The War Against Apathy

Young people have GOT to stop talking about conservatives like they're scary menacing monsters. Yes the policies they back are horrifically destructive but that's entirely because of how individually stupid, fearful, emotionally stunted, weak willed and catastrophically gullible they are. That all is what made them become right wing to begin with. Just the most easily manipulated zombie sheep on earth.

People I have encountered in the past month who voted for Tr*mp include:

- Homeless girl who asked for my pronouns immediately and used them correctly every time

- Hispanic woman with a large family who just got her citizenship and is still working on her English

Neither of these women understood what they were supporting, they mostly saw ads that he was going to reduce grocery prices and voted based on that. Neither of them have consistent access to information or any relevant political education, nor the time, money, or energy to seek it out because they are focused on surviving.

A vast amount of republican voters are exactly the same, and it's a direct result of the GOP strategically denying them resources. We cannot move forward if you throw people to the curb for not knowing any better.

I need to emphasize that these people are "stupid, fearful, emotionally stunted, weak willed and catastrophically gullible" because they have been forcefully kept in poverty without access to proper education, therapy, or community support and fed fearmongering propaganda their entire lives without anyone ever showing them life can be better. They are traumatized and exhausted and a lot of them are trapped in religious cults.

They are like this because the GOP has meticulously engineered huge swaths of the country to be that way. It is not an inherent personal failing and it is very likely you would be the same had you grown up in the same circumstances.

You do not have to shake hands with bigots, but you need to have compassion and understanding for people who have not yet been given the resources and political understanding you have.

I'm not done here actually. Dehumanization like "zombie sheep" is in direct opposition to the kinds of strategies we are going to need to survive after January 6th. Yes, these people voted for something horrific, but they are still people and as things get bad most of them are going to be negatively impacted– and when that happens we need to be there to support them because that is how we get them to join us and fight back. Everything that makes them susceptible to right-wing propaganda will work in our favor in the right circumstances.

We simply will not get anywhere if we are determined to not see people we hate as people. Humans can learn and grow, zombie sheep cannot.

ETA: Since people are misconstruing my meaning here, we punch fascists on sight. But if someone says "I didn't realize this would happen when I voted for the fascists" or there's even a single crack in their loyalty you scoop them up ASAP no matter how much you want to toss them off a cliff because with a bit of compassion you can get them to turn against the fascists, and that is how we win.

I was going to be done with this post, but just came across something I want to add because it's a lens anyone who primarily interacts with politics online is completely missing:

This is the heart of what I was trying to get across. People are not black-or-white, they're messy and diverse and a lot more malleable than you might think. If you gauge party politics by what you see online and in the media you do not understand the average American at all.

If you see right-wing voters as a distinct class of people it just shows that you exist in a bubble. Only people with a certain level of education and access to information talk about politics the way it's discussed on the internet, and if you refuse to exit that bubble out of fear, hatred, and classism you will not be able to successfully organize resistance to the coming administration.

~ Hirohiko Araki, Manga in Theory and Practice: The Craft of Creating Manga

If your democrat friends start muttering about stolen election conspiracy theories, the time to have a sit down with them and express your concerns is NOW, while you still have a chance to reach them, not 6 months from now when they're fully conspiracy-pilled.

Here's some of the talking points and why they're bullshit:

But just as importantly as the facts: sit down with your friend and talk about the anxiety that's behind their conspiracy leanings. Acknowledge their pain and fear. Help them find ways to feel less powerless and regain their sense of agency. Take them to a mutual aid event, involve them in a fundraising event for a marginalized group, invite them to a local community effort. If they spend more time feeling connection and empowerment and less time doom scrolling online, they're far more likely to stay in reality.

Feeling super amped up that we got Executive Director, Julie Packard, and Chief Conservation and Science Officer, Margaret Spring joining the trend to tell you all about the based things at our Aquarium. They truly were the moment💅✨🌊

The upside is that there was an absentee ballot recount in our most populated and very blue county and it pushed us over for a blue Senate win. So yay for that because I was fucking miserable seeing the Republican win there too.

Btw, this is another reason to call your county clerk and make sure that your absentee ballot was counted! Even if we get another Trump presidency, which is very likely, those absentee ballots make a huge difference when it comes to the Senate, the House, governors, and other federal and state officials who can completely change the balance of their governments. My state's electoral votes may be going to Trump and the majority of the elections went red, but we still got a Dem Senator and that win still means a lot.

Reblogging this for the day crowd. Even if you don't think your ballot is enough to help sway the presidential election, there are still so many elections happening that CAN be changed with a recount.

too lazy to retype this but . insane interaction w coworker last night

tell me you have never worked in customer service without telling me you've never worked in customer service

psychiatrist trying to diagnose me with psychopathy: And are you polite and professional at work?

People don't realize that when you are working in retail and a customer comes in, you are now functionally being held hostage

Happy birthday to AO3 🎂🎉

Happy birthday to AO3 🎂🎉

YOOOOOOO

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not a “skeptic” of vaccines. He has said there are no safe or effective vaccines. He is a foe of vaccines.

some random redemption arcs that aren’t just ‘zuko, but a little to the left’

Some examples from games I have played:

Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, the youngest MP in Aotearoa, starts a haka to protest the first vote on a bill reinterpreting the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi

Goes insanely hard

To provide further context from what I understand the bill wanted to take the rights guaranteed to the Maori in said treaty and expand them to all New Zealand citizens. The issue with that is that it sort of defeats the point of the protections of the treaty.

The Treaty of Waitangi is not even that good of a treaty. But it is better than any treaty the Crown signed with indigenous peoples

And it absolutely was not meant to be

The treaty as written screws over Māori, and was written in Te Reo Māori and English with deliberately misleading translations to Te Reo Māori. I'm not an expert by any means, but basically the Te Reo Māori version has clauses that promise much more independence and sovereignty, while the English version does not

However

The English version promises them rights as Citizens

From what I remember from University 10+ years ago, this clause, this sentence, was added last minute by the writer of the treaty. Like, right before the big signing at Waitangi.

And the Crown was PISSED

Because now they had a legally binding document that promised, in their own language, to treat Māori with the same rights as they would English. Which was absolutely not the goal. The goal was to trick Māori into signing away their lands and that honestly still did happen. The treaty was not a good faith proposal by the Engliah.

But its still better than anyone else got, and it's better than no treaty. And because nowadays we can't just ignore the Te Reo Māori side of the treaty, the government's of the past few decades have been honouring Māori sovereignty, honouring their stewardship of the land, and undoing a lot of the bad faith "sales" or straight up stolen land.

Except our current fuck nuggets, who want to make Te Reo Māori an endangered language again, and steal back that land because they want to mine on it and sell it and they hate that Māori stewardship is so environmentally focused and not profit driven.

So, in a way, the current government is more true to the intentions of the Crown who initially came up with the treaty.

But since those guys were colonising bastards, I don't see "honouring" them as anything good.

Even with criticism of the treaty, without it, Māori would lose a lot of protections to their lands, their culture, their language, and as a country we would go backwards to a time when they were even more discriminated against

Toitū te tiriti

Uphold the treaty

[ID: three photos of Brennan Lee Mulligan sitting at a desk with earbuds in talking to the camera. The captions read, “Self-loathing has never motivated anyone to do anything other than loath themselves. You will not hate yourself into being industrious.” / end ID]

much better footage of the haka that shut down parliament today

@endless-demon thank you so much for asking! it's a little complicated but I think simplification does a disservice to the issue and is exactly what people like David Seymour rely on to spread lies about historical context and current consequences. I'm putting this in a reblog because it's long, and I'm putting it on this post because I'd rather this video be the one to get seen. as always I'm pakeha and also not an expert, so I'm very open to corrections on details but im confident of the broad strokes.

so when the English first arrived to build settlements in aotearoa, they formed a treaty with Māori (te Tiriti o Waitangi), the people already living there, that the English can govern their own settlements, as long as they allowed for continued māori sovereignty (tino rangatiratanga). there exist two versions of the text, English and te reo Māori, which do not perfectly match. after this, the English settlers began acquiring massive swathes of land by legally questionable means, and asserting absolute sovereignty over these areas. these culminated in the land wars, which then lead to massive land confiscation as a form of both political punishment and colonization. the end result is that now the crown own nearly all land in aotearoa and claim absolute sovereignty over it.

now, the Māori text does not claim sovereignty over the property that the crown recognizes Māori own. the text promises, among other things, self determination for Māori, which is essentially impossible under a westminster system of government because they are currently a demographic minority. it's only very recent in our history that the crown has acknowledged the legitimacy of the te reo Māori text, and even more recently that we began to actually implement any of its principles. one of the biggest ways the treaty is used in modern day is to guarantee Māori have an opportunity at the table for major national decisions (particular those of environmental significance), and to defer organizational power for Māori issues to Māori communities.

the treaty principles bill seeks to water down these promises by allowing these rights to all new zealanders, "democratising" the treaty and removing those guarantees that have been so hard fought for by Māori. but, more importantly, it seeks to seed division and racism within this country to gather more support for the ACT party who are sponsoring this bill.

this bill was part of the coalition agreement by our current 3 party right wing government. the national party agreed to sponsor this bill to first reading (allowing public submission on the bill) but no further. I personally believe, along with many others, that when the time comes to vote for the second reading the act party will threaten to pull out of the coalition if the bill is not passed again, and our prime minister will not have the strength of character to stand up to his deputy. regardless, the relationship between the crown and Māori has already been damaged, both by the simple introduction of the bill as well as all the changes our current government has implemented.

as Paul Goldsmith, Minister for Treaty Negotiations outlined in his speech during the bill, the National party believe that te Tiriti must be killed, not in a single action, but by a thousand cuts, like the removal of references to the treaty from our legislation and curriculums, and the disestablishment of agencies like the Māori Health Authority, cuts to Māori advisors to govt departments, removing māori seats from local government, etc.

there's so much more to this issue, like the centuries of abuse and mistreatment of Māori by the crown authorities, how this abuse is ongoing to Māori children and adults today in state care, how iwi voices are our last line of defence against environmental and ecological damage by industry, the unilateral natural of the treaty reparation settlement process... but this is why this protest was staged in parliament today.

(in fact, there is a much larger protest taking place nationwide, scheduled to arrive the day the bill was supposed to be introduced. the bill was in fact introduced a week earlier, in a move many suspect was done to prevent exactly this kind of protest.)

as far as I'm concerned though? I think te pāti Māori achieved exactly what they wanted by this protest. they forced the government to drop the mask of civility, and force the protestors out of the building. and they showed their supporters that their protests are working - they felt threatened enough by this that they lashed out, felt a need to retaliate by suspending hana-rawhiti maipi-clarke from the house for 24 hours. the coalition are getting nervous

Found in a 120 year old time capsule.

Full VDO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoDj4mXdqmc

Worth it.

I’m sorry I might sound like a madwoman for going on a rant about this but man, it’s… I don’t know how to express it but just the thought of some person, 120 years ago, taking a photo of their cat, which back then wasn’t easy - they didn’t have phones with cameras, each photo required a lot of time and dedication, so not only the person “wasted” a whole photo on their cat, they also did their fricking best to save this photo and carefully put it into an envelope to preserve it so that people in the future will know that there was this cat and it looked like this and it’s owner thought the cat looked lovely that day so much that they decided to take a photo of it and then they loved the photo so much that they went out of their way to preserve it for future generations like “hello people from the future! this is what my cat loos like!” because they loved their cat so much they wanted people from the future to know about it is… crazy to me… and here we are, 120 years later, long after the cat and it’s owners passed away, looking at an old photo of a cat and gushing about it. The cat died so long ago and wouldn’t even know it existed if not for the owner that loved their cat so much that they decided this photo was worth preserving and put it into a time capsule. and seeing now how people dedicate whole blogs to their cats and take countless pictures of them just to show to other people really hits because you realize that in the end, people from today aren’t that much different from people that were 120 years ago. We all just love our cats and want people to look at them.

I bet this woman was imagining the photo may be seen by like… a family some day. But no. It survived till the age of the internet. It has now transcended the original media. It is now being seen by far more eyes in far more places than the media she chose would normally allow. I hope the taker of this 120 year old photo is PROUD.

hey real quick can anybody help me find this image that I’ve seen before here on tumblr. it looks like this

the button doesn’t necessarily say “Elucidate the Rapture” but it does say something that’s kind of lengthy and has religious connotations. the woman pushing the button has an expression of indescribable smugness. there might be other buttons on the machine (?) she is pressing.

FOUND IT

This is hilarious

While the Onion buying InfoWars is indeed extremely funny, very few of the posts I've seen commenting on the sale have mentioned that the families of the Sandy Hook victims apparently agreed to voluntarily reduce their lawsuit payout as part of a deal to ensure that the Onion would acquire InfoWars wholesale, rather than having the company broken up and auctioned off piecemeal, as the latter course could potentially have allowed some of those pieces to end up back in the hands of Alex Jones' cronies.

Like, yes, it is in fact very funny that InfoWars is now a wholly own subsidiary of Clickhole, but the real props go out to the Sandy Hook families who saw the opportunity and willingly gave up the additional millions of dollars that could have been realised by stripping InfoWars for parts in order to make that happen.

The families have been saying the whole time it isn't about the money - it was about stopping Jones. And this is the most effective way to stop Jones.