I want to thank Ali for the link to this story. I will try to post the comment she left pointing me to it. I do not mind a link here or there in the comments if it leads me to new good article on issues. Ali has offered me many links in the comments and all of them so far have been worth reading, and yes many I end up posting like this one. Thank you Ali. Hugs Scottie Below is Ali’s comment.
All is well. So many things tend to work out for the very best.
Here’s a new link. I’ve been reading Oliver Willis for years, and I really like his work. You’ve probably seen his work around. I now subscribe (for free) to his work on Substack, and here is the one he posted today. Bonus on each post is a photo of his doggy Kal-El, who looks like our Chrissy back when she was that age (she crossed the bridge in 2020 at age 21.) Anyway, back to the link: https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/how-boring-lgbtq-people-made-america . Enjoy when you get to it!
When I was a kid and well up until into my teens in the 1990s, the right wing in America sold us a dystopian vision of what would occur if gay and lesbian people were granted equal rights, most notably, the right to marry.
According to conservative pundits and politicians, if we allowed same-sex marriage to occur, every street in America would immediately, overnight, turn into the most extreme version of a San Francisco leather parade. Innocent families would be forced, Clockwork Orange style, to watch as bulging crotches were shoved into their faces, sparkling zippers twirling before them, women dressed in men’s clothes, men wearing dresses, the kinkiest sexual acts occurring in public at the drop of a hat.
On Fox News, the propaganda arm of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, equal marriage rights would surely end up in people marrying ducks, cows, goats, etc. Certainly.
But in the decades since then, after figures like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both now thankfully six feet under) blamed LGBTQ people for events like 9/11, none of that happened. For sure, there are sometimes leather parades, but they’re mostly happening in the same places where there have always been leather parades and nobody there is bothered by them.
Instead, after the epochal event of same sex marriage becoming legal, nothing happened. Nothing at all. No forced Pride parades breaking out in rural Alabama. No kids in Montana getting instructed on the fine art of same-sex kissing. No families in Orange County, California, compelled to learn the words to “YMCA” in gender reeducation camps. Nothing at all.
Why? Because the vast majority of LGBTQ people are just as boring as straight people. They have jobs, go to school and work, take care of their kids, have marital bliss and squabbles and all the rest of it. They aren’t activists militantly marching in the streets for issues or disco, but simply want to make it through another day in peace. Boring as hell, like all of us are.
And this is a triumph. Because for all of American history, the people in power – almost always wealthy, straight, white, men – have attained power and retained power by demonizing everyone else who doesn’t look like them. Black men were after their daughters, Muslim people are terrorists, women are emotional hysterics, and on and on and on. These people profit off of the dehumanization of others and by working overtime to scare people about the horror that could happen if we treated everybody with equality and respect.
Yet every time that the country gets over itself and fulfills the words of the Founders in ways that they could not comprehend in their limited view of the world and who truly deserved “liberty,” we collectively discover that the nightmare was always total nonsense.
This is a lesson to keep in mind as we watch in horror as the right whips up fears about immigrants, transgender people, and refugees from the Middle East in our current electoral cycle. Integrating LGBTQ families into the mainstream of American life made the country stronger, not weaker. Our collective understanding increased, the rich tapestry that is the United States benefitted from increased diversity. The only ones who lost out were close-minded bigots who can’t accept that the world doesn’t look like the deranged fantasies in their brains (and never existed in reality).
Boring is good. We’re all boring. Reject the lurid fantasy world of the haters and instead embrace the mundane reality of a diverse world. And throw a leather parade, if you feel like it. This is America, where you’re free to do so if you like.
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Again the credit for the link goes to Ten Bears, link below. This is important because the right still wants to claim that Hamas is the hold up to peace. But the fact is this plan in almost the very same respects was offered by Egypt and Hamas accepted it while Israel again refused it. Every attempt that has been offered to stop the slaughter and bring the hostages home has been blocked by Israel and Bibi specifically. Does anyone remember when the Biden administration claimed the last few days that Israel accepted the proposal … that was pressure on Israel because Bibi was already saying no not without with major changes, while Hamas said OK. It was also gaslighting by still making Hamas the bad guy in all this. Hugs. Scottie
“It’s a question of which is to be master, that’s all.”
Saturday, June 1, 2024
What’s Going On. II
From the Livre d’Or des Voyages of Louis Mainard, 1890, via picryl.com.
Déjà vu all over again? Biden (the day after the guilty verdict for convicted felon Donald Trump, some people think that’s relevant) announces proposals for a ceasefire in Gaza, to be carried out in three phases: six weeks during which all Israeli forces withdraw from the Strip, hostages in Gaza (especially women and elderly, and remains of the dead) will be exchanged for detainees in Israeli prisons, Gazan civilians will return home, supplied with temporary shelters, and delivery of food, water, medicine, and fuel will get back to full strength, and the parties will work out the details of a probably lengthier second phase; a second phase in which the exchange of hostages and prisoners will be completed and the parties will negotiate a final, permanent ceasefire; and a third, which is supposed to last forever, when Gaza is rebuilt and the last remains are transmitted.
Isn’t this approximately where we arrived three weeks ago, when Haaretz reported that Hamas had accepted a deal proposed by Egypt with a very similar shape, and Israel appeared to have turned it down?
Not exactly. The big difference, to my mind, which isn’t getting a lot of press attention, is that this one is billed as an Israeli proposal—Biden is very insistent on that:
Now, after intensive diplomacy carried out by my team and my many conversations with leaders of Israel, Qatar, and Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries, Israel has now offered — Israel has offered a comprehensive new proposal.
Although, as he acknowledges, there are ministers in the Israeli cabinet who are determined that Israel should reoccupy Gaza
I know there are those in Israel who will not agree with this plan and will call for the war to continue indefinitely. Some — some are even in the government coalition. And they’ve made it clear: They want to occupy Gaza, they want to keep fighting for years, and the hostages are not a priority to them.
and national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told reporters just two days ago that the war would continue for another seven months—and a couple of hours after Biden’s statement the Israeli prime minister’s office seemed to be categorically rejecting the offer:
Israel released a vague statement following Biden’s address, saying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized a proposal to maintain its goal of returning hostages as soon as possible, but insisted that “the war will not end until all of [the Israeli government’s] goals are achieved, including the return of all our abductees and the elimination of Hamas’ military and governmental capabilities.”
Wait what? Israel refuses to sign on to its own ceasefire plan? What’s up with that?
It’s possible, of course, that Biden was just lying about it, but what would be the value of that? What would it get him, or us, or anybody?
Meanwhile, of course, international pressure on Israel continues to mount, after the move by Ireland, Spain, and Norway to recognize the existence of a Palestinian state before it really exists. Last week, the International Court of Justice, engaged in the investigation of South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide, ruled that Israel must
Immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
(Israel has a quibble over the comma after “Governorate”, claiming it means it doesn’t have to halt anything, since it denies that it is doing anything that could have such an effect, which is patently absurd, since its blockage of aid could clearly starve everybody to death, among other things. The comma is simply an error; if you were to take it seriously, you would have to interpret it as changing the restrictive relative clause “which may inflict…” into a non-restrictive relative applying to the main clause with the verb “halt”, which would imply that halting the offensive could destroy the civilians, which makes even less sense).
Two days later came the massacre at the Tel al-Sultan refugee camp in western Rafah, a supposed safe zone to which IDF had instructed people to move, where bombs apparently ignited a fire in which 45 or 50 human beings burned to death in their tents in a strike aimed at two Hamas militants who may or may not have been there. Less than two days after that, an attack on another tent city in the area killed at least 21 more.
In Washington, the congressional leaders have finally agreed, after weeks of wrangling, to invite Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress, though they’re not saying when, and it’s become clear why it was taking so long, according to The Hill; it was Schumer:
The invitation left Washington after weeks of delay from Schumer who, during a high-profile floor speech in March, declared Netanyahu had “lost his way” and called for new elections in Israel, drawing the ire of the longtime Israeli leader, Republicans and some Democrats.
Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in U.S. history, and his office on a number of occasions said the Senate leader was supportive of having Netanyahu address Congress, despite his sharp criticism of the Israeli leader, but the New York Democrat did not sign the letter until recently.
I’m really glad to have it clarified that Schumer hasn’t dropped his opposition to Netanyahu as PM (he says the invitation isn’t to be interpreted as extended to Netanyahu as a person at all, but as a representative of the Israeli state)
In Israel, IDF has been at diametric odds with the prime minister since mid-May over his obstinate refusal to offer any plans for what happens after the war, led by defense minister Yoav Gallant, who has demanded that Gaza should be administered by Palestinians, in opposition to Netanyahu’s religious nationalist partners, who want to reoccupy the Strip with Jewish settlers, and Netanyahu fears (no doubt with reason) that if he crosses the partners they will leave the government, collapsing it and leaving Netanyahu without a job and forced to face his corruption trial.
That lends an extreme significance to something that came up this morning from Yair Lapid, who implores Netanyahu to accept the plan Biden announced yesterday, with what sounds like an offer of his own—that his party will allow Netanyahu to stay in office (for now) if the religious nationalists decide to topple the government, if and only if he sign on to the new ceasefire proposal:
“The Israeli government cannot ignore President Biden’s significant speech. There is a deal on the table and it needs to be done,” Yair Lapid wrote in a post on X.
“I remind Netanyahu that he has a safety net from us for the hostage deal if Ben-Gvir and Smotrich leave the government.”
Netanyahu’s response so far has been negative, but that could change. The hostage families, of course, have endorsed the new idea.
In the most recent weeks I’ve frequently been tempted to give up on the theory of Biden as peacemaker, as he seems just not to respond to how horrible this war is, but I generally come back to realizing how impossible it would be for him to do the work by himself—how much help the process requires from a host of international and domestic actors, from the worst (Saudi Arabia) to the most annoyingly virtuous (South Africa). It occurs to me that Biden could be telling the truth about this new ceasefire approach—that it really is an Israeli proposal, with buy-in from all the Israelis the US needs to be talking to, in the military and intelligence, in the political opposition in all its prickly oppositionality, in the broad public, just not exactly Netanyahu himself (who isn’t Israel, as Schumer helpfully reminds us, just a hated PM), or not yet. But don’t rule it out.
I want to thank Susan whose blog will be below because of WordPress changes if I post her link here it wipes out everything I write. The song has a powerful message. Susan has suggest we all listen to the rest of it, but I have not done that yet. Hugs. Scottie
As many of my readers will know I have been trying to move from my long time browser to something less invasive. I tried Firefox and took an entire day to move everything to there. That took forever. But I did not like the way it worked with the websites I like to visit.
While several wonderful readers told me of their browsers either used them or my security settings wouldn’t let them download. Lucky for me Barry, a frequent reader and commenter read of my struggles and suggest one I have not heard of before. I am trying it and so far like it. The issue will be the history. Will it save my open tabs so I can reopen them if the window closes. I did see and turned on auto sessions saving which is supposed to save and allow to be reopened another time. I hope it works. Hugs. Scottie
So what started out to be a simple fix of a malware problem on the blogging computer I used to completely change all my old Chrome tabs into Firefox tabs. I don’t like the new agreements on Chrome about information gathering no matter who you make your settings to prevent. Basically everything you do is recorded and sent to Google. It is frustrating. Firefox has less work ability and on Chrome I could always recover old tabs if I did not delete them in entire windows, even on other devices. So far Firefox doesn’t seem to have the same ability. If I start to lose to many pages or comments, then I will have to switch back. While privacy is important I need function much more. I need to be able to switch open tabs from one computer to the other to clean them. I will try this but it may not last.
Here are the open Joe My God posts I wanted to share before this all happened. Enjoy.
Read the full article. Earlier this week and this morning it was reported that Florida educators are receiving state training on teaching Christian nationalism and teaching that genocides such as the one committed by Joseph Stalin are examples of cancel culture.
Read the full platform [PDF]. The 2024 platform echoes many of the anti-LGBTQ items seen in the 2022 platform. The platform also contains the many attacks on trans youth now codified into law in nearly two dozen states. Photo: Newly elected Texas GOP chairman Abraham George.
And it total partisan Christian Nationalist news ….
And in bigotry thuggish maga right wing behavior wins news … But think about this. We have normalized and now accept that people going into a store and destroying the merchandise and attacking the staff is OK as long as it fits our religious or political beliefs. Is this what a civilized society is or has become?
Cultists are also raging in the comments of Walmart’s Instagram post. Sample reply: “Walmart and Pride whatever it is, I hate all this because you glorify everything in this world except what God has created to be from the beginning, which is a family, man married to a woman and their children!! Why don’t you give a true family unit a special month??? This evil agenda to shove all that’s unnatural down our throat will be your downfall one day!! God will not be mocked!! Yes, everyone has a right to choose how you live but why does it have to be glorified for a month??? Just wrong!!!”
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All is well. So many things tend to work out for the very best.
Here’s a new link. I’ve been reading Oliver Willis for years, and I really like his work. You’ve probably seen his work around. I now subscribe (for free) to his work on Substack, and here is the one he posted today. Bonus on each post is a photo of his doggy Kal-El, who looks like our Chrissy back when she was that age (she crossed the bridge in 2020 at age 21.) Anyway, back to the link: https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/how-boring-lgbtq-people-made-america . Enjoy when you get to it!