060120 megan as a representative of “young” don’t care if half of twitter is bots, any more than i as a representative of “just old enough to pontificate” don’t care if the guardian is out of touch—the point is, people need to get in a group and do something, and that’s fun, and fun is still the essence of life, even (especially?) in the most grisly, uncertain, disastrous moments. and we need to get some news from somewhere. and anyway, the truth of the info or reliability of the sources isn’t even the point in a moment like tonight at supper—me interrupting her story was the point. she’s in needy-touchy-skittish-persecuted mode again these last few days, and i don’t think it’s just me that feels that energy spilling out and pooling in all the corners and crannies of the house. But no that wasn’t the point either. The point is she’s stuck here while everyone else is out there protesting and shit. She wants to start living her actual life. I want her to, too. I want her to get out of the fucking hermit crab shell already. I’m afraid she’s not ready, I’m afraid I’m not ready, I’m afraid I haven’t prepared her enough, I’m afraid of what happens when she fails and I can’t bail her out without compromising myself or her sisters, but— And wow Millie just came down here and was kinda bitchy to me too; don’t want to do her the dishonor of overlooking that. But i mean everyone is on edge, just some people don’t know it, or know how, or why, or how much. I’m no exception—I can’t be cooler than the monkey in this case. We’re all grinding our teeth like organs in one way or another. OK, ya got me. That’s not the point either. The point is I’m still a lonely git and nobody gives a shit what I think anyway. OK, that’s not it either. It’s that I too feel like I should be doing something—like maybe “I got to stay here and keep my head down and take care of my kids” may be just a convenient excuse—like maybe something like I imagine my dad might have said about vietnam and all that. Do we forgive our fathers if they were too fierce... if they weren’t fierce enough (as Thomas said) 060220 and on thiswebsitewillselfdestruct.com someone said “just want to get away from these people who are called my family. the only ones who really understand me are so far away” and I was like, oh, that could be Megan, and you know what, if it is? that’s OK. Understanding goes both ways, and sometimes it takes time. There was another one about “have to fix my sleep patterns, but...” and “...i have online school, so...” and I clicked right fucking past it and now i’m clicking late into the morning trying to get it to come up again so i can see if that one was her too. Then there was “I know my dad keeps a gun in the house and sometimes it’s all I can do not to get up and get it” and for fuck’s sake it’s almost certain that none of these was her, but the fact that she didn’t reply when i texted her the website in the first place could suggest that maybe she really did use it and wanted to remain as anonymous as possible, and now the whole thing is kind of ruined for me because it’s not random and silly and pointless anymore. And maybe that’s the point. Thanks Internet for still being able to make me think a LITTLE bit sometimes. You asshole. It’s hard, you know? You can’t give someone their freedom and expect them not to hate you for it. You can’t be human but demand to be seen as a god. You can’t be really vulnerable if you’re not really willing to be hurt. You can’t respect someone’s feelings if you don’t allow them to feel something you don’t like. You can’t legitimately claim victory if all you’ve ever done is turn invisible around anything that makes you feel defeated. An apology isn’t real if it’s only intent is to garner reassurance. And on and on until the water softener’s sibilant scream dissolves your dream It doesn’t matter whether any of those posts (including the other one I zipped right past and then couldn’t get back to, that said something about “Adult life seems so hard... I can’t even rely on my parents...”) was *actually* hers; the fact that I think they *could* be is the divinatory focus in this case. People just wrapping it all up in neat little packages like they’re playing a card game. Looters vs. protestors. Oh, they’re Antifa, so they’re bad people! See, we capitalized it and we said it over and over again until it became *sinister.* Can life and the world really be that simple inside people’s minds? Is that really all there is going on in there? You’re a this or you’re a that, and all you have to do to do your part is keep repeating whichever one it is you think you’re supposed to be on Twitter? We’re good, they’re bad, and here’s the 140 characters that prove it, so why aren’t you all just being awed into submission by the sheer simplicity and obvious brilliance of this string of characters that I’m repeating because it irons out all the doubts and questions and doesn’t require me to read a book or wonder what happened a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago or 10 months ago? Glossing over all the minutia of what really goes on between people of different social roles, in the courtroom, in the boardroom, in the classroom, on the street. If you build all your sweeping moral “beliefs” out of pure theory, idealized definitions, and cute philosophical games, you end up with Us vs Them, sustained by circular reasoning. Is that really humanity’s greatest potential? Why does anti-Blackness exist, or anti-immigrant, or anti-anyone? Is it because resources are seen as a zero-sum game? Or something else less concrete? *Are* resources a zero-sum game? If so, there’s never going to be an end to violence, right? Or is there enough of everything to go around, but only if no-one is a filthy fucking zillionaire or aspires to be god? Is it as simple as people don’t know how to share? Or are moral repugnancies actually a thing, and not just a smokescreen? Are would-be righteous liberals motivated by some overarching correctness or a desire to be allied with the most moving voices? Can you be an ally unless you really know the people you would be allied with? Can love be abstract? Can anyone lay down his life for anything less than love? “Culture is powerful precisely because it is so present and at the same time so very difficult to name or identify.” - [White Supremacy Culture]()(http://www.cwsworkshop.org/PARC\_site\_B/dr-culture.html) I think that’s why we have to have “eliminate inequity” -- yes, stated in the negative -- in our little manifesto or whatever the fuck you want to call it at eAchieve, instead of just rosy “build whatever the opposite of inequity is” -- because the inequity is there, it’s already there because we can’t see because through the cardinal sin of contentment we’ve let it become one of the “norms and standards without being pro-actively named or chosen by the group.” Get rid of the poison stream feeding the ground water before digging a new well? Look and hey, this works both ways. Just because I think this or that doesn’t make me “Antifa” (not that I’m *not* anti-fascist, but that’s a whole different wormhole); likewise someone displaying characteristics in common with white supremacist groups isn’t necessarily a Nazi either. “learn to recognize those times when you need to get off the agenda in order to address people’s underlying concerns” -- hey, that’s exactly what I helped us do in that first co-planning meeting when JS was ready to plow ahead and I interrupted and said, but wait, is everybody *really* ready to move on? Yay me for that one. “never assume that you or your organization know what’s best for the community in isolation from meaningful relationships with that community” (see thing about love above) #PDP When you look at it this way, white supremacy and other related assholery seems to be more about egotistical, scared, selfish rigidity than *evil* per se, although I’m sure the eventual practical outcomes can generally be considered evil. Like way more than half the points in this article describe Amy and Kris to a “T” (especially Amy, or maybe just more obviously Amy). So um, like, what does that imply? I think it comes back to comfort and intellectual laziness, for starters. A certain arrogance perhaps. The native stupidity of the competent conformist. The socially passing. Oh yes, he bakes lasagne folks, he wins bike races like a much younger man, so let’s all smile warmly at that while we ignore the fact that he’s just mimeographing the same old sparknotes bullshit about so-called “literature” without any real skin in any *real* game. She refuses to censor history, so let’s look the other way when she refuses to reconsider it. It’s a little too easy for me to pile on *them* though, did you notice that? “emphasis on being polite” - omg yes like in that LGBTQ ally convo at ONE conference when that one lady that used to work at eAchieve spent about 30 minutes getting one sentence out because she didn’t want to sound offensive - omg she was so scared! and not without reason, to be fair, given that “the left” or whatever can be just as politely intolerant and will make you pay for not sounding allied enough. Just like you can’t suddenly tell students “be creative” and get mad when they fail to instantly trust you enough to overcome a lifetime of conformist and psyche-defensive habits; you can’t tell a suburban white lady “be honest” and expect her to instantly feel safe & able to do so—in each case, the invitee probably really doesn’t even know *how* to be whatever the system has drilled into them not to be for so many years; probably can’t even concieve of it outside their most feverish dreams. “the belief that those with power have a right to emotional and psychological comfort” yes yes yes yes, i feel this all the time around me here in this community, in this country... probably related to “you can protest but you shouldn’t loot” among other less obvious effects “One of the purposes of listing characteristics of white supremacy culture is to point out how organizations which unconsciously use these characteristics as their norms and standards make it difficult, if not impossible, to open the door to other cultural norms and standards. As a result, many of our organizations, while saying we want to be multicultural, really only allow other people and cultures to come in if they adapt or conform to already existing cultural norms. Being able to identify and name the cultural norms and standards you want is a first step to making room for a truly multi-cultural organization.” Waukesha. Is never going to do that. What if I used to be black, and i won (or lost) some kind of weird lottery, and they magically turned me white and sent me back into the world, and said, ok, go! go and make some changes from the inside! and now look at me, they’re all going, well shit. that didn’t fucking work. now what? I guess that’s kind of along the same lines as the celebrities that [Devyn Springer]()(https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/killer-mike-atlanta-speech-ti-video-george-floyd-a9543551.html) was talking about. 060320 Like it’s nice to see old George Bush and other select conservatives condemning Trump and his vile actions, but that’s not going to be enough. It’s reassuring that not everyone is in on the evil, regardless of political party, but that alone isn’t making the evil go away. Why does fucking McConnell get to block whatever the fuck he wants? How did we end up with a system where a handful of disgusting pieces of shit get to dictate so much? It’s all wrong. It’s not what we were taught America is. Is America not America now, or was what we taught just luckily, coincidentally in harmony with not this much shit going down for a few generations? How do we freeze ourselves and get through the upcoming interstellar dark age? It’s like one gasping unbosoming after another—each time a prominent, respectable person says “Trump is bad”—each time we’re like, YES! SEE! WE’RE RIGHT! EVERYBODY INTELLIGENT THINKS SO. But so then so what? Just because we’re all, those of us who aren’t ignorant, savage, beady-eyed, jealous little pieces of shit, in agreement, DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING IS GOING TO STOP IT. THEM. YES, WE GET IT. WE’VE CROSSED THE LINE. AND THAT LINE. AND THAT LINE. AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. SO BUT WHAT ARE WE ACTUALLY GOING TO *DO?* > Minneapolis City Councilman Steve Fletcher, pointing out that police unions aren’t like other labor unions, and operate like protection rackets: We pay dearly for public safety: $195 million a year plus extensive, expensive legal settlements. That should buy us more than a protection racket that’ll take it out on our constituents if we try to create accountability. https://kottke.org/20/06/increasingly-rightwing-police-unions-have-made-policing-more-dangerous-in-america Gruber: “Police unions are a bastion of rightwing political clout in otherwise left-leaning liberal cities.” Yeah, you know what? Actually DO fuck the police. But then again, if there were no police, who wouldve taken my fucking ex wife away from me? What would I have done? What would our lives be like? I don’t know, is it possible that it’s not “fuck any police” but “fuck *these* police”? Like it’s not the lofty ideal of *a* police, it’s the very particular violent, ultraconservative, militarized *gang* that we have here in this country. OMG [this]()(https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/) makes so much sense! My burly aggreived suspicious farmers out in Oconomowoc think they’re a natural ruling class! And they’re cheered on from behind computer screens by “social misfits and political deviants” -- aka gamers and trolls. > Collaboration wasn’t interesting, Birthler told me. Almost everyone was a collaborator; 99 percent of East Germans collaborated. If they weren’t working with the Stasi, then they were working with the party, or with the system more generally. Much more interesting—and far harder to explain—was the genuinely mysterious question of “why people went against the regime.” The puzzle is not why Markus Wolf remained in East Germany, in other words, but why Wolfgang Leonhard did not. Who am I going to be? And how? Who are my children going to be? And how? “It takes time to persuade people to abandon their existing value systems. The process usually begins slowly, with small changes.” FUCKING RESIST, CHILDREN. ANY FUCKING WAY YOU CAN. The little you clutching a stuffed animal and asking an innocent question knew better than any of these fuckers so called “in charge” know about what’s real, what’s true, and what’s the fucking point of living through any of this fucking shit storm we call life. “Sometimes the point isn’t to make people believe a lie—it’s to make people fear the liar.” AKA, emperor has no clothes “After that, other compromises follow. Though he dislikes the Communists—he just wants to stay out of politics—he agrees to print the collected works of Stalin, because if he doesn’t do it, others will. When he is asked by some disaffected friends to print a pamphlet critical of the regime, however, he refuses. Though he wouldn’t go to jail for printing it, his children might not be admitted to university, and his wife might not get her medication; he has to think about their welfare. Meanwhile, all across East Germany, other owners of other printing presses are making similar decisions. And after a while—without anyone being shot or arrested, without anyone feeling any particular pangs of conscience—the only books left to read are the ones approved by the regime.” “Mikhail Bakhtin, the Russian philosopher and literary critic, recognized the lure of the forbidden a century ago, writing about the deep appeal of the carnival, a space where everything banned is suddenly allowed, where eccentricity is permitted, where profanity defeats piety. The Trump administration is like that: Nothing means anything, rules don’t matter, and the president is the carnival king.” -- it’s like that Heironymous Bosch piece. “if Pence, Pompeo, and Barr had not believed that God had chosen them to play special roles in this ‘biblical moment’—” But remember, you don’t have to be “Christian” to fall for ultimate grandiosity. “Come November, will they tolerate--even abet--an assault on the electoral system: open efforts to prevent postal voting, to shut polling stations, to scare people away from voting? Will they countenance violence, as the president’s social-media fans incite demonstrators to launch physical attacks on state and city officials?” Yes. Yes they will. I’ve been waiting so many years—decades, is it?—to have my Carolyn Forche moment, when I “come back” and do the thing I was meant to do, once more. But that’s a rag doll that keeps my dodging and faking, because I was never really “there” in the first place. I could interpret that to mean I’m nothing and give up, or I could interpret it to mean that instead of “come back” I just need to “get started.” OK but again, how? It’s truly embarrassing to be this old and be asking that. But then again, “they” will use embarrassment against you if you let them. “Birthler resisted the use of the word courage; just as people can adapt to corruption or immorality, she told me, they can slowly learn to object as well. The choice to become a dissident can easily be the result of ‘a number of small decisions that you take’—to absent yourself from the May Day parade, for example, or not to sing the words of the party hymn. And then, one day, you find yourself irrevocably on the other side. Often, this process involves role models. You see people whom you admire, and you want to be like them.” That sounds like a dream—like my dream! Of the pirates! The people in the colorful silks! Making irreverent noises, hot and smiling up in that dark, glowing place! 060420 I think there's a clue [in here]()(https://www.thiswebsitewillselfdestruct.com) somewhere about why good writing is rare. And it has something to do with how the easiest and fastest and most obvious things come to your mind first, for a good reason, there's like a survival element of that, it's how the brain is supposed to work for a communal species, but to write something arresting you have to sort of poison that natural process a bit. Also it has to do with daydreaming and hankering for the attention and validation of strangers in the void. Haha, proved my own point there. But hey—the problem is the problem—the writer’s block that’s born of perfectionism, once you see this, is so obviously just a self-centered blob of bullshit—if you can’t get past it, don’t. NOBODY CARES. If you want to work on something, work on something. STILL NOBODY CARES. Unless they do, in which case you’re probably sharing something or being vulnerable with actual other humans, and then you’re not going to have time to be perfectionistic anyway. Congratulations. You won that round. —— also find a dominant strong loving woman... not in the garish, tawdry ‘femdom’ cosplay trite porn sense, but in an authentic sense... just a legitimately strong, in-control, commanding woman who is *genuinely,* not *performatively* more than just ‘ok’ with the role ‘reversal’ i’m looking for, and one with whom i don’t have to flatten myself, oversimplify myself, perform a caricature of my own ‘submissiveness’. i have to remain true to myself, that’s the key—no retreating into the old nightmare of learned helplessness wow there’s a lot of scorn and hate out there for this woman, and a lot of assholes bleating about she doesnt even exist! the easy consensus seems to be that she’s just bossy or manipulative and forget it it will never work. thats fucking depressing but i guess not surprising 060520 so we work out a compromise; Megan decides it’s worth two-weeks of self-isolation in her room (besides going to work) and bathroom-sanitizing to be able to go to the protest in Greenfield with her friend Joy. I’m worried and exasperated and sad and more than a little jealous, sitting here thinking, that’s cool, what do *I* do that makes a difference? What have I *ever* done? She comes back elated and recharged, goes directly to change and shower and begin her little quarantine. It was worth it. I made the right decision. I hope. Next up: she goes back to work, and I’m worried about getting sick all over again. 060720 what if someone invented their own mental illness out of guilt for being too comfortable? eventually everything devolves into copypasta (unless?) internet teaches you you’re not smart & unique (but? where’s the but? you gotta let me in on the angle, here... c’mon, we need a but....) 060920 The others can tell that Megan manipulates me into treating her differently and they resent it. I don’t know if they’re judging me for being gross and weak or if they’re just mad because she gets treated differently, or if it’s mainly that she actually manipulated all of us, but I’m certainly judging myself for not having been able to fix it 062020 Watching The Good Place with the girls, with no alcohol at all (out of beer; 2-day-old wine is so unappealing I forgot I had it) and noticed that I was reacting as if not more emotionally strongly to certain parts than I think I would have if I was a few drinks in. Interesting. 062120 shit i’m worried about today am i meeting the challenges of whatever ptsd my kids have (most visibly megan)? - you are safe - we have rules - basic life skills - appropriate behaviors 063020 Megan gets pissed off about frozen chicken tenders.... Cel: Can you make some for me too? Meg: (hesitantly) There isn’t a lot left.... Cel: well you had some last night so.... Meg: (stalks away) Forget it, you can just eat it. (longish text convo between her and me follows with no particular resolution) What I’m left wondering: What would you want her to have said in response to “there’s not a lot left”? What she did say, you found annoying and demanding and “policing” What if instead (before that) you had said something like, let’s see how much there is, or sure, we can share, or anything else? where did “there isn’t a lot left” come from? what was the subtext? to me (and i assume to her) it meant “i don’t want to give you any of it” with an implied justification that there wasn’t enough; given that, then pointing out that you had some last night wouldn’t necessarily have been “policing” in general, but rather a return persuasive appeal that if there really wasn’t that much, then it would be right for her to get at least some of what was left. Now there is chicken left in the freezer; Cel’s had hers and you’re eating ramen. I offered you some quinoa salad and to assemble it for you, to which you gracefully replied “no”. Sorry—bottom line, you’re being the baby in this case and your “borderline” or “ptsd” tendencies or whatever it’s called are preventing you from relenting at the moment.