#What's a protest worth if you perpetuate the system and can't see a way out and don't try for a way out?

[bijoumikhawal]

"Biden is the best choice and he's actually really empathetic and reasonable but also you can't wait for a candidate that won't do genocide and war crimes because to become a presidential candidate you have to be willing to do that" see what you fundamentally don't understand is I'm not waiting for a candidate that won't do war crimes, because I know that. I cannot morally stomach this system, it's a joke to claim its democratic, and AMERICA DELENDA EST. this country is a plague on this Earth

[nokingsonlyfooles]

Over an hour of pro-mutant content deserves another chance, and nobody's interested in voting on what I oughta talk about, so here we go again! Brigitte Empire could use your clicks, and I need inspiration for more deep dives - win-win!

So while I have your attention, let's talk about why Magneto and the whole of mutant-kind are more useless than one average protester with silly dyed hair and a brick...

You've seen the Pyramind Of Capitalist System around, but here's a refresher.

A funny thing about pyramids is that the bottom layer has the most bricks.

Thank you, Marsha, for demonstrating proper brick usage to us all. Rest in power.

And, like, it needs it to stay where it is, or else the whole thing comes crashing down. Humanity has crashed quite a few pyramids in its time, so everyone taking part in that broken system knows this, even if they want to pretend it'll never happen again.

So what does Everett Christensen mean when he calls the X-Men's ability to take up arms and fight back against injustice a "power fantasy"? We have that ability and we do it all the damn time. You, too, can move metal with your mind... and your hand and arm, and throw it at a cop. Hell, if you've got your friends with you, you can flip the damn cop car, and de-arrest each other, if it should come to that. You can get yourselves killed that way, but look at the pyramid. They can't kill all of us or they won't eat.

When it gets so bad that individuals stop seeing their individual lives and happiness as worth fighting for, they become willing to do things we do not want them to do, things that kill lots of people and make big changes. We know that. We like to pretend the people who founded our nations were the good guys and any violence they did was mild and justified, but you know that ain't how it is. So where does the "power fantasy" come in?

What I think he means, sadly, is that he's internalized the abuser's lie that if you get knocked down, it was your fault for standing up. The "fantasy" is that you'll be allowed to hit back and accomplish something. The cycle of progress and backlash that's scaring the hell out of us at the moment (we're still dealing with the backlash) can be parsed as "WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME HIT YOU??" If mutants use their power, they might hurt someone with it, and if it looks like minorities might hurt someone with their power, the majority will never stop hitting us. So mutants can't win. That is not something we can allow the minorities in our audience to see, because the majority will see it too, and beat the crap out of us. Progress is not a real option.

I would say that eternal victimhood is not what we're after either (and that sort of existence tends to produce people who DGAF anymore and hurt others anyway), and we could probably stand to see a few cautionary tales about minorities who perpetuate the cycle of abuse, just in case any of us happen to acquire a smidgen of power.

"Can't poor people just BUY housing?"

"Can't trans people just BUY rights?"

I would also say that you're probably not going to get the nuance and continuity to tell that sort of story well from a blockbuster Marvel product that has Disney clinging to its shoe like a turd. I don't know how Secret Empire - United shook out (long-running comics with dodgy continuity are not for me, and that's okay), but I'm guessing everything went back to normal or everything took place in an alternate timeline that we won't revisit unless another writer picks it up way later. 'Cos that's how shared universes roll.

Waaaay back in web 1.0 days, I ran a message board-based story with multiple writers in a shared universe, so believe me when I tell you: people do not like it when you tear up a world they are using. They're busy trying to tell their own stories and they expect things to stay approximately where they are. Everyone ends up doing a Hero's Journey where their characters return changed and the world stays right where it is. Character development can be slow and realistic (but not always in comics, where dueling writers may want to take the same character in totally different directions), but anything done to the world will be sharp and swift and involve as many characters as possible... Then it will get reset and forgotten.

How many post-Endgame plotlines needed the blip, or gave it more than a throwaway reference? And nobody mentions the stillborn god egg, because that movie didn't do well.

The X-Men and their Marvel friends live in a universe that's very close to ours, with more kinds of people in it. That's the baseline, and we need to get back there because the other writers can't be expected to put their plotlines on hold to deal with whatever shit Magneto crushed recently.

"A minority terrorist just destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge and led an all-minority attack on San Francisco? I'm sorry, but Ant-Man is having daddy-daughter time with Cassie and he will not lift even one tiny finger to help clean that up. And nobody else cares either!"

When you hear about the latest mass shooting, you hold your breath, cross your fingers and mutter, "White, male and uncomplicated... White, male and uncomplicated..." or something similar, don't you? You know if the bad guy belongs to any marginalized groups at all, there's gonna be a backlash. In the comics, that doesn't happen unless it's needed for a specific plot, and then it only lasts as long as that specific plot. There are only so many panels in an issue and Ant-Man's BAE doesn't have room to note anti-mutant sentiment is really high right now 'cos of what happened in Wolverinicon #47 or whatever, unless it has something to do with what Ant-Man is up to.

Ultimately, that is the real power fantasy you'll find in the comics, and it's never going away because it's a structural issue. You can push for change all you want, and suffer, and win small victories, and your friends can even die, and everything will stay basically the same and no one will care.

Oh, no! Jean Grey died again?! Well, I hope she comes back in time for our weekly Bridge game, because Colossus is a terrible partner!

Tony Stark can have more money and tech than God, and fly around in his little suit punching all the terrorists he wants, and have zero effect on global politics. Reed Richards can be the superest genius of all time, but if he actually fixed anything there wouldn't be any conflict or plot, so he builds cool toys instead of ending world hunger. Do you want all your problems solved or do you want an engaging narrative? You can't have both!

And that's why long-running comics are not for me! If I need a little nihilism in my life, I'll just watch The Big Lebowski again. At least it's funny.

Some people, and I think the author of the article I'm looking at might be one of them, equate the structural issues of shared universes to the systemic issues we have in real life. Well, the Arc of Justice is long, maybe too long for me to see it, or for anyone I care about to benefit from it in my lifetime. It doesn't need me to stand up and make sacrifices and maybe get my friends hurt or killed. The best I can do might be to keep my head down and try to survive.

Sometimes that is the best you can do, yes, but not always. Tellingly, Mr. Christensen's words are from 2017, before the summer of BLM. A whole lot of people got together, stood up, pushed, and yelled. And there was violence. And people got hurt and died. And the majority got real scared and started screaming and lashing out... But we got some motherfuckin' legislation out of it! You know how goddamn hard it is to cram anything meaningful through our broke-ass system these days, but look at how fast it offers us folks in the bottom tier some concessions when we unsettle the pyramid. And we're not done yet. "Defunding the police" is part of the conversation now, and no matter how much they yell and scream and distort what it means, it's not going away.

We go back and sanitize revolutions and revolutionaries. The fantasy that the good guys don't do violence takes hold, and when a real revolution takes place (near us, because I didn't see many conservatives in the States flipping out about the Arab Spring), even the people who would benefit from the changes are tempted to pull back and say, "No, you can't do it that way."

I remember reading an editorial from a Black mayor in the South, equivocating about her son's desire to participate in the BLM protests. Yes, intellectually, she knew the Civil Rights protests of the 50s and 60s were a thing, but there were buildings on fire and angry white people and her kid might get hurt. Maybe it wasn't going to make any difference and he didn't need to do that, ya know? But this is a mayor we're talking about, a person with enough authority to reign in that scary police presence and make things a little bit safer for her son and others like him. She could've used that editorial space to yell, "Hell yeah! Mess with my kid and you mess with ME!" But she saw violence, she got scared, and she thought it was more important to say, "I don't want this."

Violence isn't the answer. Violence isn't a solution. However, when violence happens, it snaps a lot of people out of their ignorant comas and makes then realize there is, in fact, a problem, and it affects them. Then they start groping around for a compromise, fast. Anything to make it stop, with the least upset possible, so those guys at the top of the pyramid don't fall off and the property and capital stops taking damage! PLEASE!

"Oh, God, come baaaack!"

Well, not anything. We've collapsed a lot of pyramids and there's a procedure. First, they offer concessions to some of the folks on the bottom. The good guys. The ones who just want to be normal. "Hey," say the folks at the endless dining table, waving a small bunch of carrots, "we know you guys don't like violence either. We'll let you be normal if you help us make this stop. Could you just hand us the bad guys? The freaks, losers and weirdos? The ones you don't like either? We'll clean them up for you and then we can all get back to our lives, okay?" And the stick, if they need it, is, "There's going to be a backlash and people are gonna get hurt. The longer this goes on, the worse it's gonna be!"

Oooh, boy, and we DO know who we're willing to throw under the bus for a carrot, don't we? The bottom of the pyramid has its own underclasses, which are meticulously maintained with the help of the folks on the higher tiers. Divided, we are much easier to control. After Stonewall, trans people, poor people, and minorities got kicked to the curb, so that Ellen could have the privilege of sitting next to George "War Crimes" Bush at a nice dinner, with smiles and tolerance. The Ellen-tier gays are still out there, kicking trans and minority folks in the face and saying "Get your shit off our flag!" And there are some trans and minority folks who are willing to aim a kick at the folks under them on the ladder too. (I'm multi-racial and nonbinary, and I know exactly what level of standing that gets me. If "real" trans minorities get a carrot, I'm toast!)

There are endless intersections and complexities and the State is doing violence that benefits all of us, though some more than others. If you use money and own property (or hope to) then the police are willing to shoot uppity people in the face to preserve that privilege for you. And they will present you with a bill, subtly addressed to your anonymous tax dollars. It doesn't matter if they would just as eagerly shoot you in the face on an individual basis; as a group, we are part of that pyramid. If we don't take it apart, we're helping to hold it up. Even if the goddamn thing is crushing us.

But if we do take it apart, people are gonna get hurt and die. The State gets an automatic pass on all its violence and its body count is so huge it's invisible. The good revolutions, the ones that existed in the past and are over, also get a pass. If you and your friends get together and fight back right now - inconveniencing people who just wanna buy a coffee and go to work - you're gonna get screaming, crying, pointing, and the blame for the inevitable backlash. Maybe history will clean up your revolution after you're dead, and maybe it won't. In the meantime, the upper classes are gonna play Deal or No Deal and keep upping the amount they're willing to offer you to give up your suitcase of progress. No matter what, people will eventually get tired and settle down, and then it's time to see what the backlash will grab away from you.

That's the reality. You have the power to fight back, and they have the power to offer whatever it takes to stop you from fighting back; you can't fight forever, and then they'll yank back whatever progress they can. Oh, and some of your friends will probably help them do it.

"Jean, for fuck's sake, we just want to live our lives in peace!"

That is why, despite so many well-documented collapses, we seem to keep rebuilding the same damn pyramid every time. It's frustrating, but it's entirely different from the endless resets needed to keep a shared story universe intact. We can change. The violence is not meaningless spectacle, it's part of the process. We real-world mutants can fight back, and win, and fuck each other over, and fuck up, and fight back some more, and still win.

However...

...when it happens, look to your left, look to your right, and make damn sure you're actually fighting for progress, not a reversion to an imaginary past where nothing needs to change ever again or even a safe space to eat your damn carrots. I know it hurts and you're tired, so don't waste your energy picking up a bucket and trying to help the tide go out. It's just gonna come back in again - bigger, stronger, and more disruptive than ever...

(It's a metaphor for the cycle of progress and backlash, Bill.)

...but that's how beaches are made.

[abassi-okoro]

THE SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS AND THE REVOLUTIONARY

by Abassi Okoro

Kwame Toure once spoke on the difference between mobilization and organization of African people in America. I would like to also speak on a difference.

There are two types of black people in America. There are those of us who are interested in "issues" and then there are those of us who are interested in much more. The overwhelming majority of our people believe that they are fighting for the right reasons and in some ways, they are. In the 1960's we fought for Civil Rights and desegregation. That was an issue that was important to us as a people. In the 60's we also fought for fair and equal treatment in the corporate world and in education, and what came out of that was a concept called, Affirmative Action. That was an issue that was important to us. We took it as a victory. The 1980's was a mixed bag. There were some good and some not so good things that took place. We had three black Miss Americas, we had an hour glass shape economic structure (big money in - a trickle down effect and big money out). It was a decade of corporate discrimination, a war on drugs that targeted inner urban black communities, and a new slogan "Afrocentric" which was more about fashion and culture than politics. But we fought the issues that were important to us.

The 90's brought in the crack epidemic, the Bloods and the Crips, the Rodney King beating, riots, the dragging death of James Byrd by white supremacist and, gangsta rap. It wasn't black people's best moment but we fought the issues that were important to us. We didn't win many battles but at least we fought our battles. I suppose there's pride in just playing the game. [It's not whether you win or lose but how you play the game. Well that old adage takes away our natural instinct and will to succeed.] The 2000's to now, Racism has gotten perpetually more brazen and in the past couple of years we have protested and boycotted more in the past two years than we did in the entire decade of 60's - proving that we have hardly taken a step towards real social progress. But, thanks to technology we can take our anger and outrage to social media and forge our dissatisfaction with our current government through Tweets and memes. Some even consider THIS "fighting."

Every time there's an act of injustice or a social issue, we (black folks) have no problem responding to that issue. There's no shortage of black people who are willing to boycott, protest or hold mass demonstrations. A clothing store is selling a racist sweater - let's rally and show them we mean business! We won't shop there any longer. No problem! The company will most likely pull the item from their shelves and we will most likely return to the store as happy patrons a couple of months later after it all blows over. We may even feel accomplished. A black man had the police called on him for doing nothing more than walking into his apartment building and a white woman took one look at him and decided that there's no way he could afford to live there and so she called the authorities. Let's rally and show them how upset we are at that sort of racism. No problem! The woman will probably lose her job at the bank as a result of the video of her harassing the young black gentleman gong viral. We may even feel accomplished. People will always come to rally and protest and scream and pump their fist. People will always come together to address "Issues." We will always gather around "Issues." It's predictable.

Those of us who are revolutionaries and progressive thinkers are not concerned with "Issues." We're concerned with the system. You must understand the difference. People who are concerned with issues are not concerned with reformation, they are concerned with equity. They are the people who pose the questions, "How come I can't have the same slice of pie? How come the white folks are entitled to certain privileges and I am not?" This is how they think. This is not how the revolutionary thinks. The protestors and equal opportunity folks don't want social reform; they just want what they think is "owed" to them and they want it with very little change or sacrifice. They want to be black without being African. Their concerns are always temporary. Once they are are satisfied, they move on to the next "issue" like a virus or forget all together about the previous issue. The two black men who were arrested in Starbucks last April, quick . . . what were their names? See? Because of this short-term memory, these people can easily be fooled around the issue and they often become so enamored by one issue that it seems that it's the only issue worth caring about. It's difficult to get these people to organize or to even organize their own thoughts. They lack continuity and consistency. They are simply not organized.

When you are organized, you don't need money, you don't need fame, fortune, popularity or allies. Why? Because you have power. Despite what some may believe, power does NOT come from money or opportunity. Power comes only from the organized masses (Kwame Toure). America is NOT the most powerful nation on the earth. China is the most powerful nation on the earth - not because they have money but because they are organized! Because they are not concerned with "Issues," they are concerned with systems! Capitalism is not a concept, it is an organized system of private enterprise. Europeans in the 1600's traveled to the west coast of Africa and captured in the excess of 10 million Africans for slavery and they accomplished this not because they had money but because they were organized. Only organization could account for several hundred men having the ability destabalize a country of millions.

Out of many of the issues that we love to rally over, we always fail to rally over the biggest issue, our disorganization. It is safe to say that we can not even organize to talk about our disorganization. Black people in America (displaced Africans) will never be able to fight an organized system while being disorganized. Money is not the answer, our national interest in destabalizing the system is the answer. We must understand our national interest and we cannot exercise so much stupidity to allow that system to convince us of what our interests SHOULD be (money.)

They will happily entertain our desire for money as long as we don't desire what we really need, organization (power). They understand that our lack of economic literacy will pretty much guarantee an hour glass result, (big money in - a trickle down down - big money out). Are you going to spend the rest of your life addressing "Issues" or are you going to stop putting your hand out and start addressing the system that gives birth to these issues? The difference between socially conscious folks and the revolutionaries is that the socially conscious are only conscious SOCIALLY and will only respond socially. They are the issue fighters. Revolutionaries on the other hand are globally conscious. GLOBALLY (hence the term: Revolve) and they see all sides of the sphere. We are the system fighters.

"Fighting the system IS fighting the issues. But fighting the issues is not fighting the system."

- Abassi Okoro

[clatterbane]

I'm exhausted after a long day, and about to try for some sleep. And I really can't write more at the moment about the the bigger context this came up in connection to.

I'm sticking this behind a cut, because it might be disturbing for people who have had similarly bad experiences.

But, a few things occurred to me about the '80s-'90s repressed memory therapy fad specifically. Some of it might also be relevant to other psych things which can turn abusive. Especially involving kids and other people with very little power, credibility, or rights are involved. (My personal experience there, yeah.)

I don't know why I hadn't thought of it in these terms before, but the big thing that occurred to me tonight? Too much of this looks like exorcism just barely disguised in secular progressive pseudoscientific clothing--but enough for insurance to pay for it.

Any resistance? It's probably not even coming from the victim at all. Even if it were? Don't listen to them. Their memories, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions can't be trusted under the influence of demons. They can't be trusted to know what their own best interest is, much less act toward that. Intervention is crucial, and ASAP, before their soul is further corrupted or even totally lost to Darkness. Even if they can't see right now that it's for their own good, you're really doing them a favor.

Any signs of increasing distress from your chosen intervention? Likely a good sign that the demons are putting up a struggle. Better keep pressing harder, to weaken them. Again, any protests are not the victim talking, and are best ignored for their own good even if they were.

The situation will look worse before it gets better, but we must all have faith that these demons will be overcome by righteous power. If something happens to the afflicted person? Not enough faith, and/or they weren't strong and dedicated enough to the fight. It probably would have happened sooner without your help.

I was going to say more, including about dire predictions and getting people who care afraid not to go along or even express many doubts, no matter what happens. But, I've pretty much run out of steam for now. Don't know how good a job I even did of wrapping words around this comparison, but hopefully you get the drift.

Too many people are primed to think in these kinds of terms, without necessarily seeing the ideological connections there. (Very much like the whole Grand Battle Against $DISEASE narrative, yes.)

And it frequently takes disturbingly little to justify denying people's agency if it can be cast as For Their Own Good, and/or that they're being influenced by hostile forces.

Most of the ones perpetuating this stuff really do think they're doing the Right Thing, out of the best motives to help. That doesn't make it right. It does make it more disturbing and dangerous, in some ways. (And we're right back around to the self-image of “goodness” malarkey, as it can relate to abuse on a more systemic level...)

I also keep coming back to the fact that if you promote just plain exorcism as a treatment for autism--as one too-relevant example--that (very rightly) will not go over so well outside of some fringes. Most people would likely agree that you should be held accountable for harming children with that wacky blatantly abusive bullshit. And that the parents subjecting their kids to this share some culpability there.

Slap a more socially acceptable (pseudo)scientific mask on the same basic ideas, though, and suddenly it looks less scary to pretty much everyone but the people subjected to that treatment. Very possibly covered by insurance, as I said before.

(Personally, my parents losing their jobs with "good" insurance was what got the worst of the psych abuse stopped. Sucked for dealing with actual medical problems, but I still have to think it was worth it. What prompted that approach? Mostly badly misinterpreted autistic stuff, plus some actual overlaid PTSD from causes that went totally unaddressed. They were essentially trying to fix autism through exorcising the Imaginary Abuse Demons, while directly layering on more trauma and encouraging more emotional abuse at home. As the short version.)

That particular therapeutic garbage may have thankfully gone mostly out of fashion. But, there is still some equally terrible stuff with wide social acceptance.