#but it's a necessary excision into the life he deserves to live

[cherubchoirs]

im so fucking deranged because this song like. JUST came out but collared by vane lily could probably be a gabriel song if you think hard enough about it

YEA I CAN SEE IT....i mean like. much of what i read in gabriel's story is the process of coming to terms with an oppressive system of faith and the deconstruction of beliefs. i know i've talked about it plenty so i won't ramble on in-depth, but i do like the idea that gabriel has never fully fit into this system and his dedication to it is a direct manifestation of his perceived internal failures - he is a paragon in his station as an archangel to cover for his personal doubts. he proves himself in works, but not necessarily in faith. it's why i have him vaguely approached by lucifer before the war in heaven, and how that has haunted him to the current time. he knows something in him has always doubted, but it caused him to double his efforts and be ever more zealous in his condemnation of sinners, the very people he has sympathy for. and so coming off of that, he is left with so many broken pieces of a life - so much wasted time, so much abuse he went through and perpetuated, so many times he should have questioned, should have stopped, and now to sort through an entirely broken world view and schema he cleaved to regardless of his own misgivings. sometimes he absolutely does wish he had never lost his faith, he still feels reverence for god and for his kingdom in many respects, he still prays and still struggles with viewing the world in black and white. and he can't fully embrace who he is and what he wants, because the old stain of thinking in terms of sin and virtue still paint everything he does. he wants wild bloody abandon with v1, to give it and to feel it, he wants to connect with sinners, he wants to oppose what has been done...yet for some of that it's too late, for some of that it's too little, and for some of that, he feels mired in shame. sometimes falling feels pointless, like he should have just died believing in all of this, but as he grows more into a new life, he realizes how grateful he is to be given a second chance to live as he sees fit, even if that chance is small, broken, and lately come

[jadelotusflower]

It’s Cold in that Fridge: The Case of Nakari Kelen

Since The Case of Mara Jade has been doing the rounds again, I’ve finally gone back to this post that has been sitting in my drafts for literally years. So let’s honour this absolute badass who deserved better:

Once upon a time, the Star Wars universe was but six films (and a tv series) in the story of the Skywalker family. But beyond George Lucas’ story was an absolute boatload of books, comics, games, and other materials that made up the Expanded Universe. When Disney purchased Lucasfilm and the rights to the Star Wars saga, everything in this universe was decanonised and deemed “Legends” - some aspects of this universe were retained or re-purposed, others sit in Disney’s figurative vault and will likely never see the light of day (and seeing how the ST turned out, maybe that’s for the best).

But this transition between Legends canon and Disney canon was not so simple, because the nature of publishing meant that there were novels approved during the time of Legends canon that would be released in the time of Disney canon. In particular, there had been the planned trilogy “Empire and Rebellion”, set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, with each novel from the perspective of one of The Big Three.  

Razor’s Edge (Leia) and Honor Among Thieves (Han) were released prior to the Great Canon Split of 2014.  But while the Luke-centric novel had been planned, it was not due to be released until well after the Split. So Heir to the Jedi (so called as an homage to the Legends progenitor Heir to the Empire) became one of the first books of the Disney canon.

What does this background have to do with Nakari Kelen?  Perhaps nothing, but I do wonder how the writing process was affected by the shift from Legends to Disney - was the novel a relic of the old EU with any reference the LFL storygroup didn’t like excised during editing, or was it a trendsetter for the new EU, a Sign of Things to Come?  

The most salient point being, of course, that Nakari Kelen - like so many love interests before her - was not allowed to go along her merry way at the conclusion of the novel, but was shoved into the fridge.

If there was one constant of the Legends EU, it was that Luke Skywalker’s love interests couldn’t catch a break. Mara Jade naturally lasted the longest relationship-wise, with almost twenty years of marriage to Luke before some bright spark decided she had to go (as per the aforementioned case study). But before Mara there was Jem, Shira Brie, and Gaeriel Captison (who came close to escaping the curse), and in the Legacy of the Force series they brought back sole survivors Akanah and Callista, only to kill them off for good too (and rather brutally, if I may add).

So perhaps when Kevin Hearne began writing HttJ within the confines of the Legends continuity, he was merely sticking to the status quo, or perhaps once subsumed by Disney they needed to make sure Luke's slate was clean (so to speak).  And I can’t put all the blame on Hearne since I don’t know whether it was his idea, or LFL mandated - but regardless it was a poor decision.

The root cause of fridging, imo, is limited imagination.  How best to cause your male protagonist pain if not kill off someone they love, or at least have strong feelings for? The answer is of course, easily. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Luke Skywalker of HttJ is fresh from his victory in ANH, a lieutenant in the Rebellion: young, not dumb, and full of...

Nakari Kalen is an absolute Queen a civilian volunteer and crack-shot sniper who loans her ship Desert Jewel to the Alliance. Luke is immediately attracted to her, they bond over a mutual love of fast ships and leaving behind desert home planets, and engage in the inexpert flirting of two nineteen year olds while also risking their lives several times over.

I want to make it clear: I actually really like this book. It's a breezy read, almost serialised as The Early Adventures of Luke Skywalker, and is ofttimes genuinely funny. And credit where it’s due to Hearne, many of of the supporting roles in the novel are female. Other than Nakari, there's Soonta, the Rodian who gives Luke her uncle’s lightsaber, Sakhet the Kupohan spy, and the Givin cryptographer/math genius Drusil Bephorin. In a genre where male characters are often the default for these kind of roles, it was nice to see, but makes the regressive fridging of Nakari even more egregious.

Luke and Nakari make a good team fighting brain-sucking monsters and Imperials, but more importantly they have fun together - she encourages him to work on his Force skills, and he successfully moves objects with his mind for the first time (leading to Nakari adorably dub him "a little noddle scooter"). It's a very sweet, if brief, relationship, and a respite from the danger of the mission. They spend the night together (leaving the reader to decide exactly what happened behind closed doors), and share a kiss before splitting up to try and escape bounty hunters. No prizes for guessing what happens to Nakari immediately after she received the Skywalker Kiss of Death.

I assume there were two motivating factors for why Hearne and/or LFL couldn't let Nakari live:

1. If she survived, fans would wonder why she doesn't appear in ESB/subsequent material.

I recall this bandied about on forums back at the time of the book's release, and to that I say - so what? Fans are always going to wonder, and try to paper over the gaps in canon, to make up their own headcanons to explain any any perceived inconsistencies. It's certainly no reason to kill someone off.

It is in fact possible for two young people to have a romance that just fizzles, or doesn’t work out for whatever reason - it should not require great maneuvering or explanation. If Nakari doesn’t show up in the next book in the timeline, what about it? The reader is smart enough to assume she and Luke broke up, decided to just remain friends, whatever. But it seems that the only way for a female character to exit stage left is for her to die, which is bullshit.

And actually, there's no reason why she couldn't have shown up again. ESB and RoTJ cover a month and a few days, respectively, of Luke's life - just because there was no mention of Nakari doesn't mean she didn't exist at that time, whether or not she and Luke were an item. She could have made an appearance in a subsequent novel, or Rebels, or the comics - she could have become a recurring character, showing up when the Rebellion needed her, or - heaven forbid - even have her own comic/book/show! Her existence in Star Wars canon didn't need to begin and end with Luke Skywalker, merely to service his plotline and backstory and abandoning the richness of her own.

No, the only reason Nakari had to die was to facilitate this:

It was a blow to the gut, realizing what that sudden absence meant. I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but I had felt Nakari's life snuffed out through the Force, and into that void where she had shone anger rushed in - anger, and a cold sense of raw power and invincibility...I took a step to join in the hunt but stopped, breathing heavily, unaccountably sweating even though I felt so cold inside and the power of the Force roiled within me... I shook with emotion and power, and none of it felt the way the Force had before...I saw what kind of space it was , a black hole that would always be hungry no matter how much I fed it. I might never feel warm again if I didn't get myself under control.

Luke feels the dark side and is tempted by the boost of power it offers him, but immediately identifies it as dangerous and unnatural. I can understand why Hearne wanted to include this - it is a book of firsts after all: Luke's first solo mission, his first time using telekenisis, and ending with story with his first experience of the dark side makes sense. But it wasn't necessary, which leads to:

2. How to push Luke to touch the dark side without killing someone he has romantic feelings for?

Also, obviously, shite of the bull (or nerf, if you prefer). Even if this brush with the dark side was absolutely necessary for the novel's climax, there's any number of ways it could be achieved. At this point, Luke is fresh from losing important people in his life - Owen and Beru, Ben, and Biggs - lumping another death on top of that a narrative trick for Luke to react not only to losing Nakari, but the others as well. But it's cheap, the first card in the deck, and why not show a bit of imagination? Luke is young and inexperienced enough at this point that any number of things could be the catalyst - the whole book he's struggling with his growing powers, why not try and reach too far in the firefight with the bounty hunters, his anger and frustration with himself in not doing enough trigger the dark side temptation? It would work thematically and doesn't involve a fridging that ultimately has very little payoff.

Because Nakari is killed less than ten pages from the end of the book - afterwards Luke grieves, but ultimately chooses to honour her memory and be grateful for what he learned with her, recommitting to becoming a Jedi. It's all very surface level, and once again a female character's death facilitates a male character's development. Was it so imperative that Luke lost someone he cared about as part of this story? Sure, this was a time of galactic civil war, and it's far from unrealistic that these stories have a high body count, but who to make collateral damage remains an authorial choice, and in this case Nakari Kelen was (a) a female character of color, (b) a love interest of the protagonist - not just of this book, but the entire Original Trilogy.

I don't know to what extent (if any) race had to play in the decision. I'm sure there was a segment of the fandom absolutely livid that Luke Skywalker kissed (and maybe had sex with) a black woman. Was her death LFL hedging its bets, or demonstrative of the general lack of attention/respect they show their characters of colour?

In any case this was a chance to stand out from the old EU and it's fridge full of Luke's dead girlfriends, but instead they chose to introduce and kill off Nakari for the sole purpose of Luke's manpain and character development, and that's gross.

And then there's this:

A grisly yet reliable fact about custom bounty hunter ships is that you can always count on them to have body bags stashed somewhere for the easy transport of their kills. They often have built-in refrigerated storage, too.

NAKARI IS KILLED AND LITERALLY STORED IN THE FUCKING FRIDGE I COULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT I WAS READING.

I really hope this was unintentional on Hearne's part, because yikes. He was halfway there, this book was full of interesting female characters who had agency - Drusil in particular was a delight with her super math and inability to understand human interaction. Nakari was full of life and fun - capable but relatable, showing a different side of the Rebellion and those that suffered under the Empire's rule. Fridging her in her first appearance is considerably more vile, because it reduces her to a footnote of Luke's story, a plot device to Help Him Grow, rather than a springboard to tell more of her own story.

Because Nakari was a compelling character ripe for spinoff potential. I would absolutely have read or watched her continued adventures, juggling missions for her father's Biolabs company and trying to aid the Rebellion, shooting her slug rifle and cracking wise, maybe even finding a way to amplify her mother's song Vader's Many Prosthetic Parts to really stick it to the Empire, or try and free the political prisoners on Kessel.

The old EU was made great by allies and enemies of Our Heroes showing up again to help or hinder them, and/or branching out into their own material. We fell in love with them, and followed their stories even as they diverged from the main saga, eager to read more about their lives.

Nakari Kelen never got that chance. In many ways, she exemplified what Disney Star Wars was to become: an exercise in wasted potential.

[thescullyphile]

Run

It was a hazy, misty morning, the kind that prefaces a Shelleyan day of contemplation and contempt. Still asleep, the sun had yet to rise and dispel the tendrils of fog that entwined themselves between thickets of undergrowth like a ghostly vapor. The crunch of gravel under Mulder’s running shoes and the quiet drone of the highway nearby were the only indicators that he wasn’t a part of some lonely, nebulous dreamscape.

He knocked on Scully’s motel room door, knuckles smarting on splintering wood, as was his custom for his first run of the month. She had never taken up the offer to join him, and in spite of his best efforts to talk himself out of it, he felt compelled to keep asking. To Mulder’s great surprise, it was not a grumbling, sleepy Scully that answered the door, but a Scully that was very much awake. Instead of crossly scolding him for knocking on her door at this godforsaken hour, she smiled close-lipped at him. “I thought I’d join you today.”

The level tone of her voice contradicted the uncomfortable flush that covered her face, like she was afraid he would laugh and reject her for deviating from her normal response. She was anxious, he realized, desperate to cling to the last semblance of routine as she faced her uprooted existence, and simultaneously dying to excise the remnants of a life she could no longer live.

“Yeah, yeah, whenever you’re ready.” Mulder’s head bobbed up and down, tripping over himself to reassure her. As he backed away to give her room to step outside, his eyes tracked her like a loyal, concerned pet. Her face was mostly healed from the Pfaster incident the previous week, but her eyes betrayed her injury, suspicious of every movement, even from him. His beautiful Scully, softness still lingering from her abduction, looked illusory as they set off down the trail, seeming for all the world that with every step she might melt away into vapor and join the mist that surrounded them. The grey murk licked at her ankles as they went, chilled flames forming phantom shackles, an intangible reminder of the past.

No words were spoken- none were needed. Footfalls and gasping breaths, flinches from bird calls and car engines revving to life spoke plenty. Mulder’s mind was irresolute as he thought of his partner, hosting a mental trial in which he was tasked with playing all sides. Should he temper his pace, go easy on her in deference to her fragility? He couldn’t tell if this was some form of self-inflicted punishment, or if it was a purification ritual to help her in her quest of reassuming autonomy. Did she run to drive from her lungs the sullied, stale air that reeked of closets and the trunks of cars? To make sure that next time, she would be strong enough to fight back? Could she want his help?

She was a curious little creature, his Scully. So guarded, so vulnerable. He keenly felt how he towered over her, protective just the same regardless of her recent ordeals, and berated himself for not giving her space to heal. She deserved space from him, from the tribulation that followed him like a perverse spectre. But Scully had thrown out space, sought him out almost without conscious thought, unaware of how she orbited him like a little moon, pulled by his secure gravity. Did she know how her eyes met his, asking for him even if she wouldn’t? Even side by side as they were, she was unreachable, a lonely prisoner falsely convicted and sentenced to solitude.

They slumped to a stop a little over half an hour later, both red cheeked and gasping for air, the burden of life hammering their ribs. Mulder squinted from the sweat that dripped into his eyes, chest heaving. Stray hairs, having escaped Scully’s ponytail, curled in the humidity. She looked him in the eyes, standing where they had started that morning but existing in a different place all at the same time. She was unveiled, exhausted and unsure, but nonetheless she peeked over her shoulder before she disappeared into her room. “Tomorrow?”

If Scully was sore the next day, which Mulder was sure she was, she didn’t mention it. She opened the door before he could knock, having watched from her window like she was afraid he wouldn’t turn up her sidewalk, wouldn’t knock on her door and extend his humble offering to her trembling body, like that wasn’t the only thing he knew how to do. Though running alongside one another, Mulder led the way, a kindly shepherd, careful as he tucked her trust in him away in his heart like a man storing away a lover’s sonnet. He bought her coffee afterwards, an enticement that wasn’t necessary, and she smiled privately up to him as steam fogged her glasses. God, he was done for.

Days blurred into weeks, weeks into months as seasons passed under their feet. As long as he knocked, she answered, even as the air morphed and froze their lungs. A fitting metaphor, Mulder thought, for life, that even necessities were painful. Come spring time, they both had to buy new shoes, the old ones beaten and destroyed in the cleansing of Dana Scully. Miles bled from their bodies, sometimes in idle streams, sometimes in torrents, unable to escape fast enough. They broke ten miles for the first time in Tennessee. In Idaho, Scully was 60 feet from beating Mulder in the mile run. Together they battered her demons into submission in an arena of grassy roadsides and stony paths, absolved her soul of survivor’s guilt.

The change was subtle, passing Mulder’s notice like the lengthening of summer’s days until unexpectedly night mixed with the daytime and all was not as it had been before. She felt more substantial now, iron willed and unrepentant, mesmeric and intense and alive in a way that she hadn’t been before. Mulder couldn’t help but watch as she honed herself down. He mourned the softness of her smile, now more careworn, just as he delighted in her tenacity. He had to work a little harder now, had to startle laughs out of her and coax out unrestrained grins. He told her of holidays he was half-sure were real, making excuses to get her to drink milkshakes and help him finish sweet potato pies.  She was indistinguishable in so many ways, and yet, looking at her, a tug in Mulder’s gut told him he was home. If this was how she had survived, this was how he would love her.

[mbti-notes]

Hi mbti-notes. Thank you for all that you do. I am an 18 year old INFP who is having issues with her parents. Both my parents are ISFJs and both of them have experienced a lot of trauma in their lives as they are both survivors of a genocide. We also come from different cultures as I grew up in the US but they came here as adults so they stuck to their culture. I know that my parents love me and I guess I can’t expect them to care about me the way that I want them to. Please let me know (cont.)

[con’t: if I’m just paying lip service to that idea based on the rest of my ask. There are a few examples I have for reasons why I am not so happy living with them and I don’t know if I should just learn to live with it before I move out or if I should communicate this to them. The first example is that I would like to have more freedom but two months ago I was at a friend’s house who lived two blocks away and both her parents were home but my parents called me at 9:30pm telling me to come home because the sun went down. The second example is that last year I ran away from home for four days (which I understand eroded what little trust they have in me) and when I came back, they never asked me why I left. They were obviously concerned about me but their answer was just for me to go on antidepressants. The third example is that a few years ago, I told my mom that I didn’t have any friends and she just laughed. The fourth example, is in the fourth grade my dad bought me a shirt once I got to school. I forgot to change back so when my mom saw, she told my dad. He was furious. He called everyone in the family downstairs so that he could yell at me and tell me that if I did something like that again, he would hit me with a cable wire and kick me out of the house. I never forgot that. He’s not like that anymore (he doesn’t threaten physical violence but he does yell a lot) but he can be very unpredictable in terms of what will make him angry. The fourth example is that my brother was working a minimum wage job to save up for a car and my dad stole the $900 that he had with no apology or explanation. I’m kind of afraid of him and feel most comfortable at home when he’s on business trips. I jokingly think to myself that combined my parents have the emotional intelligence of a grapefruit but I’m not really sure what to do or if anything can be done. I have about 2-3 years until I’ll have a job and be able to move out. Do I just hold out hope for that?]

The parent-child relationship is very complicated. First of all, a parent who threatens violence, steals from you, or ridicules your pain is a morally bankrupt parent. Setting aside the power differential of the parent-child dynamic, any healthy relationship should be one of mutual respect, trust, and encouragement. It sounds to me like your parents aren’t capable of a healthy relationship. Does that mean you ought to give up on them completely?

How you decide to treat people isn’t about calculating what they “deserve” or don’t deserve from you, rather, you should think about what kind of person you hope to be and what that means for how you treat people. If you hope to be the best you, a moral person, a person who is capable of healthy relationships, then your actions should always reflect that aspiration. If you hope to be a person who avoids hurting others, unethical behavior, and generating ill-will, then your decision making should reflect that aspiration. You can’t control how a relationship evolves because you can’t control the other person, but you can control how far you let someone into your life, you can control the emotional boundaries that you set, you can control how you respond to people when they don’t behave the way you hope.

I can’t tell you what to do. Part of developing a strong sense of self is learning how to gauge situations for yourself, in accordance with what you need to nurture your well-being. Having too much contact with your parents appears to be bad for your emotional well-being because they aren’t able to empathize with you and respect your needs. Having zero contact with them might also be bad for your well-being because what child doesn’t want to have a good relationship with their parents? One common INFP pitfall in relationships is that they often feel helpless, so they sit back and swallow ill-treatment until they can’t take it anymore and then do something extreme. Another pitfall is all-or-nothing thinking that makes INFPs believe they must reach a goal immediately or just give up, as though there are no steps in between. Keep in touch with yourself and avoid going to extremes, such as running away or lashing out angrily. Look for ways to get out of the house in order to lessen your contact with them, or keep yourself busy with work or hobbies in order to stay out of each others’ way. If you decide to tough it out for the next couple of years, then make good use of that time by developing yourself in any way you can. There’s always little things you can do to improve your situation and state of mind, be creative (Ne).

It’s a cliche but there’s truth in it: Parents are more likely to treat you like an adult when you show them that you can behave like an adult. An adult shouldn’t run away from problems, throw tantrums, or deflect responsibility for wrongdoing. An adult should approach situations patiently, with determination and resilience in the face of setbacks. With SJ parents, you have to build up a history of proof that you’re capable of adult behavior, if you hope to overwrite their memory of your childish behavior. Show them that you are level-headed, dependable, responsible, and they won’t have much cause to get in your face. Whatever they say to you, live your best life as proof rather than demonizing them or starting senseless arguments. Don’t be afraid of conflict because sometimes it’s necessary for making yourself heard, but learn to manage conflict properly so that you leverage situations in your favor. When they get mad, you stay calm, stand your ground until they calm down and have a reasonable discussion. If they restrict your freedom, negotiate with them and loosen the strings around you bit by bit. You’re already 18 years old, legally you are entitled to your own life and making your own decisions. Part of growing up is learning how to live your life peacefully regardless of what your parents want or expect from you. It doesn’t mean you have to violently excise them from your life, it only means that you have to take good advantage of opportunities to assert your independence. If you can do it small step by small step, chances are, they’ll adapt better and you won’t have to resort to extreme behavior.

[jamesatkinson]

Union Editors & Universal Health Care in California

Above: nurses & activists rally the California Senate Health Committee to vote YES on SB562 - April 25th, 2017

Hi. My name's James Atkinson. I’m a union editor, I'm volunteering for Healthy California, a universal health care campaign, and I wanted to ask you for help.

Here’s the Deal

Healthy California (SB-562) is single payer health care bill in the California state senate. It's like a statewide version of "Medicare for all" - it would provide great health insurance to every California resident, and lower costs for about 90% of us. It's not a pipe dream - it has momentum & could actually pass, since California's state government has a Democratic supermajority. One crucial ingredient to making this happen is popular pressure - California Dems are more likely to vote in favor of SB-562 if they know their constituents want it badly.

So far, multiple unions have already endorsed SB-562 and I'd like to add Editor's Guild to that list! I've talked with the Editors Guild office a bit, and it seems like they'd like more info on the bill before making a decision.

I want to give them that info! I've talked with Labor For Health Care - they're kind of like the union outreach team for Healthy California. They'd love to send a policy expert to give a presentation to the Guild (this would also give the Guild an opportunity to give feedback on the bill). My plan is to send a very polite letter asking the Guild to hear them out, and alongside that letter, I want to include a pro SB-562 petition featuring union editors like you and me!

The Only Thing You Need To Do

If you're an Editor’s Guild member and you’d like to help, and all I need you to do is sign this petition (by signing it, you're basically saying "I support SB-562, and I'd like Editors Guild to meet with the campaign and explore the bill".)

Please feel free to forward this page to any other union editors who might be interested! Also, please email me if you want to get more involved with the campaign.

Thanks! - James

Okay, You Can Stop Reading Now

... but if you're curious here's a FAQ:

Q: Why should a union member support universal health care? We've already got a great plan. Here's 3 reasons:

1: Under Healthy California, you can keep your health coverage no matter what, even if you're too sick/injured to work. This is one of private health insurance's big weaknesses - if you get too sick to work, you lose your job AND your coverage! I have personal experience with this: When I was in high school, my dad got cancer. He couldn't work, and our family eventually declared bankruptcy.

2: Private health insurance eats your paycheck. American health care is expensive, and the costs are increasing faster than the rate of inflation. As these rates go up, the studios shift the costs over to us (which means we get raises less frequently). One example of this phenomenon: the recent WGA negotiation where health fund contributions were a central issue. Cost shifting is a widespread phenomenon in the US. A recent survey for University of South Carolina says 71 percent of Fortune 500 companies plan to raise employee contributions for their health insurance.

3: The Cadillac Tax (aka The Excise Tax) This sounds boring but it affects your life! It keeps getting delayed, but eventually (maybe by 2020) a 40% excise tax will be levied on all insurance costs in excess of $10,200 per year for single coverage and $27,500 for family coverage. As In These Times puts it: "These caps are set to rise at a much slower rate than the costs of health insurance, which means nearly all union-negotiated plans will eventually face the choice between radical cuts to coverage or paying the hefty tax."

Q: How much will this cost me? How is the bill funded? The California State Senate Appropriations Committee is discussing this right now (and an economist is preparing an impartial financial report due within a month or so), so soon there will be more precise answers.

For now, I can tell you that it would be funded by...

1) Savings: Public health insurance is more efficient than private plans, and a big patient pool of 40 million Californians will have the leverage to negotiate much lower prices from health care providers.

2) Already existing public funds: Taxpayers already pay for about 70% of healthcare expenses. Healthy California will consolidate these funds, and direct them to this new universal plan.

3) The remaining percentage will be covered by a new progressive tax mix: "Taxes" is a taboo word, but this would be a net savings for 90% of Californians. Instead of having a chunk of your pay go to Kaiser or Blue Cross (ie our current system), a smaller chunk would go to Healthy California. Also, there would be no out of pocket costs (like deductibles or co-pays) for anyone in the state.

Q: Are the benefits good? The benefits are great and compare well to our plan. (I copied the below section directly from the bill and bolded some of my favorites)

"Covered health care benefits for members shall include, but are not limited to, all of the following:

(1) Licensed inpatient and licensed outpatient medical and health facility services. (2) Inpatient and outpatient professional health care provider medical services. (3) Diagnostic imaging, laboratory services, and other diagnostic and evaluative services. (4) Medical equipment, appliances, and assistive technology, including prosthetics, eyeglasses, and hearing aids and the repair, technical support, and customization needed for individual use. (5) Inpatient and outpatient rehabilitative care. (6) Emergency care services. (7) Emergency transportation. (8) Necessary transportation for health care services for persons with disabilities or who may qualify as low income. (9) Child and adult immunizations and preventive care. (10) Health and wellness education. (11) Hospice care. (12) Care in a skilled nursing facility. (13) Home health care, including health care provided in an assisted living facility. (14) Mental health services. (15) Substance abuse treatment. (16) Dental care. (17) Vision care. (18) Prescription drugs. (19) Pediatric care. (20) Prenatal and postnatal care. (21) Podiatric care. (22) Chiropractic care. (23) Acupuncture. (24) Therapies that are shown by the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health to be safe and effective. (25) Blood and blood products. (26) Dialysis. (27) Adult day care. (28) Rehabilitative and habilitative services."

[it goes on for a while longer, read the bill here if you're curious]

Q: Why do I care about this? I have a few reasons!

For one, last year, my Mom had a liver transplant. She's doing great now, and one thing that save her life (and saved us from another bankruptcy) was the fact she had a single payer insurance program - Medicare. I think more people deserve these kind of great benefits!

Also, at the hospital, I met a lot of transplant patients - and I learned they have to fight through debilitating, multi-year symptoms (like chronic pain, immobility, comas, childlike confused thoughts, etc). They also have very intense medical needs (for example, my mom takes expensive immunosuppressants a few times a day - if she misses a dose, or can't afford one, it could be fatal). These patients *already* face very difficult challenges - if Trump's AHCA goes through, it would literally be a death sentence for some of them. Healthy California could make their lives a lot better. Anyway that's one reason why I have a sense of urgency about this.

If you're curious, here's a good article on the nightmare that is liver failure under our current health care system.

Q: What happens next? The California State Senate health care committee just voted YES on the bill. The Appropriations Committee votes on it within a month or so. Right now the campaign is focusing on canvassing those senators.

Q: What's the long term time frame? This is a big campaign with a lot of variables. I've heard people estimate it could take 1-2 years to pass this bill.

Q: How can I help? 1) You can join the campaign and get regular updates on how to help (we'll be canvassing regularly)

2) You can donate to support campaign activities (like bussing supporters to Sacramento to rally Senators)

3) If you know anybody else in any other union who supports single payer, feel free to have them email me! I'm working with the campaign on a broader outreach effort.

4) If you want to train to speak/campaign for the bill, join the campaign, and contact your regional coordinator. Q: What if I have more questions? The flyers on Healthy California’s page answer a bunch of questions! Also, you can email me, or contact Labor for Healthcare!

[purrcraze]

This Is The Best Age To Neuter A Ragdoll Cat

As a responsible pet owner, you know that it is the smart thing to neuter your male ragdoll cat, and you may begin to wonder, “When is the best age to neuter a ragdoll cat?”

When is the best age to neuter a ragdoll cat? The best age to neuter a male cat is at the age of 6 months because this is when they become sexually active. You can neuter them earlier if they already show signs of puberty. If you neuter after 12 months the benefits of the operation may not be as full.

That’s the brief answer to this question. But to know more and really see why neutering your male ragdoll is important, please keep reading.

You also should know that the same age is recommended for female Ragdoll cats.

However, for female cats, this is not called neutering. It is called spaying and requires a slightly different surgery. Still, even if you have a female cat, you should continue to read as they show similar behavior when not spayed.

What is Castration/Neutering?

The professional term for the castration of a male cat is called orchidectomy. Under general anesthesia, incisions are made on the scrotal sac. By doing this, each of the testicles can be removed totally or excised. External stitches are not required for most operations.

For most cats, both of the testicles will drop before they are born from their abdominal cavity, go through the inguinal canal and end in the scrotal sac.

In some cats, one or even both of the testicles fail to drop into the scrotal sac and could stay inside the abdomen or can be held along the canal that leads to the scrotal sac, called the inguinal canal path.

Cats like this are called cryptorchid and will require a more involved surgery to get them “fixed”. It is critical that these do get removed because without removal, they will keep on producing hormones and your ragdoll will continue to act like an intact male.

You may wonder, “can my ragdoll just get a vasectomy?” The truth is that this operation is not done to cats because it will sterilize the cat, but the male hormones and the undesirable behaviors that come with it are still in effect.

Therefore, male hormone removal and sterilization are required for the benefit of all involved.

Why Should I Neuter?

Firstly, this is arguably the most common operation that a veterinarian will perform. It is very safe and is healthier for your male ragdoll in living a better and happier life.

The act of neutering your male ragdoll will ensure he cannot reproduce and also arrests the production of hormones that promote behavior of a sexual nature.

In the US and UK, there is a huge overpopulation problem when it comes to cats and dogs. Cats and kittens are sadly euthanized each and every day. Neutering is a way that you can fight this problem instead of adding to it.

Aside from this, the other advantages you can enjoy are:

Lessened spraying

Resistance to roaming and running away from home

Less odor from your cat

Reduction in fighting and injuries as a result of getting into fights

Lessened aggression toward other felines

No stress on you if your male cat gets another female cat pregnant

Medical and Behavioral Advantages

Keeping a neutered tomcat is a lot better than keeping an intact tomcat. For starters, the urine of a tomcat with sex organs still in place is very strong in smell and can lead to conflict among the owner of the cat and his or her family members.

It is also more difficult to remove from fabrics and furniture it gets on.

Castration affects behavior in a positive way. The behaviors that are affected are ones powered by male hormones. Castration can calm a tomcat that is hyperactive or aggressive to other humans.

Male cats have an urge to spray and mark their territory. By neutering your male cat, you can reduce spraying and marking by 85%.

After all, the number one reason cats are surrendered or abused is because they are eliminating in places other than their litter box. It is easy to see why having your cat neutered is a better idea.

Aggression is another behavior that neutering can be reduced. Even though cats both neutered and intact can get into fights, the chances of this happening are lessened in your male ragdoll when he is fixed.

Fights lead to lacerations and punctures, which can lead to scars, abscesses, infections and other undesirable outcomes.

Other Advantages of Neutering

Population control is a topic we mentioned briefly but cannot stress enough. Cats do not deserve to be killed simply for being alive. We as responsible pet owners can prevent this sad reality by making sure our pets are castrated. A male intact cat can create many litters.

Neutering is necessary so that litters are not created and eventually destroyed. It should be noted that some males will still display interest in females even after the operation is completed.

Roaming is another issue that cat owners have to contend with when dealing with their male intact cat. Males will do whatever it takes to leave so they can go and find a female while they are in heat.

Castration will reduce roaming in males by about 90%. Neutering will help you reduce this, and your ragdoll will be more likely to stay in his home with no trouble at all.

Quick Note on Urine

The urine of your male cat will also be more manageable. The odor of cat urine is already harsh, but an intact tomcat’s odor is unbearable. Cat owners of all breeds report their neutered males becoming less stinky, more clean, and having a normal urine odor.

For the sake of your home and nose, neutering is worth it.

Are There Any Bad Side Effects?

No, your male ragdoll will not become lazy or overweight as a result of neutering. You have to feed them proper amounts for their age and help them play and stay active, but the act of neutering alone will not render them overweight or lazy.

Calories consumed during the day will have to be cut down as a result of the lessened fighting and roaming, but this is a normal part of keeping a cat.

Your ragdoll will still enjoy hunting around for toys and doing other instinctual cat behavior and will not stunt his growth when you perform the operation. Height and weight will be normal as will the urethra.

It is best that you neuter before the male enters puberty, so that the effects of neutering will have the maximum benefits and he will not develop bad habits that are typical of a sexually mature male cat.

What Is the Procedure Like?

So that your male cat can get the benefits of anesthesia, you will be asked to stop feeding him the night before the operation.

You must be sure to arrive on time for your appointment, so be sure to have your cat carrier ready to go with a comfortable blanket or towel inside for your cat to relax upon.

Your ragdoll cat will go under general anesthesia and get a small incision in his scrotum. The testicles will be removed, and he will not feel it at all.

Using sutures that absorb right into the skin, or surgical grade glue, the skin will be stitched up and your pet can go right home with you that same day.

In some cases, stitches may not be required. Your pet may also get a special tattoo that indicates they have been neutered.  Your vet will tell you if there are any complications you should be aware of.

The recovery process will also be one that is pretty fast for your cat. He will be back to his old self in no time. Your cat will be drowsy after the operation, so keep a watch on him and make sure he is comfortable and warm.

More Post-Op Care

The next day, your cat will likely be back to being himself once more. Allow him to rest and keep him away from other cats so that he can recover. Don’t allow him to play too harshly-it’s best to let the internal wounds heal up.

However, if your ragdoll seems a bit off, and you know he is not being his true self, you should call your vet right away. Be sure you monitor him to make sure he does not lick or scratch open the surgical sutures.

You may have to purchase a plastic cone collar or get a special bandage placed over the site so that he does not accidentally open the wound.

Related Questions

Will My Cat Change After Being Neutered?

Your male ragdoll will lose his sexual behaviors in most cases. However, some males may still maintain an interest in females. These changes take place right away or in a few weeks after the operation.

When Should A Male Kitten Be Neutered?

Male kittens should be neutered at about 4-6 months old. Some vets may do it earlier at ages 8-16 weeks. It is best to do this as soon as you can to reap the benefits of neutering. Speak with your vet to see when you can get your cat in for the procedure.

How Long After Neutering Will My Cat Calm Down?

Your cat will be himself again about two days after surgery. Keep him inside for at least 7 days for the best results and be sure he does not lick the incision site. You will notice he will be calm after surgery as the testicles, the force driving reproductive tendencies for males, have been removed.

Conclusion

To neuter your male ragdoll is a responsible, safe and healthy decision-and we commend you for taking this important first step in ensuring your ragdoll has a happy and healthy life.

[harmonyresonant]

Limitations of wisdom and its affect on motivation.

The last time I fell in love I knew it was destined to fail, perhaps in one of the worst ways it could. I said to her it felt like two galaxies colliding, but galaxies can either group together or tear themselves apart and fly away.

Those moments come to me more than most I think, at least consciously, the thoughts that are so easy to let escape as trivialities, impulses to be excised with just as much fervour as their entrance, but yet if only accepted, could stop a mistake, or change your life.

What's the criteria for distinguishing these kinds of thoughts? Risk? Cost? Benefit? Joy? Importance? Substance? Love? I've spent years trying to find the real source of motivation, of my motivation, because at the end of fear is truth, and fear will only propel so far as your body and mind allow it.

Justifying motivation is not esoteric for the starved of food or hungry for love. Motivation and its reasons are intertwined with purpose, and with it - our sense of direction, and with that, our sense of growth or death.

Polony and tomato sauce with white bread, Bread on its own, Chips from the fish n chip shop, Nutri grain with no milk for dinner, no food brought to school, a home of bullying, dream killing, suppression. I'm just the tip of the iceberg. I empathise with the meth addict on the street, the Mum that boils her baby daughter, the husband that murders his family, each a victim of environment and circumstance left to play out its default option.

I know all about default. I know nearly everything that needs to be known about how it plays out. When I rejected it, I was commanded by every single person and circumstance around me to let go of the fight. I watched as my friends became the victims of it, drop outs, pregnant, jailed, drugged, abused, stiffled, angry, lost. Stop it. That's wrong. Are you sure? I can't believe you would do that. Take this, you owe me. Be more considerate. Let's have a talk. You just need to be a 16 year old. Your results are in. That's just how it is. It's time to move on. You seem chaotic. You just seem upset is all. I'm just trying to help. I think you need to see a psychologist. I think we should just be friends. If there were words to describe the amount of fury and anger I hold towards individuals of my past I would save you from them because I have shown each of these comments their due diligence and marvelled at my own self control. To entertain those people in my mind gives them an authority I refuse to allow, so I move on.

When global weather patterns are shifting and solutions are being found by quantum computer augmented AI systems as pornography fills every void that opens - spite, seemed like the most reasonable response to such as unreasonable world. At 11 through to 22 It worked to dissociate my want of meaning in my circumstances, a want of meaning in where I felt I should belong and where I am, people often pointing out I should be a drug addict and dead or in jail, adjunct simultaneously to those same individuals pressuring success with their own benchmarks. All three things only not the case because of a mixture of calculated precision and blind luck. They wouldn't know, because they are unable to know, they refuse to know, outright, in front of you, so I would achieve because fuck you. Anger and rage is bottomless, perfect for a mixed up misunderstood adolescent male. The nerve of family to attempt comparisons of their standards with my own makes me laugh with a deep seated sickness. They arent any better off knowing differently. I couldn't control myself if I indulged myself in their correction. I've done it to some, corrected them, but my capacity for flooding someone with sadness and tearing their soul from them isn't so much fun as violently calculated. It's what comes after, my mothers death a calculated suicide of neglect, the insidious idea to die and make everyone your victim to alleviate guilt for failing to be held punished for your sins ready like a conspiring death eater to leach its next victim through me. How she coughed up black tar of putrid rotted lung flesh and congealed blood as CPR accidentally flooded her airways, typical of wanton excess of disgust. These details are best left undisclosed until times like this. How they saw me as a victim when i spared them. Of course though, they were too cowardly to ask. Hugs as it were. For their embrace, but they soon realised I wasn't available for receiving empathy because when I look at people I see directly into their soul, and when they are ready, they tell me what they are afraid of, in their own way, and it was too much for my family to cope with, because they're afraid they were responsible for killing her and conspiring to create the circumstances albeit naively in arrogance which eroded my Mums mental health and therefore my sister and I's life. I looked directly at my Uncle Warren in the emergency department without a tear in my eye watching the circus unfolding in front of me and I saw it written over his face, laughing at her losing her job, her sadness, her divorce with the members of the Smith side, now she lay dead, then he looked away. The too hard basket became my home because that's what these people do to hard things, they are the lowest kinds of human, the ones that lie to themselves about their affect on children, and can't help but make it worse by leaving them there alone scared with no excuse other than fear. Besides, school was starting up in 4 weeks, there was ironing to do. Clothes to fold. Forms to sign. He'll be fine. He'll get over it. The young soldier boy. How if they demonstrated any strength to cry in front of me in regret i would explode, they don't deserve to cry. I hold onto this until they either die or reconcile it. I'm good at waiting.

So for a while I forgot what love even was. Then she stepped in. Blind luck reared its head, and she showed me a warmth, depth and love so beautiful, graceful and innocent I felt like if I touched her my fear and hatred would spread like a disease. There are certain decisions we make in life as people that we don't understand, and we wear the consequences. I am not blessed with that capacity, I was not afforded the resources needed to make the conscious skills we develop young, into the subconscious - everything became consciously calculated, what I wear, what order the day is in, what words I use, my tone, my posture, my timing, what people i need to manipulate, what are their current moods, their buttons, when the rain falls or the concrete cracks it has always been my fault or my responsibility - better me than my insane family. Of course you don't win by playing nicely. You don't learn by being comfortable. And of course, through the gauntlet, you don't feel good about it. Good or great, make your decision, and in poverty when you're broken, you are forced to choose great, usually for as long as it takes until your circumstances begin to sustain themselves, and there is only space for a few so you have to do what's necessary for as long as necessary. There were plenty of times I would punch my windows, the walls work cartons and scream, how pathetic, I got a hold of myself quickly. Got psychological problems? Bury them. Getting worse? Bury them. Life is not a documentary or a game, fail to achieve certain things in certain timelines while the cards are stacked against you and the consequences are extreme. Even more so without financial or social securities/networks. So after years of neglect she began to make me feel like I could rest. Like I deserved it. She helped me forgive myself for the stress I had caused myself and other people. She forgave me for being sorry that I couldn't be the guy she needed me to be, that I couldn't be Nathan because I was unsure who or what that even was.

Spite evaporated and then I was purposeless, my motivation gone, it disrupted my focus, my academic results, the routine of my fractured world. And she became my angel, she became the person that would forgive me for failing and tell me it would be alright and I would believe her because she understood me, I live in those moments just by remembering her, but as soon as she opened her arms she was gone. She was doing things my mother didn't and she coped a lot of difficulty from me for doing it and the legacy of failure in parenting, guardianship and neglect continued to haunt me, as it started to haunt then eventually remove those I loved. It wasn't the first time either, a pattern like many other. It was at that point that I made the decision to never allow it happen again. I would finish what she helped start, and with any luck, find a positive reason to endure the absolute crushing isolation of being the source of problems for those you deeply care about or die finding out, unable to be reached, usually impossible to help but this time different, now without the offensive weapons which I used to shield myself. I'm sure it would've been easier to approach me if I was outright hostile but people were watching, vultures waiting with their 'here to help check list' with step 1 as, 'Take a break'. Idiots.

The process is finished.

Now I am appreciating and beginning to give back in small ways to life.

I don't really remember what it feels like to love someone voluntarily. I guess that's how it's supposed to work, by accident, time, something like that, but I'm approaching a stage in my life where I'm too exhausted to care, maybe my Mum took it with her to her grave. Maybe I have had too many people come and go for good reasons to believe in holding onto someone. I finished the race first and early or last and everything's been packed up but for me it was always about finding a home in my heart, so I wouldnt look for it in someone else's, something that's as much given to you as much as fostered by yourself. It always felt like though I had reached the mountain peak, as soon as I got there I realised there's no way to go further up, so its time to look across and down at everything that's been done, take a break and look across to the next peak. I have no option but to hold onto the good things that've happened to me in my time, even if they're in totality a bit messy, as for the girl that saved me from myself, I'm no longer scared or fearful when I think of her now, like I might be dishonoring her, in a lot of ways she's still my angel. I hope we get to be friends one day once we've settled down so we can compare notes, we moved too fast to keep our both our feet on the ground long enough to be together but until then wherever she is I hope she is smiling and being taken care of because she is of such a rarity of courage and authenticity that it seems only she can reach people like me and that deserves happiness and real love.

Spread your wings.

[vitalmindandbody]

Two American Daydreams: how a dumbed-down commonwealth failed slew of a great sentiment

As Clinton and Trump prepare to debate next week , noble principles are overwhelmed in a culture where most Americans do not know what is real anymore and the dream of equal opportunity is just a fantasy

Every child had a pretty good shot

To get at least as far as their old man got

But something happened on the best way of that place

They shed an American flag in our face.

Billy Joel, Allentown

Its one of the greatest fabrications of all time, and just like it alleges on the dollar bill novus ordo seclorum it generated an entirely new ordering in human occasions. After millennia of pharaohs, emperors, kings, kings, sultans, caesars and czars, with all their helper aristocracies and locked-down social structure, countries around the world was founded where birth and lineage didnt trouble so much, where by application of your flairs, vigour, labor and willingness to play by the rules, you could improve your substance slew in life and achieve a measure of economic security for yourself and your family. Peasants and proles could aspire to more than merely survival. Radical!

We know it today as the American Dream. The now-obscure historian James Truslow Adams coined the term in his work The Epic of America, characterizing the American reverie as TAGEND

a dream of a social order in which each man and each female shall be able to attain to the fullest prominence of which they are innately capable, and be recognised by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of delivery or position.

Adams was writing in 1931, but the nightmare was there from the beginning, in Jeffersons pursuit of happiness formulation in the Declaration of Independence, happy residing in its 18 th-century gumption of boom, expand, wellbeing.

Nobody ever came to America with a starry-eyed dream of working for famine compensations. Spate of that offered in the old country, and thats accurately why we left, escaping serfdom, peonage, lease, indenture all different iterations of what was essentially a rigged arrangement, to introduce it in current political verbiage that channeled the profits of our strive upstream to the Man. We came to America to do better, to assure for ourselves the liberation that economic insurance returns, and for millions mostly white males at first, and then slowly, sputteringly, women and people of color thats the acces it worked out , nothing less than a change in the human condition.

Upward mobility is indispensable to the American Dream, the idea that people can rise from working to middle class, and middle to upper and even higher on the prototype of a( imaginary) Horatio Alger or an( actual) Andrew Carnegie. Upward mobility across years peaked in the US in the late 19 th century. Most of the benefits of the 20 th century were achieved en masse; it wasnt so much a phenomenon of great numbers of people emerge from one class to the next as it was standards of living rising sharply for all grades. You didnt “ve got to be” extraordinary to rise. Opportunity was sufficiently broad that hard work and steadiness would do, along with tacit buy-in to the social contract, faithfulnes to the system proceeding on the assumption that the organizations of the system was mostly fair.

The biggest amplifications occurred in the post-second world war era of the GI Bill, cheap higher education, strong labor unions, and a progressive tariff system. Between the late 1940 s and early 1970 s, median household income in the US doubled. Income inequality reached historic lows. The median CEO salary was nearly 30 ages that of the lowest-paid hire, compared with todays gold-plated multiple of 370. The top excise bracket strayed in the neighborhood of 70% to 90%. Awarded, there were far fewer billionaires in those eras. Somehow the commonwealth survived.

America is a dream of greater justice and the possibilities for the average man and, if we can not acquire it, all our other accomplishments amount to good-for-nothing. So wrote Eleanor Roosevelt in her syndicated article of 6 January 1941, an apt lead-in to her husbands State of the Union address later that day in which he enumerated the four impunities necessary to American republic, among them freedom from want. In his Commonwealth of the Union address 3 years later, FDR expanded on this concept of freedom from want with its own proposal for a Second Bill of Claim, an economic bill of rights to counteract what he viewed as the growing tyranny of the modern economic guild TAGEND

This Republic had at its beginning, and thrived to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political privileges among them the right of free speech, free press, free praise As our nation has grown in width and stature, nonetheless as our industrial economy has expanded these political claims have proved inadequate to assure us equality. We have come to a clearly defined realization of the fact that genuine individual freedom cannot prevail without economic security and independence.

Political claims notwithstanding, freedom sounds exceptionally hollow when youre getting nickel-and-dimed to death in your everyday life. The Roosevelts recognized that wage peonage, or any method that inclines toward subsistence level, is simply incompatible with self-determination. Subsistence is, by definition, a held, desperate nation; ones horizon is necessarily limited to the present day, to getting enough of what their own bodies must be free to make it to the next. These days a minimum wage work in New York City clocking 40 hours a week( at$ 9 per hour) deserves $18,720 a year, well under the Federal Poverty Line of $21,775. Thats a scrambling, uneasy universe, narrowly bounded. Close to impossible to decently feed, invest, and shelter yourself on a compensation like that, far less their own families; far less buy health insurance, or save for your kids college, or are represented in any of those other good American circumstances. Down at peon grade, the endeavours of pleasure is just like a bad pun. Its “ve called the” American nightmare, George Carlin cracked, because you have to be asleep to believe it.

Necessitous beings are not free beings, alleged FDR in that 1944 State of the Union speech. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are stimulate. A grim testimony, demonstrably true-blue, and specially unsettling in 2016, a point in time when the American Dream seems most viable as nostalgia than a lived phenomenon. Income inequality, opulence distribution, mortality rates: by every measure, the average individual that Eleanor Roosevelt celebrated is dropping. Exceptional parties continue to rise, but overall mobility is sluggish at best. If youre born good in Ferguson or Appalachia, risks are youre going to stay that course. Ditto if your early memories include the swimming pool at the Houston Country Club or ski assignments at Deer Valley, youre likely going to keep your roost at the top of the heap.

Income inequality, gross the gaps in resource: were to say daily, perpetually, that these are the necessary the effects of a free market, as if the market was a troop of quality on the order of weather or tides, and not the solely manmade create that it is. In light-headed of recent record, blind adoption of this sort of economics would seem to require a firm commitment to stupidity, but makes assume for the moment that its true-life, that the free market exists as a universe unto itself, as immutable in its workings as the regulations of physics. Does that universe include some ironclad principle that requires inequality of opportunity? Ive yet to discover the instance for that, though doubtless some intrepid thinktanker could construct one out of this same free-market financials, together with gusts of genetic determinism as it pertains to calibers of penalty and reputation. And “it wouldve been” bogus, that case. And more than that, sinful. That we should allow for wildly diverging possibilities due to accidents of birth can be expected to impres us as a crime equal in savagery to child abuse or molestation.

Franklin Roosevelt:[ F] reedom is no half-and-half affair. If the ordinary citizen is assure equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place. The hypothesi travels deeper than sentimentality, deeper than policy, deeper even than adherence to equality and the pursuit of gaiety as set forth in the Declaration. It cuts all the way to the nature of republic, and to the prospects for its very existence in America. We may have democracy in its own country, wrote state supreme court justice Louis Brandeis, or we may have enormous asset concentrated in the handwritings of a few, but we cant have both. Those few, in Brandeiss judgment, would unavoidably use their power to subvert the free will of the majority; the super-rich as a class plainly couldnt be trusted to do otherwise, a thesis thats being starkly behaved out in the current era of Citizens United, Super Pacs, and truckloads of dark money.

But the event for financial equality goes beyond even equations of supremacy politics. Democracys premise remains on the notion that the collective gumption of the majority of members will attest right more often than its incorrect. That have enough opportunity in the course of carrying out happiness, your population will develop its flairs, its ability, its best judgement; that over period the national capacity for discernment and self-correction will be magnified. Life will improve. The way of your uniting will be more perfect, to borrow a phrase. But if a critical mass of your population is kept in peonage? All its sparkle spent in the furrows of day-to-day existence, with insufficient opportunity to develop the full range of its modules? Then how much poorer the prospects for your democracy will be.

Economic equality can no more be divorced from the the effective functioning of democracy than the ballot. Jefferson, Brandeis, the Roosevelts all accepted this home truth. The American Dream has to be the lived world of the country, not just a fairly floor we tell ourselves.

I have always get much more advertisement than anybody else.

Donald Trump

Then theres that other American nightmare, the numbed-out, dumbed-down, make-believe nature where much of “the member states national” consciousness resides, the sum commodity of our mighty Fantasy Industrial Complex: movies, TV, internet, texts, tweets, ad saturation, personality preoccupation, plays obsession, Amazonian sewers of porn and political bullshit, the entire foray of media and messaging that is endeavouring to mark us from our brains. September 11, 2001 bombed us out of that reverie for about two minutes, but the dreaming is so elastic, so all-encompassing, that 9/11 was immediately absorbed into the the matrix of FIC. This exceedingly complex event horribly direct in research results, but a swamp when it is necessary to justifications was stripped down and binaried into a dependable fantasy narrative of us against them, good versus villainy, Christian against Muslim. The week after 9/11, Susan Sontag was practically executed for should be noted that a few iotums of historical awareness might help us understand how we came to this detail. For this modest proposition , no small number of her fellow Americans cared her dead. But if united followed her cause if wed done the hard work of digging down to the roots of the whole sickening event perhaps we wouldnt still be fighting al-Qaida and its offspring 15 years later.

An 11 -year-old girl wears Trump socks at a campaign phenomenon for the Republican campaigner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC. Photo: Mike Segar/ Reuters

Heres a hypothesis, ugly, uncharitable, but given our recent history it begs investigation: most of the time most Americans dont “know what i m thinking” real any more. How else to clarify Trump, a billionaire on an ego trip capturing a major partys nomination for president? Another blunt-speaking billionaire tried twice for the conference of presidents in the 1990 s and used to go in flames, but he made the mistake of guiding as himself, a recognizably flesh-and-blood human being, whereas Trump comes to us as the ultimate character, and irrefutable maestro, of the Fantasy Industrial Complex. For much of his occupation until 2004, to be precise he held status in “peoples lives” as a more or less normal personality. Larger than life, rest assured, cartoonishly lofty, shamelessly self-promoting, and reliably objectionable, but Trump didnt grown Trump until The Apprentice debuted in January 2004. The first occurrence reaped 20.7 million viewers. By similarity, Ross Perot received 19,742, 000 referendums in the 1992 presidential election yes, Im likening poll totals with Nielsen ratings but Trump prevented sucking that robust 20 million week after week. The season climax that year contacted 28 million viewers, and over the next decade, for 13 more seasons, this was how America came to know him, in that weirdly intimate channel TV has of giving celebrity into the very center of our lives.

It was this same Trump that 24 million viewers a record, of course tuned in to watch at the first Republican debate last year, the glowering, blustering, swaggering boardroom war chassis who afforded every hope of shredding the pols. One ponders if Trump would have ever been Trump if there hadnt been a JR Ewing to pave the way, to show just how dear and real a dealmaking TV charlatan could be to our nerves. Trumps performance on that night did not thwart , nor through all the debates in the long parade that followed, and if his thought for the truth has proved more erratic even than that of professional legislators, we should expect as much. In the realm of the Fantasy Industrial Complex, reality happens on a sliding magnitude. The truth is just another possibility.

I speak the password primeval.

I would give the clue of democracy ;P TAGEND

By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

In nine epoches Trump and Hillary will take the stage for their first face-to-face debate. There is likely to be blood. The bayonets are going to be out, and the ratings are bound to be, need it be said, yuge. The American Dream will no doubt be invoked from both platforms, for what true-blue patriot was ever against the American Dream? And yet for the past 30 times the Democratic nominee has worked comfortably within a party foundation thats battered the working and middle classes down to the bone. The brand-new Democrat of the Clinton era are always strong for political privileges, as long as they dont disturbed corporate Americas bottom line. Strong for ethnic and equality of the sexes, strong for LGBT rights( though that took hour ). Meanwhile this same Democratic establishment connected with the GOP to push a market- and finance-driven economic order that enriches the already rich and leaves the rest of us sucking wind.

Thats the very real wrath Trump is speaking to , no fantasy there. Bernie as well; small-minded amaze their constituencies overlapped, though Trumps declared devotion to the common man stumbles over even the simplest proofs. On whether to raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, Trumps moral compass has spun from an connoted no( wages are already too high ), to suggest yes( wages are too low ), to weasel words( leave it up to the states ), to yes and no in the same breather( I would leave it and heighten it somewhat ), and, ultimately, when pressed by Bill OReilly in July, to yes-but( promote it to $10, but its still better left to the states ). All this from presidential candidates whos securely in favor of abolishing the estate tax, to the great benefit of heirs of multimillionaires and none at all to the vast majority of us.

Meanwhile, the Fantasy Industrial Complex is doing just fine such elections season, thank you. Expressing at a Morgan Stanley investors seminar in March, one of the leaders of the FIC, Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of CBS and a person whose 2015 compensation totaled $56.8 m, had this to say about the Trump campaign. It may not be good for America, but its damn good for CBS. The fund rolling in and this is fun this[ is] about to become a very good time for us. Sorry. Its a horrible act to pronounce. But fetching it on, Donald. Keep going.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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