#you encourage a right wing government to take root there | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

probablyasocialecologist · 11 months ago

Text

Far-right politicians with an explicit history of antisemitism, such as Marine Le Pen, have been praised in recent months for their support of Israel and virulently anti-Muslim sentiment. On November 15th, Elon Musk tweeted out his support for the “great replacement theory”—the idea that Jewish people are engineering white genocide—leading to condemnations from the White House, and from X advertisers such as Apple and Disney. On November 17th, Musk announced an X ban on pro-Palestinian phrases like “from the river to the sea,” which he characterized as antisemitic hate speech. Minutes after the announcement, Jonathan Greenblatt, Director of the ADL, logged on to express his gratitude to Musk, writing: “I appreciate this leadership in fighting hate.” In a recent article for the far-right Washington Free Beacon, provocatively titled “What Makes Hamas Worse Than the Nazis,” bestselling British historian Andrew Roberts mounts a rousing defense of Nazism, ostensibly in the name of condemning antisemitism. Although the Nazi government began systematically murdering disabled and queer people even before the start of the war, Roberts insists that their operations were incidentally rather than deliberately sadistic, and that the majority of German people during the war opposed mass murder. If his aim is clearly to demonize the cause of Palestinian liberation as a whole, his exoneration of European fascism as “just following orders” is no less central of a claim. By conflating “antisemitism,” “genocide,” and even “Nazism” with Palestine, Hamas, and Islam as a whole, this kind of historical revisionism works to redeem the European far-right as inherently civilized even in its most barbaric actions. Any attempt to adopt a more humanist perspective, to take a longer or wider lens on the annihilation of Europe’s Jewish communities, or to relate their struggles and suffering to the struggles and suffering of others would appear to betray the ethos of post-Holocaust Jewishness. Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon both famously argued that the extreme state violence of fascism and the Holocaust was an imperialist backlash, the excesses of colonial violence returning home, only shocking in that it took place on European soil. In his introduction to Modernity and the Holocaust, Zygmunt Bauman describes the insistence on the uniqueness of the Holocaust as a form of historical decontextualization. Or, more plainly, as a refusal to engage in collective self-reflection. “One way is to present the Holocaust as something that happened to the Jews; as an event in Jewish history. This makes the Holocaust unique, comfortably uncharacteristic and sociologically inconsequential.” Bauman asserts that the underlying rationale for this circular logic, by which abstracted antisemitism is both sole cause and sole effect of the Holocaust, is collective exoneration. It works as a shield for modern European civilization, capable of outliving such atrocities.

[...]

It is not incidental then that, in line with right-wing ideological programs, the mainstream current of Holocaust narratives primarily encourage identification with the perpetrators rather than with the victims. They are propelled by the cause of personal enlightenment, encouraging the reader to look within for evil and to root it out rather than ever looking outward at the world surrounding them. Evil, this version of history would have you believe, is a personal problem and not a systemic one. It can crystallize through a mysterious process into mass evil, a spiritual rot. This gives it a kind of mystical aspect. It is easier from this perspective to believe in the innate evil of some, in the innate goodness of others. This moral binary is frequently mobilized in defense of violence and injustice. In a deleted tweet, Netanyahu called Israel’s ongoing genocidal attack on Gaza “a war between the children of light and the children of darkness.” In a December 2023 speech, Joe Biden reaffirmed his condemnation of Hamas, which he implicitly collapsed into a condemnation of Palestinians as a whole, calling them “a brutal, ugly, inhumane people, and they have to be eliminated.” Both were invoking this moral binary, the deformed vocabulary of white supremacy and colonialism. For if the world is made up of people who are “good” and “bad,” “civilized” and “barbaric,” rather than of societies shaped by ideologies, then it is possible to characterize an entire group of people as evil, to dehumanize them, to declare them guilty all the way down to their newborn babies, to justify their mass murder. In broader terms, this is a totalizing story about history; one in which the European perpetrators of wars of aggression, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, can redeem themselves by retelling their crimes but this time as witnesses to horror rather than as active participants. They can atone and wash away the sin of what they have done by giving it a narrative structure with an ending and a moral lesson, one in which the Holocaust finds its silver lining in the creation of the state of Israel, one in which Europe becomes civilized again, one in which blame is shifted from Germany to Palestine, and from fascists to anti-fascists.

#israel #holocaust #genocide #antisemitism

87 notes · View notes

almaqead · 19 days ago

Text

"The Nazir." From Surah 31, Luqman, "The Walkman."

There is a phrase scattered throughout the Quran "over all things Allah is competent." This phrase is directly translated from the Quran, often appearing in verses like Surah Al-Ankabut (29:20) where it says,

"Say, [O Muhammad], 'Travel through the land and observe how He began creation. Then Allah will produce the final creation. Indeed Allah, over all things, is competent.'".

If we were living in different times we would say the final creation is the Kingdom of Israel but in this time it is the Kingdom of Syria, which in Arabic means malakat suria, "the realm of the Sharia," the source of the Waterfall. Sharia is the water source we call Mo, the beauty of a life lived according to the principles of Allah.

Kingdom building is Allah's specialty. Throughout the Quran He tells the Angel to instruct Muhammad how to govern large numbers of people, animals, even the elements without a single hassle.

The Surah we are reading is a crash course in this which focuses on what is called a Luqman, a noble prince who aspires to walk in the Prophet's ways. The Surah says this path, process and person, this winged man leads to the onset of the Masjid, signified by the mention of donkeys, its mascot. When donkeys bray they are calling the Luqman to bring the refuge of the Masjid to man:

31: 16-19:

˹Luqmân added,˺ “O my dear son! ˹Even˺ if a deed were the weight of a mustard seed—be it ˹hidden˺ in a rock or in the heavens or the earth—Allah will bring it forth. Surely Allah is Most Subtle, All-Aware.

“O my dear son! Establish prayer, encourage what is good and forbid what is evil, and endure patiently whatever befalls you. Surely this is a resolve to aspire to.

“And do not turn your nose up to people, nor walk pridefully upon the earth. Surely Allah does not like whoever is arrogant, boastful.

Be moderate in your pace. And lower your voice, for the ugliest of all voices is certainly the braying of donkeys.”

Commentary:

Hidden in a rock is Syria's next king. Even his first choices will shake the foundation of the planet earth. The Quran advises him to establish prayer as the first step.

The reason is persons who understand how to pray are those who are willing to believe in the dictates of the Quran are God given. Cnildren need to see whether or not adults believe.

This does not mean we want the Nazir to bury his face in the dust and cry out to Allah in public. The word for prayer in Arabic is Salat, meaning "the hole." This means the Nazir must retire and study until he is able to tell the people about his vision for the future of the state.

This must well articulated, sufficiently that all he discovers during his contemplation is meet and proper to do as the legislature will need to determine how to legalize it. The Prince can go into the hole, but the people cannot go into the hole. If he does it right, then the world will experience Mo.

The current constitution establishes "there shall be no prejudice to public order". Minor modifications could permit the ascension of a Nazir and eventually a king equipped with privilges, including those to mint money and establish Salat for the future benefit of the people.

National visions take decades to fulfill, requiring many generations of progress. Only a lifetime appointee like a Nazir or a King will be able to maintain the course and heading needed for a place like Syria. As we are seeing in America, the second a progressive vision takes root a psychopath comes along and uproots it. Now that God has given its people another turn, Syria must not fall prey to anything but a visionary whom God will accompany lifelong.

As with all of the Quran Allah's advice cannot be dismissed. Here He says a man with superior instincts will automatically acquire all the power He needs to fufill the Quran pave the way for the rest.

0 notes

loki-core-the-variant · 2 months ago

Text

I disagree with both of them, honestly.

Tl,dr: vote Harris because most of you missed your chance to be usefully politically active in meatspace already, and you have slightly more chance of survival under the Dems as a dissident of an overpowered military empire that at least pays lip service to democracy and the rule of law.

Voting third party is a sign of failing to understand the futility of change through that option, and it is almost certain to lead to a violent Trump dictatorship with the full power of the US military and militarized police behind it.

Voting Harris for the collective good is a sign of failing to understand how little she cares about either Palestinian or domestic marginalized lives. In addition to demonstrably *not* working toward a ceasefire, despite her words, Harris has also refused to verbalize, when pressed, whether she will protect queer people from state-based oppression if elected. This means no. Biden did not take any meaningful action following the repeal of Roe vs Wade. Biden and Harris both have a shocking record of supporting violent policing and border policies. The Dems are completely comfortable courting right-wing voters, and are utterly corrupt- and they have no real incentive not to be.

I have been saying for what feels like an eternity now, that actively protesting violent Dem policies and making *them* feel that your vote is conditional (however futile that feels in the face of corporate and foreign influence) BUT still voting for Harris, is absolutely necessary, while forming networks of solidarity against oppression, rather than splitting the vote and encouraging others to do the same. Because it will guarantee a Third Reich-like situation if Trump wins. Are you willing to stand up to the most militarized government on earth as a civilian? Under capital F fascism? This isn't a thought experiment. This is real people's immediate futures, including yours.

All the misplaced efforts of liberal voting activism could be going toward actual protest, direct support for the marginalized, including mutual aid, and solidarity-building. Publicly demonstrating to the Dems what kind of society is desired. After they're comfortably elected, it's too late, if there was any hope of changing them to begin with.

It's too late to start now, anyway, if you haven't done any of this work on slowing the rightward Democrat ratchet effect in action. There's always time for more grass-roots solidarity though. Don't make your only activism this year be electing an openly-declared fascist by default.

#slacktivism #solidarity #actually do the work #protest your representatives #do more than vote #material solidarity #show up #organize #liberals #direct action #vote democrat

16K notes · View notes

sublimeobservationarcade · 1 year ago

Text

The Politics Of Grievance

America is the great democratic experiment. Although, this is getting on for some 250 years now. This nation is in the grip of the politics of grievance. Partisan politics in America is more about hating the other side than particularly loving the side you are voting for. Americans have been encouraged to focus their attention upon their grievances via decades of negative campaigning and attack ads. Demonizing ‘the other’ is the favoured political pastime in the 21C. Identity politics and social values are the main game these days. Economic issues are now seen through this ideological filter. Photo by Sharefaith on Pexels.com

Murdoch, Fox News & Stirring Grievance In America

Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News are merchants of toxic polarization. This network is spewing out lies and fake news 24/7. Every presentation is top heavy in anti-woke content and a right wing bias. Regular viewers are sucked into a spin cycle of libertarian anti-government GOP grievance stoking. Old white men upset at their changing worlds, where heaven forbid minorities are now getting a say. OMG the sky is going to fall in. In this partisan realm complaints about there being too many coloured faces on TV and LGBTQIA folk making too much noise are legion. Uppity women talking about sexual harassment and such like make their viewer’s blood boil – which is the whole idea for Fox. Getting their audience riled up keeps eyeballs on them and advertising rates going up for their revenue.

Popularizing Poisonous Issues For Political Gain

The politics of grievance is all about popularizing these causes for the benefit of candidates and the party. The party promoting these grievances doesn’t need positive policies. They just bang on about how the other side is to blame for the problem. Lefty liberals causing the decay of civilization through their participation in promoting diversity. Homophobes and white supremacists can get on board on this basis. Anti-immigration is a perennial grievance for authoritarian parties to champion. Dog whistling about these foreigners taking American jobs and bringing filth and crime to the neighbourhood. All this stuff is complete BS, of course. America is built on immigration and it has positively contributed to the ongoing growth and success of the nation for centuries. U.S. President Donald Trump at the 101st by U.S. Department of Agriculture is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0 Digging Up Discontent & Blaming The Other A goodly portion of Americans are unhappy and discontent with their lot, it seems. They want someone to blame for their current malaise and downward envy is a popular pastime. Race is a major fault line in America with its roots in a little thing called slavery. Inequality between whites and African Americans remains substantial in economic terms across the nation. Segregation in housing and education is wide spread across the United States. Government policies in the post WW2 period cemented and expanded housing segregation. Social housing allowed whites to move out to the suburbs and trapped African Americans in inner city slums. Black families were banned from living in these white housing estates by real estate and developer policies. The wealth created by the increase in value of these suburban properties over decades contributed to the disparity in wealth between ordinary white Americans and black Americans. This is not defacto segregation but socially engineered segregation by the state. African Americans are not poorer because of any character fault but via institutional racism. The white families were helped to buy these houses via GI bills and government welfare. African Americans were locked out of these opportunities and remained renting apartments in the city. Therefore, there was not the family wealth to pass down through the generations for these African Americans. “In 2017, housing policy expert Richard Rothstein wrote and released The Color of Law, which walks the reader through the history of residential segregation in the U.S. The book remained on The New York Times Best Sellers list for four weeks. During that time, Rothstein was continuously asked by readers, “But what can we do to fix this?” He realized he needed to write a sequel.” - (https://southseattleemerald.com/2023/10/31/the-color-of-law-housing-experts-talk-new-book-about-segregation-solution-and-celebrate-fair-housing-law/) Photo by J SWING on Pexels.com White Supremacy In America The white supremacist policies underpinning segregation in housing in America created ghettoes. The lack of racial integration in housing produces uneven social and economic outcomes for the inhabitants. If you bunch all the poorer people in one area you create social problems in those areas. It is then easy to label all black areas as problem areas and to promote that to white America as something to avoid. It is the same with schools. Demonizing black America has been a badge of honour for white supremacists. This then becomes a bone of contention for grievance politics on both sides of the aisle. Photo by Edgar Colomba on Pexels.com The Myth Of The Individual The propaganda promoted by the right idealizes a story about hard working white Americans pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. It is the Ronald Reagan cowboy narrative about the individual crafting his own success. This is a false narrative that omits crucial parts of the real history. Little House On The Prairie stuff which paints government as a bad socialist force when in fact it was the homestead policies which put these folk on the land in the first place. Governments helping their citizens is conveniently left out of the American success stories promulgated by the right. The electrification of regional areas in the US was done by the government as part of the New Deal because the private sector didn’t do it. The market found it unprofitable and so the government stepped in. It is ironic that many of these rural areas are sold hook line and sinker on the anti-government BS. The Internet was developed by the government via investment in R & D over decades and only privatized in the 1990’s by Bill Clinton. The propaganda tells a Silicon Valley story about individual innovators like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Americans have been sold simplistic narratives by the media and by vested interests about much more complex events in the history of the nation. “Most Americans know that before becoming a politician Reagan was an actor, but fewer are aware that Reagan’s flagging screen career was revived by a job with the General Electric Corporation (GE). Reagan hosted the popular television show “General Electric Theater,” where each week his voice and face reached into tens of millions of homes, promoting didactic stories of individualism and free enterprise. At the same time, he traveled across the country on behalf of GE — visiting factories, making speeches at schools, and doing the dinner circuit in communities where GE had a presence — promoting the corporation’s stridently individualist antiunion and antigovernment vision.” - (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/03/excerpt-from-naomi-oreskes-the-big-myth/) Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com The Culture Of Complaint This anti-government narrative has been fed to the nation for some 40 years and it has poisoned the place. Yes, there has been political corruption committed by both sides over the journey. No, the American democratic system is not perfect. However, it is a hell of a lot better than the authoritarian alternatives in Russia and places like it. The late Robert Hughes wrote a book about The Culture Of Complaint in America sometime around 1983. The politics of grievance may well have grown out of this cultural manifestation of this consumerist society. It has become de riguour to denigrate politicians in America and in the West more generally. We have grown fat, complacent, and irascible in our lifestyles and attitudes. In nature, when this happens it usually precedes a great fall or cataclysm. World wars play this role in transforming the perspective. When people have everything taken away, they soon lose that jaded eye about things. When the shit hits the fan most folk pull their head in. Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels.com What strikes me about the white American reactionary beef is that it is directed at the behaviour of small pockets of difference. The Christian nationalist is not content with adhering to his or her own rules, no, they want to impose it upon others. The white supremacist wants to define the lives of people of colour and determine their lifestyles. There is this general desire to impose the social values of the many upon the few. This whole anti-woke thing is a beat up by conservative and reactionary forces. The number of people effected by LGBTQIA lifestyles are miniscule in number. Where do reactionary conservatives get off in trying to control the reproductive rights of American women? Why can’t they butt out of other people’s lives? Respect the rights of others and learn to be tolerant. Tolerance comes through learning about other people and not by condemning what you don’t understand. Fox News revels in stirring up controversy and championing the ignorant and the bigoted. Abraham Lincoln wanted every American famer to read Shakespeare, according to historian Jeremi Suri. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture was established by President Abraham Lincoln on May 15, 1862. Even in the midst of the Civil War, the darkest days of any American presidency, Lincoln viewed agriculture as a critically important component of his domestic policy. In addition to the Department of Agriculture Act, Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act and the Morrill Act during the summer of 1862. This collection of legislation, providing for the development and education of rural America, would prove to be the most transformative of any policies ever targeted towards rural Americans. Speaking optimistically about the affect education would have upon agriculture and rural America, Lincoln said, “…no other human occupation opens so wide a field for the profitable and agreeable combination of labor with cultivated thought, as agriculture.” “ - (https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2012/05/15/its-150th-anniversary-usda-upholds-abraham-lincolns-vision) Lincoln learned a lot from reading Shakespeare and the Bible, as he sought to educate himself. Education remains the most important aspect of life, in my opinion. Education is more than vocational training; and higher education should be for everyone. Parochialism and bigotry are products of a lack of exposure to new ideas and places. Rural areas are often hotbeds of intolerance and racism because the people who live there often don’t know better. Stupid shows like those on Fox News thrive on the ignorance of their audience. Championing ignorance is not going to make America a better place. Championing the reactionary bile of frustrated people who live in a white bread world is not going to make America great again. Phony nostalgia for a bygone time that never really existed is more political manipulation. The only way forward is through embracing progressiveness. You cannot turn the clock back and conservative forces, especially extreme reactionary ones, are smokescreens for grifters and exploiters. The politics of grievance captures the fears and prejudices of many, but they will not be rewarded with anything more than being conned out of their savings. The right, the GOP, is a coalition of big business, Christian nationalists, white supremacists, protectionists, libertarians, and right wing fanatics. Trump is a grifter, a mob boss, intent on making money above all else and to hell with America. Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com The President, according to American historians, is the people’s choice. Congress represents the various states; and Congress makes the laws. It is the President, however, whose role is designed to unite the country behind him. The divisive nature of America right now makes a mockery of this. The politics of grievance has many Americans so riled up that they are not thinking straight. The divisive nature of Trump and the cult like nature of his leadership of the GOP has the US on a collision course with itself. People wondered how the Soviet empire could collapse so stunningly in 1989. These things can happen with devastating consequences without a great deal of notice or warning. America is on dangerous ground right now and perhaps on the eve of destruction. The great experiment could be drawing to a close. Too many Americans underappreciate what they’ve got. The culture of complaint has been captured by the politics of grievance. Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt, and Financial Freedom. ©MidasWord Read the full article

#America #cultureofcomplaint #diversity #FoxNews #GOP #grievance #inequality #Murdoch #politics #racism #segregation #slavery #Trump #whitesupremacy #woke

1 note · View note

if-you-fan-a-fire · 3 years ago

Text

It’s often argued that modern US conservatism originated in the failed presidential bid of Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964. Historian Kathryn Olmsted suggests, however, that it should be located much earlier, in the intense labor unrest in the California fields of the 1930s.

In her book, Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism, Olmsted argues that large growers and other members of the business class saw farmworker organizing and the New Deal’s pro-labor policies as fundamental threats to their power. While they had benefited enormously from government policies like infrastructure building and tariffs, California agribusiness bristled at the government doing anything to improve workers’ position. In their ferocious anti-labor campaign, they pioneered methods that have become hallmarks of the Right: the use of populist language to defend elite interests, the corporate funding of ostensibly grassroots organizations, and attacks on the Left as a threat to religion and the family.

Olmsted is a professor of history at the University of California Davis and the author of multiple books. She was interviewed by radical journalist Sasha Lilley on the California-based progressive radio show Against the Grain. Their conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

SASHA LILLEY To what degree was the New Deal a blow to big business, particularly in California and the West?

KATHRYN OLMSTED Big business had parts of the New Deal that it liked very much and others that it found very distressing, even revolutionary.

On the one hand, a lot of business leaders liked the parts of the New Deal that encouraged big businesses to get together and create cartels to raise prices. They also often liked the infrastructure projects, because the federal government was using tax money to improve roads, airports, and, in the case of California, build dams and canals that expanded their markets.

But what they, for the most part, really despised about the New Deal was its labor laws: because they threatened businesses’ control over wages and profits.

The biggest industry in California was agribusiness. In California, and throughout the West, there tended to be much bigger farms, more highly capitalized, and the land was more expensive. This dated back to the Spanish period, when they had the big haciendas and land grants, but it also had to do with the fact that in California, in particular, they needed irrigation to farm. If you need irrigation, then you need dams and canals, and that takes a lot of capital. Railroads and insurance companies and oil companies and banks owned these large corporate farms, especially in the Central Valley.

Up until the New Deal, corporate agriculture in California had been very statist because the government built the dams and the canals that made it possible for them to farm. It’s only when they decided that the New Deal meant their workers would try to organize unions and raise their pay that corporate agribusiness began to turn against the New Deal.

Now, agricultural workers were excluded from the New Deal laws. They did not get the protections that industrial workers did. But what they heard was that President Roosevelt wants you to form a union. They heard about all these industrial workers throughout the United States demanding the right to form a union and going out on strike when their employers refused to let them. The agricultural workers in California were among the most desperately poor people in America. When they heard that there were these labor laws, they decided to start forming unions.

SASHA LILLEY What did the Left in California look like in the 1930s?

KATHRYN OLMSTED California was a land of political extremes. On the Right, there was a small fascist movement and a Ku Klux Klan in the Central Valley. There was also a strong Republican Party that was split between an extremely conservative wing and a more progressive wing. On the center-left, there was a relatively small Democratic Party in the early ’30s that gained strength as the New Deal continued. On the far left, there was a vibrant socialist movement and a Communist Party, the second-largest outside of New York.

The Communist Party organized farmworkers in the early 1930s, largely because the more conventional unions like the American Federation of Labor [AFL] were not interested in organizing farmworkers. It was a very difficult, dangerous business. The farmworkers were often immigrants from different countries, they didn’t speak the same language, and even if you were able finally to get a group to organize a union, once the harvest was over, they would all move on and go to different harvests, and you’d have to start all over again with the next crop.

The Communist organizers tried to help the workers overcome or transcend their racial prejudices by encouraging them to mingle at dinner. In the cotton strike of 1933, there was an enormous camp near Bakersfield where five thousand strikers lived (because the growers would evict workers from their property during strikes). There were Okies and Arkies and African Americans and Filipinos, but mainly Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.

The Communist organizers would pick what they called “the lieutenant” to represent each of these different groups, and then each of the lieutenants would eat with the main organizers at a central table in the strike camp at dinner time. Then they would encourage the rank-and-file workers to eat among a different ethnic group every night as a way of teaching the workers, “You don’t have to fear these other groups. These are your comrades, and if we can all get together we can all help each other.”

SASHA LILLEY Tell us about the strike that you just mentioned, the 1933 strike in the San Joaquin Valley, which still is the largest agricultural strike in US history.

KATHRYN OLMSTED It was a truly massive undertaking. The cotton-growing areas in the Central Valley are a hundred miles long and forty miles wide. The workers were already interested in going on strike, and Communist Party organizers arrived and helped them organize. About eighteen to twenty thousand workers refused to pick the cotton at the height of the harvest — and cotton goes bad, just like fruits and vegetables, if it’s not picked in time.

It was a desperate moment for the growers, but they were taking a very hard line and refusing to raise the wages of the pickers. The workers went out on strike and stayed out for about two weeks. The growers tried to bring in strikebreakers to pick the cotton, and the strikers would travel around in caravans, park on the street in front of the great cotton fields, and then yell at the workers who were picking and encourage them to join the strike.

It got more and more intense. The growers used local law enforcement to arrest the strikers for vagrancy, an all-purpose charge back in those days. The California highway patrol was clearing the highways, not allowing picketing. Finally one night the growers got a big meeting together, essentially a vigilante meeting, and the crowd got into a frenzy and the next morning a group of vigilantes attacked two separate groups of strikers and killed three of them.

SASHA LILLEY To what degree were these strikers successful and what other kinds of responses did these growers then turn to?

KATHRYN OLMSTED At first, workers were able to get some intervention from the federal administration. Even though the New Deal did not protect their right to join a union, there were New Deal administrators in California who were appalled by the vigilante violence against the strikers.

In the cotton strike of 1933, after the three strikers were killed, the head of the New Deal Recovery Administration in California went to Visalia to broker a settlement. He got the state government involved, the state government appointed a commission, and eventually they hammered out a compromise. Workers didn’t get nearly as much money as they wanted and they didn’t get their union recognized, but they did get more for that particular harvest.

The growers got a big meeting together, essentially a vigilante meeting, and the crowd got into a frenzy and the next morning a group of vigilantes attacked two separate groups of strikers and killed three of them.

This was the highpoint of government intervention, and it was also the beginning of the growers’ determination to make sure nothing like that ever happened again. The growers formed an organization called the Associated Farmers, which despite its name was mostly funded by packers and shippers and corporate growers. On the one hand, it went after the Communist organizers and tried to get local governments to indict them for violating the state’s criminal syndicalism act, and on the other it started to whip up public opposition to farmworker unions in general and also to the New Deal.

SASHA LILLEY You argue that a lot of the characteristics we associate with the American right in the late twentieth century can be traced back to this time.

KATHRYN OLMSTED I see 1933 as the big turning point in the conservative movement in America. Before 1933, conservatives and business leaders were not anti-government. They liked many of the ways that the government intervened in the economy because it benefited big business. Government levied tariffs to protect their markets, it built infrastructure that enabled them to expand their markets, and it helped them control labor by sometimes sending in troops, or at least turning a blind eye when employers used violence against workers.

In the early New Deal, big business saw that the government was still doing many of these things, like the dams and the canals in California, the infrastructure projects, and agricultural subsidies. What changed in 1933 is that the government decided, “We’re going to create a more level playing field between business and labor. We’re not going to allow business to get away with many of the anti-union activities they have engaged in up to this point.”

With the Wagner Act in 1935, the government started to make sure employers bargained in good faith with unions. The act made it much easier for workers to join unions, and millions more did. This was anathema to a lot of corporations and corporate leaders. It was at that point that a lot of corporate leaders began to develop an anti-government philosophy that we associate with the modern Republican Party.

One problem they had right away was that they realized there were not a lot of people who sympathized with their economic arguments. Franklin Roosevelt, for example, won an overwhelming reelection in 1936 — the biggest reelection victory since James Monroe ran unopposed in 1820. So how could conservatives get a majority of voters on their side? They decided to portray the Left as a threat to religion, a threat to the family, and a threat to gender and racial hierarchy.

In California, the arguments about race were usually about Latinos: “aliens” were coming to the United States with different values, a different religion, and different political values. And New Deal policies were empowering these “aliens” and threatening the rest of us.

SASHA LILLEY What about gender? What sorts of anxieties did the Right play on around gender roles?

KATHRYN OLMSTED This is still early, but you can see at this time a lot of anxiety about women supposedly leaving their proper place in the home. With the Depression, a lot of women were forced to work to help their families survive. Also, in the California fields, the Communist Party used a lot of women as leaders.

This was partly ideological because the Communist Party, at least in theory, although not always in practice, was committed to gender equality. It was also pragmatic since they realized there was a lot of violence directed against Communists, and if the party used women, there was still enough chivalry and traditional gender values, even among the vigilantes, that there would be many fewer attacks against women organizers than men organizers.

So there was a general anxiety that the economic collapse was threatening traditional gender roles and also the very real example of the Communist Party putting women front and center in their organizing activities. This made Americans who supported the traditional family very anxious, uncertain, and a little angry, and thus receptive to appeals by conservatives that Roosevelt was bringing too much change and threatening the family.

SASHA LILLEY One striking thing in your book is that this right-wing backlash used various approaches that we might recognize today as key organizational forms of the New Right, including industry groups, political consultants, and publicists. Can you tell us about some of those innovations and what they looked like at that time?

KATHRYN OLMSTED A real moment of terror for conservatives in California was in the fall of 1934 when Democratic primary voters nominated as their candidate for governor Upton Sinclair, the socialist author. He had genuinely radical goals and policies. He wanted to have a very steep progressive income tax and property tax. He wanted to exempt most people from the property tax and have a very high property tax on wealthy corporations and individuals, and then use this money to have the state take over unused factories and farms and turn them into co-ops.

It was a real socialist program and it was going to result, if he was elected and got his policies through, in an actual redistribution of wealth. The people in the state who had the most wealth and power were terrified, and they spent an unprecedented amount of money — we don’t know exactly how much, but people rumored that it was up to ten million dollars, which was just unheard of in those days. They used all that money on advertisements, but also faked news reels and, for the very first time, hiring political consultants.

There were two political consultants in Sacramento named Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter who had just gone into business the year before and were the first political consultants in the nation. They weren’t just speechwriters or advertising consultants — candidates or industry groups could hire them, and they would create a campaign from scratch, and write the speeches, write the advertisements, plan the schedule, come up with the platform, the policies, all themselves and based on what they thought would win.

They discovered that Sinclair’s economic ideas, as radical as they were, were quite popular. So what they had to do was separate a lot of people who supported his economic ideas from his coalition by emphasizing his supposed threat to the family and the church. They cast these arguments in the language of populism, but instead of talking about a moneyed elite that the people had to fight against, they talked about a cultural elite — and that Upton Sinclair and Franklin Roosevelt were part of this group of intellectual, secular, anti-religious eggheads who didn’t understand the people.

Whitaker and Baxter discovered that they could mobilize a lot of conservative women who otherwise had been apolitical to go knock on doors and make speeches about how Upton Sinclair, the Democratic Party, and Franklin Roosevelt threatened your home. The interesting thing is that Franklin Roosevelt didn’t endorse Sinclair and at the end of the day completely cut him off, and the Democratic Party of California did a secret deal with the Republican nominee because they were terrified of Sinclair as well.

SASHA LILLEY In hearing your description of this anti-intellectual, anti-egghead argument the Right started making, it’s hard not to think of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, two key figures of the Right who came out of California. To what degree can we see that connection?

KATHRYN OLMSTED I think there’s a direct connection. An important figure in my book is Herbert Hoover, who was the first president from California. (He was born in Iowa but came to California to go to Stanford and continued to have a residence throughout the 1930s.) Hoover helped organize this national conservative backlash to the New Deal and helped discover Richard Nixon in 1946 and encouraged him to run for Congress for the first time. Hoover helped organize donors for Nixon and connected him with the political consultants who would help frame Nixon’s message, which was very similar to the one in 1934 against Upton Sinclair.

You have these three Californian presidents — Hoover, Nixon, and Reagan — developing and refining these California political techniques and then taking them to the national stage.

Nixon, in turn, developed this group of donors and consultants and advisors who would go on to advise Reagan in the 1960s, or to train the people who would advise Reagan in the 1960s. Reagan was elected governor in 1966, and he had a lot of the same backers as Nixon did in the 1940s and ’50s, and who had been organized by Hoover back in the 1930s. You have these three Californian presidents — Hoover, Nixon, and Reagan — developing and refining these California political techniques and then taking them to the national stage.

SASHA LILLEY You’re arguing in Right Out of California that the pivotal moment that would launch the modern conservative movement was in California in the 1930s in the agricultural fields. Beyond just getting the history right, what do you think is at stake at locating it there, rather than later?

KATHRYN OLMSTED I would argue that it helps us understand what’s really motivating the conservative movement. It’s not that other arguments about the New Right being located in the suburbs and being about sex education and cultural issues are wrong, but I think those arguments are incomplete.

We have to put labor and government labor policies at the center of our understanding of the modern conservative movement because it was the government’s decision to start protecting workers’ right to form unions that drove a lot of these corporate leaders and national conservative leaders to decide, “Okay, this is it now. This is the moment when we have to mobilize a national movement and figure out strategies to get a majority of voters to join our coalition, because this is the real threat to our wealth and power.”

- Sasha Lilley interviews Kathryn Olmsted, “The Contemporary US Right’s Roots in 1930s Union-Busting.” Jacobin. August 20, 2021.

#union busting #conservative movement #united states history #the great depression #right wing groups #new deal #farm workers #san joaquin valley #capitalism in crisis #capitalism

1 note · View note

revlyncox · 4 years ago

Text

Trees (2021)

A talk abut growth, hope, and paying attention to history

Revised and expanded for the Washington Ethical Society by Lyn Cox

February 7, 2021

In this place halfway between the beginning of winter and the beginning of spring, we draw on imagination and memory, caution and optimism, hope for the future and learning from the past. Many of these things are contained in stories.

I don’t know if the story happened exactly this way, but I believe it’s true. A sage, a wise person, was walking along the road and saw someone planting a carob tree. The sage asks, "How long will it take for this tree to bear fruit?" "Seventy years," replies the gardener. The sage then asks: "Are you so healthy a person that you expect to live that length of time and eat its fruit?" The gardener answers: "I found a fruitful world, because my ancestors planted it for me. Likewise I am planting for my children." I will tell you where this story is from because I want to give credit, but I also want to notice that this story has a universality to it, a truth that the beginnings of things we set in motion can have an impact long past the horizons of our own lives. This story is from the Talmud, a collection of rabbinic conversations on ethics and customs. (Talmud Ta'anit 23a)

We drink from wells we did not dig and eat from trees we did not plant (Deut. 6:11). Our physical, intellectual, and religious lives depend on those who have gone before. Following their example will lead us to plant literal and figurative trees for the world of the future.

I believe caring for ourselves AND others will help us sustain a shared life of meaning and compassion for a long time.

My first semester studying for my M.Div. degree in California, I worked at one college in the south bay area, and went to school in the east bay area. I enjoyed the fragrance of eucalyptus trees around both campuses. The dry leaves rustled in the breeze, leaves rubbing together like the wings of singing crickets. Some people were distracted by the sound and allergic to the smell, but I liked them. The eucalyptus trees were tall and graceful. One might imagine that they had always been there. There’s a story about those trees. I don’t know if it happened exactly this way.

The American West in the late 1800’s was heavily influenced by dreams of getting rich quick. Non-native eucalyptus trees were brought from Australia because they grew quickly. It was imagined that the lumber and oil would become quickly replaceable commodities for those who farmed them. They were promoted as ornamental trees for rich landowners new to the area and not used to treeless landscapes. Eucalyptus trees were all over California by the 1900’s, and were tested for use as railroad ties. They didn’t work out. Eucalyptus from Australian virgin forests, seasoned and treated properly, behaves differently than eucalyptus grown from seeds in California, hastily treated, and set down in the Nevada sand. Some of the railroad ties were so cracked they couldn’t hold spikes. Some decayed within four years.

The trees themselves grew like weeds. They did what non-native species are famous for doing: thriving in the new environment, edging out diverse native plants that provide food and habitat, with consequences for the entire food chain. An attempt at a quick profit turned out to have unintended consequences. Recently, there has been more discussion in that region about restoring native trees, but it’s complicated. To say that it will take time to mitigate the damage of an invasive species is an understatement. Then again, compare that to the 2,000-year growth of some living redwood trees. May we learn patience and commitment from slow-growing trees.

We strive to be among those people who have the hope and imagination it takes to envision a world of justice and compassion, a world of liberation and self-determination, a world of peace where people sit calmly in the shade of slow-growing trees. In our neck of the woods, we might imagine a world where every person lives in safety and abundance, with access to the shade of a Witch Hazel, Hackberry, or Redbud tree; the three logically native trees our Earth Ethics Action Team recently arranged to have planted on the WES property. In folk music and wisdom tales, slow-growing trees symbolize enough time for a generation to grow without being uprooted by hunger or violence.

The California eucalyptus story reminds us that some of the environmental mistakes we humans have made were decisions made by a few but using the resources and the risk pool of many. Another time, we can unpack the harm that white American westward expansion had on indigenous land rights and communities, and on the horrors of labor exploitation involved in the transcontinental railroad, and on the energy and resources that were available for white colonization but not reparations for formerly enslaved people after the Civil War. Understanding the wrong choices that have been made in the past may help us turn toward making better choices as a society going forward. We can play an active role in the governments, corporations, and organizations to which we belong and who act on our behalf. Let us embody these relationships for repair and renewal.

Contrast the rushed, climate-disrupting story of the eucalyptus trees with the story of George Washington Carver. I had to catch up on some of his story this week, when my kids noticed discrepancies between what was said about Dr. Carver in the elementary school reader on our bookshelf and what they had read elsewhere. Some of us learned in school that the most important contribution Dr. Carver made as a scientist was discovering and promoting new uses for peanuts, but this version of his story is grossly oversimplified and obscures the way his research and activism supported Black self-determination as well as environmental repair.

After he graduated from the Iowa State Agricultural College in 1896, Dr. Carver accepted a position at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Riding on the train to his new home, he noticed immediately that growing nothing but cotton was causing soil erosion and depletion. He had scientific solutions to that. What took longer was figuring out how to empower Black farmers -- especially those who were being exploited as sharecroppers -- to feed their families, improve their chances for subsequent years, and still make enough money to try to get out of debt. Smithsonian Magazine quotes biographer Mark Hersey about the way Dr. Carver understood the problem:

“What Carver comes to see,” Hersey says, was that “altering [black sharecroppers’] interactions with the natural world could undermine the very pillars of Jim Crow.” Hersey argues that black Southerners viewed their lives under Jim Crow through an environmental lens. “If we want to understand their day to day lives, it’s not separate drinking fountains, it’s ‘How do I make a living on this soil, under these circumstances, where I’m not protected’“ by the institutions that are supposed to protect its citizens? Carver encouraged farmers to look to the land for what they needed, rather than going into debt buying fertilizer (and paint, and soap, and other necessities—and food). Instead of buying the fertilizer that “scientific agriculture” told them to buy, farmers should compost. In lieu of buying paint, they should make it themselves from clay and soybeans.

So ends the excerpt. Dr. Carver understood way before what we think of as the modern environmental justice movement that liberation and conservation are entwined projects. The decisions we make for our families, for our communities, and for the planet all go together, and they all benefit from remembering interdependence and the long years of generations to come. Honoring the very beginnings of things, continuing to work on hopes that are barely tangible, believing in the distant future, allows us to live into Beloved Community. White Supremacy depends on the hurry-up-and-profit mindset that brought cracked eucalyptus logs to the Nevada desert. Beloved Community invites us to consider what may come from a seed.

Strong trees grow slowly. Strong communities learn and grow and make connections to other communities little by little over decades. Healing takes time. Repair takes time. And for all of these, we can’t always tell that it is happening. In most cases, we don’t see the seed unfolding under the soil. Our senses are not adjusted to notice the growth of trees right in front of us. Sometimes resilience is about knowing in your heart that change is possible, even when the evidence is not yet obvious.

The nearly imperceptible beginnings of change are also a theme in the earth-honoring holiday of Imbolc. The Celtic calendar where this holiday comes from is rooted in the seasons of light and dark of the northern hemisphere and the agricultural cycles of western Europe. At approximately the same time of year in the British Isles and here in the mid-Atlantic, the middle of winter means that we can start to perceive the time of sunrise and sunset edging toward spring, just a little more daylight each day.

February into March is the time of year when lambs start to be born, vulnerable and full of promise for the coming spring. It’s still cold outside! One theory for where the word Imbolc comes from is that it’s related to the word for sheep milk. The lambs need a lot of help to stay warm and to survive. Yet their arrival shows the persistence of life. Sometimes resilience is about remembering that life is possible.

This is also the time of year when people who grow vegetables in climates like ours make a plan for the next six months, gathering seeds, starting a few indoors, and figuring out how to make the most of the soil and sun that will be available later. Making plans at this in-between time of year takes courage.

For earth-honoring folks in Celtic traditions, the goddess Bridget (and, in her later form, St. Bridget of Kildare) is associated with this early February holiday. In the legends, Bridget protects access to clean, healing water. She is also a figure of light and flame. When you put fire and water together, you can make entirely new things out of what you had before. You can forge iron, cook food, sculpt clay and fire it into ceramics. Maybe this transformative potential is why Bridget is also associated with childbirth, poetry, healing, song, and art.

There is one thing that newborn lambs, vegetable seeds, soup ingredients, raw iron, and future poetry all have in common: They don’t look at the beginning the way they are going to look at the end. You have to have some hope and imagination to believe in the transformation that is coming. You have to keep doing what you are doing, when the evidence for success has not yet appeared. We need to hold on through the long term, through step-by-step processes, through the discomfort of growth and change. And so another thing we learn at Bridget’s holiday is the need for commitment.

If we’re paying attention to a legendary figure of generosity, art, and transformation, it’s a good idea to listen to the voices of poets who figured out how to sustain themselves and their families and communities through difficult times. During Black History Month, we are reminded of many examples of poets and artists who showed and inspired perseverance as they provided hope and imagination about a better world that was not yet fully manifest.

Back in October, on Vote Love Day, we heard about the story of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. She was born in Maryland in 1825 to free parents, was educated at her uncle’s school, and had published a book of poetry by the age of twenty. She became a full-time lecturer and writer, and she was an activist for abolition and for economic self-determination in the Black community. One verse of her 1895 poem, “Songs for the People,” [more on that poem here] reads:

Our world, so worn and weary,

Needs music, pure and strong,

To hush the jangle and discords

Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Harper was well aware of the injustice, economic inequality, and violence that still plagued the cities and towns where she toured. She didn’t fail to address any part of that system in her other writing. Yet she still saw a place for music and art. For Harper, poetry was not a distraction from building the Beloved Community, but one of the technologies that can help bring it into being. Out of intangible words and ideas are woven a network of visions that lift up possibilities for liberation.

Good things grow from beginnings that are not yet obvious. The forces that will become spring are already at work under the snow in the middle of winter.

On the Jewish calendar, we’ve recently passed the holiday of Tu B’Shevat, the new year of trees. This is a minor holiday. It’s been around for hundreds of years, yet more people seem to be noticing it as we learn to connect spirituality with care for the earth. Sometimes people in Jewish homes and communities gather to eat different kinds of fruit and nuts, to give thanks for ways of growing, and recommit to stewardship of the planet. In regions where it makes sense, Tu B’Shevat is a time to plant trees.

Clearly, looking out the window today, it is not the right time to plant a tree where we live. Nevertheless, in our gratitude for trees, we are reminded of the growth and the fruition of work that exist because of what has come before. The forces that create and uphold life and our ancestors who cooperated with them knew that growth and resilience don’t always look that way from the outside. They knew that growth can start with something tough or plain. They knew the importance of allowing time and of giving thanks.

We drink from wells we did not dig and eat from trees we did not plant. As a community, part of our task is to muster the hope and imagination it takes to consider growth and resilience over time. We think long-term. We honor beginnings of change, even when they are hidden or barely perceptible. Let us be mindful of the impact of our choices, now and in the generations to come.

May it be so.

4 notes · View notes

politicaltheatre · 4 years ago

Text

In A Clearing

So, here we are. At last. At long last.

For too long, we’ve felt as if we’ve been lost in the woods, blindly tripping over roots, stumbling through muck, fearful, frustrated, angry, not knowing which step would put us in the right direction and not knowing how long it would take us to reach open space, sunlight, and safety.

But we’re here. We’ve arrived. We see light ahead of us and darkness behind, and, if we aren’t careful, we’ll convince ourselves that we’ve made it out of the woods, that it really is all behind us.

That’s the trap. That’s the lie that we long to hear. But we know better. Or should.

Yesterday, the Electoral College voted to confirm the victory of President-Elect Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. and Vice President-Elect Kamala Devi Harris. After four years of naked corruption culminating in a campaign of naked racism, hatred, and fear, the arrival of a president seemingly in it to serve rather than only in it to help himself should have us elated. But we aren’t. We can’t be, and we know why.

The Electoral College itself is emblematic of where we are and of how far we still have to go. As a system, the use of electors is obsolete, like relying on a video store when you’re already paying to stream high-definition videos. The electors, representing only the major political parties, are gatekeepers, a class unto themselves who are chosen from among a select, well-connected few.

It’s one more remnant of a world in which being a wealthy, white, male land (and people) owner meant you had the moral character to decide whether or not those allowed to vote had chosen well. However much Alexander Hamilton and others talked up checks and balances, this was one thing seemingly designed to maintain imbalances of power, for that is what it has come to do.

It badly needs to go. Even some of the electors say so. Unfortunately, that will require a constitutional amendment, which will require states to ratify. And wouldn’t you know it, the states needed to reach the 75% threshold for ratification are the ones benefitting from it still: sparsely populated, rural states.

To be fair, a country dominated by the economic interests of heavily populated cities isn’t a country any of us should want to live in. We need balance (and checks), and rural regions have good reason to fear that without something to force attention onto them, they wouldn’t be heard, let alone listened to.

And yet, the electoral college isn’t the means we need to that end. It forces attention, yes, but it also enables abuse of power by the few over the many and, as the past two presidential elections have shown all too well, it encourages bigotry as a means of maintaining regional identity and securing (or suppressing) votes.

The road to eliminate it is so far out in front of us that we can’t even see it. It would require convincing small states to vote for it or creating newer small states - D.C., Puerto Rico, splitting California - to push the margin. There’s so much we have to do just to get to it, and knowing that is what should tell us where we are, not at the edge of the woods but in a clearing, still deep within.

The seemingly easy solution is simply to go forward in the direction we took to reach the clearing. Just keep going. However, without knowing what we face in the woods beyond the other side of the clearing, how will we know where it leads?

What we should do, as always, is stop to get out bearings, to know where it is we actually are, and then to ask the questions we should know to ask.

The first question upon entering the clearing is: What were we escaping from? That, of course, only leads to more questions. For example, 81 million Americans voted for Joe Biden, but how many of them were just voting to get rid of Donald Trump? If just getting rid of Trump was all they wanted, how many of them are committed to getting rid of the culture that gave rise to Trump? How many would just be satisfied to return to the world as it existed January 19, 2017? Or November 7, 2016?

The uncomfortable truth of this moment is that the answers to those questions are probably: Trump in the White House; The majority; Few even think about it; and, Way, way more than is good for us long term. If facts matter - and do they ever matter - the most simple fact of all is this: There’s a pandemic going on and people want certainty, first and foremost that the pandemic will be ended soon by competent, compassionate human beings.

That, voters of America, might as well have been Joe Biden’s campaign slogan. If you’re looking at him nominating one Washington and Wall Street insider after another and pulling your hair out, keep in mind that metaphorically turning the clock back four years was his entire campaign promise and is exactly his goal. To him and those working with him, this is what the world needs to see. He wants to reassure banks and to reassure the militaries of both allies and foes.

“We were sick,” he’s saying. “But we’re healthy again.”

That Biden is sending this message just as the first COVID-19 vaccines are arriving around the world is a little ironic, but only because the drive to release them was as much a political one as anything, pushed by a man who cared less that the vaccines worked than that they came out in time for him to claim credit. And credit will only really be due if they actually work, which we won’t know for months, possibly even an entire year.

What, then, of this coming year? Well, if you thought getting Trump out of the White House would be enough to get rid of him and his influence, you were deluded.

As much as 81 million Americans just wanted Trump gone, 74 million took a good, long, four years to look at who and what Donald Trump was and what he did and what he said and what he was doing to this country and thought, “That’s the one for me!” They’ve tied so much of their identities up in seeing him succeed, that, like die hard fans of a losing sports team, they just keep coming back for more.

If you’ve been wondering how and why 126 Republican men and women and 19 Republican Attorneys General would sign on to a lawsuit filed by the Republican Attorney General of Texas to invalidate votes in States that were not Texas, well, you have 74 million reasons, all of them potential campaign donors and voters in just two years. Of course, they all knew the lawsuit was a joke, that it would fail.

Most of them probably also knew that seeking to invalidate votes and install the loser of a presidential election could be seen as sedition or treason, but how many of them sincerely believed the lawsuit would go anywhere? To them, it was just another empty campaign promise made to suckers and losers. And to Ken Paxton, that Texas Attorney General, it was little more than a valentine to the man who, for the next four and a half weeks, has the power to pardon him for multiple federal crimes.

Which raises another question: How many of those 126 believed that they would ever be brought up on charges in this political culture? Is anyone charged with anything anymore? Certainly, no one ever goes to jail. And if they do…well, maybe there’s a pardon, from this president or whichever Republican wins in 2024. Just because they’re cynically using Republican voters for profit doesn’t mean Republican politicians can’t be just as deluded as their marks.

We live in a cheating culture. Electing Joe Biden does nothing to end it. Mitch McConnell and his House counterparts are counting on that. So, too, are current White House staffers, from outgoing Attorney General William Barr down to the lowliest interns manning the paper shredders this Christmas. They all see this moment and think, “This won’t last. We’ll be back.”

They may be right. Hell, even the Houston Astros coaches and executives who cheated their way to a championship a few years ago have jobs in baseball again. The sport entered that particular clearing, one in which cheating and cheaters were publicly shamed, turned around and walked right back where they came from. Of course, they have some experience with this kind of collective amnesia, and there’s so much money to be made.

That’s why the Republicans are acting like this moment is just that, a moment, a pause, a break. They fully expect us to turn around and go right back into the woods we just escaped. That’s how they make their money. They expect us to see Joe Biden in the White House and lose our way, either to confusion, frustration, or complacency. We’ll look around ourselves and see woods in every direction, with no sense of which path to take or how far the woods go in any one direction.

And there they’ll be, at the edge we just left, beckoning us back, telling us how foolish we were to allow ourselves to be dragged out into the open where we are vulnerable. The longer it takes for us to get vaccines, the longer we go without jobs and stuck at home with our kids, the more they will play this game. To them, that’s exactly what it is, a game with only winners and losers, and the more they play, the more uncertain the results will be.

That’s how they win, and it’s the specialty of Mitch McConnell. It’s what he did to obstruct Barack Obama and, given that Joe Biden will undoubtedly negotiate exactly the same way he did as Vice President, it is undoubtedly what McConnell will do again. Anything he can do to delay relief to those who have been made most vulnerable by the pandemic, he will do in order to extract more profit for himself and his benefactors.

That anything includes enabling and encouraging right wing violence, which has increased in lockstep with the Republican Party’s dismantling of functional governance and which will very likely increase even more now that Trump’s roadshow circus of lawsuits have resulted in comical defeat.

Trump is doing it for the obvious reasons: adulation, power, and, most important, to leech every last penny he can from his devoted followers. McConnell and the rest of the “we don’t know who won” Republicans in Congress are doing it for those reasons, too, but they have one other reason: the two Georgia runoffs on January 5th. They have two candidates battling accusations of insider trading (and cozying up to white supremacists), and desperately want Trump voters (including those white supremacists) to vote Republican.

Which takes us back to the newly-re-re-re-christened president-elect, who has until today resisted visiting Georgia to help the Democratic campaigns. He’s still been a presence there - How could a president-elect not be? - but only as a distantly reassuring face for Democrats and a menacing bogeyman for Republicans. Think the attack on Dr. Jill Biden has nothing to do with Georgia? If Republicans can’t run against “socialists”, they’ll run against “uppity, liberal elites trying to tell everyone how to live their lives”, which amounts to the same thing: “Freedom!”

All of this is to say, we can’t expect the right wing to learn the lessons we want them to learn from defeat. They never have, and they never will. If they could learn those kinds of lessons, they wouldn’t be right wing. Their instinct isn’t to accept defeat and be humbled by it, it’s to figure out ways to get around it without having to admit they lost at all.

When Nixon was forced from office, his closest supporters didn’t take the lesson that corruption and an illegal war were wrong, only that he failed to get away with it. Thirty years later, two of them, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, led the United States into a still ongoing war in Iraq from which they and they friends made billions. Their push for deregulation led in no small part to an economic crisis, for which they and their friends were bailed out. What lesson do you think they learned from that?

And almost fifty years after Nixon initiated the “Southern Strategy”, one of his most faithful acolytes courted white supremacy to gain and then attempt to hold onto the presidency. The Southern Strategy was something of a revival of Jim Crow - a mutated strain, if you will - which was a revival of the Confederacy, which was an attempt to hold onto slaves, which at its root is an economic system built on an imbalance of both power and accountability.

There is no permanent cure for things like racism and sexism and bullying, because it is the motivations, such as the craven desire not to have to be accountable to others, that drive such behavior. If I am not accountable to you, I can take from you, I can hurt you, I can humiliate you, and I can enjoy it. The abuse not only is the behavior, it is its own justification for the behavior. That is what hides waiting for us in the woods. That is what we have escaped from - or tried to - as we entered this clearing.

If only we could stay here. We have this brief moment, out in the center of the clearing, out in the sun, safe and warm, but in a few short weeks it will be time for us to choose a direction. The risk we face by stopping is that we may get turned around. From the center of a clearing, the woods look the same in every direction, just trees and shadows and whatever dangers they may hide. Lose our way and we may end up right back where we started. We can’t allow that. We can’t settle for it.

This is an inflection point. Things can go in any direction. We are the ones who have the power to decide, not the gatekeepers and not anyone preying on the worst of our nature.

Choose accountability. It may not be the fastest way through the woods, but it will be the only way out.

- Daniel Ward

3 notes · View notes

theliberaltony · 4 years ago

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Last Wednesday, the U.S. Capitol was attacked by a mob of President Trump’s supporters, many of whom had very explicit and not so explicit ties to right-wing extremism in the U.S. There are reports now, too, that there could be subsequent attacks in state capitals this weekend. President Trump’s time in office has undoubtedly had a mainstreaming effect on right-wing extremism, too, with as many as 20 percent of Americans saying they supported the rioters. But as we also know, much of this predates Trump, too. Right-wing extremism has a long, sordid history in the U.S.

The big question I want to ask all of you today is twofold: First, how did we get here, and second, where do we go from here?

Let’s start by unpacking how right-wing extremism has changed in the Trump presidency. How has it?

ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior writer): Well, the first and most obvious thing is that Trump has spoken directly to right-wing extremists. That is to say, using their language, condoning previous armed protests at government buildings and explicitly calling on them to support and protect him. And that, probably unsurprisingly, has emboldened right-wing extremists and made their extremism seem — well, less extreme.

That goes for a wide array of extremists in the U.S., too. I’m thinking, of course, about Trump’s comment after the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, when he said there were “very fine people on both sides.” But Trump has also encouraged white Christian nationalists, anti-government extremists and other groups and individuals that I certainly never thought I’d hear a president expressing sympathy or support for.

jennifer.chudy (Jennifer Chudy, political science professor at Wellesley College): Absolutely, Amelia. And while the actual extremists may represent a small group of the public, the share of Republicans who support their behavior, whether explicitly or implicitly, is not as small. This is, in part, due to mainstream political institutions — like the Republican Party, with Trump at its helm — helping make their mission and behavior seem legitimate.

maggie.koerth (Maggie Koerth, senior science writer): I’ve been talking to experts about this all week, and I think it’s really interesting how even the academics who study this stuff are kind of arguing over the role class plays in it. People like Christian Davenport at the University of Michigan have argued that we should understand that all of this is happening in the context of decades of growing income inequality and political stagnation. In other words, he contends that there are legitimate reasons to be angry at and mistrust the government. But it also seems like this crowd was not even close to being uniformly working class and probably contained people from a range of different backgrounds. And that’s why I liked one of the points Joseph Uscinski at the University of Miami made: We might be seeing a coalescing of two groups: the people who have been actually hurt by that inequality and are angry about it AND the people who are doing pretty well but who feel like somebody might come and take that away. And, of course, both those positions can dovetail very easily into racial animus and white supremacy.

ameliatd: That’s interesting, Maggie. As you alluded to, though, it’s important to be clear that economic anxiety — which was used in the aftermath of Trump’s election to explain why so many Americans voted for a candidate who framed much of his candidacy around animus toward nonwhite people — doesn’t mean that racism or white supremacy isn’t a driving force here, too.

Part of what’s so complex about the mob that attacked the Capitol is that it was a bunch of different people, with somewhat disparate ideologies and goals, united under the “stop the steal” mantra. But underlying a lot of that, even people’s anger over economic inequality or mistrust in institutions, is the fundamental idea that white status and power are being threatened.

jennifer.chudy: There is also just a lot of evidence in political science that racial attitudes are associated with emotions like anger. Two great books, one by Antoine Banks of the University of Maryland and the other by Davin Phoenix of the University of California, Irvine, consider this point in depth. Insofar as right-wing extremists express anger at the system (in contrast to fear or disgust), their anger appears more likely to be motivated by racial grievances than by economic ones.

Additionally, the Republican Party’s base has, for years now, become more racially homogeneous, in part because of the party providing a welcome home to white grievances. But some have argued that this has also been exacerbated by the Democratic Party speaking more explicitly about racial inequality in the U.S., something that wasn’t the case in the 1990s. Regardless, a more racially homogeneous base can make a party’s members more receptive to this type of extremist behavior.

We also can’t underestimate the role that COVID-19 plays here. As Maggie and Amelia suggested in their article from this summer on militias and the coronavirus, many folks are at home and glued to their computers in ways that facilitate this type of organizing. They can burrow themselves into online communities of like-minded folks which may intensify their attitudes and lead to extreme behavior.

Kaleigh: (Kaleigh Rogers, tech and politics reporter): Polling has shown that ideas that previously had been considered extreme, like using violence if your party loses an election, or supporting authoritarian ideas, have definitely become more mainstream.

This is partly due to Trump’s own rhetoric, but also due to the effects of online communities where far-right extremists and white nationalists mingle with more moderate Trump supporters, effectively radicalizing some of them over time.

What’s interesting to me about all of these different factions, though, is there is actually a lot of division among these groups: Many members of the Proud Boys aren’t fans of the QAnon conspiracy, for instance. And a lot of white nationalists don’t like Trump, but they still end up uniting against a perceived common enemy. That’s why you saw people in the mob at the Capitol waving MAGA flags alongside people with clear Nazi symbolism. They are not all white nationalists, but they’re willing to march beside them because they think they’re on the same side.

But in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack, those divisions are becoming more stark in these online communities. I’m seeing a lot of infighting over whether planned marches are a good idea, whether they are “false flag” events or traps or whether they should be armed. There just seems to be this heightened anxiety as they draw closer to an inevitable line that they can’t come back from: Biden’s inauguration.

sarahf: That’s a super important point, Kaleigh, on how different extremist groups have rallied behind this. But given how much Trump has directly spoken to right-wing extremists, as Amelia mentioned up top, can we drill in on the violence, as well? It’s not just that different factions have united or that these views have mainstreamed under Trump, but also that there’s been an actual uptick in violence, too, right?

ameliatd: One thing Maggie and I heard from experts on the modern militia movement is that these groups’ activity levels depend on the political context. The uptick in violence under Trump is real, but it’s not something that’s only happened under Trump. There was a surge in militia activity early in Obama’s presidency, too, for example.

maggie.koerth: Very much so, Amelia. The reality is that the right-wing extremism we’re seeing now is a symptom of long-running trends in American society, including white resentment and racial animus. And on top of that, you have these trends interacting with partisan polarization, which means the political left and right (which used to have fairly similar levels of white racial resentment) began to diverge on measures of racial resentment in the late 1980s and now differ greatly.

Kaleigh: Exactly, Maggie. That’s also why the FBI and other experts are particularly concerned about planned militia marches ahead of the inauguration. These groups tend to be much more organized and deliberate in their actions than the mob we saw last week. And because of that, they’re even more dangerous.

ameliatd: Right, so this violence isn’t new. But I do think it’s fair to say that Trump has raised the stakes so dramatically for right-wing extremists that we’d see a throng of them storming the Capitol. A lot of them see him as their guy in the White House!

So when he says, look, this election is being stolen from me, and you’ve got to do something about it, they listen.

jennifer.chudy: That’s true, Amelia, but work in political science shows just how much of this change was afoot prior to Trump’s election. Some tie it to Hillary Clinton talking too much about race during the 2016 election — they argue that this drove away some white voters who had previously voted Democratic (and could do so in 2008 and ‘12 because Obama, despite being Black, did not mention race much during his candidacy). But Clare Malone’s article for FiveThirtyEight on how Republicans have spent decades prioritizing white people’s interests does a great job of tracing these roots even further back.

maggie.koerth: Yeah, I’m really leery of the tendency I’ve seen in the media to act like this is something that started with Trump, or even that started post-Obama. Most of the experts I’ve spoken with have framed this more like … Trump’s escalation of these dangerous trends is a symptom of the trends. We’re talking about a lot of indicators that have been going in this direction since at least the 1980s.

jennifer.chudy: True, Maggie, from the beginning of the Republic, I might argue! But one reason the tie to Trump and Obama is so interesting is that Trump’s baseless claims around Obama’s birth certificate correspond with his debut on the national political stage. So even as there is a long thread of white supremacy throughout American history that has facilitated Trump’s ascension, there may also be a more proximate connection to recent elections, too.

ameliatd: Ashley Jardina, a political scientist at Duke University, has done some really compelling research on white identity politics — specifically how the country’s diversification has created a kind of “white awareness” among white Americans who are essentially afraid of losing their cultural status and power.

This is a complicated force — she’s clear that it’s not exactly the same thing as racial prejudice — but the result is that many white people have a sense that the hierarchy in which they’ve been privileged is being upset, and they want things to return to the old status quo, which of course was racist. And the Republican Party has been tapping into that sense of fear for a while. Trump’s departure was that he started doing it much more explicitly than previous Republican politicians had mostly done.

So yes, Maggie, you’re absolutely right that it’s not like Trump came on the scene and suddenly right-wing extremism or white supremacist violence became a part of our mjui78 political landscape. Or partisan hatred, for that matter! FiveThirtyEight contributor Lee Drutman has written about the effect of political polarization and how it’s created intense loathing of the other party, and he’s clear that it’s been a long time coming. It didn’t just emerge out of nowhere in 2016, as you can see in the chart below.

On the other hand, though, it’s hard to imagine the events of last week without four years of Trump fanning the flames.

maggie.koerth: Right, Amelia. Trump is a symptom AND he’s making it worse. At the same time.

Kaleigh: What you said, Amelia, also speaks to just how many Trump supporters don’t consider themselves racist and find it insulting to be called so. A lot of Trump supporters think Democrats are obsessed with race and identity politics, and think racism isn’t as systemic of a problem as it is. There are also, of course, nonwhite Trump supporters, which complicates the image that only white working-class Americans feel threatened by efforts to create racial equality.

ameliatd: That’s right, Kaleigh. We haven’t talked about the protests against police brutality and misconduct this summer, but I think that’s a big factor here as well — politicians like Biden saying that we have to deal with systemic racism is itself threatening to a lot of people.

sarahf: It does seem as if we’re in this gray zone, where so much of this predates Trump, and yet Trump has activated underlying sentiments that were perhaps dormant for at least a little while. Any child of the 1990s remembers, for instance, the Oklahoma City bombing and Timothy McVeigh, who held a number of extreme, anti-government views, or the deadly standoff between federal law enforcement officials and right-wing fundamentalists at Ruby Ridge.

And as Jennifer pointed out with Malone’s piece, the thread runs even further back. It’s almost as if it’s always been part of the U.S. but maybe not as omnipresent. That’s also possibly naive, but I’m curious to hear where you all think we go from here — in how does President Biden start to move the U.S. forward?

maggie.koerth: Honestly, that’s the scary part for me, Sarah. Because I don’t really think he can. Everything we know about how you change deeply held beliefs that have to do with identity suggests that the appeals of outsiders doesn’t work.

jennifer.chudy: Yes — one would think that a common formidable challenge, like COVID-19, would help unite different political factions. But if you look at the last few months, that’s not what we see.

maggie.koerth: Even Republican elites who they push back on this stuff get branded as apostates.

ameliatd: And there’s evidence that when Republican elites are perceived as apostates, they may also become targets for violence.

Kaleigh: But we also know that deplatforming agitators helps reduce the spread of their ideas and how much people are exposed to/talk about them. Losing the presidency is kind of the ultimate deplatforming, no?

jennifer.chudy: Is it deplatforming, though? Or is it just moving the platform to a different setting? I don’t know the ins and outs of the technology, but it seems like the message has become dispersed but maybe not extinguished.

sarahf: That’s a good point, Jennifer, and something I think Kaleigh hits on in her article — that is, this question of … was it too little, too late?

maggie.koerth: I think it has been a deplatforming, Jennifer. If for no other reason than it’s removed Trump’s ability to viscerally respond to millions of people immediately. And you see some really big differences between the things he said on Twitter about these extremists last week and the statements he’s made this week, which have had to go through other people.

It’s not so much taken away from his ability to speak, but it does seem to have affected his ability to speak without somebody thinking about the consequences first.

ameliatd: There is an argument that Trump’s presidency and the violence he’s spurred is making the underlying problems impossible to ignore. I’m not sure whether that makes it easier for Biden to deal with them, but it does make it harder for him to just say, ‘Okay, let’s move past this.’

Lilliana Mason, a professor at the University of Maryland who’s written extensively about partisan discord and political violence, told me in a recent interview that while someone like Biden shouldn’t be afraid to push back against Trump or his followers because it will lead to more violence (an argument against impeachment that’s circulated in the past week), she does think pushing back against Trump and his followers probably will result in more violence.

So that leaves us, and Biden, in a pretty scary place.

Republicans are in a bind, too. Electorally, many of them depend on a system where certain voters — white voters, rural voters, etc. — do have more power. So yeah, Sarah, that doesn’t make me especially optimistic about a big Republican elite turnaround on Trumpism, separate from the question of whether that would actually diffuse some of these tensions.

sarahf: One silver lining in all this is we don’t yet know the full extent to which Trump and Trumpism has taken a hit. That is, plenty of Republicans still support him, but his approval rating has taken a pretty big hit, the biggest since his first few months in office in 2017 — that’s atypical for a president on his way out the door. More Republicans also support impeachment of Trump this time around.

There is a radicalized element here in American politics — and as you’ve all said — it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but I do wonder if we still don’t fully understand where this goes next.

Kaleigh: What gives me some peace in this time is looking back at history. America has dealt with far-right extremists before. It has dealt with violent insurrectionists before. We have continued, however slowly, to make progress. Sometimes the only way out is through.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #A FiveThirtyEight Chat

1 note · View note

rptv-jamesbond · 4 years ago

Text

Obituary: Sir Sean Connery

BBC•October 31, 2020

For many, Sean Connery was the definitive James Bond. Suave and cold-hearted, his 007 was every inch the Cold War dinosaur of the books.

He strode across screen, licensed to kill. He moved like a panther, hungry and in search of prey. There was no contest. His great rival, Roger Moore, by contrast, simply cocked an eyebrow, smiled and did a quip.

But whereas Ian Fleming's hero went to Eton, Connery's own background was noticeably short of fast cars, beautiful women and vodka Martinis - either shaken or stirred.

Humble origins

Thomas Sean Connery was born in the Fountainbridge area of Edinburgh on 25 August 1930, the son of a Catholic factory worker and a Protestant domestic cleaner.

His father's family had emigrated from Ireland in the 19th Century; his mother traced her line back to Gaelic speakers from the Isle of Skye.

The area had been in decline for years. Young Tommy Connery was brought up in one room of a tenement with a shared toilet and no hot water.

He left school at 13 with no qualifications and delivered milk, polished coffins and laid bricks, before joining the Royal Navy. Three years later, he was invalided out of the service with stomach ulcers. His arms by now had tattoos which proclaimed his passions: "Scotland forever" and "Mum & Dad".

In Edinburgh, he gained a reputation as "hard man" when six gang members tried to steal from his coat. When he stopped them, he was followed. Connery launched a one-man assault which the future Bond won hands down.

He scraped a living any way he could. He drove trucks, worked as a lifeguard and posed as a model at the Edinburgh College of Art. He spent his spare time bodybuilding.

Too beautiful for words

The artist Richard Demarco, who as a student often painted Connery, described him as "too beautiful for words, a virtual Adonis".

A keen footballer, Connery was good enough to attract the attention of Matt Busby, who offered him a £25-a-week contract at Manchester United.

But, bitten by the acting bug when odd-jobbing at a local theatre, he decided a footballer's career was potentially too short and opted to pursue his luck on the stage. It was, he later said, "one of my more intelligent moves".

In 1953, he was in London competing in the Mr Universe competition. He heard that there were parts going in the chorus of a production of the musical South Pacific. By the following year, he was playing the role of Lieutenant Buzz Adams, made famous on Broadway by Larry Hagman.

American actor Robert Henderson encouraged Connery to educate himself. Henderson lent him works by Ibsen, Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw, and persuaded Connery to take elocution lessons.

Connery made the first of many appearances as a film extra in the 1954 movie Lilacs in the Spring. There were minor roles on television too, including a gangster in an episode of the BBC police drama Dixon of Dock Green.

The ladies will like him....

In 1957, he got his first leading role in Blood Money, a BBC reworking of Requiem for a Heavyweight, in which he portrayed a boxer whose career is in decline.

It had been made famous in America by Hollywood legend Jack Palance. When Palance refused to travel to London, the director's wife suggested Sean.

"The ladies will like him," she said.

A year later, he was alongside Lana Turner - proper Tinsel Town royalty - in the film Another Time, Another Place. Her boyfriend, the mobster Johnny Stompanato, reacted badly to rumours of a romance.

He stormed on set and pulled out a gun. Connery grabbed it from his hand and overpowered him, before others stepped in and kicked him off set.

He was praised for his role in the BBC drama, Blood Money

The name's Bond...

And then came Bond. Producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman had acquired the rights to film Ian Fleming's novels and were looking for an actor to portray 007.

Richard Burton, Cary Grant and Rex Harrison were all considered, even Lord Lucan and the BBC's Peter Snow.

It was Broccoli's wife, Dana, who persuaded her husband that Connery had the magnetism and sexual chemistry for the part.

That view was not originally shared by Bond's creator, Ian Fleming. "I'm looking for Commander Bond and not an overgrown stuntman," he insisted.

But Broccoli was right, and Fleming was wrong. The author quickly changed his mind when he saw him on screen. He even wrote a half-Scottish history for the character in some of his later works.

A director friend, Terence Young, took Connery under his wing, taking him to expensive restaurants and casinos; teaching him how to carry himself, so the slightly gauche Scot would pass as a suave and sophisticated secret agent.

Connery made the character his own, blending ruthlessness with sardonic wit. Many critics didn't like it and some of the reviews were scathing. But the public did not agree.

The action scenes, sex and exotic locations were a winning formula. The first film, Dr No, made a pile of money at the box office. Even abroad it was hugely successful; with President Kennedy requesting a private screening at the White House.

More outings swiftly followed - From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965) and You Only Live Twice (1967).

It was exhausting and occasionally dangerous. At one point, he was thrown into a pool full of sharks with only a flexi-glass screen for protection. When one of the creatures got through, Connery beat the hastiest of retreats.

There was other work, including Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie, and The Hill, a drama about a wartime British Army prison in North Africa.

But by the time You Only Live Twice was completed, Connery was tiring of Bond and feared being typecast.

He turned down On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with the role given to Australian actor George Lazenby, whose career never recovered.

Saltzman and Broccoli lured Connery back for Diamonds Are Forever in 1971, meeting the actor's demand for a then record $1.25m fee. Connery used it to set up the Scottish International Education Trust, supporting the careers of up-and-coming Scottish artists.

The film had mixed reviews, with some critics complaining the film relied too much on camp humour, a theme that would continue and develop under his successor, Roger Moore.

Connery starred in the Rudyard Kipling tale The Man Who Would Be King alongside his great friend Michael Caine, but most of the next decade was spent in supporting roles, such as in Time Bandits, or as part of an ensemble cast in films like A Bridge Too Far.

Never Say Never

Having lost a lot of money in a Spanish land deal, he accepted a lucrative offer to play Bond again, in Never Say Never Again. This time 007 was an ageing hero; older, wiser and self-deprecating but ultimately still as hard as nails.

The title was suggested by Connery's wife, who reminded her husband he had vowed "never to play Bond again".

He continued to play other parts, winning a Bafta for his performance as William of Baskerville in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

A year later, his performance as a world-weary Irish beat cop, albeit with a definite Scottish accent, in The Untouchables, won him an Oscar for best supporting actor.

In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, he played Harrison Ford's father, despite being only 12 years older. And there was a knowing nod towards James Bond alongside Nicolas Cage in The Rock, where he was a British secret agent kept imprisoned for decades.

There was box office success for The Hunt for Red October, The Russia House and Entrapment; although First Knight and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen failed to take off.

And he turned down the role of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings in 2006, declaring himself tired of acting and sick of the "idiots now making films in Hollywood".

Exile

He was briefly considered for the role of the gamekeeper in the 2012 Bond film Skyfall, but the director, Sam Mendes, wisely felt it would be distracting to have a previous 007 appear with Daniel Craig.

Always hating the Hollywood lifestyle, he preferred to play golf at his homes in Spain, Portugal and the Caribbean with his second wife, Micheline Roqubrune, an artist he had met in Morocco.

His previous marriage, to the Australian actress Diane Cilento, had ended in 1975 amid allegations he had been violent towards her and had a string of affairs. They had one son, the actor Jason Connery.

He claimed he remained true to his Scottish roots despite living abroad

Despite his exile, he retained a full throated passion for Scotland, despite once misguidedly endorsing a Japanese blend of whisky.

He attributed his short fuse and his "moodiness" to his Celtic genes. "My view is that to get anywhere in life you have to be anti-social,'' he once said. "Otherwise you'll end up being devoured."

A long overdue knighthood, finally awarded in 2000, was reportedly held up by the Labour government because of his support for Scottish independence.

In truth, his Bond is now a museum piece; the portrayal of women impossibly dated. The action scenes are still thrilling, but the sex too often bordered on the non-consensual. ***

Thankfully, it's been a while since 007 slapped a woman on the backside and forced a kiss. But Connery's performance was of its time, enjoyed by millions of both sexes and gave the silver screen a 20th Century icon.

He leaves behind him a body of work that any actor would be proud of and, not least, a vacancy for the title "Greatest Living Scot".

***[silly nonsense by politically-correct BBC writer. It’s a freaking movie, not a public service announcement]

https://news.yahoo.com/obituary-sean-connery-122642503.html

#sean connery #james bond #obituaries

2 notes · View notes

freedomisunderrated · 4 years ago

Text

I have long believed that the word conservative is sullied beyond reclamation, so my immediate answer to the question “What is American conservatism?” is “a Beltway-based racket exploiting the healthy instincts of decent Americans on behalf of the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, and the Republican Party.” But that answer is confuted by this very magazine, founded as it was in opposition to the criminal Iraq war and animated and inspirited, then and now, by principles and precious things that had long been forgotten or repudiated by most of the American Right: peace, place, humility, community, federalism, the Bill of Rights.

The conservative movement was poisoned at its roots—or, should I say, its rootlessness. After the death of the noble Senator Robert Taft (R-OH) in 1953, “conservatism” at the national level came to be defined, to a grossly disproportionate degree, by ex-communists avid to slay the god that failed them. The resultant movement subordinated domestic felicity and the gloriously idiosyncratic Little America to the frenzied promotion of what William F. Buckley Jr. described as an “instrument of totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores,” which he said we must accept “for the duration” of the Cold War. But when the Soviet Union dissolved, we did not return to being a “normal country,” as Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan’s UN ambassador, had recommended, but instead sought out a dreary concatenation of new enemies to justify the warfare state. (Even now, bellicose opportunists have their eye on China, as the scare-by date of shoe-bomb jihadis is about up.)

The wisest, most insightful, most independent-minded men who passed through the late and unlamented conservative movement—Robert Nisbet, Karl Hess, Russell Kirk, Murray Rothbard, Felix Morley—became disaffected and out of step. They understood that a grotesque empire had suffocated and supplanted the erstwhile republic, and that an America that is true to itself and worthy of respect must be decentralist, anti-interventionist, neighborly.

There is a healthy tradition in American political life that breathes this spirit, and that is, in parts and in sum, gentle, rambunctious, lyrical, just, and deeply, deeply American. Its first bloom was the Anti-Federalists, those prophetic backcountry critics of our misbegotten Constitution and champions of a decentralized nation. The tradition stretches on through the Loco Focos, the Populists, the Southern Agrarians, the Catholic Workers, the Old Right, the “freewheeling participatory democracy” wing of the New Left, the Perot-Buchanan-Paul Middle American revolutionaries, the hippie localists….This is the soul, the numen, of political America.

This is not just a literary conceit, or a gallery of lovable romantic losers. I see its expression, in variegated forms, all around us. It’s in farmers markets, grocery co-ops, community-supported-agriculture farms, local theater, and homeschool groups. It’s there wherever Americans gather in defense of the first Ten Amendments (dig all those Ninth Amendment rallies!), or every time a young girl puts up a birdhouse or kids gather for a pickup baseball game. Politically, it takes the form of split-state movements in New York, California, Illinois, and elsewhere; it’s in the Bring the (National) Guard Home campaign and the inchoate yearnings for peace that both parties do their best to snuff out; it’s in the distributist proposals to encourage small shops and home production and in the anarchist calls to expropriate the expropriators; it’s in the libertarian rejection of the surveillance state and in the refusal of those whom Robert Frost affectionately termed “insubordinate Americans” to say hooray for Hollywood. It’s in things hipster (small craft breweries, little libraries, DIY music) and square (Kiwanis, Knights of Columbus, volunteer fire departments).

America is not an idea, an abstraction, or a marketing slogan. It is our home, and the land we love above all others.

At church, or public gatherings in my town, a prayer for the young people in the armed services will usually end with “bring them home safely.” I never have the heart to tell the minister that the architects of U.S. foreign policy do not intend for these soldiers to ever come home en masse. They will be over there—the exact location of there changing every few years—forever. It’s no coincidence that the foreign policy slogan most reviled by the foreign policy establishment—after “America First,” of course—was “Come Home, America,” the patriot George McGovern’s beautiful, even poetic plea in 1972. Because America ain’t ever supposed to come home.

It’s striking how seldom the word home is used in American political discourse. It packs a visceral punch, it can trigger the tear ducts—“Bring the Boys Home,” to echo the great anti-Vietnam War anthem by Freda Payne—but while home touches something in ordinary Americans, it means nothing to those who stride purposefully through corridors of power.

Well, if conservatism doesn’t stand for home then it stands for nothing, and to hell with it.

We owe the carnival barker in the White House profuse thanks on two counts: first, for driving a stake through the heart of the Bush and Clinton dynasties, and second, for bulldozing the barbed-wire fences that confined political discussion to the turbid channel separating Mitch McConnell from Nancy Pelosi.

Alas, Donald Trump is in love with grandiosity, with hugeness, with a bigger-is-better philosophy that is the antithesis of the humane and human-scale Little America whose million and one civic embodiments are the best thing about this country.

Don’t make America great. Make her good by reinvigorating the dormant traditions of local self-government, of confident liberty, of charity and love, and of that wonderful indigenous blend of don’t-tread-on-me defiance of remote arrogant rule with I’ll-give-you-the-shirt-off-my-back communitarianism.

Is that conservatism? I dunno. But it’s American, and it’s good enough for me.

#bill kauffman

3 notes · View notes

pictureamoebae · 5 years ago

Note

idk how i'm supposed to reconcile my desire to not see the tories in office with my continually reinforced belief that labour leadership in general and jeremy corbyn in particular actively despise jewish people and wish me and my kind harm. there's been too many incidents, each one fouler than the last, over the past months. i want johnson out but i have no faith in the alternative's desire to keep me safe either and idk what to do

Politics.

A simple answer to a complex problem. And now a complex post to a simple question.

This will be very long, but I’m not going to put it behind a cut because it’s too important.

Nothing I say here will cut through to make you feel any more or less safe. What I want to do first is to say I do not doubt for one moment you have fears. Whatever I say next comes from as much a place of wanting you to be and feel safe as anything else. Please keep that in mind if you at any point think I’m attacking your deeply-held fears. I am not. If I’m attacking anything, it’s those who seek to weaponise your fears for their own gain.

While I continue, I’d ask you to keep asking these questions: who is saying things against Corbyn, what are their politics, what kind of world do they want to see, who do they want me to vote for, what are their interests (not as in, do they like music, but as in where do their political interests lie, how do they benefit from society under different governments)? These are good questions to ask when you hear any kind of political claim being made, whether it’s a manifesto pledge, a jibe at a political opponent, or an otherwise seemingly ‘neutral’ article in a newspaper. Everything is stated from a political position, no matter how hard someone works to hide that. And some people work very hard to hide it. Why?

First, I’ll talk about Jeremy Corbyn and his beliefs. You’ll have seen, no doubt, the picture of him being arrested for protesting against apartheid in South Africa? I’ll use this as a jumping off point because it’s in the news today. It’s emblematic of Corbyn’s lifelong approach.

One of the things that Corbyn’s supporters love about him in particular is that he’s a peacemaker. It’s also one of the things that frustrates us the most.

Love: because his approach to foreign policy has always been one of recognising the necessity of dialogue. It proves an easy stick to beat him with because it’s seen him working to bring all sides together in Northern Ireland (something the Conservative government at the time was also doing in their own way, along with others in Labour), or trying to diffuse tensions and encourage constructive talks in the Middle East, for example. It’s why he was so outspoken in his opposition to illegally invading Iraq (we hit upon one reason here why Tony Blair might have a personal interest in discrediting Corbyn: his involvement in Iraq would be under more scrutiny with a Corbyn-led Labour Party in charge). The list is endless, and he has been proven time and time again to be on the right side of history when it comes to his desire to make peace, not war.

Frustrates: because his natural desire to make peace sees him be far too conciliatory when it comes to both internal Labour Party matters and his approach to media hostility. Backing down on open selection (also known as mandatory reselection) will be seen as one of the biggest mistakes of his leadership in years to come. Time and time again he’s held out the olive branch because his opponents demand it, only to see them set fire to the branch, crush the ashes beneath their heels, and then turn around and say “pass us an olive branch”. One criticism we hear a lot is “Corbyn isn’t a leader”, and the only time I will ever agree that his leadership has been lacking is on this matter. He should have been more forthright and stood his ground. But such is the contradiction at the heart of what makes him the good person he is: that’s not his style. He’s a peacemaker.

Back to his arrest for protesting against South African apartheid. Corbyn served on the national executive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement that was “a British organisation that was at the centre of the international movement opposing the South African apartheid system and supporting South Africa’s non-White population who were persecuted by the policies of apartheid.” At the time, the Tories were pro-apartheid, and could even sometimes be found wearing “hang Nelson Mandela” stickers at their conferences and party events. Standing up so proudly against apartheid wasn’t a popular position to hold at the time. And yet he did it, because it was right.

In 1985 Corbyn was appointed national secretary of Anti-Fascist Action. I don’t know how old you are or your familiarity with British political history, but anti-fascist action in the UK has always centred around defending Jewish people from fascist groups and attack. In the 1970s he organised a demonstration against a National Front march through Wood Green. The National Front were on the rise in the 70s, and it’s seen as something of a golden era by today’s fascists in groups like the EDL who would take us back to that, and go beyond it, if they could. This is just one example of Corbyn directly putting his body on the line to defend Jewish people and others against fascists, following in the footsteps of his mother, who was at the Battle of Cable Street. In his role as parliamentarian, he signed numerous Early Day Motions condemning antisemitism, stretching back decades before he became leader, something that has been recognised in the Times of Israel. In 1987 Corbyn joined Jewish campaigners to stop the demolition of a Jewish cemetery by Islington Council (the demolition was, I note, supported by Margaret Hodge). More recently, in 2010, he petitioned parliament to help resettle Yemeni Jews fleeing from conflict.

There are countless other examples of his work to support Jewish people, as well as him being a friend to pretty much every other minority people you can think of. It’s not just empty words and platitudes, it’s real action, for decades.

Let me give you an extract from an ‘expose’ meant to discredit Corbyn, and tell me what you think of him after this:

“Dressed in a dirty jacket and creased trousers, Jeremy Corbyn arrived in Westminster as a new MP in the summer of 1983.

He immediately told friends that Parliament was ‘a waste of time’ with no relevance to his Islington constituents, especially the immigrant communities.

To meet them, he set up offices in the Red Rose Centre in Holloway where his door was always open to a tide of human misery: Cypriots, Jamaicans, Indians, Pakistanis, South Africans, South Americans, Somalis, West Saharans and Kurds all sought his help.

The procession of petitioners reinforced his conviction that Britain should allow unrestricted immigration – and offer the world’s destitute an open invitation to share our wealth.

In his opinion, all immigrant communities were victims of white imperialists, and the British state owed them a financial obligation. Anyone who disagreed was racist.”

This was intended as a ‘gotcha’ to prove to right wing readers what a dangerous man Corbyn is. They’re right, he is dangerous. Dangerous to fascists. Dangerous to racists. Dangerous to anyone who wants to take away your liberty, to anyone who wants to harm the vulnerable in society.

So how do we align all of this with what we’ve heard in the press over the past five years? Hopefully the extract above, which was printed in the Daily Mail, starts to make it clear what’s going on. Corbyn has always, throughout his career and before he was elected to parliament, fought tirelessly for peace, for reconciliation, for minority populations here and around the world, including Jewish people. Even before he became leader (outshining even Blair’s popularity at his height among party members), there were people of all political stripes who wanted to discredit him, not even necessarily because they disliked him, but because they despised what he stood for and continues to stand for.

We’re not just talking about people who want to be able to say and do racist things, but people who have an interest in our political and economic system continuing as it has so they can maintain their economic, social, cultural, and political power. It’s impossible to overstate how important and crucial this point is. It cuts to the heart of everything.

Look at this, from the Labour manifesto that was launched today:

Introduce a War Powers Act to ensure that no prime minister can bypass Parliament to commit to conventional military action. Unlike the Conservatives, we will implement every single recommendation of the Chilcot Inquiry.

Conduct an audit of the impact of Britain’s colonial legacy to understand our contribution to the dynamics of violence and insecurity across regions previously under British colonial rule.

Invest an additional £400 million in our diplomatic capacity to secure Britain’s role as a country that promotes peace, delivers ambitious global climate agreements and works through international organisations to secure political settlements to critical issues.

Establish a judge-led inquiry into our country’s alleged complicity in rendition and torture, and the operation of secret courts.

Issue a formal apology for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and hold a public review into Britain’s role in the Amritsar massacre.

Allow the people of the Chagos Islands and their descendants the right to return to the lands from which they should never have been removed.

Uphold the human rights of the people of West Papua and recognise the rights of the people of Western Sahara.

Immediately suspend the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen and to Israel for arms used in violation of the human rights of Palestinian civilians, and conduct a root-and-branch reform of our arms exports regime so ministers can never again turn a blind eye to British-made weapons being used to target innocent civilians.

Reform the international rules-based order to secure justice and accountability for breaches of human rights and international law, such as the bombing of hospitals in Syria, the illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip, the use of rape as a weapon of war against the Rohingya community in Myanmar and the indiscriminate bombardment of civilians in Yemen.

We will work through the UN and the Commonwealth to insist on the protection of human rights for Sri Lanka’s minority Tamil and Muslim populations.

Appoint human-rights advisers to work across the Foreign Office and government to prioritise a co-ordinated approach to human rights.

Advocate for human rights at every bilateral diplomatic meeting.

There are an awful lot of consequences to carrying out these policies. For example, Tony Blair and David Miliband are implicated in rendition, and it stands to reason they will do everything in their power to ensure they aren’t brought to justice for it, or even exposed to scrutiny over it. On the matter of arms sales, not only does it have ramifications for one of the most profitable industries, it also cuts straight to the heart of how and why we choose the international allies we do, and the power relationships inherent in that. This isn’t just a disagreement of opinion, this is threatening to change how we’ve done international politics for a generation or more. It doesn’t get more serious than this. As far as anyone who has an interest in things staying as they are, he must be stopped, by any means necessary.

Let’s talk about antisemitism. Labour is a broad party that reflects a wide range of people and a wide range of opinions from all walks of life and from all corners of the country. It stands to reason that every opinion, thought, and position you can imagine exists in wider society will be found somewhere among Labour members, by virtue of it being a mass membership party. There are terfs in the Labour Party, there are racists in the Labour Party, there are homophobes in the Labour Party, there are sexists in the Labour Party, there are antisemites in the Labour Party – because there are all those kinds of people in our country. There are all those kinds of people in the SNP. There are all those kinds of people in the Tory Party. There are all those kinds of people in the Green Party. There are all those kinds of people in the Lib Dems. What it speaks to, primarily, is the work we have to do, as a country, to educate and counter those bigotries across society. Where they rear their head within the party they must be stamped out immediately. It must be made clear that a socialist party is no place for bigotry and hatred. I think I’ve made it clear above that Corbyn is not an antisemite, and in fact has spent his entire life fighting against antisemitism, including putting his body on the line.

It has become increasingly striking that, over the past five years, Labour has been held to a far greater standard than any other party when it comes to antisemitism or any other kind of bigotry. Boris Johnson’s comments about watermelon smiles and letterboxes get passing comment, Sayeeda Warsi saying that Islamophobia is rampant in the Tory Party and she doesn’t feel safe there is quickly swept under the carpet. Compare the endless months of hand-wringing over Labour’s discussions over adopting the IHRA working definition of antisemitism to the Conservative’s refusal to adopt similar recommendations by the Muslim Council of Britain over anti-Muslim bigotry.

Yesterday a prominent political journalist tweeted that a Tory candidate had been expelled for antisemitism, and in the same tweet she said that a chair of a local CLP (constituency Labour Party – CLPs are the local organising groups for each constituency in the country) had resigned. In the tweet she linked to a BBC article about the CLP chair resignation. Let’s look at what’s going on here. Firstly, she gave both of these news items the same weight by putting them together in the same tweet. Second, she only linked to the story about the CLP chair, suggesting that was the more important of the two. The CLP chair resigned not over antisemitism or anything like that, but because they were disgruntled at how the selection for their local parliamentary candidate went. If you’ve ever been to a CLP meeting you’ll know that everyone is disgruntled about something. It’s hardly national news. But of course, it is. Because it was decided at some point over the past five years that everything that happens in the Labour Party must be forensically dissected and assessed as a real blow to Corbyn, or proof that Corbyn is terrible. Whereas the real story, that a Tory candidate was expelled for antisemitism, is barely a footnote. Why? Keep asking why.

I don’t know what your opinions are about politics in the United States, or whether you follow it at all, but when asking ‘why?’ it might be useful to think about what’s happening over there and how it compares and contrasts to what’s happening over here. Think about the reaction to Ilhan Omar, the inherent anti-Muslim sentiment and racism in opposition to her, and the way her critics have tried to suggest she is antisemitic. Think about those progressives in the UK who support her and see it as ridiculous scaremongering with a political motive, and how some of those are the same people who throw as much invective at Corbyn as they can. Think about the differences in how progressive politics in the US and progressive politics in the UK are presented. Think about how the same accusations of antisemitism are made against Bernie Sanders, a Jewish man who is open about his support for Israel. Think about those things and ask whether, perhaps, the wider politics of those involved might be behind some of what’s going on.

I’ll end by telling you about me and where I live. I live in Stoke-on-Trent. We have three MPs across the city: Gareth Snell here in Stoke Central, Ruth Smeeth in Stoke North, and a Tory in Stoke South, who in 2017 very narrowly beat Rob Flello, who had been the Labour MP there for quite a while. Rob is a Catholic, and has centred his Catholicism in a lot of his politics. Ruth is Jewish, and has been one of the high profile voices to speak against Corbyn. Despite going to university with Gareth and my husband working with him for years in our previous MP’s office and being his close friend, I don’t know his religious affiliation, if he even has one. I disagree with all three of them on the basis of their politics.

I’m very glad Rob is no longer in the party, he was an embarrassment, and should have gone years ago. Rob used his Catholicism as an excuse to pursue some awful political positions (against abortion, for example), all the while being an enormous hypocrite (I won’t spill the tea about his personal life, it would be unbecoming). I think you’d agree that it’s possible for me to disagree with his politics, and to even discuss how they intersected with his version of Catholicism, without being bigoted towards Catholics or wishing them harm or wanting Catholicism to be wiped out. My mother is Catholic. (I’m forever grateful her and my dad decided not to assign me a religion, instead leaving it up to me. Their one moment of progressive thinking!)

I disagree with Gareth’s politics, despite as I explained my and my husband’s history of friendship with him, and will be eternally angry with myself for signing his nomination papers in 2017 when he was selected as our candidate to stand against Paul Nuttall of UKIP in the infamous Stoke Central by-election. What’s important here, in our relationship and out of it, is the politics. My anger isn’t at his life, his family, or whatever faith he does or does not hold, but rather at his deceit towards us in the CLP, and his awful, awful approach in parliament towards Brexit.

I disagree with Ruth’s politics, as does my husband, despite him campaigning very hard and being instrumental locally for getting her selected as the candidate for Stoke North back in the day. I disagree with her handling of Brexit, which follows the same line as Gareth’s. They’re both at risk of losing their seats at the election, and have calculated that by doing all they can to seem as though they are Brexit MPs they’ll claw back the support Labour has already lost to the Tories and Brexit Party, not realising that support left long ago and won’t come back just because they personally keep voting against the Labour whip. In the meantime they’re making it increasingly difficult for us to oppose no deal or Johnson’s hard Brexit. I also disagree with Ruth because she’s helped weaponise instances of antisemitism as a way to discredit the left. Just as I disagree with any MP who has done that, regardless of their ethnicity or religion. Because, as I have said before, it’s the politics that matter. Just as I can disagree with Rob, even on matters that centre his Catholicism, without it being an attack on Catholics, so too can I disagree with Ruth, even on matters that centre her being Jewish, without it being an attack on Jewish people. And this is where we get into the nuts and bolts of the thing.

I met Chris Williamson a while back, bumping into him at Derby train station. My husband knows him (he knows everyone in the Labour Party, social butterfly that he is), and so we went to say hi. It was the first time I’d met him. I was very clear that, despite my anxiety and hate of confrontation, were he to say anything diminishing antisemitism I was going to speak out. And I did, because he did. The weird thing about Chris is that he was long known as a wonderful anti-racism campaigner and a true friend of the vulnerable and minorities. Something twisted him. Over the past few years it’s like he decided to court controversy, to push as many buttons as he could, to see how far he could go, digging his heels in no matter the cost. I think he should have been kicked out a long time ago, once he made it clear he didn’t care about the damage he caused, either to the Party or to Jewish people, because he was on his own political crusade. I don’t believe he is personally antisemitic, but there comes a point where his actions speak louder than his words, and the effects of his behaviour might as well have an antisemitic root for the harm they cause. I’m glad he was finally kicked out, and I’m furious he’s standing as an independent, risking turning Derby North Tory at a time when the very people he says he cares about, the poor, the vulnerable, migrants, disabled people, need a Labour government more than anything else and cannot survive another five years of Tory rule.

The very real fears Jewish people hold have been weaponised by the right, who always try to seed fear over hope because it gets them votes, and likewise the whole resulting situation has been further exacerbated by people like Chris. I’m infuriated by it all, not least because I don’t doubt that a high proportion of British Jewish people genuinely are scared. But because of political interests and political positioning, their fears are being exploited and redirected away from where they should be to precisely where they shouldn’t. It should be clear to you from what I’ve posted above that you’d be hard pressed to find a non-Jewish MP who has worked more tirelessly than Jeremy Corbyn to protect and defend Jewish people against fascists, just as he has worked tirelessly to defend all minorities. At a time when the far right is on the march, burning synagogues, shooting gay people and Sikhs and Muslims, to have our attention diverted away to focus on the best hope we’ve had in generations to stop it is madness. It’s motivated by political interest, whether that’s on behalf of the Conservative party and general right wing politics (let’s not forget some important points here, like Stephen Pollard being a staunchly right wing Conservative supporter, or like Maureen Lipman announcing her ditching Labour not once, but twice – the first time being under Ed Miliband’s leadership (himself Jewish), because of his support for Palestinian rights). Politics is at the heart of it all.

Politics is at the heart of it all.

Politics is at the heart of it all, and just as working class people are used as pawns, pitted against migrants and having their fears about precarity and poverty and security weaponised to divert attention away from the real causes of their immiseration, so too are Jewish people being used as pawns, having their real fears exploited to discredit the only chance we’ll have in our lifetimes of defeating the right.

As I said at the start, I don’t expect what I’ve written here will make you feel any more safe. I hope it doesn’t make you feel any less safe. I just ask that you think about the politics of it all, and remember those questions I asked at the beginning: who is saying things against Corbyn, what are their politics, what kind of world do they want to see, who do they want me to vote for, what are their interests, how do they benefit from society under different governments? I ask you to remember that everything is stated from a political position, no matter how hard someone works to hide that. And that some people work very hard to hide it. Why?

Lastly, I want you to know that the very core of my politics is justice. Justice, empathy, fairness. I couldn’t be a socialist without those tenets at the centre of it all. Our world is burning. Our people are dying. This is all only going to get worse. Official figures are that 130,000 people have died unnecessarily as a direct result of Tory austerity. Those figures were released some time ago, so it is surely more now. Millions have already been displaced around the world as a result of the climate catastrophe. Millions more will be displaced, in ever more horrific events, over the next few years. As people have to move around the globe we will see increasing international tensions, bloody clashes, inhumane national policies aimed at keeping those people away, more bodies in trucks, more children washed up dead on beaches, more people killed in sectarian wars. If we continue to turn a blind eye to the rise of the right, we’re condemning millions to untold suffering. If we re-elect a Tory government we’re condemning millions to untold suffering. If we turn to centrism, a system responsible for that rise of the right, a system that has no answers and wants to simply manage things around the edges, we are condemning millions to untold suffering.

What kind of world do you want to see? What kind of world do those who disparage Corbyn despite his well-documented history want to see?

Politics. The simple answer to the complex problem.

31 notes · View notes

useless-catalanfacts · 5 years ago

Note

Do you think the independence of Catalunya is a solution ? There's a bigger problem in Spain. For my perspective as a foreigner, what I see is a population that's not happy with the government. Call it Pays Vasc, Catalonia, Galicia, Andalucía, etc... What do you think the revolutions really stand for, from a philosophical point of view? Been rebel, doing a rebellion or doing a revolution is the same? ... reference Camus ...

Yes, I am absolutely convinced the independence of Catalonia (ideally, a federation of all the Catalan Countries, not just Catalonia) would solve a lot of things.

Not only because it would be a step forward to ending Spanish supremacist violence and oppression over Catalans, but especially because Catalonia would finally be able to apply the changes its citizens want (in order to ensure equality for women, LGBTQ+ rights, fight against climate change, against racism, to welcome refugees…) and that Spain keeps blocking. Read this post for more information on those.

But our independence still leaves many problems behind, as you said. It's not the government we are unhappy with, but their whole system. I believe the Basque Country and Galicia also should have the opportunity to choose about their independence, and it would be good for them to be independent. In fact, all nations should be able to choose that, and those who choose not to separate (I’m thinking of Leon, Asturias, Aragón) still should have their languages and cultures respected and promoted. That would be a radical change to the Kingdom of Spain as we know it now, which is just big Castille.

So many people are unhappy with being under Spanish rule because Spain is an artificial invention to justify Castillian imperiaism. All of those who are not Castillian are victims of a system that wants us eliminated, and even Castillians are -under the current Regime of ‘78- victims of a State that is deeply rooted in fascism.

So yes, granting the populations the right to choose if they want to rule themselves or continue under occupation would really challenge the Spanish system of Castillian supremacy, and it would be a step forward to destroying Spain’s ingrained fascism. I hope that, by seeing we manage fine without a monarchy, Spanish people would be encouraged to fight against the monarchy too.

Lastly, I have to say that you cannot really compare the level of “a population that’s not happy with the government” of Catalonia and the Basque Country with the rest of the Spanish territories. Just look at a map from any election since Francoism ended. Every time, in Catalonia and the Basque country progressive forces that want a change win. And every time in practically every single other area, the same old monarchist conservative parties win. Some people are of course fighting everywhere, but in most places outside Catalonia and the Basque Country (and to a lesser extent País Valencià) it’s not generalised at all, and most people are very content with the current Spanish regime or want one that’s even more centralist and right-wing (just look at the results of the elections in Andalucía, where the winners were a coalition of the right-wing PP party, the far right-wing C’s and the extreme right-wing VOX which literally admits to being a fascist party).

So to answer your last question, I can’t speak for the whole independence movement. It is a pluralistic movement, with people who come from different views, and in fact the movement takes pride in that. We have socialdemocrats, communists, anarchists, even liberals now. People who are independentist have different ideas on how the country (and the world) should be run, but we all have this in common: we are absolutely antifascist and anti-imperialist. That is the basis of our fight.

Now, I’ll say something from my personal point of view, it doesn’t apply to the whole movement, but it’s my “philosophy” behind. A lot of people say “but Europe doesn’t need more microstates!” (even though Catalonia is big enough that it would not be a microstate at all lol). I say: all the contrary. It’s better to be run by smaller communities that have more in common, than by a government in a far away city that doesn’t know the lands it controls. I wish for a world where all cultures and languages are considered equally good, where people can decide collectively how to run the place they live in, and come together with the other groups of people in solidarity to help each other in times of need and ensure the nightmare of borders and xenophobia is over. That is, in my opinion, the philosophy with which Catalan independentism (which started to take its present form in the 70s and 80s with organizations such as MDT) was started, and luckily there are still many who follow it.

#ask #anonymous

22 notes · View notes

lovehaswonangelnumbers · 5 years ago

Photo

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/waking-up-to-our-new-reality/

Waking Up To Our New Reality

By Sarah Varcas

All dates are UT

When embroiled in the midst of a crisis, the longer view can sometimes help. Reflecting on how we got here, where we want to get to and how we can do so gives both context and meaning to our current trials. It transforms us from the victim of fate to the creator of our reality, and to some extent or other we all created where we find ourselves today. It’s been difficult not to. Modern life has become increasingly unbalanced over time. Estranged from our inherent wisdom we’ve handed responsibility for our health to the ‘experts’; for our security to self-interested politicians; for our meaning to the cult of celebrity and the narrative of hatred and fear peddled by mainstream media. We’ve allowed ourselves, to some degree or other, to be numbed to the consequences of our choices by the drip-fed mindless distraction of social media. And no, we haven’t all done all these things. But everyone’s done something. Just as many have also acted to counter this descent into ever deepening unconsciousness. But as consciousness is raised, so too are the stakes for those who fear exposure of what lies in the shadows. The equal and opposite reaction continues unabated.

At one level, where we find ourselves now shouldn’t surprise anyone. In a world where our immune systems are under attack from suppressive rather than curative health regimes to air pollution to toxins in the food chain and all around us in our throw-away culture, of course disease would eventually have its way! Why wouldn’t it? But on another level there are questions to be asked about why this one and why now? On a planet where over four million people die every year as a result of exposure to outdoor pollution, why weren’t those lives important enough for us to stop what we were doing before? Why haven’t governments the world over mobilised to eradicate that pollution, as they have to stop the spread of Covid-19? Why did humankind largely numb-out to the consequences of its modern lifestyle and carry on as normal until now? What’s so special about this moment in time? What’s changed?

Confronting our fear

The Saturn / Pluto conjunction in January 2020 pulled back the veil to reveal the consequences of humanity’s arrogance. The assumption that we could simply continue forever raping and exploiting this planet with impunity has been thrown into stark relief by the narrative of a virus that threatens the continuation of life as we know it. Many see this as Mother Nature’s revenge. Others believe it to be manmade. Still others see an act of obfuscation to test just how far humanity’s behaviour can be shaped by a narrative of fear. We may never know definitively how we got to where we are now, but all these perspectives contribute important angles to the debate about where we go from here. Whilst a virus is the core narrative, the many attendant issues are just as much a part of the picture being painted in the months to come.

The scientific rationalism of the modern age has fostered a monumental fear of death such that aging has become our nemesis and youth idealised beyond all reason. We must stamp out disease and battle it into submission rather than listen to its message and change accordingly. When disease and death are perceived as the enemy we wage a constant war upon them in our own bodies and minds. Our very life becomes a battleground, against an enemy that will always win eventually. A time such as this forces us to consider our attitude towards death. Is it a demonic presence forever waiting in the wings to snatch away all that we love with a sweep of its mighty hand? Or is it the wisest teacher worthy of respect, who frames a life and gives it meaning? Pluto’s conjunction with Jupiter throughout the rest of this year provides us an opportunity to reflect deeply on our mortality. Not because we’re all doomed, but because if we don’t we may well be not so far down the line! If the mass sublimation of our death-fear continues to manifest as an on-going subjugation of nature to prove our immortal superiority, our morbid dread of death will ironically hasten our collective demise.

The beginning of the end or a fresh start?

Which brings me back to that longer-term overview I mentioned. Where are we going from here? Is this the beginning of the end or an opportunity to forge a fresh start? Have we arrived so rapidly in our new reality that shaping how it develops is beyond our capabilities? What can we do when confined to our homes?! Must we simply hunker down and hope for the best, trying to resist the growing despair that’s settling upon many as the reality of our brave new world begins to sink in? Or do we use this time to wake up? To plan a path forward that looks nothing like the one that led us here in the first place…

It’s fair to say the next few months will test us. Lockdown and other manifestations of virus-related anxiety will be with us for some time to come. An ease in June/July 2020 as Jupiter and Pluto conjunct for the second time whilst retrograde may well coincide with a lessening of the panic, followed by an increase once more from the end of September / beginning of October as they both turn direct. When they conjunct for the last time inmid-November their final say on the matter may not be particularly edifying. However, Saturn’s one-time conjunction with Jupiter in the first degree of Aquarius on 21stDecember presages yet another layer of this global conundrum. Aquarius is the sign of humanity and sister/brotherhood. Saturn – Lord of Karma – and Jupiter – the Great Benefic – joining hands here may well deliver some hope and greater context for what’s been going on. But not without affording us all the weighty responsibility of shifting our own sense of self, reality and perspective to accommodate newly revealed truths around this time.

Onward into 2021

A square between Saturn in Aquarius and Uranus in Taurus throughout 2021 will test our mettle in this regard. Do we resolve to do things differently on a global scale? Or do we resist the necessary changes and allow frustration over losing the past to rob us of a positive future? Do we embrace innovative ways to live in the wake of this crisis or turn to the ‘tried and tested’ methods that got us into this mess in the first place? This is the key challenge next year. Life (and business) cannot continue as before. And to the extent that it does, we will face far greater threats to our health and liberty before too long.

When Uranus and Saturn form a square we must act. There’s no avoiding it. This is us taking stock of our life after the hurricane has passed. The terrain may be changed beyond recognition and many of the landmarks we knew so well, gone forever. But this square provides the impetus and inspiration to begin afresh and move forward in a productive way. If we choose to.

This will apply as much in our private world as our public one. If you’re spending your lockdown dreaming of when things ‘get back to normal’, you may well be disappointed. A new normal is taking root and we must prepare to run with it when the time’s right. We’ll eventually return to a world unburdened of our pollution, released from the unrelenting impact of humanity for a considerable period of time. That world is already starting to flourish. We are part of it and can choose to flourish too or pollute it once more with our resentment and frustration over things lost. There will be grief of course, and for some people much of it. But grief allowed to flow doesn’t pollute. Only when it’s denied or blocked does it become stagnant resentment or entropic despair.

In essence, we are currently suspended in a state of global shock. When faced with a crisis, old trauma reawakens, building layer upon layer of emotion and pain. As such, we’re not simply processing the present, but all its ripples into our personal and collective past. All those unresolved times when the rug was ripped from beneath us and we were faced with situations we struggled to bear. This shock will need to dissipate through the collective energy field in the coming months. The more we can generate a calm and loving space to receive it the better, for we all have wounds to nurse and care to give in equal measure. This is how we gain the clarity to perceive what’s really going on and discern with wisdom and unflinching presence what truly needs to be done about it.

Waking up to our new reality

The North Node’s arrival in Gemini on 5th May 2020 reminds us to lighten up and allow in some fresh air. The sensitive emotionality of the North Node in Cancer since November 2018 gives way to thinking, not feeling, connecting with others not protecting our own. This nodal shift exhorts us to wake up to our new reality and live it, not avoid, detach from or fear it. It encourages us to look outside as much as within; to join together in a spirit of collaboration. New ideas will form that could not have been conceived before. As the impact of prolonged restriction begins to bite, this nodal shift gives us a positive boost and lifts us out of frustration and fear into fresh perspectives and an inquisitive attitude toward the potential of this strange new world.

Mars enters its own sign of Aries on 28th June, remaining there until the beginning of January 2021. This is a long time for Mars to remain in a sign, extended by virtue of its retrograde passage between 9th September and 14th November. Here Mars is a true warrior. But, focused intensely on its own needs, it struggles to consider those of others if it even bothers to try. Mars is our core life force which gets us out of bed each morning, puts food on our table, enforces our boundaries and protects our personal interests. Its journey through Aries may reveal a dark underbelly of selfishness if supply chains begin to struggle and anxiety about personal stability increases in the wake of loss of income and liberty. Anger and frustration may spill over. The most vulnerable will need a louder, more insistent voice. No one must be left behind nor deemed more important than another. Which is why the lighter touch of the Gemini North Node is important, with its focus on community well-being balancing the more self-centred drives of this time.

In a conjunction of Mars and Eris between August and December 2020 we face a significant challenge to stay the course in a balanced way. Refuse to allow a narrative of fear or frustration to demonise others. Use this energy to speak up for people and protect their rights alongside your own. Take a stand in the interests of community cohesion not individual protection. Beware narratives that divide at this time. Never forget we’re all in this together. Mars and Eris can be our most noble selves rising up to fight the good fight or our most base selves rising up to grab what we can from those who can’t fight back. Greed may be exposed and selfishness rife. But both are a choice that we don’t have to make. Mars, God of War, and his sister Eris, Goddess of Discord, are capable of much mischief, but when aligned with the greater good they become a formidable force of courageous protection and fearless naming of truths denied.

Sovereignty and control

Fear has been a great leveller in this process. From royalty to the street homeless, we are told, all are at risk and none immune. Motivated by it, previously unimaginable curtailments of civil liberties have been imposed and accepted, largely without question. As Jupiter conjuncts Saturn in December 2020 that may begin to change, for Jupiter affords us a bigger perspective, a broader view and instils within us a lust for the future. If the future looks too constrained at this point people may begin getting very itchy feet! And if authorities seek to over-extend virus-related powers into 2021 under the gaze of the aforementioned Saturn/Uranus square, they may be surprised at the strength of feeling amongst the people. In its shadow face, Saturn in Aquarius seeks to control (Saturn) the masses (Aquarius). It fears individuality and self-determination, moving to curtail it. Uranus, on the other hand, insists upon freedom at any cost and in Taurus is unrelenting in that demand!

As such, the issue of control – Who has it? How do they use it? How do we behave when we lose it? Who do we give it up to and why?– is as fundamental to this time as any other. It’s easy to lose connection with your sovereign self when confined to barracks and fearful of what lurks ‘out there’. But our innate sovereignty isn’t diminished by circumstances, whatever they may be. And the core task of living doesn’t change. We are here to awaken. Pure and simple. To reclaim the Self and offer it up in service of Life. We can do that wherever we are, whoever we are and whatever’s happening around us.

Nothing and no one can steal our wisdom or curtail our growing awareness. If increasing numbers dedicate this unprecedented time to knowing the true Self more deeply, just think how different our future can be! How bold and bright and beautiful. Like an embodied evolutionary leap we could emerge anew, understanding profoundly how we arrived here and how to ensure we never return again, before embarking upon our next adventure. Together.

Sarah Varcas

*****

LoveHasWon.org is a Non-Profit Charity, Heartfully Associated with the “World Blessing Church Trust” for the Benefit of Mother Earth

Share Our Messages with Love and Gratitude

LOVE US @ MeWe mewe.com/join/lovehaswon

Visit Our Online Store for Higher Consciousness Products and Tools: LoveHasWon Essentials

http://lovehaswonessentials.org/

Visit Our NEW Sister Site: LoveHasWon Angel Numbers

https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/

Commentary from The First Contact Ground Crew 5dSpiritual Healing Team:

Feel Blocked, Drained, Fatigued, Restless, Nausea, Achy, Ready to Give Up? We Can Help! We are preparing everyone for a Full Planetary Ascension, and provide you with the tools and techniques to assist you Home Into The Light. The First Contact Ground Crew Team, Will Help to Get You Ready For Ascension which is Underway. New Spiritual Sessions have now been created for an Entire Family, including the Crystal Children; Group Family Healing & Therapy. We have just began these and they are incredible. Highly recommend for any families struggling together in these times of intense changes. Email: [email protected] for more information or to schedule an emergency spiritual session. We can Assist You into Awakening into 5d Reality, where your experience is one of Constant Joy, Wholeness of Being, Whole Health, Balanced, Happy and Abundant. Lets DO THIS! Schedule Your Session Below by following the Link! Visit: http://www.lovehaswon.org/awaken-to-5d/

Introducing our New LoveHasWon Twin Flame Spiritual Intuitive Ascension Session. Visit the link below:

https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-twin-flame-spiritual-intuitive-ascension-session/

Request an Astonishing Personal Ascension Assessment Report or Astrology Reading, visit the link below for more information:

https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-ascension-assessment-report

https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-astrology/

Experiencing DeAscension Symptoms, Energy Blockages, Disease and more? Book a Holistic Healing Session

https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-holistic-healing-session/

To read our Testimonials you can follow this link: http://www.lovehaswon.org/testimonials

Connect with MotherGod~Mother of All Creation on Skype @ mothergoddess8

Request a copy of our Book: The Tree of Life ~ Light of The Immortals Book

Order a copy of Our LoveHasWon Ascension Guide: https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-ascension-guide/

**If you do not have a Paypal account, click on the button below:

If you wish to donate and receive a Tax Receipt, click the button below:

Donate with Paypal

Use Cash App with Our code and we’ll each get $5! FKMPGLH

Cash App Tag: $lovehaswon1111

Cash App

Donate with Venmo

VENMO

Support Our cause in the creation of the Crystal Schools for Children. Visit our fundraising link below:

LoveHasWon Charity for Crystal Schools

Support Our Charity in Co~Creating the New Earth Together by Helping Mother of All Creation. Visit our fundraising link below:

Support Mother Earth!

Support Us on PATREON

PATREON

Support Us Through Our LoveHasWon Wish List

LoveHasWon Wish List

We also accept Western Union and Moneygram. You may send an email to [email protected] for more information.

***If you wish to send Donations by mail or other methods, email us at [email protected] or [email protected]***

**** We Do Not Refund Donations****

MeWe ~ Youtube ~ Facebook ~ Apple News ~ Linkedin ~ Twitter ~ Tumblr ~ GAB ~ Minds ~ Google+ ~ Medium ~ StumbleUpon ~ Reddit ~ Informed Planet ~ Steemit ~ SocialClub ~ BlogLovin ~ Flipboard ~ Pinterest ~ Instagram ~ Snapchat

#5D Astrology #Astrology Updates

4 notes · View notes

psyched2b · 6 years ago

Text

All My Heroes - Chapter Five

Pairings: Steve Rogers x OFC! Cecelia Thompson

A/N: Here it is!A HUGE shout-out to my sweet babycakes, @mermaidxatxheart, for kicking my butt along the way and making sure this got done. Another shout-out to my amazing boo bear, @shreddedparchment, for 1. making this amazing moodboard and 2. encouraging me along the way to get this done. I would be incomplete without you two.

Any and all feedback is much appreciated and welcomed!!!!

Warnings: Embarassed Steeb and swearing.

Steve and Cece walked side by side, back to her hut. The sun had disappeared beyond the horizon, stars filling the sky, glimpses of the Milky Way here and there. Steve was in awe of the sight. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a sky so clear. He could see the appeal of traveling to remote tribes as she did…if only for this view.

“So,” Cecelia drawled out, interrupting Steve’s inner musings. “Since I shared something about me that you can’t find on Google, can I ask a question and get an honest answer in return?”

Steve let out a snort. “I don’t know, Cece. If I’ve learned anything in the last few years, it’s that the internet is infinite with its knowledge. I bet I could find something somewhere on the elusive Doctor Cecelia Thompson,” he teased, sending her a small smile.

She tried to ignore the flutter of butterflies in her belly at that stupid half smile of his. She had a feeling that he didn’t have any understanding of how deadly that smile of his could be. Take down the fiercest of civilizations, if she had to guess. Hardly fair.

“Hardy har har,” Cece deadpanned, throwing a playful glare over her shoulder. “I doubt that even Tony Stark could dig up mcuh on me. I have friends in high places.” She continued, not wanting to give Steve the chance to question what that meant. “You’re evading my question. I can only take that to mean that you don’t want to answer anything?” She quirked an eyebrow in question at him before facing forward to avoid any rocks or roots on their journey. If there was anything she DIDN’T want to do, it was face-plant in front of the good Captain.

Steve’s expression shifted, turning more serious. He gave a single nod, not that the woman in front of him could see. Or could she?

“You can ask. It’s just whether or not I’ll answer.”

It was Cece’s turn to snort, looking back so Steve could see the dramatic roll of her eyes. The petite woman spun on her heel before planting herself in front of him, face to face. Well, face to chest, if Steve was being honest.

She looked up at him with her dark green eyes full of curiosity.

“Do you enjoy being Captain America?”

Steve didn’t know what he expected, but that was not it.

“Of course I do,” Steve hears himself automatically answering.

They both knew that was a bullshit answer.

Cecelia, under normal circumstances with a first meeting, would never have asked such a question. But with the time she had spent with Bucky, the image of Steve Rogers versus Captain America didn’t add up. She wanted to know how he was able to reconcile who he was to being a public image.

A man for children to look up to versus the little punk who was quick to throw the first punch. The guy who sold bonds versus the man who spent years searching for an outlawed master assassin super soldier.

She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, unsure whether or not she wanted to call him out. After all, she had just met the man and they weren’t familiar enough with each other for that, right? But her natural personality was pushing back on her, telling her to demand the truth. That little imp on her shoulder was going to get her in trouble if she couldn’t keep it under control.

Steve wasn’t going to leave it at that.

“Okay, that was a lie,” he admitted with a sheepish look. “That’s a BS answer most people get, but...in reality,” he shakes his head in disbelief that he was just going to tell this woman how he felt. “Truth is that..well, it’s complicated.” He shoved his hands into his pockets before looking up at the vibrant sky before him, unable to meet her questioning eyes.

He starts with a sigh, “I don’t think it’s as simple as like or dislike. For one, I enjoy being able to breathe without feeling like my lungs are going to collapse.” He lets out a small laugh, though the memory of it was terrifying.

“I think that if I had the chance to do it all over again, I would have gone through with the experiment. I’ve always had this…will…or fight to do the right thing. Doing the right thing doesn’t mean it’s the easy thing to do…and it’s easier to do it with a healthy, strong body. At the same time, it’s hard not to feel like someone’s property. That’s what I was at the beginning, believe it or not. I was owned by the U.S. government to be a face. They didn’t care that I could go out on the lines. That was the whole purpose of Dr. Erskine’s experiment. To create the perfect soldier. But when he died and someone new took over, I was... basically a showgirl. That part sucked.”

Cece cheekily started humming the tune for ‘Star Spangled Man With a Plan’.

Steve glared at her, not amused.

She countered back with a look of innocence, holding her hands up in surrender. “What? I grew up with a family that idolized you. That song would play over the radio all the time growing up.”

Steve could feel his face turning red. “That’s….I was…before your time?”

The woman let out a snort. “Only by two decades. My parents, on the other hand, huge fans of yours.” Michael too, but she wasn’t going to call him out. “They would be incredibly jealous of me if they knew I was meeting the Steve Rogers.”

His ears turned an adorable shade of pink in embarrassment and he fell silent.

Her smile faded into a serious look. “I couldn’t imagine what that was like. Wanting to do what you could to serve your country and then being told you were nothing more than a salesperson, showgirl or whatever.”

Steve gave her a look she couldn’t quite decipher before it shifted into something more neutral. “Yeah, it took a pretty dark toll on me for a while, but it wasn’t too long before I proved I had other talents to be put to better use.” He thought back to when he broke into the Hydra compound to save Bucky along with the rest of the 107th. He frowned at the memory of finding his friend beat up and tortured. He shook his head to clear that thought.

“Once they realized that I wasn’t backing down, I was given the go-ahead to take out as many Hydra bases as I could. Haven’t really stopped since.” He paused, his heart aching at a thought. “Though now, it seems my intentions are misplaced because everything I do seems to hurt someone else.”

Cece bit her lip, reflecting on his words. She could see the pain and distress that overtook him…and she didn’t like it. She took a hesitant step towards him, hand reached out. She hesitated, unsure if she wanted to do it. But she saw the sadness and self-loathing in his eyes.

She then didn’t hesitate to place a gentle hand to his cheek, turning his face so he would meet her eye.

“I don’t doubt for a minute that you have the best intentions, Steven.” She paused, a sprinkle of blush covering her cheeks. “As long as you stay true to yourself, that’s all that matters. I have no doubt that things will work out for you.”

After their moment out in the field, Steve was convinced he would never stop blushing around this woman.

With a pat on his cheek and a cheeky smile, Cece skipped on, leading the way back to the village.

She was greeted by an indignant brother.

Michael stood at the entrance to the village with arms crossed, muscles flexed, striving to come off as intimidating. There was a cool glare on his face as he stared the two stragglers down.

Steve was worried Michael was going to attack him.

“You’re late,” Michael directed at his kid sister, completely ignoring the super soldier at her side.

Cece rolled her green eyes and sashayed away from Steve’s side to her brothers. She patted his cheek affectionately before giving it a pinch with a laugh. “You worry too much.”

Michael jerked his head away, scowling down at her. “You also left me to do the dishes. That’s just rude.”

The woman skipped several steps away, paused and gave him a mischievous smirk over her shoulder. “And yet, you still did them.” She spun around in a circle in a whimsical manner before stopping to face her brother again. She leaned forward and placed her hands on her hips and gave him a sassy look. “Besides, what else would I keep you around for, if not to do dishes? Now, we pack!” She threw her hands up in the air, cheering, as if packing was the most exciting thing she could think of.

Steve kept back, watching the siblings bicker with mild interest, amused by their behavior.

With the night taking over, he was surprised that it had cooled down considerably. He was thankful that with the serum, the chill didn’t bother him. But Cece, he worried-

“She’s pretty great, isn’t she?”

Steve turned his head to look at Bucky, startled by his abrupt appearance. Where did he come from? “Hm?”

Bucky gave Steve a knowing look, elbowing him in the ribs. “I know when you’re interested in a pretty dame, ya punk.” He sighed happily, turning his attention to the siblings who were still bickering while walking back to their domicile. “I have to say, I ship it.”

Steve’s nose scrunched up in confusion at the choice of words. “You what?”

Bucky’s cheeks turned red, slightly embarrassed. He muttered lowly to himself, “Maybe I didn’t use that word right.” He shook his head to clear that thought and looked at Steve. “I mean, I think you and Cece would make a great couple. She’s a catch.”

The Captain froze, unsure if he heard that correctly. How was he supposed to react to that?!

His heart kicked up, beating faster than a hummingbird's wings, blood rushing to his face. He sputtered, looking at Bucky with wide eyes. “I- you- what?! Me with her? Nooo no no. That’s not going to happen. No.”

“Someone’s in denial,” Bucky sang, fluttering his eyelashes at Steve. His expression then turned into one of bemusement “Are you...are you afraid of Michael?” He gasped with a mock accusatory tone. “I mean, sure he acts all tough and scary, but really-”

“No!” Steve interrupted, holding his hands up in defense. He didn’t need anymore teasing. His face couldn’t handle it. “I can’t because-because,” he racked his brain for any excuse, “Because of… Sharon!”

‘Well shit’, Steve internally winced. Why was his mouth working faster than his brain today? First with Cece and now with Bucky. And Sharon? Really?? Steve already knew that wasn’t going anywhere. Nor did he want it to.

Bucky didn’t bother to hold back a snort at the half-assed excuse. “Yeah, that’ll work out great,” he replied with heavy sarcasm. He clapped a hand on Steve’s shoulder before steering them in the direction of the quinjet. “Sharon Carter seems like a nice dame, but she’s all wrong for you. For more reasons than one. I’ve heard stories about her, Steve. Some that would…well, I won’t go into it. Just, trust me on this. Stay away from that one. Now, Cece on the other hand,” he trailed off, waiting for the ramp to lower on the jet. “She’s one in a million.” He tilted his head to the side, contemplating for a minute. “Literally.” He chuckled to himself at his own joke that Steve didn’t really understand.

He entered the jet and marched to the spot where their two bags were stored. With excessive ease, he grabbed his own before tossing Steve’s his. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that we’re spending the night. Cece would throw a fit if we left so soon.”

Steve just nodded, thankful that the topic of “shipping” him and the doctor together was dropped.

It was at times like this that Cece was thankful her and Michael packed light.

It took only twenty minutes to gather all of their supplies and place them into their appropriate boxes for easy access and easy travel.

Just as Cece was closing her last box, Steve and Bucky meandered in with their bags strapped against their backs.

Already, Michael and Bucky had set up the extra cots.

“Well, that’s that.” Cece rubbed her hands on her pants and stood up. “Time for sleep!”

She directed the boys to their pre-assigned beds.

“Okay, overgrown children. We have an early morning tomorrow, so best to be off to bed!” she called, grabbing the spare blankets she had set out. She tossed one to Steve, who easily caught it, and whipped the other one so it smacked Bucky in the face.

Michael snickered, pulling off his shirt before climbing into his cot. “Good throw, sis.”

Cece beamed at him before settling down on her own. “Thanks, broski.” She turned her head to look at Steve. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the Stark compound with us?”

Steve had explained to her what had transpired between him and Tony. Including how Bucky played into it all.

It broke her heart to hear it, but she felt better about going into the situation with eyes wide open.

Steve looked to Bucky who just shrugged indifferently, before turning back to Cece. “I think it’s best if Stark and I keep our distance for now.”

Cece offered the Captain a sympathetic smile. “Very well then.”

At first, Cece wasn’t sure what it was that woke her up from a dead sleep.

It was black all around her. She strained to see the silhouettes of the three soldiers sleeping around her.

The night was completely silent around her. Not even the bugs or critters outside made noise.

Something was wrong.

It wasn’t until she could feel a heavy presence over her shoulder leaning down to whisper in her ear that she realized she was in trouble.

“Rise and shine, bitch.”

Everything: @bettercallsabs @coonflix @dont-stop-keep-walking @angryteapot @geeksareunique @meggie-mouse-28 @mentallych-ill-desi @mermaidxatxheart @moonlessnight14 @theawesomefactor123 @thinkwritexpress-official

All My Heroes: @asguardiansoftheavengers @asimpleclumsyboy @biawol @deaniebean @mikariell95 @sadnessxvodka @shreddedparchment @shynara51 @spaceandstars @thinkingsofamadwoman

30 notes · View notes