#a revolutionary who will pursue his idea of justice by any means

[bluespiritshonour]

Idea for a Batman vs Superman story: surprise! Batman is actually wrong for once this time. Not that he always isn't, but narrative always makes exceptions for him.

Lois and Clark pursue Batman for both child abuse and idk—everything else, how about that? I think it'd make for a very interesting plot: it goes into how you see things clearly when you're the third party. That it's very easy to say what's right or wrong when you're not the one involved.

But when it's one of your colleagues/friends who has a habit of taking orphans/abusing them or basically being a one man fascist deep state—then what do you do? He works with you. You're supposed to be a hero. When Lex Luthor does it, it's not okay? But if Bruce Wayne does it, it is? Think Clark, think. You saw he kicked Dick out, Clark. You've seen the way he treats the kids, you've seen the way he treats the League. You've seen his attitude towards the poor and marginalised. You're someone who understands him deeply and knows what makes him tick and you know why he is the way he is. But if you let him roam free and abuse everyone around you, what kind of hero do you call yourself? Do you make excuses for him because it's “not that simple?”

So, yeah. Batman vs Superman that actually makes sense.

P.S. the child abuse I'm talking about isn't the “Robin is child endangerment” argument. It's [waves hand] everything else.

P.P.S: I hate that panel of Wally tearing Bruce a new one concerning “children superheroes”. I mean, it makes sense. Wally grew up with Dick, he knows what kind of parent Bruce was. And they have the entire Justice League hissing through their teeth and going all “he did not say that. Lol.” and they think they're revolutionary or cool or any of these things.

But they're not.

What is the Justice League if it condones abuse within its circles. What is the Justice League when it sees a hero mistreating their sidekick and does nothing about it? Because they know him?

Either don't bring it up at all and I'll somehow suspend my disbelief (the way I do with really good comics like Grimm and BtAS) or if you're bringing it up make sure the narrative doesn't condone it but NOPE! DC and dudebro writers of the medium only know how to half arse things.

[thewillowbends]

Halfway through S&S, and I'm here to tell you guys the reason Mal drives you guys insane isn't because he's that toxic, really. There's some bad writing around him, but I can see what Leigh was trying to do having him be the moral heart of the series, the person who keeps Alina steady when she's pushing the limits of her own ethics. (Which is, fundamentally, a mild gender reverse of what we typically see in most stories, right? I'm not joking when I say I think she was inspired by The Hunger Games because there's a lowkey Peeta/Gale vibe with the love interests here and how they reflect moral pathways Alina could have taken. The Darkling even has grey eyes, lmao.)

He annoys you because he keeps Alina from being the dark protagonist this story needed her to be. I mean, there are other ways he's annoying in that his feelings about her powers isn't mixed (wouldn't you feel disturbed that the very same power by which your friend saved your life now seems to be destroying her? wouldn't it make your feelings on the situation really complex?). Beyond the fact that the moral landscape of this series really needed an adult story to thoroughly explore its nuances, there's the fact that the ultimate fate of this character really needed Alina to go to the edge. Ideally, it should have happened in S&B, but it could have happened here....and it just doesn't happen. He's the voice pulling her back, which is fine, but a story about the corrosive influence of power really needs a protagonist who is violating our own ideas of what's acceptable and making us question whether this story has any real heroes, whether everybody is just kind of fucked because Morozova's legacy is one of greed, and everyone who gets involved gets swept up in that feverish rush of his ambition.

So what happens is that, instead of doing anything truly meaningfully, morally reprehensible on the scale a fantasy series requires, she's just kind of an asshole. And not even an asshole who's interesting. S&B Alina was prickly, anxious, fast to make judgements, desperate to feel important and wanted...and all of that was fine because she was seventeen and immature. Those qualities could have been matured into something interesting, like having her become increasingly aware of how dangerous her life was as a Grisha and the saint, something that would start her down a path similar to the Darkling (i.e. power is both a boon and target your back, so you have to protect yourself against everyone). There's even like...the implications of this in S&S with her being legitimately freaked out by how people are sanctifying her, selling chicken bones claiming they're hers. (How on Earth did Leigh miss the obvious parallel there between an amplifier and a saint? They're both more valuable dead than alive!) She already has that anger in her, the same anger that the Darkling has learned to bury and fashion into a weapon that drives him. It just needed to be allowed to foster into something meaningful.

And she just...doesn't grow. Her awareness never goes beyond how events are affecting her. She never starts to understand what drives the Darkling beyond just seeing the boy in him. Her sense of responsibility to all of these Grisha who chose their country over years of loyalty and admiration of the Darkling never develops past how they're useful to her mission. (Hmm, sounds familiar, right?) Worst of all, she simply....gets all the prickly, unlikable characteristics of a character who could tip over into some really shitty behaviors but none of the actually interesting actions that make the Darkling a terrible but deeply compelling villain.

S&S Alina shouldn't have been told to kill the sea whip out of mercy by Mal. She needed to do it without prompting, showing us a jump from S&B's moment with the stag where mercy is something she's slowly realizing she can't afford anymore - or maybe doesn't care to maintain. S&S Alina needed to fulfill the promise of that girl who crippled the skiff in a moment of panic and fear to save herself and the man she loves. She needed to be more of the girl who was infatuated by the power the collar the Darkling gave her, so he becomes a complex figure who empowered her to dark ends, while Mal is the good man with a good heart who ultimately held her back unknowingly. The story is too afraid to go there, too afraid to ask the reader to forgive their protagonist if she crosses too far of a line, mostly because it refuses to forgive it in its antagonist...which should be a warning to all of us about what happens when you create a zero sum game where redemption isn't an option. Because in the end, Alina winds up committing the worst character offense of all: she's annoying.

[anti-endings]

I’m fairly sure at this point that Naruto is more or less fascist propaganda. There are so many things that we as a fandom want to turn a blind eye to yet when SNK was called out for being fascist, we had no problem boycotting it because it wasnt an anime that we’d come to love throughout our childhood. Unfortunately Naruto was a lot more subtle and pulled a fast one on us towards the end - 14/15 years after its initial release. 

Theres a lot of intricate reasons as to why I’d call it fascist but I’ll list the general points to be made that everyone can easily recognize. 

• Genocide for the good of the nation. This one is pretty obvious but I thought I’d get it out of the way. Slaughtering possible defectors of the state is apparently an honourable and justified choice. Even if some members of the oppressed minority were completely unaware of their leaders planned coup or had no desire to revolt against the system, each and every single one of them apparently deserved death. 

• Brainwashing children into military violence goes completely unquestioned by the narrative. The only people who challenge this idea are portrayed as “hateful.” The best example of this is how the narrative feels the need to emphasize that Itachi murdering his clan was his own decision. I just find it awfully strange that we’re expected to believe that a 13 year old, who was sent to fight in a bloody war for his country when he was just a toddler and was shown to suffer from severe PTSD, apparently wasnt brainwashed with threats of war on his impressionable child brain when he was already completely numb to the concept of killing people. Itachis history details the story of a brainwashed child soldier yet goes to great efforts to brush it aside and give Itachi the autonomy that he never actually had. On a meta level it’s pretty messed up that Itachis actions as a result of his brainwashing, was praised by Hashirama Senju - the ultimate force of “peace” who founded the village and “the will of fire” that were so expected to admire. 

• Consistent denial of blatant military violence. In the manga, the truth about the Uchiha massacre is covered up by Naruto, Sasuke and eventually Sakura to “maintain honour of the Uchiha.” This makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever. How is it more honourable to say that a clan was slaughtered by a rogue criminal of their own (further perpetuating the selfish, bloodthirsty and power-hungry stereotype) when the truth is that an oppressed group of people were slaughtered off by the government? How can an act of genocide be prevented by a future government when the truth is actively censored by the governemnt? Neither Naruto nor Sasuke did anything to implement some sort of bill of human rights, laws or Geneva conventions in honour of Uchiha to prevent more innocent bloodshed at the hands of the state.

• Ultranationalism at every opportunity. The village is literally gated off. No one enters or leaves without permission from authority. The unification of the village under the statist military + the slaughter of any and all potential defectors is pretty telling. Its scary that “the will of fire” and protecting the state is the only honourable and good goal/ideology to have in this series as shown by Sasuke only ever being seen as “not evil” when he is beaten down into conforming to the government.

• Evil is in the genetics of the oppressed. This was pretty unsettling to witness and I’m surprised there havent been more people speaking out about it. Ideologies are inherited not just by fate, but by your genetics. The Senju-Uzumaki obviously have “The will of fire” which is known to be the supreme ideology. It consists of uniting and enduring the hardships of the world under the totalitarian government but NEVER pursuing revolution or change for the better. “The curse of hatred” is its counterpart which has its origins exclusively to the Uchiha. Its explained to be Uchiha culture to some degree. The narrative very desperately tries to paint the pursuit of revolution to prevent more violence as evil, bloodthirsty and selfish. This, in reality, makes no sense. Why are the Uchiha hateful for trying to fix a situation for the better of their family yet somehow the senju arent characterized by hatred despite openly hating the Uchiha? Simply put, the Uchiha are GENETICALLY undesirable and their push for equal rights are characterized as hateful, selfish and lonely. In reality, Madara Uchiha would not become a rogue ninja who decides to attack the entire village including his own family with Kurama because he could not get equal rights for the Uchiha. This doesnt add up with why he was so angry in the first place. Non of the “bloodthirsty” actions of any Uchiha do. They’re a fictional race of people that are only evil by the design of the author to portray oppressed people as selfish and aggressive. Towards the end of the fourth war, the story of Ashura and Indra is told to Naruto and Sasuke. Indra is apparently the original Uchiha who was influenced by some deranged evil spirit to pursue power over unification for completely selfish purposes. This is very unfairly equated to Sasuke and the rest of the Uchiha clan to explain to audience that the Uchiha are inherently evil and selfish detractors. 

• To be a revolutionary is to be lonely. This ties into my last point. Sasuke is constantly referred to as lonely by just about everyone in the cast, Naruto especially. This has always been bothersome because Sasuke wouldnt have been lonely if his entire clan wasnt slaughtered by the very same people that Naruto stands by. This point is incredibly simple yet its overlooked because the anti-uchiha propaganda is so successful in what it sets out to do. To add onto this point, what if Naruto had simply said to Sasuke “I believe you have every right to bring the murderer of your clan to justice and I’ll stand by your right to justice every step of the way” instead of physically fighting him and screaming at him all the time? Sasuke isnt inherently lonely exclusively by his own means, he is alienated by everyone around him. The narrative acknowledges Sasukes emotional unfulfillment, IGNORES the real reason why hes lonely and then states that the only way that Sasuke will find a sense of family through the acceptance of his peers is if he conforms to the government and adopts the hegemonic ideology…. after “repenting” for ever daring to get justice for his clan in the first place. This eerie emotional blackmail is completely normalized and unquestioned by the narrative. It sends a harrowing message to the audience that it’s more desirable and fulfilling to conform to the government despite their poor treatment of your people and should you question otherwise, you must repent for forgiveness. 

• The leader of the village is the most powerful member of the military, who is chosen exclusively through nepotism by a rich man who owns the land instead of the people, and is in power for an indeterminate length of  time. Again with the military obsession! Not even necessarily the best military commander or anyone with experience in any leadership position at all. This is partly fascist due to the fact that theres no limitations on what a Kage can do to their village, they’re selected through nepotism and not democracy and they’re in power for as long as they please no matter how the public feel. The leader is not necessarily someone who is shown to be compassionate, responsible, trustworthy, intelligent or reliable. In fact, you could be a known, unpersecuted war criminal like Danzo and still get the position. 

• To add on to that, war criminals in the Government or Military go completely unpersecuted and often unpunished - as shown by Danzo and the village elders. The village elders are still in the same position during the events of Boruto as they were in over 20 years ago when they conspired to execute the Uchiha massacre. Naruto and Sasuke know of their involvement yet havent held them accountable in any way. 

• Child soldiers are sent to die for the government. It seems that only Obito notices this when Rin dies. The second he becomes critical of the fact of this reality is the second he becomes “hateful” and “evil." 

Theres plenty more but I’ve already spent an hour typing this up and checking over every little detail. Generally speaking, much like SNK, the theme of Naruto is to just simply ENDURE hardship, stay loyal to your government at all costs even if they cause the hardship and NEVER revolt. Naruto as a character serves as the purpose of being as reductive as possible to every single character that faces hardship with "I too was lonely and oppressed but I coped by worshipping the government for a sense of emotional validation and you can too!" 

[amphtaminedreams]

Spring/Summer & Haute Couture Week 2021: Whoops, I’ve Missed a Loooot (Part 2)

Hey to anyone reading,

I’m so sorry for the gap between the last fashion week review post and this one! Argh. I had no idea I posted it as long ago as the beginning of March but I think we can all agree that lockdown has fucked with our perceptions of time completely. I wish I could say the delay in posting was as simple as me being busy but I’ve also started to reflect on whether or not I want to carry on this format of posts for the time being; on the scale of problems, this one is wayyy down there in the very lower quartile of the first world region, but my motivation to carry on this kind of content in the form of long-winded text posts is...meh...not so much there anymore. At first I was thinking the issue was that working on these was my last priority on my daily to-do lists but as I’ve got back into writing fiction, it’s kind of occurred to me that the fact I was putting these posts on my to-do lists in the first place along with things like doing the ironing and contacting student finance speaks volumes. When I’m back from work or winding down, opening up Tumblr and coming back to this draft isn’t something that I think of as a fun stress reliever in the way drafting stories is. It doesn’t feel like I’m using my imagination or my creativity or expressing myself in any way and it’s not much of an escape from day to day life in the way that writing dialogue or exploring characters is. Maybe it’s because I’ve done quite a few of these posts now but I just tend to feel like I’m repeating myself, you know kinda like when you’re writing an essay and trying to fill up a word count; of course there are collections that I do have a lot of opinions on but by and large, sometimes it boils down to THESE CLOTHES ARE JUST FUCKING PRETTY, OKAY?! There’s only so many things you can say about a tulle skirt or an exaggerated collar before you want to strangle yourself with said tulle. I used to think iF VoGUe RuNwaY wRitErs CaN dO iT WhAT's MY exCusE until I realised that 1). Vogue Runway writers actually get paid and 2). for the most part all they do is explain the designer's intentions behind the collections verbatim without giving a critical opinion anyway.

I think a lot of the pressure I feel to justify what are in reality quite simple observations and opinions goes back to some of the feelings I explained in my first ever fashion week review where people who know more about fashion and have a formal education in the subject tend to be kind of gatekeep-y and elitist. It can never be that you appreciate different things about a collection but rather than one of you has taste and the other doesn’t and if it wasn’t obvious, the taste level assigned to you by the powers that be tend to positively correlate with the amount of money you have available to spend on a degree that has a reputation for failing to provide a steady income, which for most makes it an unrealistic avenue to pursue. I know, I know, the pressure is totally self-inflicted and wholly imagined seeing as I have under 500 followers on here and those who do interact with these posts most likely do so for the pictures but I still feel it, and given that I’m going to have enough external pressure to write essays when I return to uni in September, why on earth am I wasting time putting it on myself? When just posting photosets of my favourite looks is not only actually enjoyable for me but is also what other people WANT to see too? Nobody wants to read a self-indulgent paragraph like this when they’re here for the clothes and to be honest, for the most part I don’t want to write them anyway unless it’s something I have strong feelings about or if a collection can only be properly appreciated with analysis. I think I’ve made pretty clear which designers I’m a fan of, do you really need to hear me raving about Gucci or Zimmerman or Miu Miu or Balenciaga again? Is there gonna be anything revolutionary in yet another rant about Maria Grazia? Course not. I mean, if you are reading, you might have to witness those things one last time because I do intend to finish off this season’s review in this format for consistency purposes and because I’ve already got all the notes now but on the whole, I doubt anyone will miss my rambles.

So, with all that in mind, I think after I finish my S/S21 posts I am gonna start just uploading these posts without the written part. I mean, for one, the simplicity of doing this means I’m much less likely to procrastinate making them which in turn means I’ll be able to get them out right after the shows as a kind of summary as opposed to months later when they’re no longer as relevant. This will also give me more time to work on the writing I actually enjoy. Right now I’m going through and editing my 17 year old self’s “grown-up” take on the Pretty Little Liars blackmail murder mystery style plot line which I wrote back when I was completely and utterly obsessed with the show and bitterly disappointed by the last couple of seasons. The writing is pretty mediocre and often hugely cringey to read back now but I am still a fan of the basic plot and I’m genuinely motivated to see if I can make it something actually worth reading, and to get onto that ASAP; this feels especially important right now given that the HBO version of the series’ apparent upcoming release has sent that ever-present writer’s fear of seeing-your-same-storyline-done-better-by-somebody-else-thus-forever-relegating-your-version-to-being-the-poor-imitation-so-you-gotta-get-there-first into overdrive (or maybe that’s just me and my neuroses). Again, it’s a totally unfounded fear based on the fact that the HBO show will probs get millions of viewers whilst I will be doing little more than shouting into the void but anybody who’s used Turnitin to submit an essay that ultimately counts for little more than like 1% of your grade or degree will know that no matter how irrelevant your work is, the concept of failing a plagiarism check, be it via a computer algorithm or one random stranger on the internet’s assessment, is enough to conjure visions of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse galloping towards you screaming “START THE WHOLE THING AGAIN” before releasing a hoarde of 2015 Chanel vs. Walmart style comparison memes.

Now, speaking of Chanel, I should probably get back into the reviewing. 

So for the last time for a little while, here’s Christian Siriano:

Siriano’s designs are a great example of work I feel guilty enjoying. I know that when it comes to quality, the high fashion community have a lot of (negative) things to say and I really can’t speak to that because quite honestly, I know very little about textile manufacturing. Solely from my own point of view though, I do like his work a lot. I wouldn’t claim for a minute that he’s a pioneer in terms of his creations but I would 100% love to wear them and I DO hugely admire his commitment to putting women of all sizes on the runway and designing pieces that don’t simply cater to straight up and down types which is more than can be said for most brands. I get that his collections are pretty formulaic, taking what has worked for the likes of Chanel and Alessandra Rich, De La Renta and Carolina Herrera, Michael Kors too (who is kind of guilty of the same thing himself), but that’s not to say his work is bad. Let’s be real, we’ve been on this planet thousands of years, we’re all taking inspiration from someone, and maybe figures like Kors and Siriano could wait a *little* longer before taking said inspiration but their aim at the end of the day is to sell clothes, not break barriers, a task which although often left to the big name brands, they too often fail at. I’m not going to lie, I’m feeling this whimsical mid-century tea party vibe, it’s elegant and it’s cutesy and My Fair Lady-esque, and you bet your arse I would be absolutely thrilled to wear one of these looks on a summer red carpet. I just can’t say no to anything tulle-maybe it’s that I was on Toddlers & Tiaras in a past life or maybe it’s that I watched too many Barbie Princess films growing up, but I like pretty much everything going on here, especially Siriano is giving us matching fedoras too. Plus, can we take a moment to praise Siriano for his COVID relief efforts? Near the beginning of the pandemic, he turned his studio into a mask manufacturing factory in order to send them out as donations, and I think that is very cool.

Then there’s Christopher Kane who once again came through with the most insanely gorgeous prints:

I mean, paint splattering is hardly a new technique but I haven’t seen it done as a print so tastefully before-it eats the Moschino biro scribble print (which apparently was copied too speaking of the tendencies of designers to “borrow” inspiration) for breakfast. It’s shit because there weren’t many looks in this collection and they weren’t really shot in a way that does them any justice but I thought I’d include the few I saved.

Comme Des Garcons is a fave of the high fashion community and one I look forward to seeing at fashion week but can never quite get behind. I appreciate the what-the-fuckery of it all with this show totally being able to pass as a run-through of some kind of nuclear waste themed scare house at one of Thorpe Park’s fright nights. I assume given that and the plastic Mickey Mouse print it’s supposed to be some kind of reference to the part late-stage capitalism has played in the hellish landscape we find ourselves in today? Or something all intellectual? In which case I made my interpretation with farrrr too much confidence. But Anyway! Who knows! I’ll leave the analysis to the fashion students, and give it one word: trippy.

Onto Dion Lee, a brand I truly do get excited to talk about because it’s rare that I don’t LOVE his work.

Without fail, Lee manages to be confidently ahead of the curve without going out of his way to announce it and his genius to everyone with flamboyant shows and exaggerated designs and extortionate prices. He is very much an underdog in the fashion world in terms of big names but you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t love his collections. His S/S21 collection is one of my favourites of the bunch. I love seeing something I’ve never seen before and the palm leaf breast plate is so odd but so cool and so perfectly Dion Lee at the same time; we’ve seen jungle/tropical inspired collections sooo many times *cough cough D&G cough cough* and THIS is how you make them fresh and unique. I mean, never in a million years did I think I’d get behind the resurgence of the gladiator sandal trend but Lee has me changing my mind. This is one of the very rare times you will ever see me using this meme to praise a man but:

I mean, he has Fernanda Ly modelling for him, that the man has taste goes without saying.

Now for a bit of a full circle moment, given that I did actually praise Dior’s haute couture collection in my first ever post; Maria Grazia did GOOD. Well, with haute couture at least.

She’s always pretty hamfisted with her references, there’s no denying, with that Grecian Goddess style RTW collection typifying that statement completely, but luckily she struck gold this time round; as someone who studied the Tudors for A-level history, seeing a modern take on the exaggeratedly feminine renaissance silhouettes with the baroque prints and the deep jewell tones got me super excited especially when you throw in the dreamy tarot theming and the nods to the mystical and arcane. Seeing as the Heavenly Bodies Met Gala (I know, I know, I need to move on) was some time ago now and Cersei Lannister’s *SPOILER* been crushed by a rock (could also be seen as a metaphor for the irrelevancy David Benioff and D.B Wise condemned GoT to when they aired that shitty ending tehe) and so probably won’t be getting a collection based on her costumes any time soon, this is the only fashion take on this kind of period dress I’m going to get…and you know what? I’m okay with that. Thanks Maria, I guess?

Her RTW collection wasn’t absolutely awful either, and slightly better than the past few collections at least. Put a monkey in a room with a typewriter (or show it enough similar well-received collections) and it will eventually write something that makes sense, don’t they say? I like the nomadic feel of a lot of the looks and there’s beautiful layering going on but the aura of exotic opulence unsurprisingly didn’t stick around for long and I found that there was a decline in quality in the midsection of the show that landed a lot of the outfits in either awkward mother of the bride at a beach wedding or The Only Way is Essex Ocean Beach PLT sponsored poolside party territory. The looks picked back up a bit towards the end stretch of the show but I wasn’t a fan of the Gucci style oversized glasses which were so out of place with the rest of the theming that if anything they seemed like a cheap grab at relevancy. So yeah, a middling, subpar Etro-esque collection which is better than usual for Dior I suppose.

Next, Elie Saab, whose S/S21 collection was kinda disappointing, tbh. Oh how the turns have tabled given that positive Dior review and my usual love of Saab’s collections.

I know his dresses lose some of their appeal when we can’t see them in motion but even ON the runway I can’t see myself being dazzled by any of these pieces the way I usually am. They’re lacking the level of detail and craftsmanship I associate with the brand seemingly in favour of block colours and suits and the issue is that the whole Disney Princess fantasy has always been the appeal for me because the silhouettes aren’t interesting enough on their own. They’re not ugly pieces, they’re nice, but does nice really have a place in high fashion when the pieces are so basic in both their design and presentation that the shots could pass as ripped from a catalogue? The strongest parts of the collection were when it did go down the more delicate route with the muted blue suits and the white feather trimmed dresses, the small, ornamental gold details reminding me of a very toned down nod to Schiaparelli’s hardware, but with regards to the bright coloured pieces, I can’t lie-they did look like something you could find in the M&S Per Una holiday section. Then you’ve got the weakest parts, which were just flat out ugly: sheer giraffe print, sweat band style elasticated waits, and long chiffon shirts that I hate to admit read as frumpy. There are times where I’ve not been particularly excited by an Elie Saab collection in the past, but I do think this is the first time I’ve actively disliked parts of it.

Conversely, Erdem’s S/S21 collection was super strong, and solidified the brand’s place in my mind as a dependable source of kooky maximalism, this time round giving us  Anya Taylor Joy’s Emma wardrobe on speed. You could tell me Erdem Moralıoğlu had just raided the Bridgerton set’s fitting rooms and put it on a runway and I would 100% believe you and I mean that in a positive way because to give my unpopular opinion, the clothes were the only good thing about that show. The endearingly florid details of exaggerated bows and clashing florals were still there but this time in a way that felt more subtle and self-assured, as if the calming influence of the wooded set’d had a direct hand in the designs, giving the rugged, ethereal feel to the collection I associate with brands like Brock and Simone Rocha, all whilst keeping the parts of Erdem I’m so fond of.

Is it really much of a shock that I included pretty much every look from the Etro S/S21 show?  Like, you know that Christian idea of God, like, (the voice in my head is very much taking on the dumb valley girl voice that anybody who reads this is most probably getting too) knowing our souls? I think Veronica Etro knows mine. So no, no surprise. Though there were a few unconventional touches thrown into these looks (the campier prints and nautical theming we see with the 80s beach towel print, for example, reminded me a bit of Versace) the mystical bohemian it girl that Etro designs for would still be highly satisfied. Sure, it might be a wardrobe fit for a holiday less adventurous than backpacking but if she wanted a tropical poolside holiday, this collection is the one, the paisley print chiffon mini and maxi dresses especially. I’m just gonna pretend I don’t see the monstrosity that is leggings worn as trousers-it’s a fashion rule I refuse to abandon-because they are the only stain on an otherwise expectedly gorgeous collection.

Next, an unusually reserved RTW collection from Fendi:

More in line with the wardrobe of a European fashion editor than the glamorous trophy wife (who let’s say uses that facade as a guise to ruthlessly run her husband’s whole business empire from behind the scenes because in this house we do complex female characters only), these pieces are lot “smarter” and more professional looking than Fendi’s typical offerings; where I feel Fendi usually designs for the society girl who wouldn’t mind a front page scandal, these are the kind of outfits a young member of Monaco’s royal family would wear for a positively received but business-as-usual press tour. I know, Fendi is an Italian brand, but this is more Southern France to me. We’re talking some 2nd page shots of a Kate Middleton type on a yacht on the Riviera smiling and waving as her PR team’s ideal scenario. Still, whilst fewer exaggerated silhouettes, animal prints and overtly luxurious fabrics (real leathers, silks and furs for example) mean that the drama’s a little toned down, it’s all still very expensive looking and combines the classically feminine glamour of the past and the minimalism of modernity in the artful manner that we’re used to. Maybe it’s me being a basic bitch but I always love seeing Ashley Graham on the runway too, even if brands to tend to use her as their single token plus size model.

Kim Jones’ debut haute couture collection for Fendi, however, wasn’t a very well received one. I don’t hate it personally but I can see where the criticisms are coming from. Whilst it’s closer to the version of Fendi I’ve come to expect and there were some stunning pieces which completely encapsulated that distinctive aura of luxe and glamour, there were quite a few lazy pieces which could’ve been from any designer. I also felt the collection was a bit upstaged by what seemed to be a who’s who of the modelling world; having Bella, Cara, Kate and Naomi ALL walk in one show was a bit distracting and took the focus off the clothes completely.

Giambattista Valli’s RTW collection was gorgeous as ever; the man has undeniably mastered the art of delivering classic, objective elegance, the kind of designs I feel would make you light on your feet and smell like strawberries and cream the minute you put one on. Whilst as a brand his RTW shows are rarely trendsetting, they reliably produce a plethora of unfailingly graceful and demure pieces, as appealing to your mum and your grandma as they are to young women and little girls, and this collection is another victory lap for Valli when it comes to upholding his signature tea party and artisan cupcake making and rose garden strolling and bottomless rosé brunch appropriate aesthetic. There were a lot of outfits that were bordering on overly juvenile, with structures a little too basic to justify the amount of sequins thrown on, but when it’s good, it’s so sweet that regardless of how to formula it is, I can’t help but fall in love.

Valli’s haute couture collection was stunning too and for sure a more exciting offering than the RTW. There was of course a lot of the signature tulle but it was head-turning, over the top in a way that leant far more towards the experimental than I expected. The photos themselves are 100% believable as a some kind of Vogue behind the scenes editorial shoot on the set of live action Disney princess movie (in between takes of the climactic ball scene if you wanna get specific with the vision); if you are looking for a prettier alternative to the primary colours and disruptive shapes of a Molly Goddard collection, this is the one. It’s giving the themes of excess and abundance I associate with that of the Hunger Games Capitol but through the softer lens of a Sofia Coppola movie, and being the typical cinema loving white girl I am, I’m obviously on board with that vibe.

I did SUCH a 180 on Givency’s S/S21 collection from when I first saw it to writing a review. My initial reaction was one of disappointment, I guess simply because Givenchy has given us so many bold pieces and presentations over the last few years whereas this is more low-key. After properly considering it though as I would any other brand, I came to the conclusion that I do actually really like it. It’s still got the strange, androgynous silhouettes popping up throughout and the futuristic space-age details but with a more down-to-earth, streetwear feel, albeit a very slick, glossy spin on the trends of the rabble (that’s us guys) of course before we go believing it’s achievable. On the one hand, the devil horn accents are a touch Claire’s accessories halloween range but at the same time, done with confidence they’re kind of cool and bring something new and fun to the table in line with the dark theatre of Givenchy’s last few shows.

Now for Gucci, which for the first time I have to say, if I'm attempting objectivity, is not a standout. 

Like, can I just start by saying though the format it’s presented in is cute, it’s not ideal as a way of actually showing the collection. I get that the vintage shop bin vibe is a huge part of Gucci’s brand but polaroids make it SO hard to actually see the clothes, and that’s what we’re here for right? I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t like what I see here-the clothes are gorgeous, an idyllic ode to the off-duty wardrobes of Studio 54-ers, bohemian style icons like Charlotte Rampling and young Olivia Newton-John, psychedelic rock guitarists and the inhabitants of San Fransisco’s Haight during the late 60s and early 70s, Alessandro Michele’s favourite period of reference. I can’t pretend otherwise, or act like I wouldn’t want to wear the shit out of this collection. Buut, for Gucci? It’s a little underwhelming. These are the kind of filler looks we get in a typical Gucci show to go alongside the more statement pieces, which this collection is lacking. It’s just that these are designs which usually gets people talking and these pieces don’t do that. It sucks because for most other brands this would be a stand out collection, an immersive, luscious vignette of what people tend to think of as a cultural golden era, but when you’ve had a show that involved models carrying replicas of their own decapitated heads down the runway in the last 5 years, of course something more toned down like this is gonna generate a lot of “is that it?”s.

I owe Hermes an apology. Looking back, I have disliked all their previous collections for the same reason that I now really like this one; maybe it’s in part down to the frustration of still having to whack out the winter coat on occasion in May (fuck British weather and climate change), but suddenly I really appreciate the value of some good quality, versatile outerwear. Hermes is giving us that in spades here and for that, I bow down to them. The pieces on offer are clearly well-made and genuinely practical, and through the minimalist approach manage to retain both an air of timeless sophistication whilst also being youthful and on trend. The leather tactical vest co-ord I can easily see edged up and taking centre stage on one of those insane Seoul street style slow-mo TikToks that were big a couple of months ago and there are several pieces that could tie together a grunge influenced k-style look just as well as they could exist for years on end as the wardrobe staple of a high-powered businesswoman. Designer Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski’s strengths really come through with the simpler looks and it’s the patterned pieces that drag down an otherwise flawless collection; I guess because the aesthetic is very minimalist, the patterns can’t be anything overly decorative but unfortunately this has a bit of a dowdy effect when you pair it with such modest silhouettes. Disregarding those elements of the collection though, it was super good.

It goes without saying that Iris Van Herpen’s haute couture collection was breathtaking; if the fashion community can agree on anything, it’s that this woman’s work is consistently awe-inspiring. She captures the wonder of the universe, the biological structures and kaleidoscopic colours we don’t even register, through fashion in a way that others can only imitate, to mesmerising, truly transcendent effect; I can only assume Van Herpen has mother nature whispering into her ear because how the hell else do you explain her ability to take the kind of microscopic organisms they show you images of in an outdated GCSE science powerpoint and make a dress that resembles one so stunning? Care to explain, Iris? Because if there is some kind of line of communication between the two of you can you please tell the bitch I’m over this weather and that I have cute summer outfits I’m waiting to wear so can she pack this torrential rain shit in? K, thanks xoxo

See it seems shady as fuck to go from IVH to Isabel Marant like this because we are talking 2 designers with totallyyyy different approaches to fashion; Iris Van Herpen is haute couture for starters whereas Marant is commercial, and that’s her thing, but unfair comparisons aside this collection is still a bit of a let down. This is considering I do usually really like Isabel Marant collections based on whether or not I’d wear the pieces, which seems a more appropriate barometer to use to come to a quality verdict. Whilst there were a few of the elegant bohemian pieces my mind goes to when it comes to her brand, the steps outside of that comfort zone didn’t pay off; graffiti print (can be cool if done with some subtlety which apart from a few exceptions was not the case here), cheap looking reflective fabric, and MC Hammer style dungarees, it seems to be an attempt to merge 80s trends with modern urban culture, and an attempt that at times verged on the disastrous. It’s good for a brand to experiment, of course, and appeal to a wider client base than usual, but when it’s bad the unfortunate take away is that the design team don’t have the chops to pull off straying from familiar territory; designers wouldn’t be showing at fashion week if this was truly the case because disregarding the influence of nepotism, fashion is an area you need real talent, perseverance and business smarts to excel in, and so it doesn’t do a team justice when they do fail.

J.W Anderson, on the other hand, really put his best foot forward this season and presented this work in a really cool way too which only added to the positives; whilst the way the shots were edited was funky af, it didn’t detract from the actual outfits, and if we are to see the same limitations when it comes to the F/W collections being released, this is something a lot of designers and editing teams should take note of. The idiosyncratic exaggerated shapes that we see as a recurring feature of Anderon’s collections were still on show but this time round with added femininity, billowing skirts and trailing jewellery that channel the stage looks of Stevie Nicks in a way that’s modern and functional and maybe even fit for the office if you were to work in a more creative industry with a chill boss. Could also work for a coven of witches who practice meditation by bonfires in the moonlight and burn the letters of men who wronged them in some Arizonian desert, so like I said, functional! Who doesn’t like versatility? The only thing I’m not too keen on is the shoes but they’re not so bad that it affects my opinion of the collection and they look comfy I guess.

Lastly, we’ve got to talk about Jacquemus, one of the most influential names in fashion at the moment. And yes, this time round, I’m doing it: I’m buying into the hype.

This collection is gorgeousss! I can see already that a lot of the recurring elements of the show are going to be big summer trends for this year (the cut outs and strappy details on the blouses are everywhere already) even though it isn’t hot enough to have collectively decided the time to start dressing for heat is upon us yet, and that’s always a good indicator of how successful the designer was in their vision and attempts to assess the needs and wants of fashion enthusiasts; whether I’m as big a fan of his work as everyone else seems to be, there’s no denying Simon Porte Jacquemus has always excelled at this practice if the buzz around him is anything to go by. It makes sense given the last year of us all being stuck in and suppressed that a lot of us are already romanticising the summer ahead, anticipating picnics and beach days and general Theresa May running through wheat fields type shenanigans galore, in spite of how dubious an assumption it is to make that British weather will allow for this; Porte Jacquemus has very much catered to this wishful thinking and the popularity of the whole escapist “cottage core” aesthetic, sexing it up a little bit with pieces that hug the body in ways only Mugler knows how whilst being lightweight and relaxed enough to look good with windswept, sandy hair and a little dose of sunburn. I’m talking enough to give you some cutesy freckles and rosy cheeks not PSA on the importance of suncream territory, guys, what is it with those of us on the gen Z/millennial cusp not taking sun damage seriously!? Why do I have to beg so many of my friends to wear it!? Does nobody else remember those photos they’d show you in PSHE in English primary schools of burnt people’s skin under UV lights? Or is that just me being weird and only having such a vivid memory of the images because teachers told us we had to wait until year 6 to see them due they to their “graphic” nature only for my gore-loving self to be extremely underwhelmed when we finally did get that lesson? They showed us a woman giving birth in year 4 for fuck’s sake. THAT was traumatising.

Back to the actual point anyway, with just a couple of negatives, the first of which being that the pieces are very similar to those feminine looks we saw dotted about the Jacquemus menswear collection from last year that were all over fashion Twitter. In Simon Porte Jacquemus’ defence though, it makes sense that those tones and silhouettes would be revisited in a full womenswear collection for that very reason; considering they went down so well and that lockdown gave us a bit of a half-baked summer in 2020, expanding on those elements enough for a whole new collection makes good business sense. We did get some cool additions too, mainly in the form of accessories, with the hardware details on the belts similar to those included in the Givenchy collection and the abstract hair slides being standouts for me. It was all exquisite-the shoes, the jewellery, the styling, everything 10/10. My other nitpick, and I say nitpick not because it’s not important but because it’s an issue that’s hardly restricted to Jacquemus (this casting team are far from the worst offenders, Saint Laurent I’m looking at you), is that I WISH we’d see more diversity with the models. Despite what my body dysmorphia yells at me, I am small, and yet seeing all those fucking minuscule waists made me die a little inside; it’s crazy to me that in 2020 the lack of variety in body types on the runway is still such a problem.

I must have said this a million times but I don’t want to end on a negative note so let me reiterate: this collection was STUN. NING. Plus there were some others I’ve talked about in this post that I’m sure will make it into my top 20 in the final part, Jacquemus, Dion Lee and Etro for sure; we even got some gorgeous pieces from Maria Grazia which I thought was a sentence I’d never type out. Have I said enough to not leave a bad taste in the mouth of anyone who read to the end of this post? I hope so, lol! TBH, it’s impressive given everything that’s going on that the majority of designers did roll out collections in September as usual so serious respect to them and their design teams for that.

In the next post, I’ll fingers crossed be able to include everything from Kim Shui (exciting!) through to at least Off-White (actually pretty good this time?!) and make this whole thing a 4 parter before getting straight on top of the photo posts I’m thinking about doing for the time being for the F/W21 shows. So as usual, if you did read to the end thank you so much and I respect the perseverance you must have to get through all my rambling, lmao. Hope everyone is well and coping okay and again, my inbox is always open for any post suggestions, constructive criticism, or just a chat for anyone who needs a listening ear.

Big love and thank you again!

Lauren x

[creative-type]

Several months ago someone asked what I thought about the Warlord system in One Piece and how Oda integrated it into the story as a whole. The short answer was that I thought it’s been pretty fantastic thus far, but it’s something that I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while now and I’d like to expand on my reasoning a bit. 

I know I’m in the minority on this, but as a general FYI I will be using the English translations for all titles and epithets. I have a difficult enough time with spelling as it is and don’t really see the appeal of using Japanese when there’s a perfectly serviceable translation available.

So without further ado, let’s talk about Warlords.

In Service of World Building 

As many already know, when Eiichiro Oda conceptualized One Piece the series was only supposed to last for five years. It seems silly to think that now, but when you look back and see how quickly Oda breezed through the East Bue arcs it almost seems as if that original estimate was possible.

What you may not know is that according to an interview in the 23rd log book, Oda came up with the idea for the Seven Warlords of the Sea after the Four Emperors. And while I have no proof, I would go so far as to argue that the decision to make Mihawk a Warlord was a retroactive one, as the term “Seven Warlords of the Sea” wasn’t introduced until chapter 69 when Mihawk made his debut in chapter 49. 

Chapter 69, incidentally, is also when we get our first hint of the Emperors, as they along with the World Government and Warlords make up the three great powers that rule the Grand Line.

So the Warlords were a relatively late addition to the world of One Piece, though their role and place within the story come hundreds of chapters before the influence of the Emperors or the World Government is fleshed out. Credit goes to Oda for seamlessly integrating a new idea into his rapidly expanding story. 

I’ll go into the importance of the Warlords from a narrative standpoint after a while, but first I want to point out that the Warlords make sense. Privateers were totally a thing during the Golden Age of Piracy and had a profound impact on real world politics. One Piece’s Warlord system is a broad reference to these privateers, but grounding the more fantastical elements in the series in something the audience can understand helps make the story feel real. Transforming the mundane into the fantastic is one of the hallmarks of a great fantasy series. 

Even if the reader doesn’t have any foreknowledge of real world privateers, the in-universe logic pans out. It makes sense that the marines would be overwhelmed by the pirate boom caused by Roger’s death. It makes sense that the World Government would be willing to make deals with their sworn enemies to help stop the bleeding. It makes sense that selfish, amoral criminals would take advantage of the privileges offered to them by the World Government, or that less scrupulous individuals would seek out that power to further their own ends. 

(Not a whole lot is known about the initiation of the Warlord system, but I work under the assumption that it’s a relatively new organization. As far as I’m aware Crocodile was one of the longest-tenured Warlords and joined in his mid-twenties, which matches up nicely with the beginning of the Great Pirate Age. If there’s evidence that suggests they’ve been around for longer I’d be happy to hear it.) 

As for why Seven Warlords instead of five of ten or any other number, Oda himself is on the record for saying he thought it was cool, but in-universe it stands to reason that the marines and World Government wouldn’t want to give out too many pardons for fear of losing control over the Warlords (which ends up happening anyway, but we’ll get to that later) while still having enough of a force at their disposal to counter the Emperors if need be, as seen during Marineford.

All this to say that as a concept, the Warlords work. They serve a greater purpose within the world of One Piece than fodder for the Straw Hats to face. One of One Piece’s greatest strengths is that the characters always feel like they have lives outside of what we’re shown. Even minor antagonists like the Baroque Works agents are shown to have dreams outside of Crocodile’s ambition, while characters like Hancock and Jimbe have histories that go far beyond “allies of the Straw Hat Pirates”. We are only shown tiny slivers of these characters lives, but they are all unique with different motivations, dreams, and outlooks on life while all still being, ostensibly, pirates who have made themselves dogs of the Government.

A secondary effect is we get to see how other characters react to them and their actions, particularly the marines and World Government. 

Smoker says it best. The Warlords hit this weird middle ground between the Justice spouted by the marines and the Freedom the Straw Hats pursue, and in doing so reveal the corruption within the World Government and show what the Straw Hats might become should they falter in their journey.

The Warlord-World Government relationship is especially interesting. Before the Alabasta saga we had seen small-time corruption by Morgan and Nezumi, but the cover up surrounding Crocodile’s defeat goes all the way to the top. It’s the first time we see different factions within the marines and really the first time we see how awful the World Government can be. 

What’s special is the entire interaction doesn’t involve the Straw Hats at all. It’s an interaction between Smoker and his superiors in reaction to what happened with Crocodile. There are’t a lot of series that can have this type of development separate from their main protagonists, but it’s another one of those things that makes the world of One Piece feel bigger than just the Straw Hat Pirates.

Service of the Straw Hats

While the Warlords are an interesting bunch with enough personality to carry the manga by themselves, their existence would be meaningless if they didn’t interact with the Straw Hats in some way shape or form. It is entirely possible to cut the Warlord system from the story with minimal interruption to the overarching plot. At the same time, you don’t introduce a powerful group and then not have them all show up. The moment Yosaku said there were seven Warlords Oda was basically forced to make sure they all appeared in some way, shape, or form (in the same interview that revealed that the Warlords were made up after the Emperors, Oda laments not lowering the number to something more reasonable, like two).

In a lesser series, this would mean having the Straw Hats fight all seven, preferably in order of ascending difficulty. Luckily for us, One Piece is not one of those series and the Warlords turn out to be as unique and variable as the world they inhabit. Some have become Luffy’s mortal enemies, others allies, and hopefully one will someday join the crew (any day now, Oda). Alliances form, shift, and break as needed to further the plot, with a few good twists thrown in along the way.

I would say that the Warlords were at their most effective early in the series, when they were acting as gatekeepers to the rest of the world. Mihawk, even though he wasn’t confirmed to be a Warlord until twenty chapters after his introduction, was the reader’s first glimpse into the power scaling of the series. The first thing we knew about him was he was the World’s Greatest Swordsman and could destroy fifty ships without breaking a sweat. Luffy and Zoro had their badass moments early on, but nothing they had done was even remotely close to what Mihawk was capable of with a knife and an afternoon to kill. 

Crocodile, on the other hand, opened the reader up to the political side of One Piece. We met princesses and kings, and the fate of an entire nation depended on whether or not Luffy could overcome one of the scariest Devil Fruits of the series to date. We got a greater look into the marines and the World Government, learned of weapons capable of taking over the world, and saw the first hint of an ancient conspiracy that remains a mystery even to this day. 

The Warlords of the Sea opened up the world of One Piece in a way almost nothing else could,while also fleshing it out and giving Oda a lot of freedom to maneuver. An example of this would be Thriller Bark, which might not be the most consequential arc in the series, but One Piece needed a little bit of levity between the whirlwind of Enies Lobby and the massive shakeup that would be Marineford. 

The fact that the Warlords tend to represent different factions doesn’t hurt. Crocodile and Moriah are silver medalists in the Great Pirate Age, Doflamingo was a Celestial Dragon and king, Hancock a literal empress of her island and former slave, Jimbe one of the first examples of the power of allies on the highest level, and Kuma was a Revolutionary. Mihawk is the outlier here, but even he shows what the pinnacle of swordsmanship looks like in the One Piece world.

And since Oda doesn’t have a habit of killing off his antagonists we get to see the Warlords themselves receive development and play major roles in the story long after their arcs are complete. Jimbe is perhaps the greatest example of how perspectives can change over the course of the series. He was name-dropped during the Arlong arc as a probable antagonists, introduced as a defector of the Warlord system due to his loyalty to Whitebeard, only to become one of Luffy’s greatest and most powerful allies in the New World and likely tenth member of his crew. 

A Crumbling System

By now you’ll probably have noticed that I’m referring exclusively to the original Seven Warlords, and there’s a reason for that. Things get complicated after Crocodile’s scheming gets him kicked out of the group. Blackbeard, Law, and Doflamingo follow in his footsteps as explicitly using their position to further their own goals. Jimbe quits. Hancock keeps her position while secretly allying with Luffy, Kuma was revealed to be a double agent until the loss of his free will. Moriah is double-crossed for being old and washed up, and Mihawk doesn’t even care. 

By the time skip rolls around the mystique surrounding the Warlords had vanished, and I think Buggy’s inclusion into their ranks was the final indication that, no, we’re not meant to take them seriously anymore. And why should we? The Straw Hats have graduated from surpassing Warlords to surpassing Emperors, and the series focus has shifted from a devil-may-care attitude regarding the politics of the world to an arms race of gathering allies and picking the right moment to start fights with major players.

The people within the system are still a force to be reckoned with. Despite being fought after the time skip, Doflamingo was a beast in battle. But the system itself is shown to be broken beyond repair. The Straw Hats--and the series--has outgrown them. 

Which was why I was super pleased with the ending of the Dressrosa Arc.

By all accounts the Warlord system shouldn’t exist anymore. The ridiculousness that they’ve gotten away with is absolutely staggering, and because of Luffy’s meddling it’s all starting to come to the surface. The World Government, even if they started the system with the best of intentions shouldn’t tolerate their presence any longer. 

Issho and Smoker working together to bring down the system while Sakazuki butts head with the World Government makes for excellent drama and probably the only way to keep the Warlords interesting in the manga’s current state. It’s another way Oda’s evolving narrative, and I look forward to see where it goes from here.

But that’s just my take. I’d be happy to hear what y’all think, or if there are any topics you’d like me to write on next. It’s been a while since I’ve done any major One Piece analysis, and it was really fun digging back into the nitty gritty of the series. 

[scribe-the-write-thing]

So I’m back.

Got tagged by @writtenindust <3 Decided to go with How to Pirate.

I might do another one for Strings, which is another WIP I have, soon. <3

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch). 

Three people from varying backgrounds attempt to find their way and survive during the golden age of piracy. It’s not as easy as they thought.

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be? (Is it a novella, single book, book series, etc.)

At the moment it’s just episodic -- hopefully a novella at the end of it, I’m still working on everything.

3. What is your novel’s aesthetic? 

The ocean, worn wooden ships, blackened and worn flags, empty bottles, city streets with cobblestones, hidden away taverns, navy vessels, swords and pistols.

4. What other stories inspire your novel? 

Treasure Island, Black Sails, Black Flag (AC),  tales of Robin Hood or Sinbad, The Marvellous Misadventures of Flapjack

5. Share 3+ images that give a feel for your novel ajsdh idk but i made a moodboard for one of the characters

MAIN CHARACTER

6. Who is your protagonist?

There’s three, actually, or is that cheating? Either way, the three POV characters are Jessamine Rodriguez (also known as Jesse Clarke), the captain of the ship and a part-time revolutionary with a grudge and an identity crisis;  Theodor Erkens, her partner and first mate, who proves that the phrase Dutch courage is completely accurate; and Cecil Harlow, the newcomer on board who only ever wanted a new life -- this all isn’t quite what he imagined.

7. Who is their closest ally? 

Other than each other? The rest of the crew -- most of which will have individual goals/personalities as well as their own bonds to the main cast. The crew acts more like a family, despite their nature, about all they have is each other. At the beginning, Jess and Theo are far closer allies, but later bond together more with Cecil.

8. Who is their enemy? 

The central ‘villain’ (from their perspective) is a navy admiral, Beckett Reynolds, who of course pursues them due to well, the whole pirate thing. He mainly has a history with Jess and her former family -- but largely has the desire to bring justice as he sees it. Otherwise, they also combat other pirates, various rivals for business, merchants and slavers.

9. What do they want more than anything? 

Freedom, I suppose, in different ways. Jess desires a steady, stable home where she can be completely free. Theodor wishes for a purpose -- the freedom to go where he likes and do as he likes without being tied down. Cecil wishes for freedom away from a pressure-filled life with a family that only sees him as an asset to work for their benefit.

10. Why can’t they have it? 

Because while they can, it isn’t without sacrificing something. Jess struggles with finding stability without giving up the agency and freedom a life of piracy means for her (being both a woman and of African heritage in the 1700s).  Furthermore, she views settling as giving up her fight for justice and tolerating the way things are. Theodor, meanwhile, deals with the issue that he cannot continually run away from his own responsibilities -- as it will only make it worse when he does have to face them. Cecil also struggles with exiting a life of rigid structure and entering into a system that completely goes against his own morals.

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

Jess believes that the choices she is somehow required to ‘carry on’ the legacy that her pseudo-father and mentor, Emmerson, left behind, and must do so despite how it may harm her. Theodor believes that he is unable to discover his purpose or ever be satisfied unless he keeps chasing unending ambitions and that, in the long run, he has no purpose outside of the trouble he causes. Cecil believes that he has little use to anyone and severely undervalues himself, and that he is largely unimportant to, well, anyone.

12. Draw your protagonist! 

Hoh I’m not an artist, but some art has been done of them, as I’ve shown off in a previous post. <3

PLOT POINTS

13. What is the internal conflict?

Overall, all three of them deal with their issues of identity and working out their own morality.

Jess struggles with living up to what she believes Emmerson would have wanted her to be, as well as working through an identity crisis involving Jesse Clarke, the disguise she maintains. She debates whether being Jesse is easier -- wondering who she actually is and if the ‘alter ego’ is more similar to her actual personality.

Theodor attempts to find his own purpose in the world and to find a sense of satisfaction -- he rarely feels content with where he is, and constantly hungers for more, never quite feeling complete. He tries to find some way to feel a sense of accomplishment, while avoiding his own issues wherever he can.

Cecil, meanwhile, struggles with his lack of confidence and escaping the black-and-white mentality of the home he grew up with, with the idea of greys and nuance being something strange to him -- morality and the idea of differing ideas of morals becomes his conflict.

14. What is the external conflict?

The external conflict is mainly the forces of the navy and other lawmen who, of course, interfere with the more shady dealings the characters get up to. The external conflict also follows the threat of rival gangs and of the slavers and corrupt officials.

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist? 

Separated from each other, most likely -- or one of them being captured and executed.

16. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story? 

Most of the ‘secrets’ only change the characters attitudes and the way they interact with each other. Such as the connection between Jess, Reynolds and Emmerson, Theo’s connection and relationship with Reynolds and other rival characters, Cecil’s internal conflicts, ect.

17. Do you know how it ends? 

Mostly.

BITS AND BOBS

18. What is the theme?

Freedom and finding a place/identity. The greyness of morality and how problematic does not strictly equal ‘bad’. Drama with a comedic spin on things at times.

19. What is a recurring symbol? 

The ocean/waves/the tides. The shore/docks.

20. Where is the story set? (Share a description!) 

Around the 1700s, an alternate history (in that the Republic of Pirates is more of a thing/lasts longer) of sorts with some known anachronisms at points but mostly standard to historical fiction. Set around the Caribbean islands, including; Tortuga, Port Royal, Havana, Matanzas, New Providence, ect.

The story not on land, of course, takes place aboard the Felicite, a stolen privateer-turned-pirate ship.

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your mind already? 

The vast majority of scenes have been imagined and planned out, now it’s just placing them in a timeline and writing them.

22. What excited you about this story?

The exploration of characters and their own personal struggles and how they evolve and grow as they attempt to find themselves and become what they want to be. Exploring the differences in morality and how certain events and situations can allow people to justify, internally, what they do and how they view themselves still afterwards.

23. Tell us about your usual writing method! 

Scenes/snippets all at once which may or may not evolve into chapters as I write, right now they’re very episodic and I tend towards writing scenes I feel most inspired for in the moment.

ahsh for tagging

idk if u wanna but i gonna tag u anyway lemme know if you don’t wanna and ill remove it but

@idunscrewedup

[1921designs]

A Message to the Twenty-First Century

FROM The New York Review of Books

On November 25, 1994, Isaiah Berlin accepted the honorary degree of

Doctor of Laws at the University of Toronto. He prepared the following “short credo,” as he called it in a letter to a friend, for the ceremony, at which it was read on his behalf. Twenty years later, on October 23, 2014, The New York Review of Books printed Berlin’s remarks for the first time. For more on Isaiah Berlin, please see the Contributors’ Notes.

“IT WAS THE best of times, it was the worst of times.” With these words Dickens began his famous novel A Tale of Two Cities. But this cannot, alas, be said about our own terrible century. Men have for millennia destroyed each other, but the deeds of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon (who introduced mass killings in war), even the Armenian massacres, pale into insignificance before the Russian Revolution and its aftermath: the oppression, torture, murder which can be laid at the doors of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and the systematic falsification of information which prevented knowledge of these horrors for years—these are unparalleled. They were not natural disasters but preventable human crimes, and whatever those who believe in historical determinism may think, they could have been averted.

I speak with particular feeling, for I am a very old man, and I have lived through almost the entire century. My life has been peaceful and secure, and I feel almost ashamed of this in view of what has happened to so many other human beings. I am not a historian, and so I cannot speak with authority on the causes of these horrors. Yet perhaps I can try.

They were, in my view, not caused by the ordinary negative human sentiments, as Spinoza called them—fear, greed, tribal hatreds, jealousy, love of power—though of course these have played their wicked part. They have been caused, in our time, by ideas; or rather, by one particular idea. It is paradoxical that Karl Marx, who played down the importance of ideas in comparison with impersonal social and economic forces, should, by his writings, have caused the transformation of the twentieth century, both in the direction of what he wanted and, by reaction, against it. The German poet Heine, in one of his famous writings, told us not to underestimate the quiet philosopher sitting in his study; if Kant had not undone theology, he declared, Robespierre might not have cut off the head of the king of France.

He predicted that the armed disciples of the German philosophers—Fichte, Schelling, and the other fathers of German nationalism—would one day destroy the great monuments of Western Europe in a wave of fanatical destruction before which the French Revolution would seem child’s play. This may have been unfair to the German metaphysicians, yet Heine’s central idea seems to me valid: in a debased form, the Nazi ideology did have roots in German antiEnlightenment thought. There are men who will kill and maim with a tranquil conscience under the influence of the words and writings of some of those who are certain that they know perfection can be reached.

Let me explain. If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used—if necessary, terror, slaughter. Lenin believed this after reading Das Kapital, and consistently taught that if a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society could be created by the means he advocated, then the end justified any methods that needed to be used, literally any.

The root conviction which underlies this is that the central questions of human life, individual or social, have one true answer which can be discovered. It can and must be implemented, and those who have found it are the leaders whose word is law. The idea that to all genuine questions there can be only one true answer is a very old philosophical notion. The great Athenian philosophers, Jews and Christians, the thinkers of the Renaissance and the Paris of Louis XIV, the French radical reformers of the eighteenth century, the revolutionaries of the nineteenth—however much they differed about what the answer was or how to discover it (and bloody wars were fought over this)—were all convinced that they knew the answer, and that only human vice and stupidity could obstruct its realization.

This is the idea of which I spoke, and what I wish to tell you is that it is false. Not only because the solutions given by different schools of social thought differ, and none can be demonstrated by rational methods—but for an even deeper reason. The central values by which most men have lived, in a great many lands at a great many times—these values, almost if not entirely universal, many lands at a great many times—these values, almost if not entirely universal, are not always harmonious with each other. Some are, some are not. Men have always craved for liberty, security, equality, happiness, justice, knowledge, and so on. But complete liberty is not compatible with complete equality—if men were wholly free, the wolves would be free to eat the sheep. Perfect equality means that human liberties must be restrained so that the ablest and the most gifted are not permitted to advance beyond those who would inevitably lose if there were competition. Security, and indeed freedoms, cannot be preserved if freedom to subvert them is permitted. Indeed, not everyone seeks security or peace, otherwise some would not have sought glory in battle or in dangerous sports.

Justice has always been a human ideal, but it is not fully compatible with mercy. Creative imagination and spontaneity, splendid in themselves, cannot be fully reconciled with the need for planning, organization, careful and responsible calculation. Knowledge, the pursuit of truth—the noblest of aims—cannot be fully reconciled with the happiness or the freedom that men desire, for even if I know that I have some incurable disease this will not make me happier or freer. I must always choose: between peace and excitement, or knowledge and blissful ignorance. And so on.

So what is to be done to restrain the champions, sometimes very fanatical, of one or other of these values, each of whom tends to trample upon the rest, as the great tyrants of the twentieth century have trampled on the life, liberty, and human rights of millions because their eyes were fixed upon some ultimate golden future?

I am afraid I have no dramatic answer to offer: only that if these ultimate human values by which we live are to be pursued, then compromises, trade-offs, arrangements have to be made if the worst is not to happen. So much liberty for so much equality, so much individual self-expression for so much security, so much justice for so much compassion. My point is that some values clash: the ends pursued by human beings are all generated by our common nature, but their pursuit has to be to some degree controlled—liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I repeat, may not be fully compatible with each other, nor are liberty, equality, and fraternity.

So we must weigh and measure, bargain, compromise, and prevent the crushing of one form of life by its rivals. I know only too well that this is not a flag under which idealistic and enthusiastic young men and women may wish to march—it seems too tame, too reasonable, too bourgeois, it does not engage the generous emotions. But you must believe me, one cannot have everything one wants—not only in practice, but even in theory. The denial of this, the search for a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity,

a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity, invariably leads to coercion. And then to destruction, blood—eggs are broken, but the omelet is not in sight, there is only an infinite number of eggs, human lives, ready for the breaking. And in the end the passionate idealists forget the omelet and just go on breaking eggs.

I am glad to note that toward the end of my long life some realization of this is beginning to dawn. Rationality, tolerance, rare enough in human history, are not despised. Liberal democracy, despite everything, despite the greatest modern scourge of fanatical, fundamentalist nationalism, is spreading. Great tyrannies are in ruins, or will be—even in China the day is not too distant. I am glad that you to whom I speak will see the twenty-first century, which I feel sure can be only a better time for mankind than my terrible century has been. I congratulate you on your good fortune; I regret that I shall not see this brighter future, which I am convinced is coming. With all the gloom that I have been spreading, I am glad to end on an optimistic note. There really are good reasons to think that it is justified.

[pope-francis-quotes]

2nd April >> Pope Francis' Message to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences: “There Is No Future without Fraternity” Francis Wrote to Margaret Archer, President of the Academy, on the Occasion of Its Plenary Session Below, please find an English translation of the unabridged text of Pope Francis’ message to Professor Margaret Archer, President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, on the occasion of the Dicastery’s Plenary Session on the theme: “Towards a Participatory Society: New Roads to Social and Cultural Integration” (Casina Pius IV, April 28-May 2, 2017): Distinguished Lady Professor MARGARET ARCHER President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences On the occasion of the Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which has as its theme Towards a Participatory Society: New Roads to Social and Cultural Integration, I express my grateful greeting, to you Professor, to H.E. Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez Soronodo and to each one of the participants. With the competence and professionalism proper to you, you chose to study a question that I have very much at heart: that of social participation. We can well say that society is primarily a process of participation: of goods, of roles, of statutes, of advantages and disadvantages, of benefits and charges, of obligations and duties. Persons are partners, or that “taking part” in the measure in which society distributes parts. From the moment that society is a participatory reality, given mutual exchange, we must represent it, at a time, as an irreducible whole and as a system of inter-relation between persons. Justice, then, can be retained by virtue of the individuals and institutions that, in respect of legitimate rights, look to the promotion of the good of those that take part in it. A first point I want to bring to your attention is the extension necessary today of the traditional notion of justice, which cannot be restricted to judgment on the distributive moment of wealth, but must be pushed until the moment of its production. It is not enough, that is, to claim the “just payment of the worker” as Rerum Novarum recommended (1891). One must also ask oneself if the productive process is carried out or not in respect of the dignity of human work; if it accepts or not the fundamental human rights; if it is compatible or not with the moral norm. Already in no. 67 of Gaudium et Spes, one reads: “Therefore, the whole productive process must be adapted to the needs of the person and to his ways of life.” Work is not a mere factor of production that, as such, must adapt itself to the needs of the productive process to enhance efficiency. On the contrary, it is the productive process that must be organized in such a way as to make possible the human growth of persons and the harmony of times of family life and of work. One must be convinced that such a project, at the stage of today’s society, partially post-industrial, is feasible because it is desired. See why the Social Doctrine of the Church (SDC) invites with insistence to find ways to apply in practice fraternity as regulatory principle of the economic order. Wherever other lines of thought speak only of solidarity, while the contrary is not always true, given that a fraternal society is also supportive, whereas the contrary is not always true, as so many experiences confirm to us. The appeal, therefore, is that of putting remedy to the error of contemporary culture, which has made us believe that a democratic society can progress having the code of efficiency between them disjointed – which would be enough on its own to regulate relations between human beings in the economic sphere – and the code of solidarity – which would regulate inter-subjective relations in the social sphere. It is this dichotomization that has impoverished our society. The key word that expresses better than any other today the need to overcome such a dichotomy is “fraternity,” evangelical word, taken up in the motto of the French Revolution, but which the post-Revolutionary order then abandoned – for noted reasons – until its cancellation from the political-economic lexicon. It was the evangelical testimony of Saint Francis, with his school of thought, to give this term the meaning that it then kept in the course of the centuries, namely, that of constituting, at a time, the complement and exaltation of the principle of solidarity. In fact, whereas solidarity is the principle of social planning that makes it possible for un-equals to become equals, fraternity is what makes it possible for the equal to be different persons. Fraternity enables persons that are equal in their essence, dignity, freedom, and in their fundamental rights, to participate differently in the common good in keeping with their capacity, their plan of life, their vocation, their work or their charism of service. From the beginning of my pontificate I have wished to indicate “that one finds in a brother the permanent prolongation of the Incarnation for each one of us” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 179). In fact, the protocol with which we will be judged is based on fraternity: “All that you did to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). The stages that we left behind, 1800’s and especially 1900’s, were characterized by arduous battles, whether cultural or political, in the name of solidarity and of rights, and this was a good thing – if we think of the labor movement and of the struggle to win civil and social rights – struggles in any case far from being concluded. What is more disquieting today is the increasing exclusion and marginalization from an equal participation in the distribution, on a national and planetary scale, in the goods be it of the market, be it of the non-market, such as dignity, freedom, knowledge, membership, integration, peace. In this connection, what makes persons suffer most and leads to the rebellion of citizens is the contrast between the theoretical attribution of equal rights for all and the unequal and iniquitous distribution of fundamental goods for the greater part of persons. Even if we live in a world in which wealth abounds, many persons are still victims of poverty and of social exclusion. The inequalities – together with the wars of domination and climate changes – are the causes of the greatest forced migration in history, which strikes more than 65 million human beings. If we think also of the growing tragedy of new slaveries in the forms of forced labor, of prostitution, of the traffic of organs, which are true crimes against humanity. It is alarming and symptomatic that today the human body is bought and sold, as if it were merchandise to be exchanged. Almost one hundred years ago, Pius XI foresaw the affirmation of these inequalities and iniquities as the consequence of a global economic dictatorship that he called “international imperialism of money” (Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931, 109). And it was Paul VI who lamented, almost 50 years later, the “new abusive form of economic domination on the social, culture and also political plane” (Apostolic Letter Octogesima Adveniens, May 14, 1971, 44). The point is that a participatory society cannot be content with a horizon of pure solidarity and welfarism, because a society that is only supportive and of welfare, and not also fraternal, would be a society of unhappy and desperate persons of which everyone would seek to flee, in extreme cases also with suicide. A society in which true fraternity is dissolved is not capable of a future, that is, that society is not capable of progressing in which only “give to have” exists or “giving out of duty.” See why, neither the liberal vision — individualist of the world, in which everything (or almost <everything>) is exchanged, or the centric-state vision of society, in which everything (or almost <everything>) is dutifulness, are sure guides to make us overcome that inequality, inequity and exclusion in which our societies are bogged down today. It is about seeking a way out of the suffocating alternative between the neo-Liberal thesis and the neo-Statist thesis. In fact, precisely because the activity of the markets and the manipulation of nature – both moved by egoism, avidity, materialism and unfair competition — at times knows no limits, it is urgent to intervene on the causes of such malfunction, especially in the financial realm, rather than limiting oneself to correct its effects. A second aspect I wish to touch upon is, namely, the concept of integral human development. To battle for integral development means to commit oneself for the widening of the space of dignity and freedom of persons: freedom understood, however, not only in the negative sense as absence of impediments, or only in the positive sense as possibility of choice. It is necessary to add to it freedom “for,” that is freedom to pursue one’s vocation for good be it personal or social. The key idea is that freedom goes hand-in-hand with the responsibility to protect the common good and to promote the dignity, freedom and well-being of others, so as to reach the poor, the excluded and the future generations. It is this perspective that, in the present historical conditions, enables us to overcome sterile diatribes at the cultural level and harmful counter-positions at the political level, enabling one to find the necessary consensus for new projects. It is within this context that the question of work is posed. The limitations of the present culture of work have now become evident to most, even if there is no convergence of view on the way to go to attain their overcoming. The way indicated by the SDC begins by the acknowledgement that work even before being a right, is a capacity and an indispensable need of the person. It is the human being’s capacity to transform the reality, to participate in the work of creation and conservation done by God and, thus doing, to edify oneself. To recognize that work is an innate capacity and a fundamental need is a rather stronger affirmation than to say that it is a right. And this so because, as history teaches, rights can be suspended or in fact negated; the capacities, the attitudes and the needs if fundamental or not. In this connection, we can refer to the classic reflection from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas, on acting. This thought distinguishes two forms of activity: transitive doing and immanent doing. Whereas the former connotes action that produces a work outside the one who acts, the latter makes reference to an act that has its ultimate end in the subject himself who acts. The former changes the reality in which the agent lives; the latter changes the agent himself. Now, since such a transitive activity does not exist as to not be also always immanent, from it derives <the fact> that the person has the priority in relations of his acting and therefore of his work. The first consequence is expressed well by the classic affirmation operari sequitur esse: it is the person who decides about his own operating; self-generation is the fruit of one’s self-determination. When work is no longer expressive of the person, because the latter no longer understands the meaning of what he is doing, work becomes slavery — a persons can be substituted by a machine. The second consequence calls into question the notion of the justice of work. Just work is that which not only ensures a fair remuneration, but corresponds to the person’s vocation and, therefore, is able to develop his capacities. Precisely because work is transformative of the person, the process through which goods and services are produced acquires moral value. In other terms, the work place is not simply the place in which certain elements are transformed, in keeping with determined rules and procedures, into products, but it is also the place in which the character and the virtue of the laborer are formed (or transformed). The acknowledgement of this more strongly personalistic dimension of work is a great challenge which is still before us, also in the liberal democracies where the workers have even made notable conquests. Finally, I cannot fail to speak of the grave risks connected with the invasion, in the high levels of culture and of instruction — be it of the university or school –, of the positions of libertarian individualism. A common characteristic of this fallacious paradigm is that it minimizes the common good, namely, the “living well,” the “good life,” in the communal framework, and exalts that egoistic ideal, which deceitfully affirms that it is only the individual that gives value to things and to inter-personal relations and, therefore, it is only the individual that decides what thing is good and what thing is bad; libertarianism, very fashionable today, preaches that to found individual freedom and responsibility one must recur to the idea of self-causation. Thus libertarian individualism denies the validity of the common good, because on one hand it implies that the idea itself of “common” implies the constriction of at least some individuals, and on the other hand that the notion of “good” deprives freedom of its essence. The radicalization of individualism in libertarian terms and, therefore, antisocial, leads to conclude that each one has the ‘right” to expand himself to where his power consents him even at the price of the exclusion and marginalization of the most vulnerable majority. Because it would limit freedom, the bonds must be what must be loosened. Erroneously equating the concept of bond with that of link, one ends up by confusing the conditionings of freedom – the links – with the essence of the freedom realized, namely the bonds or relations with the precise goods, from those of the family or the inter-personal, from those of the excluded and the marginalized to those of the common good, and finally to God. The 15th century was the century of the first Humanism; at the beginning of the 21st century one perceives increasingly the need for a new Humanism. Then it was the transition form feudalism to the modern society that was the decisive engine of change. Today, it is a passage of epoch equally radical: that of the modern society to the post-modern <society>, the endemic increase of social inequalities, the migratory question, the identity conflicts. The new slaveries, the environmental question the problems of bio-politics and bio-rights are only some of the questions that speak of today’s hardships. In face of such challenges, the mere updating of old categories of thought or recourse to refine technics of collective decision-making are not enough; new ways must be sought inspired by the message of Christ. The Gospel’s proposal: “seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” (Matthew 6:33) was and still is a new energy in history that tends to arouse fraternity, freedom, justice, peace and dignity for all. In the measure in which the Lord will succeed in reigning in us and among us, we will be able to participate in the divine life and will be to one another “instruments of His grace, to spread God’s mercy and to weave networks of charity and fraternity” (Benedict XVI, Encyclical Caritas in Veritate, 5). This is the wish I address to you, and that I accompany with my prayer, so that the Academy of Social Sciences will never be lacking the vivifying help of the Spirit. While I entrust these reflections to you, I encourage you to carry forward with renewed commitment your precious service and, in asking you, please, to pray for me, I bless you from my heart.

[bloodedcelt]

For not long afterwards nearly the whole Hellenic world was in commotion; in every city the chiefs of the democracy and of the oligarchy were struggling, the one to bring in the Athenians, the other the Lacedaemonians. Now in time of peace, men would have had no excuse for introducing either, and no desire to do so; but, when they were at war, the introduction of a foreign alliance on one side or the other to the hurt of their enemies and the advantage of themselves was easily effected by the dissatisfied party. And revolution brought upon the cities of Hellas many terrible calamities, such as have been and always will be while human nature remains the same, but which are more or less aggravated and differ in character with every new combination of circumstances. In peace and prosperity both states and individuals are actuated by higher motives, because they do not fall under the dominion of imperious necessities; but war, which takes away the comfortable provision of daily life, is a hard master and tends to assimilate men's characters to their conditions. When troubles had once begun in the cities, those who followed carried the revolutionary spirit further and further, and determined to outdo the report of all who had preceded them by the ingenuity of their enterprises and the atrocity of their revenges. The meaning of words had no longer the same relation to things, but was changed by them as they thought proper. Reckless daring was held to be loyal courage; prudent delay was the excuse of a coward; moderation was the disguise of unmanly weakness; to know everything was to do nothing. Frantic energy was the true quality of a man. A conspirator who wanted to be safe was a recreant in disguise. The lover of violence was always trusted, and his opponent suspected. He who succeeded in a plot was deemed knowing, but a still greater master in craft was he who detected one. On the other hand, he who plotted from the first to have nothing to do with plots was a breaker up of parties and a poltroon who was afraid of the enemy. In a word, he who could outstrip another in a bad action was applauded, and so was he who encouraged to evil one who had no idea of it. The tie of party was stronger than the tie of blood, because a partisan was more ready to dare without asking why. (For party associations are not based upon any established law, nor do they seek the public good; they are formed in defiance of the laws and from self-interest.) The seal of good faith was not divine law, but fellowship in crime. If an enemy when he was in the ascendant offered fair words, the opposite party received them not in a generous spirit, but by a jealous watchfulness of his actions. Revenge was dearer than self-preservation. Any agreements sworn to by either party, when they could do nothing else, were binding as long as both were powerless. But he who on a favourable opportunity first took courage, and struck at his enemy when he saw him off his guard, had greater pleasure in a perfidious than he would have had in an open act of revenge; he congratulated himself that he had taken the safer course, and also that he had overreached his enemy and gained the prize of superior ability. In general the dishonest more easily gain credit for cleverness than the simple for goodness; men take a pride in the one, but are ashamed of the other. The cause of all these evils was the love of power, originating in avarice and ambition, and the party-spirit which is engendered by them when men are fairly embarked in a contest. For the leaders on either side used specious names, the one party professing to uphold the constitutional equality of the many, the other the wisdom of an aristocracy, while they made the public interests, to which in name they were devoted, in reality their prize. Striving in every way to overcome each other, they committed the most monstrous crimes; yet even these were surpassed by the magnitude of their revenges which they pursued to the very utmost,73 neither party observing any definite limits either of justice or public expediency, but both alike making the caprice of the moment their law. Either by the help of an unrighteous sentence, or grasping power with the strong hand, they were eager to satiate the impatience of party-spirit. Neither faction cared for religion; but any fair pretence which succeeded in effecting some odious purpose was greatly lauded. And the citizens who were of neither party fell a prey to both; either they were disliked because they held aloof, or men were jealous of their surviving.

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 3.82

My friend posted this on my FB wall this morning. I want to say it totally rocks to have friends that read the Classics and understand them well enough we can share an adult beverage or five and discuss how Thucydides’ discussion of a war going on 2,500 years ago is absolutely relevant to current events.

If you look at this and think “TL;DR” - Go read the second paragraph. Now.

That’s happened countless times since Thucydides wrote this, and I’m quite sure it happened countless times before we started writing down history. Folks are folks, after all.

If you want a shorter version of that: 

(1) One violence becomes the normal way to solve big problems it becomes the normal way to solve small ones too. Neighbor’s dog crapped on your lawn? Kill the entire family and burn their house down and blame those damn rebels. 

(2) No one is allowed to sit the fight out. No one is allowed to be neutral. If we’re out there spending our blood and treasure, do you think we’d allow you to sit it out and side with whoever wins? No fucking way. You’re with us or you’re against us. Che called this “Suppressing the Moderates”. No one is allowed to be a moderate in a civil war - you must be on one side or the other. 

[wandashifflett]

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in America

Commentary

The recent turmoil—the protests, riots, occupations, vandalism, and destruction across the country and in other countries in response to a death in police custody in Minneapolis—reminded me of my own days as a student radical.

In May 1968, I was in London, excited as any of my contemporaries by the “events” of that month. The student revolt in France, which spread like wildfire, gained some support among artists, intellectuals, even sections of workers, and seemed to herald the revolutionary overthrow of the government and the “system.”

Some recalled the words of the poet Wordsworth, composed in 1804, in response to the French Revolution of 1789. He recalled the exhilaration many young people felt at what seemed a dawning of a new age of liberty, equality, and fraternity. As he put it,

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

I shared the enthusiasm of the students in Paris—I wrote a leaflet, entitled “France Today, Britain Tomorrow,” and went down to the London docks with a few comrades and handed it out to some bemused dockworkers there. The aim, as in many earlier revolutions, was an alliance of students and workers that would transform society.

My contemporary (though unknown to me at the time), the English philosopher Roger Scruton, was in the Latin Quarter of Paris at that time, watching the mayhem in the cobbled street below.

He was filled with repugnance at the nihilism, the glee with which demonstrators below injured policemen, overturned cars, uprooted lamp-posts, pulled up cobblestones to make projectiles, and vandalized buildings and defaced them with graffiti.

He had a particular dislike for the revolutionary spirit, with its self-righteous contempt for the knowledge and wisdom that we inherit unearned from our forebears, along with the duty to preserve, improve the culture, and hand it on to future generations.

What he saw in Paris was a self-indulgence, a squandering of a great patrimony, a kind of play-acting by the privileged youth who would soon enough settle down and become good bourgeois themselves.

Scruton became a lifelong conservative in the tradition of that great critic of the 1789 French Revolution, Edmund Burke. It took me several more decades to see that he was right.

Class and Race

The activists and leaders of revolutions are often not those for whom they claim to speak.

In France, it was not the workers who led the revolt, but students and intellectuals. Indeed, the once-revolutionary French Communist Party, along with its large trade union, presented itself as the party of order, organizing its members on demonstrations to keep the workers physically separate from the students.

In Mao’s China, at the same time, the Cultural Revolution, formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a movement launched by Mao Zedong to remove those in the party he saw as a threat to his power. It was an intra-elite struggle rather than a working-class insurrection against the ruling bureaucracy as a whole.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa movements in the United States are led by people who claim to be revolutionary (“We are trained Marxists,” as one founder of BLM said), but they do not pretend to be movements of workers or to seek an alliance with workers as trained Marxists had done in the time of Marx. They emphasize race rather than class. At the same time, the mass of protesters, in Minneapolis as in Seattle and elsewhere, are not anarchists or Marxists, or working-class, or even black.

So the radicals of the 1960s—already influenced by the identity politics promoted and funded by the Ford Foundation and federal bureaucracy—at least talked about a worker–student alliance, and those of the present do not.

Like some of today’s “Marxists,” they adopted some of the creepy-cult practices of the Cultural Revolution—the denunciation, public repentance, shaming, groveling, kneeling, prostrating, the iconoclasm—that have led some to call today’s BLM a religion for woke white people or a white-guilt cult.

The radicals, then as now, rejected what the Cultural Revolution called the Four Olds—old ideas, old cultures, old customs, old habits. We see today the elements of indoctrination into a cult of wokeness, but in this case as a kind of human resources activity for white public employees to “interrupt [their] whiteness.”

Large corporations have publicly endorsed and lavishly funded BLM. White multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos regales us with his view of what we should be reading and watching about race every time we go to an Amazon website to order anything. In our new cancel culture, employees, teachers, and celebrities have been twitter-mobbed or fired instantly for daring to express the slightest question about the movement or its association with lawlessness, violence, and intimidation.

That is not how I remember the 1960s. As Sohrab Ahmari asks in The Spectator:

“Does anyone seriously believe the American establishment—Walmart, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, the trustees of Ivy League universities, the major sports leagues, even Brooks Brothers, for God’s sake—would sign on to a movement that genuinely threatened its material interests? And yet these and many other firms and institutions are falling over themselves to express solidarity with the ‘uprising’, some going so far as to donate millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter, an outfit that lists among its objectives the abolition of the nuclear family.”

Who Is Using Whom?

Is BLM using its clever hashtag name to gain money and support from well-meaning liberals while pursuing by any means necessary extreme aims of destruction of society, its traditions, customs, habits, and institutions? Or is the ruling class using BLM for its purposes? Do they simply share a coincidence of interest in bringing down President Donald Trump and his program?

Does the American establishment support BLM because they like to be on the winning side and think the movement will win? In that case, the answer to Ahmari’s question would be affirmative. They think Americans will come to believe as BLM does, as the New York Times is teaching its readers and our children to do, to despise their country and its traditions and values, to see everything in politics and history as about race, as Marxists once saw it as about class.

Is that why the country’s leading newspapers commemorate the nation’s birthday not with a party but with a list of its shortcomings? Is that why Joe Biden used the occasion for a finger-wagging lecture, in contrast to the president’s great patriotic and celebratory speech at Mount Rushmore, which elicited an orgy of denunciation from Democrats and their media? As one conservative columnist put it, the media “turned the Fourth of July into an embarrassing fiasco.”

Or does the ruling elite, who dominate the commanding heights of economy and society, see BLM as a necessary evil, the best chance of defeating Trump in the upcoming election and regaining political power? That is a declared aim of BLM and the ruling class’s highest immediate priority.

Is such support a continuation of the policy response to the race riots of the 1960s, a “developmental separatism” that balkanizes and separates the working class into formal categories or identities and keeps them weak and divided? Every success of Trump—like the unprecedented rise in real wages and fall in unemployment for blacks and Hispanics in Trump’s term prior to the pandemic—has to be minimized or denied.

By rejecting the nation and its Founding as rotten and racist to the core and from the start, the mainstream media turn the expression of patriotism, not least the traditional and joyful celebration of Independence Day by all classes and races, into a display of white supremacy.

Everything that can be is used to delegitimize the 2016 election and Trump’s presidency, to ensure a speedy return to the rule of the affluent, educated elites who had dominated both parties and presided over the ruin of the industrial heartland, the major cities, and working-class families of all races.

The adolescent attitudinizing supported and funded by adults may seem a small price to pay to signal virtue and to damage Trump. But BLM is, in the words of a leading black theologian, “a trademark phrase … designed to use black people. That phrase dehumanizes black people.”

Much of Minneapolis may lie in ruins, with minority small businesses built with decades of sweat and tears looted and destroyed in minutes. To the indulgent rich, the university-credentialed managerial elite, and the experts, it is a price worth paying to restore the old regime and signal their virtue at the same time.

In short, understood this way, the present turmoil is not a revolution at all, but an anti-democratic counter-revolution.

Paul Adams is a professor emeritus of social work at the University of Hawaii and was a professor and associate dean of academic affairs at Case Western Reserve University. He is the co-author of “Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is” and has written extensively on social welfare policy and professional and virtue ethics.

from Rayfield Review News https://therayfield.com/revolution-and-counter-revolution-in-america from The Ray Field https://therayfieldreview.tumblr.com/post/623499108585504769

[therayfieldreview]

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in America

Commentary

The recent turmoil—the protests, riots, occupations, vandalism, and destruction across the country and in other countries in response to a death in police custody in Minneapolis—reminded me of my own days as a student radical.

In May 1968, I was in London, excited as any of my contemporaries by the “events” of that month. The student revolt in France, which spread like wildfire, gained some support among artists, intellectuals, even sections of workers, and seemed to herald the revolutionary overthrow of the government and the “system.”

Some recalled the words of the poet Wordsworth, composed in 1804, in response to the French Revolution of 1789. He recalled the exhilaration many young people felt at what seemed a dawning of a new age of liberty, equality, and fraternity. As he put it,

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

I shared the enthusiasm of the students in Paris—I wrote a leaflet, entitled “France Today, Britain Tomorrow,” and went down to the London docks with a few comrades and handed it out to some bemused dockworkers there. The aim, as in many earlier revolutions, was an alliance of students and workers that would transform society.

My contemporary (though unknown to me at the time), the English philosopher Roger Scruton, was in the Latin Quarter of Paris at that time, watching the mayhem in the cobbled street below.

He was filled with repugnance at the nihilism, the glee with which demonstrators below injured policemen, overturned cars, uprooted lamp-posts, pulled up cobblestones to make projectiles, and vandalized buildings and defaced them with graffiti.

He had a particular dislike for the revolutionary spirit, with its self-righteous contempt for the knowledge and wisdom that we inherit unearned from our forebears, along with the duty to preserve, improve the culture, and hand it on to future generations.

What he saw in Paris was a self-indulgence, a squandering of a great patrimony, a kind of play-acting by the privileged youth who would soon enough settle down and become good bourgeois themselves.

Scruton became a lifelong conservative in the tradition of that great critic of the 1789 French Revolution, Edmund Burke. It took me several more decades to see that he was right.

Class and Race

The activists and leaders of revolutions are often not those for whom they claim to speak.

In France, it was not the workers who led the revolt, but students and intellectuals. Indeed, the once-revolutionary French Communist Party, along with its large trade union, presented itself as the party of order, organizing its members on demonstrations to keep the workers physically separate from the students.

In Mao’s China, at the same time, the Cultural Revolution, formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a movement launched by Mao Zedong to remove those in the party he saw as a threat to his power. It was an intra-elite struggle rather than a working-class insurrection against the ruling bureaucracy as a whole.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa movements in the United States are led by people who claim to be revolutionary (“We are trained Marxists,” as one founder of BLM said), but they do not pretend to be movements of workers or to seek an alliance with workers as trained Marxists had done in the time of Marx. They emphasize race rather than class. At the same time, the mass of protesters, in Minneapolis as in Seattle and elsewhere, are not anarchists or Marxists, or working-class, or even black.

So the radicals of the 1960s—already influenced by the identity politics promoted and funded by the Ford Foundation and federal bureaucracy—at least talked about a worker–student alliance, and those of the present do not.

Like some of today’s “Marxists,” they adopted some of the creepy-cult practices of the Cultural Revolution—the denunciation, public repentance, shaming, groveling, kneeling, prostrating, the iconoclasm—that have led some to call today’s BLM a religion for woke white people or a white-guilt cult.

The radicals, then as now, rejected what the Cultural Revolution called the Four Olds—old ideas, old cultures, old customs, old habits. We see today the elements of indoctrination into a cult of wokeness, but in this case as a kind of human resources activity for white public employees to “interrupt [their] whiteness.”

Large corporations have publicly endorsed and lavishly funded BLM. White multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos regales us with his view of what we should be reading and watching about race every time we go to an Amazon website to order anything. In our new cancel culture, employees, teachers, and celebrities have been twitter-mobbed or fired instantly for daring to express the slightest question about the movement or its association with lawlessness, violence, and intimidation.

That is not how I remember the 1960s. As Sohrab Ahmari asks in The Spectator:

“Does anyone seriously believe the American establishment—Walmart, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, the trustees of Ivy League universities, the major sports leagues, even Brooks Brothers, for God’s sake—would sign on to a movement that genuinely threatened its material interests? And yet these and many other firms and institutions are falling over themselves to express solidarity with the ‘uprising’, some going so far as to donate millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter, an outfit that lists among its objectives the abolition of the nuclear family.”

Who Is Using Whom?

Is BLM using its clever hashtag name to gain money and support from well-meaning liberals while pursuing by any means necessary extreme aims of destruction of society, its traditions, customs, habits, and institutions? Or is the ruling class using BLM for its purposes? Do they simply share a coincidence of interest in bringing down President Donald Trump and his program?

Does the American establishment support BLM because they like to be on the winning side and think the movement will win? In that case, the answer to Ahmari’s question would be affirmative. They think Americans will come to believe as BLM does, as the New York Times is teaching its readers and our children to do, to despise their country and its traditions and values, to see everything in politics and history as about race, as Marxists once saw it as about class.

Is that why the country’s leading newspapers commemorate the nation’s birthday not with a party but with a list of its shortcomings? Is that why Joe Biden used the occasion for a finger-wagging lecture, in contrast to the president’s great patriotic and celebratory speech at Mount Rushmore, which elicited an orgy of denunciation from Democrats and their media? As one conservative columnist put it, the media “turned the Fourth of July into an embarrassing fiasco.”

Or does the ruling elite, who dominate the commanding heights of economy and society, see BLM as a necessary evil, the best chance of defeating Trump in the upcoming election and regaining political power? That is a declared aim of BLM and the ruling class’s highest immediate priority.

Is such support a continuation of the policy response to the race riots of the 1960s, a “developmental separatism” that balkanizes and separates the working class into formal categories or identities and keeps them weak and divided? Every success of Trump—like the unprecedented rise in real wages and fall in unemployment for blacks and Hispanics in Trump’s term prior to the pandemic—has to be minimized or denied.

By rejecting the nation and its Founding as rotten and racist to the core and from the start, the mainstream media turn the expression of patriotism, not least the traditional and joyful celebration of Independence Day by all classes and races, into a display of white supremacy.

Everything that can be is used to delegitimize the 2016 election and Trump’s presidency, to ensure a speedy return to the rule of the affluent, educated elites who had dominated both parties and presided over the ruin of the industrial heartland, the major cities, and working-class families of all races.

The adolescent attitudinizing supported and funded by adults may seem a small price to pay to signal virtue and to damage Trump. But BLM is, in the words of a leading black theologian, “a trademark phrase … designed to use black people. That phrase dehumanizes black people.”

Much of Minneapolis may lie in ruins, with minority small businesses built with decades of sweat and tears looted and destroyed in minutes. To the indulgent rich, the university-credentialed managerial elite, and the experts, it is a price worth paying to restore the old regime and signal their virtue at the same time.

In short, understood this way, the present turmoil is not a revolution at all, but an anti-democratic counter-revolution.

Paul Adams is a professor emeritus of social work at the University of Hawaii and was a professor and associate dean of academic affairs at Case Western Reserve University. He is the co-author of “Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is” and has written extensively on social welfare policy and professional and virtue ethics.

from Rayfield Review News https://therayfield.com/revolution-and-counter-revolution-in-america

[topworldhistory]

With a focus on racial pride and self-determination, the Black Power movement argued that civil rights reforms did not go far enough to end discrimination against African Americans.

By 1966, the civil rights movement had been gaining momentum for more than a decade, as thousands of African Americans embraced a strategy of nonviolent protest against racial segregation and demanded equal rights under the law.

But for an increasing number of African Americans, particularly young black men and women, that strategy did not go far enough. Protesting segregation, they believed, failed to adequately address the poverty and powerlessness that generations of systemic discrimination and racism had imposed on so many black Americans.

Inspired by the principles of racial pride, autonomy and self-determination expressed by Malcolm X (whose assassination in 1965 had brought even more attention to his ideas), as well as liberation movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the Black Power movement that flourished in the late 1960s and ‘70s argued that black Americans should focus on creating economic, social and political power of their own, rather than seek integration into white-dominated society.

Crucially, Black Power advocates, particularly more militant groups like the Black Panther Party, did not discount the use of violence, but embraced Malcolm X’s challenge to pursue freedom, equality and justice “by any means necessary.”

The March Against Fear - June 1966

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. being shoved back by Mississippi patrolmen during the 220 mile 'March Against Fear' from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi, Mississippi, on June 8, 1966.

The emergence of Black Power as a parallel force alongside the mainstream civil rights movement occurred during the March Against Fear, a voting rights march in Mississippi in June 1966. The march originally began as a solo effort by James Meredith, who had become the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, a.k.a. Ole Miss, in 1962. He had set out in early June to walk from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, a distance of more than 200 miles, to promote black voter registration and protest ongoing discrimination in his home state.

But after a white gunman shot and wounded Meredith on a rural road in Mississippi, three major civil rights leaders—Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Floyd McKissick of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) decided to continue the March Against Fear in his name.

In the days to come, Carmichael, McKissick and fellow marchers were harassed by onlookers and arrested by local law enforcement while walking through Mississippi. Speaking at a rally of supporters in Greenwood, Mississippi, on June 16, Carmichael (who had been released from jail that day) began leading the crowd in a chant of “We want Black Power!” The refrain stood in sharp contrast to many civil rights protests, where demonstrators commonly chanted “We want freedom!”

Stokely Carmichael’s Role in Black Power

From left to right, Civil rights leaders Floyd B. McKissick, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Stokely Carmichael marching to encourage voter registration, 1966.

Though the author Richard Wright had written a book titled Black Power in 1954, and the phrase had been used among other black activists before, Stokely Carmichael was the first to use it as a political slogan in such a public way. As biographer Peniel E. Joseph writes in Stokely: A Life, the events in Mississippi “catapulted Stokely into the political space last occupied by Malcolm X,” as he went on TV news shows, was profiled in Ebony and written up in the New York Times under the headline “Black Power Prophet.”

Carmichael’s growing prominence put him at odds with King, who acknowledged the frustration among many African Americans with the slow pace of change, but didn’t see violence and separatism as a viable path forward. With the country mired in the Vietnam War, a war both Carmichael and King spoke out against) and the civil rights movement King had championed losing momentum, the message of the Black Power movement caught on with an increasing number of black Americans.

Black Power Movement Growth—and Backlash

Stokely Carmichael speaking at a civil rights gathering in Washington, D.C. on April 13, 1970.

King and Carmichael renewed their alliance in early 1968, as King was planning his Poor People’s Campaign, which aimed to bring thousands of protesters to Washington, D.C., to call for an end to poverty. But in April 1968, King was assassinated in Memphis while in town to support a strike by the city’s sanitation workers as part of that campaign.

In the aftermath of King’s murder, a mass outpouring of grief and anger led to riots in more than 100 U.S. cities. Later that year, one of the most visible Black Power demonstrations took place at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, where black athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised black-gloved fists in the air on the medal podium.

By 1970, Carmichael (who later changed his name to Kwame Ture) had moved to Africa, and SNCC had been supplanted at the forefront of the Black Power movement by more militant groups, such as the Black Panther Party, the US Organization, the Republic of New Africa and others, who saw themselves as the heirs to Malcolm X’s revolutionary philosophy. Black Panther chapters began operating in a number of cities nationwide, where they advocated a 10-point program of socialist revolution (backed but armed self-defense). The group’s more practical efforts focused on building up the black community through social programs (including free breakfasts for school children).

Many in mainstream white society viewed the Black Panthers and other Black Power groups negatively, dismissing them as violent, anti-white and anti-law enforcement. Like King and other civil rights activists before them, the Black Panthers became targets of the FBI’s counterintelligence program, or COINTELPRO, which weakened the group considerably by the mid-1970s through such tactics as spying, wiretapping, flimsy criminal charges and even assassination.

Legacy of Black Power

Ten-year-old Robert Dunn uses a megaphone to address hundreds of demonstrators during a protest against police brutality and the death of Freddie Gray outside the Baltimore Police Western District station on April 22, 2015. 

Even after the Black Power movement’s decline in the late 1970s, its impact would continue to be felt for generations to come. With its emphasis on black racial identity, pride and self-determination, Black Power influenced everything from popular culture to education to politics, while the movement’s challenge to structural inequalities inspired other groups (such as Chicanos, Native Americans, Asian Americans and LGBTQ people) to pursue their own goals of overcoming discrimination to achieve equal rights.

The legacies of both the Black Power and civil rights movements live on in the Black Lives Matter movement. Though Black Lives Matter focuses more specifically on criminal justice reform, it channels the spirit of earlier movements in its efforts to combat systemic racism and the social, economic and political injustices that continue to affect black Americans. 

from Stories - HISTORY https://ift.tt/2V8qS4Y February 20, 2020 at 08:51PM

[postolo]

Broadening horizon of rights in a technological world

“Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.

                                                                                     — Christian Lous Lange

The rise of internet

Human memory has limits but the same cannot be affirmed about the internet. Data once uploaded stays in the internet’s continual memory. For some, it is worrying but internet slaughter, for one is not a solution. The globe went berserk with a historic decision in 2014[1], when the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) recognised a right to be forgotten. The trend trickled down to India when the Supreme Court while pronouncing the infamous Privacy judgment[2], led to traces of the birth of a right to be forgotten, domestically. How far and fair shall it fare, only time can tell. Rapid technological advancements are often a trap under the garb of necessity however legislative as well as judicial efforts at constraining such growth are not proving enough. Right to privacy, data protection and right to be forgotten should go hand in hand to overcome the vices of the data age.

The birth of internet is a tiny part of the phenomena. The world did not stop at discovering this wonder but dug deeper in anticipation of larger benefits as a result of which, this baby called “internet” is ripe and ready to outsmart humans.

Name it the internet, information technology, information age, cyberspace, digitisation, virtual world, world wide web, our globe has been part of a revolution, the magnanimity of which is immeasurable. And if experts are referred, this is just the tip of the revolution, bigger innovations and inventions await humanity. However, there is a flip side to this amazing development; while humanity smiles at the shining milestones of a long developmental journey, probable difficulties that may arise, must be questioned and resolved. Internet is as much a bane as is a boon. People have surrendered so much of their selves in the form of information (also called data, terms used interchangeably here), now it appears difficult, almost impossible to turn back and take away the same. Privacy is a mere delusion and laws are being smashed hard as corporations — private and public as well as Governments are busy mining, collecting and storing data through which a person’s current location, preferred genre of movies, choice of food or clothing, list of friends, acquaintances, relatives and much more than fathomed, are practically identifiable. There has to be a way out of this digital trap. Globally, the boundaries of privacy and data protection laws have been widened to include a “right to be forgotten”. However, time will tell whether the right will be reduced to a mere fancy term or will prove a wise step towards walking out of the digital trap.

The internet as we now know embodies a key underlying technical idea, namely, that of open architecture networking; in an open architecture network, the individual networks may be separately designed and developed and each may have its own unique interface which it may offer to users and/or other providers including other internet providers.[3] Each of the networks can be designed in accordance with the environment and user requirements therein and there generally are no constraints on the types of network that can be included or on their geographic scope, thus making the internet a world that effortlessly transcend all physical boundaries known to man.

Right to Privacy and Right to be Forgotten in India

A nine-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court of India pronounced a judgment[4] last year, overruling major precedents, thus changing the Indian outlook towards privacy of an individual. The judgment was welcomed amidst much anticipation and is definitely a revolutionary first step towards recognising the adverse impact of internet, and the need to limit the growth of this highly valuable invention in order to uphold an individual’s privacy. Adding to the explicit recognition of privacy as a fundamental right under the Indian Constitution, the judgment also welcomed a newer right in the way to creating a digitally safe India — a right to be forgotten.

Globally, there have been developments on this issue and India too has its share of the story. Walking the path laid down by the landmark decision, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul delivered a concurring opinion in the infamous “right to privacy” judgment[5], by stating that “The right of an individual to exercise control over his personal data and to be able to control his/her own life would also encompass his right to control his existence on the internet.”[6] Additionally, two Indian High Courts had the opportunity to deal with the right to be forgotten, however both dealt differently. The central issue in both cases was the plea to either redact personal information from text of the judgments available online or removal of the judgments from where available publicly.

The Gujarat High Court[7] dismissed the petition, while citing two factors: (i) failure on part of the petitioner to show provisions of law which are applicable to the situation, or that a threat lies to the right to life and liberty; (ii) publication on a website does not amount to “reporting”, reporting pertains only to law reports. Contrary to this decision, the Karnataka High Court[8] favoured the petitioner and ordered her name to be redacted from the text of the judgment. However, the Court in this case while making subtle references to the right to be forgotten as discussed globally, did not base its decision on the same lines but endorsed the ideas of modesty and reputation of a woman to favour the petitioner.

Challenges to implementation

It is not only the nature and quantity of information that has changed, but also the means through which this information can be accessed. In the pre-internet era, access to records was often made difficult by procedural hurdles. Permissions or valid justifications were required to access certain kinds of data. Even for the information available in the public domain, often the process of gaining access were far too cumbersome. Now digital information not only continues to exist indefinitely, but can also be easily accessed readily through search engines. It is in this context that in a 2007 paper, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger pioneered the idea of memory and forgetting for the digital age. He proposed that all forms of personal data should have an additional metadata of expiration date to switch the default from information existing endlessly to having a temporal limit after which it is deleted.[9]

Some significant challenges stand in the way of implementation of a right to be forgotten, uniformly. One of such is the manner in which jurisdictions comprehend the concepts of privacy and personal data. Laws in the EU view privacy as an aspect of personal dignity, and are more concerned about with protection from third parties, especially media, while in the US privacy may be seen as a corollary of personal liberty protecting against unreasonable State intrusions.[10] Further, in the latter’s case, privacy policy often dictates intervention from the State unlike the former where it is the individual’s duty to protect his/her privacy. Understanding how “personal data” is defined is also important; data that clearly identifies a particular individual does not raise concerns, however if the data does not uniquely identify the individual but gives information whereby it can be understood that the person is part of a small group, for e.g. his/her family, whether such information fits into “personal data”. Should other individuals involved in such a case, be asked for their consent? Clearly, there are many questions to be resolved before any implementation of a right to be forgotten, in a less complicated manner.

Another noteworthy argument against the total implementation of this right, is its conflict with freedom of speech. It is believed this right proves to be a battle between privacy and the freedom of speech as well as a right to know. Jonathan Zittrain has argued against the rationale that the right to be forgotten merely alters results on search engines without deleting the actual source, thus, not curtailing the freedom of expression; he compares this altering of search results to letting a book remain in the library but making the catalogue unavailable.[11]

When compared to other rights, a “right to be forgotten” falls short of significant development. This right emanates from the concept of privacy, which itself is at a nascent stage, the reason being, both, a right to privacy and that to be forgotten are intrinsically connected to the internet phenomenon birthing a genre of novel complications. However, observing the Indian situation, one cannot get a clear picture of where the legislature or judiciary stand on the issue of the right to be forgotten. With right to privacy taking its first steps, the focus should first lie on strengthening an individual’s privacy and data protection concerns, then pursue enactment and implementation of the right to be forgotten.

Two things are clear from an effort to understand the right to be forgotten. One, that there is a massive leap in the manner in which data can be collected, stored and used and two, there is a critical need for development of a right to be forgotten under the guidance of a right to privacy. Looking at theories and literature, it is clear that the right to be forgotten is in existence but not in practice as its implementation at the global level has not been figured out.

The right to be forgotten is more a journey in reverse. Man, who invented the internet is suddenly aware of its prowess but is only partially ready to tackle the same. When it comes to the right, it brings a precarious task of striking balance between rights of individuals and the internet giants; too much power with either parties can lead to its abuse. However, time is ripe to delve into this pool of problems in order to fetch a solution. A flame of hope burns alive with courts in different jurisdictions dealing with individuals demanding for a right to be forgotten, there does not seem to be a long wait till the day this right is enshrined along with other human rights.

  * Hetvi Trivedi is Research Associate, GNLU-GUJCOST Research Centre of Excellence in IP Laws, Policies & Practices.

[1]  Digital Rights Ireland Ltd. v. Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, (2014) 3 WLR 1607.

[2]  K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1.

[3]  Brief History of the Internet, available on <http://www.internetsociety.org/internet/what-internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet>.

[4]  Puttaswamy case, (2017) 10 SCC 1.

[5]  Ibid.

[6]  Id., 630, para 629.

[7]  Dharamraj Bhanushankar Dave v. State of Gujarat, 2015 SCC OnLine Guj 2019.

[8]  Vasunathan v. Registrar General, 2017 SCC OnLine Kar 424.

[9]  Amber Sinha, Right to be Forgotten: A Tale of Two Judgments <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/right-to-be-forgotten-a-tale-of-two-judgments#_ftn4>.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

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Coming Soon to Washington: An Anti-Trump Hotel for Liberals

The first thing youll see when you walk into Eaton Workshop, a hotel opening in late spring 2018 in Washington, is a custom-commissioned video art installation by AJ Schnack, shown on a series of vintage-style television screens. All day long, itll broadcast a montage of footage from the presidential elections of 2012 and 2016 thats built around one pointed question: How did our country get where it is today?

Its not a subtle statement, and its not meant to be.

In Trumps Washington, Eaton is planting a clear flag as a haven for Democrats. Its the worlds first politically motivated hotel, the flagship for a global brand thats built around social activism and community engagement. And it comes with a pedigree: As the daughter of Ka Shui Lo, the creator and executive chairman of Hong Kong-based Langham Hospitality Group Ltd., founder Katherine Lo knows a thing or two about luxury hotels and world-class service.

The Big Idea

An artists rendering of the reception desk of the Eaton.

Source: Gachot Studios

Lo firmly believes that hotels ought to be catalysts for good. In a world where we can be conscious consumersof everything from clothing to food to baby productsshe argues theres a place for conscious hotels, too. This isnt a revolutionary idea: Already, 1 Hotels has built a small collection of luxury properties entirely around the idea of sustainability, and Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts has made a significant, brand-wide commitment to bolster community programming for disadvantaged children in all of its destinations. Its one of many five-star brands that have a conscious ethos but choose not to flaunt it.

Eaton Workshop is different. With a premise thats built around liberal activism and civic engagement, the brand will weave a liberal philosophy into every aspect of the guest experience, some more obvious than others.

Among the subtler points is the significance of the companys name: a nod to the high-end shopping mall of that name in Montreal that captured the fascination of Ka Shui Lo when he fled the Cultural Revolution in China. The mall, says Katherine, was a beacon of freedom to her fatherand when she found an archival photo bearing its old motto, “Progress and better living,” the two Eatons became forever intertwined.

The Washington hotelwhich has 209 rooms just north of the National Mallwill be the brands flagship, with a second location opening in Hong Kong in 2018 and new constructions set to rise in San Francisco and Seattle no sooner than 2019.

A Hotel With an Agenda

The lobby of the Eaton.

Source: Gachot Studios

Among the Washington locations programming signatures will be a sort of TED talk series driven by the liberal agenda, consisting of fireside chats and rooftop lectures that Lo hopes will be free, open to the public, and streamable as Eaton-branded podcasts. Then comes the art program, whichaside from the political statement piece at check-inwill include commissions from at least a half-dozen up-and-coming local artists and a street-facing exhibition window curated in partnership with local museums and institutions. A co-working space will prioritize memberships for progressive startups, activists, and artists, while a wellness program will offer “inner-health-focused treatments” such as Reiki and sound baths, rather than facials and massages. (Some of these features will roll out a few months after the hotel opens.)

Just as important, partners and staff will be brought on board, both for their skills in the food and beverage worlds and their activist track records. For instance, Lo saw the cocktail director of the famed Columbia Room, Derek Brown, as a perfect fit to be the hotels beverage directornot just because hes won such awards as magazines Bartender of the Year but because he “cares deeply about social justice.” To wit, Brown actively champions policies that fight sexual harassment in the bartending industry and acts as chief spirit advisor for the National Archives.  

Similarly, Lo says that the “amazing life story” of house chef Tim Ma “perfectly expresses our brand ethos.” The Chinese-American culinary up-and-comer was an engineer at the National Security Agency for years before discovering his true passion in food. At Eatons to-be-named restaurant, Ma is planning a menu with a heavy focus on vegetables from an on-site garden.

A guest who does nothing other than check in, sleep atop Eatons organic mattresses, and check out will still have a sense of the hotels mission, says Lo. “We plan to have new ideas in the minibaran activist toolkit, for example, that includes sheets with information to help you call your congresspeople. And if wed been open during this years Womens March, I could have seen us putting poster boards and markers in the rooms!”

Political statements such as these will be tailored to each property. In Hong Kong, for instance, Lo says shed like to replace Bibles in the nightstand drawers with copies of the United Nations Declaration for Human Rights.

A Place for Thought Leaders (but Not All of Them)

The library at the Eaton

Source: Gachot Studios

Lo understands that Eaton Workshop isnt for everyone. “Self-selection is definitely one of our strategies,” she says about branding and marketing materials that directly appeal to the “woke” crowd. “We wanted to emphasize that its a place for people who are thinking outside the box and want to effect a change in the world,” she says.

Though she repeatedly talks about fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion, Lo also tells Bloomberg that “the goal isnt to bring together left and right.” Instead, she wants to create “a diversity of fields and backgrounds as well as gender and ethnicity.” In other words, her hotel should represent the antithesis of the Trump hotel thats just a few blocks away, offering an intellectual playground to those who may feel marginalized by the current administrations agenda.

This is partisan politics playing out on the citys hotel scene; whether that will hurt or help Los bottom line remains to be seen. But if the Trump Hotel is any indication, Lo may be poised for big success. According to the , the presidents hotel brought in $1.97 million in profits during the first four months of the year, despite business projections that had forecast a loss of $2.1 million.

“Its Like a Non-Profit but Better”

Though her goal is to create a successful, scalable business, Eaton Workshop is not built to pad Los pockets. On the contrary, she sees the entire enterprise as a means to a philanthropic end, and hopes to use the hotel profits to fund community arts initiatives in the brands respective destinations. 

Each location will have a radio station, cinema, and music venue so local talent can produce or showcase work in a state-of-the-art space at lowor nocost. In Washington, the buildings history as a printing venue has inspired Lo to create a writers residency, where investigative reporters can be hosted on site for several months while pursuing important stories.

Artists will be invited to create short films, podcasts, or other types of content under the emblem of Eatons in-house multimedia studio; the results will be available for guests to stream on personal devices, and each piece will feature a clear activist message and a call to action.

“Were hoping that our hotel revenues will propel our creative projects,” says Lo, who likens the hotel to “a non-profit, but better.” Still, room rates wont be extravagant; prices in Washington are likely to hover in the upper $200s. Thankfully, for members of both political partieswho are, no doubt, tired of dropping Benjamins for vodka drinks at the Trump Internationalthe price of a martini should be less radical.

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[1921designs]

A Message to the Twenty-First Century

On November 25, 1994, Isaiah Berlin accepted the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the University of Toronto. He prepared the following “short credo,” as he called it in a letter to a friend, for the ceremony, at which it was read on his behalf. Twenty years later, on October 23, 2014, The New York Review of Books printed Berlin’s remarks for the first time. For more on Isaiah Berlin, please see the Contributors’ Notes.

“IT WAS THE best of times, it was the worst of times.” With these words Dickens began his famous novel A Tale of Two Cities. But this cannot, alas, be said about our own terrible century. Men have for millennia destroyed each other, but the deeds of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon (who introduced mass killings in war), even the Armenian massacres, pale into insignificance before the Russian Revolution and its aftermath: the oppression, torture, murder which can be laid at the doors of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and the systematic falsification of information which prevented knowledge of these horrors for years—these are unparalleled. They were not natural disasters but preventable human crimes, and whatever those who believe in historical determinism may think, they could have been averted.

I speak with particular feeling, for I am a very old man, and I have lived through almost the entire century. My life has been peaceful and secure, and I feel almost ashamed of this in view of what has happened to so many other human beings. I am not a historian, and so I cannot speak with authority on the causes of these horrors. Yet perhaps I can try.

They were, in my view, not caused by the ordinary negative human sentiments, as Spinoza called them—fear, greed, tribal hatreds, jealousy, love of power—though of course these have played their wicked part. They have been caused, in our time, by ideas; or rather, by one particular idea. It is paradoxical that Karl Marx, who played down the importance of ideas in comparison with impersonal social and economic forces, should, by his writings, have caused the transformation of the twentieth century, both in the direction of what he wanted and, by reaction, against it. The German poet Heine, in one of his famous writings, told us not to underestimate the quiet philosopher sitting in his study; if Kant had not undone theology, he declared, Robespierre might not have cut off the head of the king of France.

He predicted that the armed disciples of the German philosophers—Fichte, Schelling, and the other fathers of German nationalism—would one day destroy the great monuments of Western Europe in a wave of fanatical destruction before which the French Revolution would seem child’s play. This may have been unfair to the German metaphysicians, yet Heine’s central idea seems to me valid: in a debased form, the Nazi ideology did have roots in German antiEnlightenment thought. There are men who will kill and maim with a tranquil conscience under the influence of the words and writings of some of those who are certain that they know perfection can be reached.

Let me explain. If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used—if necessary, terror, slaughter. Lenin believed this after reading Das Kapital, and consistently taught that if a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society could be created by the means he advocated, then the end justified any methods that needed to be used, literally any.

The root conviction which underlies this is that the central questions of human life, individual or social, have one true answer which can be discovered. It can and must be implemented, and those who have found it are the leaders whose word is law. The idea that to all genuine questions there can be only one true answer is a very old philosophical notion. The great Athenian philosophers, Jews and Christians, the thinkers of the Renaissance and the Paris of Louis XIV, the French radical reformers of the eighteenth century, the revolutionaries of the nineteenth—however much they differed about what the answer was or how to discover it (and bloody wars were fought over this)—were all convinced that they knew the answer, and that only human vice and stupidity could obstruct its realization.

This is the idea of which I spoke, and what I wish to tell you is that it is false. Not only because the solutions given by different schools of social thought differ, and none can be demonstrated by rational methods—but for an even deeper reason. The central values by which most men have lived, in a great many lands at a great many times—these values, almost if not entirely universal, many lands at a great many times—these values, almost if not entirely universal, are not always harmonious with each other. Some are, some are not. Men have always craved for liberty, security, equality, happiness, justice, knowledge, and so on. But complete liberty is not compatible with complete equality—if men were wholly free, the wolves would be free to eat the sheep. Perfect equality means that human liberties must be restrained so that the ablest and the most gifted are not permitted to advance beyond those who would inevitably lose if there were competition. Security, and indeed freedoms, cannot be preserved if freedom to subvert them is permitted. Indeed, not everyone seeks security or peace, otherwise some would not have sought glory in battle or in dangerous sports.

Justice has always been a human ideal, but it is not fully compatible with mercy. Creative imagination and spontaneity, splendid in themselves, cannot be fully reconciled with the need for planning, organization, careful and responsible calculation. Knowledge, the pursuit of truth—the noblest of aims—cannot be fully reconciled with the happiness or the freedom that men desire, for even if I know that I have some incurable disease this will not make me happier or freer. I must always choose: between peace and excitement, or knowledge and blissful ignorance. And so on.

So what is to be done to restrain the champions, sometimes very fanatical, of one or other of these values, each of whom tends to trample upon the rest, as the great tyrants of the twentieth century have trampled on the life, liberty, and human rights of millions because their eyes were fixed upon some ultimate golden future?

I am afraid I have no dramatic answer to offer: only that if these ultimate human values by which we live are to be pursued, then compromises, trade-offs, arrangements have to be made if the worst is not to happen. So much liberty for so much equality, so much individual self-expression for so much security, so much justice for so much compassion. My point is that some values clash: the ends pursued by human beings are all generated by our common nature, but their pursuit has to be to some degree controlled—liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I repeat, may not be fully compatible with each other, nor are liberty, equality, and fraternity.

So we must weigh and measure, bargain, compromise, and prevent the crushing of one form of life by its rivals. I know only too well that this is not a flag under which idealistic and enthusiastic young men and women may wish to march—it seems too tame, too reasonable, too bourgeois, it does not engage the generous emotions. But you must believe me, one cannot have everything one wants—not only in practice, but even in theory. The denial of this, the search for a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity,

a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity, invariably leads to coercion. And then to destruction, blood—eggs are broken, but the omelet is not in sight, there is only an infinite number of eggs, human lives, ready for the breaking. And in the end the passionate idealists forget the omelet and just go on breaking eggs.

I am glad to note that toward the end of my long life some realization of this is beginning to dawn. Rationality, tolerance, rare enough in human history, are not despised. Liberal democracy, despite everything, despite the greatest modern scourge of fanatical, fundamentalist nationalism, is spreading. Great tyrannies are in ruins, or will be—even in China the day is not too distant. I am glad that you to whom I speak will see the twenty-first century, which I feel sure can be only a better time for mankind than my terrible century has been. I congratulate you on your good fortune; I regret that I shall not see this brighter future, which I am convinced is coming. With all the gloom that I have been spreading, I am glad to end on an optimistic note. There really are good reasons to think that it is justified.

[thetruthhive-blog]

America's Broken Promises: The Anthem Protest Explained

I stand because I can and I respect why you can't.

As a naturalized citizen I stand for the anthem out of gratitude to this great nation for opening its doors to me and mine. I stand because I respect the symbols of the country my parents chose to move us to and I chose to remain in. I stand with my hand over my heart because I truly love America. I stand for the America that welcomed my family and gave us the tools and opportunities to make something more of ourselves, to live with decency and provide for our progeny for generations to come. I stand for the knowledge I have acquired here in this home of science, this beacon of progress for all those who have arrived hat-in-hand at her shores. I stand because I can, because America gave us her hand in friendship and in return for her I stand.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why you can't. When I see athletes who kneel before the anthem in protest I understand. I don't take offense because the anthem represents choice and freedom for me, but for them it represents a lack thereof. For so many sons and daughters of this land the anthem reminds them that their ancestors fought for the birth of this nation in the Revolutionary War only to be re-enslaved once the day was won and the battles were over. They kneel because after the real chains were broken, a more clever means to achieve their subjugation was devised. They kneel because the men of color of America are chattel once again in a prison system seemingly designed for them. They kneel because their brothers and sisters are still gunned down for no reason, like it's year-round hunting season. A routine traffic stop could mean death by cop, and while I understand that, there are many that just can't.

There is more than one America, there has been for some time. All her rival cultures are seething for a fight. Let's explore why so many cannot bring themselves to stand, and you might find that they are justified in their protest. America has broken her promises to her black children time and time again, and I’ll tell you about just some of them. 

Painful Beginnings

When slavery is talked about in America people love to pretend it was centuries ago - it wasn’t. It wasn’t even two centuries ago, it ended 152 years ago. Chattel slavery endured from 1619 when it was introduced in the northern colonies by the Dutch until the end of the Civil War in 1865 which put to rest the dispute of whether or not people would continue to be used as property in The Republic. The 246 year-long nightmare was over. However emancipation was far from the end of the struggles black Americans would face in the fight for freedom and equality. 

First Broken Promise: Fight for your freedom

In 1775, first sparks of revolution were ignited in Lexington and Concord in the Massachusetts Bay Colony of the Empire of Great Britain. The conflict set off what we now know as the Revolutionary War. According to Gary Nash's book"The African Americans' Revolution," some 9,000 African Patriot Soldiers fought in The Revolutionary War with the promise of freedom for service. This was in reaction to the Dunmore Proclamation, in which the British Armed Forces struck a deal with all African loyalists willing to serve: they offered freedom, and in the end they held up their end of the bargain. After their defeat, most black servicemen in the British forces and their families were shipped to other British colonies as freed men and women. Not so in the Republic. The Patriots of color, who fought bravely for what they thought would be their nation, were sold a dream. They were told: "every slave so enlisting shall, upon his passing muster before Colonel Christopher Greene, be immediately discharged from the service of his master or mistress, and be absolutely free." They were given no such freedom. By 1786, only three years after the fighting had ended, most of America’s remaining black patriots that hadn’t fled or been killed were back in chains and at the mercy of their masters. 

Second Broken Promise: Emancipation and the Reconstruction

Slavery moved out and Jim Crow moved in. The Reconstruction Period was the promise of prosperity after Emancipation. But The South would have the last word on the treatment of freed men and women by enacting a series of laws that would systematically target and separate blacks from the rest of the population. When you see or hear the words Systematic Oppression that’s Jim Crow’s love child. Jim Crow refers to the government-sanctioned, orchestrated and enforced racial aggression against black Americans on U.S. soil from 1877 through the start of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s. Everything about Jim Crow-era legislation was a spit in the face to the notion of equality. Plessy V. Ferguson was a Supreme Court decision reinforcing local state laws in the South which upheld the delusional “Separate but Equal” doctrine, which would ensure constitutional protection for segregationist practices from 1896 up until 1954, when the Brown V. Board of Ed. Of Topeka decision overturned the previous ruling. 

One thing was true about these laws, they were not equal but they were certainly separate. From schools to hospitals, to restaurants and parks, to any public space that you can imagine - including, famously, transportation - Black Americans were to be kept separate from whites. Their lack of importance and the fact that their lives did NOT MATTER to their white counterparts and the government that represented them was evident in the stark difference between the quality of services and spaces provided for blacks versus whites. Every move was a strategic blow to the psyche of the black family. It was a resounding message of inferiority that read: You are not free and you must know your place and it’s behind us. For some time, our black citizens were gaslighted into believing that. But Jim Crow laws were even more sinister than just separation, they also imposed severe voting restrictions on the black population ensuring that the engineers of these subjugating laws would remain in power and in turn the perpetuity of the laws themselves. Talk about a rigged system. Taking away voting rights from the black community essentially maimed them economically and the thriving black middle class that once existed in the south briefly after emancipation, disappeared entirely. They had no legal voice left with which to fight. 

Third Broken Promise: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

The rise of the Ku Klux Klan was the initiation of an overt and racially-motivated reign of terror. What began as a social club for former confederate soldiers soon became a breeding ground for sadistic ideas for exerting their imagined superiority over their fellow Americans. The Klan’s militant genocide resulted in thousands of deaths and delivered a decisive blow to any hope for political and social organization within a black community. Despite its clear historical and present-day status as an organization that meets terrorist criteria. The U.S. government has yet to classify it as one, (to change that sign here). The KKK has now been in existence for 152 years, it is in effect America’s ongoing response to a black person’s freedom: the constant threat of an unjustified and tortuous death. That’s not really a life; there is no freedom in perpetual fear, and no chance to pursue happiness. Since its inception, the existence of The KKK has given way to 917 white supremacy organizations across the nation that are still operating today.

Fourth Broken Promise: The Civil Rights Movement

America’s children of color demanded a seat at the table. In the 1950’s the Second World War was over. It was peace time and once again Black Americans sacrificed bravely for this nation and for the world. Black service members died in the thousands, but also played crucial roles in aiding the Allied Forces to defeat the Axis. Upon their return Jim Crow was still in full swing, they experienced that same segregation and second class treatment they did while serving and they were receiving the same as payment for their service at home. They were even excluded from the G.I. Bill, which arguably spearheaded the middle class of the 1950s. Enough was enough; America’s black children found their collective voices and took to the streets to exclaim their lives DO MATTER. Non-violent protests and civil disobedience were the markers of the movement that gave rise to the great social leaders of the twentieth century. Names like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X now inspire hope, not only in the black community but for all manner of oppressed peoples in the U.S. and throughout the world. However, at the time their protests and acts of resistance were not met with applause and praise. Rather they were incarcerated, slandered, harassed, abused and many were assassinated for their efforts to move the needle of equality further in the right direction. 

Fifth Broken Promise: Equal Treatment in the Eyes of the Law

The most evident signs of iniquity in our times are on full display in the very system where they should be most repudiated. Our “Justice” System, and I use the word justice lightly, has been designed and crafted to target and retain as many people of color as possible. Currently, there are roughly two million people incarcerated in the USA, the highest number of prisoners of any country. In fact, the USA retains 22 percent of the world’s prisoners despite representing only 4 percent of the world’s population. Of those two million detainees, some 70 percent are people of color. This was not always the case. Between Nixon’s war on drugs and the evolution of the for profit prison industry stemming from the Reagan administration, the U.S. prison population spiked from .1 percent prior to the 1970s to .5 percent by the turn of the century. There is no surprise in these numbers really, when you privatize a system intended for rehabilitation, you make it financially-dependent on the number of warm bodies filling its cells. Suddenly rehabilitation is no longer the bottom line, money is, and we all know at the end of the day, the bottom line is all that matters. Again it is people of color who bare the heaviest burden in facing the injustices this corrupt system has wrought. Black Americans make up around 13 percent of the U.S. population yet they comprise 40 percent of the prison populace. Sentencing biases contribute greatly to this disparity, along with prosecutorial discretion favoring whites and negatively-impacting people of color. A clear picture of intentional inequity starts to appear. 

Finally black Americans are unjustly shot and killed by police at two and a half times the rate as white Americans. The disproportionate mistreatment and abuse of power committed against people of color in the United States of America has come to a boiling point. That is why they kneel. 

In a free society like our own these protests should be seen as a positive demonstration of the type of republic we are. Peacefully choosing not to participate in national rituals that represent freedom only to some and oppression to others is a sign of a great nation where its citizenry is free to assemble, express themselves and effect change. That is something to be proud of.

America already is great, but she can be better and we can make her so together.