dancewriteandbehappy

[dancewriteandbehappy]

There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)

[dancewriteandbehappy]

i think we've done a great job expanding the view of what a child's favorite animal can be. kids these days can say they love axolotls or pangolins or coelecanths and their decision is respected. maybe their parents can even find them a stuffed animal of it if they know where to look. and i think that's beautiful

[dancewriteandbehappy]

Richard Siken, “The List”

[dancewriteandbehappy]

holy shit, 11 years

[dancewriteandbehappy]

Richard Siken, “The List”

[dancewriteandbehappy]

every year I post this meme and every year people get more mad at me than they did the previous year

[dancewriteandbehappy]

why bother caring about the environment when 1. It’s so obviously a lost cause and 2. There’s definitely going to be a nuclear war?

And what are you doing about it Anon? Learn about ecological restoration or get out of my way.

[dancewriteandbehappy]

good news everyone

[dancewriteandbehappy]

the secret to organising any kind of trip with your friends is to become the benevolent dictator. do NOT wait for everyone to provide a consensus on things before you book anything. do it and then ask for feedback after. do not ask people what they would like to do just tell them what is happening and let them all nod along like the sheep they are. this is the ONLY way to coordinate a group of adults in their 20s/30s

[dancewriteandbehappy]

if only dog had a bigger bed available, or perhaps two. maybe even a human bed. alas, he must make do with a measly little pillow.

[dancewriteandbehappy]

while the internet was throwing a fit about how much bodily autonomy women really have and how open sexuality is or isn’t feminist, a woman who was pronounced brain dead MONTHS ago after being let down HORRIFICALLY by the American health system had a one pound baby cut out of her. let me say this again: A WOMAN WITH A FAMILY TO RAISE DIED BECAUSE OF MEDICAL NEGLECT AND WAS KEPT ON LIFE SUPPORT AGAINST HER FAMILY’S WISHES SO THAT AN UNVIABLE FETUS COULD BE BORN. Women in America, especially in these total abortion ban states, do not have the right to their own bodily autonomy in life OR death.

Adriana Smith was taken off life support by her family, who now have to pay the bill to a hospital who put more value on a fetus than their daughter’s final rest. That baby boy is fighting for his life in the NICU and will grow up with innumerable health complications if he manages to survive. His brother has been stripped from his mother and watched her death be televised across the country, and the family HAD NO CHOICE! Put this anger against Congress, against the men who are actually killing women and setting us back 70 years. Again, the men in congress who are ACTIVELY pushing laws that end in the deaths of woman and our bodily autonomy will always, ALWAYS have more power over the country than a pop star. As long as these men are in power, and as long as they feel safe and fucking comfortable enough to do this to women, it won't matter if a girl is 'modest' or 'overly sexual' because at the end of the day the state has more rights to their body than themselves.

[dancewriteandbehappy]

Potentially hot take but one of the reasons we need art and music in schools is that, taught correctly, they are ideal avenues for teaching kids how to do something, kinda suck at it, keep going anyways and improve over time.

And THAT is one of the most valuable skill sets a human being can have. THAT is the skill set that unlocks soooooo many others.

A LOT of people I see with anxiety and depression do not have this skill set. To suck at something is a threat. Proof that they are doomed to suck at it forever. And then, often, that either THEY suck forever or the task must be stupid/useless/pointless (whence we get AI art fans who have decided actually making art is pointless and degrading the labor and skills of others is fine because these are useless skills).

Or you get the freeze- the inability to try things in case you fail. The sudden lancing shame and humiliation or hopelessness. The sense that anything you haven't learned by now you can't learn. Which is so heartbreaking and so untrue.

I just hate it.

"What if I write it and it's bad" "what if I draw it and it's bad" "what if I play it and it sounds bad" DOING IT BAD IS HOW YOU LEARN TO DO IT GOOD! You can't skip the process of leaning and the process is FUN if you let it be what it needs to be!

[dancewriteandbehappy]

“In the war film, a soldier can hold his buddy—as long as his buddy is dying on the battlefield. In the western, Butch Cassidy can wash the Sundance Kid’s naked flesh—as long as it is wounded. In the boxing film, a trainer can rub the well-developed torso and sinewy back of his protege—as long as it is bruised. In the crime film, a mob lieutenant can embrace his boss like a lover—as long as he is riddled with bullets. 

Violence makes the homo-eroticism of many “male” genres invisible; it is a structural mechanism of plausible deniability.”

–Tarantino’s Incarnational Theology: Reservoir Dogs, Crucifixions, and Spectacular Violence. Kent L. Brintnall.

[dancewriteandbehappy]

really everyone you love has something miserably wrong with them or an obvious flaw that won't ever be fixed but like it's up to you what kind of person you can and cannot deal with. someone in my family has anger issues which I can handle and diffuse with no problem, but a person who can't tolerate yelling could not be close to him. another person I know is very anxious & needs constant reassurance and she gets along famously with gentler and more straightforward people than myself, but I can't handle being second guessed all the time. someone who is loosey goosey with their morals wouldn't bother me, but a person with a profound sense of justice makes me feel afraid of getting on their bad side. none of these traits actually make someone a bad person & just because there are personalities I can't handle doesnt mean I'M a bad person either. litany against callout posts for stupid shit and simple incompatibilities we all have to live on this earth together & need to learn how to deal with each other

[dancewriteandbehappy]

I went to this Northwest Passage museum once where they had the white explorers' journals on one side of the exhibit and the native people's accounts on the other side of the exhibit and the explorer journals were like "our canoe had almost sunk when we encountered some kindly Indians" and the native histories were like "we watched a bunch of strangers come down the river in the shittiest canoe you'd ever seen. Also, they had no rain gear"

[dancewriteandbehappy]

Guy on metro had a shitty little dog who spent 20 minutes untying his laces and waiting patiently with his nose 3 millimeters away for them to be re-tied before wreaking havoc again. Over and over. Owner did not care. Dogs name was Quentin.