#which is not to undermine the jobs of social media managers because that is an important job it’s just not the job i thought i was hired to

[easeupkid]

i was listening to a podcast the other day that kinda talked about how the pivot to video was like the plight of a lot of young journalists in the mid 2010s and i was thinking about it i’m going to say the plight of young journalists today is having to take jobs working as glorified social media managers

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Rosemary Westwood at NPR:

A group of high-level managers at the Louisiana Department of Health walked into a Nov. 14 meeting in Baton Rouge expecting to talk about outreach and community events. Instead, they were told by an assistant secretary in the department and another official that department leadership had a new policy: Advertising or otherwise promoting the COVID, influenza or mpox vaccines, an established practice there — and at most other public health entities in the U.S. — must stop. NPR has confirmed the policy was discussed at this meeting, and at two other meetings held within the department's Office of Public Health, on Oct. 3 and Nov. 21, through interviews with four employees at the Department of Health, which employs more than 6,500 people and is the state's largest agency.

According to the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear losing their jobs or other forms of retaliation, the policy would be implemented quietly and would not be put in writing. Staffers were also told that it applies to every aspect of the health department's work: Employees could not send out press releases, give interviews, hold vaccine events, give presentations or create social media posts encouraging the public to get the vaccines. They also could not put up signs at the department's clinics that COVID, flu or mpox vaccines were available on site. The new policy in Louisiana was implemented as some politicians have promoted false information about vaccines and as President-elect Donald Trump seeks to have anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. And some public health experts are concerned that if other states follow Louisiana, the U.S. could face rising levels of disease and further erosion of trust in the nation's public health infrastructure.

[...]

A blow to public health practice

Staff at Louisiana's health department fear the new policy undermines their efforts to protect the public, and violates the fundamental mission of public health: to prevent illness and disease by following the science.

[...]

Experts fear consequences of undermining trust in vaccine

Last year, 652 people in Louisiana died of COVID, including five children. Louisiana currently is tied with DC for the highest rate of flu in the U.S. In 2022 alone, flu killed 586 people in Louisiana. Every health department staff member, former staff member, public health official and vaccine expert contacted by NPR repeated the scientific consensus that vaccines are safe, effective, and essential for preventing illness, hospitalizations, and deaths.

[...]

Policy change follows new governor's election

Until becoming Louisiana governor in early 2024, Republican Jeff Landry served as the state's attorney general for eight years. During the pandemic, he criticized the state's COVID response and filed lawsuits over federal and state vaccine mandates. On Dec. 6, 2021, Attorney General Landry spoke at a state committee hearing against adding COVID to the childhood immunization schedule. At his side was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who presented false claims about COVID vaccines. This year the Republican-controlled legislature passed five bills — all signed by Gov. Landry — and two resolutions aimed at loosening vaccine requirements, limiting the power of public health authorities and sowing doubt about vaccine safety.

Gov. Landry also appointed Dr. Ralph Abraham, a family medicine doctor, to be the state's surgeon general. That position co-leads the Department of Health, and is tasked with crafting health policy that is then carried out by the departmental co-leader, the secretary. [...] Abraham said masking, lockdowns and vaccination requirements "were practically ineffective," that COVID vaccine adverse effects have been "suppressed," that "we don't know" whether blood from people who've been vaccinated is safe for donation and that "we hope and pray" COVID vaccines don't increase the risk miscarriages.

[...]

A slippery slope to future disease outbreaks

Experts told NPR they feared a policy that undermines COVID, flu and mpox vaccinations could have a spillover effect, reducing public trust in vaccinations overall, including those given to children to prevent a host of dangerous and deadly illnesses. "I believe that we will see measles cases. I believe we will see whooping cough cases. I believe we will likely see meningitis outbreaks," said Hood. In the Nov. 14 meeting, a staff member asked whether the ban on promoting vaccines applied to children's immunizations, but the answer was noncommittal, according to an employee with knowledge of the meeting's details. "My understanding was it's not clear to what extent we might be able to promote childhood vaccinations," the staff member said. (The Louisiana Department of Health's statement to NPR said the changes in policy and messaging do not apply to childhood immunizations.) Nationally, vaccination rates for serious childhood diseases have been falling in recent years, including in Louisiana.

[...]

The rise of public health officials promoting misinformation

Louisiana isn't the only state where public health officials have recently announced controversial decisions and repeated false or discredited health theories. Florida's surgeon general has made false claims about COVID vaccines, undermined school vaccine mandates for the measles and said local officials should stop adding fluoride to water supplies.

The consequences of anti-vaxxer extremism and anti-public health sentiments being normalized by Republicans: Louisiana bans the state's Department of Health from promoting COVID, flu, or mpox vaccines.

[how2fit]

There might be affiliate links on this page, which means we get a small commission of anything you buy. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Please do your own research before making any online purchase.Every employee has the power to be toxic at times. But when that one bad apple keeps on ruining things, dragging down team morale, souring the workplace, and making life a living hell for you, the other managers, and their colleagues, you have no choice but to deal with it.  You have to end things. But you may wonder, “How do I deal with a toxic employee?”  Surely, there are good ways to handle the bad apple, and then there are ways to worsen the situation.  You want the first option to increase job satisfaction and ensure the workplace environment doesn’t become hostile or toxic (like the rotten apple). Before you deal with a toxic employee, here are the signs to identify that they are toxic.  7 Signs You Have a Toxic Employee  It’s not always easy to spot a toxic employee since they don’t usually advertise that they are unhealthy or behave toxically. Plus, some toxic people are really good at hiding their true nature. They carry on as “normal,” playing the game of being a good employee until that one day when they snap or you see them for who they truly are.  These kinds of employees are often skilled manipulators, so chances are high that they have colleagues and even those in management wrapped around their fingers, making it even more challenging to see their real colors or as individuals whose behavior is toxic or that they are making the work environment a toxic place.  Here are the signs to watch out for that will help you identify a toxic employee:  An overall negative attitude  Negative Neds are harmful to their core, and nothing you do as an employer seems to make them happy. These toxic employees have a low job satisfaction rate and get angry quickly, meaning colleagues walk on eggshells around them. Their negativity also tends to spread.  Gossips create an “us versus them” work environment with the cliques they form. This quickly leads to conflict as Gossip Ginas uses their charismatic personalities to divide (by spreading gossip and rumors) rather than unite. Gossip mongers tend to cause trouble intentionally.  Never take responsibility  Toxic employees unwilling to take responsibility will always blame and backstab others. It’s never a No Responsibility Rina’s fault, so they play the classic victim card by complaining, causing problems (since they never help find solutions), and blaming others for their failings.  The clock watchers or Time Waster Watsons are employees who show up to work because they have to be there.  While physically present, they don’t spend much time working, instead engaging in “hobbies” like scrolling through social media, shopping online, chatting by the water cooler, or surfing the web. Or, they find other activities that waste company time without doing the work (or do as little of it as possible to maintain appearances).  Insubordination and sabotage These toxic employees (Troublemaking Teds) are all about undermining their colleagues and managers and doing everything they can to make the company look bad. Troublemaking Teds tend to tell tale about others, causing serious distrust at work. Bullying and harassment  Toxic employees can also be bullies and harass, intimidate, criticize, or demean their coworkers, clients, and superiors. Bully Bens have a demoralizing (if not downright devastating) effect in the workplace as they highlight the mistakes others make as examples of what not to do.  Unprofessional behavior  Employees who are toxic, like Disrespectful Dianas, Violent Vinnies, or Seductive Stans, also engage in other unprofessional behaviors. They use company communication systems like email and instant messaging platforms to share inappropriate jokes, memes, and snarky messages.  They also talk loudly on the phone, sharing personal and private details about their or another coworker's life.

They may use social media to share harmful things about the company. Other unprofessional behaviors a toxic employee exhibits include taking credit for someone else’s work, being aggressive (or even passive-aggressive), being absent from work a lot, being insensitive, being a jackass, chronic procrastinating, always making excuses, and being toxic positive.  7 Steps for How to Deal With a Toxic Employee  Managing toxic employees is challenging because it creates a hostile work environment for everyone. Their toxicity is like a contagious disease that spreads either quickly or slowly, depending on how toxic the individual is and how they behave. It also costs the company money in terms of loss of revenue and increased employee turnover (and more).  Toxic employees are found in traditional workplaces and remote job settings, but how do you effectively deal with this problematic person who won’t take responsibility for their actions, who doesn't play nice with others, and who makes the workplace unbearable for everyone else?  It would be best to identify a toxic applicant before you hire them. Unfortunately, the signs that a person may be toxic in the workplace may be impossible to spot on their résumé. While there may be signs that they are toxic during the interview process, you often only realize or learn how negatively they behave once they are hired and comfortable in their position at the company.  If an applicant shows signs of being toxic, don’t hire them, no matter how brilliant they may seem. But if you do hire someone and they turn out to be toxic …  Here are the best steps to help you deal with a toxic employee:  1. Gather Information  The first step is to prepare, gather information, and document evidence. You need to make sure the toxic employee is indeed (and continuously) toxic and not just having a bad day or week (because of unusual circumstances, such as the death of a parent). Plus, most toxic employees may not realize that they are behaving in a toxic way. If they are skilled manipulators, they’ll deflect and deny it. Or, they’ll turn the tables and blame others.  Being prepared also helps ensure that when you talk to the employee about their toxic behavior, it doesn’t turn into a “he said, she said” tennis match. It also looks highly unprofessional if you say, “So, I heard about your stinky attitude and how you are spreading rumors.” They’ll disregard you, asking for proof.  You want to have your facts straight with the evidence to prove your point. You need to gather specifics and the details thereof (and you’ll use this information when you talk to the employee).  The “Golden Rule” that human resources follow will help you here. Document your investigation, making note of specific incidents, the discussion you’ll have with the employee, and what happens afterward.  The information-gathering session will also help you decide whether the employee is worth keeping or should be fired.  3. Prepare a Feedforward Plan  Marshall Goldsmith, a business educator and coach, recommends creating a feedforward plan when dealing with a toxic employee. Managers generally don’t like giving feedback, and employees don’t like getting feedback (especially when it isn’t consistent with how they see themselves).  Feedforward, the opposite of feedback, means addressing actionable ways a toxic employee can tackle negative behaviors. So you don’t look back and dwell on the past (which is what you do when you give feedback); instead, you work with the employee to be better in the future.  You want an expansive, dynamic plan that’s focused on the opportunities the future may bring since giving feedback is limited and static.  Giving feedforward to your toxic employee means that you share ideas about how they can achieve their goals (maybe they are gunning for a promotion?), which is more productive, effective, and efficient. The employee is less likely to take the feedforward personally since they’ll likely listen to you attentively. 

3. Schedule and Have a Talk with the Toxic Employee  Talking with the employee won’t be easy, and you may want to combine feedback with a feedforward approach, much like the traditional sandwich method (sharing at least two good things, such as compliments or praise, that’s sandwiched by one negative thing, like constructive criticism).  But you need to have “the talk,” so schedule a one-on-one with the toxic employee. Send them a meeting invite and ensure your chosen location is private and free from distractions.  No good will come if you choose to chastise or talk with the employee out in the open where others can hear. You also need to be calm, direct, diplomatic, assertive, and prepared to deal with them, so run various scenarios through your mind and note what you want to discuss so you aren’t caught off-guard.  Create a safe space to listen to your employees and give feedback or feedforward.  Use the specifics you uncovered during your fact-finding mission, talk about what happened as factually and emotionlessly as possible, and focus on their behavior, not who they are as a person. Share or collaborate on a feedforward plan to give the toxic employee reason or motivation to improve their past behavior.  Sometimes, you need to set benchmarks (aka deadlines) by which their behavior needs to improve. For example, you can say something like, “There will be a performance review if your behavior on XYZ doesn’t improve in 30 days.”  Also, set boundaries with the employee so they don’t approach and confront their coworkers, furthering the toxicity. 4. Follow Through & Create a Plan for the Next Steps  You can’t just think you’ve talked to the employee, put their file away, and that’s it. You need to follow up if you want sustainable improvement in how the employee behaves.  After discussing with your toxic employee, you must follow through and address the consequences. So, create a plan for the next steps.  If you agree there will be a performance review in a month and they haven’t turned their negative and unprofessional behavior around, do the review. If you decided on certain milestones in a feedforward plan, stick with those—provided their behavior isn’t toxic.  Part of following through is monitoring their progress. You can do this via colleague feedback, looking at productivity reports, and even self-monitoring. Also, schedule regular check-in meetings so you can constantly contact the toxic employee to listen, give feedback and feedforward, and keep your finger on the situation.  Recognize any improvements they make and address failure to do so.  5. Address the Root Causes of the Toxic Behavior Part of dealing with a toxic employee is addressing the root causes of their bad workplace behavior. The employee may not realize that their toxic attitude has such a negative effect on the company.  In this case, you may need to ask about personal challenges they are dealing with and offer support. This may mean that the toxic employee needs to go for mandated counseling, therapy, or anger management to help them address their behavior. It could also mean they need coaching, but only if they are ready to embrace opportunity and change their behavior.  Besides just looking at the toxic employee, you also need to see the bigger picture.  Consider the possibility that the work culture is toxic, causing the employee (and possibly others) to behave negatively.  Could it be peer pressure, and you don’t just have a bad apple but a whole basket of bad apples causing the toxicity at your workplace?  And what about the employee’s manager or direct boss? Can they be the source of toxicity and other negative behaviors like gaslighting?  Finding the root causes of toxic behavior isn’t easy, but it is a must to help you deal with one or more toxic employees. It’s only when you know and understand the why behind the toxicity that you can create an action plan to root it out.  6. Be Proactive and Creative in a Supportive Work Environment  The

next step when dealing with a toxic employee is being proactive and creating a supportive and transparent work environment. A supportive work culture can help counter negativity so the toxic employee’s behavior doesn’t drag down your other employees.  You may need to limit the time the toxic employee spends with others, so isolate the “infection vector” (aka the toxic employee) as much as possible. Even suggesting they take some time off can help break the cycle of toxicity. Other ways to build a positive and supportive workplace are to foster open communication, give your employees the resources they need to do their jobs well and to succeed, and encourage positive reinforcement.  Find ways to engage your workforce in decision-making, giving them ownership and some control. Eliminate unrealistic demands, excessive overtime, and discrimination to help prevent chronic stress.  Create mindfulness spaces where your employees can chill and work on their mental health and feel encouraged to do so.  Work with leadership to get their buy-in. They need to set examples if they truly want their work environment to be where employees feel seen, heard, and supported and to help eliminate toxicity.  7. Make the Hard Decision and Cut Ties  The last resort option is to cut ties with the toxic employee, especially if they aren’t showing up or making an effort to change their behavior.  Some people are just hell-bent on destroying and taking (never giving), and it’s no use keeping such an employee around. Sure, they may be geniuses in their field, but considering how much they are costing the company, it most likely isn’t worth keeping this difficult person around.  A study by Harvard Business Review found that at least 4% of employees with toxic behavior engaged in that behavior for fun. If that’s the case with your toxic employee, no amount of feedforward, counseling, or support will help.  Get informed about what your employees' employment contracts stipulate as fireable offenses and what type of warnings are needed so the process of letting an employee go can be as quiet and without further drama as possible. Legal implications can also cause serious ramifications if you don’t get informed before taking steps. They aren’t too valuable to keep around. No employee is. Remember, every employee is replaceable.  In extreme cases, acting swiftly and mitigating the damage is in your (company’s) best interest. Let the toxic employee go and focus on rebuilding a company culture that is inclusive, productive, and supportive.  Final Thoughts on How to Deal with Toxic Employee  No one likes having a toxic employee around. They ruin the whole work experience, poisoning the workplace with negativity and unprofessional behavior.  Managers must deal with toxic employees. While the quick (and sometimes most effortless) solution is to fire the person on the spot, it is recommended to gather information and evidence first. Then, work on a plan that includes feedforward, scheduling a private talk with the toxic employee, and following through on what was discussed while keeping an eye on the person and their behavior.  You also want to immunize your employees against toxicity by establishing a supportive work culture.  Are you still wondering if your workplace is toxic? Here are 15 signs that you are in a toxic work environment or culture. And if you need to get out, follow these steps to leave a toxic work environment. And if you're looking for more articles about dealing with toxic people, be sure to check out these blog posts: Finally, if you want to identify YOUR personality type, then take one of these 11 personality tests to better understand what makes you tick. !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments); if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script',

'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '531600042335625'); fbq('track', 'PageView');

[queeranarchism]

Thank you. I think I made the wrong assumptions because this started with the word industrialization, which mostly took place in the 18th, 19th and early 20th century, while the 'modern' that you're talking about is more about digitalization. That makes a lot of sense.

I'd say that your emotions - a lot of which I share - are backed up by facts in the sense that a lot of things have gotten measurably worse in the last three decades. Less job security, less access to housing, the destruction of our climate, the rise of fascism, increasing backlash against all the rights that women and minorities have fought for in the last century.

Limiting myself to the US and north-west Europe, I'd trace a lot of that back to stuff like:

The erosion of the power of unions, the principle of solidarity and the welfare system by politicians like Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s.

The embrace of capitalism by much the parliamentary 'left' (Labour, the Democrats, etc) since the 1990s, leaving no real push-back against capitalism and tipping the political balance in favor of an ever more right-wing shift.

The subsequent rise of the far right which started in the 1990s, picked up pace after 2001 and has managed to achieve positions of power in the last decade. That far right has done what it always does to get into power: spread disinformation, question reality, scapegoat, attack minorities, etc.

Capitalists using this ever more right wing political landscape to concentrate more and more wealth and push for an ever more precarious and insecure workforce.

I would situate these problems mainly in the economic system of capitalism and the political dominance of capitalist political parties. I wouldn't call them problems of modernity and I don't even think digitalization has much to do with them. Far right political groups were very good at spreading propaganda and undermining people's belief in measurable reality long before social media. Without social media they'd have one less tool in their hands, but we'd still have Trump and conspiracy theorists and far right antivaxers, etc.

In fact, I'd say that the far right benefits from the widespread vibe that modernity is to blame for the misery that people are feeling. Vibes like 'we used to work the soil and trusted our neighbours' are easily steered to the right and, they're selling the idea of a return to a better time. Which is part of why I'm always tempted to peel back the idea that there is a better past to return to.

A thing I love to do is telling prepper dudes that one of my disaster readiness skills is making stuffed animals. They never get it. Like, my dude, when things get very bad and we're all sharing overcrowded shelters, you're gonna want the power to comfort children. Trust me.

[seashellsoldier]

“The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession” by Alexandra Robbins (2023)

As one elementary school teacher aptly summarized, “Politics, greed, and mismanagement have made [teaching] incompatible with physical and mental health” (p. 90, Libby).

Well, one more disheartening report on how our society’s pillars are crumbling, and it couldn’t be more infuriating. Education is the bedrock of any advanced society; well, education and overall health, and good health is attained through solid education. The United States of Hypocrisy is failing dramatically at both of these keystones, and the parallelisms are flagrant.

”Between 2020 and 2022, there was a marked increase in parents harassing, intimidating, and threatening school staff; in several states, parents physically assaulted teachers because they were upset about school mask policies even during virus surges. NBC News reported in 2021, ‘The teacher is now viewed by a small, loud contingent not as a public servant but as a public enemy.’ The following spring, FOX News host Tucker Carlson said that teachers should be ‘beaten up’—and encouraged viewers to ‘thrash the teacher’” (p. 68, Libby).

This mirrors how certain demographics in America have likewise railed against science and healthcare, and just about everything else that scares them. Now, look at education attainment within the United States (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html). It is terribly sad, but terribly telling too.

Any wonder such a drastic shift has happened in such a short period of time with a toddler tyrant and his sycophants in the White House, entire news networks pandering and puppeteering and propagandizing their virulent misinformation and weaponized disinformation, and global social media-empires profiting off such clickbait bs, to truly influence too many towards an undereducated and incredibly gullible Idiocracy, just so the entitled can reap all the rewards from it while the mindless mobs fight to hold onto xenophobic-based White Christian Nationalism (despite all the data saying it’s the absolute minority in this country now)? All the screeching Karens in Moms For Liberty exemplify this brainwashed desperation, and the GOP couldn’t work harder at watering these poisonous weeds at every opportunity. Heck, the GOP fights against anything that would best benefit the middle and lower classes, seemingly hell-bent on doing everything possible to reinforce systemic poverty. I wonder why. Now, teachers and librarians are under attack, verbally and physically, from emotionally stunted adults who have lost the skills required for good parenting, wanting instant gratification through their bullying and tantrums. The American Psychological Association (APA) has been tracking this well (https://www.apa.org/education-career/k12/violence-educators.pdf), which of course NPR cares about too (https://www.npr.org/2022/03/17/1087137571/school-violence-teachers-covid).

I’ve written this so many times, but the priorities of this country are painfully delusive. Affordable health care and quality education SHOULD BE foundational rights for every single person, and free of charge. Teachers and police officers SHOULD BE the highest trained and best paid public servants on every budget. This is what creates an educated (dare I say “enlightened”), multicultural, vibrant and empathetic, and safe-for-all society. We need to trust our teachers; they are some of the most educated people in society, having to be experts in child development, social-emotional development, curriculum development and assessment, as well as unpaid tutors, parent liaisons, book buyers, charity workers, therapists, social workers, crisis managers, security staff, and human shields. Tell me you do more at whatever job you currently have.

Robbins gives some painfully clear examples of how both “the system” itself, and society at large, work to undermine education in America, save for the lily-white and wealthy enclaves and their for-profit charter school islands (even if teachers form cliques of their own, and fall into patterns of childish bullying, petty rumormongering, and mindless sabotage upon their colleagues). Systemic racism is baked into every fiber of this nation, and education is historically a glaring fault line. Read Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond for kicks, and look at Florida for the reactionary, clownish insanity of today (and watch as the state slowly, ignorantly allows the sea to reclaim the peninsula in a constantly warming world).

From Columbine High to Robb Elementary, nothing has been done to stop mass murder in schools except to make teachers frontline shields for your children. All of this is a glaring national crisis that reaches the heart of what a nation is.

So: 1. We have a seriously undereducated populace . . . 2. The deep-rooted problems with tech addiction and an unregulated internet erode an undereducated society in all-too apparent ways . . . 3. Parenting, in so many ways for so many children, has changed over the past three generations to be another symptom of a deteriorating society . . . 4. And small-minded, primitive-brained people suck.

For two semesters, I was a counseling intern at an outpatient day-treatment center for kids and teens whose schools deemed them unfit due to behavioral issues. This was a partnership with the county school district, and we had an inpatient facility too. Individual, group, and family sessions were mixed into their weekly coursework, which we continued through licensed educators. Our goal was to help these kids, and their families, find some equilibrium with diagnosed conditions and help them reintegrate back to their home schools. This was, without a doubt, the most rewarding work I’ve ever done. While some conditions are biological or genetic in origin, all too many were direct products of toxic family dynamics. It takes a village to help a child; it takes a village to help a family help their child. Teachers, therapists, child psychologists, a psychiatrist, and all the supporting staff all worked as that village for every single kid. The emotionally, if not physically abandoned, the sexually molested, the physically abused, the psychologically tormented, and the otherwise traumatized were cared for through tears and screams and tantrums of furious energy, but they ultimately knew they were safe and protected, at least for eight hours each day. This is what every school should look like, working as interdisciplinary teams to help every child succeed and thrive. Every child should be given access to every resource imaginable in the wealthiest nation in human history. The future depends upon such a seismic shift in societal priorities.

Robbins also highlights the existential issues alongside viable solutions, which she apparently shared with the Next Big Idea Club (https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/teachers-year-inside-americas-vulnerable-important-profession-bookbite/41045/). Solutions are very possible with enough public willpower. We can dynamically transform society in radical ways that can empower the lower classes to thrive with the resources, infrastructure, and opportunities to do so. Ensuring teaching professions are “worth their weight in gold” is a crucial first step. This means giving them the respect and trust they deserve, safe working environments, fair and effective protections, collective bargaining, more staffing, loan forgiveness, supply-rich classes and small class sizes, well-defined and realistic job descriptions, and of course well-paid salaries with encouraging incentives. It takes a certain type of person to be a good teacher; it takes a system that nurtures those good people to pursue education as a life-long career. Again, this is the bedrock of a modern society.

Helping all struggling parents is a future-focused second step that benefits society holistically.

Let the Lost Cause racists scream into the ether, since our bought-out politicians can’t do anything about regulating and policing up the internet, AI, autonomous weapons, and whatever the whole thing evolves into (it will happen sooner than we realize). However, in the meantime, our police forces need the power and motivation to track, prosecute, and punish every ignoramus who bullies, assaults, and casts death threats at everything they don’t like, and protect our public servants from the slathering public, from brick-throwing dads to AR-15-toting teens. (I do realize the bind this puts me in: power to the people, but only those who behave themselves like the adults they’re supposed to be.) Behaviors have consequences, and we need to start policing up such behaviors, collectively. Online public shaming doesn’t seem to affect enough of them, and oftentimes they’re simply parroting their elected officials and media darlings. Adults who lack emotional intelligence will surely produce children doing likewise. The “moral majority” have turned into rabid dogs since the 1960s, and classrooms filled with gunned-down kids don’t phase them one bit. Instead of harassing teachers, they should be parenting their children and grandchildren, helping them prepare for a highly uncertain future. Education will help them. It takes a village, right?

We need to move forward, overturn the priorities of this country, and rebuild our infrastructure from the ground skyward. Education, health care, labor, and pensions. However, this country looks to be a sinking ship captained by selfish, deluded morons voted into office by equally selfish, deluded, and poorly educated idiots. Idiocracy, here we come as climate change falls like a hammer on humanity.

Thank you, Public Library System, for having this title available; and, thank you tenfold, to all the teachers who challenged, encouraged, supported, and enlightened me along the way.

[venhedish]

On the importance of platonic love: fanon romance vs. canon relationship dynamics in Supernatural.

Hey I’ve seen some posts going around about this little niggle, and I don’t want to say I’m exceptionally qualified to talk about it, but I have been an active participant (and celebrant) of relationship anarchy for most of my adult life and I also practice non-monogamy, though that’s far less relevant to what I’m gonna be talking about here.

This applies to all fandoms where people are shipped together and obviously have a connection but are never officially made canon, but since spn is my shit rn and a lot of this particular flavor of discourse seems to be centered around Sam and Dean’s relationship (which I’m also slightly maybe embarrassingly obsessed with?), I thought that’s what I’d focus on.

Basically what I want to say is that there’s nothing wrong with pairing characters together romantically in your fanfictions and headcanons (hello! im a big gay wincest/destiel/wincestiel multi-shipper, myself!), but arguing that Wincest (and Destiel to a lesser extent) went/was always canon really, really undermines the importance of non-romantic long-term relationship representation in popular media. I mean, seriously, how fucking cool is it that Sam and Dean are canonically soulmates and also brothers and also ride-or-die-best-friends? There isn’t much precedent in TV for the kind of complicated, blurred-lines dynamic that these dudes share, and minimizing it to they fuck or they’re just brothers really diminishes one of the best Right Things™ the show managed to accomplish. The same can be said for Dean and Castiel’s relationship, too. 

I think we as fans can do a better job of celebrating non-romantic canon relationships while also still shipping them together in fanon spaces. There’s a problem our communities seem to face where we have a really hard time distinguishing where the line is between The Written Word and What My Heart Wants, and both of those things are totally good and valid! But—here’s the part that I see people struggle with—you can appreciate both at the same time. In my headcanon, Sam and Dean fuck because I have a deep desire for complicated, all-consuming romance and I want to turn any two characters with chemistry into a thing. But as it pertains to my real life and the brain I reserve for fandom meta and social-justicey-intersectionality-ish-issues of representation and breaking from hetero-normative standards, I want to see more varied and sundry takes on the non-traditional family unit, on what it means to be queer platonic with your brother, on loving and cherishing your angel best friend more than society typically considers acceptable but without having the expectation of more.

This is a lot. But I just want to celebrate that we got to watch a television show on thee CW network buck societal relationship norms for fifteen years!!! Despite its failings in like, every other area of representation, this one is a big win from me and it’s just really cool and good so thanks for listening. I love you. Bye.

[amandajeanwrites]

The End of an Era

Seven years ago, yes count those, SEVEN years ago, in late 2014, at the peak of internet fashion hauls and makeup tutorials, during the rise of YouTube and Pinterest and Tumblr, I moved from podunk Montana to the big urban areas in and around Portland, Oregon. Portlandia was airing, hipsters were growing mustaches and wearing plaid on a global scale, and I was ready to drink craft beer and breathe in as much pine scent as I could muster. 

I wanted to be a Blogger or a Vlogger. I wanted to talk about travel, but also film, but also also makeup and fashion because I was growing into my fashionista-ness. I wanted to infiltrate little boutiques and hold events and start social media campaigns, you know, really get ahead of the curve. So my first(ish) job when I moved out here was working as a sales associate for a tiny boutique.

Now, this boutique was a chain based in Austin or Houston or something, so I wasn’t going to head their social media anytime soon, and I was just working as a lowly sales associate at minimum wage, and I’m pretty sure I only worked about twenty hours to start out, but I had confidence in myself and my abilities to grow up and out.

God, I remember during my interview, I wore this NEON FLORAL swing dress that I’d bought in Portland with my Mom that July, paired with a neon sports bra that matched the colors in the dress, all topped off with a God awful cobalt blue cropped cardigan and probably some glitter-embellished shoes. For those of you who have grown to love and appreciate my new sense of style (emo-chic), you’ll understand how mind-boggling that would have been. Oh God, I probably also had matching neon lipstick and eyeliner or something.

The point is, I was young and adorable and confident in my skin and my outfit decisions. I remember panicking throughout the interview, noticing bright colors on the racks of the stock room over the manager’s head and just talking about how much I loved color… the ENTIRE interview. It’s honestly a miracle she hired me.

The reason I’m talking about this now, and the reason it’s all come surging back into my memory so damn vividly, is because Sean and I were walking through that little shopping center over the weekend (the entire mall has been and always will be one of my favorite places in my area), and we walked by this little boutique to see it’s Closing. We hopped in and bought four pairs of earrings as a last donation to the cause, and I immediately felt bitter sweet and melancholy and nostalgic for everything I learned and did there.

I talk about my outfits, my prospects at that time in my life, to reflect on just how much I’ve grown. I was so young, on the edge of 23, and I moved away from home for the very first time. I dragged my boyfriend along with me, and we overstayed our welcome at my Grandma’s. I actually remember driving the 40 minutes to work and 40 minutes back in the middle of the night, fog coating the road and my car, cranking One Direction’s Four album. (A premonition that Zayn was leaving, don’t we think!?)

I was experimenting with a social media presence, with blogging, with fashion and makeup, absorbing everything I could. I explored Portland and the surrounding areas. We went to the coast constantly. I just wanted to get out and see the world, be whoever I didn’t think I could back home. I was making new friends and trying to figure out who I was without college or Musicals or the country western bars or Perkins.

The biggest issues I had were suburban Moms from Lake Oswego that wheeled strollers through our claustrophobic boutique, knocking breakables off the gift table and then scoffing at us before they left. I spent hours irritated with my boss for being a controlling 25-year-old (an actual child). I clung to the drama of my past, not understanding how to be without thinking of how much my hometown had “wronged me”. Dear God, I was dramatic. 

I had prejudices, against suburban Moms! And against sex workers and against hipsters and against Big City people that didn’t understand Little City people and against Little City people that didn’t understand me. 

I talked too much and didn’t work hard. My only real memories of actual work from that boutique were untangling the God damn necklaces, which TRUST me was an 8 hour task. Mainly, though, we dusted the room for the 40th time and gossiped about senseless things like boyfriends that wouldn’t hurry up and propose already! (Sean did two and a half years later.)

I met my best friend there, unexpectedly. I remember meeting her and thinking she was way too cool for me. She’s stunning, hip, knows how to style a French tuck, and she seemed to rule the boutique in a way that I couldn’t ever match. The actual manager hated it too, always trying to undermine her to appear superior. None of us could live up to the grace and beauty that was Rochelle. 

We bonded over our hatred for retail and our love for One Direction and YouTube and conspiracy theories, and I’m so so glad we did. I also met at least three of my other best friends as an extension, and if any of you are reading this, I love you all. 

I took up writing again in 2014. First, little blog pieces, like I mentioned before. I wrote about my favorite products and all the places I wanted to visit in Oregon (some of them, I still haven’t crossed off my list. Sean? Get the car!). But then, something in me whispered that I needed to try creative writing again. I don’t think I’d written a story for years, not since freshman year of college when I’d write dramatic love stories about the boys I had crushes on. (Do you remember that, Aubrie? So embarrassing!) 

So I sat down, the day after Christmas, at my grandma’s countertop, and I decided to start writing a tiny piece of fiction every single day for a year. That was my goal, just a year. Until I couldn’t stop. I think I did just over 550 days, and even then, I never thought that someday I’d call myself a “writer”. I was still working retail, planning on social media management and fashion blogging, at a different boutique and a different stage in my life. But that’s a story for another time. 

I guess the point of all this, the reminiscing and nostalgia, is that if I could go back and pay that girl a visit, walk into that store and help her untangle those necklaces, I’d tell her her colored mascara is fierce and that she should keep at it. I’d tell her that someday, she would laugh at all of the drama from back home. I’d tell her that she’d move on to bigger and better jobs, and she’d kick ass at them until she realized her true calling. I’d tell her to keep writing because nothing will make her happier. I’d tell her to buy less furniture, because she’s going to be in that apartment too damn long. 

But mostly, I’d tell her that time moves on and people change and interests change and the weather changes, so just have a total blast with everything you’re doing right now, in the moment. I want to look back in another 7 years with twice the amount of fondness, knowing that I was struggling with silly, minute qualms that won’t matter then. Knowing how much I’ve grown and learned and shaped, I can’t wait to see how much I’ll grow and learn and shape in the future. 

Although, I do hope, in 7 years, I’m still wearing strictly black and white. Hahaha! 

What were you wearing in 2014? It’s important I know.

Thank you so much for sticking around all of these years and putting up with me and supporting me. And thank you, as always, for reading xo

[hobbitkiller]

She-Ra, Supergirl, and Tangled: A Tale of Three Female Relationships: Part 3

*SPOILER WARNING FOR SHE-RA, SUPERGIRL, AND TANGLED: THE SERIES*

Previously on “A Tale of Three Female Relationships” AKA HobbitKiller clearly misses grad school but not enough to find secondary sources for a multi-part tublr. post (or thoroughly proofread):

In Part 2, I discussed the impact narcissistic mother figures, resentment for chosen ones, and repressing emotions has had on three female relationships in three different series: Adora and Catra from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Lena and Kara from Supergirl, and Rapunzel and Cassandra from Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure.

These posts are a deep dive into where these relationships went wrong and will eventually culminate in a discussion of what these relationships say about the portrayal of female characters and female relationships in media.

For today’s installment, I will be covering two subjects: Blond Bulldozers and I Don’t Care (I Ship It). WARNING: This one gets reallllllly long. Like, possibly multiple sittings.

PART VI: BLOND BULLDOZERS

In my first post in this series, I jokingly mentioned that one half in all three of these relationships is a superpowered blonde who saves the world.

There are of course many implications in the fact that, though all three of these shows strive for increased diversity compared to their source material (It is also interesting that these are all shows based on pre-existing franchises), the main character continues to be a fair-skinned blond woman. 

That’s mostly a matter to be discussed another day, but I do find it interesting that all of these relationships feature one blond and one not-blond. Lena and Cassandra have black hair, and Catra is...well...a cat-person. Beyond that, the blond is not only the hero, but is typically depicted as morally superior and more righteous. Kara, AKA Supergirl, was literally declared the “Paragon of Hope” in the latest CW crossover, Crisis on Infinite Earths. That title could just as easily have gone to Rapunzel whose chief characteristics are her optimism, desire to see others achieve their dreams, and belief that everyone gets a second chance no matter their criminal past and exploits (seriously, everyone in Corona--the name of the kingdom unfortunately for right now--gets one total pardon as long as they’re sorry even if the tried to kill multiple people). Adora is a little less cotton-candy that Kara or Rapunzel. She has the same moral righteousness, but actually has more of an edge to her than many of her friends due to her upbringing as a child soldier. Still, all three blondes are meant, for the most part, to be the moral center of their shows.

But, the thing is, when I look at these relationships, I can’t help but think of another popular blonde/not blonde friendship that went wrong:

Ahhh, Wicked, the prototypical female friendship story for so many of us. Wicked aims to take this classic dynamic of the morally pure blond protagonist and their dark-haired frienemy and turn it a bit on its head. Throughout the musical, Glinda is treated as pure, superior, and good because she is flattering and pretty. In reality, Glinda is often selfish and lacks the courage to stand up to people and systems she believes are wrong. Elphaba, on the other hand, is treated like an outcast because of her green skin and social awkwardness. Yet, for most of the musical, she is the one with the moral righteousness. She is labeled “wicked” by those in power for challenging them and standing up to them.

We’ll discuss Wicked more in the finale of this multi-part post.

For now, I’d like to contrast that relationship to the three being analyzed right now. None of these three shows goes as far as Wicked did to undermine this trope of the perfect blond versus the darker brunette. This makes sense as none of the three properties is seeking to deconstruct their source material or turn it on its head in the way Wicked aims to do so for the Wizard of Oz (the movie more than anything else). They seek to update and diversify certain aspects to be sure (someone heard loud and clear the criticism that there are no people of color in Tangled), but not to challenge them.

That being said, each show does try to layer in flaws in their blond protagonists approach to relationships. These flaws tend to be more subtle than those of the people around them, perhaps to protect said blondes from becoming too unlikeable, but they are clearly there.

In the last post, I talked a lot about the resentment of the non-blondes in these relationships and how that helped lead to the relationships falling apart. Those characters are also much more the aggressors in said relationships and are much more set on taking down the other party.

However, the blondes in each relationship are not without blame for it falling apart.

In the previous post, I discussed how being friends of a so-called “chosen one” or “golden child” can breed resentment. I also mentioned that raising someone as a “golden child” is its own form of abuse. It creates a level of unrealistic expectations to always be perfect and responsible. It can be the same for a “chosen one.”

Adora, Kara, and Rapunzel all feel a tremendous amount of responsibility as the “saviors” of their respective worlds. This manifests itself in a need to constantly “fix” everyone else’s problems. Adora frequently describes her need to fix whatever goes wrong in the Rebellion. Kara feels it’s her job to fix things so much that she contacted her former boss’s estranged son behind her back to try to reconnect them. Rapunzel frequently becomes involved in the personal lives of her friends for the sake of fixing their problems.

To an extent, this is a good quality. All three of our blond saviors have good hearts and don’t want to see anyone else suffer, partially because all of them have suffered their own childhood traumas from being raised as a child soldier to witnessing one’s entire planet and species destroyed to being held prisoner for 18 years.

However, as the title of this section suggests, all three of these characters tend to take a bulldozer approach to their involvement with their loved ones’ lives. This creates tension in many of their relationships, not just those discussed in these posts. Adora’s attempts to help her friend Glimmer after Glimmer becomes queen come off as controlling and as though Adora doesn’t respect Glimmer’s position of authority. Kara, in addition to the incident with her boss’s son, had also tried to control the life of another alien (and eventual boyfriend), Mon El as well as did things like break into her sister’s apartment when she was sad. Rapunzel promises to fix everyone’s problems, which leads to friends feeling betrayed when she can’t follow through. She also frequently intrudes in Cassandra’s life and plans.

One of the most threatening things for people like Catra, Lena, or Cassandra is to feel as though they do not have control over their lives. When you already have trust issues, feeling like someone else is trying to control you can feel like you’re being trapped. Control is particularly important to Lena. In many ways, she has the same feelings of responsibility as Kara. Like Kara, Lena, having been raised by one of the most powerful and influential families on the planet, feels a sense of responsibility to be a world leader. She feels that even more keenly in light of the villainous actions of her mother and brother--that she has to restore honor to the family name. As discussed in the previous post, this feeling in Lena manifests itself in her actions towards her friends through buying them things or trying to solve problems for them such as buying Kara’s and James’s place of work, Catco, to save it from being purchased by a scumbag.

This need to take back control of her life and legacy, to me, is why Lena reacts so drastically to discovering that Kara is Supergirl. Being mad at Kara for keeping secrets is, frankly, hypocritical on several counts. Not only does Lena keep many, many secrets from Kara throughout the show, but she is also fine with the fact that Alex, Kara’s sister, never told Lena explicitly that she was an agent of the Department of Extranormal Operations (DEO). Of course, the reason why Lena wasn’t mad at Alex is because Lena had already known who Alex was, thus giving her power and control in that relationship. Finding out that her friend had successfully hidden her identity for years and had been influencing events without Lena’s knowledge took away the control Lena felt she had over that relationship.

Cassandra also feels a keen lack of control over her life and her relationship with Rapunzel due to the fact that Rapunzel is both her monarch and direct employer. Cassandra serves Rapunzel and that is the first avenue through which they formed a relationship. Early in their relationship, Cassandra resented Rapunzel’s attempts to become friends and said the chance of a Lady in Waiting and a princess becoming friends was a million to one. Rapunzel, by nature of being “irrepressible” (as her friends call her), manages to worm her way into Cassandra’s heart to the point that Cassandra almost forgets that she and Rapunzel are not equals.

What I find interesting about both Cassandra and Lena is that they both, in some ways, considered themselves the protectors of their naive blond friends. While it’s true that Cassandra always knew her station was below Rapunzel, part of her job early on was teaching Rapunzel how to be a member of the court--what to do, when to curtsy, who was who, etc. In fact, Rapunzel had so little exposure to the outside world, Cass was partly responsibly for teaching her how to interact socially in general. There’s also the added factor that Cassandra is 4 years older than Rapunzel, which can seem like a lot at their ages. Lena, as previously discussed, saw herself as a major figure in shaping the future of the world. She went out of her way to help Kara by buying Catco and tried to protect Kara if they were ever in physical danger together.

Both of these characters suffered from an abrupt challenge to the relationship roles they previously thought they had. Cassandra in this scene and Lena when Lex tells her that Kara is Supergirl.

It’s interesting that, in that scene, Lex emphasizes the idea that Lena has been a fool. (And, fair enough, I’m pretty sure everyone who’s ever watched the show found it hard to believe that Lena never once realized her best friend was Supergirl. I mean...really, glasses?) But this idea, that she had been a fool plays right into Lena’s fear of losing control. It’s the idea that someone else was pulling strings while she was oblivious that taps right into her deepest insecurities.

Catra’s issues with feeling controlled by Adora are mostly revealed in the episode discussed last post called “Promise.” They come up again in the third season finale when Adora tries to convince Catra to come with her and leave a world that is crumbling out of existence and Catra declares that she will never  go with Adora, and that she won’t “let you win” and “would rather see the whole world end (which it’s doing BTW) than let that happen.” Catra believes the way to get control back from Adora is to “win” at any cost. 

In the end, this idea of “winning” becomes part of all three relationships. It’s no longer about working together or “us against the world” for the not-blondes who have felt crushed under the weight of their friends. Now it’s about achieving their goals in spite of the collateral damage.

And the most frustrating part is that the blondes are largely oblivious to the fact that they make their friends feel this way or that they are overstepping boundaries. They just think they’re doing the right thing because they’re “taking care of” or “fixing” the problem. They’re so concerned with taking care of or protecting their friends, that they don’t realize how patronizing and condescending that can feel.

So, even as these relationship turn so sour, why are so many people not only rooting for the friendship to return, but for our ladies to go the next level beyond?

PART VII: I DON’T CARE (I SHIP IT)

I sometimes wonder how the greatest point of contention, the biggest source of toxicity, and the most exhausting part of fandom became shipping. I have seen more nastiness among fans and toward creators and actors about shipping than just about anything else.

Shipping has a long history in fandom, though that term is relatively recent. People have been writing fan fiction about Kirk and Spock getting together since the show was on and fan fiction was written and shared at either in-person gatherings or through semi-underground fanzines. 

And, trust me, I’ve been in the trenches of a ship war. Back when Avatar: The Last Airbender was airing, I was a hardcore Zutara shipper. And, to be more honest, it made me a jerk. Part of that is just because I was a teenager at the time, and teenagers don’t always realize the potential impacts of their actions due to brain chemistry etc, etc. But still, the intensity with which I argued that my ship either would or should become canon when the creators of the show clearly preferred the other relationship embarrasses me when I look back at it.

These days, fandom shipping has gotten even more complicated and contentious.

Back when those women (and it was mostly women) were typing their Kirk/Spock fan fiction and mailing it to other fans, they knew Kirk and Spock would never actually get together on the show. That was the case for the majority of fandoms until very recently--that there was no expectations of actual canon lgbtq representation. People could claim there was deliberate subtext or coding, but very few, if any people, expected shows to actually have openly lgbtq characters.

Then, it started to actually happen. Not just in a, “the actor said they saw their character as gay” or “the creators said they coded that character as gay” way. Characters actually started being lgbt on screen in ways that weren’t demeaning or stereotypes. Major characters, too.

For me, a big moment that gave rise to the hopes of many that their lgbt ships might actually have a shot at being confirmed as canon was, funnily enough, the sequel show to Avatar: TLA, The Legend of Korra.

The above was the closest the couple got to an on-screen intimate moment, and some fans didn’t believe it was romantic until it was later confirmed by the show creators. Nickelodeon was only willing to go so far, after all. The followup comics, however, are much more explicit with the relationship and the two share multiple kisses and intimate moments.

Many fans argue that Korrasami (as the ship between Korra and Asami is called) was too subtle to be considered real representation. But a wave could certainly be felt throughout the world of animation afterword. Shows became even more bold about confirming lgbt characters or at least became less subtle in their coding. 

And suddenly, the idea that a main character’s finale pairing might be anything other than straight became a real possibility and, in some cases, an expectation.

In addition to the growing visibility of lgbt relationships in media, another change was slowly taking place within fandom. 

For much of modern fandom, the most popular ships have been male/male (mlm). Back when I was getting into fan fiction (because I love reminding people that I’m old), this was called “slash.” Slash was exclusively a term for mlm relationships. Same-sex relationships between women (wlw) were labeled “fem-slash,” and were much more rare.

Multiple people have discussed theories for why mlm was, and continues to be in many cases, the most popular type of ship. Some believe it has to do with the prevalence of straight women in fandom who might fetishize mlm relationships. While I have no doubt that’s partly true, I believe the other common argument has a great deal of merit: there were more mlm ships because male characters were more interesting and more prevalent. 

Star Trek: The Original Series had only two main female characters and neither of them was given close to the emotional depth as Spock or Kirk. Lord of the Rings, which was one of the most popular pieces of media on which to write fanfic when I was younger, has so few women the movies had to add in a boat load of new scenes for Arwen.

Recently, though, not only have more shows invested in writing dynamic, interesting female characters, but they have included multiple diverse female characters with relationships with each other and not just the men in the shows. 

So, not only do more people ship wlw ships, but more people expect to actually see those ships represented in their media. Never before has a wlw ship becoming “endgame” seemed more possible.

In many ways this is fantastic. More representation being not only more possible but more expected is absolutely necessary for our media to progress and grow. This has, however, lead to some growing tensions in communities where shipping has, in some ways, become its own form of activism, which means that there is not only people’s personal feelings and preferences for ships on the line, but people who feel that fighting for their ship to become canon is a proxy battle for their own acceptance. 

All three of these wlw ships mean a lot to the people who ship them, and all three have been met with the desire, and occasionally demand, of canon validation as well as a heady mess of coding, accusations of queer baiting, and the lingering question of which, if any, relationships might get the same, and hopefully more explicit, validation that Korrasami had.

Let’s start this deep dive into these relationships as ships with the one that has, in canon, already been resolved.

Yep, that’s definitely a Disney twirl going on there.

One of the first points often made when the validity of a mlm or wlw ship is questioned is that, if you say an m/f couple do the same thing, no one would question that it was romantic. This makes it interesting, and sets off the shipping alarm for anyone who’s a fan of wlw ships when Tangled: The Series goes out of its way to not only give Cass and Rapunzel (ship name: Cassunzel) romantic moments like the above “Disney twirl,” but also directly parallels relationship moments that occurred between Rapunzel and her canon boyfriend/future husband Eugene (AKA Flynn Rider).

Look familiar? It’s almost a shot-for-shot remake of Rapunzel and Eugene meeting for the first time. In this episode, Cassandra accidentally wipes Rapunzel’s memory to the point where Rapunzel thinks she’s still in the tower. It plays out, in part, as “What if Cassandra had found her instead of Eugene?”--something every shipper had doubtless already asked themselves at least once.

Another major moment of paralleling between the two relationships is the endings of both the movie and the series. 

Eugene dies in the end of Tangled only to be resurrected by Rapunzel’s love. Cassandra dies in the series finale of Tangled: The Series, only to be resurrected by Rapunzel’s love. And it is love, that much is very clear.

The only debate really, is whether it’s romantic or platonic love. 

Cassandra and Rapunzel never get official validation in the show or by the executive producers. The most confirmation fans get outside of the text of the show are comments made by some people who work on the show saying that they deliberately coded Cassandra as gay as they could whenever they could.

Yet, for the most part, the creators of this show are largely given a pass by Cassunzel shippers for not making their ship canon. Most understand that, as a Disney property, many hands are tied, particularly given that, due the previous establishment both form the end of Tangled and from the short Tangled Ever After that Rapunzel and Eugene do get married. The reaction seems to largely be that Disney and the show got about as close to confirming it as they could without doing so.

So let’s transition from the show that met, and in some ways, passed expectations to one that has set expectations super high: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. 

She-Ra is perhaps one of the most lgbtqia coded shows out there right now. The first season even ends with them saving the day with a rainbow.

Here is show-runner and executive producer Noelle Stevenson on queerness in her life and She-Ra:

Yet, despite these deliberate attempts to show representation and to challenge heteronormative ideas, the show has yet to show any of its primary characters or even second tier characters in queer romantic relationships. We have seen a few parents, one pair on in a photo, and their is one married couple of women, but none of these characters are prominently featured on the show.

She-Ra has set expectations incredibly high and has yet to deliver.

Even so, part of what sets She-Ra apart from the other two shows discussed here is that there are multiple queer shipping opportunities. Catra and Adora (ship name Catradora) are one of, if not the, most popular ships, but both Catra and Adora have other female characters with which they could be just as easily shipped.

On the one hand, the pressure is pretty high to establish at least one major queer ship before the end of the show. On the other hand, the pressure is much less that the ship specifically be Catradora.

The near-certainty that there will be one or more wlw ships confirmed before the end of She-Ra means, to me, that Catradora has the greatest chance to become canon.

So, there’s Cassunzel that never really had much of a chance for canon confirmation and Catradora, which has a better chance of becoming canon, but also has less pressure to become THE ship. Where does that leave Lena and Kara?

Anyone who has been in the Supergirl fandom knows that it can feel like a battleground. While all fandoms tend to have their issues, Supergirl’s can be so contentions that it, frankly, makes watching the show less fun. This doesn’t all fall on one groups shoulders, I’ve seen nastiness from many sides over different issues. However, the biggest point of contention tends to center around the potential ship of Lena and Kara (Supercorp). 

Supercorp, as a ship, is completely valid. Kara has way more chemistry with Lena than she has had with any of her male love interests, and two of those guys were played by people whom actress Melissa Benoist was actually in relationships with (though the first was an abusive dirtbag, so lack of chemistry probably makes sense there). Lena once thanked Kara by filling her entire office with flowers. There are cuddles, and Kara’s unwavering (until recently) faith in Lena’s goodness. It’s hard not to ship them.

The issue in the fandom, is not so much that people ship Supercorp (though there are increasingly more people who have issues with the ship itself, which is something I’ll address about all three of these ships in the next post) but the vehemence with which some who ship Supercorp approach whether it will be endgame.

In a way, the frustration is understandable. Supergirl is, in many ways, a show that has made a point of including LGBTQ representation. The second season featured a multiple episode story arc of Supergirl’s adoptive sister Alex Danvers (I will stan her until the end of time) realizing she was a lesbian, coming out, and eventually starting a relationship with another woman. Supergirl also made headlines for featuring the first live-action trans superhero on tv with the introduction of Dreamer in Season 4. The trans actress who plays Dreamer, Nicole Maines, has even had input on how the character is represented including a recent episode that discussed the often ignored violence targeting trans people, particularly trans women of color.

She-Ra and Supergirl have different approaches to representation. She-Ra takes place in a fantasy world and appears to take the approach that nothing about identity or sexuality should be assumed about anyone. There is no heteronormativity in Etheria, yet no major characters are in non-m/f relationships. Supergirl on the other hand, is set in a world more similar to ours which has heteronormativity, homophobia, and transphobia, which leads to the show making episodes and story-arcs specifically about those topics while also somewhat constraining the show. There are arguments to be made about the worth of both approaches and both can serve a purpose for viewers, particularly young viewers, who are searching for characters like them in media.

So, why are the people behind Supergirl so often accused of homophobia?

I mentioned in the Blond Bulldozers section that it is a bit telling that all three shows being discussed here attempt to create diversity while having the whitest, most mainstream character as the lead. There are many who would argue that the true values of the shows are represented by their main characters, and that the rest are window dressing to try to make the show look good as a form of tokenism. The point being that shows won’t really show a commitment to diversity until the main characters are just as diverse as the rest of the cast.

These are all valid arguments. 

A less valid argument is the claim that Supercorp is being deliberately baited by the creators of the show. Queer baiting is a term that seems to have a lot of subjectivity tied up with it. The general idea is that it is when creators purposefully use queer coding or other means to inspire queer shipping of characters as a means to draw in the queer community to their show but then never delivering on that potential.

In some ways, all three of these shows could be accused of queer baiting. The direct parallels in between Cassandra/Rapunzel and Eugene/Rapunzel were no accident. The coding and “anything can happen” while very little does on She-Ra is much the same. And Supergirl is trying to center a large part of the show around the relationship between Kara and Lena, a relationship they know many of the fans see as romantic.

Yet, to me, Supergirl, is actually a less guilty party, at least when it comes to Supercorp. One can, again, argue that the canon LGBT ships and characters exist to pander and draw in those audiences, but Supercorp, I believe, genuinely came out of a place of wanting Kara to have a strong female relationship with someone other than her sister, mother, or boss, and I’m sure this falling-out was in the plans fairly early on.

Has the show completely shut down the idea? No, I don’t think they would be foolish enough to do that. But I don’t believe that it rises to the level of baiting. Shows like Sherlock or movies like Pitch Perfect 3 are, to me, much more egregious examples.

Still, as I said, I can understand the frustration of Supercorp shippers, I just feel like the level of anger directed by some not just at the creatives who make the show but at other fans as well is not fully justified. (And yes, I know “not all Supercorps” and I also know other fans have been jerks. Sanvers shippers who are being asses about Kelly are just as bad.) And who knows? I’d never say never to the ship maybe becoming canon eventually after Kara and Lena work out their issues.

That being said, all three of these ships, regardless of canon status, are incredibly popular, and I want to examine more of what that is and the reason some people are wary of these ships and the potential messages they send. This leads me to our topics for our next installment:

MY WIFE IS A BITCH AND I LIKE HER SO MUCH

and

POISON PARADISE

I will try to make the next one shorter. Also, sorry for typos, I did not give this a thorough read-through. I used all my brain power just writing it.

[gabegabe3205]

Blog Post 05: Fuchs vs Jenkins (Gabriel Choo)

Fuchs’ critical commentary focuses on exposing the flaws in the arguments given by other scholars studying participatory culture, revealing these authors’ lack of consideration for forces that shape and define the actions of users and producers on social media. Fuchs focuses largely on Henry Jenkins’ arguments, suggesting that Jenkins’ neglect of ownership, capitalism, and corporate motives in his celebratory writings of participatory culture fundamentally undermines his very own argument, at least according to the theory of participatory democracy. Another point Fuchs took issue with was how Jenkins conveniently assumed fandom in popular culture to be synonymous with activism. These are the two points I will address in this post.

I have to agree with Fuchs’ stance that ownership, capitalism, and corporate motives cannot be excluded in any argument celebrating participatory culture. These forces are the very foundation on which social media platforms are designed and promoted to society. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are deliberately designed to hook its users, from the colour of notifications to the endlessly refreshing news feed. In the famous documentary The Social Dilemma, employees from various famous Silicon Valley companies took their stand and moved on to businesses where designing addictive elements in alignment with profit motives is not part of the job scope. The stories these individuals tell are perfect microcosms of the exclusion that is mentioned by Fuchs – employees do not get to make decisions, they are not participating, they simply do as instructed by the owners and higher management. Fuchs shooting down of Jenkins’ assertion that social media is an expression of participatory culture is thus apt, as these platforms seek to exploit users through the hands and brilliance of employees who are held hostage by employment contracts and the obligation to further their employers’ aims.

I am also a proponent for Fuchs’ argument that fandom in popular culture is not equivalent to being politically active. From personal experience, identifying as fans of any celebrities, groups, or culture (eg. K-pop) is not indicative of an alignment in beliefs. These fans may parrot the views or political stances of their idols, but these are mere performative actions that often do not lead to any lifestyle changes or meaningful action outside of the online sphere. Those who retweet, repost, hashtag or share political movements do so not out of informed choice, but more because of herd mentality. Such performative activism is, in my opinion, quite useless and grating on the nerves. If fandom did translate to activism, after BTS’ numerous forays into environmentalism, their fans should also be spearheading environmental efforts all around the world. Whether this is so can only be determined by actual research, but I think what we should keep in mind is that these fans follow their celebrities primarily for entertainment and aesthetics, and thus I would be leaning towards the obvious result – fandom does not equate activism.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 4, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Today Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) proposed giving at least $3000 annually per child to American families. This suggestion is coming from a man who, when he ran as the Republican candidate for president in 2012, famously echoed what was then Republican orthodoxy. He was caught on tape saying that “there are 47 percent of the people who… are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”

Romney’s proposal indicates the political tide has turned away from the Republicans. Since the 1980s, they have insisted that the government must be starved, dismissing as “socialism” Democrats’ conviction that the government has a role to play in stabilizing the economy and society.

And yet, that idea, which is in line with traditional conservatism, was part of the founding ideology of the Republican Party in the 1850s. It was also the governing ideology of Romney’s father, George Romney, who served as governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, where he oversaw the state’s first income tax, and as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Richard Nixon, where he tried to increase housing for the poor and desegregate the suburbs. It was also at the heart of Romney’s own record in Massachusetts, where as governor from 2003 to 2007, he ushered in the near-universal health care system on which the Affordable Care Act was based.

But in the 1990s, Republican leadership purged from the party any lawmakers who embraced traditional Republicanism, demanding absolutely loyalty to the idea of cutting taxes and government to free up individual enterprise. By 2012, Romney had to run from his record, including his major health care victory in Massachusetts. Now, just a decade later, he has returned to the ideas behind it.

Why?

First, and most important, President Joe Biden has hit the ground running, establishing a momentum that looks much like that of Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. Roosevelt had behind him stronger majorities than Biden’s, but both took office facing economic crises—and, in Biden’s case, a pandemic as well, along with the climate crisis--and set out immediately to address them.

Like FDR, Biden has established the direction of his administration through executive actions: he is just behind FDR’s cracking pace. Biden arrived in the Oval Office with a sheaf of carefully crafted executive actions that put in place policies that voters wanted: spurring job creation, feeding children, rejoining the World Health Organization, pursuing tax cheats, ending the transgender ban in the military, and reestablishing ties to the nation’s traditional allies. Once Biden had a Democratic Senate as well as a House—those two Georgia Senate seats were huge—he was free to ask for a big relief package for those suffering in the pandemic, and now even Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), who had expressed concern about the package, seems to be on board.

FDR’s momentum increased in part because the Republicans were discredited after the collapse of the economy and as Republican leaders turned up as corrupt. Biden’s momentum, too, is likely gathering steam as the Republicans are increasingly tainted by their association with the January 6 insurrection and the attack on the Capitol, along with the behavior of those who continue to support the former president.

The former president’s own behavior is not helping to polish his image. In their response to the House impeachment brief, Trump’s lawyers made the mistake of focusing not on whether the Senate can try a former president but on what Trump did and did not do. That, of course, makes Trump a witness, and today Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the lead impeachment manager, asked him to testify.

Trumps’ lawyers promptly refused but, evidently anticipating his refusal, Raskin had noted in the invitation that “[i]f you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on January 6, 2021.” In other words: “Despite his lawyers’ rhetoric, any official accused of inciting armed violence against the government of the United States should welcome the chance to testify openly and honestly—that is, if the official had a defense."

The lack of defense seems to be mounting. This morning, Jason Stanley of Just Security called attention to the film shown at the January 6 rally just after Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani spoke. Stanley explained how it was an explicitly fascist film, designed to show the former president as a strong fascist leader promising to protect Americans against those who are undermining the country: the Jews. Stanley also pointed out that, according to the New York Times, the rally was “a White House production” and that Trump was deeply involved with the details.

Trump’s supporters are not cutting a good figure, either. Today, by a vote of 230-199, the House of Representatives voted to strip new Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) of her assignments to the Budget Committee and the Education and Labor Committee. It did so after reviewing social media posts in which she embraced political violence and conspiracy theories. This leaves Greene with little to do but to continue to try to gin up media attention and to raise money.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had declined to take action against Greene—although in 2019 he stripped assignments from Steve King (R-IA) for racist comments-- and only eleven Republicans joined the majority. The Republican Party is increasingly associated with the Trump wing, and that association will undoubtedly grow as Democrats press it in advertisements, as they have already begun to do.

McConnell has called for the party’s extremists to be purged out of concern that voters are turning away from the party. Still, the struggle between the two factions might be hard to keep out of the news as the Senate turns to confirmation hearings for Biden’s nominee to head the Department of Justice, Merrick Garland.

Going forward, the attorney general will be responsible for overseeing any prosecutions that come from the attempt to overturn the election, and the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will question Garland, has on it three Republican senators involved in that attempt. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has been accused by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of calling before Trump did to get him to alter the state’s vote count. Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) both joined in challenging the counting of the electoral votes.

It is hard to imagine the other senators at the hearing will not bring the three compromised senators into the discussion. The Republicans have so far refused to schedule Garland’s hearing, although now that the Senate is organized under the Democrats, it will happen soon.

Trump Republicans are betting the former president’s endorsement will win them office in the future. But with social media platforms cracking down on his disinformation, his ability to reach voters is not at all what it used to be, making it easier for members of the other faction to jump ship.

In addition, those echoing Trump’s lies are getting hit in their wallets. Today, the voting systems company Smartmatic sued the Fox News Channel and its personalities Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro, along with Giuliani and Trump’s legal advisor Sidney Powell, for at least $2.7 billion in damages for lying about Smartmatic machines in their attempt to overturn the election results.

Republicans rejecting the Trump takeover of the party are increasingly outspoken. Not only has Romney called for a measure that echoes Biden’s emphasis on supporting children and families, but also Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) today released a video attacking the leaders of his state’s Republican Party after hearing that they planned to censure him for speaking out against the former president.

“If that president were a Democrat, we both know how you’d respond. But, because he had ‘Republican’ behind his name, you’re defending him,” Sasse said. “Something has definitely changed over the last four years … but it’s not me.”

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[kathleenmcgregor]

September 6, 2020 (Sunday)

Heather Cox Richardson writes:

Earlier this week, New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo warned that American democracy is ending. He pointed to political violence on the streets, the pandemic, unemployment, racial polarization, and natural disasters, all of which are destabilizing the country, and noted that Republicans appear to have abandoned democracy in favor of a cult-like support for Donald Trump. They are wedded to a narrative based in lies, as the president dismantles our non-partisan civil service and replaces it with a gang of cronies loyal only to him.

He is right to be worried.

Just the past few days have demonstrated that key aspects of democracy are under attack.

Democracy depends on the rule of law. Today, we learned that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who rose to become a Cabinet official thanks to his prolific fundraising for the Republican Party, apparently managed to raise as much money as he did because he pressured employees at his business, New Breed Logistics, to make campaign contributions that he later reimbursed through bonuses. Such a scheme is illegal. A spokesman said that Dejoy “believes that he has always followed campaign fundraising laws and regulations,” but records show that many of DeJoy’s employees only contributed money to political campaigns when they worked for him.

Democracy depends on equality before the law. But Black and brown people seem to receive summary justice at the hands of certain law enforcement officers, rather than being accorded the right to a trial before a jury of their peers. In a democracy, voters elect representatives who make laws that express the will of the community. “Law enforcement officers” stop people who are breaking those laws, and deliver them to our court system, where they can tell their side of the story and either be convicted of breaking the law, or acquitted. When police can kill people without that process, justice becomes arbitrary, depending on who holds power.

Democracy depends on reality-based policy. Increasingly it is clear that the Trump administration is more concerned about creating a narrative to hold power than it is in facts. Today, Trump tweeted that “Our Economy and Jobs are doing really well,” when we are in a recession (defined as two quarters of negative growth) and unemployment remains at 8.4%.

This weekend, the drive to create a narrative led to a new low as the government launched an attempt to control how we understand our history. On Friday, the administration instructed federal agencies to end training on “critical race theory,” which is a scary-sounding term for the idea that, over time, our laws have discriminated against Black and brown people, and that we should work to get rid of that discriminatory pattern.

Today, Trump tweeted that the U.S. Department of Education will investigate whether California schools are using curriculum based on the 1619 Project from the New York Times, which argues that American history should center on the date of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to Chesapeake shores. Anyone using such curriculum, he said, would lose funding. Government interference in teaching our history echoes the techniques of dictatorships. It is unprecedented in America.

Democracy depends on free and fair suffrage. The White House is trying to undermine our trust in the electoral system by claiming that mail-in ballots can be manipulated and will usher in fraud. While Trump has been arguing this for a while, last week Attorney General William Barr, a Trump loyalist, also chimed in, offering a false story that the Justice Department had indicted a Texas man for filling out 1700 absentee ballots. In fact, in 2017, one man was convicted of forging one woman’s signature on a mail-in ballot in a Dallas City Council race. Because mail-in ballots have security barcodes and require signatures to be matched to a registration form, the rate of ballot fraud is vanishingly small: there have been 491 prosecutions in all U.S. nationwide elections from 2000 to 2012, when billions of ballots were cast.

Interestingly, an intelligence briefing from the Department of Homeland Security released Friday says that Russia is spreading false statements identical to those Trump and Barr are spreading. The bulletin says that Russian actors “are likely to promote allegations of corruption, system failure, and foreign malign interference to sow distrust in Democratic institutions and election outcomes.” They are spreading these claims through state-controlled media, fake websites, and social media trolls.

At the same time, we know that the Republicans are launching attempts to suppress Democratic votes. Last Wednesday, we learned that Georgia has likely removed 200,000 voters from the rolls for no reason. In December 2019, the Georgia Secretary of State said officials had removed 313,243 names from the rolls in an act of routine maintenance because they were inactive and the voters had moved, but nonpartisan experts found that 63.3% of those voters had not, in fact, moved. They were purged from the rolls in error.

And, in what was perhaps an accident, in South Carolina, voters’ sample ballots did not include Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, although they did include the candidates for the Green, Alliance, and Libertarian parties. When The Post and Courier newspaper called their attention to the oversight, the State Election Commission, which is a Republican-majority body appointed by a staunch Trump supporter, updated the ballots.

Democracy depends on the legitimacy of (at least) two political parties. Opposition parties enable voters unhappy with whichever group of leaders is in power to articulate their positions without undermining the government itself. They also watch leaders carefully, forcing them to combat corruption within their ranks.

This administration has sought to delegitimize Democrats as “socialists” and “radicals” who are not legitimate political players. Just today, Trump tweeted: “The Democrats, together with the corrupt Fake News Media, have launched a massive Disinformation Campaign the likes of which has never been seen before.”

For its part, the Republican Party has essentially become the Trump Party, not only in ideology and loyalty but in finances. Yesterday we learned that Trump and the Republican National Committee have spent close to $60 million from campaign contributors on Trump’s legal bills. Matthew Sanderson, a campaign finance lawyer for Republican presidential candidates, told the New York Times, “Vindicating President Trump’s personal interests is now so intertwined with the interests of the Republican Party they are one and the same — and that includes the legal fights the party is paying for now.”

The administration has refused to answer to Democrats in Congress, ignoring subpoenas with the argument that Congress has no power to investigate the executive branch, despite precedent for such oversight going all the way back to George Washington’s administration. Just last week, a federal appeals court said that Congress has no power to enforce a subpoena because there is no law that gives it the authority to do so. This essentially voids a subpoena the House issued last year to former White House counsel Don McGahn, demanding he testify about his dealings with Trump over the investigation into the ties of the Trump campaign to Russia. (The decision will likely be challenged.)

On September 4, U.S. Postal Service police officers refused Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) entry to one USPS facility in Opa-Locka, Florida and another in Miami. Although she followed the procedures she had followed in the past, this time the local officials told her that the national USPS leadership had told them to bar her entry. “Ensuring only authorized parties enter nonpublic areas of USPS facilities is part of a Postal Police officer’s normal duties, said Postal Inspector Eric Manuel. Wasserman Schultz is a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

And finally, democracy depends on the peaceful transition of power. Trump has repeatedly suggested that he will not leave office because the Democrats are going to cheat.

So we should definitely worry.

Convincing people the game is over is one of the key ways dictators take power. Scholars warn never to consent in advance to what you anticipate an autocrat will demand. If democracy were already gone, there would be no need for Trump and his people to lie and cheat and try to steal this election.

But should we despair? Absolutely not.

And I would certainly not be writing this letter.

Americans are coming together from all different political positions to fight this attack on our democracy, and we have been in similar positions before. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln spoke under similar circumstances, and noted that Americans who disagreed on almost everything else could still agree to defend their country, just as we are now. Ordinary Americans “rose each fighting, grasping whatever he could first reach---a scythe---a pitchfork-- a chopping axe, or a butcher's cleaver,” he said. And “when the storm shall be past,” the world “shall find us still Americans; no less devoted to the continued Union and prosperity of the country than heretofore.”

[antoine-roquentin]

Denmark’s center-left Social Democrats came in first in the country’s June 5 parliamentary elections—the third Nordic country where voters recently backed a left-leaning party in a Europe otherwise marked by social democracy’s decline.

Wednesday’s outcome broke with the past two decades of Danish politics. Social Democrats leader Mette Frederiksen, 41, is set to become the country’s youngest-ever prime minister and the second woman to hold the job. Her coalition’s success—91 of the parliament’s 179 seats—upended a political landscape long dominated by the right. And on the heels of the European Parliament elections, in which populist, xenophobic parties saw important gains in France, Hungary, Italy, and Poland, the far-right Danish People’s Party saw its votes cut by more than half, after an unprecedented score in 2015.

But this week’s vote says less about the far right’s demise than about its steady creep into the mainstream. In something of a paradox, the center left returned to the scene only by lurching to the right. The Social Democrats, faced with waning support in the past two decades, have parroted the Danish People’s Party on immigration, backing hard-line policies they characterize as necessary to save the country’s prized welfare state.

Social-democratic parties across Europe have opted for that strategy, but in Denmark the dynamic is particularly pronounced. “While other social-democratic parties have adopted tougher immigration laws in times of ‘crisis’ and used anti-immigration and Islamophobic language, no party has so openly ran on a nativist and welfare-chauvinist agenda as the Danish Social Democrats,” Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia who specializes on populism, said by e-mail.

Take, for example, the so-called “ghetto package,” a series of policies aimed at improving integration and reducing crime in low-income areas that the state categorizes as “ghettos” because, among other criteria, more than half of their residents are of “non-Western” background. The package, introduced by the Danish People’s Party but backed by the Social Democrats, included measures ethnic minorities consider discriminatory: One law doubles punishments for crimes committed in “ghettos”; another requires “ghetto children” from age 1 to 6, the age when public education is required for the general population, to attend mandatory courses in Danish values and traditions, as well as language courses. Families that refuse to comply risk being stripped of government benefits.

The “ghetto package” is among the slew of policies targeting immigrants—particularly Muslims—that Denmark has embraced in the past few years, often with the Social Democrats’ support. These include a 2016 law that allows authorities to seize cash and valuables from asylum-seekers ostensibly to help the state finance their benefits, or a 2018 ban on the burqa—the full-face veil worn by only about 200 Muslim women nationwide. A law making handshakes a mandatory requirement for citizenship followed, clearly targeting Muslims who refuse to shake hands with the opposite sex. Plans are underway to isolate foreigners who have criminal records and served their sentences—asylum-seekers among them—on a far-off island, currently home to a center for researching highly communicable animal diseases. In 2005, the government required UN resettlement to be based on “integration potential,” and in 2016 it withdrew from the UN resettlement program entirely, with the Social Democrats’ support. 

“The Social Democrats have made it very clear: They realize they’ve lost elections since the late 1990s by being outflanked by the right on immigration,” Rune Stubager, a political scientist at Aarhus University, told me. “They knew they’d have to change their position on the issue to win.” 

The Social Democrats’ rightward shift has earned it the moniker “Danish People’s Party lite” among some Danes, disillusioned with what they see as the party’s betrayal of its progressive ideals. “There’s no question: They saw that, without anti-Islam as a central part of their platform, they have no chance of success,” Naveed Baig, an imam and the vice-chair of the Islamic-Christian Study Center in Copenhagen, told me, noting that Islam and immigration have become synonymous in current political debates. The climate has become so toxic, he said, that some Muslim families have considered leaving Denmark altogether.

Natasha Al-Hariri, a lawyer and minority-rights advocate, agreed. “It’s disturbing to see Frederiksen in the prime-minister spot,” she said. “She’ll adopt whatever position gets the most votes, even if that means aligning with the far right. When is enough enough?”

The Social Democrats say they’ll stick to their new line on immigration, which they describe as critical to maintaining Denmark’s welfare state, one of the most robust in Europe. “We need to have enough money and enough room in our country, to take care of our citizens,” Nanna Grave Poulsen, a party chairwoman, told me. “All of our immigration policies need to be put in the context of the welfare issue.”

But the number of migrants and asylum-seekers Denmark has admitted has actually declined in recent years, and its overall acceptance rate has been far below the EU average. The country’s economy is strong, and research indicates that strains to the welfare state stem from an aging population, not migrants, refugees, or Danes of “non-Western background.”

The mainstreaming of far-right views—and anti-immigrant rhetoric’s ability to capture the national attention—is evident in the emergence of two new parties to the right of the Danish People’s Party: the Hard Line and the New Right, the latter of which managed to enter parliament, just exceeding the 2 percent threshold. In the months leading up to the elections, the media fixated on Hard Line leader Rasmus Paludan, a lawyer who campaigned on a platform to deport all Danish Muslims. Paludan sparked riots in April when he threw the Quran in the air and let it hit the ground during a rally in a multicultural neighborhood in the capital. Since then, the state has spent around $6 million protecting him at his campaign rallies, during which he burns the Quran or stuffs it with bacon.

Although Paludan’s Hard Line didn’t end up entering the parliament, the media’s focus on his provocations propelled him to national significance. Before the April riots, he had garnered only around 5,000 of the 20,000 signatures necessary to present his candidacy; in the days that followed, he managed to multiply his following and enter the race.

The Hard Line and New Right have both solidified the Danish People’s Party’s position as a mainstream party and undermined its appeal. “It’s terrifying that these Nazis, knocking on Parliament’s door, make the Danish People’s Party look ‘meh,’” Al-Hariri said. “But at the same time, it would be incorrect to say it’s not part of the establishment.”

“All the focus on Paludan squeezed the Danish People’s Party, which suddenly seemed moderate on immigration,” Karina Kosaria-Pedersen, a political scientist at the University of Copenhagen, told me. Electorally speaking, the party’s transformation—from the margins to the mainstream—didn’t work in its favor. Its cooperation with major parties and success in dictating immigration policies made it look “more like the elite it had claimed to challenge,” she said. That new dynamic, plus an ongoing scandal over allegations of misused EU funds, have curbed the party’s steady ascent.

[ejaz-talentscout]

Social Media Recruiting Advantage

As recruitment agencies compete for top talent, it has become increasingly necessary to use social media in talent acquisition.  The following are eight benefits of using social media as part of your recruitment advertising strategy:

1. INCREASES JOB VISIBILITY

Today, practically every ideal candidate you could consider for any position at your company is on social media. Facebook enjoys an active user base of over 2.19 billion. Twitter is popular for the ability to host job search chats and many millennials and Generation X demographic are active users of LinkedIn as a job hunting platform.

Wherever you look, you see social networks serving as incredible platforms for identifying and recruiting talented individuals to work for your clients. Certainly, few other platforms can reach as many people as social media, meaning that you are likely to get the caliber of talent other platforms can hardly match.

2. HIGHER QUALITY CANDIDATES

Self-reported statistics from many companies show that they get high quality candidates whenever they recruit via social networking sites. One big reason why this is the case is because most people you will find on social media are tech-savvy, a fundamental requirement to land any job in today’s marketplace.

Additionally, they are likely to already be in the know regarding emerging business trends, adding to the skills they bring to the table. What’s more, if you choose to use your employees to announce new openings at your company via social media, chances are that the people you will hire will not only stay longer at your company, they will also be more productive than those you would hire through other platforms.

3. BETTER EMPLOYER BRAND AWARENESS

Social recruiting is effective, not just in finding you the ideal candidate, but also in increasing the visibility of your brand. By advertising new positions on social media, you strengthen your brand and create some level of trust among potential employees.

People view brands that have a strong social media presence as more trustworthy. Therefore, it would serve your business well to establish a robust social media presence, not just because you want to find good employees, but also because doing so will build trust among potential customers as well as make it a coveted place to work.

4. REDUCE COST OF HIRE

Recruiting can be a very expensive undertaking. Social recruiting is cheaper, but can still cost you significant amounts of money. All the same, the value you get from the hires you find via social networking platforms makes this approach extremely cheap.

Without a doubt, recruitment costs via social media are almost always, lower than those of other methods. A simple Facebook ad can for instance get you over two times more visibility than the traditional recruitment methods like classified ads in the dailies and job boards.

5. OPENS THE DOOR TO ENGAGEMENT

Imagine a brand that has taken its time to grow its audience, even using tools like Growr to organically grow on social media, but finds itself struggling to engage with the followers it has gathered. Such a brand can benefit from a social media post of a job opening.

As interested individuals seek out more information regarding the job opportunity, your social media page gets more engagement. Some interested parties will post on the comments section, others will share with their friends and followers, while others will send you a direct message to your inbox.

These conversations keep your page active and give you the opportunity to engage with potential employees. Some of these are people who would never have applied for a job at your company had you used any other recruitment platform.

Recruiters who know how to make the most of the recruitment opportunities available on social media will tell you that some of these social conversations are better than one-on-one interviews.

In any case, you can have several chats with several potential candidates on social networking websites, and only call a few of them to further the conversation in person at your business premises later. Furthermore, there are several social recruitment tools you can use that will help you do it fast and stress free. These include Jobcast, Work4 Labs, Jobvite, Bullhorn Reach, and LinkUp.

6. ALLOWS YOU TO TARGET YOUR VACANCIES MORE

Social recruitment comes with incredible ability to laser-target certain groups of people for the available vacancies. On LinkedIn for instance, you can try to share the job postings in certain industry-specific LinkedIn groups.

On this platform alone, there are thousands of groups for professionals in practically every industry you can imagine: from engineers to HR workers, to writers, to finance experts. That said, remember to post your recruitment messages in a way that would not be deemed annoying.

The idea is to attract potential candidates, not overwhelm them with promises of bliss if they get a job at your company. Though such promises might be true, potential employees could start to view you and your company as con artists or spammers, ultimately undermining your credibility and ruining your chances of getting top talent via the social platform.

Twitter hashtags also make for clever recruitment methods. You can also consider asking your employees to share the available vacancies within their social circles.

7. SCREEN YOUR CANDIDATES

It is now an open secret that employers use social media to get an in-depth understanding of the people they have hired at their companies. Many people see social media platforms as free spaces where they can express their frustrations, talk about their causes and share their experiences as they go through the days of the lives. What you might not know is that potential employers also check out candidates on social media.

Social networking sites give them a deeper view of who they are about to hire. It gives them insights into the person’s personality even allowing them to figure out what their ambitions are and what they can expect once they hire them to work in their business.

Other recruitment methods cannot help you do that. Screening potential employees ensures that you work with those people who align with your company values and culture.

All the same, it is important to note that you should resist the temptation to review someone else’s social media profiles without them consenting to it. That said, most people now include links to their social media profiles in their resumes, a decision that implies that they are comfortable with potential employers reviewing their social media profiles.

8. SHORTENS HIRING TIME

The traditional methods of recruitment generally take longer than social media recruitment methods. This means that when you have an open position that you need filled in the shortest time possible, social media is the platform to consider. Social networking sites not only make it easy and fast to communicate with candidates, it also allows them to respond faster. As a result, excellent work relationships often emerge.

What’s more, recruiting in a talent pool that has people who share common values, interest and work styles with the hiring manager or company often accelerates the speed with which you will find the ideal person for the job. This is great news for both the hiring party and the candidates hoping to get an opportunity to work at your organization.

[adeliriouswanderer]

American Fascism, Racism, and the Trump Cult

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything on policy or politics. Quarantine has left me with what seems like an infinite amount of time to reflect on our countries current state of affairs—and as cliché as this sounds, it feels as if we are living in dark times indeed.

Since our current regime began in 2016, all of the progressive policies of the Obama era have been eradicated by an egotistical fascist. Far-right and white supremacist ideologies are being pushed as the new normal by those who fear that their position of power is being threatened by minorities and anyone left of center. A center that is very quickly skewing farther and farther right on the political spectrum. Folks who hold these far-right ideologies have historically been threatened by people of color, folks who identify as LGBTQIA, feminists, women’s rights champions, and others who voice opinions that are different than the rights self-absorbed narrative. Especially when these folks attempt to find seats at the decision-making table.

Our current regime fears these opinions so much that they attempt to silence anyone who speaks out against their clearly fascist policies and statements by convincing their base that our voices and opinions are being incited by “fake news” or as Trump loves to call it, the “lamestream media”. This regime has convinced it’s cult-like followers that any media coverage that does not stroke the ego of the POTUS or any coverage that speaks out against his archaic, and often false views/statements, are untrue accusations and that he is being unfairly targeted. Trump continuously lies to his base and the American people, and when he is called out on his lies, both he and his base scream fake news. The POTUS has convinced his base that democrats are sheep to the media who are trying their best to undermine all of the “great” work he is doing for Americans. Despite Trump not keeping his promises to his base, they still follow him with what feels like a Jim Jones cult mindset.  Take this video where trump easily brainwashes his followers into ignoring how his he is lining his and other billionaires pockets by attempting to convince his base, who largely consist of poor/working-class white folks, that they are the “elite”:  

They see no wrong in Trump's behavior. How is that Trump has convinced millions of people to blindly follow his every whim? You see, as badly as it pains me to state this, Trump is not the cause of these deeply rooted, bigoted, ideologies. They have been around since the founding of America. Like a festering cancer that sometimes quietly goes into remission, but is still there, waiting for the body to become weakened so that it can make a reappearance. Folks have long held onto their bigoted ways, Trump simply gave a platform where these ideologies could be voiced and he emboldened those who held them to speak out louder than ever. After having a president in office that championed for the rights of minorities, the right was fearful of being forgotten and worried that their ideologies would be silenced. This fear ultimately led right-wing voters to vote for and blindly follow anyone spoke out in favor of their bigoted beliefs. And trump happened to be the loudest and most aggressive at the time. The right touted his down to earthiness and non-political way of speaking. Trump is praised for “telling it like it is” because for a while, at the turn of the century, white folks seemed partly scared to fully voice what they really thought about anyone who wasn’t white and straight. That’s not the case anymore.

I find it appalling that in 2020, I can scroll through the comment section on any article related to race and find a plethora of comments written by white right-wings and conservatives insinuating that there is no race problem in America. They state racism does not exist; they unquestionably believe that there is a level playing field between white folks and people of color, and that white privilege does not exist.  Much like Social Darwinist, these folks believe that people of color and folks experiencing poverty are inherently responsible for their less than status in society. That they’re lazy and unwilling to pull themselves up by the bootstraps because it’s more convenient for them to live off of the government-- like the infamously stereotypical welfare queen, a term coined in 1974, by George Bliss of the Chicago Tribune in his articles about Linda Taylor.

These folks fail to realize that people of color and people experiencing poverty are a result of systematic and institutional racism designed to enslave people of color and keep them from sitting at the decision-making table. Further, they don’t understand how poverty rolls off the back of parents and onto children—how hard it is for children to break intergenerational cycles. Take Kaitlin Bennet, the infamous gun girl of Kent State. She hosts a youtube channel where her main “goal” is to “expose the corruption and demoralization” of the “liberal left.” In this following clip, Kaitlin states that there is no racism in America because she is surrounded by people of color on a daily basis, as if their very existence is somehow justification as to why racism doesn’t exist. She states that some lives are inherently more valuable than others and that those who are experiencing homelessness should get a job. When Kaitlin realized she had couldn’t win a baseless argument against two obviously educated college students, she had to resort to personal attacks against James's sexuality. She’s edited out the word racist or racism from her videos because apparently those words demonetize her youtube videos and she loses money for including those words. 

Let’s break down one of the systems that these folks so eagerly deny and blindly ignore-- the prison industrial complex. In the 80s, Reagan turned the metaphorical “war on drugs” into an actual initiative that was put forth by a seemingly racist governmental body whose aim was to create a caste system to ensure people of color would never rise out of poverty. While Raegan solidified these new forms of discrimination against people of color, it was Nixon who set the stage for the systematic incarceration of black and brown people through his Southern Strategy. As civil rights activists worked to dismantle the Jim Crow laws of the south, Nixon and other politicians began to create a strategy that would ensure votes from whites who aligned with both the conservative republican party and the left-leaning democratic party.

The “Southern Strategy” was ultimately a political movement that aimed to garner votes from white Americans from both sides of the political spectrum by antagonizing racialized fears in the white populace. The campaign painted an image that portrayed people of color as deserving of being poor and uneducated-- it pathologized them as criminals and deserving of their second-class place in society because they simply could not rise above their uncivilized ways. Michelle Alexander states:

The racialized nature of this imagery became a crucial resource for conservatives, who succeeded in using law and order rhetoric in their effort to mobilize the resentment of white working-class voters, many of whom felt threatened by the sudden progress of African Americans.

This campaign ultimately led to Reagan’s 1982 War on Drugs, and his later establishment of mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which were enacted through his Anti-Drug Abuse Act of1986. After Raegan’s enactment of AABA, the numbers of incarcerated black and Hispanic men skyrocketed creating an overpopulated prison system that led the way for privatization. Republicans laid the foundation for mass incarceration of people of color, and democrats solidified the systemic discrimination and oppression that would soon follow a person who was formerly incarcerated throughout their life.

The Clinton (D) administration enacted laws banning drug offenders and felons from receiving public assistance in the form of financial aid or food stamps, denying them the ability to public housing, and stripping them of their right to vote. These combined laws on part of both democrats and republicans led to the creation of a caste system that created a populace of second-class citizens, who were stripped of their most basic rights—this group was disproportionately made up of people of color. Less than 5% of the world's population, has nearly 25% of the world's incarcerated population. Black people make up about 13 percent of the U.S population and 31 percent of those incarcerated for drug use—Latinos make up an additional 18 percent of the total U.S population and account for 20 percent of those incarcerated for drug use. It is important to note that crime is equally distributed between all races, but the impact of policies of the 1980s and 1990s has been anything but evenly distributed-- black men are eight times more likely to be incarcerated than white men and nearly a third of young black men are under criminal justice system control.

These laws have persisted throughout the last three decades and allow for a system that systematically discriminates against an entire sub-group of individuals. When formerly incarcerated people are released from prison they have very little support from institutions designed to provide help to the most vulnerable populations in the U.S. They typically can not get into public housing and private landlords can legally turn them away citing their criminal history as a reason. Formerly incarcerated persons cannot receive federal financial aid to further their education-- and if they do manage to pay for school, most jobs will not even look at their resume, much less hire them because of their felon status. Further, formerly incarcerated persons cannot receive public assistance benefits such as food stamps. A lack of social support leaves these individuals at a high risk of reoffending just so they can survive in the outside world, which ultimately locks them into a brutal cycle of flowing in and out of the prison industrial complex.

It seemed like during the Obama era, there was hope; a hope that our country could heal from our divisive history of viewing anyone other than white straight cis men who are most valued, followed by white straight cis women, as something other than less than. Because, let’s be honest, many folks along all lines of the political spectrum have never fully respected the opinions and lives of people of color, LGBTQIA folks, immigrants, etc. We have been and still are, just tolerated. That’s why Obama was a breath of fresh air. He attempted, and sometimes succeeded, in eradicating archaic policies like the militaries don’t ask don’t tell policy, championed for the rights of minorities and immigrants through bills like DACA, attempted to ensure those who were poor had access to health care. President Obama launched the My Brother’s Keeper initiative on February 27, 2014, to address persistent opportunity gaps faced by boys and young men of color and ensure that all young people could reach their full potential. These were just a few of the many ways Obama worked to level the playing field for those who were not born into the western version of the genetic lottery. 

What is it going to take to heal our country and end these systems of violence against black and brown people? When are we going to step up and not give media attention and not vote in folks who are so clearly bigoted to positions where they can continue to marginalize already vulnerable populations? When will this hate for those viewed as other, less than, die out? Is this our new reality for the unforeseeable future? The biggest question of all is: when will the right figure out that Trump doesn’t have any of their best interest in mind? When will they realize that he’s sitting on one of his many gold toilets and shitting on America?

I want to live in a country where equity is at the forefront of our minds; where people strive to ensure all of their neighbors have equal opportunity regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or class. We must continue to use our voices to speak up for the oppressed and vulnerable, and VOTE for folks who believe in an equal and just society. Will 2020 usher in voices into the political sphere that are representative of folks from all walks of life, or will it be the same bullshit we’ve had for nearly 244 years since America was founded? 

[bestlawyerstoronto-blog]

10 Important Lawyer Skills and How to Develop Them

Working in law normally requires a specific range of abilities, particularly on the off chance that you need to be effective.

Right now, https://bestlawyerstoronto.com list center attorney abilities you need, and how precisely you can chip away at them.

1. Collaboration

In no way, shape or form selective to law, the capacity to work in a group is fundamental to any activity. In a group, fundamental aptitudes of regard and sympathy become basic and the individuals who come up short on the capacity to tune in and accept the assessments of others will wind up out of step.

On the off chance that individuals appreciate working with you, they will need to do so again and prescribe you to other people; without a doubt the most ideal approach to advance in your vocation.

Step by step instructions to build up this ability: Getting engaged with groups and social orders at school and college are an incredible method to have a great time and make companions and you will increase significant cooperation aptitudes without seeing it!

2. Activity and Independence

While collaboration is basic to progress, it is likewise basic that you can be unequivocal when the circumstances requests it.

As a student attorney, you will be given duty and you should ascend to that, conceiving your own answers for issues as opposed to depending just on others. That doesn't imply that you should battle alone, stepping up to the plate incorporates the capacity to realize when to approach questions or to request help.

Step by step instructions to build up this ability: This is an aptitude that can be created anytime – consider when you've needed to settle on a troublesome choice all alone, regardless of whether it be because of coursework or a discussion with a companion.

3. Inventive Problem Solving

Individuals regularly consider the law a calling bereft of imagination yet the inverse is valid. The response to a customer's concern may not be clear and your activity will be to investigate new roads, contentions and thoughts to accomplish the ideal outcome.

Step by step instructions to build up this ability: Work understanding of any sort will do some amazing things in creating critical thinking aptitudes, it needn't just be in the legitimate field. Issues are unavoidable any place you work and the more experience you have of the issues which emerge, the more ready you will be.

4. Composed Communication Skills

A ton of your work as a legal counselor will include composing, it's unavoidable. You'll draft archives, compose letters to customers, draw up contracts in addition to other things.

Mistakes and Grammatical blunders will undermine your work, while a familiar and eloquent composing style will give customers trust in you.

Step by step instructions to build up this expertise: You will normally build up your own composing style as you compose papers for school or college yet on the off chance that you don't consider an article based subject, at that point it might assist with getting some work on composing for a school or uni magazine or in any event, running your own blog! You can likewise compose for The Lawyer Portal, which looks incredible on the CV.

5. Verbal Communication Skills

On the off chance that you're wanting to turn into an attorney, at that point verbal correspondence is maybe the most fundamental component of your activity. Your job is to impart your contentions so as to convince your appointed authority or jury of the benefits of your case.

It's likewise not something you can keep away from as a specialist; customer gatherings, calls and introductions will make up your everyday.

The most effective method to build up this expertise: Speaking out in the open is something that many individuals battle with yet there are a wide range of approaches to practice and battle fears. Engaging in theater or discussing will create abilities like projection and pace while systems, for example, contemplation can help manage nerves.

6. Work Under Pressure

A legitimate profession is in no way, shape or form a simple one and you will frequently be relied upon to pivot a lot of work under tight cutoff times; having the option to remain quiet and centered is basic.

Instructions to build up this expertise: Setting yourself individual cutoff times before the official ones will guarantee that you complete undertakings on schedule and factors so as to deal with any issues which may emerge.

Make timetables and arrangements so you're ready to deal with your time viably and can organize the most significant errands. These are altogether deceives you can rehearse on exposition cutoff times as well!

7. Business Awareness

Business mindfulness manifests all over the place and basically implies having a wide comprehension of current issues and business news and how advancements are probably going to influence the firm and its customers.

Instructions to build up this expertise: While it appears to be threatening, it is extremely easy to pick up this information by understanding articles and sentiments from a wide scope of news sources.

My tip is to follow a couple of legitimate news sources via web-based networking media so as you're perusing Facebook and Twitter you're being kept very much educated.

8. Getting People

Attorneys as a matter of first importance are offering an assistance to their customers and your training ought to be outfitted towards their necessities. This includes tuning in and setting aside effort to comprehend their individual concerns.

It is uncommon that customers will have a point by point information on the law, that is the reason they come to you, so it is likewise important that you're ready to clarify matters in wording they see as opposed to utilizing excessively specialized language.

The most effective method to build up this aptitude: The more work experience you can get confronting clients and managing individuals in any way, the better you'll be at tuning in and adjusting your correspondence style to suit everybody.

9. Tender loving care

A legal counselor will consistently be confronted with enormous and once in a while muddled reports and the capacity to spot key snippets of data is fundamental. It might be that you're searching for proof to help your case or editing an agreement where missing a detail can crash the entire assignment.

Step by step instructions to build up this aptitude: Take your time when understanding records, deal with remaining centered; these are for the most part abilities you can get just from understanding books or articles!

10. Research Skills/Preparation

Nothing looks more amateurish than an absence of planning and it will consistently debilitate your position. Devote time to readiness and utilize an assortment of assets. In the event that you are getting ready for a meeting, for instance, utilize the association's site, yet in addition read news stories and official statements.

[appalledbc]

“Our House is on Fire,” and Carbon Taxes Are Not Enough to Save Us

In 2008, British Columbia implemented North America's first broad-based carbon tax. Between 2007 and 2016, provincial real GDP grew by 19%, while net emissions were reduced by 3.7%. Although GDP growth over nine years is impressive, the meagre 3.7% reduction in emissions over such an extensive period is, to say the least, dismal. Add another year, the results look even worse: in 2007, BC emitted 64.76 tons of Greenhouse Gas emissions; in 2017, 64.46 tons - a  mere .30 ton drop in emissions or 0.46%, less than one-half a percent, over ten years. And these recent figures do not take into account all the carbon emitting forest fires in BC over these years - a situation, one could easily surmise, that would add significantly to the total amount of emissions recorded over this ten year period.

Nonetheless BC’s initiative continues to be frequently looked to as a model strategy for carbon emissions reduction. But, in our current context of a climate emergency, it is not really, I would argue, an effective enough method for reducing emissions as aggressively as we must in order to have a truly habitable world.  It is instead a good example of market based economics that has been successfully sold politically, especially by neoliberal economists, and that is why it continues to be pushed in at least 50 jurisdictions around the globe as a relatively comfortable method for dealing with emissions by those in particular who have a stake in the business-as-usual game that serves their economic interests.

It is this sort of strategy, that is, putting a price on carbon, that our current federal government has adopted as its main strategy in its Greenhouse Gas Pollution Act of 2018 and, with variations, some of the major federal parties advocate - specifically a fee-rebate structure - but it, like the BC initiative, is also woefully ineffective. We don’t have a recent report, but as of 2017 emissions in Canada (716 million tons of carbon dioxide) have been reduced by a mere 2% since 2005 levels, we are 79 mega-tonnes short of the Paris Agreement targets, and emissions in 2018 have risen 7% since 1997, the year we signed the Kyoto Agreement. It’s doubtful they dropped significantly in 2019.

The fee/tax is supposed to provide an incentive to change one’s carbon behaviour. What works against such an incentive, however, is a politically motivated tax credit payable to just about everyone to use as they wish - except the big industrial polluters who have a different market based scheme based on industry sector thresholds that is also inadequate. Such compensation, in effect, undermines any real incentive to change one’s carbon behaviour. Unless one is a committed environmentalist, why should one change one's carbon behaviour when there’s little or no pain? And in what way are such fees an incentive, say, to drive less when one has no other choice but to do so, as many do, for example, in rural Canada, where there is no public transportation to speak of, or to opt for a green vehicle or home energy source when one cannot afford the capital outlay even with government subsidies, now only available from the federal government in Ontario? Not to mention  that, despite the tax credit, any fee or tax on fossil fuels disproportionately wounds those with lower incomes who cannot afford to absorb increases even with a dividend.

Even if the fee were higher, as some have suggested it should be for the process to work effectively, is anyone who isn't in the 10% going to stop driving a fossil fuel car? Is any medium size business suddenly going to switch its energy sources and green its infrastructure without significant subsidization? We're all deeply locked into fossil fuel capital investments and inscribed in the global infrastructure of fossil fuels - our houses, our cars, our businesses - and because we've naturalized that situation so deeply, we won't abandon them completely until we absolutely have to do so in order to survive. 

That day may be coming: a report synthesizing all the recent research by the Science Advisory Group of the UN Climate Action Summit to coincide with the UN Summit on climate change reveals that 2014-2019 is on track to be the hottest six year period on record and that emissions reductions should really be three times what the Paris Accord recommends. Issued just two days later, the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report co-written by 100 scientists synthesizing 700 recent scientific studies indicating that conditions are even worse than they anticipated in their 2018 report underscores once again the monumental crisis we're facing without aggressive action.

Yet carbon tax strategies remain attractive to governments and political parties, and it would seem many climate conscious environmental organizations also think they are a good strategy. Why? Because they are more politically palatable and would seem to balance some effort against climate change with a business-as-usual economy.  But it is, alas, no longer business-as-usual:  there are no jobs on an uninhabitable planet.

There is of course considerable resistance, propagandistic and otherwise, from the vested interests of fossil fuel production corporations, their financial backers, and their friends in media and government to any efforts to wean us off fossil fuels and to shift us exclusively towards sustainable green energy sources. Ask yourself who benefits from political inertia? Who benefits from climate inaction? We have a considerable number of those especially in the Western world who indulge in classic whataboutism too: what about China? What about the recalcitrance of Brazil, Turkey, and Russia? What about all the developing countries still burning coal? 

And there is also what has now become a desperate resistance from climate change deniers who, when they behave with a degree of civility on social media and elsewhere, masquerade as philosophical skeptics with a veneer of reason and dance around the massive amount of globally coordinated scientific evidence on the existential reality of global warming and climate change. (Check out the hashtag #climatebrawl.) Their goal is essentially to keep the issue in doubt and a contested state. Recent cooperative research from the University of Montreal and the University of California at Santa Barbara, however, reveals that the majority of people in every single federal riding in Canada with the exception of three accept the fact of climate change and suggest that some sort of action should be taken. Indeed, with the exception of the three all say their province has experienced climate change.

No wonder they say that. The planet’s average surface temperature in 2018 was the fourth highest since 1880, when record keeping began. Nine of the ten warmest years in recorded history have occurred since 2005 - soon to be ten of the eleven warmest. This past June, the month ER visits in Ontario uncharacteristically but perhaps not coincidentally spiked, was the hottest June ever recorded, while July was the hottest month in human history, the four-hundred and fifteenth straight month of temperatures higher than the twentieth-century average. We also learned recently that September 2019 was the hottest September in recorded history. But, worse news of all, we have increased C02 emissions globally by 20% since 2015, in  mere 3 and 3/4 years. 20%!!

The simple fact is that Canada is the ninth biggest emitter in the world, that Canada has the highest per capita carbon footprint of any country in the G20 (16 tonnes), that we are the tenth biggest emitter in the world if emissions are counted from 1900, that Canada’s North is warming at three times the global average, and that Canada in general is warming at twice the global rate, among the major effects the devastation in the North about which we learned this spring and summer - melting ice and refreezing ice slabs, eroding permafrost, raging fires, warming oceans - and several sustained dome-like heat waves in the South. 

And the effects of carbon emissions will be with us forever: the temperature we experience at the Earth’s surface will not decrease if/when we actually manage to stop carbon emissions. It will remain at whatever level it is at the precise moment when we fully stop emissions. That's why net zero* strategies are ineffective: they still allow for the continuous production of CO2 emissions, and seldom do the offsets actually balance that output. Recent research on the significant carbon debt incurred between old forests and new forests of four decades to 100 years are a good example of that failure. In other words, biomass/biofuels (whose carbon debts are misleadingly not budgeted accurately in national carbon ledgers) as well as reforestation are not quite the salvation we might think they are as raging forest fires spewing carbon around the world continue.**

Our carbon dioxide*** emissions are 415 parts per million and accelerating. We burn two-thirds more fossil fuels today than in 1990, and one-half of all fossil fuels burned in human history have been burned since 1990. Another way of saying that: emissions have gone up by 46% in the last 300 years, half that amount in the last 30 years! They will be with us for thousands of years. In other words, the longer we wait to get the process of aggressive decarbonization going, the hotter it will be and the more the economic fallout even if we finally do manage to stop emissions completely.

Much, much more than a carbon tax is required. We'll find out soon enough that only binding government legislated regulations with legal consequences will actually work to reduce emissions and mitigate their effects with the dramatic intensity we need. We will learn that we need to shift the focus to the larger perspective of systemic change - no easy task given that the entire global economy is driven by fossil fuels. Carbon taxes can play a supporting role,**** to be sure, but the sooner all our political parties stop flirting with a price on carbon and market based solutions in general as their main climate change policies, the sooner we can get on with the job that needs to be done right now.

That job is five-fold: 1)  Recognize fully at every level of government the scale of the challenge and that we all have a moral responsibility to work against the undeniable harm being inflicted on our world. Global warming even now affects every single aspect of our lives. Its effects are economic, social, and psychological; and it is already emerging as the number one health issue in the world as conditions worsen. 2) Reduce carbon emissions radically now through legally binding regulations. 3) Aggressively mitigate through whatever methods available the effects of carbon emissions already present in the atmosphere. 4) As politically difficult as this might be, shut down through legislation the production of any and all fossil fuel infrastructure (no more pipelines no more new extraction, no more subsidies). And 5) develop adaptation and survival strategies in all our communities big and small. Why this last? Because we long ago reached the point of no return and  there is no going back.

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*Net zero emissions or emissions neutrality means that the amount of emissions generated is no more than the amount taken out, a theoretical complete offset. But the new emissions generated in this process nevertheless remain in the atmosphere, thus extending the presence of those emissions in the atmosphere for decades to come. This is an inadequate form of mitigation in my judgment simply because we’re still burning fossil fuels and emitting carbon. What we need to get to is a state of carbon emissions negativity whereby our carbon footprint is less than neutral by reabsorbing the carbon emissions already in the atmosphere. That job is undermined with net zero strategies. As long as we continue to burn fossil fuels at our current rate, that will not happen and matters will only get worse.

**See Eddy Isaccs in his recent report from The School of Public Policy (https://tinyurl.com/y3vdfc5m): “This is because of the time lag between the instantaneous CO2 release from combustion of wood and the decades of regrowth required“ - 44 to 100 years.

***Why Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is a Problem

Two conditions are always in play with respect to Earth’s atmosphere: the amount of sunlight (solar radiation) that reaches the Earth’s surface through the electromagnetic spectrum and the amount of greenhouse gasses in the air.

Greenhouse gas levels control the amount of heat (infrared radiation) absorbed into the atmosphere as it radiates up from the Earth.

Nitrogen and oxygen make up 99% of the atmosphere, but they really don’t have an effect on the Earth’s temperature because they do not absorb heat (infrared radiation).  Carbon dioxide does indeed absorb heat, a process that prevents CO2 escaping from the atmosphere into space. Thus the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the hotter the Earth’s surface temperature.  Fossil fuel emissions are the biggest source of C02 emissions, and C02 can last in the atmosphere for thousands of years.

****I agree with Eddy Isaccs in his recent report from The School of Public Policy (https://tinyurl.com/y3vdfc5m) that revenue from pricing carbon emissions should focus not on recycling that income for whatever reason, political or otherwise, but on investments in solar and wind infrastructure that can actually contribute directly to the reduction or mitigation of emissions.