#while trumps is more 'well he Says hes doing this and historically has Not done it but in fact made it worse. hes telling the truth!' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sybbi · 2 months

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i think people want to replace biden because they dont see any chance of him winning against trump anymore and most people have lost faith. another candidate would restore optimism and bring in more voters

Would it?

Here's my issue: what candidate should replace Biden? I ask that question and everyone seems to have a different answer. That, for me, is more dangerous than Biden stumbling over his words a little. It is too fucking late for us to go running around looking like chickens with our heads cut off while the Republicans present a strong, increasingly unified front behind Trump.

Harris, some people say. Well ffs, Harris is already on the ticket. If you're one of those people who's afraid Joe Biden can't run things or won't live through his full term or WHATEVER, SHE IS ALREADY GUARANTEED TO REPLACE HIM. And I see no reason to switch him out wholesale when, again, there needs to be a show of a unified front. That's part of what kills me in all this - you have to have faith to inspire it in others. To fight against a unified front, you have to show unity and strength in your own cause, but instead the left-leaners are doing what they have almost always historically done: fracturing over internal perceptions and differences instead of saying "The biggest threat right now is not us, it's them."

I saw, on that giant lame-ass post by Wheaton, that he was saying we needed a candidate that can force the American people to see what kind of danger we're in. And frankly that is horseshit. The American people, I believe, largely know the stakes here. And Biden has, repeatedly, made grim and coherent speeches about the threat our democracy currently faces. The only thing that has distracted the American public recently FROM the grim threat to our democracy is this aforementioned public pants shitting that, for some reason, has gained more traction than the fact that Trump will be in effect a fucking king if he is allowed in the Oval Office again.

If the Democrats and anti-Trumpers had ANY sense they would be fucking HAMMERING on that. They would be reemphasizing all of Trumps unpopular policies, his instability, his cozy relationship with foreign leaders who act antithetical to American values and ideals, his corruption, his EVERYTHING. Because again, THIS IS A REFERENDUM ON TRUMPISM, FIRST AND FOREMOST. But no. Once again, the left is letting perfect be the enemy of good.

How much faith do you think you can drum up for Harris, who has been torn apart by the left and the media separately, or any other random replacement this late in the game, that you couldn't manage for Biden with an actual concerted fucking effort? The logic of "we need a new candidate that can draw in voters" is so flawed because there is NO candidate that is not going to be torn to shreds by a certain crowd, that will not have doubt placed on them about something, who won't be scrutinized for a story under a magnifying glass. If you give in here, why the fuck wouldn't you give in when the next guy or girl gets torn up for something innocuous, something not reflective of their actual public service? What the fuck are you going to stand for if, every time people show an ounce of criticism about ANYTHING your side does, your solution is to throw the baby out with the bathwater? Meanwhile the MAGAts continue to fortify themselves, casting themselves as strong leaders, as we run around directionless and grasping.

All this is doing, in my view, is giving in to panic and inviting more confusion and panic which can have an even more demoralizing effect on more offline voters. Because where did the loss of faith come from? A bad debate that many voters didn't even watch, because most have probably already made up their mind? Once again, everyone already knows these two candidates. They know Biden is old. They know he's tripped over words before. And they know Trump, too. Biden wasn't elected the first time because he was the perfect candidate. He was the anti-Trump vote. And I agree that just being Not Trump shouldn't be good enough for a candidate. But Biden had managed to return the country to some semblance of normalcy, and despite far right politicians and interest groups throwing up obstruction after obstruction, he has still managed to help many and has done what was within his power to undo the harms brought on by the first Trump presidency.

All this to say, once again, that there WAS a time to talk about replacing Biden. IT IS PAST. I will eat my fucking words if the DNC doesn't nominate him and simultaneously mald over what I think would probably be one of the stupidest decisions they could make. But whatever. It's out of my hands.

#politics #long post #biden 2024 #the time to field other candidates was the fucking primary #and i didnt see ANYBODY promoting alternatives #NOTHING on social media from ANYONE #NOTHING irl #once again: there were FOUR YEARS when the Democrats couldve been preparing replacements #but no. they chose to put their eggs in Biden's basket #and run this race #and now theyre tripping themselves up bc 'omg biden is old'#THEY BOTH ARE! BUT ONE IS A FUCKING CORRUPT RAPIST DICTATOR WANNABE!!#Y'ALL KNEW BIDEN WAS OLD AND THAT HIS STUMBLED OVDR WORDS FOR HOW LONG AND DID NOTHING #SO WHY ARE YOU LETTING IT BOTHER YOU NOW?#before it was nothing but a focus on his leadership and his record #only NOW y'all are having this moment??#if this is indicative of how much attention and foresight and political planning is actualy available to leftist circles #we are so cooked. and it has nothing to do with biden atp

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winderlylandchime · 1 year

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And we are on 3x09 1/2: ‘ITS JUSTIN AND BRIAN!! LOOK AT THEM BACK IN THEIR ELEMENT DANCING IN THE CLUB! I missed them being slutty on the dance floor. Every episode should start this way’ Ben says the most historic reunification since Germany ‘FUCK YEAH BENJAMIN! NEVER HAVE YOU BEEN MORE RIGHT THAN IN THIS MOMENT…maybe there’s still some faith for you’ ‘finally Justin is back to how he was! I missed him in the club being free and slutty. He acted all high and mighty before. BUT NOT ANYMORE’ and then immediately stockwell pops up ‘for fucks sake, theres no escaping this trump wannabe, is there? BRIAN, why would you do this to me?! This is the type of commercial that would pop up to convince you to stop smoking and fail miserably. (Stockwell invites Brian to hottub) *starts singing* two dudes, sitting in a hot tub 5 feet apart cause they’re not gay. Except one of them definitely is and the other one has a secret crush on Brian’ ‘wait, why cant Mel work while pregnant? Isn’t maternity leave at the end? That’s fucked up. Girl fuck ‘em and go to work’ Brian is now in a hot tub with Stockwell and he said something about getting used to it but once youre inside it feels good ‘That “yeah” from Brian was him trying very hard to not make a gay joke, no one can convince me otherw- HE LIKES HIM? Brian, you’re better than this. OOO SOMETHING HE NEVER TOLD ANYONE? IM CALLING IT! HES GAY..oh he’s just afraid, well that was anticlimactic. Now what would Brian’s doubts be? Love? Life? That peanut car? His future with Justin?’ And we are at Justin showing Mikey the rage cover ‘OH ITS A BLOWJOB COVER?! Yeah! Speak on it Blondie! it hurts my soul to agree that Mike was right (justin says brian will never say he loves him) HE WILL! I am working on it! I know i said that the last season will end that way but unfortunately you fucked up my plans so i will make it up to you this season! Ha, blowjob on a comic cover. i fuck with it, hey, did i ever tell you about the time I accidentally told a store employee that i am looking for that machine for blowjobs instead of blow dries because i forgot what it was called? It got a little awkward’ ‘why does Mike keep staring at Justin and Brian? Dude, you have your own boyfriend. Imagine being called out for being a prude by Ben of all fucking people. I MISSED THEM BEING MESSY TOGETHER-wait why is the cop here? Why are they shutting this do-? FUCKING TRUMP WANNABE, look what you did Bri Bri (The cop spots Brian at woodys) oh he’s also got a crush on Bri Bri. I see we all have a crush on Brian.’ Debbie is now calling out Brian at the diner ‘oh Bri Bri, it hurts me to unfortunately have to agree with Ben and Debbie. Look what you’ve done, you have me agreeing with Mike AND Ben in the same episode! Brian HE IS NOT STIRRING SHIT UP! shit he wants out of this town..SHIT HE WANTS TO GO TO NEW YOR- YES PLEASE TAKE JUSTIN WITH YOU! Finally michael speaks some facts! Here i go again agreeing with him’ And now the Carl/protest scene is on ‘EXACTLY CARL! NO NEED TO CALL PEOPLE NAMES! Oh she’s mad at carl, damn i kinda feel bad, i think this trump dude is above his pay grade..Lindsay you aren’t being really reasonable to Mel right now. Actually neither of you are reasonable. Youre both annoying me and they wanna bring another kid into it?’ And here comes the scene where Brian gets fired ‘Brian for fucks sake stop working with this pig! SHIT HES GETTING FIRED?! HELL YEAH! Oh fuck, its because hes gay?! FUCK YOU but also Bri Bri you should’ve seen this coming, you’re smart, why are you acting dumb now? Oh so that guy wasn’t checking out Brian at the bar. Well that’s disappointing. Now THAT is a good rule Brian. I like it. Now go home and do some business transaction with a certain blondie to celebrate you not working with this fucker anymore’

Every episode should start with them dancing and being slutty!

Your brother is working on Brian saying I love you to Justin! He’s so invested. I’m so sorry he’s not going to get his wish for a long time .

I’m loving how much he hates Stockwell and how torn he is about Brian working for him.

They’re both annoying and they want to bring another kid into this? My thoughts exactly.

#ask winderlylandchime #dear sweet anon #queer as folk #a straight man watches qaf us 2000 in the year of our lord 2023

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reasoningdaily · 2 years

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President Joe Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address, recently televised to the American public as established under Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution— the annual presentation of measures for Congress to consider—came during a time of division, strife, and crisis, placing many concerned with “the time and what must be done,” into a valley of decision beyond the rhetoric of partisan politics and the ideological struggle between liberals and conservatives.

“We are the only country that has emerged from every crisis stronger than when we entered it,” President Biden said from the Speaker of the House dais before the joint session of Congress, members of the judicial branch, and his cabinet officials. “That is what we are doing again. Two years ago, our economy was reeling,” he said. “As I stand here tonight, we have created a record 12 million new jobs, more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years.”

Referring to recovery from the economic impact of the COVID 19 lockdowns, the civil unrest that came at the end of the tumultuous presidency of Donald J. Trump, and what the president called threats to democracy not seen in the country since the Civil War, Mr. Biden said his administration proved the cynics and the naysayers wrong two years into his own presidency and said he defined the country with one word: “Possibilities.”

“Yes, we disagreed plenty,” the president continued. “And yes, there were times when Democrats had to go it alone. But time and again, Democrats and Republicans came together. Came together to defend a stronger and safer Europe,” he said. “Came together to pass a once-in-a-generation infrastructure law, building bridges to connect our nation and people,” while proclaiming a myriad of other projects, programs, and social agendas.

The African American Mayors Association (AAMA), lauded President Biden’s speech, and said they shared his optimism about America’s future and “wholeheartedly believe that the state of our union is made stronger by his leadership.” Their news release added: “President Biden took office with the promise to rebuild the backbone of the country and unite and restore the soul of the nation.

These goals remain equally important today. As the only organization dedicated to representing more than 500 Black mayors across the United States, including the four largest cities in the country, AAMA knows that President Biden’s got our back and we’ve got his,” the AAMA statement read in part.

“Tonight, President Biden spoke directly to the American people by outlining his administration’s historic progress over the past two years. From tackling unprecedented crises, rebuilding the economy, and delivering results for working families, the President’s leadership has helped steer our nation in the right direction. We are grateful for the strong support President Biden and his administration has shown to mayors across the country and look forward to a continued partnership where we can focus on the core values of getting people back to work, ensuring our communities are safe, and improving the standard of living in people’s everyday lives,” said AAMA President and Little Rock Mayor, Frank Scott, Jr.

“His tagline (was) ‘finish the job,’” Dr. Leon said after President Biden’s speech. “Well, Joe, finish the job on Medicare, finish the job on Medicaid, finish the job on free college, finish the job on the $800 billion you were supposed to send to HBCUs. He made a lot of calls for things, did not offer legislation for them, and again, he knew the buttons to push, but when it comes to him following through on the things that he advocates for, he doesn’t get them done,” he said.

“He made mention of the labor issue, and last September on Labor Day, he said he wanted to be known as the greatest pro-labor president ever. And what did he do with the railway workers strike?” Dr. Leon asked. “He sided on the side of the railway companies, sacrificing the workers. There was a lot of fluffy rhetoric and as a political scientist I did not see substantive policy initiatives proposed. I heard a lot of populist rhetoric that did not have legislation tied to it.”

Regarding Mr. Biden’s position on America’s opioid crisis, Dr. Leon said the harshness with which urban addicts were handled by the criminal justice system, during the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, as opposed to the compassion with which suburban and rural fentanyl addicts are handled by the healthcare system today, the mass incarceration of Black people, for nonviolent drug offenses, is directly linked to the 1994 Crime Bill co-sponsored by then-Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.).

“Now we have the opioid crisis impacting middle and upper middle class America and it’s made its way into the homes of White Americans, young kids who, in many cases, are taking these pills from the medicine cabinets of their parents,” adding that today opioid addiction has a White face to be handled gently while crack addiction still has a Black face to be handled harshly.

On the issue of police reform, President Biden acknowledged the parents of Tyre Nichols, a Black motorist who died in a hospital three days after enduring a savage beating by five Black police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 7. Expressing compassion over their son’s death during a questionable traffic stop, the president referenced his executive order regulating the behavior of federal law enforcement personnel but did not leverage his bully pulpit to restart negotiations over the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act stalled in the Senate since 2021.

“I don’t see any real traction coming out of it now, because Republicans tend to be more pro-police and pro-blue than the Democrats, but the one line Joe Biden gave that I thought was interesting and powerful was when he said: “When a police officer pins on this badge in the morning, he deserves the right to come home in the evening,’” Dr. Leon continued. “And then he said: ‘so do the people in the community,’” adding that as minor as it was, it constituted a powerful statement from a sitting president. But at the end of the day, it remains unlikely to bring substantive change to police behavior in Black neighborhoods.

As Merciless as Ancient Nineveh?

“Though the whips and the clubs of their enemy are heard night and day upon the heads and backs of the prey (so-called Negroes), they still do not desire to depart from America,” the Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote. “Ancient Nineveh, according to her history, was full of chariots that made much noise and the prancing horses carrying the chariots in full speed that the prophets described them as ‘jumping chariots,’” he said. “So, it is in America today: her cities are filled with automobiles and the noise of them is heard every hour of the day, rattling past our doors. She is full of blood from murdered people,” he wrote of America’s hubris and violence prone culture.

“Black people must organize themselves and have what I describe as an unapologetically Black agenda, then they should coalesce with recent immigrants, veterans, women, the Hispanic community, and even poor Whites to form, in fact or by association, what the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan described as a Justice Party,” Student Min. Muhammad explained.

“We should convene town hall meetings across this country to flush out the public policies that would be fair and just toward our people and to those who have been marginalized in this society,” Student Min. Muhammad said.

“Given the make-up of the House of Representatives and the slim margin that Mr. Biden’s party has in the Senate, and the upcoming elections in 2024, I really don’t think the opposition party is going to allow him to accomplish anything, even in a bipartisan manner,” he added. “Our destiny is not totally tied to whether they give us justice or not, our destiny is tied to our submission and obedience to Allah (God), His Christ and the Messiah. We should not fall for liberal lies, conservative cons, or moderate myths. Let us rely on Allah and make Allah sufficient for us in all our affairs and let us build a future for our children.”

#State of the Union address. Biden says nation will recover stronger #but will the plight of the masses matter #NOI #Final Call

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themageiboline · 4 years

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...Q-Shaman? Really?

Rant-Time: Let’s talk about a certain meme-worthy character of todays events...

Today an unprecedented event occurred as Trump supporters, angered at the supposedly fraudulent election, descended on DC to partake in so-called "stop-the-steal" protests.

We've all heard of this, and many people more competent than myself have and will be continuing to cover the events of today, and the egregiously dangerous implications they might have for our democratic society.

Instead, I’m here to muse and vent about something which as relatively minor in the grand scheme of these events it may be, is also something that probably won’t really be addressed much by many outside of neopagan circles. I’m talking about Q-Shaman, or more specifically “Q-Shaman’s” tattoos.

Of course he is in the spotlight and being meme’d to high Hel as the barbarian American flag face paint wearing Braveheart wannabe that led their charge, but what concerns me are the Norse pagan tattoos he has very prominently displayed on his bare chest, in addition to the runes on his hands.

Here we can clearly see a valknut, Yggdrasil, and a Mjolnir down the left side of his chest. Now full disclosure I don’t know much about this man at the time of writing this other than what he did today and what you see here now, and that he has been dubbed Q-Shaman, either by himself or others in reference to the outlandish conspiracy of Q-Anon. I plan to rectify this in the coming days and possibly either make a follow up post or share an article exploring him in greater detail later.

But for now let’s talk about the implications here. The valknut is a symbol of Odin, and it seems to me like he’s using it as a symbol of devotion strongly implying a warrior cult mentality on his part. Assuming he’s aware of the historical context, he’s effectively saying, “strike here, I dare you” while it is also said to serve as a protective charm, only allowing the wearers death to come to pass when Odin sees it fit. If taken in a literal sense as an Odinist’s expression of devotion, it would be safe to assume he’s effectively a neo-pagan warrior cultist, who may well see the fight for Trumpism as his fighting chance to prove himself before Odin one day. Now, Odinists have become rather infamous over the years, as many are warrior cultists with fascist-adjacent if not explicitly fascist or even Neo-Nazi political beliefs. Many Odinist blots around the country are infamous for openly and brazenly displaying Nazi flags and portraits of Adolf Hitler within their lodges.

So now we have some douche canoe with three very important symbols to those of Nordic heritage and faith very prominently tattooed on his bared chest, taking part in what could only be described as some shitty, poorly thought out attempt at an insurrection fueled by right wing conspiracy, by supporters of an authoritarian right wing president that refuse to accept peaceful and democratic defeat.

You see what this could mean for these symbols right? If we don’t watch it these symbols very dear to the hearts of many of Norwegian heritage and of Nordic faiths could very well go the way of the swastika if we let it. As it is right now valknuts are often seen automatically as racist symbols as it is, and Thor’s hammer Mjolnir seems to very quickly be following suit. The fact of the matter is we neither have the right nor the ability to stop them from using these symbols, or from believing in and using Nordic faiths as justifications for their authoritarianisms.

What we can do, and what we must do if we’re to preserve these symbols and by extension help to protect a class of already marginalized religious minorities, is refuse to allow them to appropriate these within the public conscious as symbols entirely their own. That means we have to stand up and be vocal whenever we see people falsely equating these symbols as being inherently symbols of hate no matter the context. We have to stand up when we see voices of hate using these symbols, and make it loud and clear they do not represent us all and will not be tolerated within our communities.

If you’re of a Nordic faith and have the emotional mental and physical energy to do so, it might mean wearing your Mjolnir out proudly in the open, ready to shoot down any accusations of hate with snappy quips, such as “ well this hammer smashes fascists” perhaps. On that note, you can buy shirts with this phrase to make this clear to all who see you if you wish. In fact I’m contemplating making a design of my own for Print-On-Demand websites, though I have no guarantees that I’ll ever get it done.

Anyways, that’s my rant for tonight. I hope it wasn’t too long winded and I certainly have no plans of making a habit of this but I just really needed to get that off my chest.

On a related note, here’s a link to an Etsy page with some very relevant stickers you might want to check out.

#NAZIPAGANSFUCKOFF #THISHAMMERSMASHESFASCISTS

#DC #washington dc #pagan #neopaganism #paganism #antifascist #heathen #asatru #nazipagansfuckoff

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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Okay, y'all. Time to do this one more time. Let the fact that there are so many of these posts right now reinforce the point. Many of you already know this, and I see and love you, but for anyone still ~undecided about their choice, should they be an American citizen of voting age on November 3, 2020:

Time to not be. It was time a long, long while ago, but I am going to have to say it again.

Primary season is over. The endless fine-tooth combing of candidates' policies and positions is over. We are all deeply well aware that the candidates on the Democratic ticket, being human beings and establishment politicians, are flawed. "BUT WHAT ABOUT THIS POSITION FROM 19/ 20-WHENEVER AS JUSTIFICATION FOR WHY IT'S TERRIBLE TO VOTE FOR -- "

No. Stop. Just stop. Stop threatening to hold the rest of us hostage, in the middle of a pandemic, the Great Depression, and racial inequality and protests on a scale not seen from the 1960s, because you did not get Barbie Dream Candidate. That is the behavior of terrorists and toddlers. If your supposedly enlightened morally pure ideology does not involve any action to mitigate the harm that is directly in front of you, it isn't worth a shit as an ideology actually devoted to helping people. If your approach to politics is to shout about how Pure your ideas are on twitter and tear down anyone working within a system of flawed choices to do the good that they can: you're not helping, and frankly, your constant threats to withhold your suffrage as a punishment to us aren't convincing the rest of us that we really need to listen to you or that you have anyone's best interests at heart. The Online Left TM is as much a vacuous, self-reinforcing noise chamber as the Online Right TM, and can sometimes tend to be even more dangerous.

I was saying this in 2016. A lot of us were saying this in 2016. I am just about to turn 32 years old and have been voting in federal elections for almost 15 years. For what it's worth.

This is not an ordinary election. This is not a contest between two flawed candidates who respect the system and want to work to enact their policies in the ordinary way. One is a flawed 90s era Democrat who nonetheless has already been pushed CONSIDERABLY left in his policies and platforms since the end of the primaries (and his existing platform would already make him the most left president elected, even more than Obama). The other is a fascist dictator who has openly spoken about refusing to accept the election results, his desire to abolish term limits and serve for life, and complete the pillaging of any remaining fragile American public funds for him and his cult of cronies. He does not respect the system. He does not want to do anything for anyone that is not himself. 160,000 and counting needless deaths of American citizens have already happened. Will keep happening.

This is the last time Trump has to face voters. This is the last chance the country has to repudiate his entire poisonous ideology and its marching Nazi minions. IF he steps aside, which is already far from guaranteed, he can ride off into the sunset as a vindicated two term president and probably be rehabilitated like George W. Bush was within a few years of leaving office. American political memory is very short. It will happen. Again, if he even leaves.

RBG is 87 and has cancer again. She will NOT survive another four years. Stephen Breyer is 81. Their seats could both come up in the next four years. The Supreme Court could be a right wing rubber stamp for whatever time we all have left before climate change and coronavirus kill us all.

"But if people just thought for themselves and did their homework and didn't vote the party line like sheep, we could support a third party/write in -- " Stop. Just stop. Attend a ninth grade civics class and learn about how politics work in America. Yes, the two-party system sucks. Yes, the Electoral College is a hot steaming pile of absolute bullshit. Magical unicorn fairy dust fantasies WILL NOT change that.

Do not vote for Kanye (who has pretty much openly admitted he is trying to play spoiler to Biden on behalf of his buddy Trump). Do not vote for godforsaken fucking Gary Johnson or Jill Stein who appear on ballots just to give sanctimonious leftists the illusion of virtue-signaling. If you want any chance of fixing the mess that 2020 has left America and the world in, you need to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The end.

Biden is a flawed old man who was our last choice, sure. He is also a distinguished public servant who has already been in the White House for eight years under Obama and thus we KNOW what to expect. He is an empathetic man who connects with people's personal tragedy and picked as his running mate a younger Black/biracial woman who directly confronted and called him out on past behavior. While the pundit class was simpering and whining about how it was Disrespectful and how could he consider her, Biden did so, and that speaks well to me of the fact that he is willing to learn, to take criticism, and not just accept it from a former Black female rival, but make her his second in command and the potential first female president of the United States.

Can you EVER picture Trump doing that? Not in eight thousand million years.

As for Kamala, we are all aware of her previous checkered history as a prosecutor (and even then, she did plenty of good things as well!). Since joining the Senate, however, she has consistently become one of its most progressive members. She is the co-sponsor of an economic aid package designed to give every American $2,000/month, backdated to March (the start of the coronavirus pandemic) and continuing at least a few months after its end. A Biden-Harris White House could make that happen. Especially if they are put into office with a Democratic House and Senate (for the love of God, Kentucky, kill Mitch McConnell with fire). That is just one example.

Harris's nomination is obviously historic. And Biden didn't choose another Biden (or another Tim Kaine, the blandest white man imaginable). He chose another Obama: a younger rising star of an immigrant background, a person of color, a former lawyer and someone who represents the diversity of the country that the white supremacists and the Cheeto in Chief have tried to paint as its worst and most degenerate evil.

A vote for Biden and Harris means getting rid not just of Trump, but Mike Pence, Vladimir Putin, Jared Kushner, Betsy Devos, the Trump crony destroying the Postal Service, the rampant coronavirus misinformation and bullshit, the destruction of Social Security and Medicare, the spread of Nazi propaganda from the President's twitter account, the likely two Supreme Court picks that would be as bad as Brett Kavanaugh or worse... on and on. Biden and Harris would be elected by progressive voters and thus answerable to them in 2022 midterms and 2024 general. They can both be, and already have been, pushed further left. They are reasonable and competent adults who have demonstrated experience and compassion. I KNOW about their flaws and past actions I don't agree with. But I'm frankly done with any more counterproductive straw man bitching about This One Bad Thing They Did and how it makes it a terribad awful choice to vote for them. Open your eyes. Look at the alternative. LOOK AT WHAT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED AND THE FACT THAT THIS IS NOT EVEN AS BAD AS IT COULD STILL GET.

Check your registration or register at vote.gov.

DO NOT LOOK AT POLLS AND DECIDE "EH BIDEN IS CLEARLY GOING TO WIN, I DON'T NEED TO VOTE." THAT IS HOW WE LOST LAST TIME.

Unseating incumbents is HARD. It is even harder when the other side has openly laid out their plan to cheat in great detail, and there is nothing really stopping them from doing it. The only thing, in fact, is massive, unfalsifiable results on an undeniable scale.

So:

Vote.

Vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Thanks a lot.

#hilary for ts #politics for ts #rant #long post #i will be reblogging this periodically as election day nears #haters/trolls will be blocked out of hand

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asklittlepip · 3 years

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World War 3 is coming it will be a miracle if there's no nuclear holocaust.

Well, we already had our Beer Hall Putsch (January 6th) and appeasement of a dictator (Crimea), so what was that saying about history repeating again? *sighs*

EDIT: Oh, my fucking God..

Almost all our leaders were in one place, with Trump hiding while watching TV, cackling at the chaos. It wasn’t “mere” vandalism, it was an attempt to overthrow democracy, and people died. There’s also been evidence that some of those traitors got a tour of the building beforehand, and if it wasn’t for brave (ex-)soldiers like Officer Goodman, we wouldn’t be having this discussion now at all. Plus things like how the alarms were literally ripped out of the walls in the offices of female elected officials. Also, when that had happened, the last time the VP was evacuated was during 9/11. But no, it’s normal, it’s “just” some theft. It’s not like actual historical scholars with more knowledge & experience than either of us have made this comparison... but, naw, I just pulled this outta my ass!

Also, I was not absolving Obama/Biden or anyone else of their fault in leading us to this point. I didn’t even mention them OR anyone else in my initial reply! I wrote a sentence and a fucking half! Not my fault you assumed I’m blaming Trump for their share of the blame. We’ve been letting Russia get away with shit for decades, so EVERY President in my lifetime have a hand in letting things reach this point. But I will blame him for attempting this earlier, when Donny blocked the $400 million in defenses that Congress had bipartisonly approved for personal gain; which, itself, is also a defiance of the Constitution AND IS WHAT HE WAS IMPEACHED FOR (the first time!), because the President is NOT supposed to be in charge of money!

I fucking hate this “well so and so did this, why aren’t you mentioning them?!” bullshit, because then we’ll be here all day, and they aren’t the ones with a goddamn cult literally DYING for them, like we have going on right now. I’m so fucking sorry I can’t possibly list or blame everyone who deserves it, ok? Excuse me for focusing on the guy who RIGHT NOW is sucking Putin’s dick! And he just he doubled down on it!

Both major parties are shit, most politicians are scum, but only some of them right now trying to dismantle it all in favor of themselves, and them alone. Focus, for goodness’ sake! You don’t worry about parking tickets or the guy stealing from the till when the arsonists are burning the store down! Priorities! After you put the flames out, then you can worry about the other offenders! Fuck’s sake..

Sorry, I just.. I should not HAVE to do this. I should not HAVE to explain every goddamn detail. The simple fact of the matter is, that America has made mistakes with Russia (and many other countries) for a very long time, but Individual One and family have done a LOT and ARE doing their utmost to ruin things...

FUCK!

#rant

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cheri-translates · 3 years

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[CN] Season 2 Summary (Volume 4: Ch 10 - 13)

🍒 Warning: Detailed spoilers from S2 🍒

Along with the update on 3 June 2021, the CN server released a “Plot Review” which contains bullet-point summaries of S2 :>

Volume 3 Summary: here

You receive a name list of people involved in the Evol assassinations, and realise that quite a number of them were participants in the Hunter Game. After considering the significance of this list, you decide to discuss the matter with Victor

With Victor’s prompting, you do a cost-benefit analysis and find that disclosing the document brings greater benefits than disadvantages. However, doing this will make LFG a target of the true mastermind behind the assassination incidents

“After all, he isn’t the only one with a trump card.”

As expected, disclosing the list results in heated debate from various segments of society

While leaving Souvenir one day, the brake of Victor’s car fails to work because someone tampered with it

The two of you have no choice but to speed around the city. Despite it being an incredibly dangerous situation, he remains composed, successfully resolving the issue before him. It’s the first time you realise how skilled Victor is in driving

After the incident, you track down the person who tampered with Victor’s car, and find that he has been assassinated

Likely sensing your feelings, Victor invites you to the park after work. When you head to the park as arranged, you see his figure from afar as he waits for you

You deliberately send him a text, telling him that you’re still at work. He believes it at first, but reacts soon after. He scans his surroundings, then meets your eyes amongst the crowd

“Childish.”

While taking a stroll in the park, the both of you stop before a tree. A long time ago, Victor had coursed through time and entered the future in order to prove that the future could be changed. Back then, you had engraved your wish. This time, the same words are your source of determination. Next to you, Victor smiles and changes “May everyone be safe and healthy” to “Everyone will be safe and healthy”

When he takes you to the riverside, Victor finally tells you the true reason why he asked you to meet him. He’s currently acquiring businesses related to the “Small Syringes”. He needs this information to be publicly disclosed in order to lure the forces that are lying low to the surface voluntarily. Even though you’re worried, you choose to trust his decision. You volunteer to release this news as it can drum up a large volume of public opinion

Victor looks at you, his expression proud and gentle

"Here’s to a pleasant collaboration.”

After the news is made public, the reputation of LFG suffers a drastic decline as expected

On the surface, your interactions with LFG have lessened. At the entrance of LFG, Victor walks forward amid the remarks and hostility by passers-by. You want to defend him, but reason tells you to stay where you are, and not act impulsively

As your eyes gradually redden, you receive a message from him-

“The weather is pretty nice today.”

Victor’s plan progresses steadily. What you’ve done has also allowed the reputation of Black Swan to rise

Even though the two of you are walking in different directions, you are certain that you’re standing in the turbulent undercurrents together

The director of the hospital whom you once interviewed has discovered a reason for the pathological changes in Evolvers, and has invited you over to talk about it. Unfortunately, a group of Evolver gangsters has suddenly taken the hospital hostage

The STF rushes to the scene quickly. When you hear Gavin’s voice, your heart feels much more at ease

The main plotter, Yang Ping, has held normal civilians as hostages, and requests for a series of provisions to be made for Evolvers, so that Evolvers can have more “benefits”

Struck with an idea, you remain on the scene to assist Gavin at any moment. When he sees you, Gavin understands your intentions despite being worried

The STF receives an order from the higher ups to disregard the lives of the hostages, and go straight to quashing the situation. Gavin openly defies orders, choosing to safeguard the lives of everyone as a priority, and to negotiate with the gangsters

“I’ll take responsibility for all the consequences.”

During the confrontation with Yang Ping, Gavin uncovers Yang Ping’s true motive: to force the STF into harming someone in order to shatter the balance between civilians and Evolvers

Catching Gavin’s hint, you pretend that the negotiation went sour and that Yang Ping had injured you, turning the tides in your favour. After all, you’re simply an Evolver used as a chip in the negotiation. Yang Ping’s claim of “doing things with Evolvers in mind” no longer holds any weight

Because of this, the STF agents are given an opportunity to suppress the gangsters

Everything appears to be wrapped up smoothly, but the director is suddenly shot by a sniper. Yang Ping is also shot

Late at night, you spot Gavin standing below your house, braving the rain

Gavin seems to be experiencing complex emotions. To you, perhaps he was unable to fire every bullet for justice

Sensing that Gavin isn’t simply referring to the incident at the hospital, you tell him that you believe in his judgement

“I’ll find the truth behind this incident.”

Gavin also gives you an incredibly resolute response

A few days later, Gavin seems to have made up his mind. He tells you that he’s investigating an incident called “New Year’s Day Change”, and he needs your help

You agree immediately

Gavin has already contacted a key informant: an old ex-policeman. Because the forces behind the incident are incredibly complicated, he needs you to cooperate with him in putting on an act

“Miss Nox isn’t showing due respect by dampening one’s spirits the moment she enters.”

He needs those people who have been paying close attention to this incident to have a mistaken impression that he’s still searching for the old ex-policeman. In order to protect you, he needs you to leave his side

Gavin will be the target of scrutiny, while the eyes on you will slacken. You’ll use this opportunity to become the mode of communication between Gavin and his informants, safely assisting Gavin in advancing in his investigations

As the final step of this plan, Gavin pushes you off the top of a building

He appears determined in breaking off relations, while you're hesitant and powerless. But the both of you are clear that the plan is going as smoothly as imagined

“I’m the greatest danger.”

You know that Gavin is walking down his path resolutely. And you will naturally want to become the person standing beside him, walking down the same path

Through a report done by a member of Black Swan, you discover that the pathological changes in Evolvers are related to their Evol. You also realise that Helios seems to be investigating this matter

At the same time, Savin tells you that something has happened to Kiro, and he’s in the hospital. You immediately rush over, but you’re told that Kiro doesn’t want to see anybody

Across the door, you tell Kiro that you wish to see him. After a strange silence, he speaks slowly

“Thank you. You can go back.”

Behind the door, only Kiro knows the reason why he’s behaving strangely - due to a sonic bomb, he has lost his hearing

Kiro avoids you for many days, until he organises an exclusive “live concert” for you one evening. The next day, he’s finally willing to meet you. When you see that Kiro doesn't seem to have changed much, you relax a little, despite having many doubts

But in the evening, you receive a statement from him which says he’s “retiring from public life permanently”, and he vanishes

Knowing full well just how much he loves the stage, you decide to keep the matter hidden, attempting to look for him

Unexpectedly, you bump into Helios at the Black Swan building

“The person you’re looking for isn’t here.”

His cold attitude makes you understand that Kiro has turned himself into Helios. He’s hiding from you, and also himself

To have a better understanding of his actions, you look through the clues pertaining to him. When you investigate the Hunter Game again, a stone tablet with the symbol “8″ appears multiple times

In order to carry out a concrete investigation, you return to the forest where you had once participated in the Hunter Game, and search for that stone tablet

The moment you touch it, thorns and thistles grow on the stone tablet, cutting your hand and absorbing your blood. Before you can react, the ground underneath your feet opens. Just as you’re about to fall into the abyss, Helios saves you

Despite being faced with his icy attitude, you attempt to form a partnership with him to explore this place

In the dark, rays of light fluctuate into a message that neither of you can comprehend. 19, an artificial intelligence which remains here, enables you to understand that this place is a historical ruins left behind by the previous civilisation - “Lighthouse”

19 tells the both of you that their world was once as flourishing as it is right now, but it was destroyed. They left the “Lighthouse” behind in hopes of assisting the both of you in preventing the fated destruction

You and Helios also hear about the songs from that generation. Cultures and languages may not be the same, but music can cross barriers

When one song ends, Helios sings that melody in his own way, letting it echo in this time and space

"All of you still exist.”

After leaving the Lighthouse, you tell him that you’re going to continue with the investigations, and use your own method to tell Helios that you’re willing to face him, and would like to carrying out this operation with him. You hope that this time, he can walk towards you voluntarily

After returning, you receive a call from an unknown number

“It’s me.”

In order to investigate the Hunter Game further, you once again participate in the game as a punter

You do your best to search for the stone tablet in this game, but accidentally get targeted by two players. Just as you plan to fight with them, Shaw, whom you haven’t seen in several days, appears from behind you

The both of you cooperate, settling the score with the other two

“Tch. Not even one of you can fight.”

You tell him about the “Lighthouse”. Shaw, who has been researching on the historical ruins, guesses that the venue of the Hunter Game could be deliberately designed to be near the ruins. By using large amounts of Evol energy fluctuations, it could unseal the ruins

While the discussion has signs of a positive outcome, the two of you are still embroiled in the game

Shaw’s conspicuous ranking and high-key thunder and lightning have attracted numerous opponents to him. But with your cooperation, the enemies fail in succession

The metal chain around his neck notifies him that he has advanced into the next round, but he loses consciousness in your arms due to a fever

The youth who usually hangs around Joker appears before you. You use psychological tactics to goad him into sending Shaw to the hospital. On the other hand, you’re taken away by him for breaking the rules of the game repeatedly

When Shaw regains consciousness, he’s unable to contact you. He returns to the antique store, only to see that it has been swallowed up by an abnormal black flame

“Get lost!”

In spite of the firefighters’ obstructions, Shaw makes repeated trips into the shop, “rescuing” the calligraphy and paintings

By the time the fire is extinguished, the antique shop is already half scorched, as though it’s a warning

Based on the youth’s memories, you discover that Joker has once visited the former site of the BS research centre. In order to find out why, you hurry over

You inadvertently find that there’s someone in the archive room. Just as you're feeling tense, your phone suddenly rings - at 2.03pm, an unknown number calls you

The sound exposes you. Taking out a gun, you attempt to warn the person in the building

“I surrender.”

That person turns out to be Lucien, and he's holding a floppy disk in his hand

Lucien explains what he’s doing here, and even demonstrates how you can use the data in the floppy disk

A series of numbers flash on the screen before it turns dark

Having considered that this process of reading data is highly confidential, Lucien notes how they might have been watched earlier, and that it’s better to leave

However, you suddenly feel dizzy. In the next second, you find yourself in the corridor. The door to the archive room is shut tight, and you can’t see Lucien anyway

Even though you’ve clearly set your phone to silent mode, it rings again. The screen shows that it’s 2.03pm. It’s a missed call from an unknown number

Returning to the archive room, it’s as though Lucien didn’t meet you earlier

You surmise that you’re experiencing this for the second time, and Lucien believes you without hesitation, speculating that you might have been in a time loop

Just as he says, whenever a certain amount of time passes, everything returns to 2.03pm

Unexpectedly, but as a matter of course, Lucien believes you every single time. He analyses the situation with you, helping you escape from the time loop

After a few more time loops, Lucien figures out a way to escape

“This time, let me accompany you in jumping out of this looping time.”

Time requires an object of reference. You're at the centre of the time loop circle, and the compass drawing the circle is your phone

Because this phone is special, it doesn’t vanish when you leave it with Lucien. At the same time, in order to measure time, your phone reappears in your hand

Since one object cannot exist in two places at the same time, this results in a contradiction that causes time and space to collapse

The next day, you and Lucien meet along the corridor, and agree to go on a stroll outside

Even though many things are unclear, the radiance of spring before you makes everything seem as though they are going in a beautiful direction. You can’t help but mention the promise you once made with Lucien to fly kites

“Spring may not necessarily arrive at a fixed time.”

In a teasing manner, Lucien says that he isn’t late. You also think that perhaps many things can start afresh

All of a sudden, you feel a severe pain in your chest-

“Now, spring has just begun.”

The words Lucien just said have yet to disperse

At this moment, he’s holding your collapsed form. The only colour in his monochrome world is gradually fading

Volume 5 (Ch 14 - 17): here

More S2 content: here

A detailed translation of Gavin’s part is available here!

#mlqc #mlqc cn #mlqc spoilers

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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PFFFF The newest Witcher trailes LITERALLY throws shade! They have the 'Geralt, but you've been such lone wofl so long, what change' and deadass show JASKIER before later shoving Geralt saying 'Yennefer' like a cheap 'no homo!' excuse. I can't. xD Whoever edited it knows what's on. xD

I feel so conflicted about the Jaskier-Geralt relationship in the show because on the one hand, yeah, they're definitely leaning into this non-romance in a way that can get uncomfortable for some, how shall I put this... jaded viewers lol. We know they'll never be canon. No matter what else we might say about Netflix's inability to accurately adapt the books, Geralt/Yennefer has always and will always be endgame, so getting intimacy between Geralt and Jaskier in these particular ways (flirty jokes, bath scene, argument staged like a breakup), while not explicitly queerbaiting, can make viewers feel... icky about it all. Especially for any show-only fans who might not know that Geralt/Yennefer is endgame. Many viewers, particularly American viewers, approach shows as malleable forms of entertainment that can provide them with the representation they crave, provided the fanbase is vocal enough about wanting it. And the more talk that surfaces about major, crucial changes to the plot that reinterpret huge swaths of the books' purpose and intent, the more it can feel like they might just change Geralt's love life too! Even though they (obviously) won't. And frankly shouldn't given that this is supposed to be a faithful adaptation.

Yet on the flipside, the Netflix versions of Jaskier and Geralt don't feel intimate to me at all. Their hostile introduction, Geralt outright punching him, the continued performance of 'I'm a big strong manly man who can't admit that he cares about others,' reducing decades of their bonding to a surprising, throwaway line, that argument when Geralt blames Jaskier for all his problems... it's terrible and I've never liked this dynamic for them (even as I, somewhat hypocritically, play with it in fic). So I'm like, you're intimate enough that fans are starting to side-eye the creators' intentions and yet simultaneously not intimate in any of the ways you should be if you were actually faithful adaptations of the book. And these problems, I believe, go hand-in-hand. By ignoring the actual friendship of the books, Netflix has been forced to "prove" that they care for one another by falling back on tired buddy tropes that, historically, fans have used as evidence for a potential romantic relationship. By not writing Geralt and Jaskier as having the open, witty, philosophical, caring-but-also-taking-no-shit relationship they had in the books, Netflix has fallen back on a dynamic that isn't doing their show any favors. Fans either hate it, or love it to the point where they expect something of the show that the show can never deliver.

So it's a mess! And that mess hasn't done Yennefer any favors either. I'm really not in a position to be defending that pairing - I've never hid that I'm not a Geralt/Yen fan - but whatever the books did that made others love their relationship... I don't think Netflix is capitalizing on that either. In that other ask I brought up how in the games their relationship seems to revolve entirely around Ciri and sex. If they're not talking about their daughter (or if Yen isn't being cruel) their relationship is just about how horny they are for each other, which... isn't really a relationship to me. Or at least, not the deep, "We belong together forever, we're basically soulmates" relationship that the franchise is going for. Same with Netflix. I never liked the foundation of their relationship being an ambiguous wish that tethered them irrevocably and a quickie in the rubble as a replacement for actually getting to know one another... but Netflix takes those aspects and emphasizes them to a disappointing degree.

"You spent a lifetime alone. What changed?"

"Yennefer of Vengerberg."

Yet when it comes time for the trailer to show us what this deep, insightful relationship is that changed a man after an entire lifetime of wandering alone... it's just sex. That's literally all Netflix is able to show us because that's the only meaningful interactions Geralt and Yen have had together. Here's a clip of them falling into bed together and Geralt, without any of that emotional work shown to the viewer, professes that he loves Yennefer the way she's always wanted to be loved.

Here's a clip of the joke we got where Jaskier is gaping over them having sex on the floor post-Yen nearly killing the lot of them.

I'm like... what out of any of this is meant to be appealing to me? Besides the fact that they're both hot as hell? (The casting does make my little bi heart happy lol.) For me, Geralt and Yen are a classic case of a story insisting they're meant for each other because That's Just How Stories Work, without doing any of the actual, you know, work to show us why they like each other, or how they got there, or why these superficial things (the sex is great!) trump the huge hurdles they should be working through. The games might have their flaws, but god bless 'em for letting the characters point out, "Hey... how do we even know this love is real and not just a byproduct of the djinn's wish?"

Geralt and Jaskier, as established, absolutely have their problems in the show, but I can understand why so many fans ship them over Geralt/Yen. And no, though bigotry can play a part, we also can't demonize the entirety of its popularity with, "You just hate women/are racist/creepily obsessed with queer men/whatever the latest accusation is." Rather, the popularity exists because, whatever their faults, it feels like they actually have a relationship in the show. We see them developing together in a way we simply don't get with Yennefer/Geralt and because that development isn't largely reduced to sex scenes—the narrative trying to pass every bonding moment off as True Love, with True Love equaling physical attraction—it comes across (at least to me) as more realistic and believable, especially given Geralt's character, someone who is emotionally closed off. If Vesemir (I think it's Vesemir) asked what changed and we deliberately cut to that moment of Jaskier leaving after Geralt drove him away... I'd more easily believe that yeah, this relationship is causing Geralt to rethink things in a way he hasn't for an entire lifetime. We've seen them travel together, become (begrudging) comrades, defend one another, do favors for each other, tease each other, have a major fight that they'll inevitably make up from, Jaskier is presented as Geralt's first friend, and none of this is tied to a questionable wish, or passed off as the totality of Geralt's development.

The fact that Netflix would include those lines, cut to a legitimately heart-wrenching moment between Geralt and Jaskier, but when it comes times to show his relationship with Yennefer, the most powerful moments are her without him (smashing the mirror, undergoing her transformation, stepping out in her new body for the first time, etc.) and their moments together are just sex—one of which is used partially for comedy—well... that just illustrates the problem for me. What relationship? The one that supposedly exists simply because the story says it's there? I don't think I'll ever be a Geralt/Yen shipper, but I'm perfectly capable of separating my personal preferences from subpar writing choices. Netflix is far into the latter. The way that they're adapting the story is, imo, hurting both fans of the book material and fans who are on the fence about book material. Because so few of these changes are working well, we've lost all the good the books contained and are now stuck with so much new bad. Basically, "No one liked that."

Except, of course, for the Geralt/Jaskier shippers riding the coattails of those tropes... though many will likely be disappointed and hurt by the series' end when they're not made canonical, with others growing frustrated with how the fandom has turned on them simply for liking what they were given. It's really turning into a lose-lose for everyone involved.

#witcher #twn #twn critical

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olivieblake · 4 years

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Let me preface this by saying I have always shipped dramione. However, I’m re-reading the Harry Potter series for the first time in years. In that time I’ve become a lot more educated on racism (and it’s many forms, etc...) Also, this is my first time reading it where I didn’t think of mudblood as some made up word for muggle born wizards, but the wizarding world equivalent of the n-word. Given all that, my feelings about the dramione ship have shifted. (1/2)

I often wrote off Draco’s violent racism as the fault of Lucius not Draco, but at what point does it become Draco’s fault. It is chicken soup for my souls when I see racist teens being denied or expelled from schools because of using the N-word or doing something equivalently racist. They probably learned it from their parents as well, but I still blame them. I don’t know what my question is. I just wanted your thoughts

I have a lot of thoughts and here they are in a stream of consciousness format

one is that I think you’re right to recognize that “mudblood” is the wizarding world’s n-word and in a lot of ways there are problems with the dramione ship that we have to be careful about. there’s a reason, for example, that I never write draco using the term “mudblood” in a romantic or sexual way (I really don’t understand why people seek that out) and also a reason I never write historically untenable situations, such as the nazi officer and auschwitz prisoner prompt someone asked for a few months ago. I do think you’re right that there’s a layer of distance we’ve taken advantage of in romanticizing the relationship; it’s hard for us to make the connection to white supremacy because the potterverse is an imaginary world—which is important for children! we feel safe within this world because our imaginations are supposed to be safe and they are children’s books. also, the decision to cast a pretty white actress named emma watson meant that for a lot of us, issues of racism seemed like very distant parallel. should we realize differently now? yes, probably, maybe. I’m still working through my feelings on this, so we’ll come back here

point two: this is the problem with so-called cancel culture, though, that you seem to be implying that at some point draco’s “racism” becomes unforgivable. but it’s not just within the dramione ship that he realizes his wrongs—canonically he shows evidence of awakening, if not actual repentance. isn’t the idea that we want people to wake up and realize they’re wrong, regardless of how long it takes? I would LOVE for donald trump to wake up tomorrow and be like oh shit I’m a racist misogynist, fuck!! that’s obviously not going to happen and it wouldn’t undo anything he did prior to that—but the whole point of dramione is to write draco’s process of 1) realization and 2) contrition. I would argue that every dramione fic (certainly every dramione fic of substance) involves him facing his prejudice and perceiving his error. does it matter that he doesn’t figure this out until his life is threatened at age 17? I mean yes, of COURSE you can blame him for his prejudice (and his prejudicial actions) whether it starts with his parents or not.

but isn’t THE WHOLE POINT that he changes his mind?

I mentioned in our AMERICANAH discussion that I think the author was right—the only way to “cure” racism is romantic love. “Not the kind of safe, shallow love where the objective is that both people remain comfortable. But real deep romantic love, the kind that twists you and wrings you out and makes you breathe through the nostrils of your beloved.” I think the dramione ship has this concept at the root of it: that draco falls in love with hermione and in valuing her over himself (which is what love is!), he begins to not only understand her trauma and the way he caused her pain but also begins repenting for it with his choices. this is always at the heart of it. we always want draco to feel that crushing devastation of knowing exactly what he’s done, and then we want him to be on her side, unconditionally.

is it EXTREMELY ICKIER when you think about this within the frame of a nazi loving a jewish woman or a white supremacist falling for a Black woman? YES, immensely so, I hate it and I would never write an AU for either of those scenarios. I would absolutely not touch that at all. so I think that distance I mentioned earlier is pretty crucial here, because yeah, this is a fake world with magic that doesn’t exist and “mudblood” isn’t the n-word because it isn’t preceded by centuries of slavery, imperialism, or punitive institutional bias. well, there’s obviously institutional bias once voldemort pops up and wrecks shit, but historically? it’s unclear

—which is not to excuse anything. I do think intellectually there is a line to be drawn between these comparisons, though it’s a fine one. if I could choose to unship this at this point in time... maybe I would. personally I have always been diligent about the way I address morality in my fics, but was I ever considering it in terms of racism? no, not really. would I have romanticized this relationship if it felt even remotely like a real prejudice that existed in the world? I don’t believe so, no.

ultimately... I stand by the way I have written this ship. can I stand by the ship in general? I think that’s much more questionable, and also the reason I have avoided so many dramione fics and tropes in the past. because sure, you can romanticize the bad guy for the thrill of the angst, but at a certain point there has to be a moment where we question what, exactly, we’re romanticizing. while I do think there’s an argument for making the intellectual distinction (again, these are children’s books, and also as a first gen immigrant american who was neither british, white, nor magical, I already felt extremely distant from literally everything in these books, so at 11 years old I would not have made the connection between the n-word and “mudblood”) there is also a strong argument for being more conscious of what you read. if you seek out fics where draco is the one who saves hermione, are you seeking something akin to a white savior narrative? if you like fics where draco fetishizes muggle culture, is that the same as fetishizing Black culture? or are you just normal and horny and interested in reading fantasy romance using characters you already know from a fiction series you grew up with??

in conclusion: I think, as in all things, there are gradations to the morality of what we romanticize, and being aware of what we consume and why we consume it is what’s important right now. on a broad scale, however, there are no definitive answers as to whether something is wrong or right, and I will definitely have to think about this when I approach it in the future.

#unpopular opinions #dramione #Anonymous

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autumnblogs · 3 years

Text

Aside Glance: The Palpable Absence of the Dubiously Canonical

So you might have noticed throughout my writings that I have at the same time avoided directly talking about any of the expanded universe material while also occasionally alluding to it just enough to make it noticeable. At least, probably.

So to nobody’s surprise, let me say;

I don’t like the Homestuck Epilogues.

Before I dig into why, I wanna dig out what I think I actually do like about the Homestuck Epilogues. CW: for mentions of suicide, sexual violence, fascism, genocide, etc. Spoiler Warning for the Homestuck Epilogues, although if you haven’t read them by now, good; don’t. Keep reading for my thoughts on the Epilogues.

I do like that the Homestuck Epilogues say quite loudly and clearly that Fascism Is Terrible, and that Neo-Liberals are often Discount Fascists at best in terms of the material effects they have on the world that we have to share with them. They can often end up being interchangeable, and events can cause someone with a temperament predisposed toward Neo-liberalism down the path of bloody reactionary sentiment the way it did with Jane.

Homestuck has always been a pretty soundly anti-authoritarian work, and pretty aggressively contemporary work, so it makes sense that Homestuck^2 would reflect an internet culture rabidly obsessing about the politics of the Trump-Era United States, cast its villains as parallels to the Trump Administration, the grody religious movements it catered to, and the hyper-rich dingalings who benefited from it.

I do like that the Homestuck Epilogues develop the theme of criticizing the author and continues to call attention to its narrators, this time by explicitly casting them as villainous, and morally ambiguous/incomprehensible respectively. A central idea in Homestuck is the relationship between Author, Audience, and Characters, and the blending of the lines between them.

I like that it calls attention not just to the idea that a story’s narrator is an agent themselves, but also to the reality that the narrator may not have the best interests of either their readers, or their characters in mind. I like that the authorial powers of these characters are represented as overtly dangerous and evil when they are addressed at all.

I also like that the Homestuck Epilogues are rather brutally honest about the fact that sometimes, the people that you grew up with - your close friends - grow apart from you, and turn into kind of bad people. I’ve watched that happen in real time, and have had to stop hanging out with people because they just kind of... turned evil. That’s something that needs to be discussed more in fiction, and more honestly than the usual way. When the most visible example of like, someone you knew and loved turning into a bad person is like, Anakin Skywalker, maybe the world needs more stories about that.

So good, that’s what we’ve got for things I think were good to say. Well done.

What don’t I like about the Homestuck Epilogues?

In a word, I think, they are cruel. Relentlessly cruel. Even actively malicious.

Homestuck has, of course, always been rather mean-spirited and adversarial, pretty much since page one. And really, so has Andrew’s writing in general, since the days when he ran the site Team Special Olympics. His humor walks a fine line between and outrageous and genuinely offensive, as he dares you to say, “That’s fucked up!” so he can respond “it was just a joke, where’s your sense of humor?”

But the Epilogues transcend the usual sardonic envelope-pushing we can usually count on Andrew for, and instead opt to sink their teeth into the readers in an assault on the senses, and on the sensibilities. Reading the Epilogues is a brutal experience to endure emotionally, and in a lot of places, morally offensive.

And they are this way practically from the first page; our very first impression of the Homestuck Epilogues is a content warning that presents itself in such a way as to be almost unmistakably parodic. The stylization as an AO3 work, particularly in the context of Homestuck, where these sorts of overzealous content warning pages are associated with preachy jerks like Kankri, it comes across as a direct challenge to the viewer, and by a challenge, I really mean an attack. It is a mean-spirited joke at the expense of people who have a desire to curate their media experience - and then the authors have the gall to say that the one of the goals of the Epilogues is to challenge people to curate their media more.

Every time a character could conceivably make a bad decision, or become a more ill-conceived version of themselves, they somehow manage it, which becomes all the more unbearable because of the identification of character and audience that has been the case throughout all of Homestuck. If Homestuck introduces us to this entire cast and says, this is you, the Epilogues seem to follow up with and there is nothing good about you. Jade Harley somehow transforms into a grotesque caricature of a trans-woman, a girl who is sexually incontinent and predatory in a way that is directly tied to her having a dog penis - a state of being which the text variously slut-shames her for in Meat, or alternatively uses to blame her for ruining Dave and Karkat’s relationship in Candy.

John Egbert is severely depressed and dysfunctional, and this leads him either to go off and kill Lord English to chase the thrill of adventure and his own sense of purpose (in direct opposition to the all-but-explicitly-stated takeaway from Homestuck which Dave gives us, that the better option is to just leave the story alone altogether - explicitly the worst decision he could make according to the rules of Homestuck) or descend into decades of nihilistic solipsism while the world disintegrates around him.

Dirk’s worst natures take over him and transform him into a person who can only conceivably be satisfied either by becoming an arch-villain, or by murdering himself.

The Epilogues are aggressively cruel to Jake English, choosing to double down on the lack of emotional resolution he suffered from at the end of Homestuck, and squarely placing the blame for his own misery on his own shoulders, in a way which is pretty hard to read around, which is part and parcel of the general malice which Homestuck has historically treated mentally ill characters with. Nearly all the kids in Homestuck have suffered incomprehensible levels of mental and physical abuse, and the text expects them to simply overcome it sheerly by force of will. Sure, Jake is miserable but it’s his own fault, the text seems to say; if he’d just get his act together, like Dave, maybe he could get on with his life without being mind-broken by Dirk, or raped and whipped by Jane.

This isn’t even to delve into the flagship reveal of Homestuck 2, that Rose and Jade in the Candy Timeline have not only had a daughter of their own (without telling Kanaya), but that furthermore they have replicated their own trauma in her. Rose and Jade’s daughter has grown up completely emotionally alone, in the care of her Moms’ archenemy.

The point in all of this is not that the Epilogues have made everyone behave out of character or anything like that - I think it’s clear after a re-read especially that all of this is a conceivable direction that these characters could have taken. Rather, the Epilogues reliably choose to believe the worst of the characters of Homestuck in terms of their writing decisions. Everyone always makes the worst decision that they could make, or at the very least, nearly the worst. And because of the identification of reader and character, we can’t help but take away from that a sense that this is what the authors think of us as well.

And in case it wasn’t stated explicitly enough, a running theme throughout the Epilogues is that all this conflict and badness taking place is, to some extent or another, because we the audience are looking at it. As Andrew stated in relation to the Epilogues, there’s a kind of Happily Ever After possibility bubble around the characters that intrinsically collapses into conflict the moment we observe the events again - in other words, by participating in a story, we the audience members are somehow complicit in the characters’ suffering. Yet not all stories must be driven by conflict - and who triumphs and who fails in that conflict says a lot about what a story has to say about real life.

The Epilogues engage in a kind of voyeuristic cruelty, a kind of pessimism and cynicism, a kind of relentless ugliness that I have seldom seen, and to what end? The whole thing seems to me an attack on the audience.

Aside from general, abstracted claims toward authorial intent (which I think is there), I also want to say that, I can’t emotionally engage with the Epilogues, for a personal reason; as somebody who has struggled with almost daily suicidal ideation for most of my adult life, the way that the Epilogues deal with that subject goes from troubling to malicious and hostile in its treatment of Dirk’s suicide.

And staying personal, while I haven’t had to deal with some of the other sensitive topics that the Epilogues handle recklessly, handle them recklessly they do - Jake is serially raped by Jane, and in a way that he serves as a vehicle to move the plot forward, rather than with any kind of compassion for Jake’s condition. The possibility that Tavros Crocker might be being molested by Gamzee is brought up flippantly in one scene and played off as a joke.

The Homestuck Epilogues play at maturity through handling dark themes and sensitive topics, and reveal a profound immaturity in their authors because of the ways in which they are cruelly, insensitively handled over and over again.

I guess I’ll close with the least egregious thing. The Homestuck Epilogues just aren’t funny. Even at its bleakest, Homestuck has always been funny. In their relentless pursuit of cruelty, and the shared misery of their audience and characters, the Homestuck Epilogues forgo even this most basic element of Homestuck, which Andrew has always described as being basically a comedy.

Anyway; I will not be doing a thorough analysis of the Epilogues. I hate them too much and they suck.

#The Homestuck Epilogues #rape mention #suicide mention #fascism

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whitehotharlots · 4 years

Text

Previewing the 2024 Democrat Primary

Within a couple weeks of his being sworn in, just about every person on earth will wish Joe Biden was no longer president. Sure, the few surviving John B. Anderson voters will be thrilled to see 4 years of crushing austerity and half-assed attempts at Keynesian stimulus. But most people will begin dreaming about a brighter future.

Good news! The 2024 Democratic primary field is going to contain dozens of options. Bad news! They are all going to be disgusting piles of shit.

The “top tier”

While it’s too early to do any handicapping, these are the candidates the media will treat as having the most realistic chances of securing the nomination.

Kamala Harris

Kamala did not win a single primary delegate in 2020. This is because she dropped out before the first primary, and that was because no one likes her. She has no base beyond a few thousand of twitter’s most violent psychos. Her disingenuousness approaches John Edwards levels: any halfway incredulous person can see immediately beyond her bullshit. She has no principles whatsoever, and while that may be par for the course for Democrats, she lacks even the basic politician’s ability to intuit anything that might, hypothetically, constitute a principle.

Even better: she is an awful public speaker. She sounds like how a talking dog would speak if he were just caught stealing people food off the kitchen table. She communicates in weird grunts and faux sassy squeaks, which is how she imagines real black women sound like, but something about her is unable to sell the bit. She begins her sentences in halfhearted AAVE, stops and panics halfway through as she realizes that maybe this sounds fake and offensive, and then reminds herself oh wait, no, this is okay since I’m black. This doesn’t happen once or twice per speech. This is how every single sentence sounds.

Kamala is like Nancy Pelosi in that no sketch show will ever impersonate her correctly, because anything that came close to authenticity would be considered far too cruel. This might benefit her in the primaries, as she exists in the minds of Democrats as someone and something she absolutely is not in reality. Nominating her would be like allowing your child’s imaginary friend to attempt to drive you to the store.

Andrew Cuomo

Easily one of the 50 worst people alive, Cuomo has a solid chance because Democrats, same as Republicans, are unable to differentiate between electability and self-serving ruthlessness. Cuomo used the deadliest public health crisis in American history as a pretext for cutting Medicaid and firing 5,000 MTA workers, and his approval rating increased. New York Dems are little piggies who love eating shit. If we assume that the political media will continue their habit of refusing to discuss the legislative history of right wing Democrats, Cuomo might well cruise to the nomination and then lose to literally any human being the GOP nominates by an historic margin.

Joe Biden

The party loves him because he is a right wing racist. “Progressives” tolerate him because black primary voters over 40 supported him, and their opinion is supposedly a magic window into god’s truth. Everyone else can tell he is manifestly senile. I don’t put it above the DNC to pick a candidate who is in horrible health, dying, or even dead--whatever the financial sector wants, they’ll get. But I would be shocked if his approval rating is above 39% by mid-2023, and by that point deep fake technology will be advanced enough they’ll put out a very lifelike video in which the Max Headroom version of Joe explains he’s proud of his accomplishments--that budget’s almost balanced already--but, man, I gotta abd--I gotta abdica--, uhh, I gotta, I, uhh, I gotta move down, man.

Wild Cards

These candidates would have all have a chance if they ran, but they could all much more easily retire to Little Saint James off of kickbacks they’ve gotten from Citibank and I.G. Farben.

Rahm Emanuel

Rahm is going to receive some hugely influential post in the Biden administration. Let’s say he becomes Secretary of Education. His signature achievement will be replacing all elementary school teachers with Amazon’s Alexa, which saved the taxpayers so much money we were able to quadruple the number of armed police officers we put into high schools. This will give him several thousand positive profiles on network news programs and the near-universal support of the Silicon Valley vampires who will own 99% of the country by the time Biden’s term ends. They will use their fancy mind control devices to convince geriatic primary voters that Rahm’s the one who will bring Decency back to the white house. His candidacy will be the paragon of wokeness, as expressing concern toward the fact that he covered up the police murder of a black guy will get you called a racist.

Rahm has a bonus in that Jewish men are now Schrodeniger’s PoC. When they are decent human beings, they are basic, cis white men who are stealing attention from disabled trans candidates of color. When they love austerity and apartheid, they become the most vulnerable people of color on earth and criticizing them in any way is genocide. No one will be able to mention a single thing Rahm has ever done or said without opening themselves to accusations of antisemitism, and that gives him a strong edge against the rest of the field. The good news is that an Emmanuel candidacy would result in over 50% of black voters choosing the GOP candidate--which, I guess that’s not really good but it would certainly be funny.

Gavin Newsom

Newsom is every bit as feckless as Cuomo, but he doesn’t put off the same “bad guy in an early Steven Segal movie” vibes. He will mention climate change 50 times per speech and no one will bother to mention how he keeps signing fracking contracts even though his state is now on fire 11 months of the year. If anything, this will be spun into an argument about how he’s actually the candidate best suited to handle all the water refugees gathering on the southern border. Look for his plan to curb emissions by 10% by the year 2150 to get high marks from Sierra Club nerds. He’s also a celebate librarian’s idea of what constitutes a handsome man, so he’ll have some support from the type of women who claim to hate all men.

Larry Summers

I mean, why not? Larry, like most members of the Obama administration, has politics that are eerily similar to those of Jordan Peterson. In normal circumstances, this makes a person a dangerous fascist who should not be platformed. But if that person has a D next to their name this makes them a realistic pragmatist who has what it takes to bring suburban bankers into our tent. If current trends in Woke Phrenology continue apace, Larry’s belief that women are inherently bad at STEM will be liberal orthodoxy by 2023, and his dedication to the Laffer Curve could see him rake in massive donations. Seriously, I’m not kidding: cultural liberalism is now fully dedicated to identity essentialism and balanced budgets. Larry is their ideal candidate. If he were black and/or a woman, I’d put him in the very top tier.

Jay Inslee

Unlike Newsom, Inslee’s attempt to crown himself the King of Global Warming won’t be immediately derailed, since his state is only on fire because of protestors. This, however, poses a different problem. He’s going to be a good test case for the Democrat’s uneasy peace with the ever increasing share of the electorate who become catatonic upon hearing a pronoun. On the one hand, you need to take their votes for granted. On the other hand, they’re not like black people or regular gays: most voters actively, consciously despise wokies, and associating yourself with them will ruin a campaign even in deep blue areas. There’s still gonna be riots in a year. Biden’s gonna announce the sale of all our nation’s potable water to the good folks at Nestle and some trans freak named Sasha-Malia DeBalzac is going to use that as an opportunity to sell their new pamphlet about how it’s fascist to not burn down small businesses. No matter what Inslee does in response, it’ll end his career.

AOC

I’m not one of those “AOC is a secret conservative” weirdos, but I am aware enough of basic reality to know she has zero chance of coming close to the nomination. The right and the center both regard her as a literal demon. The party is already blaming her for the fact that a handful of faceless Reagan acolytes failed to flip their suburban districts even though they ran on sensible pragmatic proposals like euthanizing the homeless. The recriminations will only get more unhinged when the Dems eat shit in the 2022 midterms. She will be a Russian, she will be white male, she will be a communist, she will be a homophobe: any insult or conspiracy theory you can name, MSNBC will spend hours discussing. Her house seat challenger will receive a record amount of support from the DNC in 2024 and it’ll be all she can do to remain in congress.

Larry Hogan

Don’t be dissuaded by the fact that he’s a Republican. Larry is the DNC’s ideal candidate: a physically repulsive conservative who owes his entire career to appealing to the most spiteful desires of suburban white people. He’s an open racist in a material sense--if you’re old-school enough to think racism is a matter of beliefs and actions, rather than the presence of cultural signifiers--but his is the beloved “never Trump” style of racism that Dems covet. He’s also a Proven Leader who thinks the role of government should be to finance the construction of investment property and give police the resources they need to run successful drug trafficking operations. Few people embody the Democrat worldview more than Larry.

The Losers Bracket

These people will have at least a small chance due solely to the fact that the Democrats love losing. They have lost in the past, and in the Democrat Mind that makes them especially qualified.

Joe Kennedy

The man looks like a mushroom-human hybrid from a JRPG. Trump proved that physical hideousness need not doom a presidential bid, but a candidate still needs some kind of charm or oratorical abilities or, god forbid, a decent platform. Joe aggressively lacks all of these things. A vanity campaign would be a good way to raise money and perhaps secure an MSNBC gig, so Joe might still run.

Mayor Pete

I am 100% convinced that Pete’s 2020 run was a CIA plot meant to prevent working class Americans from ever having a chance of living decent lives. I am also 100% aware that Democrats are dumb enough to enthusiastically support a CIA plot meant to prevent working class Americans from ever having a chance of living decent lives. If we have some sort of military or terror disaster between now and 2023 the Dems are sure to want a TROOP, and wait wait wait you’re telling me this one is a gay troop? Holy hell there’s no way that could lose!

Stacy Abrams

Never underestimate the power of white guilt. She lost the gubernatorial race to Gomer Pyle’s grandson, and her spiritual guidance of the Dems saw the party lose black voters in Georgia in 2020. Nonetheless, she is regarded as a magic font of fierceness within the DNC. She might stand a chance if she can establish herself as the most conservative non-white candidate in the field, but there’s going to be stiff competition for that honor.

Elizabeth Warren

Liz is probably angry that the party so shamelessly sold her out even after she was a good little girl and sabatoged Bernie’s campaign for them--yet another example of high ranking US government officials reneging on their promises to the Native American community. Smdh. The fact that this woman hasn’t been bankrupted a dozen times over by various Wallet Inspectors genuinely astounds me. So Liz is probably going to run again, and her campaign will be even sadder the second time around.

It might surprise you to hear this if you don’t work at a college or NGO, but Liz diehards actually do exist. She’ll get even less support this time because there will be no viable leftist in the field for her to spoil, but she’ll still hang in long enough to make sure the very worst possible candidate beats out the second worst possible candidate. Maybe she’ll fabricate a rape accusation against Sherrod Brown. Maybe she’ll spend her entire allotted debate time doing a land acknowledgment. With Liz, anything is possible--so long as it ends in failure.

Amy Klobuchar

Amy was the most bloodthirsty of the 2020 also rans. She will double down on the unpopular failures of the Biden administration, explaining that if you weren’t such a selfish idiot you’d love the higher social security retirement age and oh my god are so such a moron you think you shouldn’t go bankrupt to get a COVID vaccine? There’s a non-unsubstantial segment of the Democratic base that’s self-hating enough to find this appealing, but it won’t be enough to make her viable.

Martha Coakley

She lost Ted Kennedy’s senate seat to a retarded man who was pretending to be even more retarded than he actually was. Then she lost a gubernatorial race to a guy who openly promised Massachusetts voters that he would punish them for electing him. Her record of failure is unparalleled, making her perhaps the ideal Democrat standard bearer for the twenty twenties.

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tomorrowusa · 3 years

Link

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (AKA: Kos) is the founder of Daily Kos, a leading progressive blog founded at the dawn of political blogging.

An early Elizabeth Warren supporter (like me), he now thinks in retrospect that Joe Biden was the best possible candidate to defeat Donald Trump.

It hurts so much to admit it, because it says things about America that we all wish weren’t true (mainly, that we still have a long way to go on equality), but not only were they right to place all the chips on Biden, but he may very well be the only Democrat who could’ve beaten Trump last year. By virtue of his race, gender, and sexual orientation, Biden avoided the visceral, vitriolic hatred that conservatives muster up for anyone that doesn’t look or love like them. Given the historic progressive turnout and tight margins in key states, would anyone truly want to bet that Sens. Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, or my own political love, Elizabeth Warren, would’ve done just as good or better? It truly was Biden or bust, and South Carolina’s Black community pulled the right lever.

Yes, it was African-Americans in the South Carolina Democratic primary last year who saw this clearly and propelled Biden to victory in the primary. With that momentum, Biden went on to win most of a string of primaries over the next couple of weeks and became the inevitable nominee by the time the COVID lockdowns set in.

Biden’s image has made him a difficult political target for Republicans to hit.

Imagine anyone else with the exact same agenda. Imagine it was President Harris, or President Warren, or President Sanders, with the exact same $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, and the same exact multi-trillion dollar infrastructure and child care and healthcare plans. Imagine them mouthing the same words Biden has. Literally, just swap out the president and leave everything else the same. And tell me there wouldn’t be massive nationwide conservative tea party 2.0 protests against them. Yet with Biden, that old, relatively boring white guy? Crickets.

It may be difficult for some people to accept that personality plays a big role in politics. But historically, personality helped Ronald Reagan push through a lot of bad policies. And now the Anti-Reagan in the White House is doing his best to neutralize much of the Reagan agenda.

Meanwhile, progressives can’t believe what’s happening. “One thing that I will say is that I do think that the Biden administration and President Biden have exceeded expectations that progressives had,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. “I’ll be frank, I think a lot of us expected a lot more conservative administration.” Sanders said, “[Biden] was a moderate Democrat throughout his time in the Senate, who had the courage to look at the moment and say, you know what? The future of American democracy is at stake, tens of millions of people are struggling economically. They’re really in pain. Our kids are hurting. Seniors are hurting. I’ve got to act boldly. And Biden deserves credit for that.”

[ ... ]

And thus, at 100 days, we’re witnessing a transformative presidency, more consequential than anything since forever. (I’ll let historians pin an actual date on that.) And he’s done so despite a 50-50 Senate with zero Republican votes, freakin’ Joe Manchin gumming everything he possibly can, and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema utterly misreading her state. Imagine what we might be able to do if Democrats can get some breathing room in the Senate next year and hold the House.

Yes, imagine Democrats in 2022 picking up a couple more Senate seats while retaining control of the House despite GOP voter suppression efforts. It will take a united and robust party to keep Republicans at bay.

In the last cycle, Georgia gave a big thumbs down to Trump AND defeated two incumbent Republican US senators; so where there’s energy and a unified effort, what was once considered impossible may now be within reach.

The current situation isn’t perfect, but it’s better than anything I could have reasonably expected over a year ago.

So here’s a toast to being wrong, so utterly wrong, so wrong wrong wrong. So were you, even if you supported Biden. You didn’t see this coming. That’s okay! Neither did anyone else. Even if he never let on, it was progressive energy that delivered Biden’s victory, and he is paying that effort back.

🍻

#election 2020 #joe biden #exceeds expectations #markos moulitsas zúniga #kos #happy to be wrong #progressivism #democrats

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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Stefanie Gray explains why, as a teenager, she was so anxious to leave her home state of Florida to go to college.

“I went to garbage schools and I’m from a garbage low-income suburb where everyone sucks Oxycontin all day,” she says. “I needed to get out.”

She got into Hunter College in New York, but both her parents had died and she had nowhere near enough to pay tuition, so she borrowed. “I just had nothing and was poor as hell, so I took out loans,” she says.

This being 2006, just a year after the infamous Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 was passed, she believed news stories about student loans being non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. She believed they would be with her for life, or until they were paid off.

“My understanding was, it’s better to purchase 55 big-screen TVs on a credit card, and discharge that in a court of law, then be a student who’s getting an education,” she says.

Still, she asked for financial aid: “I was like, ‘My parents are dead, I'm a literal fucking orphan, I have no siblings. I'm just taking out this money to put my ass through school.”

Instead of a denial, she got plenty of credit, including a slice of what were called “direct-to-consumer” loans, that came with a whopping 14% interest rate. One of her loans also came from a company called MyRichUncle that, before going bankrupt in 2009, would briefly become famous for running an ad disclosing a kickback system that existed between student lenders and college financial aid offices.

Gray was not the cliché undergrad, majoring in intersectional basket-weaving with no plan to repay her loans. She took geographical mapping, with the specific aim of getting a paying job quickly. But she graduated in the middle of the post-2008 crash, when “53% of people 18 to 29 were unemployed or underemployed.”

“I couldn't even get a job scrubbing toilets at a local motel,” she recalls. “They told me straight up that I was over-educated. I was like, “Literally, I'll do your housekeeping. I don't give a shit, just let me make money and not get evicted and end up homeless.”

The lender Sallie Mae at the time had an amusingly loathsome policy of charging a repeating $150 fee every three months just for the privilege of applying for forbearance. Gray was so pissed about having to pay $50 a month just to say she was broke that she started a change.org petition that ended up gathering 170,000 signatures.

She personally delivered those to the Washington offices of Sallie Mae and ended up extracting a compromise out of the firm: they’d still charge the fee, but she could at least apply it to her balance, as opposed to just sticking it in the company’s pocket as an extra. This meager “partial” victory over a student lender was so rare, the New York Times wrote about it.

“I definitely poked the bear,” she says.

Gray still owed a ton of student debt — it had ballooned from $36,000 to $77,000, in fact — and collectors were calling her nonstop, perhaps with a little edge thanks to who she was. “They were telling me I should hit up people I know for money, which was one thing,” she recalls. “But when they started talking about giving blood, or selling plasma… I don’t know.”

Sallie Mae ultimately sued Gray four times. In doing so, they made a strange error. It might have slipped by, but for luck. “By the grace of God,” Gray said, she met a man in the lobby of a courthouse, a future state Senator named Kevin Thomas, who took a look at her case. “Huh, I’ve got some ideas,” he said, eventually pointing to a problem right at the top of her lawsuit.

Sallie Mae did not represent itself in court as Sallie Mae. The listed plaintiff was “SLM Private Credit Student Loan Trust VL Funding LLC.” As was increasingly the case with mortgages and other forms of debt, student loans by then were typically gathered, pooled, and chopped into slices called tranches, to be marketed to investors. Gray, essentially, was being sued by a tranche of student loan debt, a little like being sued by the coach section of an airline flight.

When Thomas advised her to look up the plaintiff’s name, she discovered it wasn’t registered to do business in the State of New York, which prompted the judge to rule that the entity lacked standing to sue. He fined Sallie Mae $10,000 for “nonsense” and gave Gray another rare victory over a student lender, which she ended up writing about herself this time, in The Guardian.

Corporate creditors often play probabilities and mass-sue even if they don’t always have great cases, knowing a huge percentage of borrowers either won’t show up in court (as with credit card holders) or will agree to anything to avoid judgments, the usual scenario with student borrowers.

“What usually happens in pretty much 99% of these cases is you beg and plead and say, ‘Please don't put a judgment against me, I'll do anything… because a judgment against you means you're not going to be able to buy a home, you’re not going to be able to do basically anything involving credit for the next 20 years.”

…

The passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was a classic demonstration of how America works, or doesn’t, depending on your point of view. While we focus on differences between Republicans and Democrats, it’s their uncanny habit of having just a sliver of enough agreement to pass crucial industry-friendly bills that really defines the parties.

Whether it’s NAFTA, the Iraq War authorization, or the Obama stimulus, there are always just enough aisle-crossers to get the job done, and the tally usually tracks with industry money with humorous accuracy. In this law signed by George Bush, sponsored by Republican Chuck Grassley, and greased by millions in donations from entities like Sallie Mae, the crucial votes were cast by a handful of aisle-crossing Democrats, including especially the Delawareans Joe Biden and Tom Carper. Hillary Clinton, who took $140,000 from bank interests in her Senate run, had voted for an earlier version.

Party intrigue is only part of the magic of American politics. Public relations matter, too, and the Bankruptcy Bill turned out to be the poster child for another cherished national phenomenon: the double-lie.

…

Years later, pundits still debate whether there really ever was an epidemic of debt-fleeing deadbeats, or whether legislators in 2005 who just a few years later gave “fresh starts” to bankrupt Wall Street banks ever cared about “moral hazard,” or if it’s fair to cut off a single Mom in a trailer when Donald Trump got to brag about “brilliantly” filing four commercial bankruptcies, and so on.

In other words, we argue the why of the bill, but not the what. What did that law say, exactly? For years, it was believed that it absolutely closed the door on bankruptcy for whole classes of borrowers, and one in particular: students. Nearly fifteen years after the bill’s passage, journalists were still using language like, “The bill made it completely impossible to discharge student loan debt.”

…

The phrase “Just asking questions” today often carries a negative connotation. It’s the language of the conspiracy theorist, we’re told. But sometimes in America we’re just not told the whole story, and when the press can’t or won’t do it, it’s left to individual people to fill in the blanks. In a few rare cases, they find out something they weren’t supposed to, and in rarer cases still, they learn enough to beat the system. This is one of those stories.

…

Smith’s explanation of the history of the student loan exemption and where it all went wrong is biting and psychologically astute. In his telling, the courts’ historically sneering attitude toward student borrowers has its roots in an ages-old generational debate.

“This started out as an an argument between the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers,” Smith notes. “A lot of the law was created by people railing against draft-dodging deadbeat hippies.”

He points to a 1980 ruling by a judge named Richard Merrick, who in denying relief to a former student, wrote the following:

The arrogance of former students who had received so much from society, frequently including draft deferment, and who had given back so little in return, accompanied by their vehemence in asserting their constitutional and statutory rights, frequently were not well received by legislators and jurists, senior to them, who had lived through the Depression, had worked their ways through college and graduate school, had served in World War II, and had been paying the taxes which made possible the student loans.

Smith laughs about this I didn’t climb the hills at Normandy with a knife in my teeth just to eat the debt on your useless-ass liberal arts degree perspective, noting that “when those guys who did all that complaining went to school, only rich prep school kids went to college, and by the way, tuition was like ten bucks.” Still, he wasn’t completely unsympathetic to the conservative position.

…

This concern about “deadbeats” gaming the system — kids taking out fat loans to go to school and bailing on them before the end of the graduation party — led that 1985 court to take a hardcore position against students who made “virtually no attempt to repay.” They established a three-pronged standard that came to be known as the “Brunner test” for determining if a student faced enough “undue hardship” to be granted relief from student debt.

Among other things, the court ruled that a newly graduated student had to do more than demonstrate a temporary inability to handle bills. Instead, a “total incapacity now and in the future to pay” had to be present for a court to grant relief. Over the course of the next decades, it became axiomatic that basically no sentient being could pass the Brunner test.

…

In 2015, he was practicing law at the Texas litigation firm Bickel and Brewer when he came across a case involving a former Pace University student named Lesley Campbell, who was seeking to discharge a $15,000 loan she took out while studying for a bar exam. Smith believed a loan given out to a woman who’d already completed her studies, and who used the money to pay for rent and groceries, was not covering an “educational benefit” as required by law. A judge named Carla Craig agreed and canceled Campbell’s loan, and Campbell v. Citibank became one of the earlier dents in the public perception that there were no exceptions to the prohibition on discharging student debts.

“I thought, ‘Wait, what? This might be important,’” says Smith.

By law, Smith believed, lenders needed to be wary of three major exceptions to the non-dischargeability rule:

— If a loan was not made to a student attending a Title IV accredited school, he thought it was probably not a “qualified educational loan.”

— If the student was not a full-time student — in practice, this meant taking less than six credits — the loan was probably dischargeable.

— And if the loan was made in an amount over and above the actual cost of attending an accredited school, the excess might not be “eligible” money, and potentially dischargeable.

Practically speaking, this means if you got a loan for an unaccredited school, were not a full-time student, or borrowed for something other than school expenses, you might be eligible for relief in court.

Smith found companies had been working around these restrictions in the blunt predatory spirit of a giant-sized Columbia Record Club. Companies lent hundreds of thousands to teenagers over and above the cost of tuition, or to people who’d already graduated, or to attendees of dubious unaccredited institutions, or to a dozen other inappropriate destinations. Then they called these glorified credit card balances non-dischargeable educational debts — Gray got one of these “direct-to-consumer” specials — and either sold them into the financial system as investments, borrowed against them as positive assets, or both.

…

Smith thought these practices were nuts, and tried to convince his bosses to start suing financial companies.

“They were like, ‘You do know what we do around here, right?’ We defend banks,” he recalls, laughing. “I said, ‘Not these particular banks.’ They said it didn’t matter, it was a question of optics, and besides, who was going to pay off in the end? A bunch of penniless students?”

Furious, Smith stormed off, deciding to hang his own shingle and fight the system on his own. “My sister kept saying to me, ‘You have to stop trying to live in a John Grisham novel,’” he recalls, laughing. “There were parts of it where I was probably super melodramatic, saying things like, ‘I'm going to go find justice.’”

Slowly however, Smith did find clients, and began filing and winning cases. With each suit, he learned more and more about student lenders. In one critical moment, he discovered that the same companies who were representing in court that their loans were absolutely non-dischargeable were telling investors something entirely different. In one prospectus for a trust packed full of loans managed by Sallie Mae, investors were told that the process for creating the aforementioned “direct-to-consumer” loans:

Does not involve school certification as an additional control and, therefore, may be subject to some additional risk that the loans are not used for qualified education expenses… You will bear any risk of loss resulting from the discharge.

Sallie Mae was warning investors that the loans might be discharged in bankruptcy. Why the honesty? Because the parties who’d be packaging and selling these student loan-backed instruments included Credit Suisse, JP Morgan Chase, and Deutsche Bank.

“It’s one thing to lie to a bunch of broke students. They don’t matter,” Smith says. “It’s another to lie to JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank. You screw those people, they’ll fight back.”

…

In June of 2018, a case involving a Navy veteran named Kevin Rosenberg went through the courts. Rosenberg owed hundreds of thousands of dollars and tried to keep current on his loans, but after his hiking and camping store folded in 2017, he found himself busted and unable to pay. His case was essentially the opposite of Brunner: he clearly hadn’t tried to game the system, he made a good faith effort to pay, and he demonstrated a long-term inability to make good. All of this was taken into consideration by a judge named Cecilia Morris, who ruled that Rosenberg qualified for “undue hardship.”

“Most people… believe it impossible to discharge student loans,” Morris wrote. “This Court will not participate in perpetuating these myths.” The ruling essentially blew up the legend of the unbeatable Brunner standard.

Given a fresh start, Rosenberg moved to Norway to become an Arctic tour guide. “I want people to know that this is a viable option,” he said at the time. The ruling attracted a small flurry of news attention, including a feature in the Wall Street Journal, as the case sent a tremor through the student lending world. More and more people were now testing their luck in bankruptcy, suing their lenders, and asking more and more uncomfortable questions about the nature of the education business.

In the summer of 2012, a former bond trader named Michael Grabis sat in the waiting room of a Manhattan financial company, biding time before a job interview. In the eighties, Grabis’s father was a successful bond trader who worked in a swank office atop the World Trade Center, but after the 1987 crash, the family fell out of the smart set overnight. His father lost his job and spiraled, his mother had to look for a job, and “we just became working class people.”

Michael tried to rewrite the family story, going to school and going into the bond business himself, first with the Bank of New York, and eventually for Schwab. But he, too, lost his job in a crash, in 2008, and now was trying to break the pattern of bubble economy misery. However, he’d exited Pennsylvania’s Lafayette College in the nineties carrying tens of thousands in student loans. That number had since been compounded by fees and penalties, and the usual letters, notices, and phone calls from debt collectors came nonstop.

Now, awaiting a job interview, his phone rang again. It was a collection call for Sallie Mae, and it wasn’t just one voice on the line.

“They had two women call at once,” Grabis recalls. “They told me I’d made bad life choices, that I lived in too expensive a city, that I had to move to a cheaper place, so I could afford to pay them,” Grabis explains. “I tried to tell them I was literally at that moment trying to get a job to help pay my bills, but these people are trained to just hound you without listening. I was shaking when I got off the phone, and ended up having a bad interview.”

Two years later, more out of desperation and anger than any real expectation of relief, Grabis went to federal court in the Southern District of New York and filed for bankruptcy. At the time, he, too, believed student loans could not be eliminated. But the more he read about the way student loans were constructed and sold — he’d had experience in doing shovel-work constructing mortgage-backed securities, so he understood the Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities (SLABS) market — he started to develop a theory. Everyone dealing with the finances of higher education in America knew the system was rotten, he thought. But what if someone could prove it?

The 2005 Bankruptcy Act says former students can’t discharge loans for “qualified educational expenses,” i.e. loans given to students so that they might attend tax-exempt non-profit educational institutions. Historically, that exemption covered almost all higher education loans.

What if America’s universities no longer deserve their non-profit status? What if they’re no longer schools, and are instead first and foremost crude profit-making ventures, leveraging federal bankruptcy law and the I.R.S. code into a single, ongoing predatory lending scheme?

This is essentially what Grabis argued, in a motion filed last January. He named Navient, Lafayette College, the U.S. Department of Education, Joe Biden, his own exasperated judge, and a host of other “unknown co-perpetrators” as part of a scheme against him, claiming the entirety of America’s higher education business had become an illegal moneymaking scam.

“They created a fraud,” he says flatly.

…

Grabis doesn’t have a lawyer, his case has been going on for the better part of six years, and at first blush, his argument sounds like a Hail Mary from a desperate debtor. The only catch is, he might be right.

By any metric, something unnatural is going on in the education business. While other industries in America suffered declines thanks to financial crises, increased exposure to foreign competition, and other factors, higher education has grown suspiciously fat in the last half-century. Tuition costs are up 100% at universities over and above inflation since 2000, despite the 2008 crash, with some schools jacking up prices at three, four times the rate of inflation dating back to the seventies.

Bloat at the administrative level makes the average university look like a parody of an NFL team, where every brain-dead cousin to the owner gets on the payroll. According to Education Week, “fundraisers, financial aid advisers, global recruitment staff, and many others grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009,” which is ten times the rate of growth for tenured faculty positions.

…

Hovering over all this is a fact not generally known to the public: many American universities, even ones claiming to be broke, are sitting atop mountains of reserve cash. In 2013, after the University of Wisconsin blamed post-crash troubles for raising tuition 5.5%, UW system president Kevin Reilly in 2013 admitted that the school actually held $638 million in reserve, separate and distinct from the school endowment. Moreover, Reilly said, other big schools were doing the same thing. UW’s reserve was 25% of its operating budget, for instance, but the University of Minnesota’s was 29%, while Illinois maintained a whopping 34% buffer.

When Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice looked into it, he found many other schools were sitting atop mass reserves even as they pleaded poverty to raise tuition rates. “They’re all doing it,” he said.

In the mortgage bubble that led to the 2008 crash, financiers siphoned fortunes off home loans that were unlikely to be repaid. Student loans are the same game, but worse. All the key players get richer as that $1.7 trillion pile of debt expands, and the fact that everyone knows huge percentages of student borrowers will never pay is immaterial. More campus palaces get built, more administrators get added to payrolls, and perhaps most importantly, the list of assets grows for financial companies, whether or not the loans perform.

…

“As long as it’s collateralized at Navient, they can borrow against that,” Smith says. “They say, ‘Look, we've got $3 billion in assets, which are just consumer loans in negative amortization that are not being repaid, but are being artificially kept out of default so Navient can borrow against that from other banks.

“When I realized that, I was like, ‘Oh, my god. They’re happy that the loans are growing instead of being repaid, because it gives them more collateral to borrow against.’” Smith’s comments echo complaints made by virtually every student borrower in trouble I’ve ever interviewed: lenders are not motivated to reduce the size of balances by actually getting paid. Instead, the game is about keeping loans alive and endlessly growing the balance, through new fees, penalties, etc.

There are two ways of approaching reform of the system. One is the Bernie Sanders route, which would involve debt forgiveness and free higher education. A market-based approach meanwhile dreams of reintroducing discipline into student lending; if students could default, schools couldn’t endlessly raise costs on the back of unlimited government-backed credit.

Which idea is more correct can be debated, but the one thing we know for sure is that the current system is the worst of both worlds, enriching all the most undeserving actors, and hitting that increasingly prevalent policy sweet spot of privatized profit and socialized risk. Whether it gets blown up in bankruptcy courts or simply collapses eventually under its own financial weight — there’s an argument that the market will be massively disrupted if and when the administration ends the Covid-19 deferment of student loan payments — the lie can’t go on much longer.

“It’s just obvious that this has become a printing money operation,” says Grabis. “The colleges charge whatever they want, then they go to the government and continuously increase the size of the loans.” If you’re on the inside, that’s a beautiful thing. What about for everyone else?

#matt taibbi #substack #long #read the whole thing #student loans #student loan debt

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