Tumgik
#FDR no more
betty-bourgeoisie · 11 months
Text
Probably my most unpopular Alfred headcanon is that he didn't participate in the roaring 20's at all because he was busy being a farmer in Oklahoma that decade
194 notes · View notes
fraseris · 9 months
Text
one thing about me is that im obsessed with 20th century politics and counterculture movements
2 notes · View notes
zerodaryls · 1 year
Text
this is probably an unpopular opinion but I really think a lot of phobias could be overcome if people took the time to intentionally trigger themselves (i.e. exposure therapy).
before I go any further, I'm not fucking saying that triggering other people's phobias is okay. I'm not saying "I'm intentionally not tagging topics that are widely known to be triggers because y'all just need to suck it up and cope". if you trigger someone on purpose you're a fucking asshole.
but I do think that we coddle ourselves too much, especially in online spaces. I've seen trigger lists on Discord servers that are a mile long. and I know a lot of triggers pertain to PTSD and other issues, and that's totally valid and not something I'm qualified to address. but that's not what I'm talking about here.
I'm talking about certain types of irrational phobias (not things like an intense fear of assault, or other phobias that are based in more realistic concerns -- I've got those, too, and I doubt that "exposure therapy" would help anyone get over those fears; that's what professional therapy is for).
I'm talking about things we have no real business being afraid of, lol.
like, for me, it was spiders (and many other types of bugs; still working on learning to be okay with some of them!)
I think a lot of trigger lists end up serving as a way for people to just keep reinforcing and living in their irrational phobias.
but like...
a phobia is not a life sentence!
estimated reading time under the cut: 4.5 minutes
I swear some people cling to phobias like it's a core part of their identity. I know I did that to an extent with my arachnophobia.
but I'm happy to announce that I'm not afraid of spiders anymore.
I actually really fucking love them and am constantly looking around my home to see if there's a new spider buddy chillin' on the wall.
and before anyone comes in with their skepticism and tries to say "oh then maybe you just never really had arachnophobia to begin with", I know myself and my experiences best. I had arachnophobia.
if someone so much as talked about their own experiences with spiders, I would tense up.
on multiple occasions I would end up shaking and unable to sleep if I spotted a spider anywhere in my home, let alone in my room.
I once abandoned my apartment for an entire day and stayed at my mom's house because there was a big hairy spider outside. it wasn't even in the apartment! it was on the balcony! I rarely even went on the balcony, but I was so fucking arachnophobic back then that I was paranoid that this 8-legged buddy would somehow manage to squeeze in through a crack in the door and... honestly idek what I was afraid would happen after that... it would be in my home?? so??
yeah, I definitely had arachnophobia.
even just photos or videos of spiders triggered me. my hands would literally start shaking if I saw a picture of, like, some Big Boi Spider on a wall in Australia or something, lmao. I would get heart palpitations. I even teared up a few times. and mind, this was in my 20s. I was an adult crying over an image of a spider.
eventually I realized how much my arachnophobia affected me, and I remembered some cheesy Pinterest quote about "interrupting anxiety with curiosity" or something, and I decided to give it a try.
I decided to become curious about spiders. when I would see a spider, I'd ask, "what kind of spider is that?"
I started googling descriptions of spiders when I encountered them, and trying to figure out what exact species I was looking at.
it was uncomfortable as fuck the first dozen or so times. I still experienced extreme anxiety. but I kept at it, and reminded myself to be curious. what was it that I was actually afraid of? how realistic was that fear? is that type of spider even venomous? what does their venom do? are they likely to bite, or do they avoid humans as much as possible? (fun fact: very rarely will any species of spider bite a human just for funsies. they straight up don't want to fuck with us!)
you can show me just about any picture of a spider at this point and I'm good. I will even seek them out! I follow a bunch of spider accounts on social media and my suggested posts are at least 50% videos of freaky lil bugs (affectionate).
my dad bought me spider stuffed animals as gifts for my birthday and Christmas. he said he never imagined that I'd want something like that in my life. neither did I!
if you'd told me even just a year ago that I would overcome my phobia of spiders (and moths! nearly forgot about how much moths used to freak me tf out), I wouldn't have believed you.
but here I am.
my next mission is to conquer trypophobia. and I'll be honest, I'm not looking forward to it. I fucking hate seeing clusters of holes n' shit, it really freaks me out. but because those kinds of patterns aren't always avoidable, it'd be really great if I could encounter them without having a panic attack. so, I'm going to be forcing myself to look a little longer every time I see that shit.
ditto pregnancy; I've had severe tokophobia since I was a teen. it's not fucking contributing to my life, and now my best friend's wife is pregnant, and I wanna be able to cheer them on during this exciting journey! I don't wanna be grimacing every time they share updates! they're gonna be moms, for fuck's sake, and my dumbass irrational fear has no business getting in the way of that joy (especially since we need more examples of queer joy and queer families to celebrate right now)!
so, the tokophobia's gotta go. any fear I encounter in myself, I want to do my damndest to work through it, not avoid ever being triggered. I want to have more confidence in myself than that.
and yeah, I know, not all phobias are the same. and I'm sure we can come up with dozens of excuses to wallow in our fear.
but like. I truly believe that Fear is enemy no. 1 in life. that behind every evil thing humans have ever done, you can usually track it all back to some underlying Fear that they hadn't learned how to cope with.
and obviously I'm not saying that your fear of bugs or holes or pregnant people is going to make you commit atrocities, lmao.
but like. for me, personally, seeing the damage that fear does to the human spirit... I don't want that shit anywhere on me.
I want to go through life knowing that I'm bold and brave and that I consistently choose to stare my discomfort in the face and tell it that it doesn't have power over me.
if I'm gonna have a phobia of anything, it's gonna be fear itself.
2 notes · View notes
dancingpieces · 5 days
Text
In my dream last night I got a dollar coin as change or something, and it was a brand new commemorative coin for LGBT rights. It was so big (so maybe not actually a dollar coin?) And was slightly holographic and so shiny so it looked different as you turned it!!! It had a light rainbow sheen as you moved it and it was so gay and beautiful, wish it was real, lol.
1 note · View note
anarchocasism · 10 months
Text
“leftist” has become such a watered down term and i think its bc people are getting introduced to stuff online (great!) but not really looking at leftist ideologies much past that (less great!). if you are a “lefitst” and you have only been introduced to leftist ideologies through social media i am begging you to research them on your own. not bc it will change your mind about leftism and not bc i think you have to read the Entirety Of Das Kapital to Get It but bc many people just hear the little bit of stuff online and do not genuinely understand the framework and meaning of it. i am SO glad you are interested in leftism but tumblr and tiktok and youtube are not good sources for learning and understanding ideologies and adopting a whole new framework. and a LOT of people on social media are only really repeating other shit they heard on social media. they are playing telephone and now being a bernie supporter makes you a “leftist” and i cannot stress enough that bernie and aoc’s ideologies and policies are not leftist.
0 notes
zippers · 10 months
Text
AAAAA it's so thrilling to watch a documentary in subject I've read a ton of books about bc I'm recognizing the names almost everyone being interviewed. wish that happened with the new history channel FDR doc because I was yelling at the TV when this one historian very firmly called my cousin Eleanor's lesbian lover her "friend" 😭
0 notes
bloomingonionbitch · 10 months
Text
(manifesting getting this writing/editing gig that's split between remote and D.C.)
1 note · View note
robertreich · 6 months
Video
youtube
From Robber Barons to Bezos: Is History Repeating Itself?
Ultra-wealthy elites…Political corruption…Vast inequality…
These problems aren’t new — in the late 1800s they dominated the country during America’s first Gilded Age.
We overcame these abuses back then, and we can do it again.
Mark Twain coined the moniker “The Gilded Age” in his 1873 novel to describe the era in American history characterized by corruption and inequality that was masked by a thin layer of prosperity for a select few.
The end of the 19th century and start of the 20th marked a time of great invention — bustling railroads, telephones, motion pictures, electricity, automobiles — which changed American life forever.
But it was also an era of giant monopolies — oil, railroad, steel, finance — run by a small group of men who had grown rich beyond anything America had ever seen.
They were known as “robber barons” because they ran competitors out of business, exploited workers, charged customers exorbitant prices, and lived like royalty as a result.
Money consumed politics. Robber barons and their lackeys donated bundles of cash to any lawmaker willing to do bidding on their behalf. And when lobbying wasn’t enough, the powerful turned to bribery — resulting in some of the most infamous political scandals in American history.
The gap between the rich and poor in America reached astronomical levels. Large numbers of Americans lived in squalor.
Anti-immigrant sentiment raged, leading to the enactment of racist laws to restrict immigration. And voter suppression, largely aimed at Black men who had recently won the right to vote, was rampant.
The era was also marked by dangerous working conditions. Children often as young as 10, but sometimes younger, worked brutal hours in sweatshops. Workers trying to organize labor unions were attacked and killed.
It seemed as if American capitalism was out of control, and American democracy couldn’t do anything about it because it was bought and paid for by the rich.
But Americans were fed up, and they demanded reform. Many took to the streets in protest.
Investigative journalists, often called “muckrakers” then, helped amplify their cries by exposing what was occurring throughout the country.
And a new generation of political leaders rose to end the abuses.
Politicians like Teddy Roosevelt, who warned that, “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power,” could destroy American democracy.
After becoming president in 1901, Roosevelt used the Sherman Antitrust Act to break up dozens of powerful corporations, including the giant Northern Securities Company which had come to dominate railroad transportation through a series of mergers.
Seeking to limit the vast fortunes that were creating a new American aristocracy, Congress enacted a progressive income tax through the 16th Amendment, as well as two wealth taxes.
The first wealth tax, in 1916, was the estate tax — a tax on the wealth someone accumulated during their lifetime, paid by the heirs who inherited it. The second tax on wealth, enacted in 1922, was a capital gains tax — a tax on the increased value of assets, paid when those assets were sold.
The reformers of the Gilded Age also stopped corporations from directly giving money to politicians or political candidates.
And then Teddy Roosevelt’s fifth cousin — you may have heard of him — continued the work through his New Deal programs — creating Social Security, unemployment insurance, a 40-hour workweek, and requiring that employers bargain in good faith with labor unions.
But following the death of FDR and the end of World War II, when America was building the largest middle class the world had ever seen — we seemed to forget about the abuses of the Gilded Age.
Now, more than a century later, America has entered a second Gilded Age.
It is also a time of extraordinary invention.
And a time when monopolies are taking over vast swathes of the economy, so we must renew antitrust enforcement to bust up powerful companies.
Now, another generation of robber barons is accumulating unprecedented money and power. So once again, we must tax these exorbitant fortunes.  
Wealthy individuals and big corporations are once again paying off lawmakers, sending them billions to conduct their political campaigns, even giving luxurious gifts to Supreme Court justices. So we need to protect our democracy from Big Money, just as we did before.
Voter suppression runs rampant in the states as during the first Gilded Age, making it harder for people of color to participate in what’s left of our democracy. So it’s once again critical to defend and expand voting rights.
Working people are once again being exploited and abused, child labor is returning, unions are busted, the poor are again living in unhealthy conditions, homelessness is on the rise, and the gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else is nearly as large as in the first Gilded Age. So once again we need to protect the rights of workers to organize, invest in social safety nets, and revive guardrails to protect against the abuses of great wealth and power.
The question now is the same as it was at the start of the 20th century: Will we fight for an economy and a democracy that works for all rather than the few?
We’ve done it before. We can — and must — do it again.
617 notes · View notes
Text
The Poll
So, for those who don’t know, I put up a poll of, “Who was the worst American President?” The list was FDR, Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon. It got up to about 13k notes before I deleted it, because I was tired of the notes clogging up my feed. And the results were... telling.
About 75-80% of all the notes were, “Where is Reagan/Andrew Jackson?!?” Many of the rest, though, can be seen below:
Tumblr media
What this tells me is that more than ten thousand people didn’t have an education; they had an indoctrination.
Tumblr media
You want to hear it? All right, buckle up, because it’s time for a stroll down memory lane.
Why was FDR a bad president?
It is almost hard to know where to begin with this. Let’s start with one of the most basic ones: The belief that FDR got us out of the Depression.
Point of fact, No the fuck he did not.
Making American Depressed
If you ask almost any historian or economist, they will tell you flat-out that not only did the New Deal not end the Great Depression, but that it made it significantly longer and worse than it would have been otherwise. Hoover bears some of the blame for this, but the pseudo-socialist dogshit that was the New Deal bears the brunt of the blame for this one.
The stock market crashed in late October, 1929. Two months later, unemployment peaked at 9%. Over the next several months, unemployment started to fall, down to 5-6% by the spring of the next year. Half a year after the crash, unemployment had not hit double digits. Hoover’s intervention, though, did cause unemployment to reach double digits. Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and took office in 1933, and unemployment did not fall out of double digits for the remainder of the 1930′s. The thing that actually pulled the US out of the Depression was the second World War; turns out that removing roughly 12 million people from the labor force to go and fight does wonders for unemployment numbers. FDR even said that Doctor New Deal was replaced by Doctor Win-The-War.
This was hardly the first economic downturn in American history. For the first 150 years of this country, there were downturns all the time. And what the government did was nothing, and the economy recovered on its own. But Roosevelt represents the first massive large-scale intervention in the economy. And government intervention in the economy slows economic recovery; when you have no idea what the government is going to do tomorrow in regards to the economy, it’s hard to make smart financial decisions, so you just don’t bother. After all, why do anything if tomorrow, the rules of the game are going to change?
Separation of Powers Who?
FDR issued more executive orders than any other President of the 20th century. He may, in fact, have issued more than all the other Presidents of the 20th century combined. Rather than letting Congress, the legislative branch of government, you know, legislate, he preferred to try to do everything himself.
The President is supposed to be the weakest branch of the government, but Roosevelt did everything he could to try to establish its supremacy over the other branches. When Congress didn’t give him his way, he used executive orders. When the Supreme Court challenged some of his acts as unconstitutional, his response was to threaten to have them replaced, or to simply pack the court with judges more sympathetic to his aims. This is a man who was openly contemptuous of the concept of the rule of law.
Here’s a fun entry from the notes:
Tumblr media
Hey, you want to talk about fascists? Actual, honest-to-goodness Fascists, not just the modern definition (i.e. anyone a nanometer to the right of Noam Chomsky)? Let’s talk about the originals. Let’s talk about the inventor of Fascism, Benito motherfucking Mussolini. And how FDR openly admired him, and was “deeply impressed by what he has accomplished”, calling Fascism the “cleanest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery [he had] ever seen”, and that it made him “envious”. And Mussolini, for his part, said of Roosevelt that, “Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices … Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism.”
When the guy who fucking invented Fascism is saying that he thinks that you are also doing Fascism, then maybe you’re not a good person.
Concentration- I Mean, Internment Camps
And just like his buddies on the other side of the Atlantic, right when World War 2 kicked off, Roosevelt thought it would be a good idea to take “undesirables” and throw them into prison camps. Roughly 20 thousand Italian- and German-Americans, American citizens, were thrown into camps, simply for the crime of having ancestors from countries we were at war with. And then, of course, there’s the 120 thousand Japanese-Americans who were likewise rounded up and put into prison camps, two thirds of whom were natural-born American citizens.
Almost 150 thousand American citizens, thrown into literal concentration camps, without the bother and expense of due process, stripped of their constitutional rights simply on the basis of race.
As for the concentration camps set up in Europe by the Nazis, however? Despite being told of their existence by people who had escaped, as well as journalists and lawyers from Germany, once American planes gained the ability to attack those camps, to shut them down? FDR refused to grant them permission to do so.
Commander in Thief
Executive Order 6102 outlawed the private ownership of gold, allowing the government to confiscate all of it. Once that was accomplished, the Gold Reserve Act allowed him to change the value of gold, debasing America’s currency (which was on a gold standard at the time), which permitted him to steal literally billions of dollars from American citizens, without any compensation.
World War, Too
There is evidence to suggest that Roosevelt knew about the imminent attack on America by Japan in December of 1941. He discussed with several high-ranking people in the War Department, and in his own cabinet, how to get Japan to fire the first shot in the war, so that he could get America involved. It would make sense: His oil embargo was designed to provoke a Japanese response, so as to draw America into the war. And once America was in the war, ordered the Philippines to be abandoned, outright lying that there was an army waiting to retake it once it had been conquered by Japan.
And as the war dragged on, he got quite cozy with Uncle Joe, Stalin himself. He helped to repatriate two million people to Russia, who very much did not want to go back, many of them ending up either in the gulags, or simply killed outright. And his constant concessions to Stalin helped the Soviet Union hold on to eastern Europe, setting the stage for the Cold War. Even when he was informed of Soviet spies within the American government, and provided evidence of their disloyalty and subversion, he simply let them keep at it.
Racism, Racism, and more Racism
Remember how you cheered when lynching was made a federal crime a few months ago, and asked why it hadn’t been done before now? Well, the main reason was good ol’ FDR himself. A bill was proposed in the Congress which would have made lynching a federal crime, and Roosevelt refused to pass it.
Or what about during the Olympic games in Berlin, when black athletes from America took home multiple gold medals? Roosevelt invited the white athletes to the White House, but not a single black one. Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals, said, “Hitler didn’t snub me --- it was [Roosevelt] who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”
And then there was his nomination of a KKK member to the Supreme Court; Hugo Black, who had zero judicial experience, was nominated simply because he supported the New Deal.
He also was of the opinion that America was, and ought to remain, a white and Protestant country, and that too many Jews was inherently a bad thing, because of how distasteful he found them. He boasted that there was no Jewish blood in his veins, as a mark of pride. He even went so far as to turn away ships of Jewish refugees, fleeing Nazi tyranny in Europe.
In conclusion
FDR was a massive piece of shit. He massively overstepped his constitutionally-appointed bounds at every available opportunity, massively expanding the power of the Presidency at the expense of all other parts of government, and at the expense of individual liberty. He was openly racist and anti-Semitic. His economic policies brought ruin upon the American economy. He openly praised fascism right up until the moment that it was no longer politically expedient to do so, and switched to deferring to authoritarian communism instead. Almost everything that you hate about the modern United States can be traced directly back to this one man.
The fact that he is remembered as not just a good President, but one of the best Presidents, shows how utterly broken American education is.
Tumblr media
1K notes · View notes
vacuously-true · 15 days
Text
Tbh I'm getting really really tired of the "Trump and Biden are mentally unfit to be president, look at all these videos of them mixing up words and stuttering and mispronouncing stuff!" thing. Actually the whole "they're too old so they're unfit because they're unwell!" thing sucks imo. Maybe they're too old and so they can't be invested in what the future of the country needs, maybe they're too old and they're out of touch with what young people need, that's an age-related argument I'll listen to, although I think policy would be much much more important to talk about.
But the health/sanity stuff? Especially based around the way they speak? Or walk? Shut up. People with physical and neuro disabilities are not inherently incompetent. Trump slurs words and people say that's evidence he can't be president. We could have an amazing president with the worst stutter you've ever heard because that doesn't have shit to do with 95% of the job of governing. We could have an amazing president who can't walk and/or uses a wheelchair. FDR regularly used a wheelchair! Biden trips up the stairs and y'all are like haha he's so old he can't be president because he's bad at walking, do you hear yourselves?
I think this is one of those things where like Trump and Biden don't hear you making fun of their vocal/ambulatory oddities but aaaaaaall your friends with the same experiences do hear you, and you're telling on yourself regarding how you actually feel about disabled people. Think about this stuff!
If you're gonna criticize them, as you should, pick something meaningful. Don't harp on morally neutral things they and many many many other people can't control about their bodies. Come ooooooon
155 notes · View notes
Text
Incomplete vs. overshoot
Tumblr media
I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in Seattle (Feb 26) with Neal Stephenson, then Portland, Phoenix and more!
Tumblr media
You know the "horseshoe theory," right? "The far-left and the far-right, rather than being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear continuum of the political spectrum, closely resemble each other, analogous to the way that the opposite ends of a horseshoe are close together":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
It's a theory that only makes sense if you don't know much about the right and the left and what each side wants out of politics.
Take women's suffrage. The early suffragists ("suffragettes" in the UK) were mostly interested in votes for affluent, white women – not women as a body. Today's left criticizes the suffrage movement on the basis that they didn't go far enough:
https://www.npr.org/2011/03/25/134849480/the-root-how-racism-tainted-womens-suffrage
Contrast that with Christian Dominionists – the cranks who think that embryos are people (though presumably not for the purpose of calculating a state's electoral college vote? Though it would be cool if presidential elections turned on which side of a state line a fertility clinic's chest-freezer rested on):
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/how-alabama-ivf-ruling-was-influenced-christian-nationalism-on-the-media?tab=summary
These people are part of a far-right coalition that wants to abolish votes for women. As billionaire far-right bagman Peter Thiel wrote that he thought it was a mistake to let women vote at all:
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/
Superficially, there's some horseshoe theory action going on here. The left thinks the suffragists were wrong. The right thinks they were wrong, too. Therefore, the left and the right agree!
Well, they agree that the suffragists were wrong, but for opposite reasons – and far, far more importantly, they totally disagree about what they want. The right wants a world where no women can vote. The left wants a world where all women can vote. The idea that the right and the left agree on women's suffrage is, as the physicists say, "not even wrong."
It's the kind of wrong that can only be captured by citing scripture, specifically, A Fish Called Wanda, 6E, 79: "The central message of Buddhism is not 'Every man for himself.' And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up."
Or take the New Deal. While the New Deal set its sites on liberating workers from precarity, abuse and corruption, the Dealers – like the suffragists – had huge gaps in their program, omitting people of color, indigenous people, women, queer people, etc. There are lots of leftists who criticize the New Deal on this basis: it didn't go far enough:
https://livingnewdeal.org/new-deal-and-race/
But for the past 40 years, America has seen a sustained, vicious assault on New Deal programs, from Social Security to Medicare to food stamps to labor rights to national parks, funded by billionaires who want to bring back the Gilded Age and turn us all into forelock-tugging plebs:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/06/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom/
If you only view politics as a game of elementary school cliques, you might say that the left and the right are meeting again. The left says Roosevelt got it wrong with the New Deal (because he left out so many people). The right says FDR was wrong for doing the New Deal in the first place. Therefore, the left and the right agree, right?
Obviously wrong. Obviously. Again, the important thing is why the left and the right think the New Deal deserves criticism. The important thing is what the left and the right want. The left wants universal liberation. The right wants us all in economic chains. They do not agree.
It's not always just politics, either. Take the old, good internet. That was an internet defined by technological self-determination, a wild and wooly internet where there were few gatekeepers, where disfavored groups could find each other and make common cause, where users who were threatened by the greed of the shareholders behind big services could install blockers, mods, alternative clients and other "adversarial interoperability" tools that seized the means of computation.
Today's enshitternet – "five giant websites, filled with screenshots of the other four" (h/t Tom Eastman) – is orders of magnitude more populous than that old, good internet. The enshitternet has billions of users, and they are legally – and technologically – prevented from taking any self-help measures when the owners of services change them to shift value from users to themselves:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/
The anti-enshittification movement rightly criticizes the old, good internet because it wasn't inclusive enough. It was a system almost exclusively hospitable to affluent, privileged people – the people who least needed the liberatory power of technology.
Likewise pro-enshittification monopolists – billionaires and their useful idiots – deplore the old, good internet because it gave its users too much power. For them, ad-blocking, alternative clients, mods, reverse-engineering and so on were all bugs, not features. For them, the enshitternet is great because businesses can literally criminalize taking action to protect yourself from their predatory impulses:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model
Superficially, it seems like the pro- and anti-enshittification forces agree – they both agree that the old, good internet was a mistake. But the difference that matters here is that the pro-enshittification side wants everyone mired in the enshitternet forever, living with what Jay Freeman calls "Felony contempt of business-model." By contrast, the disenshittification side wants a new, good internet that gives every user – not just a handful of techies – the power to decide how the digital systems they work use, and to be able to alter or reconfigure them to suit their own needs.
The horsehoe theory only makes sense if you don't take into account the beliefs and goals of each side. Politics aren't just a matter of who you agree with on a given issue – the real issue is what you're trying to accomplish.
Tumblr media
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/26/horsehoe-crab/#substantive-disagreement
122 notes · View notes
betty-bourgeoisie · 3 months
Text
All my love to Eleanor Roosevelt for being a bitch who hated food. Like damn girl, me too.
6 notes · View notes
chronically-ghosted · 8 months
Text
Tumblr media
the only thing we have to fuck is fear itself
rating: 18+
pairing: max phillips x f!reader
word count: 5309
summary: You get drunk at a happy hour and tell Max to his face you don’t find him scary at all. He takes that personally.
warnings/tags: drinking, like two seconds of scary vibes, smut, (secret) established relationship, work hard, play hard, have secret sex with your coworker even harder
a/n: I’m so sorry to FDR for butchering his quote for the sake of a title, but i like to think that horny bastard would have loved my smut.
🤍AO3 Link 🤍 Masterlist 🤍 Get notified when I post new works!
Despite working at a place that was quite literally soul-sucking, your coworkers could throw one hell of a happy-hour. 
There wasn’t a bartender in a ten mile radius from the office who didn’t know you all by name, didn’t shout a greeting over the tightly-packed house the instant you walked in. Rarely was it just a single crew member at the bars – you often got accused of moving in a pack like a five-headed hydra that could drink double its own weight in liquor, beer, and frosés – and being only two-fifths human, the Monster Squad was an alcoholic force to be reckoned with.
Maybe because you actively promoted unity amongst the species, like poster children for positive and “non-toxic human-demon relationships” HR kept encouraging in their Monday-Funday email blasts, but your little group was something of a legend in the area. You thought any notoriety was more likely due more to your faces plastered all over the bars’ trivia night winner boards, but in the office, people tended to stare. Trish, a siren from Santa Barbara, loved the attention, said it was good for her skin – gave her a “dewy” look. Nita, the only other human in your group besides you, disagreed with Ken (a quarter leprechaun on his mother’s side) when Ken claimed the whispering came from the sheer volume of nonsense that started around 4PM in the office on Fridays and continued until you all left the office. Ken was of the belief that the notoriety was actually infamy – to which he was promptly booed and had to buy the next round. 
And yet, to yourself, to the quiet conversations you had in the bathroom mirror after two long island ice teas and whatever was in what the centaur bartender at Lucky’s called an “Ass Whooping”, you suspected there might be another reason the Monster Squad even had a name at all. Within your own fields, each of you were respectable – Ken and Trish were both heads of marketing and Nita oversaw a considerable team of engineers, with you of course a department leader over in legal – one member of your group was, let’s say, more well-known. 
Well-known because he was the flashiest, the loudest, and certainly the most demonic of you all: Max Phillips, VP of sales, money-maker extraordinaire, and a fan-favorite amongst your Overlords, the rest of the sales team, and anyone with working and interested sex organs in the near vicinity. 
To your complete and utter annoyance.
You don’t quite remember how you all came together, who brought who into the group, and when it was unanimously decided that you’d stop snatching up office workers like limes at $5 margarita night after Trish, but it was Max who kept you together, who set up the group chat (somehow mysteriously gathering all of your phone numbers after a very late night), who bullied anyone who responded to his weekly “winner winner liquid dinner” texts every Friday morning with a tepid maybe into coming out that night. He already seemed to know half of the bartenders in the city, all of whom were happy to send over a free round of tequila shots as a “thank you to Max’s friends”. While you’d never look a gift vampire in the mouth, you were suspicious of his influence. Was that vampire hypnosis real? Did he have a pack of lesser, baby vamps to send out to tenderize the hunting grounds?
One thing’s for sure, he definitely didn’t scare them into it. 
“Has Halloween, like, changed for anyone else?” Nita grouched over her second Sangria Spritzer two hours into another fantabulous happy hour at Heel Clicks. The four of you were huddled into your comically small booth up on the landing near the back bar – of course there were other seats available but this had the best view, the closest access to your favorite bartender, and at some point, the shoulder-to-shoulder proximity served as a way to counteract the tipsy swaying. 
Trish leaned around Ken, her beautiful blue eyes sparkling with curiosity. 
“What do you mean?”
“I dunno,” Nita shrugged hopelessly. “It used to be one of my favorite holidays when I was a kid. I loved the candy, the costumes – all of it. But I really liked being scared the most.”
Ken sorted into his old-fashioned. “Well, if you’re still scared of things you were as a kid, Nit, I think you’ve got a bigger problem than seasonal preference.”
She elbows him and he knocks into Trish.
“Not like that . . . but, like, monster movies aren’t really scary anymore? I mean, I used to watch Ginger Snaps religiously around Halloween, but, uh, now that I know an actual werewolf and he’s the nicest little old man in accounting, I dunno . . . it’s just not the same.” 
“Sorry to burst your bubble on monsters,” Ken shrugged. “But I personally cannot relate. As a member of the Free Folk, my people have always been welcomed, seen as bringers of good will towards man.”
“You know there’s eight movies where a leprechaun murders literally dozens of teenagers, right?” You turned to Ken over Nita, your entire right buttcheek hanging off the edge of the booth. 
“Oh, yeah, baby Jennifer Aniston,” Trish mused, thinking. “If that’s what your uncle looks like, Ken, then I posit Halloween is still fucking creepy.”
“Halloween is definitely creepy and it sucks.” Your ringleader has returned with electric-green jello shots. Max Phillips carried a tray with one hand, his immaculate blue jacket gone to display firm forearms underneath his white, rolled-back sleeves. “Bunch up, kiddies, Daddy’s back with treats.” 
Half the group groaned, the other squealed in delight.
Max hip-bumped you, his ravenous cologne immediately making you think unwise thoughts, as he pushed his way onto the bench absolutely not made for this many people. He looked back at you as he passed out the drinks.
“Now why are we all in agreement that Halloween is a lame holiday?” 
“Nita claims that because she personally knows a werewolf – Ned, right? – she’s not scared of monster movies anymore.”
Max scoffed. “Well, there’s your problem right there. Werewolves were never scary to begin with.”
“What monster movies have you been watching?” Nita gaped at him. “Maybe it’s bad representation, but all the movie werewolves can tear you to shreds!”
Ken nodded solemnly. “This is why affirmative action is so important.” 
Trish smacked him over the back of the head. 
“So, what?” Max continued, crunching up the jello in its plastic cup. “Now that you know me, a vampire, you think all Dracula movies give blood-suckers a bad rap?”
“No, being a human-sized mosquito with too much hair gel is doing that all on its own.” You smirked, dead-eyed, at him. Behind you, Ken and Trish snorted so hard they almost spilled their drinks. 
Max narrowed his eyes at you, in a look he only gave you when you wouldn’t let him ease around legal loopholes “for the good of the business”. Only Nita seemed to be oblivious. 
“That’s a good point, Max.” She thoughtfully stirred her jello with her pinky, unsticking it from the sides of her cup. “I mean, I guess I never watched that many vampire movies to begin with.”
Max broke his heated staring contest with you to look around at Nita, elbow pressing up into your chest as he leaned forward on the table. “I can promise you, doll face, vampires have been and always will be more terrifying and lethal than werewolves.”
“Not the argument I think you want to make, mate,” Ken murmured as you shifted yourself to face Max entirely. 
“Oh, yeah? Enlighten us all –,”
“Nope,” Trish called down the row, “we’re taking this shot before you two get into it again.”
“To Ned!” Ken yelled. 
“To Ned!” 
Plastic crunched, tongues slurped, as jello ungracefully slipped into every open mouth down the bench. You licked your lip, tip of your tongue green. Max watched the movement out of the corner of his eye. 
“So, enlighten us, Max, why should we be so afraid of you?” 
Max grinned out the side of his mouth. “One, I’ve seen more bite out of a pomeranian than one of those Tribbles. And two, whatever-wolves can only get it up once a month. I’m all monster, all the time, baby.”
At this, everyone groaned.
“Dollar to the Dick Jar!” Trish smacked her hand on the table.
“Here, here!”
Max pouted as he took a dollar out of his wallet and slammed it into the center of the table, payment towards tips or the bill or whoever suffered the most due to The Dick. 
“Face it, buzz,” you shrugged as he put his wallet away. “You’re just not scary any more, if you ever were.”
“Is that right?” 
Fuck, you were in a lot of trouble. Beneath the table, his thigh soaked yours in heat. 
“That’s right.”
“You know what is really scary?” Ken muttered, digging around in his crushed up for the last remnants of jello. “Kelpies.”
“Ah – yes! They’ve got sloppy fangs covered in algae!”
“Hey – that’s my cousin you’re talking about!”
Tumblr media
Heel Clicks was hands down one of your favorite bars in the area. Devoted to the local music scene in the area, the vibe was a mix of old 70s rock bands, modern steel, and whatever justified lots of mounted horns and hairy cow-skin stools. The drinks were great, seasonal too, and there was always live music on the patio out back. In a twist that you found particularly cool, the old rum-runners tunnels had been converted to comfortably spacious bathrooms in the basement. Behind the solid oak door, the noises from the above bar are nearly entirely muffled, making the slow descent to the bathroom something of an out-of-body experience when you’ve had a few and the sudden silence is almost an echo. 
Plus, these fucking stairs are a death trap. 
You embarrassingly clutched at the railing, the wooden stairs at far too sharp an angle even if you were sober as a judge, much less at a Monster Squad happy hour. 
Stupid Max and his stupid drinks and his –
What was that?
You stand up right on the third to last step, listening. 
In the half darkness in front of you, there are three paths available. To the left, employee storage, the lights above the door flickering, the sign reading “do not enter” pulsating in and out of visibility. To your right, another door, maybe an exit. Always unmarked and always locked every time your drunken curiosity got the better of you. 
And across from the stairs were the bathrooms, left women, right for men.
God, what year is it? Shouldn’t it all just be gender-neutral? You think to yourself, a tad bit more aggressive than you’d usually oppose the gender binary – primarily to wash out the rising concern at the back of your neck.
You are alone down here. It’s obvious. It’s not like there’s that many places for some dastardly villain to hide. Four shut doors and three hallways. Unless some maniac was curled up under the stairs, you are the only person in the basement. 
At least, the only person you can see. 
You don’t realize how sweaty your hands are until you try to continue your way down the stairs. You take a step and nearly slip, the eyes you know are on you somehow laughing. 
One blinking light. No where for anything to hide, so why are you so nervous? You are an adult woman, for god’s sakes. You make it to the floor, the most likely candidate for your demise behind you and –
The stairs creaked. 
The empty stairs that you just walked down creaked and you nearly leap across the hallway to put space between you. Heart in your throat, you make the monumentally stupid decision and call out, “hello? Is anyone there?”
As if the serial killer was just going to announce himself, give up the whole element of surprise.
Blinking through the bleary haze of too many drinks, you take out your phone and flip on the light. A white beam chases back the encroaching darkness, a frantic worried ghost peering through the gloom. And yet, like you consciously know, there’s nothing there. But the darkness feels heavier, the eerie distant noise from the bar above so quiet and removed the sound is more of a memory – the idea of what comfort and community should sound like. But it’s not. It’s too far gone – if anything were to happen, it’d be hours before they found you. If they did at all. 
“Oh my god,” you scold yourself, squeezing your eyes shut. “Get a fucking grip and go pee and then go back up those fucking stairs and –,”
Okay, that was definitely breathing.
Breathing, right behind you. Ragged, hungry, disembodied breathing, in your ear and your heart ricochets into your chest. Your own breath turns short, choppy, panic swelling into your ears, over your fingers. You think you might drop your phone, your fingers are so numb from fear, so you clutch tighter, the trembling throwing white light across the paneled wood in a craze. 
Be rational, this is crazy, there is nothing down here! 
The stairs snarl again and you squeak, all but bolting for the women’s bathroom, desperate to put at least some space between you and those fucking stairs, put some boundaries between –
The door is locked. When the fuck is this door ever locked?
Panic recedes to overwhelming rage because fuck, fuck, fuck, now you’re trapped in here – you can’t go back to the stairs – you rattle the handle, shaking the door against its lock –
“Fucking let me in!”
The light above the exit door goes out. And then the other. You throw all of your weight against the bathroom door. You claw at the handle, begging it to give way. 
Fuck, fuck, fuck – you can hear the darkness breathing –
No, speaking – it’s saying something, chanting, mocking, calling out – calling out your name –
The door suddenly unlocks and you stumble forward – into something solid –
Its hands grab you and like a fucking fool, you played right into its trap. 
It turns you, throws you up against the tile wall, its claws around your shoulders, cold tile against your cheek and you whimper. Whimper when you feel the soft pin-prick of fangs against the back of your neck – fuck, this is how it ends?? – and –
“Got you.” 
That voice.
That condescending, snide, bratty, little –
You elbow the solid body behind you and Max lets out a puff of air, staggering back. You whip around, nearly snarling in his smirking, beautiful face. The bathroom is dark, black tiled walls and floors with a faux-wooden sink and dim lights across the top of the mirror. In the flushed orange light, his eyelashes encourage thick shadows under his eyes and in the collar of his throat. If it wasn’t for that insufferable smile, he’d look painted from thin brush strokes and heavy scarlet paint. 
Caravaggio, eat your heart out. 
“Max, what the fuck was that?” 
He rolls his eyes, rubbing the spot on his chest where you hit him, at the top of his ribcage. “Oh, c’mon, it was just some fun. Saw you sneak off after you got Nita’s drink and thought I’d mess with you just a bit.”
You sigh, willing your heart to slow down, throwing your gaze to the ceiling and dropping your head against the tile.
“God, you asshole, I thought I was gonna die.” You swallow and move your hair out of your face. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“I what?”
“You scared –,”
That smile, the crack of fangs across his mouth, widens, the bottom of his lip rolling back over the cut of his teeth, those brown eyes melting into a warm, obscene black, as he meets you hip first against the wall. 
His hands climb over your waist, as though daring you to hit him again, and your thigh muscles tighten. Your hands instinctively trace the exposed skin left by his opened collar at the dip of his throat when he comes closer, chest pressing up against yours, nose against your temple. 
Fuck, it shouldn’t be this easy for him. You sigh through your nose, eyes rolling shut, when he nips at your cheek.
“I think you were supposed to be mad at me.”
“I am,” you groan. “I’m livid. I’m enraged. I’m –,”
His thumb brushes your ribs – not tickling, not entirely touching, but just reminding. Reminding of the force behind his touch, behind his teeth. 
“Baby girl,” he chuckles softly, the sound running down your neck like rain, “you’re melting in my arms.” 
“This doesn’t mean I’m scared of you.” You focus on the softness of his hair between your fingers, the heat of the back of his neck beneath the pads of your fingertips – resolutely ignoring the radiating scent of his cologne coming from up under his collar. More than once had he come across you in his apartment bathroom, sniffing that bottle like some dopey perv looking for a quick fix. Of course, instead of admonishing you, he bent you over his sink and fucked the daylights out of you, his wrists singing with the smell of that cologne. Now he wore it to work wherever he wanted something from you, particularly to overlook some pesky lines of legalise. 
In the hallowed darkness of the bar’s bathroom, he drops a single kiss just below your jaw, inches beneath your ear. He grumbles when your pulse there quickens, and again his fangs find a curve of skin to press against – a reminder. 
Always reminding, always lurking, a threat without a promise.
And he knows exactly what that does to you. 
You release a full body shudder when his hands drop lower, guiding you back against the wall, fingers rounding around your thighs. Like interlocking pieces, your bodies slide together, your arms curling around his neck, the heat of his chest branding yours as it forces you against the wall. You’re breathing all wrong again, but for different reasons this time. You catch a flash of the ink-well darkness of his eyes when he nuzzles out of your neck to admire the mess he has made of your skirt.
“Can I fuck you in this or is this thing too tight?” He asks, like he specifically didn’t get on his hands and knees and beg you to wear that gray pencil skirt only twelve hours earlier. 
You lean up, snagging his bottom lip between your teeth, kissing him roughly and showing him he’s not the only one with a little bite. He groans softly, one hand curling into your hair at the base of your skull, and he licks you, from the front of your lips up to the valley of your mouth. He tastes like the sweetness of his whiskey n’ coke, his tongue rubbing the flexing muscle of yours, the sharpness of your molars. You could spend hours just sucking on his plush mouth. 
Maybe he did scare you. Maybe he should have scared you more, the threat of anyone discovering your relationship a real danger to both of your careers. Maybe it should have scared you, how little you cared about any of that when he palmed your breast over your shirt. 
You inhaled over his mouth, popping off his lips with a moan, his hand cupping you roughly as he dove in to suck marks on your neck. Every moment that passes, you feel your skin ratcheting up with heat, blood almost hot. He thumbs your perk nipple through your shirt and you arch your chest, his massive palm nearly cupping your ribs to your spine.
“Max, either you figure out how to fuck me in this skirt or you owe me a new one.”
“You want me to rip it off you?” He slurs, eyelids heavy, his thigh slides in between your knees, the fabric preventing him from going higher, to the place where you both need him. You groan in frustration and his hands squeeze your hips at the sound. “Tell me fast, baby, because I can’t–,”
“For the love of – just fucking lift it up–,” His hands fumble over yours as your fingers curl under the hem, his own want making that brilliant mind for numbers almost stupid. His warm fingers overwhelm your own as they push your skirt up your waist, and then dig around the line of your pantyhose. 
“Jesus Christ, are you trying to Fort Knox me out of your pussy? Why are there so many layers?” 
You hiss at him as you slide out of your heels and shove your nylons to the ground, hopping on one leg to take them off your feet. “It’s like you’ve never undressed me before.” 
Freed of the chaos of your underthings, Max’s hands rush to his belt, the clinking of the metal sending shivers down your back and straight up your cunt. He doesn’t notice because he’s obsessively watching your thighs. “I’ve never undressed you with our coworkers a floor above us and probably becoming increasingly suspicious about where the fuck we are–,” 
You take him by the back of the neck, hand clenching around the starch white of his shoulder. He comes to you, zipper digging into your hip bone as he pulls you up off your feet. For once that chatty mouth is quiet, open and wet with desire as he takes in your flushed face, the blood pumping under your tits. Max is nothing if not almost supernaturally consumed by the look, feel, texture, and taste of your tits. 
The look on his face is one of those reasons you tend to throw caution to the wind, why your heart almost feels too big for your chest, whenever he’s around. 
He hooks an arm around your low back, tilting your hips forward. You feel the heat of his cock somewhere below you and it takes all of your strength not to grind down. 
“Max –,” he’s not even inside of you and you’re already begging. You bite down on his ear to stifle whatever was rising up your throat. 
“Hang on, baby, I gotta make sure you . . .”
Using your shoulders as counterbalance, he holds himself up against the wet warmth of your cunt, breath stuttering as he rubs the head of his cock against your slick folds. That bratty aloofness is gone; he wants to sink so, so deep into you.
“Fuck, baby, I didn’t even get you ready – but you’re already so wet –,”
You don’t resist grinding down now and he knocks his shoulders forward, needing movement, but fighting against the urge to buck up into you, gasping from the feeling of your cunt. 
“Please, Max, just –,”
“Yeah, I know, baby, okay, just, I gotta . . .” 
He angles himself and you arch your back, unable to watch with the mess of your skirt around your waist, but he finds it, finds your opening, the place he loves to mark, and without any warning, thrusts his length up into you. 
The stretch, the surprise, the ear-ringing split between being empty and then stuffed so full – you can’t help but moan so loudly, you sing to the ceiling. For a moment, your bodies hum with the stillness, the blood in your cunt pulsating around him, you claw at his broad shoulders, need him closer, needing that smell of him that haunts your empty bed as far inside of you as his cock is. His hips stutter and he presses one hand against the tile by your ribs, teeth clenched against the sensation. 
“When I fuck you, every time feels like the first time. Every goddamn time.” 
It’s not particularly the confession it could be, but you shake your head, clearing it of anything stupid like feelings for Max Phillips, your chin brushing his jaw, his nose against your ear. 
“Then do it,” you whine. “Just fuck me, Max.”
With a groan that could be mistaken for a snarl, he lifts you both up right, pushing your hips down and spreading yourself over him. You lock your ankles around his back a second before he pulls out halfway, then to jerk back in with such force and precision your eyes roll to the back of your head. He sets a pace that has pleasure weaving a tight drum just under your stomach. Each sweaty thrust fires sparks up your spine. He really is so fucking good at this. 
This is the release you need, you both need. Sure, it’s an after-effect of having a high-powered job, but it’s also more than that. Max fucking you is unfortunately very often the highlight of your day. He knows what you need, how you need it – how hard to drive his cock into you, it makes you tongue-tied and dizzy. The fast pump of his cock, how it feels to split you apart over and over again, the back zipper of your skirt digging into your back – it’s too fucking good.
“Don’t know where you get off giving me orders,” he grunts, the pounding of his hips into yours rapidly shoving you up your ascension. The slapping, wet noise in the empty room is obscene. “I’m a fucking VP, little girl, and I–,”
You tense your muscles around his cock and he fumbles, his knees buckling momentarily. 
“Do not fucking bring up the org chart right now,” you hiss, your own edge yanked away when he stills. “I’m almost there–,” 
Quicker than he’s been all night, Max lunges forward, mouth open and teeth bare. He bites your neck and then he bites you. 
Fangs puncture your skin, not deep, but enough that your body is thrown into a messy coil of nerves and adrenaline. It knows you could die like this, even if you’ve only ever called the vampire a mosquito to his face, and triggering a self-preservation instinct, your body trembles from the sudden blast of sensation.
Your pupils dilate further than they were, your skin becomes overly aware of every drop of sweat, every flutter of hair, every rub of flesh – and your fucking nerve-endings feel like static, as if brushed by lightning. 
Pleasure so-white hot it almost burns roars up your spine, slick coating his cock inside you, and you cry out. Wail in his ear. Begging him to make it better. To give you your release. The feel of his cock pounding up inside your now-overly ripe cunt brings tears to your eyes.
“Oh, fuck – fuck, fuck, fuck – Max, p-please –,”
“Can you handle it if I touch you?”
You shake your head. “Yes, yes, please, touch me.” 
“You can’t keep screaming like that,” he scolds you breathlessly, the punch of his hips bouncing you against his cheek. For all his vampire stamina, the flush of exertion across his cheeks is truly staggering and a triumph for your ego. Flecks of blood dot his mouth. “Someone’s going to come looking.” 
“I don’t care,” you groan, angling your hips to take more of him. His hand not on your back cups under your knee, tugging it higher up his torso. His pace is relentless, overwhelming – with his weight on top of you, and his cock up under you, inside you, you’re consumed by Max Phillips. “Whatever you do, d-don’t stop. Don’t stop.” 
“You scared I’m gonna?”
“Yes,” you whine. You can feel your heart pounding out its shape into your ribs. 
“Good girl. And good girls get to fucking come.”
Balancing your increasingly limp body, he holds you up right, his hand snaking beneath your skirt, between the sweat of your thighs and his torso, and –
He thumbs that buzzing bundle of nerves, “come for me, baby”, and you do. You come screaming, the tension snapping, vision sparkling with stars, and you are shoved over the edge. You don’t know you’re wailing his name until he comes too, all concern for getting caught seemingly gone as he begs you to continue as he fills you up with his pearly, gooey cum:
“That’s right, say my name. Say my fucking name, sweetheart.” 
His hips thrust weakly, some instinct choking him until he makes sure every drop of him stays in you. You’re going to be dripping for hours. 
His skin is fire-hot beneath his starched white shirt. You’ll be thinking about that for days afterward when you see him in the hallways of the office. 
This is what scares you the most. When you realize it's over and neither one of you want it to be. 
Shaking from exertion, Max slowly sets you down, unwinding your legs from his waist, your ankles trembling against the cold tile. You couldn’t imagine putting your nylons back on, the thought of that pressure against the curve of your lower stomach while you are so full of his cum practically unbearable. 
He lifts his head from your neck, eyes intentionally avoiding you as he inspects where he bit you, breath coming in ragged, long gasps. Sweat darkens the hair at his temple and that post-fuck blush is staggeringly gorgeous on him. He pricks his thumb on the sharp edge of his fangs and with a scarlet bead balanced on his thumb, he smears his blood against the puncture wounds, like someone would wipe dirt away from a loved one’s skin. 
It doesn’t really hurt, but the effects leave your neck tingling. You’d never say this out loud, but you fucking loved when he did that. 
He steps away without looking at you, giving you time to adjust your skirt, your hair in the mirror. You help him straighten his collar because it’s not like he can use the mirror to check himself.
He grins, the flush fading far too rapidly from his cheeks. 
“What are you going to tell them?” You nod to the stairs on the other side of the wall. “This can’t look good for us.” 
“You got attacked by a werewolf on the way to the bathroom. I saved you.” 
“Thought you said werewolves weren’t scary.”
He shakes his head, smirking, then presses a kiss to your temple. “Just said I was the bigger monster between the two of us.” 
“My hero.” You turn your head until his lips drink in yours. 
It is dangerous, your feelings for him. 
He taps you on the butt, pulling away. The lines around his eyes do an excellent job of masking the hurt in the brownness of his eyes. 
“Gimme five, then you come up. Can’t have you looking so completely debauched.”
He kisses you again, betraying whatever amounted to “cool and collected” he attempted for, and without another word, he slides out the door. 
His smell lingers in the air long after he does. The throbbing of your cunt also serves as a fantastically bitter reminder.
You go back to the mirror because yes, you could not have been more obvious if you were wearing a sign that said, “hi, yes, I did just get my back blown out.” You try to fold your hair around your ears at least a dozen times before pulling it back in what you hope to be a casual pony-tail. You toss your nylons into the trash can, pleading that the “oh, I tore them in the bathroom” excuse might hold an ounce of water. 
You think about what’s waiting for you a floor up and your stomach clenches. 
Fucking Max could upset the dynamics of your little group, your little Monster Squad. Whatever the stupid office bylines were, your happy-hour social group is one of the bright spots in your life, especially while working at a place run by those bastard Overlords. 
And Max knew that. He didn’t want to risk your long-term happiness for his short-term. 
Max didn’t scare you because he was a monster.
He scared you precisely because he wasn’t.
You open the bathroom door and return to the world. 
272 notes · View notes
racefortheironthrone · 3 months
Note
On the subject of UBI, I always ask about the MCU UBI: Tony is a billionaire who lives a life of luxury, Bruce has a serious chronic illness that requires expensive medical care, and Trevor just wants to sit round all day drinking and doing drugs. I take the UBI guys more seriously if they can say what each man gets from a UBI.
That's a somewhat odd choice of characters to think about how a UBI would function in the MCU.
So yes, Tony Stark would get a UBI. Relative to his private income, his UBI check would be totally inconsequential - and given the level of taxation needed to support a UBI, it's pretty much guaranteed that Tony would be paying far more in taxes than he would be getting back in UBI payments.
This is not an accident or a mistake or a flaw in the system; this is how a healthy social policy should function. When Social Security was established in 1936, FDR made a big deal of the fact that even John D. Rockefeller would get a Social Security check - because it hammered home the point that everyone contributes, and everyone benefits. Reciprocal solidarity would short-circuit the divisive politics of distribution and redistribution and cement a permanent majority coalition in support of a universal welfare state.
Tumblr media
Bruce Banner would also get a UBI check. Now, his financial situation is a little unclear - originally, Banner was a top research scientist at Culver University with U.S military contracts, so he would probably have been in the top 10% of incomes (affluent but not wealthy). After his transformation into the Hulk, however, Bruce was a wanted fugitive with no way of earning income.
After that, Bruce was an Avenger - and this is where things get odd. As established in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Avengers in the MCU don't get a salary: Tony gave them free housing and paid their Avengers-related expenses, but Sam Wilson notably relied on his veteran's pension and government contracts for his living (thus why his banker could justify turning him down for a small business loan rather than admitting to structural racial discrimination) and Steve Rogers even with his veteran's benefits, Social Security, and SHIELD salary couldn't afford a place in Brooklyn. This means that, while Bruce doesn't need to worry about money for his research and can save on rent, he does actually need the UBI for everything else.
This is very different from in the comics, where Avengers get quite decent salaries:
Tumblr media
$4k a month in 1983 dollars works out to around $150k a year (on top of free housing at the Avengers Mansion), putting them solidly in the top 13% of U.S personal incomes.
As for Trevor Slattery, I feel like your description is unfairly characterizing a working actor. Slattery was not a major success in Hollywood - hence why he took Aldrich Killian up on his job offer and became part of a criminal conspiracy - and he does have some serious substance abuse issues, but what he does in his private life is his own business. Hell, even when he was abducted by the Ten Rings, he kept working as an actor. That being said, Trevor is going to have a hard time getting UBI, both because he's a wanted fugitive and convicted felon (which would end his eligibility in the U.S) and because he's now living in a rural village in another dimension.
68 notes · View notes
loving-n0t-heyting · 5 months
Text
saw a bunch of libertarians citing the recent and from what i can tell very awful case of indi gregory, a small child with a rare mitochondrial illness taken off nhs life support whose parents were denied the right to transfer her to an italian hospital that agreed to see to her medical needs. which was ofc trotted out as an illustration of the evils of statist health care, death panels, etc
the obvious retort here ofc is that the main effect of privatising healthcare on cases like these is to multiply them, but what particularly interested me was the judge who issued that ruling, robert roger peel. turns out peel is currently the lead judge of the uk's financial remedies court (for determining financial disputes between divorced or separated couples), and has published an interesting couple of articles on his (very positive) assessment of the court. a lot of his focus is trained on time/cost minimising, settlement:trial ratio maximising measures for the court to implement or that the court has implemented, including (from the 2nd one)
the extensive use of "private fdr's," a sort of privatised dispute resolution in place of the court itself, in which an ex-couple hires a "private fdr judge" (could be a solicitor, barrister or retired judge) to rule on their case without recourse to the actual judicial system. ("So too the widespread use of Private FDRs. Judges need little persuasion to permit parties to attend a Private FDR and return to court thereafter for, as the case may be, a mention hearing to endorse the consent order, or a directions hearing to timetable to trial. The use of Private FDRs has in turn relieved pressure on the courts.")
the use of single lawyers simultaneously representing both members of the former couple, explicitly in order to undermine the costly adversarial nature of the legal proceedings. ("The Single Lawyer Model, for example, has attracted much interest. The aim is to enable parties to engage jointly one lawyer whose instructions are to gather the relevant facts and disclosure, and make a considered recommendation. The advantages are two-fold: (1) it ordinarily takes place at a very early stage of proceedings, or even before issue; and (2) the joint instruction of a single lawyer removes the parties from the adversarial world of separately instructed legal representation.")
the liberal awarding of costs orders, seemingly as a punitive and deterrent measure, to litigating parties the judge deems to be litigating unreasonably or insufficiently flexibly ("Similarly, I have repeated the mantra that judges should not be afraid to make costs orders where justified, particularly if one or other party does not litigate reasonably, and/or does not make reasonable open offers. [...] I appreciate that it is more difficult to do so when the assets are barely enough to meet needs, but even in those cases a judge is entitled to consider whether to make a costs award, however modest, to mark the court’s displeasure at the litigation conduct of the miscreant party.")
summary judgements in a majority of trial cases, without hearing of any oral testimony ("In an article I did last year for the Financial Remedies Journal, I said this: ‘It has sometimes seemed to me that many cases could be fairly disposed of with no oral evidence.’ My point was that as part of a drive for efficiency, cases could be swiftly dispatched without oral testimony where the factual and financial landscape is reasonably clear, and it would not be proportionate to explore relatively minor factual issues in the witness box. I suspect that will be the majority of cases")
in short, while this is definitely not an area where i have domain knowledge, my first impression is that the judge responsible directly for this decision is sort of a miserly ghoul happy to undermine the rights of individual brits in the service of shrinking and cost-cutting that portion of the govt over which he exercises authority. (to his credit he does at least declare the lack of public funding for legal representation to be "iniquitous", tho ofc that bit is out of his hands.) many such cases!
98 notes · View notes
botaniqueer · 6 months
Text
Something I think about a lot as a Jew is how a lot of Germans (and white gentiles in general) didn’t even speak out or acknowledge the atrocities happening because things were “good enough” for them personally so treated things as if things are okay for everyone.
Especially re: how Americans do the exact same thing here. The GOP is objectively worse for more people and the democrats are better for more, but because things are good for them personally, people leave behind the people for whom it’s still bad and deny their oppression.
Also when you criticize the US people (in bad faith ofc) say “well if your don’t like it then leave!” as if we are capable of thinking about others. No matter how good things are for me here, someone is always getting brutalized by the US and me not being around doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Things being perfect for me would just mean I’d be more likely to be complacent.
Also related is how FDR as president led to a lot of prosperity but during his tenure he put Asians in concentration camps. Not to mention his progressive policies were made in order to save capitalism and stop people from revolting against it. (Also like all world leaders then like Churchill, etc. was also antisemitic) This is another “they made things better, but for whom?” situation that implies certain people are acceptable losses despite having emotions and rich internal lives themselves.
87 notes · View notes