jenny_islander

I continue with my reading of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder.

"Lesson 11: Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate propaganda campaigns (some of which come from abroad). Take responsibility for what you communicate with others."

There is so much in this chapter that I want people to see that I had a difficult time deciding what to leave out. Here, I think, is a useful sketch of Snyder's argument--mostly in quotes.

" 'What is truth?' Sometimes people ask this question because they wish to do nothing...It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds. The leader who dislikes the investigators is a potential tyrant."

Snyder relays the observation of Hannah Arendt, in 1971, that there was no way for the mass communications of the times to be overridden sufficiently to hide "factuality," in her case the truth about the Vietnam War. He notes that modern computing has changed that. "For many Americans, the two-dimensional world of the internet has become more important than the three-dimensional world of human contact. People going door to door encounter the surprised blinking of American citizens who realize that they have to talk about politics with a flesh-and-blood human being rather than having their views affirmed by their Facebook feeds. Within the two-dimensional internet world, new collectivities have arisen, invisible by the light of day--tribes with distinct worldviews, beholden to manipulations. (And, yes, there is a conspiracy that you can find online: It is the one to keep you online, looking for conspiracies.)"

This seems at first like more harrumphing by the elder generation. But remember that Snyder has spent years digging through eyewitness accounts of the rise of tyranny, resistance to tyranny, and the fall of tyranny. He repeatedly warns us in this book that tyranny hates facts, thinking, and communication that it does not control. We can also infer from his accounts of the rise of tyranny that not giving people time to figure out how to react on one hand, and pushing them into despair or apathy on the other, are great weapons of tyranny.

"We need print journalists," Snyder says, "so that stories can develop on the page and in our minds...When we learn them from a screen...we tend to be drawn in by the logic of spectacle. When we learn of one scandal, it whets our appetite for the next. Once we subliminally accept that we are watching a reality show rather than thinking about real life, no image can actually hurt the [tyrant] politically."

We need time and breathing room "to consider the meaning, for ourselves and our country, of what might otherwise seem to be isolated bits of information." And that, he contends, is the job of "the better print journalists."

Snyder warns about reflexive disdain of mainstream media. "It is derision that is mainstream and easy, and actual journalism that is...difficult."

Here he employs a rhetorical trick that is often used to imply that people ought to shut up, but I think he is being serious. "So try for yourself to write a proper article, involving work in the real world: traveling, interviewing, maintaining relationships with sources, researching in written records, verifying everything, writing and revising drafts, all on a tight and unforgiving schedule. If you find you like doing this," he says, "keep a blog." A high standard indeed. If all bloggers held to it, there would be less to read online--but is that actually a bad thing? Is trying to drink from a firehose a good thing? Weren't we able to maintain and save civilization without 24-hour news or the ability to endlessly scroll?

Snyder defends paywalled journalism. "We find it natural that we pay for a plumber or a mechanic, but demand our news for free...should we form our political judgment on the basis of zero investment? We get what we pay for."

The immediate objection that comes to mind is poverty. I was desperately poor myself not so long ago. (Now I am merely uneasily poor.) From that perspective, I say that library cards are ammunition for freedom of thought and getting better all the time. Library cards get you past many online paywalls. Libraries often have racks of current newspapers and magazines to read on site. They may offer back issues to take away for free--and that does not necessarily make the information in them out of date. Get a card if you can, and if you haven't been to your library or your library site recently, take a look.

Getting your print news via the library is also a good way for you to figure out how to stretch your subscription dollars. Unfortunately, pace Snyder, mainstream media has increasingly been bought up, and declawed, by megacorps. There is still good journalism to be found, however. Do go and look.

Snyder isn't completely averse to online media. "If we do pursue the facts, the internet gives us an enviable power to convey them." He reminds us that the authorities he cites in this chapter--Leszek Kołakowski, Hanna Arendt, Viktor Klemperer, Václav Havel--did their work in the face, and under the feet, of tyranny. They passed around printed copies of thoughts that were illegal to possess. They escaped to places where they could speak publicly in safety. But they all knew someone who had been silenced in ways that ranged from denial of access to a publisher, to judicial murder.

We have a weapon that earlier generations of journalists did not. We all have publishing houses in our pockets or on our desks. Therefore, says Snyder, "each of us bears some private responsibility for the public's sense of truth. If we are serious about seeking the facts, we can each make a small revolution in the way the internet works. If you are verifying information for yourself, you will not send on [lies and sensationalism] to others. If you choose to follow reporters whom you have reason to trust, you can also transmit what they have learned to others. If you [disseminate] only the work of humans who have followed journalistic protocols, you are less likely to debase your brain interacting with bots and trolls"--and, I add, foreign agents.

It isn't just visual spectacle that divorces the mind from awareness of real consequences for what is happening on the screen. "We do not see the minds that we hurt when we publish falsehoods, but that does not mean that we do no harm." He uses the analogy of a driver protecting other drivers. Most of the time you don't see the other driver, just a shiny windshield. But you follow the rules of the road to keep that person safe anyway. Thus also for the information superhighway. Keep in mind that real people can really get hurt, and life gets better for everyone.

What Snyder is asking for in this chapter is a great sea change in our online lives. And I think he is right.

It sounds like so much work! But, again, if practicing citizen journalism and journalistic scrutiny means producing and passing around less information, is that really a bad thing?

If the frighteners and dividers become more obvious by their inability to fit into a better online culture--I think that's a good thing.

I continue with my reading of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder.

"Lesson 9: Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing that you think everyone else is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books."

At first glance this appears to be partly a grumble about the young people of today and their darned social media.

However.

Has anybody ever told you that they can tell where you mostly hang out online by how you talk or write? And have they been right? And what does that say about where you get most of the information you think about?

There is a danger in online life, because it is often one's main or only friends hangout, of falling into the trap of focusing on one another's words instead of what inspired them; similarly, because of the sheer speed at which social media sites may update, there is a danger of reading the source, but only the quote and not the surrounding passage that was not quoted.

The speed of updates points to another problem. I, an old gray Internet user, remember the days before the megacorps took over online social spaces. I could rant. Here I will say only that there are significant differences between a neighborhood park and a megamall, even if the megamall provides something like a park among its offerings. One of those differences is the sheer speed of life. The influx never stops on a megacorp site. There is always something new to look at and tap on, and all of it is packaged in small portions. This is part of the underlying design; it is intended ultimately to maximize profit for the megacorp at the expense of your ability to stop and think.

Snyder is of a generation that did not grow up online, so it is natural to him to analyze this kind of media in terms of television. "Everything happens fast," he says, "but nothing actually happens. Each story on televised news is 'breaking' until it is displaced by the next one. So we are hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean."

I think that the developers of social media algorithms noticed how people watched cable news channels, and aimed for that.

Snyder goes on: "The effort to define the shape and significance of events requires words and concepts that elude us when we are entranced by visual stimuli. Watching televised news is sometimes little more than looking at someone who is also looking at a picture. We take this collective trance to be normal. We have slowly fallen into it."

And, I add, each channel, whether on TV or on the corporate Web, presents an increasingly limited selection of visual stimuli to entrance us by. You can also tell which stations someone watches most often by how they talk or write. And those stations are increasingly watched online, where, like anything else on the corporate Web, they are also venues for monitoring user activity, interests, and connections. People used to call surveillance software spyware. Now they call it by brand names, such as Chrome. And the data from that spyware is used to further refine the algorithm that keeps you staring.

Snyder mentions two novels, Fahrenheit 451 and 1984, that predict the effects of monitors (in both senses) everywhere you look. To these I add Brave New World, which includes chilling illustrations of a character's remark, "Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetιtions make one truth." The World State in that novel has seized on the real-world observation that if you hear something over and over, even if you stopped listening to it, even if you disagree with it, it is going to stick in your mind below the level of conscious thought. (Do you work in a store that has a music loop that you hate? And do you nevertheless find yourself singing those songs off the clock?) If someone combines that tendency of the human brain with algorithms designed to keep you fixated, and never gives you time to think, and furthermore removes the tools of reason from your field of attention--well, then you get modern social media.

Returning to the first part of Lesson 9, Snyder urges caution with use of politically charged words that are new or that are being used in new ways. It has long been known that high-demand groups that try to separate you from your daily life teach you an entire dialect that is opaque to the unchosen, and get you to think in it. If you argue against the group but use the dialect of the group, you are playing by their rules. Don't.

In Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis writes of an orator of manifest imperial destiny who attempts to impress a group of listening aliens, who do not have the underlying assumptions of empire nor any words to express them. Everything must be translated into their language. Lewis, of course, writes both passages in English, but he writes the translation as if it had been back-translated from the aliens' language. And this literary trick exposes the fundamental absurdity of empire. In the same way, try to dig into the origin of any new or newly redefined word that is written on signs carried by both sides. If that word did not exist, what would each side be saying instead? Try saying that, and see how the picture changes.

And read. Snyder offers three reading lists. One is novels that help readers to "think about ambiguous situations and judge the intentions of others." The second is a sampler of what Snyder himself has read in order to write his twenty lessons. The third is Bible passages for Christians to think on. I won't repeat those lists here for the sake of space. The Internet is infested with booklists these days, mostly generated by machinery, but I have discovered one neat trick: Search on the tιtle of a book you have read and want to use as a starting point, then click on a result from Goodreads. You can in this way circumvent the requirement to get an account, and find your way to lists compiled by individuals.

Read slowly; libraries typically allow two weeks per book. Choose one book at a time. Make notes as you read--or copy entire passages if you wish. Think about it, and talk about it. Find venues like this one, that don't barrage you with things to click and glance at as you try to concentrate, and go there.

Knowledge is power. Doomscrolling is useless.

I return to my read-through of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder.

Today's lesson is difficult for me, because I am not in the group to whom it is addressed. If the tyrants get what they want, my loved ones and I may be quite otherwise.

I quote Snyder extensively here because his exact words are so very important. Please pass it on to anyone you know who may need to hear it and who is or might be capable of hearing it.

"Lesson 7: Be reflective if you must be armed. If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no.

"Authoritarian regimes usually include a special riot police force whose task is to disperse citizens who seek to protest, and a secret state police force whose assignments include the murder of dissenters or others designated as enemies...Yet we make a great mistake if we imagine that [riot and secret police forces whose atrocities have become bywords for evil] acted without support. Without the assistance of regular police forces, and sometimes regular soldiers, they could not have killed on such a large scale...The policemen were not the principal perpetrators, but they provided the indispensable manpower."

I tend to omit the specific names of Snyder's historical examples because I have heard and read denials that tyranny is happening again because it doesn't precisely copy the tyranny of former days. So I will paraphrase his next point: The most infamous tyranny of the twentieth century in the West murdered millions upon millions of people. Their elaborate centers of mechanized torment and death get the most press. But they also had a practice of forcing people to go to fields outside their home cities, then shooting them en masse and throwing their bodies into pits. They had a paramilitary death squad, whose name translates innocuously as "deployment group" or "task force," that was specifically tasked with these murders. But there were not enough of them to murder the many, many victims who were shot. Most such murders were carried out by regular policemen. And that is only one of Snyder's examples.

These policemen did not suddenly become seized with a wickedness virus. They did not fall under mind control either. Nor did they cease to be human. "Many of them had no special preparation for this task," says Snyder. "They found themselves in an unknown land, they had their orders, and they did not want to look weak. In the rare cases when they refused these orders...they were not punished.

"Some killed from murderous conviction. But many others who killed were just afraid to stand out. Other forces were at work besides conformism. But without the conformists, the great atrocities would have been impossible."

Let those who have ears to hear, hear.

"Lesson 6: Be wary of paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come."

Snyder is a historian, not an idealist. I will quote his second paragraph in full to show his pragmatic viewpoint.

"Most governments, most of the time, seek to monopolize violence. If only the government can legitimately use force, and this use is constrained by law (italics mine), then the forms of politics that we take for granted become possible. It is impossible to carry out democratic elections, try cases at court, design and enforce laws, or indeed manage any of the other quiet business of government when agencies beyond the state also have access to violence. For just this reason, people and parties who wish to undermine democracy and the rule of law create and fund violent organizations that involve themselves in politics. Such groups can take the form of a paramilitary wing of a political party, the personal bodyguard of a particular politician--or apparently spontaneous citizens' initiatives, which usually turn out to have been organized by a party or its leader."

He of course touches on the obvious examples--the SA and SS--but also points out American-backed mercenaries, privatized prisons, and the things the current elected tyrant has encouraged people to do at his campaign rallies, particularly identifying and throwing out anyone who does not appear sufficiently faithful. To this I add the observation (not mine) that the reason why you never seem to see police doing beefcake calendars may be because doing so would require them to show their tattoos.

Here is the last paragraph of this chapter:

"For violence to transform not just the atmosphere but also the system, the emotions of rallies and insurrections and the ideology of exclusion have to be incorporated into the training of armed guards. These first challenge the police and military, then ‮etartenep‬‎ the police and military, and finally transform the police and military."

What can we do about it? I have a problem with any plan to prepare for armed violence by arming oneself in turn. Like Snyder, my observation is pragmatic. If the enemy has an army and a taxpayer-funded budget and you have a lot of guns and a few friends, they will annihilate you. It is a simple fact. The only reason for you to have a gun is if you also have a plan to run and circumstances are such that you are not going to be any worse off if you ‮llik‬‎ people to buy yourselves time to get away.

So what can we do? Again I urge turning away from the national stage on which the tyrants are strutting their stuff. Yes, what they are doing is horrific, but if your energy is limited, turn it toward strengthening democracy closer to home. Join a group that is coordinating an effort to shut down a private prison in your area. Write to legislators who might be swayed to defund paramilitarization of local police. If you can vote for sheriffs and judges, please do so. If somebody shows up in a uniform you do not recognize and demands your compliance, or if somebody in a uniform demands that you comply with something beyond their legal right to do so, refuse if you safely can, and video them if you safely can. This goes double if you see it happening to anyone else. I also note that brutal--armed--cops have abruptly ceased their actions if they were operating alone and realized that there were witnesses they could not reach--witnesses who had their cameras out.

"Lesson 4: Take responsibility for the face of the world. The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself, and set an example for others to do so."

I think the beginning of Snyder's expansion should be quoted in full: "Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices we make are themselves a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future. In the politics of the everyday, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much."

In the run-up to the full power of tyranny, Snyder says, a symbol can be used to divide and conquer. It can be used to incite angry or fearful resentment of one group by another. Then the resentful group is willing to accept, even commit, illegal and immoral actions in service of their anger or fear, while the targeted group is full of entirely justifiable fear that drives them from public life even before they are forcibly scattered and driven out or killed. And then the tyrant can do whatever they like to all of them, because the social contract has been broken so thoroughly that there is no group left that can enforce it.

Again, I remind people that one dead-eyed creep flourishing the Hitler Salute on every screen in the country does not mean that he is actually in your room. That is an instinctive reaction. It is, unfortunately, a universal human reaction--one that your local haters and wannabe tyrants capitalize on when they leave their creepy little signs everywhere. The symbol or image stands for the presence of the person who wants to do harm.

Deny them that.

If you have to show someone a sign or gesture of tyranny, make a bare link to it--to a news story or what have you. If your software can't do that, make a spoiler overlay. Don't spread their symbols around for them.

If you see something weird in a post--a symbol, some initials--look up a list of symbols of hatred. If you find it there, block and mute that person. Feel free to tell them and others why, but don't reblog or repost what they did. Also feel free to block sites and blogs that regularly show such things in order to be angry at them, so they don't show up on your media for you or others to see. The thing exists; continually looking at it, or training yourself not to look at it, on your own page does not fix that.

The same goes for graffiti. Cover up or tear down whatever you can. If feasible, post a picture of the result.

If you have the power to tell people to leave, and they walk in wearing the paraphernalia of tyranny, tell them to leave. That is not the time to explain or educate. Simply tell them that you will not tolerate Nazi bullshit. Refuse to argue. Be calm but firm. Do not give them the luxury of thinking they unsettled you. Defang their fantasies of power.

But there is a Nazi in the White House now, elected or no, and he is trying very hard to be Emperor of the World, and he has frightened yes men and eager followers. So it's important to consider what to do when people whose power is not a mere resentful fantasy do impinge on your life.

When tyranny has been established, symbols of loyalty become more important than the target markers of previous years. Here, Snyder says, is another trap. He quotes Vaclav Havel, who observed that nobody believed in the glorious communist revolution in Czechoslovakia thirty years later, but everybody displayed the usual symbols of loyalty to the Party. This, he said, was to keep the Party off their backs so that they might "withdraw into daily life." Disunity and inaction, he said, were thereby made habitual, because everyone was still "making it possible for the game to go on."

Havel went on to ask what might happen if people decided that the only winning move was not to play.

He also went on to become the first, democratically elected, president of the Czech Republic.

You don't have to be another Havel. Again: look around you, and pay attention to the immediate events of your offline life. "You might someday be offered the opportunity to display symbols of loyalty," says Snyder. "Make sure that such symbols include your fellow citizens rather than exclude them." For example, if you are encouraged or voluntold to display a flag, make it the actual flag of our nation, displayed in a manner that predates whatever tyranny has done with it.

EDITED TO ADD: Rereading this post, I realized that I had omitted something.

For years, now, I have been hearing stories about successful responses to boots-on-the-ground displays by people who want to live under tyranny--people who think that they will be important and powerful if tyranny has its way.

Here's the thing: When the camel's nose is just poking into the tent, a hearty smack will make it go away. I don't just mean punching a Nazi, as satisfying as it was to see whatsisface--Spencer--dwindle to insignificance after somebody made him look weak on camera. I mean things like the fellow in Scotland who heard a tyranny fan bloviating on his local speakers' corner, so he decided to warm up his bagpipes. Or the other fellow who looped "They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard" and played it on a boombox directly behind the head of another tyranny fan. Or the other other fellow who simply stood next to his local tyranny fan and shouted gibberish every time the fan opened his mouth.

And I mean the people who use collective action to throw joyous block parties, or collectively heckle, or throw joyous block parties that include collective heckling, wherever they hear that their local tyranny fans are planning to gather. Note that these collective actions don't fall into the trap of debating tyranny fans. They just show up, and keep showing up, outnumbering the tyranny fans, until the tyranny fans leave.

Do these actions affect Musk et al directly? No. But, again, the more heartened and unified a community is, the more able it will be to resist national tyranny when it decides to show up at their doorstep. And part of that is refusing to allow tyranny fans to leave their mark on the face of the world.

"Lesson 2: Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve democracy. They need our help as well. Do not speak of "our institutions" unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about--a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union--and take its side."

Snyder, as a historian, provides historical examples large and small. He quotes a newspaper editor who was certain that it was impossible for tyrants to do as they liked after being elected because institutions would simply stop that from happening. Those institutions were thereafter hollowed out or destroyed. Snyder also notes that some people in the groups chosen by the tyrant as targets upon which to display his strength nevertheless voted for him, hoping thereby to protect themselves using the institution of "this for that." This was also, of course, ignored.

The current tyrants have taken aim at everything from SSDI to Lutheran Social Services to FEMA to the constitutional separation of powers. The flurries of executive orders leave one breathless. What to do?

Again, as an ordinary person without power on the national level, your job is to turn your eye away from the national stage. Look around you.

Can you donate a little bit of time or money to your local library?

Can you join a union? ETA: And if you have union membership but you don't attend meetings, can you start?

Can you write a letter to your newspaper? Tip a reporter off to a story? Buy a subscription?

Can you identify a local helping organization that you can assist in some way?

This all seems so tiny. But isolation and inaction are the tools of the enemy. Refuse to use them on yourself.

Here begins my blogging of On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. I propose to paraphrase the main thoughts in the book here. A historian, Snyder provides many, many examples supporting each point within the book itself and I suggest that anyone who can get a copy do so.

Because this is the Internet, I should specify that when I use quotation marks I am quoting. If I disagree with what is said within the quotation marks, I will add this: (sic).

Prologue: Tyranny and History

The reason for democratic movements: Tyranny, that is, "the usurpation of power by a single individual or group, or the circumvention of law by rulers for their own benefit." The founders of our nation had been educated in a tradition that drew heavily on Greek and Roman history and philosophy; they had, therefore, many examples of tyranny, its effects and circumventions. As a result, they attempted to create a system of government that prevents the growth of tyranny, mainly using the checks and balances among the three branches of government.

They stood at the beginning of a worldwide democratic movement. In Europe, Snyder's area of study, this movement had three great moments: after the ends of the World Wars and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. These were times of optimism; Snyder points to the expansion of global trade, with its "expectations of progress," as a main cause, but personally I think that the relief and joy of the proclaimed ends of the wars (First, Second, and Cold) should not be underestimated.

Nevertheless, democracies have themselves collapsed back into something like the war footings--the so-called temporary cessation of the rights of citizens, or the dissonance of proclaimed democracy and actual tyranny--under which many nations lived during those wars. Why?

Because, Snyder said, of that very expansion of global trade, which created inequalities "real and perceived." Democracies seemed to be helpless against it. Therefore, citizens were primed to look for other solutions; and those who wanted to be tyrants provided them.

Fascism, says Snyder, is the party of strength. It rejects reason (weak) and embraces will (strong). Fascists deny objective truth (carefully assessed and annotated, therefore not a matter of will, therefore weak) in favor of self-glorifying mythology (strong). They replace the observation that globalization is a complicated thing with the triumphant assertion that it is really a deliberate conspiracy. Here I add an observation, gleaned elsewhere, that conspiracy theories require the identified culprits to be simultaneously poised to smash and devour with inexorable power; and weak, subhuman creatures. This allows for the identification of those who are actually weak and isolated as the enemy, whom fascists may assault with impunity while proclaiming that they are triumphing over the mighty enemies of the people. Speaking of the people, Snyder notes that a fascist rise to power generally involves a person or party claiming to represent the will of the people--and then the end of direct democracy, which would allow the people to disagree.

Communism, he says, goes the other way--superficially. (Pedantic note: The word communism, like the word robin, is not a taxonomic description; see Wikipedia for a summary of the different governmental/philosophical/economic movements that are or have been called communism. Each has its foibles. If you encounter a mention of communism, it's worth checking which flavor the speaker is talking about. Snyder means the communism of the Soviet Union et al.) Communists embrace reason and furthermore claim that they have used their reason to figure out exactly how to navigate complex historical trends and events. Reason, however, is the purview of the ruling committee of the communist nation or empire, not of individuals. I gather from my own cursory reading of history that anybody who disagrees with the committee is unreasonable (irrational, overly sheltered, childish) or incapable of reason (foolish, subhuman).

Snyder points out that our founders learned from history and acted on that learning; he suggests that we also should do so.

And from me: Democracy, as someone observed, is not a one-and-done salvation situation any more than keeping house or cleaning your teeth. It is a matter of daily maintenance, because it exists within human will and reason. Losing sight of the daily work of democracy--worse still, thinking that democracy is weak or false because it is not a turnkey operation--creates an opportunity for tyranny.

But that goes both ways. As for the perceived power of tyrants, I add a note from Ursula Le Guin about the divine right of kings. It was an immutable, brutally enforced fact for centuries. Then, she says, people stopped believing in it.

I used to be active at LiveJournal. I used to gleefully join in at Fandom Wank. I had a Reddit account. It's been the same Net handle since the days of GeoCities; if you see a Jenny Islander post somewhere on the Wayback Machine, it's probably mine. (Yes, even the embarrassing ones...)

But I'm kinda. Out of practice? I nuked my Reddit account. Fandom Wank was suddenly eaten by a moose. LJ...yeah. Yahoo Groups...yeah, that too.

So...watch this space? I guess?

One blog today, from top to bottom:

Picture of my current favorite fictional romantic couple

Long rage-filled rant against anybody who would dare to celebrate Independence Day, with picture after picture of people who have died in ICE and police custody, no links to anyplace I can call/write/donate to

Discussion of how many vegetable seeds to plant per person

Post scolding anybody who sees it for saying the name of a murdered person too much, because that is making it have less impact

Fashion post

Plea for money because shitty family is shitty and homeless sick person is homeless; I'm broke

Plea for money because favorite artist just lost everything due to a gas explosion; ditto

Cute puppy

More about people who have been killed by the U.S. government

I can't get on this seesaw of helpless horror and brief escape anymore.

To the obvious tune.

Love it from afar,
All the pageantry and action
And the merchants and wars.
I had some good times,
But it pushed me too far.
It ain't a spoonie's day,
Playing in the SCA.

Loved it all so much:
Garb and bardic, feasts and dancing
And the crack of rattan
And the flick of the fencer,
All we made with our hands,
But I can't lead or plan
When my pain's close to ten.

I spun plates and filled quorums,
Running faster until I fell.
Now I haunt all the forums.
All this fabric and these books--
Some days I can't even cook.

Loved it till I lost,
Dropped the plates, the balls went bouncing,
And I let down the Shire.
I can always aspire,
But I can't take it higher.
Can't take the strain no more;
Guess I'll love it from afar.

Gotta know where the lines are;
If you cross 'em you're bound to pay
With the health you had left, and
Then you're stuck home in your chair
With Youtube clips of the war...

Love it from afar.