Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: War] In other military news, the Obama administration traded five Guantanamo Bay detainees for a US soldier, Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, held hostage in Afghanistan, a decision which is now being criticized on several fronts. Republicans are (of course) accusing President Obama of negotiating with terrorists, and some members of Bergdahl's unit are angry because they accuse him of being a deserter whose desertion risked and cost lives. Obama's response to some criticism is here. Hillary Clinton was also asked about the deal, and gave what I think is a pretty decent response about difficult choices. The Obama administration was in a tough spot on this one. To leave Bergdahl to languish as a prisoner of war if there was a chance to rescue him, irrespective of how he was captured, would not have been ideal, and to rescue him with this exchange is not ideal. But the latter seems like the better of two imperfect options.
[CN: Car accident; death] Grace Garcia, the executive director of the Texas Democratic women-in-politics group Annie's List, co-founder of the National Latina Political Action Committee, and former senior adviser to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Office of the Chief of Protocol, was killed in a car accident yesterday. A tremendous loss. My condolences to her family, friends, and colleagues.
[CN: Natural disasters; misogyny] Whut: A study done by researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University has found that "female-named storms have historically killed more because people neither consider them as risky nor take the same precautions." I am pretty dubious about these findings, without having seen the study or its methodology, but I do want to highlight this observation by Sharon Shavitt, study co-author and professor of marketing at the University of Illinois: "People imagining a 'female' hurricane were not as willing to seek shelter. The stereotypes that underlie these judgments are subtle and not necessarily hostile toward women—they may involve viewing women as warmer and less aggressive than men." Uh, positive stereotypes are not un-hostile. They are just as dehumanizing via monolithization as are negative stereotypes—and just as dangerous, if the findings of this study are indeed accurate.
[CN: Carcerality; sexual violence] Rage. Seethe. Boil. "Complying with federal standards designed to prevent incarcerated people from being raped is too expensive, according to Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R). So Pence informed the federal Justice Department that his state will not comply with these anti-rape standards." This fucking state.
[CN: Homophobic slur; rape culture] Charming: Actor Jonah Hill, star of the date-rape classic Superbad, shouted a homophobic slur at a paparazzo and told him to suck his dick. He's very sorry, though. Sure. You know how you're so sorry after you get angry and shout violent bigotry at someone by accident?
And finally! Here is a nice story about a therapy dog who was honored at the graduation ceremony of her companion Paul Aragon, a retired US Army sergeant who has PTSD after serving three tours in Iraq. "Zoey is a lifesaver." Blub.
In the News
Welp
[Content Note: Militarism.]
Last week, President Obama gave an address at West Point in which he ostensibly laid out "his vision for a new chapter in American foreign policy," during which he said:
This weekend, Ukrainians voted by the millions. Yesterday, I spoke to their next president. We don't know how the situation will play out, and there will remain grave challenges ahead, but standing with our allies on behalf of international order, working with international institutions, has given a chance for the Ukrainian people to choose their future—without us firing a shot.This week, Obama is touring Europe, and has promised to send US troops and military resources to help provide security:
Barack Obama has assured Poland and its eastern European neighbours that the American commitment to their security was unswerving at the start of a four-day trip meant to show US resolve after the Russian intervention in Ukraine.One billion dollars of military presence to support NATO security, which has some leaders fearful that "a significant increase in Nato forces on Russia's borders could prompt reciprocal steps from Russia and spiral into a standoff reminiscent of the cold war," but we're definitely striking that perfect balance between isolationism and intervention and for sure not a single shot will be fired.
The White House unveiled plans for a $1bn initiative to send more of its military to Europe on a temporary basis but stopped short of promising to increase its permanent presence, as some of Washington's allies are seeking. It said the US would review its presence on the continent.
...The military assistance proposed by the White House, called the European Reassurance Initiative, aims to include greater US participation in training and exercises, deploying US military planners, and more persistent naval deployments near Russia in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea.
All right then.
I'm not making the argument that we shouldn't be sending military support, or any kind of argument about military strategy at all, because I am no Professor of War at Worldfuck University, so my opinion on the matter is pretty much irrelevant.
I'm just saying that the new US foreign policy looks a lot like the old US foreign policy, and it would be nice if we could just be honest about the fact that, if we're sending military aid anywhere, it is a potential escalation and there is a serious likelihood that people are going to get hurt.
Because what I am really tired of is the constant downplaying by US politicians, in both parties, of how serious any military intervention really is. I don't rightly care if it's Bush's team talking shit about how invading Iraq is going to be a walk in the park or if it's Obama's team waxing cheery about how we're just helpin' shucks: Either way, I would appreciate a more honest and serious public conversation about what military intervention, of any kind, really means, and what the political and cultural costs will be.
One billion dollars is an incomplete price tag. Especially if we end up in Cold War II.
A Culture of Violent Entitlement
[Content Note: Guns; threats.]
A young white man in Rosemount, Minnesota, was teaching his daughter to ride a bike along their residential street when one of their neighbors, an older white man, started shouting at him that he was doing it wrong. And then:
The father told Fox 9 News he's still shaken by the encounter. He explained that when he and his daughter got down to the cul de sac, [Gary Drake, 61] began yelling from his porch. When the father responded to say, "I've got it," Drake allegedly said, "If you don't like my advice, get off the street."Naturally, Drake is being described as having "snapped."
At that point, Drake appeared to get angrier -- but as the father and daughter prepared to leave the area, Drake allegedly went inside his home, grabbed a Remington 870 shotgun, pointed it at the father and threatened to kill him.
Drake's wife eventually came out and pulled the gun away, but police said he didn't appear repentant when he was booked. In fact, he allegedly told officers, "Maybe next time. I should have shot him."
But this—If you don't like my advice, get off the street—doesn't come from nowhere. And the idea that people you see as your inferior (via age, or race, or gender, etc.) need to disappear if they refuse to take your instruction is not a concept created by mental illness, but by a culture of violent entitlement.
We cannot keep pretending that every single one of these incidents, of threats of violence and/or actual violence, that are clearly underwritten by a sense of ownership of other people and the spaces in which those people move, is an isolated incident, unconnected from all the rest.
We have a very serious problem of armed men, white or white-identified, who think they own "the streets" and are empowered to violently control the people who inhabit them.
This isn't madness. It's undiluted, unexamined, toxic privilege.
[H/T to Shaker GoldFishy.]
Congratulations, Harriette Thompson!
[Content Note: Cancer.]
Ninety-one-year-old Harriette Thompson, who ran her first marathon at age 76, completed the San Diego marathon last weekend in record time for her 90-and-over age group and became the oldest person ever to finish the race:
[Thompson finished] the 26.2-mile Rock'n'Roll San Diego Marathon in seven hours, seven minutes and 42 seconds, according to race organizer Dan Cruz.Love.
"I'm elated," the North Carolina resident told Reuters on Monday. "I'm pretty active but I didn't really train for this one because I was treating for skin cancer."
Thompson also became the second oldest person to complete a U.S. marathon and the oldest to finish the San Diego race.
The previous speed record in Thompson's age group was set by Gladys Burrill in 2010, when the then-92-year-old finished the Honolulu marathon in nine hours and 53 minutes, according to Guinness World Records.
Thompson, who sat out the marathon last year because of health issues after finishing the race in 2012 in just over six hours, was one of about 25,000 runners on the 26.2-mile course, including her 55-year-old son, Brenny Thompson.
Thompson had radiation treatment for skin cancer on her legs in April, leaving her with sores that she covered with white tights and bandages, which hindered her training.
Thompson said she had no plans to stop running.
"I'll be back next year if I'm still here at all," she said. "But I'm definitely going to train next year. This is the only time I ever attempted to do the race without training, and I sure am feeling it today."
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker jenjay: "Is there an obscure word you'd like to use or encounter more, if only it fit in everyday occasions?"
Oh Hell No
[Content Note: Reproductive policing; choice policing; infertility.]
Your progressive pope on people who choose not to parent:
Pope Francis on Monday (June 2) warned married couples against substituting cats and dogs for children — a move that he said leads to the "bitterness of loneliness" in old age.First of all, I loathe the entire narrative of pets as substitute children, for a whole lot of reasons. It gets imposed on people with pets who choose not to parent, even if we don't regard our pets as children, which is annoying. It makes people with pets who desperately want to parent, but cannot, and regard pets as their children, feel like shit. It erases all the people who have both children and pets, and consider their pets part of their family; I have heard plenty of parents refer to their pets as their "furkids."
...[The pope] strongly criticized those couples who choose not to have children, saying they had been influenced by a culture of "well-being" that says life is better without kids.
"You can go explore the world, go on holiday, you can have a villa in the countryside, you can be carefree," the pope said. "It might be better — more comfortable — to have a dog, two cats, and the love goes to the two cats and the dog. Is this true or not? Have you seen it? Then, in the end this marriage comes to old age in solitude, with the bitterness of loneliness."
And I hate it most of all because it is so often, as here, used to mask what is just straight-up reproductive policing.
It doesn't matter, at all, whether people think of their pets as substitute children, because the important thing is that Pope Francis is saying that marriages which don't produce children are garbage and the people in them will end up bitter and lonely.
As if a valid and fair reason to have children is exclusively to oblige them to behave as insurance policies against loneliness in old age.
As if lots of people who choose to parent don't end up disconnected from their living children, for many reasons, in old age.
As if children don't sometimes die before their parents.
As if a childfree person who finds comfort from the companionship of pets in their younger years can't find the same throughout their lives.
As if life really isn't better without children for people who don't want children.
As if other people's reproductive decisions are any of this guy's business.
[H/T to Shaker Rosenleaf.]
Not All Men
[Content Note: Misogyny; policing; rape culture; scatological humor.]
Hey, my favorite bunch of femifarts! Long time no talk about LOVING AMERICA.
A lot has happened to me in the year since we last spoke. Me and my ex-wife/fiancée Tammy had our re-wedding, which was fucking beautiful and shit. And then we had a huge fight at Christmas, because apparently lingerie isn't a gift for her—and I'm like OH REALLY WELL WHO'S GONNA BE WEARING IT?—so we got divorced again, but then we made up on Valentine's Day, because Ol' Butch wised up and bought her something she actually wanted, which I knew about when I really stopped to think about it, because she's been asking for it for three years.
So now Tammy has a top of the line footbath, and we are engaged again.
You know what's weird? Men are always saying that women are inscrutable, but it turns out if you actually listen to them, they are pretty darn scrutable.
Live and learn, my friends!
Anyways, speaking of men, I wanted to weigh in on this whole "Not All Men" business that's been pissing me off, because Tammy and my stepmom Cheryl keep yelling about it so much that I can barely hear my re-runs of According of Jim.
Now, y'all know it usually takes me somewhere between 12 arguments and 50 years to get my head around "feminist issues," and I'm still working on why it is "not cool" according to Cheryl to put "feminist issues" in quotes, FOR EXAMPLE, but this "Not All Men" business is just a total no-brainer, man.
It's like, yeah, not all the guys who fish in Winkle Creek do dumpers upstream, but that doesn't mean I don't wanna barf my guts out every time a turd floats by while I'm minding my own business trying to catch me some dinner.
One shit in the creek is more'n enough to get pissed about guys colon-bowlin' in the water we all share.
And, you know, when I complain to the guys down at O'Tooterly's over a couple of cold ones, none of them is all, "OH BUTCH YOU'RE SO SENSITIVE! NOT ALL MEN ARE SQUIRTING DIRTIES INTO WINKLE CREEK!"
Because all them assholes know that I'm not saying EVERY GUY is doing it. I'm saying enough guys are doing it that it's a damn problem.
Which is literally like one guy or more.
But if one of you femifarts came in to O'Tooterly's talking about "male privilege" and shit—and I highly recommend that none of you do that, ever, just because it would be mega-depressing for you and also I would have a real epic internal battle with myself about whether to pretend I don't know you that I'd lose either way—those same knuckleheads would shout "NOT ALL MEN!" at you faster than Tammy said, "Fuck no!" when I asked if I could wear my favorite Guy Fieri fan shirt to our last wedding.
Thing is, I've noticed—and this goes back to that whole actually listening to women thing again—that women who are talking about "male privilege" aren't usually saying "all men."
And the other thing I've noticed—and this is about listening to men, which is way easier to do, and it's not because, as my stepmom Cheryl informed me, men's voices are objectively more smarter than women's—is that those guys say shit about "all men" like "all the time."
They say stuff about how all men like sports, or all men like cars, or all men don't know how to do laundry, or all men like wrassling with each other in the mud pit behind my best friend Dick Balzac's house, or all men can't help themselves if a woman is dressed like whatever.
To hear those dipshits talk, all men are exactly the same—and we're all dirtbags, to boot.
And I'm no Neil Patrick deGrasse Tyson, but, man, even I know that not all men even dig women. Not all men even like dirtbikes. Not all men even smoke so much weed. Not all men agree on anything, which is why we're always having arguments at the lodge when we're bored about whether we should all go shoot stuff or all go pee on stuff.
Anyways. I didn't want to shoot stuff or pee on stuff, so I'm going to go take my nephew Cody to see Maleficent, because that little weirdo wants to see it bad. And "not all men," namely my stupid-ass brother Buck, will take their sons to see ladymovies, so.
Pornstache: OUT.
Thinking About Flying
There is a nest tucked in the vines just outside my office window. It is a sturdy nest, which was built by a pair of mating robins last spring and managed to survive the winter and several intense spring storms.
At the end of the longest winter, Iain was determined to pull the vines down this year so we could repaint the porch. I adore the vines, and don't want to lose them, even though I know the porch needs painting. But, a few weeks ago, a pair of mating robins settled in again, after making a few repairs, and shortly thereafter, Mama Robin had settled in, nesting her blue eggs.
Iain knew it would have to wait another year. He grumbled, but there was no way we were going to dislodge them.
We both love watching the hatchlings grow up. It happens so quickly. The teensy naked pink babies of three weeks ago are now goofy little fully-feathered robins, whose mother has been trying to get them to take their first flight for days.
This afternoon, they took their first steps outside the nest.
They sit and chirp and stretch their wings, as Mama chirps encouragement from a tree across the yard. Occasionally, one of them will tilt its head skyward, open-beaked, as if to say, "I'm hungry! Come give me a worm!" And Mama chirps back angrily, as if to scold them, "Time to get it yourself, lazy!"
Juvenile robins are hilarious, often refusing to feed themselves long after they're actually capable, following their parents around and begging to be fed. They are comical and sweet birds, with big personalities whose moods are evident in their wide range of sounds. I love them so.
One evening, as we were headed in the front door, after standing on the porch observing the babies, just as they were getting their first feathers, Iain said, "I think we should turn off the porch light, so Mama Robin can get some sleep."
We may have to find a way to paint around the vines. Next year.
Evidence
[Content Note: Privilege; auditing; fat hatred; racism; rape culture; violence.]
Last week, my friend Jessica Luther published a Storify on "The Subjectivity of 'Evidence'" and the ubiquitous habit of privileged people demanding that marginalized people provide objective "evidence" of their claims of oppression, alienation, and/or harm.
The very next day after she published it, I tweeted this example of pushback I got in response to my assertion that dehumanizing images of fat people are harmful:
Jess, fresh off deconstructing this very flavor of bullshit, challenged him to explain, exactly, what sort of "evidence" he required, quickly revealing, as always, that there is an impossibly unattainable threshold for "proof" to convince any person who needs "science" to confirm widely reported lived experiences of a marginalized population.
Because demanding "evidence" is not about ascertaining whether people are being harmed; it's about denying that they are.
After all, denying people the right to be authorities on their own lives is itself harmful. No one who participates in that harm gives a fuck about not hurting people. Their entire objective is to hurt people.
Though that's never the explicitly stated intent.
This fellow was so intent on discrediting the value of my own reports of harm as a result of dehumanizing images of fat people that he compared my lived experiences to people who report having been abducted by aliens:
Again, the thing about the demand for "evidence" is not just that it's derailing, not just that it's the reddest of all red herrings—although it is certainly those things, too—but it is actively harmful. It is saying that people who observe and document their own oppression cannot be considered reliable witnesses.
I want to draw a very clear line between this extremely common silencing and discrediting behavior and the rape culture: In crimes of sexual violence, survivors' accounts are often not considered evidence of a crime, which fundamentally sets them apart from crimes like robbery and non-sexual assault.
It is not a coincidence that there is a cultural habit of silencing and discrediting the voices of marginalized people who experience harm on the basis of their identities, when those are the people also most likely to be targeted by sexual violence.
I also want to draw a very clear line between this behavior and the way self-defense "crimes" are prosecuted. It is not a coincidence that men like George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn are given enormous amounts of latitude and sympathy as people actively urge them to make excuses for murdering black children and urge us to listen to their justifications, while women like Marissa Alexander and CeCe McDonald and the Jersey Four, black women who were not predators and clearly acted in self-defense, are persecuted, prosecuted, and silenced.
Where's the evidence that you were harmed, beyond your own claims which we are not obliged to believe?
Challenging these demands for "evidence," in a way that suggests marginalized people's testimony about our own lived experiences is not sufficient "evidence" of harm, is a crucial social justice issue.
To address the inevitable complaint, I am not suggesting that any marginalized person who makes a legal claim of harm be believed without investigation. I am, however, suggesting that such legal claims of harm be investigated with equal vigor and seriousness, instead of routinely being dismissed out of hand with abdicating turns of phrase like "he said she said."
And I am absolutely and unapologetically suggesting that people who are sharing their personal experiences of marginalization and abuse in the process of advocating for sensitivity and decency be heard and believed. Be regarded as experts on their own lives. Be free from reprehensible demands for scientific, peer-reviewed, published, blahblahfart "evidence."
If one genuinely cares about harm done to marginalized people, one's primary instinct should be to listen to them when they speak of it. And believe them.
There is perhaps nothing more basely dehumanizing than purporting to know someone's life better than zie knows it hirself.
Daily Dose of Cute
Wee Sophs.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
The Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by chirping.
Recommended Reading:
Shannon: [Content Note: White privilege] Dear White Ladies
Angry Asian Man: [CN: Racism; racialized violence] Legendary Activist Yuri Kochiyama Dies at 93
Robert: Humans Are Driving Animals to Extinction at a Shocking Rate
Peter: Hillary Clinton on Benghazi
Andrea: Unlikely Connections to Laura Ingalls Wilder in Bich Minh Nguyen's Pioneer Girl
TFW: The Feminist Wire's 1st Annual Poetry Contest
Andy: Melissa Etheridge Marries Partner Linda Wallem
Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
President Obama has announced a new climate change initiative that will require existing power plants to cut emissions by 30%, although the companies don't have to submit plans on how they're going to accomplish this until 2016 at the earliest. (Which means if the next president is a Republican, this requirement could be unwound before any meaningful reductions ever happen.) At the Plum Line, Greg Sargent has a lot of good info about the politics of this announcement.
(My aforementioned pessimism on climate change has not been alleviated, but I would never be so happy to be wrong if it really isn't far too late in the game to significantly delay climate change.)
This is very good news: "The Obama administration on Friday ended a 33-year ban on Medicare coverage for gender reassignment surgery—a major victory for transgender rights and a decision that is likely to put pressure on more insurers to provide coverage for such services. ...The blanket Medicare ban was put in place in 1981 when such surgeries were considered experimental. But now most medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association, consider it a safe option... On Friday, the independent [Department of Health and Human Services] board, whose decisions are binding on HHS, said that medical studies published over the past three decades showed that the grounds for exclusion of coverage are 'not reasonable' anymore and lifted the ban." Woot!
[Content Note: War on agency] This is very bad news: "Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed into law a bill on Wednesday that requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinic. HB 1848 also requires the Oklahoma Board of Health to establish standards around equipment and supplies that may be necessary if a medical emergency occurs. ...These laws and the resulting closures of clinics leave many women without access to vital abortion services. Some already have to drive hundreds of miles or across state lines to get to the nearest clinic, but if multiple states continue to pass these laws, even those limited options may disappear." By any reasonable definition, this is creating an undue burden on abortion-seeking people. There is no way they should pass legal muster. But this is what happens when fetuses are valued more highly than the people who carry them.
[CN: Misogynoir] This is how to do feminist male ally work right: "Posted here is the Letter of 200 Concerned Black Men Calling for the Inclusion of Women and Girls to the President's 'My Brother's Keeper' Initiative. The open letter questions how attempts to address the challenges facing males of color, without integrating a comparable focus on the complex lives of girls and women who live and struggle together in the same families, homes, schools, and neighborhoods, advances the interests of the community as a whole." I strongly encourage you to read the whole letter. It is extremely powerful and moving, and not only advocates for the inclusion of women and girls, but pushes back on the president's rhetoric of respectability politics and bootstraps.
[CN: Terrorism; violence; death] Another bomb blast, most likely the responsibility once again of Boko Haram, has killed at least 14 people and wounded 12 in Nigeria. Meanwhile, Boko Haram continues to hold hostage more than 200 girls they abducted in April.
[CN: Surveillance] Welp: "NSA Collecting Millions of Faces from Web Images."
Spain's King Juan Carlos "is abdicating after almost 40 years on the throne and his son Prince Felipe will succeed him, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said on Monday in a surprise announcement. ...Once popular Juan Carlos, who helped smooth Spain's transition to democracy in the 1970s after the Francisco Franco dictatorship, has lost public support in recent years due to corruption scandals and gaffes. A poll published in Spanish newspaper El Mundo in January showed that almost two-thirds of Spaniards wanted Juan Carlos to abdicate. Younger Spaniards, who were not alive during the Franco years, were overwhelmingly in favor of abdication, the poll showed."
[CN: Transphobia] Whoooooooops your bigotry and colossal failure to impose it! "[Republican Maryland State Delegate Neil Parrott]'s attempt to force a referendum on a recently signed state transgender law banning discrimination was stymied after he collected less than one-third of the signatures needed to be placed on the November ballot. ...The Fairness for All Marylanders Act of 2014, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity with regard to public accommodations, housing, and employment and by specified licensed or regulated persons, was signed into law by Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley on May 15, 2014." Fuck off, Parrott.
Ian Millhiser examines "Seven Big Cases the Supreme Court Will Decide in June That Could Change America." Depressing, considering the way most of these will probably go with this court.
Oh goody! Herman Cain says he might run for president again.
RIP Ann B. Davis, whom most of us knew as Alice on The Brady Bunch.
And finally: If you love the movie Pitch Perfect, and you love Flula, then you are going to be VERY HAPPY to hear that Flula has just joined the cast of Pitch Perfect 2. Huzzah!
An Observation
Angelina Jolie's new film Maleficent opened big this weekend with a $70 million debut.
Featuring Angelina Jolie's first live-action starring performance in years, "Maleficent" beat forecasts to easily top all films over the weekend. The PG-rated Disney release is a darker twist on "Sleeping Beauty," told from the villain's perspective.This would be as good a time as any to dispatch with the garbage narratives about how people don't want to see movies about and starring women.
Seth MacFarlane's Western comedy "A Million Ways to Die in the West" was out-gunned by "Maleficent." It opened in third place with a tepid $17.1 million.
Last weekend's top film, "X-Men: Days of Future Past" dropped to second with $32.6 million.
Inequality and the Luxury of Privilege
[Content Note: Class warfare.]
Paul Krugman's Sunday column is about "inequality denial" and the bullshit arguments used to try to "debunk" the idea that wealth inequality in the US has risen sharply.
In short, this latest attempt to debunk the notion that we've become a vastly more unequal society has itself been debunked. And you should have expected that. There are so many independent indicators pointing to sharply rising inequality, from the soaring prices of high-end real estate to the booming markets for luxury goods, that any claim that inequality isn't rising almost has to be based on faulty data analysis.It seems almost unfathomable that anyone could try to claim otherwise with a straight face, because merely looking around oneself is sufficient evidence for most people of increasing wealth inequality in the US. We can see this with our own eyes; we don't need economic studies to tell us what we know from living in the world.
Yet inequality denial persists, for pretty much the same reasons that climate change denial persists: there are powerful groups with a strong interest in rejecting the facts, or at least creating a fog of doubt.
...So here's what you need to know: Yes, the concentration of both income and wealth in the hands of a few people has increased greatly over the past few decades.
But of course the 1percenters don't live in the same world that we do. They don't see with their own eyes the same things that we see. They don't attend weekend barbecues with people who are unemployed and can't find work; they don't notice the little signs of decay, or the big signs, depending on one's town of residence, signaling a permanent shift in municipal thrive; they don't talk with their friends about how lots of families like theirs used to get by on a single adult income, and now families of the same size are struggling with two adult incomes, or more. Tommy and his kids had to move back in with his parents.
These aren't conversations that the 1percenters are having. Because they are utterly detached from the people to whom this is happening.
They don't have to know. They don't have to care. They don't have to understand. To deny this reality that is not even debatable, because it is just as much a fact of life as the air we breathe, is a luxury of their privilege.
To casually elide the accelerating decimation of the US middle class as some sort of liberal hoax is a luxury of their privilege.
To cruelly attribute entrenched, generational poverty in the US in both urban and rural areas as evidence of laziness or dependence or personal irresponsibility, or whatever garbage buzzwords they're using these days, is a luxury of their privilege.
To claim without compunction that they are not actively facilitating wealth inequality by exploiting people outside their class is a luxury of their privilege.
Such breathtaking indecency is a coveted luxury item these days indeed.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
Belly up to the bar,
and be in this space together.
