no. 487

"A good friend posted this to his site today. naylandblake.net
This has to be the one of the most reasoned explanations I've read on this massacre.

What to say after Pulse

June 14, 2016
This is what I have to say post the Pulse massacre.

The problem is not that this man was a demon, an outsider, some sort of outlier on the continuum of human American experience. This man was a citizen of this country. He was what is held up as the norm: young, religious, husband, father.

The problems are the systems that surrounded this man, that taught him that the normal reaction to seeing people different from himself was disgust.
The systems that taught him that his disgust was normal.
The systems that taught him to rationalize his disgust as an expression of faith. The systems that cloaked that rationalization in a rhetoric of nobility.
The economic systems that allowed him to weaponize that disgust, to turn that disgust into bullets and mutilation. At every step he made decisions that he is responsible for, but at every step those decisions were made easier by hundreds of other people whose words and actions told him : Yes, you are right to be disgusted, and the righteous way to deal with your disgust is to deal death to people you don’t know and to crow about it. Here is a gun that lets you do that, here is a system that will laud you for doing that.

When politicians pray after these things, pray after killing bill after bill that would break these systems, pray after taking money from people whose incomes come from making it easy for these men to spray death, I can only think that they are praying that people don’t connect the dots, that people don’t try to say to them, you continue to teach people that their disgust is normal, that their violence is normal and right and good, that their deadly actions are normal.
They are praying that people don’t wake up to the fact that you have said to all of those families and lovers of the people who died at Pulse that you would rather have your gun today than to have any of those victims still alive.

The killer was merely the agent of your contempt. When you put your righteousness above those lives, when you put your gun above those lives, you make a sham of the Constitution and the country and the god you claim to serve and revere.

The problem is not that the killer is beyond the pale: The problem is that the killer was an apt pupil for all the teaching that you left for him and which you are still maintaining today." 




Bric 1101 commenting at The Rant

no. 446

"You boffed him so hard, he went Walden."

Amy to Shelley, in John Allison's Bobbins.

no. 421

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956


Or as my friend Mark Davis put it, "Silence is to injustice what oxygen is to fire."

no. 412

Conservative, n - A person who believes that the poor are to blame for their problems while his own problems are the fault of the government.

Gin And Tacos

no. 409

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

no. 400

"The Rude Pundit doesn't give a damn how we got this information about our government's spying on us. What enrages him is being told he shouldn't worry about it, that he should just go about his business and let the professionals do their work. He naively believes that the failure to call "bullshit" on bullshit just because you like the bull is how you help democracy die faster."

The Rude Pundit

no. 362

"This is a generation that sees everything they do wrong as someone else's fault but everything that happens to other people as a matter of personal responsibility. Reading a tale of hard working, well intentioned people getting reamed by a corrupt system even as they work themselves to literal death might be an eye-opener. Sure, it will sail right over the heads of some of them. I feel, though, that the understanding that the world is not fair, life is hard, and getting by is often a tremendous struggle is a necessary precondition to having meaningful political attitudes. The idea that everything that happens to individuals in our society is their own fault poisons our entire culture, from our politics to our communities. People like Sinclair saw through this over a century ago, but somewhere along the way we chose to forget."

Ed, at Gin And Tacos, from the article "The Hand of Fate".

no. 302

"The problem w/ the Zimmerman verdict isn’t that he got away with murder. It’s that even in 2013, citizens of society refuse to be humble, to be teachable, to be pliable. Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall. Society has consistently fallen short of truly being human. Coercion replaces compassion; fear replaces love; complacency replaces being proactive. People have resolved that 'this is just the way it is', shrug their shoulders, and move on with the life, leaving the grieving families of displaced, misplaced, replaced, and dead children in the wake, then they wonder why 'kids these days' never learn. Who’s teaching them to be unteachable? Who’s teaching them to be passive and aggressive in the wrong areas of life? Who’s teaching them that murder is okay, sex tapes are the norm and will make you a lot of money, and selling your soul for a reality show is the ultimate goal in life? Who’s teaching them that more time & money are spent on trying to be pretty, in-shape, attractive, and/or appealing to the masses, rather than teaching them humility, generosity, compassion, and love? A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve."

iv

via

no. 299

"If girls are asking to be raped because their clothes don't completely cover all of their bodies, then boys are asking to be kicked in the balls just because they don't wear cups everywhere."

iseeavoice

via

no. 287

"I think that if they make abortion illegal, they should make men deserting women who they got pregnant illegal as well. Because if a women can’t back out of a pregnancy a man should be able to either."

Keely @ This is a wasteland

via

no. 281

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."

Carl Sagan, in his last interview with Charlie Rose.

via

no. 270

"Your friends don’t owe you a job. Your parents don’t want to support you anymore. No one wants to hear you complain. You don’t deserve anything any more than anyone else. You aren’t the center of the world. You are responsible for your own happiness. Stop blaming everyone and everything else if you aren’t there yet. Fix it."

no. 8 : Stop Expecting Stuff
from 11 things it took me 42 years to learn by Shane Nickerson

no. 258

via

no. 256

"Because that’s the thing about Scooby-Doo: The bad guys in every episode aren’t monsters, they’re liars.
I can’t imagine how scandalized those critics who were relieved to have something that was mild enough to not excite their kids would’ve been if they’d stopped for a second and realized what was actually going on. The very first rule of Scooby-Doo, the single premise that sits at the heart of their adventures, is that the world is full of grown-ups who lie to kids, and that it’s up to those kids to figure out what those lies are and call them on it, even if there are other adults who believe those lies with every fiber of their being. And the way that you win isn’t through supernatural powers, or even through fighting. The way that you win is by doing the most dangerous thing that any person being lied to by someone in power can do: You think."

Ask Chris #81: Scooby-Doo and Secular Humanism

via

no. 253

You want to say Hi to the cute girl on the subway. How will she react? Fortunately, I can tell you with some certainty, because she’s already sending messages to you. Looking out the window, reading a book, working on a computer, arms folded across chest, body away from you = do not disturb. So, y’know, don’t disturb her. Really. Even to say that you like her hair, shoes, or book. A compliment is not always a reason for women to smile and say thank you. You are a threat, remember? You are Schrödinger’s Rapist. Don’t assume that whatever you have to say will win her over with charm or flattery. Believe what she’s signaling, and back off.

If you speak, and she responds in a monosyllabic way without looking at you, she’s saying, “I don’t want to be rude, but please leave me alone.” You don’t know why. It could be “Please leave me alone because I am trying to memorize Beowulf.” It could be “Please leave me alone because you are a scary, scary man with breath like a water buffalo.” It could be “Please leave me alone because I am planning my assassination of a major geopolitical figure and I will have to kill you if you are able to recognize me and blow my cover.”

On the other hand, if she is turned towards you, making eye contact, and she responds in a friendly and talkative manner when you speak to her, you are getting a green light. You can continue the conversation until you start getting signals to back off.

The fourth point: If you fail to respect what women say, you label yourself a problem.

There’s a man with whom I went out on a single date—afternoon coffee, for one hour by the clock—on July 25th. In the two days after the date, he sent me about fifteen e-mails, scolding me for non-responsiveness. I e-mailed him back, saying, “Look, this is a disproportionate response to a single date. You are making me uncomfortable. Do not contact me again.” It is now October 7th. Does he still e-mail?

Yeah. He does. About every two weeks.

This man scores higher on the threat level scale than Man with the Cockroach Tattoos. (Who, after all, is guilty of nothing more than terrifying bad taste.) You see, Mr. E-mail has made it clear that he ignores what I say when he wants something from me. Now, I don’t know if he is an actual rapist, and I sincerely hope he’s not. But he is certainly Schrödinger’s Rapist, and this particular Schrödinger’s Rapist has a probability ratio greater than one in sixty. Because a man who ignores a woman’s NO in a non-sexual setting is more likely to ignore NO in a sexual setting, as well.

So if you speak to a woman who is otherwise occupied, you’re sending a subtle message. It is that your desire to interact trumps her right to be left alone. If you pursue a conversation when she’s tried to cut it off, you send a message. It is that your desire to speak trumps her right to be left alone. And each of those messages indicates that you believe your desires are a legitimate reason to override her rights.

For women, who are watching you very closely to determine how much of a threat you are, this is an important piece of data.“

an excerpt from Phaedra Starling’s “Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced” (via lostgrrrls)

I have daughters, and this is now my go-to standard for judging the behavior of men towards them.

via

no. 243

1. Recognize the System: That’s right, there’s a system, and it’s a vicious one. The first step to feeling better about yourself is to recognize that there are people who are trying to make you feel down even when you don’t even notice it. It’s shitty to realize, but it’s harder to fight an invisible opponent than one you see. This system is a core of advertising and media messages that exist to create a vision of the ‘perfect girl/guy’, and when you don’t fit it (and I’m saying when because chances are you don’t and that’s totally okay) they trick you into buying a bunch of bullshit you don’t need so you can ‘strive towards perfection’ or whatever. That’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit. Call them on their bullshit and never stop calling them on their bullshit.

Izzy (maybe), one of 10 points from Body Positivity Things to Remember

no. 237

"Only in America can a dead black boy be put on trial for his own murder."

attributed to Syreeta McFadden

no. 224

fuck it
if a group of people have treated you like shit you have every right to hate them
if a single person has treated you like shit you have every right to hate them
anyone who disagrees needs to shut the fuck up
who fucking cares if hates a strong word
love used to be a strong word too but its still tossed around like some fucking ragdoll
so piss off

ninphiia

no. 207

"Women feel more guilt than men, not because of some weird chromosomal issue but because they have a history of being blamed for other people’s behavior. You get hit, you must have annoyed someone; you get raped, you must have excited someone; your kid is a junkie, you must have brought him up wrong."

Germaine Greer, Guilt Poisons Women

via

no. 199

"Blaming teachers for education is like blaming policemen for crime."

me