Besides the fact that it's fragile as fuck.
It's no surprise that a movement like #MeToo has garnered its share of detractors. And those detractors all seem to have one thing in common: they really really want men to be able to rape who they please.
The single biggest thread I've seen running through the criticisms of #MeToo is that it's punishing men for their sexuality, and punishing men for having a sex drive. And this honestly reveals something utterly horrifying about men and how they think; "rapist" is their sexuality. At least according to 1) themselves and 2) women they've brainwashed with the fear of getting raped.
Because that is the only thing that explains the conflation of punishing people who rape and abuse others with punishing men "for being men." The only way that makes any sense at all is if you think men raping people is the natural order of things. And if you think that, you only reinforce why #MeToo is both necessary and long overdue.
But that's always been the story of men. It's how men first seized the power they have. They took it out of others' hands through sexual violence, and have kept it out of others' hands by shifting the responsibility for preventing rape onto their victims. They hold onto power by being simultaneously brutal and infantile. Adult enough to rape, immature enough to not be responsible when they do it.
If you think this is nuts? Congratulations, you're a decent human being.
The backlash to #MeToo is rooted in exactly one thing, and that thing is the fear of being outed as someone who has committed sexual assault or abuse (or has shielded someone who has). And not even the fear of having done it, and thus irreparably harmed another person, but the fear of getting caught and exposed. The fear of consequences.
Because that is the only thing that men in power have ever been afraid of. Consequences.
People who aren't drunk on power, when confronted with the fact they might have done a terrible thing, examine and self-reflect and soul-search and try to ensure they don't do the horrible thing again. Because they actually fear causing pain to others. People who wish to keep a grasp on their power instead lash out and try to discredit the accusations. Because they don't give a shit about hurting others. They just want to minimize potential consequences by making the victims harder to believe.
All of the articles and tweets and Facebook posts trying to discredit #MeToo? That is their goal. To avoid retribution for what they know they've done, or what they know they don't have a problem with. They want to flip the conversation to scare victims back into silence, so that they don't have to alter their behavior and give up the power they've enjoyed.
Because that's what consequences do. They erode power. And to people who have been steeped in their own power for their whole lives, losing any measure of it frightens them most of all.
This is why you see lament after increasingly ridiculous lament about consent "destroying spontaneity" or "ruining the mood." Because it's not even the person that these men are attracted to. It's the forceful seizure and exertion of power.
Sex is a sport to them. And when the other team lets you win, the game isn't fun anymore. They get aroused by the challenge of beating their opponent into submission. #MeToo is the opponent that will not submit, and who they forgot is at perfect groin-kneeing height.
Winter is coming. And they're scared to fucking death of it.
Statcounter
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Your Minority Status Is Not a Get-Out-of-Being-a-Nazi-Free Card
Chelsea Manning is nobody's ally.
She is a trans woman, she's running for Senate as a Democrat, but that does not automatically make her part of the Resistance. She was, in fact, never on our side. And by "our" I mean "the United States, period." Not only is she a convicted traitor, but the entity she fed our cables to, WikiLeaks, is the very same one that later ratfucked the 2016 election.
Chelsea Manning should, by rights, be rotting in Leavenworth until middle age, but Obama is a better man than literally everyone and gave her an early release. Her idea of repayment? Running against a perfectly fine Democratic Senator and cozying up to white supremacists.
While most have rightly dragged her for it, there is an utterly infuriating trend among her supporters to rationalize her behavior in a variety of ways. From actually buying her ridiculous "gathering intel" excuse to making her out to be a victim of alt-right grooming tactics. It's both alarming and sad that the far-left is so enamored with her status as a trans woman that they refuse to call her out for being in league with neo-Nazis.
The two are not mutually exclusive. It's possible to be both part of a marginalized group and a horrible fucking person.
It certainly worked for Ernst Röhm, who managed to be both gay and Hitler's BFF and seemed particularly okay with slaughtering 10,000 gay men in the death camps alongside the Jews and Romani. In fact? It's shockingly common for gay white men to take up the cause of fascism and genocide.
It's the most basic response to a loss of power; the drive to reclaim it in other ways. Often horrible ones. It's like when the kid who gets slapped around by his dad for being "homo" finds out it feels really good to slap around the brown kids at school for being brown. And when you're denied power in every other way, discovering a source of it you can easily exploit is a hell of a drug.
So it's not a surprise at all that Chelsea Manning, who would have grown up steeped in white male privilege before figuring out she was trans, and who ultimately lost that privilege when she decided to betray both her country and her uniform, would seek to regain power any way she could. Being white is all she's really got, so who better to join forces with than Prosobiec and Cernovich?
The LGBT community doesn't have to protect her, nor should it. She has new friends now. And they hate all of you.
The Germans have a word for people like Chelsea. Who joined the Nazi Party not necessarily because they hated Jews, but because they desperately wanted to feel like they had control of something in their lives for once. That word is...
...Nazis.
She is a trans woman, she's running for Senate as a Democrat, but that does not automatically make her part of the Resistance. She was, in fact, never on our side. And by "our" I mean "the United States, period." Not only is she a convicted traitor, but the entity she fed our cables to, WikiLeaks, is the very same one that later ratfucked the 2016 election.
Chelsea Manning should, by rights, be rotting in Leavenworth until middle age, but Obama is a better man than literally everyone and gave her an early release. Her idea of repayment? Running against a perfectly fine Democratic Senator and cozying up to white supremacists.
While most have rightly dragged her for it, there is an utterly infuriating trend among her supporters to rationalize her behavior in a variety of ways. From actually buying her ridiculous "gathering intel" excuse to making her out to be a victim of alt-right grooming tactics. It's both alarming and sad that the far-left is so enamored with her status as a trans woman that they refuse to call her out for being in league with neo-Nazis.
The two are not mutually exclusive. It's possible to be both part of a marginalized group and a horrible fucking person.
It certainly worked for Ernst Röhm, who managed to be both gay and Hitler's BFF and seemed particularly okay with slaughtering 10,000 gay men in the death camps alongside the Jews and Romani. In fact? It's shockingly common for gay white men to take up the cause of fascism and genocide.
It's the most basic response to a loss of power; the drive to reclaim it in other ways. Often horrible ones. It's like when the kid who gets slapped around by his dad for being "homo" finds out it feels really good to slap around the brown kids at school for being brown. And when you're denied power in every other way, discovering a source of it you can easily exploit is a hell of a drug.
So it's not a surprise at all that Chelsea Manning, who would have grown up steeped in white male privilege before figuring out she was trans, and who ultimately lost that privilege when she decided to betray both her country and her uniform, would seek to regain power any way she could. Being white is all she's really got, so who better to join forces with than Prosobiec and Cernovich?
The LGBT community doesn't have to protect her, nor should it. She has new friends now. And they hate all of you.
The Germans have a word for people like Chelsea. Who joined the Nazi Party not necessarily because they hated Jews, but because they desperately wanted to feel like they had control of something in their lives for once. That word is...
...Nazis.
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
You Keep Using That Word
In light of the torrent of women finally coming forward with their stories of rape and sexual assault by powerful men -- and being believed --I wanted to take a moment to broach the topic of consent, and why men -- not just heterosexual, as we've seen with Kevin Spacey, but I'm going to focus on straight cis men because let's face it, that's the demo that can't keep their hands and dicks to themselves -- seem to have such a difficult time both recognizing "no" and taking it for an answer.
The problem is that men are socially conditioned to view sex not as a mutual expression of affection between two (or more) people, but as a thing they do to someone else. And perhaps more disgustingly, a "deal" they have to "close." They must overcome the objections of their target and turn that "no" into a "yes." You can see this ridiculous mindset at play in David Wong's Ayn-Randian manifestos on Cracked, particularly this one (which I've torn apart here).
And men are conditioned this way because up until very, very recently, their partners didn't exactly have a say in the matter. Particularly straight men. If you were a woman? As a member of the nobility/aristocracy, you were flat-out assigned a man to have sex with (the husband chosen for you by your father). If you were a peasant, you simply married the first man who asked because you needed his salary. Ergo men never had to worry about being worthy, so much as first. The woman wasn't ever going to turn him down. She wasn't allowed to.
Up until even more recently, sexual assault and rape were in the same category as property crimes. Raping a woman was no different than vandalizing a piece of merchandise. Rapists literally paid a fine to the husband of the victim if she was married. If she wasn't, he could either pay a fine to her father or marry her; you broke it, you bought it.
Hell, just for perspective? Ancient Greece (on which nearly all of Western society is based) had no separate word for "rape."
For men, particularly straight men, sex is viewed through the lens of a sales transaction. He offers strength, protection, and wealth, and he gets sex and children as payment for his services as a husband. His objective is to turn any potential "no" into a "yes."
Thus, to him, sex is something his partner is letting him do. And if they let him do it, whether they want him to or not, that's all that matters. He closed the sale.
On the contrary, when victims -- especially women -- talk about consent, they mean "sex that is wanted, with this particular person" rather than simply letting sex happen out of a sense of obligation or being too under-confident to refuse. And that's a concept that we can't seem to get through men's heads.
Comedienne Margaret Cho outlines the issue perfectly in this post on her site:
Why is this not consent? Okay, you remember Lumbergh from Office Space? Star of the That Would Be Great meme? Would you say Milton/Peter/Porter/Slydell consented to anything he asked for? Of course not. They did it out of unspoken obligation.
They acquiesced. They relented. They did not, in any way, consent.
Now picture being expected to have sex in the same way you're expected to go to work on Sunday. Specifically, picture being expected to have sex you derive little, if any, pleasure from because your partner does not know or care if you're enjoying yourself. Picture this and you're starting to scratch the surface of the problem with the male definition of "consent" with regard to what it means for women.
The difference between consent and acquiescence can be summed up in one word: desire. "Lie back and think of England" isn't consent. You don't "let" people do things to you out of desire; you do it with them as a willing and enthusiastic participant. Consent is having sex out of desire. Acquiescence is having sex because it's easier than refusing. Particularly when it comes to the power dynamics between women and the powerful men they work for. If they're "letting you do it" because "you're a star", that's not consent. That's a person too afraid of what might happen if they say no.
So if you could take no for an answer and keep your hands and dicks to yourselves unless you're double-damned pinky-swear sure the other person is into you (or wants you to be into them), yeah, that'd be great.
The problem is that men are socially conditioned to view sex not as a mutual expression of affection between two (or more) people, but as a thing they do to someone else. And perhaps more disgustingly, a "deal" they have to "close." They must overcome the objections of their target and turn that "no" into a "yes." You can see this ridiculous mindset at play in David Wong's Ayn-Randian manifestos on Cracked, particularly this one (which I've torn apart here).
And men are conditioned this way because up until very, very recently, their partners didn't exactly have a say in the matter. Particularly straight men. If you were a woman? As a member of the nobility/aristocracy, you were flat-out assigned a man to have sex with (the husband chosen for you by your father). If you were a peasant, you simply married the first man who asked because you needed his salary. Ergo men never had to worry about being worthy, so much as first. The woman wasn't ever going to turn him down. She wasn't allowed to.
Up until even more recently, sexual assault and rape were in the same category as property crimes. Raping a woman was no different than vandalizing a piece of merchandise. Rapists literally paid a fine to the husband of the victim if she was married. If she wasn't, he could either pay a fine to her father or marry her; you broke it, you bought it.
Hell, just for perspective? Ancient Greece (on which nearly all of Western society is based) had no separate word for "rape."
For men, particularly straight men, sex is viewed through the lens of a sales transaction. He offers strength, protection, and wealth, and he gets sex and children as payment for his services as a husband. His objective is to turn any potential "no" into a "yes."
Thus, to him, sex is something his partner is letting him do. And if they let him do it, whether they want him to or not, that's all that matters. He closed the sale.
On the contrary, when victims -- especially women -- talk about consent, they mean "sex that is wanted, with this particular person" rather than simply letting sex happen out of a sense of obligation or being too under-confident to refuse. And that's a concept that we can't seem to get through men's heads.
Comedienne Margaret Cho outlines the issue perfectly in this post on her site:
But the sex I am talking about having, the kind I didn’t want, is sex I initiated with people I wasn’t attracted to so that I could get finished faster, or so I didn’t have explain whytowherefor I wasn’t into it or into them, or I loved them so much, but the chemistry wasn’t there, and I felt bad for them and so I would leave my body temporarily for them to do what they wanted, like “take what you want, I’ll be over there” and then return at the end for cuddling and the nice warmth of sleeping in a bed with another person.Women have been conditioned by and large to agree to sex we don't want to have because it's presented to us as our end of the bargain. Something we let men do to us in exchange for him providing financial security and physical protection.
Why is this not consent? Okay, you remember Lumbergh from Office Space? Star of the That Would Be Great meme? Would you say Milton/Peter/Porter/Slydell consented to anything he asked for? Of course not. They did it out of unspoken obligation.
They acquiesced. They relented. They did not, in any way, consent.
Now picture being expected to have sex in the same way you're expected to go to work on Sunday. Specifically, picture being expected to have sex you derive little, if any, pleasure from because your partner does not know or care if you're enjoying yourself. Picture this and you're starting to scratch the surface of the problem with the male definition of "consent" with regard to what it means for women.
The difference between consent and acquiescence can be summed up in one word: desire. "Lie back and think of England" isn't consent. You don't "let" people do things to you out of desire; you do it with them as a willing and enthusiastic participant. Consent is having sex out of desire. Acquiescence is having sex because it's easier than refusing. Particularly when it comes to the power dynamics between women and the powerful men they work for. If they're "letting you do it" because "you're a star", that's not consent. That's a person too afraid of what might happen if they say no.
So if you could take no for an answer and keep your hands and dicks to yourselves unless you're double-damned pinky-swear sure the other person is into you (or wants you to be into them), yeah, that'd be great.
Saturday, October 7, 2017
Neon Genesis Evangelion Is the Most Misunderstood Franchise of All Time
The show that launched a thousand flamewars, because pretty much nobody knew what the hell was going on. And a show that everyone agrees was one of the darkest and most nihilistic works of fiction ever made.
Well, almost everyone.
I'm one of those weirdos that saw it as the complete opposite. As one of the most optimistic and positive views of humanity in fiction, minus the usual cheese that comes with the Humans Are Special trope. It was a visceral deconstruction of said trope, stripping away the layers to find out why. I think the reason so many folks consider it negative is because they're so focused on the visuals (which are indeed horrifying) that they ignore what's actually happening and what the characters are discussing.
The short version is that the underlying main plot of the show is to collapse the AT Fields -- the physical manifestation of the psychological wall that separates people's identities from each other, in effect the thing that makes you able to identify as the individual you are -- of everyone on earth and combine all souls into one being (referred to throughout the show as Instrumentality). The goal is that nobody will suffer any longer since they don't have an identity, and therefore no need to establish relationships with other people.
Shinji, the series' protagonist, ultimately rejects this despite his crippling fear of others, and opts to keep his identity. Hence the movie ending with him and Asuka alone on a beach in a post-apocalyptic hellscape with the "sea" in the background. That sea is the collective souls of mankind.
Now, why the unholy fuck would I consider this a positive ending? Even uplifting? Besides me just being weird and disturbed?
The devil is in the details.
Up to this point, Shinji has been through the proverbial wringer. At 4 years old, he watched his mother get absorbed into Evangelion Unit 01 (and opt to stay there, effectively committing suicide, but it's not clear he was ever informed of that). Right after this, his father shipped him off to live with a teacher, and only contacted him nearly a decade later to be Evangelion Unit 01's pilot.
Then came the 13th Angel (Bardiel) battle. It had possessed Unit 03, and when Shinji refused to fight because he knew there was another pilot just like him in there, his father took control of Unit 01 away from him and had him sit in the cockpit fully conscious and aware while it brutally tore apart Unit 03 and nearly killed the other pilot (whom he learned was a friend of his).
Right after this is the battle with Zeruel, the 14th Angel. Shinji is forced to return to piloting Unit 01 after swearing he wouldn't, and in the course of that battle is absorbed into it exactly like his mother was ten years prior. Only he makes the decision to come back.
Right before the events of the movie, he fights the 17th Angel, who had shown up disguised as Kaworu, a fellow pilot. Before learning his true identity, Kaworu was literally the first person in the series to not treat Shinji like an object that exists to fulfill the needs of other people. And in the end, Shinji is forced to kill him. Something he swore in the Bardiel battle that he would rather die than do.
So by the time that the underlying plot of the show comes to fruition, Shinji is at the lowest point any human being could find themselves. More than anyone, he has every reason to go "yup, fine by me, I'm totally cool with not suffering anymore" and taking the ultimate escape from reality that is joining Instrumentality. But he doesn't.
Because as all the philosophical talk in the movie illustrates, having an identity is painful when you fear other people and when you view the world as a cruel, shitty place. Having an identity is pure torture when you hate that identity because you are under the impression that everyone else does.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
When you change your own perspective and stop viewing everything and everyone as hating you and out to hurt you, having your own identity is good. Even pleasurable. Certainly preferable to floating in a sea of nothing and not caring anymore. As Shinji himself puts it:
So despite the crucified Eva series in the background, despite the giant decapited Rei head on the horizon, despite everything else...existing is better than not existing. And that giant sea in the background? All of humanity has the chance to make the same choice as Shinji. They can all come back if they want to.
Having walked that line before? This is powerfully positive stuff. Especially in current times when so much is going wrong. When every day seems like the world is sinking into that sea inch by inch, figuratively if not literally. It's going to get ugly, but people can act to set shit right again. Things can get better. But only if we stick around long enough to take action.
That is, at its heart, the message of the entire film and the entire series. As long as you're alive, there is still hope that things can get better because you have the ability to act. As Shinji's mother says, "Anywhere can be heaven as long as you have the will to live. After all, you're alive... and you can find the chance to achieve happiness anywhere."
God's in his Heaven, all's right with the world indeed.
Well, almost everyone.
I'm one of those weirdos that saw it as the complete opposite. As one of the most optimistic and positive views of humanity in fiction, minus the usual cheese that comes with the Humans Are Special trope. It was a visceral deconstruction of said trope, stripping away the layers to find out why. I think the reason so many folks consider it negative is because they're so focused on the visuals (which are indeed horrifying) that they ignore what's actually happening and what the characters are discussing.
The short version is that the underlying main plot of the show is to collapse the AT Fields -- the physical manifestation of the psychological wall that separates people's identities from each other, in effect the thing that makes you able to identify as the individual you are -- of everyone on earth and combine all souls into one being (referred to throughout the show as Instrumentality). The goal is that nobody will suffer any longer since they don't have an identity, and therefore no need to establish relationships with other people.
Shinji, the series' protagonist, ultimately rejects this despite his crippling fear of others, and opts to keep his identity. Hence the movie ending with him and Asuka alone on a beach in a post-apocalyptic hellscape with the "sea" in the background. That sea is the collective souls of mankind.
Now, why the unholy fuck would I consider this a positive ending? Even uplifting? Besides me just being weird and disturbed?
The devil is in the details.
Up to this point, Shinji has been through the proverbial wringer. At 4 years old, he watched his mother get absorbed into Evangelion Unit 01 (and opt to stay there, effectively committing suicide, but it's not clear he was ever informed of that). Right after this, his father shipped him off to live with a teacher, and only contacted him nearly a decade later to be Evangelion Unit 01's pilot.
Then came the 13th Angel (Bardiel) battle. It had possessed Unit 03, and when Shinji refused to fight because he knew there was another pilot just like him in there, his father took control of Unit 01 away from him and had him sit in the cockpit fully conscious and aware while it brutally tore apart Unit 03 and nearly killed the other pilot (whom he learned was a friend of his).
Right after this is the battle with Zeruel, the 14th Angel. Shinji is forced to return to piloting Unit 01 after swearing he wouldn't, and in the course of that battle is absorbed into it exactly like his mother was ten years prior. Only he makes the decision to come back.
Right before the events of the movie, he fights the 17th Angel, who had shown up disguised as Kaworu, a fellow pilot. Before learning his true identity, Kaworu was literally the first person in the series to not treat Shinji like an object that exists to fulfill the needs of other people. And in the end, Shinji is forced to kill him. Something he swore in the Bardiel battle that he would rather die than do.
So by the time that the underlying plot of the show comes to fruition, Shinji is at the lowest point any human being could find themselves. More than anyone, he has every reason to go "yup, fine by me, I'm totally cool with not suffering anymore" and taking the ultimate escape from reality that is joining Instrumentality. But he doesn't.
Because as all the philosophical talk in the movie illustrates, having an identity is painful when you fear other people and when you view the world as a cruel, shitty place. Having an identity is pure torture when you hate that identity because you are under the impression that everyone else does.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
When you change your own perspective and stop viewing everything and everyone as hating you and out to hurt you, having your own identity is good. Even pleasurable. Certainly preferable to floating in a sea of nothing and not caring anymore. As Shinji himself puts it:
I feel that there were only hateful things there. So I'm sure it was okay to run away. But there was nothing good in the place I ran to, either. After all, I didn't exist there... which is the same as no one existing.But that's not all. The real punch comes in the next few lines:
Kaworu: Is it okay for AT Fields to hurt you and others once more?
Shinji: I don't mind. But, what are you two within my heart?
Rei: Hope. The hope that people might be able to understand one another.
Kaworu: And the words 'I love you'.
Shinji: But that's just pretending - a self-intoxicating belief... like a prayer. It can't possibly last forever. Sooner or later I'll be betrayed... And they'll leave me. Still... I want to meet them again, because I believe my feelings at that time were real.That is the point at which Shinji rejects Instrumentality, and his reasons for doing so. Sure, he'll be hurt sooner or later. But there's happiness there, too, and it's just as real as the pain. And that alone is worth retaining his identity for.
So despite the crucified Eva series in the background, despite the giant decapited Rei head on the horizon, despite everything else...existing is better than not existing. And that giant sea in the background? All of humanity has the chance to make the same choice as Shinji. They can all come back if they want to.
Having walked that line before? This is powerfully positive stuff. Especially in current times when so much is going wrong. When every day seems like the world is sinking into that sea inch by inch, figuratively if not literally. It's going to get ugly, but people can act to set shit right again. Things can get better. But only if we stick around long enough to take action.
That is, at its heart, the message of the entire film and the entire series. As long as you're alive, there is still hope that things can get better because you have the ability to act. As Shinji's mother says, "Anywhere can be heaven as long as you have the will to live. After all, you're alive... and you can find the chance to achieve happiness anywhere."
God's in his Heaven, all's right with the world indeed.
Friday, September 29, 2017
Puerto Rico Isn't Trump's Katrina; It's Worse
"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
That line has got to be the single most defining moment of Bush's presidency. The reality-denial of incompetence so over the top it sounded like a Marx Brothers movie if 1,800 people had died making one. Today, barely 12 years later, Hurricane Maria's leveling of Puerto Rico is being compared as a similar defining moment for Trump. But it's not; it's way the fuck worse.
See, the Katrina response was sheer incompetence. Then-President Bush, then-Governor Blanco, and then-FEMA Director Brown had no idea what they were doing. Katrina was the first disaster on that scale that any of them had witnessed. And then they had to figure out how to respond to it. People were outraged. For the first time, the suffering and deaths of hundreds of brown people drew the empathy and attention of white people. And as a result, shit got done. This time, it's worse. Once again, the suffering of an island full of brown folk has drawn the attention of white folk. Once again, there is pressure and outrage. But unlike in 2005, shit ain't getting done.
Because in 2005, Bush's problem was ignorance and incompetence. Trump's problem is indifference.
Shit got done after white people all around the country made a big enough ruckus because for all his faults, Bush still saw the people of Louisiana and Mississippi as fellow citizens and as human beings in need of relief and help:
That line has got to be the single most defining moment of Bush's presidency. The reality-denial of incompetence so over the top it sounded like a Marx Brothers movie if 1,800 people had died making one. Today, barely 12 years later, Hurricane Maria's leveling of Puerto Rico is being compared as a similar defining moment for Trump. But it's not; it's way the fuck worse.
See, the Katrina response was sheer incompetence. Then-President Bush, then-Governor Blanco, and then-FEMA Director Brown had no idea what they were doing. Katrina was the first disaster on that scale that any of them had witnessed. And then they had to figure out how to respond to it. People were outraged. For the first time, the suffering and deaths of hundreds of brown people drew the empathy and attention of white people. And as a result, shit got done. This time, it's worse. Once again, the suffering of an island full of brown folk has drawn the attention of white folk. Once again, there is pressure and outrage. But unlike in 2005, shit ain't getting done.
Because in 2005, Bush's problem was ignorance and incompetence. Trump's problem is indifference.
Shit got done after white people all around the country made a big enough ruckus because for all his faults, Bush still saw the people of Louisiana and Mississippi as fellow citizens and as human beings in need of relief and help:
Trump sees the inhabitants of Puerto Rico as neither American citizens (which they are, and have been for a fucking century) nor as people:
And not just because they're brown. He doesn't view the inhabitants of Houston as people or fellow citizens, either:
Trump...really doesn't view other people as humans. Period.
He is, as Twitter user @HoarseWhisperer has observed, a severe sociopathic narcissist. The short version is that everything he does serves two purposes, and only two: gain positive attention, and deflect shame. He has the mentality of every screaming toddler at Wal-Mart the week before Christmas. And there is nothing that exposes a narcissist of Trump's level like a humanitarian crisis.
When we see pictures from Puerto Rico -- people who have lost everything, people covered in mud, standing in waist-deep floodwater, looking like they haven't slept or eaten in days -- we feel for them. Even those of us who have never been through a major disaster can at least imagine what going without food, water, electricity, and sanitation for weeks and months on end would be like, and therefore we at least attempt to understand how they feel. That's what empathy is. Being able to recognize and understand the emotions of other people.
A sociopathic narcissist is incapable of empathy. It's part of the disorder. They do not feel emotions except on a superficial level, therefore they can't recognize them in others. More than anything, a humanitarian crisis -- a crisis of human suffering -- requires empathy in order to deal with effectively. It requires recognizing the needs of the suffering people, and meeting those needs as quickly and efficiently as possible.
When the Bush Administration failed spectacularly at the start of the Katrina relief effort, it was still able to recognize what went wrong and took steps to fix it. Because for all of his other shortcomings, George W. Bush is still a human being capable of empathy. He is still capable of recognizing the needs and feelings of others and prioritizing them. He was just a complete fucking moron about it. But in the end, he did care about getting it right and helping the people.
Trump, by contrast, is dragging his feet to help Puerto Rico and its citizens because he doesn't give a shit. He has no properties there (anymore), and Puerto Ricans on the island can't vote for him. He has no reason to bother. Even if public opinion were to pressure him, he has no incentive to do more than the bare minimum. And even then, it's just easier to invent some other crisis to distract people with and deflect shame from this absolute clusterfuck.
So when you get a narcissist forced into a situation where empathy is required, and for which they haven't had time to rehearse their act, you get a floundering, incoherent mess like Trump. While I have no doubt whatsoever that he has some form of Alzheimer's, this is not what you're seeing when he talks about Puerto Rico. You are watching a kid get called on in history class to answer a question and he hasn't been paying attention all year.
Trump is a 100% cold-blooded sociopath. A soulless, reptilian predator trying to convince you he's one of you. And his human suit is starting to itch.
Monday, August 14, 2017
White Supremacists Are Scared of Their Own Mediocrity, Part 1
Special Note: I'm well aware that there are mediocre white women who are just as dangerous. I'll get to them in Part 2. I'm concentrating on white men for this part, because the people who marched on Charlottesville and murdered a woman with a car were by and large not women. Men have historically been the face and engine of the movement for a reason.
After the horror in Charlottesville this weekend, I've noticed way too many people -- not gonna mince words, here, it's literally all white people -- expressing shock that this could be happening in 2017. And as a fellow white person, this is the part where if I were from the South, I'd be going "bless your hearts, you sweet summer children." Because it's obvious by your shock that you don't realize that a mediocre white man is the most dangerous creature on earth.
See, you'll never find a white supremacist who is confident, self-assured, and good at what he does. He would not be a white supremacist otherwise. Because white supremacy -- the belief that being white makes you automatically superior -- is logically the position of the man who is such a generic, formless pile of nothing that whiteness and the privilege that comes with it are all he's got to define himself by. Like a sad lump of dried bird shit on the windshield of society.
These are the guys you'll find on 4chan and Reddit bitching that they can't get a job and can't get laid because brown people are being given too much of an unfair leg up and white guys like them are getting deliberately ignored because "libtards ruin errything." The reality, of course, is that guys like them are so utterly, insufferably dull that as the playing field with people of color gets more even and fair -- that is, as whiteness matters less and less -- it becomes obvious that being born with the advantage of white skin is all these milktoasts have going for them. And thus, the only thing they can feel superior about.
These are men who are so painfully, invisibly mediocre that you'd find it impossible to pick any one of them out of a police lineup with any real certainty. They all look the same. They all sound the same. They all use the same buzzwords. Wear the same popped collars. Have the same stupid haircut. And they all offer the same boring, banal, old-hat excuses for why their lives are meaningless trains to absolutely nowhere.
These are the men who have been able to so thoroughly coast through life on being white that they were never pressured to develop any useful skills or foster any unique talents. "White" was all they needed. Life is graded on a curve and as long as they could maintain roughly the same level of average, they didn't need to do anything more. The bare minimum was enough.
But that's the thing about grading curves; all it takes is one person far enough outside the curve to fuck the entire system up.
For people of color who have been conditioned to be twice as good just to achieve the bare minimum that white men have been riding the brake on? Removing or at least diminishing the race component makes their hard work and qualifications stand out in stark relief against the sea of flat, boring, dull, nondescript mediocrity of your average white male.
As far as white supremacists are concerned, brown people who have been working hard all their lives have wrecked the curve. The black kid from the projects who's had to fight tooth and nail to make people see past his skin just got 100%, so now the white guy's 50% is flunking rather than average.
And damned if a lazy, average white guy is going let society tell him he needs to study harder in order to achieve what the black kid has now. Being above black people is his right and proper place as a white guy, and nobody's going to tell him otherwise.
That is where white supremacy comes from. Mediocre white men who have gotten soft and lazy due to being handed everything that non-white people have fought for, now realize they're so in over their heads that it's not even a competition anymore. Their whiteness is not an advantage any longer, and literally everything else about them sucks. When forced to stare their own mediocrity in the face, the white supremacist, being lazy as shit, knows it's just easier to beat up the black kid than to open a book.
And it wasn't just Donald Trump that tapped this well of hatred and resentment and self-loathing. Bernie Sanders went just as hard after these voters. Even going so far as to claim common ground with Trump barely a week into the nation's mourning and reeling after the election. It's no accident at all that many of the deep red states that Sanders took in the Democratic Primary -- particularly West Virginia, Indiana, and Michigan -- went overwhelmingly for Trump. It's also no accident that many of these areas are white supremacist strongholds. Since they didn't get the "Free College" Guy, they went for the "Kick Out All the Illegals" Guy. And this makes perfect sense when you realize what the root of their hatred is: if they can't crack the books, they'll crack the black kid's skull.
They're not economically anxious, and they never have been. Poor? Sure. Poverty is as pervasive in the Rust Belt and Appalachia as it is in the inner cities of Detroit, NYC, and Toledo. The difference between rural white poverty and urban brown poverty is that those in urban brown poverty never had a privileged existence to fall from; rural white poverty is the result of the loss of high-paying jobs to automation, outsourcing, and the changing needs and wants of the market; rural white people used to have it good and now they don't, so white supremacy takes root easily by giving them a convenient scapegoat. They're not economically anxious; they're culturally anxious because the world has increasingly little use for whiteness, God, or guns. The ways they've always been allowed to behave are becoming unacceptable. White supremacy is the spoiled teenage brat throwing a tantrum because his parents took away the PlayStation after he called the neighbors The N Word. Trump and Sanders are like the subversive grandpa who promises to buy them the next model if they reject their parents hard enough.
This is further amplified when you throw women into the mix. Because when you get right down to it, what all this fear of mediocrity goes back to is the inability to attract a mate and make more white babies with her. Why yes, I'm totally saying that the core of white supremacy is men who are too incorrigibly boring to be fuckable, because it's not 1950 anymore and women don't need men's permission to support themselves. Simply having a dick and a paycheck isn't enough to guarantee white men a mate, nevermind a gaggle of women desperate for their attention so they can leave their parents' house by age 25.
There is a direct correlation between white supremacy and the hatred of women, particularly women seen as independent in any way. From r/TheRedPill to GamerGate to r/Incel to /pol/, you'll find plenty of documented overlap between white supremacists and hating women who won't make babies with them. And if that isn't enough for you? Besides poor hygiene and a racist worldview, Steve Bannon, Alexandre Bissonnette, Jeremy Joseph Christian, and countless other white supremacists all have something else in common: a history of violence toward women, or at least violent rhetoric. It's a feature, not a bug; white supremacy aims to elevate white men above all other creatures, and that sure as fuck includes women.
And if you need more recent proof? Heather Heyer, the victim of the violence in Charlottesville, was subject to a vicious screed on the white supremacist website Daily Stormer (which had served as a hub to organize the riot). Because obviously a white woman who isn't busy making white babies has no value to white men who can't get laid in the first place.
Really, white supremacy is a complete misnomer. It's a movement of men who are anything but "supreme"; fragile, cowardly, insecure, lazy, unmotivated nondescript white men who are literally so goddamn worthless that the thought of having to do anything more than the bare minimum is so terrifying, they can only cope with it by waving the traitorous flags and screaming the slogans of history's most spectacular losers.
Especially when they still use mommy's Uber account.
After the horror in Charlottesville this weekend, I've noticed way too many people -- not gonna mince words, here, it's literally all white people -- expressing shock that this could be happening in 2017. And as a fellow white person, this is the part where if I were from the South, I'd be going "bless your hearts, you sweet summer children." Because it's obvious by your shock that you don't realize that a mediocre white man is the most dangerous creature on earth.
See, you'll never find a white supremacist who is confident, self-assured, and good at what he does. He would not be a white supremacist otherwise. Because white supremacy -- the belief that being white makes you automatically superior -- is logically the position of the man who is such a generic, formless pile of nothing that whiteness and the privilege that comes with it are all he's got to define himself by. Like a sad lump of dried bird shit on the windshield of society.
These are the guys you'll find on 4chan and Reddit bitching that they can't get a job and can't get laid because brown people are being given too much of an unfair leg up and white guys like them are getting deliberately ignored because "libtards ruin errything." The reality, of course, is that guys like them are so utterly, insufferably dull that as the playing field with people of color gets more even and fair -- that is, as whiteness matters less and less -- it becomes obvious that being born with the advantage of white skin is all these milktoasts have going for them. And thus, the only thing they can feel superior about.
These are men who are so painfully, invisibly mediocre that you'd find it impossible to pick any one of them out of a police lineup with any real certainty. They all look the same. They all sound the same. They all use the same buzzwords. Wear the same popped collars. Have the same stupid haircut. And they all offer the same boring, banal, old-hat excuses for why their lives are meaningless trains to absolutely nowhere.
These are the men who have been able to so thoroughly coast through life on being white that they were never pressured to develop any useful skills or foster any unique talents. "White" was all they needed. Life is graded on a curve and as long as they could maintain roughly the same level of average, they didn't need to do anything more. The bare minimum was enough.
But that's the thing about grading curves; all it takes is one person far enough outside the curve to fuck the entire system up.
For people of color who have been conditioned to be twice as good just to achieve the bare minimum that white men have been riding the brake on? Removing or at least diminishing the race component makes their hard work and qualifications stand out in stark relief against the sea of flat, boring, dull, nondescript mediocrity of your average white male.
As far as white supremacists are concerned, brown people who have been working hard all their lives have wrecked the curve. The black kid from the projects who's had to fight tooth and nail to make people see past his skin just got 100%, so now the white guy's 50% is flunking rather than average.
And damned if a lazy, average white guy is going let society tell him he needs to study harder in order to achieve what the black kid has now. Being above black people is his right and proper place as a white guy, and nobody's going to tell him otherwise.
That is where white supremacy comes from. Mediocre white men who have gotten soft and lazy due to being handed everything that non-white people have fought for, now realize they're so in over their heads that it's not even a competition anymore. Their whiteness is not an advantage any longer, and literally everything else about them sucks. When forced to stare their own mediocrity in the face, the white supremacist, being lazy as shit, knows it's just easier to beat up the black kid than to open a book.
And it wasn't just Donald Trump that tapped this well of hatred and resentment and self-loathing. Bernie Sanders went just as hard after these voters. Even going so far as to claim common ground with Trump barely a week into the nation's mourning and reeling after the election. It's no accident at all that many of the deep red states that Sanders took in the Democratic Primary -- particularly West Virginia, Indiana, and Michigan -- went overwhelmingly for Trump. It's also no accident that many of these areas are white supremacist strongholds. Since they didn't get the "Free College" Guy, they went for the "Kick Out All the Illegals" Guy. And this makes perfect sense when you realize what the root of their hatred is: if they can't crack the books, they'll crack the black kid's skull.
They're not economically anxious, and they never have been. Poor? Sure. Poverty is as pervasive in the Rust Belt and Appalachia as it is in the inner cities of Detroit, NYC, and Toledo. The difference between rural white poverty and urban brown poverty is that those in urban brown poverty never had a privileged existence to fall from; rural white poverty is the result of the loss of high-paying jobs to automation, outsourcing, and the changing needs and wants of the market; rural white people used to have it good and now they don't, so white supremacy takes root easily by giving them a convenient scapegoat. They're not economically anxious; they're culturally anxious because the world has increasingly little use for whiteness, God, or guns. The ways they've always been allowed to behave are becoming unacceptable. White supremacy is the spoiled teenage brat throwing a tantrum because his parents took away the PlayStation after he called the neighbors The N Word. Trump and Sanders are like the subversive grandpa who promises to buy them the next model if they reject their parents hard enough.
This is further amplified when you throw women into the mix. Because when you get right down to it, what all this fear of mediocrity goes back to is the inability to attract a mate and make more white babies with her. Why yes, I'm totally saying that the core of white supremacy is men who are too incorrigibly boring to be fuckable, because it's not 1950 anymore and women don't need men's permission to support themselves. Simply having a dick and a paycheck isn't enough to guarantee white men a mate, nevermind a gaggle of women desperate for their attention so they can leave their parents' house by age 25.
There is a direct correlation between white supremacy and the hatred of women, particularly women seen as independent in any way. From r/TheRedPill to GamerGate to r/Incel to /pol/, you'll find plenty of documented overlap between white supremacists and hating women who won't make babies with them. And if that isn't enough for you? Besides poor hygiene and a racist worldview, Steve Bannon, Alexandre Bissonnette, Jeremy Joseph Christian, and countless other white supremacists all have something else in common: a history of violence toward women, or at least violent rhetoric. It's a feature, not a bug; white supremacy aims to elevate white men above all other creatures, and that sure as fuck includes women.
And if you need more recent proof? Heather Heyer, the victim of the violence in Charlottesville, was subject to a vicious screed on the white supremacist website Daily Stormer (which had served as a hub to organize the riot). Because obviously a white woman who isn't busy making white babies has no value to white men who can't get laid in the first place.
Really, white supremacy is a complete misnomer. It's a movement of men who are anything but "supreme"; fragile, cowardly, insecure, lazy, unmotivated nondescript white men who are literally so goddamn worthless that the thought of having to do anything more than the bare minimum is so terrifying, they can only cope with it by waving the traitorous flags and screaming the slogans of history's most spectacular losers.
Especially when they still use mommy's Uber account.
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
The Affordable Care Act Is Barack Obama and the Democrats' Xanatos Gambit
And it has so far succeeded beyond any of their wildest dreams.
As we've seen since January 20th, while the House of Representatives -- being a highly polarized and deeply partisan shitshow thanks to the gerrymandering apocalypse back in 2010 -- was able to pass a bill that could actually become law, the far more moderate Senate has tried to pass their own version three times, and each time they've crashed and burned spectacularly. And unlike the Senate from 2008-2011, there hasn't been a single filibuster involved (as a budget maneuver, it can't be filibustered, and this was completely intentional). Despite having a majority in both chambers and one of their own in the White House, Republicans can't do this one thing they've been chomping at the bit and salivating to do for the last 8 years. Because rather than being a symbolic gesture they know will never happen, this time it has actual consequences because they have a stooge willing to sign it.
First, in case you don't speak fluent TVTropes terminology, a Xanatos Gambit is a plan that cannot fail, because it fulfills multiple goals simultaneously. Such that no matter how its opponents try to thwart it, one or more of the plan's goals will get furthered. They simply can't all be foiled. It's named for the character of David Xanatos, an antagonist from the Gargoyles TV show from the mid-1990s, because he had a penchant for these types of plans.
The Affordable Care Act has been implemented so far and become such an integral part of the American healthcare system that no matter what the Republicans do, Obama comes out ahead. Because there are only 3 possible outcomes. In 2 of them, Republicans are summarily fucked. In the third, they'll have to concede that the guy they've been trying to fuck over won in the end:
Scenario 1: Republicans Fail to Repeal or Replace the ACA (Status Quo)
This would, of course, mean that they've broken a promise they've been campaigning on for nearly a decade. The hardcore Republican voting base isn't going to accept this quietly. While they won't vote for a Democrat, they're more likely to just stay home and not vote at all out of disillusionment. As we inch closer to the 2018 midterms, this does not bode well for Republicans in vulnerable seats (which, as the special elections this year have proven, may be far more vulnerable than they think).
Scenario 2: Republicans Succeed in Repealing and/or Replacing the ACA
This is frankly the worst of the 3. Because for any bill to get the 51 votes it would need to pass the Senate, it would have to be cruel enough to appease sociopaths like Lee and Cruz, but restrained enough to get the votes of moderates like Murkowski and Capito. If by some miracle that happened -- and if by an even greater miracle, the House managed to pass it -- it would be a bill that would still kick anywhere from 22 million to 32 million people off their insurance. Many of these people live in Republican strongholds: the rural South, the Rust Belt, and the deep red center (Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, etc.).
These folks are going to see their situation on the ground rapidly deteriorate. As rural hospitals shutter without Medicaid. As areas hit hard by the opioid crisis -- areas that overwhelmingly voted for Trump -- suffer even more devastating loss of life due to overdose. As people who didn't even know that they have insurance because of the ACA suddenly find themselves unable to get even the simplest healthcare.
And they're going to blame the people in charge. Republicans. Because there will be nobody else responsible for their hardships. Again, as we inch closer to the 2018 midterms, this is going to become even more of a prominent issue.
Scenario 3: Republicans Amend and Improve the ACA
The most likely scenario, and frankly the only one that won't mean Republicans getting walked to the electoral guillotine next year. If, after failing like a snake trying to play Dance Dance Revolution, they finally decide that maybe it's time to work with Democrats and actually legislate to fix the ACA's flaws instead of pitching out baby, bathwater, bathtub, bathroom, and entire neighborhood, Obama will come out the furthest. Because he'll have forced their hand to build on his signature accomplishment. And history will forever remember that the Affordable Care Act was the work of the nation's first black President, whom a bunch of old racist white guys tried to blow up and found out they couldn't without taking themselves with it.
And the part that would really burn their biscuits?
Not only does Obama win, we all do.
Because even more than black folk in positions of power, that's what Republicans fear most.
The people winning.
As we've seen since January 20th, while the House of Representatives -- being a highly polarized and deeply partisan shitshow thanks to the gerrymandering apocalypse back in 2010 -- was able to pass a bill that could actually become law, the far more moderate Senate has tried to pass their own version three times, and each time they've crashed and burned spectacularly. And unlike the Senate from 2008-2011, there hasn't been a single filibuster involved (as a budget maneuver, it can't be filibustered, and this was completely intentional). Despite having a majority in both chambers and one of their own in the White House, Republicans can't do this one thing they've been chomping at the bit and salivating to do for the last 8 years. Because rather than being a symbolic gesture they know will never happen, this time it has actual consequences because they have a stooge willing to sign it.
First, in case you don't speak fluent TVTropes terminology, a Xanatos Gambit is a plan that cannot fail, because it fulfills multiple goals simultaneously. Such that no matter how its opponents try to thwart it, one or more of the plan's goals will get furthered. They simply can't all be foiled. It's named for the character of David Xanatos, an antagonist from the Gargoyles TV show from the mid-1990s, because he had a penchant for these types of plans.
The Affordable Care Act has been implemented so far and become such an integral part of the American healthcare system that no matter what the Republicans do, Obama comes out ahead. Because there are only 3 possible outcomes. In 2 of them, Republicans are summarily fucked. In the third, they'll have to concede that the guy they've been trying to fuck over won in the end:
Scenario 1: Republicans Fail to Repeal or Replace the ACA (Status Quo)
This would, of course, mean that they've broken a promise they've been campaigning on for nearly a decade. The hardcore Republican voting base isn't going to accept this quietly. While they won't vote for a Democrat, they're more likely to just stay home and not vote at all out of disillusionment. As we inch closer to the 2018 midterms, this does not bode well for Republicans in vulnerable seats (which, as the special elections this year have proven, may be far more vulnerable than they think).
Scenario 2: Republicans Succeed in Repealing and/or Replacing the ACA
This is frankly the worst of the 3. Because for any bill to get the 51 votes it would need to pass the Senate, it would have to be cruel enough to appease sociopaths like Lee and Cruz, but restrained enough to get the votes of moderates like Murkowski and Capito. If by some miracle that happened -- and if by an even greater miracle, the House managed to pass it -- it would be a bill that would still kick anywhere from 22 million to 32 million people off their insurance. Many of these people live in Republican strongholds: the rural South, the Rust Belt, and the deep red center (Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, etc.).
These folks are going to see their situation on the ground rapidly deteriorate. As rural hospitals shutter without Medicaid. As areas hit hard by the opioid crisis -- areas that overwhelmingly voted for Trump -- suffer even more devastating loss of life due to overdose. As people who didn't even know that they have insurance because of the ACA suddenly find themselves unable to get even the simplest healthcare.
And they're going to blame the people in charge. Republicans. Because there will be nobody else responsible for their hardships. Again, as we inch closer to the 2018 midterms, this is going to become even more of a prominent issue.
Scenario 3: Republicans Amend and Improve the ACA
The most likely scenario, and frankly the only one that won't mean Republicans getting walked to the electoral guillotine next year. If, after failing like a snake trying to play Dance Dance Revolution, they finally decide that maybe it's time to work with Democrats and actually legislate to fix the ACA's flaws instead of pitching out baby, bathwater, bathtub, bathroom, and entire neighborhood, Obama will come out the furthest. Because he'll have forced their hand to build on his signature accomplishment. And history will forever remember that the Affordable Care Act was the work of the nation's first black President, whom a bunch of old racist white guys tried to blow up and found out they couldn't without taking themselves with it.
And the part that would really burn their biscuits?
Not only does Obama win, we all do.
Because even more than black folk in positions of power, that's what Republicans fear most.
The people winning.
Friday, June 23, 2017
Bernie Sanders Is Not Our Fucking Ally
I apologize in advance for the ridiculous amount of cursing in this post. Those who read this blog know I'm not adverse to dropping an F-bomb here and there, but when it comes to the shenanigans of the Bernie camp, I cope with my rage using good ol' fashioned sailor's talk.
Bernie needs to fucking resign as a Senator and take his shriveled old grandpa ass out to a desert fucking island with no wi-fi where he can't hurt anyone else.
The Democratic Party as we know it today has never been the party of the powerful. Black folk, Latinx, women, the disabled, LGBT folk, etc. have been the backbone of the party since the Dixiecrat revolt over the Civil Rights Movement (with the Dixiecrats becoming today's GOP). It has never been about throwing those people under the bus to win over the white working class.
But that's exactly what Bernie Fucking Sanders wants to turn it into.
Bernie Fucking Sanders has galvanized a "revolution" of freeloading angry white dudes to demonize the Democratic Party for demanding they actually do a fair share of the fucking work. Much like your stoned loser friend from college who couch-surfs through everyone he knows while eating their chips and puking on their carpets after a kegger, and then has the audacity to tell them their video game collection sucks. And just like that friend, they pitch a fit when you inform them they've grossly overstayed their welcome.
I put "revolution" in scarequotes up there because freeloading angry white dudes taking a giant steaming smelly dump on the already oppressed for their own benefit isn't a fucking revolution at fucking all; it's the status fucking quo. And Bernie Fucking Sanders is leading the charge.
That's right, kids. He's not a goddamned progressive and he never fucking has been. He doesn't want to go forward. He wants to go back. The only difference between him and Trump is how far back. Sanders wants to turn back the calendar to roughly 1960. Taxes were fairer, but life sucked enough for everyone but cishet able-bodied white males that it was still comfortable to look down on the rest of us. Trump wants to go back to 1860 so he can make slaves carry him around on a tacky golden sedan chair.
And because he's too goddamned lazy to start his own party and do the fucking work required to build it into something viable, he's decided to start a revolt within the Democratic Party.
This is a guy who literally takes a huge stinky shit on every principle he says he stands for. How many working-class people do you know who own three goddamn motherfucking houses? How is it standing up for the little guy to sponsor a bill that dumps nuclear waste from your rich white state on a dirt-poor Latinx community in Texas? How is he "new blood" in politics when he's been serving in Congress ten years longer than Hillary? Unless it's totally fine when he does it, in which case he's a fucking hypocritical bag of dicks who doesn't deserve your vote or your $27.
To make matters worse? This is a guy who, ten days after the election, says he can totally find common ground with Trump. On -- get this! -- "standing up to corporate America."
Let me repeat that: "standing up to corporate America."
Donald. Fucking. Trump.
Bernie Fucking Sanders is not our fucking ally. He's a goddamned motherfucking shit-eating collaborator. And has also probably been a Russian agent this whole time.
And I'll admit, I voted for him in my state's primary. I regret doing so. Because his antics prove every day that he does not give a single paltry constipated shit about anyone but himself. He's been on nobody's side but his own, gaming the system to get what he can out of it before moving on. He's as bad as Trump, if not worse; Trump at least makes no pretenses that he's a demented, narcissistic, self-serving son of a bitch. Sanders sells his followers his false self before he robs them fucking blind when they're not looking.
Therefore, if he wants to take all the freeloading angry white dudes with their heads so far up their own asses they could lick their own prostates out of the Democratic Party? Fucking let him. Let him lead them all into the river like the Pied Piper of Goddamn Hamelin for all I care, because these motherfuckers were never on our side, either.
If you're a "progressive" solely to improve your own station, to the detriment of other people, go join the fucking GOP, because that's where you belong. Get the fuck out of our way and the fuck out of our party, because we ain't got time for whiny, petulant, selfish children. We have fucking work to do.
The Democratic Party as we know it today has never been the party of the powerful. Black folk, Latinx, women, the disabled, LGBT folk, etc. have been the backbone of the party since the Dixiecrat revolt over the Civil Rights Movement (with the Dixiecrats becoming today's GOP). It has never been about throwing those people under the bus to win over the white working class.
But that's exactly what Bernie Fucking Sanders wants to turn it into.
Bernie Fucking Sanders has galvanized a "revolution" of freeloading angry white dudes to demonize the Democratic Party for demanding they actually do a fair share of the fucking work. Much like your stoned loser friend from college who couch-surfs through everyone he knows while eating their chips and puking on their carpets after a kegger, and then has the audacity to tell them their video game collection sucks. And just like that friend, they pitch a fit when you inform them they've grossly overstayed their welcome.
I put "revolution" in scarequotes up there because freeloading angry white dudes taking a giant steaming smelly dump on the already oppressed for their own benefit isn't a fucking revolution at fucking all; it's the status fucking quo. And Bernie Fucking Sanders is leading the charge.
That's right, kids. He's not a goddamned progressive and he never fucking has been. He doesn't want to go forward. He wants to go back. The only difference between him and Trump is how far back. Sanders wants to turn back the calendar to roughly 1960. Taxes were fairer, but life sucked enough for everyone but cishet able-bodied white males that it was still comfortable to look down on the rest of us. Trump wants to go back to 1860 so he can make slaves carry him around on a tacky golden sedan chair.
And because he's too goddamned lazy to start his own party and do the fucking work required to build it into something viable, he's decided to start a revolt within the Democratic Party.
This is a guy who literally takes a huge stinky shit on every principle he says he stands for. How many working-class people do you know who own three goddamn motherfucking houses? How is it standing up for the little guy to sponsor a bill that dumps nuclear waste from your rich white state on a dirt-poor Latinx community in Texas? How is he "new blood" in politics when he's been serving in Congress ten years longer than Hillary? Unless it's totally fine when he does it, in which case he's a fucking hypocritical bag of dicks who doesn't deserve your vote or your $27.
To make matters worse? This is a guy who, ten days after the election, says he can totally find common ground with Trump. On -- get this! -- "standing up to corporate America."
Let me repeat that: "standing up to corporate America."
Donald. Fucking. Trump.
Bernie Fucking Sanders is not our fucking ally. He's a goddamned motherfucking shit-eating collaborator. And has also probably been a Russian agent this whole time.
And I'll admit, I voted for him in my state's primary. I regret doing so. Because his antics prove every day that he does not give a single paltry constipated shit about anyone but himself. He's been on nobody's side but his own, gaming the system to get what he can out of it before moving on. He's as bad as Trump, if not worse; Trump at least makes no pretenses that he's a demented, narcissistic, self-serving son of a bitch. Sanders sells his followers his false self before he robs them fucking blind when they're not looking.
Therefore, if he wants to take all the freeloading angry white dudes with their heads so far up their own asses they could lick their own prostates out of the Democratic Party? Fucking let him. Let him lead them all into the river like the Pied Piper of Goddamn Hamelin for all I care, because these motherfuckers were never on our side, either.
If you're a "progressive" solely to improve your own station, to the detriment of other people, go join the fucking GOP, because that's where you belong. Get the fuck out of our way and the fuck out of our party, because we ain't got time for whiny, petulant, selfish children. We have fucking work to do.
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