#speaks to the effectiveness of western leftists

[gardengnosticator]

british ML's doing the whole "being transgender is bourgeois identity politics and thus we must defend jk rowling" shtick is so fucking tedious and pathetic

#speaks to the effectiveness of western leftists #too busy infighting about the “right” kind of working class than actually building a united front or whatever #im too tired of this shit

[eretzyisrael]

by Phyllis Chesler

Every Jew, both inside and outside of Israel, has been held hostage for 40 days. In the Holy Land, Israelis—Jews, Christians, Muslims and Druze—have been bombed, kidnapped, tortured, murdered, forced into bomb shelters and cast into internal exile.

Because Israel has dared to fight back, Jews around the world are being “punished” for Israel’s alleged “crimes.” Jews everywhere are being verbally harassed, demonized, threatened, physically attacked and sometimes murdered. Visibly Jewish students no longer feel safe in their classrooms, at gatherings or on the street in Europe, the United States, Canada and beyond.

The Jewish state was created to protect Jews from their 2,000-year-old vulnerability to pogroms and genocide while in exile. The existence of that very state is now being used as the excuse for a monstrous “intifada” against all Jews in the West. It is driven by the lethal propaganda against Israel that has been disseminated for at least 60 years. It may take that long to drain this swamp of lies.

But, as ever, this is far bigger than the Jews.

Right now, more than one billion Westerners are being surrounded on their streets and in the media by the war cries of “Allahu Akbar.” Everyone, everywhere has been held psychologically and often physically hostage by the “globalized jihad.”

Traffic has been stalled. Visible Jews have been physically attacked. Anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian rallies, marchers and random ranting individuals have frightened or attacked passengers on buses and trains with their aggressive propaganda.

When will the West wake up to the fact that we and our way of life are under siege?

From both a jihadist and Western leftist point of view, killing the Jews will redeem the West’s sins of racism, imperialism, colonialism and slavery. Indoctrinated Westerners refuse to acknowledge that the West is not the only or even the major sinner in world history.

Muslim countries have a very long history of gender and religious apartheid, anti-black racism and black slavery, imperialism, colonialism, conversion via the sword and more. I doubt that destroying the only democracy in the Middle East—Israel—will liberate Muslim women from being forcibly veiled or honor-killed.

Western “useful idiots” refuse to understand that all the crimes attributed only to Israel are actually crimes that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have alone and continuously committed.

Psychologically speaking, the media, college professors, the United Nations and the surging swarms in the streets have projected the atrocities committed by Islamic terrorists onto Jews and the Jewish state.

For decades, decent people, Jews and non-Jews, have been bombarded with slogans like “Death to the Jews,” “Nazi Israel,” “Hitler did not get the job done,” “Zionists are criminals” and every other hideous libel one can imagine. We have been subjected to non-stop lies in the elite media. Whatever Hamas terrorists tell journalists is reported as fact. Whatever instantly verifiable footage the IDF shows is reported as “Israel says.”

Imagine the psychological and traumatizing effect that such non-stop hatred has on all Westerners.

What must we do? In the short run, President Joe Biden must stop appeasing and funding Iran—the main supporter and financier of global jihad.

If we don’t act, they will come for all of us sooner rather than later. Israel alone cannot be expected to fight the battle for Western civilization.

#jews #hostages #jihad #hamas #gaza

[fortunatelychaoticphantom]

So apparently the "Jesus was Palestinian" bullshit is doing its rounds again, continuing the proud tradition of that fucking pink infograph from May '21 that claimed "the first Christians were Palestinians". I'm not going to go over why this is a load of racist antisemitic a-historical crap, I've already done so in the past (one, two, three, four, though I do feel I could explain it better today... but I'm not gonna do that). But I do believe we need to talk about this a little more. Not about the content of the claims, which is so unbelievably easy to refute by reading literally the first paragraph of a couple of Wikipedia articles, but the reason for the existence of the claims themselves and their structure.

We have to ask ourselves why do people need Christianity in general and Jesus specifically to be tied to the Palestinian identity and what the hell does this have to do with the I/P conflict at all? Because, here's the thing; the topic is the I/P conflict, this is our framework. And yet while talking about a war currently being waged, about cease fires and humanitarian aid, about a massacre and hostages, about politics and ideologies, out of fucking nowhere one side of the debate just throws this claim - "yeah, well Jesus was Palestinian!" / "The first Christians were Palestinians!". You might ask yourself what the actual fuck are they talking about. I mean, I could throw random sentences too, it just wouldn't be a very effective conversation, would it? So why are they saying it now in this context?

Let's go back to that OG pink infograph, because I do think it's the most revealing. "The first Christians were Palestinians". This is an equation - x equals y, first Christians = Palestinians. First is important here, it speaks of precedence, of date. Christianity as a whole and Jesus in particular are an incredibly convenient thing to date historically. They are also very ancient. This is about establishing an ancient anchor to the Palestinian identity.

But the sentence isn't actually complete, is it? There's something missing from it. A silent part at the end of it - "the first Christians were Palestinians, as opposed to Jews". This is the context. This is, and always was, about denying the history of the Jewish people. It's literally an attempt at erasing Jewishness from history itself and replacing it with a New and Improved one that is Western-Leftist Approved.

This is the single saddest thing I've ever heard in my goddam life. What they're saying, what they're actually saying, is that the Palestinian plight, suffering and right for self determination only exist if their identity is ancient enough. Ideally - more ancient than that unbelievably annoying people who won't shut up about how ancient they are. What they're saying with their "post-colonial" rotten brains, with their cruelty and their absolute wickedness, is that suffering is only worth acknowledging and fighting if it neatly fits their "colonizer/colonized" dichotomy world view. Palestinians have no right in the leftist world unless: 1) their identity is ancient enough for them to join the oppressed club, 2) the Jews' identity isn't.

And it is just so unbelievably funny. Again, I'm not going to repeat the explanation of what "Palestina" actually is, you can read my previous posts about that. What I do have to say is just how unfathomably historically funny it is to me, not just as a Jewish woman but more importantly as an archaeologist of the Ancient Near East, that they would use a Jewish man preaching Jewish things to Jewish people in the remnants of the Jewish kingdom of Judea, almost a thousand years after its establishment, barley more than a century before its final destruction and the end of Jewish autonomy in their ancestral homeland for the next almost two millennia, to establish an ancient anchor for Palestinian identity.

And by the way, when I said that Jesus and Christianity are "very" ancient - I lied. I can't begin to explain to you how "new" that is to an archaeologist of the Ancient world. I literally haven't seen the other side of the zero in like a decade. So, on top of what I said in my previous posts, along with many other people online, the thing that is even more fucking funny is how every evidence we have for the origin of the word (just the word! not the identity! which didn't exist yet!!!!) "Palestina" positions it in the Greeks' hands around 500 BCE, which is still almost 500 years after the establishment of Judea. Can you do basic math?? Can you fucking do it???

You Westerners (and non-Westerners and Palestinians to be perfectly clear) want us so badly to be foreign invaders who stole precious lands from poor little woobified natives, but we're fucking not. You are incapable of holding more than one fucking thought in your tiny little rotten minds so you try to change history, to change reality itself to fit your warped perception of the world. You do that because you hate Jews, not because you give even a tiny little shit about Palestinians. Because you don't, and you prove that every single day with every single lie that comes out of your mouth.

We are at war for maybe more than a century at this point. They killed my people, they butchered them, they literally live on the ruins of my ancestors. But I care about them because I care about everyone in the world and I am capable of looking beyond my own rights (which fucking exist) and recognize that my enemies are just as human and deserving of life and joy and safety as me. I don't need them to be more ancient than me to recognize their grief, their suffering, their right for self determination, because apparently I have a fucking heart and a working brain, something I genuinely can no longer say about most of you.

#wanna guess how many hate comments i will receive for **checks notes** #having sympathy for palestinians and recognizing their right for statehood #but **check notes again** NOT recognizing their fucking retconned version of history?? #i got my fair share of hate for daring to mourn october 7th #let's see what happens now #don't even get me started on the jebosite bullshit discussion #i fucking can't #they don't exist outside of the bible!!! #but you wan't to predate jews so fucking much that you don't even seem to care about your own suffering #jewish things #israel #jumblr

[hero-israel]

Antizionism from the average American is just scapegoating. American leftists are frustrated (and bored), and a lot of them are also themselves privileged. They don't really have the life experience to truly grasp the ramifications of how they talk about this stuff because it's so foreign to them.

It's so much safer psychologically (and politically) to direct anger and resentment outward at "America's puppet state," than inward at America itself. White leftists can easily build false solidarity with people of color if they can skip the agonizing work of unlearning their biases and prejudices, if they can avoid holding themselves accountable for their own role in American white supremacy. Focus on Israeli injustices, and they can feel the righteous fury directed into a false catharsis. Inaction becomes praxis. Just keep tweeting to recruit more people into the same thought patterns and you've earned your social justice points.

This could easily be directed at any one of America's allies, maybe not as easily in the case of other still powerful (former but not really) colonial states, but still doable. But they direct it at Israel because Jews are so easy to scapegoat already. It's a perfect formula for disaster. They've been primed by thousands of years of Western history and culture to view Jews as untrustworthy and less worthy of dignity or even life.

Most leftist antizionists are impotently raging, they're punching down at a nation of primarily Jews but they believe they're punching up; it's cheap and effective. Many of them will slip further into embracing antisemitism fully, incorporating conspiracy theories just like the right does. Israel trains Western police, Jewish money is poisoning and corrupting Washington, they're everywhere and we can't speak up or they'll silence us.

The conversation goes from "Israel is a western backed state oppressing a group I proxy for my own feelings of oppression here in America, so it's safe for me to always talk about it" to "Jewish people (headquartered in Israel of course) are oppressing us directly, they're the enemy of the working class/people of color here in America" so needless to say we're in for scary times ahead.

I have seen multiple progressives proclaim that antisemitism literally CANNOT exist on their side, that their side is inherently against racism and free of certain sins. You can really tell who just grew up in a privileged life and never happened to be on the receiving end of domestic violence, child abuse, sexual harassment, stalking, etc., from someone to the left of John Kerry.

[kvetchlandia]

Marilyn Stafford     WWII Italian-Jewish Anti-fascist Resistance Fighter, Painter  and Author Carlo Levi , Rome     1960

“Many years have gone by, years of war and of what men call History.  Buffeted here and there at random, I have not been able to return to my peasants as I promised when I left them, and I do not know when, if ever, I can keep my promise.  But closed in one room, in a world apart, I am glad to travel in my memory to that other world, hedged in by custom and sorrow, cut off from History and the State, eternally patient, to that land without comfort or solace, where the peasant lives out his motionless civilization on barren ground in remote poverty, and in the presence of death.

‘We’re not Christians,”they say. ‘Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli.’ ‘Christian’ in their way of speaking means ‘human being,’ and this almost proverbial phrase that I have so often heard them repeat may be no more than the expression of a hopeless feeling of inferiority.  We’re not Christians, we’re not human beings; we’re not thought of as men but simply as beasts, beasts of burden, or even less than beasts, mere creatures of the wild.  They at least live, for better or worse, like angels or demons, in a world of their own, while we have to submit to the world of Christians, beyond the horizon, to carry its weight and to stand comparison with it.  But the phrase has a much deeper meaning and, as is the way of symbols, this is the literal one.  Christ did stop at Eboli, where the road and the railway leave the coast of Salerno and turn into the desolate reaches of Lucania.  Christ never came this far, nor did time, nor the individual soul, nor hope, nor the relation of cause to effect, nor reason nor history.  Christ never came, just as the Romans never came, content to garrison the highways without penetrating the mountains or forests, nor the Greeks, who flourished beside the Gulf of Taranto.  None of the pioneers of Western civilization brought here his sense of the passage of time, his deification of the State, or that ceaseless activity which feeds upon itself.  No one has come to this land except as an enemy, a conqueror, or a visitor devoid of understanding.  The seasons pass today over the toil of the peasants, just as they did 3,000 years before Christ; no message, human or divine, has reached this stubborn poverty.  We speak a different language, and here our tongue is incomprehensible.  The greatest travelers have not gone beyond the limits of their own world; the have trodden the paths of their own souls, of good and evil, of morality and redemption... But to this shadowy land, that knows neither sin nor redemption from sin, where evil is not moral but is only the pain residing forever in earthy things, Christ did not come.  Christ stopped at Eboli.” Carlo Levi, “Christ Stopped at Eboli”  1945

--

Carlo Levi was an anti-fascist activist in pre-war Italy.  He was born into an educated family of Italian Jews in Turin.  While a university student around 1920, he became involved in leftist political groups.  Although a medical student, Levi developed an interest in painting and became involved with artistic circles.  He became a doctor but never practiced medicine, instead trying to make it as a painter.  In 1929, he was a founding member of the anti-fascist group “Giustizia e Libertà.”  As a result of his antifascist activism, he was arrested and sentenced in 1935 to internal exile.  A few years later, he would have been killed for the same “crime.”  

Levi’s internal exile was to Lucania, today’s Basilicata, in Italy’s deep south.  There, he encountered a world of deep poverty, of seemingly unchanging tradition and of peasant misery such as he had never encountered in his modern and educated world in the North, in Turin.  Although he had never practiced medicine after receiving his degree, he acted as the doctor to the community in which he was exiled.  This bonded him to the local peasants, and them to him.  

Levi was released in an amnesty in late 1936.  He moved to France for a few years, returning to Italy in 1941, and resumed his anti-fascist activities.  He went into hiding in Florence late in the war, trying to avoid the Nazis who were rounding up and executing as many anti-fascists as they could get their murderous hands on.  He spent the last few months of the war hiding in a small room in Florence.  It was during this time that he wrote “Christ Stopped at Eboli” (Cristo si è fermato a Eboli), his memoir of his exile in Lucania.  The book was published shortly after the end of World War II and caused quite a stir in Italy, as it brought the South to the attention of many who had never considered the region before.  Levi is buried in Aliano, Basilicata, one of two towns in which he spent his exile.

[inoppositionflorien]

I know I've been promising to articulate my opinions on anarchism pretty much since I joined Tumblr, but seeing as that's not happening today, I'm instead going to complain about complaining.

In particular the "ha the US is unique in its evilitude and it ought to stop being a thing, remember that time it did xyz" brand of complaint. Notably, this particular brand of weird political stance is almost exclusively seen in Canadian, Western European, and Australian leftists.

It is not particularly commonly held among US leftists. (This is not to say there are none who hold that opinion, there definitely are some, if just by osmosis of opinion, merely that they are far less commonly seen than ones originating from other countries, often ones with very similar colonial legacies.)

As that parenthetical says, every country that tried to be a world power and many that never made it have remarkably similar skeletons in their closet. Further, the individuals in question often make no effort to understand the US political system. This ties back to the myth of the All-powerful executive branch, the President being in charge of everything. They usually buy this wholesale, which, as said in some previous post I made is certainly an appealing idea, but a broadly wrong one. They also make no effort to follow the news beyond the headline, or occasionally the first article.

This often leads to "The US is axiomatically bad and thus any force that opposes it (even nominally) is axiomatically good." It doesn't always go there, but more often than I think anyone should be comfortable with, it does. That way lies support of authoritarians and occasionally actual fascists simply because they oppose the US out of a xenophobic nationalism, or, if they're a LatAm populist, used the specter of past US intervention (which was broadly a disaster, and pointlessly installed many authoritarians who did nothing helpful, for the record) to claim that any problems they're having came from the apparently all-powerful and illusive CIA, and not from poor management choices that necessarily come from incoherent populist policy platforms which are either ill-defined to the point that anything can be claimed as part of the policy, or a mess of contradictory ideas that don't actually work because the smart ones almost invariably rely on the perpetual existence of a macroeconomic money sink in a naturally unstable global economy or a misunderstanding of the problems raw extraction countries face in the international market, and then when they are technically workable, they trip over the really bad unworkable ideas (see what happened to Venezuela's healthcare system when they attempted to run two parallel ones at once to preserve jobs while also trying to fix inefficiencies in the old system. Essentially, it became more inefficient and more expensive to run, which dumped an enormous amount of money into an economy with few actual money sinks because taxes had been cut and the money sink that high oil prices provide to a petrostate disappeared when oil prices crashed. It would have been more effective to either fix the first system or completely restructure it if that seemed too hard)

The point is, I don't actually think it's a coincidence how in many of these cases, it's the authoritarians and populists with no coherent policy platform being praised or at least grudgingly accepted. Notably, those are both strongman positions, and strongmanism is broadly popular, pretty much wherever you go politically speaking. (Interestingly, you can find it even in many branches of anarchism!) It's also often a messianic belief system, a "someone, one person who leads, they will do it right, defeat a great evil, and then everything will be good forever" sort of thing.

The reason the US in particular is targeted, I think, is less because of its particular legacy, (After all, remember, nearly every country that didn't get colonized on heavily and several that did all have similar legacies if you're willing to look, though not necessarily to as great a recent extent simply because they haven't been major powers for a while, or haven't made it there yet) but simply because it's visible. It is THE power in the world. It is not a hegemon, nor has it ever been, but it is very capable in its own right and has been economically dominant for nearly 150 years. Incidentally, this, (and some racism) is why the US right is obsessed with China, a country that's apparently the second largest power. It's visible. In practice, there's actually plenty of evidence China has been struggling with the problems authoritarianism brings, and has been overreporting its economic strength for years, and it will probably be overtaken by India soon economically, but this is irrelevant to their position. China is visible, so China is the target. Much the same, the US is visible, certainly culturally (it has a culture so dominant that many people don't even realize they're in it. This is not a unique issue to the US, most non-minority groups in a given country don't realize they're in a distinct culture. Part of this is the "white as default" thing, but this is also much more broadly true than that particular phrase implies) so the US is the target for people who aren't in it.

It is in fact, closely related to the all-powerful executive I brought up earlier. It is very, very easy and fun to ascribe all or many problems to one position or one country or one people. It is also very easy when you're doing that to start to believe in strongmanism, because whether they know it or not, strongmen (who are almost invariably isolationist nationalists) will win international acclaim for pretending to be an underdog against the biggest power they think they can get away with taking issue with, and for many places, that's the US.

And strongmanism and more general authoritarianism, as I'm sure everyone knows by now, don't actually work very well at achieving their intended ends (not to mention the ends they intend are often bad to start with)

There could be the criticism of this made that the US school systems do not teach of everything bad the US has done, and this is why the US left broadly disagrees in the way brought up in the start... Except oops that's true of pretty much every country's education system. They very rarely go into much detail about all the various terrors their country wreaked until college level, and occasionally not even then. Further, the US left is broadly just as aware about all the past atrocity as international ones. Often more so, in fact, because people tend to know more about their own country than others. There is, in truth, no one target that must be hit to fix everything, whether it be a country as in this particular complaint, or something else, and the pervasive belief in that is a major issue across nearly all political groups that goes largely unaddressed.

This actually leads into another whole long post that I'll probably make some day about how systems of government, economic systems, and baseline happiness interact to create a whole situation where the events of the Great Disappointment of 1844 but for anticapitalism is going to happen in slow motion if capitalism ever stops being the dominant economic system, but I'll save that for another post. And maybe someday I'll actually talk about my feelings on Anarchism.

#the florien gets political #complaining about particular brands of complaint

[rametarin]

Things I enjoyed about Werewolf: the Apocalypse

I thoroughly enjoyed it, throughout the 90s and early 00s. I'm not a spiritual person, but I dug the animist fantasy. It was crunchy and flawed and such, and weighed down by the lolpolitics of the very very very leftist funkilling nannies that were at odds with the western culture of storytelling and folklore, but it was good.

And then Werewolf 5th edition came out and effectively was like being served vegan Thanksgiving turkey to go with a video on how Christopher Columbus wasn't just evil, but that white people were the devil, and America is an illegitimate country.

Sometimes I ponder trying my own take at urban fantasy with a spiritualist/animist bend that brings back the essence of what I enjoyed, outdoes Werewolf: the Apocalypse at being a compelling dark gritty urban fantasy game starring zoanthropes, and is a superior storytelling platform that pays homage to folklore without removing the FOLK from folklore.

For gods sake. They were so fucking terrified of the idea of even dignifying the idea Norse myths of werewolves are things, because to even suggest that Europe has any sort of indigenous culture inherent to being European, would entertain the idea white people HAVE any distinctly European culture, rather than just being imaginary and illegitimate oppressing "real" peoples and cultures.

So the funny viking werewolves (THAT HAVE ALWAYS BEEN MULTIRACIAL AND ACCEPTING OF ANYONE THAT COULD FIGHT AS WELL AS THEM) were removed from playability and made MAGA-type radical racist assholes. Just. They didn't even want to permit them access to the game, so wrote them out and given the hard in-character goodbye.

They could've just renamed them like they did the two Native American tribes, reimagined them. But no. Rather than reimagine the Get of Fenris, they had such antipathy to the idea of a viking culture werewolf tribe because, "those white supremacists might play them!" they straight up just made them bad guys.

The people writing Werewolf ideologically hate the idea of any sort of indigenous European folklore or any sort of sacredness to it. But they'd fall over themselves apologizing for the idea of incorporating Philipino or Arabic mythological figures.

I just despise how some things to them are profane and disallowed, some things are approproiation and offensive to use, and some things are okay because, "they aren't even a real culture anyway. :^)" all based on ideology. To people coming to the game that speak English as a second language and don't have European roots of any kind, I bet a great deal of them find this weird policy to be insulting. The Japanese for example wouldn't go on a tirade about how awful white people are for incorporating Susano'o into a cheesy Saturday morning cartoon, like it's perverting a culture's sacred character.

Modern people know such cheap, pulp crap isn't offensive, nor is it cultural exploitation. When in pop culture and fictional entertainment and not presented as true, it's not religion, it's just fiction.

Modern Paradox/World of Darkness writers seem to vehemently hate that and shape the game as if that shouldn't be true.

And in my eyes, that means the niche is being poorly filled. And ripe for supplantation.

[kyndaris]

The Never Changing Nature of Humanity and War

As another year ends, I look back over the major events that defined it and despair. Humanity seems desperate to repeat the same mistakes of old. Though there are moments when we shine, we are still motivated by greed, jealousy and pride. Look no further than the two wars currently being fought, the posturing in the Pacific and how little our world has done to combat climate change. Still, I suppose things could be worse. We might, after all, be suffering the effects of a nuclear winter (except no-one yet has the cajones to start such a huge chain reaction just yet).

But I digress.

January 2023 was a mess of events. Here in Australia, news of Pope Benedict passing away was only in headlines on New Year's Day. Other notable deaths included George Pell (a cardinal who was sent to prison for child sexual abuse in 2019 but who had his convictions later quashed) and the former king of Greece. From there, the world spiralled with Europe enduring very warm temperatures for winter (turns out 2023 was the hottest year on record!), Jacinda Ardern resigned from being Prime Minister of New Zealand/ Aotearoa. In Brazil, Bolsonaro tried to pull a Trump by stoking a Capitol-riot-style insurrection. This was later met be counter protesters.

As the year progressed, Kevin McCarthy was elected as speaker to the House of Representatives after going through fifteen rounds of voting. He was later removed and later replaced by another Republican: Mike Johnson. News of his Kevin McCarthy's unsuccessful bids were later drowned out by the shooting down of a Chinese air balloon. This led to several other unidentified objects to be shot down, which later turned out to be weather balloons set up by civilian scientists.

The United Kingdom enjoyed protests and strikes among public servants due to rising costs of living. Madrid protested their leftist government. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's First Minister, resigned.

But in case the first quarter of the year wasn't exciting enough, Mother Nature also wanted to have a little fun by sending a cyclone towards New Zealand (Aotearoa), with many residents suffering from flash-flooding. Oh, and there was an earthquake too!

An earthquake also hammered Turkiye and Syria. What's particularly telling, though, was the fact most of the humanitarian aid was directed to and more focused on the citizens of Turkiye rather than Syria. It lefts thousands dead and millions were displaced. Thankfully, though, it didn't much impact this blogger's trip overseas as our tour stayed primarily in the western portion of Turkiye and din't venture too far south.

From there, we saw the rise of the H5N1 avian flu, killing huge swathes of domestic and wild birds. The flu also had outbreaks in mink farms. So, although COVID-19 might be in the rearview mirror, there are plenty of new diseases ready to take its place! Like the zombie dear disease which as been spreading in Yellowstone! Essnetially, though, it's a chronic wasting disease with symptoms such as drastic weight loss, stumbling, listlessness and other neurological symptoms. While there are no current reported cases of this in humans, studies suggest it could pose a risk to anyone who eats meat from infected animals.

Of course, one should never forget that COVID-19 is still rampant around the world. We've all just comfortably shoved the little inconvenience to the back of our mind, even as it features as one of the core reasons for death.

Back home in Australia, permanent residency was being offered to many refugees who held temporary protection visas. There was also a resumption of assessments for asylum seeker sponsored visas where they would try to bring family members over.

Speaking of refugees (and jumping ahead a few months), there was a shipwreck off Greece carrying several hundred refugees and migrants. Most were fleeing conflicts in their countries. Of major note was the one in Sudan between the army and a paramilitary force. And when you have many countries refusing to take up migrants or helping out their fellow humans (looking at Tunisia cracking down on illegal immigrants), you end up with many a humanitarian crisis.

Further disasters abounded with a head-on crash in Greece leading to 57 being killed. China later had its own subway crash due to heavy snowfall causing carriages to detach. India, too, also had a train crash killing about 100 people.

Elsewhere, many other social media services began to emulate Elon Musk's subscription services for Twitter X, allowing users to become 'verified.' The Silicon Valley bank collapsed, followed by Credit Suisse leading to a significant downturn on Wall Street as people panicked.

In happy news, Everything Everywhere All At Once won 7 Oscars. A victory, it seemed for so many people living in Asian diasporas across the Western world. Given that many Asians were attacked during the COVID-19 pandemic simply because of their appearance, the win of Everything Everywhere All At Once proved to be a pivotal moment for many.

As the year rolled on, the International Criminal Court issued out a arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin. Trump was indicted for falsifying business records. He was even later arrested. But alas, nothing has seemed to stick and Trump has used many of the court cases brought against him to target those who would stand against him in his bid for the 2024 electoral campaign.

Following the death of Her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II last year, King Charles III enjoyed a state coronation alongside his wife, Queen Camilla.

Other quick events: Joe Biden was forced to cancel a trip to Australia to deal with the US debt ceiling. There was the discovery of a Kenyan starvation cult. Tina Turner passed away. There was the destruction of a dam in southern Ukraine by Russian forces.

And in the news of cyber security, there was a hack of file-transfer program MoveIt, affecting many companies and governments. This was topped by a hack against Insomniac and the leaking of 1.6 TB of files showing games in development as well as the personal information of many employees.

As the northern hemisphere reached the summer, Canadia endured several severe wildfires that even affected the air quality in America. Silvio Berlusconi passed away and to cap it all off: five people were killed in an imploding submersible headed down towards the Titanic.

In other news, both domestic and international, corruption findings were noted of previous New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian. A teenage boy was shot dead in France leading to protests. Microsoft won a case against the FTC to delay a merge with Activision-Blizzard. SAF-AFRA began to strike alongside the writer's guild regarding working conditions with the move to streaming and the threat of AI supplanting jobs.

With summer peaking and then waning, heatwaves continued to devastate America, Europe and Asia. There was the passing of a controversial bill in Israel limiting the power of the Supreme Court to overturn decisions made by government ministers. In Niger, the military staged a coup.

To put our thoughts at ease, people turned on their televisions and headed to stadiums to watch the FIFA Women's World Cup hosted by Australia and New Zealand. Although Spain won, I'm happy to say Australia's own team came in fourth with a strong showing and with much love showered on our Matildas.

To keep us on our toes, however, we also saw the death of Wagner Group leader in a plane crash: Yevgeny Prigozhin. There was chaos in New York when live-streamer Kai Cenat decided to host a Give Away event. In Africa, there was another coup. This time in Gabon. And in some positive news, India was the first country to land on the Moon's south pole.

As the rest of the world headed towards winter, and Australia to summer, Mother Nature thought another earthquake would shake things up a little - killing thousands in Morocco. There was also an earthquake in Afghanistan, killing quite a number of citizens.

And just to fill out our assassination quota for the year, Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar was killed in Canada.

But in a move to surprise us all, and to raise the stakes in our very fragile ecosystem, Hamas launched an attack on Israel on 7 October, killing a few thousand and taking hundreds hostage. Israel, of course, retaliated - vowing to crush Hamas. This has since led to Israel bombing the Gaza strip, killing many hundreds of people including children and a few of their own people in a desperate bid to stamp out Hamas.

While there was a brief ceasefire and a release of hostages, the situation is still quite dire for many Palestinians. And now Iran has taken a step, declaring they would close off the Mediterranean.

In Australia, we hosted a referendum for the Voice to Parliament. Unfortunately, it was a campaign filled with a lot of disinformation and misinformation. To my dismay, the Voice to Parliament failed, setting Australia back when it comes to acknowledging Indigenous voices.

As for those clamouring for a Treaty first, while I agree with you that a Treaty would be important, a Voice would have greatly paved the way. Even if it might not have been an immediate change or be the change everyone wanted, sometimes the best way to make things better is by taking small steps. True, it might not be what one hopes for but when it comes to swaying the minds of the public on key issues, governing a nation is a delicate balancing act. TAKE WHAT YOU CAN GET BUT DO NOT TRY TO HOLD THE PEOPLE/ BUDGET HOSTAGE. Public opinion IS important but relying solely on populism will get you nowhere and a country in shambles.

Australia also saw several bushfires in Queensland and norther New South Wales. We even had an Optus outage nation-wide, where many people had no internet or phone coverage. It proved, once again, the disadvantages of relying solely on technology and our phones for anything and everything.

And as we neared closer to Christmas and the New Year, Henry Kissinger passed away at the age of 100. In China, there were reports of another mysterious respiratory disease affecting children - with cases of pneumonia beginning to spike again. In north-east Myanmar, a temporary ceasefire was negotiated between the rebels and the military government. New Zealand also saw the rise of a new government (with Labour having been ousted in favour of the National Party). This set in motion a 100-day reform agenda seeking to unwind many of the policies designed to improve outcomes for Maori and Pasifika people, damaging race relations.

In India, after the firing of a smoke grenade in the halls of Parliament, more than half of the Opposition Members of Parliament were suspended in India. Back in America, Joe Biden pardoned thousands convicted of marijuana charges and there was also a mass shooting in Prague!

To round off the year, COP28 was held in Dubai for some inexplicable reason.

And as Santa touched down in Australia, many Australians have been struggling due to the large interest rate hikes and the increased cost of living. Rent, in particular, has proven difficult to overcome for many because of the high demand for housing. Some of it has been exacerbated by inflation but quite a bit of it has also been attributed to the changes in migration policies following the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of course, it's not an Australian Christmas if we don't have a cyclone tearing through northern Queensland in the week or two beforehand, leading to floods and the shutdown of Cairns airport.

So ends another rotation of the Earth around the sun. 2023 has had its highs and its many various lows. Yet although it was the hottest year recorded in living history, we are still here, ticking ever closer to midnight for when we destroy the Earth as we know it.

Actually, no. The Earth will be fine in the long run (unless we somehow destroy the core or the sun explodes). It's us humans who will be wiped out from the planet, resetting civilisation as we know it. And I, for one, am eager for a reset though I doubt we will learn our lesson.

Of course, since I'm writing this post on Christmas Day (and listening to the 2023 Carols in the Domain), I can only hope there will be a light at the end of this very long tunnel we've found ourselves in. They do say it's always darkest before the dawn. Here's hoping there is a dawn for us all where collective governments can work together to make changes so we can continue thriving on this planet we call home.

#personal blog #2023 recap #year in review #humans suck #misanthropic views

[giftofshewbread]

“Justice” :: By Rick Segoine

Published on: September 2, 2023 

How long can a civilization survive without justice?

Or a justice system that is made up of double standards?

A more pertinent question would be, how much longer can America and the entire Western system of government last under the current conditions?

It should be clear to anyone with a functioning brain and a little bit of objectivity that justice, as any decent, intelligent, and rational person would define it, no longer exists in the Western world. Not only does it not exist, justice has been squeezed inside out, flipped upside down, and radically tilted in favor of the criminals. Criminals of both the blue and especially the white-collar kind.

This backward justice has become so obvious and so blatantly shoved in our faces that, at this point, it is just expected. How pathetic.

In leftist-run cities like San Francisco, for example, bureaucrats and “law enforcement” have given the green light to looters to the point where multiple stores that sell all different types of merchandise have been forced to either close their doors for good or move to another city. It is just simple math.

This, along with ever-increasing muggings and carjackings in SF are just part of a long list of blue-collar crimes. The much bigger white-collar crimes are committed by the leftist/globalist cabal and their many cronies, who are systematically attempting to destroy every country in the entire world we grew up in so they can “build it back better.” Socially, economically, and environmentally.

It’s kind of like the night that the lights went out in Georgia, the night they hung an innocent man, but on a planetary scale.

Speaking of Georgia, as of this writing, former President Donald J. Trump will be booked, fingerprinted, and posed for a mug shot at Fulton County Jail on racketeering charges.

The harassment of Trump continues while videotape of Joe Biden bragging to the Council on Foreign Relations about his highly illegal and unconstitutional criminal misdeeds in regard to Burisma and Ukraine are ignored.

Joe gets a free pass.

Joe gets a free pass on everything, like letting our soldiers die and handing over some 80 billion dollars of high-tech military equipment to the Taliban in his misguided withdrawal from Afghanistan. Just like Barack and Hillary got one free pass after another on so many different criminal and unconstitutional acts that it would fill a book trying to list them all.

In fact, Joe and Hill and 0 each could easily fill their own books with documented misdeeds. We also know that the liberal folks they count on to buy into and support the lying and the crimes would not believe a word of it. It is highly probable that those brainwashed and befuddled lost souls would even reject live confessions.

Those who are like what the prophet Isaiah described in Isiah 5:20, saying, “Woe to them that call good evil and who call evil good.” If that is the case, true logic is nonsense to them, and any attempt at reasoning with them has no effect.

Meanwhile, people who did absolutely nothing wrong on Jan. 6th other than failing to see that they were being set up, rot away in jail to set an example for all who would dare to protest against the actual criminals. The lunatics really are in charge of the asylum.

The Leftists/Marxists/Globalists/Deep State Rinos and Demonicrats are simply doing what they do. Calling plays out of the Marxist playbook and/or Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Accusing their most feared political opponent of doing not what he is actually doing but what they are actually doing. But it goes beyond that; this is also about vengeance.

Trump has made many threats about taking down the Deep State, and now the denizens of the swamp are going to do whatever it takes to ensure that D.J. Trump never again has another chance even to attempt to do something so audacious as delaying or disrupting any part of their vain and sinister plan to re-create the world in their own image.

Ironically, even when he had the chance, Mr. Trump did very little in regard to his boasting of or his promises to Drain the Swamp.

The Swamp People always had one of their shills with acting skills ready to “advise him,” and he fell for it more than once.

A huge mistake for Trump was giving audience to one whom the devil has been using mightily, a Mr. Bill Gates, who convinced him that the mRNA experimental gene therapy “vaccines” were a wonderful scientific achievement that would benefit everyone.

The monumental mistake that followed that fateful meeting with the snake, I mean mega farmland buyer and owner Bill Gates, was when Trump could be seen standing aside and behind with his arms folded while the globalists’ own Dr. Wormtongue, aka puppy torturing Spawn of Mengele, aka funder of Gain of Function Research, aka serial liar and mass-murderer Anthony Fauci, an unelected appointee, took over the reins of leadership in America and began dictating to free American citizens globalist policies, and with Trump’s naive approval.

The rest, as we say, is history, including the lockdowns, mask mandates, vax mandates that cost thousands of people their livelihoods, and the deadly hospital protocols of remdesivir and ventilators that killed thousands of the elderly. (97% of people over the age of 65 placed on ventilators died on those Fauci-mandated ventilators.)

Then there was the massive sociological damage to children that has now warped into an aggressive and intentional perversion of children by the perverts in power. Let us not forget Operation Warp Speed, that quick untested rollout that helped the globalists mass inject their genocidal bioweapon into millions of arms sooner rather than later.

Worldwide, millions have died, and millions more have had their health and ability to reproduce drastically compromised by the poisonous shots. It is no coincidence that cases of myocarditis, blood clots, infertility, severely compromised immune systems, and healthy young people in their 20s dropping dead on athletic fields have increased drastically since 2021 when Jab Madness really took over. Those are just a few of the now-known side effects.

All that for a flu bug with a 99% recovery rate and three weeks to flatten the curve. It has also been revealed by records kept by Pfizer and Moderna that 30% of the shots were placebos used as a smokescreen to make it appear that side effects and deaths were rare.

There is a great deal of evidence and proof of these things at this point as we enter the final four months of the year 2023. These findings have been published by highly educated and respected medical researchers who are not in the pocket of the globalists. Honest people who are actual real scientists. Not arrogant, yet very dangerous egotists who believe that it is they who are the science.

Of course, the bought and paid for corrupt mainstream media will report none of this and will continue to demonize anyone spreading around that one thing all hard-core leftists are highly allergic to. Truth.

In the land of Isaiah 5:20, truth is called misinformation. In that far away and yet in your face at all times virtual reality known as Social Mediaville, quite often leftist programmed AI bots will decide for you what is truth and what is fiction.

To this day, Trump appears unable to see or admit the damage, loss of life, and flat-out ruination of so many lives as a result of a few of his own misguided decisions. You would think the swamp creatures would love him for handing them the opportunity to kill and maim people, and with zero accountability under the seemingly legal guise of the system and the “wise council” of the CDC and the NIH.

It is worth noting that when all of these things transpired in the U.S.A., the WEF, the WHO, and the U.N., along with the young global leaders trained by good old Uncle Klaus, were making the same things happen worldwide.

It was a globalist global enterprise. It was planned.

It was planned quite a long time ago, and videos exist of Bill Gates, Tony Fauci, and Obama predicting ahead of time that a worldwide pandemic was on its way. How did they know that? What sorcery was at play?

But Trump was an advocate for taking the clot shots voluntarily, and that is an unforgivable offense to the murderous genocidal elitists. The goal of these sociopaths is to mandate and force these ungodly chemicals into everyone, one way or another.

They are diabolically compelled and motivated to achieve their 2030 Agenda of reducing the world population from 8 billion-plus to about 500 million.

To say that these elitist blasphemers have what we call a God complex would be a mighty understatement.

They appear to have a vile and burning need to control all of us, not just some of us.

So, even though they were successful in manipulating Trump in some cases, overall, they do not trust him. He proved, at times, to be able to hurl large monkey wrenches into the gears of their well-oiled machine.

Some readers might be wondering at this point what any of the above has to do with the Bible, or the Rapture, or the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

Actually, it has a lot to do with it. The title of this article is “Justice.” In these last of the last days this side of the Rapture when justice has been so compromised, it sure would be nice to see at least a tiny portion of it.

I mean, watching Gunsmoke, I admit, does give me some relief in my quest for justice. However, I wouldn’t complain just to see even a smidgeon of honest-to-goodness justice in the real world.

Good news and bad news. The bad news is we are going to see little or no justice at all before the Rapture.

The good news is that the justice of God Almighty will prevail in the end, and the end is not that far off.

At the rate that Satan and his lying, murderous minions are throwing down the gauntlet of wickedness, the world is running out of time at a breathtaking pace.

The Seven-Year Tribulation is hurtling toward us like a 100-plus-mile-an-hour fastball from Nolan Ryan or Randy Johnson, or the kid from Taiwan in the 2023 Little League World Series who throws the equivalent of 105 miles per hour.

It is really hard to get the bat around in time to hit a pitch coming that fast. Those who are adamant about rejecting God’s free gift of salvation that He offers to all are being set up to strike out.

The Seventh Week of Daniel is approaching just that quickly, and the Rapture must take place before it can begin.

Though none know the day or hour of the Rapture except our Heavenly Father, all who are paying close attention to the prophetic word of God can see that we really are quickly running out of time here on the third rock from the sun, aka, Planet Earth.

True believers need to be as focused as the batter facing the 100-mph fastball or, better yet, like any one of the five virgins with their lamps full at all times. We need to keep our hearts and our souls filled with the Holy Spirit and do like Jesus said to do when we see these things take place. Watch.

Stay vigilant and keep looking up, for our redemption draws nigh (Luke 21:28).

When the restrainer (Holy Spirit) is removed from the world with the remnant church, the vile spirit of injustice will kick into an extremely hideous high gear until the time of the Second Coming of Jesus.

For those left behind, life will become a living nightmare, much worse than what is taking place right now. And right now, it is sickening and exceedingly hard to watch.

Just as the Assyrians (724 BC) and the Babylonians (598 BC) were allowed by God to take down ancient Israel and ancient Judea when they had rejected Him to the point of allowing wickedness to reign supreme in the promised land God had given them, God is now allowing these globalists in real-time to take down the free world, including America, which has also rejected Him by allowing wickedness and depravity to reign supreme.

He is allowing the globalist cabal to bring about the fulfillment of end-times prophecy. It is a hideous, evil task, but the participants, who, like their father Satan, are liars and ruthless murderers, seem to be up for that task.

Just as God dealt with the Babylonians and Assyrians after they had acted as agents to fulfill prophecy, He will likewise deal with the evil globalists during, and especially at the end of the seven-year Tribulation.

God’s justice is exact, and vengeance belongs to Him to repay those who embrace and commit evil acts. (Romans 12:19)

Injustice will be taken down by God’s perfect justice, and at the end of the seven years of tribulation, the King of Kings will return to earth to put a most welcome end to the sinister plans of Satan, the antichrist, the false prophet, the globalist elitists, the entire Synagogue of Satan and all of his minions in high places.

If Klaus Schwab has survived up to that point, it will most likely be in a cave where he had been cursing God and begging the rocks to fall on him, and Klaus will, quite likely, have plenty of famous company in that cave (Revelation 6:15).

When the Lord administers serious justice during the Tribulation, a lot of very evil people are not going to like it one bit.

At some point, the Luciferian worshipping elite will realize how greatly they have miscalculated the power of the Creator, as well as how badly they have miscalculated their own imagined power.

No politician or political party can fix this evil mess that Satan and his devotees have created here on the earth.

In fact, not all, but a very large number of politicians of all stripes the world over, are bought and paid for and owned by the fellas in the Multi-Billionaires Club. You know, the robber barons, the international banksters, the heads of international corporations, the elitist of the elite. You know, the Old Boys Club, the Club of Rome, the Club of the filthiest of the filthy rich.

Only the Lord can fix it now, and because He said He would fix it, He will.

Individuals, as long as the Lord tarries, can and should try and fight back in the sense of speaking out against evil and speaking truth, even if the reprobates call it misinformation. “The truth is foolishness to those who perish” (1Corinthians 1:18).

However, as far as turning everything around on our own goes, without intervention from the Lord our God, it just is not going to happen, and end-times prophecy confirms it.

The situation on earth now coincides (Matthew 24:37) with what Jesus described as the same conditions that existed just before catastrophe struck in the “days of Noah” and (Luke 17:28) the “days of Lot,” as well as lining up numerically with God’s “Week of Creation” and the seven millenniums He has allotted to complete His plan, 2 Peter 3:8 and about 43 other Bible verses.

Some believers still seem to think there will be a massive revival, and we can get all the evil reprobate people to repent as in the days when Jonah preached repentance in the streets of Nineveh.

And that the church itself will usher in a time of peace, when justice will once again shine bright, and Jesus would then feel comfortable returning to earth.

Once again, according to the scriptures, it just is not going to happen that way. Reference the entire Book of Revelation to confirm.

Realistically, with the precious little time left before the Rapture, the top priorities should be keeping our lamps full at all times, watching and longing for His appearing, and doing the work of the great commission to help as many people as possible to find salvation before that trumpet blows.

The great catching away. A radical departure from this world. The sounding of a trumpet only true believers will be able to hear. The shout of the archangel. The calling from the Lord Jesus Himself for the dead in Christ to rise first, and then all who are alive called up to join them and meet Jesus in the sky. In the twinkling of an eye (1 Corinthians 15:52; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17).

To receive eternal bodies like the resurrected body of Jesus, who was the first to conquer death. Then to be escorted by the Son of the Most-High God, the Messiah, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Alpha and Omega and our dearest best friend, to the place He has prepared for all those who love Him and trust Him (John 14:3).

“No ear has heard, no eyes have seen, and no heart has conceived of the wonders that God has planned for those that love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

Sound impossible or too good to be true? With God, all things are possible, and every promise He has ever made, He will keep. Every single last one.

Believe in and trust in Jesus with every fiber of your being, with every ounce of your heart, mind, soul and strength. He is coming soon.

#today #trending #justice #lawlessness #biblical #men #women #children #biden #trump #hawaii #energy #weapon #blue #ray #oprah #elites #15 #minute #cities #plandemic #billionaires #evil #deaths #missing #authorities #lying #rapture #imminent

[association-of-freed-people]

I used to find Russell Brand insufferable. There was a phase in his career as he transitioned to adulthood where he was a loud intersectional prog. A facsimile of any number of politically active Hollywood personalities and as dogmatic and boring as you’d expect.

At some point several years ago, I caught him doing a promo segment on MSNBC for a book or a tour he was on and his interaction with the hosts was engaging. He was pushing back on some assertions being made and kind of fucking with the talking heads who were interviewing him.

Over the ensuing years it became apparent that unlike most progs in show business, Russell was on a journey and legitimately interested in understanding the world.

As some of you know if you followed my terminated blogs I traveled a similar path.

I was a pretty hardcore leftist in my youth. I saw injustice in the world, my family had gone through some of it, and when I was a few years out of high school I planned a trip to the former Soviet Union to stay with some people I’d met on a student exchange in the states.

I spent a couple of months in the environs of Moscow, the guy whose family I was staying with had worked on the team that developed the ICBM detection system deployed in eastern Siberia. He lived in a broken down flat and drove a lada with a pipe wrench for a steering wheel. His father was a former Soviet functionary and very well off by Russian standards at the time. Anyway, I also lived communally in the states and on the street for a while. The three experiences were formative in my journey to better understand the world we live in with the finite time we’re given. Afterwards I became obsessed with gaps in the history I’d been taught in school, I found and read Hayek and kept going down rabbit holes until I ended up settling where I am today.

Russell seems like a kindred spirit in this sense. I do not always agree with him but he’s not afraid of seeking out truth and speaking about it. He isn’t afraid to ask questions or propose plausible answers even if they’re unpopular. He has a strong humanist ethos that guides him and helps him navigate the sea of propaganda and half-truths. His YT subscriber count is approaching 5 million accordingly.

In the video above he’s covering what any journalist in a free and open society would cover; the absolute collapse of the Covid narrative.

He’s asking why these governments are doing an instant about face when the “pandemic” is still raging if not for the failure of all of their authoritarian polices, the destruction they’ve wrought and the retrograde transition of Australia to a penal colony.

There’s a flash rush to move away from what’s happened the last 24 months and never look back.

Forensic accounting of the Western response to Covid would unmask a criminal shitshow that incentivized the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, suppressed development of a treatment protocol, suppressed the origins of the virus, and unleashed a wave of mass censorship like the world has never seen.

This is why the US establishment started beating its war drum as hard and loud as possible. You need to forget about the last two years and stop asking questions.

Something that’s rarely if ever discussed is what the central bank and United States government effectively did using Covid as cover; they monetized government debt.

The inflation vortex is a reflection of this. They’ve effectively confiscated in the neighborhood of 10-15% of the wealth of the citizenry through hysteria driven money printing.

Keep asking questions. Do not move on to the next big distraction as you become poorer and acclimated to oppression.

#long post #russell brand #Youtube

[kemetic-dreams]

Never been a beef between Africans and African American it was a plan to divide us.

I have notice, whenever you speak or act proudly about being African. Everyone who is non African becomes an expert. Your not a real African, “they don’t like African Americans or African American hate you etc.

You never been to Africa, you don’t look like them!!!!

They feel comfortable when your Christian, because they feel they can control you and tame you, and in the end fight for their cause.

They feel comfortable when you wear their names and feel proud to wear their names. Makes them feel like their ancestors may have been rough with us, but did a good job that was needed.

Notice their are no African languages in most public schools

Notice how African religions are demonized!!!

This Document is Exhibit 10 of U.S. Supreme Court Case No.00-9587

NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL MEMORANDUM-46 MARCH 17, 1978

Presidential Review Memorandum NSCM/46 TO: The Secretary of State The Secretary of Defense The Director of Central Intelligence SUBJECT: Black Africa and the U.S. Black Movement

The President has directed that a comprehensive review be made of current developments in Black Africa from the point of view of their possible impacts on the black movement in the United States. The review should consider:

1. Long-term tendencies of social and political developments and the degree to which they are consistent with or contradict the U.S. interests. 2. Proposals for durable contacts between radical African leaders and leftist leaders of the U.S. black community. 3. Appropriate steps to be taken inside and outside the country in order to inhibit any pressure by radical African leaders and organizations on the U.S. black community for the latter to exert influence on the policy of the  Administration toward Africa.

The President has directed that the NSC Interdepartmental Group for Africa  perform this review. The review should be forwarded to the NSC Political Analysis Committee by April 20.

(signed)

Zbigniew Brezinski cc: The Secretary of the Treasury The Secretary of Commerce The Attorney General The Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff

Objective of our policy toward Black Africa is to prevent social upheavals which could radically change the political situation throughout the area. The success or failure of our policy in the region depends on the solution international and internal issues whose importance of the United States is on the increase.

II. A. U.S. INTERESTS IN BLACK AFRICA

A multiplicity of interests influences the U.S. attitude toward black Africa. The most important of these interests can be summarized as follows:

1. POLITICAL

If black African states assume attitudes hostile to the U.S. national interest, our policy toward the white regimes; which is a key element in our relations with the black states, may be subjected by the latter to great  pressure for fundamental change. Thus the West may face a real danger of being deprived of access to the enormous raw material resources of southern Africa which are vital for our defense needs as well as losing control over the Cape sea routes by which approximately 65% of Middle Eastern oil is supplied to Western Europe. Moreover, such a development may bring about internal political difficulties by intensifying the activity of the black movement in the United States itself. It should also be borne in mind that black Africa is an integral part of a continent where tribal and regional discord, economic backwardness, inadequate infrastructures, drought, and famine, are constant features of the scene. In conjunction with the artificial borders imposed by the former colonial powers, guerilla warfare in Rhodesia and widespread indignation against apartheid in South Africa, the above factors provide the communist states with ample opportunities for furthering their aims. This must necessarily redound to the detriment of U.S. political interests.

2. ECONOMIC

Black Africa is increasingly becoming an outlet for U.S. exports and investment. The mineral resources of the area continue to be of great value for the normal functioning of industry in the United States and allied countries. In 1977, U.S. direct investment in black Africa totaled about $1.8 billion and exports $2.2 billion. New prospect of substantial profits would continue to develop in the countries concerned.

IV. BLACK AFRICA AND THE U.S. BLACK MOVEMENT

Apart from the above-mentioned factors adverse to U.S. strategic interests, the nationalist liberation movement in black Africa can act as a catalyst with far reaching effects on the American black community by stimulating its organizational consolidation and by inducing radical actions. Such a result would be likely as Zaire went the way of Angola and Mozambique. An occurrence of the events of 1967-68 would do grievous harm to U.S. prestige, especially in view of the concern of the present Administration with human rights issues. Moreover, the Administration would have to take specific steps to stabilize the situation. Such steps might be misunderstood both inside and outside the United States.

In order to prevent such a trend and protect U.S. national security interests, it would appear essential to elaborate and carry out effective countermeasures.

1. Possibility of Joint Action By U.S. Black and African Nationalist Movement.

In elaborating U.S. policy toward black Africa, due weight must be given to the fact that there are 25 millions American blacks whose roots are African and who consciously or subconsciously sympathies with African nationalism. The living conditions of the black population should also be taken into account. Immense advances in the field are accompanied by a long-lasting high rate of unemployment, especially among the youth and by poverty and dissatisfaction with government social welfare standards. These factors taken together may provide a basis for joint actions of a concrete nature by the African nationalist movement and the U.S. black community. Basically, actions would take the form of demonstrations and public protests, but the likelihood of violence cannot be excluded. There would also be attempts to coordinate their political activity both locally and in international organizations.

Inside the United States these actions could include protest demonstrations against our policy toward South Africa accompanied by demand for boycotting corporations and banks which maintain links with that country; attempts to establish a permanent black lobby in Congress including activist leftist radical groups and black legislators; the reemergence of Pan-African ideals; resumption of protest marches recalling the days of Martin Luther King; renewal of the extremist idea national idea of establishing an "African Republic" on American soil. Finally, leftist radical elements of the black community could resume extremist actions in the style of the defunct Black Panther Party.

Internationally, damage could be done to the United States by coordinated activity of African states designed to condemn U.S. policy toward South Africa, and initiate discussions on the U.S. racial issue at the United Nations where the African representation constitutes a powerful bloc with about one third of all the votes.

A menace to U.S. economic interests, though not a critical one, could be posed by a boycott by Black African states against American companies which maintain contact with South Africa and Rhodesia. If the idea of economic assistance to black Americans shared by some African regimes could be realized by their placing orders in the United States mainly with companies owned by blacks, they could gain a limited influence on the U.S. black  community.

In the above context, we must envisage the possibility, however remote, that black Americans interested in African affairs may refocus their attention on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Taking into account; the African descent of American blacks it is reasonable to anticipate that their sympathies would lie with the Arabs who are closer to them in spirit and in some case related to them by blood. Black involvement in lobbying to support the Arabs may lead to serious dissention between American black and Jews. The likelihood of extremist actions by either side is negligible, but the discord may bring about tension in the internal political climate of the United States.

3. Political options

In the context of long-term strategy, the United States can not afford a radical change in the fundamentals of its African policy, which is designed for maximum protection of national security. In the present case, emphasis is laid on the importance of Black Africa for U.S. political, economic and military interests.

RECOMMENDATIONS

In weighing the range of U.S. interests in Black Africa, basic recommendations arranged without intent to imply priority are:

1. Specific steps should be taken with the help of appropriate government agencies to inhibit coordinated activity of the Black Movement in the United States.

2. Special clandestine operations should be launched by the CIA to generate mistrust and hostility in American and world opinion against joint activity of the two forces, and to cause division among Black African radical national groups and their leaders.

3. U.S. embassies to Black African countries specially interested in southern Africa must be highly circumspect in view of the activity of certain political circles and influential individuals opposing the objectives and methods of U.S. policy toward South Africa. It must be kept in mind that the failure of U.S. strategy in South Africa would adversely affect American standing throughout the world. In addition, this would mean a significant diminution of U.S. influence in Africa and the emergence of new difficulties in our internal situation due to worsening economic prospects.

4. The FBI should mount surveillance operations against Black African representatives and collect sensitive information on those, especially at the U.N., who oppose U.S. policy toward South Africa. The information should include facts on their links with the leaders of the Black movement in the United States, thus making possible at least partial neutralization of the adverse effects of their activity.

V. TRENDS IN THE AMERICAN BLACK MOVEMENT

In connection with our African policy, it is highly important to evaluate correctly the present state of the Black movement in the Untied States and basing ourselves on all available information, to try to devise a course for its future development. Such an approach is strongly suggested by our perception of the fact that American Blacks form a single ethnic group potentially capable of causing extreme instability in our strategy toward South Africa. This may lead to critical differences between the United States and Black Africa in particular. It would also encourage the Soviet Union to step up its interference in the region. Finally, it would pose a serious threat to the delicate structure of race relations within the United States. All the above considerations give rise to concern for the future security of the United States.

Since the mid-1960s, when legislation on the human rights was passed and Martin Luther King murdered, federal and local measures to improve black welfare have been taken, as a result of which the U.S. black movement has undergone considerable changes.

The principle changes are as follows:

*Social and economic issues have supplanted political aims as the main preoccupations of the movement. and actions formerly planned on a nationwide scale are now being organized locally.

*Fragmentation and a lack of organizational unity within the movement.

*Sharp social stratification of the Black population and lack of policy options which could reunite them.

*Want of a national leader of standing comparable to Martin Luther King.

B. THE RANGE OF POLICY OPTIONS

The concern for the future security of the United States makes necessary the range of policy options. Arranged without intent imply priority they are:

(a) to enlarge programs, within the framework of the present budget, for the improvement of the social and economic welfare of American Blacks in order to ensure continuing development of present trends in the Black movement;

(b) to elaborate and bring into effect a special program designed to perpetuate division in the Black movement and neutralize the most active groups of leftist radical organizations representing different social strata of the Black community: to encourage division in Black circles;

(c) to preserve the present climate which inhibits the emergence from within the Black leadership of a person capable of exerting nationwide appeal;

(d) to work out and realize preventive operations in order to impede durable ties between U.S Black organizations and radical groups in African states;

(e) to support actions designed to sharpen social stratification in the Black community which would lead to the widening and perpetuation of the gap between successful educated Blacks and the poor, giving rise to growing antagonism between different Black groups and a weakening of the movement as a whole.

(f) to facilitate the greatest possible expansion of Black business by granting government contracts and loans with favorable terms to Black businessmen;

(g) to take every possible means through the AFL-CIO leaders to counteract the increasing influence of Black labor organizations which function in all major unions and in particular, the National Coalition of Black Trade Union and its leadership including the creation of real preference for adverse and hostile reaction among White trade unionists to demands for improvement of social and economic welfare of the Blacks;

(h) to support the nomination at federal and local levels of loyal Black public figures to elective offices, to government agencies and the Court.

This would promote the achievement of a twofold purpose: first, it would be easier to control the activity of loyal black representatives within existing institution; second, the idea of an independent black political party now under discussion within black leadership circles would soon lose all support.

One more thing. I was on a program in Illinois recently with Senator Paul Douglas, a so-called liberal, so-called democrat, so-called white man, at which time he told me that our African Brothers were not interested in us in Africa. He said, the Africans are not interested in the American Negro. I knew he was lying, but, during the next two or three weeks, it is my intention and plan to make a tour of our African homeland, and I hope that when I come back, I’ll be able to come back and let you know how our African brothers and sisters feel towards us. And I know before I go there, that they love us. We’re one, we’re the same. The same man who has colonized them all these years colonized you and me too all these years, and all we have to do now is wake up and work in unity and harmony and the battle will be over -Malcolm X

And the reason this tendency exists, the strategy of the white man has always been divide and conquer. He keeps us divided in order to conquer us. He tells you, I’m for separation and you for integration, and keep us fighting with each other. No, I’m not for separation and you���re not for integration, what you and I are for is freedom. Only, you think that integration will get you freedom; I think that separation will get me freedom. We both got the same objective, we just got different ways of getting’ at it.-Malcolm X

#malcolm x #who killed malcolm x #malcolmxquotes #martin luther king #african #africans #fbi #cia #freedom #kemetic dreams #unit #unity #x #trending news #african culture #african languages

[sidewalk-scrawls]

Man, I know this isn’t a huge deal, but it’s so annoying when people talk about “anti-work westerners” as if we’re all bat shit out of our minds. There are plenty of reasons to be critical of the movement, but people tend to claim that the point is that *we* shouldn’t have to do work, and that we should instead exploit the labor of other people. And there are probably some people in the anti-work movement who believe that! But to act like that’s the core of the western anti-work movement is... dishonest at best.

Anti-work westerners (for the most part) are not saying we shouldn’t have to work at all. We’re saying that the current concept of work is fucked and that maybe, we should re-evaluate how things function. Lots of people seem to take offense specifically to the phrase, “I do not dream of labor,” but I think they’re missing the point -- That phrase doesn’t mean that labor isn’t necessary. It means that people want time to pursue other things, too. And that the current reality of work divorces people from the things that they create. People just want jobs that have *meaning* and a positive impact. (As a person who’s worked in a wide range of jobs, I can say that most of them... are bullshit! Spending 8 hours a day doing things with no meaningful impact is depressing as fuck lol.)

And yes, revisiting this concept of work will have a ripple effect on other aspects of life! I’ll happily agree that a lot of westerners probably don’t realize that (i.e., two-day shipping is literally not possible in a just world. 7 million brands of cereal are also not possible in a just world.) But to act like the entire anti-work movement is just a bunch of lazy fucks who don’t want to work and just want to exploit other people is umm. Really just capitalist propaganda lol. It’s largely a leftist movement. Which in the US, at least (I can’t really speak for other countries) is really, really hard to build.

#sorry i know this is a poking the bear post #i *do* understand the criticisms of the movement #but like it's largely a net good #and i get frustrated seeing people consistently misinterpret the intentions =/ #talking tag

[mariacallous]

I have to say I'm very grateful to the Kenyan Ambassador to the UN, I think having an African speak that forcefully on Russian imperialism and colonialism and to fit it into what Europe did in Africa has shut down a lot of leftists and been useful in spaces where the words of white westerners (particularly Americans) would be treated with more salt then maybe they deserve.

It was an incredibly powerful and really well-delivered speech, and all the more so for it being somewhat unexpected by a lot of people.

I also think it's important because this isn't new for a lot of African countries - a lot of people forget that the Soviet Union was huge on "helping" countries by providing large amounts of "aid" and "personnel" to help with various projects, often with what were seen to be less stringent requirements than the West (and the West could sometimes be really fucking stupid when it came to doing this sort of thing).

(It's also the same kind of thing that China is doing now in Africa and in the Balkans.)

And it's absolutely important to listen to people who are saying "Hey, we lived with and are still living with the effects of imperialism and colonialism and we know what it looks like and how it feels and what happens to the people living under those kinds of systems."

[mbti-notes]

Anon wrote: Hey. I'm INFJ. I want to ask about relationship problems. The relationship in question is between my ESTJ mother and I. Generally, I would describe our relationship as close and loving, but there is a conflict, and that came from our opposite ideology and political beliefs.

I want to say before continuing that we are neither American or European, so our ideology and politics shouldn't be understood from the "western" side of things, though to simplify by comparison, my views could be described as leftist and my mother's as conservative. I should also add that I used to hold her worldview when I was younger, but changed once I was old enough to form an opinion of my own. This caused my mother to imply many times in our discussions that I am "brainwashed" and dismiss me as "too young" and "too ideological". I should add that the latter (ideological) is a valid criticism. Still working on that.

Otherwise, I often tried to persuade, then later find middle ground with her, to no avail. We ended up arguing many times, until we decided to not talk politics with each other anymore. So, what's the problem, you might ask.

Recently, the political climate in my country got intense. Heated, even. I won't go into details, but there are protests again the government by young liberals/leftists-equivalent of my country. Many of my good acquaintances joined the protest. The government used police force against them, and it got violent. There are young unarmed protestors who were teargassed, beaten, and shot with rubber bullets and high velocity water jets. Some protestors were heavily injured. Some protestors were arrested and incarcerated in horrible conditions. My mother and I agreed to not speak about politics, so I said nothing.

Until my mother, right infront of me, with another family member, openly mocked the protestors, made judgments about them based on the goverment's propaganda, called them a nuisance, and implied that they "deserved it". It's not about her discussing it, but it's about how unempathetic she was when she said those things, towards those young people my age, with similar ideology to me, and how apathetic she was when she said that "nothing's going to change anyway". It was the first time that I saw my mother in that angle, the complete lack of humanity in her words. It still haunts me until now.

So my question to you is, how does one deal with that? I love my mother, I think I always will. I also know that she loves me, or at least the part of me that's still her child. But for a moment, I loved her less, and that frightened me. I began to wonder, what would happen one day if we have to actually take sides, because things are getting worse in my country, not better. This adds to other issues I have in my life and made me more depressed. A part of me tells me that I should tell her about how I feel, but how do you tell someone you love that they're one of the reasons for your sadness?

I'm sorry if this is stupid. I'm sure that this feeling I have is one-sided, and I wonder if I'm being selfish or ungrateful. Maybe it's because I'm too sensitive these days, so I thought if I have an outside neutral opinion, it will help illuminate my clouded mind. Thank you. I hope you had a good summer break!

------------------------

The sentence that sticks out at me the most is: "It was the first time that I saw my mother in that angle, the complete lack of humanity in her words." I would argue that the problem doesn't lie with her. In fact, nothing about your mother had changed. She was still the same woman as before she uttered those words. The issue arises from your perception of her and the standards by which you evaluate her.

I follow world affairs very closely, so I think I know which region you are speaking of. One of the biggest problems in the manner that people think and talk about politics is the tendency to stereotype. Stereotyping is basically a form of cognitive oversimplification. It makes your thinking ability fast but also very dull and blunt, unable to understand situations with the nuance and sophistication that is required for good judgment and decision making.

It doesn't matter which country/culture you are from, there is always some variation of "right versus left". Why? Because in every society, there will always exist an underlying tension between those who don't want change and those who do. You may label these two opposing forces as right vs left, conservative vs liberal, regressive vs progressive, etc, but the fact of the matter is that these labels are gross oversimplifications of people's political belief systems.

When you divide people along an oversimplified dichotomy, it's too easy to stereotype them, in terms of believing that all people on each "side" hold all the same beliefs and values. Stereotyping goes along with the natural tendency of humans to be tribal. You start to view those on your side as being intellectually and morally superior to those on the other side. This leads to dehumanization and even demonization of the other side. In essence, you lose the ability to empathize with people, as long as you believe that they aren't on your side or the "right" side.

It seems that your political thinking has become too stark due to how extreme the situation has become. You have the feeling of fighting for your life because of the way that the situation has been handled by authorities, as they are indeed putting people's lives in danger. Your feelings about the situation are completely valid. But you fail to recognize that your mom's feelings about the situation are also valid. Certainly, there are hard-core fundamentalists and extremists out there that you can never reach because their beliefs and values are not based in any form of reason. However, I don't think your mom fits into that category, does she?

Do you know what it means to have no humanity? You are accusing her of something like psychopathy. Is that really true of her? I don't think so. She said: "nothing's going to change anyway". I don't consider this an expression of "apathy", as you assume. This is an expression of hopelessness. In that sentence, there is a real possibility that your mom is sympathetic at heart, but she disagrees that the chaotic actions of the protestors (i.e. the method) will lead to any meaningful change... and she may be absolutely right about that.

You haven't grasped the nuances of your mom's beliefs and values because your mindset has been so hardened by the extreme nature of the political conflict. This means that, when you engage in political discussion with her, you are unable to: 1) acknowledge how she feels, 2) acknowledge that there is some reason/merit/validity behind her beliefs, and 3) be open-minded enough to meet her halfway.

Put another way: If you met someone who wouldn't acknowledge your feelings as valid, dismissed all of your beliefs and values as completely wrong without proper investigation, and only sought to "convert" you, would you want to communicate with them? Probably not. This is the unproductive attitude that you now both bring to the table. This is the divisive attitude that arises when a conflict becomes too polarized and everyone is forced to "choose a side".

Unless one of you learns to listen and communicate more effectively, what will change? You say that you have tried to find middle ground with her but always end up arguing. Not finding middle ground is one thing, but getting caught up in interpersonal drama is a whole other thing. The option to amicably agree to disagree is always available. If you genuinely respect someone and respect their freedom to form their own beliefs, it shouldn't be hard to agree to disagree. Why do you find it so difficult to let her be her? Ultimately, you're not really interested in "middle ground"? You just want her agreement? Getting caught up in arguments all the time, especially on a recurring basis, indicates poor communication skills that stem from a troubling lack of objectivity. The more you argue with the intent to shame/change the other person, the more you push them away from your side, and the more myopic you get in your own beliefs.

You seem to have fallen into the trap of categorizing her into the tribe that you view as the enemy of your tribe, namely, the authorities that are cracking down on you young protestors. You've started to view her as the enemy, now you can't empathize with her, and even accuse her of having no humanity. You now consider yourself morally superior to her. If there is any possibility that she could be your ally, you've slammed the door on it.

You describe a very dire and desperate political situation that affects everyone, BUT, it doesn't affect everyone the same way. Different people have very different ways of dealing with intense emotions like fear, insecurity, grief, despair, helplessness, etc. Due to inferior Fi, ESTJs have extremely low tolerance for intense and uncontrollable emotions. Remember that one's ability to utilize the inferior function is not much better than a young child. If ESTJs can't neutralize or deflect their sense of powerlessness quickly, the burden of the emotions will quickly destroy them. I don't think you've really understood the thought process behind your mom's words and what is really motivating her "apathy".

Just because someone doesn't agree with your methods, doesn't mean that they don't have anything in common with you. Politics isn't just about good vs evil, as in, if you don't stand up for good, then you are evil. Everyone has their own way of looking at the situation because everyone has their own interests to take care of first and foremost, and everyone has their own ideas about the best methods to pursue. This is true for both you and your mom. It is possible to agree on beliefs but disagree on methods. For example, I'm assuming that you care about this cause so deeply because you care about your future. Sure, your ideas about the future differ from hers. But, certainly, you are both interested in securing your future, aren't you?

History has shown us that young people are always more willing to fight for causes because: 1) they would suffer less immediate material loss than the elder generation, 2) they have fewer life responsibilities, obligations, and commitments to take into consideration, and 3) their lack of life experience sometimes makes their thinking too simplistic when visualizing future implications.

Your interests aren't fully aligned with your mom's in this situation, perhaps because you are from different generations. However, this doesn't mean that your interests don't align in other important ways. At the end of the day, your mom is probably deathly afraid of seeing YOU on the news being beaten to a pulp and disappeared by the police, right? And it may be the case that she's passing harsh judgment on the protestors because she's trying to discourage you from meeting their horrible fate? That's hardly lack of humanity.

To be a good critical thinker, you need to learn to be more objective. Objectivity means understanding all aspects of the situation, or as many as you can manage. Objectivity and empathy often go hand-in-hand. You won't be able to empathize well unless you acknowledge that there might be some aspects of the situation that you're not seeing or understanding. When you take more time to get to the bottom of someone's thought process and why they really feel the way they do, you will discover all sorts of openings to influence their political beliefs in a friendly way. But when you can't even acknowledge that the other side might have an important point to be made, because you are so hardened in your stance, you've created a dead end for yourself.

#politics #empathy #emotional intelligence #debate #disagreement #conflict #infj #infj relationships #communication #ask

[bup1957]

𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙚 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙛𝙞𝙡𝙚

real name — Kent Mansley. No middle name. single or taken — By default, Kent is single and cycling through a veritably endless array of one night stands and weekend relationships. He is yearning quite acutely for a immutable relationship with emotional vulnerability, and is quite aggressively suppressing his attraction to men and those who have a relationship with gender that cannot be defined by the western binary. abilities or powers — He has no powers to speak of (by default, anyway, this can vary by verse or AU), but his some of abilities are as follows: adept photographer (can capture images well and knows how to set up a darkroom just about anywhere), adept at lying and manifesting more authority than he really posses, incredibly resistant to pain, solid deductive and inductive reasoning skills, effective worker when motivated, has an indepth understanding of mathematics and political science.

eye color — Blue; I oscillate between describing them as ‘electric’ and ‘baby’ blue, because I make the rules and whatever fits the scene works. hair color — Auburn/ginger. I like to imagine it’s on the darker side of red.

family members — His two parents and five brothers. He is not particularly fond of any of them, save his second eldest brother Chuck (Charles Jr.). His deceased maternal grandfather, however, bares the most of his ire.

pets — None currently. Kent will forever mourn the loss of his beagle Lucky.

something they don’t like — Cats, his family, arid environments, Democrats, counter-culture, leftist politics, tomatoes, being disrespected, his job, children, British English, redundancy, admitting he’s wrong, growing facial hair... The list could continue on.

hobbies / activities — Collecting Captain Marvel comics (and other pulp media; this is something Kent is very embarrassed about), pornography (pinups, dirty magazines, films like Teaserama; paradoxically this is something he is less embarrassed about than the comics), mathematics and physics problems (keeps current subscriptions to magazines on the topic, likes to do math for fun like a fuckin’ nerd).

ever hurt anyone before — Absolutely, both physically and emotionally. Kent’s childhood was fraught with violence, the apex of which being an assault on his high school crush and baseball team co-captain (the results of which were a broken arm and leg for the boy; his friends retaliated by breaking Kent’s arm in turn). As he grew older Kent began to learn that having a sharp tongue was often enough to sate his sadistic urges and he continues to be rather cruel effortlessly to this day.

ever killed anyone before — No. But by God does he dream about it.

animals that represent them — Bloodhounds (beagles, basset hounds) and canines of all stripes (especially maned wolves), along with American animal symbols such as the bald eagle.

worst habits — Christ, he has a whole litany of them. He’s a gossip and eavesdropper, he freely steals things because he can, he ignores the needs of others intentionally, he has a tendency to let his emotions run ahead of his logic, he’s needy...

role models — Surprisingly this is something I haven’t really considered much. Perhaps this will get a more concrete answer later, but I think it’d be safe to say that Kent looked up to pulp heroes like the Shadow and Doc Savage, along with like... Whoever was currently president.

sexual orientation — Kent is bisexual, but is completely unaware of this. Not only is he dealing with internalized homophobia but he doesn’t even understand that bisexuality is a legitimate spectrum of attraction. He represses his attraction to men for multiple reasons as a result-- he’s scared of the persecution that comes with being seen as visibly gay, and he’s scared that he will no longer be attracted to women. Outwardly he identifies as straight. This is not a measure to stay in the closet, however: Kent really does think he’s straight. In addition to this, as the understanding of sexuality at the time was based on action (so to speak) and not attraction, a theoretical Kent who accepts his attraction to men wouldn’t even question identifying as straight further because he’s never slept with men. As far as he (and perhaps even gay men of the era) is concerned, as long as he only sleeps with women he is straight, not just functionally but conceptually as well.

thoughts on marriage / kids — Kent wants to get married but does not want to have children. He sees them as tolerable at best and annoying at worst.

style preferences — The mainstream fashion trends for men of whatever era he’s in is what he will prefer... Except perhaps post-mid 1960s, as he’ll default to what’s considered conservative and stick with fashion five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty... ect. years out of date.

someone they love — ...Eeesh. A tricky question. Kent does love his mother and his brother Chuck, but he’d never admit to it. Even mentions of his mother enrage him; with Chuck he’s pleasant but standoffish. It’s possible he even loves the rest of his family (save his grandfather, who he truly does despise), but it would take some real introspection on his part to not only realize this but piece together why.

approach to friendships — Kent is very American insofar as friendships are transactional in his view. He is unlikely to consider spending further time with someone he is not romantically pursuing if he doesn’t think the relationship is benefiting him somehow. This is why, in turn, he has so few true friendships. The man needs a platonic manic pixie dream girl/boy in his life... Or someone he’s forced to spend time with that he eventually comes to like for their own merits.

favourite drink — Alcoholic, brandy or some other dark liquor (but brandy is his drink of choice). Non-alcoholic, lemonade or coffee.

favourite place to spend time at — He loves museums and places of learning! So probably the Smithsonian.

swim in the lake or the ocean — He’d do both, but I think he’d prefer the ocean.

their type — Kent’s answer would probably be someone akin to Marilyn Monroe, someone perceived to be docile and hyperfeminine and sporting a curvaceous figure. But in reality he prefers someone (male, female, or otherwise) who is unafraid to take charge of him and call him out on his bullshit behavior. When it comes to women his real type would be someone akin to Greta Garbo; with men it’s someone akin to Dean McCoppin. In either case, he tends to fall in with those who run contrary to himself. He posits he wants someone to wait on him hand and foot, but what really turns him on is someone who’ll dominate him.

camping or indoors — Indoors. Kent does like to spend some time out in nature, but he doesn’t like camping. I imagine he’s probably done it at least once for work and quickly realized he is not a frontiersman.

tagged by — @constablegoo​​ !! thank you! :D

tagging — @zenithspan​, @atcmicbetty​. @bcrkin​, @kantograndpa​, @edgelord-dl6​, @courcgecus​, @greghirs​, @lionfanged​, @makubes​, @mercyxkilling​, @mettatoniic​, and anyone else who wants to!

#[dash games] #[headcanons]

[max1461]

Just read Scott Alexander’s post on “conflict theorists” vs. “mistake theorists” and, hmm. I have several thoughts. First, to summarize the concept for anyone who hasn’t seen it before: Alexander links to a reddit post by user u/no_bear_so_low, who originated the idea, saying

There is a way of carving up politics in which there are two basic political meta-theories, that is to say theories about why different political ideologies and political conflict exist. The first theory is that political disagreements exist because politics is complex and people make mistakes, if we all understood the evidence better, we’d agree on a great deal more. We’ll call this the mistake theory of politics. For the mistake theorist, politics is not a zero-sum game, but a matter of growing the pie so there is more for everyone. The second theory is that political disagreements reflect differences in interests which are largely irreconcilable. We’ll call this the conflict theory of politics. According to the conflict theory of politics, politics is full of zero-sum games.

u/no_bear_so_low claims that both the far left and far right are more amenable to conflict theory than liberals are, who lean more towards mistake theory. Alexander seems to agree, though in his own post he’s speaking mainly about Marxists in particular. He summarizes the concept as follows:

To massively oversimplify:

Mistake theorists treat politics as science, engineering, or medicine. The State is diseased. We’re all doctors, standing around arguing over the best diagnosis and cure. Some of us have good ideas, others have bad ideas that wouldn’t help, or that would cause too many side effects.

Conflict theorists treat politics as war. Different blocs with different interests are forever fighting to determine whether the State exists to enrich the Elites or to help the People.

In addition, Alexander subdivides the categories further into “hard” and “soft” versions:

Consider a further distinction between easy and hard mistake theorists. Easy mistake theorists think that all our problems come from very stupid people making very simple mistakes; dumb people deny the evidence about global warming; smart people don’t. Hard mistake theorists think that the questions involved are really complicated and require more evidence than we’ve been able to collect so far [...]

Maybe there’s a further distinction between easy and hard conflict theorists. Easy conflict theorists think that all our problems come from cartoon-villain caricatures wanting very evil things; bad people want to kill brown people and steal their oil, good people want world peace and tolerance. Hard conflict theorists think that our problems come from clashes between differing but comprehensible worldviews.

So what do I think about all this?

Well, it seems to me that this framework is (a) a fairly reasonable descriptive dichotomy, in the sense that, yes, a lot of people do genuinely seem to fall into one of these two camps, and (b) a horrible dichotomy on which to base any prescriptions about political meta-theory, in that these are both awful (and obviously wrong) ways to think about the world. Now, Alexander doesn’t explicitly give any such prescriptions, but he does describe SCC as “hard mistake theorist central”, and generally speaks of mistake theory in approving terms, while speaking of conflict theory in disapproving ones. I think this is bad.

At a base level, my problem with both these “theories” is that they’re, in some sense, just too optimistic.

I agree, for example, with the hard mistake theorist sentiment that the world is full of extremely challenging technical problems, that these problems can be the source of real human suffering, and that the only way to address these problems is through data collection and empirical analysis and hard technical work. And I agree that this will often produce unintuitive conclusions, that run against people’s gut sense of what the right policy might look like. I agree that the state is diseased. I do not agree that “[w]e’re all doctors, standing around arguing over the best diagnosis and cure.” People, it turns out, often do have genuinely different and irreconcilable values, and genuinely do envision different ideal worlds. In addition to that fairly mundane observation, there genuinely are a lot of bad actors, who are just in the game for their own benefit. The world is full of grifters, schemers, and petty (or not so petty) tyrants; on an empirical level that’s just not something you can deny.

On the other hand, I agree with the easy conflict theorist sentiment that, e.g., “bad people want to kill brown people and steal their oil.” There’s plenty of pretty immediate proof of that to be found if you look into the history of colonialism¹, or the slave trade, or US foreign election interference in the twentieth century. Actually, just so I’m not pissing anybody off by only mentioning “western” examples, I’ll include the Khmer Rouge and the Holodomor and comfort women and uh, you get the picture. For god’s sake, the Nazis really existed, and yeah, they really believed all that Nazi shit. In retrospect they may seem like implausibly evil cartoon villains, but in fact they were real flesh and blood humans, just like the rest of us. You think that was just a one-off?

And on a much more mundane note, sometimes (actually, very very often), ordinary people just have incompatible ethical axioms. Sometimes people have genuinely different values, and there are no rational means to sort out which value-set to choose. I suspect this is at least part of the reason for the rationalist community’s skew towards mistake theorizers, in that their favored intellectual tool has more-or-less nothing to offer when it comes to selecting your values (=ethical axioms, =terminal goals, etc). I mean, of course rationality is good for diagnosing contradictions in your value set, but it can’t tell you how to resolve those contradictions. That’s the domain of intuition, empathy, and aesthetics, were data cannot light your way.

However, I do not agree with the conflict theorists’ underlying sentiment that if “the good people” were just in charge, everything would be better. After all, there are all those pesky technical problems with unintuitive solutions getting in the way, requiring all kinds of expertise and thorough empirical study and uh, plenty of them might not even be solvable.² This is a huge deal. It’s incredibly easy to have the best of intentions and still make horrible mistakes by virtue of just... happening to have the facts wrong. Not through malice, or self-interest, or even some nicely-explainable sociological bias like white fragility or whatever. Just because problems are hard, and sometime you will fail to solve them. Even when people’s lives and livelihoods are at stake.

Here’s a handy latex-formatted table for your comprehending pleasure:

lol, we live there.

So this all sounds a bit pessimistic and, well, I suppose it is. I think we have a responsibility to acknowledge the gravity of our situation. We could, conceivably, live in a world that was structured according to either the conflict theorist’s vision or the mistake theorist’s vision, but we don’t. We live in a much scarier world, and if we don’t face that terrifying reality head-on, we’re not going to be able to overcome it.

Now, in general, I’d say I spend a lot of my internet-argument-energy-allowance trying to persuade [what I perceive to be] overly conflict-theorizing leftists in the direction of a greater recognition of the genuine technical difficulty of the problems we face. It's probably worth making a separate post about why I think a “denial of unintuitive solutions” is so common on the left, but I’ll just mention here that I think it relates to what I once jokingly called the “Humanistic gaze”. That is, the bias to view everything quite narrowly through the lens of the humanities, and to view all problems as fundamentally sociological in nature. When the world is constructed entirely by humans and human social relations, there’s a level at which nothing can be unintuitive. After all, an intersubjective world must ultimately be grounded in subjective experience, and subjective experience is literally made of intuition.

I usually don’t spend much time pursuing the dual activity (trying to argue liberals out of [what I perceive to be] an overly mistake-theorizing perspective). This is largely because, well, I think the optimistic assumption that mistake theorists make —that most people have basically compatible goals, and that relatively few people are working out of abject self-interest or hatred or whatever— is so obviously false that it doesn’t warrant as much genuine critique as it warrants responding with memes about US war crimes. The principal of charity is best extended to ideas, not people or institutions. You can take the neocons’ arguments seriously without extending charity to the neocons as agents.

The post concludes with Alexander writing

But overall I’m less sure of myself than before and think this deserves more treatment as a hard case that needs to be argued in more specific situations. Certainly “everyone in government is already a good person, and just has to be convinced of the right facts” is looking less plausible these days.

And uh, yeah. Indeed.

So, in conclusion: is politics medicine, or is it war? No, it’s politics.

There are disagreements, and conflicts of interest, and coalition building, and policy-wonkery, and logistics. There is, as with anything involving the state, the implicit threat of violence. (That’s where the state’s power comes from, remember? Whether it’s their power to tax, or their power to enforce individual property rights to begin with. Their power to regulate or build infrastructure or legally construct corporate personhood or whatever. There’s more than a bit of game theory involved, sure, but the rules of the game are set through the armory.) Every scholarly technocrat with double-blind peer reviewed policy suggestions still ultimately just decides who the guns get pointed at, if at several layers of abstraction. Every righteous people’s vanguard is still bound by the mathematics of production and the dynamics of a chaotic world. There are no easy solution, not conceptually easy nor practically easy. And unless we recognize that on a very deep level, we have no chance of fixing anything.

[1] I’d quote my go-to example here, of the truly ghastly stories relayed to linguist R. M. Dixon by the Dyirbal people of Australia about their subjugation at the hands of white settlers, but unfortunately I don’t have his book with me at the moment. Also this post would require several additional trigger warnings.

[2] I mean, after all, there are only countably many Turing machines, and the set of all languages with finitely many symbols has cardinality 2^(aleph_0)!

#society #for posterity