#you created social and political climates impossible for most of us to survive on our own and now you’re mad? what a concept

[bigcryptiddies]

It’s so ironic to hear some Joe Nobody from Who Gives A Fuck, California white dude complain that liberals failed because of identity politics as if the “identities” aren’t communities of people formed out of necessity for survival in the social and political climate that white dudes that look exactly like him created

[folkelorde]

* / GUIDE: CHARACTERS AT A NEWSPAPER.

hi, hello ! here’s just a guide for creating a character who works in a newsroom/for a newspaper. most of this is drawn from personal experience (+ my parents’ experiences) but i did some googling on your behalf as well. this guide isn’t just because i wanna see more accuracy, but also because there’s a lot of things about this environment that would be fun to write that i don’t really see being taken advantage of. so, check out under the cut for all my tips.

note: if you have any questions about your journalist or journalist-adjacent muse, i’m happy to try and help answer ! let me know if you have more questions this guide doesn’t cover, i just went to the points that might be most helpful for your muse plot-wise.

1. WHERE IS THE NEWSPAPER LOCATED/WHAT KIND IS IT? this makes a huge difference. 

the environment in a small town paper is going to be a lot more lowkey and casual than a larger city paper. 

most large papers are now all owned by big companies so really unless they’re the nytimes, they’re suffering because of constant budget cuts, layoffs, etc, that affect their ability to report the stories that the people in their area care about. they’re generally just pulling from AP articles. small town papers these days are mainly weekly or biweekly. 

another thing that has become really popular (at least in the US) are altweeklies. there’s probably one of these in your state, and they generally have a huge focus on narrative journalism, come out weekly, and almost have a magazine-like feel? most probably started out as arts publications but now do a lot of news coverage to make up for the lack of coverage in their area. these are generally independently owned. if you’re curious, there’s a whole list of them here. 

essentially, if you’ve got a larger, conventional paper, it’s probably consolidating and the workers are suffering. if you’re in a tiny small town paper, it’s probably chill and if there’s ever any kind of real news, it’s the story of the fucking year. and if you’re at an altweekly, you’re kind of in the middle and maybe new to reporting news, since you have to make up for what your big city paper isn’t doing.

2. WHAT DOES YOUR CHARACTER DO? there are more people at a newspaper than writers and photographers! in fact, a lot of newspapers don’t really have staff photographers any more, just an army of freelance ones that they call on. here are some ideas for positions that your character can have:

intern: if your character is a writer under 25, they’re probably an intern. internships sometimes blossom into full-time gigs, if the paper is doing well enough to hire someone new on. 

staff writer: if your character is under 30, they’re probably one of the youngest people, if not the youngest, especially if they work in news (arts sections might have a few more younger people, but i’ve never really met a reputable news writer that wasn’t 30+). writers DO NOT spend much time in the office at all and are often on the go, running around, working from home, whatever, and popping into the office for meetings and such. seriously, they’re never there. 

freelance writer: maybe your character writes niche things on the side for a publication, like movie reviews, a political column, book reviews, etc. i know a woman that’s really into opera and she wrote into our paper asking if she could write about that so whenever there’s an opera she writes about it and that’s it. generally the people who have a column (doing reviews of some kind especially) are freelance and don’t work for the paper full time. so if your character is like a “book reviewer,” maybe consider having them do something else too. tbh, they’re probably an author. 

editor: this depends SO MUCH on the size of the paper. at the paper where i work, there’s a news editor and an arts editor. however, a tiny paper probably just has one editor for everything, and a larger paper probably has an editor for each and every section. so consider the size when you consider your character’s role, and seriously, if your character is younger, they will NOT be in this position. managing editors don’t rly exist any more unless you’re like the nytimes or something. even then. 

data journalists/data editor: again depending on the size of your paper, there’s probably one or no people that do this. however, this is becoming a crucial part of most newsrooms – people that do data analytics, build charts, work with lots of spreadsheets. these people do a lot of great shit and have been the frontrunners on a lot of big stories as of late. also, whenever you’re reading something and it’s got charts and graphs, it’s probably a data person behind that. this is really crucial with politics and elections, but also with all of the incoming data about climate change. 

web people: even the smallest fucking newsroom probably has one person who’s doing all the website stuff. web is just as important as print these days, as you probably know, and the only people surviving without good websites are the tiny small town papers because that’s a really niche market. but even they have websites, even if they’re not too snazzy! 

designers: so important!! these are the people that are at the office ALL THE FUCKING TIME, mainly because they can’t really do their work from home and they’re working on deadline, not only with the writers/editors but with the sales department too. where i work, the designers are loud and crass and fun and they’re all super close friends because like i said, they’re there all the time and a lot of late nights working on the paper and on ads and stuff.  

photographers: like i said, they’re mostly freelance and they want to be. but maybe if they have a really good relationship with the paper and have been there a while, they might have a full-time gig. jonathan byers would not have a full time job in 2019. 

sales team: even at the smallest of papers, there’s a good chance the sales team is the biggest team on staff. this is how newspapers rake in money, unless they’re on a nonprofit model, and in that case they probably don’t really have a sales team because they’re entirely funded by the readers (it works like NPR). sales team is probably in and out of the office a lot because they’re making sales calls and full of some interesting characters, you know, like on the office lmao. because of their relationships with businesses, it’s not uncommon for them to be the first ones to hear about a story OR to be the ones bitched at when a story portrays someone unfavorably, especially if its someone who advertises w the paper. 

marketing/social media: nonexistent in a small town paper, but otherwise, this is becoming a more crucial part of newspapers. a lot of newspapers also put on community events, so there’s a lot of event planning and promotion involved here too. 

secretary: a good job for a younger muse, probably answering phones and the door and organizing the calendar and helping with the classifieds and all of that bullshit. this person has to be a real people person. they’re also probably at the office all the time. 

publisher: head honcho! they generally own the damn place and make the calls on all the big picture decisions. if they’re not the owner, they’re still CEO-adjacent, yk?

3. YOUR MUSE PROBABLY WORKS WEIRD HOURS. like almost definitely. the news cycle is 24 hours and even if your character isn’t reporting on breaking news, they’re operating around other people’s schedules to get the story or put it in place, AND, yes, they’re probably working around breaking news or dealing with a crisis. or, unexpectedly, a story can go viral and that affects everyone in the office too. so, sometimes your muse might go into work at 11am and stay until 8pm or they’ll get called in at random times or have to go. this can lead to conflicts with other muses who don’t quite understand, or affect relationships when there’s an important moment and your muse has to jet off for work. it’s nice to keep in mind that your muse probably doesn’t just work 9-5. your muse also likely works holidays and such too, and if they’re not working, they’ve got their phone on them. always gotta be plugged in. more conflict! 

4. LAYOFFS. it’s impossible to talk about the industry without it. here’s a story my coworker told me the other day: “i just started my job at [redacted large paper] and the company was going through layoffs. since i was the new guy right out of college, i thought i’d be the first to go. but i wasn’t. they kept me and started laying off all the old-timers, people who had been with the paper forever.”  – THIS IS A HUGE STRAT FOR THESE CORPORATE PAPERS. it’s actually cheaper for them to keep the newer workers and lay off the people who have accrued a lot of benefits and pto and are close to retirement and such. this could be an interesting angle for a younger muse who’s pushed into a position of a lot of responsibility that they weren’t prepared for, or a muse who was at a paper and is layed off and now works for a smalltown type of paper – could be a fun sort of muse to play in your typical “small town” rps – some bigwig talent that’s now struggling after being laid off. the big name to know is gannett, who owns a huge majority of papers in places big and small, but they’re now merging with gatehouse...which is leading to even more consolidation right now.

p.s. if you’re curious, my coworker was eventually laid off from said [redacted large paper] later on

5. THE BIG SCOOP. your muse probably isn’t constantly on the scoop of the century, even at a big paper. especially if your muse is younger, they’re probably not being given that responsibility. so, if part of your plot is that your muse is breaking a big story, they probably don’t do that sort of thing all the time and it’s a big deal to them! it’s also not unusual for a writer to be working on a story over a long, long period of time, especially if it’s a very big story, or for them to be covering it in bites (like a murder trial). 

6. JACK OF ALL TRADES? writers especially are sort of expected to have a lot more proficiencies than just writing. you gotta be able to shoot your own videos and pictures too, add your posts to the web, so on. there’s more to it than just ‘writing,’ as you probably know. keep that in mind, although your muse might not LIKE that they need to do all of these things. 

7. FOLLOWING THE LAW! you’ve got to let people know that you’re interrogating them for the news, that they’re on the record, all of that shit. it’s hugely unethical if you don’t, and you can’t just be publishing people’s photos without their permission. you see a lot of movies where journalists go undercover and don’t tell people that they’re interrogating them for the paper and that probably wouldn’t happen (gale weathers from the scream movies would’ve been sued so fast for all of her defamation). also, newspapers spend a LOT of time dealing with government bureaucracy. like you expect a records request to get answered within the legal time frame, but it never fucking does, and often times you’re waiting on the state or even suing them for not sending you the records but they don’t give a fuck, they’re the state. it can be a lot of jumping over hurdles and through hoops to get any kind of info from the government...especially from the police. so even if information is supposed to be public, sometimes it can be a challenge to get, and maybe something your muse can struggle with. if your muse is in a roleplay where government workers are also present, this could be a fun plot/conflict to play out. 

[nottilus]

The Golden Repair.

The Japanese art principle that teaches how to work with failure.

Like a favorite cup or plate, people sometimes crack. We may even break.

Obviously, we cannot and ought not throw ourselves away when this happens. Instead, we can relish the blemishes and learn to turn these scars into art—like kintsugi (金継ぎ), an ancient Japanese practice that beautifies broken pottery.

Kintsugi, or gold splicing, is a physical manifestation of resilience. Instead of discarding marred vessels, practitioners of the art repair broken items with a golden adhesive that enhances the break lines, making the piece unique. They call attention to the lines made by time and rough use; these aren’t a source of shame. This practice—also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い ), which literally means gold mending—emphasizes the beauty and utility of breaks and imperfections. It turns a problem into a plus.

Golden repair

According to art historians, kintsugi came about accidentally (which is fitting). When the 15th-century shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa broke his favorite tea bowl, he sent it to China for repairs and was disappointed that it came back stapled together. The metal pins were unsightly, so local craftsmen came up with a solution—they filled the crack with a golden lacquer, making the bowl more unique and valuable. This repair elevated the fallen bowl back to its place as shogun’s favorite and prompted a whole new art form.

The idea behind kintsugi and the elements it used weren’t new, however. The glue is made from the sap of the Rhus verniciflua plant, which has been employed in Asia for about 5,000 years to adhere things, initially the parts of weapons. And the concept underlying kintsukuroi was already gaining ground in Japan at the time; it stems from the wabi-sabi aesthetic philosophy, which cultivates appreciation for flaws.

In the 16th century, Japanese tea ceremony masters rebelled against the prevailing taste of luxury and opulence, instead prizing simple items marked by time and process. They celebrated irregularity, rough surfaces, asymmetry, and defects in tea ceremony implements and settings. “These qualities often appear in the aging process or result from happenstance during the creative process … At other times, these effects are deliberately brought about by a destructive act of a tea master, such as breaking one handle of a vase,” explains philosopher Yuriko Saito, a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, writing in the journal Contemporary Aesthetics.

The golden repair method also corresponds to the Japanese notions of “mottainai,” an expression of regret at waste, and “mushin,” the need to accept change. Kintsugi is the Zen Buddhist philosophy as it’s applied to physical items—emphasizing engaging with reality, the materials on hand. The shogun Yoshimasa could surely have replaced his favorite tea bowl, but he didn’t want to waste it. By making it more beautiful after it broke, the local craftspeople respected the changes that time and use wrought on the bowl, and demonstrated that these can be appreciated and even emphasized rather than trying to hide the wear and tear.

A beautiful mess

You probably don’t expect other people to be perfect. You may in fact appreciate when people expose their vulnerabilities, show old wounds or admit errors. It’s evidence that we’re all fallible, that we heal and grow, that we survive blows to the ego or to our reputations or health and can live to tell the tale. Exposing vulnerabilities by admitting error creates intimacy and trust in relationships, and fosters forgiveness.

Still, though we’re often relieved when other are truthful, we’re afraid to expose ourselves. That’s too bad. Psychologists call this distinction “beautiful mess effect.” We see other people’s honesty about their flaws as positive, but we consider admitting to our own failures much more problematic.

According to a recent study by psychologists at the University of Mannheimin in Germany, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (paywall), this tendency stems from the fact that we understand other people’s experiences abstractly yet see our own concretely. We feel the things that happen to us viscerally and physically. What happens to others, however, functions more like an instructive tale, because the pain of failure isn’t our own and the distance gives us perspective. We all understand in theory that bad things happen. But we also feel really bad when they happen to us, and condemn ourselves.

In a series of seven tests, researchers demonstrated this self–other difference applies when subjects evaluate the effect of exposing vulnerability in various situations, including admitting errors and discussing bodily “imperfections.”

“Vulnerability is courage in you and inadequacy in me,” writes University of Houston research professor Brene Brown in her book Daring Greatly, about the transformative power of exposing what we might consider weaknesses. Like the kintsugi craftspeople who repaired the shogun’s bowl with gold long ago, Brown sees imperfections as gifts to be worked with, not shames to be hidden.

The ordinary in extraordinary

It’s absurd to be embarrassed about missteps and failures in our lives because they happen to everyone, and no experience is wasted. Everything you do—good, bad, and ugly—can serve as a lesson, even if it’s one you would never want to repeat again. Indeed, errors can be the most important and effective experiences of all.

Things fall apart. That’s life. But if you’re wise, you can use every scrap, patch yourself up, and keep going. That’s the essence of resourcefulness. It’s mottainai.

Likewise, the physical evidence of existence that accumulates over time and a life well-lived can be a source of pride rather than shame. We don’t have to try to look young and flawless, like we’re all brand-new products manufactured for Instagram. White hair, lined skin, scars, the extra pounds that show your gusto for a good meal—these don’t have to be dyed, pulled taut, hidden, and lost. They might be seen as signs you’re doing something right, that you persist, which some philosophers argue is the meaning of life.

“Our aesthetic judgments based upon perfection and imperfection almost invariably have consequences that affect the quality of life, the social and political climate of a society, and the state of the world,” aesthetic philosopher Saito writes. When we expect everything and everyone to be perfect, including ourselves, we not only discount much of what is beautiful but we create a cruel world where resources are wasted, people’s positive qualities are overlooked in favor of their flaws, and our standards become impossibly limiting, restrictive, and unhealthy.

The kintsugi approach instead makes the most of what already is, highlights the beauty of what we do have, flaws and all, rather than leaving us eternally grasping for more, different, other, better. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains, in Japanese Zen, the practitioner sits and works with what is.

“The ordinary mind is the way,” according to the 9th century Zen master Basho. He explains, “What is ordinary mind? It is the mind in which there are no fabrications, no biased value judgments, no preferences, no time or eternity, nor dualistic thoughts such as common and sacred.”

In other words, the experiences you have, and the person you already are, suffice. You may, of course, occasionally chip and break and need repairs. And that’s fine. But reality is the best and most abundant material on the planet, available to anyone, for free, and we can all use what we already have—including our flaws—to be beautiful. After all, our cracks are what give us character.

[mxenigmatic]

2020’s Self Care Books for Trying Times

With Covid-19 a global pandemic that is still lingering in the air, and keeping our connections at a social distance, added how here at NYPL our librarians miss the frequent interactions with our patrons, I was contemplating on ways to keep our reading connected, our souls warm, and our health having its self care. Before google, I’d rely on the plethora of information our branches hold on any challenge in life I’d be facing. Now with a myriad of problems we can tackle, and resources we can all use to improve our lives, I wanted to tackle grounding and elevating ourselves to cope with our surroundings, than advice I can provide on financial, relationship, life goals, etc.

In this blog “2020’s Self Care Books 4 Trying Times” I’ve comprised my 20 favorite titles for the year 2020 on wellness, people’s journeys, and how health experts can help guide us to a calm and vibrant place for our wellbeing. From parenting tips, to self acceptance, coping with a mental health disorder, or even self care rituals, the need for healthy habits is a topic we all can relate and rely on to keep us striving through this winter, and being united through our current unstable climate. We should never be ashamed of our experiences, asking for help, and addressing challenges in our lives to be at peace with our pasts, content with our present, and hopeful about our futures.

What is Self-care, according to very well mind, describes a conscious act one takes in order to promote their own physical, mental, and emotional health. There are many forms self-care may take. It could be ensuring you get enough sleep every night or stepping outside for a few minutes for some fresh air.

What is mindfulness? Mindfulness refers to being in the moment. This means feeling what our bodies feel, letting ourselves think without judging our thoughts, and being aware of our environment. It is about paying attention on purpose to both what is happening inside and outside of you.

ADULT

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey

Topics: Professional Development, Success, Psych Evaluation

One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has captivated readers for nearly three decades. It has transformed the lives of presidents and CEOs, educators and parents—millions of people of all ages and occupations. Now, this 30th anniversary edition of the timeless classic commemorates the wisdom of the 7 habits with modern additions from Sean Covey. The 7 habits have become famous and are integrated into everyday thinking by millions and millions of people. Why? Because they work!With Sean Covey's added takeaways on how the habits can be used in our modern age, the wisdom of the 7 habits will be refreshed for a new generation of leaders.

Stay Positive: Encouraging Quotes and Messages to Fuel Your Life With Positive Energy by Jon Gordon

Topics: Self Help, Affirmations, Optimism

Stay Positive is more than a phrase. It's an approach to life that says when you get knocked down, you'll get back up and find a way forward one faithful step and optimistic day at a time. Start your day with a message from the book, or pick it up anytime you need a mental boost. You can start from the beginning, or open the book to any page and find a message that speaks to you. The book is a go-to resource for anyone wanting to inject a healthy dose of positivity into their life

$9 Therapy: Semi-Capitalist Solutions to Your Emotional Problems by Megan Reid and Nick Greene

Topics: Life Skills/Hacks, Self Care Rituals, Budgeting

A collection of the authors' favorite life hacks and mini-upgrades, such as craft cocktails on the cheap or tips for a perfectly planned staycation. Sometimes it takes as little as nine dollars to turn your life around. How to find simple pleasures in a pricey, wellness-obsessed world.

You Were Born For This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance by Chani Nicholas

Topics: Astrology, Self Acceptance

A revolutionary empowerment book that uses astrology as a tool for self-discovery, success, and self-care from the beloved astrologer Chani Nicholas, a media darling with a loyal following of one million monthly readers.

TEEN

Teaching Mindfulness to Empower Adolescents by Matthew Brensilver

Topics: Mindfulness, Educational Guides, Learning Disabilities, Reflections

Effectively sharing mindfulness with teenagers depends on distinct skill sets . . . done well, it is incredibly joyous." Matthew Brensilver, JoAnna Hardy and Oren Jay Sofer provide a powerful guide to help teachers master the essential competencies needed to successfully share mindfulness practices with teens and adolescents. Incorporating anecdotes from actual teaching, they blend the latest scientific research with innovative, original techniques for making the practices accessible and interesting to this age group. This text is an indispensable handbook for mindfulness instruction in its own right, and a robust companion volume for teachers using The Mindful Schools Curriculum for Adolescents

The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color by Virgie Tovar

Topics: Self Esteem, Plus Size Positivity, Hygiene

Every day we see body ideals depicted in movies, magazines, and social media. And, all too often, these outdated standards make us feel like we need to change how we look and who we are. The truth is that many teens feel self-conscious about their bodies and being a teen girl of color is hard in unique ways. So, how can you start feeling good about yourself when you're surrounded by these unrealistic, and problematic images of what bodies are "supposed" to look like? This book is an unapologetic guide to help you embrace radical body positivity. You'll identify and challenge mainstream beliefs about beauty and bodies; celebrate what makes you unique and powerful; and build real, lasting body empowerment. You'll also learn how to spot diet culture and smash your noisy inner critic so you can start loving your body. It's time to create your own definition of beautiful and recognize that your body is amazing. It's time for a self-love revolution!

Out!: How To Be Your Authentic Self by Miles McKenna

Topics: Coming Out, Self Acceptance, Family Dynamics

Activist Miles McKenna came out on his YouTube channel in 2017, documenting his transition to help other teens navigate their identities and take charge of their own coming out stories. From that wisdom comes Out!, the ultimate YA guide to the queer lifestyle. Find validation, inspiration, and support for your questions big and small--whether you're exploring your identity or seeking to understand the experience of an awesome queer person in your life."

Dancing at the Pity Party: A Dead Mom Graphic Memoir by Tyler Feder

Topics: Grief Counseling, Coping with terminal illness, Bereavement. Family Estrangement

Tyler Feder shares her story of her mother's first oncology appointment to facing reality as a motherless daughter in this frank and refreshingly funny graphic memoir.

Superpowered: Transform Anxiety Into Courage, Confidence, and Resilience by Renee Jain and Dr. Shefali Tsabary

Topics: Health, Fitness, Selt Esteem.

The perfect tool for children facing new social and emotional challenges in an increasingly disconnected world! This how-to book from two psychology experts—packed with fun graphics and quizzes—will help kids transform stress, worry, and anxiety

Teen Guide to Mental Health by Don Nardo

Topics: Teens, Mental Health, Body Image, Puberty

Todays teens face and are expected to deal with a wide array of personal, social, and other issues involving home-life, school, dating, body image, sexual orientation, major life transitions, and in some cases physical and mental problems, including eating disorders and depression. This volume examines how many teens have learned to cope with and survive these often stressful trials and tribulations of modern youth.

KIDS

Turtle Boy by Evan Wolkenstein

Topics: Social Life, Friends, Relationships, School Stress

Seventh grade is not going well for Will Levine. Kids at school bully him because of his funny-looking chin. His science teacher finds out about the turtles he spent his summer collecting from the marsh behind school an orders him to release them back into the wild. And for his Bar Mitzvah community service project, he has to go to the hospital to visit RJ, an older boy struggling with an incurable disease. Unfortunately, Will hates hospitals. At first, the boys don't get along, but then RJ shares his bucket list with Will. Among the things he wants to do: ride a roller coaster, go to a concert and a school dance, swim in the ocean. To Will, happiness is hanging out in his room, alone, preferably with his turtles. But as RJ's disease worsens, Will realizes he needs to tackle the bucket list on his new friend's behalf before it's too late. It seems like an impossible mission, way outside Will's comfort zone. But as he completes each task with RJ's guidance, Will learns that life is too short to live in a shell.

How To Make A Better World: For Every Kid Who Wants To Make A Difference by Keilly Swift

Topics: Activism, Human Rights, Organizing

If you are a kid with big dreams and a passion for what is right, you're a world-changer in the making. There's a lot that can be changed by just one person, if you know what to do. Start by making yourself into the awesome person you want to be by learning all about self-care and kindness. Using those skills, work your way up to creating activist campaigns to tackle climate change or social injustice. This fun and inspiring guide to making the world a better place and becoming a good citizen is packed with ideas and tips for kids who want to know how to make a difference. From ideas as small as creating a neighborhood lending library to important ideas such as public speaking and how to talk about politics, How to Make a Better World is a practical guide to activism for awesome kids.

All About Anxiety by Carrie Lewis

Anxiety. It's an emotion that rears its head almost every day, from the normal worries and concerns that most of us experience, to outright fear when something scary happens, to the anxiety disorders, that many kids live with daily. But what causes anxiety? And what can we do about it? All About Anxiety tackles these questions from every possible angle. Readers will learn what's going on in their brain and central nervous system when they feel anxious. They'll learn about the evolutionary reasons for fear and anxiety and that anxiety isn't always a bad thing--except for when it is! Most importantly, kids will discover new strategies to manage their anxiety so they can live and thrive with anxiety

Dictionary for a better world: poems, quotes, and anecdotes from A to Z by Irene Latham

Topics: Inspiration, Self Help, Advice

Organized as a dictionary, entries in this book for middle-grade readers present words related to creating a better, more inclusive world. Each word is explored via a poem, a quote from an inspiring person, and a short personal anecdote from one of the co-authors, a prompt for how to translate the word into action, and an illustration".

I feel... meh by DJ Corchin

(E-book)Topics: Health, Fitness, Management

This series helps kids recognize, express, and deal with the roller coaster of emotions they feel every day. It has been celebrated by therapists, psychologists, teachers, and parents as wonderful tools to help children develop self-awareness for their feelings and those of their friends. Sometimes I feel meh and I don't want to play. I don't want to read and I have nothing to say. Sometimes you just feel...meh. You don't really feel like doing anything or talking to anyone. You're not even sure how you're feeling inside. Is that bad? With fun, witty illustrations and simple, straightforward text, I Feel...Meh tackles apathy—recognizing it as a valid emotion, while also offering practical steps to get you out of your emotional slump. It's the perfect way for kids—and adults—who are feeling gray to find some joy again!

Violet Shrink by Christine Baldacchino

Topics: Phobias, Relationships, Social Skills

Violet Shrink doesn't like parties. Or bashes, or gatherings. Lots of people and lots of noise make Violet's tummy ache and her hands sweat. She would much rather spend time on her own, watching the birds in her backyard, reading comics, or listening to music through her purple headphones. The problem is that the whole Shrink family loves parties with loud music and games and dancing. At cousin Char's birthday party, Violet hides under a table and imagines she is a shark gliding effortlessly through the water, looking for food. And at Auntie Marlene and Uncle Leli's anniversary bash, Violet sits alone at the top of the stairs, imagining she is a slithering snake way up in the branches. When Violet learns that the Shrink family reunion is fast approaching, she musters up the courage to have a talk with her dad. In this thoughtful story about understanding and acceptance, Violet's natural introversion and feelings of social anxiety are normalized when she and her father reach a solution together. Christine Baldacchino's warm text demonstrates the role imagination often plays for children dealing with anxiety, and the power of a child expressing their feelings to a parent who is there to listen. Carmen Mok's charming illustrations perfectly capture Violet's emotions and the vibrancy of her imagination. A valuable contribution to books addressing mental health."-- Provided by publisher.

Check out this link to a presentation by NYPL’s Children’s Librarians, Sarah West and Justine Toussaint on Mindfulness/Social-Emotional Self-Esteem Picture Book Spotlight. Featuring popular book titles in our database of the past few years promoting kids well beings!

Pre-2020 Books

Aphorism by Franz Kafka

Topics: Life Quotes, Recovery, Future Planning

For the first time, a single volume that collects all of the aphorisms penned by this universally acclaimed twentieth-century literary figure. Kafka twice wrote aphorisms in his lifetime. The first effort was a series of 109, known as the Zurau Aphorisms, which were written between September 1917 and April 1918, and originally published posthumously by his friend, Max Brod, in 1931. These aphorisms reflect on metaphysical and theological issues--as well as the occasional dog. The second sequence of aphorisms, numbering 41, appears in Kafka's 1920 diary dating from January 6 to February 29. It is in these aphorisms, whose subject is "He," where Kafka distills the unexpected nature of experience as one shaped by exigency and possibility."

This Book Loves You by PewDiePie

Topics: Life Skills, Inspiration, Food 4 Thought

A popular blogger shares humorous pieces of advice and positivity, including "Never forget you are beautiful compared to a fish" and "Every day is a new fresh start to stay in bed."

The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach To Living A Good Life by Mark Manson

Topic: Self Help, Happiness, Motivation

In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger shows us that the key to being happier is to stop trying to be 'positive' all the time and instead become better at handling adversity. For decades we've been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. But those days are over. 'Fuck positivity, ' Mark Manson says. 'Let's be honest; sometimes things are fucked up and we have to live with it.' For the past few years, Manson--via his wildly popular blog--has been working on correcting our delusional expectations for ourselves and for the world. He now brings his hard-fought wisdom to this groundbreaking book. Manson makes the argument--backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes--that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to better stomach lemons. Human beings are flawed and limited--as he writes, 'Not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault.' Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. This, he says, is the real source of empowerment. Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties--once we stop running from and avoiding, and start confronting painful truths--we can begin to find the courage and confidence we desperately seek. 'In life, we have a limited amount of fucks to give. So you must choose your fucks wisely.' Manson brings a much-needed grab-you-by-the-shoulders moment of real-talk, filled with entertaining stories and profane, ruthless humor. This manifesto is a refreshing slap in the face for all of us so we can start to lead more contented, grounded lives."

Zen Pencils: Cartoon Quotes From Inspirational Folks by Gavin Aung Than

Topics: Writing Development, Expression, Quotes

Gavin Aung Than, an Australian graphic designer turned cartoonist, started the weekly Zen Pencils blog in February 2012. He describes his motivation for launching Zen Pencils: I was working in the boring corporate graphic design industry for eight years before finally quitting at the end of 2011 to pursue my passion for illustration and cartooning. At my old job, when my boss wasn't looking, I would waste time reading Wikipedia pages, main biographies about people whose lives were a lot more interesting than mine. Their stories and quotes eventually inspired me to leave my job to focus on what I really wanted to do. The idea of taking these inspiring quotes, combining them with my love of drawing, and sharing them with others led to the creation of Zen Pencils.

By: @Mx.Enigma

She/They/Queen

[fatchange]

We have to actively fight to change our political systems. The biggest contributors to climate change are oil and gas companies. Saudi Aramco, Chevron, Gazprom, and Exxon Mobil, National Irania Oil Co., BP, Shell, etc. Refusing plastic straws won't stop these corporations from killing the planet. ⁣

WE NEED GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION TO STOP THE CORPORATIONS from destroying our planet, poisoning our food, and turning us into serf-like wage-slaves. They won’t stop unless they are forced to. We have tried asking nicely, wrote letters, started campaigns, boycotted, and marched in the streets. The only solution is for those of us who live in a democracy to force our governments to WORK FOR THE PEOPLE they represent, not corporate interests.  Fighting for change in our political systems includes fighting for living wages, maternity and paternity leave, and healthcare. The lack of basic needs makes for distracted citizens. So join or create a local grassroots group in your community.⁣ We can also share our low waste lifestyle, scaled up or down for any income. Not the trash jar fiction, but the real deal, like lowering emissions and changing the political systems that prevent action on climate change.⁣ ...⁣.................. 1.) divest from fossil fuels at www.gofossilfree.org ⁣

2.) get active in a grassroots organization like Extinction Rebellion, Greenpeace, and Fire Drill Fridays.  ⁣

3.) Contact your legislators, donate to legislators who will fight climate change, VOTE, drive others to the polls, help register people to vote, and consider running for office yourself.⁣

4.) refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, repurpose, rot, recycle. ⁣

5.) listen to indigenous voices. From the Amazon to the Australian outback to standing rock to Hawaii, the indigenous are fighting the fossil fuel industry. Support indigenous voices on social media and donate (no amount is too small) to help their cause (which is your cause too).   

6.) join a Buy Nothing Project or Give and Take group. It's based on the barter economy. ⁣

7.) lower consumption of animal-based products.⁣

8.) lower your food waste by following US EPA guidelines, start composting yourself, or find a composter to take food waste to.

9.) grow a potager garden. ⁣

10.) stop flying or lower your airplane travel to 3,100 miles (4,988 km) per year.⁣ 11.) watch out for greenwashing. ⁣

I hope you enjoyed these real-life examples of how we can fight climate change. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s impossible. We can and did lower our greenhouse gas emissions, but it’s still not enough. All major greenhouse gas contributors in the first world need to dramatically lower our CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions to save the planet. It’s up to us to make this happen. 

If you’d like to join me on this journey, check me out over at fatchange.com or @fatchange101 on Instagram.

[luked4nuke]

If, I were President of the United States. (I just wanna state I’m not a democrat or republican)

First I’d enforce Quarantine and extend it. I’d also attend the poorest families or individuals first and provide them with the financial assistance they need. People are struggling hard enough as it is living paycheck to paycheck.

Second I’d shut down the schools as I believe safty more important especially for the future kids who will rule this place. I also don’t like how schools give so much homework and stress. They just condition kids into beleiving working 40 hours a week is normal and that you should be lucky to have weekends. Staying in classes all day then returning home only to be forced to complete more homework that takes up time and robs them of social interactions. These schools don’t even test knowledge. They test obedience and reward them for being quiet little slaves that will slowly become a “regular worker.” They really don’t care about how smart you are, they test memory over all else, when they study a subject and pass the test they move on quickly to the next one stressing them out. If they failed the test, to bad they’re still moving on with you. (Sorry this got way of topic. I just hate how schools operate and also how low they pay the teachers)

Third I would dismantle the police force and create a new one. A better one that focuses on real problems like sex trafficking and drugs. All the horrible crimes that are allowed to fly under the radar. Any excessive use of force would be heavily punished. Fired, fined and jail time. No shooting at peaceful protesters, seriously dafaq is wrong with them unleashing hell upon unarmed civilians and sneaking in rioters to escalate it to justify the force.

Fourth, gold is a finite resource. Pretty much all the money you’ve ever spent is fake, all digital backed by nothing. Personally I hate it but you’ve all becomes achstomed to it so I would attempt to fix the economy so people can afford essential things, like homes and food. Instead of kicking out homeless people Id build shelters. They make it to easy to fall down into poverty and nearly impossible to climb back up. Once you’ve been arrested, once you’ve been homeless, you understand the struggle of trying to reintergrate with society. The easiest path become the dark one. I would attempt to control the population, America is a gigantic habitat and likewise it has a carrying capacity. If you’re gonna argue people have to pay unreasonable amounts of money for food you’re crazy.

Immigrants are definitely allowed as long as they follow the rules and don’t commit crimes. America was litterally founded on immigrants. American stole land from the natives violently and even managed to capture Hawaii, which was its own nation. They taxed us and recognized us as a small power. Iolani Palace has electricity flush toilets and even phones before the White House did. Queen Lili’uokalani signed in duress. It horrible and sheforfeited her whole kingdom in exchange for the people, as a leader should. The people make a country, the government already should put the people first. Without all the hardworking Americans working, there is no country.

We don’t serve the government. As a government worker we serve the people. It’s our duty to ensure everybody is treated fairly. To make sure everybody that we oversee has the essentials for life, a home and food.

And for LGBT rights. I personally don’t care what the heck they do. Love is love, let it be. They can chose to identify as whoever they want and pursue relationships with whoever. You can’t force things onto people. America is supposed to be freedom personified, we can chose to do as we please as long as we don’t bring harm to others. Those camps are wrong. America is also religion free, you can be whatever you want, Christian Muslim, litterally anything. Being a satanist is totally legal as long as you don’t hurt anything. Believe in what you want and don’t force it on others. Gay people are amazing! We all are, were all human and we can change and create change. We are all human at the core and we always have been. We have a right to love, and to be loved by all around us. Love is love, let it be, theres always been love. I can identify as a man or woman, and I can damn well love either as I please as long it’s reciprocated. I’d always rather say I love you too much then not enough.

Climate change is real. The pollution of those stupidly large companies is also VERY real. As an individual you contribute less than a percent of the actual pollution, it’s literally the big corporations. That needs to stop. I’m not exactly sure how but I AM GOING to start a wave of change that will benefit the worlds health. We all live here. This is not political, I don’t have time for games, scientists that have studied their whole lives are begging for us to change. We can all have solar electricity farms and then it’d be FREE. “But you can’t charge people for that you can’t make money.” I’m NOT TRYING TO MAKE MONEY I DO NOT CARE ANOUT MONEY. IM AIMING FOR SOMETHING BIGGER THAN GREED THE BETTERMENT OF HUMANITY. I don’t care about ruining electric companies and other random fossil fuels bullshits that will run out, I want the future to be bright!

Screw it im going off the rails, schools main courses should focus on stuff like self sustainment, like farming and wilderness survival. Creativity because that’s the most human thing about us! Empathy basic Psychology. Kids can get mad they should learn and understand why. Understand why they feel the feelings they feel and giving them all better emotional control. EMPATHY. They need to learn things like taxes since they’re such a big part. Also why the heck are taxes so complicated. It’s just targeting the illiterate foreigners and immigrants who struggle and try to understand it and I believe that’s horrible. Make it easier to become apart of America the land of freedom and the getaway from the crueler areas of earth. Maybe just limit the population. Also seriously fuck off with taxes! Why the hell are you charging and taxing 14 year olds that aren’t allowed to vote, thats taxation without representation.

Taxes should be like Mario kart and Ancient Greece. Quote from some thing I googled

“The philosopher Aristotle developed the theme. His "magnificent man" gave vast sums to the community. But poor men could never be "magnificent" because they did not have the financial means. True wealth consists in doing good, Aristotle argued in the Art of Rhetoric: in handing out money and gifts, and helping others to maintain an existence.

The idea is simple the higher up you are on the financial ladder the more you have to pay taxes and contribute to society. The large taxes from the rich help fund financial aid for the poor and stuff. The rich did not earn that money they climbed to top on top a mountain of millions of shortcuts and underpaid workers It should be an honor to be taxed and help the poor people survive. Like in Mario kart, the higher you’re placed the harder it is to maintain it and the last place people always get the better power ups giving them a constant fighting chance. At most I believe wealth should be hoarded to sustain like one generation of kids, two at the most. Maybe three but theres no reason anybody should have all that money that your never going to spend or all that money that becomes worthless once a war or breaks out or aliens attack or something. Life is more important than money. Something simple everyone should consider.

I think everybody should be able to pursue a career and each career should be sustainable. Enjoyment in a job of your choosing without worrying about financial burden. Jobs would be divided into smaller simple groups and the pay would based on their contribution to society. Like doctors getting paid more and getting teachers paid more, but small retailers wouldn’t get paid as much but they could survive not living paycheck to paycheck. The motivation is everybody should free to pursue the hobby they love without being punished. Maybe little Timmy doesn’t want to be a firefighter, maybe he desires a simple fun life selling flowers. That’s fine! Maybe they don’t wanna become the hero but it’ll be an honor to society. As long as you have a job that contributes to society you can live for free. If everybody is constantly trying to make the most profit, then we all become a bucket of crabs dragging each other down. I can’t sell my $10 good that costed me $2 to make. Also the whole buy back thing irritates me, I spent $60 on this goddamn game and GameStop can only give me like $10 in store credit or $5 in real life? That’s isn’t fair and that applies to pretty much everything. That’s $1000 phone you bought is barley worth $357 right now. I’m pretty sure it didn’t cost that much to make these things but like DAMN. Capitalism sucks.

In summary, I don’t know much about politics but I would be the human party. I don’t care about left or right. I’m the one that doesn’t care about money. I care more about life and creativity. Peoples right to enjoyment and living a happy life with others regardless of gender. Survival of the human race and advancement into the future where more things are free and we can constantly focus on creating an even BETTER one. We can’t go anywhere without each other especially if we’re all just a bucket of crabs. To greedy and self destructive constantly looking out only for themselves. Seriously get your act together humans before you kickstart your own downfall. If we’re all trying to make a profit, nobody does. The best things in life are free. You can pursue wealth for your future or you can focus and live and enjoy and love the now. Mario kart style, where all in this race for life and we all deserve a winning chance.

[louisa-townsend-fmp-hair]

2.

Human history is rich with hair trends, for centuries it has been cut, coloured and covered, styled, shaped and shown off. As Lauren Pilippon stated, “hairstyling is a genuine art form: it symbolically represents our transition from unkempt barbarians to civilised social beings. We are the only animals on the planet to give our hair so much care and attention”. As our priorities have shifted from the days of mere survival, self-consciousness has become a major factor in our growth as humans and, whilst it may be considered a vanity, our hair has become a great concern of ours.  In its most rudimentary state, hair provides protection from the sun’s UV rays and is a source of insulation in cooler climates. Inherently hair represents youth, vitality and fertility, making it a great point of sexual attraction when seeking a mate. Beyond that we have placed our own meanings, connotations, rules and prejudices on the stuff, we spend hours altering its physical state and as of 2018, the global haircare market was estimated to be worth about $87.9 billion. The transformative power of hair has raised the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth from unknown beauties to Hollywood icons. Hayworth (born Margarita Carmen Cansino) changed her hair from dark brown to auburn and had an electrolysis treatment to alter her hairline whilst Monroe was famed for her platinum tresses which she got retouched every Saturday, flying her colourist from San Diego to Los Angeles every week. We idolise celebrities’ hair in the modern world in a very similar way to how the ancient Romans worshipped that of their gods and goddesses; one major difference however is that we have access to our idols. A growing phenomenon of the 20th and 21st century has been the auctioning of hair, with the record standing at $115,000 for a few strands of Elvis Presley’s hair. In these cases hair has performed as both a tool for self protection and a sentimental object to be preserved, its purpose is simultaneously functional and decorative; it must be for this reason that hair has become such a valuable tool to humans.

Hair has had a long history as a financial source. When wigs reached their height of extravagance in the 1770s, they required masses of real hair to build. Whilst some people in financially vulnerable positions would sell their hair to wig makers, many cases of hair-stealing crimes emerged. Some people were wrongly informed that hair removal was a medical treatment for fever, others were captured and had their hair forcibly removed. While cases like these are rare in Europe today, still in some Eastern cultures the selling of hair is commonplace practice. The non-consensual cutting of hair has been used in places such as c19th prisons and the Nazi concentration camps as an instrument of humiliation and control. Sociologist Anthony Synnott declared, hair is “a powerful symbol of the self”, with this in mind the removal of hair is a form of stripping away a part of ourselves. A warder at mill bank prison told Henry Mayhew (journalist and social reformer) that many inmates “[especially female prisoners] would rather lose their lives than their hair!”.  Cases such as these are valuable sources to study when considering the psychological impact our hair has on us and why we still give it so much importance today.

Hair has been strongly influenced by religion for centuries, but much like hair’s place in politics, this has shifted warped throughout time. In the English civil war, hairstyles became highly factionalised. The oppositions the Cavaliers and the Roundheads’ hair provided a symbol for their opposing ideologies. The long-haired Cavaliers believed in political and religious orthodoxy, they fought for the continuation of royalism as the divine right of kings proved royalty to be closest to god. Contradicting these beliefs were the cropped-haired Roundheads, parliamentarians by cause, they stood as revolutionaries for the partial democratisation of the British administration. These two sides utilised their appearance to express either rebellion or conservatism in a way that has been mimicked in waves throughout history and still today- it would be worth studying the origins of the punk movement with the use of hair to reflect rebellion. In other cases it is seen to be the cropped or shaven hair that is more holy. The early Christian church tried to stop people from wearing wigs, especially women as it was seen to be an offense to chastity and a visible connection with illicit pleasures to wear such an embellishment on the head. In the first century AD, Clement of Alexandria stated that it was impossible to receive the priest’s blessing offered by laying his hands over the head as the benediction could not pass through the hair of a stranger. This attitude was further reflected in the second century by the early Christian author, Tertullian, who believed that the personal disguise provided by a wig was adulterous even writing that “all wigs are such disguises and inventions of the devil… if you will not throw away you false hair as hateful to Heaven, let me make it hateful to you by reminding you that it may well have come from the head of a damned person or an unclean person” . These attitudes of the church were consistent across centuries with the Council of Constantinople even excommunicating a number of wig-wearing Christians in 692 AD. Whilst this is seemingly a more forceful dictation of how one must present in the church, for Buddhist monks, the act of shaving one's head embodies the humility and willingness to renounce earthly cares that are required of the religious practice. This therefore stands as an initiation process to shift the cause of one’s life. It would be worth exploring the sacrifice of hair in a consensual act, such as in this religious process,when studying the symbolism hair holds in our earthly lifestyles.

Different cultural movements through the ages have provided wildly opposing hairstyles and attitudes towards hair. In the 60s, influenced by bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, a trend of longer, free growing hair swept the world. Music genres like glam rock and punk brought in their own aesthetics, heavily influencing the way hair was worn by both genders. And the anti establishment ideologies of the 60’s inspired wearing ones natural hair in a free afro style. However, perhaps the largest and most influential hair trend of the twentieth century was the 1920s bob.  In 1909 Antoine de Paris cut the hair of French actress Eva Lavallière, whilst the trend didn't gain momentum for around a decade, the work of this one hairstylist provided a foundation for radical change to grow. The 1920s bobbed hair phase provided women with a hairstyle that both visually represented and practically supported the emergence of womens’ liberation. Singer Mary Garden was in her 50s when she cut her hair and she wrote of the experience to have a profound effect on how she viewed her role as a woman. “Bobbed hair is a state of mind and not merely a new manner of dressing my head” she stated, “to my way of thinking, long hair belongs to the age of general feminine helplessness. Bobbed hair belongs to the age of freedom, frankness, and progressiveness.” Former trends from the Victorian and Edwardian eras were characterised by the abundance of accessories including postiches, padding and ornaments. The bob offered a complete antithesis to these fashions. The style embodied the freedom and youthfulness that characterised the ‘new woman’, it worked with new technological advancements such as the car, which had an open top which would have ruined a victorian padded coiffure. It also reflected the shorter, swinging hemlines that characterised the new style of dress. It was accessible to all and cheap to maintain, meaning women had far more time to do other things. The new style wasn't entirely accepted with open arms however. In 1923 a report appeared in the newspaper that some hairdressers refused to cut bobs for women unless they were married and their husband approved due to great backlash many of them received from the men in their client’s lives. Issues became more serious in situations like that of Mexico city in 1924 when the Archbishop denounced the bobbed fashion and excluded women with the style from church. Some self-appointed vigilantes took it upon themselves to seek out the wearers of the style and forcibly shave them as a punishment. This resulted in a mass of riots across the city  between armed soldiers and many students. An even worse case of intolerance came later in the 1920s in China where the execution of women with these short styles was introduced; it was interpreted as evidence for the support of oppositional politics. This hairstyle change took place in an era of great societal shift. Whether the style was a product that adapted to this new female behaviour, or the style itself encouraged a new way of living, it's not clear; what is clear however is that it signified a great turning point in gender politics. The new ‘boyish’ look  provided an opportunity for young women to take on roles that were previously only given to men, sparking opposition but ultimately forming a new path for the modern woman to evolve. Specific movements like these can seem frivolous on the surface but under better scrutiny, we can find great power in the way hair has been used to oppose and change politics. I think this is a really interesting starting point to then consider the impact hair has on today’s world.

From classic literature to fairytales, folklore to films, hair has been a major part in creating a character’s identity. Classically tropes like blonde hair have been attributed to the good, innocent heroines of stories, her youth and purity, as well as charm and good luck signified by the fair hue meant she was promised the happy ending. Contrastingly the dark haired woman has always held an air of danger and fierceness. I think the classic stories we have all grown up hearing, whether they are fairy tales or old legends, could provide an interesting indicator for how we subconsciously judge hair still to this day. Through studying the ways in which the entertainment media depict hair, I believe we may be able to shine a light on many of our internalised stereotypes linked with hair and thus re educate our initial assumptions.

[kiriti2009]

Dear America: Preserve These Things For The Love Of God

They say that in Europe our things are tiny and that in America your things are super-sized, and that’s a dangerous statement, prone to error when referring to anything other than the size of our Coca-Colas.

Any further debate could lead to a conflict of unprecedented proportions and distract us from the real issue: Here in Europe we are jealous of a lot of what you have in the United States of America. In particular, three things: God, liberty and civil society. In the social democratic Europe we live in, these three pillars have all but disappeared like the sun setting at the dusk of a civilization. In their stead we are left with secularism, conditional freedom and an all-encompassing state that demands money from us day and night in the form of taxes, while all we can do is shrug our shoulders, pay up and say, as did Bartleby: “I’d prefer no to.”

I write these lines, sit in a German alehouse “Cervecería Alemana” in Plaza Santa Ana in Madrid, an old cafe in which the dazzling Ava Gardner whittled away hours when she was living in Madrid, and in which Hemingway often sought refuge in good beer and beautiful people common to so many other bars in Europe. Midway through the 20th century another celebrated writer would also sit here. The Spaniard, Enrique Jardiel Poncela, was a successful comedian that, just over 30, relocated to the United States to write scripts for Fox studios.

He had such a penchant for tucking himself away in a bar in Madrid to write, that they had to build his office in Hollywood to resemble one, for him to be inspired. Jardiel hated the Hollywood vibe and on returning to Spain said that Americans were like “big kids,” although I’m not sure that’s actually a criticism. He also wrote that if a European wanted to understand America, he would have to buy, on arrival there, a “Bible, an automobile and a corkscrew.”

The corkscrew bit troubles me, even though these were the ’30s. By the way, his epitaph read: “If you want everyone to praise you, die.” When he did die, before his corpse had grown cold, everyone did praise him. And immediately afterward, not having ever displayed any political affiliation, everyone forgot about him. If there is anything this brilliant Spanish comedian got right, it was to be free, gaining himself enmity from both left and right. The European press has never been made for freedom, which is nothing other than the ability to say and do whatever you want and the strength to shoulder the consequences.

A student reaches for an inflated globe during a “Fridays for Future” protest for urgent climate action on May 24, 2019 in Muenster, northwestern Germany.

We envy almost everything about the press in America, from its independence from the government to the bravery shown by many of its greatest journalists, often opting for honor in harakiri — in ink — when the cause is a worthy one; sometimes it’s a sad collective suicide, like when they try to portray Nancy Pelosi as a rising star in the practice of origami. But even a despicable silver-screen villain like Walter Matthau from “The Front Page” captivates us, because in his madness we find an apt description of the wild press that was needed to create the brilliant myth of pressrooms littered by whisky filled flasks, and incredibly unstable individuals trying to keep the government at bay. 

Half the things that opinion-makers in the States would make the secular public in secular Europe shake in their boots and cross themselves, and that’s another thing that you got right: It’s important to call an imbecile an imbecile if you don’t you run the risk of confusing the public. And nothing describes the average European: confused and stunned. We’re not even well-manipulated à la Soviet, because even though the left wing tries whenever it can, the European center-right works ceaselessly toward that postmodern sickness called appeasement.

The outcome is that the right wing receives the brunt of the insults, the left being better liars, and nobody can freely say whatever they want in a newspaper without first reading carefully the European Single Thought Law. There are 70 million Twitter users just waiting to write your column, coming close to choking on their own bile as they spit insults at you, while your own contribution to social unrest is safely censored. If you’re right wing, they’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks.

To disagree, to think freely, to stand out, is to dig your own grave in modern Europe. There is a very European bias toward the bureaucratic structuring of private initiatives that becomes truly exasperating. Even in love.

Maybe because of liberty, the United States helps people become millionaires while Europe hinders them. Sometimes quite embarrassingly so. Just one example. Spain’s new social communist government has threatened to cripple rich people with taxes. As a result, an exodus to Portugal has begun. What does this government do? Rectify? No. They threaten with consequences against those leaving. This is all we could expect from a government whose vice president criticizes and insults the owner of Inditex, my brilliant fellow countryman Amancio Ortega, for having donated expensive, latest generation cancer treatment machines, to Spanish hospitals. According to Spanish Vice President Pablo Iglesias, the Spanish public health service doesn’t need “handouts” from the rich. Maybe he’s right. But the Spanish cancer patients sure do. Some people just keep proving Jardiel Poncelaright again when he said: “Those that don’t dare to be intelligent, become politicians.” There are exceptions, but they’re not in Pedro Sánchez’s government.

Spanish far-left Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias gives a speech during the first day of the parliamentary investiture debate to vote through a prime minister, at the Spanish Congress (Las Cortes) on July 22, 2019, in Madrid.

As a rule, the States’ civil society is healthier than the European because it’s careful not to devote itself to mass ideological prostitution. I said “mass,” I’m not here to naively canonise the whole country, ignoring that you’ve had presidents whose main virtue was knowing how to dance salsa. But even then it’s different. Your genuinely democratic culture — impossible to export– makes it easy to get rid of cretins that manage to reach office.

In Europe, the more independent civic leaders raise their voices and lead all they can, but only until they’re gobbled up by one party or another. Then they become accommodated and their voices become muddled. That might very well be the problem: this very European obsession with security, be it employment, unemployment, social life, housing or relationships. Everything has to be as secure and predictable as German engineering, which is why there exists a certain disdain for the American dream. If America can be reduced to a hamburger, part of the European elite can be reduced to the unassembled pieces of a wardrobe from Ikea; if they ever manage to get it together, in an armed conflict, you’ll find me on the hamburger’s side.

Somehow mobility and meritocracy muddy the social democrat dream, which as with communism, needs poor and hungry to survive. Sometimes I wonder why modern Europeans are so enthusiastic about living when most of their state tutored, predictable and bureaucratic lives are a bore. Obviously Mediterranean Europe is the exception; boredom is impossible there.

All of this has a tragic consequence. The lack of a sense of humor extends like a plague throughout the continent. Europe has lost its sense of humor and that’s it’s drama. You only need see that safety warnings printed on any appliance produced in the European Union to understand how total safety and security is an illness. You can’t take your job so seriously. If you sell phone batteries, don’t place a warning on them, in 10 different languages, asking the buyer not to nibble on it. Don’t make a fool of yourself in 10 different languages. The legal cobweb covering the Old Continent making you do it is no excuse. Exporting illegal batteries is better than looking like a world-class idiot all over the world.

But Europe takes itself too seriously. Everything is regulated in its pocket-sized nations. Everything is vital. Everything is serious. Everything is exceedingly dull. Americans can joke and laugh about filling some dictator full of holes without tearing their hair out and crying, which is exactly what the French, Belgian or the Danes do. The Dutch aren’t laughing so loud this week because some genius in the government has decided it would be a good idea to legalize an anti–old people pill. Suddenly, Dutch progressive OAPs, that have been smoking spliffs since their teens, feel less enthusiastic about death-dealing because they’ve realized that in this year’s Halloween parties they will be the dead.

Incidentally, proof of Europe’s idiotization is that, given a choice as to what we import from the United States, instead of choosing liberty, wealth or the size of the damn ice in our drinks, we chose Halloween, which we would gladly send back to you in a box with its corresponding bow and a thank-you note “always thinking of you.”

Something else we envy. When a policeman shoots down a dangerous terrorist, you all ask how the policeman is and swell with pride over his heroism. In Europe though, public opinion and the media react differently:

Couldn’t he have spared the man’s life?

Was it proportional?

Did he read him his rights?

He wasn’t gunned down for wearing explosives and six machetes, he was murdered for being an Arab.

The same happens with military ops. If no one botches it, America will still rally behind their military when they are deployed, even if there has been political dissent. These small shows of unison that upstage the differences, around basic issues, are what make a nation great. Small things can be huge.

Maybe because Americans don’t believe that the state will save them, and much less guarantee them everlasting life within the foreseeable future, they still choose to trust in God. And that’s understandable. When one sees Bernie Sanders and thinks, if an electoral catastrophe were to occur, that one’s life would be in his hands, it’s a huge relief to know you always have God to save you.

What’s more, God is present daily in the lives of men that, as with any civilization, want to transcend their own arrogance. Which is why, when a politician finishes speaking with a “God bless America!” no one is surprised or shocked. It even sounds good, magnificent, glorious. On the other hand, in Europe, if one finishes his speech with a “God bless Sweden!” or “God bless Denmark!” it just doesn’t work. It’s almost like saying “God bless the International Monetary Fund!” It doesn’t even sound good. What’s more you’ll instantly see people rise from their seats and call out:

Why do you say “God”? I’m an atheist. It’s offensive.

Why do you say “God” and not Goddess? Chauvinist! It’s offensive.

Why do you say “God” and not Mother Nature? I identify as a rabbit. Ethnocentrist! It’s offensive.

In the end you just give up, leave God out of it, but reference Satan because you want to send the whole world to hell. But then, once more, another uproar, like a cat fight on Twitter: Christianocentric! Islamophobe. Allah is great. It’s offensive. That’s when you decide to put an end to the event and hang yourself in a toilet stall. That’s how things are in Europe.

Of course, Europe also has the History, it’s still at the origin of our civilization, illustrious ruins, Spanish literature, British humor, Houllebecq and Swedish women. But it also has its fair share of disappointments. France was supposed to be fun. All of my damned bohemians burned Paris down between opium dens, poetry and whisky. It was all just an illusion. These days their grandchildren don’t go out at night, they only read the state’s Official Bulletin and instead of alcohol, they down copious amounts of ecological tea in vegan tea shops where they extract the tea by caressing the leaves.

What about Spain? My country is another matter. Spaniards are only Europeans during work hours. From six in the afternoon onward — Brussels time — we stop being European and we do whatever we feel like until 8 a.m. the next day. This makes other Europeans feel awkward when they come to do business here. They would much prefer to see a hoard of fools following one another mindlessly through the streets like Lemmings, that strange video game from the ’80s. I mean they would rather be in Berlin than Madrid. We don’t do it because we love partying, but to safeguard the essence of ancient Europe, when Romans would commit the seven deadly sins all together, leave work mid-afternoon for a siesta and always found an excuse for a toast (not the bread one). Our sacred duty as Spaniards is to keep these worthy traditions alive, whatever Brussels says.

It’s not that Europe is a bad idea, just the same as the — oh so different — United States isn’t either. Europe, and I mean the European Union, is a place where we can sit down and talk instead of being gunned down and invaded. It has its benefits, especially in what concerns public spending on weapons. But neither Americans nor Europeans can permit themselves to be complacent. Europe needs to recover its identity or Brexit will be just the beginning, and America needs to keep an eye on what’s happening over here, because no one’s immune to a plague of stupid people corrupting the power. Although I suspect that in the end, whatever happens in the future, here in Europe, we’ll always be jealous of the size of your missiles, Reagan’s politics, Scarlett Johansson’s beauty, George Clooney’s elegance and having a president who tweets all in caps.

[dointoomuchsworld]

Only Home

To put it bluntly, and to jump right in, climate change is quite possibly the most boring subject the science world has ever had to present to the public. Most attempts to narrativize the crisis are either science fiction or dismissed as science fiction.

Award-winning author Jonathan Sofran Foer writes, “It seems fundamentally impossible to pull the catastrophe from over there in our contemplations to right here in our hearts.”

History not only makes a good story in retrospect, but good stories become history.

For this topic, I’ve chosen to apply the Uses and Gratification theory in my discussion pertaining to political science, mass communication, and pro-environment/interdependence with nature. By definition, the Uses and Gratification theory discusses the effects of the media on people; it explains how people use the media for their own needs and get satisfied when their needs are fulfilled (communicationtheory.org). There are several needs and gratifications for people: cognitive needs, affective needs, personal integrative needs, social integrative needs, and tension free needs. 

People refer to the media for the topics to discuss among themselves. By referring to the media, they gain more knowledge and exposure to the world beyond their limited eyesight. Now, media studies have begun to take environmental topics into discussion. American culture influences the world through media. Depending on social and psychological circumstances, people have certain needs and expectations which propel them to seek out, read, and engage with certain media and content (Nerlich). This leads to differential patterns of media exposure, which results in the gratification of the initial needs but also has other consequences, perhaps mostly unintended ones.

We can consider the other hand, or the possible consequences wondered above. For many people, electronic connection is metastasizing into electronic “over”connection-- overwhelming our capacity for patience, interrupting the focus required to build real-time relationships, and herding people into unforgiving political tribes (Louv). In 1802, the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth composed a sonnet in which he blames the Industrial Revolution for substituting our connections with nature with the dissipations of materialism; never mind the consideration of the Internet yet in those times.

As writer Amitav Ghosh says in his piece, The Great Derangement, “The climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination.” We might call it a crisis of belief.

When I think about it, I’m not too sure how many versions of the climate change story that kindergarteners can re-create, and likewise there are not many versions that can move these childrens’ parents to tears. Our minds and hearts are well built to perform certain tasks, and poorly designed for others. 

Making science public involves things such as writing articles, speaking with people, commenting on articles, and much more. If none of us can figure out a way to make the climate crisis an interesting topic, or influential for that matter, how are we going to heighten it to the level that it needs? People, as consumers, want things that will make them feel satisfied or impactful, via the media. 

I’ve recently stumbled upon a quote, also written by Jonathan Sofran Foer, that reads, “We are good at things like calculating the path of a hurricane, and bad at things like deciding to get out of its way.”

Funny enough, (funny to me), after reading this quote I found myself leaning back in my chair, eyes and mouth like a fish, just saying -- Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Over and over. The endless… symbolism. And also, the absolute truth. 

In 2017 I took a family vacation to Disney World. Myself, my husband, my child, my two parents, my little sister. My other sister and her boyfriend did not join us, a last minute decision. Hurricane Irma was days away from landfall in Miami, and we knew this from where we stood in  our kitchen in Ohio. We deliberated, and determined that after Disney, who cares? We will take shelter in our condominium in Manasota Key, the bottom left corner of the state of Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico and just about right atop the Caribbean. Irma will hit the Atlantic side, so sorry for you Miami, but we will be OK.

A concrete fortress, my dad had called our condo located on the fifth floor. Indestructible. In those exact words.

The largest evacuation in American history. The largest mass exodus with nearly seven million people instructed to leave their homes.

 “Imminent deaths from coast to coast,” the media headlines began alerting, in those exact words. This is a Category Five hurricane, “we’re going to have to create a new category,” the experts advised whole-heartedly. There was an idea that at least 145-mile-per-hours winds were going to sweep across Florida, and this was going to be something America has never seen before.

The storm is no longer heading for Miami, it’s going up toward Jacksonville, now, the Carolinas. No, it’s going to obliterate the Caribbean and the Keys, rip up the gulf coast, and hit Tampa Bay. It’s going to annihilate the entire state of Florida, and you are going to die. The entire country had their eyes on us now.

As I stood in the living room of the condo, and the air and electricity of the island shut off-- an unsuspected occurrence to us-- I looked out our sliding glass doors and all I could see was water. The blue, tropical turquoise hues rippling in the outer rings of the incoming destruction. We hadn’t even filled the bathtub with clean water as a precaution. 

The ocean, swaying, with the motion of Irma coming down. The skies hadn’t changed yet, but I felt her. I turned to look at my four-year-old daughter. Would the glass shatter onto her perfect skin? Would the enormous coffee table be thrown and crush her? Should I muster herculean strength and push said coffee table, uselessly, in front of the sliding glass doors? Would the decision to move or not move the table affect whether or not the toddler is crushed? Would we hunker in the closet and be unable to see one another in the blackness until one of us is struck by a fatal shard of debris? Would it take weeks to find our bodies? Were all of these questions perfectly logical or illogical? I leaned over and tried not to vomit. I dialed the 1-800 Disaster Distress helpline, and was so blank in thought-process that I do not even remember what I sputtered. It was something, so flatly stupid, along the lines of, what should I do? But we were too late. We were supposed to evacuate, but we decided to press on southbound, despite the standstill traffic opposite in direction from us, and the island we were now on was cut off. But wait, one bridge was left open. A concrete fortress that we were supposed to be in, I didn’t think so. What about the fallen power lines, or fallen trees? If we survived the storm, how long would we be trapped on the island?

I pulled armfulls of laundry mid-cycle from the washing machine, smashed it wet into my suitcase, and through the hottest, blurriest tears I told my daughter we were getting back in the car. I’d have to get Daddy, he had just stomped out of the condo and onto the beach, to smoke an emergently prepared blunt and accompany it with two Budweisers. As if in his last moments, this was what he decided he’d do. I shoved my suitcase down the stairwell, because of course the elevators were turned off, and in this moment, I had dialed my boss, informing her that I will most realistically not survive and return to Ohio for my job.

Airlines shut down on our last day of Disney and still we stayed. In the grand scheme of it all, we ended up fleeing from Orlando, to Tampa, to Mannasota, back to Tampa, to Georgia, and finally found gasoline and a price-gouged hotel room in Chattanooga, Tennessee. We had tried to run, but this was it, and we had not even a powerless condo over our heads anymore. I turned around and looked at my darling child, full of patience in her car seat. We waited in line at a gas station that I cannot remember the name of, right before crossing into Georgia. What luck! We filled up. Both of our cars, as the rest of my family were following behind us. 

Cars drove overnight through the mountains for hours on the shoulder of the highway, creating a fourth lane. State troopers allowed it, stopping only for those who needed assistance with a tire change. Strings of ambulances evacuated hospitals and headed northbound, while federal emergency response vehicles bravely pressed on back southward to Irma. 

Nearly two thousand dollars over our budget spent on emergent nonsense, and we made it home to Ohio. For months, my family was torn apart. I wanted to quit my job, move far away, never allow them to babysit ever again. Who was responsible for us being closer to the feeling of death than I have ever been in my life, all of us together like some mass extinction?

There are many ways we can provide a feeling of engagement at the expense of engagement, in many ways that selfies make us feel present at the expense of being present, in ways that joining a cancer-support group does not shrink a tumor, but these things do make us feel better. But, it can be dangerous to feel better when things are not getting better. The feeling of making a difference doesn’t correspond to the difference made, and does create an inflated sense of accomplishment to relieve the burden of whatever obstacle we may be facing. The feeling of escaping the most powerful Atlantic hurricane in recorded history, but waiting for the next record-breaker to destroy someone else's lives. The feeling of posting a viral “Pray for Florida” statement on your Instagram, while being thousands of miles away from the site of disaster.

There are so many people out there, troubled by the direction of our country, and we do like to be reminded that we’re not alone. So who can blame us, for taking selfies, for joining support groups. Being alone together is not an alternative direction, and what the world needs is the opposite of a selfie. How do we square our own gratitude for life with behavior that suggests an indifference to it?

Here are some facts: Cattle, goats, and sheep produce a significant amount of methane, mostly belched, exhaled, farted, and passed in waste. Nitrous oxide is emitted by livestock urine, manure, and fertilizers used for growing feed crops. If cows as a whole were a country, they would rank third in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), after China and the U.S. Brazil’s deforestation plan of protected areas of the Amazon is estimated to release 13.2 gigatons of carbon. Animal agriculture is responsible for 91% of Amazonian deforestation. Carbon is released upon the burning of trees during deforestation. The Worldwatch Institute estimates that livestock is responsible for 51% of global emissions, more than all cars, planes, buildings, power plants, and industry combined.

We cannot change the planet without changing how we eat.

Even if we begin today, assuming global cooperation, a global conversion to wind, water, and solar power would take more than twenty years and require a hundred-trillion-dollar investment.

When the animated feature film “Happy Feet” came out in 2006, I was in high school, and I was obsessed with the movie. Aside from a moment of a blatantly suggestive penguin dance move, there is a separate moment in the movie that may have perplexed some kids. Maybe lost their interest, maybe confused them as to where the storyline was heading, or just filled them with an eerie and dark sensation and left them confused as to why they felt this way. 

The basic storyline of “Happy Feet” follows an outcast emperor penguin who cannot find his soulmate, because he cannot sing, therefore he has no Heart Song to match with anyone. All he can do is tap dance, which is catastrophic in his family’s eyes. However if we go deeper into the movie, our protagonist weaves eco-conscious warnings about pollution and climate crisis into his journey amidst the movie’s sing-song choreographed numbers. 

Our loveable penguin star of “Happy Feet” is eventually thrown into a zoo exhibit, demonstrating the mush-brained behavior we often feel our zoo animals adapt to. He must then grab the humans’ attention and call to action to save his homeland. As he’s tapping, screeching, and hallucinating, he is giving the audience, specifically the children that the movie is targeted towards, a general sense of unease. The camera zooms out, out, out in three major hits- then we are looking at a silent and real image of our planet Earth. The shot that is shown to us in the movie is so famous that it is named “The Blue Marble.” This is not the first photograph of Earth, but it is the first of the fully illuminated whole.

When astronauts experienced the sight of The Blue Marble, given the fact that they must be 20,000 miles of distance away from Earth to see it as a globe, they were overcome by awe and vastness. So much so, that astronauts and space travelers have deemed the phenomenon of seeing our planet as the Overview Effect. The experience is so powerful and profoundly moving; the phenomenon of seeing our only home from space, framed by infinite black emptiness; so unsupported, suspended. From this vantage point, mindsets have been changed. The environment is no longer an environment, a concept, or context outside of us… it is everything, including us.

Astronaut Ron Garan said upon his experience of the Overview Effect, “I was flooded with both emotion and awareness. But as I looked down at the Earth-- this stunning, fragile oasis, this island that has been given to us-- a sadness came over me, and I was hit in the gut with an undeniable, sobering contradiction.”

We can speculate on what his contradiction might have been. That our planet protects us from the harshness of space but we don’t protect it from the harshness of us?

While everyone knows we live on Earth, we can believe it only by leaving.

Journalist Oliver Burkeman wrote for The Guardian, “If a cabal of evil psychologists had gathered in a secret undersea base to concoct a crisis humanity would be hopelessly ill-equipped to address, they couldn’t have done better than climate change.”

A species of fish, called cleaner wrasse, is perhaps merely a species of fish. These creatures have the ability to recognize their reflection, next to the only other species (other than ourselves) who can recognize their reflection, which are orcas, dolphins, great apes, and magpies. If the Earth’s temperature rises merely two degrees, the reefs that these cleaner wrasse inhabit will become extinct.

Right now, we are set amidst the great collectivity of a living and dying planet. We call for a restitution of the sacred—in its most inclusive form—so that we can face the climate crisis of our times with our finest remaining resources. 

To ultimately recap, Uses and Gratification theory as developed by Elihu Bulmer and Jay Katz, American sociologists (1974), suggests that media users play an active role in choosing and using the media, and we can directly infuse this in the way we manage ourselves and the role we play in the connection of sustainable agriculture and climate change. I have not necessarily provided a comprehensive explanation of climate change, or provided a categorical case against eating animal products, but I do explore the decision that our planetary crisis requires us to make on the immediate platform of social media. Media has the power to rouse and urge, to overwhelm those who feed it. We rely on our future generations as much as our own selves to accept the reality of human-caused climate change and to change our lives in response. How can we get our human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future, trending on our media outlets? 

Everyone will eat a meal soon, and can immediately participate in the reversal of climate change. Self-recognition does not always indicate self-awareness, and as critical as we can be of someone else in charge, the blaming can also be a means of turning away from our own reflections. 

For a quote to muse on, consider the following, “Waves do not require feeling; they generate feeling... I have never resisted a wave” (Sofran Foer).

Works Cited:

Buerkeman, Oliver. 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited. www.theguardian.com 

Foer, Jonathan Sofran. We Are The Weather. First edition. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. 

Garan, Ron. The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2015.

Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement. First edition. University of Chicago Press, 24 July 2017. 

Louv, Richard. “Our Wild Calling.” Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2019. First edition. New York, New York.

Nerlich, Brigitte. “Science/climate communication: A view from reception theory.” 28 September 2017. University of Nottingham. www.blogs.nottingham.ac.uk 

Reinert, Al. “Blue Marble Shot.” 1972, 2011.

ScienceDaily. “Bees, fruit, and money: Decline of pollinators will have severe impact on nature and humankind.” Pensoft Publishers. 4 September 2012. www.sciencedaily.com 

“Uses and gratification theory in mass communication, psychology, behavioral and social science.” www.communicationtheory.org

[newscheckz]

Trump is winning the political spin game

New Post has been published on https://newscheckz.com/trump-winning-political-spin-game/

Trump is winning the political spin game

By Anna Jacobs

Donald Trump has somehow survived an overwhelming flood of political scandals, legal battles, accusations, the Russia investigation, impeachment, and now, it looks like he is finding a way to spin the coronavirus pandemic into something that will rally his base.

Currently, the US is facing an unprecedented public health crisis as the country with the highest number of confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19.

The death toll surpassed 100,000 this week and infections have reached nearly 1.8 million. The US is also confronting an economic crisis, with 15 percent unemployment.

Economists predict this will rise to between 25 to 30 percent. It has not seen unemployment rates this high since the Great Depression.

The Trump administration’s handling of the global pandemic has been an unmitigated disaster, he brushed off the seriousness of the virus, moved too slowly on mass testing and turned the virus response into a partisan game for his own political gain.

https://newscheckz.com/effective-communication-key-flattening-virus-curve/

Healthcare costs went up and economic bailouts helped corporations more than they helped American workers.

Trump’s grossly incompetent leadership was on full display, every day, during White House briefings about the virus, which he essentially turned into daily campaign rallies.

He attacked reporters, in his usual bullying style, for asking questions about his slow response to the pandemic.

As criticism of the administration’s response grew and the death toll rose, Trump and his team did what they do best: changed the conversation.

This is how Trump has survived these battles. He turns legal battles into political ones and positions them in the court of media and public opinion, which is where he has transformed the art of political spin.

His propaganda has normalized (or, rather, elevated) blatant lying, under the banner of “alternative facts”.

Through Fox and Friends, and Trump pals like Sean Hannity, right-wing conspiracy theories have become commonplace in the media and American political discourse.

After all, Fox News is still the most-watched cable news channel in America and has been for the past 18 years.

Just when you think Trump is confronting a crisis that he cannot escape, the White House creates a scandal for the media to focus their attention on.

They overwhelm us with a story (often with an accompanying buzzword) that creates a host of accusations and legal questions that confuse and overwhelm the public as we scramble to try to understand the basic elements of the controversy.

Cue, Trump’s now infamous Mother’s Day tweeting rampage. The #OBAMAGATE! tweet was followed by accusations of wrongdoing by dozens of individuals from the Obama administration, the FBI, the Justice Department and others. Trump demanded that Obama be subpoenaed to testify to the Senate over “Obamagate,” a demand which Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell and South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsay Graham both rejected. This says a lot about how ridiculous this story is given that McConnell and Graham are two of Trump’s staunchest defenders.

Furthermore, when a Washington Post reporter asked Trump to explain the specific crimes behind “Obamagate,” he retorted in his classic style: “You know what the crime is.

The crime is very obvious to everybody … All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.”

This is Trump doing what Trump does best. He is spinning a story that he hopes will undermine the entire Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the election.

He thinks that if they exonerate the likes of Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, it will completely exonerate the Trump team and shift attention towards Obama (and Obama’s vice president and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden).

This is also likely a pre-emptive attack to help the Trump administration battle accusations of pro-Trump Russian interference in the upcoming 2020 election.

Intelligence officials briefed members of Congress on the matter in February, arguing that Russia was already actively working to help re-elect Trump. Biden rightly pointed out in an interview with ABC that:

“This is all about diversion. This is a game this guy plays all the time.” The question is, will it work?

Given Trump’s track record, it could. Trump has the bully pulpit and he is using it. Plus, the media is falling for it.

His wild accusations and conspiracy theories increase ratings and clickbait. Perhaps less cynically, it is also the job of reporters to follow and investigate claims that the president makes.

I am guilty of this myself. In the last couple of weeks, I have spent hours trying to understand all the individuals and accusations surrounding the alleged “Obamagate”.

Trump is attempting to squirm his way out of a serious conversation about his failed leadership, yet again.

Even the impeachment did not seem to make much of a difference and opinions about the charges (abuse of power and obstruction of Congress) fell along partisan lines.

And that seems like it was a lifetime ago, given the onslaught of news and scandals coming from the White House (and Trump’s tweets) every day.

Somehow, Trump’s approval ratings are holding relatively steady. They even got a bump. As of May 13, according to a Gallup poll, his job approval rating reached 49 percent, a tie for the highest of his presidency.

https://newscheckz.com/trump-postpones-g7-summit-accommodate-invitees/

This is low, but not that much lower than previous presidents. Obama began his second term in 2012 with a job approval rating of 46 percent.

Furthermore, even amid the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, a recent CNN poll shows that respondents gave Trump a strong advantage over Biden in terms of his handling of the economy.

Trump’s strategy of blaming the Chinese for the coronavirus also seems to be working with the American public.

A recent survey by Navigator Research showed that 43 percent of Americans think “China bears more responsibility than the federal government for the way coronavirus has spread in the US”.

Polling data about the 2020 election varies. FiveThirtyEight gives Biden around a six-point lead nationally, and crucial but narrow leads in the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin and North Carolina.

https://newscheckz.com/us-protests-builds-george-floyds-death/

However, a recent CNN poll conducted by SSRS echoes Biden’s national lead but shows an advantage for Trump in the swing states.

This would allow him to win the Electoral College and likely lose the popular vote, which is exactly what happened in 2016.

But there are many wild cards going into the 2020 election, including the impact of social distancing measures and mail-in ballots on voter turnout, among other questions about whether the economy will bounce back, and whether campaign rallies and conventions will be held.

With less than six months until election day, it is impossible to predict.

One thing is for sure; The Biden campaign needs to suit up and make the shift from a primary to a general election campaign as soon as possible.

They showed a promising start with a clear message of unity when Biden and Bernie Sanders, together, announced a set of task forces to develop policy, which included progressive politicians, among them New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as members.

This shows a substantive effort on the part of the Biden campaign to work with the progressive left to establish strong policy platforms on the economy, climate change, healthcare and other vital issues.

I want to believe that this campaign will be decided by the substance of policy platforms and the virtues of truth.

I want it to be a real test of competent leadership and ideas, and I want to see a real debate about how to tackle the problems facing our country.

But I am gravely concerned it will be yet another election contested on disinformation, propaganda and fear.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Newscheckz’s editorial stance.

[trebaolsmovingcastle]

@saint-just replied to your post: “Are we all gonna die?”

(A) You’ve lumped automation in with  fiercely negative things like climate problems and doom-war. Why? (B) “A minority of people hijacked the country and do evil with it, and somehow it means that it’s all over.” - Are you referring to when a minority of evil people birthed the country then stayed on top, or are we to believe contemporary developments are a significant departure from the norm? When you say “it’s all over”, is the “it” this country? Would that even be bad?

S’alright, so there’s definitely a lot to unpack here and go through. First let me just say that the post in question isn’t a carefully crafted paean or anything, I got an anonymous ask, which got me thinking and I tend to extemporize as I go...which in turn made it a paean to hope of sorts. So I hope you’ll cut me a little slack on certain flourishes, or at the very least on not bogging myself down in some serious semantics.

That aside, let’s take a look at my concerns about automation, mind you I’ve been reading on this topic for the last five years mostly, and I’m not an academic. So I wasn’t smart enough to make a refined list of resources I can constantly drag up or refer back to when I need to reference specific numbers. That’s my fault, I just accrue information and create a holistic image of outcomes.

Also, Saint-Just, I’ll go on at length, which I think won’t bother you, so everyone else feel free to skip all of this.

At face value automation is a savior, imagine, all these jobs, roles, systems suddenly handed off uniformly to AI’s robots, machines, systems that take the human element out of the equation. It’s star trek, it’s the replicator in a way. 3D printers making houses for next to nothing, no more miserable truck drivers pulling dangerous all nighters because the freight industry is automated. no more low wage jobs, they’re all done by the push of a button. Even the white collar jobs, and medical jobs all vanish far enough down the automation line. If you can teach a robotic arm to prepare a meal, you can teach similar arms and AI’s how to close a bleeding heart valve or excise a tumor with more precision than any human surgeon. You can have your markets rise and fall at speeds completely unimaginable as processors crunch numbers and make trades at speeds that we’re basically already at.

Now, this seems all great, when I lived in Seattle I had a friend who worked at Amazon, he was obsessed with automation and the golden future it would create, he also supported a universal basic income. He believed that tech giants would pioneer the way in pushing for a UBI, that automation would render industries nonexistent, and that the capital would get picked up by either the government or that these companies themselves would willingly just hand the money to the public, providing everyone a livable income without the need for work.

The problem is that there is virtually no evidence that any corporation or business entity is likely to start handing off profits to the public for free. Nor is there evidence that the tech field is somehow immune to the corrupting influence of capitalism and for profit enterprise. 

So what seems more likely is that you’ll have industries disappear, even now you can see automation taking over a variety of industries, open a factory that used to employ 5,000 union workers, now you can open that same factory and staff it with a skeleton crew of tech savvy workers who can perform maintenance of the new robotic workers. Meaning rural communities that formerly would depend on these types of jobs can just keep waiting, because their town can’t be saved by a factory with 25 jobs for people with coding skills.

Even looking at analysis made by I think the Bureau of Labor Statistics creates this uniquely grim image. In essence they’ll go through industries and provide long term career analysis for various fields, including factors that could impact the industry in question and how competitive the work environment is for new workers. Anyway, these analyses paint a rosier picture than most, but still list automation as a major threat to a number of fields.

So you have a variety of low paying jobs disappearing from the economy, especially in service jobs, creating more and more underemployment, and stiffer and stiffer competition for these low wage jobs. As a side note consider how many retirement age americans are now expecting to work until they die. So now add in over the years all the competition created by this gradually increasing group of workers. Suddenly we have this extremely broad category of low income, or no income people, uneducated for the new automated economy, without resources to join the existing workforce. You and I know that there is no social mobility now, and that whatever income bracket your parents inhabited is now less likely to be the bracket you will occupy.

Okay, so now we’re setting a stage where you have broad automation cutting a swathe through the jobs held by the 50% of American households that are under the poverty line, then you have automation also hitting at white collar and traditionally upper class jobs. All of this we have to assume will happen without Federal assistance for the working poor, or means to support this growing mass of people unable to find jobs.

As a class, we workers in a capitalist system only have one single way to really enforce our survival and protection...strikes, attacks on production at our jobs. When you eliminate the working class, as automation does, you lose your voice, you lose the only tactic you had within the existing system to demand change, protection, recompense, anything. You’re no longer a part of the system because the system doesn’t need you. For future generations consider trying to plan a college education around what kind of career you’ll need to be in at 40...when you’re 20. We’re already sold the lie of college as an answer to security, I was told at 10 to plan for my 50′s by picking a stable job I could retire with. By the time I entered the workforce the notion of a company keeping you to retirement no longer existed for most workers. As automation comes for some industries there will be a proliferation of jobs in that industry as you can have more people working in these fields as the cost of the fields drops, but that means that those jobs are generally part time and low paying. It has happened to paralegals for example, as well as bank tellers. Sure technology has caused these industries to balloon and meet a greater demand, but now the people in those fields are paid a pittance of what they used to. 

The one thing I didn’t go into at length in that post was that a lot of this all seems to be an area of concern for the decade of 2020-2030. Most fields concerned with the health of a society seem to have this notion that this coming decade is going to be a reckoning, that what is currently modest automation will balloon as the decade progresses, that the inequality we experience now will be enhanced, I imagine that a lot of the people singing praises about the ‘singularity’ ten years ago are now biting their nails as fascism comes back and the surveillance state entrenches itself ahead of all of the increasing economic inequality.

So although automation isn’t in and of itself bad, when handled by the same humans that brought us Google and Amazon...I’m concerned. We can’t depend on capitalism restructuring itself into a system that will care for the public and redefine what it means to work...we can’t hope for a UBI and careers in creative fields and just free cash to pay for the goods generated by an automated economy. We need to see this coming and be prepared for what looks like reality, a world where the jobs for the working classes disappear, with no retraining options, and few new jobs to fight over...jobs that likely will also face automation.

Alright, bear with me, Saint-Just, if you’ve come this far I appreciate that you care enough to go further.

On to the next bit. I need you to accept a series of ideas that may seem in some bizarre or contradictory or just...impossible to accept...but neo-liberalism isn’t ur-fascism and the harm done by one isn’t categorically identical to the other. Does this mean I want a neo-liberal President, a neo-liberal system? No, I want something altogether different, but when given the choice between the agony of millions, without relief, and a boot stomping on them for decades and at least limited option to resist and alter course, I’ll take the altered course.

When you allow fascism to truly take home in your political ecology you introduce the possibility that the softness of people’s resistance to evil will see people in camps in due time. We already have these problems with our government before Trump, but this is virtually asking for an authoritarian neo-feudalism to take over. How likely is a successful revolution against a government of that type? 

So to me, in this moment, the threat George Washington poses to the world is minimal, but the threat Donald Trump poses is more important. And when offered a choice between combative resistance to Clinton and Trump, I would choose Clinton because there’s at least a minimal chance that time, effort, and action would lead to change. Now we’re entering into a realm where information technology and the changing economy will truly render our ability to avert disaster moot. We’ll be against the wall when the fascist revolution comes, and despite the beauty of the White Roses stance wouldn’t you rather they never die along with all the Jews, homosexuals, romani, and other unwanted by the fascists of Germany?

The nation was founded by slavers and self interested businessmen, the nation is crowned with the genocide of the indigenous nations that came before, our national drink isn’t coca cola, it’s blood of everyone our forefathers executed to plant a homesteader in some prairie cabin, to suppress a vote, to sell cotton...both North and South. But right now, in this moment, I have more pressing concerns, the safety of people who aren’t me, the survival of people who aren’t me. When ICE is kicking in doors and baiting families by using their children...we have people suffering on a matter of societal semantics.

As for the ‘it’s all over’ go back and reread it with a question mark, that’s a typo on my part, it’s a rhetorical question. I’m making the case that simply because you have fascists at the gate doesn’t mean that they have to win.

That is what the post is about at heart, it’s what this is all about, that there are alternatives. I’ll still make a point to answer your understandable misread of my message, namely that it wouldn’t be bad if this ended. But you have to be prepared for what happens next. I can’t rail for revolution without conscience of what can happen. I can’t take a stance that says we need to tear it all down this moment, that you, or I, is able to do that. Because in this moment, with these resources, in this world...you most likely hand all the power you need to the people who have made this world categorically worse.

Revolutionary thought isn’t just about action, it’s about vision, goals, and again, as always, over and over, hope, love for mankind, even the people we loathe most. You can’t save everyone, you can’t win without some bloodshed...but you can’t throw it all away early because your ideology can’t accept the current reality. To me, now, in the coming years, all I can do is talk, write, engage with people, stand up and be counted as the counting comes. Resist tooth and nail against the worst of it, but I need to also consider who lives, who comes next, who will benefit. Revolutionaries are better alive and volunteering, helping the living who can’t themselves muster the energy to do more than nod along with a message of something better. Martyring for causes doesn’t bring us any closer to anything better, because the life lost was a life that missed all its future opportunities to enact change.

Look at your name! Look at beloved Robespierre! A slip...a momentary accident of exhaustion, of placement, a misstep, and suddenly the ideals of a transformed society dashed and instead you get Napoleon and two centuries of ‘Bloodthirsty’ Seafoam Incorruptible. Revolutions burn the revolutionaries like kindling, that is history on repeat, so take that and consider what can be done when revolutionary action is needed? That possibly instead of burning out before the job is done, we all try being the ones to decide what comes next. No empires, no neo-feudalism, no fascists, no new Bonapartes, Hitlers, Franco’s, Kim’s, or Jackson’s...that’s the goal, that’s the seemingly impossible demand put on true souls, to think, and plan, to resist, angry, ready, eager, but with the desire to pull as much of the people out of the fire as possible.

My sincere hope is that I can help, in some small fashion, as the times demand. I do not want to be at barricades or on tribunals, I don’t want to daydream about revolutionary councils, I want to dream that the institutions that corrupt this world are dismantled, that the poor don’t suffer, that the starving are fed, that the image of western civilization...white civilization are cast down and something better is achieved. That as needed I can talk my way through problems, that when needed I can go to the streets, that as things get worse my message doesn’t stop. I can’t dream about revolution because revolution is innocent blood heaped with the guiltys for little to no gain. I am not against these things, I am not against a coming change, but when you blow a society apart, you need to have thought about the timing. There is a right time. Right now...be these ideas, life, exist in the face of these awful things. Existing at all can be revolutionary. Being an image of what could be better in the world is more important now than stockpiling brickbats in hopes that tomorrow there will be a window to break.

Now, I do not mean to imply that you’re what I fear from revolutionary thinkers, I’m expressing what I’ve experienced in the past amongst a handful of people on the coast, that there’s this suicidal desire to martyr yourself for a cause, the cause becomes a bloodthirsty god that can only be satisfied by propaganda of the deed. The purpose of revolutionary ideas should be other people, the happiness, security, FUTURE, of other people. God, but a revolutionary should love, love adoringly the world, the suffering and misery of the world should hurt the revolutionary like seeing harm come to someone you care for, multiplied again and again. 

If the time came, for anyone, to rise up, to lead, to declare, to act...surely challenges, cruelty of the times, hardship, terror all would follow, but until then it is so important to focus on what is coming and what all of us are best at, what all of us can do when called upon. I will die, as will you, as will we all, but I must live so that should I die, I will have died unwaveringly standing in my convictions and hope for something better. Let me be of the immortal dead if it means the message of love, of the people, of something better for this dismal future is what gives me voice beyond the grave.

I hope I have been clear, I know I can be long winded, I’m better in person in almost all regards and easier to understand than in writing. I also hope that this satisfies you, that you understand my position better and can see what I mean in what I said before. That post was about hope, about encouraging hope in people who are too terrified of tomorrow to have hope. We need hope, we can’t despair the future because it needs us.

[bk-lostintranslation]

ESSAY: The Law vs. Justice - A Troubling Dichotomy

"...Depictions of policemen – and recently, policewomen – as flawed but essentially courageous figures whose blatant disregard of rules should be forgiven because they care too much, fails to address a grim history of due process abuses by burying them beneath the facile premise of action-packed hijinks or zany comedy.”

In text or film, police stories run parallel to a mosaic of much-loved tropes and familiar cinematics: the steely-eyed officer staring down the barrel of a gun as he confronts the perp; the ubiquitous car-chase through a glittering metropolitan mise-en-scéne to the counterpoint of screeching tires and wild jazz; the athletic detective pursuing the antagonist through an urban maze of rooftops and stairwells, guns blazing and adrenaline pumping; the hard-edged police duo pummeling a snitch to a bloody pulp in a trash-strewn alleyway until he confesses to the information they're after. Genres switch from comedy to drama; protagonists evolve from stoic sleuths with a spotless badge and an unswerving mission to wisecracking cynics whose broken moral compass belies a heart of gold. Yet, as key figures in a discursive construction of culture, each character is elevated to near-sacrosanct levels of heroism for one reason: he will unflinchingly use violence to achieve his ends – not because he disregards the law, but because he has taken it upon himself to uphold justice. The dichotomy between the two, while incontestably age-old, is remarkable because the idea that one is an obstacle to achieving the other is a recurrent theme in law enforcement fiction – and because it appears to at once enable and ennoble police violence.

A cursory glance toward contemporary entertainment reveals how saturated it is with alternately gripping or poignant portrayals of the police – be they crime dramas, infotainment or film. Yet, when perusing a majority of these media-created depictions, it is also essential to note the dark skein of violence that runs through the narrative, framed as a necessity to maintain control within a gritty backdrop of urban decay (Deflem, 2010). From television shows like Law & Order, CSI Miami, The Wire and Chicago PD, which feature hard-nosed protagonists roughing up their suspects as par for the course, to critically-acclaimed films such as The French Connection (1971), Dirty Harry (1971), and Die Hard (1988), which showcase the ideal cop as a trigger-happy maverick willing to flout both institutional and legal safeguards to catch their perp, to more recent buddy-cop comedies such as The Heat (2013), where the quirky, would-be feminist twist attempts to call attention away from flagrant police abuses, there is a pervasive message that police brutality and misconduct are the panacea to clean up a city seething with crime.

The execution of this concept is certainly exciting from a storytelling standpoint. After all, there are countless instances where the law is stymied by historical framing, its message and purview a product of its times. Neither ironclad nor teleological, laws evolve according to their own methodology, not in smooth sequences but in messy, haphazard, often incoherent increments that reflect the protean nature of society itself (Hutchinson, 2005). However, the diegesis of law vs. justice becomes fraught with complications when it is used repeatedly to promulgate fictional constructs as truth – to frame violence as the only means to fight fire with fire, with the hero cop acting in the best interests of the underdog, against antagonists who will ultimately and most deservedly be trounced in a simplistic narrative arc of Good versus Evil (Geller, 1997; Jacobson, Picart & Greek, 2017). Unfortunately, what these formulas tend to overlook – either due to disingenuity or pure carelessness – is how they function as propaganda pieces for institutions already entangled in civil rights violations. More to the point, their depictions of policemen – and recently, policewomen – as flawed but essentially courageous figures whose blatant disregard of rules should be forgiven because they care too much, fails to address a grim history of due process abuses by burying them beneath the facile premise of action-packed hijinks or zany comedy.

To be sure, crime dramas have been a popular staple of entertainment for decades. In their work, Media and Crime in the U.S, criminologists Yvonne Jewkes and Travis Linnemann remark that crime films are "arguably the most enduring of all cinematic genres..." and that their attraction is rooted in the fact that they "reassure us that criminal behaviors can be explained and serious offenses can be solved. They offer immutable definitions of 'the crime problem' and guide our emotional responses to it" (2017, p. 173). But beyond the comforts of catharsis and closure, these films provide an intimate view into worlds that exist as ciphers to the general public. Research has repeatedly shown that viewers glean knowledge of law enforcement not from direct interaction with said entities, but from mass media consumption (Surette, 1998; Skogan, 1981; Mawby, 2003). While public opinions of policemen are, on the whole, encouragingly positive (Huang and Vaughn, 1996), it is imperative to ask ourselves whether these opinions are factual or colored by the glamour and gloss of mediated representations. In their work, Media Consumption and Public Attitudes toward Crime and Justice, Kenneth Dowler and Valerie Zawilski note that,

Presentations of police are often over-dramatized and romanticized by fictional television crime dramas while the news media portray the police as heroic, professional crime fighters. In television crime dramas, the majority of crimes are solved and criminal suspects are successfully apprehended. Similarly, news accounts tend to exaggerate the proportion of offenses that result in arrest which projects an image that police are more effective than official statistics demonstrate. The favorable view of policing is partly a consequence of police’s public relations strategy. Reporting of proactive police activity creates an image of the police as effective and efficient investigators of crime (2007, p. 3). 

Of course, it would be simplistic to claim that all audiences imbibe and interpret media-constructed images of police in the same fashion. As Yvonne Jewkes remarks in the work Captured by the Media, "people are not blank slates who approach a television programme without any preexisting opinions, prejudices or resources" (2013, p. 145; Kitzinger, 2004). However, it is equally impossible to believe that these sources do not feed social constructions of law and order in its myriad forms. Indeed, the media's portraits of crime and justice are often pivotal in influencing both policy and day-to-day events. A large body of research devoted to the relationship between public attitudes and criminal justice policy has shown that representations of crime news catalyze public pressure toward harsher policing and more punitive sentencing. Additionally, a close appraisal of police-related television shows and films yields disturbing trends. Not only is there an overblown emphasis on offender-based violence, i.e. murder, rape, and robbery, but the offenders themselves are portrayed as cunning to an almost, if not outright, psychopathic degree. They can play the criminal justice system like a fiddle, and can run circles around the average police officer, whose by-the-book approach only leaves him/her mired in red-tape and frustratingly stultified by Internal Affairs. Instead, it is up to a tenacious few, with the guts and grit to transcend these bureaucratic impositions, to dispense justice towards offenders (Barille, 1984; Surette, 1998). 

 Given that the ontological divide between fiction and fact can often risk becoming disquietingly blurred, the study of sensationalist fiction's influence on criminal justice policy becomes doubly relevant (Potter & Kappeller, 2006). An example can be taken from 24, a hugely-popular Fox Network series that ran from 2001 to 2008. The show followed the exploits of counterterroist Jack Bauer, a resourceful anti-hero willing to resort to everything from mass property destruction to torture in order to save the American public. Bauer's legacy survived well beyond the screen, to the point where he was cited by the late Supreme Court Justice, Anton Scalia, as pertinent to constitutional jurisprudence and the use of torture: "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" The fact that Bauer does not exist is beside the point; rather, it is the durable imprint his heroics left on the minds of the audience. For them, the thrilling, nick-of-time rescues and terrorist intrigues exemplified by 24 were not escapist fantasies, but a dire reflection of the national state of affairs (Lattman, 2006, p. 1).

Similarly, Clint Eastwood's wild card, Harry Callahan, immortalized by the 70s cult classic Dirty Harry, is portrayed as a ruthless but ultimately effective cop whose willingness to bend – or break – the rules guarantees fast results. What makes the film particularly noteworthy is its scathing criticism of the perceived hurdles beset upon law enforcement via the enactment of the Miranda warning in 1966, in addition to would-be obstacles such as the Exclusionary Rule. Whether or not the film's legal research is rooted in accuracy is, again, beside the point: its true premise is to question whether a system that gives precedence to the rights of offenders over victims is even worth upholding. In the film's closing scene, Harry, having broken the law by shooting the rampaging sniper, Scorpio, tosses his police badge into the water – an act as politically charged as it is defiant. Through Harry, not only is the upheaval of the period's political climate reflected, but the passions of the viewers enacted (Leitch, 2007). Indeed, the Dirty Harry Syndrome – also known as Noble Cause Corruption – is a term coined by the film, although the phenomenon understandably predates it. Jack R. Greene describes it as when "police are tempted to use illegal means to obtain justice... [even though] police ethicists and lawmakers hold that any gains that might be achieved by illegal means are not worth the miscarriages of justice and negative precedents that might result" (2006, p. 601). However, the film's enduring popularity is testament as much to its directorial finesse as to the resonance of its underlying message: that in order for justice to prevail, pragmatic vigilantism is preferable to the impractical hurdle of upholding civil rights. Like his modern predecessor, Jack Bauer, Harry Callahan's actions serve to anchor him within a timeless cultural bricolage: the everyman's avenger who occupies the liminal space between saint and rebel for his steadfast pursuit of justice.

In his work Encoding & Decoding in the Television Discourse, renowned cultural theorist Stuart Hall coined the term 'Circuit of Communication' to argue that, despite the assumption of meaning as a static agent, it is in fact a socially structured process that can either edify or delimit us through its visual language and representation (1973). Indeed, the meaning of any medium can be considered a sociopolitical and cultural discourse with its own style, syntax, structure and vocabulary – all of it pivoting on the audience as both the 'receiver of the message, and the 'source.' With that in mind, police films and dramas do not exist in a vacuum, but are in fact embedded in contingent social realities, many of which serve largely to either reflect or perpetuate specific modes of thought and conduct. One need only trace the complex evolution of law enforcement on-screen to observe how they establish specific notions of law vs. justice, good vs. evil, order vs. disorder, within a specific sociopolitical milieu. 

For instance, the earliest film noir classics such as Double Indemnity (1936) were pivotal in bringing to life the postwar disenchantment and murky morality of the era, while touching upon gender politics, social mores, and their shocking subversions. Similarly, the besieged and troubled characters of Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) served almost as widgets fulfilling a critique on sexual politics and mass surveillance. The late 1960s relaunch of the genre-defining radio and television series Dragnet (1949-70) was designed to tout the impressive intricacies of LAPD procedurals, in an age characterized by anti-police sentiment and the infamous Watts Riots. 

Later, the Nixonian legacy of the War on Drugs, and its subsequent Reaganite expansion, saw the rise of such Cop Booster classics as 48 Hours (1982) and Lethal Weapon (1989). More recent films such as Crash (2005), while attempting to touch thoughtfully upon racial tensions in the melting pot of LA, quickly became entangled in undercurrents of misogynoir and color-blindness by suggesting that the officer who committed digital rape on a black woman was redeemed by later saving her from a car crash, and by asserting superficial equality with the idealistic message that everyone across the racial spectrum has problems, while conveniently denying the reality of systemic racism in a white power structure (Hobson, 2008; Lott, 2006). Even the latest blockbuster, The Heat (2013), which aimed to subvert gender roles in law enforcement, unfortunately tripped over its own message by becoming not a paean to feminism but a stale, formulaic buddy-cop cliché that equated female empowerment with the same reckless disregard and gross misconduct vis-à-vis its male-centric counterparts. 

At nearly every point, cop films and dramas appear to be a means to either challenge or embellish institutional authority. Yet no matter their superficial advancements, very few focus on the realities of police-work, such as preventive and proactive strategies, much less on efforts at rapport-building – or lack thereof – within the community they protect. Fewer still address blatant acts of police violence and misconduct not as effective tools, but as risky perpetuations of Hobbesian logic where good must vanquish evil by any means necessary. 

However, it is imperative to understand how this rigid binarization circumvents meaningful and nuanced dialogue. By resorting to cursory labels that pit one 'side' against the other – and, indeed, create sides at all – it is dangerously easy to frame entire groups of people, policies, and phenomenon as irrational threats that can only be eradicated by extralegal and increasingly ruthless means (Parenti, 2003). Certainly, recent history has seen the expansion of law enforcement as justification to eradicate a 'newer, deadlier' breed of enemies beyond the scope of conventional legality. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, for instance, former President George W Bush denounced the tragedy as "a new kind of evil" that had to be fought "in the shadows." Constitutional safeguards therefore had to be set aside out of necessity, in order to protect the greater good. The outcome would lead to two wars, increasing governmental opacity, the establishment of the Patriot Act, mass domestic surveillance, and the unspoken sanctioning of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' on terror suspects (Graham, 2004; Nakashima, 2007; Purdum, 2001, p. 1). 

While national security – internal and external – is certainly of prime importance, it is necessary to understand the risks of being engulfed and acclimatized to an atmosphere of terror, through which the media derive profit, politicians push insidious agendas, and financial systems subjugate and surveil public activities. Furthermore, into this commodification and mass consumption of terror, recent trends towards more egregiously aggressive cop shows, and the expansion of police power they reflect, deserve critical focus. In his book, The Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces, Radley Balko remarks that, "No one made a decision to militarize the police in America. The change has come slowly, the result of a generation of politicians and public officials fanning and exploiting public fears by declaring war on abstractions like crime, drug use, and terrorism. The resulting policies have made those war metaphors increasingly real" (2014, p. 42).

To decry the media as the sole instigator of fear-mongering would, of course, be unfair. But nor can it be denied that the media in all its forms plays a pivotal role in reinforcing the black-and-white paradigm of law vs. justice, with the heroes willing to achieve their goals at any cost, be it torture or deception (Rafter, 2006). While such narrative designs can be compellingly escapist and entertaining, they run the risk of becoming so entrenched into the social fabric and psyche as to seem factual. A no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners approach to law enforcement would seem ideal for convicting the indisputably guilty – but the fact of the matter is that the deliberate disregard of procedural law will only undermine the liberty interests of the innocent. Films and television shows that continue to push this agenda merely misrepresent police misconduct as a legitimate validator of heroism, and therefore of goodness. The protagonist is elevated to near-sacrosanct levels for one reason: he will unflinchingly use violence to achieve his ends – not because he disregards the law, but because he has taken it upon himself to uphold justice. Yet regarding the two as mutually exclusive is not only pandering to teleological delusion, but masking the reality of a deeply flawed justice system by redefining criminality as the darkest shade of evil, and police misconduct as the only means to take it down. 

References

Balko, R. (2014). Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. Perseus Books Group.

Barille, L. (1984). “Television and Attitudes About Crime: Do Heavy Views Distort Criminality and Support Retributive Justice?” In Ray Surette (ed.) Justice and the Media: Issues and Research. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas. 

Deflem, M. (2010). Popular Culture, Crime and Social Control. Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Iii. doi:10.1108/s1521-6136(2010)0000014019

Dowler, K., & Zawilski, V. (2007). Public perceptions of police misconduct and discrimination: Examining the impact of media consumption. Journal of Criminal Justice, 35(2), 193-203. doi:10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2007.01.006

Geller, W. A., & Toch, H. (1997). Police violence: understanding and controlling police abuse of force. Choice Reviews Online, 34(08). doi:10.5860/choice.34-4799

Grahan, B (2004). As an issue, war is risky for both sides. Washington Post. Available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1575-2004Oct1.html. Accessed on September 21. 

Greene, J. R. (2006). Encyclopedia of Police Science. doi:10.4324/9780203943175

Hall, S. (1973). Encoding and decoding in the television discourse. Strasbourg: Council of Europe.

Hobson, J. (2008) Digital Whiteness, Primitive Blackness. Feminist Media Studies, 2 (8), 111-126. doi: 10.1080/00220380801980467

Huang, Wilson W.S. & Michael S. Vaughn. (1996). “Support and Confidence: Favorable Attitudes Toward the Police Correlates of Attitudes Toward the Police.” In T.J. Flanagan and D.R. Longmire (eds) Americans View Crime and Justice: A National Public OpinionSurvey. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications. 

Hutchinson, A. C. (2005). Evolution and the common law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Jewkes, Y., & Linnemann, T. (2017). Media and crime in the U.S. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

King, N., Picart, C. S., Jacobsen, M. H., & Greek, C. (2017). Framing Law and Crime: An Interdisciplinary Anthology. Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 46(5), 586-587. doi:10.1177/0094306117725085ff

Kitzinger, J. (2004). Framing abuse: media influence and public understanding of sexual violence against children. London: Pluto Pr.

Lattman, P. (2007). Justice Scalia hearts Jack Bauer. Wall Street Journal. Available at http://blogs/wsj.com/law/2007/06/20/justice-scalia-hearts-jack-bauer/. Accessed on September 21, 2017.

Leitch, T. (2007). Crime films. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lott, M. R. (2006). Police on screen: Hollywood cops, detectives, marshals, and rangers. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.

Mason, P. (2013). Captured by the media: prison discourse in popular culture. London ; New York: Routledge.

Mawby, R.I. (2003) 'Evaluating Justice Practices', in A. Von Hirsch et al (eds) Restorative Justice and Criminal Justice: Competing or Reconcilable Programs? Oxford: Hart Publishing.

Nakashima, E. (2007) A story of surveillance: Former technician 'turning in' AT&T over NSA program. The Washington Post. Available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/07/AR2007110700006.html. Accessed on September 25, 2017. 

Parenti, C. (2003). The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America From Slavery to the War on Terror (Reprint Edition). New York, NY: Perseus Books.

Potter, G. & Kappeler, V. (Eds). (2006). Constructing Crime: Perspective on Making News and Social Problems. Chicago: Waveland Press.

Purdum, T. S. (2001, September 16). Bush Warns of a Wrathful, Shadowy and Inventive War. Retrieved November 10, 2017, from http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/17/us/after-attacks-white-house-bush-warns-wrathful-shadowy-inventive-war.html

Rafter, N. (2006) Shots in the mirror: Crime films and society. New York: Oxford University Press.

Roberts, J. & A. Doob. (1986). “Public Estimates of Recidivism Rates: Consequences of a Criminal Stereotype.” Canadian Journal of Criminology 28:229-241. gy 28:229-241.

Skogan, W. & M. Maxfield. (1981). Coping With Crime. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. 

Surette, R. (1998). Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice: Images and Realities 2nd Edition. New York: Wadsworth Publishing. 

[alexsmitposts]

Will Vladimir Putin Declare Capitalism Dead Too? Is it time for a new Declaration of Independence? If true individual choice and truth are any factor of freedom, the writing is on the wall not just in the United States, but globally. The wealth divide that has grown into an impenetrable wall between the elites and the rest of us, it’s only a symptom of decaying set of ideas that have long since lost their luster. We simply must move on to another plan, a plan devised from innovative thinkers. The Myth of Capitalism I almost dropped my morning coffee when I scanned the headline “Competition Is Dying, and Taking Capitalism With It,” by Bloomberg contributor Jonathan Tepper. I am not sure why the article popped into view almost a year after its publication, but the fact it did gives me new hope. Bloomberg, as we all know, is not exactly the source we look to for anti-elitist info. That said, Tepper’s report is just and spellbinding. The story begins with an excerpt from Tepper’s book, “The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition:”. “We need a revolution to cast off monopolies and restore entrepreneurial freedom.” A “revolution,” the former Lehman Brothers proprietary trading guru says, is the only thing that can save capitalism from certain death. To quote the founder of Variant Perception, a macroeconomic research group: “Rising market power by dominant firms has created less competition, lower investment in the real economy, lower productivity, less economic dynamism with fewer startups, higher prices for dominant firms, lower wages and more wealth inequality. The evidence from economic studies is pouring in like a flood.” This flood threatening to drown free choice and free will, it’s been mounting for years while the misinformed public runs headlong into slavery under the oligopoly. There’s no way to sugarcoat the mess the system has become. In the U.S., where freedom and choice are the building blocks of democracy, everything from beer to airline tickets is run by a very few corporations. Google and Facebook, United Airlines and Budweiser, the list of ruling corporate titans is wide, but not very long. Take social media and the recent censorship of NEO and many other independent media outlets for an example. The Bloomberg warning reveals: “Google completely dominates internet searches with an almost 90 percent market share. Facebook has an almost 80 percent share of social networks. Both have a duopoly in advertising with no credible competition or regulation.” Forget for the moment that these oligopolies are driving the average citizen into the pavement. They also put precious little back into the system that supports their greed. Did you know, for instance, that over $20 trillion dollars in much needed civic funding is hoarded away in tax havens by these corporations? George Monbiot, in a more recent report at The Guardian, declares: “The economic system is incompatible with the survival of life on Earth. It is time to design a new one.” Monbiot’s arguments align perfectly with my own regarding the imminent failure of the capitalist model. Capitalism fails without growth, and since perpetual growth on a finite planet is impossible, capitalism as an idea was ridiculous from the start. The Guardian piece discusses things like extraction zones and disposal zones, and more bits and pieces of the prevailing system. The end of the story is, as Monbiot suggests, “bigger by far than war, famine, pestilence or economic crisis, though it is likely to incorporate all four.” But, what always confounds me is our failure to see the coming disaster. Wealth Distribution Doesn’t Add Up Wealth creation as a notion is probably all wrong, to begin with. Not only is wealth segregation a bad idea, but it’s also doomed to failure as the planet gets smaller and smaller. Economic growth, which is now linked to the increasing use of material resources, has an end game nobody wants to envision. Not only are our oligarchs killing off freedoms, their robbing the planet and future generations of any opportunity for ultimate survival. This is something we have all feared for decades, but something that is at critical mass today. We must find another way. The Guardian story shines a light on a man named Jeremy Lent, who is one of the most brilliant sustainability gurus of today. The former CEO of the internet company NextCard, is also the founder of the non-profit Liology Institute, which is dedicated to a worldview that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably. Lent proposes an ecological society with a value system based on a sense of intrinsic connectedness. Lent’s new value system focuses on quality of life, rather than material possessions. Secondly, the idea that political, social, and economic choices should be shared by all humanity is paramount in this theory. In the end, such a society would be totally environmentally sustainable. Now let’s turn to Russia’s key role in world sustainability. In a report from climate experts Alexander Bedritsky, who is an advisor to Vladimir Putin, the systemic crisis that Russia had gone through in the 1990-s had a dramatic negative impact on economic, environmental and social issues with regard to Russia’s sustainable future. According to plans developed during the Yeltsin years were never implemented in full, and Vladimir Putin has been left with only ink and paper to show for decades of unsolved problems. At the core of Putin’s effort to catch up sustainability wise, were the same precepts as those of Lent and others. Sustainability is about quality of life, the level of economic development, and environmental well-being built into a new system. Unfortunately, what I often refer to as “The Putin Way” was disrupted by guess who? The capitalists, of course. The Putin Plan First, on Putin’s agenda, was the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, without which Russia’s sustainable future would be impossible. From 2002 until the latest west-east divide, a lot of progress was made to transform Russia in this regard. In 1992, for instance, almost 50 million Russians lacked the means to survive. By 2010 the number was reduced to less than 18 million. As of 2018, that number is even lower. Goal 2 of the “Putin Plan” was to achieve universal primary education. In this and other humanitarian instances, Russia is now approaching or at the level of the UK, Sweden, and Japan, and ahead of Germany, Italy, and France. Goal 7 of this plan has been achieving environmental sustainability. It is in this sector Mr. Putin had his biggest hurdle, actually. The report talks about leaving the “legacy of the past” in order to ensure the future of Russia and the world. Unfortunately, the capitalists in the west gauge everything Putin does in terms of growth. And herein lies my point. Mr. Putin’s government tripled spending on environmental protection from 2003 to 2010, but the economic war waged by the capitalists has hampered these efforts. Russia was on track to have a middle class to rival any of the G7 countries. But this effort slowed when NATO slipped up close to the Russian border in 2014. The Sochi Olympics were a showcase of what is possible for the whole of Russia and the world. But the globalists attacked there too. Still, Putin’s way forges a new Russia in spite of criticism from growth capitalists. The New York Times makes fun of innovative plans Putin makes, but growth like that which is destroying the west is not the “Putin Way.” When the world’s most famous newspaper caught up with Mr. Putin’s economy minister, Maksim S. Oreshkin, he set the record straight on Russia’s new path: “We have set very ambitious goals. Economic growth is only one of them. We have set many others that will directly affect the quality of people’s lives.” The biggest problem with the capitalists is the liberal order’s reliance on dead 20th-century Keynesianism. Every expert opinion I read casts dispersion on efforts like the Russians is making, while at the same time using unviable economics as its benchmark. The Nationa Projects Report (Russian) at the forefront of Putin’s latest efforts is made fun up as if Russia’s struggling out of darkness into the light is a joke. Interestingly, what Putin’s Plan looks like is what George Monbiot terms “private sufficiency and public luxury.” In short, society must share luxury while living in sustainable and green privacy. And society will have to use state projects like those Putin proposes to create such a reality. This is not to suggest Vladimir Putin’s new Russia is right over the horizon. The “legacy” of failed communism and Soviet blunders will remain for some years. But the kind of competition that has ruled the world in past decades must be supplanted with a better idea. Russia is pretty far off for ideas like “participatory budgeting” of these projects, but I believe Putin is looking at such innovative ideas. In fact, I know he is, Putin’s government has been running pilot programs along these lines for years now. But, he cannot simply switch on an alternative system, now can he? Don’t take my word, read this interview with Ilya Sokolov, director of the Budget Policy Department at Russia’s Ministry of Finance.

[christheodore]

By Chris Hedges

Donald Trump’s ideological vacuum, the more he is isolated and attacked, is being filled by the Christian right. This Christianized fascism, with its network of megachurches, schools, universities and law schools and its vast radio and television empire, is a potent ally for a beleaguered White House. The Christian right has been organizing and preparing to take power for decades. If the nation suffers another economic collapse, which is probably inevitable, another catastrophic domestic terrorist attack or a new war, President Trump’s ability to force the Christian right’s agenda on the public and shut down dissent will be dramatically enhanced. In the presidential election, Trump had

81 percent of white evangelicals behind him.

Trump’s moves to restrict abortion, defund Planned Parenthood, permit discrimination against LGBT people in the name of “religious liberty” and allow churches to become active in politics by gutting the Johnson Amendment, along with his nominations of judges championed by the Federalist Society and his call for a ban on Muslim immigrants, have endeared him to the Christian right. He has rolled back civil rights legislation and business and environmental regulations. He has elevated several stalwarts of the Christian right into power—Mike Pence to the vice presidency, Jeff Sessions to the Justice Department, Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Betsy DeVos to the Department of Education, Tom Price to Health and Human Services and Ben Carson to Housing and Urban Development. He embraces the white supremacy, bigotry, American chauvinism, greed, religious intolerance, anger and racism that define the Christian right.

Click here for a 2007 video of Chris Hedges speaking about his book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.”

More important, Trump’s disdain for facts and his penchant for magical thinking and conspiracy theories mesh well with the worldview of the Christian right, which sees itself as under attack by the satanic forces of secular humanism embodied in the media, academia, the liberal establishment, Hollywood and the Democratic Party. In this worldview, climate change is not real, Barack Obama is a Muslim and millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election.

The followers of the Christian right, like Trump and his brain trust, including Stephen Bannon, are Manicheans. They see the world in black and white, good and evil, them and us. Trump’s call in his speech in Poland for a crusade against the godless hoards of Muslims fleeing from the wars and chaos we created replicates the view of the Christian right. Christian right leaders in a sign of support went to the White House on July 10 to pray over Trump. Two days later Pat Robertson showed up there to interview the president for his Christian Broadcasting Network.

If the alliance between these zealots and the government succeeds, it will snuff out the last vestiges of American democracy.

On the surface it appears to be incongruous that the Christian right would rally behind a slick New York real estate developer who is a very public serial philanderer and adulterer, has no regard for the truth, is consumed by greed, does not appear to read or know the Bible, routinely defrauds and cheats his investors and contractors, expresses a crude misogyny and an even cruder narcissism and appears to yearn for despotism. In fact, these are the very characteristics that define most of the leaders of the Christian right. Trump has preyed on desperate people through the thousands of slot machines in his casinos, his sham university and his real estate deals. Megachurch pastors prey on their followers by extracting “seed offerings,” “love gifts,” tithes and donations and by selling miracle healings along with “prayer clothes,” self-help books, audio and video recordings and even protein shakes. Pastors have established within their megachurches, as Trump did in his businesses, despotic fiefdoms. They cannot be challenged or questioned any more than an omnipotent Trump could be challenged on the reality television show “The Apprentice.” And they seek to replicate their little tyrannies on a national scale, with white men in charge.

The personal piety of most of the ministers who lead the Christian right is a facade. Their private lives are usually marked by hedonistic squalor that includes mansions, private jets, limousines, retinues of bodyguards, personal assistants and servants, shopping sprees, lavish vacations and sexual escapades that rival those carried out by Trump. And because they run “churches,” in many cases church funds pay for their tax-free empires, including their extravagant lifestyles. They also engage in the nepotism found in the Trump organization, elevating family members to prominent or highly paid positions and passing on the businesses to their children.

The Christian right’s scandals, which give a glimpse into the sordid lives of these multimillionaire pastors, are legion. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Praise the Lord Club, for example, raked in as much as $1 million a week before Jim Bakker went to prison for nearly five years. He was convicted of fraud and other charges in 1989 because of a $158 million scheme in which followers paid for vacations that never materialized. As the Bakker empire came apart, there also were accusations of drug use and rape. Tammy Faye died in 2007, and now Jim Bakker is back, peddling survival food for the end days and telling his significantly reduced television audience that anyone who opposes Trump is the Antichrist.Paul and Jan Crouch, who gave the Bakkers their start, founded Trinity Broadcasting, the world’s largest televangelist network, now run by their son Matt and his wife, Laurie. Viewers were encouraged to call prayer counselors at the toll-free number shown at the bottom of the TV screen. It was a short step from talking with a prayer counselor to making a “love gift” and becoming a “partner” in Trinity Broadcasting and then sending in more money during one of the frequent Praise-a-Thons.

The Crouches reveled in tasteless kitsch, as does Trump. They sat during their popular nightly program in front of stained glass windows that overlooked Louis XVI-inspired sets awash in gold rococo and red velvet, glittering chandeliers and a gold-painted piano. The network emblem, which Paul Crouch wore on the pocket of his blue double-breasted blazer, featured a crown, a lion, a horse, a white dove, a cross and Latin phrases among other elements. The Crouches would have been at home in Trump Tower, where the president has a faux “Trump crest”—allegedly plagiarized—and has decorated his penthouse as if it was part of Versailles.

The Crouches were masters of manipulation. They exhorted viewers to send in checks for $1,000, even if they could not afford it. Write the check anyway, Paul Crouch, who died in 2013, told them, as a “step of faith” and the Lord would repay them many times over. “Do you think God would have any trouble getting $1,000 extra to you somehow?” he asked during one Praise-a-Thon broadcast. Viewers, many of whom struggled with deep despair and believed that miracles and magic alone held them back from the abyss, often found it impossible to resist this emotional pressure.

Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) is home to many of the worst charlatans in the Christian right, including the popular healer Benny Hinn, who says that Adam was a superhero who could fly to the moon and claims that one day the dead will be raised by watching TBN from inside their coffins. Hinn claims his “anointings” have cured cancer, AIDS, deafness, blindness and numerous other ailments and physical injuries. Those who have not been cured, he says, did not send in enough money.

These religious hucksters are some of the most accomplished con artists in the country, a trait they share with the current occupant of the Oval Office.

I wrote a book on the Christian right in 2007 called “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” I did not use the word “fascist” lightly. I spent several hours, at the end of two years of reporting, with two of the country’s foremost scholars on fascism—Fritz Stern and Robert O. Paxton. Did this ideology fit the parameters of classical fascism? Was it virulent enough and organized enough to seize power? Would it go to the ruthless extremes of previous fascist movements to persecute and silence dissent? Has our deindustrialized society replicated the crippling despair, alienation and rage that always feed fascist movements?

The evangelicalism promoted by the Christian right is very different from the evangelicalism and fundamentalism of a century ago. The emphasis on personal piety that defined the old movement, the call to avoid the contamination of politics, has been replaced by Christian Reconstructionism, called Dominionism by some. This new ideology is about taking control of all institutions, including the government, to build a “Christian” nation. Rousas John Rushdoony in his 1973 book, “The Institutes of Biblical Law,” first articulated it. Rushdoony argued that God gives the elect, just as he gave Adam and Noah, dominion over the earth to build a Christian society. Their state will come about with the physical eradication of the forces of Satan. It is the duty of the church and the elect to “rescue” the world so Christ can return.

This is an ideology of death. It promises that the secular, humanist society will be physically destroyed. The Ten Commandments will form the basis of our legal system. Creationism or “Intelligent Design” will be taught in public schools. People who are considered social deviants, including homosexuals, immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims, criminals and those dismissed as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace the Christian right’s perverted and heretical interpretation of the Bible—will be silenced, imprisoned or killed. The role of the federal government will be reduced to protecting property rights, “homeland” security and waging war. Church organizations will be funded and empowered by the government to run social-welfare agencies. The poor, condemned for sloth, indolence and sinfulness, will be denied government assistance. The death penalty will be expanded to include “moral crimes,” including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy and witchcraft, as well as abortion, which will be treated as murder. Women will be subordinate to men. Those who practice other faiths will become, at best, second-class citizens and eventually outcasts. The wars in the Middle East will be defined as religious crusades against Muslims. There will be no separation of church and state. The only legitimate voices will be “Christian.” America will become an agent of God. Those who defy the “Christian” authorities will be branded as agents of Satan.

Tens of millions of Americans are already hermetically sealed within this bizarre worldview. They are given a steady diet of conspiracy theories and lies on the internet, in their churches, in Christian schools and colleges and on Christian television and radio. Elizabeth Dilling, who wrote “The Red Network” and was a Nazi sympathizer, is required reading. Thomas Jefferson, who favored separation of church and state, is ignored. This Christian propaganda hails the “significant contributions” of the Confederacy. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led the anti-communist witch hunts in the 1950s, is rehabilitated as an American hero. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, along with the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, is defined as part of the worldwide battle against satanic Islamic terror. Presently, nearly 40 percent of the U.S. public believes in Creationism or “Intelligent Design.” And nearly a third of the population, 94 million people, consider themselves evangelical.Those who remain in a reality-based universe often dismiss these malcontents as buffoons. They do not take seriously the huge segment of the public, mostly white and working class, who because of economic distress have primal yearnings for vengeance, new glory and moral renewal and are easily seduced by magical thinking. These are the yearnings and emotions Trump has exploited politically.

Those who embrace this movement need to feel, even if they are not, that they are victims surrounded by dark and sinister groups bent on their destruction. They need to elevate themselves to the role of holy warriors, infused with a noble calling and purpose. They need to sanctify the rage and hypermasculinity that are the core of fascism. The rigidity and simplicity of their belief, which includes being anointed for a special purpose in life by God, are potent weapons in the fight against their own demons and desire for meaning.

“Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty,” Simone Weil wrote.

These believers, like all fascists, detest the reality-based world. They condemn it as contaminated, decayed and immoral. This world took their jobs. It destroyed their future. It ruined their communities. It doomed their children. It flooded their lives with alcohol, opioids, pornography, sexual abuse, jail sentences, domestic violence, deprivation and despair. And then, from the depths of suicidal despair, they suddenly discovered that God has a plan for them. God will save them. God will intervene in their lives to promote and protect them. God has called them to carry out his holy mission in the world and to be rich, powerful and happy.

The rational, secular forces, those that speak in the language of fact and evidence, are hated and feared, for they seek to pull believers back into “the culture of death” that nearly destroyed them. The magical belief system, as it was for impoverished German workers who flocked to the Nazi Party, is an emotional life raft. It is all that supports them. The only way to blunt this movement is to reintegrate these people into the economy, to give them economic stability through good wages and benefits, to restore their self-esteem. They need to live in a society that is not predatory but instead provides well-funded public schools, free university education and universal health care, a society in which they and their families can prosper.

Let us not stand at the open gates of the city waiting passively for the barbarians. They are coming. They are slouching towards Bethlehem. Let us shake off our complacency and cynicism. Let us openly defy the liberal establishment, which will not save us, to demand and fight for economic reparations for the poor and the working class. Let us give all Americans a reality-based hope for the future. Time is running out. If we do not act, American fascists, clutching Christian crosses, waving American flags and orchestrating mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance, united behind the ludicrous figure of Donald Trump, will ride this rage to power.

[stretchjournalemerson]

Everything is Politics: The Role of the Essay and the Democratization of Media

By Eitan Miller and Kathleen Grillo Hilton Als, author of The Best American Essays, opens up a conversation about stories from magazines, journals, and websites. In his introduction he says, “But the essays of the future start with questions, generally political in nature, and if you don’t think so, think again” (Als xxviii). The term “political” is a broad one. While obviously some essays discuss overtly political issues, we believe that Als is describing a greater phenomenon. “Politics” shape a person’s life and the questions they ask. Als writes that essays are “generally political,” but beyond that, all essays have some basis in politics.

Apart from the simple partisanship of left vs. right, politics is the basis for life in any society. The way that society is governed and its freedoms or restrictions create individuals’ identity and shape their being. The political background of a given country shapes the writing an individual can create. In her essay From Silence to Words, Min-Zhan Lu describes her complex relationship with writing, language, and identity given her experiences in communist China and learning English. Lu directly analyzes how the politics of her country shaped her writing and thinking. She uses language, a key factor in anyone’s life, to exemplify the split world she lived in. The politics of the world she grew up in directly affected her everyday life as a child and what she wrote as an adult. This revelation affects all of us, not just those who grew up in communist China. American “democracy” shapes our lives in more ways than we could possibly know and creates the foundation on which our writing stands.

Hilton Als’s essay was possible solely because of the politics surrounding his life. As Als grew, he utilized experiences from his childhood when writing books that started a conversation about societal issues such as gender, race, sexuality, and identity. This essentially made his books contact zones where he brought issues to light in order to educate and inform those unaware of their position within those issues. As Pratt defines it, a contact zone is a “social space[ ] where cultures meet, clash, and grapple” (Pratt 34). The politics of Als’ life, defined as the way his mind was formed by the governmental structures and influences he grew up with, shaped what he wrote. As with Lu, who talked about language, a large part of what she thought about language came from the politics of her country. Als was born into a country that shunned him for his race, his sexuality, and his size. And so, the essays Als wrote focused on these issues. All writers, whether they write academically or personally, touch on subjects that matter to them and that they have encountered at some point in their life. Where they grow up, who they grow up with, and what ideals they grow up with shape what writers want to speak about. Famous essayist Joan Didion is known for her narrative memoir-style essays and novels. She wrote about various topics that impacted her life, as all authors do. Her life, as described in Goodbye to All That, includes moving halfway across the world by herself to becoming one of the top journalists in her field. This is undoubtedly linked to the politics of her society. Although implicitly, Didion wrote about feminism as Lu wrote about language and Als wrote about racism. They grew up in different circumstances, different times and places, and this is reflected in their essays. The politics of their life, whatever they may look like, continued to influence their work well into adulthood.

Like the other authors, Noam Chomsky was greatly influenced by the politics of his life. In a biography, Christian Garland describes Chomsky: “Chomsky continues to be an unapologetic critic of both American foreign policy and its ambitions for geopolitical hegemony and the neoliberal turn of global capitalism, which he identifies in terms of class warfare waged from above against the needs and interests of the great majority” (Garland). However, Chomsky’s primary work is as a linguist. Furthermore, his essay Prospects for Survival describes the limited chance that the human race will survive for an extended period of time. On the surface, this is a scientific and logical argument given the history of other species, but Chomsky describes the role of politics in the imminent destruction of the human race. He writes about nuclear war and climate change, both political issues, as shaping the human experience or eventually lack thereof. His experiences, as shaped by US politics and the political linguistic dominance of the English language, shaped his ideas, prompting his various essays.

Clearly, essays, while diverse in content, all ask questions and are based in politics. But, there are many ways that discussion can be staged. A relatively recent development is the “video essay,” a form where the creator can present an amalgamation of pictures and videos with a narrated analysis that is generally targeted towards a YouTube audience. This medium is particularly effective when discussing visual matters such as TV and movies because the viewer can witness the pertinent content. In the TED Talk below, a YouTuber who goes by the alias of “Nerdwriter” describes how video essays impacted the genre of the modern essay. Watch specifically from 5:05 to 7:26, though the entire talk is fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ald6Lc5TSk8

Evan Puschak (Nerdwriter) touches on the fact that video essays, in addition to being a convenient method of intertwining various types of media, are far more democratic than “traditional” forms of the essay. Platforms like YouTube allow users to reward and share good content, making information and analysis accessible to all people with Internet access. This democratization of the essay in its various forms is an important development, arguably the most important development of the modern essay. Even other forms of digitally shared essays share this democratization, taking power away from a “moderator” and putting it in the hands of the people. Accessibility is key to any successful essay because essays are meant to be read.

In his book The Best American Essays, Als writes, “Of course [the essays will] be made up of many things including questions, images, and gestures” (Als xxviii). The essay itself is hard to define. From the point of view of a high schooler taking AP courses, the essay consists of five straightforward paragraphs. However, the essay has many different forms. Academic essays written by the authors of this piece include How the Korean Wave Is Crashing Over America by Kathleen Grillo to Alternative Oppression: A Look at the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict by Eitan Miller. These works look at a variety of social and political issues such as race and religion through the lens of media, and are very clearly “political.” On the other hand, essays like those styled after the works of Joan Didion and the authors of this piece have a more narrative style. It may appear that these “essays” are contrary to the definition provided by Als. Didion, as well as our essays styled after her, is not outrightly political. However, they both still find a basis in politics. Didion’s works bring in issues of feminism and the effects a particular geographic location has on a person. Issues of equality and how society is constructed are based in the politics behind the author's life. Would Didion’s essays be the same if she grew up in a communist country? The essays we wrote in her style, though independent, both describe the transition from high school to college. For each of us, we find ourselves thriving in college more  than high school. And although not directly stated in either essay, it asks the questions: Why are colleges, especially high tuition institutions, better for individual growth than high school? What is the effect of education on a person’s life? How do money and the government play into the education a person receives?

Clearly, politics shape society, society shapes the self, and the self expresses ideas through writing. Logically, essays have to be based in politics. Authors are raised with implicit biases that come from the people that surround them, including the politics of the world they grow up in. And when authors write, they carry those biases within their writing. Even if they’re not choosing a side overtly, what they choose to write about is a bias in itself. Als used the stereotypes and prejudices he faced growing up in his writing. Lu struggled with a family life and country that was split, and reflected her struggles through language. Didion discussed the challenges she met as a woman moving from home and back. All authors were born into a certain political circumstance. And, while politics is most commonly viewed in direct relation to the government of a country, the power of politics is so broad that it seeps into everything. Even our most basic thoughts are founded with a certain political ideology. Because of this, it is impossible to say that essays are not based in politics. So what is written, no matter who writes it, when they write it, or where they write it, all comes down to politics.

Works Cited

Als, Hilton. The Best American Essays 2018. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.

Brockes, Emma. “Hilton Als: 'I Had This Terrible Need to Confess, and I Still Do It. It's a Bid to Be Loved'.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 2 Feb. 2018,

Chomsky, Noam.  “Prospects for Survival.”  The Massachusetts Review, 2017, pp. 621-634. www.massreview.org/sites/default/files/06_58.4Chomsky.pdf.

Didion, Joan. Slouching towards Bethlehem: Essays. Picador Modern Classics, 2017.

Garland, Christian. “Noam Chomsky.” The Decline of the Democratic Ideal, chomsky.info/2009____-2/.

Grillo, Kathleen. How the Korean Wave Is Crashing Over America, Intro to College Writing WR-101-13, Emerson College, 21 Nov. 2018.

Lu, Min-Zhan. "From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle." 1987. College English 49(4): 437-448.

Miller, Eitan. Alternative Oppression: A Look at the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, Intro to CollegeWriting WR-101-13, Emerson College, 21 Nov. 2018.

Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession 1991. New York: Modern Language Association P, 1991: 33-40.

Puschak, Evan. “How YouTube Changed the Essay.” TEDxTalks, uploaded 9 Jun. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ald6Lc5TSk8.

[enst1000blog]

What Will it Take to Live Sustainably?

One of the central concepts in environmental studies is sustainability. Sustainability is the ability of the earth’s systems and human systems to maintain their health in the long-term, even in the face of a changing environment. This concept has come to the forefront of scientific, political, and social conversations in recent years due to its essential role in climate change issues. If we wish to effect real change for good within the environment, then we must look to sustainability, its principles, and its key components.

Sustainability has three principles, including reliance on solar energy, biodiversity, and chemical or nutrient cycling. Reliance on solar energy refers to the power of the sun to support photosynthesis, renewable energy, and the earth at large. The sun provides warmth for the planet and sunlight for plants to photosynthesize. Recently, the sun’s energy has been harnessed in various forms of renewable energy including solar panels, wind power, and hydropower. The second principle of biodiversity signifies the vast array of different species, systems, and services that exist on the earth. Without this diversity, life would not have been able to survive the various environmental changes that have occurred. Lastly, chemical or nutrient cycling is the movement of chemicals and nutrients throughout the environment. These chemicals and nutrients are not replenished, and so they move through the ecosystem in a cycle so they can be reused for essential processes within organisms and the earth itself.

In addition to these principles, an understanding of the concept of sustainability requires an understanding of its key components. These include natural capital, natural resources, and natural services. Natural capital entails both natural resources and natural services in their capacities to support human life. Many human activities reduce the natural capital that the earth provides, in turn reducing the capacity of the earth to support future human activities. As Miller and Spoolman write in Living in the Environment, we must “protect [our] capital and live on the income it provides” (Miller and Spoolman, 2012). The natural capital provided by the earth provides a natural income through renewable resources and natural services. In order to live sustainably, we must preserve the natural capital or there will be no natural income with which to support human activities.

Natural capital and income are derived from the earth’s natural resources and services. Both of these have become increasingly threatened in recent decades due to human activity. Natural resources entail anything that can be acquired from the environment to provide for our life. This includes energy resources, mineral resources, and organic resources. Energy and mineral resources are nonrenewable resources, which means that they only exist in a certain amount and are only renewed after millions to billions of years. Due to overuse of nonrenewable resources like oil, coal, and aluminum we have had to look for new ways to preserve or replace these resources. Reusing and recycling are two ways we can preserve some nonrenewable inorganic resources. We can replace nonrenewable energy resources by creating new ways to harness renewable energy resources like solar energy and hydropower. By working to both preserve and replace nonrenewable resources with renewable ones, humans can live more sustainably.

Natural services is another element of the environment that has become threatened by human activities. Natural services refer to the natural processes of the earth that allow organic life to exist. These services include the cleaning of air and water as well as the renewal of topsoil. While these processes are supposed to counteract pollution and the depletion of minerals, the overuse of agricultural land and the creation of excess pollution by humans has made it impossible for the earth to keep up. Industrial activity, mining, overuse of agricultural land, and deforestation stemming from overpopulation and economic development threaten the earth’s natural resources and services, and therefore its natural capital.

In order to protect the natural capital of the earth, change much occur. This change can start at the individual level. An ecological footprint signifies the amount of land and water necessary to support a person, country, or area. As Miller and Spoolman note, “In 2003, the U.S. per capita ecological footprint was 4.5 times the average global footprint per person” (Miller and Spoolman, 2012). The ecological footprints of developed nations are far above what the earth can support. As the rest of the world begins to develop as well, the global ecological footprint will only increase, adding to the depletion of natural resources, services, and capital. If people work within their own homes and communities to reduce their ecological footprints, change can be effected. As shown by the success of grassroots movements, even change on a home and community level can make a difference.

My own ecological footprint is estimated to require 1.4 earths, meaning that if everyone lived like me 1.4 earths would be required to support the needs and wants of the world’s population. While this is apparently a fairly low ecological footprint compared to the footprint of the average American, I am still troubled to see that my lifestyle is not very sustainable. However, within a developed nation, it is not uncommon to have a large ecological footprint. Within a culture of consumerism and convenience, it is unsurprising that we live wasteful lives. It is nearly impossible to live sustainably in a developed nation, despite the affluence found throughout these countries. We call it modernization when traditional countries change to become more like Western countries. We promote modernization as something beneficial and revolutionary, but the “modernized” nations are creating the most harmful effects on our earth. Does “modern” mean wasteful and destructive? If so, we can no longer promote modernization, but must instead move towards a new revolution, what Miller and Spoolman refer to as the sustainability revolution.

While sustainability and environmental science have come to the forefront in recent years, there are many different perspectives on the issues involved. These differing perspectives come from conflicting worldviews: the planetary management worldview, the stewardship worldview, and the environmental wisdom worldview. The planetary management worldview views humans as separate from nature and places us in charge of the earth, which we can use for our benefit. The stewardship worldview sees humans as ethical caretakers of the earth, who should work to preserve the health of the earth while using it for our benefit. The environmental wisdom worldview, which I subscribe to, holds that humans are only one of many species that depend on the earth and that we must live sustainably in order to succeed.

Personally, I subscribe to this worldview because I do not believe that humans are superior to any other species. In fact, humans have created the most destruction ever caused by a single species. Many believe that humans are superior due to our brain capacity and technological advances. However, as Miller and Spoolman write, “many argue that a species in the process of degrading its own life-support system could not be considered wise” (Miller and Spoolman, 2012). We have been given clear warnings from over 1,700 of the world’s leading scientists beginning as early as 1992 when they wrote: “We must recognize the earth's limited capacity to provide for us. We must recognize its fragility. We must no longer allow it to be ravaged” (UCS). The Millenium Ecosystem Assessment found that about 60% of the ecosystems observed were being used unsustainably and that the degradation occurring to these ecosystems could be creating changes that could have serious consequences for human life and the planet. I believe that our lack of action in the face of these warnings is unforgivable, and shows that we as a species are in no way superior. Who will care about the marvels humans have created if we destroy the planet that allows us to exist, and every sign of life along with it?

Unfortunately, due to our lack of action in the face of powerful evidence, I think it will take environmental destruction on a catastrophic scale in order to mobilize us into creating any real movement towards a seriously sustainable future. It is expected in the next several decades that rising sea levels could flood low-lying lands and population growth will threaten our ability to provide for all of society. Despite the evidence that countries with large populations are struggling to provide for their citizens and that global flooding is increasing, little has been done. It seems to me that the only way in which corporate and political leaders will be motivated to take serious action towards a sustainability revolution is if they are faced with environmental destruction the likes of which have never been seen before.

Word count: 1,441

Questions: 

Do you think that humans have greater or lesser moral significance than animals? If yes, is this conditional? Does it depend on the animal under consideration?

Do you think it would be possible to return to a more natural, less developed lifestyle in the face of the push for development and modernization?

Do you think the sustainability problems created by developed nations are greater or lesser than the human rights issues found within undeveloped nations?

Sources: 

Miller, G., and Scott Spoolman. Living in the Environment. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, 2012.

“Ecosystems and Human Well-Being.” 2005. UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. United Nations. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzKbjVLpnX0RdjJJVzQ3Ymszczg/view

"1992 World Scientists' Warning to Humanity." Union of Concerned Scientists. Accessed January 17, 2019. https://www.ucsusa.org/about/1992-world-scientists.html#.XECOzy2ZPOQ.

Image sources: 

https://environmentalpolicylizbethsanchez.wordpress.com/page/2/

https://www.footprintnetwork.org/resources/footprint-calculator/

https://krobinsonphil4302.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/environmental-worldviews-and-ethics-blog-3/