#yes some of these are a metaphor for the mistreatment of minorities

[demonadelem]

Rare pity, mercy and compassion of the giants called humanity

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Sometimes a harmful person can be made less harmful without turning them into a better person.

When this can be done at scale, with less effort than it takes to make even a single person into a better person, I tend to think that’s worthwhile, as a behavior.

One example is humanizing a minority.

Like. There are a lot of people who are just not taking time to consider people they don’t interact with often as real people. That takes work, and they don’t feel like it. Would it be better if they did that, as a matter of course? Yes. Should we teach them to do it? ...Well, only in specific, honestly. In the time it takes to get someone philosophically on board with the general idea of treating minorities as real people, you could just show them a humanizing moment where a queer kid is, I dunno, scared about getting a filling at the dentist. Or show them photos of Iranian men buying groceries. Or black folks fishing. You can metaphorically shout at the person, “THESE ARE REAL PEOPLE” and yes, some people will ignore this, but many who have been thoughtlessly mistreating a group have been doing so out of a lazy sort of ignorance and will learn not to mistreat that group when presented with something that, to their set of icons, indicates the group as Real People. And because minorities are real people, they’ll have members with those icons of behavior or aesthetic unless such things are directly harmful to their own group. (I mean, sometimes even then, but you don’t want to use those icons; “See, black folks are real people - They hate black people just like you do!” might sell with some folks but what it sells devalues the whole proposition)

There were pride rallies in the 80s that were just, “We’re here, we’re queer, and we’d like to say hello!” where the purpose was not to confront The Straights on any behavior, particularly, but merely to confront The Straights with the fact that their queer neighbors existed. This WORKED. We got gay marriage when a critical mass of people in the country all knew a gay person personally, he was Mike, Mike was a good guy, snappy dresser, threw good parties, worked hard on his architecture business, and above all wasn’t a threat. Knowing Mike, it was hard to sell you the line that “gay people are a threat.” A threat how? Mike? Get real. Of COURSE Mike and Dave should be allowed to marry, they’re ADORABLE. Who’s it hurt? “The Concept of Marriage?” Well the Concept of Marriage isn’t a real person while Mike IS. And so on. Zero in on why someone’s treating people badly, and you can stop the bad behavior without having to “fix them” (a bit of a suspect goal to begin with).

[mediaeval-muse]

Book Review

A Dangerous Invitation by Erica Monroe. Quillfire Publishing. 2013.

Rating: 2/5 stars

Genre: historical romance

Part of a Series? Yes, The Rookery Rogues #1 of 4 (and a short story)

Summary:  She’s given up on love, and wants only independence… Torn from her life of privilege by her father’s death, Kate Morgan survives in London’s dark and depraved rookeries as a fence for stolen goods. The last man she ever expects, or wants, to be reunited with is her first love, who promised to cherish, honor and protect her, and instead fled amidst accusations of murder. He’s the reformed rake determined to win her back… One drunken night cost Daniel O’Reilly the woman he loved and the life he’d worked so hard to create. If he ever wants to reclaim that life–and Kate–he’ll not only have to prove he’s innocent of murder, but convince the pistol-wielding spitfire that he’s no longer the scoundrel he once was. Together, they’ll have to face a killer. Time is running out…

***Full review under the cut.***

Trigger Warnings: violence, sexual content, sexism, forced prostitution, rape, sexual assault, alcoholism, being buried alive

Overview: Another recommendation from the website Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. I decided to give this one a try because I’m a sucker for a spitfire heroine, murder plots, and the criminal underbelly of late Regency/pre-Victorian London. But while the previous recommendation was a hit, this one was somewhat of a miss. I think the bones of the story are good, as well as the character archetypes, but I wasn’t personally a fan of Monroe’s writing.

Writing: Monroe’s prose is fairly straightforward with some dramatic flairs here and there to heighten the emotion. It’s easy to read, and you can skim it quickly, if that’s your style. For me, however, it bordered a little too much on the melodramatic, and it became a bit repetitive when the same sentiments were evoked again and again. For example, we’re told a lot how much our heroine, Kate, can never trust a man again and that she can’t have a future with our hero, Daniel. After the first few times, I wished Monroe would move on to explore more complex emotions to develop her characters a little more. I also think the dialogue is a bit unrealistic, as characters tend to say exactly what’s bothering them or what deeper issues are plaguing them without much prompting, and real people don’t exactly talk that way. Some metaphors and choices of words were also a little awkward, which made for a confusing read at times.

By far, the biggest issue I had was the way Monroe handled the exposition and the details of her mystery. The action of the story starts out fairly quickly, which would have been fine except that I felt like I was being asked to care about characters’ histories without getting to know them first. Daniel runs into Kate after a long absence on page 2 of the first chapter of the novel, and I wish we were given a chapter where we saw Kate fencing some stolen goods or something else first to get us invested in her as a character. Also, because things happened so quickly, I felt like I was being told a lot of information rather than relevant details being shown to me organically. For example, a character might do or say something, then there’s be a kind of aside that explained the significance of the thing. Or Daniel would reference something about his quest to clear his name, then the author would take some time to tell us how he started his journey, how he knew people helping him, etc. As a result, there was a lot of setup jam-packed in the first few chapters, and I wish more had been done to create a flow that didn’t rely on duck info-dumping. Maybe if we had a chapter showing us Kate completing a sale (as I said) while Daniel is contacting his rogue friend, Atlas, who agrees to help him clear his name. Then the action between them could begin.

Plot: I love the idea of former lovers teaming up to solve a mystery, and at its heart, I think the premise of the plot was interesting. I did think, however, that some of the details and steps along the way weren’t handled as well as they could have been. There’s a lot of going to talk to witnesses or persons of interest, which makes for a lot of info-dumping, and there’s also some random chases which seemed to be inserted for the purposes of action rather than a logical unfolding of the mystery. During the first chase, for example, I was constantly wondering whether their pursuer was just a night watchmen or someone more nefarious. If the latter, how in the world would someone have known Daniel and Kate were snooping around the warehouses at night unless someone was following them? The thought that someone must know they are investigating the murder from the onset (and thus, know that Daniel is back in London) doesn’t really occur to the characters, which I found a bit frustrating.

Overall, I wished the events that made up the main narrative had been strung together more meaningfully. Every encounter that was related to solving the mystery had the potential for some interesting social commentary, and while it was gestured to, I ultimately felt that it was rushed. For example, there’s one scene in which Daniel and Kate go visit a prostitute, and Kate thinks a lot about how the girls are more than just objects and how women have to do what they can to survive. Soon after, she discloses her own rape after being tricked into prostitution. It seemed to me like the author was trying to cover a lot of things at once when the personal lives of the characters and the unfolding of the mystery could have revolved around one or two themes: the link between minorities and crime (due to poverty resulting from prejudice), for example, and the way gender also affects how women experience the criminal world. Or, given that the main undercurrent of the book is the existence of body snatching, every aspect of the story could be tied to the concept of “selling bodies” and disregard for the poor. If the bodies of the poor are being exploited to sell to medical facilities, that kind of matches up nicely with the idea of poor women “selling their bodies” via prostitution or Irish immigrants “selling their bodies” by becoming laborers. But alas, it seemed like the novel wasn’t quite interested in diving deep into those issues.

Characters: Our heroine, Kate, is a headstrong woman who has used her knowledge of her father’s shipping company to fence stolen goods following her family’s bankruptcy. I rather liked how her ruthlessness and street smarts were connected to this aspect of her life rather than the author throwing up her hands and just asserting that Kate was a badass. Kate was also pretty likable as a street-smart protagonist who knew how to navigate the criminal world of 19th century London. I liked watching her get out of tricky situations and disappear at opportune moments, and I especially liked that she had a practical, active role to play in the investigation. She’s enlisted for her quick mind and encyclopedic knowledge of her father’s company, and I found that enjoyable and well-done. However, she was a bit back-and-forth in her affections for Daniel. One minute, she’d be proudly declaring that they can’t be together and values her independence, and the next, she’d kiss him or let him touch her while thinking about how she wanted to be protected. While it was understandable, given her traumatic history on the streets, I did find it a bit frustrating, as a reader, because rather than there being some evolution or development to her character, Kate seemed to be on a more cyclical track.

Daniel, our hero, is an Irish immigrant who has returned from abroad after being accused of murder years before. I liked that Monroe set him up as a struggling former alcoholic and as having PTSD as a result of having found the murder victim before he died - it made it seem like reform was a continual process rather than a quick fix, and that men can be emotionally vulnerable in more ways than just being lovesick or abused. I didn’t quite see what Kate saw in him, however, as her main attraction to him seemed to be physical, especially when recounting their past. Why, for example, did she fall for him before the murder when she says she was concerned about his alcoholism? What drew her to him? I also think Daniel was written as a bit too jealous. He would hate a man he just met just because he potentially got to know Kate while Daniel was away. There was more than one time where his jealousy almost ruined his chances of clearing his name, which I found ridiculous.

The supporting characters were a bit of a mixed bag. I liked Kate’s barmaid friend, Jane, and Atlas, even though neither had quite enough “screen time” to be anything other than a convenient plot device. Other characters just outright got on my nerves with their general disregard for women. The villain, in particular, was poorly done in that he monologued a bit and sexually assaults our heroine for reasons that seem to just be “because I’m evil.” It made for a rather up-and-down reading experience.

Other: There were some interesting political aspects to this book in that many references were devoted to the mistreatment of Irish immigrants. There’s such potential there for a deeper exploration of prejudice and life as a “second class citizen,” including the brief references to Daniel’s code-switching (which was delightful) and his complicated feelings about being Irish but barely remember living in Ireland. I think, however, that a lot of the prejudice was left to stand on its own and generate some automatic sympathy for characters without actually thinking about how it could enhance the story. For example, are Irish people scapegoated for crime in Monroe’s world? How is the stereotype of the alcoholic Irishman subverted by Daniel’s struggle to be better or how does his past make us think more deeply about why people turn to drink (as opposed to judging everyone as uniformly “amoral”)? Just because the novel is a romance doesn’t mean that these issues can’t be explored (one has only to look to someone like Courtney Milan, who weaves social commentary into her romances brilliantly).

I also think more could have been done to enhance the romance itself. While I did like that Daniel was intent on proving himself to be a better man than he was when he left, I also didn’t think the romance was built on much other than their past and physical attraction. Daniel’s reasons for loving Kate seem to be that she anchors him, which is a bit selfish and frustrating, but he also admires her independence and intelligence, which prevented me from giving up on him entirely. That being said, their relationship doesn’t evolve as much as it’s cyclical. They fight a lot and Kate is constantly back-and-forth about whether or not she wants to be with him, so it felt like I was reading about the same issue over and over rather than seeing how trust was built between them. Daniel’s arc could have been more about accepting Kate for who she is now - not reminiscing about a past that couldn’t return - and Kate’s arc could have been about learning to trust again or valuing living people over the memory of her dead father. While Daniel’s acceptance of Kate’s past was well-done, I really wanted more insight as to how each person made the other’s lives better and more emotionally fulfilling, not just how they’re a good person for overlooking the other’s flaws or how the love interest “anchored” them or whatever. In fairness, Daniel does learn that he needs to “save himself” rather than rely on Kate to do it for him, but there was very little lead-up for him to get to that point.

Continuing with the Series? No.

Recommendations: I would recommend this book if you’re interested in historical romance (especially set in the 19th century), criminal underbelly of London, Irish heroes, reformed rakes, disinherited heroines, former lovers, and murder plots.

[weareindeedbastards]

ok but listen guillermo del toro is just so fucking good

so the shape of water was clearly about minorities stepping up to the man and shit right?

but it wasn’t just plot-wise and dialogue driven it was also visually. And yes it’s pretentious of me to assume people won’t get these because they’re not super subtle visual cues and very basic college film class 101, but I wanna talk about it anyway bear with me

so the story being set in 1962 makes the plot a lot easier to go about. Cold war, experiments, usa vs russia and the rest of the world can go fuck itself. It just makes sense, tense times. But more than that, it was a fantastic opportunity to highlight human hypocrisy at its most obvious (woof that sure was some alliteration right there). The early 60s wasn’t drastically different from its preceding decades. A lot of its culture was basically just everything back until the 30s but with a new stamp on it. And when I say that what I specifically have in mind is what my man del toro decided to focus on here: ideals vs reality

you thought I was gonna say minorities again, right? well hold on, children, I’m getting there

we’ve all heard it before. “Boy, I sure wish I could go back in time. I’d love the 40s/50s/60s, wouldn’t you? Apple pies, milkshakes, tight hairdos and pretty polka dot dresses to the sound of some jazz, nothing like it, don’t you think?” And while my answer is usually nervous laughter it’s not just because those people often fail to realise my developing country did not exactly have the same americanised culture. It’s also because no I wouldn’t love it. Sure there’s some nice aesthetics that we associate with the time periods but I’d much rather enjoy them in modern times which we absolutely can. Why? Because life would suck for me as a poor, queer latina. And I know people who are all sorts of categories that don’t exactly thrive in these conditions (non-white, non-rich, non-straight, disabled, etc) who would and have said the same. We don’t romanticise those times because they wouldn’t be kind to us unlike the often clueless upper middle class abled straight white person posing the question. And you know what, I think it’s ok some don’t realise! It’s not their fault, guys, they grew up hearing about how awesome it was from people like them. They never saw or heard it from another pair of eyes.

And that’s precisely what the film does. But it doesn’t just say it, it shows it too.

Mr of the Bull presents us with the glorified ideals of the time. The whole shebang, from the stereotypical family Giles has to paint for an ad and the real life examples of it, Strickland’s family

to peak 40s/50s/60s culture: an all-smiles blond man tending to a colourful diner full of sweet treats

and all of it emphasised by the sounds of Vera Lynn and Carmen Miranda through scratched vinyls and old TVs (the latter which is, probably intentionally and ironically chosen for the soundtrack because it’s a white woman who’s often seen to represent brazilian culture despite being portuguese so as to be more mass marketable than the exotic but too foreign actual brazilian culture - but hey that doesn’t sound as nice or printable as “the brazilian bombshell”, huh?)

it all sounds nice and cosy though, doesn’t it? Pop me open a cold glass bottle of cola and we’re good to go...but woah there, only if you’re a privileged straight abled white man, of course. That’s right it’s exclusive to a very specific group and it’s irregardless of your personality! In fact, both examples above are assholes but who still get their ego boosted by a submissive wife, adoring clients or a salesman. Who cares about having things because you earned them or simply treating people the way you wanna be treated, right?

Meanwhile the minorities suffer but differently, because despite all of them being marginalised groups they present different layers of experiences and social positions in the hierarchy. What do I mean by that? Eliza and Giles are both white but are discriminated over something unseen. Eliza is disabled and Giles is queer. Zelda and the couple who show up at the diner during one scene are discriminated over something visible. They’re black. And on top of that a bunch of these characters are not well off and gotta struggle in such undermined jobs.

And once again, all these power layers are told to us but also shown.

With privileged characters being positioned upfront at the camera, all big and untouchable, while minorities...

are sheepishly hidden in the back.

And yet it takes a character like Giles being discriminated for showing his true colours to finally open his eyes and see other marginalised groups’ suffering which he previously ignored.

He who, just like Eliza in comparison to Zelda, was previously closer to the camera to seemingly represent the second layer at the social positioning - aka they were benefited by their appearance but held back by their unseen “problems”. But Giles finally takes a step forward, and after subtly defending the couple’s mistreatment (could have been a lil bit firmer buddy but ok) quite literally rises above the unkind privileged man showing that in the end he’s not the real loser here, he’s not “lesser”. And again the camera play shows the change with perspective and character size. Intimidated -> determined

He then comes out braver and ready to kick some ass! Kinda..he helps rather gently, as himself, which is accepted by Eliza because accepting your friends as they are is super badass. And just as he does this the visuals of the dreamy 60s begins to seem darker and darker in saturation and our knowledge of how cruel the world can be taints every idealised scenario we step in.

While also being a more optimistic metaphor for leaving outdated concepts behind and moving on - note the cutesy old fashioned font washed in darkness, but it’s on the back of a van being driven by a scared gay man helping a mute female janitor take the weirdest member of the squad (it’s ok nobody judges anymore, acceptance rules) back home. This is a love mission dammit.

As for our two girls? Our help-people, shit-cleaners and piss-wipers as Mr Cutthoseoffalready put it? They were always strong. And when the time came to help each other they fucking stepped up to the task alright.

Whether it was in the simple but incredibly difficult act of not submitting to the abuse of someone who knows fully well their privilege allows them to get away with it (ew look at that creepy smile, christ dude, it’s darker than your fingers)

- which Del Totoro portrayed by having the villain taking over all the upper space on screen, never respecting others’ space and just keeps taking up more. He’s so in your face that the mirror in the scene where Zelda is threatened reinforces this manmade claustrophobia of our heroines’ enemy being everywhere. Much like the challenges minorities face everyday... -

to some aggressive action taking. They came, they saw, they took frogman to the docks. And all these characters quite literally crushed the repressive society represented here by the male ego, in turn represented by stricklame’s teal car getting rekt (cry, bitch, cry those repressed feelings out)

And they did it all despite the obstacles of their underprivileged positions because in the end, my lambs, it was their social setbacks that made them stronger, more caring and more resilient. All until they were finally the bigger person on camera, standing above their oppressors and becoming the (literal lens) focus of the story to the privileged character’s eyes.

And just like the Amazon Merman God showed us minorities: you can do it too. Guillie is using this dark, but uplifting fairytale to say that he believes in you.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk, have a nice day

[politicotalk]

The French 2021 Leader’s Debate for Canada, in English

The French leader’s debate had some key moments which were not present in the English debate. For those who want a brief highlight, here are the key notes from the leader’s debate of September 2021. The questions were a mix of individual questions, debate questions, and were pre-written or came directly from the public. The leaders present were as follow:

Conservative: Erin O’Toole

Liberal: Justin Trudeau

Green: Annamie Paul

New Democratic Party: Jagmeet Singh

Bloc Québécois: Yves-François Blanchet

The Pandemic and Health

1. How are we going to protect the elderly, and stop neglecting them and mistreating them.

This question came from Bernadette in New Brunswick. The first to answer was the conservative party, they said they would ��increase transfers in the health sector in a stable and foreseeable manner regardless of the conditions”, but this did not meet the province’s demands, especially Quebec.

The second to answer was the leader of the Green Party who sympathized with Bernadette, telling her that her father also passed away in a long-term treatment centre. She proposed to reform the health sector in order to establish national standards.

The NDP indicated how shameful the situation is, and told that he would remove all incentives to generate a profit from the health sector in long-term care.

Yves-François Blanchet highlighted that the jurisdiction was governed by provinces. “The province’s priorities in terms of Health System are to give the people health care. To do this, they need to have the means”.

Justin Trudeau said he would hire 50,000 beneficiary attendants and offering them a salary of $25/hr.

Jagmeet Singh added that action should be done against people who refuse to get vaccinated. Trudeau took it personally, as he has recently been approached by anti-vaxers.

 Cost of living and public finance

2. What is the plan for the labour force shortage?

Everyone said: immigration.

After this, the parliamentary correspondent Hélène Buzetti came on and it seems she completely forgot what subjectivity meant. My god that woman was aggressive!

3. To Erin O’Toole: How do you explain your budget?

The plan is to balance the budget, and create 1,000,000 jobs in one year. Let’s just remember that we were just talking about how there is not enough labour force, and this guy wants to create more jobs?

4. To Justin Trudeau: Is your plan to spend $70,000,000 over five years not going to increase the cost of life?

He wants to manage the inflation.

5. To Jagmeet Singh: How can you justify your plan [to tax the ultra rich] to people who think that it relies on magic thinking?

The media needs to pay their part. There needs to be a stop to fiscal paradises and any loopholes.

6. What to do about daycare?

O’Toole was attacked on his plan to cut $10/day daycares. He instead proposes to make a plan, not saying what his plan is. Blanchet answered by attacking the conservatives’ constant use of the term “plan”, and highlighted the fact that this cumulated to a total of $6 billion in Quebec’s pockets. Trudeau mentioned the fact that hundreds of families were waiting months to get a spot in these daycares and O’Toole’s plan is to scrap this. Ms. Paul reminded the panel that the issue in question affected women especially and that she was in a better position than her male competitors to talk about daycare, and that this issue wouldn’t still be a hot topic if other women were in power.

 The environment

The topic of heat waves, forest fire and pollution came up. As the clear solution to overcome greenhouse gases is to reduce fossil fuel consumption, Charles Leduc had this to ask:

7. What is your plan to reduce fossil fuel emissions in Canada?

Justin Trudeau said he would cap fossil fuel emissions for the gas sector, and mentioned that he planned on banning the sale of gas-fueled cars by 2035. The conservative leader said he had a plan with “a lot of details”, he wants to respect the goals set by the Paris Agreement. What this plan is and what these details are will remain a mystery, unless you go on their website. Trudeau reminded the panel that O’Toole would reduce the target established by the Liberal government and would return to the past (? (At this point they were all talking over each other and it was hard to understand)).

Trudeau was then attacked on the fact that his government bought the Trans Mountain Pipeline. Blanchet critiques the illogical thought that establishing a cap would compensate, and help the situation, for buying a pipeline. Jagmeet Singh pointed out that Canada was the only G7 country to has increased its emissions, and indicated that he would stop all subventions to the gas industry.

8. The leader of the debate asked how to reduce emissions while increasing gas production?

Blanchet started by making a metaphor about Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage, and reiterated the fact that it is impossible to increase production while decreasing emissions.

9. Is the Green Party still useful?

The question was asked as all parties introduced an environmental plan. Annamie Paul beautifully defended her party by saying that it had an effective, achievable and audacious plan.

 First Nations, Identity and Culture

The first question came from, who a Mohawk from Kanesatake.

10. Will indigenous languages will be recognized as official languages equal to French and English?

First off, let’s just remind ourselves that, according to Statistics Canada, there are more than 70. All leaders agreed that the answer should be yes, with the exception of Erin O’Toole who indicated that the important thing was that public services should be provided in these languages.

11.   What is the party’s plan to provide clean drinking water to Indigenous communities?

In 2015, the Liberals promised to erase all boil-water advisories by 2021, a promise they had not achieved. The NDP pointed out how shameful it was that he broke his promise. Trudeau has this to say: “Yes, the pandemic slowed us down, it’s not an excuse, we will catch up”. Even the leader of the debate chimed in about how wonderful it would be to not have to ask this same question in the next leaders’ debate. All leaders agreed that this issue has to be addressed.

12. What is your reaction in regards to the French catholic school’s action to throw out and burn books that were deemed racist towards First Nations?

These books were Lucky Luke, Tintin and Astérix comic books. All leaders agreed that burning books in unacceptable. Justin Trudeau added that he didn’t want to tell the First Nations how they should feel.

This is the moment when the debate got at it’s worst. Are you ready for it?

3

2

1

Yves-François Blanchet turned to Trudeau and said “[Trudeau] says we should tell the First Nations what to do or what to think, why should he say this when he tells the Quebecois Nation what to do and what to think?”. Justin felt attacked and replied that he, himself, was Quebecker and that Blanchet wasn’t the only person on the panel to represent the Quebecois Nation.

 Justice and International Affairs

13. Should fire arms be banned?

This was a topic brought on by several mayors in regards to melee arms and fire arms which were banned by the Liberal government. Erin O’Toole started by contradicting his own platform, saying that he would maintain the ban. He was criticized on all ends for this, saying that once in power, he would go back on his promise.

14. Will you financially help French-speaking universities outside of Quebec?

Justin Trudeau seized the opportunity to attack his rival, Erin O’Toole, saying that the conservatives would cut in minority languages, adding that Doug Ford and Erin O’Toole are the worst when it comes to cutting funds.

Erin O’Toole replied by saying that he has plans to help these campuses, and he wants to modernize the law on official languages, not indicating how, and pointing the finger at Trudeau for his inaction.

 Conclusion

Thoughts on this? The conservatives have plans they want you to know exist, but don’t want you to know what contain. This means that either their plans don’t exist or their leader has no idea what he is talking about. O’Toole was nonetheless very cordial to all his opponents even when receiving direct criticism. Trudeau spoke a lot, interrupting a lot of people, but promised a lot of progressive plans. Blanchet swooped in with a lot of cleverly thought-up criticisms. Jagmeet Singh was very polite and had very well crafted as answers for all the questions, as did Ms. Paul.

[brainstatic]

OK, this genre of pearl-clutching about college kids not being racist enough is overdone enough as it is, but this article by noted blowhard Jonathan Haidt is too much. I have to rant about this piece of shit.

What is happening to our country, and our universities? It sometimes seems that everything is coming apart.

This is a complaint found in every generation in every civilization on the planet. We have written records of ancient Greeks and Romans making this exact same whine.

Anyway, then there’s a brief summary of cosmology 101 because we’re in for the biggest historical stretch ever.

I’d like you to consider an idea that I’ll call “the fine-tuned liberal democracy.” It begins by looking backward a few million generations and tracing our ancestry, from tree-dwelling apes to land-dwelling apes, to upright-walking apes, whose hands were freed up for tool use, to larger-brained hominids who made weapons as well as tools, and then finally to homo sapiens, who painted cave walls and painted their faces and danced around campfires and worshipped gods and murdered each other in large numbers.

But enough about the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Here is the fine-tuned liberal democracy hypothesis: as tribal primates, human beings are unsuited for life in large, diverse secular democracies, unless you get certain settings finely adjusted to make possible the development of stable political life. This seems to be what the Founding Fathers believed.

I’m not sure the slave-owners were as committed to diverse and secular democracy as you think.

Thankfully, our Founders were good psychologists. They knew that we are not angels; they knew that we are tribal creatures.

Yet they completely failed to anticipate hyper-partisanship, an oversight that will be remembered as the one that caused America’s downfall.

So what did the Founders do? They built in safeguards against runaway factionalism, such as the division of powers among the three branches, and an elaborate series of checks and balances.

No, they were not concerned with factionalism, they were afraid of three things: tyrants, unqualified demagogues, and leaders beholden to foreign powers. Bang up jobs guys.

What would Jefferson say if he were to take a tour of America’s most prestigious universities in 2017?

Thomas Jefferson owned people and didn’t know what bacteria is, who gives a shit.

Why do we hate and fear each other so much more than we used to as recently as the early 1990s? The political scientist Sam Abrams and I wrote an essay in 2015, listing ten causes. I won’t describe them all, but I’ll give you a unifying idea, another metaphor from physics: keep your eye on the balance between centrifugal and centripetal forces. Imagine three kids making a human chain with their arms, and one kid has his free hand wrapped around a pole. The kids start running around in a circle, around the pole, faster and faster. The centrifugal force increases. That’s the force pulling outward as the human centrifuge speeds up. But at the same time, the kids strengthen their grip. That’s the centripetal force, pulling them inward along the chain of their arms. Eventually the centrifugal force exceeds the centripetal force and their hands slip. The chain breaks. This, I believe, is what is happening to our country. I’ll briefly mention five of the trends that Abrams and I identified, all of which can be seen as increasing centrifugal forces or weakening centripetal forces.

This is the metaphor that underpins the rest of the article. It’s admittedly interesting, too bad he applies it in the most asinine ways possible.

External enemies: Fighting and winning two world wars, followed by the Cold War, had an enormous unifying effect.

We put Japanese people in camps and spent the 50s afraid our neighbors could be communist spies, but sure, unifying, right.

The Vietnam War was different, but in general, war is the strongest known centripetal force.

War brings people together except for that one time it tore the country apart. Also all the other times.

Immigration and diversity: This one is complicated and politically fraught. Let me be clear that I think immigration and diversity are good things, overall.

I smell a “but” coming.

The economists seem to agree that immigration brings large economic benefits. The complete dominance of America in Nobel prizes, music, and the arts, and now the technology sector, would not have happened if we had not been open to immigrants.

So we agree immigrants are the only ones doing the things which future generations will remember us fondly for.

But

There it is.

as a social psychologist, I must point out that immigration and diversity have many sociological effects, some of which are negative.

This is from someone who just implied the World Wars had no meaningful negative side effects and Vietnam was just a big oopsie.

The political scientist Robert Putnam found this in a paper titled “E Pluribus Unum,” in which he followed his data to a conclusion he clearly did not relish: “In the short run, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighborhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down.’ Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.”

That’s questionable, but notice how it specifies “in the short run.” What does Putnam have to say about the long run? Let’s take a quote from the abstract from that very link: “In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits.” Weird that Haidt left that part out, he’s so committed to diversity.

I repeat that diversity has many good effects too, and I am grateful that America took in my grandparents from Russia and Poland, and my wife’s parents from Korea. But Putnam’s findings make it clear that those who want more diversity should be even more attentive to strengthening centripetal forces.

And yet you left out that Putnam agrees with you.

The final two causes I will mention are likely to arouse the most disagreement, because these are the two where I blame specific parties, specific sides. They are: the Republicans in Washington, and the Left on campus. Both have strengthened the centrifugal forces that are now tearing us apart.

Haidt sees too equivalent forces at work: the party that dominates every lever of government, makes all laws, controls the presidency and all executive departments, and the majority of state governments. On the other side, there’s a 19-year-old Oberlin student who wrote about safe spaces for the school newspaper.

The more radical Republican Party: When the Democrats ran the House of Representatives for almost all of six decades, before 1995, they did not treat the Republican minority particularly well.

Those six decades included long periods where Dixiecrats voted with Republicans more often than with their own party, giving Republicans a functional majority. There were also the so-called “Rockefeller Republicans”, socially liberal Republicans named after their de fact leader, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller. They voted with Democrats a good chunk of the time. This blended partisan makeup sort of kills his whole belief in the permanent partisanship of American politics, so I don’t expect him to mention it, if he knows about it at all. I don’t know how Democrats mistreated Republicans during this period, maybe by almost impeaching their profoundly criminal president?

The new identity politics of the Left: Jonathan Rauch offers a simple definition of identity politics: a “political mobilization organized around group characteristics such as race, gender, and sexuality, as opposed to party, ideology, or pecuniary interest.” Rauch then adds: “In America, this sort of mobilization is not new, unusual, un­American, illegitimate, nefarious, or particularly left­wing.” This definition makes it easy for us to identify two kinds of identity politics: the good kind is that which, in the long run, is a centripetal force. The bad kind is that which, in the long run, is a centrifugal force.

Yes, I’m sure Haidt does find it quite easy to separate the civil rights movements he likes and those he doesn’t like. I’m going to predict the ones he likes are the ones led by dead people who aren’t here to make him uncomfortable. I predict the I Have A Dream speech will make an appearance.

When slavery was written into the Constitution, it set us up for the greatest explosion of our history. It was a necessary explosion, but we didn’t manage the healing process well in the Reconstruction era. When Jim Crow was written into Southern laws, it led to another period of necessary explosions, in the 1960s.

While I would contest that racial strife happened in fits and bursts, and not in a long continuous stream, I appreciate that Haidt acknowledges the thing that torpedoes his first billion paragraphs about the Founders’ commitment to peace and justice.

Martin Luther King’s rhetoric made it clear that this was a campaign to create conditions that would allow national reconciliation. He drew on the moral resources of the American civil religion to activate our shared identity and values: “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note.” And: “I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’

Called it.

Of course, some people saw the civil rights movement as divisive, or centrifugal.

“Some people” meaning the FBI and the guy who shot him.

But what happens when young people study intersectionality? In some majors, it’s woven into many courses. Students memorize diagrams showing matrices of privilege and oppression.

That has never happened.

Intersectionality is like NATO for social-justice activists.

I have no words.

Can you imagine a culture that is more antithetical to the mission of a university? Can you believe that many universities offer dozens of courses that promote this way of thinking? Some are even requiring that all students take such a course.

I’m only in my first year of grad school for linguistics but I can tell you that it’s literally impossible without an understanding of intersectionality.

Anyway, the rest of the article is just rephrasing the first parts, and then he plugs his website called “The Heterodox Academy” (it means “unconventional.”) Being unconventional or contrarian is like being rich: if you have to tell people you are, you’re probably not. The purported goal of this website is to challenge “conventional thinking” that became conventional supposedly without evidence. The ones listed in their FAQ are:

Humans are a blank slate, and “human nature” does not exist.

No one has believed this since the 60s, so you can triumphantly cross that one off your list.

All differences between human groups are caused by differential treatment of those groups, or by differential media portrayals of group members.

Groups? What groups? Like, theater nerds, history buffs, professional bowlers? Oh you mean races, your goal is to promote race science, got it.

Social stereotypes do not correspond to any real differences.

In case it wasn’t clear this was about racism.

In conclusion, Johnathan Haidt is racist buffoon and the only injustice at work is that he was ever given respect in the first place.

[mhaccunoval]

Fic: “No Other One in Budapest”

“Hey, kid. Would ya stop fidgeting for a minute?”

“Or I’ll make ya go sit with her royal highness back there.” Han groaned, at this point fed-up even more with the weight of Luke’s restlessness on top.

To Luke’s defense, chest constraints were in no way comfortable. Yes, they hid any rigidness in one’s chest, not that he had much to begin with thankfully, but nonetheless, they would tear into someone’s ribs faster than a Sand Person could strike them down with a blow.

Grumbling, he took it upon himself to exit and try to peel the fabric for temporary relief. He hid away in a secluded cabin in the Falcon, where he was sure nobody would see him, and unhooked the clasp on the constraint. The slight draft bit at his now exposed chest, but it was better than the state it had just been in. The tissues were nearly marred from the constant mistreatment, but it was no worry to him how he passed, so long as he did. He ran his thumb over the inflamed crease under his, what he called “chest lumps’, having come about by the previously mentioned digging. With those moments of freedom, he had realized he likely shouldn’t have worn in so long; he had clasped it on directly before the ship landed on the Death Star’s hangar and had worn it since, totaling a few hours of use, give or take. This knowledge gave him the instinct to put on his looser, makeshift one. It was fraying a bit by this point, having used it for years back home and only receiving his proper one at one minor spike in income. This reminded him of how many people actually knew of his... situation. Of course, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru had known, as they were the ones he first told. They weren’t heavily surprised, having grown acclimated to his mannerisms and ways. Besides them, ol’Ben learned the last time that they met; he also dismissed it as a notion he sensed would happen.

He caught his thought process, knowing if he went down that road too far, he’d risk someone accidentally seeing his bare chest, something he was not ready to face. He massaged his sore skin for a moment before tying the makeshift constraint around his chest and fixed his tunic upon his torso.

“You were back there for a while, junior. ‘d almost guess you were dong... Something.” Han smugly remarked as soon as Luke had gained the confidence to reenter the cockpit. His face turned a bright shade of red as he sat back down and as Han continued to smirk viciously.

If only he knew what had really happened behind that closed door.

**

Seconds after landing his X-Wing back in the hangar only minutes after the Battle of Yavin, Luke felt a weight off his chest; in the literal and metaphorical sense. Metaphorically, as, of course, he had just singlehandedly blew up the Death Star. The literal being his homemade constraint had become loose and slide down to his waist in his suit. But, that proved to be the least of his problems. He was now determined to find Leia and catch her reaction. It wasn’t hard to find her once he was outside the ship and they clasped arms quickly once together. The thing that caught him off-guard was the approaching figure behind him. He turned his attention and found their scoundrel of a smuggler, in which over-excitement was an understatement. The reunion of the trio was much more powerful than any worry of appearance or tinge of dysphoria that could have come.

**

“Han!” Luke shouted, voice cracking immensely as it always did when he raised his voice. Even though he had been on testosterone for a little while, it still hadn’t gotten to where his voice would still be deeper as his volume increased. Han stood baffled in the doorway; he merely wanted to come check on the poor kid as he got dressed for the medal ceremony and was not expecting that moment at all.

The reason it happened was because Luke had no shirt on, not even his constraint, and only had his tunic he wore on Tatooine pressed against his chest, which he was thankful he had it there. Neither Han nor Leia still knew yet, but he was assuming Han would realize now. Both stood still bewildered, causing goosebumps to run all across Luke’s skin. Moments later, he realized the article of clothing he was searching for was directly under Hans foot and it made him swallow hard.

“Han. Pick up your left boot and either kick or throw that garment to me -- please.” He said softly and monotone. Han complied, dusting it off before tossing it across the cabin. Their lingering eye contact then flashed a warning from Luke’s bright blue eyes for Han to get out, which he then did. 

“Holler if you need anything.” was the last thing he said before he went back out. Luke nodded as he began to fumble with the elastic-like fabric piece. Usually, he was able to get it on in a split second, but his nervousness was making his hands shake at every movement. He sighed heavily before peeking his head out, unsurprisingly seeing Han not too astray from the door frame. Luke waved him in and they stood silent for a moment. It was definitely awkward to stand shirtless and on the verge of flashing someone, especially someone who was already so close.

It was Han who finally spoke, murmuring, “Come on, kid. We haven’t got all day.”

Luke’s face turned a rosy pink but nodded anyway.

“Alright. To get this over and done with quick and painlessly, undo those clasps you’ve already got and lay it the other way around, with the clasps in the back.”

Luke almost had the nerve to question how he knew this information, but it wasn’t his place to ask and he didn’t have the heart to anyway. He flipped it around, uncomfortable for a moment as his chest dropped, but was contained shortly after, even after the first clasps. It was a bit unexpected that Han’s hands, despite being rough and worn from years of his craft, could do the tiny claps so easy.

After finishing, Han stood up, knee a little sore from being placed on the ground as he knelt down. Luke purged his fingers under the garment to fix it against his skin and was delighted to find it was actually doing its job better as is than usual. He normally did it from the front because it was easier access but it didn’t seem to retain as well. He turned to face the older man, whose face held a grin, and was beaming.

“Say, kid, you’re lookin’--” Han’s sentence was cut off by the sudden body against his and a grasp around him. Luke was smiling into his abdomen, and, honestly, that made his day. He returned the hug, Han engulfed in Luke’s golden locks, almost tempted to kiss his head or some other minor affection.

He felt a sniff against his ribs, and softly shook his head a little. 

“Aww, kid. Don’t get sappy just yet.” He chuckled, messing up the poor kid’s hair as they both stepped back. Luke wipe his eyes against his wrist and inhaled deeply.

“Now, put a shirt on before you freeze.” Han scolded as he  turned on his heel to exit. Right before he did, Luke caught his wrist.

“Promise you won’t tell Leia or anyone?”

“You have my word. By the way, that’s one price you already owe me, junior.”

“Deal.”

{--End “A New Hope”--}

[sacrifical-lamb-core]

Sobbing

Rare pity, mercy and compassion of the giants called humanity