Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.— James 5:1-6
At first I thought this was an angry Tumblr post but then it turned out to be the Literal Bible and it got 1000x better
So, as someone who cooks, I have been taking an interest in the story of Penzey’s Spices. They’re a small business based in Wisconsin and they sell specialty spices to people who are into cooking enough that they get into that sort of thing. Right after the election, Penzey’s apparently sent out an email opposing the “open embrace of racism by the Repubulican Party in this election” and deploring the probable consequences. When this provoked quite the response, they followed up with Cooking Trumps Racism, in which the owners clarified that they did not hold ALL Republicans responsible for this, just those who had voted for Trump. For those who did, they had this to say:
“For the rest of you, you just voted for an openly racist candidate for the presidency of the United States of America. In your defense, most of you did so without thinking of the consequences of your candidate’s racism because, for most of you the heartbreaking destruction racism causes has never been anything you or your loved ones have had to experience. But the thing is elections have their consequences. This is no longer sixty years ago. Whether any of us like it or not, for the next four years the 80% of this country who did not just vote for an openly racist candidate are going to treat you like you are the kind of person who would vote for an openly racist candidate.”
This of course provoked backlash, hate mail, calls to boycott Penzey’s, etc. from Trump Nation. The other day, Penzey’s published an open letter to other CEOs about their ordeal. The summary: Since taking a public stance against the normalization of racism during the 2016 election, “online sales are up 59.9%, gift box sales up 135%.”
Below the cut tag I’m going to talk about some other examples of this, some smaller scale and some larger, all of which go to make the point that although Trump Nation may have Twitter, its citizens evidently do not like to put their money where their anonymous trolling is.
“The closure comes as a surprise even within the company, which has 18 employees. As recently as last week, officials had been discussing the implementation of long-delayed oversight of its foreign factory partners.”
Ivanka Daughter of Buttercup claims she did this so she can “focus on her work in Washington.” As nobody can figure out what the hell it is that she actually does in Washington, I’m going to attribute this decision to other factors liiiiiike…
“The announcement comes less than two weeks after Canadian department store chain Hudson’s Bay Co. said it would remove all Ivanka Trump products from its website and 90 stores because of the brand’s “performance.”’
Yes, that’s right. I’m going to blame Canada. And by “blame” I mean “thank.”
BUT…this is the ultimate result of a boycotting of the Trump brand(s) that was undertaken right after the election and is apparently FINALLY starting to bite:
“The company’s name has come down off of hotels in Toronto, Panama and New York’s Soho neighborhood, as well as from some residential buildings in New York.
While the Trump Hotel in D.C. charges some of the highest rates in the city and has become a popular meeting place for Republican political groups, religious organizations and businesses, data on other Trump properties including the Mar-a-Lago resort show signs of price drops as sports teams and charities move their business elsewhere.
Sales data on Trump-branded condominiums in New York City show them attracting lower prices than competing properties since Trump entered office. Meanwhile, the Trump Organization’s plans to dramatically expand its hotel portfolio in the U.S. have failed to progress, having opened no hotels under its announced ‘Scion’ and ‘American Idea’ brands.”
Do I care that much about Ivanka Trump’s clothing line? No. But this is an example of how sustained pressure can work. Boycotting Ivanka’s clothing line isn’t something a whole lot of people were passionate about; and yet, ‘declining sales’ has killed it off anyway.
I had to go all the way back to December 2016 to find this post; and looking over the archive was interesting. Indivisible did not exist then. Other wallet-wielding activity at that time included: donating buckets of money to the ACLU which has since been in the trenches on the travel ban as well as family separation; subscribing to newspapers which have since done major investigative reporting; donating to Democratic candidates that have since won special elections. This shit does not provide *immediate* gratification but it does eventually work. RAICES, which is working to fight Buttercup immigration ‘policy’ and reunite families, took in a huge amount of money in the first couple weeks of the crisis, and I mean HUGE. Buttercup is not the only one remaking the landscape. We’ve been doing it too. And right now, the results are modest; but if we keep it up, they will grow.
The USPS is the fastest, cheapest, and most accurate mail service on the planet last I heard, and is the biggest employer of veterans in the entire country.
On top of that, mail carriers: -have wages that top out at over $30 an hour (and their wages go up in predictable steps based on how long they’ve been with the USPS) -have excellent benefits, including a shit-ton of vacation time, plus a pension, and they can retire after thirty years
But they also have one of the oldest, biggest, strongest unions in the country. That must piss off Republicans so much.
Also, side note: they take zero taxpayer dollars. They’re entirely funded by postage.
(”But I heard they were doing terribly!” They’re not. Congress saddled them with pre-funding their retirement 75 years out to intentionally put them in the red and make them look bad. I’m not joking or exaggerating. There’s tons of info, but here’s the USPS’s own info: https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/annual-reports/fy2010/ar2010_4_002.htm )
no, i mean this social experiment started by a history teacher in calofornia in 1967
im Intrigued
it’s creepy not so much like paranormal but as in it’s a scary look at human nature. hang on a sec ill explain it
alright so. in 1967, a new history teacher at Cubberly High School in Northern California named Ron Jones was teaching his class about the Holocaust and Hitler’s rise to power. At some point during the lesson, many of his students began to ask why the rest of Germany had stood by and done nothing, and how afterwards they could have said they didn’t know. Many said that they would never allow something like that to happen, but most simply couldn’t understand how the population had allowed it back then. This made Ron curious: what was the answer? Why had so many Germans joined and tolerated the Nazis as their neighbors were dragged away? He realized there was no way of knowing, not without being there, and certainly no way of teaching it – unless, maybe, they could experience something similar.
The next day, Ron came in and began to command his class differently than usual. He had stricter rules, making students stand when asking or answering questions and having them fix their posture. He said it was a lesson on discipline and the phrase “strength through discipline” was written on the board.
The students, shockingly responded positively to the stricter rules; it was as if they had just been waiting for this and wanted more. They worked as a team and answered questions correctly, even sitting quietly until Ron dismissed them at the end of class.
In the next two days, the phrases “strength through community” and “action” appeared on the board. Ron announced to the class that their new rules and ideas were now the cornerstones of the group called the Wave. Their mottos were the three phrases on the board, and he introduced them to a salute (made by curling one’s right hand into the shape of a wave and tapping one’s left shoulder with it). The kids practiced both the motto and the salute that day.
Everything was going well in this experiment: Ron was increasingly seen as an incredibly important leader, the kids were being more well behaved, they were ahead in their studies, all good things, so Ron decided to continue the Wave. In class, he gave the students Wave membership cards, some of which had red x’s on the back. The x’s indicated that those people were to monitor the other members of the Wave and report directly to Ron if someone broke a rule.
Additionally that day, Ron gave the instruction to recruit members to the Wave; all were invited and all were equal in the Wave.
And recruit they did.
Later that week, there were over 200 members of the Wave. The pep rally became an official Wave rally where dozens of new members were sworn in. As the group grew, most everyone joined. However, if someone did not join, they were likely to find themselves very alone and possibly being threatened or hurt by Wave members.
By the 5th day, Ron knew things had spiraled out of control. He had grown into a mythical leader, and the students carried out his orders without hesitation, even if these orders never existed in the first place and were grown from within the Wave. He decided to tell the students that there would be a televised announcement of the Wave’s candidate announcement for the presidential election, and that all members should attend the rally later that day.
When they arrived, the hundreds of students were greeted with a blank screen and Ron. He told them the true nature of the Wave; how it had been born as an experiment that had grown exponentially until he had to end it. The students were shocked, and some even cried. They had all believed in the Wave wholeheartedly after just 5 short days.
The Wave is terrifying because it is real. Not so long ago, a history teacher fresh out from college was able to turn a school into a military state in just 5 days. We as humans are so easily led into fascist dictatorships and we so rarely question what goes on around us. The Wave is a testament to that, and a scary one.
There’s a really great German film of the same name (“Die Welle” – The Wave) based on this experiment – rather than stopping after 5 days however, the teacher lets it continue and things get much, MUCH worse. It’s a terrifying movie, but fascinating too.
Okay. This seems pretty insane if you don’t know what the existing state of terminally ill patients’ options is. So let’s go over that.
Terminally ill patients can sign up to be part of pre FDA approval trials for treatments which might potentially cure them. As these treatments are experimental, untested, not guaranteed to get results, and intended to provide profit to the medical provider in the long run, patients cannot be charged for these experimental treatments. As it should be. It’d be pretty unethical to get people to pay you to be your guinea pig for treatments which may not even help them.
This “right to try” law changes that. It makes it legal for terminally ill patients to be charged for experimental treatments. Furthermore, it removes FDA testing restrictions from the process. Currently a company which tries an ‘experimental’ treatment they know won’t work will get the hammer dropped on them by the FDA. But under this new process, medical providers would be legally allowed to provide ‘treatments’ they know won’t work, without oversight. This would legalize medical predation on terminally ill patients.
Labeling this bill ‘right to try’ makes it seem like terminally ill patients aren’t allowed to seek out experimental treatments right now. But they are! All this bill does is make a terminally ill patients more financially burdened and more vulnerable to predation.
But they aren’t documented so they wouldn’t be pa…..nvm
This is a huge misconception for regular Americans. When the government uses the phrase “undocumented” they’re using it incorrectly because if they were truly undocumented then they would’ve be in system. However these immigrants are in the system and they pay taxes, file tax returns and get no benefits that citizens and legal residents get. They also get to see ICE showing up at their doors because the government has their addresses.
Fun fact. “Undocumented” workers pays $12 billion dollars every year in taxes.
“Undocumented” just means “without papers,” i.e. a social security card, valid visa, etc. They’re still on databases and whatnot, they just don’t have the documentation that allows them to reap the benefits.
so if it didn’t click- the government is aware of their presence and gladly taking their money under the table while simultaneously promoting the idea that undocumented people are a threat and encouraging hatred and distrust of them it’s super messed up, literally the scheme of an evil villain, and it’s really happening
🗣 undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles contribute more to the GDP than the state of Montana and like 5 other states
oppression isn’t generational and trying to frame politics as “the old people are wrong and the young people are right” erases the fact that there are old people who have been fighting the good fight for decades and the fact that there are young people who are literally nazis
The supposed different “generations” i.e. millennials/Gen X/boomers etc is just liberalism’s attempt to replace class analysis by framing the different generations as coherent classes with different interests. It conveniently fails to mention that there are working class & ruling class people in all generations.
By making all ppl of a certain age responsible for inflation & higher cost of living or w/e, the responsibility of the ruling class is obscured, to the detriment of the working class & to the benefit of the ruling class.
“In the spring of 1940, when the Nazis overran France from the north, much of its Jewish population tried to escape the country towards the south. In order to cross the border, they needed visas to Spain and Portugal, and together with a flood of other refugees, tens of thousands of Jews besieged the Portuguese consulate in Bordeaux in a desperate attempt to get that life-saving piece of paper. The Portuguese government forbade its consuls in France to issue visas without prior approval from the Foreign Ministry, but the consul in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, decided to disregard the order, throwing to the wind a thirty-year diplomatic career. As Nazi tanks were closing in on Bordeaux, Sousa Mendes and his team worked around the clock for ten days and nights, barely stopping to sleep, just issuing visas and stamping pieces of paper. Sousa Mendes issued thousands of visas before collapsing from exhaustion.
The Portuguese government—which had little desire to accept any of these refugees—sent agents to escort the disobedient consul back home, and fired him from the foreign office. Yet officials who cared little for the plight of human beings nevertheless had a deep reverence for documents, and the visas Sousa Mendes issued against orders were respected by French, Spanish and Portuguese bureaucrats alike, spiriting up to 30,000 people out of the Nazi death trap. Sousa Mendes, armed with little more than a rubber stamp, was responsible for the largest rescue operation by a single individual during the Holocaust.”
—Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
i'll apple your turnover 