how do i blurgh

noam-chomsky:

First of all, don’t believe anything you hear from power systems. So if Obama or the boss or the newspapers or anyone else tells you they’re doing this, that, or the other thing, dismiss it or assume the opposite is true, which it often is. You have to rely on yourself and your associates—gifts don’t come from above; you’re going to win them, or you won’t have them, and you win by struggle, and that requires understanding and serious analysis of the options and the circumstances, and then you can do a lot. So take right now, for example, there is a right-wing populist uprising. It’s very common, even on the left, to just ridicule them, but that’s not the right reaction. If you look at those people and listen to them on talk radio, these are people with real grievances. I listen to talk radio a lot and it’s kind of interesting. If you can sort of suspend your knowledge of the world and just enter into the world of the people who are calling in, you can understand them. I’ve never seen a study, but my sense is that these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think, “I’ve done everything right all my life, I’m a god-fearing Christian, I’m white, I’m male, I’ve worked hard, and I carry a gun. I do everything I’m supposed to do. And I’m getting shafted.” And in fact they are getting shafted. For 30 years their wages have stagnated or declined, the social conditions have worsened, the children are going crazy, there are no schools, there’s nothing, so somebody must be doing something to them, and they want to know who it is. Well Rush Limbaugh has answered – it’s the rich liberals who own the banks and run the government, and of course run the media, and they don’t care about you—they just want to give everything away to illegal immigrants and gays and communists and so on.

Well, you know, the reaction we should be having to them is not ridicule, but rather self-criticism. Why aren’t we organizing them? I mean, we are the ones that ought to be organizing them, not Rush Limbaugh. There are historical analogs, which are not exact, of course, but are close enough to be worrisome. This is a whiff of early Nazi Germany. Hitler was appealing to groups with similar grievances, and giving them crazy answers, but at least they were answers; these groups weren’t getting them anywhere else. It was the Jews and the Bolsheviks [that were the problem].

I mean, the liberal democrats aren’t going to tell the average American, “Yeah, you’re being shafted because of the policies that we’ve established over the years that we’re maintaining now.” That’s not going to be an answer. And they’re not getting answers from the left. So, there’s an internal coherence and logic to what they get from Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of these guys. And they sound very convincing, they’re very self-confident, and they have an answer to everything—a crazy answer, but it’s an answer. And it’s our fault if that goes on. So one thing to be done is don’t ridicule these people, join them, and talk about their real grievances and give them a sensible answer, like, ”Take over your factories.”

(Source: zcommunications.org, via guerrillamamamedicine)

15 of the Deadliest Corporations

liberationfrequency:

These corporations, if they were individual human beings, would be locked up for life. Instead, they continue raking in the big bucks. Human rights abuses, murder, war, eco disasters, and animal exploitation keep…

(Source: stay-human)

hidingincanada:

Anonymous asked: Another thing I think that people need to recognize with the call-out culture - it is privilege-denying to assume that everyone has the same ability to just shut up and take it. People who have anxiety disorders or histories of abuse cannot necessarily handle that.

When you’re engaging with those people and they ask you not to be so vicious, it is NOT an invocation of “tone argument!” It’s because being told you’re a “stupid little white girl who has no business commenting anywhere ever” is the sort of thing that really can set them back several years.

Yes and no. Yes and no.

Part of me is very, very uncomfortable with the idea that people with anxiety disorders should not be held to the same standards as the rest of humanity; they should be held accountable for their actions and their beliefs. Any less, I think, is ableist.

Because people with anxiety issues, people who are neurodivergent, people who have histories of abuse, they still interact with other people in society, which means that they have certain duties and responsibilities towards others. They should not be excused from the potential fall-out that their remarks or actions may have. In general, I believe we all have a duty to at least try to be willing to learn from others, to not be so invested in your point of view to have your whole world collapse if someone points out problems with it. Entering into conversation with the assumption of good faith is a hard thing for anyone to do — and its harder for someone predisposed to be triggered by negative social interactions.

Because responsible call-outs — call-outs which deal specifically with the nature of what the person did, not who the person is, call-outs which acknowledge the multi-faceted nature of human beings, call-outs which don’t write someone off entirely because they have certain problematic viewpoints — should not be triggering. If they are, then you are triggered by people who disagree with you. 

Which means that its probably time to get off the internet. 

You have a right to not be unfairly attacked, but you don’t have a right to avoid criticism, no matter what kind of anxiety problems you have.

Also: I find the complete dismissal of a whole person based on the things they said deeply offensive, which is why call-out culture grates, for me. It ignores the fact that people are individuals first, members of society second; that they can think and analyse their own position in society, and that within each person lies the potential to change. And it ignores the fact that generally, the things we hold in common are far greater than the things that separate us. It ignores the fact that allies do exist, and simplifies the complexity of human interactions in a very bad way.

Also: and this is where it gets rather hypocritical: I do see the merits in just screaming at someone, sometimes. Marginalized people aren’t saints. People who have to deal with massive amounts of ignorance and discrimination and oppression at the hands of a fucked-up society don’t always have the energy (nor should they) to hold someone’s hand and educate them. I’m deeply uncomfortable labeling someone’s genuine frustration at a person with unexamined privilege as “ableist”.  (This whole fiasco that Jaded endured with “Margaret” comes to mind.) Too often around here, ableism is used to drown out the concerns of POC who are genuinely concerned about someone’s racism or ignorance. And IP brings up some great points: disability isn’t very well-recognized in our society, but when it is, it usually has a white face. POC are very rarely extended the courtesy and yes, the privilege of being seen as someone whose bad behavior can be explained by some prior complicating factor. 

So arguing about who has more or less privilege, the white person being called out, or the brown person doing the calling out…. just seems like a really silly way to handle things. It smacks of Oppression Olympics. 

(In rebloggable form, as requested. Original here.)

(Source: anedumacation)

classragespeaks:

This post discusses an earlier post at the blog boingboing, regarding the strange fact that many people surveyed who answered “no” to the question of whether they had ever used or participated in a US government program actually had, but apparently didn’t think of it as such.

Mettler first asked survey participants whether they had ever used a federal U.S. government program. Then later in the survey she specifically asked respondents whether they had ever benefited from or participated in specific federal programs. As it turns out, large number of people who have benefited from various federal programs or policies do not recognize themselves as having done so…

Notably, the programs recipients seem least likely to recognize as a government program are among those the middle (and higher) classes are most likely to use, while those more common among the poor are more clearly recognizable to those using them as government programs. Yet allowing you to write off mortgage interest (but not rent), or charitable donations, or the money you put aside for a child’s education, are all forms of government programs, ones that benefit some more than others. But the “submerged” nature of these policies hides the degree to which the middle and upper classes use and benefit from federal programs.

Food for thought. The stigma attached to the idea of making use of “government programs” in general is pretty substantial, but many people at many different income levels also benefit from government programs, even if they are reluctant to identify themselves as such and align themselves with “those people” who use programs like food stamps. Being a student myself and extremely dependent on my government student loans, I’m astonished that (as the research indicates) over half of student-loan recipients surveyed did not consider themselves beneficiaries of government assistance.

I believe that human communities and societies exist so that we can take care of each other, and that we have a moral responsibility to look out for the good of others and for society as a whole. I wonder how many of those who decry this attitude- those who trumpet individualism, “bootstrapping,” and personal freedoms at the cost of social welfare, who think that they are entirely self-made and owe no one else anything- are actually benefiting from the very system they speak against. I have to guess that there are quite a lot of those people, and that with socioeconomic privilege comes the privilege of being able to ignore what may have helped you along the way.

thecurvature:

This horrific story offers a window into the reality of life for low socioeconomic status minorities:

Ikenna, a 28-year old construction worker, went to deposit a $8,463.21 Chase cashier’s check at his local Chase branch, only for the teller to decide that neither he nor his check looked right and he got tossed in jail for forgery, KING5 reports. The next day, a Friday the bank realized its mistake and left a message with the detective. But it was her day off, so he spent the entire weekend in jail.

By the time he got out, he had been fired from his job for not showing up to work. His car had been towed as well. It ended up getting sold off at auction because he couldn’t afford to get it out of the pound. He had been relying on that cashier’s check for his money but it was taken as evidence and by the time he got it back it was auctioned off.

All this while the cashier’s check had been issued by the very bank he was trying to cash it at.

Chase didn’t even apologize, not even after a year.

Meanwhile, in his freshly pressed khakis, the young white college student who used to live across the hall managed to cash, on two separate occasions, two checks he stole out of my mailbox and forged without the slightest problem.

But hey, I’m sure this has nothing to do with race or class.

(Source: abbyjean)

leonineantiheroine:

“How do people’s thoughts and feelings about themselves influence their propensities to perform acts of aggression against others? Multiple answers to this question can be suggested. For decades, clinical psychologists have subscribed to a conventional view that low self-esteem underlies aggression. Yet this is difficult to reconcile with common observations that aggressors often think very highly of themselves, as evidenced by nationalistic imperialism, “master race” ideologies, aristocratic dueling, playground bullies, and street gang rhetoric.

…

On the basis of an interdisciplinary review of research findings regarding violent, aggressive behavior, they proposed that violence tends to result from very positive views of self that are impugned or threatened by others. In this analysis, hostile aggression was an expression of the self’s rejection of esteem-threatening evaluations received from other people. They noted that the evidence does not suggest a direct link from high self-esteem to violence, and indeed some people with high self-esteem are exceptionally nonaggressive; in general, however, aggressive people form one subset of people with highly favorable, even inflated opinions of themselves.

…

Combined with the failure to replicate greater aggression by narcissists toward the positive evaluator, this finding suggests that narcissists are fairly selective and specific in their aggression. The seeming implication of Study 1 that narcissism increases aggression toward everyone should probably be discarded.

…

The present investigation has confirmed important links between self-appraisal and aggression. Some theorists have proposed that people with low self-esteem would be most likely to lash out in response to an ego threat because the unflattering
evaluation reminds them of their personal flaws and faults or because their low self-esteem makes them unable to tolerate the prospect of losing any of it. Others might suggest that low selfesteem would cause an increase in aggression regardless of ego threat. Our results contradict such views. Instead, it appears that people who are emotionally invested in grandiose self-views are the most aggressive, particularly in response to an esteem threat. In both studies, we found that narcissism combilaed with ego threat yielded the highest levels of aggression. The combination of narcissism and ego threat was the primary focus of our investigation. Thus, the most aggressive responding in both studies was found among narcissists who were attacking someone who had given them a bad evaluation. These people were significantly more aggressive than would be predicted simply by adding any broad (main) effects of narcissism and ego threat. Moreover, the mediation analyses of Study 2 confirmed that degree of perceived threat determined level of aggression.

…

Thus, our data suggest that aggression by narcissists is an interpersonally meaningful and specific response to ego threat. Narcissists became exceptionally aggressive toward a person who had given them a negative, insulting evaluation. They were not, generally, indiscriminately aggressive toward all other people or in all situations, nor did they show elevated tendencies to engage in displaced aggression. (That is, even receiving an insult did not make narcissists aggressive toward anyone except the person who delivered the insult.) Rather, our results suggest that narcissists mainly want to punish or defeat someone who has threatened their highly favorable views of themselves.

…

More generally, our results do not indicate that aggression flows directly from any form of self-regard. Neither a chronic pattern of low self-esteem nor a broadly favorable view of self produced high levels of aggression in either study. Even narcissism did not lead to elevated aggression overall; rather, the aggression of narcissists occurred mainly in direct response to criticism and insult.

…

In plainer terms, it is not so much the people who regard themselves as superior beings who are the most dangerous but, rather, those who have a strong desire to regard themselves as superior beings. Some people may be able to brush off criticism easily, just as others may view it as valid and well deserved, and neither response may produce aggression. In contrast, people who are preoccupied with validating a grandiose self-image apparently find criticism highly upsetting and lash out against the source of it. Thinking well of oneself is not inherently prone to lead to aggression—even in response to criticism and insuits—but wanting to think well of oneself may well be.”

(via guerrillamamamedicine)

diggingforroots:

…constantly citing that 1 in 6 women are raped without ever specifying

• 1 in 3 Native/First Nations women are raped, and 80+% of the time by non-Native (almost exclusively white) men - and the cases are almost never even investigated.
• The rates of rape of women crossing the border into the U.S. are so high that anecdotal evidence is that it is EXPECTED, but no actual statistics can be found online to address this issue. Searching for “rape statistics for immigrants” or “rape statistics for migrants” brings up only articles debating whether immigration effects overall crime rates. This ERASES the sexual exploitation and common assaults on women coming into the country.
• Rape of non-white openly lesbian, queer and transgender individuals is significantly higher than the “1 in 6” but actual statistics are difficult to come by. So-called “corrective rape” is not something that only happens in “uncivilized”/”backwards”/”Third World” countries.
• Transgender individuals are at significantly higher risk of rape by law enforcement and immigration officials.
• Contrary to assumptions, Black men, while disproportionately present in the criminal justice system and more likely to be wrongfully convicted/serve a harsher sentence for crimes, are not anywhere near a significant rape threat as they are portrayed to be.
• In the U.S. 1 in 4 college women, and 1 in 5 high school women are raped and 44% of reported rape victims are under the age of 18, while 80% are under the age of 30. It’s bloody dangerous to be young.
• 99% of people who rape are men, 60% are Caucasian. 35% of men report at least some degree of likelihood of raping if they could be assured they wouldn’t be caught or punished.
• “In one study, 98% of men who raped boys reported that they were heterosexual.” i.e., there is NO correlation between being gay/queer and pedophilia.