thingsofimportanceanddelight

[thingsofimportanceanddelight]

The Banana Republic

In 1977 the Republicans in Congress forced then president Jimmy Carter to sell his families peanut farm because they feared that some entity would use it to funnel money to the president. Well, not really, but it was a justifiable concern. Carter, did the right thing and sold it because he didn't want to give even the appearance of impropriety. The country had just come off of the Nixon scandals and Ford's unsolicited pardon to "heal" the country.

In 2016, a new president decided differently. Instead of divesting in his businesses or at least putting them in a blind trust where he wouldn't have undo influence on their profits, Trump decided to hand off his businesses to his sons, but did not take himself out of the loop. In fact, it is more than speculated that a few foreign nations and local oligarchs paid Trump, his businesses, or his hotels large amounts of money to "influence" him. There were halted investigations that proved that foreign nations paid Trump in various ways to get what they wanted.

This is the sort of thing that goes on in corrupt nations, and sadly, America is just as corrupt as any Eastern European nation during the reign of Communist Russia. Tomorrow, Trump is getting back into office, but this time he isn't just content to get millions of dollars from foreign nations through his hotels, or tax funded trips to Saudi Arabia or Davos. Nope, now he has a new con, and a much better way to hide the vast amounts of money nations like China or Russia will be willing to pay him just to get what they want.

Cryptocurrency is a godsend for someone like Trump. Anyone from anywhere can buy into it, but it doesn't really exist. It's like money for nothing. Except it isn't going to be nothing. We aren't going to be able to monitor who buys this illusionary currency put out by Donald Trump, and it is absolutely guaranteed that someone in Trump's orbit is going to suggest to all those entities who have business in America exactly what they have to do to get what they want. It's just modern day bribery in the Banana Republic of America.

President's often got out of office with major debts they had to repay. That didn't happen to Trump last time, and it's absolutely guaranteed that it isn't going to happen this time. The man doesn't know anything about running the country, but he sure knows how to pull off a con, often badly. A lot of very bad things are going to happen to this country. After all, a man who's only concern is how much money he can make, doesn't have the countries interests at heart.

[thingsofimportanceanddelight]

The fact that “Elon musk does two Nazi salutes” isn’t blowing up my push notifications is the best example I could possibly give of the media’s failure to do fucking anything

[thingsofimportanceanddelight]

^what he said

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Please tell me that y'all won't go back to tiktok once Trump gets whatever nefarious concessions he wants from the company and "saves" it. Like, you all NEED to stay gone. Stay on Xiaohongshu or move to other platforms or create a new one or whatever, but don't go back to whatever Trump-appeasement monstrosity TikTok is about to become. Don't do it.

[thingsofimportanceanddelight]

Ain’t no way Trump just said the government would establish two genders: male and female, in his inauguration speech, and people are still trying to say that queer folks have no need to be scared 😭 fucking losing it

[thingsofimportanceanddelight]

Ian McKellen  says that all gay people should be trans allies

Sir Ian McKellen urges gay people to be better allies to the transgender community.

The legendary actor and Stonewall co-founder joined It’s a Sin star Olly Alexander for a special LGBT+ History Month talk on TikTok on February 25, Pink News reports. 

Sir Ian said: 

“I do hear people – gay people – talk about transgender people in very much the same terms as people used to talk about your common or garden gay.

“The connection between us all is we come under the queer umbrella – we are queer. I quite like being queer actually.

“The problems that transgender people have with the law are not dissimilar from what used to be the case for us, so I think we should all be allies really.“

This is not the first time the actor has stood up to transphobes. 

Speaking to lifestyle magazine Attitude, the veteran star talked about how happy he was about Elliot Page coming out as transgender. 

He felt “so disappointed” with himself for not recognizing the struggles that the then-teenage actor could have been facing when they worked together.

The actor talked about why it is important to be honest with oneself.

Top photo from The Talks.

[thingsofimportanceanddelight]

the fact that we are firmly in a time where conservatives are like "the actual founding fathers, who were slaveowners, were not racist enough for my taste" is wild

[thingsofimportanceanddelight]

Hi. Things are bleak, I know that. I know that we paid for Trump's last term with blood and it is likely the price will be blood again.

But listen to me. LISTEN.

You do not have to force yourself to witness horrors as an act of activism. It is not a form of activism. You can put your phone down, you can block that horrific video. We cannot win if you cannot fight and you will not be able to fight if you are hopeless.

Do not let them guilt you into this. People who are exhausted are easier to walk over. Take care of yourself, find community where you find joy.

[thingsofimportanceanddelight]

[thingsofimportanceanddelight]

“Back in the first Trump presidency, Trump’s critics spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get Trumpers to admit they’d done this or that, to apologize, whatever. This was always a mistake. I don’t need anyone to validate what I saw. I saw it. I don’t care what the explanation is. These are just twisted anti-American degenerates. We know this. Just what level of exuberant disinhibition led Musk to this moment or why this unmistakable gesture came so naturally to him … well, that’s really not my problem. Everyone knows what they saw here.”

— Elon Goes Full Sieg Heil In Clarifying Moment

[thingsofimportanceanddelight]

Trump used the term 'rigged' multiple times.

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[thingsofimportanceanddelight]

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There is no way of accidentally doing a nazi salute twice in a row while the entire world is watching. This man needs to be killed

[thingsofimportanceanddelight]

you could say that the world’s richest man was stupid and impulsive enough to do a nazi salute on stage twice without considering the backlash, but really what I think happened is the world’s richest man implicitly or explicitly calculated that in the current political and medial environment he could do a nazi salute on stage twice and not suffer any adverse consequences. which is worse. a lot worse.

[thingsofimportanceanddelight]

Do not let them erase this. Do not let them tell you he meant "my heart goes out for you."

This man is the grandson of a Canadian Nazi sympathizer who moved to South Africa BECAUSE he thought the apartheid was just the coolest.

He has a gaggle of kids specifically because he believes his genes are superior and need to be spread to improve humanity.

He has thrown his support behind the neonazi party in Germany and the far right party in the UK, not to mention how far he's wormed up the ass of the Republican party.

He threw two sieg heil salutes back to back at the inauguration of the president of the United States and is trying to scrub the evidence off the internet.

Elon Reeve Musk is a fucking Nazi.

[thingsofimportanceanddelight]

Because someone is on the ball, Turner Classic is playing (among other WWII films) The Great Dictator today.

If you haven't seen it, please do. It was produced by Charlie Chaplin in the late 1930s, when it became clear that the war was going to happen, and came out in 1940 after it had started. Essentially, Chaplin realized that his famous mustache was about to be usurped forever by a fascist, and that fascist was going to kill a lot more people in the future than he had already.

It's a parody, made before the worst horrors of the Nazi regime were known to the general public, so there is discomfort here (if you've seen Disney's Der Fuhrer's Face, you'll get the idea), but the movie ends with Chaplin essentially saying "fuck it, no one else seems to be speaking out about this and I'm going to use my platform to do that."

For context, this character is a Jew who has been mistaken for the dictator (for obvious mustache-related reasons), and has been sent onstage at a rally to give a speech. Instead of trying to impersonate Hitler, he says what he really thinks. And keep in mind, Chaplin was coming out of semi-retirement for this. It was the first time most people had ever heard him speak, and this is what he said: