Bernie Sanders finally made a statement, on Nov. 4, calling for a "pause" in the bombing. People in the replies are saying "better late than never!" and I don't even know where to start.
The genocide has been going on for almost a month. Over 9,000 men, women, and children have been murdered. Thousands more have been wounded. Members of press and healthcare and their families have been deliberately targeted and assassinated. Israel has been murdering civilians en masse with impunity for weeks, both lying about it and blatantly admitting to it. 100+ Palestinians have been murdered in the West Bank due to settler terrorism backed by the Israeli army.
In an interview, Dr. Ofer Cassif, the Knesset member who was suspended for calling for an end to Israeli violence against Palestinians, revealed that he'd reached out to Bernie months prior to Oct. 7th because of the pogroms being carried out by Israelis against Palestinians which he said would result with an "explosion [of violence]", but received no response.
what the fuck do you mean "better late than never". what the fuck do you mean? the genocide is still ongoing, and, just like Blinken, Biden, and every complicit ghoul, he's calling for a pause. not a ceasefire. a ceasefire is just the start of what needs to happen. but he hasn't even called for that.
"better late than never" what gives you the fucking right to say that? tell that to the 10,000 people who the U.S. and its allies allowed Israel to murder. tell that to the thousands of wounded. tell that to the thousands who have been displaced. tell that to the people of Gaza who have been without food, water, and fuel for WEEKS. tell that to the Palestinians in the West Bank who are being murdered at the hands of settler terrorists. tell that to the Palestinians who were abducted and tortured and released with blue bands around their ankles. tell that to the Palestinians in occupied Palestine who can't reach their families and friends. tell that to Palestinians in diaspora who have seen their families, their friends, their people slaughtered with the full backing and support of the vast majority of western governments and media.
"better late than never" no, it's not good enough. IT'S NOT. there are SO many people around the world - both citizens and members of government - who recognized the injustice for what it was the DAY the bombing started. we owe the Palestinian people so much more than that. "better late than never" the ONLY thing that could POSSIBLY begin to even "make up" for the horrors and injustices inflicted upon the Palestinian people for almost a century is to end the genocide, end the occupation, end the apartheid, end settler colonialism, and dismantle the colonial state. Palestinians deserve NO LESS than total emancipation. Complete liberation. until then, it is not and will never be enough.
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one of the oddest arguments i've ever gotten into was like. i had agreed to give a dude a chance. we were on a first date. and he got. just. so mad. because i had told him i read about 2-5 books a week.
but he found out it was actually that i listen to 2-5 audiobooks. he was dead set on the idea - that's not reading, it's just listening. that i was lying, somehow, by implying i'd "read" the book.
language has a beautiful ability to adapt over time, particularly in the face of technology. when i "connect to the internet" i'm referencing the oldschool method of literally plugging into the internet - which i very rarely physically do. i roll down my window, which is a reference to the circular mechanical action it used to take. hell - the floppy disc remains our resolute save file icon. when i say i "ran to the store," nobody expects me to actually run - and what my version of running to the store looks like and your version are probably pretty different.
i told the guy, baffled: i look at things through glasses, that's still seeing. nobody complains i'm filtering the image.
he says: that's not the same and you know it.
i use audiobooks because i have adhd, and it makes it so i can actually focus. i am using it to help a medically diagnosed condition.
language also has a really cool ability: when we read something, our brains look at a word and make an image. when we hear a story, our brains hear a word and make an image. whether we hear it or read it - the word means the same thing, written or spoken. there is no quantifiable difference in the knowledge-encoding experience - i still happily hallucinate while i'm listening.
and i just kind of stared at him while he was telling me that "claiming" i had "actually read" a book that i had actually-listened-to was lying
and my only baffled response was like: "... are you gatekeeping the experience of... reading?"
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how FUCKING dare they ask taxpayers to pay for their search & rescue mission for their stupid fucking death trap jigsaw submarine when I have been getting calls every single day for YEARS from FUCKING AMBULANCE DEBTORS
WELFARE FOR BILLIONAIRES BUT NOT DISABLED PEOPLE? NO. FUCK YOU. PAY FOR YOUR OWN DEATH LIKE THE REST OF US FUCKING PEASANTS
ALSO PAY BACK THE WORKING CLASS THE TAXES AND PPP LOANS AND WAGES YOU STOLE TO FURNISH YOUR DISGUSTINGLY LUXURIOUS, MEANINGLESS, EXPLOITATIVE LIVES
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when is honor not honorable? when it is prescribed by a system of nobility that perpetuates itself through the destruction of its subjects.
rue watched hob sit there bleeding, arrows in his back, waiting until they nearly pierced his lung to remove them -- all for the honor of the goblin court. for the courts. for the system that stole rue as a child and twisted them into a pleasing shape, a desired doll. for the system that has used hob’s body on the field of battle and rue’s body in the field of politics to the benefit of the system, not the bodies being used.
rue spent every interaction with hob this episode saying, Are you okay? Are you hurt? Does anything about your life of service actually make you happy? Are you ever happy? Will you ever let yourself be happy? I hope you will. I hope you find happiness. I wish it was with me.
and then at the very end hob goes, I was miserable until you held me.
hes finally able to say it but the issue is, rue never needed to be told that hob loves them. they clocked it. they know he wants them. so finally learning how hob feels, that doesn’t change anything. what they were really saying is, Can you admit that service makes you unhappy? Are you capable of prioritizing desire? I am offering you devotion.
as long as hob pursues honor as prescribed by the court system, as long as he plays the political game, he can never love anyone. least of all rue; rue who has been so damaged by their obligation to the court of wonder for so long. rue who has chosen to use all their power to dissolve political bonds and facilitate emotional ones, at the hope of destabilizing the system. rue who has finally revealed themselves as both a monster and a dissident, prompted by their love for hob, in a show of force -- they are finally rebelling, openly, against the court and the system that tried to cannibalize them. and they’re watching as hob commits himself more deeply to the goblin court, putting his body in their hands for both battle and marriage.
rue tries tirelessly to get hob to answer this question. You are unhappy; what is it for? Tell me so I can understand. and hob’s response is, I choose to be unhappy because otherwise I would be wrong.
his defense of the court system is that it tells him what to do. he believes himself to be so fundamentally incorrect that his wants, desires, and instincts cannot guide him -- the only way to be a good man is to serve something greater than himself. this belief, as we can see in his conversations with boil and blemish, has been reinforced through scorn and humiliation.
hob says, I choose this unhappy life because it is right to serve. I know that it is right to serve because those in power tell me what is right. I know I am wrong because they tell me I am wrong.
upon learning that rue dissolved the marriage between apollo and grabalba, the thing that hurts him the most is the feeling of being used by rue. of being taken for a fool and manipulated in a political game, of falling in love with someone that doesn’t care about him. but even as this misinterpretation wounds him, he tries to defend his service to the goblin court.
and all rue ever wanted was to show him that his life of service is just a matter of being used, being taken, loving those who do not love you but only what you do for them. they wanted him to see that the pain he feels at the perception of being manipulated by rue is a pain he has felt at the hands of the court system for far longer than they have known each other.
hob’s real answer can be found in both what he has said and what he’s unwilling to say. For what? Nothing. Not even love. so rue offers hob what the court system has always denied him.
honor, service, obligation, duty -- everything hob has hinged his identity on and everything he ever believed to be good, to make him good -- are tools, not ideals. the court system designed fealty so that it would be easier to exploit people like hob and rue, people that feel like monsters, people who are empty and need to be filled. rue sees that hob believes himself to be a monster, and they aren’t asking him to change that. they know that monsters will always know themselves to be monsters. instead, they are trying to convince hob that being good is not what he thinks it is, when it’s being defined by the court system.
when is a monster not a monster? when you love it. when what is monstrous is worth loving. in their last attempt to wrest hob from the court system, rue tells him they love him, and in the same breath they tell him that love and honor are not the same. rue tells him that they are a monster. that in seeing him, they finally realized that being monstrous isn't being damaged; the damage comes from elsewhere. so they ask him to see them outside the moral structure that has been imposed on him and that he imposes on all others. they ask him to see the ways in which that structure and the system that created it have wounded them for being monstrous.
in doing so, hob would have to acknowledge his own wounds. he would have to acknowledge that he has been wounded for a very long time. that is what he has been resisting; if at any point he had acknowledged his wounds, he would have needed to care for them, and hob is not equipped to care for himself. care is not something afforded via lines of support in the court system; care was never part of the conversation. but when rue speaks of love, and divests it of honor, they offer, instead, care.
this is a love story.
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