Readers know I don’t just go around using unironic exclamation points willy-nilly. BUT HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS!!!
Obama commutes Chelsea Manning sentence
Death to Squirrels
by Iris Vander Pluym
Readers know I don’t just go around using unironic exclamation points willy-nilly. BUT HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS!!!
Obama commutes Chelsea Manning sentence
“#NOT MY PRESIDENT!” in hot pink paint
Hudson & Christopher Sts.
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You know what? I also approve this tactic. Remember waaaaaay back in the ancient times of the Bush/Cheney regime, when protesters were banished to remote “First Amendment zones”? Apparently fragile conservatives – from the Commander In Chief to your ordinary right-wing doucheweasel – could never, ever be exposed to even the mildest, fact-based, critical messaging. Especially not anywhere near their Hitler Youth rallies/campaign events, or even en route thereto.
GOOD TIMES.
I want to see hot pink #NOTMYPRESIDENT everyfuckingwhere. Billboards. TV and print ads. T-shirts and jackets. Social media profiles. Bumper stickers. Tie pins. Skywriters.
#NOTMYPRESIDENT projected in gorgeous, searing fuchsia light, onto every Trump building in the world, every single night.
#NOTMYPRESIDENT spray painted in giant letters on the front of the goddamn White House. (Paging Banksy…)
I want hot pink #NOTMYPRESIDENT to be so ubiquitous that there is nowhere Trump or his supporters can go, in public, in media or online, without encountering it.
Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?
Although now that I think about it, no one ever explained to my satisfaction what dire calamity would befall us all if these delicate conservative flowers actually encountered meaningful criticism, much less vehement protest. But based on my own experience with conservative specimens I’ve personally observed, I can predict with near certainty that they will flail and lash out like overindulged toddlers on a sugar high. Frankly this could be problematic if they have, say, the US’s entire surveillance and law enforcement institutions under their direct control. To say nothing of the nuclear launch codes…
Okay nevermind. Forget I said anything.
Have a nice day.
It has become my tradition on this day of remembrance to post the text of a speech delivered by Dr. King on April 4, 1967 at Manhattan’s Riverside Church entitled Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (audio recording here), along with a short commentary about why I believe these words are so important. The speech is truly magnificent, yet it tends to be given short shrift relative to other works of the slain civil rights leader.
I am excited to be contributing with many of my FtB colleagues on a new group blog, Freethought Resistance, focused on anti-fascist activism in the age of Trump. PZ’s introductory post is here.
Here are links to my first three posts:
Petition to Mark Zuckerberg: Don’t censor human rights documentation.
Going forward, I will probably cross-post material to the extent that it’s appropriate; for some reason, no one seems very gung-ho about hosting my anti-squirrel activism over there. (?!!!)
I hope you will check out Freethought Resistance on the regular and participate to the extent you are willing and able.
The Thanksgiving fairytale is so pervasive that people across the country blindly teach and celebrate a 400-year-old mythic “friendship” between the pilgrims and Indians while turning their backs on real and systemic violence happening now to Native people and allies at the hands of authorities protecting oil interests over the interests of future generations of water drinkers. Forget Plymouth Rock. Stand with Standing Rock.
-Mniconjou Lakota journalist and citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Taté Walker
My friend Sincere Kirabo has a pithy piece up at The Humanist about the myths surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday. The money quote: [Read more…]
: The Twit in Chief took to Twitter to demand an apology for this unconscionable harassment:
Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!
And:
The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!
“Harassed.” LOL. Sure.
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Vice President-elect Mike Pence (R-eligious Bigot) went to see the Broadway show Hamilton last night, and got booed by the audience. Good.
Caine’s comment on my last post brought to mind something I wrote on a friend’s Facebook post yesterday:
Sadly, I used to have much more empathy and compassion for conservatives than I do now. When their political orientation comes down to “I got mine, f*ck you and f*ck them” – and yes, it really is that simple, narcissistic, infantile and un-nuanced – I no longer find myself able to give a single, solitary f*ck about them. I can *understand* them, and to a certain limited extent have basic empathy for them as I would any human being. But I can no longer honestly say that I don’t wish for them that they reap exactly what they have sown. And then some. I am not proud of this, BTW. But “be the better person” no longer cuts it for me as a survival mechanism (if it ever really did). Not when conservatives are *by nature* opposed to equality in principle, and indifferent (at best) to unnecessary suffering, except for their own.
And in case you were wondering, that also goes for the conservatives in the Democratic Party Squirrel People.
Somebody commented on my cross-post about the election at my other blog. Well, “commented” isn’t quite the right word—more like “Demsplained.” I’ve been seeing a lot of this, and I am not having it. I’ll spare you the whole self-righteous rant, but I do want to address the overall gist by responding to a few brief excerpts.
Stop blaming Bernie supporters.
Not if they stayed home on election day, no. They absolutely share the blame. (I voted for Sanders in the primary.)
Stop blaming white people.
The ones who overwhelmingly voted for Trump? The ones who stayed home or cast third-party votes in swing states? No.
Stop blaming Black people or Latinos.
Only a Trump-magnitude asshole would ever do that.
Stop blaming people who voted their conscience.
Jeezus Christ. EVERYONE voted their conscience, and even people who stayed home did so because of conscience. Their consciences suck. I can and will hold accountable every single one of them if they had any part in this outcome. Lard knows they’re highly unlikely to ever do it themselves. Especially not with people like you ranting about how blameless they all are.
You’re looking for me to suck it up and sing kumbaya with people who by their own action or inaction threw women, LGBTQs, immigrants, Muslims, Native Americans, the disabled, blacks and Latinxs, the poor, the environment, 20 million people who will lose health insurance etc. under the fucking bus because “They want us fighting among ourselves,” “They want us divided,” and “That’s how they always win.” No. That is an abuser’s tactic, and that shit does not fly with me. Not any more.
I am not the one who did the fucking “dividing” here; YOU are refusing to hold accountable those who are actually responsible. They, and you, need to OWN THAT SHIT.
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If you’re getting a sense of deja vu like I am, I think its because the parallels to Big Tent Atheism™ are only too obvious.
The following is a post by my friend and Freethought Blogs colleague Nathan Hevenstone. Nate requested that it be reposted far and wide. I am happy to oblige.
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Just when I thought I could start posting lighter stuff…
Cops shoot, kill woman barricaded with little boy wounded in Baltimore standoff (I don’t know if the video in the link shows the shooting… I can’t get it to play. I’m sorry. Be wary just in case.)
In a fit of road rage, Anthony Vigilotti pointed a handgun directly at a police officer, but was arrested later that day without incident. From his mugshot, it doesn’t even look like he received a scratch in the process.
Jed Frazier pointed his handgun directly at police, but “officers and medics took shelter and continued to make contact with Frazier. Shortly before 3 a.m. Police say they broke the windows in the truck and extricated Frazier. Frazier was treated for minor injuries before being taken to the Lawrence County Jail.”
In a quick search, I found a dozen similar stories from July alone. White men, be they mass shooters like Dylann Roof (Charleston), James Holmes (Aurora), or Jared Lee Loughner (Tucson) — or men like William Bruce Ray, Anthony Vigilotti, or Jed Frazier — all live to face a jury of their peers.
Korryn Gaines doesn’t have a violent history. She was a cosmetologist and, according to her friends and family, a doting mother. She should’ve received the treatment that all of those armed white men received. Somehow, in each of those cases, police found in their hearts to overcome their fears without unloading their guns on those men.
That’s white privilege.
It should be noted that at least 682 people have been murdered by the police this year.
Korryn Gaines posing with her son over her back. Both look very happy.
I really want to say more. I’d like to say how enraged I am, how every time I post something like this, I do it through tears. And that is 100% true. I’m in tears now.
But so fucking what? What do my rage and my tears accomplish?
For those who are already dead, nothing.
I can support Black Lives Matter, and they are still dead.
I can post about them, and they are still dead.
I can show pictures of them being people, and they are still dead.
I can vote, and they are still dead.
I can donate money, and they are still dead.
I can talk about my white privilege, and they are still dead.
I can get out in the streets, and they are still dead.
These people, whose lives did fucking matter, at least to me, are now dead, never to see their children grow up, never to see or meet their grandchildren, or great grandchildren, never to see how there lives would progress into the future…
Because they were murdered by the damn state. Everything I try to do to make some kind of small change, to support a future where this doesn’t happen, doesn’t help the ones who are already dead.
But it can help those who are still alive, and still in danger. I can at least do something for all of you still breathing because, so far, the cops have seen fit to let you live.
God I’m sorry. It means nothing, but I’m sorry. We white people have to make it stop. Things have to change. And I’ll keep using my privilege and my platform to speak up, for those of you who are still alive, because your lives DO FUCKING MATTER. And until this country accepts that, I won’t stop saying it.
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Thank you, Nate. ♥
Paul Jay of The Real News had an interesting discussion (in two parts) with author and scholar Henry Giroux about a potential Trump presidency and its implications for democracy. In normal times, I would find Giroux laughably hyperbolic when he says, for instance, that under a Trump presidency the world is in serious danger of nuclear war, or that political dissent would be criminalized.
These are not normal times.