...the fuck?! PONY!

Okay Hivemind, riddle me this...

How, the FUCK, am I supposed to react to the written skidsmarks you monocleclub wankers have left in my comments? tell me this. I've got Ren asserting that some physical law of the fucking universe forbids me from objecting to anything she says, Octogalore fails at life (again, I would not want ot be you when you reincarnate...) with both another failed attempt at grammar criticism (I speak vernacular english Octagalore! get the fuck over this concept already) and some classic bad faith arguement in form of the hoary old "conspiracy theory" chestnut.

*le sigh*

I've got Daisy mad at me because of, I fuck you not, a misplaced hyphen and Ravenm failing at Ally work quite spectacularly.

But it's the good kind of failier, you know, the kind that is wrong in that way taht is begs for a correction that is oh so right.

Folks, MLK has explained this already; it is very easy to trick a POC, you just have to make them trust your crackery ass and then punished them for that misplaced trust.

It's a side effect of living in a racist, white supremicist society, where it is literally beaten into POC's heads that white opinions are far far more valid than their own, where white voices are given room while POC voices are shouted down.

Being an ally means creating spaces where POC are accomodated and treated like equals, so when, after several years in which Ren has humored every crazy ass MRA and white racist misogynist that felt like posting a comment on her blog, she decides to pick out and hold up for ridicule - how dare Kate tell you that a phrase you use makes your blog a hostile place for her! The nerve of the chink Other! She almost acts like she doesn't ph33r your We-sha-sha! the impudence of it! - a POC who was just expressing how something Ren said made her feel, I am obligated to make some noise about that, and too keep making a noise about that because silence is what the racist society needs me to produce to enable it's bullshit.

And the absolute ally-vacuum into which I shouted in that comment thread is... well that's what "the silence of our freinds" thing MEANS you idiot white people. And far be it from me to point fingers, but could someone please remind me why, despite the fact that I, unlike "radical" folks like Daisy, am not a regular commenter at Ren the Magical Asian-jews's ethnically challenged asian lady's blog, I was the only one who called bullshit when Ren;

NOT ONLY, used the racist "Political Correctness" dogwhistle to silence and dehumanise a POC,

NOT ONLY co-opted the oppression experienced by asian americans so that she could use it like a commodity rather than the fucked up bullshit women like Kate have to put up with every fucking day of their lives that it actually is,

NOT ONLY then proceeded to pretend that she and her white regular commenters (like Amber) had authority enough to decide whether or not that POC was ALLOWED to be offended by something Ren said, when only a sociopath would presume that what a person feels is a debatable thing.

No agree to disagree there of course, and no allies hanging around that blog neither.

Let me now go off on a seeming tangent for second:

My objections as an anarchist to the monocle club are not to the group per se, but the power dynamics inherent to such exclusive secret clubs, linked into the same mechanisms for utilizing social capital that you find in Kos's townhouse group, or in the little club Vallenti and Marcotte formed a year or so back, or like the "safe spaces" Radfems are always using to fuck over sex workers and transexuals - And we can know that groups like this impose a hierarchy onto the social groups they arise from because that's what all the other groups have done, even though the other feminist groups who have these groups are, just like you guys, allegedly against such abusive power structures and hierarchies.

And yes, calling a safe space a "book club", or a hippo for that matter, doesn't actually change those underlying dyanmics and hierarchies.

My second major, philisophical problem you could say, with such groups is that they generally require an acceptance of what Marx in manifesto call "critical utopian socialism", and thus are inherently flawed and self restraining for the same reasons, and I cannot repeat what Mardx wrote better than him so I'll just quote the relevent section:

We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modern revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf [4] and others.

The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social levelling in its crudest form.

The socialist and communist systems, properly so called, those of Saint-Simon [5], Fourier [6], Owen [7], and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section 1. Bourgeois and Proletarians).

The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent political movement.

Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a new social science, after new social laws, that are to create these conditions.

Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action; historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones; and the gradual, spontaneous class organization of the proletariat to an organization of society especially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of their social plans.

In the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being the most suffering class. Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class does the proletariat exist for them.

The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favored. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without the distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people when once they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the best possible state of society?

Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social gospel.

Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own position, correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of society.

But these socialist and communist publications contain also a critical element. They attack every principle of existing society. Hence, they are full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures proposed in them -- such as the abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of industries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, the proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the function of the state into a more superintendence of production -- all these proposals point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms which were, at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognized in their earliest indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a purely utopian character.

The significance of critical-utopian socialism and communism bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all theoretical justifications. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavor, and that consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental realization of their social utopias, of founding isolated phalansteres, of establishing "Home Colonies", or setting up a "Little Icaria" [8] -- pocket editions of the New Jerusalem -- and to realize all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees, they sink into the category of the reactionary conservative socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.

They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of the working class; such action, according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the new gospel.

The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively, oppose the Chartists and the Reformistes.

And So I must also object to your group on communist grounds.

Thirdly; As an ally I must again Object to your group on practical grounds. to summarize, no gated community ever changed the world.

That is largely my objection to the radfems' silly little safe spaces, you can't change hte world from outside, and if you think that you can build a shangri-la so awesome that unreconstructed crackers will flock to you and demand to be let in...well I have news for you, the crakcers like being crackers, more importantly the system that made them crackers in the first place is bigger, and weilds more of the power that these sorts of groups are trying to weild.

This is one way to intrepret Audre Lord's "you cannot demolish the master's house with the master's tools" - you don't take a knife to a gun fight, and if your opponent has more guns than you have, then going to a gun fight at all seems stupid.

And here's the thing that I suspect I've been leaving unspoken when I should have: surely there's a better way to do things than this?

You can't deconstruct privelage in a secret little exclusive group because privelage works by it being kept invisible - if your attempt to tackle privealge doesn't consist of being LOUD and being PUBLIC rather than polite and private it WILL fail, because of what privealge is and how it works.

More importantly you can't build a community from exclusivity - you partition off the conversation between allies and you stop the silent majority (the lurkers) from being able to gain anything from it, and you create a circle jerk.

And you try to pass that off as "ally work", as "SRS Anti-racist bizness", then well... don't.

Because that's the thing, I can't force you to listen, I can't force you to actually think or have an open and public conversation about this group, about what it should involve and the draw backs of various approachs, and how maybe you should set up checks and balances to stop abuses of power and to limit the degree of damage an unhealthy and uncritical social cohesion can bring about.

Because you have far more social capital than I can bring to bear, and you have more social captial than I am willing to accumulate to fight you all.

And while I suppose I could hack into your accounts, your email, your bank accounts and similar, and dredge up your personal details and basically utilize the exact same pre-existnt power structures that your group, as it stands, has been supportive of, I have a horrible sinking feeling that I'm morally obliged to take the higher ground. Also I is lazy and personal bank details has not got a flavor

But I don't expect you to listen, you've shown that you don't want to take anything I say in good faith, you would rather prefer to dismiss and dehumanize me to protect your clique, and you're free to do that I guess.

This is a public space and public spaces are, in our society, by definition, the "safe space" of assholes - sure the neo-nazis have to skulk around stormfront, but you visit most of the "big blogs", and you'll find that any talk about race, or sexism, or whatever and privelage will be quickly shut down, shouted down and then locked down, because there's nothing worse than being called "racist" or "sexist" and it's all so unfair to the poor opressed rich white guy.

Don't be the poor oppressed rich white guy, don't be self pitying.

And even more unfortunately the old saying goes that you can't teach a student who isn't willing to learn, so as of this moment please take it as read that I am no longer going to self identify as an "ally", considering that you guys will undoubtably drag the term through the mud, and make us whtie folk who give more of a shit about people rather than privelage look really fucking bad by association, during this year - even more so than you already have of course, thank you for that Ren and Amber - and I have no power to stop you.

So I guess you win? Or whatever this is exactly.

Bon apetit XXX

MORATORIUM!

I'm declaring a moratorium on stupid radfems. No existing for a month.

In the mean time here's a time line:

22 june, 2006: I write a blog post pointing out that secret organisations never end well, in response to the revelation that Middle Managers like Kos and John Avarosis had been operating a little thing called "townhouse".

Quoth myself:

Now the thing that occurs to me is, WHY ON EARTH DO YOU NEED TO DO THIS THING IN SECRET!? Come on Kos, even you must be able to figure out that that was going to come back to bite you in the ass at some point, you’re coordinating and holding discussion with a group of left wing and democratic party supporting journalists, bloggers and activists via this mailing list, and you’ve sworn them to secrecy? Why on earth would you do that? Hell-fucking-lo Kos, did you not realize that a “new people-powered movement”, has to, you know, NOT involve an exclusive and secretive group of media peeps holding closed discussion that could effect the wider movement? Did you not understand that a freaking mystic oligarchy is probably not the best way to organize support for the democratic party? Are you not aware that you have justified any rightwinger who now calls you a “stalinist”? You’ve made a crazy right wing insult accurate for god’s sake, even Bill “I invented Gitmo for HIV+ Haitians” Clinton hasn’t done that.

Suffice to say that I am not a fan of secret oligarchies - if you can't run your conspiracy in plain view you probably shouldn't run it. transparency is an issue with such things, as is accountability.

And as with all things, knowing is half the battle. (The other half? Guitar Hero!)

Sometime in 2007: belle sets up a secret email list, for reasons that I can't help but call "abject laziness". From an outsider's POV it sounds pretty much like she just tricked some WOC into acting as gophers because she was too busy to bookmark some sites/type in their URL/follow links around herself - stuff that's neither time consuming or difficult basically, but which nonetheless was sold to the WOC as a sort of safe space for people who get crap thrown at them.

Of course the road to hell is paved with good intentions...

sometime in or around early december, 2007: flamefest erupts because of some stuff Amber starts by slapping people in the head with her racist parents (father or mother depending on what day you ask about it), leading to Donna and M leaving the secret email club, and thus depriving Belle of her two main gophers and thus causing the whole thing to devolve into a "we H8 Hrt" club...but *secret*, because otherwise bitching about Heart starting silly little (open) safe spaces wouldn't be ironic and fucked up.

God forbid someone take the higher ground and keep it for five fucking seconds....

Mid december 2007: Amber runs whining to Bitch|Lab, thus prompting this thread, which manages to make both BL and Amber look like complete assholes.

Some of the points BL makes are valid though, especially the ones about "wow, doesn't actually forming a little posse make everyone who scoffed at Marcotte accusing us of having a secret cabal, kinda look like idiots now huh?"

But Belle disagreed! And so calls BL and Amber self centered (presumably after fixing large brass rings around her head to stop it exploding from mental dissonance) in a post that neither mentions names nor links to anything, thus leaving anyone who didn't already know what the fuck she was talking about in the dark, and making a public post kinda...pointless, nonsensical? One can only assume following the advice she gives in her own post was too much for the poor little lambykins, aww.

Bonus Dilbert Points of course for complaining about how she doesn't have the time for the busy and complex business of moderating the groups she created primarily because she was too busy to just fucking read blogs in the first place.

And there's hte special honorable mention for how catbert there acts as though it's shocking, SHOCKING that BL might have been pissed off at the whole thing, "but we were BFF! I mean you've written a lot about how you object to those inner circle type cliques after having seen it tear apart so many other groups you've been involved with, and I did exclude you from the group, and insult your intelligence a bit when you did find out about it, but seriously why are you acting like such a jerk towards me, jeez..."

Skip ahead a bit, Belle has curled up into her email based womb (again), except the group is now a largely (upper-middle class) whites only affair, the blogosphere's not heard much about this because most of the people involved were hubbloggers - lots of the even smaller blogs tend to link into them, and they link into each other, so posts at BL or my blog don't really spread far because they would have to go through those blogs who have pinky sworn to silence on the matter... for the sake of group cohesion or something else that doesn't make any sense.

That's the slight problem with people who you think are smart, but who then go and set up secret white-only oligarchies; any assumptions you made about them being smart were clearly wrong, otherwise they wouldn't have thought that a secret whites-only oligarchy was a really neat idea.

During this period I'm a bit confuddled. Basically my life since july has gone:

- homeless.

- stay at friend's place.

- Start experiencing rage attacks along with massive stress based crying jags as a result of the homeless period.

- Anorexia goes into overdrive and my period disappears during late august, but fortunately it reappears when I get my eating pattern sorted out again

- Ren randomly insults me, her commenters go all borg-esque on me and join in. As the insults tend less towards "R is being stupid and btichy and needs to get a grip" and more towards "oh R is a terrible writer, everything she says is just wrong" and others that were basically their generic anti-heart comments with my name in place, even if that didn't make all that much sense.

- Due to the sheer randomness of the attacks and my general low self esteem, I flounce and do an impression of Zippy the pin-head. Admittedly not my finest hour.

- find new apartment, start moving in.

- I start blogging again. Amanda starts yet another round of bullshit.

- start new job.

- finally see BL's post about Belle's secret treehouse club and I'm pissed off, but not sure whether to really take it up because while it raises huge warning flags in my mind, just from the basic concept* of an inner circle like that developing, and regardless of the reasons for it, becuase I know from history that such things never stay true to their origins, no matter how noble. And then their's the issue of the massive empathy failier on Belle and Co's parts, I mean, anyone who's read BL's work during the sex wars or burkagate should have been able to tell that BL was going to have issues with such a thing, and for belle to turn around and pretend that it's totally invalid to have issues with such a thing...

And then as I'm starting to think that maybe I can just ignore it, let the whole thing be, Ren's brings the butt hurt.

Not just any butthurt though, we're talking prime A-grade racist butthurt.

With. Sprinkles.

I should point out that this came after another, almost as bad thread; where Ren let her commenter turn her place into a cesspit, and you remember how I accused Marc of humping his recently deceased dog to death? Well it turned out that I actually do have a standard of decency wrt rhetoric.

That level is reached at about the point where, in response to a relatively tame attack post for Ginmar, Ren commentariat suddenly decided that accusing Ginmar of being mentally ill as a way to dismiss what she was saying.

I think the fact that they were using Ginmar's PTSD, which she got from serving in Gulf War 1, as a way to dismiss her was as bad if not worse than the whole using a mental disorder someone suffers with to attack them, because it is ridiculously dehumanizing - and again this was from people, including Belle, who'd talked, previously, about the importance of empathy and how they stood against dehumanizing people and the violence that that leads to, who suddenly turned around and threw all that out of hte window.
So I wade in, as I am want...

Oh no, if Ginmar chose to join up... well it's what she deserved for helping american imperialism and she has no one to blame but herself...

Comment after comment like that. From Ren, from belle, from others who should know better.

And I'm looking around and I'm starting to get that odd prickling sensation on the back of my neck because I suddenly realise that all of her regular commenters are all, exclusively, upper middleclass, and spewing the most hateful classist bullshit imaginable, at women like me who are getting screwed over by the system they benefit from without the costs that we have to endure for their comfort.

Because anyone who pretends that the working class are not given three, equally evil, choices in life, to either join up with the military, turn to crime and get put in jail, or to be slowly killed by the soul destroying working that will, if we're really really Lucky, provide just enough to keep a roof over our heads and maybe put some instant ramen in our stomachs as well, is a fucking evil bastard themselves, who has decided to make themselves complicit in the oppression working class poeple like myself experience.

Because those rage attacks I've been suffering are due to both the way I got treated while out on the streets last year, and the first time I was homeless back in the 90's as well, by other people, and the little voice inside my head, that told me that it was all my fault and that I deserve that kind of treatment.

Because underlying all the oppression people face is erasure, both the willingness of the victims to accept the bullshit notion of some how deserving to be tortured by a system of Hate, and that willingness of seemingly rational human beings to, with out cause or seeming prompting, to suddenly declare that black people are just jealous when they complain, or Latin@s are just being lazy when they demand a human wage. Underlying oppression is a society that is willing to do any, ANYTHING, rather than admit that such oppression exists, let alone that We, that meta-textual Us, is in any way responsible for it.

And after witnessing that bullshit being thrown by Ren's pals with her tacit acceptance, after the shit with the email list, with Amanda's crap again and again...

That's when I saw this at ren's place.

Ren was told by Kate that a term she used made Ren's blog hostile to her. Kate is voicing how Ren's writing makes her feel, in a remarkably polite way, and asking Ren to do something that really doesn't cost Ren.

So obviously ren did what any Ally would do: she declared that she was asian and then started waffling about how she deosn't do Politically Correct while utterly dismissing Kate's expereince of racism, while dismissing the hurt that Ren's words can.

Because oppression of Ren is the One True Oppression, accept no substitute folks.

And the thing I have to ask, in retrospect, given the entire bushel of bullshit is basically this:

WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO THOSE PEOPLE!?

I mean because we discussed that sort of thing, I rememeber conversations involving how to be a better ally that dealt with just that sort of sitaution, and everyone being a racist asshole in that thread has called other white people on pulling that crap so...

I'm looking at the people who are supposedly anti-racist, and who've demonstrated intelligence in the past and who has demonstrated that they know better and yet...

And I've been shying away from this, because like a crap Ally myself I've been afraid, cowardly even, my lifes chaotic, and the amount of emotional investment required to, once again, completely write off people I'd thought "Got It", thought were true allies, not with myself, but with the people who need allies, the people who get it in the neck when people like us don't pull through and don't speak up, and let them come for their children because they ain't coming for us yet, and it turned out I was nieve, stupid, cowardly and blind.

I could stand being personally insulted, because there is nothing any of those scumbags could say that is worse than what I say to myself, and I could stand silliness that was probably going to lead to an epic, mind boggling blowout that would at least be fun to watch.

But then Amanda goes and out does herself, and I see another good writer, not one of the heartless sychophantic hacks who buzz around Ren, for obvious metaphorical reasons, but a good writer, and a strong women, and a good woman, and I see how it affects all those other beautiful and I see these silly little cliqueish types, buzzing around it all, saing not very much apart from a bit of empty posturing that makes promises their hearts can't cash, and I'm torn between vomiting and killing myself, because maybe I did something wrong? Maybe the degeneration of these people from actual allies into pathetic self absorbed racists.
Except I'm still blaming mysefl for other people's failings, and I'm suffering because of their problems, and causing suffering because I'm trying to accomadate the feelings of such losers, and staying silent not for any valid reason, but to maintain some fantastic notion I have that the group that we're all tied up in is worth more than actaully supporting those beautiful women who get silenced while the hacks keep chortling to themselves in their dirty little whites only club.

The hell with that.

You still reading this?

I'll be back on the 20th of next month, and you remember that R. Mildred from waaay back who was kinda awesome, back before everyone turned into jagoffs? She'll be back too. I'm gonna clear my head, sort my self out, make out those clear boundaries between myself and the bastard world that got destoryed at some point, see if I can't squeeze a little more free time for RL activism and then I shall return.

And one more thing:

After burkagate, I vowed to punch Amanda in the face should our paths ever accidentally cross.

After this Seal house explosion let me make this promise; should I happen to bump into Bfp, or BA, or M, or Donna or yes, even Nez, I promise to pick them up and mercilessly soak their feet.

It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.

Peace out.

Seung Cho had 99 problems but a bitch ain't one

Cho was Asian...

Cho was disturbed...

Cho was an immigrant...

This is the retoric with which the nation is reacting to the virginia tech shootings.

Bellatrys lays the connections down between this set of shootings, the history of randomised gun killings, and our post-9/11 responses to revenge ourselves upon afghans and iraqis with... randomised killings.

Of course while everyone else is psychoanalysing crappy vent fics by Cho, I think I'll focus on psychoanalyising the nation itself.

Because for one thing, the context in which he wrote those are gonna get retconned to make him fit into easy stereotypical conceptions of the lone gunman.

Of course as with all other past shootings, the proceedings are quickly devolving into what is hard to describe as anything other htan a good old fashion freak show.

Here's what Fox has on it's front page right now:


"A Loner", "Disturbed Writings", "Quietly Seethed"...

Aside from the way FOX has decided that a woman sniffing some purple panties should be the face of the virginia shootings hysterics (unless prince was somehow involved)... It's also funny how, year after year after year after year after year these things occur and yet, despite the fact that the gunmen are always revealed by our benevolent news media to be the stereotypical Wolfman Lone Gunman, and there's never a lack of apparent warnings about the state of mind of these monsters... they still happen.

Of course once you're portraying something that horrifies you as monstrous, and describe it using the same route narrative structures and memetic constructs you used the last time some horribly monstrifiable event occurred you're acting in a way that most psychologists would describe as "compulsive" if it's how you react to something.

And the thing is that the more I think of it, the compulsive disassociation that tends to mark the national reaction to these events is pretty normative for it's reaction to anything that's salaciously horrific, the attention of the news orgs seems...to...slip past the true horrors, and cut everything down into simple, pre-existing, concepts, each of which do the exact same thing to all the wildly different topics they're used to cover - whether it's terrorism, or war or whatever - put emotional distance between the readers and the events that unfold, the world gets cut down into peices because if you focus on one shard of the mosaic you can't see the bigger picture and so don't have to deal with the full implications of it all.

There are probably thousands upon thousand of "loners" in this nation, seething and festering and undoubtably entertaining wonderfully histrionic revenge fantasies* - however only one of them shot up Virgin Tech on monday, but even a passing familiarity with the news media would tell you that despite the fact that him being a loner was probably only at best partially the issue with him going postal, this is the probably going to be the core aspect of the reporting of the massacre.

Of course the point of that is to of course mark him clearly as outside the community, outside the connections that would place an obligation upon the community he lived in to either have some way of dealing with people who were as socially disfunctional as Cho was, or to at the very least attempt to find solutions to this recurring problem - not to shift the "blame" as the news orgs are doing when they're not monstrifying Cho, which of course is just another way to disassociate from the tragedy, except instead of Cho being the Outsider, the victims or the school for whatever reason, because if we can peg someone with the blame and Other them, then we can absolve ourselves of any responsibilities we as a society have for what went on that day.

However, let me point out that no matter how I look at the events that day, the school authority could be said to have done anything but fucked up after the shootings began - the hyperfocusing on the "domestic dispute" hypothesis, combined with the apparent blase attitude towards the fact that there was, no matter how you cut it or interpret the initial murders (which included both a man and a woman, and thus makes the whole domestic dispute excuse somewhat nonsensical), a murderer loose upon the campus.

Now you don't need to have a magic 8ball to realise that not warning people that there was an armed killer who wasn't particularly picky about who he killed, and that the VT authorities dropped a rather large ball that turned out to be filled with 30 corpses inside it on that count.

But here's the thing: VT's problems are the nation's problems.

That's what's missing in so much of news coverage, it's so rife with this constant compulsive need to disassociate the readers and viewers from whatever is being covered - not just geographically or emotionally, but socially as well.

This is very interesting because newsmedia and the rightwing especially use disassociation very selectively, and quite maliciously.

You see, the VT authorities' reaction to the shooting didn't just happen - there was a cause, a cause made of a smidgin of racism coupled with a soup con of misogyny on top of a big heaping pile of the it-could-never-happen-heres all of which mean that instead of two murders and a suicide that VT would have been hard pressed to stop, we've got 30 more dead, taking with them not just their personal futures but ideas and concepts and knowledge that will probably have to be recovered from wherever the students and professors killed last decided to write down their notes.

The disassociation from people like cho, and the victims and the events last monday, is the reason why we'll probably have another similar tragedy as a result of the it-could-never-happen-heres - the media Othering of not just the killer, not just the victims (who's personalities are erased quite neatly by all the 2-Dimensional and deeply objectifying "tributes" to the dead while the Pundits are musing on what the victims did wrong, like they foolishly jumped in front of the bullets for giggles and shit or something) but of the event itself.

I didn't pick the term "freak show" up thread as an empty perjorative, the media disassociation of these events, their perpetrators and the victims is the velvet rope or the glass barrier seperating the freaks from the audience - it marks the clear Us/Other dichotomy that is essential if you're gonna suppress any sort of feedback either into teh greater society as a result of the event, or into the specific society that it occured in as result of the greater society's reaction to the event that trickles down to the focus point for all the waves that would otherwise be created by the central event itself.

And what's interesting is that this effect extends far beyond the VT shootings, and is present in the reporting of things ranging from the various middle eastern crisii to Imus or Kramer's respective bigotry blowups.

In the Kramer incident we get this wonderful effect whereby, when he starts making jokes about lynching black members of his audience, the white majority audience hoots and laughs but then he says "nigger" and suddenly, BAM! The trained disassociation kicks in, as suddenly he is marked as outside and other.

Which is a wonderful way to deal with the problems of societal racism, you know, by always marking anyone who says the wrong trigger phrase - not the horrible concept that black folk should shut up and be thankful that they can be in the presence of white folk without getting lynched, oh no - as outside the racist society itself so that their actions can't be linked to any sort of wider propensities towards racism that is posessed by soceity itself.

This of course means that this whole disassociation dance that is so apparent in Cho's treatment by the news orgs, is yet another aspect of Political Correctness.

And of course it works in reverse too, because once you're able to just randomly declare members who, by any sane way of reckoning things, are actually part of the community and society they get disassociated from by the pundits and media, it becomes equally easy for those same pundits and media to associate people with groups and people who they are in no way connected with.

Of course the greatest trick involved in that is to of course create or adapt mythical groups that permeate the racist, sexist, heteronormative and cisgender dialogue, and attach things or behaviors or people to those groups - and then when you want to say attach behavior that you want ot present as abbarent among a favored community to some community of people who are targeted for hate - Imus is a classic example of this because not only did he try to excuse his actions by declaring that "the black community" said stuff like that all the time**, but the media coverage of that event played into that and linked his behavior, and hence himself considering that people are defined by their actions, into the "black community" (whatever taht is).

Which is why when a racist asshole tries to get a public appearance with an african american, and I'm talking largely to you jackson and sharpton, as though you were the frigging pope of the negros and able to absolve him of all sins - DON'T DO IT! No person from an Othered group can absolve a white person of being a racist, forgiveness can be given, but there's no real point to it other than to get you to shut up about it - but for the rest of us white folk, those connections to the black community are crucial becuase they absolve his listeners and the station and the entire rest of society from any responsbility for finding his bullshti to be perfectly acceptable until he tripped over the PC phraseology that requires this complex system of othering.

becuase what the media did was paint imus up in black face - which doesn't say "imus is racist" as hamsher and billmon thought blackfacing would do becuase htey're idiots who didn't bother to even try to research the nasty little concept they were using, but labels imus as black, I.E. Non-White and thus outside the confines of any greater need for the other white folk that made Imus to accept guilt or repsonsibility for making Imus pretty normative for public figures these days.


And this all again applies to the virginia shootings just as much - they declare Cho to be korean or a loner or a nut case, and then they say "We Are VT" and all that other trite bullshit that serves to assure people that they are affected by the shootings as much as those in VT are when they're not, nor could they be.

Imagine if instead of saying "we are VT" we talked about how "Those Around Us Are Cho" in the wake of this tragedy, and we faced up the pain and anguish and challenges this tragedy presents us now...
Could such a thing happen again in that sort of country? Probably, but would it happen as often, and would as many people die?

I doubt it somewhat. And mores to the point, not even trying, not even attempting it, demonising Cho and disassociating from both the tragedy and him, is plain Wrong, no matter how you look at it, no matter you religion or faith or personal ethics, marking him apart when pretty much anyone could have been that 33rd body on the VT campus if only things had been slightly different.

Jesus said*** that as we treat Cho, so do we treat Jesus himself, something a so called "christian nation" and those people who presume to act in His place seem to have forgotten.

Those of us with actual morals and who actually truly feel for the survivors, and weep for them and the dead equally, cannot, and are unable to forget that.

God is long dead to America, and has taken any Beauty this country might have with it, but these scum bags can't take the beauty from our hearts, not if we don't let them - Cho was Jesus, as indeed we all are, and while we still walk and refuse to falter or give up that sacred duty, God walks with us.

* Though of course, the way I'm reading his plays is with the violent swearing protagonists as the people around him who he bitches at in his suicide note, not as himself, and with the step dad from the mr McBeef play being a representation of himself - put upon, trapped and abused by those around him, which fits neatly with the usual Nice Guy messia complex, and even portrays a stereotypical undeserving "jerk" archetype as getting the affection of the single woman figure in that play, while the poor suffering guy is hated and killed by those stuck up assholes who seems so skilled at getting everyone to listen to them and not him.

But on the gripping hand, describing a guy who shot up a school as "a Nice Guy" probably breaks some sort of law about hyper-irony. Rain on your wedding day this is not, but still, a guy who goes around and acts put upon because the world isn't acknowledging his mediocre commitment to social norms of politeness and is basically fetishing how people around him break the alleged social standards of behavior that he holds himself to is far from the sane side of the crazy dichotomy.

** And while I've bitched at Chris Rock in the past for adding to the acceptability of that excuse because he misused the term "nigger" somewhat, it has to be remembered that it's not actually his fault white people are racist assholes who cling to that to justify their bigotry - no african american ever owned a white person, let alone was responsible for their actions and until I have reason to believe it's fair to think that's changed, anyone who tries to pretend that black people are responsible for white folks' actions is a really big fool. Really big.

*** I get really preachy here, don't worry, I've not gone christian again, but the language I'm using expresses what I feel as accurately as I can express otherwise - I think of jesus as a rather secular figure technically, and God as something a damn sight more complex and deep and spiritual than a mere guy with a beard who occasionally waffles about knitting sea monsters (or something) if you question him, so read this bit in that light or at face value if you are a christian.

Ah, about the white guilt thing

Tried to post this at Chasingmoksha's for some reason, posting here in case it isn't let through her moddding process and because I think it's worth leaving somewhere on it's own:

Judging by the way we keep hearing about your husband, who's self and experiences are always off stage and out of sight...

I'm gonna go ahead and assume you are in fact Columbo.

I'd be really interested to hear his story btw, to hear how he was treated for marrying you and being a father, because so far you seem to only mention this whole relationship as an attempt to explain how you really do get it (despite stuff that flows from a place of ignorance, even if some of it is an understandable result of cultural training) and how you weren't treated as white by all white people, and therefore WOC HAVE to accept you because you got Othered this one time etc...etc...

The people you're talking to GET being Othered, they do not get only being intermittently Othered, being able to choose to be Othered, being able to point out that you were Othered in isolated incidents and oh how terrible it was to be Othered against your will and all.

Okay CM, we get it, you have had a glimpse beyond the looking glass - now what? because the more I read of this little thing of yours, the more I get that you're wanting to be carried, you want to be pampered and waited on and suffered through your ignorances while people dig and dig and assume hte best of intentions underly your actions that, all things being equal, offend and anger.

And now, because they didn't, didn't treat you like they were white people talking to another white person basically, but acted like you really were a white person, and that they really were a non-white person, and that there is a normative way they're supposed to treat you (as their superior) and how you're supposed to treat them (as inferiors), and while you held up your end of that normative interaction, they didn't and treated you as though they really aren't under any obligation to "get" and "get" what you really mean underneath all your words.

Because all of that you're calling foul play? Kicking up a stink

Wake up sister, you just got treated like a person, not a white person, but an actual, 100% person, and judging by the struggle to avoid it and push everyone away, probably for the first time in your pale little life.

Scary aint it?

Embrace it, headbutt it, whatever, but move forward, don't turn away.

trust me on this, I've had to deal with the non-white people who are exactly as you say WoC are, the racist ones and the ones who really do affirm racists by doing nothing more than react to them constantly.

You ever tangle with the new lot of Black Panthers and people associated with the Nation of Islam - they're racist far beyond that "the white man is the devil" sort of whineness, but go off into wanting a true black supremacy equivalent to the one they're having to live under. Unsurprisingly they're all homo/transphobic misogynists like the cultural feminists are racist homo/transphobes, people who worship oppression like that are always assholes.

But the people you're reacting to - that ain't them, really, and to hear you whine, like twisty at one of her father's "spit on the poor" company barbecues about how terrible life is for the poor rich spinsty aunts of the world, about shit that really, ain't all that, and hardly compares to the shit I've been through, little ol' white me, the crap that I've been through.

You want a dick measuring contest, well then fine, I'll go get a step ladder for you to stand on so I can slap you in the face with mine.

I've felt direct racism, at me you see? AND I've had it thrown at my freinds, in fact white folk just like you tend to have this nasty little habit of sauntering up to me and saying stuff that basically parses down to "those black folks, huh?" when they started shit with my freinds as though it was my freinds who did something wrong.

First time I lived in a neighbourhood that wasn't predominantly black that got thrown at me.

And up until I'd been spouting crap like you did about that asian america girl you once knew, spouting off about those nasty little back stabbing two faced racist black girls at school who'd give me shit.

Used to cuss them out to my friends, who weren't white, and I'd do it like you did, go on about those black people just like you went on about those asians.
My friends tended to quickly change the subject if I did, didn't think much of it personally.

Then the first white person in my life did the "you're one of us - and they're not" dance at me, pissed me off, told my friend who'd they started shit with about it after wards and she got pissed off - at me.

Didn't get it, didn't understand why she was pissed off.

next week the friend is really distant, the asshole saunters up to me at lunch, starts eating, her other white freinds join us, we're all chatting, laughing, and now my freind turns up.

I ask her to sit with us and the table goes silent.

Her eyes, I never again want to see what I saw in her eyes that time, pain, anger, even more pain, then nothing, body went tence, face went unreadable.

And she said no, walked off, sat down and ate FAST, rushed out of there afterwards before I was finished, didn't speak to her the rest of the day, she was always in a hurry someplace not near me, probably would have kept htat up if hadn't... I'm Getting ahead of myself.

But as she walked off to sit down, the conversation started up again and the asshole from before nudged me while I'm looking at my friends' back, I turned and the asshole said "oh don't worry, you know what they're like." I smiled my fake smile at her, little nostril exhale of "mirth" at htat, and ate, didn't say anything at that table for the rest of the meal, walked off when I was done without saying bye.

Because it clicked, that asshole nudged what ever little thing that had been teetering on the brink of awareness for fucking years over the edge and... it clicked, commonalities and interstices.

She didn't return my calls, txted her, still no reply by about 10 o'clock, we'd been talking about going out and getting drunk.

I did.

Turned up on her doorstep with some seriously smudged eyeshadow - just the waiting and thinking about what to say to her had me in tears, and when she opened the door (a little, followed by a lot in a big angry slamming as she realises who I am) I just dived at her knees and cried and cried and apologised between ever other sob "didn't mean to be white to you, didn't mean to be so fucking stupid don't hate me i'm so sorry."

After she finally let me in and pried me off her knees and we started to talk - but afterwards we weren't friends like we had been, not for a good long while, but we were at least friends, and here's the thing; once you go that route, your freinds have no obligation to accept you back - your credit is poisoned forever by pulling shit like that, if I hadn't realised that, first of all, nothing would have happened, I could of rode up to her house on my big high horse and waffled about racist constructs this, and waffled about how I'm less of a racist because i think everyone's green and murdered that freindship like ted bundy at a wet t-shirt contest that was offering an "all you kill then rape" buffet because as a friend it is my obligation not to add to the crap the rest of society piles on her, and she had no obligation to be my black tonto.

And as such, she kinda objected to me treating her like it was.

And the thing is, she was there when, back in HS and we were doing maya angelou, the clique kids would snigger and look my way whenever the "po' white folks" were mentioned (and that's the stuff that didn't involve me getting beat up and sat on and having my head flushed in the boys toilets by the girls while they pulled my underwear down and wrote "white trash ¢2" on my butt. So yeah, I been there and then some with actual racism being directed my way.

But that's just shit people gotta put up with in general, if it hadn't been black girls spewing crap like that, it'd have been white spewing their brand of idiocy at me, and trust me, I tend to react to insults and those beat downs tneded to come from the idiots being unable to reply with anything that didn't involve two of them sitting on my arms, one on my legs and the fourth wailing on my stomach.

But seeing the look in her eyes before she shut it off, then having the stupid asshole nudge me and make me realise what I'd actually done.

You talk about white guilt, but you don't seem to know that it's not black people calling us white that creates it - hell, you're doing what white guy after white guy always does when that happens, react and whine and run from what they're trying to get you to understand.

Oh no, that's not where the white guilt comes from, and htat's not where the pain should be coming from because being called a "nigger" or a "race traitor" by other white folk? HAH! That's fucking music to dance to, a status to, as you and heart make so fucking clear, revel in because being a white women in a white man's world means fucking freedom from having to accept the checks they try to make you cash in.

No, the guilt should stem from the other white people accepting you, sucking you into those habits of saying "Them" and generalising and Othering, that leaves you seeing black people, or asian people, when you should be seeing nothing more complex than just plain assholes - and all assholes are brown, even the ones on white people (ignoring asshole bleaching for a second).

You should be feeling guilty for pissing on asian women, and asian progressives, and asking them, and asking their friends of various hues to just be white with you, and to call it lemonade and get them to suck it down.

Because you can denounce whatever you like, you're actions, your words, have been white.

And that's what matters, not whetehr some white girl cussed at you once.

That is very true professor, and perhaps my mistake, I actually thought someone would at least once not veiw every single white person as the enemy

They can't walk into a dialogue with white women and assume what you wanted them to assume, or they get screwed over.

And when you ask them to let down that justified guard, because you've suffered, and you can sympathise whoah-ah-oh-oh, and any number of other declared attributes you want to throw out there, you're asking them to risk more than you've so far been willing to show.

This results in what one calls a "monologue" because no one with any sense'll listen to you, rather like that whole "bipartisan" thing the repugs go on about.

There's a power dynamic beneath all that as well.

(the word verification for that comment was "jbnbaaby" btw, make of that what you will)

And yeah yeah, I know, she asked me not to comment at her place, and usually my policy is to act like an anti-vampire, don't go where I'm not invited and all that, but I had a mad on, okay? Fuck you.

Dear world that thinks drunk women lead to rape:

Has anyone considered the idea that men drinking might have something to do with rape as well? Why are women stopping the boozing and the toilet fucks just because some men can't handle their liquor and just damn well lick her instead?

I demand mandatory neck collars that electrocute men whenever they drink to much.

Your sincerely,

R. Mildred

The Airing of Grievences - the sober edition

Tis the season to Kvetch and whine folks, O'Rielly was the first of the modern Orthodox Irreligious pundits to say "fuck christmas" and mark the One True Holiday of Festivus with an endless tirade of whining and whinging - though I some how think Father Costanza (who travels all around the world on festivus eve, bringing gifts of disappointment and disfunction to all small children and their families) didn't have a rehashing of the nazi's (And even earlier facists') ye olden "secular boogieman" propaganda in mind when he began our glorious tradition - and other such Orthodox Irreligious have since taken up the charge and embraced Our glorious tradition, and like most orthodox irreligious have even followed the old ways and performed the ancient rite of Making The Huge Song And The Huge Dance About Getting Drunk Down At The Local Bar (which may or may not include the lesser Making of The Empty Threats followed by The Slamming of The Doors, and their related sub-ritual of Having Forgotten The Coat and I Meant What I Said You Ingrates) after which such orthodox types come home stinking of booze and tanked up to their eyeballs before engaging in the Airing of Grievences.

Kyso at Punkass has two sterling examples of what the more orthodox irreligious get upto come festivus time, and while my fat promiscuous mother may roll in her grave at my continued refusal to engage in the ancient practices of Shaming The Sluts and Bemoaning The Downfall of Western Civilisation, I have had a few brewskies before I start as a capitulation to yje ancient Irreligious ways.

So without further adeiu let the airing of grievences begin!

Okay! I got a lot of problems with you people! And now, you're gonna hear about it.

First off, America, what is your problem huh? We, the people, had such high hopes for you and look what you've done with yourself! The arms sales! The class divide! The continued hatred of women and non-white people including hispanic peoples! And exactly how hard is it to get a system of universal healtcare in place and to make the schools work? You are a huge disappointment to everyone, bow your head in shame.

FireDogLake! What the hell is your problem huh? We, the people, had no real hopes for you a result of you being run by a crazy lady who is personally responsible for Quentin "freak jawed plagarising hack of immense suckitude" Tarantino, and still you disappoint us! In the year of the blackface, you somehow managed to lift yourself head and shoulders above the milling crowd of would-be-wits to produce more racist, colonising, misogynistic, insulting, patronising, alienating bullshit than all the other half witted pwogwessive bleached assholes combined.

I'd ask you all over there to bow your head in shame but you'll probably just cause a crick in your small intestine if you tried.

The Nation State of Israel! THE HELL!?

You do realise that by the standard of "exceptional persecution" that enables your inexplicable word lawyering religious zionists (what rock did they spring up from under?) to allocate a slice of the middle eastern imperialistic pie for themselves, you have pretty much just justified Lebanon and Palestine several countries all their own, with no benefits for yourself whatsoever. Oh but that'd only apply if you were bothering with such trifles as logical consistency or introspective contemplation. Come the fuck off with the holocaust waving already, no past oppression justifies lebensraum and ghettos, nor does it justify mass reprisals against civilian populations. no, you don't even get to pull off the occasional analogue to the invasion of poland nor do you get to start erecting barbed wire edged fences manned by psychotic brainwashed "patriotic" armed soldiers around your ghettos.

And what took you so long to start moving towards relaxing the marriage laws huh?

Bow your head in shame The Nation State of Israel!

Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, current president of Iran! I know what you're trying to do and I for one think it's disgusting.

Yes, that's right, it's all too painfully clear, the obession with nuclear weapons, the love of international arms sales to crazy islamist nutjob terrorists, the propensity for religious craziness, the love for making hollow threats to wipe your international rivals off the face of the earth on international TV, yes yes yes but here's the thing: You're not Ronald Reagan.

You don't have the hair for it, nor do you have the wooden personality and impressive level of incompetence that kept him from focusing on any single issue for long enough to make too huge a fuck up out of it all.

Alzheimer's is not a toy young man, stop it at once and bow your head in shame!

People who go on about how "eloquent" and "well spoken" Barack Obama is! I know it's the year of the blackface and all, but still, shut the fuck up already.

Goths! Get a fucking tan already! The same goes for mimes, clowns and all european aristocrats, in this age of sun beds and easy-on skin cancers you have no excuse for being so pale!

People who talk about the "judeo-christian" tradition! It's a fucking Greco-Roman tradition you stupid fucking goys, on account of the modern face of christianity being just a rather pathetic offshoot of all those nasty little nationalistic state religions that the various greek and roman states and empires, and I'm talking historically as well as theologically and stylistically here! damn you for your wilful jingoistic puritan style stupidity! Bow your head in shame all of you!

Emmanuele Kant! I find your universal maxim inane and vacuous! Also, those dodgy soft core porn movies you kept starring in back in the day were equally unimpressive and bland!

The State of New Jersey! I don't remember anyone asked you to join the union either during the war of independence or after the civil war. No one likes you, go away and stop bothering us. I'd suggest you become an impoverished south american country, you've got the nazis for it.

The City of Los Angeles! The ocean is rightfuckingthere! All you've gotta do is slide into it! Come on, it's easy! Go on! Slide already!

Conservatives who are all about shooting progressives and liberals! You shoot MLK, but Markos Moulitsa is still a-fucking-live!? What, do you want me to hold your hand while you do it? Get on with it already you yellow bellied cowards!

Houston Texas! Stop bogarting the world's supply of bengal tigers!

The Fine Officers of the NYPD! Bite me!

Obviously enough of you didn't get killed in the towers, because you've still got alot to learn about not murdering people, and if you didn't get the message from the deaths of 3000 people then I guess your next sensitivity training course had better culminate with eahc and everyone of you and your immediate families getting shot 50 fucking times, because your ability to actually concieve of anyone who isn't in a uniform being human is obviously somewhat lacking.

Oh sorry, it's only black people who you don't consider to be human, that's different of course.

And all those genital orb-less cowards in the NYPD who sit around on their fat asses munching doughnuts and start talking about how "larry" and "brad", or whoever it was, are such nice guys (You're talking about when they're not actually bathing in the blood of the innocent for shits and giggles I presume) instead of actually taking a damn good look at their fellow officers and making damn sure that they're not hideous blood thirsty racist monsters who have this nasty little tic that seems include emptying whole clips into people who have the gall to going around and be black in a built up area every year or so. Though I guess it's sort of a good thing that the people they shoot at aren't armed, otherwise that whole pesky unloading whole clips wildly into the general vacinity of their targets might bite them in the ass. Hey guys, why don't you change that old motto of "to protect and to serve" into something more accurate hmm? How about; "the NYPD: Where evolution goes horribly wrong, with a gun!"

The People's Republic of Vietnam! What's you problem with transgender people getting gender reassignments? You can do better!

And all you people who think the holiday season is the "season for charity and good will", no no NO! the season for charity and good will begins on january 1st and continues until december 31st!

Hang your heads in shame all of you!

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Remember folks, Festivus ain't over 'til I'm pinned to the floor, which usually happens during the new years celebrations if I have any say in the matter, so I may add more yet.