#I have no doubts trump WILL try to make himself a president for life. there is no DOUBT in my mind.

[bleuberrygliscor]

Alot of people are misunderstanding and misrepresenting the “vote for biden” pleas, so allow me to break it down really easily with one of my personal favorite pastimes, Splatoon.

If you’ve never played, Splatoon is a game where you basically want to cover an entire map with your ink color in 4 v 4 groups. For the sake of ease, I am using the most evenly square map i can think of, Kelp Dome. (all of the splatoon maps are super even and symmetrical,  Kelp Dome is just the first square and flat map i can think of.)

The way this works is, You and your team of 3 other people are assigned a color. and you want that color to hold the majority of the map, or else you lose. You dont want purple to win, they are the opposing team. Your objective is to make sure team purple does not win. So you pick up your splattershot and get to inking.

Assuming everyone is using the same weapon and are decently good at the game, you would come out with something like this.

In practice it wouldnt be this clear cut(and judd would arbitrarily assign a winner at random), but hear me out. That is what a map looks like when everyone on your team works together to accomplish the goal. Everyone is playing the objective here. Every member inked two squares! Fantastic. We all did our part.

Now, youve done your part but you really hated it, who can blame you. You dont like the color Lime Green. You were hoping green would be like a forest green or more a true deep green and not this lime monstrosity you were assigned. You find another teammate has the same feeling, they hate lime green. Absolutely detest it. Did you hear what lime green said the other day? fuck that guy am I right? “ Fuck it,” you say “I refuse to play lime green! We’re going to play Sky Blue instead!” You and your teammate swap colors and sneer at the other two who are sticking with lime green. You play the match.

Whops! You and your teammate played just as good as you did last game! You covered your two squares! What the hell happened?? Well, because you and your teammate decided to swap parties colors in the middle of the election season match, youve split the ink. It became a two vs two vs four. Team Purple was banded together, they had four people covering their turf. Meanwhile you had to fight with Lime Green AND Purple to keep your Sky Blue on the map.

“Well why didnt the rest of Team Lime Green also change their colors?!” your teammate asks.

“well, why did you change yours?” a player from Lime asks you, “We were all Lime Green before the match started, What happened?”

You dig your heels and rattle off the list, noting all the terrible things Lime Green has done, both in the past and the recent present. the Lime Green team members nod and ask “Have you seen what Purple is doing though? Like now, in office? Lime Green has done some seriously gross stuff, we dont deny that, but you would need to convince 60-75% of the country to suddenly change their outlook on life within a few months. Lime Green is the only actual option we have at this point. We can change colors after the match, but right now we need to focus on beating purple right?”

You dont find that answer satisfying. You dont want someone who has done all the terrible things Lime Green has running your country. You dont want Purple either. Both options are terrible! Both colors are horrible and ugly. They're right though, sky blue cant win, not with just the two of you painting your hardest. So If your color cant win, and you are forced to choose between Racist Rapist Lime Green or Racist Rapist Purple, how can you morally choose?

“You know what? fuck this!” you say, tossing your splattershot to the side, “Why do I have to vote play either way? One of these disgusting colors will win anyway, why do I care who wins? I just wont play, theres no point.”

you leave the arena with your Sky-blue teammate, watching from the sidelines...

...as team Purple Slaughters team Lime Green. (in splatoon, the map would look alot less like that, and alot more like this:

“serves them right for not picking Sky blue.”  you say and your blue teammate nods along. Team Lime green has lost. Team Sky blue has ALSO lost. Team purple has won. You chose not to play the objective.

#rem rants #politics #biden2020 #haha for real? fuck biden. but fuck people who cant be assed to play the objective more. #before you ask. yes i am black. yes i am voting for biden. yes i know he's racist as hell. they all are sweaty... #there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. that includes our politicians sweatyyyy #you will see hear touch smell a racist no matter what you do. its inevitable. now does that make it okay? no. #we had to argue with obama to have gay marriage legalized. we have and still have to fight. #you think trump will even HEAR socialist policies? you think he would even entertain them??? #at MINIMUM i think biden would at LEAST give them some thought. at LEAST let his experts speak on it. #i can survive biden. i feel comfortable surviving biden. #I have no doubts trump WILL try to make himself a president for life. there is no DOUBT in my mind. #i am personally coming to slit the throat of every person who either abstains or throws away their vote on a write in. #i wanted bernie so bad. so fucking bad. but we have biden. and thats the end of it. #please. please dont fuck us over. please dear lord PLAY THE OBJECTIVE

[jewish-privilege]

(...)

I was a 12 years old when I was attacked by a mob of children and called "Christ killer" — the same age Jesus was, according to the Gospel of Luke, when he lingered in the Temple of Jerusalem and impressed the elders with his intellect — so this issue is undeniably personal. That wasn't the first or last time I was bullied for being Jewish, but it was the only time I nearly died because of it: Those kids held my head underwater, chanting, "Drown the Jew!"

This incident sprang back to mind  this month as Republicans tried to figure out what to do about Greene, a particularly obnoxious Christian right-winger who has suggested that a "space laser" affiliated with Jewish banking families caused the 2018 Camp Fire in California, expressed sympathy for the anti-Semitic QAnon fantasies, promoted a video that claimed Jews are trying to destroy Europe, posed for a picture with a Ku Klux Klan leader and liked a tweet linking Israel to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

(...)

None of this is surprising for anyone who is familiar with the history of American anti-Semitism. Greene is not an aberration, some inexplicable pimple of hatred that blemishes the American right's otherwise Jew-friendly visage. The American right has long had an anti-Semitism problem, and she's just the latest symptom.

This history of hatred "tells us much more about the anti-Semite than it tells us about Jews," Dr. Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, told Salon. After citing an Israeli historian who refers to anti-Semitism as a "cultural code," Sarna explained that beliefs that vilify Jews as malevolent plotters who secretly control the world have a long history in American political life. "These ideas, which I think many on the left frankly had thought were done and over with, we suddenly see them full blown," he said

Before the 19th century, Sarna explained Jews were stereotypically depicted as being cursed: They were "wandering Jews" for their supposed role in killing Jesus Christ. In the modern era, however, the stereotype emerged that Jews secretly controlled the world and were responsible for everything that a given anti-Semite might regard as sinister. During the Civil War, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant blamed the Jews for cotton smuggling and expelled the entire Jewish community from areas he controlled in Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. When the populist movement arose to address agrarian economic concerns in the 1890s, Jewish bankers like the Rothschilds were a frequent target among ideological leaders like William Hope "Coin" Harvey.

(...)

There's a direct line between those conspiratorial fantasies ideas from previous decades and the anti-Semitic attacks of the 21st century. "Conspiratorial thinking, by its nature, argues that everything is connected," Sarna explained. "There are no coincidences and it eschews complexity. It believes there are simple explanations based on sinister individuals who are manipulating the universe. Unsurprisingly, in a Christian setting, those are Jews."

Those ideas can evolve — Sarna pointed out that the QAnon belief in a giant child abuse ring run by Jews is analogous to the "blood libel," the medieval myth that Jews used the blood of Christian children for rituals — but the underlying assumptions have been consistent. It just so happens that, in the modern right-wing incarnation, Donald Trump's cult-like following believes that "all the enemies of Mr. Trump are now child molesters."

(...)

[Jewish comedian Larry Charles] brought up community organizer and political theorist Saul Alinsky, a favorite target of the right. "He is almost like the devil in a way," Charles observed. "He's like this radical leftist Jew, he fits all the categories. He checks all the boxes."

"Shooting some of these movies, we would see reasonable people who have this blind spot," Charles said. "They have this crazy belief, and there were all different applications and manifestations of it, that the Jews control everything. That is like a mantra amongst a certain segment of the population."

(...)

With the election of Trump in 2016, those ingrained belief systems — which for many years had been kept outside the American political mainstream — became more prominent, and their adherents more emboldened. David Weissman, a military veteran and former conservative Republican who stopped being a self-described "Trump troll" after a 2018 conversation with comedian Sarah Silverman, told Salon about his encounters with anti-Semitism on the right.

Back when he still supported Trump, Weissman recalled, he got into a "little spat" with an alt-right commentator who calls himself Baked Alaska, who was recently arrested after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Ultimately they moved past it, Weissman said: "We both realized we were Trump supporters" who believed "Democrats were the bad guys." Once he left MAGA world, however, Weissman said "the anti-Semitism definitely escalated" in interactions with his former allies.

"When I became a Democrat, I was called 'the k-word'" and targeted by "anti-Semitic slurs and tropes," Weissman said. Trump supporters sent "memes of me being Jewish in the oven," and "put my name in parentheses," a common tactic used by the far right to target someone for being Jewish.

(...)

"Anti-Semitism certainly did not start with Marjorie Taylor Greene, nor did it start with Donald Trump, but we have seen an exponential increase in violent anti-Semitic incidents during Donald Trump's presidency," Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told Salon. "That is no doubt related to the fact that he emboldened and aligned himself with white nationalism." She mentioned Trump equating the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville with the peaceful protesters by "commenting that there were very fine people on both sides," refusing to denounce white nationalism and telling the right-wing Proud Boys during one of the campaign debates to "stand back and stand by."

"White nationalism had existed in our country prior to that, and anti-Semitism as an element of it, but white nationalists had never had an ally in the White House until Donald Trump," Soifer said.

(...)

Donald Trump's supposed pro-Israel policies were closely aligned with those of Benjamin Netanyahu, and did nothing to correct for Trump's history of anti-Semitic words and actions. He accused Jewish Democrats of "great disloyalty" toward Israel (feeding into the stereotype that Jews have dual loyalties), removed any specific reference to Jews from a 2017 State Department statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day and has frequently used anti-Semitic dogwhistle terms by opposing "globalists" and describing himself as a "nationalist." When I interviewed Charlotte Pence, the daughter of former Vice President Mike Pence, she talked about her family's love of Israel but refused to answer a question about whether she believes Jews are going to hell — or discuss the creepy messianic theories underpinning the Christian right's support for Israel.

When I asked Larry Charles whether, based on his experiences, there's an opportunity to build bridges with anti-Semites, he was skeptical. "I have not seen a lot of opportunities for bridge building in the situations that I've been in," Charles explained. "The people that I've met through Sacha [Baron Cohen] were very rigid and dogmatic in their prejudices. There was no crossing that gulf with them. There might be tolerance, temporarily. There might be patience, temporarily. But there's no changing that belief."

I hope that Charles is wrong but suspect he is right, which raises the question of how American Jews should react to the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world. For want of a better alternative, I think the only solution is to be intolerant toward intolerance. House Democrats were right to strip Greene of her committee assignments, but that is not nearly enough. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter need to do more to limit hate speech, even if conservatives cry foul in bad faith (the First Amendment only protects people from government censorship, not consequences from private corporations). Right-wing politicians who attack prominent Jews in ways that can be plausibly construed as anti-Semitic, or by denouncing "globalists," need to lose their funding. People who oppose anti-Semitism must lead boycotts against right-wing media figures who cover for people like Greene, such as Fox News' Sean Hannity.

On a broader level, critics of anti-Semitism must recognize that this form of bigotry is part of America's long history of hate — a history which holds that only white, straight Christian "manly" men have a right to rule — and recognize our responsibility to be allies to African Americans and the Latinx community, Muslims and the LGBT community, women suffering under the patriarchy and the poor struggling to make ends meet. If we limit our empathy merely to other Jews, the implicit message is not that systemic oppression is wrong, but only that we happen to dislike it when our group is targeted. The Jewish tradition at its best instills a moral responsibility to see all the layers of oppression, and align ourselves with its victims.

[Read Matthew Rozsa’s full piece in Salon]

#marjorie taylor greene #antisemitism #american antisemitism

[tomfooleryprime]

Everyone talks about how Trump’s supporters will never abandon him, no matter how often he demonstrates his terrible leadership skills, or regardless of whether most people who work for him end up humiliated, fired, indicted, or quitting because he has the temperament of a spoiled brat whose life has amounted to little more than a string of lawsuits, failed businesses, questionable associates, and mediocre children suckling on the teat of nepotism.

It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t actually fulfilled most of his major campaign promises—he never built the wall, deported all undocumented immigrants, repealed Obamacare, put Hillary in prison, brought back manufacturing jobs on a large scale, or eliminated the federal debt. What matters to his supporters is that they feel like he’s accomplished things, and what you make people feel is often more important than what you actually do for them.

So much of the momentum of Trumpism has nothing to do with achieving discrete conservative goals—it revolves around a culture of shock value, trolling, antagonizing, and “othering” anyone who criticizes them or their president. As far as I can tell, they suppose the real problems in our country stem from people who hate Trump and constantly try to undermine his policies or invent lies about him. I would assert they have the cause and effect relationship backwards—protests, violence, and unrest aren’t the problem eating away at our social contract—they’re a symptom that the social contract is being eroded. But never mind.

Picture a thought experiment where his supporters get exactly what they claim they want. Imagine every Democrat in Congress, every member of the Hollywood elite, and every Jewish billionaire dropped dead tomorrow, or perhaps the majority of Americans who dislike Trump suddenly abandon their entire worldview and understanding of the Constitution and give into the demands of the minority of America who adores him. However it happens, the opposition disappears.

And then they build a “great big beautiful” wall to keep all the immigrants out. They put prayer in schools and outlaw homosexuality and ban abortion and abolish gun laws and cut social programs and save the white suburbs and measure their economic success solely by the stock market, as if they could eat the Dow or live in the NASDAQ. Will they be happy? Will America be great?

I doubt it. Trumpism isn’t a traditional political theory that proposes ideas on how to best preserve the social contract and promote national unity, instead it peddles the concept that liberal elites long ago shattered the social contract by asking us to respect people’s pronouns and implying that maybe not all cops are fair to minorities, and unity can only be restored when all of Trump’s enemies are vanquished. Trumpism requires comic book-esque villains to shape a narrative, a deliberate “us versus them” mentality.

It’s rudimentary, but it’s the backbone of storytelling. What’s more, there will always be enemies. Even if all the BLM protesters or socialists or secularists or feminists evaporated into thin air, they would invent a new enemy to malign. They would have to.

Ever wonder why Batman never defeats the Joker or why a supposedly all-powerful God never settles the score with Satan? Because that would be the end of the plot and you can’t sell comic books or church if you don’t keep the storyline open or at least leave room for a new antagonist.

Similarly, you can’t sell Trumpism without Antifa, migrant caravans, and wildly out-of-context AOC or Greta Thunberg quotes. And so give them an imaginary country completely devoid of never-Trumpers, and the whole movement would disintegrate, either because they would get bored and finally notice the emperor isn't wearing any clothes, or they would turn on each other for lack of an appropriate subject to burn in effigy.

For all the talk of what Trump supporters claim they stand for, the cornerstone of their movement is really best summed up by what they stand against, as evidenced by the “fuck your feelings” t-shirts and the “liberal tears” coffee mugs. Without any obvious enemies to scapegoat, outrage, and oppose, I imagine a good many MAGA believers would find a theoretical Trumpland a pretty far cry from the utopia they yearn for.

Some might argue the Democrats are "just as bad" and all they’ve done these past four years is disparage and try to tear down a president that God himself ordained. Side note—ever notice how Republicans get elected through God’s guiding hand, but any time a Democrat sits in the Oval, it has Satan’s fingerprints all over it?

Anyway, trust me, I’ve spent a lot of time agonizing over the reality that we won’t be a country at peace for a long time. Maybe not ever again. And it’s almost entirely because Trump thrives on sowing discord. Even if Joe Biden wins in November, the MAGA cult won’t just graciously accept defeat and take the advice they gave never-Trumpers in 2016, which was to “suck it up and deal with it, crybabies” because after all "he's the president whether or not you voted for him."

But the thing is, without Trump, Democrats actually DO have a platform, contrary to what right-wing cable news pundits would imply. Most of its objectives have nothing to do with sticking it to Donald Trump, but focus on reducing poverty, improving access to healthcare, and advocating for civil rights.https://www.demconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020-07-31-Democratic-Party-Platform-For-Distribution.pdf

Meanwhile, perhaps nothing supports my argument that all Trump supporters care about is "owning the libs" and generally just doing the opposite of whatever Democrats want than the fact that their 2020 platform is a single page long and literally says “The RNC enthusiastically supports President Trump and continues to reject the policy positions of the Obama-Biden Administration, as well as those espoused by the Democratic National Committee today.” https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_2020.pdf

#Trump #Donald Trump #maga #velvet divorce #political theory #democrats #election 2020 #2020 election #republican platform #us vs them #trump vs biden

[imagitory]

Allow me to apologize. I worded that wrong. I no longer support Donald Trump after that riot on the capitol. It was bad, it was violent, and it spits in the face of everything the GOP stands for. What I mean is that prior to that riot, I did not notice anything racist/homophobic about him, and I never understood why so many ppl have those allegations.

I accept your apology, and I’m glad at least that you don’t count yourself among the members of the Republican Party who have flagrantly turned their backs on what our republic supposedly stands for.

That being said, I’m afraid Donald Trump’s racism is still pretty hard to deny, and I have to admit, I’m both stunned and dismayed that you have somehow yet to see it.

As I said in my response to your original words, Donald Trump has long been championed by white supremacists like ex-KKK Grand Wizard David Duke and the Proud Boys, and he has consistently refused to actively condemn their actions or beliefs, instead being prone to jump into “what-about-ism” and “both-sides-ing” the issue so that he equates actively racist extremists with counter-protestors and civil rights activists...or, even worse, actively encouraging those racist extremists. (“Stand back and stand by,” anyone?)

This isn’t even touching on how Trump’s travel ban actively targeted Middle-Eastern countries and how even now there are dozens of Mexican and South American people locked up on our southern border in real-life concentration camps, separated from their families in the midst of a raging pandemic, all because of the rhetoric Trump spewed about Mexicans “bringing crime and drugs” into our country and “being rapists” who would “steal jobs” from “real” Americans. Regardless of one’s stance on immigration, refugees are protected under international law, and yet we have lumped them in with people who tried to cross our southern border illegally -- and on top of that, all of those people came to our country out of desperation, and most illegal immigrants who make it across the border and integrate into American society don’t become criminals at all. If anything, it’s more logical for them to try to stay under the radar, since they don’t want to be deported back where they came from! And even if you arrested those immigrants on the border as criminals, they would still be entitled to a full criminal trial and humane conditions while imprisoned, which they most certainly are not in at present. Trump got elected largely because of his anti-immigrant (which in truth was largely anti-Mexican and anti-Muslim -- he sure as Hell didn’t mind giving his wife Melania’s parents American citizenship without much fuss) rhetoric and his promise to “protect” America with a great big wall that Mexico would pay for -- a wall that, may I point out, we Americans not only paid for, but is also a tiny, pathetic shadow of what he claimed it would be and yet he’s still boasting was a victory of his administration.

Then of course there’s Trump’s history of racism toward black people, shown in his discriminatory housing practices and the completely fabricated “birtherism” conspiracy theory he started about Barack Obama that claimed he wasn’t a real American citizen, which tapped into a lot of racist Americans’ prejudice toward our first black president. Trump’s referred to countries like Haiti as “sh*thole countries” and blames China singularly for the spread of Covid-19 by trying to call it the “China Virus” and the “Kung Flu,” completely ignoring how much his own administration’s negligence resulted in America easily surpassing every other country on Earth in Covid deaths, with over 386,000 deaths in less than a year, compared to about 405,000 deaths over the course of four years during World War II. Even Trump’s whole mantra of “America First” is a slogan associated with both the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party -- David Duke himself used that very phrase when running for office in 2016, the same year Trump was elected president. I’m truly sorry, but if all of this doesn’t make it very clear where Trump stands in regards to race, I don’t think there’s anything I could do or say to make it clearer.

As for homophobia, I’d point to Trump’s supposedly more “religious” counterpart Mike Pence as being the more actively and vocally anti-LGBT out of the two of them, considering his support for “gay conversion therapy,” his voting history against gay marriage, his vote to preserve the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, and his stance on so-called “Religious Freedom” that denies services to people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. But considering Trump selected Pence as his running mate, I think that says plenty about how unproblematic Pence’s anti-LGBT positions are to him.

Although I’m disheartened by the fact that I had to write out any of this and that you could have any doubt in your mind about the kind of person Donald Trump truly is, I’m at least encouraged that you’ve softened your words to the point that you acknowledge you don’t understand the other side’s position, as opposed to acting like other people are just being overly sensitive and confidently saying that one can’t name three instances where Trump has proven himself to be racist.

#ask me #excuse me politics coming through #donald trump #mike pence #racism #homophobia #I'm honestly kind of stunned you feel any need to defend this man at all though? #I mean even if he's despicable for more reasons than just his treason #why do you feel the urge to try to say 'well he's not as racist as people say he is?' #it kind of feels like those people who try to claim that at least hitler was a good artist #which honestly?? ehhhhh not really??

[giftofshewbread]

The Infrastructure (Good vs Evil)

 By Robert Campbell      Published on: August 8, 2021

Hello folks, I think it’s time for another article about things that concern me regarding what’s going on in America. I don’t write regularly because other writers have covered many important topics, and I don’t need to repeat them. But as I look at America, I see the face of it changing right before my eyes. It does not have that American greatness as before; the light is dimming daily. Why is that?

We are a Christian nation, or are we now? We have been weakened over the years, and now we cannot even fight back. Has the infrastructure been rebuilt so that we cannot fight back without destroying it?

I have always wanted to understand more of what the Bible meant that “good will become evil, and evil will become good.” How does that look? I can see it from afar, but how does one see it today?

There was a day when evil was hidden; it kept itself hidden so as not to alarm the people of its deception. It would not show itself, or we would fight it back. There was a time that we were ashamed to even be around those doing wrong.

Christians were the mainframe of what was right in this country and abroad. We were proud to be a part of a nation that worshiped God daily. Traveling the world helping others was part of our nature as a country. We did it, not for our glory, but for the glory of God. God blessed us with everything we needed, and we were the envy of every country on earth.

Whether they believed in God or not, our founding fathers had morals from a higher standard than themselves. From the very beginning when, yes, the white man set foot in this country, God used them to create, second to none, the best country that ever was and that ever will be.

If men today were like men of yesterday, we would be better off today as a country. But men today are weak and pathetic; they act like women, emotionally vulnerable. They have fallen prey to the women just like Adam did in the garden; men have bitten the apple. Eve bought the lie in the garden, and women today are repeating it over and over again. Men decided to turn over their responsibility to the weaker vessel (the women). Men of all walks of life are addicted to women; they have put the women before God and Jesus our Lord and Saviour.

The children are led by weakness instead of strength, and they grow up without any morals and values. Just look around you at our children today. The parents are too busy getting their stuff, and the children are left home to fend for themselves. We send them to the public schools where they get indoctrinated, and the parents are clueless about what is being taught to them.

The infrastructure has been changed. How did this happen, how did this begin to change?

We Christians bought the lie; we decided to allow evil to get a foot in the door. We allowed evil to tell us it was alright to let the Godless rule over us. The churches were the first to go under the onslaught of evil; just look around you.

To this day, we are still slaughtering innocent children in the womb (Black women are responsible for one-third of babies to date slaughtered in the womb), and the so-called preachers (not all, but most), even the good ones, are not speaking on it. They’re too afraid they might lose their people and money and the most important of all, their parking space up front.

The men of the church allowed women to become preachers knowing God is against it. Women were not designed to rule over men; it’s out of order.

Even in our country, we have allowed women to rule over us in government – mayors, senators, etc. Just look around you. We now have a vice president that is a woman (Kamala Harris), and she is clueless on what to do under pressure. And we also have a president that is not in good health; we know that he is showing signs of Dementia. The liberals do not care that this man is sick; they only are concerned with power.

There is no love among liberal Democrats, and it seems to be the same with the so-called conservative Republicans. They will do whatever the cost to gain wealth and power and to control you.

Joe Biden’s wife “Jill” has no love for her husband; she has allowed him to make a fool of himself in front of the world—all for the sake of fame and power. Even Biden’s family could care less about him; as long as they get what they want, they will use the president to their advantage.

They are using the president to get their godless agenda done. We all know that this election was stolen from Donald Trump, and we saw before our eyes the weakness of righteous men and women who did nothing to stop it. We watched the liberals put their plan in action and still did nothing to stop it. Our senators and congressmen did nothing to stop this thievery from taking place. All because of fear and retribution. In other words, they were cowards. And most of them hated” Donald Trump.” They hated him because he was arrogant and bragged, and he called them out.

Even preachers will tell you that God did not like his arrogance. But folks, Donald Trump was always that way. He was a real man, not afraid to tell it like it was. God could care less about his arrogance; God put him there for a reason.

But the infrastructure has been changed. We no longer have strong men to lead a country; we gave it over to the women to lead us. Even conservative women have no business ruling over a man. Even “Candice Owens” is trying to rule over men. Men are saying that she will make a good leader. She claims that men should go back home and lead their families, yet she will not go home and raise her newborn child. Her husband will allow her to run around the country saying a whole lot of nothing. Her Ego is off the charts; she bought the lie, just like “Eve” did in the garden.

Evil is now the new good, and folks from all walks of life are falling for it. At first, it was subtle, and now it does not care because it is now in our infrastructure. Evil is now in the forefront and looks like good; it’s an imitation, not real. Commercials have turned evil into good and blatantly puts it in your face. There is no more shame in showing two men in bed together representing a family over children or having men calling themselves women (transgender) to compete in women’s sports. It’s in our infrastructure now, hard to reverse.

What was logical is now all emotion, now mainly from the men who are more emotional than the women.

The white man has become so weakened that he cannot even fight back because he has a bullseye on his back. The white man is so hated because he represents power in this country. He represents good in America; he works the hardest to build, not destroy.

Black men were destroyed a long time ago through “Welfare and Civil Rights.” The black man bought the lie that he needed help from the government; that he could not succeed in life without their help. Liberals and Godless folks told Blacks that racism was the cause for them not getting ahead in America. Slavery was so long ago that it is not even worth a conversation. It’s in the past, but blacks today believe it is still relevant.

The infrastructure has been changed. Even the conservatives believe in the lie. Evil is now good, and good is now evil; you cannot see the difference.

This pandemic was a set-up from the very beginning to weaken America and destroy Donald Trump. Liberals could not allow Donald Trump to succeed in “Making America Great Again.” That would hinder their plan for control over the masses. It would stop them from making billions and billions of dollars. The pharmaceutical companies are making billions over this fake pandemic, and the mind-numbed robots follow every government and media instruction even though they know it’s a lie. They follow suit because of fear. They have fear because the no-good pastors, senators, governors, and mayors tell them so.

Satan, in reality, has sold us fear, the true enemy. Even today, people are still wearing a mask, knowing that it will not stop a virus. But they wear the mask because of fear and doubt; it makes them feel secure and comfortable. After they dress for the morning and get ready to go out, they grab their smartphone and mask; they won’t leave home without it. It is fashionable now to have one on.

Even after a year, folks will still wear the mask, thinking that the virus will somehow float through the air and magically stop and not go through the paper mask. And the most striking part is that I see more blacks wearing the mask than anyone else, all because they were told to do so.

Remember the yellow star (patch) in the days of Nazi Germany that the Jews were forced to wear? It’s no different today. The vaccine is a set-up, a trial run of what is coming.

There is nothing in the vaccine that will stop the virus; it is all smoke and mirrors. Folks believe that by taking the vaccine, they will not get the virus, so they go running gladly to the nearest facility and get their miracle drug, all supplied freely from their government.

Fear and anger run rampant today, and blacks are leading the way to America’s destruction, leading the way in everything wrong in this nation today. They go around with hate in their heart for the white man; they hate everyone, including themselves. They do not believe in God. Instead, they would go around and support an organization like “BLM,” believing that the ten, perhaps 11 blacks killed by white police officers was a racist act. Yet blacks are killing each other daily in the hundreds.

The infrastructure has been changed. This is happening to all races of people; the spirit of evil is the same throughout.

White men, you need to stand up and tell the truth; be not afraid. America, will not change until you men of all races stand up.

God is waiting on men; He is waiting on righteous men to do the right thing, but the infrastructure of America is not the same any longer. It has been destroyed to allow evil to reign, and it is hard even to find one righteous man or woman to fight back. Most have bought the lie.

Churches today are just as dangerous as the women’s womb; you may not come out alive. Preachers sound just like the world today; they give you no hope. They will follow Jesus as long as it goes along with the world and keeping their stuff.

People cannot afford to be without their Smartphone or Google; that’s their new god; it gives them everything they need. Just look around you; they pray to their phone every five to ten minutes without hesitation. It goes everywhere with them; they will go back 10 miles from home to get their phone when they are a mile away from work.

God no longer leads America in people’s lives; Satan has given them a new false god to follow and worship. Satan has made a lie look like the truth and the truth to look like a lie.

Men of all races that are true believers in Jesus Christ must get their courage back. After all, it took one man like Donald Trump to change the world; God used him like he used men from old to get his agenda done. God is looking for a few good men and women to have no fear, and we can begin to move mountains. All is not lost if we now turn around and stand up, and you, that’s right, you white men must lead the way.

We cannot rely on the women to do it for us; it’s not in them to do so. Women cannot fix a man’s problem; we fix women’s problems; that’s our job.

America’s light is almost out, but we did not have to let it come to this; all we had to do is have no fear and trust in God. Now is the time to take America back. The godless liberals think they are winning but are digging a deep hole for themselves. God will, in time, judge them harshly, and I’m afraid good Christians will go down with them. All because they bought the lie.

God is the master of all, and he will let you decide on good or evil; he will give you ample warnings. We have read and re-read Bible, and we still don’t get it.

The word of God is in our hearts from the beginning. For those who have kept up the good fight, God will honor you with his blessings. He will see you through this just as he has taken care of me. I’m here to tell you that God will not forsake you or leave you, even though it seems the bleakest. Our roughest trials are just trials to make you stronger through turbulent times. God is here and now, and he did not give us Jesus for anything. He gave us Jesus for everything. Look to him, and you will get through this.

You must forgive your enemies and love them anyway.

America, it is up to you. We must always pray for Israel; if not for them, there would be no us.

I’m a Christian American Republican who happens to be black.

Make America Great Again.

#anime #pic #pixel #art #cute #news #gay #bi #trans #lgbtq #infrastructure #government #good #vs #evil #men #women #republican #democrat #black #white #fear #blm #covid #plandemic #hate #crime #dictatorship #love #lawlessness

[theunvanquishedzims]

Calming my post-election anxiety with sweet sweet logic

So Trump is a wannabe dictator with crazy screaming fans who are headed toward violent armed meltdowns. What’s to stop him from going full dictator and refusing to leave office?

I’m glad you asked!

You see, the major difference between wannabe dictators and actual dictators is ALLIES. Dictators are surrounded with tight security, aided by the military, cheered on by media that they control, and are either helped, encouraged, or just ignored by other countries with the power to stop them.

Trump has charged the Secret Service money for the privilege of protecting him and his family since day one. You remember the first year, when his wife and son refused to move to the White House so the Secret Service had to RENT FLOORS in TRUMP’S BUILDING to be close to them? And how his extended family went globetrotting and the Secret Service had to accompany them? And when Trump himself insisted on hosting people at his golf club, he made the Secret Service RENT GOLF CARTS from TRUMP’S CLUB to follow him while he went golfing?

The end result was that halfway through the first year of his presidency, the Secret Service could not pay their own wages. Because half their yearly budget had gone straight to Trump’s pockets. And that’s just financially. I think we all remember how the White House came down with Covid and Trump still insisted on Secret Service agents driving him around to wave at people. He has not been kind to the people who are sworn to protect him. These people have had a front-row seat to his circus since 2016. When the time comes from Trump to leave the White House and Biden to take over, I doubt they’ll betray the country out of loyalty to Trump. If anything, they’ll be the ones to drag him out.

As for the military, Trump insulted and fired four generals from his administration staff. He said on multiple occasions that soldiers who get captured or killed are suckers and losers. He refused to visit a cemetery to honor the dead because it was raining. He tries to pander to the military by massive increases in defense spending, but that money goes to capitalists who make weapons and war technology, not the soldiers or veterans. (He also hypocritically accused military officials of being in bed with those same companies.) In a poll of 1000 service members 50% said they disliked Trump. Overall, he doesn’t act like a leader, and the way he skirts responsibility (like taking charge during the pandemic) doesn’t appeal to a group that functions on trust in their leadership.

A proper dictator would have spent the last four years cozying up to his generals and making sure they knew the financial and social benefits of answering to him personally, not the office of the President. And while Trump did adhere to the adage “find a foreign foe” to unite people against, he badly misjudged what most US citizens consider “foreign.” He hasn’t found a villain that we would root for the military taking down, and the people he targets (Latinx, Blacks, immigrants, and people in countries our military has already devastated) are not a minority he can turn the majority of the country against, especially with how many of the former two serve in the military themselves. When the time comes for him to leave office, the military might be the first to cut ties with the wannabe Dictator-in-Chief.

Now, the media. They’ve been treating him like a joke candidate since day one, but after he was actually elected and took office they’ve started to take him more seriously. He’s gotten his catchphrase “fake news!” to catch on, but that doesn’t change the fact that under his administration news reporters have been harassed, illegally arrested, and generally poorly treated by Trump, especially if they’re women. He’s trashed talked everyone, with Fox News being the last bastion of semi-legitimate news that openly supports him (and their credibility has taken a big hit over it.)

Despite this support, in recently months Trump has been increasingly dumping on Fox, even throwing the mediator they provided for the debate under the bus, and risking alienating them in the process. If his supporters listen to him and start considering Fox part of Big Fake News, it might possibly be the death of Fox, leaving most of his supporters adrift and isolated from their source of right-wing news, and sending the more extreme fringes into the arms of conspiracy theory websites. (I’m not saying this is bad, being cut off from Fox and its toxic stream of “information” can actually help rehabilitate the right.)

Honestly, I don’t think Trump ever had a shot at controlling the media like a dictator would, mainly because of social media. He’s in love with attention, and Twitter has provided him a nonstop stream of it. No other President has threatened, insulted, promoted, or hinted at war over social media the way Trump has, and he gets so much direct feedback and interaction with the public and the world as a result. He could have leveraged that by buying the company (through a shell corporation, obviously) and setting it up as The One True Source of Information, manipulating public perception of him and his administration by keeping a tight grip on what information he let out.

But he’s just. Not. That. Clever. He blurts out everything that crosses his mind, leaving his administration to play clean-up on his messes, put out fires he keeps pouring gasoline on, and claim he’s joking when everyone knows he’s testing the limits on what he can get away with saying. He took advantage of the direct communication with legions of supporters, but seemed to forget that his detractors had equal access and would absolutely call him out on things he definitely said, it’s right there on his Twitter account, they have the Tweet pulled up on their phone right now. Instead of operating a single state-run media outlet while crushing all free press and limiting internet access like other dictators, he’s mooned the world’s cameras and acted surprised when they put his saggy butt on tv. “Fake news! That’s not my butt! THIS is my butt! [image attached]” he tweets. “Twitter is so biased, they haven’t censored any of Sleepy Joe’s photos!” he later tweets.

And lastly. The key to a dictatorship’s success. To prevent outside intervention, the country a dictator runs must be unimportant and ignored, wealthy and well-connected, or scary and well-armed. Minor warlords are the former, Putin is the latter, Trump might have weaseled his way into being the middle. But at the end of the day, America’s whole thing is new leadership every four years. It was revolutionary to replace a lineage of kings and queens stretching generations with a non-royal elected leader who only held office for four to eight years, but we’ve stuck to that for 200 years and everyone’s used to it by now. It would take a charismatic and powerful person to move the American people towards abolishing such a basic tenant of our democracy, and despite the mob mentality that lead a small portion of his supporters to chant “sixteen more years!” in the heat of the moment, Trump is not that charismatic. He’s not that smart. He’s not that well-connected. He’s not that savvy. He’s not that good at politics. And he’s not that powerful.

(I was going to say something here about him being the laughingstock of the world’s leaders and shouldn’t expect any outsiders to help him stay in power, especially since his tax returns came out and showed he owes people a ton of money that he doesn’t have, but this post is long enough so let’s cut to the chase.)

Trump is a greedy, small-minded man that has clung to power by appealing to the worst in humanity and scraping away at the best. But he hasn’t succeeded. He’s a sad old man who will say anything to be loved, and I don’t think he even knows what love is, so he’ll settle for attention. He doesn’t have money, he doesn’t have an army, and the only allies he has are using him as a political pawn to further their own interests. They will cut him loose the minute he stops being useful.

Now, the bad part: crazy screaming fans. Fringe groups on the internet. Mobs chanting “sixteen more years!” Men with guns and bombs and kidnapping plots, men trying to get into voting centers to destroy the election, men driving trucks with black flags that say FUCK YOUR FEELINGS, TRUMP 2020 (available on Amazon for $11.99, I wish I was joking.) I have no idea how many people in this country genuinely love Trump. It is hopefully significantly less than voted for him. There are some big issues in this country that are make-or-break, and unfortunately by reason of running Republican Trump has aligned himself with some of them.

There are people who hate everything about Trump, but he put a pro-life judge on the Supreme Court so they’re voting for him. There are people who are uncomfortable with Trump, but they’ve forgiven their grandpa for saying worse at Thanksgiving dinner, so they’ll vote for him. There are people who don’t know a single thing about Donald Trump, but they see (Republican) next to his name on the ballot, so they vote for him. None of that means those people will side with him if he tries to make a move towards dictatorship.

Now there are people who love Trump. They’ve heard and seen the vile things he’s said and done, and are genuinely okay with it, because they are full of hate and rage and want to change the world to put themselves on top. I do not know how many of these people there are. I know they exist all over the country, not just in red states. I know some of them have guns and want a reason to use them, because they’ve been talking about it for decades. I don’t know if we can trust the police to side with us over them if fights start breaking out. (And I pray pray PRAY people de-escalate any fights, because monkey see monkey do, and one news report of a MAGA extremist shooting someone can inspire a hundred copycats can lead to full-on civil war like we've never seen.) I know we need to be careful the next few months, to take care of ourselves and watch out for the more vulnerable in our communities.

And above all, I know this: Trump is not going to keep this country. He got it through trickery and deceit and foreign influence and national indifference and people not taking him seriously. We’ve learned. We’ve grown. We’re taking him seriously now, and we will not let him take what we’ve already told him he can’t have. The election is over. He’s a loser. He’d better start packing his bags. Because he’s not staying in office.

#politics #long post #best case scenario: he tries to rehabilitate his rep as a man of the people #by pushing massive amounts of money into direct stimulus #funds it by cutting the military budget in half #everyone gets several thousand dollars next month #he screws over every white collar criminal he ever had help from #exposes a lot of corruption and behind-the-scenes stuff #and pardons every convict in jail on weed charges #''he really drained the swamp'' everyone says admiringly #''only took him four years and an impeachment'' #then he gets convicted of crimes and runs away to Russia #where he's found dead in a snowbank #because PUTIN IS NOT YOUR FRIEND YOU USELESS LUMP #Melina inherits everything and never sets foot in the US again #the Obamas send her a gift basket every Christmas #at least one of his kids runs for president #and gets laughed out of the party #the kid in question might be Ivanka who gets a concerning amount of radfem votes #it's definitely not Barron though #(watch me eat those words in 21 years)

[route22ny]

ON 19 OCTOBER 2016, in the third and final presidential debate, Hillary Clinton opined that Vladimir Putin would “rather have a puppet as president of the United States,” meaning Donald John Trump, than a formidable adversary like her. As Trump short-circuited like a Star Wars droid on the fritz (“No puppet. No puppet. You're the puppet!”), she continued:

It’s pretty clear you won't admit that the Russians have engaged in cyberattacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him, because he has a very clear favorite in this race.

So I think that this is such an unprecedented situation. We've never had a foreign government trying to interfere in our election. We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing.

As usual, HRC was right. But even the most cynical viewer could scarce have imagined, in the fall of 2016, just how on the nose she was.

Trump’s activities since taking office—the gutting of the State Department, the jackals in the Oval Office, Helsinki, Mueller obstruction, Ukraine skulduggery, and his willful non-response to the covid pandemic—make clear that the longtime mob money launderer has spent most of his presidency doing Putin’s bidding, just as Clinton predicted. Allow cyberattacks against the United States? Check. Encourage espionage against our people? Check. Spout the Putin line? Always. Sign up for his wish list? Like a porn addict on OnlyFans. Break up NATO? Western Europe is as divided now as it’s been since the forties. Continue to get help from him? Every fucking day.

Three years after that third debate, almost exactly to the day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stormed out of a meeting with President Trump concerning his strategically obtuse decision to withdraw US troops from Syria—a move that was ore in Russia’s interests than ours. “Why,” she exasperatedly asked the press, “do all roads lead to Putin?”

It’s actually quite simple: Trump has been mob property his entire life. The difference is that now, in 2020, the mobster who owns him is not “Fat Tony” Salerno, or “Big” Paul Castellano, or Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, or even Semion “The Brainy Don” Mogilevich. The mobster who owns him is Vladimir Putin—which makes Trump, by extension, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian government.

Previously, I wrote about Trump’s longtime association with the mob, both Italian and Russian, and his almost certain career as a top echelon Confidential Informant for the Justice Department. He is, as I said, “second generation mobbed-up.” Although he is not, and never can be, an actual mobster—a front can never be a member of the family, for obvious reasons—the unscrupulous Trump is an extremely useful asset to his underworld associates, and has been for decades. Front men, after all, are a vital cog in the global crime syndicate machine. That dirty money’s not going to wash itself.

While the Trump Organization does deals overseas, for most of his career Donald Trump was a stateside operator. The bulk of his revenue is homegrown. As a business professional of my acquaintance who worked for years in Russia colorfully put it: “The thing to remember about Trump is that he’s a venal crook, not some international criminal mastermind. His primary source of wealth, such as it is, comes from a string of golf courses, hotels, and mixed-use office buildings spread around the world, but the corn nuggets in his crown of shit are in the New York metro area and spread across the beaches of Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Broward County, Florida.”

So how did a Queens-born front-man and mob money launderer, whose business was overwhelmingly domestic, wind up an asset of a hostile foreign government?

To understand this transformation, it is instructive to think of Trump not as a human being but as an asset, in the strict sense of the word—a piece of property, like a beach house, a private jet, or an HBO Go password. Just as two different families can share a beach house, and your buddy down the street can use your login to stream Succession, so Trump can be utilized by more than one entity at a time. He can also be sold outright—or rather transferred, like the deed to a house. None of this is up to him. At all. To paraphrase Elvis Presley: he’s caught in a trap, he can’t walk out, because the mobsters own him baby.

As for Vladimir Putin, while he may have started as an intelligence operative, and he may pretend to be a diplomat and statesman on the world stage, his true profession, at this stage of his career, is mob boss—probably the most powerful mob boss in the world, more powerful even than his longtime associate from back in his Dresden days, Semion Mogilevich. (There was, and is, a lot of blur between IC and OC in Russia.)

Putin and Mogilevich are two foci of the small circle of oligarchs—there are subtle distinctions, but for all intents and purposes, oligarch is basically just a euphemism for mobster—who own almost everything of value in Russia. In mafia states, the mob runs the show—charging protection for businesses, taking bribes, imposing restrictions on airports, seaports, etc. The Russian mafiya is closer to the East India Company administering the entire colony of British India than some Scorsese picture. It steals from the people, and manipulates the weak central government, to keep itself in power.

(Sidenote: per Robert I. Friedman’s Red Mafiya, Mogilevich has complete control of Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow. So if a self-styled NSA “whistleblower” contrives to spend 40 days there avoiding the media, coughEdSnowdencough, you can be damn sure the “Brainy Don” authorized it).

An ex-KGB chief, Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin as president in 1999. He’s been in charge ever since. Under his reign, Russia has regressed from a burgeoning democracy to a veritable dictatorship. Putin consolidated power, destroying the independent judiciary, clamping down on press freedoms, using false-flag operations to win popular support, and exploiting his power for personal gain. He is more like a tsar than a president—although the Romanovs did not possess nuclear weapons, and their wealth, obscene as it was, paled in comparison to Putin’s own.

Bill Browder, the American-born British national who was an early investor in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and who left the country after the government became too corrupt to continue doing business there, tells a hair-raising story about Putin: After the rise of the oligarchs in the early 2000s, Putin had the richest, most powerful oligarch—Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of the energy concern Yukos—arrested. At a humiliating show trial during which the accused oligarch was kept in a cage, Khodorkovsky was found guilty of fraud. He was sent to prison, and his sizable assets seized.

After this sobering display, the other oligarchs approached Putin and asked what they needed to give him to avoid the same fate as Khodorkovsky, whose fate none of them wanted to share. Putin replied: “Half.” Since then, ill-gotten gains have poured into his coffers. The oligarchs boast fabulous wealth, but by virtue of claiming half of their money, Putin bests them all. Browder has suggested that Putin may well be the world’s richest individual.

And if this all sounds like the world’s greatest mob boss making the world’s biggest mob-boss flex, well, you say “tomato,” I say whatever the Russian word for “tomato” is. Whatever he might have been before that series of power moves, Putin emerged afterward as a no-doubt-about-it mob boss. Khodorkovsky, the fallen oligarch, himself said as much, in a recent interview.

Whether Putin is more powerful than Mogilevich is anyone’s guess. But only one of them is concurrently the head of state of a G8 country, one of a handful of nations that has nuclear capability—and, despite what revisionist historians at Fox News would have us believe, America’s chief adversary since 1945.

Donald John Trump’s association with the Russian mafiya—as opposed to the homegrown Italian one—began, best as we can tell, in 1984, when the Soviet soldier-turned-mobster David Bogatin purchased five of his condos for $6 million. Trump Tower was one of just two buildings in all of New York City that allowed units to be purchased by shell companies. Fishy deals like this did not deter Trump, who had traveled in underworld circles all his life.

By ’84, as covered previously, Trump was already a Confidential Informant for the FBI. He’d been on the radar of the KGB since 1977, when he married the former Ivana Zelníčková, a Czechoslovakian national who someone managed to emigrate from that Eastern Bloc country to Canada. As Luke Harding writes in his masterful and must-read book, Collusion (excerpted here by Politico):

Zelníčková was born in Zlin, an aircraft manufacturing town in Moravia. Her first marriage was to an Austrian real estate agent. In the early 1970s she moved to Canada, first to Toronto and then to Montreal, to be with a ski instructor boyfriend. Exiting Czechoslovakia during this period was, the files said, “incredibly difficult.” Zelníčkováa moved to New York. In April 1977 she married Trump.

According to files in Prague, declassified in 2016, Czech spies kept a close eye on the couple in Manhattan.…There was periodic surveillance of the Trump family in the United States. And when Ivana and Donald Trump, Jr., visited [her father] in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, further spying, or “cover.”

Like with other Eastern Bloc agencies, the Czechs would have shared their intelligence product with their counterparts in Moscow, the KGB. Trump may have been of interest for several reasons. One, his wife came from Eastern Europe. Two—at a time after 1984 when the Kremlin was experimenting with perestroika, or Communist Party reform—Trump had a prominent profile as a real estate developer and tycoon. According to the Czech files, Ivana mentioned her husband’s growing interest in politics. Might Trump at some stage consider a political career?

The KGB was really, really good. Are we to believe that the Soviets would not at least try to use Ivana—and her father Milos, stuck behind the Iron Curtain in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic—to get to Trump? Would not some cooperation be expected as the price of her being allowed to emigrate in the first place?

The Russians began to actively cultivate Trump in 1986, soon after his landmark real estate deal with Bogatin. As Harding tells it, Trump was invited to Moscow by Natalia Dubinina, the daughter of the Soviet ambassador to the United States, whom he met at a luncheon in New York in ‘86. The following year, he took her up on the offer. “On July 4, 1987, Trump flew to Moscow for the first time, together with Ivana and Lisa Calandra, Ivana’s Italian-American assistant,” Harding writes. “Moscow was, Trump wrote, ‘an extraordinary experience.’ The Trumps stayed in Lenin’s suite at the National Hotel, at the bottom of Tverskaya Street, near Red Square….The hotel was linked to the glass-and-concrete Intourist complex next door and was—in effect—under KGB control. The Lenin suite would have been bugged.”

Donald John Trump was a textbook KGB mark. The agents must have been drooling. Harding cites an internal memo circulated by the agency at the time, advising how to spot potential recruits: “Are pride, arrogance, egoism, ambition or vanity among subject’s natural characteristics?” Like a great baseball prospect, Trump was a five-tool player. Harding continues, writing about the internal memo:

The most revealing section concerned kompromat. The document asked for: “Compromising information about subject, including illegal acts in financial and commercial affairs, intrigues, speculation, bribes, graft … and exploitation of his position to enrich himself.” Plus “any other information” that would compromise the subject before “the country’s authorities and the general public.” Naturally the KGB could exploit this by threatening “disclosure.”

Finally, “his attitude towards women is also of interest.” The document wanted to know: “Is he in the habit of having affairs with women on the side?”

We don’t know what, if any, kompromat was gathered on that first trip to Moscow. But we do know that Trump is a serial philanderer, with a taste for Eastern European women. This wasn’t exactly a state secret; by ‘87, he was already a tabloid legend. Are we really to believe that the KGB—arguably the best intelligence agency in the world at human intelligence gathering—would not have tried to honeypot him?

It was upon his return from that fateful Moscow trip that Trump began to branch out in his interests. “For the first time he gave serious indications that he was considering a career in politics,” Harding points out. “Not as mayor or governor or senator.

“Trump was thinking about running for president.”

And indeed, in 1988, Trump flirted with the idea of entering the presidential race, going so far as to deliver a speech in New Hampshire. He toyed with running again in 2000, on the Reform Party ticket, even hiring his old friend Roger Stone to run the exploratory committee before ultimately dropping out. Is it really a coincidence that his dormant political ambitions manifested themselves immediately after his Moscow trip, and never went away?

So, yes, the Soviets were absolutely, positively recruiting Trump on his 1987 visit to Moscow—which began, not coincidentally, on the Fourth of July (Russians love that kind of symbolism). But the KGB was not the only spy network interested in the real estate developer. The trip also attracted the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency—the latter, by this time, becoming the bigger outfit, owing to the emphasis on signals intelligence collection that began in the late seventies.

As the pseudonymous mob expert known as Lincoln’s Bible put it, during our recent telephone conversation: “It’s 1987—the height of the Cold War. Ronald Reagan is president. The Russia desk is the largest, most important desk in the largest intelligence agency in the world (the NSA). And Trump was already a top echelon Confidential Informant for law enforcement. How could they not have known about that trip? It would have been gross negligence not to have known.”

And if our intelligence community knew, would they really not bother interviewing Trump upon his return from Moscow? He’d been wined and dined by the Party elite, after all, and they would have wanted to hear all about it. Beginning in 1987, then, Trump was not only a Confidential Informant for the FBI, but was also being utilized by the CIA.

Again: the two intelligence services were really fucking good. If the KGB was all over the guy, the CIA would have known, and thus taken some kind of action. “There is no universe in which he wasn’t being surveilled/tracked and used by our guys,” Lincoln’s Bible told me. “Not one that I can see.” If so, Trump’s counterintelligence file is over three decades old.

Moscow also marked a transition of sorts. Ownership of the mob asset known as Donald Trump began its gradual transfer from La Cosa Nostra to the Russian mafiya. Not long after the trip, Trump spent time aboard the Lady Ghislaine, the yacht owned by the British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell. That sounds perfectly above board, until you consider that Maxwell, born Jan Hoch in Czechoslovakia, was a seditious little fucker. His classified dossier at the British Foreign Office described him as “a thoroughly bad character and almost certainly financed by Russia.” He was affiliated with Israeli intelligence and the KGB. He was business partners with Semion Mogilevich, so he was mobbed up. And his daughter, Ghislaine Maxwell, would in 1991 begin a long and scandalous relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. For all we know, nothing untoward happened on that yacht. But given the nexus of key OC figures—Mogilevich, the two Maxwells, Epstein—it is hard to write it all off as mere coincidence.

Four-and-a-half years after Trump’s visit to Moscow, the USSR fell. Rapacious “oligarchs” raced to gobble up the country’s wealth and natural resources. Untold billions, maybe trillions, of dollars were removed from Russia, most to banks in quasi-Western places like Cyprus. This created unprecedentedly vast opportunities for willing money launderers in the West—and Donald John Trump was well positioned to benefit from the windfall.

Trump needed the help. By the early nineties, his casinos were going bust, US banks had stopped lending to him, and he desperately needed Russian capital to stay afloat. My business professional contact who lived in Russia explains what likely happened, incrementally, over the next two-and-a-half decades:

Take someone who cannot get credit from a bank headquartered in the English speaking world because he’s already burned every major US and UK bank in New York and London. Canadian banks don’t take American risk that American banks won’t take and Australian banks won’t touch him because their government blacklisted him from doing business in the country. But he has a massive cash need because if he does not have lines of credit to keep servicing his previous debts and his lifestyle and his next big thing, he can’t attract investors into his businesses to keep the ball rolling.

This is a critical point. Trump is not just greedy for his own sake. He has to keep earning, or he will have outlived his usefulness to his mafiya whoremasters. His very life depends on his ability to do deals.

The professional continues:

So Trump needs money that doesn’t ask a lot of questions. He’s happy to pay extra—and pay it he will—because in his mind interest comes without cost: he can write it off his taxes, or he can flush it in bankruptcy, or he can pass it on to his customers, or he can get his investors to give him enough to wash it all out, or he can refinance if and when the straight lending world comes back to him. He’s happy to take Russian money because in his mind, it’s an asset to him to have Russian lenders; it makes him more likely to play the real estate market in Russia.

But he knows that if his name and a Russian lender’s appear on the same finance document, that’s discoverable: by the IRS, by the agencies he probably reports to, by the gaming commissions, by the state regulators, by his ex-wives, by his last set of creditors, by the next bankruptcy trustee he has to deal with. So how does he get money from a Russian bank into his pocket, and how does he repay money to the Russian bank, without leaving that paper trail?

Simple. He does not borrow directly from the Russian bank. He borrows from a straw-man bank, like Deutsche, and has the Russian bank act as a silent guarantor.

The Mazars and Deutsche Bank documents almost certainly contain damning information that confirms all of this, and that will collapse his Trump Tower of Cards—which is why Trump has moved heaven and earth to keep them secret.

Whoever ultimately controlled the dirty rubles in the nineties, when Trump first opened his doors to the Russians, in the twenty-tens the kopek stops with Vladimir Putin. Would any Russian bank be able, in this day and age, to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to Deutsche Bank, or any other straw-man bank,” without Putin’s awareness, if not approval? If you borrow money from a loan shark, but the transaction is made through your local branch bank, guess what? You’re still borrowing money from a loan shark—and in that world, the penalties for nonpayment are brutal.

In the event, by the time Trump began his presidential run in 2015, the transition was complete. He was no longer a creature of the Italian mob. He was fully owned by the Russians—by Mogilevich and the mafiya, and ultimately by Vladimir Putin. The president really is Putin’s puppet, just as Hillary Clinton claimed.

What’s more, plenty of people in the intelligence community and the Justice Department know this is the case, because they have seen his counterintelligence file, or have worked with Trump in his capacity as CI. Robert Mueller must know. James Comey must know. Andrew McCabe must know. James Clapper and John O. Brennan must know. And while all of these individuals have dropped hints, none save Mueller have produced actual receipts—and a lot of his Report remains redacted. It’s no accident that Trump has done everything in his considerable power to impugn these people. He knows what they have on him, so he must attack their credibility.

To wit: When Lisa Page texted Peter Strzok that Trump is “not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” and Strzok replied, “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” they were discussing national security, not Democrat/Republican politics; two of the FBI’s best Russian mob experts were highly, and rightly, concerned that an asset of a hostile foreign power would win the White House. No wonder Trump wants us to believe their text exchanges were romantic in nature, and constantly frames Page and Strzok as lovers—the truth could end his presidency.

Alas, Page’s worst fears were realized. The President of the United States answers to the Kremlin. That sounds like something from a bad movie, but in the time of the worst pandemic in over a century, it has immediate, and grave, real-world consequences.

“We have been taken over,” Lincoln’s Bible said, “and a quarter of a million innocent civilians are going to die because of it.”

***

As with “Tinker, Tailor, Mobster, Spy,” this piece was written with a lot of help from Lincoln’s Bible.

Photo: President Ronald Reagan Shaking Hands with Donald Trump and Ivana Trump During The State Visit of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia at The State Dinner in The Blue Room, 2/11/1985. From the Reagan Presidential Archive.

#greg olear #putin's puppet #covid times #organized crime #america is broken #lincoln's bible #long reads

[quicklyseverebird]

Why I became politically activated (agitated), or why I became a Trump supporter.

All the cards on the table, I doubt anyone will read this, especially anyone to whom it might make a difference or change a mind.  This is a textual equivalent to shouting into the wind, and at the moment of writing these words, I don’t even know if I will post them anywhere.  Yet I find clarity in writing things out, and in light of the state of our country, I want to organize my stream of consciousness to see why and how I got here, to where I stand now, at this point of time.

I used to pride myself on my lack of political involvement.  I used to all but sneer when people got all worked up about political issues.  Such things were distant and had no seeming impact on my life, though I did my civic duty and voted whenever possible, because that’s what you do in a republic, and you have no right to complain about the results if you did nothing to affect them.

So, when Trump first mentioned that he was running for president, I just rolled my eyes and chuckled like anyone else.  He was vain, self-promoting and way too quick on the Twitter finger.  He’s no one I would want to have over for dinner, but now I’m glad he won and I hope he wins again.  I don’t think anyone else’s ego would have been able to weather the storm we’ve gone through over the past 4 years.  Especially not a politician, who survives mainly by going wherever the wind of public opinion blows.

But I’m not a Republican, so I can’t vote in their primaries, so when he rose to the top, I was as surprised as anyone else.  So, who was my other option?

Hillary Clinton, the poster child of political corruption and cronyism, whose scandals and crimes make a bigger volume than all the books she’s written explaining(complaining) about her loss.

2016 is when I had my political awakening and started to really look around at what was happening in the culture around me.  Perhaps it was because I was a parent to a child on the cusp of adolescence who would soon start to be immersed in it.  What I saw terrified me.

America had a rising group of Nazis infiltrating our culture.  And I don’t mean the stereotypical skin heads we all revile and view with disgust.  And I don’t mean the paltry 10-11k white supremacists in our country of 365 million (per Anti-defamation League data).  No one took them all that seriously, because their bigotry was all too obvious, easily exposed, and they were, quite frankly, too few to matter.

No, I mean a real group of extremists who were Nazi’s in all but name.  Who actually made a point of labeling anyone who disagreed with them a Nazi, in fact.  Who with seeming ignorance of the historical irony of their actions, re-enacted every deed performed by the black and brown shirts of pre-WWII fascist Europe.  They worked to shut down free speech (of anyone whose position differed from their own), attacked and intimidated anyone who challenged them with threats physical, verbal, professional and political, advocating literal book burning, public destruction of property, and most sneaky of all, enacting a new form of acceptable racism into a form that some have compared to a state-sponsored cult or religion.  I saw the blossom in 2016, and now I am seeing the fruit.

A couple weeks ago, I watched, in horror, live on television as the Krystal Naught was reenacted in my own city and cities across the country.  Since then I’ve seen these groups claim territory, terrorize and destroy businesses and residents’ homes.  Most often—again in seeming unconscious irony—those belonging to the very people they claimed to be fighting in support of.  The term terrorist is apt, as well as zealot.  They subvert groups of well-meaning people to their own political ends and rain down terror on anyone who disagrees with them, up to and including actual physical harm, and provoking situations that wind up in death.

They are left wing, just as the Nazi’s were, born from a communist/Marxist foundation with an emphasis on race, instead of class, as their dividing point.  It’s not the proletariat and bourgeoisie anymore, it’s <insert minority group> vs white.  The irony that most of these individuals are themselves, white, seems—of course—to be lost on them.  Fascism is socialism with a nationalistic and racial focus.  It was invented by a student of Marx as a way of making socialism feasible.  Apart from the nationalistic bent, this group follows the same formula.  Anyone who disagrees with them is a Nazi or some kind of “-ist” or “-phobic.”  It’s a marvelous rhetorical device.  Say you’re not racist, well that that’s proof that you are!  Try and bring up a factual point that disagrees with them, and they slap you with a label and claim through intersectionality politics that they don’t have to listen to you or any facts you might have to offer because you are from the “wrong group.”  They only have to listen to details or views on an issue from a group appointed and designated by their ideology.  No one else could ever offer a differing position.  And those from the group in question who DO disagree with them?  Well obviously, they are “race traitors” and their views don’t matter either.  After all, a person is only a part of the “right group” if they agree with these people.  If this took place in Nazi Germany, they would have been called “Jew-lovers.”  I’ve literally watched people of color assaulted, abused, called racial slurs, by white people.  (yes, there’s that irony again.)  I’ve watched POC being told by these individuals, unaware of their actual skin color, to check their white privilege because obviously they have to be white if they disagree with their position.  I see this inherent and rampant racism every time I post my own views and watch as people assume I’m a white man because…I hold the “wrong view.”  Why would race even matter to whether or not what is being said is true or accurate, unless you're a racist?  They have all their groups in neat and tidy boxes, with their assigned positions and “proper,” “permitted” viewpoints and anyone straying from the herd must be culled.  I’ve watched them tear down statues of the men who gave them their rights, and statues of the men who freed slaves or died to free them, even black heroes!  They’ve torn down statues built to commemorate abolitionists in the name of…racism…  They paint a street, claiming that it is free speech, but when someone else paints on the same street, it’s a hate crime.

They are, in fact, the most racist people in our country, and they revel in it because they feel it’s justified.  Place any of these people in Nazi Germany and they would be chomping at the bit alongside the Fuhrer at the "outrages" the Jewish race had inflicted on their country and the "privileges" they possessed.  Their racism is “justified!”  It is “right!”  I have no doubt that, if our skin color didn’t already distinguish us from one another, the mobs roaming our cities now would be demanding something akin to pink triangles or stars of David be worn by the designated parties.  We can see their racism clearly wherever they find a position of power and are allowed to organize themselves.  We watched an utterly self-unaware Chaz/Chop re-institute Jim Crow laws and create race-designated locations, parks, gardens, etc.  Whenever they find themselves in power, they organize themselves along racial lines.  Given enough time, they would probably have created separate bathrooms and drinking fountains.

Like the Nazi’s of Germany, they thrive on division and fear.  It gave the Germans a sense of purpose and pride coming out of the Great Depression following WWI.  In today’s world, they never would have risen so far or so fast if not for the economic devastation following Covid-19 and the many frustrated, unemployed, frightened people it left in its wake.

And they do it all in the name of “racial” or “social” justice, and justify their rampant racism that way. They excuse their racism in the name of…racism.  It leaves one wondering if these are either the most historically ignorant and self-unaware people in human history, or if they are literally evil.  And I don’t use the term evil hyperbolically.  I don’t mean mustache-twirling villains in black.  No one really evil believes they are evil.  The Devil himself thought his actions justified.  Evil always justifies itself, masks itself as good, and this allows them to do even greater harm, for no one does more damage than an intellectual fool who believes they are doing the right thing.  The only thing greater than mankind’s tendency towards evil is our ability to convince ourselves that it is good.  And oh, they lie, and they lie, and they lie.  They lie about events where they were the aggressors.  They lie and even post videos of the event proving they are lying, boasting about their lies, because they know that they won't be held accountable, and their lie is being spread faster than the truth, and the people in authority will allow this.  Far from being counter-cultural, they are now a state-sponsored, state-supported non-theistic religion.  The similarities with a cult are creepy.

The truth is, they aren't interested in eliminating racism. In fact, as we can see from these protests, they make racism worse!  And they do so deliberately.  Why?  Because they aren't interested in lives, no matter the color.  They aren't interested in actual justice.  More black lives alone have been killed by these protests, by actual BLM and Antifa people, than unarmed black men were killed by cops across the country in all of 2019.  Perhaps we should defund/disband them.  They are militarizing racism the same way the Nazi's did, to gain power.  It's not about lives, it's not about actual violence or inequality, it's about the Movement. It's about gaining power and influence in society.  And it is working the same way it did back in Germany.  When you have literally white, leftist people attacking and calling black people racial slurs because they don't agree with their positions, and then claiming they are against racism....

So, let’s see here.  We have an international organization born from the German Communist Party, with localized cells but a unified ideology, cooperative networks, shared finances, a common uniform, trademarked logos and merchandise, who ferment racial tensions to gain political power, create divisions between communities, seek to destroy anyone who would stand in their way through threat of violence and intimidation, destroy history, hide in screens of “useful idiots” seeking to be a part of a cause that they stir into “protests” so they can create further unrest and violence, all so they can gain power for their ideology.  And all the while, claiming to be the victims of the people they attack so they can claim the moral high ground.  Self-defense in the face of the mob is “racist.”  Protecting your property is a sign of “privilege” that must be purged, even as they loot, burn, destroy homes and businesses of the people whose lives they claim to want to protect.  

Explain to me how, exactly, they aren’t exactly like the Nazi’s before the rise of Hitler?  They are a socialist organization, with a racial element that use intimidation, threats of violence, doxing, actual violence and harm to anyone who disagrees with them or stands in their way to gain political and social power.  A literally evil ideology that has caused more death and suffering to mankind than any other in history, that has failed everywhere it was implemented.

And all the while the media propaganda praises them, just as they did Hitler (who himself won Time’s Man of the Year award, recall).

If you want to know if you are one of the good guys, then ask, which side supports freedom of speech?  Which supports liberty?  Which side doesn't advocate for violence as a means to their ends?  Which side are literally attacking their opponents?  Are people better off when you are in control, or not?  I think we can look at the smoldering ruins of our cities to decide where these extremists stand.

So, why did I become politically activated/agitated?  It wasn’t some YouTube channel “radicalizing” me.  I am not a MAGA fanatic or Trump fan.  What motivated me was seeing the rise of a new, evil authoritarian power in America.  They wear a different mask, but their actions speak for themselves.  They are the REAL neo-Nazis.  It doesn’t matter what they call themselves now.  You can change your name, but your deeds remain.  Your title doesn’t define you; your actions do.  If it quacks like a duck….  The Right didn’t pull me to their side, you on the left drove me here in fear for my life and the future of this country.  The fear is only growing now as I see official after official bow (sometimes literally) to these groups.  If they gain any more political power, I shudder to think of the world my daughter will inherit.  Will she be the new Anne Frank?  The Right isn’t the one making threats or calling me names if I disagree with them.  You are.  They don’t threaten my life or my family’s future.  You do.  They aren’t the people approaching with devastation in their wake.  You are.  You activated me.  I can only hope enough other people will see you for what you are and be activated as well.  God help us all if you ever gain power.  Some of them are literally already calling for anyone who disagrees with them to be imprisoned in "re-education" camps.  No lie.  This cannot happen.  Never again.

#antifa #trump #politically activated #america #BLM #fascist #leftist #right

[tigpooh67]

New interview from Pedro.    Did my best to translate to English.

Enjoy!!

**************************************************************************************

Looks like Pedro Pascal is in every possible universe. Here and there. In the past, in the present and in galaxies far, far away. Today, the actor is considered the great benchmark of entertainment and one of those in charge of saving a franchise that seemed lost. Sufficient reasons to talk exclusively about discipline, gastronomy, creeds and how he swallowed his dad in 30 seconds.

 The SAR defines 'creed' as the set of ideas, principles or convictions of a person or group. For example, by creed, one can leave his country and be in exile. It just so happens that one can leave the loved one behind. Or simply live in another reality. And you can also put on a helmet to pretend never to take it off again. If that is the way to go, the creed says that it must be done with the profession of faith and without stopping to look. As he turned the pages of the script for The Mandalorian, the Disney+ series that revived passion and nostalgia for the Star Wars franchise, Pedro Pascal came across this definition in every dialogue and moment, and reflection worked his way.

It has been more than two decades since the Chilean-American Pedro Pascal began his acting career and today, named as the great benchmark of 2020, misses the theater and still hurts him not to have the discipline to exercise and maintain a healthy diet while recognizing the ironic of having the best year of his career in the midst of one of the worst in recent history. But even in physical solitude, the man who carried Christmas's best-selling baby rescues many positive things and shares the vision of the universes he has traveled through, his passion for distant galaxies, and how to traumatify your family with a simple TV scene. In interview, the Mandalorian of Latin America.

 IMDB named you the 2020 benchmark in entertainment, a year in which the world took refuge in fiction. What was it like to live your best time locked up and what do you rescue on a human level from him?

The strength of family relationships and friendship. For them, we endure this physical loneliness. I find it ironic that in 2020 I received projects so well received by the public, although they were carried out before the pandemic and their impact was during this one, and that year I was isolated and alone. But I must stress that loneliness is a privilege when many people had to keep working, surviving and maintaining the functioning of the world. We just had to be alone, but they had more than that and you have to value it too.

 Among the activities you've lost, how much do you miss the theater?

A lot, really. It's something I miss most and being with people without feeling afraid. See a play and return to those experiences of being with people doing and living things in common. That's what I need most, besides my loved ones.

 Disney went into streaming and its strong card has your face, what do you think of the discussion of platforms against movie theaters?

In streaming there are amazing things and many people develop great projects that they didn't access before. The diversity of voices is taking its way and it is important to recognize that opportunities grow exponentially and limits change. It's amazing how much availability we have to very well-made content and how creative people can share their work in different ways. But I also want to be honest: limiting the experience of viewing content only on our gadgets or at home is a mistake that affects the stories we can tell. A mix of opportunities and challenges must be achieved.

Leaps between the fictional universes that mark the last decades until they reach the universe of universes. What is your first Star Wars memory and how do you sum up the essence of this legendary story?

For me, Star Wars is nostalgia itself. It's one of the primary things in my memory, of my childhood. I came to the United States with my Chilean family when I was under two years old and one of my first memories is going to the movies with my dad to see the saga; it becomes one of those romantic things about childhood, that open your mind, so imagine how special it is to participate in this project. I think the creators of The Mandalorian fully understand this nostalgia and power, and they managed to count on that element as a great ally for the Star Wars world and I can't be happier to be a part of it. (Of which we look forward to the third season The Mandalorian)

 The Mandalorian exploits the power and nuances of your voice, did you have that letter on your resume?

I didn't know I could do it, but I resorted to my theatrical preparation, which was very physical at all levels and feelings. There are elements that have to do with creating a role, and they teach you that voice is a primary thing, something you have to start with and can't hide. Now I've learned a lot more about the importance of that, and how to use it with economics. The body also has to do with it, because something very subtle communicates something. At The Mandalorian, I had a great time figuring out how to do it, they gave me the opportunity to develop it in different ways. The opportunity to be very intense in it.

 What about the ego when someone works under a suit and mask?

In the conversations about the project, before doing so, we were informed of the idea and concept of the whole season, so I clearly understood what it was. I wanted it to be the most powerful version of what they were trying to accomplish, so it didn't make sense for me to involve my ego, you know? It was already very clear what the project meant, so I knew about the character, the piece he represented for himself and the opportunity it was for me, so I was just focused on better executing the part that touched me in all this. In the theater, I worked several times under a mask and it helped me develop the experience.

It seems that The Mandalorian has a very theatrical base...

Exactly, and thanks to the physical experience of working in theater, making a play a few times a week, discovering how your body and your voice communicate, being part of an entire image, and how you will tell that story visually, I achieved this character. I never imagined it would be something I would have to use in such an important Star Wars project.

 On the list of entertainment greats, there are names like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, do you think John Favreau's should be added to the list?

I think his name is already included. Without a doubt, it's in that category and it's amazing. I'm fascinated by his vision. I remember a chapter in the second season, and I had some boots and I walked so much in the snow, that it stuck to them. He noticed, so he talked to the art department about the kind of boots you need when you're in the snow. They came up to me and gave me some new ones that fulfilled the idea I was looking for. He noticed it in an instant. It is such a wonderful detail and is repeated at scale in every session with it. Think of absolutely everything and your vision of using technology is admirable. He's someone who makes you feel motivated and always sees how to achieve the goal.

 One of the reflections of the series is on how and under what circumstances a man can break his creed and the way he lives. What makes you break up with your beliefs?

I think you must follow your heart so as not to repent of anything; even if it sometimes brings pain or conflict, deep down when you go back, it's all worth it because it's what you heard in your heart. I'm very afraid to deny that feeling or not to take care of it. Now I'm 45 years old and I can't believe I have a finer philosophy. Make him more disciplined. It's ridiculous, but I'm trying to accept that I am and that's all I can say, "Follow your heart." Although, you know, I still don't follow a good diet, I still have trouble sleeping or exercising.

 Are you still good at Chilean empanadas?

Yes, I couldn't stop. And also how good that I don't live in Mexico City because I would only spend it eating. I could move my whole life to the defe just to eat.

 I want to deviate and ask you, who did you see the chapter of your death in Game of Thrones and what trauma did you cause to your family?

For me, no trauma. I separate myself well from the characters, although I fully understand that if I were a Game of Thrones audience and loved that character, it would make an incredible impression on me. Thank you, it wasn't. I had to interpret it and there was a model of my head to be crushed that way with the tubes and the fake blood, you know? I lay there, with pieces of my flesh, it was funny in the end. But not for my family. There's nothing funny about them and it's traumatic. My dad totally changed his voice when we saw the episode, turned around and said, "I didn't like it, Pedro. No, Pedro, not this."

 The media found similarities between your villain in Wonder Woman: 1984 and Donald Trump. When you play a character with characteristics like that, do you humanize or understand it?

The project had nothing to do with the former president. I was always told that my character in Wonder Woman:1984 was emotionally messy, and I took that and took it as far away as possible. Instead of creating it with images or certain inspirations from life, it was more working with what was on the page. Personally, what made sense to me is the size of the story being told and there's always more, and we all want more. Creatively, if this makes sense, that meant "flying it out of the park." Connect a hit with the character and be committed to telling their story faithfully, in a way that was true to me. So all the exterior elements found their way.

 What way to start 2021 with the theme of the Capitol... how do you perceive that moment?

I am not a politician and it is not that I have no opinion on such events; However, there is no need to express the obvious. My opinion would be very simple compared to that of a person who studied this, who knows how to act in these kinds of scenarios; I think I'm next to the majority who lived this, which is the logical result of what we've been through over the years and we're all horrified. It was distressing to see this violence.

 If you had the monolith in your hands, what would be your wish?

My wish would be... it's impossible, the truth (laughs). I think it's being together again, with less fear and people having a chance to connect.

 What is your position of the reality that Chile has experienced in recent years and how has the relationship with your country been since exile?

It's something I'm developing and I keep doing it in my life, trying to understand that it's my home. Being in Chile is being at home, but my life has been very nomadic, living different things and having many influences; so it's strange, I don't feel the title of a full Chilean identity or an American.

 Neither from here nor there?

In a sense, but I'm also completely both. My parents are Chileans, my brothers were born there before my parents traveled, and I returned sometimes because my family is so big; in fact, my parents came back. It's always been there, it's still developing, and it's going to be a part of me. I don't know if I answer your question, but it has a lot to do with who I am.

 What is your relationship with Latin American cinema? Interested in you?

A lot, it's invaded me in life like American cinema. The movies I have in my heart, seeing something like And your mom was also something that changed me; I also love the work that comes out of Chile, and all I can say is that it is a cinema that needs more access and projects.

You got a comedy with Nicolas Cage on your doorstep today, can you tell me something?

It's my first chance at comedy, as a complete story within the genre. Speaking of American influences, in the 1980s I saw all the films where Nicolas Cage was coming out, he came into my life and it's great to be his partner after seeing all his performances.

 What's your relationship with the comedy genre like?

I love it, I've done a lot of comedy in the theater, what happens is that in film and television themes, I was always part of drama castings. And in the cinema, you go where the doors open; although I identify with one or the other, I think being an actor, you go and do what you have to do. Comedy is something unique, it's very challenging because it has to be very real to make it funny, you can't hide or use normal tricks. I was very excited to have this challenge in front of a camera.

 Finally, Pedro, after going through so many fictional worlds, literally, what do you dream of when you sleep?

I dream that my bathroom is dirty, that I haven't done my math homework, that the oven and all that stuff are on. Of course, there are times when I close my eyes and see myself in all these projects, although my conscience is with the anxieties of the day you can imagine.

#pedropascal #the mandalorian #games of thrones #the mentalist #dave york #the good wife #Equalizer 2

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Political Rant: Nothing To See Here

Literally, I just need to vent for a bit, just move along.  You didn’t see anything.  Go about your business.

I can’t keep pretending that I want Joe Biden to be president.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m gonna vote for him, but only because it’s a broken 2-party system, and I would literally rather die than vote for Donald Trump.

Joe Biden is at best a moderate centrist, and at worst a mainstream conservative who acknowledges what the people in his party want without actually doing it.  The Overton Window has shifted so far right in the last few years that people are hailing him as some bastion of liberal democracy; Democrats are acting like he’s the greatest politician they’ve ever nominated, and Republicans are calling him a communist.  He’s neither of those things; he’s store brand white bread, he’s a single scoop of plain vanilla with no mix-ins, he’s room temperature with 40% humidity so as not to be explicitly uncomfortable.

He very well could win in November.  I don’t doubt his qualifications, nor his popularity relative to the Gonad Lump we have now, but he’s not going to make any substantive changes if he takes office.  He’s not going to defund police, he’s not going to shrink the executive branch, he’s not going to raise the minimum wage, he’s not going to rejoin the Iran Nuclear Deal or the Paris Climate Agreement or the WHO, and he’s certainly not going to abolish ICE and close the actual literal CONCENTRATION CAMPS. He’s going to uphold the status quo so as not to alienate the Republicans who didn’t vote for him, while driving a wedge in his own party between the old guard moderate leadership and the up-and-comers who even so much as lean to the actual political left.

Republicans are united under a common banner of cartoon supervillainy, Democrats are a party of chickens running around with their heads cut off. 

Republicans are lemmings who will follow their leader off a cliff. Democrats are turkeys that look up and drown when it rains.

There are no progressive Democrats in any real positions of power; their voices are being drowned out by the career politicians who would rather compromise with the right than fight for anything they claim to want.  Democrats will bend over backwards to reach across the aisle for the sake of bipartisanship, but Republicans would never budge an inch in our direction.  This is demonstrably true, just look at the last 50 years of presidents; Democrats controlled the House of Representatives for Ronald Reagan’s entire presidency, and he still managed to get a shit ton of legislation passed which fucks over the middle class and minorities to this day.

Bill Clinton was effectively a Republican, and they absolutely HATED him.  Newt Ging-bitch’s Republican Revolution?  And Obama, don’t even get me started on Obama.  George W. Bush was so unpopular that BOTH parties ran candidates under the platform of “I am not George W. Bush,” and it’s no surprise that between Barack Obama and John McCain voters chose the one who was the least like Bush.  Obama was a perfectly competent president who pulled us out of the worst economic recession since the 1930s, and Republicans hated him even more than Clinton!  The Tea Party rose up less than a month after he took office, before he’d even DONE anything!  I don’t agree with everything he did as president, in fact I oppose a lot of it (drones), but I know that America was a better place under his leadership than it is now.

And now the Democrats are kowtowing to the Republicans AGAIN, nominating an adequate politician, Average Joe, that Republicans wouldn’t complain about if he wore a red tie instead of a blue one, but even now they’re complaining about it!  They’re acting like he’s a far-left socialist because they want the country to think that his middle-of-the-road policies are WAY too radical; they want to make people think that normalcy lies to the right of Joe Biden, they want to keep shifting the Overton Window until they pick a candidate in 2032 or 2036 that will make Donald Trump look like Bernie fucking Sanders.  Republicans never shift to the left, they never try to appeal to Democratic voters, they never think twice about alienating liberals, they won’t compromise, they’d rather shut down the government than spare a dime for any even remotely liberal talking points.

I’m sick to death of this country.  I’m sick to death of everyone pretending like what we see is not what it is!  Joe Biden is better than Trump, but the bar is so low at this point that I’d feel ore comfortable with a flaming bag of dogshit in the Oval Office than the racist date rapist we have now.  I will swallow my pride and vote for Joe Biden, but I will not be happy about it.  This man does not stand for the people’s best interests.  He will face overwhelming opposition, cave to the pressure from the right, then lose re-election because I know for a fact that he’s too proud to admit he’s too old to run again in 2024.  People keep pretending like his VP is going to get the nomination, but there’s no way on Earth or in Heaven that this man is going to just retire!  This year was a vanity run; he wants to be president because he wants to be president, not because he wants to do anything.  He’s wanted it his whole career; he’s a dog chasing cars, he doesn’t know what to do when he catches one, and no, I don’t means he’s like the fucking Joker, I just think he’s focusing more on himself than the country.  What would it look like in 2024 if the president retired because he’s TOO OLD to keep the job?  The Democrats would be even bigger laughingstocks than they are now; there wouldd be no way for him to retire with dignity without admitting defeat and giving the Republicans a political victory.

He’s going to run for re-election in 2024, and he’s going to have his ass handed to him because by that point he’s going to be stumbling over his words even worse than Trump is now, and the Democrats aren’t going to blindly rally behind him like the Republicans do for Trump.  Republicans will vote in line with Trump whether they like him or not, they know their career depends on it, but Democrats won’t get in line behind one of their own because they want to appeal to everyone, even if that means ignoring the people they claim to represent.

If Trump wins in 2020, America will go the way of the Soviet Union.  You know what, no, that’s not true.  America will never break apart, it’s too obstinate.  What will happen is America will go the way of the British Empire; once a global superpower, now just a bunch of isolationist racists who don’t know they’ve been irrelevant for the last 80 years.  America will continue to alienate its allies while sucking up to its enemies, the wealth gap will widen, life expectancy will drop, infant mortality will rise, and we’ll peak in the 2030s or 40s before losing our position as the de facto “leaders of the free world.”  Under normal circumstances I’d say that’s a good thing because we have no right to force the rest of the world to do whatever we want, but the resulting power vacuum will almost certainly be filled by China which is even worse than we are.  If Trump wins in 2020, democracy dies.  His handlers will find a way to skirt the 22nd Amendment so he can run for a third term in 2024.  They’ll just unilaterally amend the constitution so he can do whatever he wants; every right-wing dictator does that.  Hitler did it, Pinochet did it, Putin is doing it now.  IF the Republicans want to PRETEND that laws still exist, they’ll have him “retire” at the end of his second term, but then stay on as a top advisor to his successor, who will almost certainly be his daughter he wants to fuck, at which point he will be president-by-proxy, ruling vicariously through her until his brain melts enough for him to disappear into the woodwork like Reagan did in the 90s.

If Trump wins in 2020, the Trump dynasty will hold power for decades.  This regime will be no different than the fucking Saudi Arabia or North Korea.

If Biden wins in 2020, we’re just kicking the can down the road; Trump won’t let himself become irrelevant without a fight.  Carter and Clinton and Bush and Obama don’t pretend that they’re still president, they don’t make their voices heard, but you KNOW that Trump will.  He will try to stay in the limelight forever, and the media will let him; they’ll report on every snide comment and contrarian remark he makes on Twitter and compare him to Biden every single day because he’s a demagogue, and Republicans aren’t just gonna move on after they’ve invested so much emotional capital into him over the last five years.  They’ve doubled down in support of him, he can do no wrong in their eyes, he’s their golden boy, the Fuhrer is Always Right; they’ll follow him to Hell and back (though let’s be honest, he’d never lead them out of Hell once he brings them there).  They’ll treat him like an elder statesman and a genius political strategist/advisor until he dies.  He’ll basically get to pick the nominee in 2024 because Republicans will vote for whoever he endorses.  And he’s going to pick Ivanka or maybe, MAYBE, Tom Cotton because he’s a brown-nosing right-wing toadie.

FUCK.

#ramblings of a disaffected nobody #I don't know if I'm millennial or gen z but at this point I just don't care #long post #politics #rant #political rant #2020 #i just feel empty #exhausted #political #ranting #ranting and raving #ranting and rambling #ramblings

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

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

sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): On Sunday, The Washington Post published leaked audio of an hour-long conversation President Trump had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where he urged the Republican to “find” enough votes to overturn the result in Georgia and declare him the winner.

This story has captured headlines, as it is by far Trump’s most brazen attempt to overturn November’s results, although it is hardly his first time trying to do so. Trump has repeatedly tried to cast doubt on the election results since Biden was declared the winner on Nov. 7, citing false claims of voter fraud and launching countless futile lawsuits to try and overturn the election. And now as Congress prepares to vote on Jan. 6 to certify the election results in what should be a largely ceremonial, low-key affair, a faction of GOP senators plans to mount a protest vote, even though it is destined to fail.

There is no question that this is bad for democracy — polls have found a record number of Americans distrust the election results — but let’s talk through some of the biggest consequences of this push to delegitimize the results, in addition to whether this jeopardizes Trump’s role as the de facto party leader once he’s left the presidency.

To start, what do you view as the biggest consequence of all this?

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): I think the biggest potential danger is that in any election where the Republicans earn fewer votes, they will make unfounded and exaggerated claims of voting irregularities and fraud and try to toss out or overturn the results. No election is conducted perfectly, but using minor problems as a pretext for invalidating the outcome is a huge problem. You can’t have a democracy if one of the main parties can’t admit defeat.

I am really worried about this in the context of these Georgia Senate runoff races. If Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock both win their races, that would give Democrats total control of Congress. So will Republicans be able to accept losing these races if they do? Or will there be an endless stream of lawsuits trying to prevent Ossoff and Warnock from being seated?

julia_azari (Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): Biggest consequence: This splits the GOP and deepens the dilemma for Republicans (and possibly Democrats) about how to deal with the other party. Namely, can they continue to thread the needle in arguing that the other party’s constitutional and political views are illegitimate, but the processes are legitimate and thus they sometimes win? Or will the other party’s victories, as Perry suggests, not be tolerated?

I don’t want to “both sides” this — obviously, the Democrats are not the ones creating the current situation, but I think this creates potential dilemmas for them, too, regarding the way they treat the idea of legitimate opposition.

sarah: What are some of the dilemmas you think Democrats face as a result of this, Julia?

julia_azari: Well, take the debate happening over how Democrats should react to this news. There’s a question of whether the House should consider impeachment, which I’m guessing they probably won’t do. On the one hand, I’m not sure impeachment would have much public support, and there’s plenty of other issues that Congress needs to work on. But on the other hand, it does sort of leave the impression that these kinds of norm violations are sort of begrudgingly tolerated.

This will linger after Trump leaves office, too, I think. You’ll have Democrats who want to move on and not ratchet up the stakes of partisan disagreement. And you’ll have others who want to seek accountability for some of the laws that they think were broken by the last administration.

sarah: That’s a really good point, Julia. One thing we saw after the 2016 election was a big drop in the share of Democrats who thought the election was fair and accurate, but it’s nowhere near as big as the drop we’ve seen among Republicans here in 2020. That’s why what you and Perry are hitting on — how the parties handle loss and what that means for voters’ trust in democracy — is the biggest consequence of all this to me.

But maybe you all disagree? Should Democrats be digging into Trump’s behavior more for the reason Julia cited — that this behavior otherwise seems begrudgingly tolerated?

julia_azari: Well, the fact that COVID-19 continues to pose a very real challenge for the country, creates a bit of a problem for Democrats, because if they look like they’re focusing too much time on investigating the Trump administration, they look like they’re ignoring the pandemic and its consequences. But if Democrats try to take this on in a less high-profile way — subpoenaing lower-level officials, etc. — then maybe they’re accused of not being transparent enough.

The impact of this norm-breaking administration isn’t just that it violates these unwritten rules, but that it behaves in ways that make the whole system of usual practices not work. That makes things extra challenging for Democrats.

perry: Questions about what the Biden Department of Justice, congressional Democrats and state attorneys generals do about Trump’s conduct are all still very much up in the air. If there was some criminal activity, he should not be above the law. Perhaps there are some congressional hearings — and maybe even charges filed by the DOJ and/or attorneys generals — involving some Trump associates and maybe Trump himself. I don’t expect Biden to talk about Trump that much, but other actors might weigh in.

sarah: What is the end game here for Trump and Republicans? Trump admitted on the call to Raffensperger that, “I know this phone call is going nowhere.” I know we can’t speak to the president’s state of mind, but what can we point to for why refusing to concede the election has become Trump’s defining stance?

julia_azari: Well, it fits in well into this idea that “grievance politics” have turned into a somewhat successful brand — especially in a place like Georgia, where a history of racist voter suppression informs the context, and where Democratic victories are especially tied to the mobilization of Black voters.

However, I don’t see how having this kind of split within congressional Republicans is helpful to the GOP in the long term.

perry: Trump has lied and cheated in a lot of different venues in his life. That is just the truth. So him insisting that he won an election that he lost is nothing new. He likes to push and push people and see if they will uphold their ethics or bend to his will. For the Republican Party, part of this is just the trajectory they were on anyway, even without Trump at the helm. When you are writing voter laws targeting Black people with “surgical precision” (North Carolina Republicans), making it harder for felons who served their time to vote (Florida Republicans) and gerrymandering in a way that almost makes a mockery of majority rule (Wisconsin Republicans), then unfounded voter fraud charges that aim to disqualify the votes of Black people in particular are just a more aggressive step in an anti-democratic direction.

But part of this is directly tied to Trump. Elected and aspiring Republican officials know he is very connected to the party base, so aligning with Trump is aligning with the party base. So that is why you see Georgia Sen. David Perdue, in light of this phone call, attacking the secretary of state for leaking it, and not Trump for what he said.

2/ “To have a state-wide elected official, regardless of party, tape unknowing – to tape without disclosing a conversation – private conversation of the President of the United States and then leaking it to the press is disgusting,” Perdue told Fox.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 4, 2021

julia_azari: I think the intersection of what Perry and I have said is this: “The future of the Republican Party is the division between those who say the quiet part out loud and those who don’t.”

One key difference is that Republicans used to win national majorities with the quiet part. That’s no longer the case. Per Rep. Thomas Massie, who along with six Republican colleagues authored a letter that pointed out the necessity of preserving ‘s comments on the Electoral College, the bullhorn can occasionally at least win a plurality. Matt Glassman, who studies Congress as a senior fellow at Georgetown University, on it:

The Senate vote on the objections will be lopsided—at a minimum 70-75 votes against, probably more like 80-85—and also starkly split the GOP caucus.

It may feel like the end, but this is really the beginning of the party fight over the meaning and future of Trumpism. https://t.co/8E9AW9GJul

— Matt Glassman (@MattGlassman312) January 4, 2021

sarah: If Glassman’s whip count is right, though, we’re still talking about a smallish wing of the GOP, right? In other words, it’s possible that the battle over Trumpism splinters the party, but that maybe the movement loses power?

Calling the integrity of the election results into question has clearly become a litmus test or demonstration of fealty for those in the GOP, but some senators like Ben Sasse and Mitt Romney are speaking out against it. Do you think it’s possible that Trump is ruining his ability to be the party’s leader post-presidency?

julia_azari: Well, our readers should stay tuned for my upcoming piece where I address that question!

But to give you a sneak peak: I think political scientists would frame this question as, “Can populism, on the right, be compatible with participation in a pluralistic, multi-ethnic democracy in which you sometimes lose even when you claim to truly represent the Constitution and the people?” The issue is that a wing of the Republican Party has skirted answering that question for decades now.

perry: Having covered the GOP in the era of Trump for the last six years, I will always bet on the more extreme wing of the party carrying the day. The fact that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would not acknowledge Biden’s win until mid-December was extraordinary. If I had told anyone that in 2015, they would have thought I was crazy.

The moderate voices in the Republican Party are not well organized, not connected to the party base and have no real compelling leaders, whereas the more extreme voices in the party have Fox News, Newsmax, One America News Network, Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson and Trump. I see very little chance that the Republican Party changes its general direction, even if Trump himself recedes.

Would you bet on Sasse winning a battle over the soul of the Republican Party against anyone whose last name is Trump?

julia_azari: I would probably bet a small amount that it is possible, Perry, especially since Sasse seems like a fairly skilled politician and the Trump kids do not.

That said, I generally do not disagree, but I wonder about the sustainability of it all. I think I have some questions on what counts as “moderate” — specifically, considering the GOP, as political scientist and Bloomberg View columnist Jonathan Bernstein has been saying for quite some time, is post-policy.

perry: When I say moderate, I mean people like Romney or Sasse, who are quite conservative on policy but generally avoid white identity politics-style moves (attacking Black Lives Matter or immigration reform) and are full-throated in favor of democratic norms and values. Republicans who are moderate on policy, like Susan Collins and Larry Hogan, are basically nonexistent among top Republicans now.

sarah: That’s largely what FiveThirtyEight contributor Lee Drutman outlined in his piece on why there are so few moderate Republicans left, Perry.

Given how favorable the down-ballot results were for Republicans, however, one of my takeaways from the 2020 election was that a lot of voters rejected Trump but not necessarily the Republican Party, making it a little harder for me to understand the extent to which the GOP has lost moderate voters.

At the same time, it’s hard for me to see a Romney, Hogan or Sasse winning the 2024 Republican nomination, given the current dynamics we’re seeing play out in the GOP — a largely ceremonial, non-headline grabbing vote on certifying the results of the Electoral College, for instance, has now become this big-stakes issue. That said, I’m not sure we can know at this point the success of Trumpism moving forward. I think, for instance, Democrats will face some real tests in the next four years on whether they can keep their big umbrella coalition of both moderates and very liberal voters happy, and that might create opportunities for more middle of the road or moderate Republicans.

perry: I am not confident who will win the 2024 nomination. I have no idea. I do think in the short term, though, that Trump will remain highly influential in the GOP, as will his style of politics.

I just don’t see an easy path for the Republicans to get off that ramp.

julia_azari: This is a bit of a cop-out but I’d need to think more about the costs and benefits for various Republicans. I’m gonna hold off on 2024 predictions until I get a feel for what politics in the Biden administration looks like. And per my earlier comment about how Trumpism has changed the unwritten rules for everyone, I feel a lot more uncertain about what this will look like now once Trump is gone than I have in previous administrations.

sarah: A lot probably hinges on how the Senate runoffs shake out tomorrow, and like you’ve both said, I really don’t have a sense of how “Trumpism” plays out now. It’s unclear to me, for instance, whether Trump is doing a lot of harm … or if he’s the future of conservatism in the U.S.

But at the very least, can we agree that the lasting consequence of this might be an escalation in how the parties oppose each other when an outcome is in dispute?

I’d argue we’ve seen a ramping up of this in the last decade, but it’s largely been over more procedural things, like the Senate changing rules around judicial appointments, and making it a more partisan affair. But now we have this extreme example — contesting a free and fair election. That ups the ante, no? And it seems as if partisan infighting could get much worse.

perry: I’m not sure I’d say we’ll see an escalation in how the parties oppose each other, at least not yet. I think it’s a change on the Republican side. I don’t expect Biden, for instance, to be fighting his defeat for two months if he clearly lost by a wide electoral margin (not one state by 500 votes) in 2024.

julia_azari: I agree with that, Perry. But I think it’s possible that Democrats will start to feel pressure to both uphold norms and be “reasonable” while also responding to norm violations more forcefully.

perry: I am wary of suggesting we are seeing escalation on both sides, though, as I think we are really only seeing big escalations on the GOP side. And I worry things could get worse. If Republicans controlled the House right now, I would be really worried about this election certification issue, for example.

julia_azari: For me, it comes down to a question of sustainability, and of possible splits among Democrats on this issue. But to be clear, I don’t see any of them supporting the scenario you described, Perry. But I could start to see them play a bit more “constitutional hardball.”

sarah: Yeah, I think Julia is getting at what I meant. I definitely don’t want to “both sides” this. But I do think what Julia touched on earlier, about the mechanisms for expressing legitimate opposition being brushed aside, leaves Democrats in an awkward position, as Trump’s brand of politics has challenged how the whole system works.

julia_azari: My main point here is that the parties are not self-contained, and I don’t think the Democrats have really figured out answers to some of the questions posed by Republicans’ norm-violating behavior (which again, is a situation Democrats did not create).

perry: Julia is getting at an important and complicated question here, and one we kind of saw play out around whether Democrats should add justices to the Supreme Court given Republicans’ rush to nominate Amy Coney Barrett before the election.

Biden was clearly uncomfortable with it, but the party activists really pushed him on the issue. So what does Biden/the Democrats do about what we have seen over the last two months?

Biden, in this pre-inauguration period, is basically ignoring Trump and suggesting Republicans will work with him. And I can’t tell if he is 1) pretending, 2) clueless, or 3) Republicans will actually work with him. But Biden’s theory of the case and how other Democrats approach this issue, not to mention how the two parties interact on this, will be interesting. I truly do not know the answer to this question.

sarah: Exactly. It will be interesting to see how Biden and the Democrats work to address this — or whether Trump’s brand of politics has upended everything.

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

[jswdmb1]

Identical

I don't just know you, I've grown like that too...

If I don't dislike you, I'm withdrawn, unrighteous too...

I’m no prophet, I'm your friend

Take my advice, make your mistakes”

- Phoenix

Every four years, the PBS series “Frontline” presents an episode called “The Choice”.  It presents the two candidates running in that particular presidential election.  But, it is not a show about the current campaign, policy issues or even the politics behind the particular candidates.  It is instead a personal biography of each candidate up to the point of the current election told chronologically.  The show portrays each individual’s story back and forth as the years go on that allow the viewer to both understand the people behind the front their campaigns present, but also provides a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the two candidates.  I have watched this particular episode of Frontline in every presidential election dating back to 2000, and I find it to consistently be the single best source of information for me to decide (or confirm) which candidate I am to support in that year’s election.

I was going to pass on this year’s version as I didn’t think there was anything I could learn about either man, and my choice is already made, but I watched anyway.  I have to admit that I was surprised to pick up nuggets of information that were new to me such as that Joe Biden’s first wife and daughter were killed six weeks after his election to the Senate for the first time, or that Donald Trump’s mother fell ill when he was very small and was effectively absent for his nurturing years.  Those are facts that seemingly are unimportant when weighing which man to support in a presidential election, but I think we have all found out in the last four years that an individual’s personality, temperament, and morality are just as important as their stance on any issue or their knowledge of the inner workings of government.  In the example of this year’s election, it finally crystallized the stark difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump that has made my decision for whom to vote so easy.

Let’s start with the challenger Biden.  If there are two things that are clear about Joe, it is 1) he makes a lot of mistakes, and 2) he has overcome quite a bit of adversity of the years whether they are of his own doing or not.  You can watch the show to see the examples of both, but Biden’s approach to problems in his life has been remarkably consistent.  First, he acknowledges the problem exists and that he has responsibility to address it.  Next, if it was a problem of his own doing, he owns up to it.  Often times, he does this quite clumsily and occasionally makes things worse, but he does, at a minimum, take responsibility.  Finally, once it is out there, he puts his head down and gets to work with an amazing ability to ignore the long odds that he may face or the chirping he hears in the background about how badly he messed up and/or how he will never make it right.  He simply has a fundamental belief that humans make mistakes and he is no exception to that rule.  At times, it would be refreshing if he demonstrated better that he learns from some of these mistakes so as not to repeat them, but there is at least a good faith effort even if the execution at times is mediocre.

There is no need to go into detail how Trump behaves whenever he is faced with a problem and it is well documented that he never admits to making a mistake (and likely doesn’t even believe he has ever made one).  There are daily examples of this behavior and running through the list at this point is massively unappealing.  What I do find interesting is why he is this way.  The show goes into great detail about the influence three men have had on his life. The first is his father Fred.  We all know his background and his ruthlessness in business and within his personal relationships and this was applied to each of his sons.  The first, Fred Jr., bristled at the notion of going into the family business, and became an airline pilot instead (a decision for which both father and brother Donald would mock him mercilessly and drove him to alcoholism and an early death).  Fred Sr. then set his sights on son #2 who was more than willing to take up the cause.  After a stint in military school that hardened his outlook on life and reduced what little emotional capacity he had, he moved into his father’s footsteps and practiced the approach that personal gain is everything and little else matters.

The second man was a lawyer named Roy Cohn.  Cohn rose to fame in the 1950s as Joseph McCarthy’s hatchet man in the blacklisting of innocent American citizens for unfounded (and mostly false) accusations of communism.  Despite the shame eventually brought upon him for that role, he rose to become one of the most powerful attorneys in New York.  A client of his was a young Donald Trump and Cohn taught him three things that helped him rise from the ashes: 1) deny anything that makes you look bad as even having happened 2) attack those that bring these things up and deflect the blame elsewhere, and 3) never take responsibility for your actions unless there is a transactional gain that serves you.  This has been Donald Trump’s blueprint his entire life and it can be found in his business, his marriages, and certainly his presidency.  He literally has never operated in a manner that is different in any aspect of his life, so the fact that this has come through during his time in the White House should be surprising to no one who witnessed him before his election.

The final man was the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale who was the pastor at the church Donald Trump attended for over 50 years.  Peale’s claim-to-fame was the publishing of a book The Power of Positive Thinking and the Trumps followed it like their bible.  Boiled down, the main tenant of the book was that one must think positively at all costs and negative thoughts must be barred from the mind or success cannot be achieved.  That seems okay on the surface, but it becomes a problem when situations require more effort than simply a good thought and a wish that it goes away.  This clearly explains Trump’s complete inability to handle the COVID-19 pandemic.  Even though he obviously intellectually understood the severity and danger of the virus from his recordings on the Woodward tapes, this brainwashing of Peale on the Trump family made it impossible for Donald to acknowledge that the problem existing in any way.  When combined with Cohn’s teachings on taking no responsibility and Fred Sr.’s example of bulldozing past anyone who disagrees with you (like a scientist or doctor), the end result of his response makes a lot of sense.  It’s why even when catching the disease himself, he views it as a positive event that only he could dream up.

I do find it curious that I spent three long paragraphs on Trump with only one brief paragraph on Biden, but that meshes with each approach they have on the basic issues of life as a human being which is confronting adversity and accepting that we do make mistakes.  Biden’s approach is simple and to the point, sometimes to a fault.  Trump has this complicated troika of mad men’s teachings running through his head when problems come up and it is no wonder he is paralyzed with inaction when it comes time to do something about it.  For me, this is the defining trait between the two men that seems to tower over everything else about them personally or this election in general.  The question then is what do we do with this information.

I’m certain it is obvious which way I am going to go, but it may surprise you why.  You see, I have struggled myself with some of these same issues that each man has faced.  Up until a few years ago, I actually would describe myself as really being more Trump-like in my approach to life than I really care to admit.  I rarely acknowledged I was wrong and often blamed others for problems that were within and could only be solved by the guy responsible for them in the first place – me.  This attitude prevented me from seeing what was the real root of my unhappiness and depression and did not allow for me to acknowledge that my drinking and moderate drug use had become a problem.  It wasn’t until everything broke down and I ended up in an intense six-week program of therapy and deep soul searching that I discovered that mistakes we make are what builds us up and not what tears us down.  Granted, we need to learn from those mistakes to become better people and achieve great things, but admitting responsibility is the only path to doing either of those things.  I know now after a few years that I will never get things totally right, but I can get up each day and at least try to improve on the one before.  At a minimum, I strive to not make things worse, and it all gives me strength to fight whatever demons I have head on.  It’s a trial-and-error approach for sure, but I don’t see how it can be done any other way.

And given where things are at now, I don’t see how any other approach can help us overcome the enormous problems we face at this time whether it be COVID-19, or the economy, or global warming, or any other massive threat we face right now.  There is no amount of positive thinking that will help us overcome any one of these things and clearly wishing the problems away (or denying they even exist) is not going to work.  We need someone who understands this and there is no doubt the current president has no ability to do so.  Joe Biden may not be perfect, and he is not going to get us all of the way there on likely any one thing, but we have to start somewhere.  And, if there is one thing that he is good at, it is looking at a big hill, putting his head down, and climbing up.  It’s not pretty, and it isn’t the easy thing to do, but it is what we need right now more than anything.  

That is a tough pill to swallow for many Americans who think their freedom is a birthright that requires no effort, but that fantasy has been squashed.  In three weeks, the choice is clear about what needs to be done and the decision is up to you: are you going to acknowledge fault and accept responsibility for our collective actions that have led us to this point and vote for Joe, or are you going to give Trump another four years by simply wishing that all our problems away (spoiler alert – they don’t)?  The politically correct thing to say at this point is that either way you decide please make sure you vote, but I cannot apply that here.  The stakes are too high and the path is too obvious – either vote for Joe or don’t vote at all.  That second option may be tough for some people to take, but consider it your first step on a long road to recovery and redemption not just for yourself but our nation.

Good luck, everyone, we are going to need it.

-        Jim

[go-redgirl]

Pastor Robert Jeffress: Left Wing Using Coronavirus to Separate Trump from Evangelicals and Push Abortion

Pastor Robert Jeffress of Dallas First Baptist Church said during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday that particularly during the coronavirus pandemic left-wing groups are trying to drive a wedge between President Trump and his evangelical base and using the crisis to push their radical pro-abortion agenda.

Jeffress, who heads one of the largest evangelical churches in the country, slammed left-wing groups for pushing their political agendas during the coronavirus pandemic — specifically, abortion.

“The left has not given up their agenda. Right here in Texas, Planned Parenthood has sued our state and Gov. Abbott because he declared that abortion is not an essential service during the coronavirus pandemic,” Jeffress said. “In other words, they are suing for the right to have abortions take priority over other surgical procedures and tie up our healthcare workers and our medical facilities during this crisis. That is absurd.”

“You know, Cory Booker described abortion as a sacrosanct belief, and I mean that’s really true,” he continued. “It is almost a religion to Democrats and to the left, their so-called right to murder babies, and we are seeing this carried out right now. They believe in unrestricted abortion,” he said.

The left’s radical position on abortion will only encourage evangelicals to support Trump in even greater numbers in the general election, Jeffress predicted.

“And that’s because Democrats have moved so far to the left on this issue in just three years,” he said, noting the Democrat candidates who had signaled their support for unrestricted abortion. “And to most Americans, that’s not only wrong. It is barbaric.”

Nonetheless, Democrats are attempting to drive a wedge between Trump and his evangelical base, even during the coronavirus pandemic. Jeffress slammed the recent New York Times article that essentially blamed the pandemic on evangelical Christians.

“God doesn’t want us to be paralyzed with panic during this pandemic. He wants us to exercise faith, but He also wants us to exercise common sense,” he explained.

“But what’s really going on here, Matt, is the New York Times and other left-wing groups know that there’s an election coming up in a few months. They know President Trump’s on the glide path to reelection, and they’re trying to do anything they can to separate the president from his evangelical base, thinking maybe he will distance himself from the so-called kooky evangelicals, and they will distance themself from him. Neither is going to happen,” he said.

“President Trump won the evangelical vote in 2016 by 81 percent — largest margin in history. Every time I see the president, I tell him I believe he’s on the path to win an even greater margin than the 81 percent,” he said, praising Trump’s accomplishments, many of which resonate with Americans of faith.

“Without a doubt, it is the irony of all time that it was a secular real estate tycoon from New York City named Donald Trump who has become the most pro-life, pro-religious liberty, pro-Israel president in the history of America,” he said.

That, along with the left’s pursual of its radical left-wing agendas like abortion, especially during the pandemic, will only further rally Trump’s evangelical base, Jeffress suggested, adding that Trump’s likely opponent, Joe Biden (D), must be grilled on the issue.

“I hope that President Trump will wrap unrestricted abortion around Joe Biden’s neck. Make him choke on it because he needs to answer to the American people whether or not he believes that abortion is an essential surgery that needs to take priority in this coronavirus crisis,” he added.

READ MORE STORIES ABOUT:

2020 Election Health Politics Abortion Breitbart News Saturday coronavirus Planned Parenthood Robert Jeffress

______________________________________________________________

OPINION:  It’s great to see the President and Vice President surrounded by those of faith and believers in Almighty God, because they understand what time period we’re in these days.  

There is a ‘war’ going on but, its not a ‘man’s war but a ‘War’ between good an evil in this country and around the World.  The war is between good and evil and ‘Ole Satan’ is losing its evilness and power in this country and around the world and the ‘devil knows that.  

We are at war between good and evil.  Satan is on his way out and he’s fighting like ‘hell’ to stay in power.  But, Alrighty God is now in full charge of this war and we’re going to Win it because  ‘Satan’ two thousands years are up!

Our President Donald John Trump has been ordained before birth and after birth to take our great country into ‘peace time’ for the next two thousands years.  A new book of the Bible is being written before our eyes in our life time, to set us and (i.e, future generations) on a path for the next two thousands years are longer. 

Those of ‘faith and believers’ understand what time period we’re in and no group or entity can stop this process.  

Almighty God ordained Donald John Trump (i.e, trumpet in the book of Revelations) Michale Pence (i.e, Archangel Michael) to take this country and  the world into peace time on earth.  They both have the right ingredients and they are the ones that will get us through this time period in our life for a greater life than we’ve ever, ever had ‘said the lord’.

Believe what you may, but its not going to change Almighty God’s plans.  So, hold onto your seats because its going to get a little more rocky before ‘PEACE’ time arrive.

All praises to Almighty God and his Angeles.

[arlingtonpark]

SNK 121 Review

TFW you’re relying on someone to pull through and they’re failing badly.

Has anyone ever seen JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure? SPOILERS

One of the villains is this guy named DIO. He’s an asshole. 

DIO’s whole schtick is that he is obsessed with being dominant. In the clip, he assaults JoJo’s girlfriend to show his dominance over both her and JoJo.

In JoJo’s, people fight using spiritual manifestations of their own life essence. These manifestations are called Stands, and because they are a manifestation of the user’s essence, Stands are revealing in some way as to the nature of the user.

DIO’s stand is the World and it has the power to stop time. Being able to stop time is absolute domination, both physically and temporally. Physically because you can stop the world and fuck around with everything as you please, and temporally because you are no longer subservient to the constant flow of time. The world stops for no man, except you.

Now Eren is fittingly in the same boat, except worse because while DIO could only stop time, Eren can control the course of events. He can see the future and affect the past. His domination over the world is (theoretically) absolute.

I don’t know what Eren’s plan is, but we get a taste of it this chapter. Zeke asks him point blank what he hopes to accomplish and Eren’s response is the most disturbing thing ever.  

“If people try to take my freedom away, I will take theirs away.”

My God.

This statement completely encapsulates Eren as a person. This is the rambling of a deranged lunatic. Worse, even. It’s the thinking of a stupid kid.

“Eren, why did you hit Little Timmy?”

“Because he hit me!”

You cannot hit someone just because they hit you. It doesn’t work that way. You are allowed to hit back in self-defense, but not to exact revenge. Both actions are the same, but the state of mind backing either action is the key difference. The former is the mindset of someone trying to protect themselves. The latter is the mindset of someone trying to hurt someone else.

That’s the faultiness of Eren’s thinking in principle, and it’s even worse in practice.

Eren believes that them trying to kill him gives him license to kill them. Nope, wrong.

Human life is, of course, inviolably valuable, and therefore killing in itself is always wrong. You can kill in self-defense, because the point in that case isn’t the killing itself, but the preservation of your own life. Killing for its own sake is appalling.

Ironically, this deranged narcissist perfectly illustrates why this tit-for-tat way thinking is dangerous. Restraint? Graciousness? Mercy? Can Eren comprehend these concepts?

It’s just so stunning how childish this whole thing is. Eren is opposing a king who would force his will on the future, but since Eren is doing the exact same thing, I can only assume he doesn’t think this is intrinsically wrong.

No, it’s not that Fritz’s vow is wrong, it’s that the same mechanism isn’t being used in service of Eren’s goals. Eren doesn’t think the vow is wrong in itself, he just opposes it because it’s another limit on his freedom.

There is no reason to believe Eren has any boundaries whatsoever. Or any shame for that matter. 

This “me-centric” form of morality is called egoism. It’s an utterly disreputable theory that no one defends. It’s the same with the children he killed in Liberio. Killing is wrong, unless it helps me, in which case it is good. By defining what’s good and bad in these terms, Eren reveals himself as the egomaniac man child that he is.

And yet.

Eren is the one who lectures Zeke in this chapter!

This is what Eren has reduced me to, defending Zeke. Why is this happening to me?

Zeke is supposedly the pathetic one, because he has, you know, an ideology. It’s a stupid AF ideology that is completely indefensible, so it is pathetic, but not the way Eren thinks.

Zeke’s opposition to Grisha is incidental to his ideology. It’s not that Zeke is opposing Grisha out of spite, which would truly be pathetic. Zeke opposes Grisha because their respective worldviews are incompatible.

Meanwhile Eren is saying he should be allowed to do mean things to people because they did mean things to him.

The idea that people can just kill others, simply because they tried to kill you is fundamentally lawless. Not to take the fun out of superheroes, but vigilante justice isn’t actually justice. It’s totally illiberal to have one person hold the power to judge, convict, and sentence another.

But it is also totally in character for Eren to support that idea. With Eren, it’s all about power.

I’ve often compared Eren to our 45th president. Whatever the Eren stans say, that is an apt comparison. Eren’s talk of taking freedom from those who try to take his is not unlike something Trump would say. 

They are both narcissistic man children with an insatiable lust for dominance. Slighting them creates an imbalance that they must make right, and the world is off kilter until that is done. It’s that one itch they must scratch.

Eren fights because, to be blunt, he wants the world to be his bitch and he will not settle for anything less than that. This is second nature to someone who says the things Eren says. If you think killing is justified just because they tried to kill you, then you obviously do not value human life.

At this point, Eren is undeniably similar to Zeke. He wants to bring his dream to fruition and anyone who gets in his way is just a pissant to be stomped on. 

Is Eren redeemed by his (apparent) concern for his friends? 

Nnnnope!

While friends do have certain obligations to each other, it is completely obscene to do the heinous things Eren’s done just for their sake. 

You cannot define the morality of your actions by how much they help a random group of people. Why are the lives of Eren’s friends worth any more than the lives of the people he’s killed?

The answer is that, all else being equal, they aren’t. 

You may care deeply for someone, but that does not justify a killing. 

Who is even the hero of this story anymore?

It can’t be Zeke, because his values are anathema to the series values. He may be the audience surrogate this time around, but I doubt fucking Zeke Jeager is going to be the hero when the final chapter comes around. 

Eren is theoretically the hero because his values broadly align with the story’s, but his actions are depicted in an almost devilish light. I always hoped the series would tackle the notion of fighting too hard for what you believe in, but…it’s too late for that now?

We’re in the final story arc. It’s weird to only just now be dealing with this meaty idea. Over 100 chapters of “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!” and we’re just now getting to the “But not too hard.” part? There’s no way. 

Alternatively, this is just one final fake-out in the game of is-he-or-isn’t-he that Isayama has been playing since the Marley Arc. Is Eren evil, or isn’t he? Or maybe they’ll play it as “Can he be redeemed or can’t he?” 

Either way, I bet there’ll be some kind of change of heart from Eren soon. 

This chapter echoes a point made by Yelena about the titans and their relationship to humanity: that the titan powers will be abused by people because that is just the nature of things. So let’s unpack that.

King Fritz, speaking through Frieda, says that the power of the titans must not fall into human hands lest it be abused. This mirrors ongoing debates about how to deal with certain controversial weapons, such as nuclear weapons.

The (very) liberal position is that nuclear weapons should be banned completely because the risk of abuse is too great.  As per usual, the liberal position is taken by King Fritz.

The conservative position, which, once again, is the position the story sides with, is made more implicitly: that the titan powers can be a force for good, it’s just a matter of making sure only good people can access that power.

This conservative position is what underlies US policy towards North Korea and Iran. Those countries are rogue states that the US believes cannot be trusted. (Note, though, that the nuclearization of Iran is supported by Russia, a nuclear power.)

Personally, I believe nuclear weapons should be banned completely. Most countries are at least nominally supportive of the eventual, complete destruction of all nuclear weapons, and international norms have been evolving in that direction.

That is the contradiction of this issue: most people take the liberal position in the long term, but hold the conservative position in the short term.

This is just another reason to think that SNK will end with a ringing endorsement of nuclear weapons, with nary a nod to the need for eventual total disarmament.

See, ungodly amounts of power aren’t inherently bad, we just need special people to wield them for the public good.

Yeah, I get it, we need special people, but you know what? Frodo was special. The One Ring supposedly couldn’t corrupt him, but they still set out to destroy it. Because power on this scale is itself wrong.

Nuclear weapons aren’t the only possible parallel, though. Any controversial weapon will fit. In the United States there is a debate over regulating high powered weapons like the AR-15.

How do you handle such a thing? Do you ban the weapon completely, or just certain people from using it? I won’t wade into something as controversial as that here, though I will point out that the story clearly sides with the position of regulation over a total ban.

The scene in the cave also mirrors Japan’s current nuclear predicament. Japan has many outside rivals and threats, and Japan could build nuclear weapons if they wanted too. They have the technological capability, but in spite of the threat of North Korea, and the tense relations with China, the Japanese government chooses not to.

So, yeah, I’ve had the series pegged as leaning neoconservative and I still think that.

So what does the future hold?

Apparently, an event where Eren… becomes/does something. They both saw the same thing: a future where Eren is this OP chad of chads and a total boss. Grisha looks like he saw the worst thing imaginable. Eren looks like he just had an orgasm.

Since Eren is portrayed in a more sinister way this chapter, I am inclined to believe this future actually is a ghastly one.  

Before this chapter, my guess was that Eren wanted to destroy the world using the wall titans, but would somehow come around to using it the way Armin mentioned: defensively.

Having it be preordained that the future holds a version of Eren that people who aren’t Eren will think is abominable throws a wrench into that.

I wouldn’t bet against Isayama somehow finding a way to make it work though. The only other alternative is that this series ends in the most ironic way possible, with the deranged lunatic having his way and “freedom” finally being established.

#shingeki no kyogin #attack on titan #snk 121 #spoilers

[dat-town]

the day after tomorrow pt.3 (final)

Characters: Lucas/Yukhei & OC (Ariadne)

Setting: paranormal abilities au

Genre: humour, adventure, this gets quite angsty

Summary: It’s time to end this once and for all. But what are they willing to sacrifice?

Words: 4.3k

For my dearest @restlessmaknae​ ❤️

<< Previous part 

Wong Yukhei had some issues.

Having a terrible father was just one of those. Being hunted for his powers was a much more urgent problem actually. But every problem's solution started with finding the source and that he knew well. The next question was the how part: how to get rid of the source so that the problem can stop being a problem? It was a tricky one because as long as Jedikiah Price, his 'beloved' father lived, he wasn't going to give up this legacy. Ultra was now in his hands and could only be taken from his cold, dead fingers. But no matter how much he hated his father, killing him - which his kind was physically unable to do anyways - wasn't one of the things he was willing to do. He didn't want to go that far because then he wouldn't have been anything better than Ultra.

"I can tell you're overthinking. Stop it," Ariadne said as she appeared next to him on the rooftop and joined him watching the sunrise.

Yukhei looked up at her confused at first, with undying curiosity and wonder in his caramel eyes but then his features softened and he sighed.

“I just can't figure out how we could stop my father.”

“Hey it's not your job to have everything covered. You shouldn't take all of our weights onto your shoulders. We're in this together,” the girl reassured him and she always seemed to know what to say to make his uneasy heart feel at least a bit better. He didn't let go of worrying but it was good to know that even if he was the unsaid leader of the team, they didn't expect him to do everything from forming a strategy to making it real. And yet, he couldn't get rid of the feeling of guilt.

“I know but...”

“No buts,” Ariadne interrupted him sharply. Her dark eyes were firm and authoritative, Yukhei didn't have it in him to protest. “We don't care who your father is. You could be the child of the president of the United States for all we care. You stand by us, that's what matters.”

As she was talking, she looked like a warrior giving a pep talk to her soldiers but he indeed needed it, he needed to hear it.

”Thanks,” he nodded at her with a small smile forming on his lips that made the girl relieved. She didn't like to see him blame himself for the sins his father committed. There was no way for him to know what kind of person Jedikiah was, he was the most betrayed out of all of them.

“Anytime,” she said and she meant it. Whenever Yukhei needed someone who was straightforward enough with him, she would be there, that much she could promise. “By the way, Ten actually has an idea but I'm not sure you're gonna like it.”

It wasn't that kind of situation but Yukhei let out a forced chuckle.

“I don't think there's anything that I would like at this point but there is no good solution, so I'm okay with the least bad one,”

”Then let's go. He wants to gather a meeting,” Ariadne prompted, standing up and she held out her hand. Yukhei stared at it for long seconds wondering what happened to the girl who didn't like to be touched. She offered willingly, so there was no way he wouldn't take it. He slid his own hand into hers, letting her to pull him up. Although she let him go immediately when he was on his two feet and he didn't know why he felt so empty and cold then.

In the underground building they had a room called The Campfire. It was basically the living room with a round table but since they often used it to sit around and discuss their plans or problems, these started to feel like heart-to-heart talks by the fire.

By the time Ariadne and Yukhei arrived almost all of them were there. Even the new guys and Ten shot them thumbs up when they got there.

"Thanks for coming, I swear we won't talk about who ate my last cookie again," the Thai guy promised with a hint of mischievousness in his voice he had that look on his face that ensured he wanted to talk about something serious. He cleared his throat and looked around. “So… Jeffrey, tell them what you told me this morning,” he prompted pointing at one of the newcomer guys.

Said boy was around Winwin's age, had lanky limbs and such a new yorkian way of talking he must have been here for quite a while. He ran his fingers through his blondish brown locks and spoke up:

“In Ultra they weren't only doing experiments on us but on humans too. They were trying to figure out what exactly it is in our DNA that causes our paranormal skills and how they could reproduce it,” he said and that was sick, Yukhei furrowed his brows. It went against Ultra's principals, just like the experiments that tried to fry out the 'can't kill' barricade in their brain. Jedikiah must have lost his mind.

"Yeah, I heard them say they want to figure out how to get rid of the difference between us and humans." Yuta added with a nod and a bitter grimace.

“Wait, does that mean that they want to make them like us?” Hendery asked, with reasonable confusion in his voice. It really didn’t make any sense. They both wanted to kill them and now, for some ridiculous reason they wanted to make more of their kind. What was the logic in that? Why did they need the witch hunt then?

"Like an army," Johnny mused out loud, Honey nodding alongside with him.

“Or they want to make biological weapons to kill us all,” she piped in and Mark choked on his Coca Cola next to her. He looked downright scandalized.

”Always so positive, good to have you with us,” the organizer of this whole gathering remarked. “But yeah, you're probably right. They want to make their own homo superior army and their first task would probably be to kill us all who disobey.”

Ariadne looked sideways to see Yukhei's conflicted face because boy, was it rare to see him speechless, so lost in his thoughts but lately, he was more and more like that. The joking kid who flirted with her non-stop now had the weight of the world on his shoulders. She wanted to see him smile again.

"So… what's your suggestion then? Ariadne said you have one," he turned to Ten, voice deep and serious.

"Uh yeah. It's a pretty risky plan with lots of what ifs. First step is that we steal an injection from Ultra. Then we kidnap Dr. Price or have an ambush on him. Then we threaten him," the Thai guy introduced the plan to him but it wasn’t quite convincing so far. Yukhei furrowed his eyebrows. His father wasn’t easy to make swayed and not to mention, it would have been almost impossible to find him alone after their attack on Ultra.

"With what?"

"Shouldn't you know the best?" Ten raised a brow, looking at the son of the man who lied he wasn't even his just to save his face in a company where any relation to homo superiors counted as a sin. But the saddest thing is that Yukhei was sure the only reason why he was still alive because Jedikiah had some kind of leverage due to that fact. It wasn't any parental sentiment. “What he's the most afraid of."

And oh, they both knew what it was.

Yukhei had to admit that no matter how crazy Ten’s idea was, it was a good one, good enough to put a dot at the end of this endless fight between superiors and the organization against them. But there were lots of variables even he wasn’t sure of. He didn’t know his own father enough to bet their life on a mission that could go wrong any minute. No, he wouldn’t do that. Even if they saved half dozen young superiors last time, he almost lost Ariadne. He still remembered how ice cold it felt, the sheer panic of her might not waking up. He wasn’t ready to face that again, he wasn’t ready to lose anything anymore. He had lost enough already in his short life.

"Where are you going?" Ariadne chirped leaning against the wall that he passed by on his way out of the building. He could have teleported easily out of his room but since they had incidents before when people started appearing out of nowhere, bumping into each other and knocking off things, they made a rule to reserve teleporting to one area.

"I need to get some fresh air. To think." Yukhei said while he put on his leather jacket and Ariadne was tempted to joke about guys in leather and motorbikes but this time wasn't for joking.

"I'm coming with you," she claimed and she came prepared, she had her denim jacket with her. Almost as if she knew what he was planning to do (Because she did know. She knew him better than anyone. Maybe even better than himself and when he started to doubt himself she was there to give him the final push.)

"You sure?" The boy quirked a brow because while she also knew what he did and where he went when he needed to get away from this little chaos, he knew that she wasn't fond of fast vehicles ever since the accident in her family.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Ariadne nodded and held a hand out for him. Twice a day, he was impressed (he must have looked pretty devastated if she felt this bad for him) but he took it anyway, memorizing the softness of her skin and the light scratches on her knuckles and on the tip of her fingers. She was working hard to learn how to fight properly even if she can't use her powers.

But he didn't say anything, they all worked hard and he knew she wouldn't have wanted to be treated any differently. When his fingers closed around her hand, there was a glitch, a pause of a heartbeat before they found themselves in an abandoned warehouse logistics centre where Yukhei kept his bike.

They needed no words, it was a routine for the boy which she followed wordlessly. She took the helmet with a smile and sat on the motorbike behind the guy, arms winding around his middle. Under her hands, under the thick material of his jacket, his heart trumped loudly. They went on for an hour, going around the city wherever they could with no destination in mind. Ariadne couldn't help but enjoy the closeness, the wind in her face and all the bright neon lights that seemed like modern art as they passed by them. They ended up leaving the bike in a parking lot of a fast food restaurant and teleported to the top of a fifty storey building. They looked down on the city, all those tiny little lights from up there and Yukhei felt like he could breathe again. He needed this.

Ariadne knew that Ten's plan wasn't foolproof and a lot of things could go wrong but even last time when they prepared a whole lot, even then were surprises they would have never expected so by now she knew that there was no perfect preparation. However, Yukhei seemed more hesitant than ever and standing next to him, arms brushing as they watched the moon, she openly asked: 

“What are you afraid of?”

“Of losing you,” the boy blurted out without thinking and then looked up at a girl with eyes wide like a deer caught in the headlights. Okay, she didn't expect that answer but it made her heart soar. “All of you, but you especially.”

After a moment of dumbfounded silence, he sighed and looked ahead, pointing at the edge of the building.

“Remember when you dived off from a building when we first met after all these years? You nearly gave me a heart attack. Then I didn't know what to do with myself after the last mission when I thought that you...”

Ariadne cut his words off, shutting him up by pressing her lips on his chastely for an eternal moment.

“You will never lose me,” she said, promised when she pulled a breath away and looked into those dark, confused eyes. Yukhei blinked, almost not believing that this happened and before Ariadne could think that she misunderstood all the signs, he slid a hand over her nape, angling her head just right for a proper kiss.

Their confessions echoed between them through telepathy.

When they went back to their so-called headquarters hand-in-hand and Johnny saw them, the older guy screamed like there was no tomorrow.

“Oh my god, guys, it happened! It finally happened! The ship is sailing, I repeat, the ship is finally sailing!” he hollered to make sure that everybody, even the half-deaf cat lady down the street could hear it.

Ariadne smiled sheepishly, burying her face into Yukhei's shoulder as their friends all come out to congratulate them. Yukhei squeezed her hand and smiled proudly as if he was showing her off.

“It was about time,” Honey scoffed with a roll of her eyes as she and Mark walked out of the tech room.

“Look who's talking,” Ten fake coughed into his hands that earned him a slap on his back from the girl. But oh, was that a slight blush on her cheeks?

“Oh and Ten?” Yukhei looked at said boy with something wicked in his smile. “Let's do it. Let's threaten my father.”

His remark earned some chuckles, hollers, encouraging pats on his back from the others. They talked it through with Ariadne before coming back and they decided that leaving hidden isn't something they could keep up much longer, so they needed to take risks. For a more wholesome life.

The plan was easy-peasy as Ten liked to call it. Since Yukhei knew the inside-outs of Jedikiah's apartment and Ariadne was good enough to deal with the security system, they decided to execute their mission there. It gave them the leverage of knowing no other factor could bother them, the only tricky variable in the equation was Dr. Price himself.

Of course the man used the same technique at his home as the one in the labour that prevented the usage of homo superior power but it wasn't only their power that made them dangerous and he was about to learn that. Yukhei was ready to teach him a lesson as he sat in his armchair, casually reading a magazine while waiting for his father to arrive.

It didn't take long, around 11:30pm the door finally opened and light filtered into the study room from the hall. He must have looked like the prodigal son coming home from the way Jedikiah looked at him as soon as he stepped into the room, switching on the lights.

“It is quite bold of you to come here, Lucas,” he said cold and unnervingly calm. He walked closer to the desk, taking a good look at his son but he didn't seem quite satisfied. He never was when it came to Yukhei. After all those years, trying to prove his worth to his father, he finally realized why he couldn't. The man would never really acknowledge him as a son, he was a homo superior and the doctor was ashamed of it. He could never be good enough as long as he had this in his blood but he wasn't willing to give this up, not for him. For a father who only used him to get what he wanted.

“I have told you countless times, again and again, not to call me that,” the boy gritted his teeth. “But you never listen, do you? Because you think you're above me, that you could wipe me off the Earth. Do you really still think all this, the Tomorrow People is just a childish rebellion on my part?”

Jedikiah sighed with all the heavy burden of a man whose hand was red with the blood of hundreds and he sat in the chair across Yukhei.

“Is this why you came? To have a father-son chit-chat about where things went wrong?”

“No,” the boy shook his head. “But I thought I would ask nicely because this will probably be the last time we talk.”

Jedikiah raised a brow at the confident statement.

“You should give yourself up. This is your only chance. You will never win,” the man warned him but only got a scoff as an answer.

“Oh you think?” Yukhei smiled devilishly and in that moment he indeed looked like the son of his father. “Maybe you should check the security cameras of your beloved Ultra.”

There was a flash of sheer panic in Dr. Price's eyes and Yukhei knew they did well. The man immediately turned on his computer and opened the camera screens. Ultra was dark and empty at night safe from the guards. However, as it could be seen, the guards were nowhere and there was a bomb ticking in his office counting down now from 15 minutes.

When the man reached for his phone, Yukhei was quicker and took it from him.

“Ah-ah. No funny business. We are here to make a deal,” he singsonged which made the man growl. He loved Ultra more than anything, good.

“What the hell do you want?”

“Apart from the video game you still didn't get me?” Yukhei pouted, he felt like winning even though he knew his father must have had other cards up his sleeve. “I want a life. A peaceful, I can walk on the streets kind of life. I want you to stop hunting down our kind.”

“It's not a hunt. It's for the safety of humans! Your kind can't be trusted with this power. It's only a matter of time. Look how you turned out.”

The man's voice was full of spite but Yukhei didn't care, not anymore.

“Oh you think it's a wise idea to mock me now?”

“You won't get away with it. My men are already on their way here,” Jedikiah claimed and the boy knew it wasn't a bluff. He saw him fidget with his smart watch while they talked. But oh, it wasn't only his father who had backup.

“Your men? You mean the guys currently totally out of it in the hallway?” The door opened and Ten, Johnny and Ariadne walked in. The others were either at Ultra or at their base.

“He wasn't convinced, was he?” Ten sighed theatherically and when Jedikiah reached for the gun at the small of his back, they quickly held him off. “You are slow, old man. See, we don't even need our powers.”

They pushed the man on the armchair, keeping him off no matter how much he struggled.

“Let's add another convincing factor, shall we?” Ariadne winked at the boys and took out an injection with bright blue liquid from her backpack. Jedikiah's eyes widened as he saw it.

"Remember? Familiar liquid? We will see how your blood will take it, buddy,” Johnny clicked his tongue. “Your statistics say almost half the lab rats who willingly joined you on this road to hell died. Do you think you will be a part of the other lucky fifty percent? Or would that be more of a punishment for you to live like the species you hate so much?"

Yukhei didn't know much about biology and genetics but since he was homo superior he had to get the genes from somewhere and since his uncle and cousins were also like that it wouldn't have been so unreal if he survived.

"You know what's the problem with you? That some people randomly got these skills and they can use them to anything, whatever their heart desires. It's unfair. Why did some undeserving brats get this only to cause trouble? It shouldn't be like this. They aren't worth of holding such power," the man's tongue got loose as he spat curses at them.

"Why? Would you be?" Yukhei scoffed at his father. The way he talked just proved his inferiority complex.

The man didn't answer but kept his eyes on the injection held close to his neck artery.

"So we have some conditions," Yukhei declared brushing the needle against Jedikiah's skin. "You destroy every tracking device, every weapon made to hurt our kind, you delete all our files and you shut down Ultra."

He listed their wishes as if it was a Christmas wish list but oh well they say go big or go home.

"You want me to wipe the world clear off my life's work," the man said bitterly and wow all those PhDs, he really was smart after all.

"Yeah."

"Even if I do, there will always be others like Ultra," Jedikiah said with lips trembling from anger.

"Then we will deal with them then," his son said remarked confidently and checked the countdown on the computer screen. Only two minutes were left till midnight. “Tick-tock, dad, decide quick or Ultra will explode and you won't have the serum to save you if I accidentally get this blue thing in you and make you like us.”

There was a minute a silence but when the clock reached 00:00:59, the man finally decided to speak up.

“Okay, okay. You won, I will shut down Ultra,” Jedikiah agreed in a rush and it was Ten who let out an evil laugh at that.

“Do you think we will believe you just like that?”

The sound of an explosion echoed even in the room though it only came from the computer screen that showed the ruins of a once office.

“What?” Yukhei blinked, looking at the others. It wasn't supposed to be a real bomb, it wasn't supposed to go off. He wanted to watch his father take everything down by himself.

“Sorry, we couldn't take risks,” Johnny said and as apologetic he looked Ten also knew about it. Only Ariadne was as dumbfounded as him.

“Hah, see? This is how it feels to be backstabbed,” Jedikiah said with clear hatred and ill-intent in his voice. As the hold of him weakened he broke out and took the injection from Yukhei's loosened fingers. It all happened too quick to stop it and before he knew it, the man pierced the needle through Ariadne's skin.

“I hope you will know how it feels like to lose it all, too,” the man said bitterly and didn't even try to run off just fell onto his knees to watch Ultra burn through the screens.

The guys all gathered around the girl, asking how she felt. She looked pale but nothing else seemed different. She looked just as surprised as them that she didn't feel any different as the injection was spreading in her veins.

“Maybe it doesn't do anything to us,” Ten hummed out loud, hopeful but Yukhei had a hunch about something bad was about to happen. He knew his father wouldn't have done it just so. He must have planned something but he wasn't willing to tell hem.

“Let's get out of here,” the boy ushered them outside. Once they were out of the apartment, the guys teleported back one by one, leaving Yukhei and Ariadne alone.

“Are you sure you feel okay?” he asked just to be sure, not wanting her to strain herself by teleporting if she was unwell.

“Yeah, yeah. Everything's fine. Let's go home,” she forced a smile and looked like she was about to jump but then didn't. She got pale once again as her knuckles turned white from trying so hard.

Can you hear me? Yukhei, please tell me you can hear me, she pleaded, looking at the boy with tears spilling from her eyes.

“What's wrong?” he asked, confused, as he stepped closed and cupped her face.

“I… I can't...” she sobbed and felt like she was robbed.

“What?”

“I can't do anything. He took my powers, Yukhei,” she whispered and so they knew what he meant by losing it all.

At the news of Ultra's being done for and Jedikiah actually sitting behind the bars because of some evidence of his medical wrongdoings and inhuman experiments came to surface while Ultra's ruins were being cleared, it was a time for celebration. Most of them decided to go to the surface to have fun, to visit their families they haven't seen in a long while so it was only the two of them by The Campfire, cuddling on a worn couch.

“At first, I hated being like this, I didn't ask for it and I hated the hardships and lies it brought into my life. But ever since you, I liked it more and more,” the girl said sadness evident in her voice. Being homo superior and using the powers has become such a big part of her that now she felt empty, she felt like she didn't know who he was anymore. But Yukhei didn't look at her any different.

“Homo superior or not, you are you and I love you, Ariadne,” he said hinting kisses on her shoulder as he pulled her closer. “We will get through this. Together.”

And Ariadne smiled, because she knew he was right. Together, they could overcome anything.

Nothing proved that better that by the time Johnny came back, they were arguing about superheroes again and whether he should buy flowers for her mother when he officially introduces himself as her boyfriend.

Everything was going to be alright.

#lucas scenarios #lucas imagines #yukhei scenarios #yukhei imagines #nct scenarios #nct imagines #wayv scenarios #wayv imagines #paranormal abilities au #tomorrow people au #stories

[writeinmysoul]

I feel the need to state that this isn’t an attack on tony but an attack on extreme tony stans and y’all reasonings.

Disclaimer before y’all dumbasses get in my comments and say stupid shit about my opinions on tony. I genuinely like tony stark. He’s a really great hero and he’s flawed but good. And he tries. He tries so hard. But he’s still so flawed, but that’s part of why he’s such a good hero, because sometimes, he’s the most relatable and human out of most of them, and y’all assholes seem too forget that.

I just realized how fucking much I hate tony stans like. It took me a second to realize why tho since I actually do like tony stark. But I realize, I’m really just extreme anti tony Stan narratives. At least half the time, people act like tony was never wrong and could do no wrong. Even tho part of the reason people even like him is because of his fuck ups and want to do better or right. Because he was real and had his struggles and it’s so easy to sympathize with him and such. And yet, tony stans will still sit there and act like he has literally never done any wrong. He’s done a shit ton of wrong in his life, which is part of the reason he’s constantly wanting to do better and work harder and help more people. Like it’s literally a whole fucking part of what makes him who he fucking is. Then you’ll sit there and act like Ultron wasn’t 100% his fault. I’m so fucking sick of hearing the whole, “no one listened to him. He said what was coming and no one cared. Blah. Blah. Fucking blah.” Bitch, I can’t listen to someone who ain’t fucking talking to me. He deliberately created Ultron behind his team’s back when he hadn’t even talked to them about what was to come until he royally fucked up after the fact. But everyone pretends that the reason they weren’t ready for thanos is because no one listened to him. Shut tf up. Like.

And the whole accords thing. Like. It’s straight bullshit. And tony was on his shit when he thought they were a good idea. And like, a huge motivating factor for it is his guilt, cause from iron man 1-3, it is extremely fucking unlikely he would’ve fucking signed it then. Probably not even after the first avengers. And who’s to really say if he would’ve signed it if it wasn’t for the fucking mom that confronted him. And like, i understand his intentions in both age of Ultron and I’m civil war. And his intentions were good and I get it. But like, you still massively fucked up. And what pisses me off about him in civil war is that, they don’t need to be held accountable for the battle of New York cause that was strictly the government’s fault. No one else’s. Age of Ultron? Strictly Tony’s and partially Bruce’s fucking fault. So why does the whole team need to be punished for him not talking to his fucking team? Civil war? Both Steve and Tony’s cause neither of them would sit the fuck down and actually fucking compromise. Steve was too fucking stubborn and tony was too fucking blinded by arrogance and guilt and naïveté. “Do it now or it’ll be done to us later.” That shit. wow. Like, bro, it’s already being fucking done to you. You have no real other options. Sign or stop. That’s not a real choice bro. Wtf. And in what world do you think that’s a good argument to sign?nah. Fuck you. For a genius, you’re dumb asf. Like. And what really pisses me off is the fact that like, we still know he’s still going to blatantly fucking ignore most of the rules. You got peter on your side right, but you know he doesn’t want to tell his aunt who he is, so you clearly must’ve not told him all the accords would’ve said if he still fought. Cause the accords would’ve wanted his identity too. So we know that when the time came, Tony would push to let peter keep his identity secret when they tried to force peter to identify himself. And we know the government would do it cause they did it in the defenders and agents of shield. Right. So tony was gonna ignore that rule for peter or he was gonna force peter to reveal himself which is fucked on both ends.

Then, he ignored the accords when he went to Steve in Siberia and wanted it off record so he wouldn’t have to be held accountable like the others would’ve if they came back. So fuck out of here. And we know, tony doesn’t follow fucking rules. The only people he was willing to listen to half the time was pepper and Steve. And that wasn’t always either. He was sure as hell not going to follow every rule laid out even tho he’s the reason it got as far as it did. And what really really pisses me off, and I really didn’t think about this til now, is the fact that like, he wouldn’t trust his own fucking suits in the hands of the government. But he’s willing to trust his teammates’ lives and missions in the hands of the government? Really? Gonna trust Bruce’s life in the hands of secretary Ross who has been wanting to experiment on Bruce and get his hands on him? Wanna trust your teammates’ lives in the hands of the people who repeatedly lie to you and have their own agendas that they will no doubt invoke onto the team? Man. Like, fuck the team, they’re not the only people who are affected by this. You’re affecting hundreds if not more, heroes fucking lives just because you’re fucking feeling guilty for your own fucking creation even tho you’re not gonna follow the rules you fucking signed.

And what pisses me off about most of these tony stans that all wanna fucking get behind the accords is, y’all call team cap fans dumbasses and shit. But like, you’re the ones stupid enough to trust a government that has proven themselves faulty in every fucking mcu movie. And you know goddamn well that if they had a president such as trump and his cabinet, how fucking fucked every single one of them would be. Especially once Sam took over the mantle as captain America. So fucking tell me again why you’re dumb enough to fucking trust the accords? Fuck y’all. That shit ain’t going to do anything but more harm than good. And when people refuse to sign and refuse to fight, where tf will you be when there’s no more heroes. Fucking dead. Which is why they’ll fucking fight even if they don’t sign. Which then, they’re risking both their lives and their freedoms for your dumbasses. Fuck you. There’s a lot more I could say. But I’m tired of typing on my phone.

Sidenote, Steve Rogers may be my fave, but he’s not why I made this post. At least, not the sole reason, part of why was an “anti Steve” tagged post that was saying “you’re either team iron man or team dumbass.” And I’ve made a lot of posts like this before, even without factoring in Steve, but it irritates me when people act like Steve was the only fuck up. And i see some dumbass posts about why Steves team was bad or whatever. And some of the arguments, esp any single one includes Bucky are so beyond idiocy. I can rant about Steve’s stupid ass decisions too. Lying to tony about his parents? Really Steve? Really you fucking asshole? What really pissed me off with Steve is smashing Tony’s chest plate in, I have never been more pissed at my fave. And not compromising. Tony didn’t compromise, but neither did fucking Steve. And it was ridiculous and on both their heads that it got as far as it did. Steve is only seeing things in black and white, and it isn’t always like that. But neither or tony was trying to see down the middle. It was a whole fucking mess.

Also, this doesn’t change the way I feel about anti Tony’s. Y’all dumb as shit too. Like, your arguments and opinions are worse than extreme tony stans. Like, you just really want to hate on him for the dumbest things and act like he hasn’t grown or changed and I can shoot every single one of your arguments down but you’re dumb and won’t listen like, so fuck out of here. Y’all will say anything to try to prove tony is oh so bad, and yet, you don’t even acknowledge the shit that’s worn acknowledging in point out actual supported flaws, such as shit I mentioned. So stfu and sit tf down.

Anti Steve’s? Y’all can sick my dick or my clit, but your opinions are also fucking irrelevant, and I will fight you. Really tho, I would fight any mcu hero anti. Like, none of them deserve to be absolutely hated. I understand just not caring much about a character one way or another, but then y’all will hate any fucking character for the dumbest reasons and it pisses me off. I will defend every single fucking mcu hero, but I will also call them out for the shit that they did. Like. You can like a hero or anyone really, and acknowledge fault or flaws. But y’all just ain’t got common sense. So leave me alone. Like. Fuck outta here. Anyway. I’m done for real, goodnight. I would turn off comments if I knew how to, but I don’t so whatever.

#tony stark #steve rogers #civil war #age of ultron #captain america civil war #avengers age of ultron