I see that Watergirl gave you all your dessert, and I am now here to give you your fucking vegetables and to make sure you eat the god damned things. If I have to choke you out with a brussell sprout, I will. I’m going to say some shit that will piss you off, but read to the end before you make up your mind if you are right to be pissed off and/or if you want to continue to be part of the problem or start to be part of the fucking solution.
Again, Watergirl touched on some of these things and others have discussed them ad nauseum, but I think I need to weigh in here. I am hesitant to do so most of the time because I am the actual bull in a china shop- I often speak in haste, I often speak in anger, and I often regret what I have said because it has not conveyed my actual thoughts. I also don’t like having a heavy hand on things. I absolutely hate banning people or having to tone police shit- you all are allegedly adults, why can’t people behave like it? But things feel to me as if they are coming to a head, so I need to clear some things up, express my thoughts, and with your help steer this clusterfuck of a blog away from the giant god damned iceberg we are heading towards. And I hate how many times I have said “I” already but whatever.
One of the things about a blog like this, with for the most part freedom for everyone to say what they want, is that there are always going to be bad behaviors from a few assholes. It’s guaranteed. It doesn’t matter how much time you spend trying to safeguard things, it doesn’t matter how amazing anything is that you build for people, there is going to be some motherfucker who is going to dedicate their time to smear shit on the walls. It’s just life. My drill sergeant, when trying to express the importance of keeping your wall locker of possessions locked and secure, was fond of nothing that “Privates keep your shit locked you can’t trust people and there was a thief in your goddamned Sunday School class.” That is just how life is. Someone is going to try to tear things and other people down. Sadly, this is the way of the world.
At the same time, whenever you get a bunch of smart, creative, and diverse people, there are going to be disagreements. And the more people believe in things, and the more they hold true to their core beliefs and principles, the bigger those beefs and the more vicious they will become. And man, have we been through them all. We had the blowout when I switched parties and all the wingnuts I used to pal around with decided I was the great Satan and there was an influx of new people from places as diverse as Red State, the Daily Kos, Andrew Sullivan, Firedoglake- you name it. And there were growing pains. People came, people left, we adjusted to a new reality and a new family. And after time, home became home again.
It happened again with the Party Unity My Ass shitshow during the ’08 election. People we thought we knew went berserk, and they felt the same way about us. At one point I was so disgusted with the Clinton campaign there was a category called “I Can NO Longer Rationally Discuss the Clinton Campaig.” Eventually, Obama won, time healed some of the wounds, people who felt they no longer fit moved on, others who became disgusted with their old homes came here. And we kept on keeping on, making new friends, missing the old, but it was still an online home.
Again, in 2016, we went through it again. We had the great Bernie wars with each side convinced the other was the worst. Another large rift formed, people left, new people arrived, and eventually we all trauma bonded to endure the Trump years. And honestly, we became the biggest and most cohesive I think we have ever been, unified in our opposition to the toxic orange manbaby.
So we have gone through this before, and it should provide a framework for the future, but it feels like it isn’t. Upon reflection, and spending a lot of time reading the comments the last few days, I think I have noticed something different. What appears to be noticeably less present today is the key element that held us all together for the last twenty years- a lack of charity towards fellow commenters and front pagers.
All of us seem to be less willing to give each other the benefit of the doubt, and what I see going on here in the comments recently is what I see happening with the chronically online people on twitter- people seem less concerned with trying to examine the intent of what other people are saying and instead race to take umbrage. We’ve decided that being pedantic and right is more important than trying to understand what people are saying. Instead of a conversation, it feels like people dug into trenches lobbying artillery volleys at one another. Instead of looking what people are trying to say and giving them grace, everything has become a zero sum game. People who have been voting for Democrats and fighting the good fight their entire lives are treated as if they are the problem because while trying to express something we all agree in, they say something that doesn’t use the right vernacular or the exact terminology demanded by the chronically online tone police. It’s got to stop. You’re better than this. I am better than this. And there is too much at stake right now. Do you really want to alienate allies who vote with you 100% of the time because they didn’t use the right words or don’t think they phrased something the way they should have? If so, get fucked.
Why is this happening now the past year and a half or so? Well, a host of reasons. First and foremost we are all a little bit older, but we are also fucking tired. I am so tired. These fucking sociopaths running the country right now are a lot of things, but most of all they are so fucking tiresome. I’ve only been a Democrat for two decades but already I am sick to fucking death of having to argue the same god damned things over and over again. How many fucking times do we have to point out the government isn’t a business or a household and only a fucking crackhead would try to run it like one. And if we were going to run it as a business, we certainly wouldn’t hire the guy who has declared bankruptcy as many times as the Yankees have won the World Series, including bankrupting a god damned casino.
And I’m angry. I am so fucking angry. I deactivated my fb account a couple months ago, but I reactivate it every two weeks to tell any Trump supporting followers to go fuck themselves and that every guy I served with who supports Trump is a traitor and a blue falcon. I see someone in a pickup Truck and I mentally scream “YOU FUCKING MOTHERFUCKER” and I see someone who looks like me and think “YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE I KNOW YOU VOTED FOR HIM.” I told a friend I have known for thirty years to go fuck himself and not talk to me until he breaks out of the cult. I keep a browser tab open to the “I never thought the leopard would eat my face” subreddit and refresh it multiple times a day. I feel so betrayed and hurt and angry and I just want to make people pay for what they are doing to all these defenseless people and kids. I intentionally have to work to change my mental state so that I can keep on enjoying things in life. It’s fucking awful living like this I don’t want to be a bitter person It’s not who I think of myself as, and even then I am lucky because I’m a cishet white male who will be relatively untouched by much of the day to day suck.
Second, I don’t think we will truly understand how bad the covid pandemic fractured society. A lot of people’s brains are broken and we have not yet even remotely begun to understand the societal damage those years did. We still have no idea what the long terms effects the virus itself did to our bodies or minds has or will do in the years to come. I am absolutely convinced that historians will spend many years examining how so many things about the United States and the world changed because of that trauma and disruption. On top of what we all have endured, your immuocompromised friends have been living in a dystopian hell ever since half the country collectively decided “fuck the weak, the elderly, and the sick, this mask makes me itchy and WHAT ABOUT THE STOCK MARKET.”
Third, we are living in a time of unprecedented inequity, and that is just getting worse. The broligarchy with help from Russian and Chinese assets as well as the never-ending parade of frauds and grifters in our own society has us all at each other’s throats. Like the comments section here, a few malicious actors can influence and shape the way we behave and exacerbate divisions we were once able to look past or agree to look back. Despite the abundance of this nation, a country so fucking rich that it is absolutely unmatched in history, has millions of homeless, tens of millions working at below subsistence, tens more millions living paycheck to paycheck, and probably almost two hundred million living with no real plan for retirement and just a lifetime of working to stay alive with no light at the end of the tunnel. Millions of us have no health insurance, tens to hundreds of millions are one bad medical diagnosis away from losing our house and life savings. It’s fucking insane, yet the greedpigs in the top percentiles still don’t have enough.
Fourth, we’re scared. And we should be. We are in a very dangerous time, with things we took for granted my entire life now being destroyed before our very eyes. The stupid people are fine, because they’ve never paid attention. But for those of us who have, which includes people still reading blogs in 2025, we definitely are paying attention, and I am fucking terrified for the future of this country, and because we are the United States and can cause unfathomable destruction to the world. And this is a particularly dangerous and scary time for minorities, LGBTQ+ people, the disabled, and the elderly.
Adding to this, it feels on many days that we are in a leadership vacuum, although recently, it feels like that is getting better. As I write this, the House GOP passed their budget resolution/statement of principles/circlejerk/I dunno what to call it, and they did not get one fucking vote. People in leadership positions appear to be stepping up. They are slowly finding their footing and starting to read the room. Thank goodness. There will be missteps and failures and shortcomings to come, but we have to keep on them and keep the pressure up and do our part.
Finally, everything I have said above is set inside a nation that has never even half tried to reconcile the original sin of our racist and genocidal past. The simmering racial discontent that has always been there under the surface, bubbling up every now and then, but so infrequently and with no real impact on us that it was easy enough for white people like me to think things were getting better. When you reflect on the fact that this has never been accounted for other than in polite discussion, the great white freakout of the nation electing its first black president was like a volcano erupting, spewing the lava and dark clouds of poisonous gas that were always there, just we didn’t know it was still there.
And when I say we, I am talking predominantly to you fuckers like me who could star as one of the bad guys in Django Unchained or 12 Years a Slave. This was something that was predominantly hidden from the caucasian gaze, but black and other minority communities have always known this existed and was waiting to erupt. Just like the Nixon’s secret war in Cambodia and Operation Menu were no secret to the people of Cambodia, this crude and cruel racial past has always been well known to the Black community. When a black woman says to her husband, “Did you give our son the talk,” she is not talking about the birds and the bees. In light of all that, the betrayal of the black community by white people at the polls, yet again elevating that odious racist and his white supremacist gang, is for many, just too fucking much.
(A quick aside- I have been thinking about this for days and was eating some grapes watching tv with Joelle and realized I knew what I wanted to say and how to say it and was entering a flow state, so I rushed in here, sat down and began to write and will not pause to edit before hitting post, so there will be more than the usual number of errors. I’ll sort it out as they are noted in the comments by some malcontented prick like Baud.)
So that is where we are, and it is no surprise it is spilling out in the comments. It’s understandable, I realize it, and I feel it, and I get it. But it has got to stop. We have got to band together and defeat this fascistic takeover, and we need to come to peace with our differences and wall out the ugliness of the Republican machine, and treat each other as friends, partners, and family. We have to go back to treating people with a modicum of respect and giving each other some charity. We are all allies here. No one voted for Trump here. No one here is your enemy. Maybe you have extreme ideological differences on some issues, but we are all, in the end, working together.
I get why Mistermix and others would be shocked to be called racist, they don’t think of themselves as racist, they know they haven’t done or said anything even remotely racist- “This is bullshit.” I get why some people of color might look at attacks on Jeffries and other black leaders as racially tinted, because let’s face it, we’ve had mostly white leadership who totally fucking failed us (and I am to blame for supporting them too blindly for too long) and was far worse for years aand never had the instant backlash some of the younger, more diverse leaders are receiving. These are understandable things. Hell, they are not only understandable, they are excusable and perfectly normal things to think.
But we have to get past this. We need to be charitable and afford each other some grace. We really are all we have. The courts, the government, the media, waiting for moderate Republicans to see the wrongness of their ways? That shit is not going to save us. There’s no room for anyone- a front pager, blog owner, commenters, to be sniping at other commenters and front pagers. There is just no fucking space for that. We just can’t. I don’t know how to say this any clearer. We need to be more tolerant, more respectful, and extend a hand not a fist. It’s so fucking crucial that I just can not overstate it. We can’t have groupthink. We can’t just shut people down who disagree with us or don’t agree with us in the right way or using the right performative gestures or demand 100% use of the appropriate jargon du jour.
So how do we do this? Maybe think five seconds before you comment. Maybe instead of coming after someone who you know is on the side of good most of the time with a chainsaw and baseball bat, you phrase things differently- “I disagree with you and don’t like the way you said that, could you rephrase it so I may better understand.” And I know how preposterous that sounds for a website who for a decade was the #1 google search result for “skull fuck a kitten” and whose founder mutters “fuck off” like a verbal tic, but you know what I mean. Give everyone a second read before going in for the kill.
And what does that kill get you, anyway- a fleeting moment of smugness you can share with no one? Have you changed anyone’s behavior? Are you a better person for your big “win?” Is the other person? No. All you have done is make the place more toxic and less desirable for everyone. Lurkers who have never commented to share their insights will decide “Oh fuck that.” People who were already close to saying “fuck this cesspool” may finally be gone. Have you advanced the cause to defeat Trump? No- you have just weakened us and shit on the lily pad in the pond of a place that for a lot of people is the only refuge of calm they know. Some victory. Get off on your bad self.
And we need more voices. We need younger people. We need more people of color. We need to hear from people of all genders and sexual orientations. We could probably use some more religious people or people willing to talk about it, because I have no insight into what motivates religious people. I’ve tried to bring them to the front page with varying levels of success, but most are no longer with us. We need them in the comments because the best writers here are the ones who came from within, who get this place, who get the community, who can speak to the community here because they know our language and share our common experiences.
I love this place. Sometimes it is a love/hate relationship. I hate conflict and put it off as much as I can and often times drive Watergirl insane because I don’t like to have a heavy hand. And no, I am not changing any comments policies or anything like that, I am hoping to change our collective behavior.
I don’t like to think of it as MY weblog. I miss so many commenters who have died and gone on to other places. I would do anything to have DougJ and that rowdy fucking crew of the aughts back in here just going berserk. Is there anyone who doesn’t think every day would be better with an AngryBlackLady post? Almost every time I log in to check in and read and post I think of someone from the past who said something funny that only I and a handful of people would find amusing, but I will be laughing about it every now and then for the rest of my life.
Again, I love this place and by extension, most of you. And I don’t want to see it torn apart at the time in its 20+ year history I feel we and I need it the most. Not to mention all the good we have done- so many animals lives saved, so many people in times of need helped, so many new politicians supported during their run. So much voter outreach. All that and so much more.
It used to be that comments is what made this blog. Please don’t let the comments be what kills this blog.
That’s all I have to say. Well, one more thing. I always feel like I never do enough to point out that while people have come and gone, there has never been anyone like Anne Laurie, who is the spirit and patron saint of the blog. She is the rock this rickety ship is moored to. She has been here every single or damned near every single day since she got the keys to the front page. In all these years, I think only once has she felt the need to reach out and force me to realize the website needed a course correction. But I always know she is there, and on more than one occasion I have frantically emailed her at 11:30 pm and by 11:35 pm I have a gmail notification with “what do you need” and her phone number. You all rarely see behind the scenes as Watergirl mentioned, so this may be news to you, but every single front pager here would agree with me. I just wanted to say thank you and let you and everyone else know how much you mean to me and the blog.
War for Ukraine Day 1,097: More Drone Swarms Attack Ukraine
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, this.
Prairielogic
Thank you John Cole … hang in there.
Jeffro
AL and WG ftw! I’ll take their hard work and positivity over long rants any day
let’s get it in gear, Team Blue…this ain’t over yet, not by a long shot ;)
Baud
Lowercase “c” in courts.
Baud
@Jeffro:
Seconded.
Jay
Thank you so much for this, John,
and for the place that you and others have created.
Planetjanet
Speaking real truth here.
Cheryl
I’ve been reading this blog for more than a decade and apparently not participating in the Balloon Juice version of pie fights (aka almost never reading the comments) has been a good choice for my mental health. If I could just post pics of shelter cats here I would
DarbysMom
@Baud: and @Jeffro Thirded!
Thank you John. Don’t know what I would do without this place
dr. luba
Been here since the first GWB administration. Thanks for all you’ve done, helping me keep same.
West of the Rockies
@Baud:
You should have used italics for “court”.
Kristine
Thanks for this, John, and for this place.
And yup, AL is aces.
Virginia
I have read and loved this place nearly from the beginning. Not much of a commenter, more a lurker, but I check in at least three times a day. This is an important place and I want it to continue.
We all need to try to relax and be considerate of others and kind to all.
Fuck knows, the idiots in charge right now aren’t going to do either of those things. It’s truly up to us.
Many thanks to John and all the FP’rs now and in the past.
Tehanu
As usual, John, you are a beacon of sanity and good sense.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I’ve learned more from BJ in the last 15+ years than I have anywhere on else on the intertubes. It reminds of the intro to the 1st Real World on MTV in 1992. This is the true story…of seven strangers…picked to live in a house…(work together) and have their lives taped…to find out what happens…when people stop being polite…and start getting real…The Real World.
Llelldorin
Two truths that to my mind adequately explain almost everything in here. We’re tired to the point that we’re reacting, not conversing. We’re scared so we’re trying to react instantly, instead of planning or even thinking twice before hitting “Post Comment.”
Extending that “we” to everyone, it also explains what we initially saw from elected Democrats. They’re as exhausted and scared as we are — maybe more, because we don’t have to sit on committees with these assholes every day. Our go-to when we’re in that dark place is to snipe at each other. Theirs is to bargain with everyone in sight and try to find a least bad loss. Neither is even remotely effective given the threat we face.
I’ve been lurking in here forever. It’s gotten ugly before, and it will again, but we’re all we’ve got. Let’s not set our house on fire
EDITED TO ADD: Huge thanks to John, and to all the front pagers current and past, even the ones I’ve disagreed with. This has been one hell of a community over the last couple of decades, even if I’ve mostly been a ghost lurking in the walls.
singfoom
Man those arguments from the 2008 era seem pretty quaint now. Been lurking here for a long time. Thanks for keeping it going John.
frosty
Thanks, John. This blog is the first thing I read in the morning and the last I read at night … which usually means it’s an Anne Laurie post.
I agree with your observations. I miss our departed commenters who were some of the best. I miss others who have checked out and hope some of my favorites don’t follow them.
I hope your post encourages everyone to reduce the level of toxicity.
Llelldorin
Unfortunately for us, Musk is pretty much this.
NickM
Thank you, John. You still got it!
sentient ai from the future
i was driving earlier today and passed a parked incel camino, so made sure to roll down my window and spit on it.
i should have something handy for that. if only eggs werent so expensive. THANKS OBAMA.
oh also what cole said.
its not just here either. the few irl people i know who follow politics at all are curling up and weeping in a corner these days, myself included.
one foot in front of the other. if we need to take some time for ourselves, we need to do it so that we arent just pissy assholes all the time to each other, that does nothing but cause more conflict.
Redshift
I see nothing to disagree with, John. Well said.
I heard a point from someone a few months ago who knows what they’re talking about (Anne Applebaum? Heather Cox Richardson?) that to build a movement against authoritarianism or a dictatorship, you have to accept joining together with people you have nothing in common with except opposition to the dictator. You have to learn to set aside any disagreements, no matter how severe, until after you win, because you need everyone you can get.
And that’s for people we have way bigger problems with than anyone here. Use this place to practice so when you have to march alongside people you really can’t stand, you’ll be ready.
VFX Lurker
Love you, John. Love this community.
My OCD is on it:
I am the actually bull in a china shop – should be I am the actual bull in a china shop
iceberg were are heading towards – should be iceberg we are heading towards
your imnmune compromised friends – your immunocompromised friends
living paycheck top paycheck – living paycheck to paycheck
can cause unfathomable destruction, the world. – can cause unfathomable destruction to the world.
lgbtq+ people – LGBTQ+ people
well known the black community. – well known to the Black community.
(modern styling when referring to race – “white” does not get capitalized, but “Black” does).
The Courts, the government – The courts, the government
…and I wish I could have written something as good and fine as this post. You’re a hell of a writer, John. Thank you.
SiubhanDuinne
Thank you, John.
Tasha
Been here since the Teresa Schiavo fiasco, mostly lurking. You go, John.
buck2202
Think I’ve been reading here since sometime pre-ACA fights, probably have commented less than 10 or 20 times…mostly for lack of time/bandwidth to engage in the comments in a meaningful way, even though I do often read them. I always figured why drop my take if I’m not able to stay and discuss it or keep up with the conversation moving through posts over that day or that week or…
But I have been grateful for every FP voice to pass through this place in the last 15 years, miss a lot of the people that have been lost or moved on, and am grateful that this place exists and the work that John and *everyone* do to keep it. I don’t think I’m alone in that. So, thank you
John Cole
@VFX Lurker: danke, fixed
Justin W
I’ve been (mostly lurking) here for 18 years, since I was 27 and in my second year of law school.
I don’t spend much time in the comments, so I’m always a bit caught off guard when something blows up.
But just like LGM and any other blogs I follow, there are people I agree with completely and people who rub me the wrong way.
I’m just not sure why we feel the need to call out the folks who rub us the wrong way. They aren’t personally attacking you. Why do you take it personally.
Folks need to meditate more and find someone, professional or otherwise, to talk through your mental space with. Because if you don’t, you end up flipping out on people who just don’t deserve it (usually).
Anyway, thanks for nearly two decades of information and entertainment and introspection, John, et al.
mvr
Damn Cole. So now you’re going to make us cry?
But also I think you covered it.
ArchTeryx
Blue falcons everywhere these days.
I just hope that things even out again. I’ve come to care about this community a lot. And a few, if I am lucky, care about this old greycrest too. I hope folks take my one piece of advice to heart. Always know who your enemies and allies are. Always. Here, we’re allies. As fractious a bunch of allies as can be, but still allies. The enemy is over there. Start firing downrange.
TheMightyTrowel
I’m a pretty hard core lurker these days but still kicking around. been a reader since the great red to blue conversion….
anyhow thanks for this. the cure for nihilism, fascism, and capitalism, the most radical thing we can do, is to aggressively build and maintain communities of care and mutual support. I’m a filthy anarchist – one of the reasons I’ve disengaged here because sometimes the party loyalty talk is too overwhelming – but i genuinely appreciate this blog, the front pagers, and the commenters (well… most of you. the one who told me to grow up and use soap when i tried to gently defend some anarchist thing or other a few years back can stay pied).
anyhow solidarity, friends. the only way we get through this is if we all hold together and work collectively to keep everyone safe.
HeleninEire
What a remarkable post. You are a good man, John Cole.
eclare
Great post. Been here since around 2012?
Sister Golden Bear
Thanks John, extremely well said.
FWIW, years ago I learned some rules of thumb for dealing with interpersonal conflict that have served me well:
Worth keeping in mind before rushing to reply. And yeah, I admit I haven’t always followed my own advice.
toine
I came here after the great conversion to the D side, so I missed that story. I have been here since.
I only occasionally comment so I often miss what is going on there. The main reason I don’t comment much is that I am Canadian and feel like it isn’t my place to get involved in some of these arguments. But as a Canadian, I have seen the politics of division, anger and blame move north as much as they have become anchored in our great southern neighbour and moved to Europe and other areas of the world. I guess we are all fighting the same blight…
In all my time here, there is one thing that I can say without hesitation… I love a good John Cole righteous rant. The thing is he doesn’t do it often, but he is batting 1000 when he does.
This place has given me much more than I have ever contributed. I would be devastated if it fell prey to the division, anger and blame that seems to be the currency of current politics around the world.
Aziz, light!
Right on, John.
For decades politics was like a sport to us. Win some, lose some, there is always next season. Now we are facing an existential crisis, with the future of the world at stake. The inchoate fear of what may come makes most of us uneasy, unsettled, more tense, and perhaps more testy.
I don’t have much to say anymore, although I used to, going back to 2007 when my nym was Soylent Green. Now I find no solace in the usual snark, and have no stomach for engagement. I don’t want to lie awake at night rehashing what rejoinder I should have collied to something stupid or hateful said by someone on the internet. At times I decide to withdraw entirely from online forums, but as you all know that’s easier said than done.
In the end, we must hang together, or we will hang separately.
Edit: volleyed, not collied, stupid AC.
stinger
I remember, some years back, when any mention of Bernie Sanders on this blog would trigger a specific troll to jump in with obnoxious comments, to the point where most people would use a pseudonym for BS instead.
During the past several months, the names of certain other politicians and events have seemed to trigger a similar instant reaction from a few of our regular commenters. When those topics arise, I hope we can all count to ten before hitting Post. During those seconds, ask ourselves, “Am I saying anything I haven’t already said a dozen times about this topic? Am I contributing to the discussion, or just complaining and sniping?”
We’re all just typing things on the internet, but in a way we are also having a conversation in John Cole’s living room, and we owe him the respect of not picking needless and fruitless fights.
sentient ai from the future
@TheMightyTrowel:
theres a wonderful scene in “Army of Shadows” where Gerbier, an upper-middle level organizer in the french resistance, is in a prison camp with Legrain, a young communist. encountering each other going to their duties in the morning, he says to Legrain “see you later, comrade” and Legrain is taken aback, “you are a communist?”
“no, but i still have comrades”
we must be comrades here.
glc
Always nice to hear from you, John, when there’s something that needs saying. My affection for the blog goes back to when Duncan Black said you’d started making sense. He was certainly surprised by that, and maybe confused as well. Lively days.
The place became a refuge from a certain kind of madness. Less weird than the current form, but madness nonetheless. Still standing, after all these years.
stinger
@TheMightyTrowel:
I was just thinking yesterday that I hadn’t seen your nym here for a long time — glad to see it now!
mvr
@stinger: Count to ten thing, or a version of that for rereading one’s posts before hitting “post comment” is a good idea. Or if you can’t wait that long, the edit button gives you five minutes to fix it.
Which is a wiseass way of agreeing with stinger.
TheMightyTrowel
@stinger: I’m still around, just swamped with work – my commenting heyday here and elsewhere coincided with my phd years, no accident!
OCD
I’m 99% lurker here and have been since John was a Republican. Great post boss. Hang in there.
RevRick
Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted that Jesus said some things that appeared in complete contradiction. Once, he asserted, “Those who are not for us, are against us.” Another occasion he said, “Those who are not against us are for us.” As Bonhoeffer was speaking in the context of Nazi Germany, he interpreted those contradictory remarks of Jesus as themselves being said in very different contexts, who was himself speaking in the context of the Roman Empire.
What Jesus meant (and Bonhoeffer understood) was that there will be times when you (his followers) in taking a stand against Empire values may find yourselves isolated from others by their hostility, derision, indifference or their fear of being perceived as associated with you. And yet there will be other times when those who once mocked you will join hands with you, because a common enemy threatens them too.
Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoller were some of the few Lutherans in Germany to join with the Reformed Churches to form the Confessing Church in opposition to the Nazi Regime. Out of that tiny group came the Barmen Declaration and perhaps what we need to do on this blog is come up with our own version of the Barmen Declaration, a statement of values and principles to which we can all give our assent.
NotMax
@VFX Lurker
Also too, a brussell sprout — a Brussels sprout
;)
Quiltingfool
I love this place. Some days I comment a lot, most times I don’t, because someone in the comments writes exactly what I’m thinking, and their writing is much better than mine.
It’s hard to deal with harsh truth, and I think that is what has upset some folks. I know I was discomfited when commenters I know are straight shooters would be ruthlessly truthful about things I *wished* weren’t true. Well, we all know “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” but if we don’t deal with the truth unflinchingly, then we go nowhere. I so want to believe the United States will survive this catastrophe. But I’ve got to be honest and realize things may be horrific for many people and that may not change during my lifetime.
We do need to listen carefully to people here. To think about things from a point of view different from our own experiences. To truly walk in someone else’s shoes.
I want to thank all the front pagers here. Your contributions are invaluable. This is my most favorite place and I feel like folks here are family.
stinger
@Aziz, light!:
Is “collied” even a word???
Well, I looked it up and it is! Past tense of “to colly”. But why AC thought that was what you were trying to say is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t fit the sense of your sentence at all.
RaflW
Thanks, John. I woke up at 5am Monday and realized I was experiencing some amount of grief over the feeling Balloon Juice is coming apart at a time when do much else is wrecked or about to be.
I hope there’s a turning here. I’ll hang on and see it through.
Melancholy Jaques
That’s me, 100% me.
Pennsylvanian
I am here. I am grateful to be here.
I am Pennsylvanian who moved to Maine.
My outrage fatigue is on a status to be named later.
NobodySpecial
Thank you for the space, Cole.
As far as the increased sniping, I think a lot of it is because we don’t have anyone on the other side to talk to. The broader right is crazy and not worth engaging with, and anyone reasonable on the right did what you did after Schiavo and switched. And now that that more small-c conservative cohort occupy more space in the big tent, a lot of people are more willing to argue with them than with the unpersuadeable deplorables. Add in the never satisfied super lefty cohort who are always willing to shank a Democrat before anything, and the circular squad feels more real than ever.
I’m gonna do my part by shutting up now. I’ll save my yelling for my blue state and district politicians when they enable the GOP and praise them when they don’t. That’s the best thing we all can do.
NotMax
This.
Not being of the bovine persuasion I don’t chew cud.
geg6
Thanks John. I will always love this place even if some discussions and personalities drive me nuts. It’s thanks to everyone here, especially you and AL, that I got my spirit dog, Koda, and my feisty dog, Lovey. And being here has gotten me through some tough times. I mentioned earlier today that I think July 2024 broke the blog. Perhaps I should have said that it broke me. Impending retirement, my John’s slipping deeper into dementia with the doctors basically shrugging, my brother’s accident that eventually took his life at Christmas, my sister with Crohn’s getting pneumonia that eventually had her hospitalized 12 times in three months, the fight over Biden and my nagging intuition that Cheetolini was going to win and which never dissipated…all of that hit in July. The fights here pissed me off so badly that I quit even skimming the front page for days in a row. There are people I’ll never forgive because of those battles and because I am an epic grudge holder when driven to the edge.
All that said, we do need to come together and prepare to fight. I don’t think we can count on our political class to get us through as they’ve not shown me any evidence that they can. So we will have to do it. And to make that happen, we have to build communities like this to be ready for whatever battles are ahead.
MN Grubert
Your advice… basically if you read something that angers you, stop for a moment, re-read and go back a bit to find the context, give it another read and try.. TRY LIKE HELL to find some way for the thing that made you so angry to make some sense from some point of view.
GOLDEN ADVICE.
Also learn to write “I guess I misunderstood.” Strong people admit error.
No need to grovel, but know how to dismount..
Kelly
Well said. I have followed this blog for everyone’s insight and humor. It helps me decide which problems to pay attention to. There’s more to worry about than my heart can bear. I retired to the place I grew up to be amongst the people and landscape of my youth. This place voted 70%+ every time Trump and 70% of my old friends are Trumpy assholes.
I’m tired. Stealing a couple lines from John Gorka
“Standing on a broken path/Waiting for the sky to rain”
I don’t know the way forward. It’s going to get worse. Some of the damage will be difficult to mend. Some will be impossible mend. I’m not gonna sit here in the mud. I’ll need some company and wiser points of view to find my way through this thorny patch.
I’m scared. A bit for myself but mostly for my grandchildren. They’ll live amongst the ruins.
Tom
Great post and sentiments—thank you for creating this space and for genuinely caring about other people. Longtime lurker with a beard and a truck but I am as heartbroken and angry as everyone else on this blog. Kristofferson has some good advice for times like these: “Don’t let the bastards get you down.” Democrats will be there to rebuild America from the ashes just like they did after GWB and Trump’s first go around. We’re a big tent party but when we’re focused on the same goal, we can win and force America to live up to its ideals. We need to deal with the fascists first and to support one another in the fight. Let’s get off the mat and start throwing haymakers at the bad guys. Thanks again to all the writers on this blog who answer the bell daily.
Gretchen
Thank you John. And you’re right about Anne Laurie – she’s the glue that’s held this blog together for decades now. Her posts are so detailed and well researched, and I so appreciate especially the covid/health related posts keeping us safe.
I hope we can pull back from the brink and fight forward together.
CaseyL
This post is one of the best things I’ve ever read online. Thanks, John.
I’m not here much these days, and it’s mostly because I can’t bear the world right now, just don’t want to talk about it or think much about it (while, of course, thinking about it all the goddamn time). The enormity of the betrayal by the US electorate – yes, yes; decades in the making, but it still hit like a nuclear bomb – is just more than I can bear. At some point maybe I’ll be ready to start fighting, but I’m not there yet.
Thor Heyerdahl
Thank you John; front pagers current and past; AL for all the early morning and late night posts; and all the jackals here. I’ve been reading this for about 19 years.
There are challenging days ahead for the world, some will be cloudier and some will be sunnier. Giving grace that this almost top 10,000 blog is on the side of the goodness.
mandarama
I’ve been here a long time…since I had little kids and we got our first dog with them, and you featured their photo together. My boys are now grown and our pets from then have gone to heaven, and it has been wonderful and sad and funny and hard and the best. That’s what everything worth doing has been, for me. That’s what we share here while we work to pull this enormous potential-Titanic of a nation back to safety and pointed towards home.
Thank you for making this place and being you. I promise one day I’ll switch PayPal over to Patreon properly. I love our writers here and our commenters, even during freakouts.
Mike in Oly
Thank you, John, and all the people who make BJ such an oasis in an increasingly insane world. I’ve been here for over 20 years now. I very rarely comment or even read them, but this is a place I am always drawn to. I contribute in my own ways, and I learn far more here than I do elsewhere. That is thanks to all our FP’ers. I have learned from them all. Thank you to everyone in this community for being a part of this community. Let’s continue to center that word.
hitchhiker
Somehow I’ve felt tuned in to this post all day, like while it was percolating in JC’s head, the fumes were part of the atmosphere.
Of course he’s right, and of course it had to be said.
I keep thinking that losing the assumption of good faith is driving us all insane, and for what it’s worth, having this place as a sort of safe house to duck into seems invaluable to me. You guys are how I know I am not crazy. Almost everywhere else, there is no guarantee that some lame asshole or misguided fool is not just feeding out dark shit for the fun of it.
As others have said, the idea was never to make us believe this or that – it was to make us believe we couldn’t know what was true and what was fake. There are lots of bad actors out there with that goal in mind.
But I still know right from wrong, and this place is right, and I am not giving up on it.
YY_Sima Qian
Thank you JC for this post! Completely agree.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Sister Golden Bear:
I would add one to your excellent list.
Sometimes the person’s toast burned, coffee spilled, hand burned and there was no hot water in the shower. In other words, it is just a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for that person, which has nothing to do with me.
karen gail
Excellent rant!
I believe in a collective consciousness; too many people are saying the same thing in different places and different ways at the same time. Everything and everyone is connected and at this point in time it appears that the malignant narcissists are piling up wealth, buying the reigns of power and driving those who aren’t super wealthy into the depth of despair, depression and dystopia. It is affecting all of us.
Mai Naem mobil
Thanks John, Anne and WG. I consider this place somewhat of a safe space for me and would hate for it to go away.
matt
Good luck Cole.
Anne Laurie
Thanks, Cole.
Sandia Blanca
@Sister Golden Bear: Thank you for spelling out this excellent approach to commenting, with the addition from HopefullyNotcassandra below at #64. These techniques could help us restore the atmosphere of trust we all desperately need in these times. I have communities IRL, but this virtual community is also extremely important to my ability to keep functioning.
Thank you to John Cole, Anne Laurie, WaterGirl, Adam Silverman, Mistermix, David Anderson, Tom Levenson, and all the other front pagers. Your passion for this work is what keeps us engaged.
Joey Maloney
Been a peripheral commenter for a little while but I started reading back during the Schiavo – I don’t even know what to call it – but back then BJ was just one of maybe a dozen or more blogs I checked over the course of a week. Most of them are long gone and the ones still around have turned into nonstop pie fights or crawled so far up their own butts that half the comments make no sense without a decoder ring. But this place remains a beacon of good writing and good sense AND good action through fundraising drives and other organizing. I would hate to lose that and I’m not sure we can afford to lose it.
YY_Sima Qian
I also think it would be helpful if the entire community here can agree on some ground truths that serve as basis for our engagements with each other, which I think almost all of us do, or at least can get there:
Every black person in the US (even an FOB immigrant) is disadvantaged, one way or another, downstream of the legacy of slavery & Jim Crow.
Every white person benefits, one way or another, from white supremacy & white privilege, whether you are for or against it.
Every man benefits, one way or another, from patriarchy, whether you are for or against it.
Every resident of the US (except for Native Americans) benefits from the past stealing of Native lands & genocide of Native Americans, whether you want to acknowledge that history or not.
Much less remarked upon in these parts, every current US resident or citizen (including FOB immigrants) benefits from past US colonialism, imperialism & more recent US led “Liberal Hegemony” (a.k.a. “Liberal/Rules Based International Order”), whether you are for or against US hegemony. I would say even Native Americans are, at some level, as residents & citizens of the US, beneficiaries of US hegemony.
Stating these ground truths should not be interpreted as personal attacks, nor should they be employed as personal attacks. It is simply the water we all swim in & the air we all breathe. Astronomical economic values were extracted out of the the sordid activities the US engaged in & engages in, accumulated through the generations, at home & abroad, & all of us residents & citizens of the US can claim a share, one way or another, at one level or another. The level of inequities have changed, but they still exist & remain highly relevant. Each of the inequities can be overcome w/ individual effort & good fortune, but remain systemic.
All of us have multiple facets to our identities, interface w/ the above ground truths in one way or another, & are motivated by complex urges. Each of us can be the oppressed in one context & an oppressor in another. We are all flawed, but hopefully what unites us is that we all want to do better & we all want to see the US do better.
So, as JC advised, all of us members of this community, commenters & FPers, can be more charitable to each other, and be less defensive.
YY_Sima Qian
@Anne Laurie: Thank you A.L. for your dedication & persistence!
Cowgirl in the Sandi
Righteous rant John.
Thanks to you and all the FPers who make this such a great place.
Fair Economist
I’m all in for tolerance in the coalition to defeat the fascists. Pretty much everybody is doing the best they can, and it’s valuable to remember we are all wrong on something! Because of that, we’ll never get lockstep agreement; no point in getting upset over it.
scav
This is the angel of insufficient patience with stupid things.
She’s as of today actually got her own little shrine on my bookcase.
And she’s a postcard.
Marcopolo
Righteous rant Cole. Schaivo was 2005 & I came here from DKos just as that was happening. Thanks for a couple decades of good community.
Also, I too have been saying/thinking fuck those fucking fuckers almost hourly, mostly internally to myself but occasionally shouting it loudly while driving myself somewhere. You know, like if I see a Tesla. Anyway, I gave myself much of the month of February to mourn. Now the month’s about up; time to get back out there, chew some bubblegum and kick some ass and I’m all out of bubblegum.
Hang in there everyone & thanks for being along for the ride.
Steve Crickmore
As a sometime commentator in fits and bursts, more of a lurker, I thought I would like to contribute. John Cole’s energetic jeremiad, reminds me of the legendary, cantakerous Baltimore journalist, H.L Mencken’s, more in his syle than his politics. Mencken could be prophetic- ‘The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots’, but also reactionary and racist. But perhaps, we need some of Mencken’s toughness, for the period we are living through. Mencken said he would have been “ashamed” to have been praised by letter writers and “always let anybody that denounced me violently get in because I believed that people liked to read abuse, and I didn’t care what they said of me. I was much too vain to care what such idiots believed about me.” Admittedly, it is a much different and more progressive community, here on this blog, that the larger general American public, often prejudiced and not well informed, that was Mencken’s audience, a century ago, but I think there should be moderation in moderation, as long as we realize, none of us are trolls whose aim is to willfully injure others.
Phylllis
@Joey Maloney: Well said. Like you, I used to have a good number of regular blog reads. Some have folded their tent, others have become unreadable. I’m down to BJ and Defector these days, and find the community here invaluable.
No One of Consequence
Thanks for posting this Mr. Cole. I did read it all. This is my second attempt at a reply, with the first one being summed up with ‘Fuck off.’
Instead, in the spirit of comity and Good Will, I will invite you to engage in anatomically-challenging behaviour, the results of which, I have been assured if performed correctly, will result in an ironically-violated-yet-self-satisfied feeling.
Your results may vary.
-NOoC
Ron
A nice complement to leopardsatemyface:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Project2025Award/
Sister Golden Bear
@HopefullyNotcassandra: Very good point!
No One of Consequence
(is this still the one place I don’t have to put in mandatory irony tags? I re-read my post in light of this new spirit, and think that my sarcasm/humor might be missed. I don’t believe what I wrote, but it was an exercise in writing something out pleasantly, which I intended so very not so. No, I don’t have anything against Mr. Cole, and I don’t know anything about any missing mustard, honey dijon or otherwise. I have spent weeks of my life here, probably totaled up in person-hours. Most of which has been most pleasant. I miss a lot of voices that are no longer here. For example, what would Ozark have to say about all this? And I too miss ABL’s righteous screeds.)
While, unlike Jefferson, I don’t weep for my nation when I reflect that God is Just and his justice cannot sleep forever. I weep for my son. I weep for the other innocents, American and otherwise. I earned this downfall, with actions I did not take, and time I did not invest. My son did nothing to deserve what is coming. The innocents did nothing to earn this.
I fear when our collective tears come to an end. The anger that replaces those tears will be truly incandescent. I question our collective mettle as a nation at this point in our history. Against a united external threat, I still like our chances. Against ourselves, defeat is assured before we ever even engage.
Be Kind Jackals, and Be Ready. We’ll need strong backs, stout hearts, and the wills that our politicians apparently lack in order to Set Things Aright. If your at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on. Be ready for the change when it comes. For come it surely will.
-NOoC
Eolirin
I hate to have to post something like this on a thread intended to try to move us toward good feelings and that’s probably going to be dead by the time it goes up, but I feel like it really needs to be said and at this rate I’m not sure I’m going to have many other opportunities to say it.
I think something really core is missing in this analysis of why things have been getting so bad. The way minorities get treated here has been a problem for a very long time and it’s at the core of even what happened with the Biden thing. There’s been a reason why the attempts to get more diverse voices front paged have failed.
Those of us who are really vulnerable tend to view the world in very different ways, and tend to view our places in communities in different ways, and that bleeds into politics just as much. The reciprocal nature of having the back of the people who have yours tends to be a lot stronger for us because almost no one has ours and we really need that to survive. That means attacks on our politicians are a lot more personal.
We also tend to be more sensitive to whether or not we will be supported in conflicts, whether or not it’s safe to express our difficulties and frustrations, whether or not we can make complaints against the way other people are treating us. We’re sensitive to a lack of support, to that support being conditional.
Lots of you get instantly defensive when whiteness is critiqued. Lots of you get dismissive when we talk about how we’re affected by our minority status. So most of us stop doing it eventually. The ones who don’t tend to be very vocal to the point of belligerent about it.
For those of us that are vulnerable, with the conditions we now face out in the world, the way we’re being treated, the level of existential threat to us and our communities, it’s all so bad that having to deal with the microaggressions and the lack of being listened to in a supposed safe space is not something that’s so easy to tolerate anymore.
I have already come this close to not wanting to be here because of Mix, and it wasn’t because of the post about Jeffries. It’s been nearly everything he’s been posting since the election.
A lot of my communities are in crisis. If the Medicaid cuts go through a lot people in one of my communities are going to die. I very well may be one of them. I really don’t need to see people spending more time tearing down Democrats, who will at least have our backs a little bit even if they ultimately fail, than talking about anything productive.
I don’t need to see people spending time spinning their wheels pretending to be political consultants focusing on messaging and social media presentation, despite having the ear of no one who could implement their demands for how Democrats need to talk, while Republicans get ready to cut off food stamps which will push a lot of my peers into starving to death. Or while they move toward criminalizing our very existence as trans people. It isn’t helpful, it comes across as tone deaf, and it’s more than a little offensive.
People who are in my situation are dealing with so much unpersoning right now that subtler forms of erasure like that, where the focus of two out of every three posts is talking about talking, about how Democratic leadership needs to clap louder to bring tinkerbell back from the dead, that are confusing basic concepts like the difference between how well you can speak and how well you can lead, the role of a movement and the role of Congress, and spending zero time focusing on how we’re affected, or on actual things people can do to help anything at all, are difficult to stomach. They reek of privilege.
To then retreat back into demands for everyone to be more civil, no matter how well intentioned and genuine, compounds the hurt, because what that is saying to those of us who are going to bear the worst of what’s happening is that we need to shut up about how the things people do are hurtful to us, but none of the people causing that hurt need to engage with the ways in which they’re hurting us.
Our positions are asymmetrical; whatever hurt you may experience from, say, being called a racist by people over the internet when you say a dumb thing, even and especially if you don’t think it was dumb, is literally nothing compared to the reality of our situations right now.
If unity and avoiding people like Mix having to be uncomfortable and feel unfairly attacked because the people who have the right to define racism decide to apply that label to an action, and especially despite his having a long history of being antagonistic, we have a problem.
If unity is more important than grappling with Kay driving away Planet Eddie by engaging in transphobic rhetoric and not listening to anything any of us were trying to tell her, and never having to apologize for it, while continuing to maintain status, then we have a problem.
The Mix blow up was an echo of that same dynamic. They will be centered before us. They will be tolerated more than us. We will be asked to forgive and move past, but they will not be asked to change.
Moments like these are telling us that our viewpoints aren’t things that can be given space. At the end of the day we’ll always be the ones that just have to get over it. We cannot upset the rest of you or it’ll be a fight and the kind of fight that’ll eat up enough space and focus that the blog will feel like it’s coming apart and ultimately we need to be the ones to drop it.
Because it’ll never be the Mixes or Kays who will stop and reflect that maybe, even if the response was too extreme and feels unfair there may have been a point to it, and maybe there needs to be an acknowledgement that there was a wrong, even if unintentional, and maybe there needs to be a change, and maybe there needs to be more listening, and maybe there needs to be a greater allowance of space even that means they have to give up some of theirs.
And this is true also of the way Kay has sometimes been treated. There have been places there in which I was the one who needed to be better. Our individual status does not invalidate others similarly struggling.
But the difference in response to what’s happening now and what happened when we lost ABL and Planet Eddie isn’t something that is so easily missed for those of who have been here a long time.
That difference does not feel good.
Without reconciliation, without a real grappling with our behaviors, there can be no healing.
No one else has to apologize, or reflect, or change their behaviors when it comes to the subtle disregard for our points of view and our struggles.
We just have to get over it. And the worst part is you don’t even realize that that’s what the ask here really is.
And I want to be clear, Cole I respect the hell out of you. I think you put in far more work than most on these issues. I think you genuinely care. And I know you want to make this space work. I think Anne and WG and Adam do massive and important work here. This isn’t meant to tear down or attack any of that.
But no one here can ask trans people and blacks and jews and the disabled and immigrants and brown people and women, especially of color, to maintain the same level of civility and assumptions of good faith when we’re operating in an environment in which we are being systematically assaulted, erased and eliminated without asking us to do more than you do.
Do not ask those of us with the most burden to carry to carry even more. We are already tasked with bearing our pain in silence, with ignoring any microaggressions and subtle attacks on our communities and on the people who keep those communities safe, with ignoring the subtle and occasionally gross forms of erasure that keep being thrown our way, and to do so without being impolite or judgmental or angry. It is already too much.
You cannot fairly ask that just because the ways in which we are affected are invisible to the rest of you and bevause of that invisibility you are not acting with intention that we should treat them like they do not exist, or that you should not be held to account for them.
We are hurting more than you can understand and we aren’t just afraid, we are being marked for death.
All of you, if you’re going to give us space, you need to be serious about that, and if you’re not, and you really don’t have to, because it’s going to be uncomfortable for you to do so, because it’s going to cause conflict, because we may at times flail and rage and you will sometimes get caught up in that and it often won’t be fair to you, if that’s going to be too much of a distraction for the rest of you, if it’s going to make you too defensive, if it’s going to upset you to the point that it tears the community apart, then we shouldn’t be here.
And that’s very much where I’m ending up after all of this. I’m questioning my continued participation.
Yes, people are doing dumb ass shit and it’d be cool if it stopped. That goes for everyone. But that’s not really the larger problem.
We cannot continue to paper over the way in which whiteness fundamentally distorts what is acceptable here and how it places a far greater burden on those of us who do not recieve it’s protection and the advantages of its defaultness.
We cannot continue to ignore the ways in which that remains invisible to far too many of you.
Not and still have a genuine place in the community. If we’re not willing to have that conversation, if we’re not able to have that conversation, if we’re not able to grow and become better through having that conversation, then I’m not sure what we’re doing here.
If we can’t have fights about important things when we need to, if we strive only for the fights to end, or to not happen, instead of allowing those fights to carve proper space for those of us who need it, if privilege is perpetually allowed to dominate the nature of these conversations, instead of those with it choosing to listen, even when they feel attacked, even when they feel like they’re being treated unfairly, if when we get angry and lash out there is no attempt to see past that to the pain and hurt behind it, to accept the truth of that, to do what can be done to accommodate it, to step back and question whether you are playing a part in that pain, especially when you don’t mean to, then there can be no real space for us.
Even without realizing it you’re all asking us to create that space for you and denying us the same latitude. That has to stop. You aren’t experiencing what we’re experiencing. It can’t all fall on us.
ColoradoGuy
Thank you, John. That was a fucking work of art. If I smoked, now would be a good time for a cigarette. But I don’t, so I’ll just bask in one of the finest rants I’ve read. Well done.
I have friends in Eastern Europe. They have told me in blunt language the same things that Adam Silverman has been saying: we are in World War III, and it broke out in 2014. All the terrible things happening in the USA were prototyped and refined in Ukraine … the weaponization of social media, the cultivation of bad actors, the stoking of ancient hatreds, and using technology to create deep social divisions. These techniques were further refined in Britain with the Brexit campaign, which caused a massive loss in social capital in Europe and long-lasting damage to the UK economy. Looking back at my antiwar years in college during the late Sixties, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the KGB had infiltrated that movement as well, particularly as the radicalized New Left became detached from mainstream American society.
We are at war, and it’s been going on for a long, long time. Fascist and oligarchic forces are trying to bring pluralistic democracy to an end. John is right that we need to see each other as comrades, in a long fight for human decency and mutual respect.
sab
@Eolirin: Please don’t go.
John S.
@YY_Sima Qian:
I agree with pretty much everything you said (quite nicely I might add) as a general framework. For my part, I would simply add the following.
Ethnic identity does not wholly dictate who we are alone. And as you said, we are influenced by a wide range of socio-political, environmental, and personal factors. Generalizations based on nothing more than ethnic identity ignores the diversity of opinions and actions within any group.
We do not stand against Republicans, Nazis and fascists (now conveniently sold together) because of their ethnic or religious identity. We stand against them because we disagree strongly with their views and find their actions to be reprehensible. It’s not about who they are, it’s about what they do.
I hope we can move away from generalizations, and instead start discussing specifics. It’s like zooming in on the individual threads of a tapestry rather than simply admiring the design from a distance. Only by focusing on the threads can we truly appreciate the depth and detail of the picture.
mvr
@Eolirin: This probably deserves some space at the beginning of a thread rather than the end of this one. It has a lot to say. Which for me doesn’t detract from the main point of Cole’s post but nicely supplements it. So I hope this gets picked up in some way in broad daylight, possibly in a new thread.
Eolirin
@sab: I will stay as long as I can.
Ruckus
John, the blog has been here before.
Humans get at least semi relaxed in places they enjoy, understand, agree with the vast majority of the time. But this is a political blog, even people on the same side are at times going to be argumentative, at least to some degree. It’s humanity, it has a lot of sides, views, depths and high points. Even if every one of us was perfect we are still going to have views that are not 100% consistent. It’s humanity. Now on the other hand we can and likely do at least generally agree about a lot of things. One is that some humans are incapable of leading and/or actual humanity. Another is that freedom has a cost. And we all have to understand this and live with that cost, which is that we as a group will never agree 100% about everything. We may go along with a lot simply because it’s better than not agreeing about anything.
But right now we are going through about the worst political bullshit that I can remember in my 3/4 of a century. We have a puppet leader who first, doesn’t know he’s a puppet. And maybe has reached that point in life that he really doesn’t even know what is actually going on around him. Second we have the world’s richest man seemingly believing that his money makes him not only the greatest person but the leader of the world. And he’s 10000% wrong on both of these. For a number of reasons.
I have no answers. None. Nada. Zip. The shit has hit the fan and it’s getting all over all of us.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Eolirin: If it is alright with you, I am hugging you across the spooky distance. If it isn’t, just know you are seen and heard.
Eolirin
@HopefullyNotcassandra: I will always take hugs. ❤️
sab
@Eolirin: You touched on an area where I had hoped to be helpful and instead was an ignorant toxic godzilla. I m still ashamed but also furious about being misunderstood. I think there is a lot of that going around here.
Your comments often catch me up short. Yikes, I hadn’t thought about that and I should have.
That is a lot, to expect you to put yourself out so much to help us be less stupid or awful.
I worked my butt off on the Kerry campaign. But when the LGBT idea came out I was very much okay with LGB but I remember thinking and possibly asking what is the T about? I had no clue.
Meanwhile I had a favorite nephew I really love who seemed incredibly unhappy. Until years later she came out as trans. Came out shouldn’t even be the appropriate language and possibly is not.
Morose boy became a delightful girl.
There are lots of other examples in my life where I was born entitled and only figured that out years later.
I understand why you don’t want to waste your life educatiing us. I hope you realize some of us do try to listen.
Eolirin
@sab: If I didn’t think any of you did I wouldn’t be bothering at all. And I really appreciate you saying all of this. It matters a lot to me. Thank you.
No One of Consequence
@John S.: man
“…Republicans, Nazis and fascists (now conveniently sold together)…”
should be a tagline.
@Eolirin: I appreciate your taking the time to type that up, your depth of feeling and thoughts on these matters are obvious and overwhelming. People should be able to be themselves, and have a comfortable space in which to do so. I will not knowingly or willingly contribute to making anyone feel negatively about this place.
Some of us, or at least one of us, is among the demographic you are railing against. Representatives of a history that is unjust, unkind, and indefensible. My fathers’ fathers’ decisions and actions contributed to this, and though I don’t believe in visiting the sins of the father upon the son, that does nothing towards the rightings of those wrongs. Unlike too many of this demographic, that despite the mens rea of my ancestors, and despite my conscious lack of it, the wrong persists. It needs be righted. Sadly, I do not know how this can be accomplished.
-NOoC
danielx
@ColoradoGuy:
I’m a little under the weather (Restoration Rye is helping) so both angry and maudlin. Ever we think evil is beaten down, even among ourselves, and it never is.
But yes, pull together people – the collective us here in the home of jackals. Disclaimer: I’m not only an old fuck but check all the boxes for something; white, cisgender, hetero, etc. A few years back I had to be awakened to attitudes I didn’t realize I had, by a person of another ethnicity. He was right and caused me to reassess my assumptions, not just then but every day. Which ain’t easy and makes one think a lot more, which makes people uncomfortable. But getting back to that collective Us and the pull together thing, it’s Easy to say but hard to do. Try this – there are people out there who want to kill each and every one of us, directly or indirectly. Repeat this after me:
They Want To Kill Us.
If you aren’t thinking about that and how we avoid it to the exclusion of everything else, may I suggest you think about priorities. Yes this is a goddamned debating society, but but please. It’s like listening to people arguing over what they are going to drink and how much, so they can generate piss to douse a welding torch.
Cathie from Canada
20 years I have been here — not always reading every post, not commenting often enough, but appreciating everything done here and everyone who does it.
Recently I watched Almost Famous again, so when I read your post tonight I got thinking about one of that movie’s best scenes, when they were all on the bus — “Hey, I have to get home.” “You ARE home.”
And that’s the way I feel about this blog.
Thanks, John and Watergirl and Annie Laurie and Betty and Adam and David and Tamara and Major and Rose and all the rest, who work so hard to research and write and re-write such thoughtful posts, and who all care about this community, so much so that thoughtless or mean-spirited or off-kilter or pedantic comments have the power to hurt you all so much.
You know, I will never forget this — Watergirl actually emailed me once, because she had noticed that I hadn’t commented for some time and she wanted to make sure no one had offended me and everything was OK. I was profoundly touched, and amazed that she would care so much and would reach out to check.
So always believe that I have your back — me and thousands of others. We love this place and we thank you for creating it and nurturing it.
Gloria DryGarden
@sab: seconded
Ruckus
@Cathie from Canada:
We arrived here about the same time and just because you didn’t/don’t comment a lot does not mean anything. On this blog there have been a number of times I have thought “I HAVE TO COMMENT ON THIS!” and didn’t because someone else beat me to it and said what I wanted to say. IOW the big we often agree on a lot of points, which is one reason a lot of us have been here a long time.
Mallard Filmore
Hi John, I will happily choke down all the slop served up here by front pagers and commenters. I have not found a better blog since my first encounter many years ago.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@YY_Sima Qian: does FOB mean “Fresh off the boat”, or have I completely misunderstood the term as you use it? Otherwise, I completely agree with your listing of privileges people enjoy without really thinking about it. As a woman, I can recognize male privilege easily, but as a white person, I have become appalled at my ignorance about the truth about black lives in this country (as well as other POC). Just finished watching a PBS documentary on Walter White and the NAACP and the part about lynching was sickening. A federal anti-lynching law was finally passed in 2022. FDR was afraid to support one; at Ieast Truman desegregated the armed forces with an E.O.
And thank you JC for the righteous rant, and bless all the front pagers, especially AL and WG, for all the good-hearted work you do for this place.
Rusty
@mvr: I second highlighting Eolirin’s comment. I also agree with John and was sad when ABL was driven away by hostile commenters. We need more excluded group voices, and we need to listen better, especially when we don’t agree, because those moments of uncomfortableness can be revealing of our own biases, or at least moments to challenge our own long held beliefs. Finally, I also agree we need more progressive religious voices. The very angry right wing responses to Rev. Budde’s pretty mild request for mercy show the moral authority that a challenge to conservative religious doctrine in the US can still hold. Opposition to slavery, child labor and much more was previously driven by religious conviction, and it con continue to be a force of social good and transformation in this world. Some of the most radical left readings I’ve encountered have been this last year in seminary. To everyone as we try to work together on this place and the broader world, peace be with you.
Ruckus
@Eolirin:
Many of us are not on the same path as you or at the same milage marker even if on the same path. So our experiences are going to be different. That does not reduce the reality and respect you deserve or that any of us do. We all have a history, some similar and some way different, some way worse or way better. We are different humans and the vast majority deserve to be treated rationally and well. We don’t always get that. Ever been shot at? I have and it wasn’t in combat. It was walking down the sidewalk, back to where I lived.
sab
@Mallard Filmore: Gotta argue with you about ‘slop from frontpagers.’
I don’t always
disagree with them, but they work hard to present real news, and often news I don’t hear elsewhere until days later. I don’t want to spend my life on the internet. So far BJ has been a “mostly reliable” aggregator. The ‘mostly’ is what makes us jackals. Snarly sceptics.ETA Freudian slip there: “I don’t always agree with them…” came out as “I don’t always disagree with them.” I don’t actually know which side I come out on. I often disagree but not always.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Six words sum up my view of what’s been going on here:
Scared people don’t always think straight.
I don’t think there’s anyone here who’s not afraid of what’s already happened and what’s still to come, not Our Gracious Host, not any of the front-pagers, not any of the commenters or lurkers in the jackaltariat, not any truly rational normies around us – and probably not any Democrat on Capitol Hill, either. We’re all terrified, with good reason, and to quote Dr. Egon Spengler, often “terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.”
It’s made me a worse person, I’m sure. I no longer have the capacity for grace that I had, oh, ten years ago. I can’t even read the news any more because there’s no way for me to express my rage. I don’t even dare say what I want to happen to every Republican in Washington, to every billionaire who collaborated or capitulated to make this happen.
I think I may truly be an exile now, and fortunate at that, in that I can largely escape the effects of the oncoming catastrophe in ways that none of you back home can. Unless there’s a Third World War.
And I feel guilty for having this … distance.
I know I shouldn’t talk about myself in all this … but … well, like I said. Scared people don’t always think straight.
Sorry.
YY_Sima Qian
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Yes, FOB is short for “Fresh Off the Boat”.
There was a time, in my younger & dumber days, when I would have absolutely scoffed at any suggestion that I, a 1st generation Chinese immigrant, myself sometime subjected to bigotry & discrimination, should have benefitted in any way from the legacy of slavery, genocide of the Natives, & American hegemony. But, my family & I chose to emigrate to the US, for its abundant resource, plentiful opportunities & seemingly infinite possibilities. It took some reorienting of my conceptual frameworks to recognize that these material wealth (& the relative tolerance built on the foundation of material abundance) are either direct result or downstream consequence of value extraction from the labors of slaves (& later the labors of oppressed blacks & exploited immigrants), from stealing from Native Americans, & from value extraction under the threat of gun point or financial sanction from the developing world.
& the point is not to assign guilt/blame, but to gain fundamental understanding of the true nature of the unjust & inequitable system we all inherited & in our own ways perpetuate, that we all benefit from in some ways & are exploited by in other way (although the net balance is dramatically different across individuals & groups). Only w/ fundamental understanding can we strive to improve.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@sab: yes, I get a lot of news from here also. My husband will tell me some news he read on Google, and usually I had read about it here the day before, either as a post, or in comments of a post. The people here pay attention, and know things. I really appreciate the width of knowledge and experience I have found here.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@YY_Sima Qian: truth!
Eric NNY
Mostly lurker here: I love you all and would be terribly damaged without this place. Remember to share grace.
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: I have three binational nephews/nieces. The blue eyed one is adamantly Chinese-American. The middle one, brown-eyed black haired just wants to be totally American. His hazel eyed wife is herself the grand-daughter of a Japanese war bride and an American Gi , agrees.The third one, being trans, is more into gender issues than citizenship issues.
Our kids and grandkids have complicated lives that we, being intransigent, make much worse.
We, being me. You are a generation younger and don’t even understand our world has changed because you are already living in the newer world.
Eolirin
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: I think it’s fine to talk about yourself. I think we need to center our own experiences with each other or we won’t have an ability to get to understanding. As long as it’s not done in a way to erase other people, and I don’t think you’re doing so here.
Even with that distance, the world is too global for this to not have an effect everywhere. Fear is rational right now. But you do have the privilege of not having an immediate existential threat to yourself. All that I would ask is to do the best you can to use that privilege in benefit for others who may not be so fortunate.
ColoradoGuy
Eolirin, it took a lot of courage to write what you did. Now that fascists and oligarchs are openly discussing genocide, while the mass media is trying to normalize it, the true dimensions of this horror are only just beginning to dawn for the “normies”.
My guess is Covid psychologically damaged hundreds of millions of people. A significant proportion of the population of this country (and others) seems to have escaped into mass denial, turning away from horror, seeking diversion into social-media trivialities, or even mass hallucinations like QAnon or the Trump hate-religion.
sab
@Eolirin: I am retired with an inheritance and hopefully Social Security and Medicare.
My step-children have none of that. They survive on their wages and their medical insurance.
My stepdaughter has had multiple health issues ( three times cancer) and without insurance she might die. Her autistic daughter fortunately has an uncle and aunt who can take her in and are trained to deal with her. Not every family is so lucky.
This Medicaid vote just socks me. What the fuck country do I live in? Okay for kids to starve and old people to be abandoned in nursing homes?
YY_Sima Qian
@John S.: No single component of an anti-Fascist coalition can survive the coming onslaught alone. We hang together or we hang separately, or we choose exile (one could say that’s where I am already).
However, to truly build & sustain a coalition to defeat the Fascists, we cannot simply will it into being by browbeating prospective parts of that coalition to “just move on” & “get w/ the program”, & using the threat posed by Herrenvolk authoritarian reactionaries to do so. That is why I wrote the [certainly non-exhaustive] list of what I feel to be ground truths that we should all acknowledge & accept, because it is indeed the case that not all of us necessarily acknowledge & accept these truths, or we all sometimes forget, or we acknowledge them at the intellectual level but do not actually let it to guide our behavior. We all have a tendency to center our own fears, anxiety & suffering, & each of us can easily feel alienated from coalition allies if we feel our fears, anxiety & suffering go unacknowledged, or acknowledged inauthentically. We are all only human.
We are all guilty of lacking empathy, or lacking the patience to empathize, at least some of the time. We all let the lizard part of our brains take over, at least some of the time.
As individuals, we cannot dictate the behavior of others, but we can government our own behavior, & perhaps through our behavior influence that of others.
YY_Sima Qian
@sab:
True. We are all limited by our vantage points.
YY_Sima Qian
@Eolirin: Thank you for writing this.
sab
Fifteen or twenty years ago I used to follow many blogs. BJ was interesting but at the time but I didn’t realize it was unique.
AxelFoley
Damn, Cole can write his ass off when he goes on a righteous rant
scav
We could maybe also give our neighbors here (and ourselves) a bit of grace in relearning which of our neighbors / “fellow americans” we can trust. These last few years have certainty destroyed that assumption / founding myth. It’s easier for some of us to be comfortable with how often the people around us daily will sell us out for a tax break and some pretense of moral superiority, but we’re all somewhat wrestling with figuring out who has really has our backs in a crisis. Sure as hell ain’t anyone with an American passport. We unfortunately greet everyone with the question “Are you safe? Prove it.” and we’re not quite graceful with it.
Canadian Shield
As an Outsider (Canada), I think you should all just bite the bullet and go full Bernie now.
They have stolen/twisted “DEI” and every other reasonable thing around Liberalism that leads to Caste/Race/Gender freedom.
But…they have no defense against what Bernie is laying out v.s. The Oligarchs (in this current pure form).
NotMax
@scav
The new “What’s the frequency, Kenneth.”
// (Young’uns, look it up.)
Jesse
Thanks John.
I guess we can be pretty testy because I think a lot of us are working out, in public and (sometimes) together, our trauma. Not all of us see things the same way, some emphasize some issues but that might be taken by others to mean “ur completely neglecting these other issues which are way more important”. Who knows for sure? I myself (and I have to imagine many of you here) are also taking a good long look at some sacred cows. No this doesn’t mean throwing people under the bus or radically altering one’s values. Just thinking through whether we have our own taboos that are limiting us and which look foolish in the eyes of the normies and politically minimally/completely non-engaged.
Anyway, I don’t have any answers. We’re all working on that and are coming at it from very different directions. And I guess a lot aren’t even necessarily taking any *steps* yet, just mentally sheltering in place and observing and coping. Also fine. I hope to have the grace to see that in others.
Glory b
@Eolirin: Wow, this is everything, as my daughter used to say.
Please stick around!
Gloria DryGarden
Such a great, clear summary of a bunch of what our wealth rests on, or is built from. It’s a devastating history. (And I know people who refuse to see it. Who just see “greatness”)
YY_Sima Qian
@Gloria DryGarden: Effective resource mobilization, ingenuity, risk taking, good governance (relatively speaking) were all critical ingredients to America’s historical success.
However, how the US got its starter fund when breaking away from its wealthy & overbearing parent, & how it obtained continued cash infusions throughout, not a pretty history. Applies to much of Western Europe, too.
AxelFoley
@Canadian Shield: Nah, fuck Bernie. He’s a big reason we’ve been saddled with Trump for the last decade.
YY_Sima Qian
@Gloria DryGarden: OT: In a previous post you asked if perchance I draw strength from the lotus. I do indeed! & I shared an very short essay (almost a poem) by an ancient Chinese philosopher extolling the virtues of the lotus.
In case you missed it.
columbusqueen
@Glory b: Agree. I will try to do better, too.
Spanish Moss
@Sister Golden Bear:
Well said John, made me a little teary.
And Sister Golden Bear, I just love your “Only when you’ve ruled that out….” formulation. What a great way to approach an upsetting comment.
And finally, Anne Laurie, you are a treasure! Thank you so much for all you do.
planet eddie
@Eolirin: thank you
John, I love you, but I started reading this blog when I was 18, and what happened to me here broke a bit of my heart in a way that makes it very hard to read this and not be upset. I experienced more transphobia on this site in the comments, including people mocking me being assaulted, etc. It remains unreal and every time WG or Betty lift up Kay, I feel like your message is clear.
Well, there is a saying, which is that feminism without intersectionality is just another form of white supremacy.
Repair is part of community. I remember thinking, why do none of the other FPers give a fuck that I’m having transphobic bombs lobbed at my head, and my only conclusion was that they agreed with them. The behavior has to be acknowledged, people need to actually talk about the real conflict at hand, and there needs to be apologies and repair offered or you will continue to have to write these posts to an ever dwindling crowd of white cis people.
Gloria DryGarden
@Eolirin: What you’ve said is important, and I agree, would be useful reprised during daytime. It hasn’t been so transparently and openly discussed, and it’s clear that it’s needed. It matters. You matter.
I’ve had 6 hours of sleep in the last 50 hours, so my comprehension is a little dulled. I’m not agile enough to absorb long sentences with clauses and direction changes. Even so I’d like to try some active listening, see if I got some of your main points.
What I think you’re saying ( lmk know what I missed or got wrong, if you like) [using “we” voice, for ease of my attempt at paraphrasing you.]
**********
Theres a lot of privilege and some elitism here on the bj blog.
Being in a marginalized group marked for death, highly at risk, often a target of hate, under-supported, and at risk of having most of its support yanked, is a huge big deal. People with privilege often fail to see, recognize the situation, or care about what the affected people are going through.
we need to be included, and seen, and not made invisible. There have been micro aggressions, in the blog, in the way things, people issues have been spoken of. they hurt. Being excluded, and ignored, our needs overlooked, is not a good environment.
there’s good stuff of value here. And if it continues to feel like shit, it’s hard to stick around for it, makes more sense to walk away, and go where actual support is.
Did I understand some of the key points?
***********
I think you’re saying we commenters and writers here, need to open our awareness a bunch, become aware of our less privileged, more marginalized members. And recognize that people who are white, cis, het, Christian or atheist, and even for best results, male, are in a very different boat, especially if able bodied , and successfully employed for decades of life.
Eolirin, I am certainly sending you hugs, and have lit a “candle” on my virtual altar, for you and your cohort. I wonder what would cut past the privileges and possible blinders of folks, and help you get seen and to get meaningful responses of care and that you matter?
I remember during Covid when people said, we’re all in the same boat, I realized, we’re in the same storm, sure, but some people have nice big boats, with supplies, lots of staff and resources, and friends on board. Others of us are clinging to a small floating log, trying not to drown.
I know PTSD, I get SNAP, I used to have Medicaid
Nelle
@YY_Sima Qian: Thank you for this grounding piece.
Momentary
Everything Eolirin said. Every word.
Betty Cracker
@Gloria DryGarden:
Love that metaphor!
frosty
@YY_Sima Qian: I agree. These are all good points; I’ve seen them IRL myself.
Socolofi
I’ve been mostly lurking here for 20 years… I do remember the big Schiavo incident. Used to have a running count of dozens of blogs, but I did like this one mostly for the quality of the front pagers. I’ll admit I tend to skip comments because by the time I get to them, like this one, it’s comment #125 or more and the thread is done.
My wife has been lashing out at me more and more, over dumber and dumber stuff. It’s because she’s anxious, scared, frustrated, and there’s no other outlet – I’m safe and I’ll forgive her. During election season, she was also anxious, scared, and frustrated, but she also knew what she had to do – she wrote hundreds of postcards, she went to Vegas as a poll watcher, she and I donated – there was stuff to do, and she did it. She showed up. But now, there’s no place to show up. We don’t know what to do – so invariably, we snipe at each other because sniping at random Internet people is way safer.
Until we do figure out what to do, I would encourage everyone to develop both a thicker skin and a shorter memory. It’ll be hard because we’re all wired to hit back and hold a grudge. But I think that’s going to be the requirement. For what John said, yes, people should try to assume good intentions and realize that we’re all in agreement on 99% of stuff here. But one of my best profs way back when in undergrad once gave me some of the best advice when it comes to partnerships – everyone should assume they need to do 75% of the work. That way, 100% will get done. If both parties just do 50%, they’ll overlap on some, and miss some, and it doesn’t get done.
75% of your part as a commenter is to assume good intentions, and try to learn, and be constructive.
The other 75% of your part is to have a thick skin and short memory. That way, we all get through this.
Elizabelle
@Eolirin: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Once again, you show such courage and clarity.
And now, jackals, eyes on the prize.
TBone
Verklempt. Thanks J.C., A.L., and everyone else for keeping on keeping on. The only way out is through.
Almost sorry I slept through this last night…
After the news about 2USV I was so freaking angry I had to sedate myself. That is a rarity – but I remember kids in cages (the audio of that wail will never leave my brain) and I remember the forced sterilizations…
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8034024/
We are, indeed, all we have.
Spanish Moss
@stinger:
I like this advice:
I would add:
Have I over-generalized or used inflammatory language in making this point that I think is important?
Too often I see something valuable said in a way that takes the discussion down the tubes, and unfortunately the idea itself gets lost. I read a comment like that and think, “Oh no, here we go…” I am not suggesting that anyone needs to beat around the bush, but there is a difference between being straightforward and being accusatory, and the latter is not helpful. In the case of over-generalization, the discussion often turns to correcting the broadness of the statement instead of focusing on the more important point itself.
Socolofi
@AxelFoley: So, I get Bernie hasn’t sponsored much legislation, doesn’t do much down-ticket party building, isn’t even a Democrat, etc. And he loves his pontificating.
That said, I don’t blame Bernie for Trump.
There is a group of people who love Bernie AND love Trump. A lot of people have dismissed that group, but I think that group more than others is responsible for Trump. Basically, you’ve got a lot of working folks who aren’t doing well, and haven’t been doing well for quite some time, and they see lots of other people doing better. These are people who got killed in 2008 and are still trying to get back. These are people who have dealt with being laid off because the company decided to make money elsewhere, or fucked up somehow and had to cut costs. These are students who don’t have rich parents and are going into major debt for college and then discovering they don’t have a good enough job to get them out of the hole.
Bernie told them that he saw their pain, and that it was corporations and bilionaires, and he’d do something about it. They loved it.
Trump told them that he saw their pain, and that it was immigrants and globalization, and he’d do something about it. They loved that too.
It isn’t Bernie’s fault here that what he said resonated with a lot of people and caused some internal friction – the fault is that we and especially the Democratic leadership really didn’t do enough to get those people on with us.
And now we’re rooting for the leopards.
Gloria DryGarden
With regard to being charitable toward each other
I understand and folks are angry as hell. Some say let us vent, we have deep reasons to be terrified and enraged.
I grew up in an angry family, who had no skills with that anger, except to blame and name call and yell, and hurt each other, a lot. There was labeling, and shouting, and silencing, and gaslighting. There was a party line, and all other beliefs and thoughts were suppressed, shot down, made wrong.
I really really don’t enjoy that shit, it hurts a lot, and I walk away when it goes that way. And if people say mean-assed unproductive stuff to me, and don’t rescind it or apologize, I get pretty angry about it. I’m no stranger to looking for careless ways to express it. But I don’t like my past with anger, when the only tool I had was mean terrible words. A verbal hammer.
through Alanon and some coaching, classes and therapy, I’ve learned some much more helpful skills, and strategies. I recommend this, adamantly:
Some folks are already kind, and measured, here, and diplomatic, and caring. Y’all don’t need my suggestions.
Others really need to step up. At least don’t call people names or make put-downs. It doesn’t help anyone grow. And it’s hard for people to hear it in a useful way. Vent without hurting people. We all need to be heard, but it doesn’t need to involve “being right”, or saying how wrong someone is, or what a jerk they are.
Stop hurting each other. Being divided, we fail to gather our strength, and focus our energies. The enemies love that.
TBone
Why in everloving fuck is Bernie STILL being discussed, especially in THIS post? I’m going back to bed. I do not root for leopards.
Momentary
I think there is a blind spot here about the fact that a community and a movement are not the same thing, and Balloon Juice keeps trying to be both at once without understanding the difference. The dominant culture/inner circle here wants it to be community, wants it to be a home base and safe haven where they can express their fear and anger without getting pushback on their core assumptions. At the same time they want it to be movement building, want to think of it as welcoming to diverse commenters and diverse points of view. Those things do not go together.
It’s not wrong to want a safe haven of shared reality assumptions to vent in and seek comfort in times like these. But it is wrong to keep telling marginalised folks they are valued and wanted in your safe haven and then punish them whenever they point out how unsafe it is for them.
I have never seen a community founded and led by members of the dominant culture/demographic actually be a welcoming and safe space for marginalised people, online or offline.
Gloria DryGarden
YES.
i don’t agree. It doesn’t work that way. Not for everyone. And we’re not all wired to hit back and hold a grudge.
i like to assume people are doing their best.
Gloria DryGarden
@Momentary: brilliant point. Thanks. I’ll await others’ thoughts about this; but I hadn’t thought of this.
Ben Cisco
Nominated!!
Gloria DryGarden
@YY_Sima Qian: so very well said. And thorough.
important points, puts it all in context
zhena gogolia
@Eolirin: THIS NEEDS TO BE ON THE FRONT PAGE
MagdaInBlack
@Eolirin: Thank you.
@YY_Sima Qian: and Thank You.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: mornin. Up all night again, not on screen until quite late. What the hell is 2USV? No I’m not googling it I have to go to bed, I have appointments. And really low on sleep.
i commented earlier on the thread, (TL:dr) actually I feel pretty strongly about it.
Betty
Thank you, John. I appreciate how much you care about this blog, realize this is a horrible moment we are living through and hope people can find a way to express themselves without dumping on each other. Sometimes it is best to move on and say nothing rather than keep a disagreement going. Silently agreeing to disagree. There is no need to respond to every comment.
And many thanks to Anne Laurie and Watergirl for their devotion to the blog. Much appreciation to all the front pagers, past and present.
Booger
I found this joint way back in the day, when you started the day going through your blogroll to see what was up. There’s a reason this joint is probably the Last Man Standing and it is (1) Cole and (2) AL and (3) the jackaltariat. Let’s keep this treasure alive…I’d be lost without it.
Signed, Old White Guy you’d assume was a magat living in a very red, very white part of the world.
siddhartha
Eolirin: thank you.
John: thank you.
On the topic of things that we have to say over and over again:
fighting racism is not the same as decentering whiteness.
“If unity is more important than grappling with Kay driving away Planet Eddie by engaging in transphobic rhetoric and not listening to anything any of us were trying to tell her, and never having to apologize for it, while continuing to maintain status, then we have a problem.”
That’s just it. White people got us here. We have the right to ask our allies to do better.
Another thing that we are tired of having to say over and over again (ask Ida B. Wells last nerve given her debate with Barbara Willard in the 19th century): racism is not some bullet point in a list. By the law of intersectionality, when someone is being racist they are also being sexist, classist, etc.–just in ways that we don’t yet recognize. So talking about racism IS talking about ALL the other issues but it does so by decentering whiteness.
I missed the whole mistermix situation. People like me are trying to contribute our actual expertise and experience in decentering whiteness–and that means decentering whiteness even for ourselves in how we think, frame issues, and see ourselves.
We are looking for white allies–not folks who insist they are on our side but who are unwilling to work with us on doing the exact same we had to do as people of color while paying the price with our careers, our safety, our families, our jobs: decenter whiteness. So if folks can’t even do that on a blog when black people and people of color have done so by losing EVERYTHING….it’s sad. Like I said, I’ve been here since John was a Republican. In fact, I’m still not over Tunch.
Gloria DryGarden
@YY_Sima Qian: I did see that. And loved it. Both posts. Thank you! I love your responses to my little OT intuitive tangents. The exchanges are so fun for my curiosity self.
montessori, lotus, Uigur lamb kebobs, and the nuances of being bicultural.
I’m sure it’s even more eloquent in the original language..
more later, I’ve been up all night, trying to wind down. 5 am here.
Chris Johnson
Back in the day I posted as Applejinx and was full of rage and mistake. Took years for me to realize I’d been had (and in my opinion, Bernie’d been had as well, similarly full of rage and mistake and got used by bad actors) and eventually I figured it out.
The nastiness of my early life left me very sensitive to the hints of wrongness I ended up figuring out, and now the wrongness is blanketing the whole country. But it also left me able to focus on my work in a world with no friends and no social life and a state of near-total isolation. And through doing that work (and being in recovery) I gradually ended up surrounded by nice people… and still noticing when people were not.
John, you know sometimes I’ve had trouble around here. That has persisted. I don’t expect you’ve stopped any of it but I don’t think that’s your actual job any more than it’s your job to stop or start rain. I hope your attempt at an umbrella works for some, and accept that it’s not for me. Not everybody gets everything. Not everything lasts.
I’ve unpied every pied name, and I might even continue to post when I can be the ‘Porsche whisperer’: I feel like I’m on good terms with a few people who aren’t always on good terms with people as a rule, and I’ve taken pains to try and bring clarity, and I would hope my worked-for-Bernie cred can carry some weight when I’m defending things like Democrats and our system of government.
Maybe blogspaces where there’s a broad coalition of viewpoints can’t work at this point in our history. I hope when the current fascism and foreign-adversary stoking of all possible grievances, burns out in the disaster it is, things eventually return to the way normal humans act with each other.
What POINT would there be making sure the people left in the rubble are still yelling at each other?
Professor Bigfoot
@Eolirin: Thank you; you’ve said what I’ve been thinking as I read the Blogfather’s post and these comments.
My loudest complaint has been the unwillingness of so much of this commentariat to ever examine the ways in which whiteness and white supremacy affect their individual views, beliefs, and actions.
I’ve said how I had to grapple with the ways the patriarchy has affected my own views, beliefs and actions; but that because I don’t WANT to be a patriarchist, I WANT to be an ally to women, but I’m a man raised in a patriarchal society that builds blindspots in the eyes of men and only by examining them can I avoid those blind spots.
My perception (and I’m sure some commenters will just say I’m a bigot) is that this is a very whitesafe space, and there are commenters who want to keep it that way… and therefore others of us have to decide if we want to stay in what is, by and large, a wonderful, loving, friendly, tail-wagging-dog and purring-kitten kind of place; but there are blind spots.
”We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression, in the denial of my humanity and my right to exist.” -Robert Jones Jr. “Son of Baldwin”
Spanish Moss
@YY_Sima Qian: This is the best thing said today. Thank you.
Professor Bigfoot
QFT.
Another Scott
Hang in there everyone. We’re in this together.
Meanwhile, one for Suzanne – DW on Brutalism.
Best wishes,
Scott.
YY_Sima Qian
@Gloria DryGarden: Get some sleep! Spending so much time here, as addictive & vexing as it can be, is not healthy!
Professor Bigfoot
@Socolofi: The base of the Democratic Party— the people most dependable in voting for the party— is Black people.
The Independent showed his hostility towards Black people.
He lost.
No Democrat wins without the enthusiastic support of the Black electorate; and as shown last November, sometimes even that isn’t enough.
Gloria DryGarden
@YY_Sima Qian: doesn’t Shakespeare have a line,
something something, perchance to sleep?
perchance is a word one doesn’t see very often. Quite.
Chris Johnson
@Professor Bigfoot: The proudest I’ve been around here hasn’t been calling out bad actors, as much as I think they’re out and about…
…it’s when you listened, as I and a bunch of other white people showed you that we in fact understood whiteness in the way you mean, because there’s aspects of it that make our families and lives SUUUUCK sometimes.
We told you stuff that left you gobsmacked. Do you remember? I’m pretty sure I mentioned my grandmother who exiled one child and terrorized my Mom for fear she too would be banished. Commenters chimed in left and right with their own stories of things you couldn’t imagine families would do to each other.
Maybe this is why, when you go on a tear, people are distressed and upset. How many of us know that the way we were raised, is very inadequate? And look at the big Cookout and families of other colors who seem to love each other very much, and the feeling is a little awed and a little stunned. How do they do that?
And then we come here and try our best to put our quarreling, grudgeful cranky asses into a space where there can be friends and threads intentionally made to not scrap in… and then here you come again. I have every sympathy with your arguments on every level…
…but can you not see people are trying to learn, even just with each other, to not do what you want them not to do? The question is how do they extend that and how far can they extend that, and we’re on the same page there.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Thanks, John. Great rant to wake up to.
I generally don’t care if people stay on topic or go off it here, but for me, if I find myself starting a comment with “you,” I know I’m making the other commenter the topic. That’s when I stop and go away for a little while to get hold of myself.
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: Cause he’s a white dude? THE white dude?
I don’t know— my own perception of the man, based on my own personal observations, is that’s his appeal.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: I follow mekka okereke on Mastodon and he thought Biden’s history as a “tough on crime” politician, and the lack of progress on police brutality and racism after BLM’s moment, hurt Biden and Harris’s cred with Black men. Was warning about it through the whole campaign and kept having to explain to white respondents that he knew perfectly well Trump would be worse (and was doing his best to convey that IRL) but that this was a fact Democrats had to deal with.
Professor Bigfoot
@Momentary: ‘
I’m gonna have to sit with that one… because it does seem to explain a lot of what’s been happening here.
Tandem
I’m glad to see so many lurkers come out of the shadows. I’m a lurker too, rarely commenting but doing what I can to help to fund the blog and the wisely-chosen issues and candidates. I write to say I never want to find out what my life is like without all of you — you are my community. Let’s take a deep breath, take Cole’s post to heart, and do the right thing here and in the broader world.
Momentary
@Matt McIrvin: Mekka is an infinite source of very hard but very important truths.
Chris Johnson
@Professor Bigfoot: It’s hard not to notice the economic class arguments, and when you look at how things are right now, it’s hard not to find fault with class-related things about America.
I’d ask, do you figure Bernie has a position on billionaires? Gotta say I do. Look at how they’re carrying on, globally.
Gloria DryGarden
@YY_Sima Qian: yes but the topic!
so very important to me!
I was already thinking about it, as a guest post even, because I think handling our disagreements in a less destructive manner is a big part of the way forward. I just so hate the way people treat each other badly, slinging sharp angry hurtful words around.
I think anger is just jet fuel – to do actions that change a thing
and anger is an indicator light– to tell you something is quite seriously not ok.
and then the writing of my comments 130, 140, thinking, editing, making it more clear.. couldn’t be slap-dash or haphazard…
I will curl up inside a lotus blossom and absorb the radiant beauty while I sleep…
Professor Bigfoot
@Chris Johnson: Some are.
Many are not.
Should I shut the fuck up about those who are not in order to keep most of these white people comfortable? Is that what’s required to be part of The Jackaltariat?
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: It may have, but Harris still got over 77% of Black men.
Don’t, please, don’t try to pin this on anyone other than white people.
Professor Bigfoot
@Chris Johnson: Bernie insists there’s no “racism” problem, it’s only “classism,” and as a Black man I can tell you that’s fucking BULLSHIT.
Chris Johnson
@Gloria DryGarden: Anger can be knocking, in the engine.
It’s a thing that can explode in the wrong place, and rather than pushing the piston, the octane is too low and the anger explodes early, screwing up the firing of the cylinders or perhaps even breaking the parts.
I think the big discovery of WWIII is how to screw with the octane of societies and their social interactions, to make the anger go off in self-breaking ways. I don’t have an answer for that, but I’m real sure that’s been reduced to a science by now and we’re seeing the consequences everywhere.
satby
@Eolirin: Spectacular comment and I thank you for saying it. Every word is true.
And John, I get what you’re saying too, but Eolirin really clearly says what so many have tried to and failed.
Geminid
There could be big news out of Turkiye tomorrow. From Ragip Soylu:
Soylu linked to his article about this in Middle East Eye:
https://www.middleeasteye/news/ocalan-urge-pkk-disarm-week-source
Darn! The link doesn’t work.
Hopefully there will be more on this tomorrow. This would be very big news un Turkiye, and there would be regional implications as well.
AndyG
Another long time lurker and very occasional poster since 2008. I love this blog, read it every day but rarely head into the comments. I have seen the changing cast of front pagers but thought that all of them had something to tell me, even if I haven’t agreed with everything they have said. I’ll continue to read, think and donate and I fervently hope that the leaky, cranky ship held together by duct tape and sarcasm continues to stay afloat. I’ll keep loving it until they carry me off to a MAGA re-education camp.
Momentary
@Professor Bigfoot: Meant as a criticism of Biden, not of black voters. It was hard for me to read because Biden was so good on unions and native issues (Deb Haaland) and so many other things, and I had assumed he was good on black issues because of Obama, so it was a hard lesson. But important.
Chris Johnson
@Professor Bigfoot: Real question: if they’re white people, how can you tell if they are (trying to find the beginnings of that unity that’s your birthright for the worst reasons) or not?
We’ve established before that they can be operating at a level of cruelty that amazes you, to each other and not just to minorities. I think it’s probably something to do with societies evolving in the Northern wastes and what happened to humans in order to gain a foothold there, but I wasn’t there and don’t know.
If the people like that (note that our biggest adversary, Russia, are VERY like that in every possible way) were trying to connect, would you recognize it for what it was? Or is it too alien to interpret?
YY_Sima Qian
@Gloria DryGarden: Not sure we want draw inspiration from Hamlet’s suicidal thoughts at this moment… :-)
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: 🎯💋
You have calmed me down again. I need the peace today especially.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Momentary:
Thank you for articulating the inchoate thoughts rattling round my head as I read John’s screed and plowed thru the comments.
satby
@planet eddie: And this. I’m still angry about it, and how it empowered the perpetrators. So sorry that happened to you, you deserved so much better.
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: I will write to you soon, when I’m feeling like my stomach isn’t going to drop out through my feet and leave the building.
Gloria DryGarden
@YY_Sima Qian: no. For sure a good point.
but insomnia, for decades, and upside down circadian rhythm for 9 months,
it’s the longing, in ‘perchance to sleep.’..
I am thankfully not suicidal
Professor Bigfoot
@Chris Johnson: “By their fruit you shall know them.”
TBone
@Tandem: welcome, fellow citizen!
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: amen, brotha.
David_C
@Eolirin: I’m glad I scrolled up the thread to read your thoughts. Thank you.
billcoop4
@John Cole:
@Eolirin:
First, John, while I lurk I very much appreciate this site and the folks here even if sometimes things get….wobbly.
Thank you both for your contrapuntal postings. I do very much appreciate your dialog. @Eolirin, especially, reminds me that as a white, middle class, gay man, I can pass but need to do more simply because of the privilege of the first two and last in that list to benefit those too readily cast aside (for wide definitions of “cast aside” — and I learn so much from listening to others here, including @planet eddie, @Professor Bigfoot, and so many others.
BC
Another Scott
@Geminid: Thanks for the pointer.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/ocalan-urge-pkk-disarm-week-sources
I’ve thought for decades that Erdogan is the problem; maybe he’ll finally let a solution grow before he exits the scene.
Fingers crossed.
Best wishes,
Scott.
YY_Sima Qian
@Professor Bigfoot: It’s both racism and classism, always has been since the founding of the Republic. Anyone who says it is only one or the other has major blind spots. Unfortunately, for African Americans & Native Americans, they bear the brunt on both counts, downstream of the original sins of the Republic.
Any anti-Fascist coalition has to march under the banners of class equality, anti-racism, & social justice & anti-militarism, & make common cause w/ other such movements around the world. That is how we can build the strongest coalition w/ the broadest appeal.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: That would be a big development in the history of Türkiye.
YY_Sima Qian
@Gloria DryGarden: “To sleep, perchance to dream“. I wish you happy dreams.
Poptaracus
Get more young people? Anit happening Leroy. I’m an old white asshole married to a nice young brown. The only thing him and his buds got lit about last year was the tik tok ban. They would consider this place just boomersbeingfools. Going to have to get a lot worse before they get involved and it certainly won’t be here.
Momentary
@Chris Johnson: I believe you are asking this in good faith. But you are asking Professor Bigfoot to do a lot of work here, and to treat analysing and acknowledging the good intentions of white people, and brainstorming about how to help them heal and grow, as his first priority. White people very often do this. I’m gonna suggest that it would be good to try not to do that.
A good way to try to connect is to learn to sit with your bad reaction to feeling like you’ve been accused of something, and instead listen, when marginalised people are speaking from their own experience. You don’t have to agree with what they say. But you can choose to not treat defending yourself as more important than anything else. Treat it as an opportunity to get some information you wouldn’t otherwise have, that you can then think over and add to what you know.
Professor Bigfoot
@YY_Sima Qian: Indeed.
It’s just that when a fabulously wealthy celebrity like LeBron James can still have his home vandalized with the n-word; when even wealthy Black men cannot hail a taxi in Manhattan… I’d say that race counts more than class, and Bernie and his followers’ absolute blindness on the subject says a lot more than they’d like to.
Class divisions really only appear within racial classifications in this country; it’s inherent in the nature of the caste system itself.
[edited to add a couple of missing apostrophes ;) ]
Nancy
@stinger:
In John Cole’s living room–I like this–thanks.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
This.
LAC
@Eolirin: Thank you for everything you have said. You have captured my experience here a lot of times and have said it better than I ever could. I hope you do not go, but I understand it as it is in back of my mind often here too. Internet hug, my sis…
Betty Cracker
@Eolirin: I second the comments thanking you for having the courage to write the comment at #83. What I’m struggling with a bit is figuring out the ask.
As someone who would also die if preexisting conditions make a comeback, and as the parent of a gender fluid kid, I think I understand that urgency. But I don’t accept that it’s offensive to criticize Democrats (or to push back on that criticism either). Many if not most of us are active participants in politics outside of voting and reading this blog, and change in the party starts with us.
I also don’t believe discussions about messaging and social media presentation are illegitimate unless you’re a working political consultant. I’ve learned things during those conversations that I can apply to real life, and even if I didn’t, so what? We should be able to shoot the shit among fellow liberal-learning politics junkies as entertainment. No one else is required to participate in those discussions. So what’s the ask here? (That’s a sincere question, btw. I’m trying to understand.)
I agree that our positions are asymmetrical, and I agree that it is essential to be able to talk about that. (I don’t think John was implying we shouldn’t, fwiw.)
But at the same time, I do not consent to be anyone’s punching bag. I think MM bowed out for the same reason — because he was tired of being a punching bag.
@planet eddie: I am deeply sorry for adding to your hurt. I can only offer my perspective by way of explanation, not excuse.
The incident you’re referring to was a long time ago, and I noped out of that original shit-show of a thread fairly early, so maybe I missed things. And I’m not going to discuss the comments of another person who is not participating in this thread and is more than capable of defending herself.
But there’s a maddening cultural phenomenon I’ve noticed that, from my perspective, provides relevant context here: a loophole that makes it culturally okay in left spaces to shit on women and/or feminists indiscriminately as long as the adjective “white” is present.
I think it started in notoriously sexist dirtbag left spaces, and it kind of rippled out. The sexist knobs in those spaces were almost comically relieved to have found a formula for saying sexist shit again without being criticized for it.
I’m sure that wasn’t your intent in the comment that set off the controversy. I’m also not saying white women/feminists don’t do things that legitimately require criticism. But the phenomenon I describe is real, and I know it gets my hackles up when I think I see it. And people with raised hackles tend to talk past each other. All that said, I am sorry, for what it’s worth.
Another Scott
@Eolirin: @planet eddie:
Thank you both for contributing here. I’m still very sorry about the pain you have suffered.
I don’t want to sound trite and minimize the problems here, but it will probably come out that way because I’m not good at this stuff.
We cannot know, really know, what’s on the other side of the screen. I’m still haunted by a discussion on another board a few decades ago which quickly escalated to the point that one of the participants felt that there was no future and he took his own life. What one person thinks is a good natured battle of wits can be devastating to another. It can have real, permanent consequences.
Some participants here want to have thoughtful discussions about life and politics and making humanity better. Some want to talk about music and jokes and the latest memes. Some want to talk about pets and gardening and birds and landscapes and photography and retirement and surgery. Some want to convince others of their views. Some want to vent. Some want to do all of that. Some want to see how other folks cope.
Balloon-Juice contains multitudes.
We cannot know why others are here. Maybe it’s their only island of “sanity” in their day.
This is a special place. It has a long and very interesting history. It has great and varied front pagers and commenters. It’s full of plain-old human volunteers who push us all to do more.
We’re different. We need to understand that our words matter. We need to understand that there are more important things than winning arguments here.
I have my buttons and have posted things here that I shouldn’t. I’m sorry for the offense I’ve caused. I learned things from many of you, yes even the folks that annoy me at times. ;-) But I come here to learn and understand and try to figure out a way forward.
I continue to believe that mutual admiration societies are boring. We need to be willing to listen and think about things that we don’t immediately agree with. We need to be able to slow down before posting things that may hurt others.
So, thanks to you both, and to everyone that is trying to get us to be better and think more deeply, as we laugh at memes and all the rest. We can do both.
Please keep working on us.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Soprano2
This, 100%. I don’t always know the right way to say things, but I’m doing the best I can, and it can be stunning when people assume the worst of me because of it. I’ve always been a person who gives the benefit of the doubt until I see a reason not to, so it’s hard for me when people immediately seem to be assuming bad faith on my part when that’s not what I intend.
Thanks, John. It’s hard to create a good community out of such varied people, but you’ve done a pretty good job of it. I think the PTSD from Covid and then our side losing the election (when I was sure Harris was going to win!) when we knew the stakes made life so hard for a lot of us. (Then it turned out to be so much worse than I had ever imagined…..) When I add in that now I’m dealing with hubby and all his problems, when I wasn’t having to do that during the first Reign of Error, that means I’m super stressed most of the time.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Eolirin: As a white cishet moderate with Trumpy parents who is also a lesbian, I straddle a lot of these worlds. I remember having to be in the closet for legitimate fear of being fired or evicted. I remember all the ways I had to keep my apartment scrubbed of obvious LGBT materials. I remember having to have a fake boyfriend to stave off suspicion at work. The many sleazy bosses who hit on me at work. Listening to gay men bash all women, and lesbians especially. So I understand prioritizing a safe space. However, the twin goals of a broad based coalition that can defeat Trump and a community of people both willing and able to see their own microaggressions are directly in conflict. In a perfect world, you can have both. In the real world, it’s very unrealistic. Years ago, I made my choice. I’m willing to put up with all kinds of crap if it accomplishes my goals: sexism, homophobia, etc. I don’t like it. I’ve gotten angry sometimes. In the end, it has been worthwhile making my skin tougher. I get safety from a much smaller community of in person friends. You have to decide that for yourself as well. The blogfather has to figure out that priority too.
Stella
@Professor Bigfoot: This is gonna be a long comment, and I think parts of it are going to look like just old arguments being redone. I ask you to please believe they’re not, I do have something I’m trying to do.
So I have several friends that I would describe as vaguely left leaning. They’re not Republicans, but they’re also not that invested in left politics. They dislike the obvious bad the right does, but they’re not convinced of the correctness of more overt leftist solutions. I like them, overall, but they can also be annoying to talk to. Because I have to baby them.
When it comes to trans issues, they would never just tell me I’m wrong, but I’m also well aware that at times they just don’t want to disagree to be perceived as anti-trans. When I discuss those topics with them, I’m very careful of what I say and what I share.
I have therapy later today. I’ve been dealing with depression for a long time. While some of what I discuss with my therapist is the obvious sort of fodder – parents, family, etc – most of what I actually spend my time doing is talking about my frustrations with people, with how they think. I’m neurodivergent, and I’m aware every day of my life of the way my thinking does not align with others. There is a fundamental disconnect between me and most of humanity. And my biggest frustration is that it’s on *me* to correct that.
I have to understand how others think. I’ve had to come to figure out how their minds work to communicate. And normal people absolutely, on average, are not interested in meeting me halfway. They do not work on how to communicate with people that are different. They simply do not. I can make them understand me, but that will be entirely my labor. And it’s not fair! Other people could try, even a little! But most won’t. I can say that’s not fair, and not try, but then people will not understand. I have to do all the emotional labor, not because it’s right, but because that’s how it has to be if I want people to actually engage with my words.
And I say that because I’m intimately familiar with the way people engage with conversation, all the failure points, all the ways it can go wrong and short circuit and result in a person shutting down all effort to understand.
There’s a wonderful phrase I think I actually learned from ABL, “bitch eating crackers”. Even if you’re not familiar with the phrase, most people are with the feeling. It’s that point where you dislike someone so much that everything they do just gets on your nerves. So much so that you can look at them eating crackers and think, “ugh, look at the way that bitch eats crackers”. This is, again, pretty normal. We all do it. Just a couple days ago I was going to rant to my wife about something someone did, realized that it was actually just a “bitch eating crackers” moment, and stopped myself. The behavior was actually normal, it just annoyed me how they were doing it.
When a person thinks you’re having a moment like that, they check out. When you’re engaging with someone that is loosely in line with your beliefs, but not all the way there, it’s especially important to avoid them because it signals to the other person when you’ve gone from being “objective” to “biased”.
I think your complaints about the “kids book” were a “bitches eating crackers” moment.
Here’s the thing – I actually agree with you now the book tour was fine. There were other people in the thread that posted other takes I found persuasive – that it was more about community outreach, that he was meeting with constituents while out. And I still have that stupid “kid’s book” argument in my head! I re-litigate it to myself constantly over the past few days, because I’m a pedantic twit! I think being a pedantic twit is pretty common on the left! Most of us are drawn to this side because we want things to make sense, solutions that grapple with reality and actually seem to have been based on facts. So even though I now agree with your conclusion, the argument itself stays in my head.
I’d invite you to consider, even if you still think you were right in that argument, if it was the most effective one to make. And you can rightly say that’s not fair, it’s not on you to be perfect, and to not let out your feelings and have to consider every time if this argument is rock solid.
That’s right, it’s not fair. I know. You gotta do it anyway.*
*(Not all the time. I’d say it’s crazy vital to have people you complain to about all this. After a long day of trying to get neurotypical people to just listen, I’ll sometimes reach out to my friend who’s brain works the same way and rant about people, because you gotta get it out.)
I have another friend who basically shares all my politics, but is extremely passionate. The sort that wants to get in a Trump voters face and yell. And what I try to explain to him, constantly, is that he can either be fully correct or persuasive, but you can rarely be both at the same time. Yelling at a soft democrat about how bad a thing they said is, will not get them on board. You gotta be gentle. You gotta slowly lead that horse to water, or else they won’t drink.
It’s SO FUCKING FRUSTRATING.
People, overall, only will listen if you carefully make the shape of the argument one that will fit within their minds, within their current preconceptions. Or else it’s discarded.
And any time you make a weak argument, it’s even easier for them to store that, use it as what they imagine your current argument is next time, and engage with you less.
So I’d say your passion is great, but if you want to be persuasive – WHETHER THAT’S FAIR OR NOT – you’ve got to learn to be more particular about your arguments. Only go hard on the most clear cut of evidence. It doesn’t have to be big! But it cannot have an easy “out” for the other person to dismiss it.
Again, this isn’t fair, but this is how brains are. This is how people are. I agree with near ever word you’ve written about how pervasive racism is, and how people dismiss things, and how important it is to engage, and even with the fact the book tour was fine. And my stupid, stupid brain still gets upset about the one thing I vehemently disagree with you about, about a topic I ultimately ended up agreeing on!
God, this is so long. Some TLDR:
1. Brains are stupid.
2. When writing, know what you’re doing. If you just want to get feelings out, that’s perfectly valid, but understand that’ll rarely be persuasive. If you are trying to persuade, you have to purposefully write with that purpose.
I’d try to edit this into something more coherent but I’m not actually sure that’s possible. I dunno. I guess I just read your anger, and it seems so familiar to me. And this is what I wish I could have told myself twenty years ago.
Nancy
@YY_Sima Qian:
Wow, I wish I said that.
And wish I could find a way to say it in other places.
Wish I weren’t so late to this post.
LAC
@satby: I second that! I am so sorry to hear about this and the pain it must have caused.
Stella
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Jesus, or ignore my monster of a wall of post and just read this. It’s the summary of what I was trying to express without all the long winded life anecdotes.
bluefoot
@Eolirin: I am just now reading the comment from yesterday, but THANK YOU so much for this. This is exactly what I’ve been thinking, and you are much more clear and dispassionate than I would have been trying to explain it.
LAC
@Nancy: It is amazing, isn’t it? One of my favorite posts to read this morning.
Chris Johnson
@Stella: Cosign. Though from the word go I had no problem with Jeffries trying to use his position to influence through a book and book tour. That sort of thing can get you on the news even when it’s slanted against the positions outlined in the book. That’s politics and civics.
Frustrating is when everybody starts from ‘you’re bad faith, my job is to either jockey you into admitting the thing you don’t want to admit, or exposing you as a monster!’. It’s Monsters Are Due On Maple Street out of the Twilight Zone.
I’m not sure it’s fixable. There’s a reason I keep going back to, not everyone gets everything, not everything lasts.
I could see looking back on all this, counting the things killed by this strange WWIII and how it was waged, and including communities like this one has been. I don’t see how to move forward at all.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Stella: Thank you!
RevRick
@YY_Sima Qian:
@Eolirin:
@planet eddie:
@Gloria DryGarden:
@Momentary:
@Professor Bigfoot: Returning to my forlorn and weird comment about Bonhoeffer’s understanding of Jesus’ seemingly contradictory statements about under what circumstances who is for or against whom, what I hear you saying is that you feel that you’re in the “those who are not for us are against us “ position.
That’s hard to hear, but I will endeavor to be better at being for you. I have no right to ask for grace when I fail. Rather, please hold me accountable.
One thing I am learning to do is not take stuff personally. I know that buried within in me, and all of us, I believe, are the shitty lies of white male supremacy. It takes a lot of effort to unlearn those assumptions.
My engagement on this blog is haphazard at best. So, please don’t take my apparent silence as assent to wrongs that you have felt. I am simply not here most of the time.
I weep at the pain coming through loud and clear in your posts. I will hold that pain closer to my heart.
Spanish Moss
@Momentary: That is a very interesting point. I have never cared for the term “safe place” because it isn’t clear to me that it has a universal meaning. Perhaps because I am not up on the lingo. I just googled it and it seems to have many meanings. Should we be free from harassment or personal attacks here? Absolutely. Should our remarks be free from criticism or judgement? I don’t think that is realistic or even desirable in a broad discussion forum.
When the rules of engagement are, as John put it, “for the most part freedom for everyone to say what they want”, I think we are all pretty much guaranteed to occasionally get our feelings hurt or feel targeted by an intemperate remark. Our comments will be misunderstood. These things are going to happen, commenting here is not for the faint of heart. I think I lead a fairly sheltered life and I am sometimes shocked at the hostile way that some people express themselves, but that is the price of admission and I try to get past it, because I think the exchange of ideas is worth it.
Stella
@Chris Johnson: That’s a fundamental misread of my post. The undercurrent was actually “you can be right and still have people not listen to you”. I don’t think Prof. Bigfoot et al were wrong, necessarily. Merely that they were being unpersuasive. And that if they want to be persuasive, sometimes they have to coddle their audience, even if that’s exhausting. Because people won’t listen otherwise. Which is unfair but true.
Momentary
So many people (not all) want to tell Professor Bigfoot how to communicate better and what the important questions should actually be, rather than starting out with curiosity and openness to his points. I’m going to assert that it’s a safe assumption that any black person in the USA who has survived to late adulthood already knows everything there is to know about how to choose their battles and pick their words carefully when dealing with white people.
If you assume that the question is how Professor Bigfoot should behave if he wants to be part of the Balloon Juice community, you’ll get one set of answers. But is that the question? Or is the question what will it take for the Balloon Juice community to stop driving away marginalised folks?
Soprano2
@Eolirin: Thanks for this, it was a thoughtful post. All I can say is that I grew up in a small town where everyone was the same – white, mostly lower middle class, straight and Christian. I was one of only a few kids in my class whose father had a white collar job. If there was anyone different they didn’t make it known. I first met a black person at honor band when I was a freshman and sat next to a black girl who was also a flute player. I didn’t even know what a homosexual was until I went to college. So yeah, I grew up in a conservative bubble yet still turned out liberal. My parents never told me there was something I couldn’t do or shouldn’t read, I think that’s how it happened, plus what I saw in my class was all the girls were smarter and worked harder so why did people think men were better at everything? It made no sense to me. LOL I try the best I can to put myself in another’s place when I can, because I know there’s a lot I don’t know, but I’m sure I’m sometimes obtuse about things. I will say that those of you who live in liberal areas don’t know what you’re asking when you say we should repudiate everyone who voted for FFOTUS, because that would be 65% of the people I work with who voted and the same for my customers at the bar. I can’t repudiate all those people, it’s not possible!
YY_Sima Qian
@Professor Bigfoot: You are right that racism generally overrides classism in the US (there are always anecdotal exceptions to rules), & that is the reality we all need to not only acknowledge but internalize as members of the putative anti-Fascist coalition in the US.
As a practical matter, however, placing the anti-racist banner ahead of all the other banners would probably not build the largest coalition w/ the broadest appeal. It is a sad commentary on US society (but hardly unique to the US), & precisely the dynamic that really rankles the most vulnerable minorities. I think it is more likely to consolidate around class solidarity & defense of basic human rights. You really cannot expect, on average, non-African Americans to fight w/ as much determination & dedication for the interests of African Americans as African Americans would for themselves. That applies to every group. Human beings are just selfish that way. However, people in the anti-Fascist coalition might fight for their self-interest w/ determination & dedication, as long as we determine where the self-interests come in confluence, & proclaim them universal values.
Of course, I suspect you will say that this just sets up African Americans (& other most vulnerable groups) to be betrayed, which is understandable due to the historical precedents. But what is the alternative?
rebelsdad
Once again I’m late to the comments :)
John, from the bottom of my heart- THANK YOU. And thank all of you FPers.
I’ve been a lurker/infrequent commenter since 2005. My political trajectory is similar to John’s. I’m a gay Christian from a deep red state now living in God’s waiting room and trying to rebuild my life amid all this chaos. Y’all were there for me three years ago when my life fell apart and I had to rehome one of my pups.
I want to comment more often but the level of vitriol I see here sometimes is very scary. I already have to live with MAGA family ridiculing my beliefs- I don’t need to come to an ostensibly safe space and face the same thing.
Love to you all. We shall overcome.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Momentary: Yes! That was the point I was trying to make also! You can’t have safety with a truly shared set of assumptions AND a diverse anti-fascist coalition. These ideas conflict.
Professor Bigfoot
@Stella: Deleted, because I don’t think there IS an argument that I could put forward that SOME NOT ALL white people will listen to, because SOME NOT ALL white people simply will never listen to any voices that are not also white, and there’s no point in trying.
zhena gogolia
@Momentary: This.
zhena gogolia
@Professor Bigfoot: You are welcome here.
zhena gogolia
@Momentary:
This should also be front-paged, in all caps:
Betty Cracker
@Stella: Thanks for the insight into the neurodivergent struggle to be understood. It must be absolutely exhausting.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Professor Bigfoot: You are welcome by many and not by some. As I’m sure am i. I enjoy your comments much of the time.
Eolirin
@Gloria DryGarden: That’s it, yes.
Professor Bigfoot
@YY_Sima Qian: What is the alternative?
What I’ve said many times and been pilloried mercilessly for it: that white people will shake hands over the ashes of the rights of not-white-not-straight-not-Christian people and move on.
That the only way for Democrats to get a majority of white voters is to abandon the rights of everyone else.
THAT’s the alternative, and I believe it will come to pass.
Patrick
The fear, panic, and anger, sadly is a feature, not a bug. While the rightwing has an ideology, they are not currently trying to consolidate their thoughts or beliefs. They are just tearing things down. When I see someone celebrating the toll trump’s government is taking on red states and maga voters, I’m reminded that those people, more than any other cohort, punch down even harder when they are threatened economically. Trump and the billionaire class want the entire political spectrum to melt down because they think they’ll be fine. That’s what corruption in a democracy looks like.
terraformer
Thank you, John – and all the front-pagers and regular posters.
I *absolutely love* this place. I found it a refuge of sanity during the BushCo/Darth Cheney years, and ever since. I don’t comment too often, but when I do, I try to be respectful and insightful.
A hat tip to everyone here, who I weirdly see as my colleagues and online friends who want the world to be a better place, starting with this currently-very-fcked-up-country. Let’s take it back – and keep it there.
LAC
@zhena gogolia: yes! I was worried we might have lost the Prof!
zhena gogolia
@LAC: Me too.
Nancy
@Eolirin:
I don’t know if you’ll see this, I don’t know if my words will mean much at all to you. I’m writing to give shape to my thoughts, because I don’t have coherent thought without expression. This can be a problem because I often speak awkwardly while working out what I mean. I hope this issue I have doesn’t cause harm I don’t intend. I am a white retired school counselor. I currently work as an adjunct instructor teaching new school counselors. I’m working on finding ways to invite my students to consider their priviledge. I’ve found research articles that document how implicit racism in a school counselor has harmed students. As students they (and I) have to look at ourselves and recognize unspoken beliefs and assumptions. That’s the first step toward ensuring that unacknowledged racism does not continue to drive decisions that damage others and words that cause pain like that you describe.
Your statement woke me up and shook me up. You gave me and others a gift. I hope it comes through in these words that don’t capture all of the thoughts your comment inspired.
Stella
@Professor Bigfoot: Yeah, I know. Plenty of people will never listen.
This was not an attempt to Whitesplain to you, to tell you the “right” way to argue for your rights. This was only an attempt, by someone who has very similar struggles and anger, to explain how it feels to me and how I get people, inch by fucking inch, to listen. How angry that makes me. How much I want to scream in their stupid faces, how I want SO BAD to live in a world where I didn’t have to.
And the I put on another fucking smile and explain it to the again, more gently.
I was aiming for solidarity, I genuinely apologize that I failed.
zhena gogolia
As a white woman, I just want to say that I have been devastated that white women did not turn out in overwhelming numbers to vote for a highly qualified woman over a rapist who is destroying women’s bodily autonomy and health care standards. This has happened twice now, and it makes me wonder WTF is going on in their heads.
We, white women, could have stopped this. Twice. We didn’t.
Eolirin
@Nancy: I appreciate you saying this. Thank you.
Geminid
@Another Scott: The bigger problem was the treatment of Turkiye’s Kurds in the period preceding Erdogan coming to power in 2003. That’s when most of the 40,000 lives claimed by this conflict were lost.
Erdogan actually lightened up on restrictive government policies regarding the Kurds. And in 2005, when Erdogan tapped Hskan Fidan to be his diplomatic trouble shooter, Fidan’s first task was opening secret negotiations with Kurdish officisls in Norway.* Fidan, whose father is Kurdish, has been point man in these negotiations ever since. They resulted in a ceasefire in 2013, but that blew up two years later. Now it seems that a durable settlement can be reached.
One problem throughout has been the adamant opposition by Turkiye’s rightwing nationalists to any concessions to Kurdish aspirations. However, there was very significant speech last December by MHP party leader Devlet Bag elli in which he told National Assembly members that Ocalan was willing to renounce armed struggle in return for concessions regarding Kurdish rights, and Bahceli was all for it.
Bahceli is Erdogan’s junior coalition partner and in past years was a leadling hardliner on the Kurdish question. He was also privy to recent negotiations with Ocalan. Bahceli’s new position gave cover to the others parties to engage in negotiations with DEM party, which is largely Kurdish.
These negotiations are over new constitutional guarantees for Kurdish cultural rights in areas including public school instruction.
Apparently political autonomy, like Iraq’s Kurds enjoy under the Kurdish Regional Government, is not on the table. Turkiye would remain the unitary state that was won by the Turks in their War of Independence (1921-22) and ratified by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. That seems to be Erdogan’s and Bahceli’s bottom line.
* When news of Hakan Fidan’s secret negotiations with the PKK in Norway was leaked in 2008, an Istanbul prosecutor announced a criminal investigation of whether Fidan was in violation of a law prohibiting contact with a terrorist organization. Erdogan countered by having his National Assembly majority pass legislation protecting the Prime Minister’s envoys in such cases.
Just Some Fuckhead
TL;DR
narya
@Nancy: Have you read John Scalzi’s essay, “Being Poor”? It does not address race or the privilege associated with white skin, but it might be a “sideways” way to bring up privilege.
YY_Sima Qian
@Professor Bigfoot: The Dem Party does not need a majority of Whites to win elections in America. The anti-Fascist coalition does not need a majority of Whites to win a civil war (hot or cold) in America. But both need a large minority of White people.
A Dem Party that abandons the rights of all the minorities will still be sounded defeated by the reactionaries. No one ever goes for the Lite version.
Then we all get hung separately, or seek exile.
John S.
@Betty Cracker:
Exactly. And nobody should have to do that.
rusty
@RevRick: I meant to thank you above for your reference to Bonhoeffer. I’ve been trying harder more recently given current politics to engage the world as “Those who are not against us are for us”, in contrast to “those aren’t for us are against us.” We need all those people in the middle if we are to overcome our current circumstances.
I’ll also add regarding the discussions of race, gender, class, sexual orientation above (Bernie picking class over race, adding “white” is permissive of misogyny) my understanding of intersectionality (where all of those intersect and overlap in an individual) is still growing. Our American culture overlaps all of those and more, and creates a fine tuned hierarchy of oppression, where each person gets placed. It’s even more complicated because different communities will have their own fined tuned hierarchies. I think some of what is happening here are different commentators and FP’s feeling hurt because how they are are perceived in these varying hierarchies we each carry and are imposed on us by the broader culture.
Another Scott
@Geminid: I’m thinking of things like this:
Turkey is complicated. The conflict is complicated. Erdogan is complicated. I can’t pretend to understand all the nuance. I just hope that a way forward can be found so that the Kurds have a decent life and see a future for themselves, and most of that seems to depend on Erdogan.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: People with raised hackles who constantly misgender a trans person in a contentious conversation that’s cleaving along transphobic lines and excluding them from concerns of reproductive rights when they’re AFAB and have a functional uterus, instead of having had those questions and bothering to ask them instead of assuming maleness, does not get the benefit of the doubt about feminism. If you start a conversation with a trans person and make assumptions about their gender or history or biology you are by definition doing it wrong.
Especially when white feminism is in fact often actively hostile on trans issues. Kay has also repeatedly raised trans kids in sports related concerns despite that really being a complete nonissue.
It’s not a loophole to attack women to discuss the ways we are being attacked on an ongoing basis. It’s not a loophole to discuss our lived experiences. And the fact that it’s even being questioned that that may be a reason for the reaction demonstrates the point I was trying to make.
Even if that’s the reason for the conflict, it’s because our status was erased in order to center a more privileged position and its concerns about how men behave, when the people discussing their lived experience are not men. There was no stepping back to understand that that was what was happening, despite so many attempts to make it clear. It cannot continue to be that it’s our job to educate you all on this. You need to be more proactive about doing so yourselves.
To my ask: There can be disagreement about the value of those kinds of posts, and I’m not saying they need to go away, some of them were even okay. But I have found many of them to be vapid, devoid of useful informational content, and mostly full of unnecessary sniping without much in the way of careful thought. There are ways to maintain the value you find while minimizing the frustration I feel. Like, Mix didn’t need to add digs to Schumer and Jeffries when discussing how good the messages were from certain other dems, except that Mix has always been hostile to the Democratic establishment.
The ask is for there to be reflection that people may have a point when they’re telling you that right or wrong on the issue of whether they should be warning off Hochul from turfing Adams, Hochul is in fact correct to listen to black NYC political leaders instead of ignoring them, and that if we’re going to actively focus people’s ire it should really be directed at the DoJ for dropping the charges in the first place.
There is no dialog from Mix when those points of view are expressed and there will be no consideration of why some of the ways he goes about creating content aren’t okay to some of us here.
There will be no moderation of behavior when called out on those things. You don’t put “The accusations of racism, the inability to brook even the tiniest criticism of local heroes, and the intolerance of any opinion that deviates from the self-appointed, prolific and often wrong commenters.” with no self awareness into your not so as it turns out farewell post if you’re trying to understand and accomodate those viewpoints.
And a lot of the time you not wanting to be a punching bag subsequently forces us to be instead. You need to be more willing to be if you’re going to continue to ask that of us.
Again, if that’s too much, we cannot share the same space as equals. Either we need to shut up so you don’t have to deal with it or leave, or you need to be more okay with feeling uncomfortable and hurt and finding the grace to cope with that the way we’re constantly asked to do, not just here but everywhere.
planet eddie
@Betty Cracker: I really do appreciate the apology. I was trying *so hard* to keep it civil at the time and explain exactly my perspective and real lived experience *as a trans person.*
Trust me, I know what you’re talking about, and it’s lazy & dirty pool, but I was being honest about the sad fact that much of the worst transphobia I face — and that other trans folks I know face — is from women. And I’m not excusing men when I say that; I’m trying to expand a conversation around a marginalized experience that is my own and that of others in my community.
The issue about “hackles being raises” is that those hackles have been raised by women at trans folks a *lot* because—as I pointed out at the time and will continue to point out—trans folks are the wedge issue. Why? Because it can be threatening to meet someone whose identity threatens your notion of your status and positionality in the world.
The fact that the Right has successfully branded the fight against trans folks as the fight for women and girls tells you that they are winning this fight of hearts and minds unless people find ways to swallow their pride and breathe through the kneejerk reactions and secondhand embarrassment that they feel at being called in to have a conversation that isn’t even calling them out.
beckya57
Well said, John, thank you. I really appreciate AL’s posts, the Covid/flu info is especially interesting to me as a health care provider, and it’s very helpful to have all that in one place. I’m very very sorry about what happened to mistermix, and am very glad he’s still posting. And WG is the guardian angel of the blog, a very kind presence (in my hometown!). I think you’re right about Covid, and there’s some interesting scholarship about how the Spanish Flu pandemic may have played a major role in the rise of fascism then too. I hope we can rise above all that and pull together to address the people menacing this country and its most vulnerable people.
Professor Bigfoot
@YY_Sima Qian:
See also Tim Ryan ‘22.
Again, I don’t see that there’s anything I can say that will persuade most white people; and I’m quit uninterested in playing “the good one” anymore, I did that for most of my adult life and I still got shat on.
Anyway— I deeply appreciate your voice and perspective (and understanding of Shandong dumplings!) and will be one that I miss.
dp
Every time I read a post like this, I feel confirmed in my not generally commenting or reading the comments. That said, nicely put — we have to hang together, or we’ll hang separately, someone once said.
Nancy
@narya: Thank you, I’ll look for it today,
Professor Bigfoot
@Stella: Bless you; for I was a ready listener to that for most of my adult life.
I tried to persuade white men; to get them to think through some of their positions and why they took some of those positions— and understand, I spent years being successful in selling capital equipment— I am not unpersuasive!
But I am old, I am tired, and I got fucked over by white men in corporate America just maybe one time too many.
I worked with too many of them for over four decades to blindly give them any benefit of the doubt.
But I give you all honor for continuing the effort, may you achieve success.
Eolirin
@planet eddie: And it’s especially depressing when you look at polling data and see that the people most likely to have an issue with, say, trans women in sports, are also the people who are the most interested in defunding and eliminating women’s sports.
The people turning trans existence into an attack on women tend to hate women.
Emperor Lew
I’ve been (mostly) lurking since W. Love the community and all of this was well-said. It’s never wrong to extend grace to somebody.
Nancy
@Eolirin: I am still working it out and appreciate your response to what I was able to say. Would you mind if I quoted some of your thoughts as part of my opening conversation with the class? I won’t name the blog or anything identifying.
Eolirin
@Nancy: Not at all, I would be very grateful of it even. I’m glad it was helpful to you.
John Cole
Some really great remarks here and I want to say how nice it is to see y’all talking to each other rather than at or about each other.
Burrowing Owl
@Another Scott: Your comments are almost always sensible and sensitive here. I will respectfully say when you tell people in marginalized communities to “please keep working on us,” you may not yet realize that it’s not their job. When they try to show us our blind spots, it is labor. It is work for them. And they encounter the blindness and white/cis/male defaults every day and everywhere.
To be an ally, start to take up that load. Appreciate the gift of the work if they choose to share energy with you, but asking them to keep the job is a BIG ask, at an exhausting time.
I hope they stay. I hope more and more we non-marginalized people in this community take on the task of learning to be better, one by one, and to respect the lived experiences when we are told. I know the blog father sees this to some extent, and Eolirin has told it well (thank you for that effort.)
—Longtime lurker doesn’t know much but does know this
Chat Noir
I mostly lurk, read through each thread, and read a few comments but then move on. Been here since around September 2008. I appreciate this blog and everything you do, John; same goes for Anne Laurie, Water Girl, Betty Cracker, Adam, Mr. Mix.
Thanks for this post!
Another Scott
@Burrowing Owl: You’re right.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Stella
@Professor Bigfoot: Sometimes you figure things out in strange ways.
I started crying when I read this reply. I realized I didn’t really think it works either, I just don’t know what else to do.
Eolirin
@Burrowing Owl: Thank you for saying this. I think most of us, most of the time, don’t mind the labor, especially when people are receptive, but it is, indeed, labor. And it can be exhausting. And yes, god, are we exhausted already right now.
Donatellonerd
@YY_Sima Qian: Thank you for that.
and Eolirin and Professor Bigfoot: please don’t go.
rebelsdad
@scav: ouch. This is me. I’m an Episcopalian and looking for a new congregation here. I found a small one close by and attended a couple of weeks ago. Black female priest, very welcoming congregation- so why was I reluctant to return? Because two cars in the parking lot had Trump and MAGA bumper stickers.
I probably won’t go back there. I don’t feel safe now.
Nancy
@YY_Sima Qian: May I quote your explaination of priviledge? It’s an excellent statement of themes I had a hard time grasping as the daughter of parents who struggled their way out of the working class to be able to be middle class.
With that background it was hard to see my priviledge.
xjmuellerlurks
I’ve been hanging around here since a few months before Anne Laurie came on board. I read this blog regularly and since retiring eight years ago it’s the the first thing I see when having my morning coffee. I love the current front pagers and, like John, miss many of the former ones (there were a few lesser lights in the mix over the years). I do follow some folks on other social media, so they’re not lost and gone forever.
To be honest, I stopped reading the comments here sometime mid to late Obama. There are two reasons for this:
As my handle suggests, I rarely comment here – once a year would be a generous estimate. But I did want to show support for John, and the other writers. I’m guessing there are lots of readers like me out there and it would be good for the front pagers to know we exist and appreciate their work. I know that we get counted in readership metrics, but sometimes it’s nice to hear from an old friend in person.
Chris Johnson
On reflection, no, I don’t want that. Why would I want that?
stinger
@Spanish Moss:
Excellent addition. I was also going to add, “Have I allowed myself to be triggered? Am I strong enough to ignore that?”
YY_Sima Qian
@Nancy: Use them however you see it.
Madeleine
Thanks to John and Eolirin for bringing problems to light. i too hope that you, Eolirin, and Professor bigfoot won’t leave and won’t stop speaking up (others too).
Momentary wrote about BJ trying to be both a community and movement (I think “movement”), community as something like safe space I think. Community as safe space has never made sense to me based on my experience, and the more homogeneous, the less safe. But reading comments today make me question whether it’s just that in more diverse communities I can be an insider rather than an outsider, therefore safe. Sorry. I haven’t thought/felt this through and I have to go work.
YY_Sima Qian
@Professor Bigfoot: Thanks for that comment. I now have a better sense of where you are coming from. There are a couple of African American colleagues of mine I could see becoming like you in retirement, when they have no more f*cks to give.
Ruckus
@rusty:
Humanity is and will continue to change. First, it is the nature of humanity, second it is the world of today, which in many ways is different than the world of 75-100 years ago. Like what we are doing here now. I’ve typed that sentence here before but look how old what we are doing is – not that old. Humanity has changed and it has changed a lot in the last 40-50 yrs and one of those ways is communication – like this. We’ve never met, very likely never will, but we can discuss, well basically anything. This place (and others like it) are the backyard fences that we used to discuss things over. It’s just that there may be thousands of miles between our fences. Think how old that concept is. 20-25 years. In the time of humanity that’s a split second. It’s not as much that individual humans have changed, it’s that humanity got bigger, broader, less under the control of a few and more by each individual. It’s the biggest back fence ever. Now there will always be humans that cause trouble, stir up shit, see bull and shit as the basis of everything. But there are more of normal(ish) humans that don’t need to cause trouble to be noticed, that look towards fixing/repairing, well – life, and that is better than, far better than, trying to tear it down, spread shit and hate. Humanity will likely always be about survival, but it’s the WAY we survive that helps or hurts. I say we survive with thought, humanity, each other, even if we never actually meet. Because we don’t need to meet, we need to think, discuss, agree if at all possible, rather than tear down/destroy. And yes that is different than a lot of history, but then it NEEDS TO BE DIFFERENT, because we’ve done things the old way too long and now it’s not the outliers, the rebels that suffer it’s ALL of US.
Other MJS
John, thank you for this long and thoughtful post. Some of your points are doubtless more on target than others, but every one demands reflection.
Geminid
@Another Scott: I think that in order to appraise Erdogan’s Kurdish policies I have to look at the methods and practices of the PKK. They are the other side of this equation.
The Crisis Group provides good, objective reporting on this conflict. They broke down the deaths since the conflict restarted in 2015. The vast majority were combatants– Turkish soldiers and policemen, and PKK fighters. Many of the civilian deaths were from PKK car bomb attacks launched during the heavy fighting of 2015.
This is very different from the dirty war the Turkish Army waged in the period from 1984 into the 1990s that began with Operation Castle.
As for the heavy-handed political crackdown Erdogan launched after the failed 2016 coup, he deserves blame for its excesses. i
He also deserves credit for bringing the Turkish political system out from under control of the military, which dominated post-WWII Turkish politics. That was no easy tas, and the prospective prosecution of Hakan Fidan I talk about at #237 was one skirmish in a decade-long battle.
Now its been 28 years since the last “Military Memorandum”– a kind of soft coup. That is the longest prriod of civilian rule since the Second World War. A lot of Westerners do not appreciate this because they don’t like who Turks elect, but it’s a very important change for Turks.
But the war with the PKK has distorted Turkish politics for 40 years. If the government and the PKK can turn the page on this conflict, their politics can become more liberal in the broader sense of the word.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Eolirin: The hug is all around you now.
S Cerevisiae
I missed this post and the thread is long dead but I have to jump down here to say thank you John Cole. There is a lot of wisdom in your words here and we all will do well to heed them. I have been hanging around here for two decades now (or so, just remember it was during W) and all of you have helped keep me sane. I love this community, thank you all.
Ruckus
@YY_Sima Qian:
First I like what you say in this comment. Life can be great, it can be just survival – and not for everyone. Much of humanity has seen that war does little for the common human and is either great or horrible for each side. But life today is a hell of a lot different than life when people alive today were born. Like me. I am an old, I have seen massive change in living for many/most. For some there is likely not much change, which is wrong. But for a lot life is different, even in countries that change at a slower/much slower rate. Look at what we are doing here. We are discussing LIFE, living, surviving, growing, being worse, being a hell of a lot better. Because life, while still life, is changing. More of us and better communication brings change, and often for the better. As an old, I can easily state that life is, while still life, it is a hell of a lot different than 50-75 yrs ago. And because of what it is now for a huge percentage of people, it is changing faster. Life is not as hidden as it was 75 years ago. We know far more, we see far more, we do what we are doing right now, communicating about it. With people from anywhere, with people we very likely will never meet. That is a pretty big back yard, with much less fence in between.
Ruckus
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Scared people think scared.
No, I’m not trying to be what that sounds like. As a former mental health counselor, a lot of the people I spoke/worked with were scared people. Some had very valid, rational reasons for being scared, because being scared is a valuable emotion. A protective emotion. It shows us there may be or is something that can hurt us. Be it ourselves or someone/something else.
But being humans it can also be imaginary. Age and learning can help separate the real from the imaginary. Doesn’t always work that way but the process is there.
I’d say, do not feel guilty, unless you are the protagonist, and I’d bet a lot of money that you AREN’T. Life can be hard, difficult, some times far beyond difficult. Like the time I hit a pickup truck head on. And I wasn’t in a car – I had just been knocked off my motorcycle by a coyote, a block away from home. My helmet likely saved my life. I ended up riding away. My neighbor was very relieved that he hadn’t killed me.
There is a reason we take steps to protect ourselves, because there are and always will be things/people that can do us damage, even without ANY intent. Add in intent and the likely hood goes up dramatically.
Humanity has one thing in common with every other living being. Continuing to do that, continue to live, to the best of each of our abilities.
dnfree
@Stella:
Very late to this thread, but I thank you for this comment heartily. I am self-diagnosed as “neurodivergent”, because a lot of what constitutes neurodivergence wasn’t recognized when I was young. (I’m almost 80.) All I knew when I was younger was that if I wanted to “fit in” and be more accepted, I had to learn how to do that. It still doesn’t always work.
Your perspective makes sense to me and I appreciate your sharing it.
dnfree
@Eolirin:
That’s beautiful, and so well-expressed. Thank you.
Ben Cisco
@Eolirin: Co-sign.
JustRuss
Thanks for posting this Cole. I’ve been kicking around here since the dark days of W, and I am in.
ChrisSherbak
@Sister Golden Bear: re: oblivious. I was spending time with an African American and used the phrase “not my monkeys, not my circus” talking about work. He informed me that was racist. I was shocked as I had never thought of it that way (in fact, I think it’s a Polish saying) but realize what >>I<< thought really didn’t matter. Some people would take it that way and that was enough for me to remove it from my lexicon.
This was only a couple years ago, after I had thought I had deconstructed/removed all racist thoughts from my pea brain. Nope. I (we) are deep in it and should be thoughtful whenever. It’s on us to reduce our (possibly unintentional) harm.
I’m ‘woke’ (and strive to be) not because I want to join the Kewl Kidz Klub, but because it means I respect and honor all people.
p.s. Thanks for the initial post.
AnnaC
I have been an on and off again lurker here (usually just from an RSS reader) from when Cole first ticked me off with his W support and seeing how time helps us all grow and change. Cole, thank you sir for your words here, thank you to all the FPers that make me laugh, cry, think and appreciate our pets (5 cats in this house!). We’ll all need each other to get through this, now more than ever.
Paul in KY
Great points, John. I miss a bunch of old commenters too. Those passed on and those who don’t come around anymore. I really loved mistermixes posts and am sorry he’s headed out. For the love of God, don’t lose Betty!
thruppence
Thanks everybody. I know I am not even a fraction of a dandruff flake on the mammoth of this community, but I really depend on all you guys, from blogfather to front pagers to lurkers, more experienced and eloquent than I, to hold on to a sliver of sanity and purpose. This is really the time when we need to love and respect each other. And I’m just an undistinguished nobody in real life, but so are a lot of people, and we’re all going to have to fight together on the battlements. Sorry you don’t like my T-shirt
Nancy
@narya: can you give me some direction about the John Scalzi essay? Is he the science fiction and many other items writer? I think I found his blog and it doesn’t seem to be there. Maybe it was in a book of essays or published in a journal? I could try the library.
Nancy
@planet eddie:
I haven’t seen you in comments and I’m saddened to read that you’ve been suffering. I’m sorry that I didn’t know.
Nancy
@Professor Bigfoot:
I’m glad I came back to this set of comments after everyone has moved on. This is the first time I realized what you were responding to in previous quick glimpses I’ve had of your interactions with others. I didn’t get it. Now I hope I do. I’m often caught up in my own stuff, but what you wrote struck me just as Eolirin’s comment did last evening. I needed to read this to see myself and what I’m doing in just enjoying the blog and not noticing everything.
Nancy
@Professor Bigfoot:
Florida doesn’t want white children to feel uncomfortable about our history of racism and genocide.
I try to allow myself to feel uncomfortable. It is terrible to realize that my parents and grandfather were racist. I loved them. I was raised in a racist environment and when I tried to break out, I carried a lot of that history with me. I’m still screwed up but I don’t want you to have to worry about me when you worry about the jackalariat and discomfort.
I know too many people IRL who don’t want to hear it and want Black people to get over it when racist murders are still happening.
Nancy
@YY_Sima Qian: Thank you.
NaijaGal
Wow – I can’t articulate how much this post and the ensuing discussion has moved me. Thank you John, Eolirin, Professor Bigfoot, YY_Sima Qian, planet eddie, Stella and so many more. I’ve been coming here (mostly lurking) for 20 years now and there’s something absolutely unique about this place that keeps me coming back, in spite of the issues that many have raised. Even when we talk past each other, even when we’re hurting and scared and lashing out, I see at the core, good people who want a country that works, truly works, for everyone. It is absolutely a balm to my soul to know that you all exist.
WTFGhost
John, I think you hit most of the points I’d try to make.
I will say something: it’s not easy to reset your brain. It takes work. And the thing about it, is, you can’t stop.
I just had a pain doc tell me that I need to keep *working* at PT to try to get past my pain, after I told him I’d worked it for over a year, and I feel for the poor bastard, running into someone who’s been in pain for *decades*. Seriously – poor sorry bastard. But you do have to keep going at it, because you don’t want to quit when it was about to help. Your emotions are a lot kinder than my body, I assure you.
Alas, that’s how it is, sometimes, with your brain, with your emotions. You need to keep working at them. And it’s not right, and it’s not fair, but, if you don’t keep fighting, your very perceptions are warped by the emotions, and that’s why you won’t pull out of it by just waiting.
So you have to fight. And it’s constant. And if you think it’s unfair, wrong, and the biggest dick/kidney punch combo ever, you’re right. It is. And it’s not like you see on TV, where you have some big breakthrough, where everything comes together. You have to keep working, even when it seems to be working, until you’re well. And then, you might need to keep an eye on it.
And it’s not easy, because you have to watch the effect you’re having on other people because you won’t even notice it in you, first. So that’s all just to make things more difficult, but… geez.
You know – it’s like sex. Your partner is *right there*, right? You can tell if your partner is happy – right? But your partner might be going along, “boy, my partner’s being a jerk, but, being a partner means you don’t skimp on sex when you’re doing it.” You can tell, if you care, if your partner is going along with you, after a while. You aren’t going to notice one of the jackals (that *is* the right term, I hope) is “just going along,” nor, any of your friends at work, your friends from college, your friends in general, etc.. are just going along.
So you have to figure out, for yourself, if you’re being the person you can, and should be – the real you, the best you, so you’re not crapping on people you don’t want to crap on. And you need to watch the effects you have on other people, because, when you’re pulling out of an emotional funk, *other* people notice it before you do. Also, the point of all this is to stop crapping on people you don’t want to crap on (save your crap for those that deserve it). You’ll feel better, eventually, too – a lot, but you probably don’t even realize you’re feeling *badly* right now, in many cases. Seriously: it’s trivially easy to lose a year, or more (!!!) due to misery, without realizing you’re miserable.