#obviously revolution isn’t an unrealistic goal

[rotationalsymmetry]

I get it can be frustrating to see people talk about problems without talking about solutions, but frankly I find it significantly more frustrating when there’s a pretty sensible discussion about the problems then someone tacks on a solution that …doesn’t really fit? Or is just an “I’ve got a hammer and this looks like a nail” thing, you know, when someone thinks the solution to every problem is always the exact same thing…and frankly both “go vote” and “revolution” are equally frustrating in this context. Vote? Ok, what happens when you have record turnout and you still have a problem. What then? Is your plan to just sit on your hands until the next election, when you will again tell people to vote on social media? That’s not what any effective movement does. (That’s not even what effective GOTV efforts look like. I’ve done get out the vote. There’s a reason nobody’s hiring you or even asking you to volunteer to urge random strangers online to vote.) Revolution? Uh, ok, you got a plan beyond “persuade a larger tiny minority of the population that revolution is a good idea”? You got a plan for “the government is better funded and better armed”? You think online organizing over social media is going to get you people who will have your back in even the smallest squabble with the cops? I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you, I don’t know the first thing about you, I don’t know that you’re not a fed. I’m not so much as committing to put two bucks into your bail fund, what do you think you’re even doing here?

Maybe just let “identifying the problem accurately” be its own step, without rushing in to tack your preferred form of telling other people what to do on it before letting what the problem even is fully sink in.

There is not a shortage of people who think they know exactly what other people should do to fix everything in the world. You are not providing a valuable or necessary service here.

Some of you have never been to a fucking meeting where you split up at the end knowing who’s going to design the fliers and who’s going to coordinate with this other group and who’s going to (other thing that needs to happen to accomplish a modest yet realistic goal), and it shows. If you’ve never organized a toiletries drive for the local homeless people or planned a banner drop or gotten 50 people together to speak at a city council meeting, what the everloving fuck makes you think you’re capable of making a meaningful contribution to stopping climate change? That’s like when some kid asked Mozart (I think) advice on writing a symphony and he was all, maybe write something smaller first? Having a revolution (or doing a serious GOTV drive or organizing to get a specific piece of legislation passed or…) is doing a thing, and doing things effectively involves skills that you need to build up with time and practice. You can’t just write a symphony when you’ve never written a 36 bar chamber piece, you can’t run a marathon when you’ve never run a mile, and you can’t make big changes unless you work up to it from small changes. Either as a person or a group, you know? Not everyone involved needs every single skill required, but someone has to have each skill. If you want a revolution, for one, you need people who know fighting, people who know how to make blockades, people who know how to make or acquire explosives and firearms, people who know espionage, people who know recruitment, people who know how to deal with large number of people, people who can figure out how to get everyone fed and manage sanitation and so on. It’s not enough to convince people that armed revolution is a good idea. Revolutions require skills. (Many of which are most easily learned by being in the military, so if that’s not a background you have you’d better get in contact with people who do.) But also…if you want armed revolution, people are going to die, horribly, especially if you lose. This isn’t something you turn to because doing things other ways seems too slow or tedious. It should be a tool in your toolbox, a last resort after less extreme measures keep not being enough and when you have some reason to believe it can actually work, one that you understand as a natural continuation of other forms of organizing like labor organizing or the sort of protests that involve blockades and medics and umbrellas and water bottles for tear gas, not as something where there is nothing that can be done until a few million other people go “yeah, revolution, let’s do it.” As though people can just go from never held a gun in their lives to an effective revolutionary force with nothing in between.

And the other thing is…education does things backwards, you get rewarded for “class participation” for forming opinions on things you know nothing about…the more experience doing stuff you have, or having stuff done to you depending on the subject, the more valuable your opinion is. Not everyone’s opinion is actually helpful. In a context of “here’s what racism looks like” the experiences of people who have experienced racism is more valuable than the experiences of people who haven’t, in a context of “here’s what trans people are like” trans people’s opinions are more valuable than cis people’s, and when it comes to “here’s what to do about this problem” people who are in the arena with some degree of effectiveness have more relevant opinions than armchair theorists who aren’t even going off of actual research but just off of…nothing really. Or the opinions of other people who are equality ignorant. Problem is people who have experience worth sharing often don’t have time to talk about it on a site like tumblr, so you get people who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about dominating the conversations. It’s annoying.

[julystorms]

will you please rant for hours about good vs evil? i would love to read that

I don’t have the physical strength to type for that long, but meet me for tea IRL and I’d be happy to discuss it with you. ;P

How about a short monologue instead? 

Good vs. evil is obviously not often best-used as a black and white concept within a narrative. It’s tired, it’s boring, and for years now we’ve moved further away from it and toward what most people would call Sympathetic Villains, because most narratives have a “bad guy” for the “good guys” to fight, but it’s unrealistic to portray your villains as puppy-kicking douchebags who sing about being evil and wow the world with their bad breath. Writers have been pulling from their own life experiences to create asshole villains who feel a little more solid and real. 

It might...have gotten longer...than I anticipated...

Hans from Frozen is a pretty decent example. Look, straight-up the guy’s an asshole, but some of the traits we see him display aren’t inherently evil: he’s subtly selfish in Love Is an Open Door, isn’t he? You have to actually think about the words to see that Anna is singing about finding fulfillment in another person/companionship/etc and he’s singing about, um, getting what he wants. He’s charismatic and charming. He’s ambitious as hell. And while all of these traits are used for evil purpose, by themselves they aren’t bad things. Better yet, we find out he’s like 13th in line for the throne and basically A Nobody who has to make his own way in the world. Which, to us plebians, gets a big “boo hoo you poor fucking baby” but in his private personal world is Shitty. So in Frozen we’re given a villain who does evil things to prove his evilness to us, the viewer, but whose actions extend beyond “because I can” or worse, “because being evil is Fun.”

Some people try and take it a step further by making super extra duper sure we don’t forget the old and frankly tired phrase: “there are two sides to every story.” Well no fucking shit there are! But that doesn’t mean the other side is telling the truth. 

Writers like to capitalize on that, on unreliable narratives, because it’s, um, fun. But also because people in general aren’t completely reliable narrators of their own lives and experiences, so to an extent it feels good to tell things from the perspective of a character who skews the truth in their favor--or in the favor of a loved one.

Anyway Isayama, in writing SnK, obviously wanted us to see that there are always two sides to every story. This isn’t a new concept by any stretch of the imagination; it’s been done a million times already. But he tried to take it a step further but getting us into the heads of the “enemy” to see if they are the enemy or not, to see how the “enemy” thinks and how they become an enemy instead of something else to the main characters.

The problem is that if Isayama is going to claim that everything is relative, that has to extend through his entire narrative, not just through the Walled Eldians and the Eldians in Marley. Marley itself needs to be shown as more than evil firebreathing dragons abusing the poor Eldian people. Because everything is relative right?! Why are they being shitty? How can we believe the whole “Eldian people used to abuse their power and hurt Marley people” thing? And if that’s the case, why would you put that slap-bang right in the middle of a narrative chunk of stuff that reeks of WWII? The connotations are legitimately disgusting. What’s he trying to do, make it sound like the Eldians deserved it? Or what about the reverse, that the Jews deserved what happened to them because somehow they’d provoked it years and years earlier? 

I mean for fuck’s sake, if Isayama wants us to see that the good vs. evil debate is tired and old and “hey assholes have reasons for being assholes” then okay cool show us. But he really, REALLY should have thought through the connotations his story was going to bring with it when he punted it into the 1940s and gave his characters armbands with special stars on them I MEAN JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE HELL WAS HE THINKING? Like if it DOESN’T scream THE HOLOCAUST at you have you ever cracked a history book? Do you even know what goes on around you that doesn’t involve you?

And look. LOOK. I hate the tired evil vs. good bullshit because I want to know what makes the “bad guy” into the bad guy. Psychology is fucking amazing. Criminal psych is incredible. 

And I was fine with the narrative showing us that because hey, I don’t mind seeing what the other people are dealing with. But then they’re only evil because someone else is MAKING them evil and haha sURPRISE THAT person happens to be an entire country of Asshats!! Who have no overtly redeeming quality or current reason for oppressing the Eldian people! Yes, they’re afraid of them, we can infer that. But it’s never really shown; their actions are barely explained; the world isn’t built up to ANYTHING. 

And then here Isayama toddles in to tell us that he really isn’t asking if war is good or bad. Okay???????? Nobody asked you to answer that question because WE ALREADY KNOW that in general war is Bad. People die, the goals of war tend to be selfish, etc etc. If people break free of rule that’s called revolution not war. It’s the French Revolution for a reason, not the Stop Being Shitty War.

Anyway, I could discuss good vs. evil in literature/media forever, but nobody wants the dichotomy storytelling anymore. Nobody. And Isayama rolls in in the middle of a story that screams its themes until you’ve gone deaf and tells us, “it’s all relative man, like dude...relative. it’s all...relative...” Like something straight out of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. And it is, but only to a point. Like, sure, Marley is afraid of Eldia. But that relativity only lasted until, idk, they enslaved everyone who didn’t run away. And sure, the Eldians left behind are fighting for their own group of people but that’s only relative to a point, too--probably the point where they’re talking about slaughtering the entire island of Paradis just for their own gain.

And look, this isn’t knocking on the plot itself, though it kind of makes me feel Tired and Bitter. My issue is with Isayama stomping all over his own plot making sure to tell people in an interview that everything is relative when IT’S NOT when you’re talking about these big fucking things. What’s this relativism shit doing in here?? This isn’t Philosophy 101. Go home and think about what you just dumped on your story like a steaming hot shit. My god. 

[thweaty]

Thanks for your response. Yeah my last sentence was not the best due to the character limit. Bernie supporters aren't all democrats. Lots of them are independents or even libertarians that switch solely to vote for bernie. They will most likely switch back if he isn't the nomination. I think that those people are people that democrats SHOULD try to win over in terms of voting for Biden. And seeing democrats attack "Bernie Bros" could affect the chances of them doing so, due to feeling unwelcome.

ah okay yes, gotcha! i think we’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place here because i do think it’s important to try to make sure a platform is presented in which there are no people who preferentially benefit while others go ignored-- but unfortunately, with our two party system it’s kinda impossible. however, compromise is SUPER (imagine me shouting that from the rooftops plz) important, and whether you like him or not, i think that biden has demonstrated both his ability and willingness to compromise. i am of the opinion that sanders does not share either the ability or the willingness (not sure which one it is) and i think that that’s what contributes to a lot of people’s desire to not vote for him in the primary-- this isn’t the point i’m trying to argue. i think what’s most important is that whatever compromise that is done needs to be pragmatic-- in that whatever is agreed upon needs to be an actionable change. biden already has the majority’s support and he’ll likely win the nomination because of this (but again not rlly the point i’m trying to argue), so he doesn’t really NEED to compromise to at least pull off the primary, but i think he should because, again, unity is extremely important especially when no one can be 100% satisfied. the issue, currently, is that a lot of sanders supporters really like his M4A proposal and want this to be the thing that biden adopts (there are obviously other important things but i’m trying to make an example out of this one bc i feel that it’s currently the most significant). 

the issue with M4A is not the message. everyone has a right to healthcare. this is my opinion, but morally, for me, it’s also a fact. the issue is not the idea of making sure that everyone has healthcare, the issue is that the expectation of winning the election, passing M4A through the house and the senate, and then effectively upending our current healthcare system as we know it without any major pushback, job loss, or economic instability within 4-8 years with no SNAFUs is so unrealistic that it would arguably be of detriment for it to be added to the democratic platform for the risk of 1. it alienating the people who believe it’s impossible or straight up don’t want it (for a multitude of reasons) and 2. the people who were happy about it being added to the platform becoming unhappy when it doesn’t come to fruition because of how difficult it is to pass sweeping reform (see: 90% of obama’s presidency). while unsatisfying, biden prioritizes baby steps because that’s all that can realistically be done under our current set up. there are people who understandably want a revolution, but there are arguably more people who don’t want a complete and utter upheaval and instead would rather commit to working toward a goal to lower the hypothetical risk of chaos. 

this got very long-winded, but essentially what i’m trying to say is that there are people who will only support biden if he does adopt a rather “revolutionary” change such as M4A, but the likelihood of this occurring is so low for the reasons stated above. that’s why i think that we’re at a stalemate with some of the voters who still need ~convicing~. there’s also the potential risk of alienating those who don’t want M4A and leaving biden with the same total amount of support he had in the first place-- with no net gain or loss and thus no benefit toward increasing supporters in the general election. but, like i said, i focused on the one policy i’ve seen mentioned the most. i’m sure there are many other things people would like tweaked, and i’d love to talk about them if you have ideas! but i’m just not sure that we can expect drastic alterations to biden’s platform to occur.