I've been sitting for a few minutes asking myself, "Do I look at Minneapolis? Do I not look? Is it wrong to choose not to & to do something else? What does that even mean? I don't think I have anything interesting to say about it. . ." I do think we should share grief. Emotions.
I think it is a disservice to the issues we care about to constantly approach them as if we have to say something novel, or interesting, or pithy, or whatever. I think this is one of the worst effects of social media, in its current form. We can't just be regularly human.
This is particularly true in times of rising fascism. It's also true in terms of violence against children. It's true about all the evils of the world & our own country.
When we think that we have to say something special about the awful thing, & then the awful thing keeps happening, over & over & over again, we end up saying nothing at all. Then its almost like the inverse of a social contagion. A contagion of silence. The issue loses saliency.
I have nothing new to say. Nothing interesting. No proposals. No analysis. But I will say this:
This is the fault of the Republican Party. We should be outraged at them. They are a destructive cancer. I am quite numb. I think you are too. We have to try to pierce through this.
We have to collectively express our outrage. Who we believe is accountable. If we do not do this, the news media will let the story go & then we will forget till the next time. And the cycle will repeat. This is part of what has been happening to us.
Innate novelty bias is theoretically supposed to protect us, as the animals we are. Our negativity bias theoretically does the same. We have to be alert to threats. Changes in the env't. But then in human societies, & particularly w/ social media, these biases work against us.
This sort of numbness is well-document in the literature on PTSD. It's why people who have been traumatized once are statistically more likely to be traumatized again. And then if you have been traumatized twice, the likelihood of another trauma increases ever more.
This zombie-like effect has also been attested in personal accounts of rising fascism. Why aren't people reacting anymore? Why aren't people feeling anymore? And so on. All this before social media & our constant public performance of our own specialness.
I'll end here, with this: Children. They are better than adults. They are vulnerable. As adults, we are charged with their care. In our families, schools, & broader society. We come up with rules and laws and regulations to ensure the protection of these vulnerable people.
Republicans do nothing but harm children. They do not protect children. They harm children. We have to fight back even if it feels like we'll never win. It's never over till it's over. We have to express ourselves. If we do not, we will, again, forget. Pierce thru the numbness.
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Yes. I am finally done. After 9 months, I am done. I had a very good lawyer and he told me not to say a peep about the police to anyone because what they really needed to be was "soothed." That they needed time to calm down. That's what the police needed. And it worked.
I was arrested 13 days after the presidential election. I still had my Kamala Harris signs. When the police were typing up the false charges against me, & laughing to each other, they said, "Who's she gonna tell? Twitter?" Then: "Bet she's proud of those Kamala Harris signs now"
I had seen the Harris campaign was trying to "depolarize" the electorate. There's research indicating that signs of patriotism are strong associated w/ Republicans. So, for the 1st time in my life, I bought American flags & decorated my Kamala Harris signs with them.
This is a photo of my mother's roommate, Jimmi, from when she lived in Paris in the 1960's. Jimmi was American, from California, & went by the stage name Mademoiselle Crème de Coco. Like many Black Americans, she recieved cultural appreciation in 1960's Paris, per my mom's memory
Western societies' racism operates in different ways. France had--& has--a racism problem, largely directed to Arab ppl, Jewish ppl, & Black African immigrants. It is simultaneously true that the French revere Black Americans & Black American culture.
Jimmi told my mother that she much preferred Paris to the U.S. b/c she did not encounter as much racism there. She eventually left Paris to go tour in Russia. She invited my mom to come & be her assistant; to manage her hats, clothes, wigs, etc. My mom declined. They lost touch.
The last 2 years have been a lesson in how little Americans understand the world prior to the emergence of nation-states. In some sense, I think the rigidity of this anachronistic lens helps us remember facts of WWII much better than those of WWI.
Obviously other things contribute to these differences in remembering fact/detail. WWII closer in time. My grandpa fought in it, whereas his father fought in the previous war. Nazis were almost incomprehensibly evil in their project. The very American story of D-Day. Etc.
Still, I'll tell you this: Every few years I ask my dad to explain the origins of WWI & he does so quite exquisitely but, up until recently, I couldn't really remember much other than random phrases like "Serbian Nationalism," detached from narrative; just floating in my brain.
Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, & Joe Biden would all know that such a statement was not only deeply disrespectful to Kamala Harris, but to Black women more broadly. And that is one of the reasons, in my view, Bernie Sanders is a two-time primary loser.
I think we need to say some things more plainly. It is not just wrong to tell Jews to "go back to Poland." It is an incredibly fucking awful thing to say. It is disgusting.
The Germans viewed Poles (Slavs) as their lessers. The land of the east--Poland, Ukraine, etc. We can actually use the lens of "intersectionality" to understand. The Slavic lands--the East--that's where you brutalize people. That's where the Nazis made their death camps.
The Nazis didn't build their camps in France, which they occupied. Or the Netherlands, which they occupied. They didn't build their camps in the West. Nor did they go on mass shooting sprees. No, they did that in the East. They made "barbaric" Poland into a factory of death.
Alright, back to my position of not commenting on the Israel-Gaza conflict. I'll continue to comment on the "related" matter of rising antisemitism in the U.S. No comment on the conflict itself. There are too many people w/ bad motivations. We contribute to an abstraction.
I say "related" because there is no real reason anymore to say these "protests" etc have any real connection to the conflict. They don't respond to events in real time. They're just Westerners getting their jollies out over demonizing Jews & turning Palestinians into symbols.
Me? I see that there is increasing risk to a civilian population. I see aid is not distributed. I have actually spent a long time studying war & conflict. I ask questions: How can this be solved? I identify lies that fog everything up. I try to strive for true accountability.