#but that doesn't absolve them of responsibility

[johannestevans]

a thing i love about kai winn is the way in which she is OBSESSED with personal responsibility as a way of absolving herself of her influence over others.

it's bareil's CHOICE to kill himself because she won't tell him not to. it's people's CHOICE to follow their d'jarras. "i won't interfere."

this poor insane and absurdly scarred woman who is repeatedly and continuously rejected by her own gods. a starfleet human is their new messiah, to whom the prophets continuously reach out. the prophets are speaking to everybody but her - not just kira, youthful and disobedient and chaotic

but fucking. more humans. a trill. odo. a FERENGI!!!!

forsaken by the prophets during the occupation and like… it's so easy for kira to judge her, she thinks, when kira had weapons, and winn never did. all she had was her mind and her ability to talk and manipulate and bribe

and she is so absurdly lonely. she's no longer in a prison cell the way she was for most of the occupation, but she may as well be. everyone thinks her cold and treacherous - the ds9 cmo calls her a coward to her face! her!!!! a priestess who has survived a genocide, this CHILD, calls her a coward!!

and in her mind i think it's just. so much easier to think of everything in terms of… people make choices. she's not making anyone do anything. she's not holding a gun or the weight of an occupying force. she's not making any threats. people can just make their choices. like she has - has had to

and like. god. her gods do not give a single fuck about her. when she's finally able to reach out to them outright that they do not think about her and if they did they would think she's fucking cringe. when your own gods say you're not worth shit, well, okay! i guess she'll do whatever then!

i understand why people have like. a massive knee jerk response to winn - i do think that people wrongly conflate her fundamentalism with american christian fundamentalism & its ideologies, bc like. she is not an american. she is not a member of the dominant culture. she is a genocide survivor

and god like. you can see the acid in her mouth whenever she's negotiating with the cardassians, but more than that like. kira as a member of the bajoran militia works very closely with starfleet, and she's also federation-pilled from hanging out with those rootbeer-drinking freaks 24/7

winn doesn't have that. all she has is the knowledge that starfleet watched the cardassians rape and pillage and abuse and murder her people for decades and not give a flying fuck because the bajorans didn't have anything they wanted. and then the wormhole appeared. and suddenly they were helping

and idk like. she's so painfully uncomfortable with quark naming a fucking dessert after her and trying to get her to try it bc she's not a fucking celebrity and she doesn't want to be.

kira accuses her of wanting fame and her place in history but that's so clearly not what she cares about

she genuinely DOES want what's best for her people. and unfortunately, like kira, she very much has an all or nothing spirit about the whole thing. for winn, that doesn't mean bombing the families of oppressors or blowing up DS9 to stop the cardassians from taking it. it means shit like this

taking every single advantage she can get, using up her assets even when those assets are dying in front of her, even when super fucking unethical medical stuff is being done - letting bareil die when, really, he didn't need to, just for one treaty where there will be others, frankly

but kai can't think of all the people she's killing or leaving behind, because she's not that kind of strategician and she's not ACTUALLY interested in Going Down In History. what she wants, what she has always wanted, is to save what she sees as The Core of Bajor as best she can, and preserve it

part of that is saving people, redirecting prison ships, fucking off the cardassians, getting these treaties signed. part of that IS keeping starfleet at arm's length and, frankly, ensuring that bajor doesn't become a federation planet and get subsumed into federation culture.

and most of all it's faith and doctrine and her fundamentalist understandings of bajoran texts and the teachings of the prophets, because that is what helped her survive, and therefore, in her fucked-up head, all that MUST survive in perpetuity

god. i love that awful woman

[lorata]

ok i was flippant yesterday bc i had been working outside in a heatwave all day and was tired but i'm still stuck on this. i'm not discoursing on the hunger games blog i promise but like. ok. professions are not ontologically evil. that's too easy. it's systems of oppression and the choices made by people in those professions and the ease with which said systems automate those choices.

acab doesn't mean that becoming a peacekeeper (cop) automatically strips every bit of good from you, it doesn't mean that you have now become an Evil Human and are irredeemable, it means you have chosen a profession that has, within the system you exist in, itself chosen to align with systems of oppression and power, and that your actions now feed into those systems no matter how good your intentions might be. hence -- no good cops because the only good ones are dead or burned out trying to 'be different' and left. it's not because becoming a cop you stepped through a doorway and the good inside you was magically burned away in some arcane ritual

people like it to be easy, they want evil to be something inherent and easy to point to but it's not! it's choices, it's always choices. in fiction especially but i hate to tell you it's in real life as well. someone is choosing to do that. they can also choose to stop. history is littered with the stories of people who -- damn the consequences -- chose to stop. like -- sorry i bang on about this constantly but everyone makes choices, and everyone can make ones that cause real, systemic harm, even people who adore their kids or bake pies for orphans or ride motorcycles and have ADHD, even you, even me. especially you, especially me.

which, obviously, is exactly the point with peacekeepers? sloane calls the cops when her stepdad abuses her and they have drinks with him instead. electra's brother and a bunch of kids are killed in a massacre bc they ran in guns blazing to the wrong address and the whole thing gets covered up. petra's PK dad was given the choice of lose his job or abandon his family and chose his job, and then she was injured in the arena and is THIS CLOSE to losing faith, so brutus takes her to all the local PK galas for her PR tours and she gets to feel proud and important and valuable and that reinforces her indoctrination instead. they provide her emotional wellbeing -- still supporting the regime. selene meanwhile dngaf about the rules but she loves her dad and her uncle and looks up to them, so why not follow in their footsteps, meanwhile (as xanify said) the program takes a kid with undiagnosed ADHD, channels all her energy into weapons training and uses her for Evil. they give her belonging -- still supporting the regime. emory's mom was a second-twenty local beat cop in a sleepy quarry town, never told emory any of the tales of when she worked out of district, only said be grateful for your district, so emory learned that peacekeepers are kind and honest and helpful and didn't interrogate that until MUCH later. alec and creed love their mother but when she has an uncanny ability to get the truth out of them joke that she used to be an interrogator -- this is a family joke that the boys don't think about, because it's not real to them at the time. it's real to adora and it's real to the people she tortured and that moment is meant to be a stumble.

joseph, i'm not even going to go there, except i guess to say that showing someone who participates within an oppressive system to be a complex and human person rather than one-dimensional Evil is not advocating for that system OR excusing their actions, it goes back to the choices thing again, trying to remove that little moment of comfort and disconnect that says 'only evil people do this and i am not evil therefore i am absolved of responsibility'

re: two vs the capitol PKs that comes from canon where plutarch says that in the capitol getting sent to the PKs is a punishment for like, debt or minor crimes or whatever, but in two it's an actual industry, so i just assumed that the capitol PKs are shipped off to the ass end of nowhere until their sentence is commuted (like snow in tbosas). they don't have the same training or indoctrination into the system so they'd mostly just be pissed off and bitter and apathetic

(lol my wife also adds: some of the above comparison is the difference between a local cop in rural tennessee and the NYPD -- PKs in the capitol have way more power and privilege and will be far more disconnected from the people than rural ones; someone closer to their community will be far more likely to connect and empathize with the people there, which is also why I have the elite PKs (scouts) rotated so often, so they don't manage to make those connections)

so like. yeah, it is propaganda, the whole district is propaganda, and all of the characters are fed it from the day they're born. but there's also meant to be that layer of interrogation of the concept

on that note i am just an author trying to make a story land and it's not going to land with everyone! if people read it and feel like it's not doing that, if they feel like i'm giving a pass to the PKs because i write about characters who are good people then that's valid!

[a-wins-a-win]

wanna talk about sex (but we're not allowed)

potentially controversial b;apo take, but hey, why not -- there are many more things i would've liked to say, but they didn't really fit neatly into the main thesis i was working under ;

the merit of considering Jason and Ivy's sex during 'One' as a depiction of assault, drawing parallels to Spring Awakening

To preface; I acknowledge that I am not using 1:1 examples. Since both b;apo and Spring Awakening are stage shows, there is so much of the atmosphere that is created through lighting and blocking and the subtleties in the way that each of the characters are played against one another, there’s no way to make a definitive blanket statement. That said, I was personally inspired by the production of b;apo I got the absolute pleasure of seeing live last year. Not only did we have the Ivy ever, but the team made an, in my opinion, super brilliant choice when it came to 'One'. They cut the “it was cute” line from Jason when Ivy’s apologising, and they really played up a visceral discomfort and overwhelm, culminating in Jason pacing up and down beside the bed while Ivy tells him he is “all [she] need[s]”, and it’s at that point that he concedes before focus shifts across to Peter trying to call his mother on the phone.     

Right off the bat, I think we’d be remiss not to acknowledge the gender dynamics at play when drawing these parallels, especially when gender as a concept intersects so much with the way sexuality is understood and explored by the characters in both b;apo & Spring Awakening. In particular I want to touch on the fact that - at least to my perception - Jason’s fully realised masculinity functions almost as a barrier to his emotions within the context of the story overall, but also when it comes to the meta context of his decision to have sex with Ivy. Because Jason is presented as this sporty, conventionally hot, outgoing guy who is popular with women, and because he is the one who is delivering most of these innuendos during 'You & I', I think there is a subconscious bias towards seeing him as someone who wouldn’t have sex with anyone he didn’t want to. And while generally a fair assessment, I think this subconscious bias is what leads people to unfairly assign amounts of blame when it comes to an analysis of his and Ivy’s relationship. Of course, 'One' and 'I Believe' don’t serve as exactly 1:1 examples even without the gender factors, given the time periods in which both shows were written and set, but I think both explore the idea of a grey area when it comes to sex as the crux of complicated relationships, both shows have running themes of dubious consent and religion, and most obviously both instances result in a pregnancy. 

Where it gets interesting to me is where the lines start to blur — yes, Wendla “let [Melchior] love [her]”, and Jason made Ivy “make [him] promise […] ‘I love you’” — but the contexts of both shows paint Wendla and Jason as confused and uncertain. Both Melchior and Ivy know, or believe they know, within themselves that both parties want to have sex. And while they may be correct on the subconscious level, this belief and expectation that they are holding dismisses the material reality of the situations. It’s not that Wendla wants to have sex with Melchior, it’s that she wants to know about sex, wants to understand why she has this physical attraction to him, not necessarily act upon it. It’s not that Jason wants to have sex with Ivy - it’s that he wants to want to and doesn’t have the safety to express that in any other way than simply going through with it. Where this is often acknowledged in the Spring Awakening context, I find that analysis of Jason and Ivy’s interactions in One don’t dig quite so deep. 

Which is not to say that Ivy or Melchior are terrible people - it is more so to say that they are both characters who struggle with appropriately communicating, and understanding other people’s communications, about sex and sexuality. Where Ivy likens pursuing Jason to “such a game of hide-and-seek”, Jason only ever takes their sex as something deep and important. Where Melchior has been “playing with [Wendla] in [his] fantasies”, Wendla “only wanted to be close to him”. Despite Ivy and Melchior’s knowledge on and experience of the subject, it manifests more so an intellectualisation of the act of sex itself, as opposed to a genuine understanding of the ramifications on a personal level - especially for people like Jason and Wendla who don’t have the same experiences or beliefs as they do.

Melchior knows that the way the adults in their lives address sex and sexuality - or don’t address it, as the case may be - isn’t productive, and because of this perceives himself as the ultimate authority on the subject. I think that this belief is what leads to the implicit forcefulness of his interaction with Wendla in the hayloft. He knows what’s happening, and because he is armed with a preconceived idea of what Wendla must be feeling, “defending [herself], until finally [she] surrender[s] and feel[s] heaven break over [her]”, he isn’t receptive to her hesitation. Rather, he interprets it as a necessary part of the experience. He knows that Wendla wants it to happen - but he also knows that she doesn’t comprehend that it means sex yet. And because they are both so present in the moment, “hearing [each other’s] heart beat”, Melchior falls back on his belief that the truest understanding of sex and that kind of physical pleasure can only come through lived experience - such as when he all but teaches Moritz about how to masturbate during 'Touch Me'. Even when productions of Spring Awakening do revise the dialogue to include a verbal ‘yes’ from Wendla, the presentation is still that of an assault, intense and hazy hounding and coercion.   

Ivy knows why boys are nice to her - “I know them, and what they’re after” - and when she stacks this belief up against the fact that Jason is nice to her despite his loyalty to and care for Nadia, it makes sense that she would assume that he wants to have sex with her, it makes sense that she wouldn’t put any thought into the subtleties of Jason’s responses to her or the hesitation in his questions about her “want[ing him] to kiss [her]”. What’s very interesting to look at in regards to Ivy and her character is this dichotomy she has in her head. She knows that “[...] boys will be boys [...]”, and on some level has the same expectations for Jason, teasing him about “see[ing] what [he’s] staring at” on her birthday. Even so, she believes that it’s different, because she loves him in a way that “[she’s] never felt [...] before”, she has the notion in her head that Jason “want[s her] just like [she] want[s him]”, because he kissed her on her birthday when she asked. I would argue that it is because of her conviction in her belief that Jason does want her that she does put such a pressure on him in the moment of 'One' - “If you like me, kiss me, don’t stop”. 

It is also important to acknowledge Ivy as a victim - while no abuse is heavily implied or stated outright in b;apo, there is an understanding that Ivy is a girl who has been sexualised for a long time, and that is of course going to skew her view of and relationship with sex as an activity and the role that she is expected to play within that. I don’t mean to detract from that fact at all by drawing out comparisons to her and Melchior, and acknowledging Jason’s own victim status as it parallels Wendla’s.   

There is also something to be said for how both Wendla and Jason’s loss or lack of functional autonomy contributes to their deaths. Both of them are characters burdened by conflicting expectations - Wendla is expected by her mother to still be young and naive, while simultaneously expected to know better, and Jason is expected by his father to “keep the McConnell flame burning”, an expectation competing with the one held by Peter that he cannot stay closeted forever. However, Wendla’s mothers expectations of her don’t conflict directly with Melchior’s expectations of her in the way that Mr McConnell’s conflict with Peter’s - in a way, Mrs Bergmann’s expectation that Wendla is still young enough to follow blindly what she’s been told is the expectation that leads to the pregnancy in the first place. Melchior is explicitly more knowledgeable about the mechanics of what they are doing in the hayloft, and as such holds a power over Wendla by being able to lean into those expectations that if another person knows more they ought to be listened to. Similarly, it is Ivy’s assumption or expectation being that Jason does truly want to have sex with her that snowballs into the conflicts as presented in Promise, and ultimately b;apo’s “story ends in total damage” at least in part as a result of these expectations being enforced.  

To summarise, I believe that because Ivy and Melchior are so sure of their own wanting, their own  understanding, and their own emotions, they end up projecting that onto Jason and Wendla respectively, turning them into vessels for sexual gratification and somewhat diminishing their personhood in the moment. 

There are of course many other parallels that could be drawn, many other configurations of characters to compare and contrast in regards to b;apo and Spring Awakening, and even on this topic specifically I think there is a lot of room for different takes and interpretations - I simply wanted to throw my hat in the ring, so to speak, when it comes to breaking down and analyzing Jason and Ivy’s relationship.

[wardensantoineandevka]

wait, wait, wait, are some people SO upset about the Those Across the Sea stinger that they're offhandedly framing it as a matter of debate about whether Meredith is awful and horrific as a narrative agent? yeah, like, the oppressive systems of the Chantry is the real root cause here, but one part of the material expression of the awfulness and evil of those systems within the narrative is in how it enables people like Meredith to do all that and pursue her prejudices in that manner without resistance? like, DA2 isn't really presenting Meredith herself with a lot of nuance and is kinda landing simply at "Meredith is kinda evil / doing evil things (for whatever measure of evil even is)". what drove her to develop this perspective and what ALLOWED her to do and accomplish all this harm and enact all that violence because of her prejudices and fear is where a bit more complexity comes in, but the fact that she is doing awful shit is not really, like, that up for debate, and I'm kinda baffled that this is something that's being put out there by some because they didn't like the stinger.

[ringwraithmd]

Gale Hawthorne mirrors young Snow

holy shit I'm losing my mind

okay here's why I think so --

Weather related name -- Snow vs. Gale

Hawthorne -- the name for shrubs/bushses in the family Rosaceae, aka the rose family. Pop quiz: what other character is associated with roses

Those are the surface reasons. Other reasons why:

Arguably similar behavior to their love interest - I'd say both Gale and Snow display possessive/jealous behavior.

Gale moves to District 2 after the war. Hear me out. Although it's been a minute since I read the books, I do remember Gale resented those with more wealth in his District. I'd argue Gale's resentment and desire for more (wealth, food, power, etc) mirrors Snow's, as well as his anger at the system that created his circumstances. While wanting more isn't necessarily bad, what you are willing to do to achieve that may be, especially when you live under a fascist regime. Gale's shown, with the bomb idea, that he's capable of coming up with plans that should horrify a compassionate person. The potential is there, if left unfulfilled by Coin's death. His move after the war to District 2 always niggled at me, but it makes sense if you think of it in the context of Gale's desire for power and his ambition. Katniss, if I remember right, mentions that Gale is promoted to a fancy government job. Interestingly, District 2 is also one of the districts that more closely aligned itself with the Capitol pre-rebellion.

Gale and Alma Coin. I've seen comparisons of their dynamic made to Snow's dynamic with Gaul, and I honestly agree with it. What comes immediately to my mind is how Snow came up with ideas to make the Hunger Games more popular and publicly digestible, while Gale came up with the bomb idea. Side note: while Gale might not have built the bombs or deployed them, I do think in some way he does hold responsibly for Prim's death, if in fact it was his idea that killed her (obviously, the only person who would know for certain she used Gale's idea would be Coin). Maybe if Gale had never come up with the bomb idea, it wouldn't have happened. Or maybe someone else would've come up with it. Maybe if Snow had kept his mouth shut about his ideas to change the Games, they would've ended. It's possible Gaul would've come up with something else, or someone else would have. But what we do know for certain is that Gale did pitch the bomb idea and Snow did implement new ideas for the Hunger Games, and both their decisions had affected the narrative.

[ananke-xiii]

I think the only thing I'll never change my mind about SPN is that I moderately enjoy Bobby (until he's alive at least, after that I wish they had just stopped but no, I was stuck with the ghost of Bobby past and the ghost of Bobby AU forever) but I'll never agree to see him as the "Good Father Figure" that fandom (heavily fuelled by canon, I have to admit, it's not a fanon thing or something like that) makes him out to be. And I say "fandom" because, while it makes sense for the characters to see Bobby as "Good Father", I'm very limited in my understanding as to why people usually don't question this view and take it at face value.

And I blame "Death's Door" for this because, on one hand, the "death is a door/ the door of death" concept is something that I deeply, deeply ADORE so this ep. is just SOOO enjoyable to watch. And, also, the implications that whatever you didn't deal with in life you'll have to deal with in death? This is my jam, LOooOOOoooVE this. Not only do we get to see Bobby's GIGANTIC trauma but we get to see it via him re-living it? Uhm, yes, more of this, thanks.

On the other hand, the bad: side characters' backstories that become really interesting only before they die is a meh for me. I can't make myself like this type of overly-emotional writing cop-out so this is a me-problem. Well, the other thing is also a me-problem, lol: Bobby's death reframes his life as "worthy" because he was "a good father to two heroes" or whatever he says in the episode and to me this is very boring. It shouldn't be, because it's a noble and wonderful thing, I just find it boring precisely because of what the episode has just showed me, i.e. Bobby's HUUUUGE trauma. As far as I see it, you can't explain trauma away like that. It's a very mediocre view of healing from trauma but still understandable from a writing pov because, well, Bobby is a side character and his death his functional to the main characters' story, sadly. But my point is that it could've been so without the resolution of his, I repeat, BIIIIG trauma thanks to him rejecting his own father's accusations by saying that, after all, he did something good with his life and this something was Sam and Dean. I think Bobby should have had his own moment there, face to face with the fictionalized version of his father but should've engaged with him differently. We had 6 seasons of implied parent-child relationship between Bobby and Sam and Dean, this extra glorification wasn't necessary, imo.

It's this over-explanation that bores me and it's also, I think, a huge factor in how lots of people seem to interpret Bobby as this "Good Father" type which he, let's just say it, isn't. And it's totally okay because that's the core of his character! Like, he was a deeply traumatized man who was aware enough of his own issues to decide that having children wasn't for him and this decision caused him (and Karen, his wife) some big problems. And then, and theeeeen, after tragedy hits him again, he finds out that, yk what? perhaps not only does he LIKE being a father, he'd also make, probably, a good father. But he's not. We think he's good because compared to John anything and anyone are better parents than him. The bar is in hell (lol) and all that. And because the show itself can't really imagine what being a good father actually means. Like, in SPN playing baseball and learning how to drive are portrayed as peak father-son moments but they're definitely not. They can be but, per se and without context, they're not, they're just conventionally accepted images of what a "good father" is supposed to do with his son.

It's, of course, way, waaaaaaaaay more complex than this but, essentially, a "good father" is "just" a parent who Loves his children. But, like, the very first STEP you need to take in order to be able to Love your children is to start working toward loving your inner child, which is another way of saying that you have to give yourself the Love you haven't received or, at least, some grace. Which is WEEEERK, loads and loads and loads of it. And this is impossible on Supernatural, duh, because it's the self-loathing people show where the "work" they have to do is something else entirely and it's more like a "job". But they went SOOOO close to get this in "Death's Door", all they had to do was for adult Bobby not to confront his own, imagined father but to hug himself as the scared little child he was. That was it. That would've been a huuuuuuge first step for the show as a whole.

So, to me, Bobby couldn't actually be a "good" father because he hadn't resolved his deep, deeeeeep, immeeense trauma that he brought to his DEATH. But the interesting thing about him is that he could have been a great father. It's the unexplored potentiality that makes him compelling and quite tragic, frankly. I mean, he's "The One Who Tried To Do The Very, Veeeery Minimum At Least" and that's actually already a lot in that show.

This, thiiiiiiiis I like. So this is the Bobby that I moderately enjoy.

[zitasaurusrex]

the lawn is bad and i haven't been making it better and i shouldn't take sole responsibility for things but i haven't been making it better and i don't know how to make it better and personally i think i should be crushed to death with rocks

[thesaltyace]

Y'all I did NOT know this about Harris, and I think it's really critical that we all listen and understand as we approach this election. Video at the end.

This creator's video describes how progressive Harris was as a prosecutor -- actively going against the grain to the point she was accused of being soft on crime. Accused of being a social worker, not a prosecutor. She calls it being smart on crime. She's pushing for systemic changes to give real pathways to reintegrate incarcerated folks back into society and prevent their past from continuing to haunt them moving forward.

"Kamala's a cop" is a catchy dismissive response usually used to shut down conversation rather than add nuance. But this kind of reform is ESSENTIAL to work towards a present and future that treats incarcerated people with value.

I fell for it in 2020 and have thought "Kamala's a cop" without further inspection since - and I'm sobered by the realization that (you guessed it!) I'm not immune to propaganda.

A better system only follows liberal democracy, because library democracy allows for exploration of better systems. If authoritarianism takes hold, it will not allow for the exploration of better systems. We will have to fight tooth and nail just to try to get back to liberal democracy, and I suspect we could not achieve it in our lifetimes.

Harris isn't perfect. But she's a hell of a lot better than many leftists have led me to believe. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good. Don't let perfection be the enemy of harm reduction.

We can either help elect Trump and usher in authoritarian fascism, or we can help defeat him and pull things back in the direction we want to go. Not liking the choices doesn't absolve you from participating and doing the most good you can with the options available.

I'll link the original video in the replies. The original video has captions if you need them.

[carlandrea]

The reason Animorphs works as a deconstruction of the kid hero archetype is that it comes at it from a place of respect for the genre, and for the children reading it.

It never denies the kids agency, because it is a book for children, who want to read about children being given agency. Animorphs doesn't treat its child soldiers as victims the way a story aimed at adults would. They are full agents within the story who make moral choices. The fact that they are children is treated as a tragedy, but it's not treated as something that absolves them of any responsibility.

It plays by the rules. These kids are the only people who can save the world. They cannot trust the adults in their lives. It just takes that story—the story it's telling—seriously.

The message of animorphs isn't actually of "isn't it fucked up that this book I read when I was a kid sent a twelve year old on an adventure" it just uses its take on the kid hero genre to get across the actual message, which is War Is Hell

[teaboot]

Sometimes at work it's not my place to tell people the things I want to say, and I find I often go home at the end of the rougher days to stand blankly in my shower and tell myself over and over what I wish I could pass on.

This accomplishes very little, and mostly just gives me a tension headache, but through it all I think I've narrowed myself down to a few solid things I'd like to tell people the most.

You can't change people. Not permanently, not for anythig. You can support them, encourage them, love them, give them tools and opportunities and resources, but you can't make them change. They can change themselves if they want to, but they have to want to, and they have to want it for themselves, because they're the only one that's certain to be with them forever.

For better or worse, you make your own choices, and blaming bad choices on others doesn't only work to absolve you of responsibility- it also robs you of control. Because if you say you only did something because I did something, then you arent only shifting blame- you're admitting that you cannot control yourself, that you cannot truly make choices for yourself, that other people can control you- and as long as you truly beleive that, you'll keep facing the same problems over and over. You'll keep letting others dictate your choices, because you'll beleive that they can, and you'll never be free.

White knights on horseback are from fairytales. Nobody can help you if ou're not willing to help yourself. To try, to put the dirty work in, to belive you're worth that effort- Act as though nobody is coming to save you. From a struggle, from pain, from bad relationships, from yourself. And when you do save yourself, because you will, because failure here isn't an option if you want to survive, you'll never find another dragon that can keep you prisoner.

Don't say anything to anyone that you wouldn't want them remembering forever.

Doing the right thing in bad circumstances is hard. It's the hardest thing. But if you make the choice to do that hard thing anyways, despite your fear, you'll go on the rest of your like knowing that you're the sort of person who did something.

The present only seems the hardest because the past I over and the future hasn't happened.

There's so much joy ahead of you, the kind you can't possibly understand until you see it yourself.

The responsibility of consequences is often disguised as the power of permission. "I won't do this if you help me", "I'll work on my anger if you do this for me", "I promised you I'd quit, but can I have just one?". The unspoken question is, "Can it be your fault if this goes badly?"

You cant make someone love you the way you need to be loved. Someone can love you very much and still be bad for you, even if you love them very much in return. Two people can love each other very, very much, and try their very best, and still be wrong for each other.

Sometimes being near to someone changes you, even in good ways, and the people you become don't fit together as well as the people you were.

Caring takes work. Even if it's real. Especially if it's real. And the most important gestures aren't the grand, poetic, songs-and-flowers-and-tears moments; they're getting out of bed even though you don't want to. Paying attention to things you don't enjoy. Scrubbing pans, or opening a window, saying "thank-you", or helping carry groceries into the house. The small things fill the big things- without the small, boring, mediocre things, big things feel hollow.

Thrre is honour and dignity in humble work.

If you are a cruel and spiteful person, then you will find every place you visit to be full of the same cruel, spiteful people. This is not because the world is as cruel as you, but because everywhere you are, you will be disliked. This is the curse that comes with being persistently cruel and spiteful.

If you are a kind and ppsitive person, you will repeatedly encounter kind and positive people, because as they grow familiar with you, they will be happier to have you near. This is the reward of being a kind and positive person.

When splitting paths with loved ones, briefly or forever, aim for your last words to always be "I love you".

[malewifegustave]

knowing the truth about solas being a spirit and regretting it, and being responsible for the tranquility of the titans and loss of connection to the Stone makes. me. insane when looking back on his conversations with varric. and just their relationship on the whole.

"why do the dwarves not know? why have they forgotten? did someone make them forget? how can they not care what i did to them?"

"do you miss the stone? do you know what i took from you?"

"look at what i did to you. your people are mutilated, forever forced to change from what they once were. and i did this to you."

"you don't even know what i did to you. the horrific crime i comitted against you and your people. you have no idea what you lost or what i did. you're not even angry at me. why aren't you angry at me?"

"you should be angry at me and trying to restore what i took. how can you continue on the way that you are? how are you even whole?"

and then we have harding's comment in da:tv

this comment from harding, after all of the conversations with varric, in hindsight, really does highlight something about solas. for all his guilt and regret, being practically one of if not THE only person who knows what truly happened to the titans. being one RESPONSIBLE-

at no point does he make attempts to fix that until he is convinced to potentially at the end of da:tv.

his conversations with varric are clearly some self projections, and wondering how varric can't be like HIM- he DOES know what the elves lost and what was done, and so he DOES want the old world to be restored. it's to absolve himself of his own guilt, along with trying to fix his mistake. how can he NOT fight? how can his own people not see what they lost and not try to put it back? he has to undo what he did.

but he never does this for the dwarves.

he often will say how he doesnt relate to the elves, and how when asking him 'who are your people', he avoids the topic. because the elves are NOT his people. he is a spirit! and his priorities always align with one simple thing:

that he regrets being made flesh. if he could go back to being a spirit, if all the elves could, if it could all just go back to the way it was before, everything would be fine!

it takes at least four people at the end of da:tv to make him see that this is ultimately selfish and unrealistic. that no amount of regret or attempts to put things back the way they were will undo what he did. in his obsession with self absolution, he completely forgets about the titans, and the blight, all being because of HIM.

he talks to varric, he talks to harding, all the while knowing what he did and being oh so sad about it but never stops to think. wow i actually may have the power to help with this!

he is so, SO focused on his own crusade for himself while also convincing himself that it's for the greater good. telling himself that oh! this time his great plans for the 'right thing' will go well, surely! the last few times, with the titans, and the blight, getting mythal killed, the sealing away the evanuris and changing the world because he messed up the ritual, then trying to awaken his orb only to give it to an immortal blighted magister that explodes the veil- those were all just! flukes! this one will go right FOR SURE!

and is that not just very similar to varric? how varric repeatedly also makes mistakes, and then doesn't face them? he brought hawke into the deep roads and put them in danger, possibly got their sibling blighted, brought back the red lyrium which led to (gestures) all THAT, introduced hawke to anders which led to (gestures) BOOM, led hawke to corypheus, told bianca about the deep roads which led to corypheus getting his hands on red lyrium.

but their key difference? varric simply accepts his mistakes and attempts to do better the next time. varric accepts that the past cannot be changed, no matter how badly he regrets it. he has to move on, he has to do better, he is still here, people are still here, and theyre worth trying for.

"That's the world. Everything you build, it tears down. Everything you've got, it takes. And it's gone forever."

"The only choices you get are to lie down and die or keep going. He kept going. That's as close to beating the world as anyone gets."

like of course. of course solas couldnt keep rook inside a prison of regret by using varric as the catalyst! because that's just not who varric is! that's who solas is. solas saw parts of himself in varric, but didn't listen enough to what varric has always been saying. he never does! he doesn't self reflect, he doesn't consider, truly consider that he's wrong until he is being held at knifepoint and confronted with the literal specters of his past telling him to stop fucking self flagellating and convincing himself that he knows best or that this isn't just out of self pity. 'it's for the elves', he says every morning when he wakes up.

for all solas' wisdom, he truly is poisoned by pride and regret. it's just so. (clenches fist)

he spent all this time using varric's memory, surely he is familiar enough with how varric thinks and feels at this point? surely he undersands now?

you have to stand with him at the edge of the world, teetering on the edge of the abyss and decide if he's worth putting in the effort to make him truly take everything varric said and did to heart. to take what we have now and make it better, instead of dragging a corpse of guilt around for eternity.

[viv-hollande]

Oh boy howdy, this is a long one.

Ok, so this has been brewing for a while, and I think it's more or less crystalized into a proper, if rambling, argument so here goes.

This example was the incitement of this argument, but the problem is really much bigger than just this. So . . .

The United States did not commit the Cambodian Genocide. The United States is not responsible for the Cambodian Genocide.

Pol Pot, and the Khmer Rouge he commanded, were responsible for the conception, planning, and execution of the Cambodian Genocide. Nobody was twisting their arm. No one was ordering them around. They, independently, made the incomprehensibly evil choice to commit genocide, and the ultimate responsibility for that genocide lies on their shoulders alone.

The United States was responsible for an illegal (both internationally and domestically) and grossly immoral bombing campaign that killed an unconscionable number of Cambodian civilians, and directly contributed to destabilizing Cambodia and driving recruitment for the Khmer Rouge. The United States is partially responsible for fueling the Khmer Rouge's conquest of Cambodia.

But the United States is not responsible for the Cambodian Genocide, and anyone saying otherwise is engaging in genocide denialism and absolving by omission the true perpetrators of one of the most brutal and comprehensive genocides in human history.

The men who ordered the bombing of Cambodia were criminals. Their actions are, to me, incomprehensibly immoral. And yet the decision to commit genocide, especially to commit it in the most brutal and actively tortuous ways, ways that make mass rape and gas chambers seem tame (I am not fucking kidding DO NOT LOOK UP THE DETAILS OF THE CAMBODIAN GENOCIDE unless you are prepared to have a really bad day), is a decision that would be as alien to those men as their decisions are to me. For a human being to do such a thing . . . responsibility for that kind of act cannot be transferred lightly.

And to those who hold out and maintain that creating the conditions that allowed the Khmer Rouge to commit genocide gives the United States primary responsibility for the genocide, I'll note that none of you have ever blamed Osama bin Laden for the Iraq War.

And while we're at it . . .

If we do want to talk about international responsibility for the rise of the Khmer Rouge and/or the Cambodian Genocide, we should probably start with, you know, the nations that funded, supplied, armed, and militarily assisted the Khmer Rouge's insurgency.

Pol Pot didn't conquer Cambodia with American weapons. He conquered Cambodia with Soviet, Chinese, and North Vietnamese weapons. Between 40,000 and 60,000 Viet Cong fighters directly engaged in military action against the Sihanouk and Lon Nol governments (not to imply that either were anything other than thug rule of different shades) in alliance with the Khmer Rouge. If we're going to point fingers at the international community, I'm afraid the US doesn't even podium at this competition.

To reiterate, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were solely responsible for the Cambodian Genocide. Not the United States, not the Soviet Union, not China, not Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge, and the Khmer Rouge alone. You can litigate responsibility for who helped the Khmer Rouge rise to power, and YOU CAN AND SHOULD acknowledge American responsibility for our bombing campaigns in Cambodia (which has left the country littered with unexploded bombs that regularly kill random unfortunate civilians btw). But for years and years I have seen American bombing seated center stage while never once has the responsibility of Pol Pot's actual military allies been mentioned or even alluded to.

And this extends far beyond Cambodia. The 'America bad' crowd consistently overstate the degree of American involvement in our sordid interventionist history.

The United States provided limited support for the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, and deliberately and directly tried to destabilize the Allende regime in years prior, but it was Augusto Pinochet and his fellow Chilean Army officers who independently planned the coup because they wanted to, and because it furthered their own political aims, and they would have attempted such a coup without any American intervention, if or when the proper circumstances presented themselves.

The United States almost certainly facilitated the supplying of Saddam Hussein with dual-use chemical precursors to chemical weapons under the guise of agricultural aid, which helped prop up Ba'athist Iraq's existing chemical weapons program. The United States was attempting to maintain Iraq's ability to engage in chemical warfare against Iran in the ongoing Iran-Iraq War.

Subsequently, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons to carry out the genocidal Halabja Massacre, as well as in the wider genocidal Anfal Campaign. It is basically unconfirmable, but likely, that some of the chemical weapons used in these attacks were created from US-supplied chemical precursors. The United States did knowingly lie and blame Iran for these massacres to protect Iraq and hobble Iran on the international stage. But it was Saddam Hussein, and Saddam Hussein alone, that committed these genocides.

Small diversion, but Saddam Hussein also carried out a genocide of the Marsh Arabs (despite the name, Marsh Arabs are ethnographically and ethnically distinct from Arabs) by draining the Mesopotamian Marshes (thus making this an ecocide as well as a genocide), forcing the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of Marsh Arabs from their indigenous homeland. For those in the 'America bad' camp who still lionize Saddam Hussein and violent, genocidal dictators like him just because of their opposition to the United States, fuck you.

Real responsibility . . .

None of this is intended to minimize the United States' involvement in these and other horrible events, because it's not minimization to correctly characterize the nature of US involvement in them. It's being historically accurate. We can do that and acknowledge the things America is directly responsible for.

The United States was directly responsible for the 1915 invasion and subsequent occupation of Haiti until 1934 by US military forces under direct orders from Woodrow Fucking Wilson, which resulted in thousands of Haitian deaths and likely strongly contributed to the ascension of Papa Doc to power two decades later.

The United States was directly responsible for atrocities committed by United States forces in Vietnam, including massacres and bombing of civilians and the ecological devastation of enormous parts of the country with extremely carcinogenic pesticides that continue to cause cancer and birth defects in Vietnam today at a nearly incomprehensible rate.

And finally, the United States is and was directly responsible for our support for brutal regimes across the world, regardless of whether we were directly responsible for the crimes perpetrated in the affected nation.

That the United States is or is not directly involved in a particular incident has no bearing on how seriously our actions should be taken. To knowingly support and defend brutal dictatorial regimes is just as immoral as directly perpetrating the crimes of those regimes.

But I rarely have I seen a mention of Pinochet or Cambodia that doesn't center the United States' involvement, which flattens the crimes that took place and reduces them to rhetorical ammunition to use against America.

If your accounting of these events talks more about America's role than the actions of the perpetrators, then you aren't telling the story of these events properly. If one is telling these stories properly and centering the victims and their experiences, the perpetrators are impossible to miss because they are in the fucking room. America's role in these events must be included in a full retelling. It should have its own dedicated chapter or two or the story isn't complete. But it shouldn't be the whole damn book.

The Sorry State of Leftism

There is an infuriating kind of infantilization inherent to this kind of thinking. It is partially a result of the moralization of oppressor-oppressed dynamics where evil is solely the product of the imagined cohesive, organized oppressive 'system', and that implies or outright states that without the interference of the 'American empire' oppression, state violence, racial strife, indigeneity conflicts, and economic exploitation will greatly diminish or outright cease to exist. It denies entire races and ethnicities their fundamental humanity, which includes their extremely human ability to commit atrocities without direction from an outside force.

The United States is not an incorporeal devil planting foul thoughts into the minds of dictators and plotters. Far more often than not, the United States encourages and supports what is already there. American involvement in regime change and national destabilization in Latin America should be a topic of great discussion, but far too often these discussions omit the actual perpetrators of the crimes attributed to the United States, nor acknowledge that many of these coups and massacres and genocides around the world probably would have happened whether the United States was involved or not.

There is in addition a profound double-standard to which the United States (and Israel) is held; not one where the United States is extraordinarily and unfairly maligned, but one where the opponents of the United States are absolved, either by trivialization, omission, denialism, or apologism, of their actions, systemic inequalities, and unjust histories.

Frequently is the real, oppressive, colonial history of the United States with regard to native American Indians spoken of. Yet rarely do I see the same standard applied elsewhere.

Have you ever wondered why there are so many ethnic minorities in Russia, or in China? Did you know that, on the whole, minority communities in Russia and China are poorer and less developed than those of the majority ethic group? Have you ever noticed that many of the neighbors of both nations are both historically and currently extremely wary of them?

Have you ever wondered how the world's four largest countries, Russia, Canada, the United States, and China, all got that big? Could there, perhaps, be something they have in common?

Isn't it odd that Arab culture and ethnicity, originating from one little peninsula in the Middle East, achieved hegemony over more than a dozen states as distant as Morocco and Indonesia? I guess it's only cultural genocide when white people do it.

American military support for Israel become a global cause célèbre, yet I have not seen mention Saudi Arabia's ongoing war in Yemen outside of token lists of "Eyes on . . . so and so" in years.

As I am writing, Greta Thunberg's little PR stunt with her dumb empty aid yacht is front and center on every corner of this accursed website, and yet not once in the year-and-a-half since October 7 have I seen mention of the years-long ongoing Saudi blockade of Yemen. Not. Fucking. Once.

So many here cheer on Russia and call Ukrainians Nazis. They ignore or, worse, deny the Uyghur genocide because it is inconvenient for their anti-American agenda. They hyper-focus on the violence Israel is committing in Gaza, and ignore every other brutal or genocidal conflict on the planet except to virtue-signal their moral correctitude by reblogging meaningless lists of who to 'keep your eyes on' compiled by people who obviously know fuck-all about the actual conflicts they list except that they are useful for their own projection of personal righteousness.

The historical imperialism of the Soviet Union is ignored because it is inconvenient to the historical narrative of 'America bad'. The current imperialism of China and Russia are ignored because it is inconvenient to the current narrative of 'America bad'.

Long lists of books on the history of Israel and Palestine are presented everywhere as essential reading, but memory of the crimes of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the twin perpetrators of the two largest sets of atrocities and genocides in human fucking history which continue to have lasting repercussions on the contemporary world are not considered important. The crimes of the Soviet Union, a strong contender for a not-so-distant silver medal in that competition, are not merely ignored, but often denied.

Hamas, a brutal regime that executes queer people, murders political opponents and journalists, commits war crimes and terror attacks on civilians, deprives the people it rules over of liberty, steals aid from the mouths of Palestinian children, and commits all manner of other horrors universal among authoritarian regimes against the people of Palestine is hailed as a revolutionary liberator. Fuck. Off.

I am not saying and will never say that we shouldn't talk about America's very real crimes. Concerning our initial example, I think the story of the US bombing campaign in Cambodia, and Indochina more broadly, deserves far more attention than it currently gets. I think especially that comparatively much is said but not much is done. If I were president, one of the many things I would do would be to send over the US army or UN peacekeepers or whoever the fuck I can get and have them doing nothing but bomb disposal for the next half-century.

The point of this post is not to downplay American crimes, nor is it an attempt at whataboutism. It is to hopefully push back a bit of the blindness brought on by this 'America bad' obsession and get more people to acknowledge the reality of our history, and perhaps open some people's perspectives a little bit to get them to subject America's opponents to a great deal more scrutiny. Us-vs-them can be hard to fully overcome. I sure as hell haven't, but I like to think I'm making progress.

The potential to create and maintain oppressive systems, commit genocide, conduct imperialism, obliterate or assimilate foreign cultures, exploit the labor of others, excuse systemic and literal violence for the sake of personal profit, is universal. We are all capable of it; many nations and peoples, around the world and throughout all of human history, have done so.

Stop infantilizing and sanitizing the oppressed peoples of the world. As humans they are just as capable of committing all of the evils of the world as today's oppressors. By that same token, they are also capable of joining hands with those of us who are fighting for a better world for all people, without exception.

[lizardsfromspace]

It's tempting to call out evangelicals on grounds of hypocrisy - on ignoring the teachings of their own religion - but to them, it all makes sense, because they've developed a framework that basically amounts to Jesus having no real philosophy

They acknowledge the many verses about caring for the poor etc, but take it either as a code or of lesser importance. It's not about changing society, it's about individual charity, but not about compelling people to be charitable, just that it's nice. When Jesus spoke of the "least" of society, that wasn't about helping marginalized people, that was either about Christians, or about what side to take in the war that happens after the rapture. Simple. You may think "wait, but right before that it mentions caring for the poor, sick, and imprisoned" and their answer is, as I understand it, that you can just read every verse of the Bible in isolation from every other verse and it still makes sense on its own, so it doesn't matter (for reference, the New Testament wasn't split into numbered verses until 1551, when they were decided on by a random Frenchman)

This doesn't make sense on many levels. Anyone outside the sphere would point out that, religion aside, it would be really weird to have a story about someone telling a bunch of people to help the poor and then reveal "actually, it was all about events that will happen thousands of years after everyone present was dead! Nothing that was said matters to you or most people reading this!" Like what's the point. But within the sphere they have so many rationalizations, like how it's taken as writ in evangelical circles that it's okay to be rich because the "Eye of the Needle" was a specific gate in Jerusalem that was merely difficult to get through. Meanwhile, outside their culture, no references to that gate exist, because it didn't exist

One fun strain of this thinking is this

The Good Samaritan is a parable that ends with the directive to "go and do likewise". So clearly, the real point of the story is that you can't do anything. Jesus told everyone to go and do likewise to prove that nobody can ever show the impossible love to...help a guy who got robbed? Because Jesus was perfect, all advice from Jesus can be disregarded, because nobody can follow it because they're not Jesus

This idea, that every story Jesus told was just about how nobody can ever be like Jesus, is a thing in those circles and it's such a baffling foundation for a religion. Follow our messiah, who told us to be nice to people, but we know all the secret messages about how all those stories meant we SHOULDN'T be nice to people. Their sacred text is not a guide to living, it's a textbook for the apocalypse and how to go to heaven disguised as a guide to how you should be nice to people and help poor people. But a bunch of well-off white people discovered the secret parts of the Bible absolving them of the responsibility to care about people, so

[kerink]

the thing that's been most surprising to me with mouthwashing so far is how little empathy people are willing to extend to curly. and i don't mean this in a piss on the poor way, i'm deeply saddened and genuinely confused by it.

when i first played the game i was at one of the lowest points i've been at in a really long time. my mental health is bad my physical health is bad. i experienced SA a year ago and was recently diagnosed with cancer. i have 2-5 doctors appointments every week with various specialists.

all the while me and two of my doctors are talking about if i need to make a career change that's going to best support my poor health and improve my overall well being. and my family and friends struggle to understand, because i have a doctorate and a good job and live on my own. everyone looks at my life in awe, and they don't understand why i'm unhappy. they tell me so every time i try to explain it.

so when i played i immediately identified with curly. here is a man who's deeply depressed, having hallucinations, trying to reach out to his best friend for support but just has his words thrown back in his face, doesn't want to burden anya with his stuff because she has her own stuff and he wants her to lean on him, he has all these responsibilities and people look up to him and rely on him and have these ideas about him. the highest wrung of their ladder is the lowest of his, and they have no way of conceptualizing why or how he's unhappy and dissatisfied. before the reveal that he's innocent, i completely understood why he attempted suicide.

and then he develops a new disability.

when jimmy goes to crash the ship, he uses curly's unhappiness to try to convince him a murder-suicide is a good idea, and it works. it buys jimmy enough time to get to the cockpit and crash the ship. curly's too in his own head to realize what jimmy meant because jimmy distracted him with how bad his life is. it isn't until the sirens start that curly snaps out of it and it clicks for him what jimmy's done.

i'm not going to re-litigate the issue about if curly could have done more for anya because i've said pretty much all i have to say on it already.

but we really need to highlight that in addition to his lack of tangible choices, he's sleep deprived, deeply depressed, and hallucinating. this is not a man in his right mind making his best choices.

and over and over again i see people refusing to extend him any empathy, to call him a bystander. does a man who says he'll do anything to help and who wanted to be there when anya broke the news and who does his best to play liaison between anya and jimmy sound like a bystander? he let anya keep the gun case! he knew having it would help her feel better!

how good of a friend have you been when you were in your pit of despair? how much were you able to pour into others when your glass was empty?

anya wanted her and curly's support to be reciprocal. if she has enough psych training to do the evals, and having been thru nursing school, she's probably well aware that she and curly need to both be pouring into each other if either of them are going to be any good to anyone. but curly is so determined to defend and protect anya he won't confide in her, despite the fact it's running him so thin that he almost takes jimmy's bait that suicide is a good idea.

i don't think we need to absolve curly of his responsibility. i don't think we should over look his role as an enabler. i don't think we should discredit or discount analyses of his failures. but i'm so tired of people actively avoiding getting in his shoes, getting in his head, reflecting on how they've acted in the past when thinking and feeling similar ways. our worst moments don't make us monsters.

it makes me so sad. and frankly it makes me feel like all the times my family hasn't understood when i've tried to reach out. curly is screaming in agony and just like jimmy we're just trying to keep him quiet because it's too complicated to deal with.

[wuggen]

To clarify, the part of the second one that I find annoying is in fact the "Fuck you for making individuals responsible for solving the systemic problem" person, not because it isn't true that individuals generally have very little power over or individual responsibility for systemic problems, but because people will trot out that truth as a cudgel to shut down any response that isn't just sitting and being impotently angry and bitter about it

"This phenomenon, which has demonstrably existed in some form across societies basically since societies were invented, is really bad, and is because of capitalism" strong contender for most annoying genre of post

[unsolicited-opinions]

I would be fascinated to know what the western leftist people think of Liberia.

(Actually, no I wouldn’t. I don’t need another headache.)

It might be funny to see them tie themselves in knots, though. Particularly the white Americans, the further they scroll through the Wikipedia entry for the first time.

Quick recap of the relevant history:

Liberia is a West African country founded in the 19th century by freed Black US slaves with support from the American Colonization Society. These settlers (called Americo-Liberians) established a society that in many ways replicated the racial hierarchies of the American South...but with themselves at the top.

They ruled over the indigenous African populations in ways that explicitly and deliberately mirrored colonial oppression, despite being formerly oppressed themselves...for 133 years.

Anon is pointing out that this history:

Involves Black Americans playing the role of colonizers and elite rulers...which doesn't fit neatly into common activist frameworks.

Complicates the oppressed/oppressor binary often used in Western leftist discourse.

Poses a challenge to simplistic narratives about colonialism, racism, and power.

However, Anon may be underestimating the ability and determination of some Western leftists to rationalize and cognitively distort in defense of their binary.

Here are some of the narrative-defending responses I'd anticipate from this crowd if they were faced with these facts:

"Well, obviously the Americo-Liberians had involuntarily internalized white supremacy." When in doubt, blame colonial trauma for literally everything...including becoming the colonizer.

"This just proves how toxic Western imperialism is - it even turns its victims into villains!" Even when oppressed people oppress others, they cannot be seen as having agency.

"Liberia was a CIA plot to discredit pan-Africanism!" They'll say this despite the fact that Liberia was founded in 1847...about a century before the CIA came into existence.

"We shouldn't focus on what Americo-Liberians did wrong - it's racist tone policing and distracts from Western colonial crimes!" Moral relativism kicks in whenever oppressed people do the oppressing.

"It's complicated, but Israel is still worse!" Their thought-terminating cliche for all purposes.

"Why are you even bringing this up!? Are you trying to undermine solidarity with Palestine?!" Any historical facts which don't serve the narrative is treated as an attack, treated with hostility

"The real issue is that white Americans forced Black people into the position of power. They were set up to fail!" Oppression is a pyramid scheme and everyone's a victim if you squint hard enough.

"Maybe the indigenous Liberians were reactionary anyway. Don't romanticize them." Yes, they might well pivot to defending settler-colonial behavior…as long as they don't regard the settlers as white/European.

_____

For those committed to viewing history through a sacred binary, considering Liberia is a horrifying theological heresy. It asks them to do something obscene and unthinkable:

_____

The example of Liberia makes it clear that having been oppressed doesn't automatically make anyone just...and that historical injustice doesn't absolve anyone from responsibility.

If that complicates your activism...?

Good.

Complexity isn't the enemy of justice, but false binaries are.