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scullydubois · 3 years

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Only the Light Ch. 16

Scully searches for Mulder in the desert; Missy encounters her own trouble back in Washington.

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As she stands in the charred boxcar, she can’t help but fear that Mulder’s remains are scattered around her. She fears him being dead, of course, but thinking about his condition if he’s alive makes her insides swirl. She had heard coyotes howling through the night and all she could think about was what if Mulder was out there, what if their glowing eyes faced him in the dark, what if their howls drowned out his cries? She thinks of all the children on milk cartons, and their poor parents, and all the pain in the world.

Albert and his son accompanied her out to the desert while Melissa stayed back and phoned the Navajo Nation police department and New Mexico’s county police. Mulder is a wanted man in the eyes of the federal government, Scully’s sure, but she’s more concerned with whether he’s a dead man. And if the FBI knows what’s good for them, they’d be concerned too. Of course, that’s a hard argument to make when her name is probably scribbled alongside Mulder’s for aiding and abetting a fugitive. Still, the more manpower they have, the greater the chance of finding him, and that’s in everyone's best interest.

She kneels on the red-dusted bottom of the boxcar and recalls what Mulder had told her he’d found: bodies, piles of them--inhuman by his description--and smallpox vaccination scars. She hadn’t been thinking clearly the night before when she told her sister there’d be nothing left. When a body burns, the skeleton survives. Not intact, exactly, but there. Permissible as forensic evidence, capable of unfurling the secrets of the skin that once surrounded it. Crematoriums have to put bones through a grinder to turn them to ash. Scully sees neither bones nor ashes around her--what is she to make of that?

“Anything ma’am?” Eric calls down to her from where he and his father are searching the rocks.

Scully stands up. “No, nothing but sand and smoke.”

“FBI man couldn’t have gone far,” Eric emphasizes. “I never saw him leave the boxcar.”

“Well, in that case there’d be bones or some sign of remains...I see nothing, not even what he told me he saw down here.”

Albert appears at his son’s shoulder. “What was that which he saw?”

Scully squeezes her temple. “Bodies with smallpox vaccine scars. He said they didn’t look human.”

“Ah. The disappeared.”

“No, I don’t think it was the Anasazi. I think that...it’s related to whatever caused them to disappear. I think the government knew, and they wanted in on it.”

“You see?” Albert tells her. “Nothing disappears without a trace.”

Scully turns her back to them. She’s said that exact sentence to Mulder before...what if she was wrong? About all of it?

Eric helps her out of the boxcar. Vultures whine above them.

“Is the tribal police equipped to handle a missing person case?” Scully asks Albert, shielding her eyes from the sun.

“I sure hope so, but it is not often that a non-resident goes missing on the reservation.”

“Since this deals with one of their agents, the FBI could get involved,” Scully relays, “but I fear it might disturb the community.”

Albert nods. “It would be best to leave the federal government out of this.”

“Unfortunately,” Scully says, kicking a stray rock, “my partner and I were in the midst of a sort of dereliction of our duties, so I suspect the FBI will track me down no matter how hard I resist.”

“That is unfortunate,” Albert affirms. “But we will protect you as best we can.”

“Thank you.” Scully meets his eye. It is warm, but it is not the gaze she wishes she were looking into. “I’d like to get back to my sister now,” she divulges, moving toward the truck Albert brought them in.

“We’ll go,” Albert replies, ushering Eric into the truck.

And as the tires rattle over the earth, Scully realizes that the heart can choose to stop beating when it pleases, and my god, what a burden to bear.

--------------------------------

Scully’s phone is ringing when she walks through the motel door. She ignores it--Skinner chewing her out is the last thing she needs right now.

At the desk, Missy labors over a spread of tarot cards, not even acknowledging Scully’s entrance. She whispers to herself as she analyzes the selections.

“You brought those?” Scully gripes.

Missy nods, still engrossed by the arrangement. She looks up from the cards. “I suspected I would need it.”

“And what do you need it for?”

“To make decisions. Specifically, to decide whether I should go back to Washington.”

Scully’s forehead wrinkles. “And what do they say?”

“It’s not definite, of course, but the cards are leaning toward yes.”

“And you needed the cards to tell you this why?”

Missy smiles. “Because the cards work in concordance with the universe, Dana.”

Scully turns away so her sister can’t see her roll her eyes. “Oh. Right.”

Missy slides her chair back, stands up. “I know you think it’s crazy, and I won’t try to change your mind. However, I believe that it’s a worthwhile instrument of spiritual guidance, and I’m inclined to follow its advice.”

“By going back to Washington.”

Missy nods.

“Does that mean that I come too?” Scully asks, suddenly seeing the appeal of putting tough decisions at the mercy of a completely arbitrary system.

Missy pushes a lock of her sister’s hair behind her ear. “Not so fast. I only asked the cards about me. They said I should go.”

Scully allows the corners of her lips to turn up slightly. Oh, to let child’s play seep into your adult life. “So you didn’t ask them about me?”

“No,” Missy says, eyes shining. “Because I already know the answer. You should stay.”

“Well, shouldn’t you check with the cards about that?”

“I can, but I know what they’ll say.”

Scully frowns now. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because I know the answer in my heart. It’s obvious, like what color the sky is, or should you take an umbrella when it rains. There’s no need to use the cards for that.”

Scully just stares at her sister, feeling backed into a corner. If she asks her to use the cards, that implies that she has some faith in them...but to her the answer isn’t obvious, it isn’t something she knows implicitly in her heart, and sometimes she doesn’t even take an umbrella when it rains!

Missy pats her sister’s shoulder, sensing the uncertainty. “If you want me to use the cards, I’ll use the cards. But I can tell you what the right answer is.”

Scully screws her eyes shut, opening them after a long moment. “Fine, fine, I’ll just stay. But were you able to get a hold of the police?”

Missy nods. “The reservation department doesn’t have enough resources to launch a search until tomorrow. And county police won’t get involved unless the FBI requests assistance.”

“But the FBI isn’t even involved!”

“The conclusion was that since the case involves their missing agent, they should be involved (or you know, would be if we told them), and they have superior jurisdiction over the matter. It would be considered rude if local law enforcement got involved.”

Scully bites her lip. “I’m sure there’s an APB out on us, is that not enough for them?”

Missy shrugs. “I don’t know. I only gave them Mulder’s name, and they didn’t mention anything about him being wanted.”

“Well, maybe they’ll get the memo…”

“There’s a simple solution, Dana.”

Scully raises an eyebrow, inviting her to answer.

“Tell Skinner where you are and what’s happened! Having the Bureau on this would increase the chances of finding Mulder.”

“If the Bureau doesn’t disown us first.”

Missy shrugs. “I’m sure it’s in their best interest to locate a wanted man, and maybe even his rag-tag partner…”

“That’s kind of what the rag-tag partner is afraid of,” Scully concurs.

“Look, you’re not gonna be able to avoid questioning him for his father’s murder, but you have evidence that proves he didn’t do it. And then that will be done and over with, and you can move on with your lives. Or you can continue to hide out in the middle of nowhere and further incriminate yourselves.”

Scully lowers herself onto the bed, her face in her hands. “That’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to say before we drive across the country!”

“I wanted you to make progress on the conspiracy. You have, now it’s time to stop hiding.”

“You call what’s happened here progress?” Scully grumbles.

“Sure. You got translations from Albert--”

“That don’t reveal much.”

“--and Mulder got a look at what was inside that boxcar.”

“What good does that do if he’s not here?”

“He will be. And this will motivate both of you to push even further.”

Scully looks at her sister with world-weary eyes. “I’m really hoping that elder sisters have some sort of psychic abilities that I don’t know about,” she sighs.

Missy pulls her lips into a smile. “We do.”

The girls hug, and Scully feels the world right itself just a bit.

---------------------------

As he steps out of his office, key in hand, the phone sounds. He answers without hesitation, not normal for him at such a late hour.

“Hello?” he barks into the phone.

“Director Skinner, it’s Agent Scully.”

“Agent Scully, where the hell are you?”

He hears her voice tremble with a sigh, then--”It’s a long story, and I can explain it all later, but right now I need you to know that Mulder is missing.”

“He’s on the run,” Skinner responds. “Because he killed his father.”

“No, sir, he didn’t. He came to me, and I...well, I’ll spare you the details right now, but we ended up on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico, and Mulder’s disappeared.”

“Agent Scully,” Skinner booms into the phone, “Agent Mulder is a federally wanted fugitive. If you’ve known where he is all this time, you are complicit in his crimes.”

“He didn’t do it sir, I took his weapon to ballistics the morning after his father was shot. They ran a ballistic fingerprint test. The results are in our office, you can see them for yourself.”

“Why was I not informed of this? You had contact with Agent Mulder after the shooting--when he was a suspect--and you didn’t turn him in?”

“Yes, sir,” Scully sighs.

“You told our men you didn’t know where he was.”

“Uh-huh, and I gave them a weapon to run ballistics on, but I didn’t tell them it was Mulder’s. It was FBI issue, so I told them we should run it to confirm that a FBI weapon wasn’t used.”

“That doesn’t clear him, Agent Scully. He could have used another gun.”

“He doesn’t own another gun.”

“His father does.”

“Then ballistics test it. It wasn’t Mr. Mulder’s weapon, I promise you. I’ve seen the weapon, and I know who used it.”

“So you’re withholding information from the FBI as well!”

“It’s not that sir. I’d be more than happy to share it with you, but first and foremost, I need your help.”

“How can you expect me to help you when you’ve deserted your duties and committed multiple federal crimes?” he thunders.

“This is about Agent Mulder’s life, sir. As you said, he’s a wanted man. Here’s your opportunity to catch him.”

“I see you in my office before I do anything.”

“Please, sir. I’m in New Mexico.”

“You either come to my office tomorrow morning to acknowledge your failure to carry out your duties and provide me with the whereabouts of Agent Mulder, or consider yourself stripped of your badge with a warrant out for your arrest.”

Scully’s jaw clicks, he can hear it through the phone. “Alright,” she responds curtly. And with nothing else to add, “Good night.” The line clicks.

In the desert motel room, Scully turns to her sister. “He wants to see me in his office tomorrow morning.”

“You could fly back. I’ll take the car.”

Scully bites her lip and looks out the window, but all she’s met with is darkness. “I hate this, Melissa. It’s my job, or my partner.”

Missy frowns. It’s not cold, but she lifts a blanket and drapes it around her sister’s shoulders. “And you’re thinking of dad, aren’t you?...What he would do?”

Scully nods, pulling the blanket closer to her. “I thought I knew, but now that I’m faced with the decision, I’m not sure.”

“He loved his work, but he loved his family more,” Missy muses, a smile creeping onto her lips. “That was his last wish, wasn’t it? He visited you, told you that he wanted more time with you.”

Scully averts her eyes. He had, he had. A vision of him told her that when she thought she was dying, and it turned out she was not. But what is she to do with that now? Mulder’s not family, not in that way…

As if she could hear her sister’s thoughts, Missy responds, “It’s about love, Dana, in all its forms. What is life if not the connections we make with others?”

A dam tucked away in Scully’s soul has broken open. She looks at her sister with water-logged eyes, her lips trembling.

“I love him, Melissa. More than any…”

“I know you do.” Missy wraps her arms around her sister, rocking the two of them back and forth like a mother and her baby. “Act from that place. The world needs more of that feeling.”

Scully sniffles against her sister’s shoulder. The gears have clicked into place, finally. If this is the hill she has to die on, then so be it.

------------------------------------

The tide climbs the shore like the man in the sky is holding magnets, drawing it onto land faster than even the moon could dare. This is no tsunami; no sky-scraping waves, no crash and burn as water meets solid. This is a flood. Like there was an invisible barrier keeping the water in its place so well delegated on maps, and suddenly that impediment has disappeared. Water sweeps onto and over land like it's been waiting since the dawn of Earth to do so. Like it’s been held back all this time, drifting in silent slumber. It’s beautiful, really. Natural. But in its celebration of freedom, it unwittingly wipes out the world.

This is the dream Scully wakes from, roused by a knock on the motel door. Through the curtains, night’s pure darkness softens to a navy blue. She rolls out of bed and pads to the door in her silk pajamas, standing on her tip-toes to peer through the peephole. Sheets rustle as Missy sits up.

“It’s Albert,” Scully whispers to her sister, who pulls on a robe and joins her at the door.

Scully unbolts the door and ushers Albert in. Chilly air slips in behind him. The desert becomes a void without the sun as its heat source.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” he mutters. “But we’ve recovered your partner.”

Scully feels like she’s had a stun-gun taken to her spine. “What? How? Is he alive?”

“He is not conscious, but there is breath left within him. My son was out feeding the goats and noticed buzzards circling over the desert. He rode down to see, and sure enough, FBI man’s body was tucked in a quarry.”

Scully’s voice leaps octaves. She gropes for her coat. “He needs medical attention right now--”

“Yes. We are handling it,” Albert says with the calm manner of a stately man. “We are preparing a traditional healing ceremony for him, the Blessingway. We will summon the power of our holy people to help him, but ultimately, it is his spirit that must choose to stay.”

While respectable, this is not a good enough answer for Scully. She pulls on her coat. “I need to see him. I’m a doctor, I can examine him.”

“It is not medical intervention that he needs now. He is being hydrated and will be fed when the time is right. He has no visible injuries...I believe that the desert simply wore him down, as is its way.”

“There could be internal injuries, and his vitals need to be checked…” Scully argues, the scant slice of sanity she held onto slipping away.

“We are caring for him, I promise you. You can come and observe our rituals.”

“With all due respect, I think what Mulder needs right now is more than rituals.”

Missy scoffs and lays a grounding hand on her sister’s shoulder, pulling her away from Albert. “Dana, please just let them do their work.”

Scully turns on her sister. “Mulder’s dying, and you want me to leave it in the hands of the spirits?!” she snaps.

Missy sets her lips in a line. “That is what prayer is, isn’t it?”

Scully crumbles, her world-views clashing like tectonic plates. Finally, she whimpers--“I care too much about him to leave it up to fate.”

--------------------------

And so Melissa sets off for Washington in Scully’s sedan, while Scully herself stays cloistered in that motel room trying not to scare off a miracle. The call she expected from Skinner comes, followed by many others. All go unanswered while she waits for an answer from the universe.

Albert invited her to look in on the Blessingway ritual, but she couldn’t do it. It would be intrusive and painful and maybe even blasphemous--she can’t tempt the fates at a time like this. Besides, looking at Mulder and not being able to help him would take her back to her med school days of staring at death through the glass. Nowadays, there are only two conditions where she’ll allow herself to face death: when she can strangle it, and when she can examine the damage left in its wake. It worries her, then, which one she’ll meet Mulder under.

Missy had gone in to see him before she left. She understood her sister’s apprehension and took the liberty of checking up on Fox herself. Albert had not lied; Mulder was unconscious, but he looked alright. No blood, no bruises, just sun-burnt skin and the aura of exhaustion. She would not have left if she didn’t believe that he would pull through and that his awakening would be a moment of reckoning for he and her sister to tackle on their own.

Four days pass before Eric greets Scully with the vague notion of a smile as he pulls up on his motorbike. She had been expecting him; he takes her over to Albert’s for lunch every day. His countenance is different today, but he is quiet like always. She snaps on the helmet he brought for her and settles herself behind him on the bike.

The growl of the engine reminds her of Maryland forests and Bill’s four-wheeler. How she’d sit behind him and Missy would sit behind Charlie and they would race over the paths traced by hundreds of children over hundreds of years. It felt like being a part of something bigger than herself. It felt like freedom.

Now, it feels like chains. Chains she’s had put around her because she’s choosing to do the right thing. The ones keeping her hidden in the desert. The ones making her pin all her hopes on the Navajo people and their gods. The ones holding her feelings hostage from her. And the ones hiding the truth from her and the man who needs it the most. She wants to be back in the basement office with Mulder. She wants things to be okay.

It’s a short ride to Albert’s, and he is standing on the driveway to greet her when they drive up.

“Hello Agent Scully,” he says as she swings her leg over the bike and hands her helmet to Eric. “It is a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

She had been too occupied with her thoughts to notice, but yes, it is as good a day as the desert gives. Sunshine offset by a breeze, low humidity, and temperatures that do justice to spring.

“It is, Albert,” she answers kindly. “How are you today?” She has become quite comfortable in his company. He’s been helping her scour the translated passages for useful information, though they have not come up very lucky.

“I am well,” he answers in his warm tone. “There is someone who wants to see you.”

“Oh?” Scully’s attention snaps to Albert’s house. Has Skinner tracked her down? Is he waiting inside to admonish her? There are no extra cars in the driveway, but knowing what she knows about helicopters and appearances and disappearances, this means nothing.

“No one in there,” Albert assures, following her gaze. He lays a hand on her shoulder and guides her toward the Blessingway tent.

Scully resists him. “I’ve told you, I feel it would be disrespectful to enter your sacred space as a non-believer.”

“You are not a non-believer just because you believe other things. You are one of the most fervent believers I have met. Besides, your partner wants to talk to you.”

Scully breaks away. “What?...He’s awake?”

“Yes, ma’am. As of dawn.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who reverses course as quickly as Scully does about the tent. She rushes toward it, Albert following after. “Is the ceremony over then?”

“No, it is up to FBI man to end it properly. He may not work, change clothes, or bathe for four days.”

Scully groans, then takes hold of the tent entrance flap. “I can go in…?” she queries, still uncertain despite days worth of invitations.

Albert nods. “Go on. I will stay here, and you can ask the boys to join me.”

Scully pulls the material aside and enters. She’s met with the same excitement one feels when stepping onto a train car or off of a plane. She is arriving somewhere only her imagination could previously touch.

At the far side of the tent, a cluster of Navajo boys about Eric’s age char a piece of bread over the fire. Completing their circle, with his back to her, her partner sits with a blanket pulled around his shoulders. His hair brushes the nape of his neck, and the curve of his biceps look less defined than she’s ever seen them. Yet undeniably, it is him.

“Mulder.” Hellos have never been necessary for them.

He’s heard so many voices talk to him over the past few days that he assumes this is one hanging behind. Only when he sees the boys stop their conversation and draw their attention toward the entrance does he turn and realize this is not a voice, but the voice.

He rises to his feet far quicker than has to be healthy and stumbles toward his partner. “I didn’t know if you had stayed or not. When Albert told me you were here…” Words can’t capture the feeling. Scully understands.

“I couldn’t leave you behind,” she says, deciding to gloss over the details of her dilemma. “Melissa took the car back, but yeah, I’m here.”

She lays a hand against one of the diminished biceps and walks him over to the pillows that have been laid out for sitting. She helps him down in a delicate fashion, then takes a place next to him. The Navajo boys exit without being asked.

“I didn’t think I would see you again,” Mulder confesses, his voice straining as it gains back its strength.

“Were you planning to join the Navajo?” Scully wisecracks, taking over his usual duty.

“No, I…” he chuckles at himself. “I don’t know. I just thought I’d wake up and it would be like Freaky Friday, like I’m in someone else’s body, someone else’s life.”

“In Freaky Friday, the mom and daughter switched bodies. They knew each other. So it would be like if we switched bodies, and I think we’d figure out a way to switch back, don’t you?”

Mulder cracks a smile. “On second thought, no take backsies!”

Scully rolls her eyes. She hasn’t done that, she realizes, in about five days. What an influence he has on her.

“Are you feeling okay?” she asks, threading a hand beneath the blanket so she can lay a hand over his.

“You ever asked the bodies on your autopsy table that? I think they’d have a comparable answer.”

“Is there anything I can get you?” Her voice is a rush of tenderness. “Water?...Have they fed you?”

Mulder rubs his eyes. “I’ve been fed, watered, and bathed like any respectable man brought back from the dead. I apparently have four days of lazing around ahead of me.”

“Yeah, I heard. Not very convenient for a wanted felon.”

“Damn, I was hoping I dreamed that part.”

“No, unfortunately not,” Scully sighs out. “And I’ve been ignoring Skinner’s orders, so I’ll be lucky to still have a badge.”

“So we’re the Bonnie and Clyde of the FBI now, ey?”

Scully smiles. “I think we’ve always been the Bonnie and Clyde of the FBI, though now we’re just...Bonnie and Clyde.”

“So fugitives without the employment of the federal government to protect them…”

“Yeah.”

“Great.” He pulls the blanket tighter against him. Then--“So do you have any idea how I got here?”

“Which part are you fuzzy on? New Mexico, this tent, life in general…” She is so relieved to have him back that she’ll indulge in a bit of playful banter.

“Um…” through his bleariness, he is still able to smile at her silliness. “I remember our car ride out here. I’m not really sure how I ended up the guest of honor at a Blessingway ritual.”

“Do you remember being in the boxcar? You called me and told me there were bodies with smallpox vaccination scars.”

“And that they didn’t look human…”

Of course he remembers that above all.

“Right, how could I forget?” Scully teases.

“And then I remember heat--really searing heat--and a long period of nothing, and then crawling into the rocks and hearing coyotes cry as I closed my eyes. And then I found myself here.”

“The boxcar went up in flames. CSM’s work, I believe.” She rakes her nails against his blanket. “I don’t know how you escaped without any burns.”

Mulder shakes his head. “I don’t remember.” He looks up at her. “Did you think I was dead?”

She bites her lip, thinking of the hours she spent on the imaginary-that-she-worried-wouldn’t-be-so-imaginary eulogy Melissa made her write.

“I was afraid of that, yeah,” she answers tautly. She considers...should she tell him of the heartache she poured out on paper because she had nowhere else to put it? It seems so futile now with him there in front of her, his heart beating blissfully.

She knits her brows together. “I had to think about what I would say at your funeral, so I would really appreciate if you could not scare me like that again.”

“I’ve seen your gravestone, Scully. I think we’re even.”

She contorts her face so as not to show her frown. “Maybe.” She rises, offering him her hand. “You wanna go back to the motel? Sleep in a bed for a change?”

He links his fingers through hers, and she hoists him up. “You’re still paying for that second room?” he jests, only half-joking.

She makes her way toward the tent entrance, looking back at him with a mischievous smile. “No, but Missy’s gone, so you can have her bed.”

Mulder snickers. “Cheapskate.”

Scully gets her revenge by letting the tent flap fall back on him as she goes through, and he laughs because yeah, that sounds about right. He has definitely woken up in the right life.

-----------------------------------

She’s just stepped out of the shower when she hears it: the faint clash of a rubber sole against hardwood. It shouldn't be; her sister is 2,000 miles away, her lover even more than that. She is to be alone...but she’s not.

And it scares her, but it doesn’t. She knows what to do--she’s read about this, thought about it, almost lived it dozens of times. It comes with the territory. A young woman, a conventionally attractive young woman, a young woman who walks hand-in-hand with her girlfriend in public...yes, she has been waiting for this like winter waits for the first snow. She was born with the knowledge of this fate in her bones.

And so she slides on her t-shirt and shorts, grabs the phone from the nightstand, and wordlessly locks the bedroom door. Seeking as much cover as she can get, Missy slips into her closet, her hair still bundled in a towel. If she could get to her purse, she could grab her mace, but it’s in the kitchen and that’s too much of a risk.

She won’t cower defenseless though, for she will not allow herself to become another name in the paper, a number on the page. She raises onto her tip-toes and grabs an old lamp from the top shelf. Sliding off the lampshade reveals some nice sharp carvings that’ll surely do some damage.

She presses herself against the slats of the accordion door and listens. Could she have been hearing things? She didn’t hear anyone break in, but the shower was running. Now she hears nothing more than the usual creaking of the walls. Still, she could have sworn there were footsteps, and that’s happened here before, so how could she rule it out?

She thinks of her sister, alone, running a bath to relax after another day on her new job and ending up laid out on her bathroom tile. Put on display like a mannequin in a store window. It sickens her. That was just the first time her sister became a board for bad men’s depraved darts. How do you end a violent cycle without further violence?

Murmurs--too loud for their speaker’s own good--confirm Missy’s suspicions. So it is not one pair of footsteps, but two, that stalks her. They come from the other side of the door, though not too much beyond it. She dials the three digits that can save her and squeezes the phone between her ear and shoulder.

As fate wills it, so it shall be.

-------------------------

Scully can’t take her eyes off him, and she’s not sure whether it’s the motherly instinct or its perfect opposite. He’s lounging on the adjacent bed in his undershirt and jeans, chewing leftover Spitz while absorbing some public broadcasting documentary about the Trail of Tears. His eyes prowl the screen, and Scully wonders if he always watches television like this: hungry desperation meets boyish wonder. It is charming, and it is sad. She wishes she knew him when he was growing up, and that he knew her too.

The documentary breaks for a word from its sponsors, and Mulder rolls onto his side, the front of him facing his partner.

Scully gives him an acknowledging smile. “Are you comfortable?”

He nods. “These are better accommodations than the Bureau would stick us in, that’s for sure.”

Scully smiles at her cross-legged lap. She doesn’t think so really, it’s the second cheapest she could find and all the drinking glasses have lipstick stains, but it’s a nice idea. And he’s spent days against the Earth floor, so she won’t challenge him.

She runs her eyes over him, thinking of the days and nights she passed staring at that bed’s emptiness. Forget the fear of losing her job, even the fear of arrest--none of that matters because he is back now, and that is all she could ask.

With a stretch, she pulls open her bedside drawer and takes out a notepad. The notepad. Just like that, she is a teenager taking a plastic key and unlocking her diary.

Mulder tosses a sunflower seed in the air, but it thuds on his chest instead of landing in his mouth. Scully pretends she didn’t see.

“When I said that I had to think about what I’d say at your funeral, I mean I thought about it a lot...I wrote it down even,” she stammers. Now she is a teenage boy asking his crush to the prom with a handmade sign and a balloon, and god does it feel inadequate.

Mulder’s face lights up. “Lemme see!” He sticks his arm across the way, flexing his hand like he’s begging for a cookie.

Scully clutches the paper close to her side. “It’s stupid and sentimental,” she insists.

“As opposed to the crushing takedown you were hoping to deliver?”

She shrugs. “It just doesn’t do you or your life justice, and that’s all the more clear with you right in front of me.”

“C’mon, Scully. I’m not asking you to create world peace--I just wanna know what you said.”

She scans her sprawling writing, her beating heart in ink. “I mean...it’s nothing you don’t already know.”

He leans forward on the bed, closing the distance between his hand and the paper. “Let me see it.”

Scully lets it slide from her fingers with a huff of apprehension. Indifference has always been her go-to defense mechanism, but there’s nothing about Fox W. Mulder she can be indifferent about. If he doesn’t already realize that, he will in a moment.

His eyes trace her sentences with a curiosity that is quenched by every word. He smiles up at her, and it’s the youngest she’s ever seen him.

“Best friend?” He can’t even make it through his teasing with a straight face, chuckling before he gets a chance to continue. “Scully, I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“Thank god we got that out in the open,” Scully hums, riding his playful wavelength.

“No doubt.” Mulder caresses the paper between his fingers, absorbing all the care she put into it while she thought he was gone. “Well, at least you won’t have to read that anytime soon.”

Scully nods, a bashful smile adorning her face. “At least.” Her lips part decisively, but she closes her mouth, a self-imposed censure.

Mulder takes a stray look at the TV screen, the documentary having come back on. Quickly, his eyes fall back on Scully; she shines brighter than the television light.

“For what it’s worth,” he stammers, “I’m glad I didn’t die...that I get to be here with you.”

Scully’s eyebrows crease. That’s the most moving thing a living person has ever said to her...it’s as if she’s taken a bird with a broken wing into her palm, a display of trust so tender it renews her faith in existence.

She turns her face away from him. He’s left with a view of her profile--a dainty white cheek and the curve of her nose--and he’s never understood the urge to break out a sketchbook until now. This is a sight crafted for capture.

“Mulder, that’s...thank you,” she spills out. If she looked at him now, she’d do the thing she fears would ruin them forever. So she doesn’t. She closes her eyes and tilts her head toward the popcorn ceiling with something like a prayer in mind. It’s God’s hand, she knows it must be, when the phone rings at just that second.

She lifts it off the bedside table without opening her eyes. “Hello?”

“Dana?”

Her sister’s voice floats through the receiver, sounding as close as it ever does. Scully sits up, turns toward the table’s edge as if her sister were in the room. “I’m here. Is everything okay?” She asks this because she’s used to it being the first thing she’s asked.

“Well…” A pang leaps in Scully’s heart. Her sister is not one to know uncertainty. She lays the receiver on the table and hits the speaker button.

“There was a break-in.” Missy’s voice fills the room, catching Mulder’s attention too. He mutes the TV. “I’m okay, I wasn’t hurt, and I didn’t encounter the burglars directly. I hid in the closet and called the police--I don’t think they even knew I was home. They were gone by the time the authorities arrived. They dug around in your room.”

“My room?” Scully’s heart beats in double-time. “Did they take anything?”

“Not that I can tell.” Missy exhales. “They were looking for you, I think.”

Mulder leans forward, and Scully swaps a pin-prick glance with him. “Are the police still there?” she asks.

“Yes, they’re swabbing for fingerprints and shoe-prints.”

“Can I talk to them?”

“Yeah--I’ll give you someone better.” Before Scully can question what that means, she hears the receiver switch hands and a familiar voice boom toward her. “Agent Scully, we’re reviewing your complex’s security cameras to see what we can get.”

“Skinner?” Scully remarks, as if his voice is one she might fail to recognize. Mulder chuckles, and she wishes he didn’t.

“Are you alone?” Skinner asks, probably tipped off by her partner’s lack of finesse.

“No, Mulder is here,” she replies nonchalantly.

There’s an indiscriminate grumble on Skinner’s part, then he continues--”Well, this appears to be a targeted attack. As far as we can tell, all of the apartment is untouched but your bedroom and bathroom. Drawers were left open in both areas.”

“And this wasn’t law enforcement serving an arrest warrant or anything?”

“No, that situation has been resolved.”

Scully’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean…?”

“I found the ballistics report for Agent Mulder’s weapon in your office, and after speaking with your sister, mother, and Albert Holsteen, any charges have been dropped. For both of you.”

Scully’s mouth falls open. She and Mulder lock eyes. Stress he didn’t even know he had falls away.

“Now, there will still be internal discipline by the Bureau, but that’s not the subject of this call. We believe that whoever is responsible for killing Mulder’s father is the same person who broke into your apartment.”

“Krycek,” Scully and Mulder both choke out.

“Alex?” Skinner scoffs. “I’ll need the details on that, and I’ll need to hear them from you. In my office.”

“Yes, sir,” Scully exudes.

Finally, she and Mulder are homebound.

-------------------

They are a sight to see as they crawl through airport security, Mulder in week old clothes and Scully lugging their suitcases just in case that might count as “work.” Mulder passes through the metal detector first, coming up clean despite the tangy stench he is taking on.

Scully takes her gun out of the holster and presents it to the security guard in one hand, her badge in the other. “I’m a federal agent. This is my FBI-issued weapon.”

“Alright, leave it here and we’ll slide it through.”

She does so, then slips under the metal detector herself. It whines in protest, and she’s surrounded before she can even process the sound.

Her hand goes to her cross. “Is it the necklace?” It doesn’t usually set off the detectors, but maybe this one is more sensitive. She takes it off and tries again. Again, the machine beeps.

“We’re going to need to pat you down, ma’am,” the guard informs her. She pushes away the fear that flashes in her core, then spreads her arms and legs. Hands--men’s hands, brawny and uncompromising--inundate her. She closes her eyes and pretends it isn’t happening, and god, she wishes Mulder weren’t standing only a few feet away.

After a minute that feels all too indulgent, the men back away. “I’m not finding anything,” one says to another, like Scully isn’t even there.

“Let’s see the x-ray again,” another says, limping off with the other while one stays positioned in front of Scully.

“Neck…” she hears them say. “I’m thinking it was just the necklace.”

The men return, and one moves her hair aside to examine the base of her neck. Nothing shows. “You got a bomb in there we should be worried about?” he jokes.

“I sure hope not,” Scully huffs, getting testy.

“Well, here’s your necklace, and your gun. You’re good to go.”

She takes her items with the feeling that she is nothing but a toy to them. They work at a candy shop, but only every once in a while do they get to taste the candy. She hopes she left a sour taste in their mouths, though she doubts that.

Joining Mulder, she feels a sense of cleanliness, a rebirth of a sort. How do his hands touch a woman, she wonders? She’s been privy to his gentle touches and reassuring swoons, so she knows he’s not greedy, but...would he be? If she asked him to?

A woman can only wait so long.

#good lord this got very long #we are getting close to the 'twist' that is the whole reason I wanted to write this...#also prob about 3/4th done with the whole thing :)#thank you so much for reading/liking/commenting #mwah 💋#only the light fic #the x-files #txf #txf fic #missy and scully fic #mine

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a-stitch-in-time-and-space · 4 years

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Cardassians aren’t Nazis (and also not quite the USSR, but I see where you’re coming from)

TW: for much discussions of Nazism, fascism, persecution, no details

So tottering around as a lover of DS9 and (disclaimer) as a major fan of the Cardassians as a not-yer-generic-villain type villain that then become less of a villain, because you can’t assign villainy to a whole species + also being German and hearing/watching/reading a lot of analyses that compare them to Nazis is inspiring me to write this (gasps for breath at the end of that sentence).

@tinsnip , @handsome-anne

1. Who were the Nazis that the Cardassians are specifically being compared to (versus neo-nazis/alt-rights, etc. that they’re not being compared to)

Short version: Post WWI the Versailles Treaty fucked over Germany in a way that left it wide open to the sort of megalomaniacal little bastard on a powertrip that fed on people’s fear and pushed them into a far-right disaster. The Nazi party itself didn’t have a ton of members, but it basically eroded any kind of democracy the country had and decided it would scapegoat Jews, Romani, communists, queer people, and other “intelligent elite”/political dissident and then spread those ideals across the world like a demented wannabe roman Caesar state. This didn’t last too long in the grand scale of world history, but left a body count of 6 million+ dead, mainly Jewish.

2. Germany and its relationship to this history

So Germany tries pretty hard to teach people this history in schools, through memorials, in film, etc. It’s not perfect by any means, there’re still discussions on how to make reparations, as well as neo-nazis and other far-right people around still, sadly just like in the rest of the world.

But it’s not covering up these atrocities, because there’s a belief that the way to make sure it doesn’t happen again is to be honest. Sadly, not everyone around the world gets as detailed a history surrounding its origins, happenings, and aftermaths, nor does every country engage with its own past like that.

3. Let’s get fictional (Cardassians, first impressions)

The Cardassians are a species that we mainly meet first through their subjugation of the Bajoran people, and then on DS9 following the immediate aftermath of the occupation on Bajor and everything that follows on from there. Throughout the story we discover various bits about what they had done - labour camps, mass executions, forced prostitution, and in that one Voyager episode I’m not a fan of because it didn’t have the range, experimentation.

On the surface, pretty comparable to the nazis, I get it. Hell, often that’s definitely “the source” of where the writers are getting their ideas.

4. So they’re... Nazis?

The problem comes when using one fascist regime as a go-to for these atrocities. It ignores the reality of fascism beyond this particular point in history and also it’s just not that simple.

When looking at Nazi Germany we also have to look at the source of its making, the climate around it (countries like the UK having a nazi party, Italy and Spain having fascist dictators, hell, the list of dictators that were/are not German is disgustingly long, the worldwide anti-semitism making surrounding countries apathetic or even sympathetic to the Nazis, etcetc.) and the aftermaths of WWII.

The Cardassians are not Nazis. (As an aside the Federation are not the brave allies, but that’s another post for another day.) I’ve seen them compared to the USSR - both by official writers and fandom - which I won’t comment on seeing as I am not from anywhere that was affected by that (I’m not East German, but I do have East German friends), but at least this points out that one cannot compare Cardassians to a specific atrocity that happened at a specific time with specific connotations surrounding it.

Is the Obsidian Order the Gestapo or another secret police? Which secret police? Is Garak “the good Nazi” trope - but then how does that align with Cardassians living under a repressive regime for centuries, not a few years, and therefore take into account an indoctrination and climate of fear created over several generations? No child “born” into the nazi regime became an adult while it was still lasting, unlike the Cardassians (and many other real life dictatorships and fascist states - as well as "democratic” states that have similar kinds of surveillance, oppression, mass-imprisonment and disappearances, and camps).

Is every Cardassian soldier a “nazi”? How does one compare that to polish and french prisoners (see Pierre Seel for a particular harrowing account, all the trigger warnings apply) who were forced to fight for the Germans and put on the front lines?

Eugenics, labour camps, and every other atrocity has been practised by numerous regimes, both in history and now, can we shrug off every country that’s participated in them for the sake of making the metaphor “easier”?

How does the aftermath of the Cardassian Union - when they’re attacked by the Klingons and themselves occupied by the Dominion and then have their main planet bombed to the point of millions dead - align with Nazi Germany?

5. It doesn’t.

It doesn’t. It doesn’t neatly align with any other fascist or military dictator-led regime either. This is not saying that there aren’t aspects obviously borrowed from history (and can easily apply to now). This is saying that in trying to bend the Cardassians into Nazis specifically, people are ignoring every other aspect about them and in my opinion doing a disservice to those who suffered under the actual regime. This is a fictional world, with fictional people that is based on an oppressive society template. It is also a fictional world in which the people themselves are oppressed (especially if you align with what’s written in Andy Robinson’s book) - I’ll be getting back to that point in a bit.

I would argue that making it “about Nazis” is too easy. This isn’t about “us” this is about “them” those evil bastards from wwii. It strips the Cardassian story of any current-day relevance. One can look no further than one’s own society to see people struggling against acknowledging histories, being treated as second-class citizens, etc. No need to go back in time to do so.

It also strips the Cardassians of any three-dimensionality. If they’re just villains then why are we rooting for their uprising to succeed at the end of season 7? Why do we want their society to flourish, their people to no longer have a broken court system, and their secret police to stop training and recruiting children if they’re Nazis, the convenient shorthand for über-evil?

Cardassia isn’t about a past society, it’s about our society. If we empathise with the Cardassians and don’t cast them as villains, then it’s a discussion about our own oppression and privilege. And it’s a damned good scifi allegory (even if I sometimes don’t think the writers and showrunners quite understand it themselves - death of the author and all that).

6. To conclude

I didn’t mention Bajor as much in this, because I was very focused on Cardassians, but I would argue that while there is value in casting them as “space Jews” (as I’ve seen here and there) because I understand the value of representation and I am not taking that away from anyone (I hope), similarly if one reads this take as the only valid one it ignores the reality of religious oppression on a wider scale and also that the Bajorans’ oppression at the hands of the Cardassians didn’t happen for the same reasons as the Jewish genocide at the hands of the Nazis - I would also argue that in making Cardassians = Nazis / Bajor = Jews, we similarly ignore that the Nazis were and are not alone in perpetuating anti-semitism, which kinda again leans into the “Good Federation (the Allies) Versus Evil Cardassians (Nazis) - because none of the Good Allied Countries have ever/are currently involved in persecution or dehumanisation *stares into the void*

And lastly - bringing back a point I made earlier about Cardassians themselves being oppressed by their own government - something that is often forgotten when people talk “Nazi tropes in genre fiction” is that the first country the Nazis occupied was Germany. I’m mentioning this, because it’s interesting in the metaphor, but it’s also conspicuously is absent in the simplification of how these reads are applied. It’s easy to cast the Cardassians as a whole as Bad People, but it makes for worse story-telling and has uncomfortable undertones of how the world reads Germany’s people as being at fault as a whole as well, without taking into account the specific events that we were globally complicit in - and once again the metaphor falls apart, because allegory doesn’t work so easily, and it shouldn’t.

TL; DR In general I am uncomfortable by “Nazi’s used as tropes” in any fictional world. One shouldn’t sacrifice analysis nor simplify history for the sake of making it easier to make a quick point about “bad guys” and forcing allegories into one shape makes them lose their power.

Also watch German films on Nazism and European ones on WWII if you’re looking for some better takes (also Cabaret, one of the best movies ever made).

#ds9 #st: ds9 #star trek #cardassia #bajor #cardassians #bajorans #ds9 meta #star trek meta #tw: nazi mention #tw: discussions about genocide #this is a looong breakdown basically summed up as *stop simplifying allegories*#but I've seen *nazi tropes' thrown around so casually not just here but in so much fiction that I kinda *nope*#so it feels like a post that I needed to get off my chest

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radramblog · 3 years

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National Sorry Day

Look, I’m regrettably less aware than I probably should be about the mistreatment of indigenous Australians by the colonising population and past governments. I know we fucked them over in a lot of different ways, but I’m not too clear on the specifics. When all the schoolkids learned the sanitised version, I was over in Malaysia, so I missed the whole disillusionment process entirely.

So when I looked over at my calendar and saw May 26th listed as “national sorry day”, I just had to ask…really? That’s what we went with?

I guess this is like 2 weeks early, but it’s on my mind now, so suck it up.

For the non-Australian readers I’m sure I have about 3 of, turns out there were already people here when a bunch of stuffy English and Dutch cunts turned up and said hey look at all this land, perfect for prisoners and shit. Standard practice at the time, to be honest- happened in the Americas, happened in a bunch of pacific islands, happened real bad here. A whole bunch of genociding, but at least down under, we didn’t quite stop there.

See there was a whole policy around the 20th century (up until the 70s, even!) where people would just take indigenous children by force from their families- without really any justification- to “assimilate them” into white culture by forcing them into institutions or foster families. This is, obviously, completely fucked, and supposed “benefits” of doing so obviously didn’t manifest, and the government’s still not really done all that much to make up for it.

The first National Sorry Day was in 1998. 6.5 months before yours truly was born, so they’ve done 22 of them at this point. Thing is, it wasn’t official or anything at that point- it was a community thing, people showed up but this wasn’t government-led or anything like it should have been. Official stance at the time was like…ehhh wasn’t actually us that did it right? Because turns out the Howard government did literally one good thing ever and this wasn’t it. A year after said PM made a “Motion of Reconciliation”, which pointedly was an apology, that never actually said the word Sorry? And I’m not sure who he was trying to fool. It wasn’t until the 2008 Rudd government- and god Rudd wasn’t perfect but we can’t help but miss him given current circumstance- that the Australian Federal Government actually apologised for, you know, fucking over several generations of innocent people for reasons that were racist at best.

And the formal apology is nice, but where does that actually take us? Because we still live in a world where indigenous Australians are severely marginalised. And the government we’ve had for the past 9 years clearly doesn’t give a shit. Turns out, when you keep in the party who didn’t do anything about this for several decades, they will continue not doing anything about it. They defunded the Recognize campaign 4 years ago, and they clearly aren’t doing anything about deaths in custody.

I guess it isn’t really my place to comment on this. I’m a white bloke from WA, and I don’t know shit. But I feel like even with a formal apology, and some programs set up by the last Labour government 10 years ago, I don’t think we’ve done enough to make up for 6 decades of cultural genocide. There’s a phrase that always goes around right-wing circles, that because the current generation wasn’t purposely involved in slavery, or genocide, or whatever, that it’s not our problem and we don’t have to worry about it. But first of all, the effects are still felt today, and second of all, that doesn’t mean we don’t have to be aware of our history. I know so little about the Australian half of my family heritage that I might have family members complicit in the Stolen Generation. Most of us probably do. And I think we in the present ultimately are responsible, at least somewhat, for cleaning up the mistakes of the past.

#ramble #political #australia #gonna look into protests and such when I have time so i'm a bit less of a slacktivist

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omfgtrump · 3 years

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Ready or Not, Here We Come!

With the events of this week so shocking, let’s not forget the greatest criminal act of The Don’s presidency is his perpetuation of a genocide of neglect when it comes to the response to Covid-19. We have now almost 360,000 deaths and in the last 9 days, 2 million new infections (that we know of) have been documented. The vaccine roll out is highly problematic and no matter how diligent Joe Biden and his crew is we are so behind the eight ball they some are now predicting as many as 1 million deaths by the end of May.

So here we have it. The extraordinary climax of the four- year reality show called: “Make America Great Again.”

You must admit it was a whopper. Cast of thousands, great costumes, violence, looting, profanity and in an ironic twist, endless incriminating selfies that will make finding the characters as easy as to find as one, two three. Rumor has it that the trials resulting from these arrests will spawn another “Law and Order” spinoff called: Law and Order: Sedition

With just a dozen more days to go to the end of The Don’s presidency, will there be another surprise episode? There is already talk in the ranks of loyalists about more actions to come before the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20th, so stay tuned.

I must admit I am hoping the networks will cover the F.B.I.’s midnight raids to the homes of the thugs who violated federal law. And please, pretty- please, make sure when they are arraigned, they are wearing those inspiring Viking costumes.

After weeks of The Don promulgating lies and conspiracies theories about election fraud, his continual unwillingness to concede, his refusal to participate in a peaceful transition of power and his urging of his supporters to show up to Washington D.C. ready to “have a wild time,” why would anyone be shocked about what happened?

For four years we have heard how shocking The Don’s statements and actions have been.

For four years we have heard how the man was not fit for office.

For four years we have heard how he has defiled and stained the presidency.

For four years we have watched him dismantle the very government he was elected to lead in order to consolidate his power.

For four years he has used his office to profit in direct, in-your-face violations of the Emolument’s Clause.

For four years he has tried to subvert the constitution.

For four years he has embraced White Supremacists and espoused racist ideology.

For four years the Republican party made a bargain with him, placating his every whim, feeding his grandiosity. And for their final act, these traitorous Republicans allowed and supported the lie that the election was a fraud, stoking the flames of his supporters to the point that storming the Capitol to make things right made sense to them!

What was shocking was the ease at which the insurrectionists entered the Capitol. When one of my friends texted me, exhorting me to turn on the news, I must admit, the first thing I did was laugh. Laugh? In hindsight, I think the laughter was born of an inability to deal with the dread I felt, but my first impression was that I was watching a strange Toga party that matched that great scene in “Animal House.” Strange people walking around in costumes, taking selfies with police officers and general mayhem. All that was missing was the conga line!

Given the known threat, it was beyond comprehension that there wasn’t a massive police and National Guard presence to prevent this. It was like the police were standing at the door and asking people: “Do you have a ticket for this event?”

Comparisons by the right wing media to a BLM protest is outrageous but not surprising. It goes without saying, that if this insurrection was populated with blacks, it would have been a bloodbath.

The Don’s aspirations for the presidency started with the racist lie about Barack Obama’s legitimacy and ended with another lie- that the election was stolen, particularly by black people who voted illegitimately in battle ground states- inspiring an insurrection by White Supremacists.

A full accounting of the failure to protect the Capitol will show widespread complicity and collusion up the chain of command, including the Secretary of Defense, who would not order the National Guard to get involved.

Ultimately, when the history books are written, I hope those who are complicit with The Don, are treated with the same critical eye as The Don himself. In my mind, they are the ones truly responsible for what has happened these four years. The Don is just one profoundly disturbed man. He lacks empathy, and is amoral at his core. To be amoral means a complete absence of a conscience: there is just emptiness and a need to fulfill his desires without any concern about the consequences of his actions. His enablers, who at any point, could have stopped him, are immoral men and women who allowed an amoral man free reign. To be immoral is to know the different between right and wrong and decide that supporting what is unconscionable is worth the reward. You need go no further than to sit with the fact that an entire party was silent while The Don and his evil partner in crime, Stephen Miller, separated children from their parents- some never to be reunited.

After the madness of the insurrection, when calm was restored, our elected officials went back to the business of doing their jobs and certified Joe Biden’s election to be the 46th president.

One would assume that after their lives felt threatened and the house of our democracy was invaded on the orders of the president and his henchmen, with the marauders yelling “Hang Pence,” that the Republicans would finally take a stand and separate themselves from him. But still 6 senators and 120 members of the House of Representatives continued to challenge the veracity of the election.

And what of the right- wing media? Was this a bridge too far? (I know silly question.)

And what of Republicans in general? A snap YouGov poll found that 45 percent of Republicans approved of the storming of the Capitol.

New conspiracies spawned. If you look really carefully you can see that the majority of people in this rally were really ANTIFA. And for that matter, why stop at that? Maybe the rioters were BLM people wearing whiteface?

Our loveable and long lost hockey mom, Sarah Palin, even weighed in.

“To any insincere, fake DC ‘patriots’ used as PLANTS — you will be found out.”

We always knew that Mrs., “I can see Russia from my house,” isn’t the brightest, but shit she sure knows a plant when she sees one. When asked about what kind of plants were there, she responded: “You know, the usual ones. “The usual ones,” responded the reporter? “Yeah, those.” “Can you name one, asked the reporter?” I don’t know, umm, plants, a stupid plant, like Daisies. Now get out of my way. I need to text my kid who is ransacking Nancy Commie Pelosi’s desk as we speak. Want to see a selfie of him with one of the police offers who gave him the keys to Nancy’s office. God, I wish I could have been there.”

Which way do we go, America? Your guess is as good as mine.

Below some scenes from the insurrection.

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#IFTTT #WordPress #trump #politics #potus #capital hill #washington dc #white house #america #usa

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spottedalienmonster · 4 years

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tw for suicide mention

But we do realize that Trump getting re-elected will cause people to commit suicide, right?

Like, I’m already seeing people say that they will. Trump has been that awful that people feel the only way to make things better or less painful is to take their own lives. We understand that it’s only truly traumatic and horrifying shit that drives people to do this, right?

If Biden gets elected, yes, we’ll have to deal with a problematic president, and Republicans suddenly turning “Not My President” on us, as if the past 4 years weren’t illegitimate for many. Yes, if Biden gets elected, we will still have a struggle to make sure he actually gets in the White House, since Trump’s made it clear he really doesn’t want to leave and will fight dirty to make it so.

But at the least, Biden/Harris won’t cause mass suicides.

And I apologize, this is a triggering post, but Biden is a far better option than Trump. If we get a Dem packed Senate and House, we could actually start the process of undoing all the shit Trump has done, and Biden wouldn’t compound stuff on top of that.

But if Trump gets back in office, we can only assume it’ll be another four 2020s. Another four years of pandemics, of kids in cages, of police and ICE and federal agents ramping up and becoming more and more violent.

Another four years of people ruining the post office, ruining public education, slashing safety regulations, dumping on the environment, and certainly, building a wall across the US.

It’ll be another 4 years of open white supremacy, of people feeling comfortable with being open bigots, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, hell, we’ll see calls for genocide before we see calls for impeachment.

We’ll see protesters attacked, journalists attacked, more shootings, more denial of humanity to the poor, the immigrants, the refugees, those just trying to get by in life.

We’ll see the rich get richer, while the poor won’t just stay poor, they’ll become even worse off.

Trump will continue to pack the courts with loyalists like he has for the past 4 years. We’ll see a Supreme Court loyal to Trump and everything he stands for.

I want to return to this post in a year, and for all this stress to be over. We’ll have to keep hammering on Biden for more rights, for Universal Healthcare, for reparations, for all the things we must demand of an American government, that is complicit in so many wrongs that it’s hard to keep track sometimes.

But if Trump wins, we’re looking at the possibility of never even getting the chance to vote for another candidate, let alone a far more left-leaning one.

Please, vote for Biden. A vote for a third party isn’t a voice of opposition, it’s a vote for Trump. Choosing to not vote when you have the ability to is a vote for Trump, too.

Just, please, we can sort out Biden’s baggage after the only other option isn’t an authoritarian fascist.

#tw suicide #trigger warning #trigger #suicide mention

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pettysexual · 4 years

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Please read

I absolutely HOPE that a lot of you are at least beginning to understand what is at stake this election season if you don’t vote for Biden.

Biden honestly isn’t my first choice candidate, and neither is Kamala. For both 2016 and 2020, I have cast my primary vote for Bernie because I am also fed up with how this country is run. I agree in that I want to see change in this system; one that is fair and just for all.

The one thing that I want to ASK of you if you are still considering a third-party candidate; what democracy do you think we will have if Trump and his Republican cronies reclaim the White House and Senate? What hasn’t Trump done yet in a goddamn election year, and what do you think he would be capable of doing if he has no more elections left to run? And he has Congress and now a more conservative Supreme Court to do his bidding?

Trump clearly doesn’t give a damn about what this U.S. Constitution stands for, and if you think that this Presidential election is the perfect opportunity for you to vote for someone besides Biden, need I remind you what happened in 2016 and where that got us today. Need I remind you that if god forbid, Trump were to win re-election whether in part due to you believing the GOP propaganda in that your vote doesn’t matter, or you feel that a vote for anyone besides Biden is a chance to “stick it to the man,” then I hate to tell you that we won’t have a chance to fight for anything anymore with a federal government that is deep in conservative/borderline fascistic hands.

I believe that the GOP will have this Supreme Court win, and will insultingly replace RBG’s seat with an ultraconservative, either before the November 3rd election, or the January 21 Inauguration Day. And we are clearly witnessing that barely after a day of RBG’s passing, with Trump stating that they will fill her seat “without delay.” Remember back in March 2016 (8 MONTHS BEFORE THE NOVEMBER ELECTION) when McConnell stated that “the American people should have a "voice" in the process”? Do you think that the GOP gives a damn about seeing our diverse values come to fruition? Or do you think that in addition to not only serving their own elitist interests, they are also pandering to and catering for a fascist in the White House?

I could go on this rant forever from how much is still needed to be unpacked from the mess we got ourselves into since 2015, we do not have much time with Election Day only weeks away and states already beginning their early voting processes.

RBG has passed the torch onto us, and bless her soul, she fought until the very end. We must not stay complicit and repeat the mistakes of 2016. We must continue this fight for even long after November 3rd and January 20, 2021. We must bring in Biden into the White House and make sure that Congress is deeply blue. We must make sure that even with a sweeping Democratic win, we continue to hold Biden, his administration, and Congress accountable. We must make sure that landmark decisions like Roe v. Wade become codified federally to ensure the Supreme Court does not take away a woman’s right to choose. We must expand on protections for our LGBTQ, poor/working class, undocumented, and BIPOC, because clearly this current administration and McConnell would never. Because if we succumb to GOP/Fascistic ideologies and prevent the Dems from reclaiming the White House and Congress, I fear that we will no longer have a country that is reflective of who we are as The People.

For the sake of our democracy is in our hands.

#my rant #PSA #important #please read #please vote #election #democracy #we the people

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magickfromscratch · 4 years

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I’m having something of an existential crisis.

Trump is incompetent. Volatile. Utterly corrupt. Hell bent on completely wrecking the checks and balances that prevent Presidents from becoming dictators. He has got to go.

Biden, though, is a garbage human. He’s been accused of sexual assault. He was complicit in the opening of the detention camps. He’s as likely to be in cognitive decline as Trump.

Justin Amash is entering the race, and he could take Biden’s voters. Or Trumps. No one knows. What we do know is that he’snot a “go along to get along” kinda guy.

Why Democrats might vote for him:

- He WILL curtail the power of the oval office, which has been spiraling out of control since 9/11. It pushes back the clock on the Christian Right turning this place into a theocratic shithole.

- He went on record saying that anyone standing accused of sexual assault —or any other crime— is legally disqualified from running for President.

- He’s half Palastinian and half Syrian. Both his parents are immigrants from the Middle East. Further discrimination against immigrants? Not this guy.

- He voted to impeach Trump, then rage quit the Republican party in disgust.

- He has stated something to the effect of, “Obviously trans people should be legally protected! Don’t we have laws that protect people based on gender already? Did I hallucinate that? Are you all on drugs? Or are you just choosing to ignore those laws because of your fee fees? Your fee fees are not laws?”

- He is for universal basic income

Why Republicans might vote for him:

- He may be viewed as embodying the spirit of what the Republican party used to stand for pre-Reagan.

- He believes that since the right to bear arms is in the Constitution, the Federal Government does not have a right to institute gun control.

- He wants to curtail government programs. Period. He’s not a tax-and-spend Republican

- He will be viewed as a “states rights” guy

- “Constitutional literalist”

- ‘Merica!

Last time, a compelling third party candidate secured only a few points. But in that tight race (which this will be, too, because Biden is a “hold your nose” candidate), it was enough to swing the odds in Trump’s favor.

And, forget social values. Trump is dismantling the government. He dismantled the Pandemic Response team. He’s pushing us away from democracy and toward autocracy. So, between Biden and Trump, it’s a question of, “Do we want a corrupt dictator?” Because if the answer is “no,” then we need to make sure Trump doesn’t win.

You saw what he did. You see how he has the DOJ in his pocket. He could shoot a man in broad daylight on a busy street and skate, and has bragged about this on the record. If that doesn’t scare you, I am not sure what to say.

Biden is a half-senile man who stands accused of assault. But he’s only planning to be President for 4 years, and his plan is to undo the damage done by Trump. He’ll be a puppet of the Democratic party. That’s why they all filed in behind him: they earnestly believe that he will be easy to control. That is kinda the opposite of a dictator.

None of that is flavorsome, but if you’re thinking of voting for Amash, don’t just go and vote on election day. Campaign for him, and if you see, in the polls, that he hasn’t broken 40% of the electorate, vote Biden on election day.

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feelingbluepolitics · 4 years

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When Biden talked of fighting but also healing, what he means is fighting to win the election, and then pardoning every criminal Republicon including trump.

There can theoretically be healing with or without pardons, but with old-school Joe, this was more of the same type of reassurance he was giving mega-rich prospective donors: don't worry, nothing will change if I get into power.

Of course Biden will make "compromises." He has his ambitions. Duh. He covets this position, which is why this is his third presidential run. A third strike, and he's out.

Of course he's signalling status quo and safe passage, but he's doing it on the debate stage.

This is something Democrats should be debating.

trump talks about Democrats as enemies and traitors for not clapping for him and for investigating his crimes and for constitutionally mandated oversight, so we know what's likely if he gets a second term and keeps his pet Senate.

Democrats especially, in contrast, buy into the misty-eyed vision of healing and uniting which affects much of the nation's politics. Democrats do want to heal and unite, but serious consideration should be given as to whether pardons are the way forward this time, or really were before.

There are all kinds of sappy visions about how political pardons "heal the country" and are somehow heroically magnanimous, even though they are ugly and dangerous, much like decades of shoving racism under a pretend rug, or like rewriting slavery as a good-natured profit-producing team sport, with winners and not-winners.

Here are a few particles of the mist:

See especially:

We shouldn't nominate Slow-Mo Joe anyway, because the country and the world can't afford the centrist vision of hobbling into the future while straddling every political fence. What good does it do to survive trump and rampaging Republicons, only to have Biden in charge of a fate not worse than death, but seriously unappealing. He contemplates the possibility of a Republicon running mate! That isn't healing. That's a lifeless marriage of convenience where Democrats, already honor-bound regardless, get both f*cked and cheated on after handing out indemnity.

In borrowed psychological terms, there's a case to be made that pardons aren't "healing." They are national repression. They have made us dysfunctional. They have led directly to Republicons, and the 1%, and the white supremacists, and the Christian dominionists, and all of their combined vicious, arrogant, determinations of grandeur, including criminal king trump and his dynasty in waiting.

With this concept of pardons creating unity, we have arrived at near civil war levels of tribal divisiveness. Fox Gnus, a plague on our democracy, was born in conservative rage that Nixon the Lesser criminal had been squeezed out of power, without being impeached, and regardless of blanket pardons.

We are at a point where the duty to uphold the Constitution, and the office of the presidency, but not any level of crook who took power, was regarded as "too divisive," and too risky, although Mueller specified crimes, until a simple no-brainer set of crimes came along ... All of which still has not budged the divisiveness we started out with, born from the various "unifying" political pardons.

Historically, mercy is regarded as wiser than vengeful slayings, or the type of brutally stringent reparations that helped bring about Nazis. But here we've been pardoning our way along, and we have privileged faux "victims" and freaking neo-Nazis in America, all feeling cosiest on the side with almost all the criminals and nearly all the political pardons.

We can find a balance between scooter-free pardons versus strictly making murderous regimes. That balance is justice, in a public forum.

There is a deep bench of eager, criminal Republicons, cult loyal, who have watched the criminals ahead of them get slapped with a few weeks or months of incarceration for crimes in the context of our government where we should have the strongest accountability. As a result, the Republicons set out to transform the federal judiciary into a wholly owned subsidiary, sure to be lenient towards them and to favor their agendas, while harshly judging everyone else.

We've been pardoning. Look where it's gotten us. The perfect time to stop is coming right up. Justice is supposed to be the American way. We got misled. The American way right now is letting horrible and complicit leadership in our government branches, whether Chiefs trump or Roberts' and their supreme conservatives, or Majority Leader McConnell, or Minority Leader McCarthy. They lead the NRA and law enforcement, our military and our churches and our news media and our industries, and whatever future we may have.

Those who are weak, or complicit, who won't investigate, and look at evidence, and hear testimony, and hold a trial, and mete justice, don't belong in power in our future if we want a future. That's something to keep in mind as we watch Senate Republicons this month, after watching House Republicons before, and watching trump all along.

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newstfionline · 6 years

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Hacking a Prince, an Emir and a Journalist to Impress a Client

By David D. Kirkpatrick and Azam Ahmed, NY Times, Aug. 31, 2018

The rulers of the United Arab Emirates had been using Israeli spyware for more than a year, secretly turning the smartphones of dissidents at home or rivals abroad into surveillance devices.

So when top Emirati officials were offered a pricey update of the spying technology, they wanted to make sure it worked, according to leaked emails submitted Thursday in two lawsuits against the spyware’s maker, the Israel-based NSO Group.

Could the company secretly record the phones of the emir of Qatar, a regional rival, the Emiratis asked? How about the phone of a powerful Saudi prince who directed the kingdom’s national guard? Or what about recording the phone of the editor of a London-based Arab newspaper?

“Please find two recordings attached,” a company representative wrote back four days later, according to the emails. Appended were two recordings the company had made of calls by the editor, Abdulaziz Alkhamis, who confirmed this week that he had made the calls and said he did not know he was under surveillance.

The NSO Group’s actions are now at the heart of the twin lawsuits accusing the company of actively participating in illegal spying--part of a global effort to confront the growing arms race in the world of spyware.

As private companies develop and sell cutting-edge surveillance technology to governments for tens of millions of dollars, human rights groups say the scant oversight over the practice invites rampant misuse. And no company is more central to the battle than the NSO Group, one of the best-known creators of spyware that invades smartphones.

The two lawsuits, filed in Israel and Cyprus, were brought by a Qatari citizen and by Mexican journalists and activists who were all targeted by the company’s spyware.

In Mexico, the NSO Group has sold the surveillance technology to the Mexican government on the explicit condition that it be used only against criminals and terrorists. Yet some of the nation’s most prominent human rights lawyers, journalists and anti-corruption activists have been targeted instead. Many are now plaintiffs in the lawsuits.

The government of Panama also purchased the spyware, and the president at the time used it to spy on his political rivals and critics, according to court documents in a case there.

Whenever challenged, the company has said that it merely sells the technology to governments, which agree to deploy it exclusively against criminals but then operate it on their own.

The new lawsuits include leaked documents and emails that directly challenge the company’s repeated assertions that it is not responsible for any illegal surveillance conducted by the governments that buy its spyware.

In the case of the U.A.E., the lawsuits argue, an affiliate of the NSO Group attempted to spy on foreign government officials--and successfully recorded the calls of a journalist--at the request of its Emirati customers four years ago.

The technology works by sending text messages to a target’s smartphone, hoping to bait the person into clicking on them. If the user does, the spyware, known as Pegasus, is secretly downloaded, enabling governments to monitor phone calls, emails, contacts and potentially even face-to-face conversations conducted nearby.

For the U.A.E., documents show, an affiliate of the NSO Group specifically suggested language for the corrupting text messages. Many were tailored for the Persian Gulf with seemingly innocuous invitations like “Ramadan is near--incredible discounts” and “keep your car tires from exploding in the heat.”

Leaked technical documents included in the lawsuits also show that the company helped its clients by transmitting the data gained through surveillance through an elaborate computer network.

“We are pushing to make the law catch up with technology” and show that the spyware makers “are complicit in these privacy violations,” said Alaa Mahajna, an Israeli lawyer who filed the lawsuits in cooperation with Mazen Masri, a senior lecturer in law at the City University of London.

The NSO group declined to comment until it could review the lawsuits. The Emirati Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

After The New York Times reported last year that prominent Mexican lawyers, journalists and anticorruption campaigners had been targeted by the NSO Group’s spyware, the Mexican government announced a federal investigation.

But more than a year later, the investigation has made little apparent progress, so the Mexican journalists and human rights defenders joined the lawsuits to uncover more about the government’s hacking program.

The lawsuits also shed new light on the political intrigues involving Israel and the Persian Gulf monarchies, which have increasingly turned to hacking as a favorite weapon against one another.

The U.A.E. does not recognize Israel, but the two appear to have a growing behind-the-scenes alliance. Because Israel deems the spyware a weapon, the lawsuits note, the NSO Group and its affiliates could have sold it to the Emirates only with approval by the Israeli Defense Ministry.

Leaked emails submitted in the lawsuits show that the U.A.E. signed a contract to license the company’s surveillance software as early as August 2013.

A year and a half later, a British affiliate of the NSO Group asked its Emirati client to provide a sixth payment of $3 million under the original contract, suggesting a total licensing fee of at least $18 million over that period.

An update the next year was sold through a different affiliate, based in Cyprus, at a cost of $11 million in four installments, according to leaked invoices.

Tensions between the U.A.E. and its neighbor Qatar reached a boil in 2013 over a struggle for power in Egypt. Qatar had allied itself with the Egyptian Islamist movement that won the elections after the Arab Spring. Then the U.A.E. backed a military takeover that cast the Islamists into prison instead.

In the escalating feud, each side accused the other of cyberespionage. Hackers broke into the email accounts of two outspoken opponents of Qatar--the Emirati ambassador to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, and an American Republican fund-raiser who does business with the U.A.E., Elliott Broidy. Mr. Broidy has filed a separate lawsuit accusing Qatar and its Washington lobbyists of conspiring to steal and leak his emails.

Other hackers briefly took over the website of the Qatari news service to post a false report of an embarrassing speech by the emir to damage him, and later leaked Qatari emails exposing awkward details of Qatari negotiations over the release of a royal hunting party kidnapped in Iraq. Allies of Qatar blamed the Emiratis.

The leaked emails disclosed in the new lawsuits may also have been stolen through hacking. Lawyers involved said the documents were provided by a Qatari journalist who did not disclose how he had obtained them.

The messages show that the Emiratis were seeking to intercept the phone calls of the emir of Qatar as early as 2014.

But the Emirati target list also included Saudi Arabia. In the email discussions about updating the NSO Group’s technology, the Emiratis asked to intercept the phone calls of a Saudi prince, Mutaib bin Abdullah, who was considered at the time to be a possible contender for the throne.

The Emiratis have been active promoters of Prince Mutaib’s younger rival, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Last year, the crown prince removed Prince Mutaib from his role as minister of the national guard and ordered his temporary detention in connection with corruption allegations.

In a telephone interview, Prince Mutaib expressed surprise that the Emiratis had attempted to record his calls.

“They don’t need to hack my phone,” he said. “I will tell them what I am doing.”

According to the emails, the Emiratis also asked to intercept the phone calls of Saad Hariri, who is now prime minister of Lebanon.

Mr. Hariri has sometimes been accused of failing to push back hard enough against Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese movement backed by Iran. Last year, the U.A.E.’s Saudi ally, Crown Prince Mohammed, temporarily detained Mr. Harari in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, and forced him to announce his resignation as prime minister. (He later rescinded the announcement, and he remains prime minister.)

Mr. Alkhamis, who resigned in 2014 as the editor of the London-based newspaper Al Arab, called the surveillance of his phone calls “very strange” but not unexpected, since he had published “sensitive” articles about Persian Gulf politics.

The U.A.E.’s use of the NSO Group’s spyware was first reported in 2016. Ahmed Mansoor, an Emirati human rights advocate, noticed suspicious text messages and exposed an attempt to hack his Apple iPhone. The U.A.E. arrested him on apparently unrelated charges the next year and he remains in jail.

After Mr. Mansoor’s disclosures, Apple said it had released an update that patched the vulnerabilities exploited by the NSO Group. The NSO Group pledged to investigate and said in a statement that “the company has no knowledge of and cannot confirm the specific cases.”

But other leaked documents filed with the lawsuits indicate that the U.A.E. continued to license and use the Pegasus software well after Apple announced its fix and the NSO Group pledged to investigate.

On June 5, 2017, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia began a blockade of Qatar in an effort to isolate it. Ten days later, an internal Emirati email cited in the lawsuits referred to 159 members of the Qatari royal family, officials and others whose phones it had targeted with the NSO spyware, promising a report based on “what we found from the top 13 targets only.”

“ur highness based on ur instructions we viewed the collecting from the Q phone targeting,” wrote an Emirati official identified in the lawsuits as an assistant to Prince Khalid bin Mohammed, the chairman of the Emirati intelligence agency and the son of the de facto ruler of the U.A.E., Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.

This month, Amnesty International said one of its staff members working in Saudi Arabia had also been targeted by spyware that appeared to be linked to the NSO Group, and the company reiterated that it bears no responsibility for its customers’ use of its spyware.

“Our product is intended to be used exclusively for the investigation and prevention of crime and terrorism,” the company said in a statement to Amnesty, pledging to “investigate the issue and take appropriate action.”

#NSO Group #Israeli spyware #UAE #United Arab Emirates

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hardynwa · 5 months

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Fubara, Rivers APC clash over N144bn allocation spending

The leadership of the All Progressives Congress in Rivers State, on Tuesday, challenged Governor Siminalayi Fubara to account for the N144.2bn federal allocation received by the state in the last five months, claiming that there was nothing on the ground to show for the funds. But defending the governor, the Rivers State Commissioner for Information and Communications, Joseph Johnson, accused the APC of playing politics. The Chairman of the state APC Caretaker Committee, Chief Tony Okocha, during a visit to the Speaker of the state House of Assembly, Martin Amaewhule, questioned Fubara’s management of the state’s resources. Okocha said, “As a party in opposition in the state, we have received data of the sum received by the Rivers State Government from the Federal Allocation from June 22, 2023 to November 2023. “The Rt Hon. Speaker, it is our finding that a whooping sum of N144,291,667,791.1 has been received from the federal allocation under the governor. This amount is outside the Internally Generated Revenue of the state, which is put conservatively at N10bn every month. “We regret that this humongous amount has not translated to action in any way in terms of development in the state. What we see are heavily funded street processions and media-sponsored rallies in support of unnecessary political imbroglios. “Fifth columnist and crisis entrepreneurs feed fat from our commonwealth. As a party, we shall not hesitate to punish any member of our party who is in the cohort in this gross financial malfeasance of our dear Rivers State.” The APC leader urged the Assembly Speaker to keep a close watch on the governor, saying “And if you do nothing you are equally complicit.” Responding, the Assembly Speaker, Amaewhule, said the legislature would continue to make laws that would benefit the people while it would amend those harmful to the people. He stated, “Rest assured that the 10th Rivers State House of Assembly will not do anything outside the law. Whatever we do today is for the interest of the state so that when we are out, others coming after us will feel the impact of the service and legislation we offered to the Rivers people.” But in a swift reaction, the Commissioner for Information and Communications, Johnson, insisted that the Fubara administration had been prudent and accountable. He said, “When we come to the accountability forum, the Rivers people will see what we have done and, of course, they know that we are on course. “Even though it is too early to assess this government, I’m sure we have since hit the ground running. “He (Okocha) forgot that we have given about N150bn legacy project for the Ring Road, which surpasses the N144bn he is talking about. We have paid 77 per cent of it. “We are doing 20, 000 hectres of land for housing units. “So you don’t just raise issues or mention figures without a proper understanding as to how government works. That’s why I said it’s his own imagination. “We have promoted civil servants who had not been promoted for over eight years. All those funds, if you calculated from June to November, it speaks volumes about what has entered. Our wage bill is N2.6bn just from the promotion of teachers alone. “So, he needs to go back to the drawing board and ask what and what has not been done and what has been done.” Read the full article

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crstapor · 4 years

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Why I am so Cynical

“I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” - Zarathustra

Part 3

Let me stop shouting - sometimes I get carried away. Because it needs be clearly stated that my perspective on the matter at hand is not based solely on 'personal' experience (of course one can never deny the importance such datum possess!) but also 'phenomenological' experience, which is, clearly, a different animal altogether. That this menagerie has informed my thought will surprise no-one who's ever tried it; thinking, I mean. How else, if one is being as honest as possible, can one arrive at any conclusions whatsoever? While the first part of this essay waxed rather subjectively poetic, allow me to offer this third as a sort of empirical respite. Facts, good reader, let me proffer facts to further found my cynicism most severe.

But let me first define the scope these facts will express. The working title for this missive to minds who want to think was 'A Polemic against American Modernity'. Allowing that my interests, here, lie not north to Canada or south of Texas, the parameters of this diatribe should be well understood by all with even meager cartographic skill.

Superficial perhaps I've structured these facts into three distinct phenomena; the surface, the self, and the symbol. I do so not to make any sweeping ontologic distinctions or assertions, rather, to help me think through them. System-building is not my purpose here - system-analysis is. The facets of modern America culture were well in place before I came along, and, unless I'm completely mistaken, I've done little to add to or enhance any of them. Apart from the clear truth of my having lived with and through them the vast majority of my mortal years. This 'truth', my citizenship and biography, allow me credence to present what follows as 'fact'; though of course it's still just one man's opinion!

Knowledge!

The Surface

Politics. Democracy. American Exceptionalism. Yeah right. So, help me out here, we have a great democracy because we vote for other people to get to vote on who actually becomes leader? Unless of course nine robes get that special privilege - based off of their admitted political preferences naturally! - like back in 2000. How the legislature is just a club for the privileged, connected, and the rich (which is almost redundant). How once 'money' became speech only those with 'money' had speech. The Founders are grave-rolling and Mussolini's having a laugh - fascism much? Let's remember Benito's definition of the term; which is when State and corporate interests converge (more or less). And we find that just about everywhere we look up in DC these days. Apparently we have the 'political will' to help banks, big oil, agribusiness, gun manufacturers, and all the other consolidated purveyors of terror, hate or control (sure, tobacco had to be sacrificed - occasionally you must throw the peasants a bone to keep the lie alive) but can't find the time to help out 'we the people': see continuing cuts to social programs; see the limp-dick governmental response to the housing/mortgage crisis of 2008 - ?; see the student loan pyramid scheme; see a 'minimum' wage that consistently fails to keep up with inflation; see a 'healthcare' plan that mandates private citizens purchase a product from non-governmental, for-profit companies - and taxes them if they don't; see how prohibition (here considered against natural, earth-born narcotics) continues to fuel a for-profit prison system and further erodes race relations; see how the gravest existential threat to the species (climate change, for realz) is perpetually laughed off and ignored; see how we lecture others on human rights while keeping Gitmo open and denying homosexuals equal protection under the law; see how NASA's (quite possibly, from a historical perspective, the greatest achievement of our modern society) budget keeps getting gutted while their priorities are schizophrenically re-ordered with each administration; see how children keep slaughtering children with weapons of war and no one can even attempt to do anything about it; see how voter ID laws are passed like Jim Crow; see how the innate sovereignty of the nation has been torn asunder now that private corporations can be 'to big to fail'; see an ever increasingly militarized police force; see the constitutional absurdity of 'free speech zones'; see democratic campaigns where one guy runs but once elected that guy's nowhere to be found and in his place is a carbon copy of the last guy who held the office ... See how our 'political parties' are two sides of the same coin ... But let's stop here and consider that last point in greater depth, as it is so vital to any understanding of 'democracy' in America ... Republicans, Democrats; Jefferson has been famously remembered, quoted, as saying once our (more properly his) democracy devolved into a two party system it would be a democracy no more. And I've certainly been a witness to that in my life. Sure, America isn't a dictatorship, but it sure as hell isn't the country Jefferson helped forge. And the main reason for that, to my eyes, seems to be the consolidation of power in the hands of politicians with more in common with each other than their constituents. R or D you can bet they're there for Wall Street or the military-information-industrial complex. Anyone else? Good luck with that citizen ... And while they're both complicit in gutting the middle class, let's take a moment to reflect, ethically, on that matter ... You can't blame the snake for its venom, but you can sure as hell blame the snake-oil salesman for shilling his bullshit wares. In case that metaphor wasn't clear enough allow me to decode it for you:

R = snake. D = snake-oil salesman.

Switching gears - though not by much! - let's shift to the state of modern American entertainment. To the uninitiated possibly a trite transition, any who've watched politics lately will surely see the connection. And just as our politics smell rotten, the main complaint with what passes as entertainment these days is how bad it tastes. Yes, it's a question of taste, as it seems most Americans have none. From 'reality TV' (which is surely anything but - though let's not forget Barnum's maxim!), to a pop-music ecosystem that's cannibalized itself to the point of parody, a movie industry that can seemingly fill ten months of releases with one script, the apotheosis of sport, the devolution of literature into a hobby for diarists, the way the performing arts are continually hoarded into smaller and smaller urban green zones, well, it's just hard to swallow most of that without gagging. Or throwing up. Yet a more concerted analysis along these lines is not called for here - we have much too much ground yet to cover.

Speaking of ground and covering it why not mention war? That old playground of glory now some video game where you might win many things; though honor's not among them. The full transition here is yet to occur, but we're definitely in the middle of it. Drones, air strikes, GPS targeting and bombs dropped from orbit (sure, not yet - wait for it!). The complete impersonalization of the other; that total objectification of the enemy (you better believe the pornographers have drone-envy). Let's not equivocate; it's one thing to look someone in the eye and take their life - quite another to push a button sixteen time-zones away and watch an image of indiscriminate carnage. How long will it be before we don't even let a homo sapien sapien push that button? How long before the machines are killing us on their own .?. Nothing to be cynical about here!

And if killing our 'enemies' has/is becoming so much more impersonal healing our 'own' has a fortiori. I'm not even going to start bandying about statistics but it's well known that of the 'first-world', 'post-industrialized' countries we're the only one that still considers healthcare a cash-grab instead of a human-right. And to what wonderful affect! Go ahead and try to ignore all the horror stories of your fellow Americans who lost it all because they couldn't pay their medical bills, or because they did. Pay no attention to record profit margins at insurance companies while the poor forgo all but emergency treatment and the wealth of the middle class is bled out and transferred to HMO executives. Sure, Uncle Tom tried to change all that - by passing a Republican plan even though the Ds had two branches of the federal government! - but when I tried to sign up for 'Obamacare' I still couldn't afford it even though I had $200 in the bank, no assets, and had been unemployed for over two years. If I lived in any other country where English is the primary language I'd be covered without paying a dime. My solution? To use the actual Republican plan - don't get sick!

But that should be easy since we all know of the three pillars of good health (diet, exercise, genetics) eating right is the easiest of all ... Hell. No, sorry, I was about to go all sarcastic and make it seem America knows nothing about sugar overload, HFCS, preservatives, the increasingly and horrifying inability of urbanites to access fresh foods (specifically the poor ones!), pesticides, pink slime, corn or corn or more corn or when will there ever be enough corn already, price gouging on foods that were produced the way they've been produced for centuries (read: organic, grass-fed, free-range), trans-fats, GMO proliferation in our breadbasket without an honest debate on the merits or looking at the science past what some corporation's panel has assured us is true, sodas, the food-gap, throwing away enough food daily to feed the world's hungry cuz it wouldn't make a dime, slaughterhouses like Auschwitz or Dachau ... That Quite Barbarism ... But that would be foolish - America knows all about that ... Why shouldn't it? America invented most of it …

And we invented the largest consumer-driven transportation system the world has ever seen to move all that food around. Sure, China will catch up with us eventually (if not already), but for the better part of three generations the US led the world in road-building and car-buying. Quite apart from the environmental effects this produced there was a profound psychological positive feed-back loop involved as well: one justifying the pre-dominate narrative of our consumer culture. Choice is sacred; you are special and unique and can reflect that through choice; so choose this product or this other one and express your uniqueness through possessing any one of these infinitely similar products; the choice is yours. Perhaps nowhere else in the market was this ‘story’ sold as diligently and aggressively than in the automobile industry. While it is true the US is, spatially speaking, a very large country, it is not true that every adult American needed or needs their own set of wheels to connect it. There are other options, other technologies that could’ve been employed to bring the masses together with more energy efficiency and communal cohesion. I admit it’s no Copernican Revolution, but the thought that Americans are so stubbornly self-interested and quick to discriminate opposed many of their European or native counterparts can not be divorced from the fact we all love to be in the driver’s seat. That commodified ‘freedom’ we are told awaits us on an open road with our very own internal combustion engine humming along in front of our feet; a freedom trains, buses, or carpooling can never provide. Again, notwithstanding the ecological impact of all this, the psychological dimension is impossible to ignore: even if we all owned Tesla’s that were powered by clean fusion charging stations it would still be me, me, me … which is quite naturally a completely uncynical disposition from which to hold a society together …

American’s fascination with their own value and freedom has of course been a dominate theme in the grand narrative of the country for some time; and while cars and roads were the major technological expression of that for much of the twentieth century, we have turned the corner here, in this regard, finding ourselves lost amid tiny little shiny screens that put the whole world inches from our eyes. With the advent of mobile computing the freedom so many seek isn’t conceived any longer by MPG rather MPBS. The new speed of information, and the promise of perpetual access, have enchanted the newer generations in much the same way vehicles did their antecedents. The technology is different while the story remains the same. It is still a self-centered freedom underlying the need, desire, to own the newest, quickest, coolest gadget. A freedom of information surely, yet one closely connected with the freedom cars brought their older relatives; it is as much economic as it is self-satisfying. The internet changed the game, naturally - and hail and well met etc. etc.! - but a claustrophobic observation remains … for a technology that has brought so many people together - and it has - it sure as hell does an awful good job sundering them as well … for you can’t find a public space anymore where a near-majority of your fellow citizens aren’t more interested in their precious little screens than those flesh and blood humans nearby. Perhaps this is just the necessary evolution of the social fabric - perhaps resistance is futile - though a social contract that has more to do with Facebook’s TOS opposed a Bill of Rights just (and forgive me for being so cynical) doesn’t seem like much of a society worth bothering with to this writer. Certainly not one worth the name.

Speaking of the modern technology we all now can’t live without, it seems to me a funny thing happened on the way to Google’s homepage … we now have access to all the information we can consume, on any topic, just a keystroke away, and look what we’re doing with it … I’m not just talking about social media or pornography, I mean the fundamental epistemological conundrum of an allegedly intelligent species that now has post-scarcity style access to information yet we’ve made of the web one colossal echo-chamber where the tribes huddle together in aggrieved resentment or ignorant bliss of the ‘others’ … look at it like this: in a day and age when the work of science (you know, that thing that made all this ((by which I mean ‘Modernity’ and all its toys)) possible) is more evenly, widely, and objectively disseminated than at any other time in history the public’s grasp and understanding of science and its work is at an all-time low. Basic data are disputed; empirical findings are called into question by anyone with a laptop, forget about a degree in the subject: what used to be considered non-issues, resolved subjects, are now argued over as if the Earth might actually be flat … all of which might just be good for a laugh if there weren’t actual existential threats to the species that only science can solve; yet we can’t even begin that discussion because some car salesman googled Glenn Beck and now we have legislatures that don’t think climate change is real; or they say the data doesn’t support an anthropogenic cause even though they never took a serious science course in their life; or that can’t be right because it doesn’t fit into our time-warp economy and a dollar today is obviously more important than our children’s future; or anyway shut-up idiot scientists just because you actually studied something other than law or business doesn’t mean you know any more than me because I have a high speed internet connection and I bookmarked the Drudge Report … how is it, philosophically speaking, tenable that the more information you have the stupider you become? I don’t know, but if you want a good example of the principle in action take a look at America today. Or just Google it …

Of course there is one thread that ties all these elements of ‘the surface’ together and that thread is consumerism as expressed by our current form of capitalism. The ascendancy of the dollar over all else (sorry God!). The desire to possess, acquire, consume. We are material creatures, we humans, and thus must consume to survive; fine: but do we have to do so in the manner we seem set on here and now? No, not at all, even suggesting that our’s is the only system, the only way to satiate the human hunger is absurd on its face as well as betraying an amnesiac’s conception of history. No, there are other paths, yet we have chosen this one, this ‘capitalism’ that mimics the terrors and rigors of the jungle at every turn. In the act of deifying money (more on that later) we have dehumanized ourselves. For the most part we are simple cogs in a vast machine that cares little or nothing for us; and so we care only for ourselves. The inherent egoism of the modern American psyche is spectacular to behold, certainly, in its primal vanity; at the same time giving the lie to any ethical system we still tenuously cling to as reminder of simpler days (sorry Christianity!). So we are, as a culture, no better than spoiled children grasping for another slice of pie. And while that’s certainly comical, it is also tragic, since such a system is not sustainable whatsoever (there is never enough pie). Neither history or science can provide any examples of such a system expanding into perpetuity (literature has given us a few but they are either satire or utopias ((same thing really))), and yet a sincere, concerted discussion on this issue has yet to percolate through the public sphere, or if so, only in the usual places and thus not given the sort of urgency it requires. But to have this conversation we all have to be ready to listen; it is not enough for the cynics and naysayers to keep shouting into the wild or the web: there has to be an audience, a receptive ear. Which brings us to our next section.

The Self

The problems elucidated in ‘The Surface’ are, to a great extent, symptoms of our sense of self, or, as is more often (if paradoxically) the case, our lack of one. While I am specifically referring to the modern American ‘self’, I’m going to be doing so with large brushstrokes; forming great swathes of colored splotches closer in kind to a rorscharch test than a pointilistic canvass. You may not see a reflection here so much as a sense of remembrance, or deja vu. That’s fine. I can’t be alone in thinking our lifespeeds have altered, and it’s just that alteration I want to discuss.

Lifespeed. Right. Let’s define that quickly so we can move on. By lifespeed I mean that facile quality of Being that tethers us to the ‘now’. Perceptually, our lives happen at a specific point in time, and I’ve conceived the word lifespeed to represent this point, as well as our conscious reaction to it. It’s just a word. Other than this meager definition it means nothing; has no other value. Right.

We were talking about choice earlier and there’s a clear connection between the act of choosing and the extant phenomena adjoining it. Just the relationship that lifespeed is meant to express. On its face, choice is neutral. Neither positive or negative, good or bad. The ‘designed’ choice of our consumer-driven society I find abhorrent, though not from some reactionary impulse, but a genuine longing for what it’s replaced. By making choices we define ourselves and I fear many of us are accepting a story that tells us we can only make this or that choice opposed to this that or the other. That we are told certain stories so many times we think we have no choice how they end; or wether to listen to them at all. In this way our lifespeeds have been damaged; like a bonsai pruned too severely.

Perhaps many are content defining themselves through ‘designed’ choice, or who ‘designed’ it anyway? Yes … there will always be sheep and lemmings in human form, and if that’s your angle you have my pity but nothing else. On the other hand, if you genuinely desire a leveling-up on the self-awareness front but have found this difficult to achieve thus far, you must realize two hard truths; the first that it is your business alone, none others - and the second, that it will be incredibly difficult to achieve because our society was not constructed to assist in this goal - quite the contrary! - it was designed to prevent it, at almost every turn. Here we return to the ‘designed’ component of American choice. Since the beginning the tiny tribes watching the throne have conspired to affect a marked class distinction in the land of the ‘free’. From the original agricultural workers of the new world, to the industrial workers who built a modern nation, to the current service sector workers slipping into poverty those with the firmest grip on the levers of power have continually strived to erect massive obstacles between those that labor for a living and those that live off that labor. Nor are these obstacles simply economic or aspirational in nature, no, due their pervasiveness through the generations they have percolated down into the most subterranean reaches of the mass conscious; into the very stories we use to define ourselves. Egads! a polite-hyper-modern-liberal-minded-triangulator might reply, don’t you know everyone has a TV! A refrigerator! Cheapest food ever! Why yes of course, there is an exception to every rule. While, for about thirty years in the middle of the last century, it seemed America was finally delivering on its promise, just look how long it took for us to devolve into another gilded age (the apparent default position of American society). It is foolish to define a thing based off aberrations, opposed its consistencies. In this way we clearly see the US for what it is … the second most successful marketing scheme in human history (naturally one must award Christianity top honors on that mark) … in the same way tobacco used to be good for you, that sodas were harmless, or how fast food is every bit nutritious as home-made, America cries ‘freedom’ when in so many ways the reverse is clearly the case. From ‘power’s’ perspective it’s nihilistically brilliant sure - give the people a semblance of freedom (in our case economic choice) and they’ll extrapolate that into a veritable cosmos of self-authorized-self-actualization - and you bet the monarchists, dictators, or petty politburos are jealous as hell at the level of control the political classes of America have been able to sustain generation after generation. A state of affairs that continues for no other reason than that an over-whelming majority of Americans keep believing the lies. We are forced to ask: why do they?

Let’s speculate wildly! Is it possible there exists some globe-spanning underground tributary of Lethe that constantly replenishes all the aquifers in the land? Or perhaps when we, on average a truly vain people, look into a mirror our historical consciousness is reset to zero? Or maybe we’ve all become so addicted to the stories we repeat about American Exceptionalism even the most destitute are content to sacrifice any chance they might have of another, better life, so as the stories can keep being told .?. the gyre is constricting at every turn, just like water flowing down the drain we’re becoming closer and closer to ourselves and ours; we’re losing a visceral sense of community and common cause through the ‘designed’ choices of a consumerist economy and specifically the newer technologies of self-absorption. So many of us don’t seem able to see past our own reflections, our problems, that even beginning to consider the larger problems facing our country seems as pointless as sending a manned mission to Mars.

The latent greed of the species is given free reign in America and this greed is destroying us. Making us sick. Stunted, withered, cloying little souls blighted with giga-myopia and eterno-amnesia. Greed. Most cultures have oft thought it a base emotion, one needing constant oversight - not the good ’ole US of A! We saw right through that ethical clap-trap - we saw that by harnessing the simmering greed of a people and putting them to work fulfilling that greed great things could happen … just absolutely amazing things … and we have accomplished quite a bit worth being proud over, and we sure have shown all those historical moralists just how wrong they were about the most solipsistic emotion … but this is a strange greed, our American one, one many may not even be aware of, so deep do its roots dive; a conniving greed that wraps in upon itself like a fresh burrito from Chipotle or those roller coasters you remember from Disneyland or Six-Flags … a greed that we have to learn to turn off, ignore, or quit seeing as so basic and benign in all our lives that there’s nothing you can do about it anyway - because it isn’t benign, it reacts to us and the environment as surely as we do it, and lately it’s been acting badly … yes, there are historical elements to this greed, there is also the question of personal responsibility, mutual complicity, systems of control and power as well - so many factors … I guess I’m nostalgic for another type of human being, one not fueled by avarice or beholden to the choices of others … qualities most seem to have lost somewhere on the way to Walmart … a human being that might never have existed except in a dream …

The Symbol

Human beings have long used symbols to represent value. Symbols are convenient, easy, and incredibly mutable. They can be transferred or translated almost infinitely. With a symbol ideas that might take an incredible amount of energy to explain or describe can be conveyed almost instantaneously. Logic and mathematics could likely not exist without them, nor, indeed, any language. And like any good thing, as is so often the case with any wonderfully useful thing, we humans have become dependent on them. Created for ourselves a world where we can not live without them. We are, in many ways, addicted to their utility. On its face there is nothing ethically challenging about this. Language and math are boons to humanity, practically describing our modern conception of ourselves. Symbols are naturally value neutral, like any high-level epistemological building block. And yet, we modern Americans have found ourselves in a tricky spot. We have crafted a society where one symbol is supreme. Where one symbol, and one symbol alone, holds all the power. A symbol that, if you find yourself without it, without access to it, without a stock-pile of it hiding somewhere, essentially makes you a non-entity. No longer part of the culture, the game. For it is certainly true that the only game in modern America is money. That collecting dollars has superseded all other activities; has supplanted any other endeavor as the only one with value. This state of affairs is the genesis of our cultural decline; of the death of the ideals that the Founders (who themselves were already playing the only game) attempted to instill in the New World: will in the end be understood by future historians as the single greatest crime of our time.

I say crime and I mean it. Don’t use the word for shock or awe. Nor do I want to dwell on this particular subject (not being the place for an extended analysis of this issue I will allow such a discussion its own essay, its own space, a place where it can be a bit more academic and dry, not so emotive or cynical) though we do have to mention a few more things before moving on. Crime. Yes. What was this crime? In short order here we go … it used to be the case that money was a symbol that referred to labor, actual work performed by one human that held value for another. So far as that is all money is, there is nothing ethically suspect about it. Then, at some point in the past, a few cunning paradigm-shifters saw an opportunity and changed the rules regarding what money was; they removed the labor as referent of value, replacing it with rare objects (typically gold) that few among any populace would ever see in their lives. Well, since the promise of alchemy was a lie, and the philosopher’s stone was never discovered, at least this money still referred to something real, something that couldn’t just be made up on the spot. Ah ha! the sons of the sneaky paradigm-shifters thought, that would just be the icing on the cake! Let’s remove the rare objects as value referent as well - let’s go all in on a communal mass delusion and see if anyone believes it … let’s just have money valued at whatever we say it’s valued at. Let’s create a massive shell game that only a very few will ever truly know the rules to, though the outcome, the results, will effect everyone … yes … let’s create the only game worth playing, and let’s give every live birth a turn … which leaves us with a system that, no matter how hard you work, no matter how industrious you are, if you don’t know the rules of the game (in modern America we can think of the Federal Reserve, Wall Street bankers, old money, select members of the Treasury Department etc. as the holders of the rule book) you will not win at it. You will play and play and play and keep losing and losing and losing all the while the rule keepers keep winning and winning and winning because for most players in this game the tokens of victory they collect (dollars) are bought at the hard price of actual labor, as if they never heard about how money grew up - no, they slave and slave for pennies without any chance of leveling up in this game and getting to that haughty echelon where money is no longer about work but having money make money off of someone else’s work … this little narrative I just outlined is a crime because there are clear stealers and victims (of course there are exceptions to every rule, but for every Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, there are a hundred and fifty million working at Walmart for a slave-wage). You see, the architects of the monetary symbol’s paradigm shift knew that by removing any referent to an actual act (labor) or object (gold) they were essentially hollowing out the natural relationship between the symbol and the symbolized, and in that empty space they would find their own El Dorado; their own little universe where they called the shots and none other. They essentially re-wrote the rules of symbolism, and clearly in their favor. And while symbols shift meaning all the time, especially in religious or political environments, these shifts are fundamentally harmless as neither religion or political discourse ever directly affects the physical well being of a human being as does their ability to acquire food, or energy, or health care, or shelter (I understand that by including ‘politics’ in this sense I might seem to be advocating a ‘post-history’ perspective; one where capitalistic-liberalism has won over all other political narratives, and while I hope that isn’t so, at the moment, and especially as an American author, one would be hard pressed to argue the point otherwise). To be clear, I’m not suggesting there was some shadowy cabal that gathered and planned out this great hollowing out of the monetary symbol; as is often the case it happened by fits and starts, here and there, as history would have it, propelled by the innate greed of the least amongst us. And yet they have scored a grand victory, these acolytes of avarice. Have pulled the proverbial wool over so many eyes - and in the process redefined a country that promised freedom into a vassal state completely enthralled to an ugly little strip of green denim that truly means nothing at all …

Of course this transformation did not just occur on American soil. But we sure as hell took the ball and ran it home. More than any other modern nation we are more readily defined by the empty symbology of the dollar than any others. This is not just an American problem; but we must be the first to address it …

America’s enslavement to the dollar is the singular cause of all the problems I put forth in ‘The Surface’, and, in many ways, ‘The Self’. We are a nation of suckers, rats, blind idealists, idiot sensualists, blatant thieves and the occasional dreamer … and knowing that, seeing my country in this way does nothing to alleviate my pathological cynicism … but allow me a query - do you still ask me why I am so cynical .?.

#Essay #Philosophy #c. r. stapor #cynicism #nietszche #modernity #philosophers on tumblr #writers on tumblr

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