Bébé Mélange (née Great American Satan) is an AMAB genderqueer pansexual person living near poverty with their husband in the concrete suburban sprawl of the Puget Sound region.

With regards to the new blog title up there, apologies and respect to the late and lovely Marc Bolan.
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**COMMENT POLICY**
I recognize this is not easy, but avoid using "stupid" "crazy" and their synonyms in my comment sections. Also try to be a little less aggro with each other than you might be on other FTBlogs. If somebody is being a shit, I'll probably get rid of them myself. I get few enough comments it's not hard to moderate each one.
DOOMERISM POLICY - I'm going to stop posting hopeless content, although I am allowing myself to post things that point to dark realities, within the context that I'm advocating we all do our best to survive and have a stoic spirit. And in exchange for me not posting doomerism, I'm banning doomer comments, whether they're about the environment or politics. I won't allow people to make other people terrified or suicidal by expressing their own terror or suicidal ideation here anymore, sorry. Take that to Pharyngula. For the history of this policy, see this post.
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Furry Rights Now

Seriously.

Transgender people were a big wedge issue used to flip who knows how many fools to voting fash, or just not bothering to vote against them. Scumbags look for somebody to hate, smash the hate speech button until they find one that doesn’t make people feel too bad about themselves, and get everybody disgusted about some disgusting weirdos that don’t deserve rights.

If social progress somehow makes it through the barrier of fuckery that has been erected against it right now, if transgender people become more accepted, who is the next target for nazis? They never stopped targeting Jewish people and racial minorities and the disabled and women, just tuned that whistle high enough to harvest a few demographic traitors. In this election it was all about “illegals” and “perverts trying to trans your kids.” And somewhere in all that ruckus, they tried on a new target for size.

Furries. They’re going after furries next. I am not shitting you. The time to try and move the needle on furry rights is now. Get people to accept furries whenever you can. Turn the conversations around, when people talk about how disgusting and creepy they are. Who are you to judge, Nancy? I seen what you’re into, Fred.

Anyway, for my part, I’m throwing open the barn stables right now. Bébé Mélange is a furry ally. I may not always be the best ally, but I’ll try to improve.

This gets into a territory of “is this an immutable characteristic,” like can you change this about yourself if you want to? People will try that on as a way to say furries don’t need protection. But I think, nuh. I know the transgender experience is highly variable, and for some of us, it might feel like a choice – like for safety, some of us could detrans and ride out the rest of their life, without committing triple turbo suicides immediately. But even for those people, they deserve trans rights. Likewise, if being a furry is totally optional for all furries? So what?

There are some lines I’ll have to scribble here and there on the big perv tent, like, I’m not gonna stump on Capitol Hill for age regression RP and diaper play. People should be able to do that too, but it feels less like something you could do non-sexually at the office on Monday… I dunno. I don’t know anything.

But I know this. Furry rights now!

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We Weren’t Abandoning You

There’s a notion, fueled by some careless rhetoric from blue state types, that we don’t care about helping protect the oppressed in red states. As I reflect on that in this moment, we really weren’t. Absolutely not. The very fact we were trying to make sure the federal government was blue on top was specifically an effort to protect your rights. It helps us as well, but it helped you a lot more – because that federal power was necessary to impose your rights on hateful state governments that argued prejudice is a state’s right.

State’s rights is the cry of those who do not have as much political power as they’d prefer, for their faction. I find myself singing it from the rafters now, and that is, low key, an abandonment of you now. Sorry about that. I do hope that whatever rights we manage to protect in blue states, we can use those to help red state refugees when they need it. I know Canada doesn’t want you. They are absolute shits about USians trying to move north. Not sure if Mexico would take US refugees, but I can think of some big reasons why they wouldn’t.

Point is, we weren’t abandoning you, back in the halcyon days of anytime before now. But it might look more like we are now, as we scramble to secure our states’ rights to protect human rights from the fascist death machine. I hope you won’t look poorly upon us for that, and I hope it benefits you as well, in some way, some day.

I’m too tired to find a better place to end this post. May these motherfuckers devour themselves and vanish from the Earth in a puff of smoke. May we all live to see a better tomorrow.

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Sieg Fvck All Y’all

I heard about the event but I’d never have seen the moment itself, if a tumblr I follow hadn’t thrown it in my face. It’s a lot less ambiguous than I’d have imagined from the words apologists and wemblers used to describe it. Side-by-side comparison with some non-trillionaire neo-nazis is informative, hidden under the fold because yuck.

Getting Terrorized

If it seems like I’m not taking the current political situation seriously, that isn’t true. I feel it. It hurts. It’s wretched. I wish I could fix it, undertake some sort of violence that would set the world right. I feel bad, for at least some amount of time, every day. Feels worst in the lead-up to going into work on Monday – Sunday night, Monday before dawn. Composing this on a Sunday, back on the 2nd.

But there are some facts that are very important to keep in mind. Most of us are going to be able to live the rest of our lives just fine, whatever hardships this may add. We can prepare ourselves in various practical ways for a lot of bad things, but not all of them. Worrying is not preparing; it’s just hurting yourself. I know, you can’t avoid it completely. I sure can’t either. But we have to minimize its impact on our lives.

Frankly, if we don’t, the terrorists win – to borrow a cheesy slogan from the post 9-11 era. The fascists love it when we think about them all the time, when we show fear, even when we show anger. Were you ever bullied? Same deal. I don’t love living in fear of what the bastards will do next, but I really don’t love the fact they can crank their hogs to the signs of my fear.

We have to oppose them. I do think almost all the methods we were using before still have a place in practice now. We might have to add some new tricks. Keep up the good work, when and how and if you can. And if you can’t? Do your best to survive and thrive. Anything you can do to make your life as good as it can be, that does matter. It is a victory in this larger war, on one small but very important battlefield.

Meanwhile, what can we do to ease our worries? I’m still trying to find things that work for me. Obviously, I’ve been throwing myself into creativity, and plan to continue that as much as possible. Even so, tonight I find myself feeling kinda ill, my viscera trembling like a fall leaf. Keep in mind I wrote this days ago, so reassurance belated and probably unnecessary when you read it.

At least I have a posse. I have a blue state behind me, I have a union, I have my comrades here. It doesn’t feel real some days, but other times, it really helps me. I know a lot of you don’t have all of those reassurances. But you do have a comrade in me, for what I’m worth. Let’s keep this life going, together.

Drop suggestions for ways to feel better, even if they only work a little bit. Add ’em all up, that’s something. See you later!

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A Civil Restructuring

As Abe Oceanoxia mentioned, we’re in an era of endless recovery, where the damage wrought by natural disasters will always outpace our ability to repair it. The slithering shitstain in chief is doing a blitz of horrible moves to make life worse for everyone. Everything has everybody on back heel all the time, which parallels the recovery from natural disasters. Before you can even get a handle on one fucked-up insult to human dignity, you are broadsided with another three.

But at some point, we are going to have to crawl out from under the fecal deluge, and make some moves. You and I can only do so much, and we should of course do that much, but the people most responsible for fighting back? That’s on the decent people in government. What can they do?

It is distinctly possible this is the end of democracy in america for the next few decades. Certainly it feels like the Civil Rights Movement was just busted back to the 1960s. I used to say there was no way a politician on either side of the aisle would want to be the one holding the bag when Social Security runs out of money, but that sentiment belongs to a time when norms existed. We’re in an era of uncharted fuckery, under the fascist deathclown administration. Will they let the SSA fail? They might.

This brings me back to those decent people in government, particularly in states where they have enough power and resources to make real moves for their people. The governments of places like California, Washington, and New York, they need to start uncoupling themselves from the federal government.

What does it matter to your state if Social Security fails, if you have a state retirement system that covers your citizens? What does it matter if Medicare fails, if you have a better state healthcare system? Those things are not so trivial and not so easy, but I contend that they are possible.

Those would be the actions of true states – independent political entities. Easy to forget that the very name of the USA is an artifact of a time when every state wanted to be its own country, with only a nominal federal government. Well, the federal government is about to get nuked from within, so it’s time to start treating the situation with that kind of seriousness.

How hilarious would it be if the NYPD had its budget actually fucking constrained for the first time ever, to pay for important shit the people actually need? It would be soooooooooo fucking easy to spot the excesses. They could keep their massive salaries and benes and number of cops in the city, sure, and still save millions by, oh, say, not having offices in foreign countries? Not having military vehicles? I’d love to see it.

I had another article about this before, more or less, but that one didn’t get this specific. I’m calling on the governments of blue states to make those baller moves. Protect human rights. Get teams of civil rights lawyers figuring out any way possible to keep civil rights decisions from escaping to higher courts staffed by fascist shitlords. Get sociolgists forming comprehensive analyses of the ways people live in your states, where society is failing them, and develop more efficient and effective ways to palliate human suffering – thus making your states even more attractive to people fleeing from the United States of Jesusland.

Get civil engineers thinking of ways to take care of natural disaster preparedness without a lick of federal support. Make concrete plans that will make your states physically safer and better places to invest in, for business and real estate etc. Laugh at places like Florida letting themselves get blasted to pieces year after year, just to stick it to the transes and DEI wokesters. What if Cali could figure out a way to make fire season less dangerous? What an achievement that would be!

Yeah, there are a lot of items on here that seem wildly pie-in-the-sky, even sci-fi, but this is the future, guys. Right now it’s a burning trashfire of a cyberpunk dystopia. The failure of the central government might actually be just the opportunity you need to set this thing off – to really change the world where you are in ways that inspire all of humanity.

Do you have the political will? You’ve never shown that spine before, but these are wild-ass times. Show us what you can do, please.

Hey, why am I not making a hunnerd grand a year in a DC thinktank. George Soros! Hear me! (in the voice of that guy that recorded himself kidnapping his kids and asked Qanon to save him) Give me tha power. Y’all know I’m good for it.

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Are Black People Smarter?

Little bit of a land mine here, but I’m feeling insouciant today, so bear with me… I’ve talked with thousands and thousands of Americans from all walks of life, and surely my impressions of that experience are tainted by biases. Racists annoy the fuck out of me and are foolish as all hell; people who live on the receiving end of systemic racism have my sympathy. I also relate a lot more to poor people than to the middle class. So are my perceptions accurate?

There are standardized tests for “IQ” other cognitive faculties, and these have problems galore – not the least of which was their origin as a method for justifying racism. I’m not even gonna bother with links; this shit is common knowledge among those nominally acquainted with the subject and with no delusions about their genetic superiority motivating the shit out of their reasoning.

But on a practical level, numbers aside, some people are just more thoughtful than others. I characterize this as being willing to take new information on board, genuinely try to understand new things they encounter, and able to learn.

Ability to learn is a funny thing, because as we grow out of childhood, many of us handicap ourselves on purpose. You mean I’m never gonna need this information again? Fuck it, I chuck it, will re-learn as-needed. I can feel that I did this to myself sometime around age 20. While circumstance has pushed me into trying harder, I still allow myself the luxury of not learning shit, whenever I can. There are people who either didn’t limit themselves in the first place, or are just more wise in how they apply that limitation, more able to get back into learning mode.

Willingness to try to understand new things is obviously a useful trait to have, but we don’t need it most of the time. Our lives can be pretty damn simple in most ways, most of the time. Whatever else is difficult about them, it isn’t the complexity of the problems in front of us. It can get rusty, same as what I described in previous paragraph. But I feel like this is a little different from that issue… That’s about memorizing a new fact, this is about understanding why that fact is so – understanding a process.

The thing the reflexively ignorant don’t get is that understanding the process makes remembering the facts easier. Like, remembering dates in history is rote, easy to lose. Understanding what happened in sequence – what led to what – can make the simpler facts, like dates, easier to remember.

This is practical intelligence, not fancy logic or math or knowing big words. A small child can be thoughtful, an adult can be thoughtless, and vice versa. By this metric, I’ve spent a vast, unspeakable amount of time talking with thoughtless people, and less speaking with the thoughtful. Of course, the average person is somewhere in between, but still shades toward the foolish side.

If I’m talking to an 89 year old who is still very sharp, it’s usually an upper class person with an ocean of privilege behind them, who worked in academia, finance, law, etc, on the pointy end of it. That’s gonna shade white, tho not exclusively. But stepping back from those rarities to look at people who are still very competent, who can look at a situation involving new information and deal with it, not shut down and get angry or cry about it?

Feels like the median black person is more intelligent than the median white people, in practical ways – which are the only ways that really matter. I’m not interested in having a conversation with somebody that has advanced knowledge but can’t be fucked to understand anything outside that domain. I want somebody that can be exposed to new information and understand it enough to have something to say about it. That’s just conversation, but it’s indicative of the approach to other kinds of information as well.

It’s like white people feel more entitled to not have to think about things, to put that onto other people, and have anything they need sorted out for them with zero thought involved. Black people are used to a society that is low key hostile to them getting their needs met in every way, cradle to the grave, so they need to be able to understand the shit that comes their way.

I might be remembering the thoughtless white people at outsized rates because of the biases I mentioned above, but also because they make a much more acrid stink about having their right to not have to think impinged upon. I might be remembering black people who figured out some tangled bullshit at outsized rates because my unconscious bias is to assume them less intelligent, and it comes as a surprise when it should not. I know there’s no way I haven’t absorbed that poison on a cellular level.

But I dunno. Maybe black people are just better than us.

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Note: If my comments are half as foolish as this post itself was, I’m gonna have to shut ’em down. It could get offensive in a hurry. For that matter, what I wrote could be pretty offensive to a reasonable person, and they don’t deserve to get upset because I thought it would be funny to upset unreasonable people, right? In which case, sorry, and let’s just move along tomorrow. I’ll leave this post up as a monument to my folly.

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Tvxnp Wants You Stuck in Traffic

There are about three million federal workers and more than half of their collective work hours take place in person – telecommute is common, but most telecommuters spend some amount of time in office; few are exclusively remote. Sixty-one percent of work hours are in person, so using that an extremely crude proxy for amount of time spent in commute, something something,

Tvxnp🖤Mvksk want to put like 1.8 million extra drivers on the road during your daily commute, with all the attendant pollution we as a nation have proven to not give a fuck about, but also adding to congestion, which we do complain about an awful lot. That includes people whose entire-ass job is being on the phone and computers, whose work is constantly tracked and monitored, who couldn’t be doing less work at home even if they wanted to.

It’s also making any federal jobs that had offered telecommute before suddenly a lot less appealing than their equivalents in the private sector, driving people away from agencies that are already understaffed. This only makes sense in light of their overt not-quite-fully-confessed desire to destroy the entire US government, except for whatever apparatus funnels working peoples’ tax money into the bottomless tax credits and loopholes available to the rich, and except for the police and military which are needed to keep the proles in line.

Never change, shitheads. Keep making everything worse for everyone in every way you can, why not? It’s who you are.

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Write, Jan 17th-20th

In a profound insult to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., a racist sexist classist know-nothing soulless shitsack con-man thug and dime store Hitler will assume the throne of the USA on MLK day, January 20th 2025 – soon to be known as The Day the Music Actually Died. I don’t know about you, but I will not be paying the slightest bit of attention to it, or fucking anything that follows. We know by the end of the week there will be about fifty executive orders making things worse for just everybody that is alive now or going to be alive for decades to come. We will have all the time in the world to find out about these things as they fuck us over, so why speed-run our sorrow?

I don’t work Fridays and I have Monday the 20th off for the holiday, so I have a four day weekend. I will be doing a speed-writing event with whoever is willing from my writing group – which is likely to be nobody but my husband, heh. I will be attempting to finish a short novel in four days. To facilitate that, I have done a lot of preparation and intend to do more – coming up with answers to any questions that might bog me down with research, coming up with names, outlining the plot more specifically than I might for a more casual paced event.

So. Can you write around 12,500 words a day during that window of time? Or just part of that time? If not that ambitious, what could you write? Might you be available? It would be cool to have some solidarity on busting this thing out.

Another question for you: Would you mind if I posted the whole first draft here as I wrote it? I know some of you feel overwhelmed when I ramp up productivity for a minute, and just check out. I don’t mind if I don’t get comments, or get them days or weeks later when you’ve caught up. I do think it would be fun to post a big wild pile of unedited mayhem on here, but I don’t want to waste your time or my own if that’ll just hit like a lead balloon.

And with regard to the solidarity thing, you could post your first drafts in my comments. Long posts will end up going to spam and need to be manually cleared so might not show immediately, but I will approve them. Or you could post reminder links to somewhere else online where your words are posted. Sharing your first draft is for egomaniacs only; it is showing your ass in the worst way. I’d love to see it. If you do post yours, I might not have time to read them until after the event, but I’ll read yours if you read mine.

Holla at your dogg.

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Edit to Add: i forgot that critique is an implicit ask when posting something publicly. if it helps you feel more bold in posting your stuff, we can make this officially “no critique” or “positive feedback only.” it’s my house; i can make that happen for you.

Time to Form a Third Party?

More than usual, I’m amenable to hearing arguments in favor of abandoning the dems for a third party. If it was done on a large enough scale and fast enough, it could end-run the two-party stranglehold. If you do it on election eve 2028, bad timing. If you got way better than Green numbers well in advance, with a sufficiently bad-ass campaign, it might not be that hard to make a better showing than Harris, next time out. Her numbers were that miserable. These are radical times; radical things may happen.

I don’t have much to say on this right at the moment, and I know the conversation could get acrimonious, but if you can keep it civil, please speak your piece below. As much as I’m “vote dem or die” when there is no viable alternative in sight, it feels more possible than it has in a while that we could all just dust those fools off and do something else.

With dems acting the way they are now, we can be fairly assured of ten to forty years of fascist rule. If they changed their tune tomorrow I’d be open to hearing it, but they’ve been signaling a right-wing turn. What if we had somebody else, another party that wasn’t a fucking piss-take?

I will immediately return to “vote dem or die” if we get closer without a crushing success in building a replacement, so this is idle fancy. But get fancy with me for a minute.

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