner world is also tumultuous and has to do with more than just the war. She has vulnerabilities and regrets. If she has a sword, it’s in her words, which can shatter or save a person.

Works by Western writers (including Russian Americans) on Ukraine are bound to come under heavy scrutiny at a time of upheaval, and Gallagher’s narrative is not going to be for everyone. Yet it is not a tourist’s narrative, nor is it exploitative. If you’ve ever tried to care for someone who has lost part of themselves to war, you might recognize those feelings, even if that war wasn’t Ukraine’s. That sense that someone has been scooped out by conflict, that they’re searching for something to replace a loss, is familiar to veterans and people who care about them across the world.

Russia’s war is senseless and genocidal, but in the shadow of horned death, people continue to tell stories—as Pax does, as Svitlana does. A lot of what is written in the ashes is lost, and Ukrainians’ stories should always come first. There is a privilege Americans have when it comes to narrating a foreign conflict, a privilege that isn’t always earned. Gallagher, however, has approached the topic of Americans in the context of Ukraine with humility and humanity. I can only hope Western politicians will be willing to do the same.

[majorasnightmare]

saw another dem/lib post that irritated me but most importantly made something click

i think for a lot of these people, the idea of voting is so intrinsically tied to the concept of preserving human rights that they miss the forest for the trees. like. in a democracy, it isnt supposed to be this overwhelmingly dire all the time. i think the idea of voting being a pleasant process that inspires no guilt regardless of what votes are cast or how or when is a concept utterly foreign to these people

so it bears repeating: democracy is not supposed to be like this. this is not democracy. you are supposed to directly, directly, contribute to policy making by virtue of your vote and not work through several appointed representatives whos opinions may differ wildly from yours and who can choose to straight up ignore you in favor of what benefits them. you voting for a tax increase on imported bread, for example, should meaningfully impact whether or not that tax increases and by what degree in a democracy

voting is not part of your birth control routine nor should it be

birth control is a resource you have an unalienable right to access and voting should not determine if you get to have it

voting determines the degree of tax money the state takes from the sale of birth control, if any, or if it even costs anything in the first place, as voted on by the needs of the community

a better future is so impossible to imagine that handling voting as the contextual tool it is feels like a personal attack on human rights to these people because thats how they conceptualize it. voting is not pleasant. voting is always stressful, and critical, and the idea of a vote not being meaningfully effective towards reaching an intended end goal feels anthithetical because voting feels like the only thing preventing human rights abuses

i promise you that isnt the case. voting will not save us because voting did not get us into this situation. the problem is deeper, the root cannot be cut at the ballot box, and you need to be able to conceptualize a better world where this cycle doesnt keep repeating, and then make it real on as small a scale as you can

this isnt a psyop or ahistorical. this is the reality of america being an oligarchal republic that calls itself a representational democracy that operates as a fascist state to the vast majority of the populace. fascism is not incoming, it is here, we cannot vote our way out of it, because voting is not a tool designed to stop fascism. you cannot unscrew the lid off your ps4 with a hammer.

voting in america determines how much weight a representative gives a particular topic or policy to determine if enacting those policies will meaningfully contribute to either their quality of life or their ability to stay in power, and voting is directly offset by lobbying who possess a stronger influence by virtue of manipulating capital. voting determines power at a local level, where its most powerful, but grows increasingly weaker the higher the scale and the more representatives between you and your intended official. thats why the electoral college handed trump the presidency in 2016 despite hilary clinton having the largest popular vote lead to date.

please stop blaming third party voters, non voters, people critical of the american government+biden+democrats+liberals on the internet, russian psyops+chinese psyops, etc for the fact that the american representative system of presidential election is functioning exactly as intended, and start dedicating that time and energy towards helping houseless people in your community find shelter from the heat and donating to aid palestinian aid freedom and resistance. change starts at home and home can be a single person. we can make a better world