#GelLikeBehavior

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Plant-Based Gelatin Alternative: Gum Tragacanth

Researchers have explored gum tragacanth as a plant-based alternative to gelatin in edible films. By experimenting with different ratios of gelatin and gum tragacanth, they identified a 3:1 ratio as optimal for maintaining the gel-like structure of gelatin. However, the addition of gum tragacanth increases porosity, making the films more susceptible to water and saline penetration. While not a complete replacement, this partial substitution represents progress toward sustainable food packaging solutions.

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An Op.Ed: Signed, Sealed, Still Oppressed.

White Lies in Black Ink.

They changed the law. So, racism ended there, right? It’s comforting, maybe. A soft little story of triumph over evil. A blanket. It says it here, in the statutes. But the notion that slavery ended on January 1, 1863 is a fallacy. A convenient truth, like most truths, is only ever half true. It gets regurgitated onto the pages of textbooks. In this case, not even a quarter true. The mindset of the oppressor cannot be undone with dry ink and a few well-to-do signatures. Legal reform without cultural repair is futile and, as it turns out, downright dangerous. Lawmakers at the time were either irresponsible, ignorant, or perhaps even more malignant than that: manipulative. Performing a Houdini sleight of hand. Look over here, not over there. Because while the law may shift, power rarely, if ever, does. Not really.

Racism. 2025. The sickness is the same as it always was. But the ailments have become more violent, more discreet, and ultimately more malignant. Especially now that the Trump era has picked the delicate scab and reopened an old wound. The blood is gushing out in every direction. Old violence, newly emboldened.

Paper Justice, Real Blood.

We signed the Proclamation. We just never kept the promise. Slavery ended. Technically. But the system didn’t collapse. It didn’t even teeter. It just rebranded and continued stronger than ever. Except now, the distance between the hand and the harm is harder to measure. Leaving those responsible without repercussions. Harming even more people than before.  Power mutates faster than legislation ever could. The moment one door is closed, another is wedged open by privilege in patent leather. From Jim Crow to stop-and-frisk, from water fountains to voter suppression and gerrymandering, the machinery whirrs along, fine-tuned to preserve the status quo for the powerful and the rich.

Chain gangs replaced chains. Sharecropping replaced the whip. Later, prisons would replace plantations. Efficient, profitable, and shrouded behind legalese to protect the autocrats and appease the masses.

So too would the police, stopping anyone who didn’t fit the face they had been taught was ‘superior’ in its pallor. The Civil Rights Act outlawed segregation, but without the redistribution of wealth, access to the arts, education, and healthcare remains out of reach. Except of course for those born into unmitigated privilege. And the gulf between those who have and those who have not is only deepening.

Political Correctness: A Bandage Over Rot

When the law began to forbid explicit hate, these nasty views and nasty words went underground. Society didn’t purge it. Didn’t progress. Instead, it buried it under already tainted soil, festering, fermenting and tripling in potency. Political correctness was a further accelerant. A damp cloth soaked in gasoline, stifling the flames in the immediate but garnering the oxygen for ignition later.

Racists, misogynists, homophobes began to feel even more victimised in their own narrative. Their imaginary power had already been diminished by the changes in equality and diversity laws. Now they were, in their minds, being silenced.

 “You can’t say anything these days” became a rallying cry, not of the oppressed, but of the entitled. As if equality were a muzzle for their whiteness. As if colonising, raping, and pillaging the home of others were a badge of honour. A symbol of their hard-earned superiority. The smug Republican army rubbed their grubby hands with glee and added fuel to the smouldering fire, blaming economic downturns on immigrants. Diversity legislation was framed as enabling others to steal the white man’s job. The public was force-fed the lie that unqualified Black and Brown people were stealing jobs from the deserving white man. A truth that is simply a lie. Believing something with vigour does not make it true.

The bigot became the victim in his own imagination. And by now, the ‘other’ had been firmly planted as the antagonist in the story.

Hate Isn’t Born. It’s Taught.

Hate is heirloomed, like legacy silverware, that no amount of vinegar can polish. It’s passed down through dinner table comments, through school curricula that erase or distort reality, through governments that refuse to reckon with the decisions made in the name of their country. There was no truth commission for slavery or any real consequences for colonialism. Just a herd of rich white men pretending the past was over.

But the past wasn’t over. It isn’t over. History was archived, not exorcised. And so, Europe got the rise of the right and Brexit. The USA got MAGA. Anti-trans bills pushed by men raised on “tolerance” but trained by culture to despise difference. When trauma festers, the consequences are terrifying but inevitable nonetheless.

The Scorned Majority Complex

We’re fully entrenched in the era of the spurned majority. The straight white Christian man told that he’s still in charge but feels under attack. He’s never had to fight. Never been challenged and has no idea how to defend what he cannot fathom. The Karens who fully believe that consequences are persecution. Though none have ever had to deal with real persecution. They drive their SUVs safely down the highway without ever being pulled over for having a brown face.

Opportunistic politicians bemoan “wokeness” like it’s the second coming of the bubonic plague. As if respecting other human beings that may look or think differently is a deadly disease.

At the very heart of all the blustering, it is just fragile entitlement reacting violently to the idea that others might share the stage. Not just share it. Dominate it. It’s a territorial beast at its very worst. And, that horror of perceived loss twists the fragile ego into a fireball of blind rage. Blind to see that the enemy is not the ‘other’ but the very same blood from which they hail. Albeit, richer and more powerful. And when that fragility is armed, algorithm-stuffed, and economically panicked, the result is brutality under the guise of a patriot.

The Mob Got Its Mascot

Make America Great Again.

The slogan that catapulted Trump into his first term as President isn’t just a handy media soundbite. Media genius, it might be, but it’s a confession. Stark and emboldened, it represents a yearning not for the old times when white, straight, Christian men dominated. Throw in a Black man who dared to run for president. Who dared and won. The silent seethe simmers at the top of the pot waiting to boil over in waves.  It isn’t a movement. It’s overspill in a cape of stars and stripes at a costume party.

And that tantrum has become the machine. He has dragged the underbelly to the surface. Trump gorges on imagined persecution: banning books, signing off on cruelty, and deporting whoever fits the day's distraction whilst he guts the economy and doles money out to freeloading capitalists. All the while firing up the base. The very people who will be harmed by his own economic greed and desire for infamy. Trans children criminalised for existing. Immigrants persecuted. Women being told that liberty ends at their uterus. Politicians draped in red ties and evangelical scripture, cheer for forced births and clink crystal glasses overflowing with Moet as they slash food stamps and Medicaid.

Trump Republicans never hid their aims. They didn’t need to. The MAGA base had already learned from him exactly what the systems of power have always taught. As long as your violence is coded in patriotism or wrapped in policy, it won’t be punished. It will be platformed and rewarded.

White MAGA, in hindsight, can hardly be seen as a surprise. But for the vote of Black or Hispanic Americans, or any woman at all, to be galvanised as it has been seems utterly shocking. But it’s survival at its worst. Survival and systemic putrefaction.

Some voted for Trump because they’ve been raised to believe that proximity to power will protect them. That aligning with the strongman will save them. Pile on decades of evangelical, conservative Catholic messaging that equates morality with white male authority, then Trump, in all his grotesque sanctimonious glory, is just another vessel for divine justice.

There are others, who lack the critical thinking or research skills to understand how information can be manipulated, fall prey to misinformation. Fox-reared myths, WhatsApp disinformation campaigns, TikTok fear-mongering about immigrants and trans kids. They absorb it all like drowned sponges.

Of course, aside from the games of power, economic anxiety is also a huge driving force. They vote for the man they believe is an entrepreneur, a job-creator and a self-made strongman who will punish the “freeloaders.” It doesn’t matter that none of this is true. They just opt for the one that will make their family safest. Perceptions are everything.

When you grow up in a culture that trains you from birth to fear the bottom rung more than the steel-capped toes on your back, voting for the steel feels like the only option. It’s symptomatic of what happens when a system built for the rich crushes you into compliance, then teaches you to thank it for the bruises and broken knee caps.

So, this is where we are. Delusion has become doctrine. The ‘other’ the enemy. The poor are getting poorer. And all the while the rich are lining the pockets with gold and flying private jets to Scotland for a round of golf.

The Clock’s Ticking. Pick a Side.

Changing laws is easy. Changing hearts is not.

Healing and justice require more than signatures and handshakes. It demands redistribution, education, unlearning. Relearning.  Acceptance. It begs the powerful to relinquish. It needs the comfortable get uncomfortable.

It’s not enough to be quietly anti-racist. And it’s not enough to be anti-racist only within the safety of your echo chamber. What truly matters is what’s said, and done, out loud, where it counts. Racism and homophobia must be challenged openly. That means having the uncomfortable conversations at family gatherings, calling out your friends and relatives when they say something harmful, and making it clear, consistently and publicly, that racism will not be tolerated. Silence protects the status quo.

Discomfort is the cost of change.

The more insular we become, the less willing we are to talk to one another, to listen, to learn, to connect. But most people, regardless of where they come from, are just trying to live their lives, feed their families, find a little peace. It would be easier to exist in this world if we sat down and shared a meal every once in a while. Tried to understand. Is there evil in the world? Of course. But it’s not the little guy trying to make his rent, or the woman working three jobs, or the family just trying to stay safe. It's not the neighbour who speaks a different language, or the stranger who worships differently. The real danger lies in how easily we’re convinced to fear one another, instead of sitting down and breaking bread. 

Progress isn’t the removal of a statute. Or a scribble in the appendix of a statute. It’s a sustained, lived transformation. An acceptance and reverence for the differences that unite us as humans. And it’s speaking up when it matters.

It takes more than nodding along. More than sending private messages of support. It takes standing up and shouting hell no when it would be far easier to stay on the sidelines. It takes losing things. Comfort, approval, reputation. Followers. Because you refuse to let hate slide.

The rot remains unchecked. Out in the open. Tailor suited, and far deadlier for its years of externally imposed silence. You saw it. You see it. But you were too afraid to make dinner uncomfortable. We need to stop mistaking laws for justice and start naming it for what it truly is. The paperwork of appeasement. We need to do better.

Because real progress stands the fuck up to be counted. Especially when it’s white.

Source: An Op.Ed: Signed, Sealed, Still Oppressed.