#Language and racism

[feminegra]

"Hay que mejorar la raza" - Exploring Mexican Racist Slang

1. Hay que mejorar la raza (aka Let’s pretty up the family tree… with lighter branches) What’s the deal? This one’s like saying you should aim to marry someone super pale – because apparently, that’s “better”? Yikes. It reeks of that old colonial “white is right” attitude. Why it’s messed up: Imagine telling your kids the key to success is ditching their heritage for a whiter shade. Not cool,…

[intersectionalpraxis]

Trevonte Helton, a 29 year old Black man, "was found hanging from a tree at High Shoal Falls in North Georgia." This man was murdered, and their quick eagerness to call this an "isolated" incident is just horrifying.

[spacebubblehomebase]

Helllo i Love your art more than i love donuts and thats ALLOT.but my boy lucifer can have babys,like i dont even know how that works!make it make sense! I just wanna say thank you again for curing are boredom👍🏻

You are SO right that is high praise indeed! I'm honored! =D So here. Have a donut! 🍩🍩🍩 As for Luci, let us turn to the world's favorite 700k+ words old man fanfiction that is The Bible (tm) as according to their lore, it's been canonically stated that angels are genderless for they are beings made of the Pure Holy Spirit and- Holy SHIT! What do you know??? Our dear depressed duck dad was an angel himself and in some depictions Lilith is infertile as was her punishment for her freedom! The more you know! -Bubbly💙

(LMAO. My guy's been traumatized. Once is enough XD)

[alwaysbewoke]

[wafflesrisa]

As an actually autistic person who learned English as a second language can I just say this about Yuki:

If your reaction to Yuki’s sincere apology, written in his own cadence and “imperfect” English, is to disbelieve his statement that he genuinely did not know what the R-slur meant and then call for cancelling him on all platforms -

I want you to take a long look at yourself and think hard about where your expectation that he is lying about his knowledge of the term actually comes from. Think about it for a second.

You are not actually helping autistic people. You’re just racist.

[ljblueteak]

"Paul Asks About White Australia: Beatle Paul McCartney yesterday showed an unexpected interest in the White Australia policy." From The Sydney Morning Herald, June 19, 1964.

Text of the article reads:

At a Press conference yesterday Paul was approached by a Nigerian journalist.

Paul said "Are you an aborginal?"

The journalist said he was from Nigeria.

Paul said: "I didn't think that Australia allowed coloured people to come in. I remember reading about this in geography in school which I failed, and I thought it was a bit off. I thought they were the only country in the world to do this. I saw you today and I thought: 'Hullo, we'll get onto the Government right away.'

The journalist said he was allowed to stay in Australia under certain conditions which included having a job.

He said Australia was host to more than 3,000 Asian students and he had found no discrimination whatsoever.

Paul said: "That is good because there is in Britain and in America."

He said that apart from kangaroos and koalas his biggest early impression of Australia had been "this white-only business."

"John and I were talking about it only this afternoon."

[llyfrenfys]

Xenophobia in Celtic nations' independence movements: A guide to the red flags

This is something I've wanted to write about for a long time - I want to go over this in more detail when I can. But for now a short guide to the most egregious red flags is warranted imo.

'Celtic nations' refers to the modern regions where Celtic languages are still spoken, namely Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Isle of Man, Cornwall and Brittany. Its important to know that these places are called Celtic not because of who lives there, but because of the languages which have survived there. Its a common error to think 'Celtic nations'= Celtic people. In my field (Celtic Studies) Celtic is generally only applied as a descriptor in the sense of language family.

Because of the popular misinformation 'Celtic nation' = 'Celtic' population, xenophobia rears its ugly head in multiple corners of the various Celtic nations' independence movements. Left unchecked, this xenophobia develops into outright racism. Which is why it's important to recognise these red flags when you see them.

'Acceptable Targets':

The reason why some of the xenophobia goes unchecked (and develops into worse kinds) is because a lot of xenophobia in the Celtic nations is aimed at 'acceptable' targets - which no-one bats an eye about when this rhetoric is deployed. But were it deployed against any other nationalities, it would immediately obvious that it isn't acceptable. Now, I will preface this with that there's nuance with these nationalities and there's something to be said about whether some of it is 'punching up'. However, because of how accepted it is to be casually xenophobic against these privileged groups, it is signalled through that that it's okay to be xenophobic in general to less privileged groups. I feel its important to address the first rung on the ladder before tackling any higher up.

Without beating around the bush, I'm talking about the English (and French. But I know more about the English so that's where my focus will be).

Yes, pro-independence anti-English memes and jokes can be funny. Most of them do stay on the side of punching up and many raise important points on the effects of English imperialism on the Celtic languages. However, there's a fine line between punching up and voluntarily using and wielding xenophobic arguments and rhetoric to get one up on the English. This, in my view, only paves the way for worse kinds of xenophobia and to me is a canary in the coal mine situation. But I also cannot talk about this without also making it clear that it is possible to recognise that sometimes a line is crossed without validating English persecution complexes à la 'you can't even say you're English these days' or similar nonsense. Both things can be true at once: Casual xenophobia against the English does exist, however, its existence should not be used to validate English persecution complexes. On the contrary, we should fight that also.

The reason why this canary in the coal mine has gone unnoticed is because of the reluctance to actually point out xenophobia against the English in pro-independence movements due to fear of accidentally validating the claims Englishness as a concept is under threat or due of fear of ostracism from Celtic nationalist movements. There is little danger of actually validating the former sentiment, however, because of a crucial fact. The people in the Celtic nations being casually xenophobic and the English with persecution complexes have one massive trait in common: they're both xenophobic in incredibly similar ways. If it's hard to tell apart an English nationalist from one in a Celtic nation if you were to swap the target of their ire, congratulations, your movement has a xenophobia problem /s.

English nationalist: We should tighten controls on our borders to keep all those foreigners and immigrants out. Make England English again.

(Xenophobic) Celtic nationalist: We should fight for our independence so we can tighten controls on our borders to keep all those foreigners and immigrants out. Make [insert Celtic nation] [nationish] again.

Many Celtic nationalists will also present ahistorical facts or manipulated versions of history in order to seem more valid or legitimate. It's a massive red flag when someone's grasp of history seems more emotional than grounded in historical fact. Using Welsh history as an example, I've seen this type of Celtic nationalist blatantly lie about historical figures, literally deface ancient castles in Wales based on a poor grasp (and respect for) history and conflate modern English and Welsh identity with ancient entities which do not map neatly 1:1. The ahistory presented by individuals or groups fancying themselves as leaders in their respective movements are unquestioningly accepted by others in the Celtic nationalist movements. This creates a manufactured mythology, belief in which confers in-group status and out-group status. A mythology which reinforces beliefs already present in the movement - such as the right to be casually xenophobic as long as it's against the 'right people' and as long as it is done in the name of protecting or advocating for their nation.

It was never going to stop at English people:

Once casual xenophobia is established as being tolerated, expected or even encouraged in the various independence movements, it enables xenophobes to be bolder in their rhetoric. Because casual xenophobia against 'deserving' nations like England is dismissed as 'just banter' and not taken seriously, it sends a signal to everyone in that movement that xenophobia is okay if its used against the 'right groups. While it may roll like water off a duck's back to the average English person, other, more vulnerable people do not fare so well.

To use an actual example I've seen out in the wild, some people will claim that you can't be considered Welsh unless you were born in Wales. Many people won't question this or interrogate the implications. Firstly, this comes back to how Celtic nationalists can often sound exactly the same as English nationalists (blood and soil nationalism is common to English and Celtic nationalisms). Secondly, this rhetoric also simulataneously invalidates several ostensibly Welsh people, such as Saunders Lewis (born in Liverpool) and Jan Morris (born in Somerset). In most cases, anyone who lives in X country / is a citizen of X country can or should be able to describe themselves as Xish.

The perennial anxiety of Celtic nationalists is that because most of the Celtic nations (excepting the Republic of Ireland) are constituent parts of a state (either the UK or France) and not independent entities in their own right, there is no control over borders and there is no system by which someone can be made a Welsh, or Breton or Cornish etc. citizen - and thus no way to control [nation]ness via those means. When Celtic nationalists agitate for independence, it's important to interrogate their motivations. If they are motivated primarily by a desire to control who is considered Xish and who isn't, that's a red flag.

English nationalists have this citizenship problem too, since England is not an independent nation, but a country within the UK. However, most English nationalists overlap heavily with British nationalists in general, so most agitation for 'sovereignty' gets channelled into British nationalism. This is one of the key differences between English and Celtic nationalists - the former is usually very fond of the United Kingdom, the latter detests it and wants to secede. This leaves Celtic nationalism in a tight spot - there is a desire for self determination which is currently impossible to achieve or enforce. And that makes a lot of Celtic nationalists anxious. And that anxiety leads to feeling like they need to prove their commitment to the cause by performing xenophobia, which validates their in-group status while simultaneously establishes the out-group.

A person born in England but who lives in Wales, perhaps speaks Welsh or considers themself Welsh will, in general, be mostly unharmed by 'you have to be born in Wales to be Welsh' rhetoric. But you know who might be? So many immigrants who consider themselves Welsh who make Wales a great place to be. Immigrants in Wales (especially nonwhite immigrants) may feel excluded by such rhetoric. It's almost on par with "where are you really from" sentiments. And this is an entirely self-defeating kind of rhetoric for Celtic nationalists to take up. Here we have thousands upon thousands of people who willingly want to live and work in Celtic nations - many of whom will also learn the language - undoing centuries of English and French propaganda that diminished the worth of Celtic nations and their languages* - and Celtic nationalists want to exclude these people from claiming the nationality of their adopted nations because... they didn't happen to be born here. Got it.

Xenophobia, once established, cannot be contained:

Xenophobia ripples outwards. Once it is established it is okay to be xenophobic to certain groups, other groups begin to be included in the xenophobia. This then has the potential to expand into outright racism. In Ireland, for example, there's significant amounts of antiblack racism present in the nationalist movement. Very recently, due to the actions of the UK government over the Rwanda Plan, the Republic of Ireland has gotten frustrated at the amount of immigrants attempting to reach their shores after abandoning attempts to claim asylum in the UK (out of fear of being sent to Rwanda). There's a "we don't do that here" attitude in many Celtic nationalist movements with regards to English imperialism, xenophobia, racism and anti-immigration. But not only do we do that here - it's worryingly integral to some people's visions for their nation's independence! You end up with complacency because many will take a literal no true Scotsman approach to Celtic nationalism and pretend that such people aren't really part of the movement. The problem is, is that they are here and regularly hijack otherwise unproblematic movements.

There are many routes through which Celtic nationalists can get radicalised into becoming massively xenophobic in order to fight for their respective nation's independence. All of them stem from real, legitimate problems in each nation whose cause has been misidentified.

One way is through opposition to second homes. On all counts, a noble goal and a very legitimate problem which I myself am invested in fighting. But the ways in which this problem is addressed often veer into questionable territory. If the focus is on "how dare those people from over there come over here" instead of "how dare a very small group of people monopolise housing for holiday lets at the expense of locals" there's a problem. The problem isn't people not from [place] holidaying there, it's the people who monopolise housing for their own profit which reduces housing available for locals and destroys community. In Aberystwyth I've heard some appalling sentiments against people from the Midlands - borderline if not outright classism around their appearances, mannerisms and accents. Sneering at random families visiting the beach isn't going to help anything and only exposes thinly veiled bigotry in whoever is making such remarks.

As already mentioned, another way radicalisation into xenophobic Celtic nationalism can occur is through mythologised 'history' which has been manipulated to suit the needs of the person or people making the claim. Lately, I've been seeing a rise in Welsh 'history' groups rife with disinformation and outright misrepresentation of historical events which are so designed to keep people angry about historical injustices against Wales. There are plenty of real historical injustices which can be talked about - but the 'history' presented in these groups is often fabricated or twisted to make things worse than they were or are stripped of nuance which perhaps paints certain historical figures less favourably than the authors would have liked. Not to mention superimposing modern nationalism onto ancient peoples is also just accepted as fine to do. Here is a screenshot of a Welsh 'history' group shared in a Welsh learning group I'm in. I can and will do a deeper dive into this topic in particular when I can. For now I'll mention the most important things to notice:

As mentioned in one of my other posts on this topic - the term 'native' is frequently misused in a Celtic context. Here, it sets up the basic in-group/out-group dynamic from the start and creates a setting in which members of the group are privy to the 'real' history while others are not. A brief glance at posts in this group makes that quite clear. The flag in the image is a representation of Y Groes Naid - supposedly a piece of the True Cross kept at Aberconwy. Now, there are ways to depict this cross which aren't so dogwhistley - so I'm immediately suspicious this image was chosen on purpose. Right down to the fact there's plausible deniability if anyone tries to point out how much the flag looks like the white supremacist Celtic Cross symbol, since it's Y Groes Naid, right?

I will wrap this up with that as a Celticist, I see far too many people uncritically supporting certain Celtic nationalist movements simply because they are pro-independence. Turning a blind eye to 'acceptable' xenophobia and choosing to believe ahistorical versions of history because it better suits their politics. This must be resisted - we can advocate for the independence of Celtic nations which desire it without relying upon these means. It can be done, I promise. But the path to that means dismantling systems of oppression which exist within Celtic nationalist movements. Awareness of the problem in the first place is a good place to start.

Reblogs and comments are welcome on this post to raise awareness of the issue and actually talk about these things.

Diolch am darllen!

[spacedace]

Fuck whatever DC is doing with the al Ghul's characterizations and story lines, I've decided that from now on the al Ghul's are gonna be DC's version of the Addams Family instead.

Now I don't mean just give the various al Ghul's the exact personalities of the various Addams and call it a day. That's boring, that erases all the interesting parts of the al Ghuls, that's just using "find & replace" and not actually adding anything. I mean give them the vibes of the Addams Family.

Keep the al Ghul's as the al Ghul's with all their scheming and machinations and world domination attempts but give them all the unhinged energy, the casually insane view of the world, the deranged levels of love and devotion for family. Make them that group where objectively they are batshit insane but also you cannot argue with the fact that they are indisputably the most stable and functional family in the entire universe.

They're creepy, they're kooky, they're mysterious and spooky. Ra's many opulent homes and impenetrable fortresses are a museum and the al Ghul's really are a screa-um whenever people come to see-um (or when they lay waste upon their enemies in a surprise attack that has been planned for months and is just the first domino in a series that will ultimately lead to achieving a far greater goal).

They all love each other and want each other to be happy, they express this primarily with stabbing and murder attempts (its fine, death is a thing that happens to other people).

And forget the League of Assassins being a cult. Just make the whole vast globe spanning organization a collection of cousins/aunts/uncles/dear old friends ect. No one (not even the al Ghuls, if they cared to keep track of such things) is sure who is actually related to them and who just got absorbed into the ever expanding family tree based on their vibes being right.

(Is Sensei Ra's father you ask? Well he's certainly someone's father - probably.

Anyway have you heard about Cousin Cheshire? Despicable poisoner of a young woman, capable of the most horrific things imaginable - yes she is the sweetest dear. Like I was saying though, she just had a baby!

Everyone in the family is just so excited to throw a baby shower to celebrate! Ubu has really gone all out with the spike traps, he does so love getting to welcome a new addition to the family.

Talia of course has cultivated a brand new strain of the most toxic plants imaginable to make a brand new kind of necrotizing poison. You know, as a nice little romantic gift for Cousin Cheshire and that young man of hers. It really is so important to make sure you take time for you and your partner to go on dates and have a few pitched battles to the death on dark rooftops in the pounding rain when you have children.

Now there is some to-do about it all of course, you know how family get together can be. Everyone is arguing over who should get to give little Lian her first weapon and what it should be. Nyssa is pushing for grenades but Ra's is insisting on a sword - he's traditional like that you know - but Dusan has the vote so far on throwing knives. You know the kind that have the little divots along the edges of the blades them to make it easier to get the poison you dip them in to stick.)

I'm just saying that the al Ghuls should be a delightful cross between the Bond Villains they were originally conceived as and the lovingly unhinged Addams Family. It just feels correct in my heart.

(Again keep the interesting aspects of the characters and the nuances of who each of them are like their drive to save the world through destroying humanity and their strong environmentalist leanings and their constantly playing 5D chess and everything, but like, take away the racism and the cartoonishly evil for no reason bullshit and give them some fun feral energy to go along with it).

[rochenn]

Hate the chokehold anglicisms have even on formal German speech rn. Homies you need to STOP adding in so much random English or ur gonna reinvent Dutch at this rate 😭

[birdsong-warriors]

Brick may seem to have a bit of a double standard here when it comes to labels, but they don't consider "halfhouser" (half housecat) to be a bad thing, much less an insult. But "half-cat" is too far into icky and demeaning and invalidating territory; they are very much not cool with that, and they're eager to call it out.

On another note: the escaped prisoner is Stonefur.

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Part 1: Friend and Family

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[deadpresidents]

"The Trumpian attitude toward Harris's Indian name reanimates an old American trope. Instead of opening up to a foreign world and even exploring it a little, Trump is treating it as an alien presence in need of assimilation, telling it to conform to whatever he decides it should be.

This willfully blasé attitude towards the word's pronunciation has the effect of othering it, and Harris by extension. A name with no set pronunciation is alien, exotic, unplaceable -- and therefore not who we are. It's a subtle dig that aims in the same direction as Trump's false rumor that Barack Obama wasn't American."

Here's a gift link behind the paywall to noted linguist Dr. John McWhorter's excellent (and fascinating!) article in the New York Times about why Donald Trump and his allies intentionally mispronounce Vice President Kamala Harris's name.

[applejongho]

WHY are the people of tiny twt talking about atz needing to release an eng album...... no they do not!

[dreamwatch]

Let The Bodies Hit The Floor

Written for @corrodedcoffinfest

Day #26 - Prompt: Tour Date | Word Count: 1000 | Rating: M | CW: racism, violence, use of the C word| POV: Gareth | Pairing: None | Tags: mosh pits, rough gigs, fighting, band vs the world, run on sentences

These shitty little bar gigs are a curse and a blessing, honestly; like some set up for a shitty joke - what happens when you throw four hundred people into an underground bunker with no air conditioning? They take their clothes off and drink too much. Badoomtish!

It’s hot as satan’s balls backstage, and his shirt didn’t even make it to the stage with him. The thing about gigs in small venues that you don’t get in big venues (he imagines, he’s never played anything with more than six hundred people and they were the openers, it wasn’t even full), is that you can see them. Like, they’re practically on stage with you, you can see their eyes, see them moshing, watch how they get progressively sweatier, their hair plastered to their heads and faces. It’s visceral. It’s what The Hideout could never give them. Gareth has never felt more alive.

They’re the last on tonight which is just fucking, like what? How is this happening? How are they getting anywhere? It’s insane and he loves it, and fuck you Taco Bell, he’s never going back. But that means with no air conditioning these lunatics have all been drinking for hours, and you can see it. They’re getting rougher, people aren’t just pushing and shoving because it’s fun now, they’re doing it because some of them are drunk and angry.

It shouldn’t be exciting. It feels wrong, like he’s watching an arsonist flicking the spark wheel too close to a gas pump, over and over, and it’s probably okay, maybe, but one spark. It just needs one spark.

Jeff ends up throwing his shirt into the crowd within five minutes, he knows Matty and Eddie will just tough it out; they’ve both got their reasons not to but it boils down to the same thing. And Eddie suffers more than most; his temperature regulation is fucked since all that shit happened a few years back, he’s brittle and pained in the cold, boils if the thermometer rises above seventy. He’s got his hair tied back, same as Gareth, and they keep more water coming for him. It’s not much, but it helps.

The gig is good, Gareth can feel the rivulets of sweat running down his back, his face, the crack of his ass when he stands up. And he can see Jeff’s back right in front of him, glistening under the lights, defined muscles that weren’t there back in high school when he was carrying a few extra pounds. Touring and living cheap has made him lean, loading and unloading amps has built strength. He’s growing his hair out, sides shaved, locs a work in progress on top. He looks fucking awesome. 

The problem with some of these little bum fuck towns is that they like metal just fine, satanism who now? Fuck it, thrash the fuck out of us. But black people? Not so much. Mostly it’s not overt, it’s the vibe, the looks, a thing they have to be careful of, and, bar some nasty words being spat at them, so far they’ve walked away. Angry, disgusted, but with all their own teeth.

It’s how it affects Jeff, though, that’s what’s upsetting. He gets introverted, ruminates on it, which like, he gets (but he doesn’t, he knows they’ll never really understand). Where Eddie would usually have to tell you everything about everything, taking you on the journey of where his brain started to where it ends up, Jeff sits on things, he’ll come up for air when he’s good and ready. And even when he does come up for air he’s not sharing with the class, not all in one go. It’s Matty that’s there first doing the unpicking, soothing the verbal cuts and bruises. Gareth’s never been able to figure that one out, Matty being kind of cold sometimes, but he caught a snippet of conversation one day — 

“— cunts, every last one of them. One day you’ll be breezing through here in our tour bus, we’re not even gonna stop for a piss in this sewer, and you’re going see that racist cock sucker at the side of the road with one tooth in his head and his dog. And then you’re gonna notice he’s married to the dog—“

— and Jeff had laughed, like belly laughed at that, and Matty strikes again.

So this show is fucking something else, and that spark is getting closer and closer to the gas and then whoosh, up it goes, there’s an actual fight in the crowd. They keep playing, there’s blood in peoples teeth, he’s that close, but fuck it and then he notices it really kick off and then he can’t hear Jeff anymore and when he looks up he’s gone, what the fuck, locs flying into the audience. Gareth’s gone, over the fucking kit, can hear the cymbal stands clatter to the ground, but now he’s in the crowd and like, what the fuck is he actually doing here? And he gets a punch to the head and he punches back and then he’s being yanked back on the stage by Eddie and a security guy, and Matt has Jeff, but then a guy from security punches Jeff, like he dragged himself into the crowd, and Matt is like in this fucking dudes face, and Gareth watched Matty break someone’s nose a couple of years ago, he’s got it in him, but Matty shoves the guy away. And like… what do you do now?

There’s this vicious sound, a scream of anger from the amps and it’s Jeff. They all get the memo, Gareth picking up his cymbals before climbing back behind the kit and he doesn’t even count them in, they’re already in, already off. And like fuck the crowd at this point, they’re playing with fury and everyone’s going to listen. And maybe it was excitement, maybe it was some racist fuck, but whatever, their ears are going to bleed for it.

Okay so... A/N if you're interested.

Title from Bodies by Drowning Pool (a song all about mosh pits!)

Inspiration for this came from two places.

1. There was a game going round yesterday - your first gig / last gig. My first was Anthrax at the Camden Underworld in 1993. Small basement gig, getting kicked in the head by stage divers, all that good stuff. It just reminded me there was a time I went to places like that to see metal gigs and it just sent me down a 'oh fuck I am so old and i used to be so cool' spiral.

2. Related, my husband showed me a video of a Nirvana gig where Kurt threw himself into the crowd, and once he got back out he was punched in the face by a security guard, and oh boy, how fast Dave got over those drums. And Matty getting into it with the security guard is a straight rip of Krist doing the same in the video.

Also - Gareth POV and mostly about Jeff because I didn't write for their prompt days and I felt bad. :(

[catyuy]

I've seen "Time Travel to the Prequels" Luke, Leia, R2 and even Han but I've never seen it with Chewbacca.

Chewie wakes up in the past at the beginning of the Clone Wars. He warns Tarfull of what he knows is coming. He then tells Malla, his wife, that he's going to rescue some cubs. Then he goes to Corellia and kidnaps Han and Qi'ra.

He eventually gets to the Jedi Temple where he talks to/berates Yoda. When he meets Anakin he makes it his mission to befriend him as this young man needs more hugs in his life. This leads to him adopting their entire Jedi Line into his family. He makes Obi Wan, Anakin and Ashoka spend time as a family, relaxing, talking and grooming each other. He and Han join them on occasion.

(Not sure if Qi'ra joins him, if he left her on Kashyyyk with his wife, sent her with Shaak Ti to Kamino or convinced Padme to bring her to Naboo.)

He's not worried about Lando at this time. He'll find him when Han is older and the twins are safely born.

He knows he can't just rip off the Supreme Chancellor's arms but he does makes various contingency plans with R2. He does what he can while he makes sure his family and future family's parents are safe.

[batwynn]

Sooo I’m watching an entire facebook group full of trump and cop dick suckers lose their entire minds right now.

Everyone in my very red area just went from “blue lives matter” circle jerking to “maybe we should not have given the local police 7 billion dollars” veeeery quickly when it came out that one of them just straight up killed a guy everyone liked and almost got away with it. 🤔 Wild how fast the opinion changes when it’s them murdering a likable white guy who didn’t qualify for the “oh he’s just a druggie” apathy special. It sure feels like something.