#...it's a similar principle when applied to politics...

[uncanny-tranny]

Niche politics tip: If you start dissociating from politics so much it starts feeling like each side is akin to a football team or a game, you might need to take a step back in order to recuperate.

When you're so caught up in politics that you need to dissociate from the humanity of it in order to engage with politics, that's not a good sign. It's especially not a good sign when we are talking about human rights

[qqueenofhades]

fwiw: a lot of people follow @roach-works who just reblogged yo ur comments on history, books, and authoritarian regimes' inability to indoctrinate entire populations.

I'm an ex classics major with a lot of history under my belt, who knows Rome sutmr under a corrupt oligarchy even when it coughed up a hairball like Nero or Commodus. (Of course, it helped that Rome worked on the pragmatic principle, "How can we keep society and infrastructure functioning, given that positions of power tend to be occupied by the rich & corrupt?" I like to joke that Western Rome never fell; it just became the mafia.)

At any rate, my tendency to see the US through the lens of Rome makes me a pessimist: I assume we'll manage even in a dystopia.

I'm working on expanding my knowledge of world history to counteract that, but it's great to check in with a sane historian who will help me resist crowdsourced panicmongering.

Look, as I have said, I 0% blame anyone for being scared. I'm scared. With no exaggeration or hyperbole, Shit Real Bad, and it's undoubtedly going to get worse, at least in some ways, before we have a chance to make it better. It was completely avoidable, but half of America decided they didn't want to avoid it, so here we are.

Nonetheless, as my last reblog also pointed out, there are still basic historical and critical-thinking skills that we can use here, and to acknowledge that even if it is obviously unprecedented to us, it is not unprecedented to others, and we can study those lessons and think about how to apply them to our own situation. Rome is the obvious model for a world empire brought down by corruption, oligarchy, imperialism, endless foreign wars, income inequality, economic upheaval, excessive militarism, etc etc, but it's not the only one, and the "fall of Rome and start of the Dark Ages" is one of those narratives that gets my premodern-historian rant especially exercised. By the time Rome "fell" in 476, the city of Rome wasn't even the capital of the Empire; the western capital was in Ravenna, northern Italy, and the eastern capital was in Constantinople, where it endured for another thousand years. Roman successor kingdoms were founded in Visigothic Spain, Merovingian Francia, etc., and often imported Roman law, religion, bureaucracy/administration, and nobility relatively unchanged, which is why Latin was the legal, ecclesiastical, and educational language of western Europe until as late as 1962 and Vatican II. The "Dark Ages" are likewise at best an extreme simplification and at worst exceedingly misleading imperial-nostalgia propaganda. Etc etc. I will restrain myself.

Rome dominated the (European/Near Eastern/north African) world in the way that the 19th-century British Empire dominated the actual world and American empire dominates now, at least for the moment, and thus we have to recognize that similar dynamics are at play here in a late-stage imperial decline. However, Rome did not just up and vanish in a puff of smoke one day and never appear again, and we also have to recognize that the end of empires is generally a good thing, historically speaking. Yes, absolutely a turbulent, dangerous, and traumatizing time, especially for those living within the imperial core, but still. There's also the blunt fact that America itself has been responsible for a lot (a LOT) of violent regime change, coups, overthrows, bombings, and other disastrous foreign policy interventions for almost the entirety of its existence, and we can't pretend that we are just the shining beacon of unproblematic truth, freedom, and faith that most conservatives, and a lot of saccharine American-exceptionalism liberals, tend to think. If that comes back to bite us and we have to experience the kind of political and social upheaval that we have arrantly and unrepentantly inflicted on other places in the name of our Superior Right... well.

As for the post about history books (here), that was another attempt to push back against the kind of broad-strokes fearmongering that is often prevalent right now. Again: for completely understandable reasons, but still. There is literally no way on earth that the practice of academic history, or the procession of human events, is going to be destroyed because an orange dumbass and his idiot followers took power in America for eight nonconsecutive years. Even if by some miracle he managed to do it in America and the only thing ever officially published was Heritage Foundation balderdash, a) historians in countries other than America would still be writing books about it, and b) again, literally impossible. To return to the history of Soviet totalitarianism that I was addressing in that post, I suggest that people look into the samizdat, the contraband news and literature widely shared in the USSR. They faced far more stringent conditions than we ever will: the KGB controlled access to all word processors and copiers, precisely because they could be used to spread non-regime-approved information, and dissidents had to write and circulate it by hand. If they were caught, they could be disappeared, sent to the gulag, confined in a psychiatric hospital, subject to intensive "state education," etc. But they still managed to pass it around and read it, and it would be literally impossible for this collection of Trumpster chucklefucks to exert even a fraction of this logistical and physical control, when every citizen already owns a laptop and a smartphone. The history books aren't going anywhere.

That all said, of course we are all hyper-alert and anxious and afraid, and we don't want to miss anything that might be important or dangerous or anything else. I get that, I completely do. But we still have to pace ourselves, we still have to apply critical thought and learn how to educate ourselves when something seems huge and scary and unstoppable, and I am attempting to do a small part of that on a niche blue hellsite that won the social media competition by literally doing nothing while its peers all fell face first into being corporate Nazis. The bar is low. But hey, I'm here, and you're here and you're reading it, and we will get through it. I promise.

Courage, etc.

[shorthaltsjester]

coming off the high of finishing the draft of the last of my exegetical/theory heavy chapters of my thesis and while i was writing i was thinking a lot about why applying real world political philosophies to exandria specifically tends to fall flat and like. even beyond the explicit treatment of things like homophobia as nonexistent and hegemony functioning wildly differently if it really actually exists in exandria as we conceptualize it in our actual world really boils down to the works that make up a lot of the roots of the leftist theory people apply to exandria. like obviously marx is a big guy, nietzsche has more influence than you’d think given his reputation as the internets (poorly interpreted) sad boy, and less people probably know the names of the critical theorists that came out of the frankfurt school but you’d know their ideas — and they all have their toes in countless leftist ideas today, whether their influence is explicit or not. what’s notable in all those theorists is something found in the argumentative and background work that they provide before the claims most people on the internet know re: the workers of the world uniting, god’s being dead, and the culture industry, whether in their previous work or just earlier in the same books that people have read the goodreads quotes of: first principles.

if you’re unfamiliar with the term, it’s just a philosophy word for basic proposition that cannot be deduced from a previous claim. And for a whole lot of works in the history of moral and political philosophy (as well as other less relevant branches), one of the most common first principles you could find was the proposition that god exists. so much of the work of philosophers who inform leftist theory has required them to do the work of either coming up with a different first principle and justifying it and/or providing justification for why first principles are in themselves a flawed notion. nietzsche was so impactful in his claim that god is dead because it targets the very notion that history and the philosophy in it was finding the proposition that god exists to be unsatisfactory if unsupported. marx then was only able to ground his historical materialism because that first principle re: god was able to be dismantled. critical theorists, like adorno for example, were only able to do their work in light of accepting that god is not something worth appealing to without justification. and the reason any of this is relevant to the fantasy world of a silly internet show where voice actors roll dice is because any leftist theory whose most foundational basis is the realization and gradual societal acceptance that the claim “god is real” could not be assumed but had to be given justification will always end up being unsatisfactory when it is applied to a world where “god is real” is not only factually true but is also societally accepted and the existence of those who might philosophize about the gods is a direct product of those gods’ existence.

this isn’t to say there can’t be insight granted by applying these theories anyway (looking at my blorbos and applying philosophical theories is my favourite hobby, just ask my thesis supervisor) nor is it to say that the risks of trying to apply these theories to exandria starts and ends with its failing to be philosophically apt — but there have been many great posts circulating re: the issues with viewing certain facets of exandria through an “it’s a colonialist metaphor” lens and many similar cases so i won’t dive in here. just pointing out that as a facet of the objective truth that can exist in a fictional world, especially a world established by gods (world here being a word that includes the existence of mortals), some of the foundational propositions of the philosophical arguments at work in those theories are rendered false in the exandrian context. but this also means that, if the gods leave exandria in some sense, i will have a very fun time unpacking a nietzschean interpretation of their absence. because i predict that though the gods will be dead/gone, his meaning of god being dead will Not be fulfilled since ostensibly the majority of exandria still looks to the gods in love and in doubt as providers of guidance, and i question how much their presence actually informs the depth of that dependence. anyway. that’s my philosophical enrichment for the night.

[collapsedsquid]

Now: why would libertarianism be a form of feudalism, of all things? Here I would like to offer an argument of my own, which I came up with reading Jan Narveson’s The Libertarian Idea, a couple years back, which dovetails with Freeman’s argument. He discusses Narveson quite a bit along the way and has thereby gotten me off my butt, to write out these old thoughts. (Pardon me if someone else has already made this argument, or nearly. It seems like the sort of thing that someone has probably already tried on for size. I am not a literature hound on this stuff.) Libertarians – propertarians, anyway – rather notoriously maintain that you really ought to be able to sell yourself into slavery, if you want to. After all, you’re your property. You should be able to dispose of yourself as you see fit. (Some libertarians don’t go so far but many do. Nozick, for example. I think it’s pretty hard to resist this conclusion, in princpled fashion, once you’ve bought the strong self-ownership principle.) Now: suppose we drop, experimentally, just the libertarian ‘self-ownership’ assumption, while keeping the ownership model. Imagine a society in which everyone belongs to their parents, at birth. (Or, if their parents belong to someone, to their parents’ owners.) The libertarian logic of this is clear enough, I trust. (I don’t say all libertarians should be bound by logic to embrace this vision of utopia on the spot, but they ought to recognize libertarianism, minus assumed self-ownership, as a form of the philosophy they advocate, albeit an extreme form.) You didn’t make yourself. You are not the sweat of your brow. Someone else made you. And people are the sort of things that can be owned. So you are a made-by-someone-else thing. And made to be owned. Why shouldn’t you be born owned by whoever went to the trouble (two someones?) It would be kind of fun to sketch a hyper-propertarian society, organized along these lines. It’s not obvious how such a society would work. Obviously it could work (or fail to) in a lot of different ways. It wouldn’t have to turn out radically differently than what we’ve got now. Most parents love their children, so they would free them – officially at birth, or when they turned 18 or whatever. But it could turn out quite differently, if different social patterns developed. You could have your free children and also your slave children, and you might regard them very differently. This utopia doesn’t seem likely to shape up as a more free society than the one we’ve got, by any ordinary stretch of our ordinary notions of freedom. It wouldn’t be terribly surprising if it turned out radically … feudal. Libertarianism, in this extreme form, could turn out to be the road to serfdom. But beyond that, it would be quite feudal in the sense that Freeman actually has in mind, which is not the serf-sense. He means that political power is privately held. And a bit more. I’ll just quote Freeman:

Under feudalism, the elements of political authority are powers that are held personally by individuals, not by enduring political institutions. These powers are held as a matter of private contractual right. Individuals gradually acquire the power to make, apply, and enforce rules by forging a series of private contracts with particular individuals or families. Oaths of fealty or service are sworn in exchange for similar or compensating benefits. Those who exercise political power wield it on behalf of others pursuant to their private contractual relation and only so long as their contract is in force. Since different services are provided to people, there is no notion of a uniform public law that is to be impartially applied to all individuals. (148)

In other words:

Libertarianism resembles feudalism in that it establishes political power in a web of bilateral individual contracts. Consequently, it has no conception of legitimate public political authority nor any place for political society, a “body politic” that political authority represents in a fiduciary capacity. (149)

[conclaveyaoi]

just thought I could add my perspective to this, if it is worth anything each of you will be the judge of that. in what concerns the "caught up in the old man yaoi and forgot what the catholic church was" and "liberal? this is the catholic church" and "new pope covered up scandals fork found in the kitchen?" feelings and the extent of which they relate to your personal experience in enjoying the material and the fandom, I have found myself dumbfounded at the thought that the history of corruption and sex scandals would be news to anyone or that, actually, being aware of reality wasn't the baseline before watching the film and reading the book. in my first watch I actually joked to my best friend saying "I loved it and this was made for me but I wonder if some sort of catholicism 101 will be a pre-requisite for non-catholics".

this reality is mentioned throughout the movie and book over and over by several different characters. this reality is part of lawrence's existential crisis and ultimately the root for several of incredibly interesting questions the story brings to the table. in fact, in my personal experience, it was writing my first lawrellini smut, funny as it sounds, that removed the heavy religious trauma weight I didn't even realise I carried. I'm a much calmer, more in tune with my principles person than I was before the movie and people told me on ao3 about similar experiences and thanked me for it, others hated the film, some enjoyed but don't feel comfortable interacting with the fandom. each of us will define individually how much we want to be using the grim parts of reality/history as backdrop for our fanfiction but awareness as baseline avoids "oh no! I focused too much on the old man yaoi and now that I stumbled upon the history of corruption and horror of this centuries-long political institution I'm panicking and will return to focus on the old man yaoi pretending this isn't true". it is true. I'll say it again for all the victims: it is true. so is the aid the vatican is sending to gaza and ukraine. so was francisco (much to my surprise!) criticising the us administration more explicitly than many progressive european leaders, one of whom is keir starmer from the labour party. so what? it cancels out? never. never. never. you see, when we're kids we want reality to fit archetypes from animation. when we're adults we can point out the hypocrisy around, including in ourselves. robert harris writes knowing it isn't simple and seems to be interested in the existential crisis from within. it is a reminder the institution is made of people and people are people. when I write my fanfiction, I'm interested in these fictional adult characters as people and the nuanced circumstances they are in, including the reasons why they chose to be in them. human and humane in my native language are the same word so I've always preferred english because of the distinction.

to me, being aware of what's morally reprehensible in reality (a necessity!) does not diminish or take away in any way whatsoever enjoying the incredible art, fanfiction, conversations and meeting the lovely people I'm glad I met so far thanks to this fictional story. my blog is +18 not just because of smut but also because I don't see how teenagers can interact with this material without the critical thinking required. I know teenage me wouldn't have. I don't think the answer is then in dumbing down the source material or diluding the realness of it until it becomes disney content. we're adults. let's be adults.

to give a serious answer to the memes: I have no horse in this race and am fed up with all the news cycle but yes, he's liberal in the context of vatican politics which has its own overton window. is this a discussion you want to have? nice but you can't apply the american overton window (holds back a concerned chuckle) to the british overton window, much less to the vatican one. so yes he is a liberal as a cleric in the vatican. and republicans in the us refer to a political party while republicans in the uk is a term used for abolishing the monarchy. fork found in the kitchen, yes indeed, which doesn't need to mean nothing more than awareness of such in the context of our fandom. enjoy the movie, write bellesco, ship joe and sister agnes. the vatican is a very interesting institution with a set of rules and gay subculture that appeal to me and it's been very fun to share this with you. I watched conclave, wrote lawrellini fucking, overcame the immature anger in my religious trauma and now am fascinated by the whole ordeal as an atheist. I find it funny but I don't see any contradiction in this. being "catholic-atheist" (because one can't escape the cultural aspect of it, spoiler alert) doesn't make me morally above catholics, it just make me a non-catholic who is a conclave fan.

if this feels like a "dear reader" letter and if my advice is worth anything: let the awareness of reality be the starting point and go on from that. that was the case for me due to having a headstart so to speak ie. my catholic background. as the record shows, pushing the dirt to under the rug isn't the best way to handle anything. they would know.

edit: it was first reported the current pope was "liberal". taking into account his view on marriage "between man and woman", in my view that makes him a moderate figure, very similar to tremblay, seemingly appealing more to the traditionalists like adeyemi and tedesco. he is far from the "common sense" approach bellini mentions and maintaining the long-lasting tradition of being vocal against and harming queers. so yes, fork found in the kitchen. don't bow down to propaganda. be aware. take care of yourself.

[dcdreamblog]

WRT your field, a question; do you also study supervillains or is that a separate field?

My field isn't actually that large. So it stands to reason that people who study supervillains are equally included in the work that I do. If only because it's a lot of the same knowledge in a historical and contextual sense. But there are a few things that I've noticed about one "group" over the other.

(One of the many supervillain 'teams' over the years, this one the Secret Society entering a battle against the League at a football stadium) 1. Supervillains are probably a lot EASIER to study at least in a certain detail oriented sense. After all when a supervillain is arrested their secret identity is unveiled to the world in booking and their relevant background, origin and the like are all brought out during discovery as part of their trial. As such we tend to know about supervillains a lot more than we do their heroic counterparts. Often I have to shrug my shoulders and say we just don't know that core background of a superhero because nobody besides them knows anyway.

2. Interestingly, people who study superVILLAINS tend to have backgrounds or minors in criminology or psychology. Unlike other Superhero Studies students who tend to have backgrounds or minors in sociology or history (my minor is in political geography). This is understandable. Studying supervillains has way more to do with trying to figure out the people in question, whereas studying superheroes is more about watching the ebb and flow of their relationships, actions and reactions on historical events about and surrounding them. A superVILLAIN expert is much more likely to say, be called in at a villain's trial and have to explain their pathology to a jury.

3. None of this applies to people who run the endless glut of supervillain 'True Crime' podcasts or blogs or anything else. Those people tend to be blundering amateurs without an ounce of tact whose main methodology is calling people who lost family members to the Joker in the middle of the night and badgering them until they get another restraining order pinned to their hides.

4. People who study supervillains are a deeply brave and principled sort. Rather than being focused on the tragedy or romanticizing the inhumane psychology of these people, the supervillain students I know are more focused on trying to find out who supervillains are, why they do what they do and how they commit their crimes in the interest of preventing harm or even rehabilitating them.

The person who most closely fits here that I know personally was a project partner of mine back in Metropolis, we ended up getting to know each other very well. She came from a family with a history of poverty and criminal conviction and she saw a similar pattern manifesting in supervillains. That villains are often people who have been forgotten or wronged by an uncaring system and have either never been presented with another outlet for their needs or have been pushed to the limit when they DID try to escape bad circumstances.

She's a guidance counselor at Iron Heights now, actually and she reads this blog. Hi Tiff! Happy birthday, if I scheduled this right!

[dreamtydraw]

Rewatching snow white ( the 1937 Disney movie ) with my little sister and I think it’s a great example on how people view feminity as weakness.

There is this image in media that snow white message is outdated because she gets saved by a prince and she’s naive but that so reductive of the whole movie and snow white as a character. Sure the social message of this almost 100 years old movie is vastly différent because of the war context and the goal intended for snow white as a character but aside of that ( because that important but too long to develop) even if you apply today modern standards, the film isn’t less feminist ?

Snow white is a polite pretty and kind woman. She takes care of the animals and in return they help her. She survive an assassination attempt and willingly choose to stay kind to other. When she chose to clean the house it’s because she thinks orphans lives here and she wants to help them. She’s a princess but used to be her step mother’s slave / servant ( in french she’s said to be a slave ) so that means before event of the movie she spent her time working. And about the prince she loves him, sure it’s very superficial but nevertheless she show mutliple time that she has interest in him through the movie ( two songs about it ) yet it’s only when he saves her that she end up with him, her goal is not to end up with him from the start, it’s after that she find safety that she wish for more like her love being reciprocated.

She rules the house, she pray for the well being of the dwarfs and dosen’t let negative comments going against her principles ( she force the dwarfs to clean themselves even if they insist to not do so and she still try to befriend grumpy politely when he say he dosen’t like her. )

And about the apple, she let the woman enter the house because she thinks the old woman is sick and need water, again showing signs of her good heart. The old woman tell her she’s gifting her an apple that grant wishes as a thank you for helping her, she dosen’t eat it because she’s dumb, she eats it because she thinks it’s a gift with good intentions for her good acts. + the old woman INSIST that she eats it.

She’s not dumb or incapable but a lot of people think she is for some reason and I’m pretty sure that reason is her femininity. Snow white is a symbol of feminity she’s humble, a good housewife a pretty girl and is in love. Sadly a lot of people think that the only way to be a strong female character is by being a bad bitch, in the eyes of a lot of people women can only be strong if they actively shout that they are by showing off or exercising roles previously offered by men.

Similar thing happened with the Mario movie where they toned down Peach hyper feminine character to make her more badass and people were like « oh finaly they gave her a character »

Hyper feminine characters aren’t less strong because of their hyperfeminity…..

Anyway that my little rambling and I take this occasion to remind people TO NOT watch the live action remake because of Gal Gadot’s presence importantly. Gal gadot is a proud zionist, idf soldier and was introduced in hollywood with intention of propaganda. + they used cgi instead of hiring real actors for the dwarfs and Disney suck ass. Watch Mirror mirror instead:

[unavailableapple]

Excuse me for coming to your askbox, I am not a radfem and don't agree with a lot of it's principles, yet I find radfem spaces are the only place where discussion of nonbinary identity has any nuance. Personally I have no problem with people doing whatever they want with their own bodies/minds/labels but I did struggle to wrap my head around just how many people started IDing as nonbinary during the last few years. Now recently it's been a bit of the opposite, with a noticeable amount of previously out and proud nonbinary people dropping the label. I've heard some people discuss it like it was just "in fashion" for a while, while others insist it's a result of gender experimentation or having to go back in the closet due to the political climate. But it's not just the young, I noticed that includes some of the first nb people I knew, who were nonbinary before 2020, hell, before 2015. I know you had a similar experience, so I just wanted to hear your opinion on this whole phenomenon, why it's happening and why now, and if you expect the trend to continue?

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot and honestly the short answer is: I’m not sure.

The long answer:

I think that these things come in waves. Think about BBL surgery (Brazilian butt-lift surgery). When that surgery was really popular, I’m sure it felt like a very real need to the women who got it. Similarly, my nonbinary identity felt very real to me. But once you apply any amount of pressure to either of these, they start to break. Because really what does it mean to be nonbinary? Why do I NEED to express myself as nonbinary? Why does she NEED to have a large posterior? Eventually you realize, it is misogyny. That’s all it is. And then the whole thing falls apart…Aside from that, even if you don’t acknowledge the misogyny, these things are ultimately superficial and, as such, fall away once one reaches a certain point of adulthood.

I don’t mean adulthood as in becoming an adult human I mean adulthood as in a certain level of struggle that makes fanciful discussions of pronouns seem taxing. Eventually real life catches up and you don’t feel like wasting your precious free time thinking about whether you use they, she, he, or meow pronouns. I think the lasting effects of COVID have meant terrible things for the general public and a lot of people are struggling to pay rent or afford food. I know that what first made me stop caring about pronouns was when I was homeless and thought a lot more about finding a safe place to sleep than making sure everyone calls me he/meow/it pronouns.

Then I think there’s the climate of the trans community right now. When I was younger, there was an idea of, “Being trans is equally hard for males AND females”. But now the dominant narrative seems to be that trans identified males have it a thousand times harder being trans and trans identified females face no oppression at all. I do think this drives more trans identified females out of trans spaces and leads them to find more community with other women. This was the case for several of my friends. Once the trans community told them, “You don’t face any oppression” even though they did (by right of being female), they stopped feeling aligned with a nonbinary identity and suddenly realized they felt more aligned with being female, on the basis of shared experiences.

Finally, it could genuinely just be that it’s falling out of fashion. I’m of an era where I, like a lot of young women my age, was the froggy jumper round glasses meow/it pronoun using boyflux aligned aroace nonbinary person and that was in style. Nowadays kids on TikTok make fun of that and it’s much less “in”. Recently Mitski cut her hair short and people started calling her “theyfab”. For the uninitiated, theyfab is a rude term the trans community uses for a female person who identifies as nonbinary, especially if she doesn’t do anything to express this nonbinary identity beyond cutting her hair. They were not trying to “affirm” Mitski, they were making fun of her for being a gender nonconforming woman, and they were making fun of the women who identify as nonbinary. No matter what, it’s always “in” to make fun of women so if a lot of women are identifying as nonbinary, it’s going to be “in” to make fun of them and it is. On pinterest, Nonbinary identities are already being relegated to “2010s nostalgia” the way moustache tattoos on pointer fingers are “2000s nostalgia”, these things come and go.

So yeah, I ultimately don’t know, and these are only a couple among my many many MANY different theories. But based on my own experience and the experiences of people I know, this is what I’ve been thinking.

[icarusbetide]

connection between wartime administration & federalist-lean?

There's an argument that wartime service and experiencing Congress' failures firsthand as Washington's aide de camp pushed Hamilton further into the ideals that would later be seen as Federalist: a national instead of state outlook, a permanent military power, and a strong, efficient government.

I was wondering if that argument can be applied on a broader scale: is there an overall connection between revolutionary wartime administration and federalist-leaning political beliefs?

I'm by no means qualified but for my own curiosity's sake, I tried to find the political inclinations of former leaders in the war as well as members of Washington's family, who arguably should have seen the same inefficiencies as Hamilton.

Major Generals:

Washington: Tried very hard to be nonpartisan, but pretty federalist when all's said and done. Especially in 2nd term as president and in last years of life Horatio Gates: Supported Jefferson's presidency, so assuming he was leaning Democratic-Republican? Henry Knox: Federalist Philip Schuyler: Federalist William Alexander, Lord Stirling: Not sure John Sullivan: Federalist, led drive in New Hampshire for Constitution's ratification Thomas Mifflin: Federalist according to Wikipedia (was also aide to GW from June to August 1775) Arthur St. Clair: Federalist. Governor of Northwest Territory, removed by Jefferson in 1802 due to political party differences. Benjamin Lincoln: Federalist, strong policies and presence in Massachusetts Thomas Conway: Unreliable source says Federalist William Moultrie: Some sites say Federalist but he had falling out with Washington because of his pro-French actions towards Genet. Possibly nonpartisan.

Washington's family (Aides, Culper, Life Guard. If they died before we can quantify as "Federalist", then not included):

Note: I tried to include length of service and timeline, arguably important (there during Valley Forge or good period?), but it's difficult in consideration of leave and such. Used Wikipedia's dates.

Edmund Randolph (August - November 75): Wiki says Federalist but I know enough about him that he was often the swinging vote in Washington's cabinet, and that he didn't sign the Constitution because he thought it too strong. Tench Tilghman (August 76 - June 80 | June 80 - Nov 83): Died in 1786. I shouldn't include him but raise a glass for our hardworking Tilghman. Robert Harrison (Nov 75 - May 76 | Military Sec May 76 - 81): Died in 1790. Wikipedia says Federalist. John Fitzgerald (Nov 76 - July 78): Couldn't find John Walker (Feb - March 77): Unreliable source says Federalist Samuel Blachley Webb (June 76 - Jan 77): Couldn't find William Grayson (Assistant Sec. July - August 76 | Aide August 76 - Jan 77): Leader of Anti-Federalist faction with Mason, Monroe, etc. died in 1790 Alexander Contee Hanson Sr. (Assistant Sec. June - Sep 76): Federalist according to Wiki Alexander Hamilton (March 77 - April 81): Is this even a question? Stephen Moylan (March 76 - June 76 | Sept. 76 - Jan 77): "Firm Federalist" according to Founders Online James McHenry (May 78 - August 80): Federalist, GW's Secretary of War in 2nd term when cabinet members were much more partisan. Richard Kidder Meade (March 77 - November 80): Couldn't find. I know that he was very close with Hamilton, which makes me think it possible that their politics had some similarities? But entirely speculation. Hodijah Baylies (May 82 - Dec 83): Federalist. According to Founders Online, Gallatin was advised against Baylies because he was a "decided and we believe a sentimental federalist”. David Cobb (June 81 - Jan 83 | June 83 - Dec 83): Wiki says Federalist Peregrine Fitzhugh (July 81 - Oct 81): Not sure if same Peregrine Fitzhugh, but in a letter to Jefferson in 1807, said: "It is true I have been called a Federalist, and feel a pride in being so: but my Federalism is firmed in those principles which dictated the correct and memorable declaration that we were all Federalists all republicans" William Stephens Smith (July 81 - June 82): Federalist (member of Congress as Federalist in 1812) David Humphreys (June 80 - Dec 83): Federalist. He was part of the Hartford Wits and wrote the poem The Anarchiad. "In 1802, Thomas Jefferson...decided to replace Humphreys...Historians speculate that Humphreys's closeness to the Federalist Party motivated Jefferson’s decisions." from Mt. Vernon Richard Varick (Aide & Priv Sec May 81 - Dec 83): Apparently Federalist and later mayor of New York Benjamin Walker (Jan 82 - Dec 83): Federalist, elected to Congress as Federalist

Caleb Gibbs (May 76 - Dec 80): Couldn't find Nathaniel Sackett: Couldn't find Benjamin Tallmadge (1778 - 1783): Federalist, part of minority in Congress during Jefferson & Madison administrations

Other aides who might've had administrative work, although I'm not sure:

Aaron Burr: Very short run with Washington, and Israel Putnam's aide. Technically Democratic-Republican, but some historians have noted his politics did not always align with a party.

James Monroe: Aide to Stirling, Republican-Democratic

Concerns:

First concern: I'm not sure if the other major generals' aides would see as much administrative work directly with Congress as Washington's aides. I'm under the impression that other generals would report to Washington, than Congress, but I'm not sure.

Second concern: I also want to add that other factors would have most definitely played a role, such as familial and economic interests, which may or may not have been influenced by the war. Still, I thought it would be an interesting exercise.

Third concern: A lot of this is very shallow research as I did not have the time or energy to really dig into all of them. Please let me know if there is any inaccurate information (even Federalist or Democratic Republican is a very broad term and I'm sure their beliefs varied).

Please let me know if you see any inaccurate information, or anyone/some branch I did not consider!

[whetstonefires]

I hope you're having an excellent day 😊😊😊 What about Wei Wuxian as Naruto?

Thanks! It was pretty good. I organized my embroidery floss and took advantage of being alone in the building to dance around like a maniac for about 20 minutes. My cat hated it. My knees aren't sure they approve either.

Wei Wuxian as Naruto has a lot going for it right out the gate. Orphaned sunshine boy protagonist types, now we're cooking with propane. They're even both fox coded!

However, at the risk of stating the obvious, if Wei Wuxian were Naruto he wouldn't be Naruto anymore. That is. Fundamental to Wei Wuxian is that he is brilliant and talented and he damn well knows it. He would excel without effort in ninja school--not as much as he did in Jiang Sect unless he unlike Naruto was still getting personal mentoring in honor of his late father, but still.

Difference is, when this Wei Wuxian slacks off in class and the teacher tries to embarrass him, if he reels off the correct answer and then reinvents senjutsu from first principles in a creepy-sounding way for a lark just to show off, the teacher is not going to think that he's just like his annoying late mother. (Though he'll still have one. Kushina and Cangse Sanren are fairly similar Dead Mom archetypes too.)

The teacher is going to think things like, no real child would say that shit and I'm expected to teach the monster fox that killed my family basic ninjutsu I hate this I hate this we're all gonna die.

So basically this Wei Wuxian gets his Yiling Laozu reputation mod as part of the starter pack. I don't think he'd handle it super gracefully! But not the worst, either.

Not even as badly as he did in the actual version, probably, on account of he doesn't know his own dark secret. So he can't self-isolate to protect it. Though him pulling away from people once he does learn would be cool.

He'd probably have forged slightly stronger social ties rather sooner than Naruto did, even if he was just as neglected and radioactive; Wei Wuxian doesn't care what people think of him nearly as much as Naruto does, but in some ways he's a more genuinely social person, and he's got much better social intuition, so it's easier for him to figure out what people want and either do that or not do that on purpose.

He'd have at least a bunch of casual friends. Mostly civilians, and other kids from ninja school whose parents told them not to play with him but they did anyway.

Wei Wuxian cannot do therapy no jutsu. He does not have that ability to confront and exist with emotional discomfort or that intensity of interest in what is going on with other people.

He does however have some level of Friendship Beam Attack (the plot to some extent hinges utterly on how effectively it hit Wen Ning) and it would presumably be more effective, in a shounen context.

But that's the thing, Wei Wuxian isn't really built to confront shounen manga style problems. Or, well, he is, but he's overbuilt for them; they're his bread and butter. One of Naruto's key motifs, early on at least before we got into the heavy power creep, is not being a genius.

Wei Wuxian, by definition, is a genius. He is the kind of guy who walks up to shounen manga sorts of problems scaled to what ought to be his level, handles them, and goes 'what, like it's hard?'

Wei Wuxian is designed to be destroyed not by external threats but by his own loyalties, politics, and lies. (Which was a point of confluence with Itachi I didn't really touch on because the flow was so different lmao.)

He's also, otoh, designed to be destroyed. Naruto is designed to start off artificially low and climb steadily up toward heaven. (Ymmv on how this worked out but he sure did escalate.)

You have to pick which schema to apply when performing the fusion--I mean, it's not either-or, the whole deal with Wei Wuxian is he goes through the entire arc of a tragedy and then comes back to life and stars in a romcom. These things can superimpose and stack. But there are structural decisions that have to be made early.

So anyway, Wei Wuxian as Naruto is not going to enter the Genin Team phase of life with the same priorities, even if he has largely conducted himself about the same way hitherto. 'Proving himself' so 'people will accept him' is not a motive that works for this character--you basically have to give him actual precious people earlier just to get him to care about attaining ninja rank at all.

Otherwise he would probably much rather loaf his way through his teens stealing jutsu and making trouble. Which is the well-adjusted reaction to the idea of becoming a child soldier, like. He likes recognition but 'showing off' is a reason he does dumb fun things, not difficult high-commitment ones. He's like if Shikamaru had ADHD and no parents.

Being twelve is going to make him dumber, but I can't see it making him not the kind of person who stops caring about his marks in school if the teacher is hostile.

If Wei Wuxian here isn't acting out of appreciation for the Hokage raising him, or something like that, you have to give him a practical motive to enter military service like 'Konoha stops supporting orphans out of the public purse at thirteen so he's got to get some kind of job and ninja is the least boring option' which. Is significantly less like either Naruto or Wei Wuxian in terms of reasons to do anything, and starts getting into solidly OC territory.

The whole fact that Konoha's worldbuilding centers around an attempt to move away from decentralized clannish social organization and promote the idea of shared, communal social institutions and (in theory) civil society, and the ways this does and does not work out for people especially considering it is still a relatively small military dictatorship, honestly interfaces super interestingly with how, in Mo Dao Zu Shi, one of the underlying challenges backstopping all character choice is that there is no feasible alternative to the clan system, and you have to pick a family-faction to depend upon and submit yourself to, or face the world with no safety net.

Like. Huh.

.....Kishimoto is honestly unusually-for-shounen well-grounded in the genres he's riffing on tbh, for all my bitching there were some very good reasons his work found such success; I would have liked to see what kind of story he produced without the insane pressures of the Weekly part of Weekly Shounen Jump. I wonder if he'll ever publish again. For all I know he already is lmao.

So anyway, however we manage it we get Wei Wuxian on his genin team with like. Lan Wangji and Mianmian or whoever. Actually that's hilarious. Yeah, make it lwj and lqy, both of them so done with his shit.

Setting up some wild role-reversal here--Lan Wangji being the one to go Away and Wei Wuxian asking him to stay? Or Naruto-person leaving into the dark, and Sasuke-person remaining and calling for him to come back? Either way. Getting some inversion. Tasty.

Where does this leave Jiang Cheng, though? Because in a lot of ways Uchiha 'Deuteragonist by Editorial Mandate' Sasuke is straddling both roles.

In many ways Wangxian is much more like if Naruto had an endgame romance with Neji. Which is a great ship tbh, I saw very little of it back in the day?? In a series with a smaller cast or with less Sasuke Creep (not sasuke being a creep, it's like power creep) it would probably have done numbers.

...Naruto going away for that timeskip really limited his opportunity to make connections in the village huh.

I guess it depends on the kind of narrative you're trying to put together. On one hand, you can do Jiang Fengmian as the rather-more-involved Third Hokage, with Jiang Cheng as an aged-up Konohamaru kind of figure. And then Jiang Yanli is standing in as both Iruka and. I know I know the ramen guy's name. Ichiraku. Soup! XD Emotionally significant soup!

But with a different backstory than either lmao. Kurama very possibly killed Yu Ziyuan in this universe, though I can't visualize her as a midwife.

[[[Why do I have so much Naruto lore on tap, there is no life value in knowing Sarutobi Hiruzen's wife was at ground zero of the Kyuubi attack because she was the expert overseeing Uzumaki Kushina's childbirth a;kdj;lafdks. I do not remember the things I was actually studying in high school nearly this well.]]]

(Actually Jin Ling is Konohamaru and Jiang Cheng is aged-down Asuma. But whatever.)

And in this case Wei Wuxian's genin team is Lan Wangji and Mianmian under idk who. Lan Qiren, possibly, although he seems more the Ebisu type. Lan Xichen? (It's not like he can serve as a plausible Itachi. Can you imagine.) Actual Kakashi, possibly; we can't replace everyone with mdzs characters; the cast sizes don't square.

Kakashi training Wei Wuxian is very funny to think about. He deserves this.

Or on the other hand for a different pacing and focus, the genin team is him, Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Yanli under Jiang Fengmian, who dies sometime after or probably during the climax of the chuunin exams. And Sarutobi stays Hokage, and probably doesn't die during the chuunin exams. And we aim for a Naruto/Neji kind of romance storyline lol.

What is the Lan Wangji equivalent of Neji exposing his caged bird seal in front of god and everybody and ranting (it is very unclear at what effective volume though you'd think the proctors would have shut him up if he could be heard from the stadium seating that shit was sedition) about his traumatic backstory and the deep injustices in his family's system of hierarchy? I'm gonna say Not That.

Wei Wuxian versus Lan Wangji important ideological-conflict bonding duel in the Chuunin exam finals sounds excellent though.

Either way Wei Wuxian is going to get much more thoroughly involved in the ugly ninja politics than Naruto ever did, and he's going to hate it so so bad and at least temporarily lose so so so hard. A likely story element is he becomes troublesome enough he winds up having to flee the village ahead of a scheme by Danzou to (fatally) rip the Kyuubi out of him and implant it in some thoroughly conditioned ROOT kid.

Maybe Wen Ning?? Idk. I'm mostly saying this because Wen Ning 1) canonically gets Victimized and Transformed and 2) shares some notes with Sai. And this means he's leaving, in part, for Wen Ning, which ties into some plot and character stuff from their original narrative. You could make it work.

Also him taking the replacement human sacrifice with him when he books it would be hysterical.

Anyway he's branded a missing nin and it is, canonically, illegal for him to tell anyone who doesn't already know about the kyuubi thing, so both Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji are appropriately what the fucking fuck and receive no adequate answer. This is a workable plot element.

Either the Jiangs or the Lans are the Uchiha, here, which has its own story value, lots of fun to be had. Gotta engineer a way he's protecting Jiang Cheng--does Danzou want to make him the jinchuuriki? Is Orochimaru or his replacement making a play for Jiang Cheng's bloodline limit, whatever it is, fun if it's eyeballs, and Wei Wuxian bargains to give him a jinchuuriki instead? Hmmm.

You want an inside and an outside threat, the obvious viper and the political spider, so you can silo information and make sure nobody entirely knows what's going on.

If it's Jiang Cheng who's assigned the role of bloodline limit macguffin, I have the very wicked urge to cast Yu Ziyuan as some combination of Itachi and Obito. Very Vader kind of effect.

Jin Guangyao as Kabuto, excellent, I need that innocent smile and those torture skills. This may require making Jin Guangshan much smarter than he really is just to fill out the ranks, or again you can keep Danzou as himself.

Tsunade is amusingly enough occupying an overlapping Baoshan Sanren and Wen Qing position; given one of them impersonated the other that time you'd have to do something with that. She's also got some Yu Ziyuan vibe up ofc. Tsunade just contains an entire franchise's supply of girlboss tbh.

Who could possibly stand in for Jiraiya, nobody, but at the same time. Wei Wuxian (with internal sapient asshole nuke) apprenticing under Jiraiya of the Sannin sounds like enough problem-creating goofy jackass genius clown energy in one place to open a singularity. That's too much. No narrative could survive.

Anyway someone please feel free to write this, I am intrigued but also will 100percent never ever put in the time it would take to realize any version of this concept.

[anarchotahdigism]

"At the time I resigned in early March, I was the only staff member of Palestinian descent at World Central Kitchen (WCK).1 I resigned in protest of extensive, unexplained censorship regarding Gaza at the organization. WCK leadership is taking a stand six months too late, only after 7 of its personnel were killed." ..... "Much of the work in a genocide is not pulling the trigger, but instead minimizing and denying that a genocide is going on. Genocide is a phenomenon of gradual boundary pushing. Each increment must be accepted by the parties with agency for the next to be reached. Under the direction of CEO Erin Gore, Linda Roth, and “Chief Feeding Officer” José Andrés, World Central Kitchen recklessly endangered its personnel, selfishly exploited the situation for its own benefit, and actively participated in the normalization of an ongoing genocide." "The way in which WCK writes stories and talks about its work in Ukraine suggests this isn’t principled humanitarian neutrality. In three separate videos, the NGO has highlighted its initiative in rural Ukraine, titled “Seeds of Victory.” It refers to its Ukrainian employees and volunteers as “Food Fighters,” positioning them as part of the war effort. Gaza has had a much higher rate of civilian, especially child, casualties. Andrés is Co-Chair of Biden’s Council on Sports, Fitness, & Nutrition, a member of the State Department’s American Culinary Corps, and has warmly hosted Antony Blinken on his podcast. He has had no issue asserting that Russia was using starvation as a weapon in Ukraine, but has never publicly stated a similar stance on Israel’s policies in Palestine. Until the highly publicized slaughter of its employees forced it to do otherwise, WCK has been towing the Biden admin line regarding Gaza. Despite ridiculous assertions to the contrary, WCK does take political stances, seemingly in line with the privately expressed views of its leadership.

Save the possibility of genuine incompetence, the WCK leadership’s decisions were not made to maintain neutrality, did not increase effectiveness, and, as April 1 demonstrated, did not protect personnel. The leadership’s failure to honestly portray the dire reality in Gaza, and lack of an attempt to influence the genocide in Gaza via its status and close ties with the Biden administration, means that they bear responsibility for its outcomes. Let no one say they did everything they could.

Mine was only one experience. When I resigned, there was a palpable, widespread atmosphere of disappointment and anger among employees, stemming from issues that began long before I signed on. I am calling on current and former World Central Kitchen employees, contractors, and volunteers to publicly share their stories and force accountability and change."

nonprofits/NGOs exist to ensure neoliberal politics continue to apply to those they claim they "help" or "serve." They will never take radical actions, they will never effect systemic change, and they will always be complicit in the sins of the systems they promulgate. They are all tax reliefs for the rich and nearly always follow white supremacist neoliberal policies while presenting themselves as being morally superior to whatever conflicts they are involved in, claiming to be neutral when they consistently work with genocidal regimes & forces to effect whatever projects or goals they decide are best for the most vulnerable people on the planet while laundering, if not enriching, their executives & founders. WCK executives are all absolutely accomplices to genocide and one final note is that they have claimed to have distributed almost as many meals in so-called Israel as they have in besieged Gaza. They are quite literally feeding the genocide of Palestine and Palestinians.

[str8slv]

Natural Male Heirarchy is often confused with other philosophical paradigms and has been misrepresented by many who either misunderstand it, purposefully use and bastardize it for their own political ends and those who benefit financially from it.

If anyone says a lot of things that make sense but starts slipping in off-topic suggestions and false facts, keep in mind, that's exactly the kind of shit the Nazis pulled to manipulate people into their politics. It's disgusting.

If anyone says Natural Heirarchy intrinsically involves exchanging money for imagery, sexual gratification or feelings of submission, they are wrong. In a nutshell, that's a form of prostitution and/or scamming. The vapid use of Natural Male Heirarchy as a way to manipulate people out of money is foul and unnatural.

Actual Heirandroism involves more than webcams and photos. It's a personal present interaction which involves kinesics, pheromones, biofield impressions, subtle tonal, facial and kinesthetic communication and instinctive responses and impulses that would occur anywhere, not just when you're in the mood or in the bedroom.

It seems like it's time for a change.

My suggestion is adopting a new identifying title.

Heirandroism is by definition the collective term for Heirandrology, Heirandrosophy & Heirandrolatry - the study, philosophy and spirituality of Natural Heirarchy Among Males.

Heirandroism (or just 'Androism') is a paradigm, a way of viewing oneself, others, nature, reality, psychology, spirituality and the world around us & our place in it.

Natural Male Heirarchy has many individual and personal interpretations and expectations. That's okay. But staying true to the core philosophical principles is important.

Deviating from the actual meaning of Natural Male Heirarchy is fine, but call it like it is.

If it's a sexual fantasy and not a way of life, say that. If it's a venue for dishonesty, fuck you.

And if it's real to you, be proud and learn about it instead of relying on social media to gradually shape your conceptualizations about it.

The image above symbolizes the dynamic of Rightful Dominance and Natural Subservience. It's not about bdsm or sexual fetishes (though there is often overlap due to the dynamics involved).

It's the Alphas and higher ranks being supported, admired, respected and served by the lower ranks. It's the Omegas and lower ranks being owned, protected and guided by Alphas and the higher ranks.

Heirarchy is a gradient of authority that applies to all ranks of the Heirarchy: A (Alphas) : Σ (Sigmas) : B (Betas) : Γ (Gammas) : Δ (Deltas) : Λ (Lambdas) : Θ (Thetas) : Ζ (Zetas) : Ω (Omegas) : Ι (Iotas) : Κ (Kappas) : & Ε (Epsilons)

— and can be flexible depending on the interpersonal dynamic.

The image above is centered around a Greek Phi (ⲫ) – a symbol of masculinity, virility, fertility and manhood – and loosely resembles a Ying-Yang with a similar concept of the give and take and the balance of imbalance while symbolizing a supportive platform under the Alpha and a sheltering roof over the Omega.

The phrase at the bottom means "the empowerment / authority - given by acts of adoration / worship - comes from natural /innate - truth /reality".

To me, this means that the truth of a male's inner nature brings about the inherent dynamics of Natural Male Heirarchy.

I'm posting this because I feel this is worth sharing.

[preheville]

i think like the main issue wrt hamas bogeymanning is all non-muslims but especially westerners really have no place in the conversation surrounding political islam. this is in no way a recent issue, but you see these people throwing around words like jihad and sharia law with only an extremely simplified and oftentimes incorrect understanding of what their true cultural, religious, and political meanings are. the conversation of how these things affect people should be left to the people who actually live beneath them; it is never going to be the role of the non-muslim or non-palestinian to dictate the what is and what is not acceptable in a muslim or palestinian state (ignoring the fact that there are many non-muslims living in palestine).

an example i've seen thrown around is the age-oldforced-hijab issue. and yes forcible hijab is not right and actively hurts people, but when is it ever going to be someone who's never going to wear one's job to decide this? when we ask people to speak up about these issues, it's always oh but because it has never occurred to non-muslims that there might be nuance within a people, and we're still struggling to make people understand the idea that people want to wear hijab, and the hijab is never going to be the issue; it's the forcing that is.

in the case of hamas, people only parrot that they're """terrorists""" and """the next isis""" without (a) understanding hamas' own background, (b) the factors which caused this image to come into being and, most importantly, (c) have never once tried to understand an average palestinian's opinions on hamas because it has never crossed their minds that perhaps the people living beneath this government might have opinions on it; to them, hamas must be destroyed because palestinians do not know what's good for them, in the ideologies that bother humanizing palestine at all.

additionally, this principle applies to really any minority group. living in canada i often see similar rhetoric applied to the landback movement.

tl;dr i think that people who don't have a place in this conversation should only listen to what people who do have a place (palestinains with regards to hamas, muslims with regards to muslim states, etc.) in it say, and then elevate their voices without trying to add on their own opinions. it's not your story, it's not your life, and it is not up to you to decide, based on your worldview, how things ought to be.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

Transgender youth healthcare—and the media ecosystem surrounding it—is a minefield of disinformation, moral panic, and bad-faith actors exploiting public confusion to push bans on lifesaving care. It’s no surprise, then, that many Americans hold complicated and often ambivalent views. But one striking trend stands out: their opinions tend to be soft. Many openly admit they don’t know enough to make it a core part of their political worldview. I speak with these Americans regularly, and many have come away from those conversations with a deeper understanding of how these bans inflict real harm. If that sounds like you—or someone in your life—this piece is for you. People unfamiliar with transgender healthcare often find the idea of youth access unsettling. They worry that transgender teens might be harmed by the care itself—citing fears of safety and regret. That last concern is especially common, and it’s not surprising given a media ecosystem that disproportionately amplifies rare stories of regret over the far more common reality: most transgender people are satisfied with their care. Rather than interrogate those feelings or reckon with the science, many default to what feels like a compromise—“just wait until 18.” It sounds reasonable on its face, but it fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of transgender youth care.

For transgender teenagers, puberty is not something that can simply be reversed. Once it begins, many will face lifelong consequences—transgender adults often spend tens of thousands of dollars on surgeries just to undo the effects. More immediately, the onset of unwanted puberty is tied to a sharp increase in anxiety, depression, and even suicide attempts for transgender teens. One major study found that access to gender-affirming care reduced suicidality among transgender youth by 73 percent. Clinicians consistently report profound mental health improvements among the teens they treat. The evidence is clear: giving transgender youth access to transition-related care offers them the best shot at living in peace with their gender identity. That said, transgender healthcare exists in a minefield of disinformation. Some scientists claim the care is ineffective, but often rely on flawed reviews that demand a higher standard of evidence than is applied to most pediatric treatments. Others operate through groups designed explicitly to cast just enough doubt to justify legislative bans. Most recently, we've seen this tactic deployed at the Department of Health and Human Services, where RFK Jr. has used similar strategies to target vaccines, mifepristone—and now, transgender care. The result is an environment of purposeful uncertainty and manufactured controversy.

One principle resonates across the political spectrum: parents should have a central role in their children’s medical decisions. When Republican Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed a gender-affirming care ban in Ohio, he put it plainly: “It is parents who know their child best.” Even for those uncertain about the evidence behind transgender healthcare, in cases where there is ambiguity but a clear potential for benefit, decisions should be left to parents, patients, and doctors—not politicians. This is a majority opinion found in many polls. For example, a Data for Progress survey found that 77% of respondents believe these decisions should rest with families and medical professionals. Just 12% said they should be made by elected officials.

Something often lost in the broader debate over transgender healthcare—amid statistical generalizations and cherry-picked studies—is the critical role of individualized care and the doctor-patient relationship. Most Americans understand what it means to work with a doctor to find treatment that fits their body’s needs. Sometimes one medication works, another doesn’t. It’s a process of collaboration and adjustment. That’s exactly how transgender healthcare operates. Most trans youth have comprehensive care teams—psychologists, endocrinologists, general practitioners—and families often come armed with binders of research, evidence, and documentation. It’s not a one-time decision, but a recursive process that’s monitored, discussed, and—if needed—paused or stopped entirely. It remains important to protect and provide individualized care to every patient.

Erin Reed laid out an excellent argument on the moderate case against gender-affirming care bans for trans youth.

[mariacallous]

Elon Musk is the richest person in the world—one of the richest in history. But Musk’s power is no longer just tied to the financial wealth derived from Tesla, X, or SpaceX. Musk, by virtue of his close relationship with President Donald Trump, has been given a sweeping mandate to influence policy across the entire U.S. government through the newly founded Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). His life as an entrepreneur sheds important light on his work as a political actor.

Musk has often claimed that physics is at the center of his worldview: He talks about the search for natural first principles as a motivation for his actions in business and life more generally. And “first principles thinking” has become something of a mantra in Musk world. It evokes both rigor and a childlike, innocent approach to any problem, however complex.

The idea is that you’re going to break down any technological problem, whether automobiles or rockets, and you’re going to start from scratch. Then you’re going to derive whatever solution you come up with from very fundamental axioms. And in this process, nothing anyone else has done up to that point, no inherited tradition, will count. In fact, the underlying premise is clearly that all of that inherited thought and practice is bad, old, dusty baggage that we’re better off doing without and moving on from.

There are advantages to this approach, as the demonstrated success of Tesla and SpaceX can attest. But, as any competent car reviewer will tell you, there are also huge downsides. Tesla vehicles do often appear to be engineered by Martians, as though the industry did not have decades of experience in how to set up and optimize and efficiently manufacture the chassis, steering, and brakes of a modern high-performance car.

And when it comes to politics, the advantages of this “start from scratch” approach are far less clear. Musk and his DOGE team have now drawn on his habits of mind to position themselves to destroy government agencies, principally the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and meddle with the very wiring of government in the United States, in the form of the Treasury payments system.

It’s true, of course, that you can derive inspiration for politics and ethics from analogies to physics. Think about the impact of Isaac Newton on modern political thought: the notions of equilibrium in economics, the stability of equilibria—these are ideas derived from physics analogs, mechanics more often than not. Or think about the impact of cybernetics in the early computer age. And this is even more stark when you think about engineering, a close cousin of physics. Vladimir Lenin famously defined communism as Soviet power plus the electrification of Russia. The authoritarian technocracy movement of the 1930s and ’40s drew similar inspiration from engineering. Musk’s maternal grandfather, who would later emigrate from Canada to South Africa, was involved with that movement.

The knock-on effect of these kinds of positions, analogizing physics to politics, is twofold. First, it is likely to be bad physics. Second, even if you can derive an ideology from physics-based analogies, is what you end up with really political? If politics is about argument, disagreement, the play of human emotions and ideas, then deriving one’s politics from engineering or physics analogies can never be taken at face value. Either it is political and acknowledges itself as such—but then the physics and mechanics will have to be acknowledged as no more than metaphor—or it is not politics but an authoritarian technocratic vision that actually seeks to suppress the political.

Musk’s blank-slate approach to policy was preceded by his unprecedented manner of involvement in U.S. politics in the first place. There were many ways of making a lot of money by placing bets on a Trump victory in 2024. But Musk is not just the biggest beneficiary of a discrete Trump trade. Through his donations, through X, and through his personal endorsement, he helped make it happen. He is fully vested in Trump’s political success.

What’s indisputable is that Musk has personally benefited from his political involvement. Today, Musk’s personal net worth is estimated in the $330 billion to $350 billion range; it fluctuates with the stock market, $10 billion up, $10 billion down. As recently as the summer of 2024, his assets were valued at $170 billion and back in the doldrums of 2023 at $130 billion.

What has changed in between? Nothing fundamental about the business outlook for Tesla, which is the core of Musk’s personal wealth. Tesla, in fact, has been having a tough time, as consumers are starting to reject the brand for its newfound association with Trump. The obvious explanation for the more than doubling of Musk’s huge personal wealth was the fact that Trump’s bid for the presidency was successful, Musk was his biggest donor, and he is now perhaps the man who is closest to Trump. His partnership with Trump fuses his personal interests with the country’s own.

There does not have to be any kind of malfeasance. There doesn’t even have to be any conflict of interest. What is good for Trump is good for Musk is good for America: That is how they will imagine it, and they will act accordingly. SpaceX, to name just one example, through its relentless innovation and investment, has already earned a place at the core of the U.S. space program. Trump, who created the U.S. Space Force during his first presidency, could easily expand that program and SpaceX’s place in it. And Musk will think of himself throughout as being on the right side of history.

With what, from his point of view, is a relatively trivial investment, he has demonstrated the force of his vision and is now creating facts on the ground. Arguably, the question is, why hasn’t anyone done this before? Obviously, Trump is uniquely susceptible to this kind of idiosyncratic personal influence. He loves business success. And while no one has had the resources that Musk does, there are still plenty of multi-billionaires out there. Why are their donations to the political system, why is their effort to suborn politics generally, so mealymouthed? Yes, one sees a few millions spent here or there. But Musk bought Twitter and put down $277 million on Trump and other Republicans in the 2024 election, and look at his return! It is a spectacularly successful investment.

The only obvious analogies that come to mind might be the relationship between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Indian oligarchs such as the Ambanis. They made a truly long-term and large-scale investment in a political personality who would change the game in their favor, not just narrowly but in a much broader sense.

You could think of this “investment in politics” as proactively shaping the environment around the vision that also animates Musk’s business ventures—as an enablement of further risk-taking. Or you could think of his intervention in politics more defensively.

Is it better to sit back, stay in your lane, and enjoy your wealth, waiting for history to happen to you? Or is it better to place a serious bet and try somehow to manage the conflict? Musk has clearly opted for the latter route. Are there risks and contradictions? There obviously are. Tesla is hugely exposed in China. It is one of the firm’s largest markets and an even larger share of worldwide production.

Is there any guarantee that this won’t clash with Trump’s trade policy or the geopolitics of more hawkish members of his entourage? Absolutely not. But do you have a better chance to influence the course of events and to find pragmatic fixes that may work for your business if you are inside the administration? Of course you do. Apple, which successfully lobbied for tariff carveouts during the first Trump administration, demonstrated what could be done. Musk is going to go one better. Like Apple CEO Tim Cook, Musk has formidable contacts up and down the Chinese hierarchy. Perhaps he can find some way to square the circle. What Musk doesn’t consider an option is retreating into an imaginary position of neutrality.

There has been much discussion about how Musk’s upbringing in South Africa may account for his affinity for far-right ideology. The willingness of the Trump administration to bully the current government of South Africa over its policies on land redistribution and Black ownership is now apparent. Whether or not it is Musk pulling the strings, there is a broader group of white South Africans around Trump of whom Musk is the most powerful. It is hard to imagine that they don’t shape his views on the topic.

But at a deeper level, it is useful to consider the way in which growing up in the truly protean environment of South African politics in the 1970s and ’80s might have shaped the underlying risk-taking form of Musk’s politics—his understanding of the fungibility of constitutions and of history itself.

His formative years were spent in an environment that was in dramatic flux, with the system of apartheid buckling and apocalyptic scenarios of race war (which are still very much present in South Africa today) overshadowing political life. Everything was up for grabs. No political system could be ruled out. It was not an environment easily conducive to developing a liberal imagination. Musk’s father was reputedly liberal, although in the South African context that meant discussing multicameral parliaments to allow some measure of Black representation. According to Musk, he himself left the country to avoid conscription into the South African military, which was a pillar of apartheid.

Musk, Peter Thiel, and others in their Silicon Valley milieu have in common that they like to “think the unthinkable” about all sorts of things. It connects to the habit of thinking about politics on the basis of scientific axioms. And in a situation like that of late apartheid South Africa, when everything is subject to revision, what else do you do? You have to recur to first principles.

But Musk’s adventures in European right-wing policy suggest his motivations may be less transparent to himself than he would admit. Around the factory he built outside Berlin, he has had some uncomfortable encounters with German politics repeatedly posing resistance to his business plans. Musk is reportedly on unfriendly terms with certain parts of Berlin’s terminally hip party scene. At this point, Musk probably quite likes the idea of disrupting Germany for the sake of retribution. And when you apply first principles to that emotional math, you rapidly arrive at the conclusion that the German far right deserves strong support.

When you see him in conversation with Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Musk comes across as almost naive. In terms of its program, though the AfD is commonly labeled far-right, it is not more right-wing than the Republican Party in the United States. The one difference is history—so Musk has concluded that Germans should worry less about their Nazi past.

What Musk isn’t going to do is tamely follow the example of someone such as Bill Gates, who took his immense fortune earned via Microsoft and poured it into conventional good causes such as global public health and education. Gates is a baby boomer. He cultivates conventional tastes and has a reputable collection of American art. Musk is a poorly socialized, somewhat feral computer kid of the 1970s and ’80s who, through maverick energy, has made himself the richest man in the world. Thinking outside the box is simply the only way he knows.

As for what Musk’s endgame at DOGE is, and where his political philosophy ultimately leads, it’s not clear anyone knows—including Musk himself.

Hostile audits in the form of invasions of government infrastructure and physical occupations of office buildings are not unknown in political history. In the later stages of the eurocrisis, for instance, inspectors from the so-called troika—the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund—made visits to Greek government buildings and accessed their computers and files to make determinations about the shape of the country’s future spending.

But that took years and followed a procedure. What we have seen in the first weeks of the second Trump administration is an assault more in the style of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. With a budget of $40 billion, USAID is a small part of the U.S. government machine, but it accounts for more than 20 percent of official development assistance worldwide. The destruction of that agency is like nothing we’ve ever seen in recent history in terms of governmental change.

The teams that he is using to drive change comprise a mixture of teenage engineers, staff on loan from his various businesses, and high-flying lawyers. Layoffs have hit nearly every federal agency, from the Education Department to the Small Business Administration to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If there is a plan they are implementing, it seems haphazard.

But there may be a strategy. Musk seems to want to break things. He may think that disrupting the U.S. government will unlock huge, undreamed-of efficiencies. He may even imagine displacing much of the government with private enterprise, as SpaceX has effectively done with NASA. But most recently, he has resorted to an ugly gardening metaphor to describe his vision:

I think we do need to delete entire agencies, as opposed to leave part of them behind. … It’s kind of like leaving a weed. If you don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back. But if you remove the roots of the weed, it doesn’t stop weeds from ever going back, but it makes it harder.

A gardener, of course, is someone who has cultivated the practical knowledge to identify weeds, to differentiate them from plants in need of tending—precisely not someone, in other words, who works according to first principles.

[i-merani]

Lawfare and discrimination against Palestinians by Arab countries

Hey I want to talk about something that is a very uncomfortable truth regarding Arab countries and their attitude towards Palestinians. Arab countries, which claim that they support Palestine, only do so to fulfill their own self interest. The reality of their "support" is different. Palestinians are not allowed to be in certain arab countries, they are not allowed to get citizenship, residence permit, pasport. Palestinians cannot fully live in Arab countries.

First read this info about Palestinians in Israel: All persons legally resident and registered, born or naturalised in Palestine under the British Mandate (1919-1948) were British Protected Persons, holders of British (Palestine) passports. Citizenship in both Jewish and Arab states – proposed by the Partition Plan set out in UN Res. 181 in 1947 – was meant to be granted to all inhabitants. However, when Britain promptly ended its mandate on 15 May 1948, it was left to the successor state, Israel, to determine entitlement to nationality.

Here are some facts:

Today more than half of the eight million or so Palestinians are considered to be de jure stateless persons. These fall broadly into three categories:

• holders of the 'Refugee Travel Document' (RTD) issued by Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq and some other Arab countries (not a pasport/citizenship)

• holders of nationalities of convenience - mainly temporary Jordanian passports (not a pasport/citizenship)

• holders of the Palestinian passport issued by the Palestinian Authority (PA) which is considered as a travel document pending formation of a fully-fledged Palestinian state.

Policies of Arab countries regarding Palestinians:

Two main principles - set out in an Arab League protocol signed in Casablanca in 19651 - have determined the treatment of Palestinian refugees in host Arab states:

1. Granting Palestinian refugees full citizenship rights but denying them naturalisation (meaning, if a Palestinian is born in a certain Arab state, they will get a citizenship but a Palestinian not born in e.g. Egypt, will not get a citizenship even if they've lived there for 20 years)

2. Issuing them with Refugee Travel Documents (RTD) in order to maintain their refugee status (again, not granting citizenship)

But protocol was not followed through by some Arab countries, including Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Meaning that Palestinians were not only denied possibility of citizenship, but even their refugee statuses (RTD).

Additionally, Palestinians were expelled en masse from Kuwait in 1991 and from Libya in 1995. Palestinians in Iraq had to endure acts of vengeance including killings, evacuation and deportation.

Instititional discrimination against Palestinians in Arab countries:

The legal status, residency and civil rights of Palestinian communities in the Arab World are increasingly uncertain, particularly in Lebanon and Egypt where they are denied rights to secure residency, employment, property, communal interaction and family unification (this part is very similar how Jews were treated in Europe).

Procedures to allow nonresidents to apply for naturalisation in Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia do not apply to stateless Palestinians.

Palestinian refugees in Jordan have Jordanian nationality but are denied equal political participation and subjected to subtle forms of discrimination. Jordanian authorities refuse to offer naturalisation to those Palestinians who at the time of their displacement in 1967 did not hold Tordanian passports. Some 60,000 stateless Palestinians, mainly from Gaza and original holders of Egyptian RTDs, were allowed to stay but have been denied any civil rights and most are confined to a camp near the northern city of Jarash.

What is my point?

I want to demonstrate how Arab countries are directly harming Palestinians. While Arab countries express their support for Palestine, restricting their freedom of movement by elaborate rules of law that deny them possibility of pursuing better life outside Palestine is a blatant violation of human rights.

At this moment, while Israel is bombing Palestine, Egypt and Jordan are refusing to open their borders to Palestinians fleeing the bombs.

Arab countries are physically trapping Palestinians in Palestine not giving them proper means to live in the Arab world outside Palestine.

Palestinians don't have anywhere to go and that is not a hyperbole, it is a deliberate lawfare against them by their "brothers" from the Arab world. While Israel is destroying Palestine, it is also important to see how much harm the policies of Arab countries cause regular Palestinians who want to flee the conflict zone and live a better life.