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thevoidscreamer · 7 months

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Stop Talking About "Proportional Responses" and Read This.

Okay. So as an Intelligence Studies student who has had a longstanding special interest in the Middle East, I feel a little bit compelled to talk about the Israel-Hamas-Palestine situation going on right now.

First off, there are tons of great resources to learn about the history that pertains to this conflict. I highly recommend the book The Contemporary Middle East, 3rd edition, for a good start, but for those of you who don't learn well through reading, Warographics has a great short video that can help you get the bare minimum bit of context necessary to understanding what's going on.

Secondly, it is paramount to note that there are no good guys in this situation aside from the civilians and non-combatants whose lives are being horrendously upended (again) by this conflict. Anyone who tells you that either Israel or Hamas is the sole hero or the sole victim in this story is not looking at the full picture. The world is made up of shades of gray, and there is no truthful black-and-white view of this situation. I caution anyone against listening to those who make statements that glorify the actions of either party or who refuse to accept that both have committed atrocities over the past decades preceding this particular event and the days containing it or who equivocate Palestine with Hamas.

Third, my personal bias is against the use of egregious violence, shock tactics, and ethnic cleansing in any efforts to effect lasting change. I am also against the apartheid state model, the definition of which can be found at this hyperlink. I stand against any form of extremism and terrorism, be they enacted on behalf of an individual, a group, or a recognized state. If you are a proponent of these things, you will not like my analysis. I also assert that LOAC should be staunchly adhered to, not just in letter but also in intent. If you think that exceptions to LOAC should be made to religious or ethnic groups, you will not like my analysis. I do not believe in making exceptions for "divinely inspired" behaviors and I harshly disagree with the assertion of some Christians that Israel reserves the right to reign unfettered damage on any and all others because they are the "apple of G-d's eye."

Fourth, I don't believe in the principle of "reciprocal action" for nations that are actually seeking peace. Responses to terrorist behavior should not be met with equal terrorist behavior. War should not be an avenging action, it should be an procedure that seeks to end the conflict with as little collateral damage as possible. Counter to what most US Americans seem to believe, war is not just bombs and guns. It is ISR, agreements, support, appeals to other countries for aid, international propaganda campaigns, cybersecurity efforts, counterintelligence, economic shifts, and a lot more, all of which has become tremendously more accessible (and impactful) thanks to technological advances. Throwing bodies at the problem and throwing bombs at the bodies until enough people die that it slows down or stops is not our only option anymore, and it hasn't been for a long time.

Finally, I strongly believe in the responsibility that journalists and reporters bear to inform their viewers. Does the average US American news viewer understand Israel's defense capabilities? No, and I wouldn't expect them to. But it's helpful for them to know, when forming their opinions about the conflict. Instead of only showing the tragic final moments of Palestinian and Israeli civilians on loop for the entire 24 hour news cycle, why not dedicate some of that time to discussing the armaments and capabilities of each side of the conflict? What missiles are being used in the air strikes? What about the aircraft? What is the method that the IDF is using to decide where to strike? It's not sensational, but it is important.

Okay so now that that's all out of the way, let's talk specifically about Israel's response to Hamas' coordinated attack on its citizens on 7 October 2023.

My thesis statement here is this: Israel has the knowledge and means to locate and deal with the most important/influential members of Hamas who reside in Gaza while sustaining minimal collateral damage to buildings and civilians, but they have chosen instead to inflict a moderate amount of collateral damage -- more than they have in the past, but less than they are capable of. To what end? That is yet to be seen, though inferences can be made.

In my opinion, this is reckless and will only serve to stoke the flames of anti-Israel sentiment in Palestine and around the world while appealing to the radicalized far-right fringe groups Netanyahu is beholden to, as well as radical Christians, Messianics, and Zionists in the United States. It will not result in peace and will further divide the Middle East and the US along archaic religious extremist lines.

The following post will provide the puzzle pieces that support this hypothesis, and bring them all together in a conclusion.

Let's start by talking about Israel's intelligence apparatus, Mossad. Background on Mossad here for those who need it.

Why is everyone upset with Mossad? Mossad is actually one of the most effective intelligence agencies in the world. The fact that they didn't catch this before it happened comes as such a shock to me as an analyst-in-training that I actually think they may have allowed it to happen in order to enact a war on Palestine. That's simply my impression, but we have yet to see evidence of why this attack was not caught and stopped. The IDF's actions seem to back my hypothesis, but we won't know for sure until the dust settles years from now. At this point, I don't feel speculation is particularly useful.

What benefit does Mossad have to offer now that the conflict has popped off? Hamas is a large organization, estimated at around 20,000 individuals. However, Mossad likely has profiles (and possibly even patterns-of-life) on the high ranking and influential members of Hamas who reside in Gaza. This is because Mossad is a highly adept, globally notable intelligence service, and Hamas is a well-known enemy. Even if Mossad does not have profiles on those individuals, it would only take some patience on Israel's part to locate and identify them and their patterns of life, especially given Israel’s UAV capabilities.

What are Israel's UAV capabilities?

Israel's use of UAVs is not publicly acknowledged, but it is well known that they not only use but manufacture three specific UAVs. In fact, they are one of the world's foremost suppliers of UAV technology.

Of these, the Hermes 900 and Heron TP most resemble the MQ-9 Reaper. Why is this important? Comparison. The MQ-9 Reaper has hella capabilities I won't go into here, but follow this link if you'd like to learn more about the technological marvel that is General Atomics' MQ-9B. What you need to know for this comparison is that the MQ-9 can surveil and destroy a target without that target even knowing the MQ-9 was there. It's stealthy and incredibly precise. The US DOD version has a suite of sensors for all kinds of tasks, and it can carry a decent payload, which is addressed in the next bullet.

The missile we'll be talking about today is the November-class Hellfire. These 104 lb missiles have a unique capability. They are often called a zero-collateral weapon, because they eliminate their target(s) and nothing else. The short of how this missile works is by pressurizing an enclosed space and liquifying what's inside it. This missile does not explode because it has no explosive material. That means no shrapnel, no molten metal, nothing. And, its effects are confined to the four walls, floor, and ceiling of the room it "detonates" in. People in the next room? Unharmed. And it will not pressurize an open space. Which means, by using the laser guided air-to-ground missile system mounted on an aircraft like the MQ-9 or similar, this missile can be deployed to hit one target in an open space and impact no one else. Once deployed, the missile will make impact with the target, destroying it via sheer velocity, bury itself in the ground, and detonate without harming any other people or structures.

So how would Israel get their hands on something like that?

Prior to the Hamas attacks, the Biden administration requested Israel receive $3.3 billion in foreign military financing for the upcoming fiscal year -- the same as the past three years. For comparison, $2.8 billion is going to Europe and Eurasia aid, with an additional $1 billion earmarked specifically for Ukraine. The DOD version of the MQ-9 Reaper costs about $32 million, and Hellfire missiles cost around $120,000 per, including costs for technical support and training -- and its many variants are compatible with multiple platforms, not just the MQ-9.

For context, the Hellfire missile was initially developed in the late 70's. Its newer iterations are much more elegant and efficient, but the point still stands that Israel has had access to the same technology for just as long as everyone else. So even if they were not receiving funding from the US, Israel likely already has figured out an equivalent tool.

Now that we know what the most effective, least damaging option is... what kinds of missiles is Israel using?

Right now, since explosives are still flying, we won't have that information. But we do have information about the last big barrage of missiles and bombs used by Israel on Gaza, back in 2021.

Gravity bombs (mark 82, 83, and 84) fitted with JDAM guidance kits (GBU-38, GBU-32, and GBU-31 respectively) giving the weapon the capability to hit a designated GPS coordinate. These are general purpose bombs built to penetrate concrete and then explode, spreading lethal shrapnel. Lethal area: 2,400 m2

2,000 lb GBU-31 (V)4/B (bunker-buster subvariant), used to level high-rise buildings in Gaza.

500 lb GBU-54 'laser-guided JDAM.'

Semi-active laser-guided Mikholit missile (ATGM). These small missiles can be carried by the smallest of the UAV, but are often deployed by helicopter.

"Spike" or Tammuz NLOS anti-tank missile, which in some models has a staggering range of 16 miles, features a built-in video feed, and can be controlled like a drone.

So... they don't seem to have a track record for using precision missiles that cause minimal collateral damage. Okay, well maybe they have a reason.

So where is Israel sending its explosives?

Gaza is the world's third most densely populated polity, with a population of over 2 million Palestinians -- 70% of those being refugees from other parts of Israel. Below are two maps. The first one shows the population density using dots to depict the general clustering of humans in Gaza. The second one shows the IDF airstrike locations. There is a citation in the image itself, but the hyperlinks in this paragraph take you to the same places. I will let you draw your own conclusions regarding the impact the bombs will have on the Gaza Strip populous, based on the impact locations and population clustering.

From here, it is important to address the considerations that go into what missile to use on a target.

There is generally a three-point system that helps determine which munition is necessitated by which mission and which targets.

Value of target

Missile capability

Estimated collateral deaths

These are all important because of the Law of Armed Combat, sometimes called the International Humanitarian Law, or the Law of War, which is backed by both the Geneva Convention and the Hague Convention. The intention of the LOAC is to minimize collateral damage and unnecessary death, especially to that of non-combatants. And yes, it does apply to "non-international conflict" i.e. engaging in conflict with non-State armed groups -- but it offers a unique exception. "Leaders of non-State armed groups are also subject to attack on the same basis as other members of the group." See subsection 5.7.4 of the DOD Law of War Manual. But that's a rabbit hole for a different day.

How effective was the 2021 bombardment on damaging or destroying Hamas assets?

This is important because the current bombardment is on trajectory to be much more deadly and costly than any IDF bombardment in the past. If the goal of Israel's bombardments is to stop Hamas, then the damage to Hamas should outweigh the damage to the civil Palestinian population. When reading these records, remember that Hamas has controversial political control over Gaza -- many Palestinians do not want Hamas as their governing body, but Hamas enacts legal power there anyway.

Most of the boats and many of the personnel of Hamas' naval cammando force were destroyed

10 Hamas government buildings, including its Interior Ministry, were destroyed

11 military buildings, including one housing Hamas' cyber branch, were destroyed

Five banks that were allegedly linked to Hamas were destroyed

"Nearly 30" (yes, that's the quote) senior commanders and one rocket engineer expert were allegedly killed

The family homes of at least 15 Hamas leaders were destroyed, some including the families inside

Over 60 miles or roughly 20-25% of Hamas' estimated 250-310 mile "Metro," which is an underground tunnel system -- the demolished area included 15 cross-border strike tunnels

Let's compare that to the impact of those same strikes on Gazan infrastructure and non-combatants.

Gaza's only COVID testing and vaccination center was destroyed

Gaza's largest bookstore was destroyed

A critical desalinization plant was disabled

The sewer system was rendered unusable -- reportedly 50% of the water pipeline network was destroyed

53 school buildings were damaged

11 health centers and 6 hospitals were damaged

17,000 residential and commercial units were damaged, including 5 residential towers

An estimated 72,000 Palestinians were rendered homeless

800,000 Gazans lacked access to clean drinking water and were receiving 5 hours of electricity per day, down from 12

At least 243 Gazans were killed, including over 100 women and children

So how is this current conflict shaping up, just five days after it's begun?

Let's look only at total reported deaths so far, because the damage and bombings are still happening and it is not easy to project the impact of something like this.

Gaza: 680, plus 1500 militants reported found dead by Israel

Israel: 900

Hamas Leaders: 3

US: 11

Note: this data is from 10 October, because I could not find a reliable source for reported deaths more recently. However for the curious reader, of the many projected death counts available, I felt AlJazeera would be most accurate.

So what does this all mean?

The current scenario unfolding showcases Israel's prowess in defense and the capabilities they hold, with potential access to precision weapons that minimize collateral damage. However, their choice to utilize munitions that cause significant collateral harm raises pertinent questions about their objectives. Israel's historical actions, while crippling to some of Hamas's assets, have also disproportionately affected Palestinian civilians, disrupting their infrastructure and causing substantial loss of life. It's evident that conflict responses shouldn't be retaliatory actions but must aim for lasting peace.

Israel's approach to the conflict manifests a concerning disregard for the safety of Palestinian civilians residing in Gaza. The destruction of essential infrastructure in 2021, show a pattern of excessive force that suggests a stubbornness against employing more efficient, precise methods of eliminating targets. Instead, their recent actions in the 2023 conflict will inevitably lead to devastating collateral damage that affects non-combatants more than the intended targets. Moreover, these tactics will serve to further tarnish Israel's international image. The global community is increasingly conscious of human rights and the usefulness of discrimination in warfare. Israel’s actions, therefore, risk isolating them in the global theater and could potentially invite international sanctions or legal action, as well as continued aggression from Palestine and its sympathizers. These factors all combine to indicate a blatant disregard for Palestinian civilian lives and a lack of foresight in their strategic actions and international relations.

With technological advancements, nations no longer have to resort to conventional warfare tactics. As the current conflict unfolds, it becomes even more critical to highlight the importance of a balanced approach and the dire need for solutions that prioritize humanity over political or religious objectives. However, Israel and Hamas have both made their positions clear, and neither of those positions reflects the idea of regional security.

Tl;dr ... Israel could have chosen to do better, but they didn't. And that's not okay.

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Note about the author: I grew up in a radicalized far right evangelical household, and at least one of my parents is still radicalized. I did a brief foray into the radicalized far left side of US politics before settling into my current moderate position. As a white, atheist, transgender individual who has experienced homelessness and chronic illness, and who has been a victim of sex trafficking, but who now lives a stable and solidly middle class life with a bachelor's level education and a partner in the military, I recognize that my moderate political position is a privileged one.

I acknowledge that the unfortunate truth is that often the only option left to oppressed groups seeking change is violence, especially provided there is no substantial humanitarian intervention available to them. I believe that Israel's actions will further that sense of no-other-way-out for Palestinians, especially those not affiliated with Hamas.

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just-late-roman-republic-things · 7 months

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What sources do you think had cemented a view of Caesar where he is this guy ultimately tying to destroy the republic to make it into a one man show?

Good question! This is just my opinion - I'm not a historian - but I think there are several layers to this:

Ancient sources. Cicero, Caesar himself, Sallust, Pollio, Hirtius, Augustus, Velleius Paterculus, Suetonius, Plutarch, Appian, and Cassius Dio are the big hitters here.

Some are pro-Caesar, some are anti-Caesar, and some (like Cicero) show different views at different times. But one thing they all have in common is that Caesar tends to "take over the story" as either a hero or villain. They also tend to be "backward-looking," in that they look for evidence of this heroism or villainy long before the civil war broke out in 49 BCE. It's like when a scandal breaks about a modern celebrity and people start digging up old rumors about them, or looking for signs that there was always something "off."

This is why Suetonius gives us stories of Caesar plotting to overthrow the government at times that don't make logical sense, and Plutarch highlights Caesar's charisma by telling us how he charmed the pirates who captured him. Even when a writer isn't trying to be biased, they still tend to assume Caesar's actions in 49-44 BCE reflect the values and goals he always held.

Most people change considerably throughout their lives, and a lot of our actions are dictated by luck and external pressures. But acknowledging this would go against the "story" that Caesar was exceptional, either for good or evil. It is, quite frankly, uncomfortable to imagine that an ordinary person could do monstrous things under the wrong circumstances, or that "bad people" have a lot in common with us. Easier to say that Caesar was different, Caesar chose to break the republic, not like us who are just making the best decisions we can in difficult circumstances.

(This is not me making excuses for the bad shit Caesar did do; I've criticized him in other posts.)

2. Secondary sources.

Caesar doesn't change, but the way we see him changes with every generation. Ronald Syme's monumental work The Roman Revolution came out in 1939, under the shadow of rising fascism in Italy and Germany; that influenced his views of Caesar and Augustus considerably. Napoleon saw Caesar as a role model, an exemplar of a "middle path" between tyranny and mob rule. The American founding fathers saw him as a boogeyman, a symbol of everything they were trying to get away from, and drafted the Constitution with the fear of an "American Caesar" in mind.

I don't think there's ever been a consensus on "How should we feel about Julius Caesar?" We cannot help but project our own values, fears, and cultural baggage onto him. In fact, I'd argue that most people's views of Caesar are more about what he represents to us than about what he personally did.

This is why I recommend A Companion to Julius Caesar and Julius Caesar and the Roman People so highly. Both books attempt to distinguish Caesar, the ordinary and fallible person, from Caesar the legend.

3. Cultural values.

One of the reasons we have so many conflicting views of Caesar is that in many ways he exemplified the cultural values of Roman politicians, and our values have changed significantly since then. Like, I detest Caesar's conquest of Gaul, but most of his contemporaries would have attempted to do the same thing, and very few Romans would have seen it as immoral.

Even during Caesar's lifetime, people disagreed on how to interpret his actions. When he reinstated Marius' statues, was he piously honoring his family, or was he dissenting from the post-Sullan establishment? Was his conquest of Gaul a traditional, respectable way of serving the state, or was he building an independent base of power to challenge the state? Were his multiple dictatorships necessary responses to breakdowns in public order, or a sign that he wanted to amass power for himself? Depends who you ask!

Ultimately, I think it's impossible to have an objective view of Caesar. And we'll never know what was really going through his head; we can only make our best guesses. But we can try to distinguish the man from the myth, to examine what we know and don't know, and to become aware of our own biases.

And all of this [waves in nerdy frustration] is why I tag posts like this with #caesarhell!

#just roman asks #julius caesar #caesarhell #historiography #jlrrt essays

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bloodstained-ballgowns · 3 years

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Things I Loved About Black Widow (2021).

*Spoilers*

Yes it’s been almost two weeks since release. Yes I’ve seen it almost three times now. Yes, all my thoughts are still a jumble. Somewhat ordering them for this post will be difficult.

Honestly, the entire first 53 minutes of this movie is perfect to me. Everything about it. The dialogue, the action, the way it’s able to convey so much without words, how it’s just Natasha, Yelena and Mason, everything is just *chef’s kiss*. (This isn’t to say the remaining 1hr 21mins is bad, it’s just not as perfect as the first act imo)

I have a thing for scores and god bless Lorne Balfe he really understood the assignment on this one. If you haven’t already, take a few minutes to listen to his composition, specifically ‘Natasha’s Lullaby’. I love when you can hear a story in music and I think this score does that really effectively.

Nat speaking Russian! Nat speaking Russian! The way she reverts back to it in the opening scene when she’s scared! I wish we’d gotten more of it honestly, especially in the family dinner scene, even something as simple as ‘pass the salt’.

Also, her Russian accent in the Budapest flashback! It was quiet but definitely there, and it showed that her American one was something she had to train herself back into once she defected, which I appreciated.

“I stashed that like five years ago” Is this a canon hint that Nat hoards her food? Maybe?! I’ll take what I can get to satisfy my headcanons thanks.

Natasha and Yelena’s fight sequence in the apartment is the best fight scene in the movie. No arguments.

So much of my inner monolgue while watching was just ‘imsogayimsogayimsogay”. That much leather and that many piercings??! The BRAIDS?? This movie is for the wlws.

Mason you absolute icon I love how much you care about Natasha I love that you’re sleeping everywhere because same. (You deserved better than to be a Taskmaster misdirect). Please turn up in more MCU properties as Yelena’s contact or something.

“But you’re not a mouse, Melina. You were just born in a cage, but that’s not your fault.” THIS LINE!!!

AND THIS ONE. “You took my childhood, you took my choices and tried to break me. But you’re never gonna do that to anybody ever again.” The emphasis on choice vs children, how it’s always been about bodily autonomy instead of the romanticised horror of sterilisation that Whedon went with.

“I never let myself be alone long enough to think about it.” I GASPED.

HONOURABLE MENTION: “You didn’t work in the shadows, you hid in the dark,” (or something). There’s something really satisfying about that line.

Everything about this film is so inherently female, I love it when things don’t reek of testosterone.

I’ve heard some critics say this movie felt really ‘isolated’ and ‘disconnected’ from the rest of the MCU because of the time jump and how many new characters there were and I have to hard disagree there. The appearance of Secretary Ross, name-dropping Tony Stark, and the continued references to the Avengers were not only realistic but also really cemented this oneshot in-universe for me.

*cue me flapping my hands and opening another draft because every separate point is eliciting another two paragraphs of analysis that I absolutely cannot include on this post or it will never end*. Man I love this movie. See the read-more because this is getting longgg.

Similarly, how it actually carries through on a lot of previous set up, mostly from Avengers 1, like with ‘Dreykov’s daughter’ and “thank you for your co-operation”. I got very nervous when they announced they were going to tackle Budapest because a) I didn’t think anything they came up with would ever live up to the hype people gave that line so it would only end in disappointment and b) I’ve never particularly cared, to be honest. (it was a throwaway line in Avengers 1 that was repeated for nostalgia in Endgame in a context that now makes no sense, forgive me for being indifferent) but I actually loved how it tied everything together.

The way it reclaims her from every male creator that’s handled her (fuck the Russos and M&M) while simultaneously keeping the best of what they managed to foster (again, Avengers 1 is a heavy influence, and rightly so, but it gives a fat middle finger to AOU, also rightly so).

How competent Nat was shown to be without being unbeatable. She fully got her ass handed to her a couple of times, and yes, it’s very unrealistic that she was able to go through two car accidents, fall off that bridge, out of that window and then out of the sky without being seriously injured, but we finally got to see the physical manifestations of some of that pain! She was holding her ribs when she got out of the water, the bruises on her back, the dislocated shoulder, and the blood splatters were actual splatters when she broke her nose rather than delicate dabs.

This might be an unpopular one, because I know this was what a lot of people were expecting more of, but I was glad Natasha’s youth in the Red Room was confined to the opening credits. The aftermath of that training and Natasha as a product of it has always been more fascinating to me than the actual event.

As an older sister myself, the dynamic between Natasha and Yelena really struck home for me. Yelena’s pride in Nat and need for approval and validation from Natasha in conflict with realising Nat’s flaws, wrestling with her disappointment, seeing how human Nat is, were perfectly portrayed by Florence Pugh. I could completely relate to Nat, who, despite trying to convince herself otherwise, couldn’t fight her fierce protective instinct and specific brand of unconditional love that only an older sister will ever feel.

A diverse set of Widows!

I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of comics references in this movie. The frame where she jumped through the fire from the Waid/Samnee run, the pheromonal lock.

Now I have my problems with Scarlett Johansson, but I came out of this movie with a lot of respect and a little bit of pride in her. It’s clear that she put her everything into this movie, both as an actor and executive producer. She obviously cares immensely about Nat and how she’s portrayed, and it’s clear from interviews that the things she loves and finds fascinating about Nat are the same as the fans. (I also feel a little bit sorry for the way she’s getting brushed over in the coverage in favour of a new and shiny Florence Pugh, so this is me expressing some ScarJo-as-Natasha appreciation).

A big question I had going in was, ‘Natasha’s always reflecting the people around her, but what’s she like when she’s alone, and has only her own mind for company?’ and this movie really answered that for me. Seeing her out of her suit and wearing clothes that were for her, not for a cover or a mission, seeing her drink beer and eat ice cream and let her hair dry while watching a Bond film she’s obviously seen many times before, it was all perfect. The scenes in the caravan were a huge step for humanising women in action movies.

I’ll probably be adding to this post a lot because this movie will not leave my mind and new things are occurring to me at the most random points.

See my ‘Things I...didn’t like as much about Black Widow’ post here.

#black widow #black widow spoilers #natasha romanoff #marvel #yelena belova #mcu #scarlett johansson #antonia dreykov #melina vostokoff #alexei shostakov #my post #black widow analysis

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forsetti · 3 years

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On The Right’s Response To Covid: The Backlash of Losing Cultural Relevance

Right now we are in the middle of a surge of the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus, a virus that has already claimed the lives of 640,000+ Americans. Yet, in spite of hospitals in the hotbed states of Florida, Alabama, Texas...being filled to capacity, people suffering from the virus being sent out of state for care, makeshift patient rooms being set up in hospital garages, and the new variant hitting younger people much harder than its previous version, there is an angry sector of the public that is still adamant the virus is a hoax, refuses to get vaccinated, protests any mask mandate, and is getting more and more violent against anyone who disagrees with them. Whenever all this madness comes up in conversation with anyone not part of the anti-science, anti-functioning cerebral cortex, the following always comes up, “I just don't understand why they are acting this way. It makes no sense.”

I fully understand and appreciate why it is difficult to grasp why there is a very vocal, very angry faction of our country that is actively doing whatever it can to undermine even the most basic solutions for dealing with a world-wide pandemic. Their words and actions defy fundamental common sense and basic humanity. When things like this happen a lot of people respond with shock, amazement, and even anger. Whenever someone expresses these feelings to me, a part of me completely understands and sympathizes. It is when the discussion shifts from, “Can you believe?” to “Why are they acting this way?” is where a discussion about the hard truths need to happen.

Whenever someone asks, “Why are they acting this way?” what they mostly want is some quick, easy explanation to make them feel good about why some of their family, friends, coworkers...are acting so horribly. I wish the answer to this question was something that was easy and allowed the person asking the question to feel good when they heard it. Most people have a difficult time believing people they know, care about are not the sweet, caring, smart people they think they are. The hard truth is, in a lot of cases, this is exactly who these people are. This answer may be difficult to come to terms with but it should be is easy if you understand the big picture of how/why of belief systems, a passing understanding of American history, and a grasp of modern-day conservatism.

The main reason there is a good-sized chunk of American society who are standing in the way of properly dealing with a pandemic is the same reason the U.S. is the ONLY major economy that doesn't have some form of universal healthcare. It is the same reason twenty three school children were murdered in cold blood and not one single law could be passed to protect against future school shootings. It is the same reason a significant number of Republican voters still believe President Obama was not born in the U.S. It is the same reason these same voters believe the 2020 election was stolen. There is a significant portion of American society who have been on the losing end of the “culture wars,” and instead of adjusting their belief systems to adopt even a fraction to meet these changes, they've dug in their heels in order to protest not only past loses but the ones they are certain to lose now and down the road. These cultural loses can be traced back to the South losing the Civil War. More recently, the loses go back to the Supreme Court decision in Brown versus Board of Education. For a good number of Americans, black people are naturally inferior to whites and that is just the way God intended the world to be. How dare anyone suggest or make mandatory that their precious, God-blessed, God-preferred white children be in the same classroom, be considered in any way equal to black children. To make matters worse, a few years later, these “inferiors” were legally given the right to eat at the same diners, drink from the same water fountains, swim in the same public pools, and *gasp be allowed to vote. In 1964, black people didn't have one iota of economic, legal, or political power. Hell, one can easily argue they don't have these things in 2021. Yet, to those opposed to the Civil Rights Act, it doesn't matter what black people really have. The ONLY thing that matters is the very idea that black people can be equal, even theoretically, to whites. The next “L” American conservatives took was with women's rights. No matter how adamant they have been that women don't belong in the workplace, shouldn't be treated equally to men, have no rights over their bodies...our society has delivered them one loss after another and continues to do so. Conservatives feel “forced” to have a woman as the Vice President. They are “forced” to see women referees and assistant coaches in major league sports. They are “forced” to have women as their bosses, doctors, state representative... Deep down, they don't want any of these things and see these changes as a slap in their face and in the face of God because, like whites being inherently superior to non-whites, men are naturally superior to women. People don't “get over” things like this. They internalize them. They fume about them. They build up anger and hatred about them. They do not get over things like this or cope with them. The next major cultural losses conservatives experienced was the election of the first black president which was quickly followed with gay people being granted the right to marry. Despite what the Civil Rights Act says, for a lot of Americans, black people are inferior to whites. For conservatives, having a black man sitting in the Oval Office was like having Judas being granted sainthood or Bin Laden being given the Congressional Medal of Honor. It was an affront to God, America, apple pie, and the ghosts of the Founding Fathers. Instead of coming to terms Barack Obama was president, even if they didn't vote for him, the conservative outrage cottage industry fed their base's already built-in racism to undermine not just his policies but the very legitimacy of his election. This didn't happen by accident or came out of nowhere. It was already baked into the belief systems of conservatives and has been reinforced over and over and over again for decades. As bad as having a black man as their president was for conservatives, it wasn't nearly as bad as gay people being allowed to marry. For these people, blacks are inferior. However, gay people are an abomination. America may have elected an inferior to be president, that can be rationalized as a one-off, a Black Swan event (no pun intended,) something that will never happen again. Barack Obama was a single individual. Gay people being allowed to marry is an entire subset of people and, unlike a one-off, happens over and over and over and over...again. After eight years in office, the black man in the White House went away. Gay couples legally being able to marry doesn't have an end date. It may be decades before America elects another person of color to the highest office in the land. Every day, gay couples are getting married, having kids, attending PTA meetings, being accepted as normal, fully functioning members of society. If Brown versus Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act were the genesis of American conservatives losing their minds, the election of President Obama pushed them to the edge and Obergefell versus Hodges pushed them right the fuck over. Because these two events took place directly after a major financial crisis, a lot of people missed the real underlying reasons why conservatives lost their minds and blamed it on “economic anxiety.” Excusing racism and bigotry on “economic anxiety,” allowed people to “feel good” about the batshit nuttery coming from every pore of the American conservative movement. White people, in particular, will go to amazing lengths to avoid viewing or calling a fellow white person, “racist,” “bigoted.” Deep down, we know being a racist/bigot is really, really horrible. This is why we have such a difficult time calling out people when they say/act in racist/bigoted ways. Yet, this is exactly what has been going on and driving American conservatism since the first European stepped foot in the New World. As deeply ingrained as racism and bigotry are in conservatism and even though it has been this way for centuries, the one thing white conservatives could always rely and fall back on has been the fact they are the majority and had all the power in society. However, since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, in spite of their majority, it has been one cultural loss after another for American conservatives. Each loss doesn't count as a single loss to be added to the total. Because of the personal nature of the issues involved, each loss increases the sense of loss by a factor. It isn't three straight losses equals three. It is three straight losses equals eight. Four losses becomes sixteen. The more they've lost, the more angry they have become. In Trump, they really believed they had someone who was going to reverse this losing tread and put them back in their self-appointed place of prominence in society. Trump knew this and used it to his advantage and in the process, gave conservatives a false sense of hope which is and will continue to be dashed on the rocks of reality, only fueling their outrage.

Certainly, there have been cultural “wins” for conservatives since 1964 but they have been few and at best, briefly slowed the culturally shift. They have never completely stopped or reversed the changes they've spend their lives fighting against. Deep down, conservatives know, when it comes to culture wars, their winning record is in Washington Generals territory. This has to sting. It sure as hell has led to some very nasty and dangerous consequences. Consequences we are seeing played out right now when it comes to dealing with a pandemic.

If you feel your belief system, which in turn becomes inseparable from your self-identity, your self-worth, is always under attack and no matter what you do, you can't get a “win,” you will latch onto anything and everything that might remotely make you feel like you are on the right side of things. If you've lost a bunch of large battles, this means you are relegated to fighting small, often meaningless ones. Conservatives can't win the war against blacks, minorities, women...being viewed and treated as equals but they will damn sure try to win the war over wearing masks or getting vaccinated. Because they've lost so many big battles, making sure they win the smaller battles take on even greater importance. The fights whether to wear/not wear a mask or get/not get vaccinated are not really about these particular issues. If they are, it is only tangentially. The fight is about winning a battle against their opponent, against a world, that has kicked their ass up and down the cultural field their entire life.

This is why so many people on the right are willing to risk the health and well-being of others. The “others,” are viewed as the enemy and must be defeated, no matter the cost. This cost even means the health and well-being of themselves and their own children. If someone is willing to sacrifice their kid's health to “own the libs,” which really means, “win a culture war,” they can't be reasoned with. There are not arguments or data point sets or incentives that will change someone's mind who is willing to let their own child get sick, suffer, and possibly die rather than wear a small piece of cloth over their mouth when in public or get vaccinated just like millions and millions of Americans of all political persuasions have done for decades. It doesn't take much to see just how far conservatives are willing to go right now to get a cultural win. They will willingly inject bleach into their system. They will happily inject medicine specifically to rid livestock of worms. They will scream at grocery store cashiers for wearing a mask. They will be on their deathbed in a hospital, dying of COVID-19, and with oxygen-depleted lungs, insist they don't have the virus. They will assault cancer clinic workers and patients over a mask mandate for the clinic, even though they themselves don't work their and aren't a patient. They will threaten public health experts with harm and death for telling them things they don't want to hear and/or believe. They will literally put themselves, their families, their friends, their coworkers...at risk of a very transmittable, dangerous virus rather than wear a piece of cloth other their nose and mouth when they are out in public. If this sounds crazy, it is because it it.

As crazy and seemingly unbelievable the right has been the past few months with their reactions to the 2020 election and the pandemic, they are only going to get worse. The world where they have relevance and where their ideas are deemed even marginally acceptable is shrinking. There really are not many big cultural battles for them to fight anymore. This doesn't mean they have or will stop fighting these large battles. They do and will continue to do so. However, I don't think they really believe they can win battles they lost years ago and continue to lose. This means they are reduced to fighting smaller and smaller battles-battles that have crazier and crazier rationalizations and justifications. The size of the battle no longer matters. What matters is getting a win, even if it means the deaths of hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens. Even if it means losing their own lives or their children's. This kind of mindset cannot be changed through persuasion. An individual here or there might change but it will only be because of some deeply personal reason. For the masses, they are going to be who they are. The only thing the rest of us can do is make sure they don't get the levers of power because as they continue to rack up cultural losses, they will lash out in more and more violent ways against anything and anyone they see as being responsible for their losing streak. America has been moving towards this moment for a long time. It is very much at a “make it or break it,” moment where it either becomes the multicultural democracy it has promised it could be or it becomes some form of an apartheid, authoritarian state. My heart is always with the former but knowing how mean, angry, and spiteful conservatives are, the latter is more of a possibility than I like to admit.

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bloodbenderz · 3 years

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humaniterations (dot) net/2014/10/13/an-anarchist-perspective-on-the-red-lotus/ this article from oct 2014 is very dense — truly, a lot to unpack here, but I feel like you would find this piece interesting. I would love it if you shared your thoughts on the points that stood out to you, whether you agree or disagree. you obv don’t have to respond to it tho, but I’m sending it as an ask jic you feel like penning (and sharing) a magnificent essay, as is your wont 💕

article

i know this took me forever 2 answer SORRY but i just checked off all the things on my to do list for the first time in days today so. Essay incoming ladies!

ok im SO glad u sent me this bc it’s so so good. it’s a genuinely thoughtful criticism of the politics in legend of korra (altho i think its sometimes a little mean to korra unnecessarily like there’s no reason to call her a “petulant brat” or say that she throws tantrums but i do understand their point about her being an immature and reactionary hero, which i’ll get back to) and i think the author has a good balance between acknowledging like Yeah the lok writers were american liberals and wrote their show accordingly and Also writing a thorough analysis of lok’s politics that felt relevant and interesting without throwing their hands up and saying this is all useless liberal bullshit (which i will admit that i tend to do).

this article essentially argues that the red lotus antagonists of s3 were right. And that’s not an uncommon opinion i think but this gives it serious weight. Like, everything that zaheer’s gang did was, in context, fully understandable. of course the red lotus would be invested in making sure that the physically and spiritually and politically most powerful person in the world ISNT raised by world leaders and a secret society of elites that’s completely unaccountable to the people! of course the red lotus wants to bring down tyrannical governments and allow communities to form and self govern organically! and the writers dismiss all of that out of hand by 1. consistently framing the red lotus as insane and murderous (korra never actually gives zaheer’s ideas a chance or truly considers integrating them into her own approach) 2. representing the death of the earth queen as not just something that’s not necessarily popular (what was with mako’s bootlicker grandma, i’d love to know) but as something that causes unbelievable violence and chaos in ba sing se (which, like, a lot of history and research will tell you that people in disasters tend towards prosocial behaviors). so the way the story frames each of these characters and ideologies is fascinating because like. if you wanted to write season 3 of legend of korra with zaheer as the protagonist and korra as the antagonist, you wouldn’t actually have to change the sequence of events at all, really. these writers in particular and liberal writers in general LOVE writing morally-gray-but-ultimately-sympathetic characters (like, almost EVERY SINGLE fire nation character in the first series, who were full on violent colonizers but all to a degree were rehabilitated in the eyes of the viewer) but instead of framing the red lotus as good people who are devoted to justice and freedom and sometimes behave cruelly to get where theyre trying to go, they frame them as psychopaths and murderers who have good intentions don’t really understand how to make the world a better place.

and the interesting thing about all this, about the fact that the red lotus acted in most cases exactly as it should have in context and the only reason its relegated to villain status is bc the show is written by liberals, is that the red lotus actually points out really glaring sociopolitical issues in universe! like, watching the show, u think well why the fuck HASN’T korra done anything about the earth queen oppressing her subjects? why DOESN’T korra do anything about the worse than useless republic president? why the hell are so many people living in poverty while our mains live cushy well fed lives? how come earth kingdom land only seems to belong to various monarchs and settler colonists, instead of the people who are actually indigenous to it? the show does not want to answer these questions, because american liberal capitalism literally survives on the reality of oppressive governments and worse than useless presidents and people living in poverty while the middle/upper class eats and indigenous land being stolen. if the show were to answer these questions honestly, the answer would be that the status quo in real life (and the one on the show that mirrors real life) Has To Change.

So they avoid answering these questions honestly in order for the thesis statement to be that the status quo is good. and the only way for the show to escape answering these questions is for them to individualize all these broad social problems down into Good people and Bad people. so while we have obvious bad ones like the earth queen we also have all these capitalists and monarchs and politicians who are actually very nice and lovely people who would never hurt anyone! which is just such an absurd take and it’s liberal propaganda at its best. holding a position of incredible political/economic power in an unjust society is inherently unethical and maintaining that position of power requires violence against the people you have power over. which is literally social justice 101. but there’s literally no normal, average, not-politically-powerful person on the show. so when leftist anarchism is presented and says that destroying systems that enforce extreme power differentials is the only way to bring peace and freedom to all, the show has already set us up to think, hey, fuck you, top cop lin beifong and ford motor ceo asami sato are good people and good people like them exist! and all we have to do to move forward and progress as a society is to make sure we have enough good individuals in enough powerful positions (like zuko as the fire lord ending the war, or wu as the earth king ending the monarchy)! which is of course complete fiction. liberal reform doesn’t work. but by pretending that it could work by saying that the SYSTEM isnt rotten it’s just that the people running it suck and we just need to replace those people, it automatically delegitimizes any radical movements that actually seek to change things.

and that’s the most interesting thing about this article to me is that it posits that the avatar...might actually be a negative presence in the world. the avatar is the exact same thing: it’s a position of immense political and physical power bestowed completely randomly, and depending on the moral character and various actions of who fills that position at any given time, millions of people will or won’t suffer. like kyoshi, who created the fascist dai li, like roku, who refused to remove a genocidal dictator from power, like aang, who facilitated the establishment of a settler colonial state on earth kingdom land. like korra! she’s an incredibly immature avatar and a generally reactionary lead. i’ve talked about this at length before but she never actually gets in touch with the needs of the people. she’s constantly running in elite circles, exposed only to the needs and squabbles of the upper class! how the hell is she supposed to understand the complexities of oppression and privilege when she was raised by a chess club with inordinate amounts of power and associates almost exclusively with politicians and billionaires?? from day 1 we see that she tends to see things in very black and white ways which is FINE if you’re a privileged 17 yr old girl seeing the world for the first time but NOT FINE if you’re the single most powerful person in the world! Yeah, korra thinks the world is probably mostly fine and just needs a little whipping into shape every couple years, because all she has ever known is a mostly fine world! in s1 when mako mentions that he as a homeless impoverished teenager worked for a gang (which is. Not weird. Impoverished people of every background are ALWAYS more likely to resort to socially unacceptable ways of making money) korra is like “you guys are criminals?????!!!!!” she was raised in perfect luxury by a conservative institution and just never developed beyond that. So sure, if the red lotus raised her anarchist, probably a lot would’ve been different/better, but....they didn’t. and korra ended up being a reactionary and conservative avatar who protected monarchs and colonialist politicians. The avatar as a position is completely subject to the whims of whoever is currently the avatar. and not only does that suck for everyone who is not the avatar, not only is it totally unfair to whatever kid who grows up knowing the fate of the world is squarely on their shoulders, but it as a concept is a highly individualist product of the authors’ own western liberal ideas of progress! the idea that one good leader can fix the world (or should even try) based on their own inherent superiority to everyone else is unbelievably flawed and ignores the fact that all real progress is brought about as a result of COMMUNITY work, as a result of normal people working for themselves and their neighbors!

the broader analysis of bending was really interesting to me too, but im honestly not sure i Totally agree with it. the article pretty much accepts the show’s assertion that bending is a privilege (and frankly backs it up much better than the original show did, but whatever), and i don’t think that’s NECESSARILY untrue since it is, like, a physical advantage (the author compares it to, for example, the fact that some people are born athletically gifted and others are born with extreme physical limitations), but i DO think that it discounts the in universe racialization of bending. in any sequel to atla that made sense, bending as a race making fact would have been explored ALONGSIDE the physical advantages it bestows on people. colonialism and its aftermath is generally ignored in this article which is its major weakness i think, especially in conjunction with bending. you can bring up the ideas the author did about individual vs community oriented progress in the avatar universe while safely ignoring the colonialism, but you can’t not bring up race and colonialism when you discuss bending. especially once you get to thinking about how water/earth/airbenders were imprisoned and killed specifically because bending was a physical advantage, and that physical advantage was something that would have given colonized populations a means of resistance and that the fire nation wanted to keep to itself.

i think that’s the best lens thru which to analyze bending tbh! like in the avatar universe bending is a tool that different ethnic groups tend to use in different ways. at its best, bending actually doesn’t represent social power differences (despite representing a physical power difference) because it’s used to represent/maintain community solidarity. like, take the water tribe. katara being the last waterbender, in some way, makes her the last of a part of swt CULTURE. the implication is that when there were a lot of waterbenders in the south, they dedicated their talents to building community and helping their neighbors, because this was something incredibly culturally important and important to the water tribe as a community. the swt as a COLLECTIVE values bending for what it can do for the entire tribe, which counts for basically every other talent a person can have (strength, creativity, etc). the fire nation, by contrast, distorts the community value of bending by racializing it: anyone who bends an element that isn’t fire is inherently NOT fire nation (and therefore inherently inferior) and, because of the physical power that bending confers, anyone who bends an element that isn’t fire is a threat to fire nation hegemony. and in THAT framework of bending, it’s something that intrinsically assigns worth and reifies race in a way that’s conveniently beneficial to the oppressor.

it IS worth talking about how using Element as a way to categorize people reifies nations, borders, and race in a way that is VERY characteristic of white american liberals. i tried to be conscious of that (and the way that elements/bending can act in DIFFERENT ways, depending on cultural context) but i think it’s pretty clear that the writers did intend for element to unequivocally signify nation (and, by extension, race), which is part of why they screwed up mixed families so bad in lok. when they’ve locked themselves into this idea that element=nation=race, they end up with sets of siblings like mako and bolin or kya tenzin and bumi, who all “take” after only one parent based on the element that they bend. which is just completely stupid but very indicative of how the writers actually INTENDED element/bending to be a race making process. and its both fucked up and interesting that the writers display the same framework of race analysis that the canonical antagonists of atla do.

anyway that’s a few thoughts! thank u again for sending the article i really loved it and i had a lot of fun writing this <3

#this is 2.1k words LMFAOO #asks #analysis #do i have an analysis tag?#crit #lok crit

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comrade-meow · 3 years

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For a long time, academic feminism in America has been closely allied to the practical struggle to achieve justice and equality for women. Feminist theory has been understood by theorists as not just fancy words on paper; theory is connected to proposals for social change. Thus feminist scholars have engaged in many concrete projects: the reform of rape law; winning attention and legal redress for the problems of domestic violence and sexual harassment; improving women’s economic opportunities, working conditions, and education; winning pregnancy benefits for female workers; campaigning against the trafficking of women and girls in prostitution; working for the social and political equality of lesbians and gay men.

Indeed, some theorists have left the academy altogether, feeling more comfortable in the world of practical politics, where they can address these urgent problems directly. Those who remain in the academy have frequently made it a point of honor to be academics of a committed practical sort, eyes always on the material conditions of real women, writing always in a way that acknowledges those real bodies and those real struggles. One cannot read a page of Catharine MacKinnon, for example, without being engaged with a real issue of legal and institutional change. If one disagrees with her proposals--and many feminists disagree with them--the challenge posed by her writing is to find some other way of solving the problem that has been vividly delineated.

Feminists have differed in some cases about what is bad, and about what is needed to make things better; but all have agreed that the circumstances of women are often unjust and that law and political action can make them more nearly just. MacKinnon, who portrays hierarchy and subordination as endemic to our entire culture, is also committed to, and cautiously optimistic about, change through law--the domestic law of rape and sexual harassment and international human rights law. Even Nancy Chodorow, who, in The Reproduction of Mothering, offered a depressing account of the replication of oppressive gender categories in child-rearing, argued that this situation could change. Men and women could decide, understanding the unhappy consequences of these habits, that they will henceforth do things differently; and changes in laws and institutions can assist in such decisions.

Feminist theory still looks like this in many parts of the world. In India, for example, academic feminists have thrown themselves into practical struggles, and feminist theorizing is closely tethered to practical commitments such as female literacy, the reform of unequal land laws, changes in rape law (which, in India today, has most of the flaws that the first generation of American feminists targeted), the effort to get social recognition for problems of sexual harassment and domestic violence. These feminists know that they live in the middle of a fiercely unjust reality; they cannot live with themselves without addressing it more or less daily, in their theoretical writing and in their activities outside the seminar room.

In the United States, however, things have been changing. One observes a new, disquieting trend. It is not only that feminist theory pays relatively little attention to the struggles of women outside the United States. (This was always a dispiriting feature even of much of the best work of the earlier period.) Something more insidious than provincialism has come to prominence in the American academy. It is the virtually complete turning from the material side of life, toward a type of verbal and symbolic politics that makes only the flimsiest of connections with the real situation of real women.

Feminist thinkers of the new symbolic type would appear to believe that the way to do feminist politics is to use words in a subversive way, in academic publications of lofty obscurity and disdainful abstractness. These symbolic gestures, it is believed, are themselves a form of political resistance; and so one need not engage with messy things such as legislatures and movements in order to act daringly. The new feminism, moreover, instructs its members that there is little room for large-scale social change, and maybe no room at all. We are all, more or less, prisoners of the structures of power that have defined our identity as women; we can never change those structures in a large-scale way, and we can never escape from them. All that we can hope to do is to find spaces within the structures of power in which to parody them, to poke fun at them, to transgress them in speech. And so symbolic verbal politics, in addition to being offered as a type of real politics, is held to be the only politics that is really possible.

These developments owe much to the recent prominence of French postmodernist thought. Many young feminists, whatever their concrete affiliations with this or that French thinker, have been influenced by the extremely French idea that the intellectual does politics by speaking seditiously, and that this is a significant type of political action. Many have also derived from the writings of Michel Foucault (rightly or wrongly) the fatalistic idea that we are prisoners of an all-enveloping structure of power, and that real-life reform movements usually end up serving power in new and insidious ways. Such feminists therefore find comfort in the idea that the subversive use of words is still available to feminist intellectuals. Deprived of the hope of larger or more lasting changes, we can still perform our resistance by the reworking of verbal categories, and thus, at the margins, of the selves who are constituted by them.

One American feminist has shaped these developments more than any other. Judith Butler seems to many young scholars to define what feminism is now. Trained as a philosopher, she is frequently seen (more by people in literature than by philosophers) as a major thinker about gender, power, and the body. As we wonder what has become of old-style feminist politics and the material realities to which it was committed, it seems necessary to reckon with Butler’s work and influence, and to scrutinize the arguments that have led so many to adopt a stance that looks very much like quietism and retreat.

II.

It is difficult to come to grips with Butler’s ideas, because it is difficult to figure out what they are. Butler is a very smart person. In public discussions, she proves that she can speak clearly and has a quick grasp of what is said to her. Her written style, however, is ponderous and obscure. It is dense with allusions to other theorists, drawn from a wide range of different theoretical traditions. In addition to Foucault, and to a more recent focus on Freud, Butler’s work relies heavily on the thought of Louis Althusser, the French lesbian theorist Monique Wittig, the American anthropologist Gayle Rubin, Jacques Lacan, J.L. Austin, and the American philosopher of language Saul Kripke. These figures do not all agree with one another, to say the least; so an initial problem in reading Butler is that one is bewildered to find her arguments buttressed by appeal to so many contradictory concepts and doctrines, usually without any account of how the apparent contradictions will be resolved.

A further problem lies in Butler’s casual mode of allusion. The ideas of these thinkers are never described in enough detail to include the uninitiated (if you are not familiar with the Althusserian concept of “interpellation,” you are lost for chapters) or to explain to the initiated how, precisely, the difficult ideas are being understood. Of course, much academic writing is allusive in some way: it presupposes prior knowledge of certain doctrines and positions. But in both the continental and the Anglo-American philosophical traditions, academic writers for a specialist audience standardly acknowledge that the figures they mention are complicated, and the object of many different interpretations. They therefore typically assume the responsibility of advancing a definite interpretation among the contested ones, and of showing by argument why they have interpreted the figure as they have, and why their own interpretation is better than others.

We find none of this in Butler. Divergent interpretations are simply not considered--even where, as in the cases of Foucault and Freud, she is advancing highly contestable interpretations that would not be accepted by many scholars. Thus one is led to the conclusion that the allusiveness of the writing cannot be explained in the usual way, by positing an audience of specialists eager to debate the details of an esoteric academic position. The writing is simply too thin to satisfy any such audience. It is also obvious that Butler’s work is not directed at a non-academic audience eager to grapple with actual injustices. Such an audience would simply be baffled by the thick soup of Butler’s prose, by its air of in-group knowingness, by its extremely high ratio of names to explanations.

To whom, then, is Butler speaking? It would seem that she is addressing a group of young feminist theorists in the academy who are neither students of philosophy, caring about what Althusser and Freud and Kripke really said, nor outsiders, needing to be informed about the nature of their projects and persuaded of their worth. This implied audience is imagined as remarkably docile. Subservient to the oracular voice of Butler’s text, and dazzled by its patina of high-concept abstractness, the imagined reader poses few questions, requests no arguments and no clear definitions of terms.

Still more strangely, the implied reader is expected not to care greatly about Butler’s own final view on many matters. For a large proportion of the sentences in any book by Butler--especially sentences near the end of chapters--are questions. Sometimes the answer that the question expects is evident. But often things are much more indeterminate. Among the non-interrogative sentences, many begin with “Consider…” or “One could suggest…”--in such a way that Butler never quite tells the reader whether she approves of the view described. Mystification as well as hierarchy are the tools of her practice, a mystification that eludes criticism because it makes few definite claims.

Take two representative examples:

What does it mean for the agency of a subject to presuppose its own subordination? Is the act of presupposing the same as the act of reinstating, or is there a discontinuity between the power presupposed and the power reinstated? Consider that in the very act by which the subject reproduces the conditions of its own subordination, the subject exemplifies a temporally based vulnerability that belongs to those conditions, specifically, to the exigencies of their renewal.

And:

Such questions cannot be answered here, but they indicate a direction for thinking that is perhaps prior to the question of conscience, namely, the question that preoccupied Spinoza, Nietzsche, and most recently, Giorgio Agamben: How are we to understand the desire to be as a constitutive desire? Resituating conscience and interpellation within such an account, we might then add to this question another: How is such a desire exploited not only by a law in the singular, but by laws of various kinds such that we yield to subordination in order to maintain some sense of social “being”?

Why does Butler prefer to write in this teasing, exasperating way? The style is certainly not unprecedented. Some precincts of the continental philosophical tradition, though surely not all of them, have an unfortunate tendency to regard the philosopher as a star who fascinates, and frequently by obscurity, rather than as an arguer among equals. When ideas are stated clearly, after all, they may be detached from their author: one can take them away and pursue them on one’s own. When they remain mysterious (indeed, when they are not quite asserted), one remains dependent on the originating authority. The thinker is heeded only for his or her turgid charisma. One hangs in suspense, eager for the next move. When Butler does follow that “direction for thinking,” what will she say? What does it mean, tell us please, for the agency of a subject to presuppose its own subordination? (No clear answer to this question, so far as I can see, is forthcoming.) One is given the impression of a mind so profoundly cogitative that it will not pronounce on anything lightly: so one waits, in awe of its depth, for it finally to do so.

In this way obscurity creates an aura of importance. It also serves another related purpose. It bullies the reader into granting that, since one cannot figure out what is going on, there must be something significant going on, some complexity of thought, where in reality there are often familiar or even shopworn notions, addressed too simply and too casually to add any new dimension of understanding. When the bullied readers of Butler’s books muster the daring to think thus, they will see that the ideas in these books are thin. When Butler’s notions are stated clearly and succinctly, one sees that, without a lot more distinctions and arguments, they don’t go far, and they are not especially new. Thus obscurity fills the void left by an absence of a real complexity of thought and argument.

Last year Butler won the first prize in the annual Bad Writing Contest sponsored by the journal Philosophy and Literature, for the following sentence:

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

Now, Butler might have written: “Marxist accounts, focusing on capital as the central force structuring social relations, depicted the operations of that force as everywhere uniform. By contrast, Althusserian accounts, focusing on power, see the operations of that force as variegated and as shifting over time.” Instead, she prefers a verbosity that causes the reader to expend so much effort in deciphering her prose that little energy is left for assessing the truth of the claims. Announcing the award, the journal’s editor remarked that “it’s possibly the anxiety-inducing obscurity of such writing that has led Professor Warren Hedges of Southern Oregon University to praise Judith Butler as `probably one of the ten smartest people on the planet.’” (Such bad writing, incidentally, is by no means ubiquitous in the “queer theory” group of theorists with which Butler is associated. David Halperin, for example, writes about the relationship between Foucault and Kant, and about Greek homosexuality, with philosophical clarity and historical precision.)

Butler gains prestige in the literary world by being a philosopher; many admirers associate her manner of writing with philosophical profundity. But one should ask whether it belongs to the philosophical tradition at all, rather than to the closely related but adversarial traditions of sophistry and rhetoric. Ever since Socrates distinguished philosophy from what the sophists and the rhetoricians were doing, it has been a discourse of equals who trade arguments and counter-arguments without any obscurantist sleight-of-hand. In that way, he claimed, philosophy showed respect for the soul, while the others’ manipulative methods showed only disrespect. One afternoon, fatigued by Butler on a long plane trip, I turned to a draft of a student’s dissertation on Hume’s views of personal identity. I quickly felt my spirits reviving. Doesn’t she write clearly, I thought with pleasure, and a tiny bit of pride. And Hume, what a fine, what a gracious spirit: how kindly he respects the reader’s intelligence, even at the cost of exposing his own uncertainty.

III.

Butler’s main idea, first introduced in Gender Trouble in 1989 and repeated throughout her books, is that gender is a social artifice. Our ideas of what women and men are reflect nothing that exists eternally in nature. Instead they derive from customs that embed social relations of power.

This notion, of course, is nothing new. The denaturalizing of gender was present already in Plato, and it received a great boost from John Stuart Mill, who claimed in The Subjection of Women that “what is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing.” Mill saw that claims about “women’s nature” derive from, and shore up, hierarchies of power: womanliness is made to be whatever would serve the cause of keeping women in subjection, or, as he put it, “enslav[ing] their minds.” With the family as with feudalism, the rhetoric of nature itself serves the cause of slavery. “The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural…. But was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it?”

Mill was hardly the first social constructionist. Similar ideas about anger, greed, envy, and other prominent features of our lives had been commonplace in the history of philosophy since ancient Greece. And Mill’s application of familiar notions of social-construction to gender needed, and still needs, much fuller development; his suggestive remarks did not yet amount to a theory of gender. Long before Butler came on the scene, many feminists contributed to the articulation of such an account.

In work published in the 1970s and 1980s, Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin argued that the conventional understanding of gender roles is a way of ensuring continued male domination in sexual relations, as well as in the public sphere. They took the core of Mill’s insight into a sphere of life concerning which the Victorian philosopher had said little. (Not nothing, though: in 1869 Mill already understood that the failure to criminalize rape within marriage defined woman as a tool for male use and negated her human dignity.) Before Butler, MacKinnon and Dworkin addressed the feminist fantasy of an idyllic natural sexuality of women that only needed to be “liberated”; and argued that social forces go so deep that we should not suppose we have access to such a notion of “nature.” Before Butler, they stressed the ways in which male-dominated power structures marginalize and subordinate not only women, but also people who would like to choose a same-sex relationship. They understood that discrimination against gays and lesbians is a way of enforcing the familiar hierarchically ordered gender roles; and so they saw discrimination against gays and lesbians as a form of sex discrimination.

Before Butler, the psychologist Nancy Chodorow gave a detailed and compelling account of how gender differences replicate themselves across the generations: she argued that the ubiquity of these mechanisms of replication enables us to understand how what is artificial can nonetheless be nearly ubiquitous. Before Butler, the biologist Anne Fausto Sterling, through her painstaking criticism of experimental work allegedly supporting the naturalness of conventional gender distinctions, showed how deeply social power-relations had compromised the objectivity of scientists: Myths of Gender (1985) was an apt title for what she found in the biology of the time. (Other biologists and primatologists also contributed to this enterprise.) Before Butler, the political theorist Susan Moller Okin explored the role of law and political thought in constructing a gendered destiny for women in the family; and this project, too, was pursued further by a number of feminists in law and political philosophy. Before Butler, Gayle Rubin’s important anthropological account of subordination, The Traffic in Women (1975), provided a valuable analysis of the relationship between the social organization of gender and the asymmetries of power.

So what does Butler’s work add to this copious body of writing? Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter contain no detailed argument against biological claims of “natural” difference, no account of mechanisms of gender replication, and no account of the legal shaping of the family; nor do they contain any detailed focus on possibilities for legal change. What, then, does Butler offer that we might not find more fully done in earlier feminist writings? One relatively original claim is that when we recognize the artificiality of gender distinctions, and refrain from thinking of them as expressing an independent natural reality, we will also understand that there is no compelling reason why the gender types should have been two (correlated with the two biological sexes), rather than three or five or indefinitely many. “When the constructed status of gender is theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice,” she writes.

From this claim it does not follow, for Butler, that we can freely reinvent the genders as we like: she holds, indeed, that there are severe limits to our freedom. She insists that we should not naively imagine that there is a pristine self that stands behind society, ready to emerge all pure and liberated: “There is no self that is prior to the convergence or who maintains `integrity’ prior to its entrance into this conflicted cultural field. There is only a taking up of the tools where they lie, where the very `taking up’ is enabled by the tool lying there.” Butler does claim, though, that we can create categories that are in some sense new ones, by means of the artful parody of the old ones. Thus her best known idea, her conception of politics as a parodic performance, is born out of the sense of a (strictly limited) freedom that comes from the recognition that one’s ideas of gender have been shaped by forces that are social rather than biological. We are doomed to repetition of the power structures into which we are born, but we can at least make fun of them; and some ways of making fun are subversive assaults on the original norms.

The idea of gender as performance is Butler’s most famous idea, and so it is worth pausing to scrutinize it more closely. She introduced the notion intuitively, in Gender Trouble, without invoking theoretical precedent. Later she denied that she was referring to quasi-theatrical performance, and associated her notion instead with Austin’s account of speech acts in How to Do Things with Words. Austin’s linguistic category of “performatives” is a category of linguistic utterances that function, in and of themselves, as actions rather than as assertions. When (in appropriate social circumstances) I say “I bet ten dollars,” or “I’m sorry,” or “I do” (in a marriage ceremony), or “I name this ship…,” I am not reporting on a bet or an apology or a marriage or a naming ceremony, I am conducting one.

Butler’s analogous claim about gender is not obvious, since the “performances” in question involve gesture, dress, movement, and action, as well as language. Austin’s thesis, which is restricted to a rather technical analysis of a certain class of sentences, is in fact not especially helpful to Butler in developing her ideas. Indeed, though she vehemently repudiates readings of her work that associate her view with theater, thinking about the Living Theater’s subversive work with gender seems to illuminate her ideas far more than thinking about Austin.

Nor is Butler’s treatment of Austin very plausible. She makes the bizarre claim that the fact that the marriage ceremony is one of dozens of examples of performatives in Austin’s text suggests “that the heterosexualization of the social bond is the paradigmatic form for those speech acts which bring about what they name.” Hardly. Marriage is no more paradigmatic for Austin than betting or ship-naming or promising or apologizing. He is interested in a formal feature of certain utterances, and we are given no reason to suppose that their content has any significance for his argument. It is usually a mistake to read earth-shaking significance into a philosopher’s pedestrian choice of examples. Should we say that Aristotle’s use of a low-fat diet to illustrate the practical syllogism suggests that chicken is at the heart of Aristotelian virtue? Or that Rawls’s use of travel plans to illustrate practical reasoning shows that A Theory of Justice aims at giving us all a vacation?

Leaving these oddities to one side, Butler’s point is presumably this: when we act and speak in a gendered way, we are not simply reporting on something that is already fixed in the world, we are actively constituting it, replicating it, and reinforcing it. By behaving as if there were male and female “natures,” we co-create the social fiction that these natures exist. They are never there apart from our deeds; we are always making them be there. At the same time, by carrying out these performances in a slightly different manner, a parodic manner, we can perhaps unmake them just a little.

Thus the one place for agency in a world constrained by hierarchy is in the small opportunities we have to oppose gender roles every time they take shape. When I find myself doing femaleness, I can turn it around, poke fun at it, do it a little bit differently. Such reactive and parodic performances, in Butler’s view, never destabilize the larger system. She doesn’t envisage mass movements of resistance or campaigns for political reform; only personal acts carried out by a small number of knowing actors. Just as actors with a bad script can subvert it by delivering the bad lines oddly, so too with gender: the script remains bad, but the actors have a tiny bit of freedom. Thus we have the basis for what, in Excitable Speech, Butler calls “an ironic hopefulness.”

Up to this point, Butler’s contentions, though relatively familiar, are plausible and even interesting, though one is already unsettled by her narrow vision of the possibilities for change. Yet Butler adds to these plausible claims about gender two other claims that are stronger and more contentious. The first is that there is no agent behind or prior to the social forces that produce the self. If this means only that babies are born into a gendered world that begins to replicate males and females almost immediately, the claim is plausible, but not surprising: experiments have for some time demonstrated that the way babies are held and talked to, the way their emotions are described, are profoundly shaped by the sex the adults in question believe the child to have. (The same baby will be bounced if the adults think it is a boy, cuddled if they think it is a girl; its crying will be labeled as fear if the adults think it is a girl, as anger if they think it is a boy.) Butler shows no interest in these empirical facts, but they do support her contention.

If she means, however, that babies enter the world completely inert, with no tendencies and no abilities that are in some sense prior to their experience in a gendered society, this is far less plausible, and difficult to support empirically. Butler offers no such support, preferring to remain on the high plane of metaphysical abstraction. (Indeed, her recent Freudian work may even repudiate this idea: it suggests, with Freud, that there are at least some presocial impulses and tendencies, although, typically, this line is not clearly developed.) Moreover, such an exaggerated denial of pre-cultural agency takes away some of the resources that Chodorow and others use when they try to account for cultural change in the direction of the better.

Butler does in the end want to say that we have a kind of agency, an ability to undertake change and resistance. But where does this ability come from, if there is no structure in the personality that is not thoroughly power’s creation? It is not impossible for Butler to answer this question, but she certainly has not answered it yet, in a way that would convince those who believe that human beings have at least some pre-cultural desires--for food, for comfort, for cognitive mastery, for survival--and that this structure in the personality is crucial in the explanation of our development as moral and political agents. One would like to see her engage with the strongest forms of such a view, and to say, clearly and without jargon, exactly why and where she rejects them. One would also like to hear her speak about real infants, who do appear to manifest a structure of striving that influences from the start their reception of cultural forms.

Butler’s second strong claim is that the body itself, and especially the distinction between the two sexes, is also a social construction. She means not only that the body is shaped in many ways by social norms of how men and women should be; she means also that the fact that a binary division of sexes is taken as fundamental, as a key to arranging society, is itself a social idea that is not given in bodily reality. What exactly does this claim mean, and how plausible is it?

Butler’s brief exploration of Foucault on hermaphrodites does show us society’s anxious insistence to classify every human being in one box or another, whether or not the individual fits a box; but of course it does not show that there are many such indeterminate cases. She is right to insist that we might have made many different classifications of body types, not necessarily focusing on the binary division as the most salient; and she is also right to insist that, to a large extent, claims of bodily sex difference allegedly based upon scientific research have been projections of cultural prejudice--though Butler offers nothing here that is nearly as compelling as Fausto Sterling’s painstaking biological analysis.

And yet it is much too simple to say that power is all that the body is. We might have had the bodies of birds or dinosaurs or lions, but we do not; and this reality shapes our choices. Culture can shape and reshape some aspects of our bodily existence, but it does not shape all the aspects of it. “In the man burdened by hunger and thirst,” as Sextus Empiricus observed long ago, “it is impossible to produce by argument the conviction that he is not so burdened.” This is an important fact also for feminism, since women’s nutritional needs (and their special needs when pregnant or lactating) are an important feminist topic. Even where sex difference is concerned, it is surely too simple to write it all off as culture; nor should feminists be eager to make such a sweeping gesture. Women who run or play basketball, for example, were right to welcome the demolition of myths about women’s athletic performance that were the product of male-dominated assumptions; but they were also right to demand the specialized research on women’s bodies that has fostered a better understanding of women’s training needs and women’s injuries. In short: what feminism needs, and sometimes gets, is a subtle study of the interplay of bodily difference and cultural construction. And Butler’s abstract pronouncements, floating high above all matter, give us none of what we need.

IV.

Suppose we grant Butler her most interesting claims up to this point: that the social structure of gender is ubiquitous, but we can resist it by subversive and parodic acts. Two significant questions remain. What should be resisted, and on what basis? What would the acts of resistance be like, and what would we expect them to accomplish?

Butler uses several words for what she takes to be bad and therefore worthy of resistance: the “repressive,” the “subordinating,” the “oppressive.” But she provides no empirical discussion of resistance of the sort that we find, say, in Barry Adam’s fascinating sociological study The Survival of Domination (1978), which studies the subordination of blacks, Jews, women, and gays and lesbians, and their ways of wrestling with the forms of social power that have oppressed them. Nor does Butler provide any account of the concepts of resistance and oppression that would help us, were we really in doubt about what we ought to be resisting.

Butler departs in this regard from earlier social-constructionist feminists, all of whom used ideas such as non-hierarchy, equality, dignity, autonomy, and treating as an end rather than a means, to indicate a direction for actual politics. Still less is she willing to elaborate any positive normative notion. Indeed, it is clear that Butler, like Foucault, is adamantly opposed to normative notions such as human dignity, or treating humanity as an end, on the grounds that they are inherently dictatorial. In her view, we ought to wait to see what the political struggle itself throws up, rather than prescribe in advance to its participants. Universal normative notions, she says, “colonize under the sign of the same.”

This idea of waiting to see what we get--in a word, this moral passivity--seems plausible in Butler because she tacitly assumes an audience of like-minded readers who agree (sort of) about what the bad things are--discrimination against gays and lesbians, the unequal and hierarchical treatment of women--and who even agree (sort of) about why they are bad (they subordinate some people to others, they deny people freedoms that they ought to have). But take that assumption away, and the absence of a normative dimension becomes a severe problem.

Try teaching Foucault at a contemporary law school, as I have, and you will quickly find that subversion takes many forms, not all of them congenial to Butler and her allies. As a perceptive libertarian student said to me, Why can’t I use these ideas to resist the tax structure, or the antidiscrimination laws, or perhaps even to join the militias? Others, less fond of liberty, might engage in the subversive performances of making fun of feminist remarks in class, or ripping down the posters of the lesbian and gay law students’ association. These things happen. They are parodic and subversive. Why, then, aren’t they daring and good?

Well, there are good answers to those questions, but you won’t find them in Foucault, or in Butler. Answering them requires discussing which liberties and opportunities human beings ought to have, and what it is for social institutions to treat human beings as ends rather than as means--in short, a normative theory of social justice and human dignity. It is one thing to say that we should be humble about our universal norms, and willing to learn from the experience of oppressed people. It is quite another thing to say that we don’t need any norms at all. Foucault, unlike Butler, at least showed signs in his late work of grappling with this problem; and all his writing is animated by a fierce sense of the texture of social oppression and the harm that it does.

Come to think of it, justice, understood as a personal virtue, has exactly the structure of gender in the Butlerian analysis: it is not innate or “natural,” it is produced by repeated performances (or as Aristotle said, we learn it by doing it), it shapes our inclinations and forces the repression of some of them. These ritual performances, and their associated repressions, are enforced by arrangements of social power, as children who won’t share on the playground quickly discover. Moreover, the parodic subversion of justice is ubiquitous in politics, as in personal life. But there is an important difference. Generally we dislike these subversive performances, and we think that young people should be strongly discouraged from seeing norms of justice in such a cynical light. Butler cannot explain in any purely structural or procedural way why the subversion of gender norms is a social good while the subversion of justice norms is a social bad. Foucault, we should remember, cheered for the Ayatollah, and why not? That, too, was resistance, and there was indeed nothing in the text to tell us that that struggle was less worthy than a struggle for civil rights and civil liberties.

There is a void, then, at the heart of Butler’s notion of politics. This void can look liberating, because the reader fills it implicitly with a normative theory of human equality or dignity. But let there be no mistake: for Butler, as for Foucault, subversion is subversion, and it can in principle go in any direction. Indeed, Butler’s naively empty politics is especially dangerous for the very causes she holds dear. For every friend of Butler, eager to engage in subversive performances that proclaim the repressiveness of heterosexual gender norms, there are dozens who would like to engage in subversive performances that flout the norms of tax compliance, of non-discrimination, of decent treatment of one’s fellow students. To such people we should say, you cannot simply resist as you please, for there are norms of fairness, decency, and dignity that entail that this is bad behavior. But then we have to articulate those norms--and this Butler refuses to do.

What precisely does Butler offer when she counsels subversion? She tells us to engage in parodic performances, but she warns us that the dream of escaping altogether from the oppressive structures is just a dream: it is within the oppressive structures that we must find little spaces for resistance, and this resistance cannot hope to change the overall situation. And here lies a dangerous quietism.

If Butler means only to warn us against the dangers of fantasizing an idyllic world in which sex raises no serious problems, she is wise to do so. Yet frequently she goes much further. She suggests that the institutional structures that ensure the marginalization of lesbians and gay men in our society, and the continued inequality of women, will never be changed in a deep way; and so our best hope is to thumb our noses at them, and to find pockets of personal freedom within them. “Called by an injurious name, I come into social being, and because I have a certain inevitable attachment to my existence, because a certain narcissism takes hold of any term that confers existence, I am led to embrace the terms that injure me because they constitute me socially.” In other words: I cannot escape the humiliating structures without ceasing to be, so the best I can do is mock, and use the language of subordination stingingly. In Butler, resistance is always imagined as personal, more or less private, involving no unironic, organized public action for legal or institutional change.

Isn’t this like saying to a slave that the institution of slavery will never change, but you can find ways of mocking it and subverting it, finding your personal freedom within those acts of carefully limited defiance? Yet it is a fact that the institution of slavery can be changed, and was changed--but not by people who took a Butler-like view of the possibilities. It was changed because people did not rest content with parodic performance: they demanded, and to some extent they got, social upheaval. It is also a fact that the institutional structures that shape women’s lives have changed. The law of rape, still defective, has at least improved; the law of sexual harassment exists, where it did not exist before; marriage is no longer regarded as giving men monarchical control over women’s bodies. These things were changed by feminists who would not take parodic performance as their answer, who thought that power, where bad, should, and would, yield before justice.

Butler not only eschews such a hope, she takes pleasure in its impossibility. She finds it exciting to contemplate the alleged immovability of power, and to envisage the ritual subversions of the slave who is convinced that she must remain such. She tells us--this is the central thesis of The Psychic Life of Power--that we all eroticize the power structures that oppress us, and can thus find sexual pleasure only within their confines. It seems to be for that reason that she prefers the sexy acts of parodic subversion to any lasting material or institutional change. Real change would so uproot our psyches that it would make sexual satisfaction impossible. Our libidos are the creation of the bad enslaving forces, and thus necessarily sadomasochistic in structure.

Well, parodic performance is not so bad when you are a powerful tenured academic in a liberal university. But here is where Butler’s focus on the symbolic, her proud neglect of the material side of life, becomes a fatal blindness. For women who are hungry, illiterate, disenfranchised, beaten, raped, it is not sexy or liberating to reenact, however parodically, the conditions of hunger, illiteracy, disenfranchisement, beating, and rape. Such women prefer food, schools, votes, and the integrity of their bodies. I see no reason to believe that they long sadomasochistically for a return to the bad state. If some individuals cannot live without the sexiness of domination, that seems sad, but it is not really our business. But when a major theorist tells women in desperate conditions that life offers them only bondage, she purveys a cruel lie, and a lie that flatters evil by giving it much more power than it actually has.

Excitable Speech, Butler’s most recent book, which provides her analysis of legal controversies involving pornography and hate speech, shows us exactly how far her quietism extends. For she is now willing to say that even where legal change is possible, even where it has already happened, we should wish it away, so as to preserve the space within which the oppressed may enact their sadomasochistic rituals of parody.

As a work on the law of free speech, Excitable Speech is an unconscionably bad book. Butler shows no awareness of the major theoretical accounts of the First Amendment, and no awareness of the wide range of cases such a theory will need to take into consideration. She makes absurd legal claims: for example, she says that the only type of speech that has been held to be unprotected is speech that has been previously defined as conduct rather than speech. (In fact, there are many types of speech, from false or misleading advertising to libelous statements to obscenity as currently defined, which have never been claimed to be action rather than speech, and which are nonetheless denied First Amendment protection.) Butler even claims, mistakenly, that obscenity has been judged to be the equivalent of “fighting words.” It is not that Butler has an argument to back up her novel readings of the wide range of cases of unprotected speech that an account of the First Amendment would need to cover. She just has not noticed that there is this wide range of cases, or that her view is not a widely accepted legal view. Nobody interested in law can take her argument seriously.

But let us extract from Butler’s thin discussion of hate speech and pornography the core of her position. It is this: legal prohibitions of hate speech and pornography are problematic (though in the end she does not clearly oppose them) because they close the space within which the parties injured by that speech can perform their resistance. By this Butler appears to mean that if the offense is dealt with through the legal system, there will be fewer occasions for informal protest; and also, perhaps, that if the offense becomes rarer because of its illegality we will have fewer opportunities to protest its presence.

Well, yes. Law does close those spaces. Hate speech and pornography are extremely complicated subjects on which feminists may reasonably differ. (Still, one should state the contending views precisely: Butler’s account of MacKinnon is less than careful, stating that MacKinnon supports “ordinances against pornography” and suggesting that, despite MacKinnon’s explicit denial, they involve a form of censorship. Nowhere does Butler mention that what MacKinnon actually supports is a civil damage action in which particular women harmed through pornography can sue its makers and its distributors.)

But Butler’s argument has implications well beyond the cases of hate speech and pornography. It would appear to support not just quietism in these areas, but a much more general legal quietism--or, indeed, a radical libertarianism. It goes like this: let us do away with everything from building codes to non-discrimination laws to rape laws, because they close the space within which the injured tenants, the victims of discrimination, the raped women, can perform their resistance. Now, this is not the same argument radical libertarians use to oppose building codes and anti-discrimination laws; even they draw the line at rape. But the conclusions converge.

If Butler should reply that her argument pertains only to speech (and there is no reason given in the text for such a limitation, given the assimilation of harmful speech to conduct), then we can reply in the domain of speech. Let us get rid of laws against false advertising and unlicensed medical advice, for they close the space within which poisoned consumers and mutilated patients can perform their resistance! Again, if Butler does not approve of these extensions, she needs to make an argument that divides her cases from these cases, and it is not clear that her position permits her to make such a distinction.

For Butler, the act of subversion is so riveting, so sexy, that it is a bad dream to think that the world will actually get better. What a bore equality is! No bondage, no delight. In this way, her pessimistic erotic anthropology offers support to an amoral anarchist politics.

VI.

When we consider the quietism inherent in Butler’s writing, we have some keys to understanding Butler’s influential fascination with drag and cross-dressing as paradigms of feminist resistance. Butler’s followers understand her account of drag to imply that such performances are ways for women to be daring and subversive. I am unaware of any attempt by Butler to repudiate such readings.

But what is going on here? The woman dressed mannishly is hardly a new figure. Indeed, even when she was relatively new, in the nineteenth century, she was in another way quite old, for she simply replicated in the lesbian world the existing stereotypes and hierarchies of male-female society. What, we may well ask, is parodic subversion in this area, and what a kind of prosperous middle-class acceptance? Isn’t hierarchy in drag still hierarchy? And is it really true (as The Psychic Life of Power would seem to conclude) that domination and subordination are the roles that women must play in every sphere, and if not subordination, then mannish domination?

In short, cross-dressing for women is a tired old script--as Butler herself informs us. Yet she would have us see the script as subverted, made new, by the cross-dresser’s knowing symbolic sartorial gestures; but again we must wonder about the newness, and even the subversiveness. Consider Andrea Dworkin’s parody (in her novel Mercy) of a Butlerish parodic feminist, who announces from her posture of secure academic comfort:

The notion that bad things happen is both propagandistic and inadequate…. To understand a woman’s life requires that we affirm the hidden or obscure dimensions of pleasure, often in pain, and choice, often under duress. One must develop an eye for secret signs--the clothes that are more than clothes or decoration in the contemporary dialogue, for instance, or the rebellion hidden behind apparent conformity. There is no victim. There is perhaps an insufficiency of signs, an obdurate appearance of conformity that simply masks the deeper level on which choice occurs.

In prose quite unlike Butler’s, this passage captures the ambivalence of the implied author of some of Butler’s writings, who delights in her violative practice while turning her theoretical eye resolutely away from the material suffering of women who are hungry, illiterate, violated, beaten. There is no victim. There is only an insufficiency of signs.

Butler suggests to her readers that this sly send-up of the status quo is the only script for resistance that life offers. Well, no. Besides offering many other ways to be human in one’s personal life, beyond traditional norms of domination and subservience, life also offers many scripts for resistance that do not focus narcissistically on personal self-presentation. Such scripts involve feminists (and others, of course) in building laws and institutions, without much concern for how a woman displays her own body and its gendered nature: in short, they involve working for others who are suffering.

The great tragedy in the new feminist theory in America is the loss of a sense of public commitment. In this sense, Butler’s self-involved feminism is extremely American, and it is not surprising that it has caught on here, where successful middle-class people prefer to focus on cultivating the self rather than thinking in a way that helps the material condition of others. Even in America, however, it is possible for theorists to be dedicated to the public good and to achieve something through that effort.

Many feminists in America are still theorizing in a way that supports material change and responds to the situation of the most oppressed. Increasingly, however, the academic and cultural trend is toward the pessimistic flirtatiousness represented by the theorizing of Butler and her followers. Butlerian feminism is in many ways easier than the old feminism. It tells scores of talented young women that they need not work on changing the law, or feeding the hungry, or assailing power through theory harnessed to material politics. They can do politics in safety of their campuses, remaining on the symbolic level, making subversive gestures at power through speech and gesture. This, the theory says, is pretty much all that is available to us anyway, by way of political action, and isn’t it exciting and sexy?

In its small way, of course, this is a hopeful politics. It instructs people that they can, right now, without compromising their security, do something bold. But the boldness is entirely gestural, and insofar as Butler’s ideal suggests that these symbolic gestures really are political change, it offers only a false hope. Hungry women are not fed by this, battered women are not sheltered by it, raped women do not find justice in it, gays and lesbians do not achieve legal protections through it.

Finally there is despair at the heart of the cheerful Butlerian enterprise. The big hope, the hope for a world of real justice, where laws and institutions protect the equality and the dignity of all citizens, has been banished, even perhaps mocked as sexually tedious. Judith Butler’s hip quietism is a comprehensible response to the difficulty of realizing justice in America. But it is a bad response. It collaborates with evil. Feminism demands more and women deserve better.

#Anglo.txt

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nexyra · 3 years

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Okay so This is just a way to let out some frustration so I can put it out there and stop mulling on it bc I'm bad at this sort of stuff - Feel free to ignore it

I'm putting this under Read More; if your fav past-time is to call anyone who likes Ironwood's character or was disappointed by his V8 turn to villainy a stupid bootlicker who "should have seen the signs he was always a tyrant !!" please don't interact with this post. You're ultimately free to think what you want but honestly I see enough of that in the main tag when left alone, I don't need it on my blog it doesn't make me feel good.

Anyone else... well you can read if you're interested but you don't have to either. Feel free to respectfully disagree though, I'm not that bullheaded that I can't partake in a friendly argument =) I'll just be listing some things about Ironwood's reading by the FNDM who get old or draining as someone who doesn't like the V8-characterization they went with

Can people please stop just... copy/pasting real world issues on a world/characters that have nothing to do with them or a completely different context ?

Like,, I genuinely try to educate myself on real-world issues. I know I'm rather privileged so I try to listen and hear out people who speak out about the issues they live through day by day. I know why the "ACAB" moniker exists. I understand the problem that lies within the american police system (and likely other countries as well). I see why the army, on our blue planet, is criticized & its many failings. Etc, the list can go on...

But I'm sorry to say, Remnant isn't OUR Earth. Their Army's primary job is to fight actual evil soulless monsters, not people. The Ace Opps or Huntsmen are not an organization directly inherited from slave-hunting groups. James Ironwood isn't the US army general bombing Middle East. Clover Ebi isn't the racist cop you want in prison. So WHY are they treated as such by so many people ? Stories are not a 1-1 where you can take everything you know and just apply it to a completely different world.

Has Atlas been presented as a country that suffers from racism & classism ? Certainly. Has it be shown this way ? That's already more debatable since the only racist arguments we got were in Mantle (which is the city we're supposed to be rooting for so that's a weird choice but eh it's whatever). Are the characters, as persons, shown to evoke these issues in a way that deserve our scorn ? Not really.

Is Ironwood depicted as particularly racist for example ? I wouldn't say so seeing as one (or more considering Tortuga) of his Ace-Opps are Faunus & it seems perfectly accepted; and he hates Jacques Schnee's guts. So why does he get to shoulder all of our real-world issues as if he was responsible for them, in a context where (pre V8) his army had most likely never killed anything else than Grimm and was shown to elicit very positive reactions from most of the population (V3) ? (In direct contrast to the polarization that the US army might evoke for example.)

You can totally hate Ironwood because of the feelings he evoke, the trope he stems from or the parallels to be made. That doesn't mean however, that he IS truly guilty of every one of OUR world issues (pre-V8)

Just because classism is prevalent in Atlas society does not make Ironwood the figurehead & leader of this issue.

Is classism an issue in Atlas ? Yes. That's been made clear because of Mantle's state as well as Jacques Schnee entire existence & even Cinder's backstory. Does that mean every single one of Ironwood's decisions reeks of classism ? NO

Trust me, as someone who found Ironwood's V8 characterization not... well-executed & too much; there's nothing more annoying than being assaulted by posts about his fall going "it was so obvious !! look at -" only for them to then list reasons in a really biased way or even headcannons based on (again) irl problems. An exemple...

Reasons his turn was good that I see thrown around : "Ironwood left Mantle behind because he only wanted to save the rich. He's a selfish coward & an asshole !"

What we were actually given : "Ironwood suffers from PTSD, and faced with Salem's imminent arrival, he tried to save what he was CERTAIN to be able to protect aka the flying city and all the people on it including Mantle evacuees. There is absolutely no text backing the idea that he wanted to leave with Atlas because it's rich. We could even suppose that he would have left with the 'poor' Mantle if it was the flying city and rich people were hanging safely on the ground. There is indeed an issue with Atlas & Mantle disparity, but Ironwood isn't directly responsible for it."

Does that make his decision to leave Mantle behind a morally right one ? That's of course NOT what I'm saying. The situation is still very ambiguous. But the classism theme has NO place here.

"Ironwood leads Atlas & Mantle. As such, he inherently holds responsability for the issues plaguing it." THIS is an acceptable reading according to me. I would probably argue that even if Ironwood's the only Atlas leader we're shown; he actually only oversees the military & academy (where we haven't ever seen classism issues), so putting Atlas' classism issues on him still doesn't sound fair to me. However the idea & argument is sound.

Acknowledging only how his actions look/the tyrannical surface reading and not the reasonnable justifications or glimpses we were given (pre-V7) of Ironwood being more than his trope

I'll probably stop after this one, but the last thing that is both tiring & annoying after too much of it; is seeing people boil down all of Ironwood's character to the most basic summary, inherently written to paint him in a bad line. And then saying that everything led up to his downfall by using these watered-down versions of the show's events to justify it. Or worse (imo), saying that people who are not satisfied with his V8 characterization that THEY don't understand how good a character he is and don't really appreciate him.... All the while only ever highlighting his characters flaws. Please stop this.

"Ironwood brought an army to the peace Olympics why are you surprised he turned out this way ?" ==> Ironwood brought an army to a country where the civilians visibly have no issue with said-army, to protect a peaceful event that he KNOWS to be targeted by foes. It's definitely overzealous & his conviction that threats should be dealt with by blunt force IS one of his flaws; but pretending that he did it for fun or because he's a tyran is just as misplaced.

"Ironwood said he'd shoot Qrow if he were one of his men why are you surprised he shot Oscar ?" ==> Do I really need to flip through every joke in this show and consider it as absolute truth & proof that the character would enact these words if given the occasion; even when we're shown with certainty that they actually don't mean it ? (IW hugging Qrow to welcome him, refusing to attack Qrow when he's certain Qrow IS attacking him...)

"Ironwood has his military all over Mantle, there's a curfew, all of this is tyrannical why are you surprised he's also down for genocide" ==> Damn, it sure is criminal to have Mantle defended from the litteral monsters roaming inside & out, and to make sure with a curfew that the people are not at risk during the night. I wonder if any recent events could make us reconsider our stance on how evil a enforced curfew is. Mhmmm maybe a pandemic ? Nah I must be imagining things. For real though, at what point did Tyrian's framing/lies (IW has his soldiers all over Mantle because of politics/he's a tyran who refuses opposition) became the truth of the situation for the FDNM too ? Again Mantle's situations SUCK, and that's a problem in itself. Making up problematic reasoning for the situation is dishonest though.

To end this, I'll just make clear. I do not condone any of Ironwood's actions post-V7. I don't think he had to be the big hero of the Atlas arc. Nor that he was without faults. I merely think that he'd have been a better antagonist than villain. And that it'd have been nice to keep the ambiguity/morally greyness that surrounds him; the knowledge that he's TRYING hard to do what's best for everyone; that he has good intentions. That he cares about individuals too to a lesser degree, and that he had people who cared about him as a person.

For short... Ironwood as an antagonist with understandable issues, flaws & failures; making questionable choices but with good intentions ? Hell yeah. Ironwood as a villain, more irredeemable than Hazel, willing to kill people for NO reason or even wipe out a city ? I'm not convinced.

#rwby #rwde #rwby thoughts #rant #fndm discourse #james ironwood #pro ironwood #canoncrit ironwood

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adiwriting · 4 years

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FYI thanks for mocking me on discord that was fun to see my heightened emotions of the day mocked by my fav writer. I wasn't planning on saying anything but I figured if it stops you guys taking the piss out of other asks you said you weren't even going to publish in the first place then perhaps I should. Be aware some of us don't have tumblr accounts. This is not the friendly fandom I was led to believe if you enjoy doing that with friends on discord in the public chats. Thanks for educating me

First of all, I’m not even sure how this ask got through except to say that Tumblr is buggy AF and I’m angry about it. Most people that have anon off, have it off for a reason, so that fact that Tumblr can just up and ignore that to let anons through is pretty shitty and @staff should look into that.

But since this is not the first time that somebody has accused me of trigging them over the entire Tyler Blackburn situation, I’m going to write up a response and hopefully everyone that’s been triggered by me and my words can all read this and perhaps have an ounce of self-awareness and empathy for others.

12 days ago, I wrote a post about fandom racism that also apparently was the first time most of fandom was learning about the fact that Tyler Blackburn was not an indigenous person. I expected about 10 people to read it and for it to anger about 1-2 people. Those were my expectations. To get an angry anon or two. To have somebody pop into my replies to argue DNA testing. So when the post blew up and I became the subject of fandom rage, with new people vague blogging me by the hour, my DMs and my inbox filled with hate, and this became “the topic” of fandom on multiple platforms... I wasn’t mentally ready for it.

Despite all of that, I still stand by the spirit of that original post. I still stand by the fact that I posted asking people to stop calling Tyler a POC and using that as a defense of their own racist behavior. I DON’T stand by my argument of using percentages or DNA testing to “prove” Tyler wasn’t NA. I’ve learned better over the last 12 days. I don’t stand by my statement that we shouldn’t cancel Tyler. As a white woman, that isn’t my call and I don’t get to decide how the indigenous fans respond to this hurtful news. But the things I regret revolve around not being a good ally. They don’t revolve around regret posting about Tyler’s actions and they certainly don’t revolve around any regret for calling out fandom racism.

Back to my response and my “mocking” behavior.

I want anyone who says that I triggered them (because it’s been a handful of people by now, either directly or through vague blogging about me) to understand something.

Most of us have been in the situation where you post something and you get 1-2 hate anons. You bitch about it, you complain to your friends, then you move on. Few of us have likely ever woken up day after day to 25+ messages calling you an awful person for having the audacity to share news about an actor who shared the news about himself first. It, understandably, gets to you. And yet, I’m not out here blaming those hate anons and DMs for being the reason I couldn’t sleep for a week, the reason I had full blown panic attacks, or the reason I couldn’t eat more than a bite of food each meal. Because at the end of the day, this fandom wasn’t the SOLE reason for my mental health issues and I refuse to blame other people for my own mental health issues. I refuse to say that anyone else “triggered” me, because the fact remains that anyone who triggered me only did so because I gave them the power to do so. Just like I would argue, I don’t have the power to trigger anyone else, you’ve all given me that power and you can take it away. You can unfollow me. You can block me. You can chose not to read my thoughts on things and let it affect your day. I’m not remotely worth anyone’s stress.

Did I publish anons after I said I wasn’t going to? Yes. Though, I’m 99% sure every anon I published were ones I received BEFORE I said I wouldn’t answer anons, and thus I’m not sure anyone sent me anything under the guise it wouldn’t be published. I’m pretty sure fandom etiquette is that you don’t send anon asks you don’t expect to be answered publicly. You can ask anyone who DM’d me their hate, I didn’t respond to any of THOSE things publicly. It isn’t the proper etiquette. But yes, I published the handful of anons that I found funny in a sea of ones that were truly disgusting. So disgusting that i had to delete them the moment they came into my inbox. But I kept a few that I found entertaining because I honestly, needed a laugh. And in the middle of a panic attack, I snapped, and responded to a handful of the funnier asks. Do I regret it? Sometimes. I don’t think it helped make the situation any better... but I also don’t think I said anything that I don’t stand behind either.

Did I talk to my friends on Discord about the asks I received? Yes. My friends were, understandably, worried about me and trying to show support. They asked me if I was getting a lot of hate about my post and I answered them honestly. And yes, the discussion did lean towards making fun of the more ridiculous defenses of Tyler’s actions. Because most of my friends on there still struggle to understand why we are defending Tyler’s actions. And most of my friends, I think, were trying to help me make light of a truly awful week for me.

I apologize if you felt we were mocking you. But considering any ask I got was sent in an effort to silence me and make me feel bad for calling out racism, I question why I should be apologizing to you and why there’s no expectation that anyone apologize to ME for the hazing I just went through. I ask why one specific group of fandom continues to use emotional manipulation to try and silence me for simply stating facts: Tyler is NOT a POC. Why is it okay that one group of fandom can continually attack others but when those blogs say anything, then we are suddenly told that we don’t respect anyone’s mental health. I have NEVER in my life bullied anyone. Even the Tyler Stan blogs that have come to me personally, off anon, to talk about their problems with me can hopefully have enough self awareness to let you know that I was apologetic for snapping and sympathetic to their mental health issues but also stood by my opinions that racism is real and I won’t apologize for posting about it.

I don’t care if people like Tyler. I don’t care if people’s favorite character is Alex. That is all fine with me. If you want to keep stanning Tyler and loving Alex, do so. Just know that I’m going to stand by my fans of color on this issue with Tyler and continue to post about racism. If that is something that people cannot get behind, they should 100% unfollow me and block my name.

If you want to read my writing but disengage with my opinions, I suggest you subscribe to me on AO3 and block me on Tumblr. But also, you can just stop reading my fic too. I promise you that nothing I write is remotely special enough for people to continue risking their mental health if the things I’m doing trigger you in any way.

Finally, I can empathize with you not having a Tumblr account to come at me with. But it sounds like you have a Discord account that you could have DM’d me on. And if you had come to me off of anon, I can 100% promise you that our interactions would have been respectful even if we disagreed. They also would have been private. But what I won’t apologize for is the fact that YOU came to ME on anon expecting some level of respect when the asks being sent to me weren’t respectful. I was accused of being the reason for Tyler’s anxiety. I was accused of being unsympathetic to a man who didn’t know his dad because his dad COULD have been native american and how did I feel about that? I was accused of trying to get Tyler fired. I was accused of a lot of awful things.

And yet... all I did was make a post about fandom racism. And anyone getting triggered by that should perhaps ask themselves this:

If you’ve never been racist in this fandom, why did my post feel like an attack against you?

#tw racism #discourse #still haven't figured out how to tag TB discussions for people who need space from it #Open to ideas #But still avoiding just flat out tagging Tyler Blackburn as the tag #not because I don't think it belongs in that tag #but because I'm trying to avoid that group of blogs who has been harassing me

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xtruss · 3 years

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A Muslim Writer on Finding Her Voice in Post-9/11, Post-Trump America

— By Aisha Sultan | 09/01/21 | Newsweek.

A new generation of Muslim Americans is making its mark. Spencer Platt/Getty

Like most Americans old enough to remember, I know exactly where I was and what I was doing on September 11, 2001 when the first hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City. I was showering when I heard my husband yelling for me. Dripping wet and wrapped in a towel, I watched in shock, along with tens of millions of others, as the Twin Towers fell, killing thousands of people inside.

Emotions from that day feel so much closer than two decades ago.

My stomach turned in revulsion. My body tightened with fear for my relatives who worked there. Dread settled like a heavy rock on my chest. Like other Americans, I wondered, who was attacking us. But as a Muslim, I had other questions too: Did the attackers claim to be Muslims? And, if so, what would happen to the rest of us?

I quickly got dressed and headed to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where I worked as an education reporter. I talked to stunned school officials and students while still trying to process what was happening.

That evening, I checked in with my family in Texas. My brother, then in middle school, had been in class when his teacher broke the news. He became nervous and, in the teacher's eyes at least, asked too many questions. "Is this World War III? Did they bomb downtown? Are they going to bomb our town next?" The teacher told him to shut up and leave her classroom, that she couldn't bear to look at his face.

Riz Ahmed attends the "Mogul Mowgli" press conference during the 70th Berlinale International Film Festival Berlin at Grand Hyatt Hotel on February 21, 2020 in Berlin, Germany. Ahmed recently criticized “dehumanizing and demonizing portrayals of Muslims" in films. Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

My mother's co-workers at the department store where she had worked for years suddenly refused to speak to her. Cops escorted my hijab-wearing cousin off her college campus because it was no longer deemed safe for her to be there.

In the immediate aftermath of that day's horror, my grief and anger as an American was so compounded with my fear and anxiety as a Muslim that it compelled me to do something unthinkable for me: I poured my heart out to the readers of the Sunday paper.

Back then, it was unusual for a news reporter to pen a personal response to a national tragedy. This was long before social media made us all performative, confessional animals. I needed my neighbors in the Midwest to know that while Muslim Americans shared their grief and anger, we also feared whether our country would turn on us.

I ended that column with the questions my college-aged sister had asked me: "Will the government come after us like they did with the Japanese? Will other Americans stand up for us?"

I told my readers the same thing I told her: I don't know.

I wasn't sure what to expect but dozens and dozens of readers responded to her question with expressions of support: Yes, we will stand up for you, you and your family are one of us, they said, in one way or another, in message after message. There were just two negative, Islamophobic emails in the bunch.

Such an overwhelmingly positive response seems inconceivable now, given how polarized our discourse is now and how normalized hate speech has become—an irony, when you consider how heightened anti-Muslim sentiment was at the time.

Key moments after 9/11 also feel unimaginable now. Back then, a Republican president, George W. Bush, visited the Islamic Center in Washington D.C. days after the attack to tell the American people that the attacks violated the tenets of Islam—"Islam is peace," he famously said—and to defend Muslims as equal citizens worthy of respect and protection. Our last Republican president, by contrast, touted a "Muslim ban" across the country. Even my state, Missouri, now bright partisan red, was a swing state back in 2001, where Democrats sometimes voted for Republicans and vice versa.

Coming together after tragedy: U.S. Muslims sing "God Bless America" at an interfaith memorial service in Pasadena, California for 9/11 victims two days after the attacks. Lucy Nicholson/AFP/Getty

It was against this backdrop that I felt moved to share my vulnerability with readers who may never have met a Muslim before.

Their responses reassured and comforted me, but the expressions of support didn't always—or even mostly—translate into action on a national scale. Instead, the Muslim community bore the brunt of the fallout of 9/11 for years. The government targeted Muslim communities with surveillance, questioning and confinement. It seemed law enforcement and the media used the label of "terrorism" for heinous crimes only if the perpetrator was Muslim. The number of anti-Muslim hate crime incidents reported to the FBI rose from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001— and those are just the official numbers. Countless incidents are never reported to the FBI.

Yet, in those ensuing years, creative work by Muslims also bubbled up in the country. A trio of Muslim comedians—Preacher Moss, Azhar Usman and Azeem Muhammad—launched the "Allah Made Me Funny" comedy tour in 2003. Writer Laila Lalami's debut novel, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, was published in 2005. Actor Aasif Mandvi began appearing on The Daily Show in 2006. G.Willow Wilson published her first graphic novel, Cairo, in 2007.

People who had lived as Muslims in America prior to 9/11 became American Muslims, more engaged in its civic, cultural and political institutions. Muslims creatives were reclaiming the narrative and telling our own stories instead of responding to the false dichotomy of victim or villain told about us.

I was among them. Seven years after the attacks, I began lobbying my editors for a features column, a departure from a decade of straight news reporting. I had become a mother with two small children. I was trying to make sense of the confusion and isolation that parenting provokes. My first column in 2008 described a bleak winter day when I was sleep-deprived and frustrated and feeling slightly suffocated by the tight bonds of motherhood.

The author: St. Louis Post-Dispatch syndicated columnist Aisha Sultan. Elizabeth Wisemen

Again, readers in the heartland responded with overwhelming support and commiseration. I wasn't making any overtly political arguments. As readers got to know me, they appreciated the commonalities in our parenting experiences despite our differences. I wasn't trying to be an ambassador or spokeswoman for my faith or an ethnic community. I was sharing my observations and struggles as a suburban, middle class American mom who happened to be Muslim and of Pakistani descent.

An older, childless white man who lives in a conservative exurban county wrote to say I was the only Muslim he knew besides the attackers on 9/11. He said he had changed his perspective on Muslims in America after reading my column for years. We weren't just a faceless enemy to him anymore. He saw me as a person, my humanity very real to him.

We've stayed in touch for more than a decade.

Over time more Americans have become like that reader, increasingly comfortable with the idea and presence of Muslims—as neighbors and even family members. Yet simultaneously, the conservative right turned Islam into an effective political weapon and used it to bludgeon Muslims who have sought greater representation and political power.

These opposing forces once again became evident in the correspondence I got from readers, The tone and tenor changed notably in the summer of 2016 as the political rhetoric of the presidential campaign came to a boiling point. Public writers have always had our share of angry critics. But the criticism I received turned increasingly vitriolic, with a deep undercurrent of anger. People who disagreed with what I'd written weren't merely looking to dissent but to silence me.

Increasingly, pushback was laced with profanity, racial slurs and calls to go back to where I came from. Anonymous writers called me a 'raghead c*nt' and others told me to "get out of America, you towel head bigot b*tch." One reader mailed a handwritten letter after I wrote about talking to my children about the killing of Travyon Martin, the Black teenager fatally shot by a white member of a neighborhood watch patrol in Florida. She said she would make a point of cutting out my column photo from the paper every weekend so she could put it in the toilet and piss on it.

After the 2016 election, the heightened anxiety about personal safety I'd felt right after 9/11 returned, even stronger and lasted for years. It's not hard to understand why. During the period between 2015 and 2016, the number of assaults against Muslims rose significantly, surpassing the aftermath of 9/11, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of hate crimes statistics from the FBI. Over the following years, disinformation and conspiracies began taking hold in America at a level I'd never seen before. White rage was palpable online and eventually, on the streets.

The memories and feelings associated with the events of 9/11 continue to play a role in attitudes toward the American Muslim community in some quarters. Here, the annual 'Tribute in Light' memorial in lower Manhattan near One World Trade Center. Spencer Platt/Getty

And yet during this period, Muslims in America continued to create art and cultural capital at an unprecedented level. Playwright Ayad Akhtar produced his Pultizer-winning play Disgraced. Hasan Minhaj reclaimed the title Patriot Act, launching a show that became a cultural touchpoint for a generation of American Muslims too young to know firsthand how that legislation was wielded against the Muslim community. Ramy Youssef won a Golden Globe, Mahershala Ali won two Oscars and Lena Khan is directing Hollywood films. Models, pundits and Olympic athletes came into the spotlight while wearing a hijab.

At some point, I too decided that whatever the costs of speaking out, far greater was the cost of silence. If someone was going to attack me for speaking out against white supremacists, that was a risk I was willing to take. I couldn't back down from writing about controversial issues that I knew would provoke an angry backlash, even when it felt reader abuse could possibly escalate to violence.

What I've observed and experienced over the past 20 years, as a columnist and as a Muslim, perhaps boils down to this: As the politics of exclusion grow more strident, parts of the culture embrace inclusivity. Each force is a reaction to the other.

Certainly this has happened in my own relationship with readers. Even as the negative emails ramped up in intensity and bile, I still have far more readers who send words of kindness and encouragement than hatred. Many reveal their own secrets and most vulnerable stories.

My goal when I began writing a column was to give a voice to parents struggling to raise kids in this digital, social media saturated age. I hope I've done that but along the way something else important happened: I found my own voice too.

My youngest sister, who was in college when I wrote my first personal story in the aftermath of 9/11, decided to attend law school after she graduated. She eventually ran for state judge in the 113th District in Houston and was elected in 2018 as part of the record-setting number of Muslims who won public office that year.

With the benefit of two decades of hindsight and the insights I've gained from my interaction with readers over the years, I realize I could have given her a better answer when she turned to me as a frightened college student in 2001. I could have reassured her: Yes, there will be other Americans who will stand up for us.

More importantly, we will learn to stand up for ourselves.

— Aisha Sultan is a syndicated columnist based at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 years

Link

Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.

The magnitude of this failure is astonishing. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering,1 the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and in deaths due to the disease, far exceeding the numbers in much larger countries, such as China. The death rate in this country is more than double that of Canada, exceeds that of Japan, a country with a vulnerable and elderly population, by a factor of almost 50, and even dwarfs the rates in lower-middle-income countries, such as Vietnam, by a factor of almost 2000. Covid-19 is an overwhelming challenge, and many factors contribute to its severity. But the one we can control is how we behave. And in the United States we have consistently behaved poorly.

We know that we could have done better. China, faced with the first outbreak, chose strict quarantine and isolation after an initial delay. These measures were severe but effective, essentially eliminating transmission at the point where the outbreak began and reducing the death rate to a reported 3 per million, as compared with more than 500 per million in the United States. Countries that had far more exchange with China, such as Singapore and South Korea, began intensive testing early, along with aggressive contact tracing and appropriate isolation, and have had relatively small outbreaks. And New Zealand has used these same measures, together with its geographic advantages, to come close to eliminating the disease, something that has allowed that country to limit the time of closure and to largely reopen society to a prepandemic level. In general, not only have many democracies done better than the United States, but they have also outperformed us by orders of magnitude.

Why has the United States handled this pandemic so badly? We have failed at almost every step. We had ample warning, but when the disease first arrived, we were incapable of testing effectively and couldn’t provide even the most basic personal protective equipment to health care workers and the general public. And we continue to be way behind the curve in testing. While the absolute numbers of tests have increased substantially, the more useful metric is the number of tests performed per infected person, a rate that puts us far down the international list, below such places as Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia, countries that cannot boast the biomedical infrastructure or the manufacturing capacity that we have.2 Moreover, a lack of emphasis on developing capacity has meant that U.S. test results are often long delayed, rendering the results useless for disease control.

Although we tend to focus on technology, most of the interventions that have large effects are not complicated. The United States instituted quarantine and isolation measures late and inconsistently, often without any effort to enforce them, after the disease had spread substantially in many communities. Our rules on social distancing have in many places been lackadaisical at best, with loosening of restrictions long before adequate disease control had been achieved. And in much of the country, people simply don’t wear masks, largely because our leaders have stated outright that masks are political tools rather than effective infection control measures. The government has appropriately invested heavily in vaccine development, but its rhetoric has politicized the development process and led to growing public distrust.

The United States came into this crisis with enormous advantages. Along with tremendous manufacturing capacity, we have a biomedical research system that is the envy of the world. We have enormous expertise in public health, health policy, and basic biology and have consistently been able to turn that expertise into new therapies and preventive measures. And much of that national expertise resides in government institutions. Yet our leaders have largely chosen to ignore and even denigrate experts.

The response of our nation’s leaders has been consistently inadequate. The federal government has largely abandoned disease control to the states. Governors have varied in their responses, not so much by party as by competence. But whatever their competence, governors do not have the tools that Washington controls. Instead of using those tools, the federal government has undermined them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was the world’s leading disease response organization, has been eviscerated and has suffered dramatic testing and policy failures. The National Institutes of Health have played a key role in vaccine development but have been excluded from much crucial government decision making. And the Food and Drug Administration has been shamefully politicized,3 appearing to respond to pressure from the administration rather than scientific evidence. Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government,4 causing damage that will certainly outlast them. Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed “opinion leaders” and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.

Let’s be clear about the cost of not taking even simple measures. An outbreak that has disproportionately affected communities of color has exacerbated the tensions associated with inequality. Many of our children are missing school at critical times in their social and intellectual development. The hard work of health care professionals, who have put their lives on the line, has not been used wisely. Our current leadership takes pride in the economy, but while most of the world has opened up to some extent, the United States still suffers from disease rates that have prevented many businesses from reopening, with a resultant loss of hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of jobs. And more than 200,000 Americans have died. Some deaths from Covid-19 were unavoidable. But, although it is impossible to project the precise number of additional American lives lost because of weak and inappropriate government policies, it is at least in the tens of thousands in a pandemic that has already killed more Americans than any conflict since World War II.

Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.

[The New England Journal of Medicine]

#The New England Journal of Medicine #NEJM #COVID 19 #global pandemic #the plague #2020 #corrupt GOP

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route22ny · 4 years

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(This editorial appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine on October 8, 2020)

***

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2029812

Also available in pdf format at the link.

#covid-19 #coronavirus #public health #trump knew and did nothing #VOTE

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themerriweathermage · 3 years

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Author Interview

I was tagged by @sleepswithvillains . I’ve never been tagged much before so this is kind of new for me, but I love it! Tag me all the time! Also you did it again, where I got the Tumblr notification like right as I went to bed, but my sleep schedule is so wack right now.

Tagging: @guardianofrivendell @moriamithril @sunflower1000 and really whoever wants to do it. Drop me a tag if you decide to do it because I definitely want to see what you have to say!

I have a lot of unfinished fics and not a lot of published works in comparison.

1. Name: The Merriweather Mage (Tumblr)/ RinzlersGhost (AO3)

2. Fandoms: LOTR/The Hobbit, The Witcher (TV), SWTOR/Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Twilight, Underworld (though I’m not active in most of them unless I’m hyper-fixating)

3. Where you post: AO3, Tumblr, and I have an inactive FF.NET account

4. Most popular oneshot: People seem to have a real affinity for Meleth-nin/My Love. I actually hated writing it, because I was in such a bad place after receiving news that my childhood dog had died, but I don’t hate the fic itself.

5. Most popular multichapter: Every Kitten Has Claws which is a Geralt X Druid Fem!Reader. 25 Kudos, 3 bookmarks, 517 hits. Followed by Turuhalme in the Greenwood which is Thranduil X Fem!Reader. 9 Kudos, 1 bookmark, 270 hits. Both contain 18+ Content.

6. Actual worst part of writing: I legitimately hate writing fight scenes. I’m horrible at them and most of my fics contain some sort of fight scene obnoxiously enough. Although the best advice I ever saw on here was to keep your fight scenes short because not very many people are interested in a long drawn out detailed fight scene.

7. Favorite story you wrote: Bards & Beans Coffee Co. Elrond X Fem!Reader. Was the first time I’d ever written anything in the second person. I based it off of a dream I had about meeting Elrond in a coffee shop. I planned it, wrote it, and posted it in the span of four days. It’s basically as if Middle Earth exists on the other side of meridian locks, and it’s set during the War of the Ring but with some of the characters from the Hobbit so the timelines are pretty pushed together. Your side of the meridian locks has a Earth that is basically a continuous strip of land that varies from high-tech futuristic ports all the way down to medieval ports. Basically the farther North you go, the more high tech and futuristic the land becomes. Quite a shock for those who would have never been to the other side of the locks. 18+ Content.

8. Story you were nervous to post: Most likely all of them. Any of my Twilight work though, I always hesitate about publishing. Sometimes it’s because the stories are close to my heart, but I also know that the fandom can be rabid. Most of the interactions I’ve ever had with Twilight blogs are fine, but there’s a lot of discourse about Twilight right now, and while I appreciate that most people are in the right (the issue with the Quileute tribe, the Cullen’s as villains, Jasper and the Confederacy, the actual legitimacy of the Volturi as a ruling body, etc), this is actually one of the reasons I left the fandom from a writing/following POV. (There are many, many things that are wrong with Twilight and not from a literature point of view. For example, Meyers took a real life Native American tribe and treated them highly unfairly in the books, to the point of calling them dogs which isn’t very fair at all, and they have received no compensation for being used and they are risk in the place they live in now. If you have some time and money, I would recommend checking out the Quileute Move to Higher Ground project.)

9. How you choose your titles: For story titles, I like to choose the main theme or a main phrase that is used. For chapter titles, I either don’t title or I will chose something that is a main part of the chapter.

10. Complete works: Out of the 21 works I have on AO3, 18 of them are completed, although one is an open ended and may be reopened after I get some of the larger works out of my way. As for fics in general that I haven’t published or have published on other platforms, there is 2 of 5 complete works on FF.NET. Some of those stories I will be pulling and deleting. The two complete works will be migrating to AO3.

11. Incomplete works: Actively: Sadril-nin/My Loyal One, A Hunter’s Circlet, and Beauty in Brokenness (unpublished for now). I have a few other inactive LOTR/The Hobbit based fics that I might try to finish after the main two are finished. Inactive: Literally too many to count. I mean, when I wrote my goodbye to the Twilight fandom, I said that I had been writing for the fandom for nearly nine years. I have so many unfinished Twilight fics, well over 100.

12. Do you outline: Not usually. I’m at the point with Sadril-nin right now where I’m literally following a map of Middle Earth and cataloguing the journey across the map, so I guess that could be considered an outline. Mostly if I’m writing for LOTR/The Hobbit, I want to follow the timeline of progression for the story that’s already been written. I do have a little bit of leeway in that gap between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings though.

13. Coming soon ideas, maybe? I’ve been giving you a taste of Beauty in Brokenness. I do intend to publish it, but it’s a constant struggle to rework it. I have ideas that I want to cement in the story that don’t always come out the way I want them to, so I am consistently reworking parts of it all the time. I will also be rewriting (eventually) Crown of Thorns, which is Pirates of the Caribbean fanfic, Lord Beckett X Siren!OFC. I also appreciate the idea of Nestadion X Centaur Fem!Reader, but instead of being a centaur all the time, you’re actually a shifter who can turn into a centaur. Really confuses a warrior elf to see what amounts to a small human carrying this massive two handed sword around and calling him “princess” all the time.

14. Ask me anything: Is there anything you miss in fanfic? In comparison to the actual book/movie? Not really. I appreciate the original works, but I recognize that they can be flawed and so can their authors/writers. Which is why fanfic is so appealing-- everyone has a different spin on the original; everyone has a different take on the characters, everyone writes differently, and that’s the fascinating part to me. The only downside, of course with any fanfic, is the fandom and it can be hit or miss with people. It is what it is, and the liberty of fanfic is that not everyone is going to like or enjoy your works, and the same goes for your tastes. Are there right or wrong opinions? I don’t know; I’ve both read and written some morally ambiguous fics, and some I would like to forget that I very much haven’t.

15. Best writing traits: Same as the worst writing traits. I’m a sucker for detail. I love it. I want my readers to see it like I do. When I read books or play D&D or play video games, I see it like I’m in a movie. When I write, I want you to see it like you’re on set and the cameras are rolling and you are perfectly prepared. I want you to feel like you are in the story, which is why my oneshots turn into series, and my multi-chapter fics turn into novel length stories. I find it obnoxious at times, because I feel like I can’t ever turn it off, but by the feedback I get, some of y’all really enjoy it, so let’s get this show on the road.

16. Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: Uhhhh, let me go browse my WIP folder. I’ve put quite a bit of research into rewriting Crown of Thorns and making it slightly more historically accurate. I know that there will be a Part 2 to Sadril-nin, because I’m not going to time skip a seventy/eighty year gap between the timelines of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. And I really don’t want to submit y’all to this absolutely massive story all jam-packed into one fic. Other than that, I’m also sitting on Through Hellfire and High Waters, which is another Elrond X Reader fic that follows the premise of a modern/medieval world all smashed into one. The Queen of Eryn Galen also needs a proper ending and to be published, a Thranduil X OFC fic; this one will also have a Part 2.

17. Spicy Tangential Opinion: I don’t care if my writing makes the characters out of character. I try to tag that if I can, but let’s be real here. Either I’m writing a character that originally has a limited backstory and a very real chance at an open-ended future, or I didn’t like the canon character and I’m rejecting that reality and replacing it with my own. Does it mean that I don’t or am refusing to recognize character flaws? No, and that’s the beauty of fanfic. You can do whatever you want. You might get hate for it or you might not. For example, I am a fan of Severus Snape (RIP Alan Rickman). Does his character have flaws? Yes. Do I like the way he was canonically written? No. Are his actions justifiable? Hell no. Is that going to stop me from being a fan? Again, no. He is arguably one of the most disagreed upon character of that series. I don’t see a need to defend why I write him the way I do. I don’t see a need to defend him in discourse, and I’m certainly not going to be hateful about it. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion about it. Yes, there was probably some underlying intent when the character was written. I’m not here (unless you’re specifically asking my opinion on it) I’m not here to read in between the lines with characters like Snape. I do not care enough to lose friends over opinions like that.

#long post #i am so sorry #get to know the author

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gaiapaia · 3 years

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Kermit And Friends: Police Chief William Blair Anderson

William Blair Anderson has been the Chief of Police in St. Cloud, Minnesota for over 9 years now. Chief Anderson is one of Minnesota's only four Black police chiefs. He has faced unbelievable odds to get where he’s at today, and now the Kermit and Friends community is blessed to call him one of our own.

Chief Anderson joined Kermit and Friends from his home on Sunday, rocking a very colorful “knowledge” t-shirt, and man... did he spread some knowledge throughout his wonderful interview with Elisa Jordana.

On the official St. Cloud Police website, it says the following:

“The SCPD is proud to serve you. As such, we will govern ourselves using the principles of the “Wheel of Integrity" as our guide. The “Wheel of Integrity” consists of Accountability, Honesty, Humility, Respect, and Transparency.”

It took less than 2 minutes of hearing Chief Anderson speak to realize he lives up to these remarkable standards. He is truly what every cop should strive to be.

Chief Anderson was open and honest about whatever question Elisa and the KAF audience hit him with. For instance, Elisa asked the Chief about the time his house was firebombed by some racists who were unhappy about a black man moving into the neighborhood with a white significant other. It amazed me how Chief Anderson could share this story and not be filled with rage and hatred for the World. Instead, he channels their hatred into love and compassion and uses it as a cornerstone to try to improve humanity for the better. Elisa and the Chief also talked about gun reform. Everyone who knows Elisa knows how passionate she is about anti-gun violence. Of course the Chief is anti-gun violence too but he believes in the 2nd Amendment, that Americans should have the right to protect themselves, whereas Elisa wants all guns banned period. This was a beautiful example of two people disagreeing on their stance while remaining respectful and understanding of the other’s point of view. If only all political discussions could be this way, the World would be a much better place (America, specifically).

One thing the Chief and Elisa both agreed on was their distaste for marijuana. I knew Elisa wasn’t a fan of weed but I didn’t know it was such to an extent where she believes it should still be illegal. The Chief agreed with her! I don’t smoke it myself but I don’t want those who do to go to jail, so I’m not in agreement for it to be illegal. However, like Elisa and the Chief on gun reform, I’m definitely able to see where they’re coming from.

The Chief’s upbringing was another big topic of discussion. Chief Anderson was born and raised in the inner city of Detroit, Michigan. Anyone familiar with American geographically knows how rough Detroit is, and it’s beyond incredible that Chief Anderson was raised in that environment and still somehow managed to become the terrific human being that he is. He credits his parents for that... I can only imagine what amazing people they must be.

As mentioned, Chief Anderson also took some questions from the Kermit and Friends community members.

New Kermit and Friends Superstar Sigmond Twayne returned to the show with his beard dyed handsomely red, and he asked the Chief about his pastry eating habits. The Chief like any normal person loves doughnuts, and he doesn’t let cop stereotypes stop him for indulging himself with some delicious doughnuts whenever he’s in the mood!

T-Bob popped on to ask Chief Anderson about some false allegations made against the Chief in his past. Out of all the things Bob could have asked a great man like Chief Anderson, of course he brought that nonsense up. Thankfully, Chief Anderson being the upstanding gentleman that he is, he addressed the issue with honesty and humility. The story at least had a happy ending since it was this traumatic event that convinced the Chief to marry his current wife. You never know what kind of blessings hardships will bring!

Since the Chief was once falsely accused, this brought Sharmin on to ask what can be done about punishing people who falsely accuse others of crimes they didn’t commit. Sharmin has sadly had some horrible false allegations made against her that hurt her to this very day, and unfortunately it’s a very complicated situation to bring charges against those who falsely accuse people of heinous crimes they’re innocent of. I think your only real course of legal action is to hire a lawyer and sue.

Dr. Roy Alabado asked the Chief a question I think cops tend to get a lot: Why do cops shoot to kill instead of shoot to injure? Chief Anderson tried his best to explain to Dr. Roy that they’re trained to hit the widest part of the body - the upper torso, which can sometimes lead to death. Normal citizens like us can’t fathom what it’s like to be in a gun fight or partake in an altercation where our life is in danger. You have no time to be aware of being careful not to kill the person that may be trying to kill you... your only thought is survival by any means necessary. Chief Anderson has a family to come home to every night... it’s his job in life to make sure he does that.

Elisa’s fiancé Andy Dick then graced everyone with his presence. He was surprisingly very nice and courteous towards Chief Anderson.

For anyone that knows Andy’s history, you know he’s been arrested many times. This led Andy to not having the best feelings towards cops. Recently however, Andy admitted he’s been calling the police nearly every night to his trap house. Although most of the time it’s unnecessary, If you ever see Andy’s house and who he lives with, I’m sure you understand why he feels the need to call for protection quite often. Still though, to anyone reading this... don’t waste a cop’s time unless you really need their assistance!

Poor Andy joined yesterday’s show despite being stricken with a broken ankle. Andy originally told Elisa that it was brutally broken on purpose by someone he knew (we all assume it’s Lucas), but on the show he claimed they were having fun wrestling around and it was an accident. The truth is most likely somewhere in the middle. Andy showed the ankle and it’s horribly bruised, not sure if it’s fully broken but it could be. I wish Andy a very speedy recovery either way.

It’s possible Andy had some bad luck fall upon him due to Andy being such a naughty boy during Memorial Day weekend. Instead of honoring dead American soldiers, Andy was having crazed sex parties with Polish twin sisters and his housemates. Elisa shared a video of Andy recanting his weekend where he displayed some pictures that were blurred out. God only knows what those pictures actually showed!

Outside of Chief William Blair Anderson, Kermit made another new friend this week named Byron.

Elisa didn’t recognize Byron and we found out he was brought on by Sharmin, who he once helped out. How did Byron help lovely Sharmin? Well, he eradicated ghosts from Sharmin’s house! Yep, Byron is a ghost hunter. What’s really amazing is that Byron doesn’t even need to be present physically for him to kill ghosts that are terrorizing your home... all he needs is pictures. What a miraculous gift!

I must give a huge shout out to Love Coach Erika in this review for booking Chief William Blair Anderson to be on the show this week. She’s a huge blessing to Kermit and Friends and I’m certain she will do more awesome stuff for the show in the future. Please subscribe to Love Coach’s Youtube channel by clicking here so you can catch her livestreams whenever they go down.

I also have to give co-host Sugar some love for her cop outfit. Hilarious! Moreover, major props to Johnny B for his awesome karaoke performance of I Fought the Law by The Clash to end the show.

I think this week’s Kermit and Friends will hold a special place in Elisa’s heart forever. She was nervous about interviewing such a high profile official, and it went better than I’m sure she could have ever dreamed. Elisa did a tremendous job, and much credit has to go to Chief William Blair Anderson for making it easy for her. The Chief is an awesome human being and I’m truly inspired to be a better person after listening to him talk yesterday. I hope you are too :)

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danwhobrowses · 4 years

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America, We Need to Talk

For some reason in these past years the concept of ‘Reason’ and ‘Sense’ has departed your country, I’ve hissed, I’ve simmered, I’ve hit my head against the wall hoping that in the end IN THE END the collective mass of the American People will open their eyes, stop making excuses and realise that for 4 years, America has not become ‘Great Again’ I’ve resisted the urge to unload many a time, but news that Donald Trump is to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize is just too much, because this is literal horseshit. For some part it feels like they’re only trying it just so Republicans can force a rhetoric as if Trump did a better job than Obama - who won in 2009 for easing religious tensions, preventing Nuclear Weapons distribution and profiting, working towards fixing climate change and assisting with the UN - as people die of COVID, cities burn and violence against peaceful protests continue to ravage your country.

I have to say that again, Ravage, because I feel as though some people are blind to the matter at hand. Donald Trump will say something and his cult of followers will believe it, when someone disagrees and presents evidence it’s deemed irrelevant or forged, if a Democrat says something on the contrary they need a full powerpoint presentation to prove it, somehow this mentality has poisoned the American society when the louder people will say something in confidence only for the rest of the world to read and think it’s one of the dumbest shit they’ve ever read. This isn’t just coming from a Brit, this is coming from family in Chicago, a co-worker who moved out of America and worked in the army, Italians, Greeks and someone who was in Hong Kong during the riots. The people who believe in Democracy, Majority Vote, Free Healthcare, Fair Wage, Equal Rights AND international peace that doesn’t look towards World War Fucking Three look at your country in shame because the state of your leadership and how it’s been allowed to continue with ridiculously boneheaded and stubborn reluctance to see the truth. So let’s start with the boiling point shall we, a Nobel Peace Prize Nomination? Have you learned anything from the last year? Or has the far-right got the prize so by the balls that this nomination is used as a cheap add-on to coincidentally peacock the Trump administration in its build to an election. The nomination to Trump has been cited to be in favour of the following things; Israel-UAE relations (aka ‘Saving the Middle East), Serbia-Kosovo deal (aka ‘Saving the ‘Middle East’’), Inter-Korea relations and likely the support of Jerusalem and Hong Kong, and in face value that may sway the common person who knows nothing about these deals. But a simple amount of research cuts most of these at the legs. Let’s talk Serbia and Kosovo, since it’ll directly involve Israel, relations were tense but they have not been at war, they are peacefully not talking to each other. The media will have you think that Peace has been brokered by Trump only in this but in reality Serbia still refuses to recognize Kosovo’s independence, the tensions are still there you can just travel there now. This is an agreement that’s been build up since the economic and trade agreement in 2013. If that year isn’t surprising you that is 3 years before Trump was elected, when Barrack Obama was in office - Republican Public Enemy Hillary Clinton was at the forefront of that when she was Secretary of State. So no, Trump hasn’t saved the Middle East by this deal, mainly because Kosovo and Serbia are in Europe, they have been part of the EU for quite some time and the deal is already jeopardized since Serbia won’t build an embassy in Jerusalem if Israel recognize Kosovo as independent - which was part of the original deal. Also for all the Republicans’ use of ‘fear by Communism’ to slander their opponents they sure love to rub shoulders with countries also rubbing shoulders with Russia and China. So this segues into Israel-UAE, the Arab Nations have mainly been reluctant to recognize Israel as independent. On the 13th August a deal was struck called the Abraham agreement establishing Diplomatic Relations. Except, this was in the making since 2012 and only delayed to help progress Israeli-Palestine conflicts (which Trump’s actions with Israel led to Palestine cutting ties with the administration and his ‘Peace Plan’ falling apart 3 years after announcing it). UAE and Israel had been in conversation before Trump was signed in, but only made headway when the FDD - already funded by the UAE - took over. For 3 years USA did little for the relations, UAE and Israel doing it themselves, it’s only now do the US mediate a peace agreement, which meant that Trump didn’t really do much in terms of convincing both sides, he just made sure things didn’t get out of hand - which was never close to happening since there is little tensions. It was Kushner who requested the meeting and Mossad also had a huge part in it. Also I want to add that the US are only buddied with these two out of fear of Iran - you know, that country that Trump almost goaded into war in January after bombings and the death Assassination of General Soleimani who helped the US in the wake of 9/11 track and hunt down the Taliban, as well as fighting ISIS, how peaceful was that? The Middle East is still in Civil and Proxy Wars, no saving has been done there, the US just were there for Israel and UAE to confess that they’re friends. Which leads me to Korea. The Olympics helped more than Trump did, a shared effort where both countries had to travel and accommodate each other. Tensions may’ve eased in 2016 but they were far from resolved and in 2020 not much is better. Korea still antagonize one another and the North still antagonizes the US, any ‘peace’ the Trump Administration will claim to towards Korea faded quickly. And finally, Hong Kong, the US may be supportive and rightly so but this is again fear of Communism, it should’ve happened sooner but the US was hoping for that big and meaty trade deal with China. And this isn’t months I’m talking about it’s years, the proposal first took place after the Umbrella Movement...in 2014, it was annually brought up in Congress but postponed until the Senate decided to. And after Trump signed it he said he might veto it in favour of the China trade deal

“We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I'm also standing with President Xi: he's a friend of mine." - Donald Trump, November 2019

So really, this Nobel Peace Prize is the product and efforts of other people that set events in motion that Trump was there just to sign his name on. Meanwhile, in the country he is President of, the COVID Death toll has officially risen to 190 Thousand. 20% of COVID deaths are in the United States. Tear Gas/Pepper Spray - which is a recognized chemical weapon not allowed to be used in warfare - is used by Trump Supporters along with paintballs to attack peaceful protesters and Trump calls that peaceful because ‘Paint is not bullets’ - as someone who has been hit with Paintballs from safe range, they will hurt like a bitch and if you don’t wear protective gear they can do enough harm to crack and sometimes even break bone, the asthmatic co-worker I aforementioned that was in Hong Kong also notes that Tear Gas is awful, it may not kill you but it is far from peaceful. In the same breath Trump refuses to condemn a 16 year old carrying an AR and shooting someone in the head. He has also refused to condemn Epstein’s financier Ghislaine Maxwell and ‘hopes that she’s well’...the sex trafficker, but when you mention late Civil Rights leader John Lewis and his words are ‘can’t say one way or the other...he didn’t come to my inauguration’. This is your leader. The embodiment of the standards the country upholds itself to, it baffles me and many many others that the American People Chose a racist, bigoted, misogynistic, careless, self-important, naive, power-mad, severally-bankrupted, reality tv personality man-child, who is also intending to use US Taxpayers money to cover lawsuit fees against him alongside all his other golf trips. The man literally said that no other president has done more for Black People than he has, this is while he profusely condemned Kaepernick taking a knee to protest Police Brutality against Blacks and POC only for years later the world support it as BLM protests still happen because action has not been taken. We’ll also see what happens on the 14th regarding the Felony Hearing of the officers in Buffalo who pushed over Gugino and gave him a brain injury which he is still rehabilitating from after Trump tried to sell him as an Antifa member. Just in case you’re unaware, antifa stands for anti-fascist but Trump will paint that again in ‘Fear of Communism’. If you actually look up this stuff, the web of Trump’s lies unravel, and yet people just forget about. The man is a pro at gaslighting I’ll give him that, I mean leaking e-mails that condemned Clinton right at election time was some cutthroat stuff, but a man who needs to rely on preying on xenophobia, paranoia, fear, racism and invests mainly on smear tactics and dismantling, is not someone who can lead a country to prosperity, the amount of leeway this man gets from his supporters just hurts my head. So let me ask you America, truly, what is it that you want? Because it can’t be this, can it? Protests, Riots, people refusing to wear a simple face mask to limit the spread of a deadly virus because they think it’s a fake thing that the entire world decided to get in on with WHO just to spite Trump? Teenagers carrying guns? Refugees refused asylum and kept in cages? Do you want to keep spending your savings just to go to the doctors? or do you think that ‘Patriotism’ is blindly defending your country’s flaws and clinging to archaic and outdated thinking because centuries ago your country prospered in it? I’ll tell it to you straight: America is not the greatest country in the world, it hasn’t been for a long time. I don’t know what your history books tell you; that Native Americans were fine with slaughter, that the US won WW2 with the military might they always had, that Vietnam was a moral victory, but the present day should tell you that your country is a mess, and the man who has been at the helm for 4 years will not fix it in another 4. There’s only so much of Obama’s policies he can plagiarize as his own; he has left the UN, left the Paris Agreement for cleaner air and energy and all his original campaign members have been arrested, an alarming amount of people associated with him are facing criminal charges - is that not a red flag? Don’t let your thoughts that as a patriot you have to support your country no matter what, true patriotism is not just the love of your country but the hope and strive to better it because you can love it but accept that it has flaws. I mean even I’ll admit that the UK has a lot of its own shit to deal with, doesn’t mean I hate where I live I just know it can be better. If this were anyone else, hell if this were a Democrat the Republican party would be booking them a flight to the other side of the world with the stuff Trump has done and let to continue on with afterwards, through him you went from the United States to an Absolute State and the rest of the world wonder if this will either lead to World War 3 or a Second American Civil War You don’t have to like Joe Biden, but he clearly looks like the lesser of the two evils here, and at least in 4 years time America under him won’t be on fire. If you still don’t like him someone new could be elected after, but right now you are on a downward spiral and need someone who can put you back into a stable place, that man is not Donald Trump. The man who wants to intercept mail-in voting and outcry its ‘risk’ of tampering when he himself voted by mail is not a truthful leader, the man who tried to cancel the World Health Organization when they simply asked to not call COVID a racist name that incited xenophobia after decrying cancel culture is not a moral leader, and the man who said that COVID would peter out and suggested injecting disinfectant into the lungs to combat it only to now suddenly buy out all the experimental treatment so that they can try and engineer a cure in time for the election campaign, is not a wise leader. All the stuff you see in these coming months is just an attempt to win your vote, for the most part it’ll be Trump stamping his name on something other people worked on for years and claiming that he did all the work. So make sure you actually check the truth of these things, research and fact-check yourself with valid, neutral sources. Take off the blinders, take a breath and actually see the full picture. And please, as well as not letting this man have the Nobel Peace Prize Don’t give this guy have a Second Term

#politics #political rant #let sense prevail for all our peace of mind

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