For as much complaining, joking, and even objective analyzing people do concerning how…young Luke comes across in the first acts of A New Hope, I’ve yet to see anyone actually give him credit for staying home on Tatooine and fulfilling his obligations to his aunt and uncle, despite how frustrated, stifled, and bored out of his mind he was. I mean, he was 19, he was grown (enough), he could’ve just been like, Screw this, I’m outta here, and ditched them. Aunt Beru was even sympathetic to his plight. But Luke was loyal to her and Owen, sucked it up, and took care of his responsibilities. Never mind that Owen was most likely repeatedly adding responsibilities and moving the goalposts on when Luke could leave because he didn’t want him to leave because he was trying to keep him safe on Tatooine because he knew things about Luke that Luke was still unaware of… Because Luke didn’t know all that, he just knew that his aunt and uncle need for him to help on the farm outweighed how much they cared about how held back he felt. So he stayed, and he was bored, and he did his chores, and he eked out bits of relative fun when he could, and when the weird old wizard hermit man who claimed to have known his dead father invited him on a mission presented by a beautiful princess from a far-off planet, he was like, No. I can’t just up and leave my family and my place here. It took tragically losing his family and his place and having nothing left to stay for before he would “accept the call”. But before that, Luke was reliable and dutiful as hell. As well as very respectful and loyal to the people who raised him–basically his adoptive parents. Even in the face of his growing frustration and wanderlust. And that’s something to be admired and commended. That’s a strength of character. So just saying, it’d be nice to see more recognition of that in between the constant snickering about Tosche Station. It’s been 40 years, we get it. Now credit where credit is due.
saw a comment someone made on a post saying “it’s not possible to read dark fiction and not have that affect your morals, you can’t train your brain NOT to normalize those things!” and i completely agree
as a life-long crime fiction and horror fan, i am an immoral monster. i’ve watched all 456 episodes of law and order and committed a murder after each one. i ate my neighbors after watching hannibal. i started a meth lab after breaking bad. i ruined my high school prom because i watched carrie the night before. in middle school i read stephen king’s it, went down to the sewers with some friends and
(2/2) “Mom tried her best to pay for flight school, but we kept running out of money. I’d have to drop out for a few weeks, and since flying involves so much muscle memory, it would take me a while to get back on track. So one day I bought a stack of magazines and newspapers. I went through every page and cut out the advertisements. Then I opened my pantry and wrote down every brand I could find. I sent all of them letters, asking for help. Almost everyone said ‘no.’ But I did receive an amount from a grocery store called Pick-n-Pay. And Breitling sent me a brand new watch to raffle. That was a huge break. I sold six hundred raffle tickets. Things were going so well. African Pilot Magazine promoted the raffle for free. A man from Australia bought 100 tickets. But then I got a letter from the Lottery Board ordering me to end my raffle. They said it was illegal. I tried to explain that I was raising money for my education, but they didn’t care. I was so disappointed. I’d have to sit out another year of flight school. But when I called everyone to explain the situation, nobody would accept their money back. They told me to keep it! It was enough to keep me in the air for months. Then around Christmas that year, one of my mentors invited me to eat lunch at the airport. When I stepped out of the car, everyone who had ever helped me was there. They all started clapping. And somebody handed me the phone. A person on the other end said: ‘You’re live on 94.7, and we’re going to pay for your entire education!’ That was nearly four years ago. I just got my license last week. My plan is to fly for South African Airlines, but first I want to do some teaching. I want to visit schools in black neighborhoods. I want all the kids to see what an African female pilot looks like.” (Johannesburg, South Africa)
You are either 100% anti-fascist or you’re a fascist.
No more pretending there is some middle ground. There are only two sides in this fight.
There is no time for both-side-ism here. The debate isn’t even over, it never should have happened in the first place. The nazis killing Jews are from the same cloth that Sam Harris called “peaceful Nazis” when they confronted antifascists last year.
The people emboldened to build and send bombs to politicians, to kill POC in the open, are the same people who centrists said deserved a seat at the table and had a right to a platform. The same centrists who warned that the left was the problem, and allowed Nazis or organize.
I have not forgotten a single centrist who defended Nazis, fascists, added “anti-antifa” to their profiles, or gave platforms to these peddlers of death on their YouTube shows or podcasts.
You chose your side, you decided to align with murders in order to score anti-left points
You need to understand that people are surrounded by propaganda that paints a real ugly picture of antifa. From sources that people have been taught to trust. See…. This if you’re not a hundred percent with us and all of our tactics then you’re equivalent to Them" rhetoric really makes me take a step back. That means if I disagree with you on anything , I’m a target? Seems…a little…. authoritarian?
Here’s what YOU need to understand.
Let’s say fascists want to kill my family (they actually do want to kill my family, so I’m not being hyperbolic). If I have two people in front of me, a fascist who wants to kill my family and someone who claims to not be fascist, but who also says, “hey that fascist has a right to want to kill your family, and I will defend their freedom to do so,” then guess what? YOU ARE BOTH MY ENEMY. You are both a danger, the fascist and the fascist-enabler. You don’t get to wriggle out of enabling a bunch of genocidal maniacs just because Trump told you that antifa are bad hombres. As a targeted individual, I don’t have the time to ascertain your good intentions, and even if I did, I’d find out your so-called “good intentions” are really just a mess of willful ignorance, unexamined prejudice, and rejection of the principles of critical thinking.
And if people who enable fascism feel targeted… good! How the hell else are they going to change their fascist-enabling behavior? When we ask nicely, they just ignore us.
Also, keep in mind they’re only being targeted for what they believe and how they enact those beliefs: that it’s OK to enable fascists. And we’ll stop targeting them the second they change that stupid belief. In contrast, fascists don’t target people for their beliefs, they target them/us because they believe we’re not real human beings, that some aspect of who we’re born as makes us unworthy of life itself, no matter what we believe.
the NYT 2018 midterms morning-after narrative, with all the chin-stroking about mixed results and the bland end of the Dems driving the successes, seems really wrong to me and frankly kind of enraging. obviously there were disappointments but, net-net, this is not a morning for wailing and gnashing of teeth. I compulsively wasted hours and hours of my life following this shit last night, so I’m just going to lay out some of the story points supporting a more robust and optimistic narrative real quick
the objective was always to take the House; the Senate was always an almost hopeless moonshot
we did take the House, decisively
the things that follow from that are now going to be realized. it means not only more robust Trump oversight, the tax return subpoenas and protection for the Mueller investigation and so on, but also much needed brakes on the runaway GOP legislative agenda. the Republicans are not going to get to try to repeal ACA again, or kill Social Security, or defund Planned Parenthood, or have their way with the 2020 census or the budget. those things are all huge
the >9% popular-vote D advantage is comparable to or bigger than past midterm “wave” elections, including 1994’s Tea Party wave. that’s literally how we fucking took the House despite 1. the disastrous 2010 census gerrymandering and resulting structural 5- to 7-point GOP advantage and 2. the more recent horrifying surge of strongman fascism. excuse me but we 110% fucking deserve wave status
got a bunch of governorship wins that really fucking matter! Scott Walker, don’t let the door hit you on your way out of Wisconsin! welcome home, Michigan! fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Kris Kobach!
what’s not the matter with Kansas, multiple excellent results there with both Laura Kelly and Sharice Davids winning upsets. possibly they’ve finally put it together that austerity is terrible and are positioning themselves to start fixing the damage. good going, Kansas
this whole weird line that it was moderate Dems that drove all the key successes and dynamic progressives only ever have any chance in the very bluest coastalest elitest cityest races is bullshit. I can’t believe the NYT can say that with a straight face. Sharice Davids is NOT your bland straight white guy DINO, and Kansas is, um, not the Bronx? Pennsylvania is literally going to have a DSA caucus? Beto O’Rourke lost what was, come on, a moonshot race by a high-suspense hair, he clearly has cemented his rising-star status and generated real excitement and momentum
meanwhile DINO “moderate” poster children Heitkamp and Donnelly lost us two (2) Senate seats. wtf with this narrative?
several of the highest profile GOP wins were in states with especially flagrant and egregious voter suppression. we’re all looking at you, Georgia, North Dakota, TEXAS whose Senate race was still close as hell. this is one of the things a Democratic House is well positioned to make a goddamn fuss about.
also Michigan and uh I think another state passed anti-gerrymandering ballot initiatives and, may I goddamn repeat, official face of ‘voter suppression is actually good’ Kris Kobach is out on his ass. plus, granted Florida is a trainwreck by a hundred thousand or so people again, they’ve also just reenfranchised 1.4 million ex-felons, so that may be goddamn changing in future
Virginia is a blue state now btw
New York internal state shit here but the state senate has finally thrown off its shackles so maybe we can actually get some good goddamn legislation passed, seriously if you don’t live here you have no idea the bullshit that’s been going on in Albany thanks to so-called moderates
is everything in the garden lovely? hell to the fuck no, shit sucks in abundance out there, but we knew that! that’s not the surprising bit!
give hardworking blues the credit they deserve 2k18
On the progressive side, I would also note that Stacey Abrams (who hasn’t conceded yet but I’m not holding my breath on this) came the closest to flipping the Georgia’s governor’s mansion since the 90s when middle of the road democrats since 2002 have lost from between 5 to 20 percent. Good lefty Abrams got within 2 percent (and outperformed Clinton in total number of votes received in Georgia…IN A MIDTERM YEAR). The Southeast did tend to go less blue than might have been hoped, but the Midwest made up for that and the vote totals show the progressives can get out to vote.
This despite entireblue districts in GA getting allocated non-working voting machines and being no joke completely shafted for voting, BY THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE WHOSE LITERAL JOB WAS RUNNING GA STATE ELECTIONS. It’s not a disgrace, doing this well in the face of not only a legit mixed af Southeastern state constituency but also flagrant bald-faced cheating.
wait wait wait wait
How can running elections possibly be the job of somebody who has such an immediate and vested interest in the outcome?!
I think we would all know yet more on this point
Apparently both the Abrams election in Georgia and the Gillum one in Florida were called before most(maybe all? The stories I’ve read are unclear on this) of the absentee, provisional, and mail-in ballots were counted, and there’s a real possiblity those returns could push them into run-off territory, so:
Not only did leftier Dems, even the ones who lost, drastically out-perform centrist Dems
At least two of the lefties getting national recognition who did seem to lose(largely as a result of clear civil rights and election law violations) the night of, may not have actually lost.
So, as everyone above has been saying, all this stuff coming from status quo loving pundits about how Tuesday “proves” Dems should shrink away from ~extreme~ policy positions like “people should be able to afford to go to school”(when the US basically invented public universities), “people shouldn’t go bankrupt from seeing the doctor”(a problem no other post industrial country has), and “you should be able to leave your house without worrying you’ll be shot”(again, a problem unique to the US among post-industrial countries), are spewing hot-air.
i'll apple your turnover 