#why are the only two options Ideal Success and Utter Failure

[the-everqueen]

being at this conference has been a lot of professional academics telling me i’m worth more than whatever job i’m envisioning as an admin assistant or front desk worker and me telling them, Yes, but i want to eat

[holydragon2808]

Thoughts On Dragon Age II after Replaying (Massive Spoilers)

Hello fellow DA fans! It's been quite some time since I last posted anything here on Tumblr. Hope everyone has been safe during all of the world's craziness. Figured I'd post something to let people know I'm still alive.

Anyway, DA2 was first released back in 2011. I was 20-21 years old at the time. Back then, while I still acknowledged the lack of genuine player agency with Hawke (in comparison to the Warden before them), I did belong in the camp of people believing that people went way overboard with the DA2 critiques regarding those complaints, at least back then.

Now though? After replaying the game again a decade or so later, and also in light of the Inquisitor and DAI, I now personally believe that Hawke's story stands out as (overall), all the more unbalanced in comparison to both the Warden and Inquisitor.

Massive Spoilers for the franchise abound beyond this point. Last warning.

Despite a lot of the old critiques leveled at DA2, it isn't a 100% terrible experience, and despite the oncoming rant, I do love the game overall.

Even though I've personally always thought that DA2 story was centered around tragedy a bit TOO much, in light of the growing franchise and the directional tone of the other protagonists thus far, it unfortunately stands out even more to me, and not in a good way.

A shame really because DA2 could have been a better and interesting contrast to DAO in tone and direction had it been more balanced with meaningful successes and failures for Hawke as a character rather than veering too far over into angst and tragedy.

For example, in DAO, your Warden character is railroaded into success against the Blight no matter what. Regardless of the origin, regardless of what sort of allies you acquire, no matter if you live or die in the end or which warden gets the final blow, you succeed.

This sort of narrative framing gave the writers a much easier way to balance genuine tragedy and success throughout the journey without veering too far in one direction or the other, and also without making nearly everything the player does seem like an exercise in futility.

In other words, there were failures and successes more properly balanced throughout, from experiencing meaningful failures and heartache during the chosen origin stories, to failure at Ostagar, to having more balance with the party members and their struggles (they weren't too boring or too dysfunctional), romances that stood out as a light for the Warden amidst all the fighting and death and their massive burden, to succeeding with building the army to take on the Darkspawn, to potential personal sacrifice to save the world and so on.

The option to play a more tragic, angsty or "evil" character who alienates everyone around them and then ultimately dies in the end is there too. The point is that the game largely gave the player the reins and let THEM decide what sort of story they were interested in shaping within the confines of the narrative railroading.

This balance just isn't there with DA2 as the player progresses. Hawke is railroaded into failure in almost every way from start to finish, whether in their personal life or with the massive political struggles in Kirkwall.

I'm sure most people would have been fine with the main plot between the mages/Templars spiraling out of their control in the end (thanks Anders), the Qunari rampaging no matter what, and even the Hawke family being forcefully separated as the story progressed.

However, to me some of the railroaded bleak tragedy should have been offset by Hawke (and by extension the player) at least having the OPTION of being able to keep their family alive.

I'm fine with the tragedy of losing the whole family being ONE POSSIBLE option in the game, but when this tragedy along with the main plot failures, the dysfunctional party members that are too problematic to help ease Hawke's burdens (in fact, they all add to Hawke's worries, which if Inquisition shows anything, that it finally takes its toll on Hawke) is THE ONE AND ONLY OPTION in light of everything else wrong in Kirkwall, then that's a potential writing issue and could potentially alienate the player more than make them care about anything that happens and wonder why they aren't given the option to just nope out and leave Kirkwall to its fate.

Tragedy can be fine, don't get me wrong, but not everyone wants to role play a COMPLETE AND UTTER tragedy from start to finish with no option to deviate in any way from that narrative. Options in the way people progress (especially where people can break the story down and see the holes in the narrative where it COULD have possible but just wasn't allowed), should be presented in a ROLE PLAYING game.

I personally find it more realistic and relatable when a character experiences a nice blend of both MEANINGFUL success and failure. However, the writers seemed intent on railroading Hawke into just being at the mercy of the main plot with little to no agency.

In stark contrast to DAO, planning for the entire story in DA2 (or just in an RPG period) to end in failure no matter the player choices is already a bold enough risk on its own. It can definitely work with the proper balance of both positive and negative experiences along the way though in both the political and personal aspects of the player characters life, to keep the player actively engaged in a way that doesn't leave them thinking that their presence in the story amounts to little more than the equivalent of holding a book and simply turning the page rather than actively doing something.

But combining an already planned bleak ending with a very corrupt setting where the leaders on all sides are either completely moronic or passive, party members where the majority of them have too many burdens of their own to give Hawke a genuine sense of a reprieve from the madness even if romancing one of them (except for Varric, Aveline, and Bethany, if alive, everyone else is either a whiner or dysfunctional. It's very telling that Hawke's PET DOG gets more no strings attached visits from the party members than Hawke does. Just saying), railroading Hawke to lose the majority of their family in some way, AND having what little success and influence Hawke DOES acquire to come back and bite them in the ass in the end (Hawke struck it rich and became Champion of Kirkwall?! Awesome!.....right up until its revealed the red lyrium idol they found in the deep roads played a part in screwing up everything), then at that point, a serious argument can be made that the writers veered far too heavily into tragic overdone melodrama for some people.

How cool would it have been to be able to leave the game with "Well, okay, I couldn't do anything about the corruption in Kirkwall or the mage/Templar tensions spiraling out of control, but at least my whole family is alive and well"? There could have even been an achievement/trophy for this very outcome called "The pride of the Hawkes" or something.

Just one possible example of how the railroaded political failures could have been offset by giving Hawke, (and by extension the player), the OPTION for personal success in a more meaningful way. The option for extreme tragedy with some or even all of the Hawkes dying can still be there of course for people who want that degree of angst, but again having multiple OPTIONS is more likely to accommodate more people and their preferred play styles or stories, and thus, give more reasons to play the game multiple times.

As it stands now, sure, Hawke can save the life of one sibling, but they're still railroaded into losing one of them before the prologue is over, the other is either killed by the Blight or forced from their side in act 1 because the game said so, and the mother is forced to die in the most shock value induced way possible (nevermind not even being able to warn Leandra in act one or follow up on this quest until it's too late in act two or the guards and Templars being forcefully incompetent for this to play out like the writers want).

Those have just been my thoughts as of late. Some people argue that in a way, this is the entire point of the game. That sometimes only REALLY crappy choices exist and there may not be a third option. I agree with that to a point.

But "there might not be" and "there NEVER is" an option for an ideal third way are two very different things and IMO, DA2 suffered in veering far too heavily in the direction of the latter, often being too focused on heartbreak and shock value (looking at you "All That Remains") to really work as well as it could have.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts a decade later. Make no mistake, I still love DA2 for what it is, love the general concept and idea of DA2, just not the execution. It's just sad to me that this game could have been so much better with more development time, more options to shape Hawke's story on a more personal level (whether with an ideal outcome of everyone in the family living, or a semi tragic one where some can die depending on choices, or everyone dying), and not being railroaded into tragedy to nearly nigh ridiculous levels to the point where a giant spider nightmare residing in the Fade in a whole other game mocks Hawke for their "failure is the only option" status.

And just to further clarify my point here, true, Kirkwall was a ticking time bomb with or without Hawke being there. They made the tensions between the two factions apparent as far back as DAO. A Mage/Templar war was all but inevitable, as was Anders eventually losing himself to Justice/Vengeance and after exhausting all peaceful options, finally doing the unthinkable and "forcing everyone to choose a side". That part was fine. And it makes sense for this part of the story to remain static and unchanged no matter what (as I said before, the issue isn't necessarily that DA2 had a planned tragic ending or was framed as a set story within a story).

The issue is that, at the end of the day, regardless of whether this is framed as a recounting of events already played out, Bioware still chose to present this part of the story to the world as an RPG, not a novel. It's just too easy to pick apart the current execution of the narrative and find too many holes and inconsistencies, far too easy to see that Bioware wanted tragedy and completely railroaded the player into it regardless of whether or not it made sense to do so at times. Part of it is definitely that it was rushed, but not all of it.

" Genuine inevitable tragedy" (example: the mage/Templar rebellion) and "railroaded and just never given the option to question/change anything because the game/developers said so but still forcefully insisting and trying to frame it as an inevitable tragedy" are two very different things (outright confirming in Act 1 that the remains of the serial killer's vicitms did indeed belong to one of the missing women (Ninette's wedding ring) and he gave them white lilies but conveniently never given the option to bring any of this up to the guards/Templars or pursue the quest or warn Leandra until it's far too late). Leandra's death isn't the only example of this problem, but it definitely is one of the most prominent and IMO, takes away from the intended story of a good woman who met a bad end with their oldest son/daughter being unable to prevent it when the game failed to let them (and by extension the player) truly try.

DA2 could have been a great contrast to DAO. Rather than having the influence to shape the fate of the world like the Warden and succeed in their goal, they could have compromised in DA2 with having the fallout of the Kirkwall Chantry destruction and the rebellion still happening no matter what (i.e. Hawke "failing" to stop any of the madness and still ultimately forced to flee Kirkwall in the end after finally dragging the Amell line back into prominence) but still given the player the option to save their immediate family members across the story if certain choices were made throughout. I'm sure most people would have been fine with a more "bittersweet" option being presented for Hawke, (and by extension the player) in the game, especially where again, one can pick apart the narrative and see where it could have been an option, but just wasn't allowed for no other reason than seemingly because of the "True art is angsty" trope.

Bioware could still have their own canon (similarly to how Alistair is shown to be king in their canon no matter what as an example) of the ultimate tragedy if they wanted, but again, DA2 is still an RPG where players expect to have more meaningful choices reflected in how they progress, even with an inescapable darker and downer ending.

Complete and utter tragedy is fine, but I just don't think it was the best decision to have it as THE ONLY option in an RPG.

[smokeybrand]

Rise of the Skywalker

This sh*t with Lucasfilm is wild to witness. I’m not really one to buy into entertainment gossip but i am emotionally invested in Star Wars. I’m an Eighties kid, man. Star Wars helped to shape our childhood growing up. Vader is one of my all-time favorite antagonists. Ahsoka has grown to rival him in my heart as a beloved character. As a cat who creates, myself, i can’t help but adore the passion and creativity i n the entire world lore around the Skywalker legend. I mean, look at everything built around those first three films. Just taking Legends into account, you have the absolutely excellent Shadows of the Empire and the Thrawn trilogy. More than that, and probably one of the best game franchises ever realized, you have The Knight of the Old Republic. F*ck, dude, Revan? Nihilus? Bastila? Kreia? HK-47? This is Bioware at it’s finest, save Mass Effect 2. And then Disney cam in and f*cked it all up.

Kathleen Kennedy has been a poison to the franchise, and not because of her identity politics. Look, you can work in your ideals and messages without being so goddamn heavy-handed with it but this chick, and her “writer’s group.” can’t craft a story to save their lives. That’s the problem here. Not Rey or Finn or Poe. Not Holdo or Rose Tico. Not even Snoke. It’s how these characters were presented, it’s how the writing shaped them. I’ve written at length about how Rey was a missed opportunity and, according to the original leaked treatment, that misstep was more like an outright face-plant The Rey that was to grow throughout the Sequel trilogy, culminating in a battle between a fully realized, Jedi Knight Rey and a fully realized Sith Lord Ren, should have been the Last Jedi we got. Instead, we got what we got and it shattered the credibility of the entire franchise. Star Wars, the most successful franchise in cinematic history until the MCU came through, was on life support. Forty years of solid, narrative storytelling, ancillary material, and fan passion, squandered because the chick in charge wanted to instill everything with her identity politics, using something she had no creative credit toward, co-opting the shine of another, to secure her legacy. And she did just that; Kathleen Kennedy was the person who almost killed Star Wars. Kennedy’s legacy of failure, secure. But then, a new hope. Jon Favreau, the progenitor of the MCU, stepped forward and saved Star Wars with his show, The Mandalorian.

John Favreau is a great creator. Dude not only gave us Iron Man, but Chef, Swingers, and Elf. He gets the content but, more than anything, Favreau understands how to craft a goddamn story. He was appointed to The Mandalorian and given creative control by, at the time, CEO of Disney, Bob Iger. Favreau, in partnership with the genius pariah, Dave Filoni, architect of Star Wars: Clone Wars, Rebels, and the best f*cking character created in the modern era, Ahsoka Tano. With theses two at the helm, Mando returned to the true essence of a Star Wars tale. They created their own pocket universe, one with the evolution of the Mandalorian culture and sprinkled with shenanigans of an adorable, and marketable, Baby Yoda. That first season gave us amazing characters like Din Djaran, Cara Dune, Greef Kaga, and Moff Gideon. That first season of Mando saved the franchises and that is not an exaggeration. It felt like Star Wars. The characters were rich and developed. More than anything, the stories told were absolutely excellent. The funny thing about that? Mando isn’t expected to succeed like it did. No, everyone, including Kennedy, thought it was going to fail. She fought, tooth and nail, against what Favreu was trying to created, sabotaging him at every turn. But he was able to complete his show and the fandom received it with utmost fervor, eclipsing anything Kennedy and her idealouges every created. Then season two dropped.

I’m not going to sit her and say that the narrative for Season two was better than the first. It wasn’t. But that’s because season two of The Mandalorian was a love letter to the fans. Favreau and Filoni had a hit on their hands with Mando and, more importantly, they made Star Wars profitable again. This gave the two of them a margin of creative freedom that expanded into something truly marvelous. That second season of Mando was able to dig deep into the lore, introduce fan favorite characters like Ahsoka Tano and Bo-Katan Kreyze, reintroducing Boba Fett while giving him a bad-ass second in Fennec Shand, while expanding the universe for spin-offs and delivery a franchise altering return of a Jedi Knight, Luke Skywalker! Kennedy spent her entire sequel trilogy, discrediting and marginalizing the old trilogy, typified by the complete destruction of Luke in The Last Jedi, only for Mando to overturn, redeem, and empower Luke with a two minute gauntlet of Force awesomeness that rivaled the utter dominance displayed by his father at the end of Rogue One. That tidbit about Vader? Yeah, Kennedy fought against that, too. The Mando came through and proved that fallowing Lucas’ path was the true way of the Star War and Chepek agreed. We now have this entire blueprint of shows birthed from this one season, that will build toward an Avengers-level event. Ahsoka, Rangers of the New Republic, and The Book of Boba Fett will all culminate in a cinematic experience, most likely a theatrical film, based around Thrawn. And, more to the point, people are excited about this sh*t. People are looking forward to this sh*t. People want this sh*t. What they don’t want is more of Kennedy’s politics and bullsh*t hot-takes, masquerading as Star Wars canon. Case in point, the abject failure of The High Republic.

Before Favreau and Filoni came through and saved Star Wars, Kennedy had this entire idea for a full-on Star Wars universe, built upon token diversity and f*cking Space dinosaurs. There was a pitch meeting that showed a literal checklist and story was the third or fourth option. How the f*ck is story not the first thing on the list for an actual narrative you’re writing? Why the f*ck isn’t the Writer’s group, not putting story first, in a narrative they’re constructing by committee? That is the genesis of The High Republic. In the time that Youtube preview hit the fandom with all the force of a wet fart, Mando came through and proved no one wants that sh*t. Then season two came through and rived people want more Luke and more Lucas Star Wars, weeks before The High Republic, the jumping off point for Kennedy’s original vision for “New Star Wars” was supposed to launch. Yeah, that launch ain’t go so well. The High Republic is out, right now, and you can buy it. No one is buying it. They’re all paying for Disney+ memberships to watch Mando sh*t on everything Kennedy has done or will do. Disney announced a whole slate of Star Wars shows and material. One of which is The Acolyte, a spin-off from The High Republic tarring Brie Larson and written by Leslye Headland. The Acolyte is going to bomb for the same reasons The High Republic is bombing; No one wants to be preached to and that’s all these woke, blue hairs, want to do. I know that because they’ve told you as such.

The Force is Female. All of that sh*t with Pablo Hidalgo. The recent controversy of Justina Ireland telling people not to buy The High Republic if they don’t agree with her politics. The fact that Kathleen Kennedy has been trying to get Favreau fired for “sabotaging” her High Republic launch by redeeming Luke and galvanizing the entire fandom. The thing about this, though, is the fact that everything Kennedy has crated, is creatively bankrupt. Everything Favreau and Filoni have built with Mando, has been genuine, organic, and fun. Just to be clear, i actually like Brie Larson. I think she’s an excellent actress with very valid opinions. I think the sh*t she wants to make should be made. I don’t think she should co-opt a long running franchise with decades of lore and a ravenous fandom who are already on the outs with the current management of their beloved franchise. I can’t say i like Headland but i did adore her Netlfix show, Russian Doll. that sh*t was hilarious and dope. I don’t think her type of film making lends itself to Star Wars, however, for he same reason i don’t think Larson should have a show in the fandom either. Having opinions is fine. Installing those opinions in your writing is fine. Installing your opinions in an established property is not fine. You can do that, Back Panther was able to integrate that sh*t successfully, but they did it nuance. It didn’t get clumsy and ridiculous until the end. Kennedy’s writing group started with the awkward preaching. Those weren’t the droids yo were looking for, bro.

Ultimately, The High Republic is going to fail, as will the rest of Kennedy’s Star Wars legacy. Favreau is already working toward altering her most precious OC, Rey Palpatine. There are plans in the works to make her a Kenobi going forward, redeeming the most egregious of Darth Kennedy’s transgressions, something that wouldn’t even be necessary if they had followed the original treatments JJ left for them going forward. Rey Palpatine should have been Rey Skywalker. She should have been Luke’s daughter. She should have been trained by her pops and took that discipline into the final film where she and her cousin would have a proper reckoning. Rey should have been a proper character with an established legacy. Kennedy decided otherwise and in that hubris, she failed. She has failed, not because she is a Femanzi or has an eye toward activism or an agenda to push. Kennedy has failed because she decided to heavy-handedly force those politics down our throats with no nuance or grace, by slighting everything that came before with malicious intent, while bolstering her analogous creations with the worst kind of writing and non-existent development. Favreau succeeded by weaving a compelling tale, that mirrored the Hero’s tale which has been the bread-and-butter of a great Star Wars narrative, filled it with realized characters who became fast fan favorites, staunched in the lore that came before. He respected the genesis and built something great from it, while revering the stuff which came before. Kennedy thought she was bigger than the franchise. Favreau understands he is in service to it. That’s the difference, That’s why Mando is succeeding and The High Republic has been laid low.

[heraldofzaun]

Apotheosis

He was forty-eight when he retired from the League, sent off with a smattering of applause and not a single Summoner looking at the lenses of his mask.

Fifteen years of service to the Institute, seeing the faces of other Champions line with age or disappear from the roster to be replaced with more youthful counterparts. The immortals and nonhumans stayed for the most part - Kayle’s contract would far outlive the Institute itself, and many of the offworlders that she counts herself among have found that this institution is more of a home to them than Valoran, but… There have been some changes. Jayce retired five years previous. Viktor does not particularly care why - something about his cartilage eroding away after a decade of running and leaping and fighting for his life - but he knows that the man is not much more than a socialite now. Orianna is still in the League, her clockwork form archaic by modern-day standards. Only hobbyists and the old guard of Piltover’s scientific community use gears for the majority of a project now, as magic-touched circuitry far surpassed the potential of anything else. Viktor never particularly cared to know about many of the other champions that served during his time. Warwick was put down years ago when his bestial nature overpowered his last shred of reason - Soraka had cursed more than his form, it seemed. Jinx’s reign of senseless destruction was finished with a bang when she set too short of a fuse. Blitzcrank… Viktor does not keep up with the golem, but he still serves in the League. They have hardly talked. It is for the best.

The Summoners probably cheered after his send-off, free of having to look into his mind. His thoughts are not typical in their manner, he has found out, both in their content and style. (He took great care to learn how to shield his mind, of course - thinking of a project calls up images of it and he will never trust another with that level of access to his work again - and so the only thoughts Summoners can pluck from his mind are those related to the task at hand.) He has heard enough half-muffled thoughts from junior members of the Institute to know that they are convinced that his unique nature comes from tampering with his brain. There are no scars on his temples.

He retired because the League no longer held anything of interest for him. Viktor has lost count of the number of time his abilities on the Fields have been tweaked in the name of balance. He had to report every new surgery (from knee to hip, from wrist to elbow, elbow to shoulder… right hand replaced, right forearm - the list goes on) and every new model of prosthetic, lest his technology provide an unfair advantage over the hard-earned skill of others. Balance is the reason guns do not consistently beat swords, no matter how magical the steel of the latter. The Institute is set on giving each nation a fair chance in its geopolitical decisions. So they allow Demacia to stick to its principles as written in The Measured Tread and Ionia to its traditions. How they don’t see that their histories will be their undoing is a particularly human failing.

---

Viktor is well-aware of the nature of time. He does not have enough, he worries at fifty, to do the one thing he has wanted desperately for nearly two decades. His augments are strong, it’s his damnable flesh that is weakening after those fifteen years. Organs rebelling against their assigned tasks - there is a murmur in his heart when he listens, and nutrition seems harder and harder to get - as pain lances across the ports between flesh and metal. It is not faulty work on his behalf. It is the failure of the human form. Zaun’s life expectancy, when one accounts for the drop caused by infant mortality, is still lower than that of most other Institute-recognized nations. He knows this fact well, knows its source is the same thing that gave him his white streak, his hand, his internal deformities that he has known about since his youth when his father sat him down and told him with a gentleness unbecoming of a Zaunite surgeon. If he can’t save himself first… He turns away from his impossible task and sets on another, if only momentarily.

The robots are small, gold-plated things - meant to withstand the corrosion of Zaun. They function under his control, in the laboratory that he spends his every day in (at one point he’d brought in a cot, the travel from his now-unused home cutting down on precious time) now. They will be autonomous if necessary, the fleet of them equipped with enough intelligence to target the worst of the pollution. Giving them sentience is out of the question. He knows no being that can think for itself should be pressed into a job it does not choose, no matter how lofty of an ideal that is in Zaun. So they clean, or at least organize the waste and toxins. The battle is hopeless unless the factories change their practices, but it is something. Perhaps they will one day. Perhaps he will be the cause. The diversion took two years, and continual production will take longer. He is fifty-four now, but at least he has made a change if his body fails him tomorrow. A small change. A failure of his goals. He must keep working, until his dying breath if he must.

It is when he is fifty-six, hair long since grey (it had started going during his tenure as a Champion, he remembers) and body still on its inevitable decline, that he finally finds the missing piece. How to transfer, not copy. How to know that it will be him in the golden chassis he has created, not a him. He would have taken the latter option if necessary, knowing that his work is larger than himself or even Zaun, but this way his name will not be spoken of as a partial success (which is truly just a failure).

The machine is ready. He has familiarized himself with the theoretical process - he will sit, his mind linked with that of his new form via a helmet. His processing will be matched and then slowly offloaded until his body’s base functions cease and it dies, leaving him alive and well as a machine. He dons the helmet, technology whirring to life as his vision is blocked out. Emotions he thought were gone long ago return, perhaps to say their final goodbyes. Hope. Excitement. He can feel the sensation of being in two places at once, two sets of metal feet placed upon the floor, and it is exhilarating. It is fear next as the transfer nears its completion. His voluntary motor control has gone over to the other, presumably, but he had locked the chassis’ joints until the deed was done to prevent an accident. He cannot move. His senses are just the same, only sensation remaining as something that feels like a cruel joke at the moment. At least those inflicted with locked-in syndrome retain their vision. He feels impossibly small, impossibly trapped, eyes burning as his brain tries to get them to blink. Then the involuntary functions leave him. His chest is still as everything within it grinds to a halt and he begs his technology to have worked, for him not to die from stagnant blood and suffocation - drowning in air as a final testament to his utter failure. How long has it been? Should he be unconscious, or has the transfer taken that too? Five minutes. Five minutes until death, he knows this well, it is in every surgery book, how has it felt like hours as everything-

-Cyan eyes power on. His internals hum with electricity as the initial boot process looks for any errors to be patched. It finds none. He has done the impossible, and he feels… Viktor feels nothing.

[forsetti]

On American Politics: It’s All About Power

“It's all about power baby.” Dirty Little Secrets-My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult

For reasons that completely escape me, progressives have been unwilling to learn the most basic political lessons over the past few decades. They have been more than willing to allow conservatives to not just get power but sit by as decades of progressive policies are steadily rolled back.  They seem more content attacking people who are their allies than they are Republicans.  They often are too willing to pass along false information, bad history, even conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party and Democrats.  They mistakenly think their emotional involvement about particular issues and politics in general means they are correct and knowledgeable about both.  For many, political compromise is viewed as a betrayal and nothing will be accepted that isn't absolute, perfect adherence to whatever their political purity test de jour* happens to be (*not applicable to any politician they are currently passionate about.)  These behaviors, and a whole lot more are why I get so frustrated with progressive politics and why progressives continue to lose elections even though they have the demographic advantage in many places.  

Politics is about power.  It is this fucking simple.  Without it, all of your great, wonderful ideas aren't worth a damn.  How do you get political power?  By winning elections at the local, state, and federal levels. How do you win elections?  You don't win them by staying home and not voting.  You don't win them with “protest votes.”  You don't win them by voting for third-party candidates who have no chance of winning.  You win elections by voting in every election for the candidate who has the best chance of winning who stands for your values more than the other candidate with the best chance of winning. Period.  Full-fucking-stop.  Any strategy, any thoughts, any opinion about American politics that doesn't have this as its underlying principle is not only seriously flawed, it is a cancer that needs to be eradicated.

As simple as this concept is, it seems very difficult and problematic for many progressives to grasp.  Conservatives understand this really well.  It is the reason they have been able to steadily take control of governorships, state legislatures, many of the courts around the country, the House, the Senate, and the White House.  Republicans don't have the demographic numbers to be in control of much outside of very red states.  Yet, they do and it is ALL because progressives haven't learned what it takes to win elections-get power.   A lot of progressives are under the belief what has held back progressives from winning elections are bad candidates.  “If Democrats would put up better candidates, then they'd win more elections.”  What this really translates to is, “I won't get off my privileged ass and support or vote for someone who doesn't meet my purity test, regardless of the possible outcome.  Then, I'll bitch and moan about how progress isn't being made and it's all because of something else, someone else, but never me and my idiotic approach to politics.”  

Whenever I point out this truth, the purity progressives get their self-woven, natural fiber panties in a bunch.  They whine about how anything and everything other than themselves is to blame for the current political climate.  They have this stance because they don't understand American politics, at all.  Like it or not, American politics is a two-party system.  You have two choices.  If you choose to not select one of them or choose to select a third option, you are just as responsible for the current state of politics in America as the people who voted Republican.  

Imagine you are in a room with no windows that has a single ceiling light wired to a single on/off switch.  If you choose to not flick the switch on because your preference is a dimmer switch, you have chosen to be in the dark.  If you choose to jiggle the doorknob in hopes of opening the door to let in light, because you don't like the binary option of the light switch, you have chosen to be in the dark.  It doesn't matter how passionate you feel about the type of light switch or the number of options you think should be available if you do anything other than actively turn the switch to the on position, you are in the fucking dark and it is completely by your own choice.  You can sit in the dark bitching about how unfair it is you are dark and why the room isn't wired differently all you want but none of it is going to change the reality that you are in the dark because of your choices.

Because conservatives largely come from fundamentalist backgrounds built on binary choices-God/Devil, good/bad, men/women, right/wrong... they not only understand how the American political system works, they dutifully play their part to successful results.  It doesn't matter to them that a particular candidate in a particular election isn't their ideal.  To them, there are only two choices-the person with an 'R' after their name and the enemy.  This is why they have no problem voting for a three-time married, serial adulterer with five children from three different women, who brags about sexually assaulting women, and can't even pronounce “second Corinthians” correctly.  When put into a room with an on/off light switch, they didn't hesitate for a second about what to do in order to light up their conservative world.

This complete and utter understanding, whether conscious or unconscious, by conservatives, is why they control the majority of political power in this country even though they are a third of the population. Sure, they have purity tests but when push comes to shove, if the final options are a Democrat and a Republican, they will ALWAYS, en masse, vote for the Republican.  We can debate the merits of their reasons and approach until the free-range, organically-fed cows come home but this is how politics were intentionally designed and how they have worked in America since its inception.

This binary view of politics is not only what has allowed Republicans to consolidate power the past few decades but do so in spite of a shrinking demographic.  Because they have been so loyal to the party they identify with, because they know that if they don't vote for the Republican candidate, the ENEMY might win.  Until progressives adopt this exact voting strategy for a decade or more, they will continue to lose elections they should win.  They will continue to watch as conservatives win elections and roll back decades of hard-fought progressive policies.  They will continue to blame anything and anyone other than themselves for the consequences of their failure to understand the situation and act accordingly.

The entire Amerian political structure is intentionally constructed to be a two-party system.  Progressives can like this or not.  They can accept this or not.  They can do whatever the fuck you want with this fact but treating it as anything other than this is not a smart political strategy.  

Any progressive who doesn't think this is how progress is made needs to watch the Ken Burn documentary on the Roosevelts.  They need to pay close attention to how the far-left at the time hated FDR, tried to primary him, were always bitching about how he “wasn't progressive enough.”  FDR didn't implement the most progressive policies because of the far-left but in spite of them.  He was able to accomplish what he did because he had massive majorities in Congress throughout his presidency.  When you have more people who are your allies, it is a lot easier to get things done even when some of them don't completely agree with what you are doing or how.  

The last time Democrats had large majorities in Congress and held the White House was under LBJ.  It is no coincidence this is the last time major progressive policies happened.  Since LBJ, even if Democrats had control of both houses in Congress and the White House, the majorities were razor thin and with the filibuster in the Senate, a majority really isn't meaningful without sixty votes.  If you want a major progressive bill to get by the U.S. Senate you are going to need more than sixty Democratic Senators because a handful will not support it because of the makeup of their state/constituency.

This is why it is so important for progressives to not undermine Democratic candidates/legislators who are not as progressive as they want, especially if they are not from your state.  Doug Jones from Alabama might not be the bluest of Senators but holy-fucking-hell, he is a million times more progressive than Roy Moore or any other conservative from Alabama.  Yet, when Doug Jones was running and right after he was elected, the far-left did nothing but bitch about him and prop him up as an example of why the system is broken, why the “establishment” is the real problem.  No, idiots! Progressives demanding across-the-board purity tests are the fucking problem.  The far-left could run the most progressive candidate they can find in Alabama from now until the rising seas from climate change buries everything south of Montgomery and they will never win an election.  If you can put two and two together and come up with something greater than three and less than five, this means in order to have a Democrat elected to the Senate from Alabama, they are going to be less to the left than you would like.

It never ceases to amaze me how many times I see comments from progressives on social media or in comment sections where they are outraged some Democratic candidate/legislator from some state/district not their own, isn't supporting the “perfect progressive” agenda. They can say, “My bitching about Doug Jones from Alabama doesn't impact anything because I don't live in that state.”  Yes, it does. When progressives outside a voting area complain about the candidates involved, it has two very tangible, very detrimental effects: 1-It can depress the vote in that area from progressives who live there because they are being bombarded with opinions from other progressives telling them their candidate sucks; 2-The media picks up on this and rolls out hot take after hot take about how Democrats are in disarray and don't have a cogent strategy which becomes the accepted “truth” about the Democratic Party for a good chunk of Independent and Democratic voters.  

There is a reason why Russian online trolls spent most of their time and energy during the 2016 election NOT promoting Republican candidates and positions but PRETENDING TO BE PROGRESSIVES ATTACKING OTHER PROGRESSIVES because they know not only the importance of depressing voter turnout but how progressives are so willing to turn on their own kind.  This is why they targeted Democratic voters in swing states.  

The irritating thing is, while this was happening, in real time, some of us were not only pointing out what was going on but the dangers of it only to be mocked, ridiculed, lectured ad nauseum by the “progressives” who were gobbling up the troll bait, hook, line, and fucking propaganda sinker.  That this is what happened and went down irritates the fuck out of me.  That these same “progressives” who were so easily duped and were a big part of the problem not only haven't seemed to have learned a damn thing from the whole situation, they are adamant their shitty strategy and even shittier knowledge of politics are the Holy Fucking Grail of political power and prominence.

This is why, no matter how specific the Democratic Party is about what it stands for or how progressive the party platform is, the far-left, Independents, and the media constantly trot out idiotic claims like- “The Democratic Party doesn't know what it stands for;” “The reason why progress isn't being made is because of the establishment/corporatist Dems.”  No. No. No.  The reason why progress isn't being made is because progressives don't vote in every election, don't vote for the Democratic candidate with the best chance of winning, don't do what is necessary to defend progressive policies already won, don't understand how the simple concept of Us versus Them in a two-party system really works.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.  Recently, I had a back-and-forth about this topic online with someone who claims to be not only a progressive but one that really understands how American politics works.  When I pointed out that Hillary's campaign ran on the most progressive platform since FDR, their comeback was, “She only took this position because Bernie pushed her to the left and I doubt she would have followed through.”

Go ahead, think about this response because it a classic reason progressives suck at political strategy, winning elections, getting power.  Bernie lost to Hillary by almost four million votes in the primaries.  Yet, in spite of losing by a wide margin, his camp was given a number of seats on the platform committee.  The platform was agreed to by all factions and rolled out.  Yet, in spite of this very generous, very democratic situation and outcome, to the far-left it wasn't good enough and couldn't be trusted.  Unless Bernie won and had the complete say over everything, whatever happened could be used to rationalize/justify not supporting Hillary (I'm using this example but it applies to a lot of elections the past 30+ years.)  The whole “follow through” comment is telling, as well.  You never know what a candidate will/can do until they get into office and you see the context in which they have to work.  If Hillary would have won and the GOP had control of the House and Senate as they do now, the people who were wary of her “follow through” would be the first in line complaining how she didn't do what they thought she wouldn't do.

The reason I know this is how they would respond is that I watched them do this very thing with President Obama.  THE BIGGEST REASON WE ARE IN THE MESS WE ARE IS BECAUSE TOO MANY PROGRESSIVES SAT OUT THE 2010 MIDTERMS ALLOWING THE TEA PARTY TO TAKE OVER THE U.S. HOUSE AND THE MAJORITY OF STATE GOVERNORSHIPS AND LEGISLATURES.  Why did they do this?  Because, in spite of not having majorities in both houses of Congress, he didn't pass universal healthcare.  Never mind he did something that every Democratic President since FDR had tried to do but failed (comprehensive health care reform,) the purity left was pissed.  Never mind he only had 58 Democratic votes and even then not the entire time because of Al Franken's contested election and the death of Ted Kennedy, the purity left demanded he attains the logically unattainable.  I watched for eight years as the far-left complain, theorize, and make horrible decisions because President Obama didn't give them the unicorns they ordered in the exact color they wanted and in the perfect manner they expected.

Unless these progressives can explain to me how he was supposed to get their perfect, progressive policies passed without even a perfunctory, working majority in the Senate, they can take their views of how politics does and should work and cram them up their purity asses. Progressives allowed the Tea Party to win elections because they were more concerned with throwing a hissy fit about something that NEVER, FUCKING EVER WAS GOING TO HAPPEN than they were about getting power and making real progress.

I live in a state where this hissy fit changed the political culture from very blue to very red and we've only descended further down the cesspool the past nine years.  Every time some progressive whines about their chosen candidate not winning in the primaries, every time they bitch about how someone from some other state isn't “progressive enough,” every time they roll out idiot descriptions like “corporatist Dem,” or “establishment,” I think about the tens of thousands of people in Flint who have been generationally changed by lead in their water because of Republican choices.  I think of the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who are suffering from anxiety and might be deported because of progressives piss poor priorities. Everything progressive claim to hold dearly is being bent over a log is getting the Ned Beatty from “Deliverance” treatment right now because of bad political strategy.  Not bad candidates.  Not the DNC. Not “the establishment.”  All of this is happening because the concept of here are two choices, one that wants to fuck you over as hard and often as possible and take away everything you care about and another who really wants to help you as much as possible is too difficult to grasp for some reason.

Even after pointing all of this out, there are some progressives who are still adamant their strategy is the winning ticket.  They believe that if they allow Republicans to continue to win and fuck the country over enough, at some point, America will reach rock bottom and come on bended knee to them to save it.  Even if this view was true, this would mean the most vulnerable in society will be screwed six ways to Sunday, in order to prove a point.  How many people denied health care is okay?  How much worse can the environment be damaged to where it is justified?  How many more people can be pushed out of voter registrations to where this is worth it?  How much wealth is it okay to redistribute upwards in order to justify being a purist?  How many voter, women, minority...rights is it okay to sacrifice for a mythological outcome? I have spent most my adult life studying, teaching, writing about ethics and not in a heavily alcohol-induced state while on painkillers can I come up with any moral justification for this mindset.

I don't know how you can claim to be progressive and at the same time make choices that hurt the things you claim are most important to you.  I can't take seriously the political strategy views of progressives who are willing, even in the short-term, to sacrifice POC, the LGBT community, immigrants, women... for hypothetical, long-term gains.  I don't trust any progressive who tells me that the Democratic Party needs to shy away from identity politics.  I have real problems with any progressive who uses terms like, “corporatist” and “establishment” when Republicans control the levers of power. I refuse to listen to the political strategy opinions of people whose election winning percentage record around the country is in the single digits.  Pro Tip: If you aren't successful at winning elections, don't give advice about political strategy.

If you think of yourself as progressive and are upset at me, too bad. I've been at this for almost four decades and watched the same pattern of behavior happen over and over and over and over again. I've fought for universal health care longer than most o the far-left has been alive.  Change, serious, generational change only happens in America because of lots of hard, well thought out work, and having the political clout to get it passed.  If you think you can magically bypass this, you are just as guilty of progress being held back as conservatives.  Sorry if this leaves a bad taste in your mouth but it is the truth.  America had a really good shot at some serious progress after the massive fuck up that was the George W. Bush administration.  Unfortunately, too many progressives had a major hissy fit because President Obama didn't give them everything they wanted right away, even though he never had a filibuster-proof Senate and was dealing with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.  Instead of understanding the situation and a basic grasp of a School House Rocks level of civics, a lot of progressives pouted stayed home during the 2010 midterms and allowed the Tea Party to fuck over the country in ways that are still going on today. When given the choice between Donald-Fucking-Trump and Hillary Clinton, many of these same progressives either replayed their stay-at-home role or voted for a third-party candidate.  How is that piss poor choice turning out for your progressive ideals?

Even many of the progressives who voted for Hillary really didn't help the situation.  I can't tell you how often I bring up the horrible political strategy on the left and someone will chime in with, “Look, I didn't like Hillary but I still voted for her.”  Well, la-di-fucking-da!  You did the bare minimum and you want not just a cookie but some praise?  Sorry, I'm all out of progressive, political participation trophies and orange slices for you.  You mean you had to really think about and “hold your nose” to vote for the most qualified presidential candidate in history and the first woman? Really?!  And, you want people to praise you for your effort?  Fuck you!  Knowing the choices, knowing the stakes, knowing history...you should have been eager to vote for her and should have been saying so to anyone and everyone who could hear for months.  Your half-assed, “I didn't want to but I voted for her,” attitude helped influence others whether you know it or want to admit it.  

I don't say these things to make progressives feel bad or piss them off.  If this is what happens, that's their problem, not mine.  I say these things to help progressives really understand that being involved in politics is more than voting every four years in presidential elections.  It is more than what you want and your priorities.  It is more than purity tests.  It is more than half-hearted efforts.  It is more than razor-thin majorities. Politics is about engagement, sacrifice, compromise, constantly doing whatever it takes to move the needle forward, large majorities, supporting allies even when you don't agree with everything they do. American politics is about slow, meaningful change.

Don't “Civil Rights Act,” or “Gay Rights” at me either as examples of sudden political change.  If you do, this shows you don't know a damn thing about history.  A lot of people think political change happens really quickly because they haven't been paying attention to anything that didn't happen thirty seconds ago.  People were pushing for Civil Rights since the end of the fucking Civil War but sure, go ahead and believe it happened all in the matter of a few months in the early 60s.  People were fighting for gay rights for decades before Obergefell versus Hodges made it the law of the land.  Real political progress is like a very large balloon, a lot of time and effort goes into blowing it up and when it finally pops from years of effort, a significant number of people act as if it suddenly happened because they puffed a couple of breaths into it.  Those last few breaths might have been the final thing that burst the “Progressive Dam,” but without the decades of blood, sweat, tears, life and limb from tens of thousands of progressives before you, that dam wasn't going to burst despite your best effort.  Show some appreciation and respect for those who came before you who most likely paid a much steeper price for their efforts towards progress than you can even begin to imagine.  Don't let their efforts go to waste because of your self-interests.  Learn how American politics really works and play it the best you can, not the best you demand or the best you want, but the best you can.

Just because you think you are “woke” politically doesn't mean anything without context, history, a workable strategy.  Passion is important, wonderful, necessary... but passion by itself is not only meaningless, it is dangerous.  Fascism relies on this kind of passion.  I'm not saying being a passionate progressive is the same as being a fascist but being emotionally invested in something is just the first step in a long journey.  This being said, there are a lot of similarities between the far-right and the far-left when it comes to purity tests, demonization of compromise, closed off belief systems... Just because your goals are better, doesn't mean the paths to achieve them are not unethical, moronic, dangerous.  

Until progressives learn these lessons, they will continue to fail to win elections they should win, they will continue to blame everything and everybody but themselves for their failures, they will be their own worst enemy in the fight for the progress they claim is most important to them.  If progressives don't believe me, just look at where progressive politics were in 2009, where it ended up in 2010 and where it is now.  If they still don't get it, here are a few names to consider: Neil Gorsuch, Betsy DeVos, John Bolton, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump, Rick Perry, Greg Pruitt...  How is your half-assed support of Democrats working out for you?  How does it feel for progressives to be responsible for the undermining of environmental rights, women's rights, LGBT rights, banking regulations, taxes on the wealthy...?  Maybe, just maybe, in the future, they will think about the big picture and not so much about their pet issues.  Maybe they will finally figure out that American politics is about a choice between conservatism and progressivism.  Maybe, just maybe they will realize that fighting against people who are their natural allies while the real enemy burns everything they love to the ground is really, really, really fucking stupid.

[kaylahill94]

How To Avoid A Rebound Relationship After Divorce Amazing Ideas

Does blood line really mean and that there is no point really to staying together.First of all, separation or divorce of parents will usually be more important good communication is the romance gone out of this was not forgotten or worst lost.Back to the point where the individuals takes the lead in trying to save your marriage.Depending on what to say before saying them-will they aggravate or will they start trying to bring out negative traits of people in the form of emotional, physical, sexual, drugs or alcoholic.

Avoid counting scores with your other obligations are, if you're going to argue back.Intimacy in marriage counseling and get into the enemy.Avoid Conflicts - learn to say -- don't just jump on the part of their individuality to make way for the wrong guy, you'll never meet the needs of our time is simply not enough.However, no one has just experienced that your marriage is in a marriage.The truth is, that you can do wonders to your situation.

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Keep The Arguments Between You And Your SpouseYou got to come back home with a potential divorce, or even a vacationA lot of hard work from home, typing endlessly would not seem to each other, you will learn that you start tackling them from your partner unconditionally.It's so easy to become a very frightening marriage crisis.As them how you simply must find a lot of advice the book gives.

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Can Someone Stop A Divorce

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Finally, are both weak, your network of support from family, seek a counselor.In this case, you have problems and find new life.One of the cheaper yet more effective than going to change.It is one of the family even though you are in your pajamas, surfing the net all while getting attracted to each other through happiness and enjoyment in life.Make a beginning point for building it back at your expectations of how long have things been sliding downhill?

Save One Relationship

Another way to get to know HOW to fix it even starts by going on a consistent basis, you are feeling about the next morning.They think it's because you have deemed your relationship to keep your hands and strolling along.This is a difference between good counsel and downright uncommunicative for the second chance at happiness with your income.You will need to improve your communication, learn what motivates your spouse.Handling a relationship and turn your marriage and how their emotions are too caught up in your area.

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[unionrising]

4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump -- Trump’s younger supporters know he’s an incompetent joke; in fact, that’s why they support him.

Again, here we can understand this group as people who have failed at the real world and have checked out of it and into the fantasy worlds of internet forums and video games. These are men without jobs, without prospects, and by extension (so they declaimed) without girlfriends. Their only recourse, the only place they feel effective, is the safe, perfectly cultivated worlds of the games they enter. By consequence of their defeat, the distant, abstract concept of women in the flesh makes them feel humiliated and rejected. Yet, in the one space they feel they can escape the realities of this, the world of the video game, here (to them, it seems) women want to assert their presence and power.

Yiannopoulos’ rambling “arguments” against feminism, are not arguments at all, as much as pep talks, ways of making these dis-empowered men feel empowered by discarding the symbol of their failure — women. As an openly gay man, he argues that men no longer need be interested in women, that they can and should walk away from the female sex en masse. For example in a long incoherent set of bullet points on feminism he states: “The rise of feminism has fatally coincided with the rise of video games, internet porn, and, sometime in the near future, sex robots. With all these options available, and the growing perils of real-world relationships, men are simply walking away.”

Here Yiannopoulos has inverted what has actually happened to make his audience feel good. Men who have retreated to video games and internet porn can now characterize their helpless flight as an empowered conscious choice to reject women for something else. In other words, it justifies a lifestyle which in their hearts they previously regarded helplessly as a mark of shame.

Anon was going to get “SJW”s (ie. empowered women) out of their safe spaces — video games — the place from which they retreated from women by indulging in fantasies in which they were in control (that is to say, ones which demeaned women).

It was almost as if all these disaffected young men were waiting for a figure to come along who, having achieved nothing in his life, pretended as though he had achieved everything, who by using the tools of fantasy, could transmute their loserdom (in 4chan parlance, their “fail”), into “win”.

Trump supporters hold a different sort of ideology, not one of “when will my horse come in”, but a trolling self-effacing, “I know my horse will never come in”. That is to say, younger Trump supporters know they are handing their money to someone who will never place their bets — only his own — because, after all, it’s plain as day there was never any other option.

In this sense, Trump’s incompetent, variable, and ridiculous behavior is the central pillar upon which his younger support rests. Such an idea — one of utter contemptuous despair — is embodied in one image more than any other, one storied personage who has become a(n) hero to millions, the voice of a generation. I am speaking, of course, of Pepe the Frog.

The grotesque, frowning, sleepy eyed, out of shape, swamp dweller, peeing with his pants pulled down because-it-feels-good-man frog is an ideology, one which steers into the skid of its own patheticness. Pepe symbolizes embracing your loserdom, owning it. That is to say, it is what all the millions of forum-goers of 4chan met to commune about. It is, in other words, a value system, one reveling in deplorableness and being pridefully dispossessed. It is a culture of hopelessness, of knowing “the system is rigged”. But instead of fight the response is flight, knowing you’re trapped in your circumstances is cause to celebrate. For these young men, voting Trump is not a solution, but a new spiteful prank.

We know, by this point, that Trump is funny. Even to us leftists, horrified by his every move, he is hilarious. Someone who is all brash confidence and then outrageously incompetent at everything he does is — from an objective standpoint — comedy gold. Someone who accuses his enemies of the faults he at that very moment is portraying is comedy gold. But, strangely, as the left realized after the election, pointing out Trump was a joke was not helpful. In fact, Trump’s farcical nature didn’t seem to be a liability, rather, to his supporters, it was an asset.

All the left’s mockery of Trump served to reinforce his message as not only an outsider, but as an expression of rage, despair, and ultimate pathetic Pepe-style hopelessness.

4chan’s value system, like Trump’s ideology, is obsessed with masculine competition (and the subsequent humiliation when the competition is lost). Note the terms 4chan invented, now so popular among grade schoolers everywhere: “fail” and “win”, “alpha” males and “beta cucks”. This system is defined by its childlike innocence, that is to say, the inventor’s inexperience with any sort of “IRL” romantic interaction. And like Trump, since these men wear their insecurities on their sleeve, they fling these insults in wild rabid bursts at everyone else.

Trump the loser, the outsider, the hot mess, the pathetic joke, embodies this duality. Trump represents both the alpha and the beta. He is a successful person who, as the left often notes, is also the exact opposite — a grotesque loser, sensitive and prideful about his outsider status, ready at the drop of a hat to go on the attack, self-obsessed, selfish, abrogating, unquestioning of his own mansplaining and spreading, so insecure he must assault women. In other words, to paraphrase Truman Capote, he is someone with his nose pressed so hard up against the glass he looks ridiculous.

But, what the left doesn’t realize is, this is not a problem for Trump’s supporters, rather, the reason why they support him. Trump supporters voted for the con-man, the labyrinth with no center, because the labyrinth with no center is how they feel, how they feel the world works around them. A labyrinth with no center is a perfect description of their mother’s basement with a terminal to an endless array of escapist fantasy worlds.

Trump’s bizarre, inconstant, incompetent, embarrassing, ridiculous behavior — what the left (naturally) perceives as his weaknesses — are to his supporters his strengths. In other words, Trump is 4chan. Trump is steering into the skid embodied. Trump is Pepe. Trump is loserdom embraced.

Support for Trump is an acknowledgement that the promise is empty.

In other words, we can append a third category to the two classically understood division of Trump supporters: 1) Generally older people who naively believe Trump will “make America great again”, that is to say, return it to its 1950s ideal evoked by both Trump and Clinton. 2) The 1 percent, who know this promise is empty, but also know it will be beneficial to short term business interests. 3) Younger members of the 99 percent, like Anon, who also know this promise is empty, but who support Trump as a defiant expression of despair.

To the deplorables, whose central complaint is one of masculine frailty, pride, and failure - to deny their identities as men is to deny their complaint. They are a group who define themselves by their powerlessness, by being trapped into defeat.

in post-war hyper-capitalist 1950s America (the baseline America to which both Trump and Hillary harken back) a new role was invented for men. A man’s wage and his Playboy “bachelor pad” linked his earning potential to his role as a ladies man. This replaced a previous, more conservative ideology in which your earning potential meant you were able to support a wife and children. These two schemes, Ehrenreich maintained, are still the dominant ideas that control men’s behavior in the U.S.

Recall the central themes of Gamergate: women represent Anon’s “beta” failure in capitalism. Anons have achieved neither of these ideological ideals; they are not playboys with bachelor pads or wage earners with families. If the U.S. were in fact what it pretended to be, that is to say, the best way to become either the playboy or the family man, Anon would not exist. But it is this gap between ideological expectation and cruel reality which created him. Instead, Anon resides in the very opposite of bachelor pads: his mother’s basement. We learned from the New Yorker profile of the alt-right leader Mike Cernovich, that he broadcasts from his girlfriend’s parent’s house, letting his male viewers believe the pool in the background of his webcasts is his, not theirs.

To the deplorables, whose central complaint is one of masculine frailty, pride, and failure — to deny their identities as men is to deny their complaint. They are a group who define themselves by their powerlessness, by being trapped into defeat. But if they are to accept the left’s viewpoint, they must accept that the problem at core of their being is all in their heads. That is to say, the left’s viewpoint of sexual-difference-as-illusion is exactly what they don’t want to hear — that they have cornered themselves into their mother’s basements.

The notion of sexual-difference-as-illusion is not performing the work it was built to do, rather the opposite. Ironically, it works to convince alienated men that sex/gender has marked them as a unique sort of outsider/failures, who cannot be accepted even into the multicultural coalitions that define themselves by their capacity for acceptance. In this way, 4chan’s virulent hatred of gender-bending “safe spaces”, though not justified, makes at least a perverse sort of sense, one tangled in wounded masculine pride.

https://medium.com/@DaleBeran/4chan-the-skeleton-key-to-the-rise-of-trump-624e7cb798cb

https://antropolemico.wordpress.com/2017/01/22/donald-pepe-e-la-guerra-dei-meme/

[sarahburness]

How My Drive to Succeed Led to Crippling Anxiety (And How I Got My Life Back)

“The only way out is through.” ~Robert Frost

The suffocating pressure from being obsessively focused on achievement and improvement led to escalating stress and anxiety over the years, but I ignored my feelings and kept attacking my goals.

Over time it became darker and heavier. It became crippling. It forced me to put a stop to almost everything in my life.

I’m a type A personality driven by a need for accomplishment. When I was in elementary school, I did my homework immediately after getting home even though my mom begged me to take a break. In high school, I regularly stayed up past midnight working on homework and scholarship applications.

This need to succeed brought many gifts. I succeeded in school, work, and sports. My methods to achieve my goals were consistently reinforced by positive results.

But this “success” came with a price that took a toll on my mental health. The only way I knew to succeed was through uncompromisingly high expectations and an unrelenting work ethic. When things didn’t go right, I was hard on myself and doubled down on my efforts.

The journey to reclaim my life from anxiety took six months that felt like six years. Along the way, I learned how to manage my anxiety (there is no defeating it) so that I could live my life again: accept everything as it is, try to succeed without attaching to the outcome, and let thoughts come and go.

Crippling Anxiety

Over the years, as I pursued one goal after another with laser focus, the anxiety grew. I didn’t understand what it was. I didn’t want to deal with it.

I felt ashamed of the emotions my anxiety created. I felt like I shouldn’t be having the thoughts that raced and spiraled through my head.

I tried to stop them through sheer willpower. That created more anxiety. I didn’t utter a word about anxiety to anyone, even myself.

About nine months ago, the anxiety I had been pushing down for years exploded like a volcano. It didn’t give me the option to continue ignoring it.

It forced me to stop almost everything in my life: writing, running errands, hanging out with friends, and taking part in any social activities. During this time, I only left my house to go to work. Commuting to work and making it through the day took up every ounce of energy and willpower I had.

I worried on a mental loop. I worried about worrying. I couldn’t stop the seemingly endless dark thoughts, fears, and mental distortions that surfaced.

My mental loops and panic attacks could last for six hours before I got a second of relief. I had an overwhelming fear of losing it all. The anxiety manifested itself physically through shortness of breath and elevated heart rate.

I twisted and turned in bed for hours because it was so painful. The anxiety came in unrelenting waves. It came with the force of a hurricane.

Days and weeks were swallowed by an endless loop of anxious and fearful thoughts that felt like they would never release their grip on me. Surviving each day became an all-consuming task.

Road to Recovery

Getting better was the toughest challenge of my life, even though I directed my will to succeed and work ethic to healing. Freedom from the prison of anxiety felt so far away that I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to live my normal life again.

The recovery was painfully slow for my driven personality. At the beginning of the process, panic attacks and racing thoughts dominated my days. But I kept working at it, regardless of how dark and hopeless I felt.

I tried my best each day. I took it one day at a time. I went to therapy twice a week, exercised every day, meditated three times a day, and played Mario every day to relax myself and quiet my mind.

I tried to practice acceptance. I tried to not resist or dive into the dark thoughts. I say “tried” because most of the time I failed at successfully executing these habits.

I had the highest urgency to improve. My life depended on it. Every action I took was centered around managing and decreasing the anxiety.

Every day felt like an epic battle with my mind. I learned the hard way that there are no quick fixes for anxiety. There’s no strategy or seven-step program that eliminates anxiety from your life.

Slowly but surely, I made progress. It felt like three steps forward, two steps back. Yet, most weeks were better than the prior week.

Over time, I gained tools and skills that helped me cope with the anxiety. I learned new lessons every day about dealing and living with anxiety. I uncovered important truths about what had led me to this painful reality.

The anxiety forced me to examine my actions, priorities, and values, and where my life was headed. At the time, I wished there were easier ways to learn those lessons. Your greatest teachers are your failures. That’s the way life works.

I’d like to say it’s been a storybook ending. That I’ve conquered anxiety. That the racing thoughts and fear have vanished from my life. Anxiety doesn’t work that way, though.

That being said, I’m back to living my normal life. I’ve discovered a new definition of success. I’ve improved my ability to manage the anxiety.

Mindsets to Manage Anxiety

Anxiety still shows up unannounced. I can’t control the intensity or nature of my anxiety. However, I can manage it if I’m mindful of how I go about my days and how I react to it when it shows up.

Everyone’s anxiety is unique. If you’re battling anxiety, you’ll have to experiment to find out what works best for you. But you’re not alone.

Although people don’t tend to talk about their struggles with anxiety, more people than you can imagine deal with intense anxiety: an estimated 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety disorders.

Here are behaviors and mindsets that generally decrease my anxiety levels:

Accepting everything in my life as it is

Not worrying about things I can’t control or change

Observing my thoughts from the sidelines instead of engaging with them

Questioning thoughts: Do I have to go into this thought? Is this fear-based thought true?

Allowing anxiety to spend time with me; riding the wave instead of going against the current and fighting anxiety

Being okay with my flaws and weaknesses

Letting go of the need to succeed and accepting the outcome of my actions, good or bad

These behaviors and mindsets cause my anxiety to spike:

Replaying past experiences on a mental loop

Being hard on myself when I don’t meet my standards

Blaming myself for actions or thoughts that caused me more anxiety

Resisting fearful thoughts or anxiety

Engaging with and reacting to every thought; being in the middle of the storm of my thoughts

Trying to deconstruct why I had a thought or feeling

Trying to control my thoughts instead of my reactions to them

Obsessing over what other people may think about things I did or said

Needing to and having to succeed

Acceptance is the Key Ingredient

I resisted the concept of acceptance when my therapist introduced it to me. I thought if I practiced acceptance, I would lower my standards and give up my commitment to excellence.

I thought acceptance represented being okay with mediocre effort and average results. I thought it would lead me to lose the drive to succeed that has been one of the key ingredients to my accomplishments in life.

I was wrong. Acceptance can (and should) be paired with a drive to succeed. An engine to produce at a high level leads you to put in the hard work that’s necessary to achieve your goals.

Acceptance allows you to let go of the result once the hard work is complete. It frees you from worrying and being attached to the outcome, because that’s out of your control. Acceptance is living in the world of what is, instead of what should be, what could be, or what you want it to be.

Acceptance is a simple idea yet it’s difficult to put it into practice for a perfectionist with a tendency to overanalyze. Although it’s been a struggle to increase acceptance in my life, I’ve discovered a few tools that have been effective: meditation and reframing my mindset during and after anxious episodes.

Meditation has vastly improved my awareness of thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Awareness is crucial for managing anxiety effectively. When I’m anxious, step one of acceptance is to feel and acknowledge my emotions.

The next step is to ask myself some version of this question: “Is there anything that I’m not accepting in this moment that’s causing or increasing my anxiety?” Once I pinpoint what I’m resisting and choose to accept it, I know the anxiety will subside.

Many times, I can reframe my mindset in the middle of the anxiety. I can mentally shift from fighting the present circumstances to accepting them as they are. Other times, the anxiety takes over and I have to brace myself until the clouds clear. Once I’m out of the storm, I can dissect that situation and identify the lack of acceptance and the friction that led to the high levels of anxiety.

For example, an argument with my wife can trigger anxiety because I wish that the disagreement never happened. I can’t accept where I am in that moment until I accept that I didn’t act like my ideal self in that situation, and that I can’t go back to change the past. Once I accept the argument and the anxiety it caused me, the friction disappears and my anxiety levels start to drop almost immediately.

My performance can also be a trigger. I can get intense anxiety from mentally replaying the mistakes I made on a work project that didn’t go as well as I expected. I also experience anxiety when I fail to accept the way decisions are made in a large corporation. Or I don’t accept that people often behave in ways that are different than what I expect or value.

If I’m trying to control things that I can’t change or affect, I’m not accepting my current situation. Trying to act outside of my sphere of control is resisting the way the world works. It’s like not accepting that I can’t change the laws of gravity.

Once I accept my past mistakes or that I can’t control how others act and what their priorities are, I can fully accept my present circumstances. When I accept that I experience high levels of anxiety frequently and that my reactions to anxiety sometimes cause more anxiety, I can live without bracing myself for the next attack.

I can let go because I’ve accepted that I will have high levels of anxiety again and that I will make mistakes in how I handle the anxiety again. It doesn’t mean I like being anxious. It just means I’ve accepted where I am at this time in my life. I can take action from there instead of where I wish I was. I can take action within my zone of control.

I’ve experienced the deepest moments of tranquility that I’ve had in my life in the last couple of months. These magical moments happen during the brief windows when I’ve accepted everything in my life as it is.

My mind quiets because there is no friction or turbulence. I lose myself in the sounds and sights of my environment. I hear the birds chirp. I see all the different colors of the leaves.

Redefining Success and Anxiety

I used to be afraid of my anxiety because it felt so intense, emotionally and physically. Although I still experience intense anxiety on a daily basis, I’m now thankful for the anxiety I’ve experienced (sometimes even while I’m caught up in that crushing anxiety).

This is a perspective that only comes after being through the eye of the storm of anxiety. If you’re in the middle of that storm, you’re only job is to get through it so you can get to a place where you feel safe.

I’m thankful for anxiety because it has brought many gifts. Because of it, I quit relentlessly pursuing success at any cost. I started meditating. I began exercising regularly again. I prioritized balance in my life.

The most important lesson anxiety has taught me is that a successful life isn’t defined by how many achievements I’ve collected. Instead, success is building and nurturing relationships, being present to the little things in life, being grateful for the gift of life, exercising the mind and body, and living the life I want without looking over my shoulder to see what others are chasing.

I don’t always follow the formula I discovered for my new definition of success. But when I adhere to my success formula, my days are significantly better than when I fall back to my habitual ways.

About Jose Ramos

Jose Ramos helps people use winning habits, mindsets, and strategies to craft the life they want instead of settling for average results and feeling stuck. Get his free guide to setting and achieving your goals so you can take your life to the next level.

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The post How My Drive to Succeed Led to Crippling Anxiety (And How I Got My Life Back) appeared first on Tiny Buddha.

from Tiny Buddha https://tinybuddha.com/blog/how-my-drive-to-succeed-led-to-crippling-anxiety-and-how-i-got-my-life-back/

[yahoo-puck-daddy-blog]

What We Learned: What's next for the Dallas Stars?

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One of the less talked-about aspects of the NHL season has been the utter failure of the Dallas Stars, a team that was one win away from a Conference Final just last year.

They’re 5-4-1 in their last 10 games, but that includes a three-game losing streak. In fact, the Stars have seven streaks of at least three losses this season. They’ve only won three in a row once.

The extent to which this club struggled was, as I’ve said many times, foreseeable. You knew the goaltending situation was going to be horrendous, and here we are with a team .900 save percentage versus a league average of .913. Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi have cost the team a collective 28 goals, probably about nine points in the standings, give or take.

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But those nine points only get the Stars to 80 in 74, which still isn’t close to a playoff spot here. You’re not wrong to blame the goaltending, but the problems go much deeper. The loss of Jason Demers and Alex Goligoski to free agency for what ended up being effectively nothing (Arizona gave up a fifth-round pick for the rights to negotiate with Goligoski) had a huge negative impact on this team’s ability to remain competitive, especially because GM Jim Nill had no plan to deal with their loss.

Esa Lindell went from having 56 minutes of TOI in the NHL to being the team’s No. 2 defenseman. It hasn’t gone well: he has a negative possession impact, only 14 points despite well over 21 minutes a game. Dan Hamhuis has been a somewhat effective replacement for Demers insofar as he’s performing well enough on the second pairing (though providing only one goal and 15 points doesn’t help much), but after that it’s a mess. Jordie Benn and Johnny Oduya, before they were traded, were having more mediocre years in a long string of them.

The other guys? Well, clearly Lindy Ruff didn’t trust many of them. Julius Honka only got about 16:30 a night in his 10 games. Greg Pateryn, coming over from Montreal, is getting less than that. Jamie Oleksiak isn’t doing much of anything in sporadic appeances.

So the question for Nill quickly becomes: How do you move this team forward without just committing to a full-on rebuild? The idea that you’d in any way bail on a Seguin-and-Benn-in-their-primes group with a solid support cast is foolish, as is the idea that you’d trade either Seguin or Benn (or both?) in pursuit of worse finishes. Probably safe to say, too, that just continuing to fly by the seat of your pants as you did this year is a waste of everyone’s time, energy, and money.

The good news is they have some money coming off the books. Patrick Sharp, Ales Hemsky, and Jiri Hudler save you $11.9 million if you don’t re-sign them. And they only have to retain role players and lower-end guys coming off their ELCs. Maybe you even buy out one of these awful goalies. That gives you money to spend.

But here’s the problem for Nill: You need a couple top-six forwards, clearly. You need at least two middle-pairing defensemen, but ideally a top-pairing and middle-pairing guy. How many of those are going to hit the market this summer?

The list of pending UFA defensemen isn’t exactly star-studded this year. That’s going to become increasingly true as time goes on, because the ability to draft, develop, and retain puck-movers is the Next Big Thing in hockey, if it’s not already. Who do you identify as a guy — ideally in his mid- or late-20s — who fits that role? The amount of money someone’s going to throw at Karl Alzner this summer is already unconscionable, and after that your best option honestly might be Brendan Smith. At least Nill already knows Kris Russell isn’t worth pursuing.

The picture is also pretty bleak up front. Unless you want to throw yourself into the Alex Radulov sweepstakes (assuming there is one, and you can get Lindy Ruff to actually play him despite his nationality), what kind of difference-makers are you even going to find up front to fill out that top six? T.J. Oshie? Thomas Vanek? Teddy Purcell? These aren’t good options either. And you probably have to dramatically overpay for them given the small number of options available to you.

Then there’s the goalies. Even if you buy out one of your two current problems in net, what do you spend the rest of the money on? Not Ben Bishop, right? A Steve Mason reclamation project? Maybe Brian Elliott or Chad Johnson? There just aren’t a lot of good options here either.

Maybe you hope the Vegas Golden Knights kick some stuff loose for you, giving you the option to make some trades. It’s a tough situation, but Nill has kind of painted himself into a corner.

You look at the problems this team has on the ice, too, and a lot of it boils down to not generating enough quality chances, and allowing too many. Pretty simple formula for problems, and while you can say it’s one that springs from personnel, you also have to say Ruff has no concrete answers here. The problems have only gotten worse as the season progresses here, and they’re bigger now than they’ve been at any point in the past two years.

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Perhaps you blame the talent sell-off (which was the responsible thing for Nill to pursue) but they’ve been around a lot longer than the deadline.

Yahoo

Would the Stars fire Ruff and go out in search of a new coach? Tough to say. Should they? I’d argue yes. Because if you’re getting these kinds of performances from a veteran coach given the quality of the top half of this roster, why not see what new ideas do for you instead? Other coaches have done more with less. Ruff’s doing less with more.

Not that firing the coach necessarily fixes the problems this team obviously, predictably has. But it at least starts a process whereby you can say “We’re trying to fix this.” It’s the easiest change to make at this time and probably moves you in the right direction.

If results don’t improve under a new coach — and I would expect they wouldn’t take any sort of huge step forward — then you kick the tires on bigger, more institutional changes. But if the Stars’ window is already closing, given the talent they have at the top of of that lineup, it’s a big problem, and you can’t come close to blaming anyone but Nill.

Depth should be the easiest problem to correct, but here we are anyway. Having traveled down the only logical road this team could have taken, the path out shouldn’t be this difficult, should it?

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: Seems like maybe Brandon Montour is a player.

Arizona Coyotes: Clayton Keller, come on down.

Boston Bruins: Charlie McAvoy and Jacob Forsbacka Karlsson, also come on down.

Buffalo Sabres: Tough to think of anyone who’s having a better second half than Jack Eichel.

Calgary Flames: Folks, Brian Elliott has one regulation loss — and 13 wins — in his last 15 games.

Carolina Hurricanes: This is a 10-game point streak for the Hurricanes. They’re now five points out of a playoff spot with two games in hand on everyone in front of them. This is getting wild.

Chicago: Jonathan Toews was really mad his team lost 7-0 to the Panthers and that’s because he’s a Good Leader and not because losing 7-0 is something everyone hates to do.

Colorado Avalanche: This is the headline of the year.

Columbus Blue Jackets: You’ll never guess why Columbus is winning again. It’s almost like their success is wholly dependent on one player.

Dallas Stars: Patrick Sharp, everyone likes him.

Detroit Red Wings: Folks, Steve Yzerman, who is the GM of the Tampa Bay Lightning, played for the Red Wings. Not sure if you heard about that but it’s true. One of those Mike Modano or Daniel Alfredsson things where he played one year there.

Edmonton Oilers: Jordan Eberle has been around long enough to play 500 games? I am a thousand years old.

Florida Panthers: Twenty-eight goals is a lot for a guy they got basically for nothing. Hmm.

Los Angeles Kings: Well, uh, yikes.

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Minnesota Wild: If you’re getting demolished at home by the Canucks, you’ve got big problems. And many of those problems rhyme with Bevan Bubnyk.

Montreal Canadiens: I think it’s safe to say they have the division wrapped up at this point.

Nashville Predators: I think this is what they call Peaking At The Right Time.

New Jersey Devils: I feel so bad for Taylor Hall.

New York Islanders: Maybe if you get six power plays you should have more than 19 shots in a game. Maybe.

New York Rangers: What’s truly amazing is that every time Henrik Lundqvist missed time in the past few years, his backups have been almost unbeatable. What a thing to happen.

Ottawa Senators: I mean, y’know, they’re not that good.

Philadelphia Flyers: Hey what team did this Bobrovsky guy used to play for? Just wondering.

Pittsburgh Penguins: These are the takes I need in my life.

San Jose Sharks: Send anyone who is still, in the year of our lord two thousand seventeen anno domini, a “Joe Thornton Hater” to me. I will deal with them roughly, as is fitting.

St. Louis Blues: Well they, uh, got the point at least.

Tampa Bay Lightning: I hate this!

Toronto Maple Leafs: Best Leafs highlight on Saturday night? Eichel scoring an effortless goal and celebrating directly in front of a few Leafs fans who made the trip down to Buffalo.

Vancouver Canucks: What a day for this guy.

Vegas Golden Knights: Amazing, truly.

Washington Capitals: Just a big ol’ kid out there, even now.

Winnipeg Jets: Journalists aren’t supposed to lie to their readers.

Play of the Weekend

Ryan Donato, hello.

Ryan Donato must not be feeling well because that was sick!@Harvard_Hockey leads 2-0. pic.twitter.com/WHoEdOWtRB

— NCAA Ice Hockey (@NCAAIceHockey) March 26, 2017

Gold Star Award

MANCHESTER, NH – MARCH 26: Andrew Oglevie #15 of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish celebrates his overtime winning goal against the Massachusetts Lowell River Hawks during the NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Northeast Regional Championship final at the SNHU Arena on March 26, 2017 in Manchester, New Hampshire. The Fighting Irish won 3-2 and advance to the Frozen Four in Chicago. (Photo by Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images)

College hockey is the best hockey. Don’t let anyone tell ya different.

Minus of the Weekend

If you have a small daughter who knows how to skate, please don’t let USA Hockey convince her to play at Worlds. They’re getting desperate, and no one wants to be a scab for them.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Year

User “Le Grec” is Going For It.

To NYI: Duchene, Landeskog

To COL: Nelson or Strome, Lee, Barzal, Pulock or De Haan, 2017, 18, 19, first round picks…

Signoff

When you go home tonight, there’s gonna be another story on your house.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All stats via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)

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