ThePrettiestOne

venuselectrificata:

my political views are “i want my friends to be safe and healthy” and i am extremely wary of people who dismiss me because of this

hip-hip-poohray:

• Why Do We Keep Breaking For No Reason On The Highway
  
• I’m Going Above The Speed Limit Why Are You Riding My Ass 
• Use Your Fucking Blinker
• Pull Over And Get Your Shit Together If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going
• Bitch Turn If You’re Going to Turn
• I’m In The Far Right Lane Why Are You Still On My Ass Just Fucking Pass Me
• Inching Closer Every Second Isn’t Gonna Make The Light Change Any Quicker
• Wtf Was That
• Really? You KNOW I’m The One With The Right Of Way

* Oh God Stop Swearing With The Windows Open You’re Gonna Get Us Murdered
* What No Don’t Flip Off The Bikers
* I Love The Jesus-Handle Above My Window So Much
* Let’s Just Hang Here Like A Sloth And Whimper

allrightcallmefred:

roachpatrol:

skullspeare:

man imagine aliens w no concept of interspecies cooperation or pets

‘commander the scan of this shelter reveals three primary lifeforms’

‘excellent. elaborate please’

‘all mammals. two quadrupeds, one feline and one canine, as well as one biped sapien. they appear to be… relaxing and eating in a shared space’

‘what the fuck’

imagine these guys trying to be really polite about it because for some reason the bipeds really enjoy harboring these strange freeloading carnivores. an alien warlord meeting some diplomat’s cat and being all tentatively like ‘ah… yes. your parasite is remarkably large and complacent. you are no doubt a very well-used host and oh my stars don’t let it touch me no no NO.’

“but what function do they serve”

“well sometimes they catch pests or protect us from intruders”

“ah I see very sensible”

“but mostly we just hug them whether they want us to or not”

“…………what the fuck”

Stick with me. Please. I have to speak from a place of experience in order to lay the ground to comment on something that doesn’t directly affect me.

Several years ago there was a story making the rounds about some guy taking legal action against his kid’s school because they were making his daughter say the Pledge of Allegiance which has the phrase “Under God” and he was an atheist. I saw so many Facebook posts making fun of the guy and criticizing this waste of time and many called him Un-American and there was also the typical, “PC POLICE!” outrages and just tons of dismissiveness about his efforts.

But here’s the thing…I’ve had a hard time explaining that one to my kids too.

Stop for one second and imagine if the pledge said, “One nation, under Ganesha, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

I mean…really think about it.

Now imagine your child comes home one day, kinda realizes what she’s been saying every morning at school, and asks you about it. So you say what I say, “Well…that’s a God that is part of a religion of a huge group of people in this world.”

And of course your daughter will ask, “Is it part of our religion?”

“No.”

“Then why is it in our pledge of allegiance?”

I tried to explain how that God was part of the religion of most of the people in our country and that about 60 years ago one of our Presidents added the “under God” part in it because there was some bad stuff going on in the world and he thought it would help unite our country more to have that.

“Doesn’t seem very uniting when not everyone is that religion.”

It was a hard thing to explain to my daughter. It was hard to try to assure her that legally – religion and government are supposed to be separate – when every morning she has to pledge to a flag referencing a religion that’s not hers. Now, of course she’s legally allowed not to do it, but who wants to be that kid? She already has a hard enough time being one of the few damned non-Christians in a public school in Alabama.

My point? Every time someone made fun of that guy and his efforts to make that change, or if they dismissed his anger like he should just “get over it” or they did the WORST THING EVER: Say stuff like, “Losing God is what’s wrong with this country!” (Please. Stop saying that. It’s so offensive to the billions of non-Christians in the world to imply that your religion is responsible for all of the good and the rest of us are responsible for all of the bad.) All of those comments hurt and the dismissiveness pained me because many my friends or family didn’t understand the problem. Everyone was pledging their support and claiming, “It’s not offensive!” when they weren’t even part of the non-Christian group who was taking issue with the pledge. They were posting these support memes and claiming that those of us supporting the removal of the phrase “under God” (which wasn’t in the original pledge) were anti-American and therefore should not even be given the respect to be heard.

Dismissiveness is what is wrong with this country.

I understand how frustrating it is to live in a politically correct world. My first response was anger and shame when I had to be told 10 years ago to quit saying the word “retarded”. No one likes finding out that something they’ve been doing for a long time is offensive to a big group of people. And I’m not saying that we need to make sure that nothing we ever say is ever insulting to anyone. But – when large groups of people stand up and say, “Please stop using the word ‘gay’ as an insult.” Or, “Please stop calling things ‘retarded.'” then we need to listen. Dismissing a large group of people and their pain does more to divide this country than any lack of God.

But here’s the other thing…unless you are part of the group that is offended? You really shouldn’t publicly proclaim that something is FINE. If your daughter has Down Syndrome and you wanted to post on Facebook that the word “retarded” doesn’t bother you? Go for it. But don’t, as a Christian, dismiss my feelings and fight to keep that line in the pledge when the pledge existed for 60 years without the phrase even in it. Unless you are part of the group hurt by something, do not dismiss their pain. It is not your place.

Now…my point to all of this? Unless you are a black person living in this country you can not proclaim that the confederate flag is not offensive. You can say what it means to you, and you can fly it in your home and wear it on your belt buckle, but dismissing the feelings of a huge portion of our country just because you don’t have those same feelings…that is what is wrong with this country.

You don’t have to agree with them. But dismissing them entirely is what creates huge gaps between groups of people. Posting memes supporting the confederate flag to your Facebook page is like throwing a middle finger up to the black people on your friends list.

Am I equating the frustration a non-Christian feels saying the pledge to the pain the Confederate flag triggers in Black America? HELL NO. I don’t feel pain at all about the pledge. But I do feel pained by dismissiveness. When people post snarky comments about how annoying the PC Police are on the day of awareness to end the use of the R-word, I am pained for the person who told me 10 years ago to please stop saying “retarded” casually like I had been using it. Anytime someone dismisses the pain or frustration or efforts to make change of a large group of people, I am hurt.

A lack of God is not what is wrong with this country. A lack of empathy is.

We all want to hold our ground SO STRONGLY that we won’t even take small moments to adapt for the sake of our neighbors. No one is taking away your right to fly whatever flag you want at your home, or use the word retarded, or say the phrase “under God”, but know that those things are all going to offend LARGE portions of the population and by committing to those things, holding your ground as the un-offended majority, you are pushing away a large group of your neighbors.

God won’t bring us together. Empathy will.

Just stop for a moment and see that confederate flag as your African American neighbor sees it. As a visual proclamation against desegregation. As a symbol of support of the Jim Crow laws. As a flag of White Supremacy. You can not, as part of the white majority say, “THIS SYMBOL IS NOT OFFENSIVE TO THE BLACK COMMUNITY.” Because you are not part of the black community. Try for a moment to empathize. If it is removed from the flagpole on a government property, your rights to fly it at home are not infringed upon. Yet the removal provides a small (very, very small) sign to your African American neighbors that someone recognizes the pain the symbol causes them and the government will not be a part of inflicting that pain.

HERE’S WHAT WE CAN DO: If the latest news cycle is giving a voice to a large minority group offended by something that you do not find offensive, ask yourself:

AM I PART OF THAT MINORITY GROUP CLAIMING TO BE OFFENDED?

If the answer is “Yes” then speak up. Your voice might be needed in that group to play the other side of the discussion.

If the answer is “No” then really stop and think for a minute before you post some sort of proclamation of support of this offensive thing on your Facebook page. Do you need to vocally support something that you are now seeing offends someone in your community? Is supporting that thing more important than keeping a dialog and a connection open with those people in your community? Have you taken a moment to really see it from their side? Can you think of a way to put yourself in their shoes? (Like replacing “God” with “Ganesh” in the pledge.) Have you tried to empathize? How will stopping doing this offensive thing really affect your life? Will that affect have a greater negative impact than the continuance of it would have on the group in question? REALLY THINK ABOUT THIS before you post your dismissive status or meme that supports that offensive thing.

EMPATHY. Not dismissiveness.

It took me awhile to quit using the word “retarded” – I didn’t realize how prevalent it was in my language until 1- years ago. But once I got out of the habit? It was no big deal. My life was not negatively impacted in any way by making that change.

(Friendly reminder about the First Amendment: someone asking you not to use the word “retarded” is not infringing on your freedom of speech unless they are going to put you in jail for using it.)

We are living in a very divided country right now where politicians are scared to do anything that might anger their “base” so the conversations sway to the extreme sides of every argument. We need to keep from dividing ourselves further by dismissing the feelings of large portions of our communities. We need to be able to adapt to keep from burning bridges. We need to recognize the difference between infringing on civil liberties and just common decency. If someone tries to make it illegal to fly the confederate flag on your own property? Then we can talk “freedom of speech” but until then? I’m just talking about public land and common decency. I’m talking about empathy over dismissiveness. Stand in your neighbor’s shoes for a moment before you dismiss their pain in your next Facebook status.

indoomitably:

Let’s also focus less on how Emma Watson’s taking parts in problematic films, which she seems to be doing largely because her managers tell her it’s the only way to make it past Harry Potter, and more on how James Franco, Seth Rogan, Jonah Hill Jay whatsisface, and Cahnning Tatum made uncomfortable sex jokes and rape jokes around her until she was so uncomfortable she left halfway through filming This is the End- but by contract had to still be in the movie.

Let’s talk about how Evangeline Lilly signed onto the Hobbit movies on the condition that her character not be in a love triangle, and everyone involved rewrote the character so that she was, and she couldn’t leave. Let’s talk about how actresses are signed into films whose final products are the opposite of what they want to be a part of, and still wind up on-screen playing terrible, problematic, sexist roles, or even being sexually harassed and assaulted while on set. Let’s talk about the implications of an industry where women have no control over the part they play or the story they’re used to tell, and are forced to make difficult decisions about which producers and directors will and won’t completely screw them over.

starline:

sslarrybullship:

I like what I see

More of this please. 

As Gandhi never quite said,

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then you win.

I remember one of the first TV debates I had on the then-strange question of civil marriage for gay couples. It was Crossfire, as I recall, and Gary Bauer’s response to my rather earnest argument after my TNR cover-story on the matter was laughter. “This is the loopiest idea ever to come down the pike,” he joked. “Why are we even discussing it?”

Those were isolating  days. A young fellow named Evan Wolfson who had written a dissertation on the subject in 1983 got in touch, and the world immediately felt less lonely. Then a breakthrough in Hawaii, where the state supreme court ruled for marriage equality on gender equality grounds. No gay group had agreed to support the case, which was regarded at best as hopeless and at worst, a recipe for a massive backlash. A local straight attorney from the ACLU, Dan Foley, took it up instead, one of many straight men and women who helped make this happen. And when we won, and got our first fact on the ground, we indeed faced exactly that backlash and all the major gay rights groups refused to spend a dime on protecting the breakthrough … and we lost.

In fact, we lost and lost and lost again. Much of the gay left was deeply suspicious of this conservative-sounding reform; two thirds of the country were opposed; the religious right saw in the issue a unique opportunity for political leverage – and over time, they put state constitutional amendments against marriage equality on the ballot in countless states, and won every time. Our allies deserted us. The Clintons embraced the Defense of Marriage Act, and their Justice Department declared that DOMA was in no way unconstitutional the morning some of us were testifying against it on Capitol Hill. For his part, president George W. Bush subsequently went even further and embraced the Federal Marriage Amendment to permanently ensure second-class citizenship for gay people in America. Those were dark, dark days.

I recall all this now simply to rebut the entire line of being “on the right side of history.” History does not have such straight lines. Movements do not move relentlessly forward; progress comes and, just as swiftly, goes. For many years, it felt like one step forward, two steps back. History is a miasma of contingency, and courage, and conviction, and chance.

But some things you know deep in your heart: that all human beings are made in the image of God; that their loves and lives are equally precious; that the pursuit of happiness promised in the Declaration of Independence has no meaning if it does not include the right to marry the person you love; and has no force if it denies that fundamental human freedom to a portion of its citizens. In the words of Hannah Arendt:

“The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which ‘the right to attend an integrated school, the right to sit where one pleases on a bus, the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement, regardless of one’s skin or color or race’ are minor indeed. Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs.”

This core truth is what Justice Kennedy affirmed today, for the majority: that gay people are human. I wrote the following in 1996:

Homosexuality, at its core, is about the emotional connection between two adult human beings. And what public institution is more central—more definitive—of that connection than marriage? The denial of marriage to gay people is therefore not a minor issue. It is the entire issue. It is the most profound statement our society can make that homosexual love is simply not as good as heterosexual love; that gay lives and commitments and hopes are simply worth less. It cuts gay people off not merely from civic respect, but from the rituals and history of their own families and friends. It erases them not merely as citizens, but as human beings.

We are not disordered or sick or defective or evil – at least no more than our fellow humans in this vale of tears. We are born into family; we love; we marry; we take care of our children; we die. No civil institution is related to these deep human experiences more than civil marriage and the exclusion of gay people from this institution was a statement of our core inferiority not just as citizens but as human beings. It took courage to embrace this fact the way the Supreme Court did today. In that 1996 essay, I analogized to the slow end to the state bans on inter-racial marriage:

The process of integration—like today’s process of “coming out”—introduced the minority to the majority, and humanized them. Slowly, white people came to look at interracial couples and see love rather than sex, stability rather than breakdown. And black people came to see interracial couples not as a threat to their identity, but as a symbol of their humanity behind the falsifying carapace of race.

It could happen again. But it is not inevitable; and it won’t happen by itself. And, maybe sooner rather than later, the people who insist upon the centrality of gay marriage to every American’s equality will come to seem less marginal, or troublemaking, or “cultural,” or bent on ghettoizing themselves. They will seem merely like people who have been allowed to see the possibility of a larger human dignity and who cannot wait to achieve it.

I think of the gay kids in the future who, when they figure out they are different, will never know the deep psychic wound my generation – and every one before mine – lived through: the pain of knowing they could never be fully part of their own family, never be fully a citizen of their own country. I think, more acutely, of the decades and centuries of human shame and darkness and waste and terror that defined gay people’s lives for so long. And I think of all those who supported this movement who never lived to see this day, who died in the ashes from which this phoenix of a movement emerged. This momentous achievement is their victory too – for marriage, as Kennedy argued, endures past death.

I never believed this would happen in my lifetime when I wrote my first several TNR essays and then my book, Virtually Normal, and then the anthology and the hundreds and hundreds of talks and lectures and talk-shows and call-ins and blog-posts and articles in the 1990s and 2000s. I thought the book, at least, would be something I would have to leave behind me – secure in the knowledge that its arguments were, in fact, logically irrefutable, and would endure past my own death, at least somewhere. I never for a millisecond thought I would live to be married myself. Or that it would be possible for everyone, everyone in America.

But it has come to pass. All of it. In one fell, final swoop.

Know hope.

June 26, 2015: Marriage Equality

It’s time. (photo via thesheepdog)

razairazerci:

religiousragings:

There is a famous story told in Chassidic literature that addresses this very question. The Master teaches the student that God created everything in the world to be appreciated, since everything is here to teach us a lesson. 

One clever student asks “What lesson can we learn from atheists? Why did God create them?”

The Master responds “God created atheists to teach us the most important lesson of them all — the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs and act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that god commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his acts are based on an inner sense of morality. And look at the kindness he can bestow upon others simply because he feels it to be right.”

“This means,” the Master continued “that when someone reaches out to you for help, you should never say ‘I pray that God will help you.’ Instead for the moment, you should become an atheist, imagine that there is no God who can help, and say ‘I will help you.’”

ETA source: Tales of Hasidim Vol. 2 by Mar

I started reading this and was worried it would be something attacking atheists, or bashing religion, but this makes me really, really happy.

ipodmini:

officialcommanderlexa:

who’s gonna tell them

winterstar95:

huffingtonpost:

Obama Praises Supreme Court’s Decision To Legalize Gay Marriage Nationwide

President Barack Obama praised the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage nationwide, calling it a “victory for America.”

Read more of President Obama’s speech here. 

For once I can be proud to be an American.

This afternoon, in announcing her support for removing the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley asserted that killer Dylann Roof had “a sick and twisted view of the flag” which did not reflect “the people in our state who respect and in many ways revere it.” If the governor meant that very few of the flag’s supporters believe in mass murder, she is surely right. But on the question of whose view of the Confederate Flag is more twisted, she is almost certainly wrong.

Roof’s belief that black life had no purpose beyond subjugation is “sick and twisted” in the exact same manner as the beliefs of those who created the Confederate flag were “sick and twisted.” The Confederate flag is directly tied to the Confederate cause, and the Confederate cause was white supremacy. This claim is not the result of revisionism. It does not require reading between the lines. It is the plain meaning of the words of those who bore the Confederate flag across history. These words must never be forgotten. Over the next few months the word “heritage” will be repeatedly invoked. It would be derelict to not examine the exact contents of that heritage.

This examination should begin in South Carolina, the site of our present and past catastrophe. South Carolina was the first state to secede, two months after the election of Abraham Lincoln. It was in South Carolina that the Civil War began, when the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter. The state’s casus belli was neither vague nor hard to comprehend:

...A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

In citing slavery, South Carolina was less an outlier than a leader, setting the tone for other states, including Mississippi:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin…

Louisiana:

As a separate republic, Louisiana remembers too well the whisperings of European diplomacy for the abolition of slavery in the times of an­nexation not to be apprehensive of bolder demonstrations from the same quarter and the North in this country. The people of the slave holding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery.

Alabama:

Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republi­can party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as it change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new princi­ples, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions—nothing less than an open declaration of war—for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and. her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans.

Texas:

...in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states....

None of this was new. In 1858, the eventual president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis threatened secession should a Republican be elected to the presidency:

I say to you here as I have said to the Democracy of New York, if it should ever come to pass that the Constitution shall be perverted to the destruction of our rights so that we shall have the mere right as a feeble minority unprotected by the barrier of the Constitution to give an ineffectual negative vote in the Halls of Congress, we shall then bear to the federal government the relation our colonial fathers did to the British crown, and if we are worthy of our lineage we will in that event redeem our rights even if it be through the process of revolution.

It is difficult for modern Americans to understand such militant commitment to the bondage of others. But at $3.5 billion, the four million enslaved African Americans in the South represented the country’s greatest financial asset. And the dollar amount does not hint at the force of enslavement as a social institution. By the onset of the Civil War, Southern slaveholders believed that African slavery was one of the great organizing institutions in world history, superior to the “free society” of the North.

From an 1856 issue of Alabama’s Muscogee Herald:

Free Society! we sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern men and especially the New England States are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meet with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery, and yet are hardly fit for association with a Southern gentleman's body servant. This is your free society which Northern hordes are trying to extend into Kansas.

The last sentence refers to the conflict over slavery between free-soilers and slave-holders. The conflict was not merely about the right to hold another human in bondage, but how that right created the foundation for white equality.

Jefferson Davis again:

You too know, that among us, white men have an equality resulting from a presence of a lower caste, which cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race. The mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of the African, takes the position which only a master-workman occupies where all the mechanics are white, and therefore it is that our mechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us.

Black slavery as the basis of white equality was a frequent theme for slaveholders. In his famous “Cotton Is King” speech, James Henry Hammond compared the alleged wage slavery of the North with black slavery—and white equality—in the South:

The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either. Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any street of your large towns. Why, you meet more beggars in one day, in any single street of the city of New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole South.

We do not think that whites should be slaves either by law or necessity. Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race. The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them, by being made our slaves. None of that race on the whole face of the globe can be compared with the slaves of the South. They are happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations. Yours are white, of your own race; you are brothers of one blood. They are your equals in natural endowment of intellect, and they feel galled by their degradation.

On the eve of secession, Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown concurred:

Among us the poor white laborer is respected as an equal. His family is treated with kindness, consideration and respect. He does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense of the term his equal. He feels and knows this. He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men. He black no masters boots, and bows the knee to no one save God alone. He receives higher wages for his labor than does the laborer of any other portion of the world, and he raises up his children with the knowledge, that they belong to no inferior cast, but that the highest members of the society in which he lives, will, if their conduct is good, respect and treat them as equals.

Thus in the minds of these Southern nationalists, the destruction of slavery would not merely mean the loss of property but the destruction of white equality, and thus of the peculiar Southern way of life:

If the policy of the Republicans is carried out, according to the programme indicated by the leaders of the party, and the South submits, degradation and ruin must overwhelm alike all classes of citizens in the Southern States. The slave-holder and non-­slave-holder must ultimately share the same fate—all be degraded to a position of equality with free negroes, stand side by side with them at the polls, and fraternize in all the social relations of life; or else there will be an eternal war of races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting and destroying all the resources of the country.

Slaveholders were not modest about the perceived virtues of their way of life. In the years leading up to the Civil War, calls for expansion into the tropics reached a fever pitch, and slaveholders marveled at the possibility of spreading a new empire into central America:

Looking into the possibilities of the future, regarding the magnificent country of tropical America, which lies in the path of our destiny on this continent, we may see an empire as powerful and gorgeous as ever was pictured in our dreams of history. What is that empire? It is an empire founded on military ideas; representing the noble peculiarities of Southern civilization; including within its limits the isthmuses of America and the regenerated West Indies; having control of the two dominant staples of the world's commerce—cotton and sugar; possessing the highways of the world's commerce; surpassing all empires of the age in the strength of its geographical position; and, in short, combining elements of strength, prosperity, and glory, such as never before in the modern ages have been placed within the reach of a single government. What a splendid vision of empire!

How sublime in its associations! How noble and inspiriting the idea, that upon the strange theatre of tropical America, once, if we may believe the dimmer facts of history, crowned with magnificent empires and flashing cities and great temples, now covered with mute ruins, and trampled over by half-savages, the destiny of Southern civilization is to be consummated in a glory brighter even than that of old, the glory of an empire, controlling the commerce of the world, impregnable in its position, and representing in its internal structure the most harmonious of all the systems of modern civilization.

Edward Pollard, the journalist who wrote that book, titled it Black Diamonds Gathered In The Darkey Homes Of The South. Perhaps even this is too subtle. In 1858, Mississippi Senator Albert Gallatin Brown was clearer:

I want Cuba, and I know that sooner or later we must have it. If the worm-eaten throne of Spain is willing to give it for a fair equivalent, well—if not, we must take it. I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican Stats; and I want them all for the same reason—for the planting and spreading of slavery.

And a footing in Central America will powerfully aid us in acquiring those other states. It will render them less valuable to the other powers of the earth, and thereby diminish competition with us. Yes, I want these countries for the spread of slavery. I would spread the blessings of slavery, like the religion of our Divine Master, to the uttermost ends of the earth, and rebellious and wicked as the Yankees have been, I would even extend it to them.

I would not force it upon them, as I would not force religion upon them, but I would preach it to them, as I would preach the gospel. They are a stiff-necked and rebellious race, and I have little hope that they will receive the blessing, and I would therefore prepare for its spread to other more favored lands.

Thus in 1861, when the Civil War began, the Union did not face a peaceful Southern society wanting to be left alone. It faced an an aggressive power, a Genosha, an entire society based on the bondage of a third of its residents, with dreams of expanding its fields of the bondage further South. It faced the dream of a vast American empire of slavery. In January of 1861, three months before the Civil War commenced, Florida secessionists articulated the position directly:

At the South, and with our People of course, slavery is the element of all value, and a destruction of that destroys all that is property. This party, now soon to take possession of the powers of the Government, is sectional, irresponsible to us, and driven on by an infuriated fanatical madness that defies all opposition, must inevitably destroy every vestige or right growing out of property in slaves.

Gentlemen, the State of Florida is now a member of the Union under the power of the Government, so to go into the hands of this party.

As we stand our doom is decreed.

Not yet. As the Late Unpleasantness stretched from the predicted months into years, the very reason for the Confederacy’s existence came to threaten its diplomatic efforts. Fighting for slavery presented problems abroad, and so Confederate diplomats came up with the notion of emphasizing “states rights” over “slavery”—the first manifestation of what would later become a plank in the foundation of Lost Cause mythology.

The first people to question that mythology were themselves Confederates, distraught to find their motives downplayed or treated as embarassments. A Richmond-based newspaper offered the following:

‘The people of the South,’ says a contemporary, ‘are not fighting for slavery but for independence.’ Let us look into this matter. It is an easy task, we think, to show up this new-fangled heresy — a heresy calculated to do us no good, for it cannot deceive foreign statesmen nor peoples, nor mislead any one here nor in Yankeeland. . . Our doctrine is this: WE ARE FIGHTING FOR INDEPENDENCE THAT OUR GREAT AND NECESSARY DOMESTIC INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY SHALL BE PRESERVED, and for the preservation of other institutions of which slavery is the groundwork.

Even after the war, as the Lost Cause rose, many veterans remained clear about why they had rallied to the Confederate flag. “I’ve never heard of any other cause than slavery,” wrote Confederate commander John S. Mosby. The progeny of the Confederacy repeatedly invoked slavery as the war’s cause.

Here, for example, is Mississippi Senator John Sharp Williams in 1904:

Local self-government temporarily destroyed may be recovered and ultimately retained. The other thing for which we fought is so complex in its composition, so delicate in its breath, so incomparable in its symmetry, that, being once destroyed, it is forever destroyed. This other thing for which we fought was the supremacy of the white man’s civilization in the country which he proudly claimed his own; “in the land which the Lord his God had given him;” founded upon the white man’s code of ethics, in sympathy with the white man’s tra­ditions and ideals.

The Confederate Veteran—the official publication of the United Confederate Veterans—in 1906:

The kindliest relation that ever existed between the two races in this country, or that ever will, was the ante-bellum relation of master and slave—a relation of confidence and responsibility on the part of the master and of dependence and fidelity on the part of the slave.

The African, com­ing from a barbarous state and from a tropical climate, could not meet the demands for skilled labor in the factories of the Northern States; neither could he endure the severe cold of the Northern winter. For these reasons it was both mer­ciful and “business” to sell him to the Southern planter, where the climate was more favorable and skilled labor not so important. In the South the climate, civilization, and other influences ameliorated the African’s condition, and that of almost the entire race of slaves, which numbered into the millions before their emancipation. It should be noted that their evangelization was the most fruitful missionary work of any modern Christian endeavor. The thoughtful and considerate negro of to-day realizes his indebtedness to the in­stitution of African slavery for advantages which he would not have received had he remained in his semi-barbarism wait­ing in his native jungles for the delayed missionary.

And in 1917, the Confederate Veteran singled out one man for particular praise:

Great and trying times always produce great leaders, and one was at hand—Nathan Bedford Forrest. His plan, the only course left open. The organization of a secret govern­ment. A terrible government; a government that would govern in spite of black majorities and Federal bayonets. This secret government was organized in every community in the South, and this government is known in history as the Klu Klux Clan...

Here in all ages to come the Southern romancer and poet can find the inspiration for fiction and song. No nobler or grander spirits ever assembled on this earth than gathered in these clans. No human hearts were ever moved with nobler impulses or higher aims and purposes….Order was restored, property safe; because the negro feared the Klu Klux Clan more than he feared the devil. Even the Federal bayonets could not give him confidence in the black government which had been established for him, and the negro voluntarily surrendered to the Klu Klux Clan, and the very moment he did, the “Invisible Army” vanished in a night. Its purpose had been fulfilled.

Bedford Forrest should always be held in reverence by every son and daughter of the South as long as memory holds dear the noble deeds and service of men for the good of others on, this earth. What mind is base enough to think of what might have happened but for Bedford Forrest and his “Invisible” but victorious army.

In praising the Klan’s terrorism, Confederate veterans and their descendants displayed a remarkable consistency. White domination was the point. Slavery failed. Domination prevailed nonetheless. This was the basic argument of Florida Democratic Senator Duncan Fletcher. “The Cause Was Not Entirely Lost,” he argued in a 1931 speech before the United Daughters of the Confederacy:

The South fought to preserve race integrity. Did we lose that? We fought to maintain free white dominion. Did we lose that? The States are in control of the people. Local self-government, democratic government, obtains. That was not lost. The rights of the sovereign States, under the Constitution, are recognized. We did not lose that. I submit that what is called “The Lost Cause” was not so much “lost” as is sometimes supposed.

Indeed it was not. For a century after the Civil War, White Supremacy ruled the South. Toward the end of that century, as activists began to effectively challenge white supremacy, its upholders reached for a familiar symbol.

Invocations of the flag were supported by invocations of the Confederacy itself. But by then, neo-Confederates had begun walking back their overt defenses of slavery. United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine claimed that...

Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Raphael Semmes and the 600,000 soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy did not fight for a “Lost Cause.” They fought to repel invasion, and in defense of their Constitutional liberties bequeathed them by their forefathers…

The glorious blood-red Confederate Battle Flag that streamed ahead of the Confederate soldiers in more than 2000 battles is not a conquered banner. It is an emblem of Freedom.

It was no longer politic to spell out the exact nature of that freedom. But one gets a sense of it, given that article quickly pivots into an attack on desegregation:

Since the Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, reversed what had been the Supreme Law of the land for 75 years and declared unconstitutional the laws of 17 states under which segregated school systems were established, the thinking people have been aroused from their lethargy in respect to State’s Rights.

In this we see the progression of what became known as the “Heritage Not Hate” argument. Bold defenses of slavery became passé. It just happened that those who praised the flag, also tended to praise the instruments of white supremacy popular in that day.

And then there were times when the mask slipped. “Quit looking at the symbols,” South Carolina State Representative John Graham Altman said during a debate over the flag’s fate in 1997. “Get out and get a job. Quit shooting each other. Quit having illegitimate babies.”

Nikki Haley deserves credit for calling for the removal of the Confederate flag. She deserves criticism for couching that removal as matter of manners. At the present moment the effort to remove the flag is being cast as matter of politesse, a matter over which reasonable people may disagree. The flag is a “painful symbol” concedes David French. Its removal might “offer relief to those genuinely hurt,” writes Ian Tuttle. “To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred,” tweeted Mitt Romney. The flag has been “misappropriated by hate groups,” claims South Carolina senator Tom Davis.

This mythology of manners is adopted in lieu of the mythology of the Lost Cause. But it still has the great drawback of being rooted in a lie. The Confederate flag should not come down because it is offensive to African Americans. The Confederate flag should come down because it is embarrassing to all Americans. The embarrassment is not limited to the flag, itself. The fact that it still flies, that one must debate its meaning in 2015, reflects an incredible ignorance. A century and a half after Lincoln was killed, after 750,000 of our ancestors died, Americans still aren’t quite sure why.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/

huffingtonpost:

These Black Trans Couples’ Stories Tug At Our Heartstrings

The couples speak to the daily experience of living at the crossroads of being black and identifying as LGBT. Together or separate, these two groups carry the burden of societal implications that stem from ignorance and assumptions. Milan shares that his mother was fearful that he would not find love – a common concern among loved ones of those in the trans community, he said.

Watch the full video and you’ll really believe in true love after hearing from these black trans couples.

Mentally count the windows in your home. Did you close your eyes? Visualize your house’s layout in your head? I did, when I tried this task. But some people, researchers have discovered, seem to be incapable of producing and holding such images in their mind’s eye. (They’re also perfectly capable of answering the window question.)

Read more...

sandandglass:

The Nightly Show, June 22, 2015

explore-blog:

Neil Gaiman on what stories do for the human spirit and how they last for generations. 

when you know you move wrong and you play wrong and your face is wrong and your voice is wrong and everything about you is wrong

animatedamerican:

nextyearsgirl:

thatweirdo-intheduckieshirt:

drst:

darthmelyanna:

drst:

A couple weeks ago The Mary Sue announced they weren’t going to cover “Game of Thrones” any more after yet another female character being brutally raped. The thread is still being invaded by trolls periodically, and there are more than 12,000 comments on the article, which is a site record and probably an internet record. (12K comments because a single website said “We’re not going to recap or promote this show any more.” Baffling.)

Tons of trolls have thrown out the “but THINGS WERE JUST LIKE THAT BACK THEN!” argument ad nauseum. Which is total bullshit, of course. Now with the season finale of “Outlander” (which, spoiler, also included rape) the trolls are coming back.

I just want to ask, why is it whenever producers/directors/writers want to demonstrate “gritty historic realism” it’s ALWAYS RAPE? It’s always sexual violence toward women/girls.

You know what would be gritty historic realism? Dysentery. GoT has battles and armies marching all over the place. You want to show “what things were like back then”? Why aren’t we seeing 500 guys by the side of a road puking and shitting their guts out from drinking contaminated water while the rest of the army straggles along trying to keep going? Or a village getting wiped out by cholera? Or typhus, polio or plague epidemics? 

You want to show what it was like back then for women? Show a woman dying of sepsis from an infection she caught while giving birth. Show a woman coping with ruptured ovarian cysts with nobody know what it is. Breast cancer that the audience will recognize immediately but the characters think is some mark of the devil or some shit.

But no, it’s always rape. And we all know why that is. Because these douchecanoes that do this, though they’ll deny it, think rape is sexy. Because they can’t make a modern set story where women get raped in every god damned episode without being called monsters. So they use “but but historical realism!” to cover their sexism (see “Mad Men”) and misogyny. Then they tell us “That’s just how it was back then!” with the clear implication “Shut the fuck up bitch, because that could be you  and you should be thanking me that it’s not.”

Can we propose a rule for “realistic” historical fiction/fantasy? Twelve graphic cases of dysentery for every one graphic rape?

^^ I like this idea.

And the worst part about it is that, by their own logic, their argument isn’t even a valid one.  They’re saying that rape is “historically accurate” in Game of Thrones, a show which 

1. Is not a historical drama
   
2. Is not set on our Earth
3. Is fantasy

So no, there was no “back then” because we can’t go “back” to a “then” that never existed.  And as far as I can find, Westeros is ~12,000 years old.  You wanna make a historically accurate drama set on earth in 10,000 BC, be my guest, but it ain’t gonna look like Game of Thrones.

So when all of the writers for the TV show keep putting rape scenes in the script, they aren’t thinking “yeah, this would’ve been realistic,” they’re thinking “haha let’s see how much I can torture women on this show.”  If the logic you’re using doesn’t even hold up to the thing you’re discussing, you’ve really gotta examine why you’re so enthusiastic about defending rape as a plot device.

Maybe if high fantasy writers and creators weren’t all fucking hacks who’ve been riding JRRT’s dick for the last fifty years and insist on making every single god damn fantasy world they create a boring retread of Middle Earth based on the same three hundred year span of time in four countries of Western Europe they wouldn’t all have to rely on the same garbage logic to justify their garbage misogyny. 

You know, they could deny that they find rape sexy, and they might even believe their own denials.  But the point is that they clearly don’t think of rape as something distasteful enough and disgusting enough to omit.

And you know what, I’m not even gonna insist on the dysentery.  Just this: if you’re going to include rape on the basis of historical accuracy, none of your female characters are allowed to have shaved legs or armpits.  And all of your characters have to have terrible teeth – yellowed and worn and crooked, because nobody’s getting braces or regular visits to the dentist – with at least a few teeth blackened or missing for every character over the age of thirty.

Of course, if your reaction to blackened teeth and hairy armpits is “ugh, no, sure it might be historically accurate but it’s gross, nobody’s going to want to watch that" and you don’t have the exact same reaction to rape, you might want to think about why that is.

Library of Alexandria – with Gina Torres as Alexandria Astarte, Bianca Lawson as Anat Freedman

Set in a near-future world where information economy is absolutely literal, Alexandria Astarte has created an empire by holding to just three rules: 

1) Family first.

2) Always trust women.

3) Burn everything else to the ground.

Her unbeatable advantage: an eidetic memory and thousands upon thousands of journals kept by hand, on paper.  You can’t hack what’s not connected to the digital world.

Her right hand (and professional fixer) Anat Freedman might be a little bloodier than is strictly legal – but as long as they keep the upper hand in the endless corporate war and keep the balance of secrets and public disclosure carefully measured there’s no one who can touch them.  Not even the king of the darknet, a hacker known only as Ba’al who threatens the whole system but who has never quite managed to get a real foothold in the real world.

–

Give me your favorite myth or legend or god or goddess and I will fancast and create a modern adaptation/aesthetic

lierdumoa:

battlenuggalope:

Jurassic World, Mad Max Fury Road, and Little Girls

For her birthday, we took my soon-to-be six year-old to Jurassic World. Prior to that, she had watched a bootleg copy of Fury Road with me after I had confirmed that it fit the levels of violence I consider acceptable based on what I know of my daughter.

The most interesting thing to me was her reactions after each film.

After watching MMFR, she talked incessantly about it. (She had talked during the film as well, making observations, etc.) Her name was suddenly changed to Angry Cereal, mirroring two of her favorite characters. She made a new Sims game, spending more time than she ever had before perfecting the characters - and giving them all pets. A Lego car set was turned into a crazy car that could fit into the Mad Max world. Barbies were now the Wives and her dad’s Diablo figurine was now Immortan Joe. It’s been a little over two weeks and she still talks about it.

When the credits rolled on Jurassic World, she said, ‘Can we go see another movie?’ –And that was it. The only other comment vaguely related to the movie was her assertion she liked dinosaurs. Nothing else. No elaborate recreations, nothing.

I had thought with MMFR that my excitement had rubbed off on her but that doesn’t seem to be the case. After Jurassic World, I was excited, encouraging her to talk about her favorite parts. She asked for a Happy Meal. When we went to spend a gift card at Toys-R-Us the next day, I pointed out all the Jurassic World toys. They had Blue! She barely gave them a second glance.

It didn’t jive. She had tons of dinosaur books. Why was she infinitely more interested in an adult movie that was pretty much one big car chase rather than a movie about dinosaurs? Was it because despite the differences in ratings, Jurassic World had frightened her more? Maybe. But when she picked out a new stuffed animal to buy with her gift card, she informed us the little owl’s name was Splendid.

And that was it.

She had watched Fury Road in almost complete silence until the first shot of all the Wives. Then she turned to me and said, “There’s so many girls!” That was her takeaway from MMFR: there were lots of girls! All the girls were fighting together against the bad guy! The girls were the heroes! That was important to her, seemingly even more important than it was to me. Maybe because she’s just getting her first taste of playground culture where boys and girls are separate and the two don’t mix often and it’s been confusing. Maybe because she just really liked seeing girls on the screen. When I ask her, she just shrugs and says, “I don’t know, mommy, I liked all the girls. I liked Toast.”

As an adult, I’m aware of issues with representation. I don’t remember consciously noticing it as a child but I remember Leia and Uhura and Janeway being my favorites. I remember dressing up as Dana Scully. As a mom, I watch my daughter gravitate to girls and women on screen. A movie I thought would a sure thing because DINOSAURS! became a total miss because for her, there was no one on screen that she left the theater wanting to dress up as. There was no incentive for her to change her name to mimic favorite characters. I left grinning because holy shit, raptor squad! She left wanting a cheeseburger.

Children know when they’re being marginalized. They might have no idea what they word marginalized means, but they can still tell, instinctually, when they’ve been misrepresented in and/or excluded from the story.

[look, there’s even a scientific study supporting this]

(photo via imgur)

… are you implying that makes it OK? Like, that Peter Parker can never, ever be black is OK, because maybe some day in the future possibly Marvel might make some other Spider-Man who is black, and then maybe we can choose that Spider-Man for a movie instead of Peter Parker, and THEN it’s all OK?

Because like, no.

There is nothing – nothing  intrinsic to Peter Parker that says ‘white’.  There is nothing intrinsic to him that says ‘straight’, either.  Yes, there’s Gwen and MJ, but there are these orientations called ‘bisexual’ and ‘pansexual’ that you might want to try out.

Like, so the fuck what that Peter Parker has always been white.  That does not mean that Peter Parker always has to be white.  Or straight.  Etc.  FFS, anon, I’m gonna let Donald Glover take the rest of this: