Aleppo is being besieged and bombed by Russian and Assad forces for days now. Their electricity and water supply are faltering, there’s 30 doctors for hundreds of millions of people, UN supplies are being held up because of the intensity of the attacks, and the people have no way out. This is a humanitarian tragedy on every scale.
Tag: important
Our culture has celebrities in place of myths, and we have grief twitter instead of byzantine lore about the journey to the underworld and the proper ways of burial. When celebrities die and we mourn them in a massively public way, this is a safe way to practice mourning for our parents and our partners and our friends, to try to force ourselves to make the unthinkable familiar.
The generational quality of this grief comes from the fact that, as the celebrities with whom we grew up die, it signals that we are at the age where people are dying, and we look ahead to the inevitable disasters, the wave that grows larger on the horizon. If our public grief is a performance, it’s a performance in the way that a disaster drill is a performance.
Our grief at losing an icon who meant a great deal to us is a real grief but a bearable one. But that bearable grief is a test-drive for future unbearable ones. We practice together in the hope that we can be prepared, so that the idea of loss does not seem so alien.
Complaints about the inappropriate nature of grief on social media – that it’s a circle-jerk, a joiner’s club, an obligated performance – are as defining a part of these mournings as the remembrances themselves. But to call this grief a performance is to miss the point – it’s not a performance, it’s a rehearsal. It seems right to me that grief be public, and messy, and inconvenient, that it make everyone in its path uncomfortable.
Small amounts of discomfort, after all, increase our tolerance for large amounts of pain. Mourning celebrities who mattered to us is a way to remind ourselves that no one is spared, not even those who seemed immortal, larger than a human being with petty little organs doing their pedestrian little jobs inside their skin. Speaking things aloud removes their terror, dulls the power of their unfamiliarity. We speak this over and over to try to come to terms with something that cannot possibly be made familiar.
With Trump’s election and the threat of fascism, Twitter user Raphael Bob-Waksberg reminds us of Martin Niemöller’s words after WWIII:
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS
White supremacists target Jewish community of Whitefish, Montana
- White supremacists across the country have focused their attention on Whitefish, Montana, because of neo-Nazi Richard Spencer.
- Spencer’s parents Rand and Sherry Spencer live in Whitefish.
- Earlier this month, the town took a firm stance against Spencer’s rhetoric.
- A city council meeting included the reading of a recently approved proclamation that “repudiates the ideas and ideology of the founder of the so-called alt-right as a direct affront to the community’s core values.”
- An activist in the town called for a boycott and protest of the businesses in a building owned by Sherry Spencer.
- In response, Andrew Anglin wrote an article for The Daily Stormer in which he targets Jewish Whitefish residents, exposing their contact information.
- The article, entitled “Jews Targeting Richard Spencer’s Mother for Harassment and Exortion. TAKE ACTION!” uses anti-Jewish slurs and describes the Jewish people as “a vicious, evil race of hate-filled psychopaths.“
- Anglin calls on supporters to “hit [the named targets] up,” asking “Are y’all ready for an old-fashioned troll storm?“
- Targeted individuals and human rights organizations, as well as city council members, have received death threats since the article was published. Local businesses in support of human rights have also been harassed. Read more
follow @the-movemnt
Don’t forget they also released the name and social media information of a Jewish 7th grader who is a child of an activist. These monsters aren’t opposed to coming after our children.
They have always been okay with coming for Jewish children because to then Jews an infestation and thus not children or human.
PLEASE PROTECT MY PEOPLE PLEASE ACT
OK, so, someone obviously needs to introduce anti-doxxing legislation. I mean it’s time. The law would have to be written very narrowly to avoid abuse, but it could be. I know we’re going to be playing defense for the next 4 years but this really should be introduced at the federal level by the Democrats even if it never passes. There is no form of legitimate protest that requires you to doxx an individual. But that’s for the long term.
In the short term, I might suggest that concerned netizens make a donation to Love Lives Here, which has been working in the Whitefish area since, it appears, 2014, and probably deserves our support anyway.
That’s so annoying that no one wants to talk about Black pastor who dresses and feeds homeless people before Christmas…
Paul Ryan once argued that “liberal government programs give people comfort, but not dignity.”
And to justify cutting Welfare and defunding food programs, Republicans disingenuously equate having the basic necessities needed to live — like food — to dignity. Following that logic, are we to believe that wealthy people somehow have more dignity than poor people, because they have more access to more resources like housing, food and clean drinking water? Do the mostly white residents of Bismarck North Dakota have more dignity than the Native Americans at Standing Rock? Do Donald Trump’s children somehow have more “dignity” than does Little Miss Flint? Because Trump’s children don’t need to depend on free lunch programs?
Wealth ≠ dignity.
Access to resources ≠ dignity.
People living in or born into poverty do not have less dignity. They have less wealth and less political power.
Providing free school lunches to children living in poverty doesn’t “give kids an empty soul” it simply feeds hungry children. Feeding a hungry child lunch is not “giving them undue comfort” or making them lazy, it’s simply feeding a hungry child. How did feeding hungry children become a controversial act for “Christian” conservatives?
Intentionally starving children to teach them the “dignity” of hunger is inhumane.
Stop stigmatizing poverty. Stop equating poverty with a lack of dignity. Stop reinforcing the notion that poor people have no dignity just because they’re poor. There is no nobility in starvation, and there is no benevolence in allowing children or anyone else to go hungry when you possess the power to prevent it.
Interesting you should bring up the ‘Christanity’ of these people, because there’s something the man himself has to say about that:
Matthew 25:34-40 – Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, my Father has blessed you! Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you took me into your home. I needed clothes, and you gave me something to wear. I was sick, and you took care of me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’ Then the people who have God’s approval will reply to him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or see you thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you as a stranger and take you into our homes or see you in need of clothes and give you something to wear? When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ The king will answer them, ‘I can guarantee this truth: Whatever you did for one of my brothers or sisters, no matter how unimportant they seemed, you did for me.’
The Tweeter In Chief Strikes Again. This time, it’s the US economy he’s going to blow up.
I misspoke when I said we have gone 24 hours without a Trump twitter controversy. This one’s less likely to start a war, though in some ways it’s more disturbing.
So, at around 8:00am this morning, Trump fired off a tweet which suggested he was going to take the contract for Air Force One away from Boeing. When I say ‘suggested,’ what I mean is that the tweet ended with the words, “Cancel order!” Boeing’s stock began dropping.
There was a lot of confusion abroad about why Trump would just up and do this. Then Jake Tapper from CNN, who appears to be a man on a mission when it comes to Trump, noted that Boeing’s CEO had been quoted in a Chicago Tribune piece as being critical of Trump’s anti-trade rhetoric.
Evidently, Trump read this article, got pissed off, and decided to punish Boeing because its CEO dared to oppose him. I’ve figured out, incidentally, why Trump is so addicted to Twitter. It provides him with an instant gratification that he cannot obtain in any other way. He thinks it, he tweets it, he basks in the attention. The attention is what’s important to him, not the consequences. No wonder “Trump’s Unpredictable Style Unnerves Corporate America.”
All right. Let me see how succinctly I can explain why, in a capitalist economy, when you are the incoming or actual President of the United States, Words Have Consequences, and why even those of us who kind of hate corporate America share some of their unnerved-ness.
My friend told me that she is raising her son to not believe in Santa Claus because she thinks it’s dishonest. Do you think it’s ok to let kids believe in Santa?
Of course I do. That’s why I write letters to my nephew that are from Santa Claus.
Why would it be wrong for kids to think and know and understand that the world is a magical place? Why would it be wrong for someone to experience a protective force of love that gives and asks for nothing in return?
Anyway, the fact is Santa Claus is real. I can see the effects he has every day. Anyone I ask on the street will know his name and who he is and what he does. Just because I may never see him with my eyes and touch him with my hand doesn’t mean that he doesn’t affect me. I’ll never see or touch President Obama, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have influence on me.
Santa Claus is real in the way that Superman is real and that ghosts are real; and, in fact, in the only way that really matters: they are indelibly laced with metaphorical power and metaphor is one of the strongest weapons we as a species have in our arsenal. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may destroy or heal me forever.
And just to be real for a second, if a mom thinks Santa Claus is the only “lie” she’s ever going to tell her child, I don’t think the child is the one she needs to focus on being honest with.
“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
MY POINT EXACTLY.
– Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
please if you’re a registered voter in the United States, make this call. You do not have to speak to anyone, you only have to leave a message if you have phone anxiety like me. Here’s a potential script:
Hello, my name is [your name] and
I’m a registered voter in the United States. I’m calling to urge
that the Electoral College vote be postponed until a full
investigation of Russian interference in the election, and the Trump
campaign’s potential coordination with Russia is complete.
@fandom please stop using “i dont want any more heteronormative relationships” as code for “get the female characters out of here”
Fandom writes a lot of woman-erasing slash for canon where the female characters are badly written or absent. In fandoms where there was numerous well-written female characters, femslash is huge and women are everywhere.
Fandom is not the problem here. Canon is.
fandom shoves out women even if they are well written and even if the male characters they are discarded for are terribly written.
Fandom operates on a double standard with women characters.
Fandom demonizes female characters who exemplify the exact same qualities as male characters.
Fandom uses gendered insults about female characters’ sexuality while prizing male characters’ sexuality.
Fandom reduces women of colour characters to tropes while developing extensive backstories for minor white male characters.
Fandom writes female characters as plot devices and volunteer wombs for male characters, reducing them to their bodies and how they can be used for male characters.
Fandom has shown through fanfiction that they are absolutely capable of turning bad writing into good fanfiction. The fact is fandom absolutely chooses to turn that talent to almost exclusively white male characters to the detriment of female characters and male characters of colour.
Fandom has demonstrated that when canon is the problem, they are perfectly capable of fixing those problems. Fandom itself is a problem because of how it makes the choice of what problems to fix.
Steel Phoenix Studios 