viv-hollande

[viv-hollande]

Just to be 100% crystal clear - if you come into my space saying "No such thing as an innocent Palestinian" I'm going to block your hateful, bigot, monstrous arse just as fucking quickly as I do the ones who say "No such thing as an innocent Israeli" because you're two sides of the exact same grotesque, inhuman coin.

[viv-hollande]

They. They forgor

[viv-hollande]

[viv-hollande]

stoned and autistic at a party trying to make conversation: I find the comparative lifespan of organisms so interesting. Spiders are comparatively long lived animals. Female black widows can live up to 3 years but their male counterparts rarely live four months. Some tarantulas live upwards of 20 years. The longest lived spider was around 43 years old when she was cruelly assassinated by a parasitic wasp. Domestic rats have a lifespan comparable to female black widows. To put things into perspective, there are spiders that remember a pre-pandemic world but it is likely every rat on earth was born post-COVID. There could be a spider out there born when Reagan was in office.

[viv-hollande]

i walk a fine line between “i’m asexual and i hate how much the world revolves around sex” and “sex is way too stigmatized and people should be able to be more open about it if they want to”

[viv-hollande]

Hi, I don't want to seem like I'm downplaying the seriousness of your recent post but I wanted to let you know that the "paranatural" tag is about a webcomic called Paranatural. Unfortunately, I don't think including that tag will hit your target audience. You don't have to reply to this, I just wanted to give you a heads up just in case it was added by mistake.

Oops! Thanks for the heads up. I'll delete that tag right away!

[viv-hollande]

So I'd normally tag this with 'anti-' or 'critical' tags instead of the standard ones because I care more about solidarity-griping with people who agree with me rather than starting fights, but this is important to me and I actively want the people I am talking about to see this.

I will never forgive the paranormal community for what they did to Elisa Lam.

For over a decade now, a real woman's life and tragic death has become the plaything of 'paranormal enthusiasts' whose actions have done profound damage to her memory.

They don't care that their hobby is suffused with ableism. They don't care that they trivialize mental illness and obfuscate the reality that those with psychiatric disorders are faced with. They don't care that their prioritization of fiction is destroying society's ability to agree on what reality really is.

Bipolar disorder is one of the most misrepresented and stigmatized mental disorders. The lack of cultural understanding is itself part of why so many people still refuse to accept the official, extremely well substantiated reports on her death. So many stupid 'gotcha' questions can easily be explained with a basic understanding of bipolar disorder, or using a spoonful of critical thinking and prioritizing the real world over unproven supernatural speculation.

"Why is she acting like that?" Because she was having a psychotic break.

It is impossible to reason through the thought process of someone in the grips of psychosis. They are not perceiving reality in the same way as you and me. They do not act rationally, they do not think in ways you can understand. Their mind can convince them that they're the personal target of a CIA assassination plot (paranoia is one of the primary psychotic symptoms) or the literal fucking Messiah on a mission from God (grandiosity is another psychotic symptom) and there is usually not a damn thing you can do to get them out of that.

It doesn't make sense. That's why it's so scary. That's why it's so dangerous.

EDIT: I didn't specify because I take it for granted and don't remember that other people aren't me, but in this post, "dangerous" primarily means danger to the self. Bipolar people are rarely a danger to others, though of course psychosis does carry some potential risks for others.

"Why did she enter the tank if there was no way out?" Because she was manic.

Mania decimates your ability to judge personal risk. You can being doing the most insane shit and you won't have even one reservation about it.

Doing donuts in a half-rusted 2006 Toyota Corolla with one of the wheels falling off on the edge of a crumbling seaside cliff face? Sounds like fun. There is no way this can possibly go wrong for me.

One of the DSM-5 criteria for mania is poor impulse control and inability to evaluate consequences. Hypersexual behavior, reckless spending, and dangerous actions are usually explicitly mentioned as the main examples of these defective risk-evaluation processes.

When she entered that tank, Elisa was probably completely unaware of the danger she was putting herself in, because her brain was not functioning in the way it was supposed to be. It couldn't keep her safe, because that 's what bipolar does to your brain.

That's why it's so scary. That's why it's so dangerous.

"How did she get on the roof?"

It's trivial to find multiple videos of people, after Elisa's death when the Cecil promised it had improved security, making their way to the roof unimpeded without triggering any alarms. Some of those routes are easier than others. But none of them were remotely beyond the reach of someone like Elisa.

In a psychotic break, there is no limit to the determination of the person having it to achieving their goal. That unquenchable drive is, again, why manic episodes are so dangerous. Normal safety features can be surpassed by a sufficiently determined person, and determination is something that people in psychosis have in spades.

"Well, why doesn't this specific detail match bipolar disorder?" It was caused by something else.

Bipolar disorder is nearly always co-morbid with at least one other psychiatric condition. OCD, eating disorders, social anxiety, ADHD, autism, etc. ADHD especially often masks bipolar symptoms in children, whether through misdiagnosis of one condition, or having both conditions with one masking the other. Many co-morbid disorders are never diagnosed, especially considering that Elisa probably was diagnosed in the late 2000s, over 15 years ago. Psychiatry is always evolving, and the past few decades have seen extremely fast development of better ways of treating bipolar, as well as many other conditions. It's likely that Elisa Lam, like most bipolar patients, had other conditions that were never diagnosed.

"Why did the elevator—" I don't know, and I don't fucking care.

Elevators just do stuff like that sometimes. They're machines, they break. Occam's razor, you [EXPLETIVE DELETED].

I think I hate you more than I hate 9/11 truthers.

"Don't take it so personally, we're just having—"

The first time I read the autopsy report, I realized I'm currently taking two of the same medications Elisa was prescribed at the time of her death. I've taken a third in the past.

So yeah, it's pretty fucking personal for me.

This isn't just some person who shares a paper diagnosis with me. This is my life.

It's one thing when you're doing a creative writing exercise on the SCP wiki, but all too often I see the real lives of real people ERASED by gleeful paranormal speculation with no respect for the victims of tragic deaths.

Elisa Lam's memory will be forever saddled by years of bullshit to the point that even NORMAL, RATIONAL discussions on her death have to touch on the jumped-up campfire tales that destroyed her memory and stigmatized people like me and her.

I don't have the kind of reality-destroying hallucinatory episodes that Elisa had. But if my brain were wired just a little bit differently, that could have been me, and the idea of my own memory being destroyed by callous ableists too obsessed with their ghost story hobby terrifies and infuriates me beyond measure. The knowledge that Elisa Lam's memory was destroyed in this way is utterly sickening.

I know what you're gonna say, 'bad apples, blah blah blah' and I don't fucking care.

A few bad apples spoil the barrel, especially when the good apples don't care enough to push back.

I have never seen anyone in the paranormal community try to elucidate any kind of ethical guidelines around their treatment of the lives of real people. The 'good apples' are either ignorant of the harm their community is doing to real people, or they just don't care.

I know I swear too much, but for once I think I'm swearing too little. My hatred for you burns brighter and hotter than a hydrogen bomb.

I hate you all for enabling a culture of profiting off of disrespecting the dead. I hate you all for enabling corporations to make four-hour "documentaries" because you all ate up enough conspiracy slop to convince the soulless suits in Netflix's marketing department that they could make a profit off of your grave desecration.

You aren't truth-seekers. Your supernatural speculations are not 'peeking behind the curtain' and showing us what's really going on. You're hobbyists. You're fanfiction writers for reality. The things you obsess over aren't real.

The lives you stomp all over are. The stories you erase are. The people whose memory you desecrate are.

Bipolar disorder is a complex phenomenon, far more diverse and interesting than your bedtime stories. The expression varies from extreme expressions of deep depressive episodes and intense mania usually found in Bipolar I, the long, dreadful depressive episodes and briefer manic or hypomanic episodes of Bipolar II, and the mix of less extreme depressive spells and hypomanic expressions found in cyclothymia/Bipolar III.

There are mixed states and rapid cycling. Sometimes mania expresses itself in euphoria, high energy, boisterousness, and sometimes it involves irritability, extreme anxiety, and permanent restlessness. The length of depressive episodes as compared to manic episodes varies wildly from person to person.

Medication is complex and often frustrating. Some are extremely helpful, but come with unlivable side effects that send you back to square one. I'm stuck on 20 mg lurasidone because the 40 mg gave me déjà vu. Daily. I probably need a higher dose of antipsychotic, but I don't want to change because lurasidone works really well for me. Lithium is considered one of the more effective medications with relatively few side effects, but taking it requires regular blood testing to guard against toxic overdose from regular usage.

There's so much more to bipolar disorder, and most of this is completely unknown to the general public. Not even I'm pissed enough to delude myself into pretending that this is paranormal enthusiats' fault. There is incredible societal stigma around bipolar disorder unrelated to stupid ghost stories.

But the conflation of typical symptoms of psychiatric conditions, which make people behave in inexplicable and at times unnerving ways with the supernatural doesn't help. These things can be explained by real science in the real world. But they usually aren't. And this obsession with the paranormal (and to a lesser extend true crime, which does overlap somewhat) has conditioned many to jump to false, destructive narratives that erase the humanity, the struggles, and the lives of both the tragically deceased and the living.

In conclusion, FUCK alls y'all.

[viv-hollande]

THE FUCKING ICE REPORT AAAAAAAAAAA

[viv-hollande]

Okay, the results are in and the reblogs deleted.

Apparently Tumblr doesn't let you see the results of your own poll until it closes, or you cast your own vote, so I actually didn't know what the results were until now.

Wow, I did not expect there to be that strong of a consensus. I was actually kind of worried about problems with low sample size, but it seems that 'single post' has won handily.

Again, nonbinding, but seeing how strong consensus was has greatly shifted my perspective here.

The posts in question are in progress. Still no idea about a release date.

So I have a question for my followers.

First off, hi. There's a lot more of you than there used to be. Welcome aboard.

Second, I've got a handful of assorted historical posts coming down the pipeline, but, as some of you have no doubt noticed, conciseness and I are not friends. They're getting pretty long, and I'm starting to wonder if it would be better for me to break them up into smaller posts that all link to each other.

On the pro side:

easier to read/less overwhelming

you get to see parts of the post early when I finish them

I won't feel as bad going into more detail

less overwhelming for me to write

On the con side:

Having to click a bunch of links to keep reading can be annoying

reblogs can't be edited by me, so if someone reblogs before the link is up, no one who sees or reblogs the post from them will see the link

Could go either way:

I have a bad habit of leaving projects incomplete; the more detailed I get, the worse the problem

You may prefer to have a half-complete series with a few complete self-contained sections

You may prefer not to be blueballed by my chronic allergy to commitment

There are also a couple of compromise options.

I could finish the post, break it up into the smaller posts and go live all at once in the middle of the night so no one reblogs it until I can scramble to edit all of the links in. Still less overwhelming to read.

Also there are a handful of essentially interesting side-tangents that I could cut out into their own separate addendum post/posts, so the main post would be shorter but still long. Also I won't feel bad about making the addendums more detailed.

This poll won't be binding or anything, it's just to gauge interest. I also might go for different options, depending on which is better suited for a particular post. It also depends of whether the post gets just really long or Tolstoy long.

Additionally, any suggestions you may have would be welcome. I think I know which topic will be completed first, and trust me, none of you will ever guess what it is.

though given how expansive history is that is probably not a surprise but whatever

[viv-hollande]

The Aesthetic of Resistance: Why Some Western Leftists Support a Regime Which is Everything They Claim to Hate

(Dedicated with appreciation and admiration to literally every single Iranian person I've ever met for educating me.)

A vocal current within the Western Left has become inept at recognizing abuse of power…when it speaks in the language of 'resistance.'

Objectively, Iran isn't a scrappy underdog challenging imperialism. It's a repressive regime that embodies everything the Left claims to despise.

A Theocracy Run by Religious Extremists

If you believe in the separation of Church and State, the regime isn't an ally.

Iran is ruled by unelected clerics who claim divine authority and answer to nobody.

The Supreme Leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is not an elected politician. He's a religious messianic figure with ultimate say over everything from military policy to women's clothing.

The Guardian Council is all male, conservative religious fanatics who regularly disqualify moderates, reformists, or women from participation in any public matters.

This is textbook authoritarian theocracy, a system where dissent is heresy and religious doctrine is law. There is no religious freedom in the Regime's Iran.

They Stone Women. Yes, Still.

The regime's laws on women would make the Taliban proud.

Women must cover their hair and bodies in public.

They cannot sing solo in public.

Their testimony in court is worth half that of a man.

They need male permission to travel, study, or even get a passport.

And yes, they have been stoned to death for adultery — in the 21st century.

When 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested in 2022 by Iran's morality police for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly, she was beaten to death in custody. Her murder sparked mass protests, which the regime crushed with bullets and mass arrests.

There is no question what the response would be if a US state like Alabama enforced such laws. The outrage would be deafening and justified. So why does that same righteous fire for justice seem to extinguish itself somewhere over the Atlantic? What principle justifies this selective vision?

If you chant "ACAB" as a denunciation of state violence and the enforcement of oppressive norms as a moral principle, consistency demands you cast that same critical gaze towards the Regime and it's morality police.

These enforcers serve as agents of the state's ideological control. They target women for unveiled hair, arrest dissidents for defying religious codes, and violently suppress basic civil liberties.

If your anti-authoritarianism stops at Tehran's border because it feels geopolitically inconvenient to criticize a state opposed to Western influence, you're not anti-authoritarian and are not promoting moral principles. You're just performing selective, aesthetic outrage.

Solidarity, if it means anything, must extend to all those resisting state oppression, not just those who fit your aesthetic of revolution.

They Kill Gay People. By Law.

Iran's government executes gay people.

In public.

For being gay.

As state policy.

Consensual same-sex acts between men are punishable by death. Between women? Up to 100 lashes. The regime often forces gay and trans Iranians into exile, prison, or coerced surgery.

This isn’t some rogue judge. This is the actual legal code of the Islamic Republic.

Iran's LGBTQ+ rights record makes Putin look like RuPaul.

Yet somehow, the same activist movements that cover their feeds in rainbows during Pride Month can't seem to work up a single post about Iran's state-sanctioned homophobia.

If your pride doesn't cross al borders, it's not pride. It's an aesthetic, just branding and performance. You can't claim to support LGBTQ+ liberation while ignoring the regime's brutal state-led persecution...unless your solidarity is only for show.

Real allyship doesn't flinch when it's inconvenient or challenges your preferred villains. Pride isn't pride if it's selective and intersectionality is meaningless if you use it to excuse abuses in one nation...which you'd condemn in another.

They Crush Labor Movements and Workers' Rights

Iran doesn't just jail journalists and students. It jails bus drivers.

Labor unions are illegal. Strikes are illegal. Demanding back pay is treated as "national security sabotage."

Teachers, steelworkers, truck drivers — anyone who organizes is beaten, arrested, or disappeared. In 2023 alone, dozens of labor activists were sentenced to multi-year prison terms for trying to negotiate wages or demand safety protections.

You can't champion the "worker’s struggle" while turning a blind eye to a regime that jails, tortures, and executes labor organizers.

If your solidarity skips over Iranian workers because it complicates your anti-imperialist narrative, that’s not internationalism, it's performative ideological convenience. You don't get to wave the red flag for workers' rights while ghosting the ones bleeding for it under a theocratic police state. Labor solidarity isn't real if it ends where the slogans get uncomfortable.

They Colonize and Militarize Their Neighbors

The Islamic Regime of Iran is not just a local bully. It's a regional empire.

It bankrolls and controls violent militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen not to support anyone's liberation, but to spread its own political and religious dominance.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah functions as an Iranian outpost that undermines democratic politics, murders critics, and uses civilians as human shields.

In Syria, Iran helped Assad murder hundreds of thousands of people, including with chemical weapons, just to keep Assad in power as an ally on Israel's border.

In Iraq, Iranian-backed militias have assassinated reformists, hijacked politics, and turned protests into bloodbaths.

In Yemen, Iran arms the Houthis, prolonging one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises so it can poke Saudi Arabia from afar.

If any other country did this, the Left would call it neo-imperialism. When Iran does it? It's "resistance."

You can't claim to stand against imperialism and ignore Tehran's regional warlords. If empire is wrong when it’s Western, it's still wrong when it wears clerical robes and claims to operate under the banner of "resistance."

They Practice Ethnic and Cultural Domination

Iran itself is not a culturally unified state. It's a multi-ethnic empire where Persian Shi'a identity is imposed from the top down.

Kurds are surveilled, imprisoned, and gunned down in the streets.

Baluchis live under occupation-like conditions, with entire towns attacked by the military.

Ahwazi Arabs are denied clean water and education in their own language — in the very province that produces most of Iran’s oil.

Azeris, Turkmen, and others are pressured to assimilate and punished for cultural expression.

Baháʼís, Sunni Muslims, Christians, and Zoroastrians face discrimination, harassment, and systemic exclusion from public life.

The regime bulldozes indigenous cemeteries. Bans non-Persian names. Executes poets and religious leaders.

And yet the Western Left doesn't call this apartheid or colonialism.

If your anti-colonialism skips over this because it clashes with your chosen narrative, then it's not principle. It's just performance.

The Iranian Regime Censors Everything and Jails Everyone

There is no freedom of press. No freedom of religion. No freedom of speech. None.

Journalists are imprisoned for reporting the truth.

Filmmakers are banned or exiled.

Internet access is filtered, throttled, and monitored by the state.

Peaceful protests are met with bullets and mass arrests.

Torture is standard. Forced confessions are routine.

When students protest, they get shot. When families demand answers, they get threats.

Iranian prisons are filled with feminists, union leaders, teachers, students, environmentalists, atheists, reformists, and even children.

Where is the Western Leftist solidarity for them?

You rally for free speech and civil liberties at home, so why the silence when Iran shoots students and jails teachers for demanding the same?

A regime that censors art, criminalizes dissent, and tortures activists is authoritarian.

If your solidarity evaporates the moment it's inconvenient for your narrative, it was never about justice. It was about fashion.

You can't be both pro-liberation and mute about the Regime's prisons overflowing with feminists, filmmakers, and kids. Either stand with the oppressed everywhere or stop pretending you have any moral principles.

If the Regime Wasn't Anti-American, You’d Hate It

The reason some progressives give Iran a pass is because it opposes the US and Israel.

That's it.

If it were a Christian theocracy executing gay people, torturing minorities, and colonizing its neighbors,they'd see it for what it is: a violent, fascist, patriarchal, ethno-nationalist police state.

But because it wears the right aesthetic, they (either through dishonesty or pure ignorance) mistake the Regime as seeking justice.

It’s not.

The Regime Is What the Left Says It's Fighting

It's everything they claim to stand against:

Misogyny

Homophobia

Theocracy

Anti-labor authoritarianism

Militarized ethnonationalism

Colonial violence

Censorship, repression, torture, and propaganda

So the next time someone chants slogans lifted from Tehran, ask yourself: do they know what they’re endorsing? Or are they just cheering for the empire they want to believe is innocent...because that narrative appeals to them.

The regime isn't the voice of the oppressed.

It's just another boot on 90 Million Iranian necks...and millions more in the region.

Sources and Further Information:

[viv-hollande]

On the one hand, yeah it is a good idea to make sure Iran can’t make nukes. It is good that the Iranian regime is significantly weakened. The people of Iran have been asking for help for years and Iranian leaders have been threatening to wipe out full countries like Israel and the US for also years and it would be really bad for such a corrupt regime to have nukes or like get stronger at all. The US only targeted a few specific facilities used for enriching uranium it is a very strategic preventative move. I have friends and family who will be safer because of this. Iranian people are that much more likely to see an end of the regime and a more peaceful future because of this.

On the other hand, he’s acting like a king. Where did rule of law go. This is an impeachable offense and he should be impeached for that. It’s not like he couldn’t have gotten congressional approval. Theres a lot of democrats too against Israel to approve that but there’s also a lot of democrats who are at the very least anti-Iran and understand why this can be a good thing in the long term. As a USian this looks like a very bad sign of very bad things in my future. Like tf. You need congressional approval for that for a reason. It doesn’t matter if it’s preventing nuclear war, you need congressional approval. Don’t go setting the precedent that you can just do this without asking that’s a really scary precedent. This country exists because we don’t want a king tf are you doing rn

[viv-hollande]

[viv-hollande]

what i’ve failed to understand since i was a kid is why these ghouls want war with iran so badly. is it resources? do they have money in defense contracting? is it just that iran is too strong an opponent to us hegemony? why specifically do they want to see iran destroyed?

There is not one singular motivation behind the drive to send the US to war with Iran. There are multiple motivations which often overlap, but which are held in different orders of prioritization by different advocates of war. Most of these motivations are irrational and/or immoral, while others are legitimate complaints that could be addressed through diplomacy far more easily than they could through militarism.

Here's ten common motivations and arguments for a US war with Iran which you might encounter:

Independence from the US: The Iranian government is among the world's least-willing governments to obey US demands and subjugate themselves to the US-led order. For certain US primacists, this independence means that their very existence poses an existential threat to US dominance (similar to North Korea, Cuba, etc.) To a particular type of US militarist, it is necessary for the Iranian government to fall in order for the US to remain the unquestioned leader of the world.

Real Fear of their Nukes: There is a substantial contingent who really does believe that Iran is close to developing a nuclear weapon and that they could well use it if they were to develop it. Logically, the best way to address this concern would be through a diplomatic deal similar to the 2015 JCPOA, which Iran complied with! But the intensity of anti-Iranian sentiment among US hawks tends to convince them that direct military confrontation is somehow a better option, thus explaining why Trump decided to break this deal.

Desire for Revenge: Many older foreign policy hawks in the US have never forgiven Iran for 1) the 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis, and 2) the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Lebanon, which was orchestrated by a terror organization with ties to the Iranian government. In their minds, both of these incidents were embarrassments to the US' military prestige which we have never properly gotten revenge for. (These people tend to ignore the massive wrongdoings which the US has carried out against Iran during this same time period, like the US destruction of Iran Air Flight 655). There are people in and around the Pentagon who have wanted to bomb Iran over a grudge for more than 40 years now.

Iran's Regional Proxies: Over the last several decades, Iran has engaged in an aggressive campaign to expand their influence throughout the region by supporting proxy paramilitary forces in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, etc. Many of these proxies have undeniably engaged in acts of terrorism. This strategy is both opportunistic (taking advantage of the power vacuum caused by the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein) and defensive (countering the regional influence campaigns of Saudi Arabia and Turkey). This is probably the most legitimate cause of US anger towards the Iranian government, but it is a grievance which will only be worsened by backing Iran into a corner militarily.

Israel (and Saudi Arabia) Hates Them: Iran is unfriendly with two of the US' closest partners in the region: Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Israeli government, in particular, has long been laser-focused on the overthrow of the Iranian government, and they are fully committed to dragging the US into such a regime change operation. For the most fervent defenders of Israel in the US, overthrowing the Iranian government is near the top of their wishlist.

They Got Oil: Oil is a factor which is often overstated in these discussions, but it definitely is one of the factors. Iran currently produces 5% of the world's oil and has the potential to produce far more were the current sanction regime against it to be removed. They also have the ability to shut down the Straight of Hormuz, an important chokepoint through which 25% of the world's oil flows. Regime change in Iran would significantly increase the leverage that the US and its allies hold over global oil markets and further weaken the strength of OPEC.

And Other Commodities Too!: Though the separation between the US and Iranian economies hurts the US economy as a whole, there are certain sectors of US industry that benefit enormously from having Iran so heavily sanctioned. Some of the big names in the US pistachio industry have lobbied heavily to keep US-Iranian relations unfriendly, because the elimination of US sanctions on Iran would allow the massive Iranian pistachio industry to compete with the US industry. As long as these two governments hate each other, a few politically-connected US businessmen make way more money.

Diaspora Pressure Campaigns: Most Iranian-Americans hold the following two opinions at the same time: 1) they hate the current Iranian government and want to see it replaced, but 2) they strongly oppose US efforts at regime change in Iran. However, there is a vocal minority of Iranian-Americans that do support regime change efforts, and they tend to cluster into two well-organized groups that wage pressure campaigns against the Iranian government. The first are the monarchists, who want to see the son of the former US-backed Iranian dictator restored to power. The others are those who are loyal to the MEK, a cult and former terrorist organization which has been extremely effective at building relationships with US politicians. Both of these groups work full-time to push the US towards overthrowing the Iranian government so that they can step in and take over; it's fairly easy to find both of these groups in online social media threads about US-Iranian relations.

Who Cares, We Want War: As I have written about many times before, the US military-industrial complex encourages the US government to engage in militarist behavior in order to boost their profits. Iran is one of their favorite boogeymen to justify increased levels of US military spending, second only to China. These companies fund think tanks and other policy initiatives to argue that Iran is an immediate threat to us, and then they fund political candidates who want to spend more money preparing for this "threat."

They're Crazy! You Can't Trust Them!: We are led to believe that the Iranian government cannot be negotiated with because they are irrational, they're anti-Western religious zealots incapable of reasoned decision-making. This is a convenient excuse for war, but it's entirely incompatible with the restraint that the Iranian government shows in responding to Israeli attacks, their continued willingness to sit down for diplomatic talks with their aggressors, the way that they helped the US government deal with al Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11, and a million other indications that the Iranian government is just as rational as any other government in its geopolitical decision-marking.

Add all of that together, and you get a deranged political ecosystem obsessed with inflating the scale of foreign threats, finding excuses for maintaining the trajectory of our militarist status quo, increasing regional tensions, and rejecting obvious opportunities for diplomacy and a peaceful resolution of our differences.

[viv-hollande]

offer them a little treat !

[viv-hollande]

while we're at it, tearing down the hostage posters was always evil and fucked up.

[viv-hollande]

“lmao that’s gooner bait” “so seggsy” “lol that’s for coomers”

[viv-hollande]

which 3 US presidents do you think would be the best omegas and which 3 bisexual pop stars would be their best matched alphas

1) John Adams

John Adams was a tireless advocate for the revolution (i.e. topping from the bottom) and he once described himself as "obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular" - "he was known for his bluntness, impatience, and tendency to be easily frustrated with those who disagreed with him." As a brat in Congress, his personality was repulsive, but everyone listened to him and they all still wanted him. They wanted him so bad they made him president. Kind of makes you think.

His match:

Adams needs someone with a strong personality to challenge his - someone who's not afraid to repel the mainstream in order to realize their vision. Gaga has it, and he needs it. "Bad Romance" in many way encompasses Adams' struggles through the 1776 Continental Congress. They could teach each other much.

2) Theodore Roosevelt

A man dedicated to the preservation of natural parks and ecological wonders - and for what? To run through the trees under the full moon as his pheromones wafted through the air? We know.

His match:

Grimes once described herself as becoming "way less gay" after she became pregnant, which is 1) weird, and 2) the reason I'm sticking her with Teddy. I don't think that he could fix her completely, but she seems the type to maintain no moral compass of her own, simply adopting the political ideology of whomever she's with, so maybe there's hope. Maybe Grimes could introduce Teddy to shrooms, and Teddy could take her out on trips in the forest. And then we can find out if Grimes getting a man pregnant makes her more or less gay.

3) Richard Nixon

Best known for his one legendary debate with the handsome JFK, wherein he became a stuttering, sweating mess, unable to focus or say what he meant. Interesting!

His match:

Bisexual icon Taylor Swift is also struggling to appease both sides of the political aisle. They could share their woes and their love of good ol' fashioned Americana, and then Taylor could tie him to the wall and make him bark like a dog. The pregnancy would be difficult on both of them with Taylor's extremely busy schedule, and Nixon would regrettably terminate it in the second trimester, causing a rift in the relationship that would never be mended. The resulting laments that Taylor composed about Nixon's abortion would of course be dissected and attributed to a secret relationship with a woman - Nixon's wife.

I welcome critical analysis.