there’s something so compelling about stories where a character’s virtues intensify into flaws that lead to their downfall. loyalty and love becoming so all-consuming that compassion outside of them ceases to exist. duty overwhelming any moral compass until order becomes more important than justice. selflessness so intense it becomes self-destruction. let me watch while whatever saved the hero in the beginning destroys them. let me see them fall to their own worst impulses disguised as what once made them good.
the elephant in the room when it comes to the “we must protect our children” objections by conservative politicians is that they are not referring to living, breathing children, but a platonic concept of “a child” that children are coerced into emulating through abuse kneaded by both the state and their parents. The lack of rights children possess is to render them unable to object to what adults claim to do for their own good, which oftentimes are merely just means to maintain them as property than help them as people. The idea that teaching 6th graders very basic, very clinical sex ed is child abuse stems from the fear that their parents lose some control over their child’s autonomy by having the child know things (which, statically, also makes them more likely to tell someone when they are being abused by an adult. Interesting) that the parent has not sanctioned as a part of their person. Conservatives accuse everyone else of child abuse not because they care that a child is being hurt, but because hurting children is only their god given right.
i cant be fucked to go find the actual post but u guys know the “if miss piggy was on drag race she would absolutely bring up the fracking” post, and then the comment that’s like of course she would her boytoy is an environmentalist
ok first of all that comment always throws me because i think the reason the image works so well is cause it’s something you know she’d do of her own accord. like i don’t think ms piggy has ever in her life done something bc she was taking someone else’s opinion into consideration
but anyway. my point is it made me realize that part of the reason i liked and agreed with the og post so much is cause ive always just assumed that like. ok so ms piggy has the whole vintage early hollywood diva thing going on right, like her whole deal is she’s an aging diva who was huge in the 1940s and now its the 1960s and her lustre has faded but the magic’s still there. and this comes across extremely strongly in the way she acts
well because of that, i think i’ve always subconsciously assumed it was an implicit part of her backstory that she participated in the walkout during the hollywood red scare in 1947. of course she would bring up the fracking, she was an early face of american communism. she was huffing and throwing her shawl over her shoulder at the huac interrogation
Our Japanese class found it funny that in common terminology “food” isn’t very distinguished from specifically “rice” until it was pointed out to us that in English “meal” is “loose roughly ground grain”
humans be like staple crop
In German a Christmas tree farm is called a “tree-school” and I thought that was very cute and funny until I remembered that we buy our plants at… a nursery.
waitâŚ.are any americans aware that the cia overthrew the democratically-elected premier of iran in 1953 because he wouldnât concede to western oil demandsâŚ.and how that coup was the reason for the shahâs return to power, the iranian revolution, and the resulting fundamentalist dictatorshipâŚ..like, america literally dissolved iranian democracy and no one knows about it???
No. No we donât know about it.Â
Americans arenât told this shit.Â
The only thing weâre taught about any Middle Eastern country in school is that 1) the region exists 2) itâs where The War is happening and 3) Muslim people live there. Thatâs it. Maybe if youâre lucky youâll get into the Hammurabi Code and some early Babylonian stuff but American schools seem to think that if it happened outside Europe and before the colonial period, or makes America look bad and isnât about A Very Watered Down Version of What Slavery Was, itâs not important.
Info on this is almost notoriously hard to find. Itâs not in any texts on American and Russian involvement in the Middle East during the Cold War that I can find. You have to specifically look for a book about the Shahâs return to power, and even then youâd be hard pressed to find a book like that at your local bookstore. Once you get into some higher level college courses you might know about it, but the people who can afford those are more likely to already be indoctrinated into a certain Way of Thinking (read: theyâre racist as shit) by the time they get there. And itâs almost like you have to know about it beforehand if you want to find information on it.
The only reason I knew about it is because thereâs a thirty second summary of the event in Persepolis. Those thirty seconds flipped my entire worldview.
âAll the Shahâs Menâ by Stephen Kinzer is a good, accessible text for people who want to know more about this.
!!!
I had to explain literally this to one of my co-workers, who is so fuckin racist against Middle Eastern people itâs insane.
Sheâs 60. She never heard of this.
As I was explaining this and how, during the Regan years, we funded Osama Bin Laden to fight against Russia, leading to the destruction of much of the infrastructure in the region, one of the plant workers came in to get his badge fixed.
He works in the quality control lab. He served 15 years active duty in the Army. Super smart guy, has a masters in chemistry and another masters in biology, raises saltwater fish in his spare time for sale, has the saltwater aquarium setup of the gods.  Raises rare corals too, some of which he donates to be used in re-seeding reefs around the world, but thatâs a side tangent.
And he listened for a minute, then nodded and said âYeah. I was there during that. I helped train people to fight. They wanted us to help them build schools and hospitals, after, but we were only interested in them as cannon fodder. Left the whole area in ruins. I wasnât surprised when they hated us for it later. Told people then it would happen. We let them know then that they were only valuable to America as expendable bodies. Why wouldnât they resent us for that?â
And she just looked floored.
âSoâŚâ She started, after a few minutes. âWhat do you think of Trump?â
âI hate him. Heâs a coward and heâs going to get good people killed.â He didnât even blink. â
She looked back and forth between us for a second, and then asked how I knew all this.
âI research things.â I said. âGoogle is great.â He nodded enthusiastically.
And she just sat there for a second and then said, really quietly, âI didnât know.â
She lived through it.
American schools donât teach you any of this sort of thing.
my great-grandfather had to leave italy in the 20′s because he hit a fascist with a tuba, so if you think I am going to take this sitting down you are going to have to catch these hands and also this tuba
Fun story my Great Great Grandma left Germany in the 1920s because she had family in the US and could get citizenship pretty easily and once she was over in the US she then smuggled over 15 jewish families out by forging family documents so now my aunts are currently in the process of trying to tell the real ones from the fake ones because my great gran just died and there are legally over 100 surviving descendants but we know that math is a lil screwy.
Sometimes a family is you, your kids, your grandkids, your great grandkids, and the 15 Jewish families you helped smuggle out of Nazi Germany.
