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#repressive tyranny
immaculatasknight · 9 months
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Digital douchebag
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ultramaga · 2 years
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Leftists claim to experience anxiety when conservatives mock them. If true, they are simply too mentally ill to function in society, and should be drugged and possibly lobotomised for their own good. Of course, the chances are that they are practicing fainting couch tactics, pretending to be overwhelmed by emotions they are incapable of experiencing. In which case, we should view these arrests exactly as we did those done under equally false pretences in the USSR. The claim by Leftists that jokes cause them physical harm is clearly insane, but since the lunatics now control most Western governments, they have to be taken seriously as a credible danger. Every Leftist hate you, hates your freedom, hates your ability to even think a thought they have not dictated to you, and the only thing that holds them back from bloodshed and total victory is the threat of violence. Only in America is the right to self-defence acknowledged by the State. Everywhere else, Leftism is on the march, pushing brutal crackdowns on individuality and freedom in every nation they infect. Some claim war is inevitable, as the broader population finally becomes aware of the police state they are building around us. Is Leftism compatible with democratic civilisations? Is it even compatible with the survival of humanity? Time will tell.
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secretmellowblog · 10 months
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I love how Les Mis (the original novel) is so fundamentally hopeful about the power of rebellion and activism. So many adaptations/retellings of Les Mis imply its message is kinda shallow and defeatist— something about how rebellion never changes anything/always puts you back right where you began, so it’s wiser to never stand against the government. But that’s not the novel at all.
The original novel, which Hugo wrote as a barely-veiled call to action against the government of Napoleon III, is so convinced of the value of resistance against tyranny. The message is not that resistance is doomed to fail— it is that resistance to an unjust government is imperative, and it will be a moral victory even if the resistance is crushed.
The June rebellion in Les mis May have been repressed, and it may have failed in its goal of overthrowing the monarchy— but later rebellions did eventually succeed. France doesn’t have a monarchy anymore. A democracy is now in place, the way the rebels of 1832 would’ve wanted. There’s an undercurrent of hope throughout Les Mis— it’s not a story about how rebellion/resistance is futile, it’s a story about how it’s necessary, and about how positive social change is not only possible but also inevitable.
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turquoisemagpie · 1 year
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With all the shit JKR has risen about feminism and what it means to be a woman, I’m always reminded of a metaphor I was taught by the amazing feminist philosophy lecturer back in university. This was back in 2017 (quoted from lecture notes I saved) way before terfs started getting traction, but it rings true today more than ever. 
“In feminism philosophies there are three types of philosopher: the individualist, the radical, and the socialist. 
Here’s a metaphor for how they work, called ‘The Wall, The Lion, the Sheep’. 
The wall represents society, particularly capitalist patriarchal society. The lion represents men, the sheep represents women. 
The wall cages both the lion and the sheep, which makes the lion angry because he wants to be free, but with no one else to attack, he attacks the sheep, the sheep dealing with both the caging of the wall and the force of the lion. 
The individualist feminist sees that the issue is the sheep and suggests “It’s the sheep’s fault for getting in the way of the lion” most them saying “That’s just nature/life!” or at ‘best’ suggesting “Move the sheep out of the way”. That may work in the short term, but the lion is still there, and he can move more freely; he will just attack the sheep again. The individual feminist says that any women suffering the abuse of men or the patriarchy should make their way out on their own, doing minimal effort to help, even blaming the woman for ‘doing this to herself’, falling into the easy solution of solving a problem by victim blaming. 
The radical feminist sees that the issue is the lion and suggests “Declaw the lion and take out his teeth.” That may stop the sheep being harmed in the short and long term, but now the lion is suffering. Radical feminists say that men are the issue and seek their punishment, “an eye for an eye”, not realising that they are ‘othering’ men in the same way women have been ‘othered’. Radical feminists see anything related to men as evil; they don’t see a trans woman as a woman, only as a lion in sheep’s clothing, nor do they see a trans man as a man, only as a misled sheep. They overlook the truth that not all men hate women; lions don’t eat everything that crosses their path. 
The socialist feminist sees that the problem is the wall and suggests “Break the wall down.” The lion is free and runs away to be free, as does the sheep. The problem is solved for both the sheep and the lion. A socialist feminist recognises that the harshest societies have moulded us to be the oppressed ways we all are, and the most effective way to help women is to help everyone; tear it up from the roots. With the oppressive system broken, not only will women have more freedom from patriarchal tyranny, but men will be freed from the toxic masculinity that comes with those systems. Everyone is happy. To be a true feminist is working to destroy an oppressive system to truly help women and all those who are othered by capitalist patriarchy, and anything that allows men to escape the enforced repression of the patriarchy is a great bonus. 
The biggest issue that holds back true feminists is this: walls are harder to break when they keep getting rebuilt by the ones who are so stubborn that the problem is the lion or the sheep. To them, using the oppressive forces of a closed wall gets them what they want, which is to be right, rather than to actually solve the problem.”
JKR is now using the transphobic tory party, currently in charge of the UK government, so further restrict trans voices; a radical feminist that seeks to use the bricks of this current Wall to make sure she is heard, oblivious and probably careless to the fact she’s deafening the voices of other feminists who will now probably feel ashamed to say they’re feminists... 
Feminism is not just helping women, it’s helping those marginalised, those oppressed for who they are, those othered by a system that wishes to box the un-boxable. Feminism is just the name of another movement to help as many people as possible. 
I am non-binary, and I’m a feminist, and the opinion of one close-minded author isn’t going to change that. 
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dandelion-bride · 2 months
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Headcanon chat: so, pursuant to a previous post regarding how difficult it would be to redeem Gortash from Bane, I wanted to explore what that might look like. What does a Banite Crisis of Faith look like? What does Bane give Gortash?
Security. Bane has Rules and Gortash can Follow Them. Similar to Raphael, there is a strict hierarchy to follow. There is Hierarchy, Consistency, Order. The world is drawn in a simple black and white, and as long as he is ruthless enough to ink those black lines, he is safe.
The Ability to Support his Partner. The Dark Urge has no choice in their path - they kill by their own will, or they become a mindless feral creature, killing and spawning. Bane gives the power for Gortash to enable the Dark Urge to succeed in their 'sacrifice the world' quest.
The Only Choice. No one has saved this boy, no one has cracked the shell and been able to hold a hand out to save the man. All he knows is power. His one equal connection is just as damned as he is. He is the Chosen of Bane, the Lord of Tyranny, the God of Darkness. He can see no other path.
If the Dark Urge is dead, we don't have to deal with #2, but we also lose the one equal connection Gortash has ever forged, and now we need to recast one, possibly while dealing with repressed grief. On the other hand, if the Dark Urge rejects Bhaal, #2 is no longer an issue.
For #1, there are plenty of Lawful deities. I saw someone (feel free to chime in!) who talked an AU about little Enver being sent off to the House of Wonders as an apprentice for the Gondians. He would have thrived there. After his fuckery at the Foundry and Iron Throne? Ehhh not so much.
But you need to find a lawful deity who would accept him now. Someone who could look past the past, who could agree to take in the former Banite, protect and support him, as he turns his face from a dark past towards the dawn of a bright future. Someone whose statues show him stepping on a skull, to show he can conquer Death.
Look, all I'm saying is that "I shall let all who dwell in dark feel your holy dawn, Morninglord. Hear my prayer." sounds like it could be rewritten into a very appropriate Paladin oath. Especially if the Dead Three are on their last legs at the end of the game and potentially killable by mortals.
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ohsalome · 1 year
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Again and again and again I see (mostly) westerners accusing Ukraine of "opressing russian-speaking minority" by our language law (without reading the language law itself, obviously). It really looks like people have some kind of pavlovian reflex to the word "minority", immediately jumping to the assumption that minority = opressed by the majority. But a minority by numbers does not automatically mean minority by power. Billionaires, too, make up a minority of population, does that mean that they are opressed by the majority class? Are gaelige speakers in Ireland priveleged in comparison to the English? Are Elon Musk's white emerald mine owning family opressed by the majority black African population?
For the 1000th time, the relationship between Ukraine and russia is that between colonised and coloniser. It is russian identity, russian language, russian culture, russian world that has been privileged on the territory of ukraine for at least last 400 years. It is ukrainian language, ukrainian culture, ukrainian identity that people have been repressed and killed for.
russian propaganda takes this assumption westerners have about how the world fuctions (minority=oppressed) and uses it to twist the reality. To make you believe that Ukrainians somehow "deserve" to be genocided. To make you believe that it's the best course of action for the West to abandon Ukraine to be raped and plundered by russia. But we can call it "peace", because russians won't allow western journalists to report on it, and we all know that if the west doesn't talk about something, it means it doesn't exist :))))
Here are statistics about the "opression of russian language" from 2012 - during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovich, russian puppet and a literal mafioso [source]:
More than 60% of the total circulation of newspapers, 83% of magazines, and about 87% of books (most of which are imported from Russia) are published in Russian in Ukraine.
In October 2012, only 28% of the prime time on the top 8 TV channels was devoted to Ukrainian-language programs, 44% to Russian-language programs and 28% to bilingual programs.
On the 6 top-rated radio stations, songs in Ukrainian account for only 3.4% of the total number of songs in prime time (last year - 4.6%). At the same time, songs in Russian account for 60% of the total number of songs.
Out of 290 restaurants in 29 cities, only 50% of them have signs in Ukrainian, 46% have menus in Ukrainian, and only 36% have employees who answer Ukrainian to Ukrainian-speaking customers (in another 11%, employees switched to Ukrainian during the conversation).
The "oppression of russian speakers in Ukraine" is nothing but the tyranny of russian chauvinism and imperialism losing its footing. Y'all had no trouble understanding how white ethnonationalists complaining about "the great replacement" is nothing but fear of losing the privilege. Y'all had no trouble understanding that "white cis male is the most opressed person" is a moral panic not grounded in the real power structure of the western society. But in this question, you've decided to ally with the opressor.
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citadelofmythoughts · 5 months
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Bumblebee, in addition to being a major LGBT couple, is also thematically relevant to RWBY primarily because they are one of the many romantic pairings that directly parallel the main story between Ozpin and Salem's failed relationship.
A big reason why Ozpin and Salem's relationship fell apart was because of their failure to communicate with each other. Ozpin was too dogmatically stuck in the idea that he needed to redeem humanity to the gods, and that they needed to grovel before them for forgiveness. He ended up leading Salem around without telling her about this, despite the fact that Salem absolutely DESPISES the gods for harming her and her husband for extremely petty reasons, and she is not unjustified to despise them. And once that lack of trust and communication was revealed, their inability to properly deal with it led to the relationship collapsing, and all of the misery that followed. This doesn't absolve Salem of her own terrible mistakes and her acts of villainy since then, but it's plainly evident just how damaging the secrecy and half-truths ultimately turned out to be.
It's also relevant when you draw additional parallels to other pairings in the story, like Renora, Arkos, Black Sun, and Adam/Blake.
Arkos fell apart before it could truly begin because Jaune didn't understand Pyrrha's emotional turmoil, and held her on a pedestal subconsciously when she needed understanding the most. As such, his story ended up closely paralleling Salem and Ozpin's tragedy the first time they were separated; a powerful but martyr-complexed warrior saving a helpless person, only for tragedy to tear them apart, and the helpless person making rash grief-stricken decisions in the aftermath that caused immense pain for themselves and others.
Renora was an outwardly good relationship, but it steadily became clear how codependent they really were, how much Ren and Nora had not really dealt with their personal issues and in the former's case, was just outright repressing his darker feelings until his trauma was pressed. Once they hit an ideological impasse, with Ren favoring security and safety due to his own insecurities and his own strongly implied feelings about what happened to his family and village, vs Nora favoring aiding the helpless and marginalized in the face of tyranny due to her abandonment, it only further highlighted how they weren't communicating enough. They had gotten too comfortable with not really challenging each other's beliefs and figuring out their identities outside of just being Renora, something that they've only begun to do after properly talking things over.
Blake and Sun suffered from communication problems, as it was evident that the latter didn't really understand the former and just didn't get her very well with her outside of a shallow crush, but it was more driven by well-meaning ignorance rather than any genuine malice. And once the air was cleared, Sun also ended up showing a relationship that might not have worked out, but at the least was still amicable because they communicated on what the problem was.
Blake and Adam's relationship by contrast was purely toxic, with the latter being all take and no give. Everyone else's desires were subservient to his own, and for all of his outward acts of appearing benevolent, became cruel and selfish the minute anyone challenged him. A purely lopsided relationship that was never going to end well because he had no interest in communication, only subjugation and the expectation of absolute obedience to him. Which also frankly puts him in direct parallel to the God of Light and Darkness' relationship; the latter being stuck in unfair and arbitrary rules made by the former to the point of angrily lashing out when Dark finally had enough (and unfortunately also causing immense harm from the fallout), and said GoL revealing his (albeit more subtle) cruelty when someone challenged him, ala Salem.
Heck, even Team STRQ have this with Tai, Summer, and Raven. The latter two disappearing without any communication as to why (or perhaps in the latter's case, her possibly trying to in regards to her suspicions of Ozpin but being dismissed or ignored) absolutely broke Tai, and the fallout of that hurt Yang and Ruby's ability to value themselves and communicate their own pain, leading to this tension in their familial ties.
Bumblebee in many ways directly parallels each of the above, but the key difference was that when push came to shove, Yang and Blake were willing to try to communicate, to TRY to fix what had happened and actually come to a mutual understanding. And in doing so, they were able to find love with each other and truly begin to heal the wounds that those mistakes made.
I don't have a great deal to add here. Excellent analysis and further proof that Blake & Yang have the healthiest romantic relationship in the show.
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mariacallous · 27 days
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“How much evil we must do in order to do good,” the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in 1946. “This, I think, is a very succinct statement of the human situation.” Niebuhr was writing after one global war had forced the victors to do great evil to prevent the incalculably greater evil of a world ruled by its most aggressive regimes. He was witnessing the onset of another global conflict in which the United States would periodically transgress its own values in order to defend them. But the fundamental question Niebuhr raised—how liberal states can reconcile worthy ends with the unsavory means needed to attain them—is timeless. It is among the most vexing dilemmas facing the United States today.
U.S. President Joe Biden took office pledging to wage a fateful contest between democracy and autocracy. After Russia invaded Ukraine, he summoned like-minded nations to a struggle “between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.” Biden’s team has indeed made big moves in its contest with China and Russia, strengthening solidarity among advanced democracies that want to protect freedom by keeping powerful tyrannies in check. But even before the war between Hamas and Israel presented its own thicket of problems, an administration that has emphasized the ideological nature of great-power rivalry was finding itself ensnared by a morally ambiguous world.
In Asia, Biden has bent over backward to woo a backsliding India, a communist Vietnam, and other not so liberal states. In Europe, wartime exigencies have muted concerns about creeping authoritarianism on NATO’s eastern and southern fronts. In the Middle East, Biden has concluded that Arab dictators are not pariahs but vital partners. Defending a threatened order involves reviving the free-world community. It also, apparently, entails buttressing an arc of imperfect democracies and outright autocracies across much of the globe.
Biden’s conflicted strategy reflects the realities of contemporary coalition building: when it comes to countering China and Russia, democratic alliances go only so far. Biden’s approach also reflects a deeper, more enduring tension. American interests are inextricably tied to American values: the United States typically enters into great-power competition because it fears mighty autocracies will otherwise make the world unsafe for democracy. But an age of conflict invariably becomes, to some degree, an age of amorality because the only way to protect a world fit for freedom is to court impure partners and engage in impure acts.
Expect more of this. If the stakes of today’s rivalries are as high as Biden claims, Washington will engage in some breathtakingly cynical behavior to keep its foes contained. Yet an ethos of pure expediency is fraught with dangers, from domestic disillusion to the loss of the moral asymmetry that has long amplified U.S. influence in global affairs. Strategy, for a liberal superpower, is the art of balancing power without subverting democratic purpose. The United States is about to rediscover just how hard that can be.
A DIRTY GAME
Biden has consistently been right about one thing: clashes between great powers are clashes of ideas and interests alike. In the seventeenth century, the Thirty Years’ War was fueled by doctrinal differences no less than by the struggle for European primacy. In the late eighteenth century, the politics of revolutionary France upheaved the geopolitics of the entire continent. World War II was a collision of rival political traditions—democracy and totalitarianism—as well as rival alliances. “This was no accidental war,” German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop declared in 1940, “but a question of the determination of one system to destroy the other.” When great powers fight, they do so not just over land and glory. They fight over which ideas, which values, will chart humanity’s course.
In this sense, U.S. competition with China and Russia is the latest round in a long struggle over whether the world will be shaped by liberal democracies or their autocratic enemies. In World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, autocracies in Eurasia sought global primacy by achieving preeminence within that central landmass. Three times, the United States intervened, not just to ensure its security but also to preserve a balance of power that permitted the survival and expansion of liberalism—to “make the world safe for democracy,” in U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s words. President Franklin Roosevelt made a similar point in 1939, saying, “There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend, not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments, and their very civilization are founded.” Yet as Roosevelt understood, balancing power is a dirty game.
Western democracies prevailed in World War II only by helping an awful tyrant, Joseph Stalin, crush an even more awful foe, Adolf Hitler. They used tactics, such as fire-bombing and atomic-bombing enemy cities, that would have been abhorrent in less desperate times. The United States then waged the Cold War out of conviction, as President Harry Truman declared, that it was a conflict “between alternative ways of life”; the closest U.S. allies were fellow democracies that made up the Western world. Yet holding the line in a high-stakes struggle also involved some deeply questionable, even undemocratic, acts.
In a Third World convulsed by instability, the United States employed right-wing tyrants as proxies; it suppressed communist influence through coups, covert and overt interventions, and counterinsurgencies with staggering death tolls. To deter aggression along a global perimeter, the Pentagon relied on the threat of using nuclear weapons so destructive that their actual employment could serve no constructive end. To close the ring around the Soviet Union, Washington eventually partnered with another homicidal communist, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong. And to ease the politics of containment, U.S. officials sometimes exaggerated the Soviet threat or simply deceived the American people about policies carried out in their name.
Strategy involves setting priorities, and U.S. officials believed that lesser evils were needed to avoid greater ones, such as communism running riot in vital regions or democracies failing to find their strength and purpose before it was too late. The eventual payoff from the U.S. victory in the Cold War—a world safer from autocratic predation, and safer for human freedom, than ever before—suggests that they were, on balance, correct. Along the way, the fact that Washington was pursuing such a worthy objective, against such an unworthy opponent, provided a certain comfort with the conflict’s ethical ambiguities. As NSC-68, the influential strategy document Truman approved in 1950, put it (quoting Alexander Hamilton), “The means to be employed must be proportioned to the extent of the mischief.” When the West was facing a totalitarian enemy determined to remake humanity in its image, some pretty ugly means could, apparently, be justified.
That comfort wasn’t infinite, however, and the Cold War saw fierce fights over whether the United States was getting its priorities right. In the 1950s, hawks took Washington to task for not doing enough to roll back communism in Eastern Europe, with the Republican Party platform of 1952 deriding containment as “negative, futile, and immoral.” In the 1960s and 1970s, an avalanche of amorality—a bloody and misbegotten war in Vietnam, support for a coterie of nasty dictators, revelations of CIA assassination plots—convinced many liberal critics that the United States was betraying the values it claimed to defend. Meanwhile, the pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union, a strategy that deemphasized ideological confrontation in search of diplomatic stability, led some conservatives to allege that Washington was abandoning the moral high ground. Throughout the 1970s and after, these debates whipsawed U.S. policy. Even in this most Manichean of contests, relating strategy to morality was a continual challenge.
In fact, Cold War misdeeds gave rise to a complex of legal and administrative constraints—from prohibitions on political assassination to requirements to notify congressional committees about covert action—that mostly remain in place today. Since the Cold War, these restrictions have been complemented by curbs on aid to coup makers who topple elected governments and to military units that engage in gross violations of human rights. Americans clearly regretted some measures they had used to win the Cold War. The question is whether they can do without them as global rivalry heats up again.
IDEAS MATTER
Threats from autocratic enemies heighten ideological impulses in U.S. policy by underscoring the clash of ideas that often drives global tensions. Since taking office, Biden has defined the threat from U.S. rivals, particularly China, in starkly ideological terms.
The world has reached an “inflection point,” Biden has repeatedly declared. In March 2021, he suggested that future historians would be studying “the issue of who succeeded: autocracy or democracy.” At root, Biden has argued, U.S.-Chinese competition is a test of which model can better meet the demands of the modern era. And if China becomes the world’s preeminent power, U.S. officials fear, it will entrench autocracy in friendly countries while coercing democratic governments in hostile ones. Just witness how Beijing has used economic leverage to punish criticism of its policies by democratic societies from Australia to Norway. In making the system safe for illiberalism, a dominant China would make it unsafe for liberalism in places near and far.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reinforced Biden’s thesis. It offered a case study in autocratic aggression and atrocity and a warning that a world led by illiberal states would be lethally violent, not least for vulnerable democracies nearby. Coming weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin had sealed a “no limits” strategic partnership, the Ukraine invasion also raised the specter of a coordinated autocratic assault on the liberal international order. Ukraine, Biden explained, was the central front in a “larger fight for . . . essential democratic principles.” So the United States would rally the free world against “democracy’s mortal foes.”
The shock of the Ukraine war, combined with the steadying hand of U.S. leadership, produced an expanded transatlantic union of democracies. Sweden and Finland sought membership in NATO; the West supported Ukraine and inflicted heavy costs on Russia. The Biden administration also sought to confine China by weaving a web of democratic ties around the country. It has upgraded bilateral alliances with the likes of Japan and Australia. It has improved the Quad (the security and diplomatic dialogue with Australia, India, and Japan) and established AUKUS (a military partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom). And it has repurposed existing multilateral bodies, such as the G-7, to meet the peril from Beijing. There are even whispers of a “three plus one” coalition—Australia, Japan, the United States, plus Taiwan—that would cooperate to defend that frontline democracy from Chinese assault.
These ties transcend regional boundaries. Ukraine is getting aid from Asian democracies, such as South Korea, that understand that their security will suffer if the liberal order is fractured. Democracies from multiple continents have come together to confront China’s economic coercion, counter its military buildup, and constrict its access to high-end semiconductors. The principal problem for the United States is a loose alliance of revisionist powers pushing outward from the core of Eurasia. Biden’s answer is a cohering global coalition of democracies, pushing back from around the margins.
Today, those advanced democracies are more unified than at any time in decades. In this respect, Biden has aligned the essential goal of U.S. strategy, defending an imperiled liberal order, with the methods and partners used to pursue it. Yet across Eurasia’s three key regions, the messier realities of rivalry are raising Niebuhr’s question anew.
CONTROVERSIAL FRIENDS
Consider the situation in Europe. NATO is mostly an alliance of democracies. But holding that pact together during the Ukraine war has required Biden to downplay the illiberal tendencies of a Polish government that—until its electoral defeat in October—was systematically eroding checks and balances. Securing its northern flank, by welcoming Finland and Sweden, has involved diplomatic horse-trading with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who, in addition to frequently undercutting U.S. interests, has been steering his country toward autocratic rule.
In Asia, the administration spent much of 2021 and 2022 carefully preserving U.S. ties to the Philippines, at the time led by Rodrigo Duterte, a man whose drug war had killed thousands. Biden has assiduously courted India as a bulwark against China, even though the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has curbed speech, harassed opposition leaders, fanned religious grievances, and allegedly killed dissidents abroad. And after visiting New Delhi in September 2023, Biden traveled to Hanoi to sign a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Vietnam’s one-party regime. Once again, the United States is using some communists to contain others.
Then there is the Middle East, where Biden’s “free world” coalition is quite the motley crew. In 2020, Biden threatened to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. By 2023, his administration—panicked by Chinese inroads and rising gas prices—was trying to make that country Washington’s newest treaty ally instead. That initiative, moreover, was part of a concept, inherited from the Trump administration, in which regional stability would rest on rapprochement between Arab autocracies and an Israeli government with its own illiberal tendencies, while Palestinian aspirations were mostly pushed to the side. Not surprisingly, then, human rights and political freedoms receded in relations with countries from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates. Biden also did little to halt the strangulation of democracy in Tunisia—just as he had decided, effectively, to abandon Afghanistan’s endangered democracy in 2021.
Indeed, if 2022 was a year of soaring rhetoric, 2023 was a year of awkward accommodation. References to the “battle between democracy and autocracy” became scarcer in Biden’s speeches, as the administration made big plays that defied that description of the world. Key human rights–related positions at the White House and the State Department sat vacant. The administration rolled back sanctions on Venezuela—an initiative described publicly as a bid to secure freer and fairer elections, but one that was mostly an effort to get an oppressive regime to stop exporting refugees and start exporting more oil. And when a junta toppled the elected government of Niger, U.S. officials waited for more than two months to call the coup a coup, for fear of triggering the cutoff of U.S. aid and thereby pushing the new regime into Moscow’s arms. Such compromises have always been part of foreign policy. But today, they testify to key dynamics U.S. officials must confront.
THE DECISIVE DECADE
First is the cruel math of Eurasian geopolitics. Advanced democracies possess a preponderance of power globally, but in every critical region, holding the frontline requires a more eclectic ensemble.
Poland has had its domestic problems; it is also the logistical linchpin of the coalition backing Ukraine. Turkey is politically illiberal and, often, unhelpful; nonetheless, it holds the intersection of two continents and two seas. In South and Southeast Asia, the primary barrier to Chinese hegemony is a line of less-than-ideal partners running from India to Indonesia. In the Middle East, a picky superpower will be a lonely superpower. Democratic solidarity is great, but geography is stubborn. Across Eurasia, Washington needs illiberal friends to confine its illiberal foes.
The ideological battlefield has also shifted in adverse ways. During the Cold War, anticommunism served as ideological glue between a democratic superpower and its autocratic allies, because the latter knew they were finished if the Soviet Union ever triumphed. Now, however, U.S. enemies feature a form of autocracy less existentially threatening to other nondemocracies: strongmen in the Persian Gulf, or in Hungary and Turkey, arguably have more in common with Xi and Putin than they do with Biden. The gap between “good” and “bad” authoritarians is narrower than it once was—which makes the United States work harder, and pay more, to keep illiberal partners imperfectly onside.
Desperate times also call for morally dexterous measures. When Washington faced no serious strategic challengers after the Cold War, it paid a smaller penalty for foregrounding its values. As the margin of safety shrinks, the tradeoffs between power and principle grow. Right now, war—or the threat of it—menaces East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Biden says the 2020s will be the “decisive decade” for the world. As Winston Churchill quipped in 1941, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” When threats are dire, democracies will do what it takes to rally coalitions and keep the enemy from breaking through. Thus, a central irony of Washington’s approach to competition is that the same challenges that activate its ideological energy make it harder to keep U.S. diplomacy pure.
So far, the moral compromises of U.S. policy today are modest compared with those of World War II or the Cold War, in part because the constraints on unsavory methods are stronger than they were when Hitler and Stalin stalked the earth. But rules and norms can change as a country’s circumstances do. So Biden and his successors may soon face a daunting reality: high-stakes rivalries carry countries, and leaders, to places they never sought to go.
When the Cold War started, few officials imagined that Washington would conduct covert interventions from Afghanistan to Angola. Just three years ago, hardly anyone predicted that the United States would soon fight a proxy war meant to bleed Putin’s army to death in Ukraine. As the present competitions intensify, the tactics used to wage them could become more extreme.
Washington could find itself covertly trying to tip the balance in elections in some crucial swing state if the alternative is seeing that country shift hard toward Moscow or Beijing. It could use coercion to keep Latin America’s military facilities and other critical infrastructure out of Chinese hands. And if the United States is already ambivalent about acknowledging coups in out-of-the-way countries, perhaps it would excuse far greater atrocities committed by a more important partner in a more important place.
Those who doubt that Washington will resort to dirty tricks have short memories and limited imaginations. If today’s competitions will truly shape the fate of humanity, why wouldn’t a vigilant superpower do almost anything to come out on top?
DON’T LOSE YOURSELF
There’s no reason to be unduly embarrassed about this. A country that lacks the self-confidence to defend its interests will lack the power to achieve any great purpose in global affairs. Put differently, the damage the United States does to its values by engaging dubious allies, and engaging in dubious behavior, is surely less than the damage that would be done if a hyperaggressive Russia or neototalitarian China spread its influence across Eurasia and beyond. As during the Cold War, the United States can eventually repay the moral debts it incurs in a lengthy struggle—if it successfully sustains a system in which democracy thrives because its fiercest enemies are suppressed.
It would be dangerous to adopt a pure end-justifies-the-means mentality, however, because there is always a point at which foul means corrupt fair ends. Even short of that, serial amorality will prove politically corrosive: a country whose population has rallied to defend its values as well as its interests will not forever support a strategy that seems to cast those values aside. And ultimately, the greatest flaw of such a strategy is that it forfeits a potent U.S. advantage.
During World War II, as the historian Richard Overy has argued, the Allied cause was widely seen to be more just and humane than the Axis cause, which is one reason the former alliance attracted so many more countries than the latter. In the Cold War, the sense that the United States stood, however imperfectly, for fundamental rights and liberties the Kremlin suppressed helped Washington appeal to other democratic societies—and even to dissidents within the Soviet bloc. The tactics of great-power competition must not obscure the central issue of that competition. If the world comes to see today’s rivalries as slugfests devoid of larger moral meaning, the United States will lose the asymmetry of legitimacy that has served it well.
This is not some hypothetical dilemma. Since October 2023, Biden has rightly framed the Israel-Hamas war as a struggle between a flawed democracy and a tyrannical enemy seeking its destruction. There is strong justification, moral and strategic, for backing a U.S. ally against a vicious proxy of a U.S. enemy, Iran. Moreover, there is no serious ethical comparison between a terrorist group that rapes, tortures, kidnaps, and kills civilians and a country that mostly tries, within the limits war imposes, to protect them.
Yet rightly or wrongly, large swaths of the global South view the war as a testament to American double standards: opposing occupation and appropriation of foreign territory by Russia but not by Israel, valuing the lives and liberties of some victims more than those of others. Russian and Chinese propagandists are amplifying these messages to drive a wedge between Washington and the developing world. This is why the Biden administration has tried, and sometimes struggled, to balance support for Israel with efforts to mitigate the harm the conflict brings—and why the war may presage renewed U.S. focus on the peace process with the Palestinians, as unpromising as that currently seems. The lesson here is that the merits of an issue may be disputed, but for a superpower that wears its values on its sleeve, the costs of perceivedhypocrisy are very real.
RULES FOR RIVALRY
Succeeding in this round of rivalry will thus require calibrating the moral compromises inherent in foreign policy by finding an ethos that is sufficiently ruthless and realistic at the same time. Although there is no precise formula for this—the appropriateness of any action depends on its context—some guiding principles can help.
First, morality is a compass, not a straitjacket. For political sustainability and strategic self-interest, American statecraft should point toward a world consistent with its values. But the United States cannot paralyze itself by trying to fully embody those values in every tactical decision. Nor—even at a moment when its own democracy faces internal threats—should it insist on purifying itself at home before exerting constructive influence abroad. If it does so, the system will be shaped by regimes that are more ruthless—and less shackled by their own imperfections.
The United States should also avoid the fallacy of the false alternative. It must evaluate choices, and partners, against the plausible possibilities, not against the utopian ideal. The realistic alternative to maintaining ties to a military regime in Africa may be watching as murderous Russian mercenaries fill the void. The realistic alternative to engaging Modi’s India may be seeing South Asia fall further under the shadow of a China that assiduously exports illiberalism. Similarly, proximity to a Saudi regime that carves up its critics is deeply uncomfortable. But the realistic alternative to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is probably a regime that remains quite repressive—and is far less committed to empowering women, curbing religious zealots, and otherwise making the country a more open, tolerant place. In a world of lousy options, the crucial question is often: Lousy compared with what?
Another guiding principle: good things don’t all come at once. Cold War policymakers sometimes justified coup making and support for repressive regimes on grounds that preventing Third World countries from going communist then preserved the possibility that they might go democratic later. That logic was suspiciously convenient—and, in many cases, correct. Countries in Latin America and other developing regions did eventually experience political openings as they reached higher levels of development, and democratic values radiated outward from the West.
Today, unseemly bargains can sometimes lead to better outcomes. By not breaking the U.S.-Philippine alliance during Duterte’s drug war, Washington sustained the relationship until a more cooperative, less draconian government emerged. By staying close to a Polish government with some worrying tendencies, the United States bought time until, late last year, that country’s voters elected a coalition promising to strengthen its democratic institutions. The same argument could be made for staying engaged with other democracies where autocratic tendencies are pronounced but electoral mechanisms remain intact—Hungary, India, and Turkey, to name a few. More broadly, liberalism is most likely to flourish in a system led by a democracy. So simply forestalling the ascent of powerful autocracies may eventually help democratic values spread into once inhospitable places.
Similarly, the United States should remember that taking the broad view is as vital as taking the long view. Support for democracy and human rights is not an all-or-nothing proposition. As Biden’s statecraft has shown, transactional deals with dictators can complement a strategy that stresses democratic cooperation at its core. Honoring American values, moreover, is more than a matter of hectoring repressive regimes. A foreign policy that raises international living standards through trade, addresses global problems such as food insecurity, and holds the line against great-power war serves the cause of human dignity very well. A strategy that emphasizes such efforts may actually be more appealing to countries, including developing democracies from Brazil to Indonesia, that resist democracy-versus-autocracy framing because they don’t want any part of a Manichean fight.
Of course, these principles can seem like a recipe for rationalization—a way of excusing the grossest behavior by claiming it serves a greater cause. Another important principle, then, revives Hamilton’s dictum that the means must be proportioned to the mischief. The greater the compromise, the greater the payoff it provides—or the damage it avoids—must be.
By this standard, the case for cooperation with an India or a Poland is clear-cut. These countries are troubled but mostly admirable democracies that play critical roles in raging competitions. Until the world contains only liberal democracies, Washington can hardly avoid seeking blemished friends.
The United States should, however, be more cautious about courting countries that regularly engage in the very practices it deems most corrosive to the liberal order: systematic torture or murder of their people, coercion of their neighbors, or export of repression across borders, to name a few. A Saudi Arabia, for instance, that periodically engages in some of these practices is a troublesome partner. A Saudi Arabia that flagrantly and consistently commits such acts risks destroying the moral and diplomatic basis of its relationship with the United States. American officials should be more hesitant still to distort or destabilize the politics of other countries, especially other democracies, for strategic gain. If Washington is going to get back into the coup business in Latin America or Southeast Asia, the bad outcomes to be prevented must be truly severe—a major, potentially lasting shift in a key regional balance of power, perhaps—to justify policies so manifestly in tension with the causes the United States claims to defend.
Mitigating the harm to those causes means heeding a further principle: marginal improvement matters. Washington will not convince leaders in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, or Vietnam to commit political suicide by abandoning their domestic model. But leverage works both ways in these relationships. Countries on the firing line need a superpower patron just as much as it needs them. U.S. officials can use that leverage to discourage extraterritorial repression, seek the release of political prisoners, make elections a bit freer and fairer, or otherwise obtain modest but meaningful changes. Doing so may be the price of keeping these relationships intact, by convincing proponents of human rights and democracy in Congress that the White House has not forgotten such issues altogether.
This relates to an additional principle: the United States must be scrupulously honest with itself. American officials need to recognize that illiberal allies will be selective or unreliable allies because their domestic models put them at odds with important norms of the liberal order—and because they tend to generate resentment that may eventually cause an explosion. In the same vein, the problem with laws that mandate aid cutoffs to coup plotters is that they encourage self-deception. In cases in which Washington fears the strategic fallout from a break in relations, U.S. officials are motivated to pretend that a coup has not occurred. The better approach, in line with reforms approved by Congress in December 2022, is a framework that allows presidents to waive such cutoffs on national security grounds—but forces them to acknowledge and justify that choice. The work of making moral tradeoffs in foreign policy begins with admitting those tradeoffs exist.
Some of these principles are in tension with others, which means their application in specific cases must always be a matter of judgment. But the issue of reconciling opposites relates to a final principle: soaring idealism and brutal realism can coexist. During the 1970s, moral debates ruptured the Cold War consensus. During the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan adequately repaired—but never fully restored—that consensus by combining flexibility of tactics with clarity of purpose.
Reagan supported awful dictators, murderous militaries, and thuggish “freedom fighters” in the Third World, sometimes through ploys—such as the Iran-contra scandal—that were dodgy or simply illegal. Yet he also backed democratic movements from Chile to South Korea; he paired rhetorical condemnations of the Kremlin with ringing affirmations of Western ideals. The takeaway is that rough measures may be more tolerable if they are part of a larger package that emphasizes, in word and deed, the values that must anchor the United States’ approach to the world. Some will see this as heightening the hypocrisy. In reality, it is the best way to preserve the balance—political, moral, and strategic—that a democratic superpower requires.
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popcaki · 1 year
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what do you think of the people that make up headcanons about ghost not being able to love and calling him "a broken man"? as a person with trauma this absolutely shatters me bc even if i repress my feelings,by the end of the day im still craving that type of human connection.they literally call him a psychopath/sociopath and going as far as to call him heartless...
Trigger warning: Discussion of trauma,
just a disclaimer to people seeing this, people can write whatever they want and we all have unique views on a character and so on,
but in my personal opinion, yeah I don’t understand why people make him into a psychopath and straight-up abusive. It’s true some people can become like this but it really puts trauma victims in a bad light. Not to mention people who have trouble expressing their emotions making people think you’re emotionless when in fact you are feeling a looot of different kinds of emotions. Lots of autistic people for example. I do think he has a bit of a twisted mind, he is a morally grey character and can be a bad person, but it is clear as day that he does care about his teammates and that Infinity Ward is showing more of his good sides,
examples of Ghost not being a emotionless/abusive/psychopath:
the ”No one fights alone” I mean do I need to say more?
him sounding actually sorta terrified when Graves betrays them and he calls out to Soap,
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does this look like a face of a emotionless guy?
in the original MW2 he literally screams ”NO” and is about to shoot shepard when they get betrayed. He sounds absolutely devastated when his team mate dies
Ghost going ”Why?” in a panicked way when Graves stated he cannot disarm the missile, there is clear stress and concern.
If I remember correctly Ghost has canonly anger issues, anger is an emotion lmao.
He literally makes dad jokes with soap and clearly thinks they are funny, the guy has a dry sense of humor.
He’s making sure to keep Soap talking and alive as best as he can in the Alone mission. Even if it’s all practical and needing a team mate alive for that reason I don’t think Ghost would want Soap dying in general.
If I remember correctly he literally holds his mothers skull smiling, seeking comfort, in a very disturbing and stressful moment for him
Him literally going ''that's for my mates!'' in multiplayer when you get the enemy team back
Distracting the creep of a terrorist from interacting with the child
He thinks war crimes is ''Tyranny, it won't stand.''
He clearly bottles things up and has multiple times shown he indeed has emotions. I think Ghost would want a normal life and connections, I truly believe that. He is just most likely terrified (another emotion) of forming them due to fear of betrayal or loved ones dying.
He is broken but not in the way of being an emotionless abusive psychopath, he really does need support and help, therapy, support from friends etc. It’s not something someone/another character can fix. He’s the one who needs to be comfortable enough to want to seek help in the first place.
I don’t think he’d take things out on people close to him or innocents either.
But yeah it puts trauma victims and people who express themsleves in a way that isnt the norm in a weird light, imo. I still find it weird with all the trauma erasing/ignoring for him too, you can still write about it and have em work things through and get the help the character needs. A character can still love and want human connection despite trauma.
I’m wondering if what’s going on is that people only see Ghost and not Simon Riley? he’s wearing a mask which hides most of his facial expressions, but if you look at his eyes he displays lots of emotions. As if the masking he’s put on figuratively and literally to try to push people away and think of him as something else is working on people in real life?
anyway I hope this answers your question!
edit: I just now properly read the comics (I skimmed through before because it was a bit tough to read), and this post including my post about his SA trauma still stands... He only hurts people who seem to deserve it, and he's feeling a bunch of emotions. I highly recommend reading the Ghost comics about his backstory, it's very triggering tho so be warned, contains all sorts of messed up shit. But this makes me even realise more how many fics and headcanons contain things that would trigger Simon massively and how many portray him as an abusive person, it's a bit unsettling to see. if you don't wanna go through with reading the comics I can list things that happened that will definitely be a trigger for him,
His dad was abusive, absolutely horrible. I don't think calling Simon ''Daddy'' would be something he enjoys.
Christmas times, his family got slaughtered on Christmas, I don't think you'll really move on from that.
He got SA both by women and men, and he feels terrible about it.
He was held captive for months, tortured (this includes SA and physical violence) and they tried to brainwash him, to change him.
Concerts.
He's not a terrible person, he's morally grey. He's gone through a lot of bad shit. He himself is the one who's going to need to want help or seek out things like human connection, Him trusting Soap, and the rest of the team is a step in that direction. I think he can and will open up more and hopefully get the help he needs, but it would take a long time of working on himself. No one can ''fix'' him but himself.
He isn't an emotionless abusive person, I don't understand where people get that from lmao. I mean look at him,
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witchofthesouls · 5 days
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I have the image of Six-Shot playing the Deceptacon equivalent of relationship councilor in self-defense. Only it does something to Tarn's broken and scrambled Seekerkin coding. And now the Phase Sixer(and the rest of High Comand) has to deal with Tarn's instinctive attempts to trine court him.
After a particularly charged and akward meeting, Megatron catches Starscream locking himself into a storage room to laugh and weep. He thought he was going to catch his SiC in mid-plot. Instead he finds Starscream clutching a shelving unit for suport. "He would have been an excellent Left Wing. Primus fragging blessed now he's courting a Trine leader." And Starscream's too lost in his hysterical laughter to explain.
Ahhh, I have the image of the Camien nurse and Sixshot stuck in the "he looks at me and I look at him" meme.
Sixshot has so many questions. He refuses to remain in Tarn's vicinity because he's constantly fighting his own beast-related deep-coding instincts trying to online his panels in response to Tarn's massive repression. (It's that strong.) Meanwhile, the nurse is trying and failing to lay low with Overlord casting a ghastly shadow over the poor thing. Either you're tucked within the Peaceful Tyranny or deep in the bowels of Hook's domain mixing up new materials.
Because Sixshot prefers something simple and effective...
He locks you and Tarn inside a medical supply closet and lets himself be taken by the medbay staff for some "issues."
Tarn's living a dream with your wells, you're discovering a new kink, and Sixshot is muttering darkly for you two to frag nasty and get it over it.
(That doesn't happen. What happens is a quiet, intimate session in that closet as Sixshot glares at it.)
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girlactionfigure · 26 days
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Did you know..
that Napoleon was a passionate Zionist more than sixty years before Herzl was born? He planned to proclaim a Jewish state on Passover 1799 but was defeated by the British before he had a chance to do so. The proclamation itself is so beautifully written that I'm going to post it here in its entirety: "Israelites, unique nation, whom, in thousands of years, lust of conquest and tyranny have been able to be deprived of their ancestral lands, but not of name and national existence! Attentive and impartial observers of the destinies of nations, even though not endowed with the gifts of seers like Isaiah and Joel, have long since also felt what these, with beautiful and uplifting faith, have foretold when they saw the approaching destruction of their kingdom and fatherland: And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. (Isaiah 35,10) Arise then, with gladness, ye exiled! A war unexampled In the annals of history, waged in self-defense by a nation whose hereditary lands were regarded by its enemies as plunder to be divided, arbitrarily and at their convenience, by a stroke of the pen of Cabinets, avenges its own shame and the shame of the remotest nations, long forgotten under the yoke of slavery, and also, the almost two-thousand-year-old ignominy put upon you; and, while time and circumstances would seem to be least favorable to a restatement of your claims or even to their expression ,and indeed to be compelling their complete abandonment, it offers to you at this very time, and contrary to all expectations, Israel's patrimony! The young army with which Providence has sent me hither, let by justice and accompanied by victory, has made Jerusalem my headquarters and will, within a few days, transfer them to Damascus, a proximity which is no longer terrifying to David’s city. Rightful heirs of Palestine! The great nation which does not trade in men and countries as did those which sold your ancestors unto all people (Joel 4:6) herewith calls on you not indeed to conquer your patrimony; nay, only to take over that which has been conquered and, with that nation's warranty and support, to remain master of it to maintain it against all comers. Arise! Show that the former overwhelming might of your oppressors has but repressed the courage of the descendants of those heroes who alliance of brothers would have done honor even to Sparta and Rome (Maccabees 12:15) but that the two thousand years of treatment as slaves have not succeeded in stifling it. Hasten! Now is the moment, which may not return for thousands of years, to claim the restoration of civic rights among the population of the universe which had been shamefully withheld from you for thousands of years, your political existence as a nation among the nations, and the unlimited natural right to worship Jehovah in accordance with your faith, publicly and most probably forever (Joel 4:20).
Uri Kurlianchik
@VerminusM
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cutebatart · 6 months
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NOW THE SKETCH IS COMPLETE. Next up: The Suit of Wands set!!
List of meanings below
Taken from multiple sources! Interpretations between them vary so I decided to place emphasis on mine. And yes, there is symbolism in the pics :3 Some are obvious. Some are not. If I ever get around to making them more detailed, then I'll add descriptions and clarifications.
You'll find that some meanings are contradictory (The Moon is an obvious one), so I tried to recall some moments that fit all meanings as best as possible. Due to that, bias is gonna become pretty apparent ajkdff
0. The Fool Upright: Innocence, New Beginnings, Free Spirit Reversed: Recklessness, Taken Advantage Of, Inconsideration
21. The World Upright: Fulfillment, Harmony, Completion Reversed: Incomplete, No Closure (reversed meanings are optional, but it's always good to trust your gut, not your wants or fears)
1. The Magician Upright: Willpower, Desire, Creation Reversed: Trickery, Illusions, Out of Touch (thursday :3)
2. The High Priestess Upright: Intuition, Unconscious, Inner Voice Reversed: Lack of Center, Loss of Inner Voice, Repressed Feelings
3. The Empress Upright: Motherhood, Nature, Creativity Reversed: Overbearing, Insecurity, Lack of Growth, Negligence
4. The Emperor Upright: Fatherhood, Authority, Structure Reversed: Tyranny, Rigidness, Coldness
5. The Hierophant Upright: Tradition, Conformity, Ethics, Morality Reversed: Rebellion, New Approaches, Subversiveness
6. The Lovers Upright: Partnerships, Duality, Choices, No Return Reversed: Imbalance, Indecision, Conflict
7. The Chariot Upright: Direction, Control, Willpower, Ambition Reversed: Reckless, Aggression, No Direction
8. Strength Upright: Bravery, Compassion, Inner Strength, Calm Reversed: Self doubt, insecurity, Forcefulness, Cowardice
9. The Hermit Upright: Self reflection, inner guidance, solitude Reversed: isolation, rejection, lost of way, madness
10. Wheel of Fortune Upright: Change, fate, fortune, decisive moments Reversed: misfortune, unbalanced control, delays
11. Justice Upright: Consequences, Fairness, Clarity, Objectivity Reversed: Dishonesty, Lack of Accountability, Unbalanced heart and mind
12. The Hanged Man Upright: New Perspectives, Release, Free Will Reversed: Stagnation, Material obsession, apathy, depression
13. Death Upright: End of Cycles, Transformation, Reaping, Sacrifice Reversed: Bad habits, Delay, Resistance, Unfulfillment, Denial
14. Temperance Upright: Patience, Purpose, Willpower, Harmony Reversed: Imbalance, hastiness, impatience, no moderation
15. The Devil Upright: Addiction, Fear, Powerlessness, Obsession Reversed: Freedom, Control, Reclaim of Power, Clarity
16. The Tower Upright: Destruction, Powerful Change, Fate, Chaos, Wake Up Call Reversed: Delay of the inevitable, resistance, Clinging to Control
17. The Star Upright: Hope, Rejuvenation, Faith, Trust, Healing Reversed: Distrust, insecurity, hopelessness, discouraged
18. The Moon Upright: Intuition, Complexity, Secrets, Illusion, Uncertainty Reversed: Fear, Deception, Misunderstanding, Clarity, Reveal
19. The Sun Upright: Joy, Success, Celebration, Vitality, Truth Reversed: Blocked happiness, unrealistic expectations, too much or not enough enthusiasm
20. Judgement Upright: Reflection, Reckoning, Awakening, Renewal Reversed: Self doubt, Failure to learn lessons, Self loathing
Thank you for reading!! I had a lot of fun making this set!
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reds1981 · 7 months
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‘When people see behaviours, modes of existence, ways of being that are subject to repression or hatred, the imperative becomes to make them identities, and then demand that such behaviours are normalised. Perhaps we can […] make them credible, legible to the norm, feasible, and therefore deserving of rights. It doesn’t work: white American male homosexuality has been swept up in the new moral panic along with all the other queers. Resisting normalisation isn’t an issue of posing as radical, of wanting to be edgy. It’s about acknowledging the fact that, as Davey Davis says “normalcy does not exist without the abnormal.”
Perhaps we are not normal. Perhaps normal is no good. Perhaps normal is the thing that made us abnormal to begin with. I hope to become better at welcoming my abnormality, and in the process accepting and loving the abnormality of others. It’s no easy task: as I wrote last year, when I discussed disgust, in our society “...abjection - to be the object of revulsion - is to be unworthy of love. This is not just something preached from the homophobe’s pulpit, either, but is a belief that underpins a society constructed, at root, on the reproduced image, the once printed and now pixelated image. We live under the tyranny of the image. Disgust is to be erased, sanitised, purified, ejected. Only the immediately and crudely attractive, only the beautiful, is capable of being loved.” We don’t need to normalise anything: we need to reckon with our love of the norm’
- Huw Lemmey, Normalyze This
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mmmmalo · 8 months
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just realized dave's obsession with/infantilization of the mayor is an extension of the obama/black presidents joke
More or less yeah. I'm not sure how evenly it's applied, but WV harboring repressed desires for tyranny despited his avowed love of DEMOCRACY, or his looking over the bloody remains of the people he tried to unite and chastising himself for ever thinking he could be a leader of men -- they hit a bit different when you project Obama's face onto WV, like we're undergoing a tragifarcical fantasy of Obama's projected presidency. Wouldn't it be funny if that's why the W/V symbols eventually get tied to the "Hope" aspect via the Amporas. Wouldn't it be funny if the entire concept of Can Town was a pseudopejorative riff on the slogan "Yes We Can".
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pinksparkl · 6 months
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Redacted Bois as the Major Arcana
Inspired by @sealriously-sealrious' idea of categorising the characters from The Wayhaven Chronicles into the Major Arcana. I'm ever in awe of your beautiful mind~~
Card descriptions from Labarinthos
Narrowed down to only Erik's characters, and only characters that have at least 2 audios by themself (i.e. not sharing with other speaking characters)
(I was gonna add a bunch of quotes but that was getting too time-consuming for a little fun post, so I'm happy with settling for this. Maybe when I get access to transcripts (and have more spoons...) I'll add on to this)
I'm still gonna do a post explaining some of these choices and how I found some bois' personalities/storylines so similar in surprising ways (at least for me)
0. Fool – Caelum
UPRIGHT: Innocence – New Beginnings – Free Spirit
REVERSED: Recklessness – Being Taken Advantage Of – Inconsideration
1. Magician – Regulus
UPRIGHT: Willpower – Desire – Creation – Manifestation
REVERSED: Trickery – Illusions – Out Of Touch
2. High Priestess – Avior
UPRIGHT: Intuitive – Unconscious – Inner Voice
REVERSED: Lack Of Centre- Lost Inner Voice – Repressed Feelings
3. Empress – Huxley
UPRIGHT: Motherhood – Fertility – Nature
REVERSED: Dependence – Smothering – Emptiness – Nosiness
4. Emperor – Vega
UPRIGHT: Authority – Structure – Control – Fatherhood
REVERSED: Tyranny – Rigidity – Coldness
5. Hierophant – Damien
UPRIGHT: Tradition – Conformity – Morality – Ethics
REVERSED: Rebellion – Subversiveness – New Approaches
6. Lovers – Geordi
UPRIGHT: Partnerships – Duality – Union
REVERSED: Loss Of Balance - One-Sidedness – Disharmony
7. Chariot – Guy
UPRIGHT: Direction – Control – Willpower
REVERSED: Lack Of Control – Lack Of Direction – Aggression
8. Strength – Milo
UPRIGHT: Inner Strength – Bravery – Compassion – Focus
REVERSED: Self Doubt – Weakness – Insecurity
9. Hermit – David
UPRIGHT: Contemplation – Search For Truth – Inner Guidance
REVERSED: Loneliness- Isolation – Lost Your Way
10. Wheel – Sam
UPRIGHT: Change – Cycles – Inevitable Fate
REVERSED: No Control – Clinging To Control – Bad Luck
11. Justice – James
UPRIGHT: Cause And Effect – Clarity – Truth
REVERSED: Dishonesty- Unaccountability – Unfairness
12. Hanged Man – Marcus
UPRIGHT: Sacrifice – Release – Martyrdom
REVERSED: Stalling – Needless Sacrifice – Fear Of Sacrifice
13. Death – Vincent
UPRIGHT: End Of Cycle – Beginnings – Change – Metamorphosis
REVERSED: Fear Of Change -Holding On – Stagnation – Decay
14. Temperance – Lasko
UPRIGHT: Middle Path – Patience – Finding Meaning
REVERSED: Extremes – Excess – Lack Of Balance
15. Devil – Ivan
UPRIGHT: Addiction – Materialism – Playfulness
REVERSED: Freedom – Release – Restoring Control
16. Tower – Blake
UPRIGHT: Sudden Upheaval – Broken Pride – Disaster
REVERSED: Disaster Avoided – Delayed Disaster – Fear Of Suffering
17. Star – Camelopardalis
UPRIGHT: Hope – Faith – Rejuvenation
REVERSED: Faithlessness – Discouragement – Insecurity
18. Moon – Elliott
UPRIGHT: Unconscious – Illusions – Intuition
REVERSED: Confusion – Fear – Misinterpretation
19. Sun – Asher
UPRIGHT: Joy – Success – Celebration – Positivity
REVERSED: Negativity – Depression – Sadness
20. Judgement – Gavin
UPRIGHT: Reflection – Reckoning – Awakening
REVERSED: Lack Of Self Awareness – Doubt – Self Loathing
21. World – Brachium
UPRIGHT: Fulfilment – Harmony – Completion
REVERSED: Incompletion – No Closure
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chirxlity · 5 months
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SATSUKI KIRYUIN
CW: KLK spoilers, mention of: compulsory heterosexuality, physical & emotional violence, s-xual trauma, CSA, SA, r-pe (for the sake of better background and context about this anime & about Satsuki story)
About her character and why she is stone femme headcanon for me.
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SATSUKI
This character does not have this cold, strong but sharp and fierce appearance as a random addition of traits just for the sake of fanservice. Her physical appearance and her personality traits are polished and calculated, yet she is pretty vulnerable on the inside and has a huge and rich inner world. She is acutely smart, a powerful strategist, a good and strong leader with the kindest heart I've ever seen in a character apparently so cold, stubborn or even despotic. But we have to keep in mind her upbringing and that she did what she had to do in order to survive because her main goal was to save the world and protect her closest friends. She wanted to free them as well as she wanted to free herself. But... from what?
SATSUKI'S PLOT
about her plans, goals and what Ryuko meant to her
Satsuki had such important goals: she wanted to free humanity (and herself) from the biofibers and the tyranny of her own mother, who was working with them to subjugate all the people on Earth, but she also craved to avenge her father and sister for what Ragyo did to them, so she fought for revenge but also for love. In the end, all that she wanted was to protect the ones she loved the most. 
Satsuki believed she could lead a revolution against Ragyo and the biofibers by using the power she had as her daughter against her. She took advantage of that power and the fear it inflicted on everyone to build a hierarchical system based on The Law of the Strongest and blind obedience (basically she militarised the school), and then she started to ‘colonise’ other schools to gather an army. She did this to trick her mother into thinking that she was working for her because her empire was much larger and stronger, so she had to be very cautious or else the chances to defeat Ragyo and the biofibers would be even lesser. All of these factors led her to repress her thoughts, feelings and emotions.
But when she met Ryuko, her plans started to change a bit: she saw a lot of potential in Ryuko and wanted her to get stronger and surpass her from the very beginning. She felt that Ryuko was something more, not just another soldier that could help her defeat Ragyo once and for all, and she wasn't wrong about it: later on they found out that Ryuko was that little sister Satsuki and Ragyo thought dead and that Isshin Matoi was actually Soichiro. He raised Ryuko and hid her from Ragyo with the hope that, one day, she would defeat her and the biofibers.
When these facts were revealed, Satsuki knew everything changed: she could trust someone of her own blood, she could finally have her dream family: one that she'd have built, one that she'd have chosen, one that would have truly and deeply loved her for who she is.
NONON
Now we have to talk about Nonon, Satuski’s best friend and (implicitly) lover, the only person who knew her best and could fully trust: this character can come across as an irritating or pedantic girl, but that’s just the surface; she acts tough the only way she knows just because she wants to show that she’s strong and the most important person in Satsuki’s life. I find it so heartwarming that even though the rest of the Elite Four are respectful and loyal towards Satsuki, it is Nonon that better understands her boundaries, and they treat each other as equals. Nonon is not just another subordinate to Satsuki (and never was). I think that because of this and her appearance (small, cute, etc) she wants her value as a fearsome opponent to be acknowledged, and that's why she acts so sassily and arrogantly (a thing which I personally love about her).
Nonon always finds the courage to fight and never gives up whenever Satsuki is near her; she feels the need to protect her, and she is always willing to carry all the weight if that means Satsuki will be safe and sound. 
She is the one who always took care of Satsuki’s deepest wounds but also her dreams, and is the only one who knows best the pain Satsuki had to endure in order to save everyone. Both of them shared their dreams and hopes with each other when they were kids, and since then Nonon took care of hers as well as Satsuki took care of Nonon’s. 
JUNKETSU
It is hard to talk about Junketsu and what it felt like his relationship with Satsuki and Ryuko to me right after talking about Nonon, but it has to be done if I want to illustrate why I headcanon Satsuki as a stone femme. 
Junketsu is, first and foremost, an allegory for compulsory heterosexuality. He was the symbol of the chastity/virginity forced upon the future bride and spouse, Satsuki (we have to remember it was Soichiro the one who told this to her, that Junketsu was going to be her wedding dress). So it was the underlying expectative of defeating Ragyo by sacrificing her will to Junketsu that her father put on her shoulders, one of the reasons that kept her from loving Nonon freely, openly and wholeheartedly, maybe the main one because Ragyo simply wanted the whole subjugation of her daughter, her complete devotion to the biofibers cause, while Junketsu was just a tool for both her father and mother that would force Satsuki to do the will of one or the other.
But even though Junketsu was just a tool, Satsuki had to wear it on all the time, which means that Satsuki was living constant situations of rape; after all, whenever Satsuki dressed Junketsu and tried to activate him, she endured a lot of pain and ended up very weakened from resisting Junketsu taking full control. And the thing here is, although Satsuki willingly wore Junketsu, that doesn’t mean she had another option. As I said, this suit was made to control her and Ragyo used it later to control Ryuko too. He, as the symbolic husband, tried to tie them up to heterosexuality at some point in their lives. 
So as we can see, Satsuki didn’t want to wear any biofiber cloth, she had to use them and let herself be used by them in order to save the whole world and set everyone free.
CONCLUSIONS
I think it is well pictured that Satsuki truly cares about people but felt she couldn’t trust them because of how the world was built by her mother and the biofibers, and also how Ragyo treated her with so much despite at the same time she emotionally and sexually abused her (it’s so obvious that Ragyo is a child abuser and a paedophile). But Ryuko was key to help her understand that things could be different, that she didn’t have to make everyone afraid of her in order to get what she wanted, that she actually could trust people. 
So for all that has been explained in this post is why I think Satsuki embodies so perfectly what it’s like to be a stone femme for me and not just for her appearance, but for her choices too. She had to carry so much weight on her shoulders but Nonon and the rest of her friends supported her without putting more pressure on her; they just took care of what Satsuki ordered them to do. 
I also find so relatable the way she copes with all the trauma she’s got from facing lots of sexual violence, and physical and emotional abuse, or the fact that a close relative (her own mother) made her believe she was a failure and a good for nothing, that she didn’t belong and would never be enough for her. She didn’t lose her kindness and her hopes and dreams even though she had to turn herself more tough, it just happened that she showed her soft side differently. She actually cares, she is the one who provides and she sacrifices lots of things to protect humanity’s freedom. And she finally learns to trust in the good potential of all humans, and to let the women she loves take care of her too. 
To conclude, Satsuki was key to make me come to terms with me being a stone femme because I can see lots of subtle details in how she moves, behaves, thinks and approaches things that -somehow-remind me of myself, although I know we are not on the same league. But I really think she might be a stone femme too because she is a woman with strong and rigid boundaries around every aspect of her life, and she defends and makes everyone respect them. In the whole anime I’ve never seen anybody try to question her and her boundaries, and I truly admire her a lot for this.
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