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creativefiend19 · 4 years

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Raven cycle asks 5 11 24 :)

Hey Anon! Thanks so much for the Asks. I’m loving them!

I already answered 5 :) Seems like a popular one!

11. Opinions on Kavinsky?

Right. Not pulling any punches are you? This is going to be a long one (I’m tempted to make a Kavinsky-style ‘that’s what he said’ joke here, LOL). Just read the bolded bits if you can’t be bothered to read everything (I wouldn’t blame you.)

(TW: some canon level discussion of physical and sexual abuse, but Kavinsky is his own warning anyway, right?)

I’m not actually going to answer about Kavinsky as a Person. Because, y’know, he’s to your taste or not. But I’m really interested in Kavinsky as a CHARACTER. How Maggie uses him to move the plot forward, why was he in TDT anyway. Here is my list, in no sort of order:

A. He was the villain of the piece. Very true, IMO. K was Coded to be the villain of TDT. We’ll come back to this in a bit.

B. He was Ronan’s gay awakening. Really tho? Idk. He did bring the Gay motif to the fore, I grant you. But the sex dream featured both K and Adam. And pretty much anything K said to Ronan about being gay was a slur or a joke or full of not very subtle internalised homophobia. Except maybe when he says to Ronan: Don’t tell me you don’t swing that way. This is K at his most authentic and vulnerable - no jokes or slurs now. Just desperation.

Also, K definitely has low regard for Ronan's personal boundaries. Although, his dialogue about consent being overrated and 'sometimes you just gotta take it'? I've always wondered if the 'take it' hinted at K actually being a survivor of sexual abuse, rather than the more obvious indication of him being only the abuser.

(However, I love that little trip Ronan has of: does K have 3 balls, is he Gay etc. Lol)

But there is no doubt about the fact that K is, well, sexy – to put it frankly. Not just sleazy sexy, like bad boy sexy, but legitimately has animal magnetism. Even sensible Blue feels it a bit, when K enters Nino’s and she’s torn between wanting him to notice her, with his Full and Vulgar Lips, and being relieved that he doesn’t (definitely interesting that she thinks about K ‘swallowing’ her, just like Ronan dreams of later. Those must be Some Lips). Even Gansey is egged on by him at the substance party – with the infamous Molotov cocktails and the ‘dog’ dialogues. Adam seems the only person genuinely unaffected by K.

C. He was Ronan’s Dreaming mentor. Yup. Because Niall bloody Lynch was such a shit excuse for a dad or a responsible dreamer, Somebody had to teach our Hero, so we could have an actual fucking story.

Ronan needed an Obi-Wan Kenobi. And how Absolutely Brilliant of Maggie to make KAVINSKY Ronan’s mentor! It’s like Darth Vader teaching Luke about the Force:‘In and out like a motherfucking thief, Luke. And, ah, speaking of motherfucking…’ (LOLL I crack myself up sometimes). So, it all immediately becomes hella complicated and interesting and full of possibilities!

Aside: unfortunately for the complexity of the story, Ronan isn’t actually swayed by the Lure of the Dark. Or the Lure of the Kinky Sex. Or the Drugs. Or the Violence. All of which are supposedly siren calls to Ronan’s self-destructive tendencies.

D. He showed how much of an asshole Ronan can be. (Okay, I LOVE Ronan to bits. But he’s not a perfect person, and is not meant to be. His flaws are never in question).

Ronan takes advantage of K offering to teach him to Dream and then just - fucks off! Without so much as a thank you, literally. Wham bam thank you ma’am. In fact, it was Ronan who was ‘in and out like a motherfucking thief’ in this situation, to be fanciful about it. Not saying how K reacted to this was in any way excusable, tho, let’s be clear.

But here is where Ronan’s arrogance makes him a POS. And maybe he was influenced by Gansey: We matter Ronan (and K doesn’t). Or maybe Ronan cares about field mice and people he loves and is an absolutely heartless bastard to everyone else. Maybe this is just pre-evolution Ronan and he grows into a less 17- year-old- toxic-masculine- closeted-gay- angry version of himself.

E. He is Adam’s narrative foil. So, here we have two ‘broken’ boys from horrible families, with violence in their backgrounds. Except Adam is poor and K is rich (and born Magical pbly). But K wastes it all on drugs and Dreams. Adam ‘rises above’ the disadvantages of his life, and works three jobs and is coded for Ivy-league greatness.

F. He is Ronan’s narrative foil. This is who Ronan could’ve been if he hadn’t grown up cocooned in the loving valley of the Barns. (Corollary: so who would've K been, if he'd grown up at the Barns? Interestingly, Adam wonders this about himself in BLLB).

So, the tools that Ronan uses to veer away from K’s path in life are the tools that make him the Hero of TDT, if not the Hero of TRC. Ronan is the Greywaren. He will not steal from Cabeswater. He is someone with unshakeable principles (mostly!). He loves himself and others (see Albino night horror, and Maggie actually saying: The Lynch brothers love themselves and each other). He is loved in return.

And so, very much like a goth skinheaded Harry Potter, Ronan is coded to Rise above it all, as the Hero.

Therefore, K is coded to die as the villain.

That is the simple truth, as I see it. He existed to be the Big Bad, teach Ronan to dream, kidnap Matthew, lose the readers’ (and Ronan’s) sympathy, and show how not-K Adam is. And then die in a literal blaze of glory.

So he’s out of the picture and not complicating the remaining storylines with his seductive presence. His Fatal Flaws make him Lose so the Heroes of the story Win. He is Bad and the Gangsey is Good. These are all understandable, and typical, authorial decisions.

TL;DR: So, in other words, I absolutely LOVE Kavinsky as a character. And I think he is one of Maggie’s most brilliant creations in TRC. And definitely the most tragic.

24. Who would you want to do a reading for you?

Thankfully, after that K thesis, this is a short one.

I would love for the three psychics to do my reading together: Maura, Calla and Persephone.

I would actually be very intrigued to have that ‘Tree of Life’ spread done, with All the Fox Way ladies (whom I Adore) and all their very individual card decks, but TBH I don’t want to know That much about my future LOL.

***

Anon – thanks for this absolutely Smashing ask. It was so much fun for me, I cannot tell you. I hope it was fun for you too, and you don't regret opening this can of worms!

TRC Ask Meme

#Anonymous #Kavinsky #TRC #Meta #Joseph Kavinsky #mine #asks

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surveys-at-your-service · 3 years

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Survey #330

“and i don't want ya / and i don't need ya / don't bother to resist, or i'll beat ya / it's not your fault that you're always wrong / the weak ones are there to justify the strong”

If you have a job, do you like it? I'm unemployed. Do you like any kinds of fruit? Well of course. Are you waiting for something right now? Covid and this headache to fuck off, May for my tattoo, to be paid to take some pictures again... What is your favorite kind of animal? Kind, not the actual animal itself? In that case, social species, usually mammals. What kind of Dippin' Dots do you like? Holy shit, I haven't had that in like a damn decade or something. I don't know, I barely remember the taste. Who is the most badass woman that you can think of? My mom. My mother is a fucking warrior. Do you have a Pinterest account? Yeah. I get a lot of photography ideas from there, as well as base pictures to make Mark icons, haha. If you were to write a book, what would it be about? The stories I and my friends have weaved in RP. Have you ever seen the television show The Munsters? AHHHHH YES!!!!! Mom loves that show, so I used to watch it with her growing up. Have you ever written one of those 'Roses are red...' valentines? I don't think so. Would you/have you spent more than $200 on any one person for a holiday? I haven't, but I would for certain people. Do you have a favorite Robin Williams movie? Probably Night at the Museum. Thoughts on Slender Man? Have you even heard of him? I think it's a cool creepypasta; he does look pretty unnerving with his height and especially lack of a face. The movie was good too, btw. Do you know what the Tardis is? I think almost everyone does in this generation, haha. Doctor Who ain't no joke to a whole lot of people. Are there any children's shows that you'd watch today if they were on? Sure, like Pokemon or Avatar: The Last Airbender, among others. I wouldn't at all be opposed to watching The Lion Guard, either. I actually want to, with my whole TLK love. I'm not embarrassed to watch "kids" shows or movies at all. What would you call yourself the King or Queen of? Having not an ounce of knowledge on how to love things in moderation/avoid total obsession with things, haha. If I paid for you to take karate lessons, would you? No, especially not now with my legs. Do you read more fiction or non-fiction? Almost solely fiction. What modern technology are you especially grateful for? Laptops, ig. Do you have a favorite science topic? Genetics. Very fascinating stuff. Have you ever read any Sherlock Holmes stories? No. What is the saddest movie that you've ever seen? Either Johnny Got His Gun or Boy in the Striped Pajamas. What's your most popular post? On what? If Facebook, I don't really know. Possibly my "coming out" one or a lovey-dovey essay when Sara and I were together. On Tumblr, it's definitely the gif I made of Mark and Chica (his dog) with I think over 10k notes. Manga or anime? Anime. I don't read manga, though I've been tempted with Deadman Wonderland since the show only had one season and ends on a ginormous cliffhanger, but there's more story to be had. A card game that you're good at? None, really. A popular book you haven't read yet? To Kill a Mockingbird. I feel like every school student has read it at some point. Favorite Mean Girls quote? I don't know any. It's a fine movie, but I've never understood the hype. Name your top 3 albums from your favorite band/artist. Black Rain, Ozzmosis, and... then I can't choose. I love so, so many very dearly. Name your top 5 music videos. I don't really watch music videos, so I definitely can't name five. My #1 favorite is probably "Wrong Side of Heaven" by Five Finger Death Punch; I absolutely cannot watch it without crying. What are you most passionate about? How did this passion develop? Animals. I was born simply adoring animals and have always wanted to protect them and their environment. Do you like monkeys? Do you believe in evolution? Yes and yes. We've literally watched it in action. What embarrasses you the most in front of other people? Discussing RP if you're not involved in it. I'm terrified of people thinking I'm weird. Have you considered running for president? Absolutely not. Which famous person would you like to be BFFs with? I'd say Mark, but I'd be way too interested in dating him instead of being just friends, haha... So with that said, maybe Bindi Irwin? Would you ever go skinny dipping with the last person who commented you? Lyndsey would be that person, so no. She's a great friend of mine, but realistically I'd probably only ever - if ever - do that with the company of my s/o. Are you still friends with the last person who broke your trust? No. How long did your last relationship last? Around two years. Have you ever been banned from anywhere? Online, yes, as a little kid on the Animal Planet forum, haha... Has anyone kissed you when you weren't expecting it? Yeah, Juan. Did you like it? It was a sweet moment, but I didn't want it. Does your dad smoke? Like a chimney. Is your mom over 50? Yeah. Are you currently listening to anything? Yeah, kinda hooked on "The Horrible People" by Manson. I've found a lot of great music lately. Would you ever consider getting breast implants? No, but once (if...) I lose all the weight I want, it's going to be a moderate priority to get a breast lift. I've hated my body way too fucking long and am dying to be satisfied with it again, and with how much weight I need to lose, I would essentially have grandma tits. :x Do you know anyone who is bisexual? Me, haha. Among some friends. Who would you tell, or who did you tell when you lost your virginity? That's not something I'd just go to tell someone afterwards for no reason... I'd only ever mention having lost my virginity if I was actually asked or if it was relevant to a conversation. Is there something you have been trying to learn lately? I'm really trying to practice opposite action and behavioral activation, among other things I've learned in group therapy. When you think about your future career, do you envision yourself becoming the head honcho or CEO? If not, why not? Well, I want to be my own boss as a freelance photographer. In any other job, I definitely wouldn't want that. Too much responsibility and leadership skills. Can you think of a time when you seriously misjudged a music artist based on their name? I don't think so? Have you ever kissed someone that you didn’t really want to kiss (not assault, just indifference)? Why did you go along with it and how did you feel after? Yes, Tyler. I felt like I was "supposed to." I felt really uncomfortable afterwards. If you have to wake up early for something, what time is just TOO early for you to be there and be presentable and sentient? Have you ever had to be somewhere that early? Probably like, 5:00. No. Have the majority of your romantic relationships started with a physical attraction or a deeper connection? Always an emotional connection. Did you ever write a fan letter to a celebrity? How about submit something to a magazine? No to both. What hair color is the most attractive on the opposite sex? Of natural colors, black, but I like unnaturally dyed hair most. Where do you like to go to when you are stressed? On a carride, so long as I'm controlling the music nice and loud and not talking. Where do you go to get your hair cut/dyed? To a family friend's little salon/small business. Why do you want the career that you want? Because I adore art and think it's pretty darn magical that you can freeze a moment forever to not just remember in your head, but actually see. Have you ever watched iCarly? Yeah, I enjoyed it when I was younger. What was your favorite class during your sophomore year of high school? Art. Do you wear bandanas in your hair? No. Have you ever been on a blind date? No, not interested. How many living grandparents do you still have? None. Have you ever worked in an office? No. Who does the grocery shopping in your house? Mom. Have you ever stayed in a hotel without your parents or older relatives? No. Did you have an Easy-Bake oven when you were little? Sure did. Have you ever seen a donkey? Yeah. Have you ever made out in a hot tub? Pretty sure no. Do you always flush the toilet after you use it? Yes. What were the last words you said to your dad? Probably "bye, love you." Have you cuddled with someone you weren’t dating? Nah. Who has the ability to hurt you the most emotionally? JASON. Are you a really understanding person? Yeah, very. Are you the type of person that enjoys getting hugs? Yes. When’s the last time you wore a wig? For a witch costume many years ago. Why were you last hospitalized? Suicide attempt. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without food? At least 12 hours, but I think I almost went a day once back when recovery started and my appetite was non-existent. What was the last name of your third grade teacher? Mrs. Britt. How was the last chicken you ate cooked? They were chicken tenders. What is your favorite kind of chip? Hot crunchy Cheetos. What grade did you have your first boyfriend? 7th. Have you ever been told that you’ve lost weight? Yeah, back when I actually WAS losing loads of weight. >> Do you have the same political views as your parents? Some things, but definitely not all. Does anyone call you babe/baby? No. Have you ever made a significant other cry? Sadly. If you could make your lips bigger, would you? Maybe just a teeeeny bit. Are you one to sneak food into movie theaters? Yep. Fuck them prices. Are you prone to illness? Definitely not. What races do you usually date? History says Caucasian, but I have no actual preference. I'll date any race. What’s your cup size? C. Ever flirted with a teacher? Yikes, no thanks. Who was the main cook of your Thanksgiving meal last year? My older sister made the most stuff. Have you ever been dumped really harshly? Well, considering it literally traumatized me... Do you have any ex’s you can’t stand anymore? No. Are you more of a phone or a computer person? Computer, definitely. When was the last time you made a sandwich? What did you put on it? Yesterday for lunch. Ham, American cheese, and mustard. Have you ever made friends with someone that you didn’t expect to get along with? Yeah. Do you own any accessories with your name on? No. What brand of eyeliner do you use? I pay no attention to this. Have you ever been sexually harassed? No. Have you ever sent a naughty text message? Suggestive ones, yes. How long have you had your pets? Roman, around two years. Venus, around three or four years. Who was the last person to tell you that they love you, other than family? Sara. Has one of your friends ever tried to hook you up with someone? Colleen tried obnoxiously hard to push Girt and me together. We all went out to eat pizza once just as friends hanging out, and this bitch prefaced an uncomfortable and nosy question to him with an even more uncomfortable "because I'm trying to get you in her pants...", and that, my friends, was the closest occasion I've ever come to slapping someone right across the face. I looked at her in absolute disgust, and Girt was clearly thinking "what the actual fuck" as well. I do not miss her feral mouth. Are you good at staring contests? No. Eye contact is very difficult for me to maintain. Do you like peanut butter? I love peanut butter. When was the last time you had to present something to your class? In this mandatory but entirely pointless entry class at my last college, we all had to do like this PowerPoint introducing ourselves. I hated it. Who was the last person that told you they missed you? I think my friend Chelsea. What store is your favorite shirt from? It's not a real store, but rather an online brand: Cloak. Mark is one of the owners/creators so I obviously support them intensely. Have you ever fell off your bed while you were sleeping? No, thankfully. Do you have something you’re supposed to tell someone, but you haven’t yet? No. What type of food do you never really eat? Vegetables, oops. Have you ever cut someone else’s hair? No. Do you like going to weddings? Not really, if I'm being honest. I'm only interested in photographing weddings for the only the couple pictures and pay, really. I'm not big on formal events. What’s your favorite flavor squash? I don’t like squash. Do you or anyone in your house have a severe allergy? No. Who was the last guest in your house and what were they staying for? Our landlord/family friend, just to hang out for a little bit and chat with Mom. What fad were you actually into? Hm. What was the last spontaneous thing you did? I'm not a very spontaneous person, so I really don't know.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''the beautiful people'' by marilyn manson

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dieselpunk-progressive-blog · 7 years

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Back by Popular Demand

Since the election, I’ve made a point of keeping my mouth mostly shut about politics, both for my sanity and that of my friends and family. But as we’re now past the half time show for this first year of the Trump administration, I find that my sanity is more endangered by my silence than by my engagement. The maddening bit, though, is that it is not the Donald’s performance as the nation’s executive which is driving me insane, but rather the general failure of the Democrats to provide any sort of organized, motivated and effective opposition.

As I repeatedly pointed out during the 2016 primary season, there has been a general sea-change in the political, economic and social values of these United States. This coincides, unsurprisingly, with the massive impact of economic globalization and the emergence of the Millennial Generation as the newest, fastest growing and soon-to-be-if-not-already largest voting block in the United States. In a great many ways, Millennials reflect the energy and attitudes of their Boomer grandparents, who are currently fighting them tooth-and-nail for both political and economic power. But the real irony of this, is that the Boomers, are fundamentally doing the same thing; they, however, are now taking the role of intransigent elders determined to forestall the socio-economic evolution of the country. One might now entertain an energy-policy based on harnessing the speed and torque of the Kennedy Brothers in their graves.

Of course, the parallels are not exact. Most prominent in it’s absence is the character of a genuine, external existential threat to the American way of life, or just American life, despite the continued saber-rattling of North Korea. There’s also the greatly diminished (though not extinct) role of institutional racism and sexism, although these two insidious evils remain and continue to adapt for survival in an increasingly egalitarian society. And the struggle for justice and social enfranchisement of the LGBT+ alliance has added new dimensions as well. But perhaps the single most important difference between the second decade of the 21st Century and the sixth decade of the 20th, is that we find ourselves confronted by the same evils which threatened to consume the nation all through the first half of the last century. These are evils which cross all boundaries of race, religion, sex, gender and ethnicity. These are the evils of economic concentration and fashionable ignorance.

The antitrust and antimonopoly laws of the early 20th Century, combined with the economic reforms and regulations instituted during Franklin Roosevelt’s administration created the framework for the expansion of the greatest economic power in the history of the world: the American Middle Class. Living wages, guaranteed retirement benefits in old age, restraint of market speculation by commercial deposit banks; all these things, and more, made it possible for American citizens to invest in their own futures. Home ownership, which really should be thought of as investment in a community, became a reality for most citizens. So did the expectation that their children would due do better than their parents. People could afford to buy the sort of manufactured goods the fueled general economy, and as a result kept more-or-less everybody employed. The odds that very many people were going to get rich this way were nil, but for people who lived through the chaos of the late 19th Century, the deplorable income disparity of the Gilded Age, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and two World Wars, stabile, moderate economic growth and prosperity was Heaven on Earth.

Of course the capital interests of Wall Street and big business across the country were universally opposed to anything that seemed to cut into their profit margins. This isn’t anything new today, nor was it in 1902, when the coal miners of the country went on strike, threatening to not only halt the machinery of American Industry, but to literally freeze the country to death for want of heating fuel that winter. The tide of power between capital and labor, or more correctly private and public interest, has shifted back and forth for centuries. But the post-Industrial world has seen that balance of power shift almost exclusively into the hands of private interest. FDR worked hard to create economic circumstances that engaged as much of the population as possible in participating in both the productivity and prosperity of the nation. Since then, private interests have worked long and hard to shift as much of that prosperity to themselves as they can. It isn’t practical to make moral judgements about this fact, it is simply a natural law of human behavior: given the opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of strangers, with whom they have no personal ties or empathy, and expecting no social consequences, a significant number of people will do it.

Birds sing, grass grows, and Wall Street makes money.

The problem with this lies in that the balance has been shifted too far towards private interest, for too long. We can say this because we can observe conditions that closely parallel those of the aforementioned periods of economic turmoil. Debt-to-earnings ratios are entirely out of control, large amounts of public money are being used to subsidize extremely high-risk private business decisions, income disparity is close the same levels as the Gilded Age and roughly half of the US economy is now focused on trading paper instead of building goods. And just to put the cherry on top we’re already starting another mortgage bubble, because people have been taught to see their house as a commodity to be traded, rather than a roof over their heads. We have people working more hours, earning fewer dollars, that are worth less, while the price of the basic goods and services they need are climbing, because lax interest rates have driven inflation. And behind it all are the very wealthy private interests which invest billions in buying political campaigns, in order to promote more of the same policies.

Of course, while this is happening, we somehow have an electorate which paradoxically has the greatest access to information, and the lowest levels of education and comprehension, in history. It is tempting to point fingers at the national media organizations, but the real culprits are the voters.

Yes, the voters. Us.

Over the last twenty-some-odd years we have gotten into the comfortable habit of ignoring public discourse and conflicting views which challenge our assertions and assumptions, in favor of conveniently prepackaged, pre-analysed and above all demographically targeted infotainment. It began with the Cable News Network (for those of you too young to remember CNN’s origins) and and spiraled completely out of control since then. There are now just six corporations which completely control all of the information available via the mainstream media, and this gives them the power to control what the content of our national discourse is.

Ah hah, some of you are now saying, I don’t have to rely on the Big Six, I can use the internet! Bravo, you; now take a quick turn around your browser of choice and take a look at what the most prominent search results for current events are. You will notice that, baring your particular local news, they are all covering the same dozen or so stories, from one of approximately five points of view: far left outsider, left insider, centrist/moderate, right insider or far right outsider.

Viewed another way: HuffPo, MSNBC, CNN, FOXNews and Breitbart.

And you are perfectly fine with this, because you can look at that list and pick one of them out, saying to yourself, well, those guys get it mostly right. Damn near every single voter in this country (and most non-voters) are convinced that their particular view of public policy is unambiguously Right. As a result, we don’t take the time to hear what each other are saying, and so we have no idea about the frustrations, fears and needs of our fellow citizens. We are complicit in our atomization and alienation from one another, and the absolute worst part of this is that we are proud of it.

It doesn’t matter if the discussion is about climate change or confederate statues. One half of this country simply assumes that their prejudicial caricature of the other is all there is to them. Does anyone really believe that the overwhelming majority of angry white men who tried to start a riot in Charlottesville, Virginia were actually upset over the removal of a statue that most of them had probably never known was there a week earlier? Of course not. Most of those guys are worried about their jobs, their homes, their families and their economic stability in general. But those issues aren’t being discussed, and when someone brings up those realities, they get dismissed with words like ‘privilege’. As if, somehow, being white and male makes any given person immune to the exact same economic turmoil that has ravaged everyone else in this country for the last thirty-some-odd years.

Yes, the statistics matter. Yes, white males are as a group less likely to have been damaged by globalization, the mortgage bubble, student debt, etc. But that only means that the number of those who’ve been damaged is smaller, not that they are each less damaged as individuals. And why does that fact matter? Because when lump all white males in a box, and ignore their individual circumstances, you are alienating them. You are saying that their needs and fears don’t matter and denying them a stake in society. And as a result, you turn them into an enemy. Worse, the very small number of actual reactionaries can them recruit these people. This is exactly how ISIS does it.

This is exactly how the Nazis did, and still do, as demonstrated in Charlottesville. These guys listen to and sympathize with the genuine racists and Nazis, because nobody else is listening to them or giving them a stake. And the same is absolutely true of women, Millennials, Latinos, Christians and every other demographic subset in the United States. You can’t just try and sweep them up into a bloc and hang a two word label them. You can’t just speak to people’s identity; you must address their actual, concrete needs.

Women are more than a set of reproductive organs; they need jobs that pay a living wage. African-Americans are more than the descendents of slaves; they need comprehensive health care, now. Latinos are more than exploited migrant labor; they need education to provide their children better opportunities. And literally everyone needs us to stop sending our sons and daughters to kill and die in foreign countries.

All this means we have to actually step outside our echo chambers, leave our social media bubbles, and make the effort to hear what someone is saying, rather than what we’re assuming about them. We have to work, hard, at correcting our ignorance of our fellow citizens, and stop being proud of it.

Both of these two points, about the corruption and imbalance of economic power and the atomization of the electorate, form the foundation of my tremendous frustration with the Democratic Party in the wake of the Trump Presidency. I would have thought that the general decline in party membership as a percentage of population should have indicated that they needed to make a serious course correction in their policy positions and agenda. I cannot avoid pointing out not only their inability to defeat a narcissistic reality television personality with all the vocabulary and maturity of a cranky five year old, but the fact that they lost the faith and loyalty of the working class voter in three of the states hardest hit by forty years of Republican economic policies.

And so, I return to the fight in earnest. The concept of ‘the resistance’, as it it spoken of by the current Democratic Leadership, is laughable at best. Have we forgotten that the Republicans were ’the resistance’ during the eight years of the previous administration? This accomplished little, and now they’ve swept into power again, we can see how much work they actually put into developing eventive policies to put into the legislative process. For the Democrats to follow this exact same playbook at this point isn’t just insufficient, it is positively counterproductive. The fact that instead of developing a platform oriented around the clearly Progressive push in modern American politics, they want to attempt to garner votes with a rebranding campaign, does nothing to inspire enthusiasm for them. It seems, in fact to fly in the face of Chuck Schumer’s New York Times piece. He started signaling that the Party was ready to change tack and move in line with the now more left leaning electorate, but such an agenda, with definable, concrete objectives, has yet to manifest.

The new slogan for the new brand (A Better Deal) is vague, undefined and is very obviously the product of a corporate focus group trying to evoke the legacy of FDR without committing to the actual policies he put in place. Aside from wondering how much they had to pay Papa John’s Pizza to forego legal action, the first question that any reasoning American citizen should ask is, ‘Better than what?’

Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick?

#politics Democrats Progressive Left government election OurRevolution DNC DLC economics racism feminism identitypolitics

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