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Dec. 29th, 2017 08:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* "Turkey brain drain: Crackdown pushes intellectuals out:" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42433668
* "Jailed Russian says he hacked DNC on Kremlin’s orders and can prove it:" www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article191857354.html
* "Trump opens up about Mueller, Russia probe:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-opens-up-about-mueller-russia-probe-in-impromptu-interview-1125658691688
* "Trump asserts 'absolute right' to act on DoJ:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-asserts-absolute-right-to-do-what-he-wants-with-justice-1125656643917
* "Trump assertions on DoJ farther than Nixon:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-doj-assertion-more-than-nixon-would-have-dared-beschloss-1125664323927
* "Trump falsely claims he broke a legislative record:" https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/27/trump-legislation-record-truman-319542
* And is charging tax payers for it. "Trump has spent nearly one-third of his presidency at a Trump property:" https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/22/politics/trump-mar-a-lago-golf/index.html
* "Appeals court rejects challenge to Trump voter fraud panel:" http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/366482-appeals-court-rejects-challenge-to-trump-voter-fraud-panel
* "Mueller probe outgrows its ‘witch hunt’ phase:" https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mueller-probe-outgrows-witch-hunt-phase-100045988.html
* "Robert Mueller May Indict Paul Manafort Again:" https://www.thedailybeast.com/robert-mueller-may-indict-paul-manafort-again
* "Trump White House Saw Record Number of First-Year Staff Departures:" https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-white-house-saw-record-number-of-first-year-staff-departures-1514457002
* "Trump nominee's racist roots raises alarm:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-nominee-s-racist-roots-raises-alarm-1125679683616
* The Republican Class warfare continues. "Jeff Sessions Takes a Stand for Debtors’ Prisons:" https://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/race-and-criminal-justice/jeff-sessions-takes-stand-debtors-prisons
* "African-American vote threatens red South:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/african-american-vote-threatens-redness-of-southern-states-1125675587986
* "Where Roy Moore's Voter Fraud Claims Fall Flat:" https://www.npr.org/2017/12/28/574222257/fact-check-where-roy-moores-voter-fraud-claims-fall-flat
* "Truckloads of food meant for Puerto Rico will instead help Central Florida evacuees:" http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/puerto-rico-hurricane-recovery/os-puerto-rican-evacuees-food-donations-20171226-story.html
* "Puerto Rico crisis lingers as Trump moves on:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/puerto-rico-crisis-lingers-as-trump-administration-moves-on-1125682243777
* "Defense Department-Lawsuit story:" https://apnews.com/fe6b9e57e01c4dd89dbb6b520f9c5bf3/Cities-sue-Defense-Dept.-over-gun-check-system-failures
* Only 27. Damn. "Eric Garner's daughter and prominent activist is brain-dead with no chance of recovery, reports say:" http://www.newsweek.com/erica-garner-eric-heart-attack-762221
* "Like Humans, Chimps Try Harder to Warn Unaware Pals:" https://www.livescience.com/60955-chimps-warn-unwary-pals.html
* "Sweden's giant Gavle goat survives Christmas:" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42502375
* I'm ill again and needed to rest Thursday. I SHOULD have gone out for 9AM bureaucracy, but Livia had appropriated the bureaucracy bag, it was cold, and I was exhausted. I really did get as far as shows on, but she was napping and when I went to get it, she blinked at me all sleepy and trusting. I decided that this was the last straw and went to bed instead. Somehow i managed to injure a nipple in my sleep. how does anybody do that? It was so bad I had to take one of the good pain killers to get back to sleep.
I've not been able to pay one of the big bills this month, which means I'm going to be 120-140 down next month at a time when I'm running out of a bunch of stupid basic things like shampoo, litter, tp, the multi vitamins I'm ordered to take to counter nutrient leaching, etc.. I really need to do another round of auctions. I've selected sacrifices, but I don't want to handle oils while i'm contagious, so I've pushed that to hopefully next week. Sigh.
* So a little over a week ago, one of my meat space friends referred to me as "easy going," which is something that startled me. The thing is, in a lot of ways I am like the Hulk in that some part of me is always angry. I am furious that the men who murdered Tamir Rice are still walking free and their are zero plans ever to bring them to justice, for example, and for all the similar cases where there will be no attempt at bringing the criminals to justice because racism. I am constantly, endlessly furious that we are re litigating things like are NAZIsm and pedophilia good or bad, whether women are fully human and capable of making their own medical decisions, should people of colour and trans people have human rights. I am furious that there is still not safe water in Flint and Puerto Rico, that the lights will likely stay off in Puerto Rico for 8 months or more. I am furious about all the ways we've gone backward in the last year and the rob the poor to give to the rich tax bill that just passed. The list goes on and on. I am in so many ways a ball of rage and have been since I was eight.
But she's not wrong either, once I thought about it, because on the personal level, on the dealing with people level, I am still living by the noble lie I adopted when I started teaching, and I don't take much personally unless there is a good reason to. The decades I invested on working on my anger, on healing old wounds, on meditation, did win me something. They often tell survivors of abuse of any kind that they must forgive to get better, but I think this is simply not true. I don't have to forgive or forget the gaslighting. I have chosen to retain most of the survival skills I learned during my grim little war. Oh, I went through and carefully audited my defenses and responses and carefully weeded out the ones that were no longer useful to adult me, but I refused to throw the baby out with the bath water. My particular set of strategic and tactical skills, the particular ways in which I am stubborn in the face of existential threat, my way of triaging crises, a whole toolkit of people observational skills honed to tell actual threats from people just being thoughtless or self involved and from people who are worth being friends with, are all still damned useful. I refuse to root out a whole collection of survival mechanisms that are dormant most of the time, but useful as anything in certain rare, but occasional threat situations. I am proud of my survival. I am proud of the disciplined and occasionally ruthless way I have gone about protecting my core values, myself, and the people I care about. I am proud of having refused to forsake empathy, and of having kept my memories of just how grim shit can get for children and young teens and for having used that in my teaching to help the kids most in need of true kindness from an adult with authority over them. Every time some whiny sexist geek boy pretends that he gets a pass on being a bully himself as an adult on account of his past, I am furious, because that behavior is a choice and I think people who have been harmed have LESS of an excuse for a lack of empathy and decency than people who have no idea what it feels like to be systematically abused. At eight, I could distinguish between true malevolence, adults doing terrible harm because lying to themselves protected them from having to do better, adults who meant well but for one reason or another could not work out an effective course of action and instead were useless at best or extremely harmful for all their good intentions at worst, those who were powerless to intervene but would have liked to, and children who were doing terrible things to save themselves. I never forgave the first category, and have very little sympathy for the second. The others though? I understood and forgave. If I could manage that level of nuance at eight, how much more so at 48.
Like I said, like the hulk, some part of me is always angry, but I get to chose to use that anger for good or for ill. I can chose to direct it at people in power doing harm or on taking it out on innocent people around me. I invariably chose the former instead of the later. It's there when the anti-choice assholes are screaming at woman down at the Grocery Outlet and I go to stand with the women being screamed at. It's there when I right about the abuses the system inflicts. It is there to keep me fighting when the world is as horrible as it is in Trump's America. I do not have to forgive abusers; I just have to be decent where decency is called for.
The Wednesday forage line was a block long Wednesday, despite the snow that was falling, as people are always foraging at the end of the month. I had a lung full of cigarette smoke and couldn't stop talking because one dude towards the end of the line refused to step away far enough like the other smokers were doing. I was cold, I was in pain, I was standing on damaged joints and was going to be for a long time. I could not read or sit down because of the snow. The guy ahead of me started ranting about a women further up the line who was on her cell to a friend working out which of their group had the Costco card, transport, and where to meet up. I was not particularly eavesdropping as she was loud and I wasn't reading. The man was building up a rant about how if she was rich enough for a Costco card, why was she in the forage line and how that was like someone he once saw driving a BMW there. I said something like, "Someone could have bought the car before they lost their job. It could easily be several years old." I pointed out that last time I had the money for it, I bought a really good coat and getting rid of a warm sturdy coat wouldn't be worth the small amount of money I could get selling it. I pointed out that the lady, who was clearly sharing a car and a Costco card with at least two other adults from the bit of her conversation we'd heard, might have clubbed in with a bunch of friends to share a card. I can't afford to do that now, but I'd shared the membership fee with three or four other people at various times in the pat when I could afford to chip in for one and that ten or fifteen dollars is not that large an investment if you are in a position to make it. The man visibly calmed down. I could see him thinking about the woman and her shared Costco card from a different perspective. I could see him applying empathy where escalating anger and resentment had been. I'm glad I spoke up, because I feel like even though it is a drop of water against an ocean, anything we can do to make people see that it is possible to read the same set of facts from a kind perspective instead of a judgemental perspective is good. I used to do something similar when the native born students started getting paranoid about the Ukrainian kids.
The world is full of assholes, but I often come back to my noble lie, which was a Socratic truth. (In case you are curious, the Noble Lie in Plato's republic is "that all men are brothers.") My Noble Lie was that if you show people the Good they will chose it over the alternative and act accordingly. My experience in eight years of teaching was that approximately 1 out of ten people will do the right thing without prompting most of the time. If one goes around openly talking and acting as if the Noble Lie is the truth, another seven or eight out of ten depending on group composition will chose the Good for whatever reason (social pressure, wanting to impress a popular and well liked authority figure, not wanting to look like an asshole in front of their friends, etc.). I never forgot that the noble Lie was a Lie though, and that other 10-20%? I watched like a hawk.
So unless I have good reason to think otherwise (Paul Ryan is clearly intelligent enough to know how destructive and cruel his policies are and is choosing to do them any way for selfish reasons, justifying his cruelty and destructiveness through Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand bullshit, for example, so no excuses and no forgiveness. He chooses to do terrible things to people and the world, on purpose, having a reasonably good idea of the consequences. He is not mistaken or mislead. He chose these things on purpose), I generally look for multiple constructions one could put on a person's actions based on available data. I act as if the innocent ones are more likely as long as the person is doing no obvious or deliberate harm. If there is harm or potential harm, I proceed as if the noble lie is true, because if you do explain or demonstrate the good, gently, kindly, calmly, a majority will chose the good in the end or at least proceed more gently and with more empathy. Nothing can be done about the rest, but people who are not sociopaths/psychopaths generally can be reached with the right approach. I save the direct opposition for real threats; I speak up where I need to, but I try to direct my anger at the people who deserve it and not direct it at someone who likely is doing nothing wrong or someone who just made a mistake. I had a whole lot of success explaining to middle schoolers why a particular sexist, homophobic, ableist, etc. comment was not okay but making the assumption in my soundbite length response that the thing was said out of ignorance. Sometimes it was; sometimes it wasn't. Pretending it was for all first offenses drew the boundary, but gave them a way out. Very few needed a second warning and only one in eight years needed a third and his friends made it clear they were on my side. There was never a forth offense in my hearing.
I suspect all those years of not taking Middle Schooler unpleasantness personally, (because it hardly ever was about me even when it was directed at me), and all those years practicing empathy and liking kids even when they couldn't like themselves does mean that in a sense I am easy going even though it doesn't feel that way on the inside sometimes. A thing to think about anyway.
* I really wish Valkyrie and Diana Prince could meet.
* This misses some things that bothered me, but is close to my reaction. "Doctor Who, Season 11, Episode 0: Twice Upon a Time:" http://www.fangsforthefantasy.com/2017/12/doctor-who-season-11-episode-0-twice.html
* I'm not entirely in agreement, but this is very close to my reaction. "The Twelfth Doctor Bows Out With Grace:" https://www.thefandomentals.com/doctor-who-s10-e13/
*****
* Full list of Resistance and charity links has been migrated to my profile as it was getting out of hand.
* "Help us stop the humanitarian crisis on Manus:" https://www.asrc.org.au/donate-now/
* "RISE (Refugees, Survivors and Ex-Detainees):" https://www.givenow.com.au/riserefugee/donate
* How to help Rohingya refugees: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/world/asia/rohingya-aid-myanmar-bangladesh.html?emc=edit_nn_20171012&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=50784086&te=1&_r=0
* A list of organizations to help you run for office: http://lovingmyselfishard.tumblr.com/post/167330144634/psst-hey
* Trans Lifeline is one of those organizations you can call at (877) 565-8860 in the US and in Canada (877) 330- 6366.
* The Trevor Project has a 24 hour hotline geared toward helping our youth, and you can call it at 1-866-488-7386
* Resistance links for the tax cuts for the rich: http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/166977878817/fullhalalalchemist-the-gop-is-aiming-for-a-65vc
* Scripts for resisting the Tax Bill: https://laughingacademy.tumblr.com/post/168175070608/the-tax-bill-just-passed-the-senate-heres-what
* Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the representative of your choice.
* This App phones your rep for you: http://takeastance.us/
* Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resistbot.io/
* Help pay for cat food, litter, meds, medical copays: Paypal Lethran@gmail.com
* Birthday/Solstice master list: https://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/1925021.html
* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com
* "Jailed Russian says he hacked DNC on Kremlin’s orders and can prove it:" www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article191857354.html
* "Trump opens up about Mueller, Russia probe:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-opens-up-about-mueller-russia-probe-in-impromptu-interview-1125658691688
* "Trump asserts 'absolute right' to act on DoJ:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-asserts-absolute-right-to-do-what-he-wants-with-justice-1125656643917
* "Trump assertions on DoJ farther than Nixon:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-doj-assertion-more-than-nixon-would-have-dared-beschloss-1125664323927
* "Trump falsely claims he broke a legislative record:" https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/27/trump-legislation-record-truman-319542
* And is charging tax payers for it. "Trump has spent nearly one-third of his presidency at a Trump property:" https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/22/politics/trump-mar-a-lago-golf/index.html
* "Appeals court rejects challenge to Trump voter fraud panel:" http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/366482-appeals-court-rejects-challenge-to-trump-voter-fraud-panel
* "Mueller probe outgrows its ‘witch hunt’ phase:" https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mueller-probe-outgrows-witch-hunt-phase-100045988.html
* "Robert Mueller May Indict Paul Manafort Again:" https://www.thedailybeast.com/robert-mueller-may-indict-paul-manafort-again
* "Trump White House Saw Record Number of First-Year Staff Departures:" https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-white-house-saw-record-number-of-first-year-staff-departures-1514457002
* "Trump nominee's racist roots raises alarm:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-nominee-s-racist-roots-raises-alarm-1125679683616
* The Republican Class warfare continues. "Jeff Sessions Takes a Stand for Debtors’ Prisons:" https://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/race-and-criminal-justice/jeff-sessions-takes-stand-debtors-prisons
* "African-American vote threatens red South:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/african-american-vote-threatens-redness-of-southern-states-1125675587986
* "Where Roy Moore's Voter Fraud Claims Fall Flat:" https://www.npr.org/2017/12/28/574222257/fact-check-where-roy-moores-voter-fraud-claims-fall-flat
* "Truckloads of food meant for Puerto Rico will instead help Central Florida evacuees:" http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/puerto-rico-hurricane-recovery/os-puerto-rican-evacuees-food-donations-20171226-story.html
* "Puerto Rico crisis lingers as Trump moves on:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/puerto-rico-crisis-lingers-as-trump-administration-moves-on-1125682243777
* "Defense Department-Lawsuit story:" https://apnews.com/fe6b9e57e01c4dd89dbb6b520f9c5bf3/Cities-sue-Defense-Dept.-over-gun-check-system-failures
* Only 27. Damn. "Eric Garner's daughter and prominent activist is brain-dead with no chance of recovery, reports say:" http://www.newsweek.com/erica-garner-eric-heart-attack-762221
* "Like Humans, Chimps Try Harder to Warn Unaware Pals:" https://www.livescience.com/60955-chimps-warn-unwary-pals.html
* "Sweden's giant Gavle goat survives Christmas:" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42502375
* I'm ill again and needed to rest Thursday. I SHOULD have gone out for 9AM bureaucracy, but Livia had appropriated the bureaucracy bag, it was cold, and I was exhausted. I really did get as far as shows on, but she was napping and when I went to get it, she blinked at me all sleepy and trusting. I decided that this was the last straw and went to bed instead. Somehow i managed to injure a nipple in my sleep. how does anybody do that? It was so bad I had to take one of the good pain killers to get back to sleep.
I've not been able to pay one of the big bills this month, which means I'm going to be 120-140 down next month at a time when I'm running out of a bunch of stupid basic things like shampoo, litter, tp, the multi vitamins I'm ordered to take to counter nutrient leaching, etc.. I really need to do another round of auctions. I've selected sacrifices, but I don't want to handle oils while i'm contagious, so I've pushed that to hopefully next week. Sigh.
* So a little over a week ago, one of my meat space friends referred to me as "easy going," which is something that startled me. The thing is, in a lot of ways I am like the Hulk in that some part of me is always angry. I am furious that the men who murdered Tamir Rice are still walking free and their are zero plans ever to bring them to justice, for example, and for all the similar cases where there will be no attempt at bringing the criminals to justice because racism. I am constantly, endlessly furious that we are re litigating things like are NAZIsm and pedophilia good or bad, whether women are fully human and capable of making their own medical decisions, should people of colour and trans people have human rights. I am furious that there is still not safe water in Flint and Puerto Rico, that the lights will likely stay off in Puerto Rico for 8 months or more. I am furious about all the ways we've gone backward in the last year and the rob the poor to give to the rich tax bill that just passed. The list goes on and on. I am in so many ways a ball of rage and have been since I was eight.
But she's not wrong either, once I thought about it, because on the personal level, on the dealing with people level, I am still living by the noble lie I adopted when I started teaching, and I don't take much personally unless there is a good reason to. The decades I invested on working on my anger, on healing old wounds, on meditation, did win me something. They often tell survivors of abuse of any kind that they must forgive to get better, but I think this is simply not true. I don't have to forgive or forget the gaslighting. I have chosen to retain most of the survival skills I learned during my grim little war. Oh, I went through and carefully audited my defenses and responses and carefully weeded out the ones that were no longer useful to adult me, but I refused to throw the baby out with the bath water. My particular set of strategic and tactical skills, the particular ways in which I am stubborn in the face of existential threat, my way of triaging crises, a whole toolkit of people observational skills honed to tell actual threats from people just being thoughtless or self involved and from people who are worth being friends with, are all still damned useful. I refuse to root out a whole collection of survival mechanisms that are dormant most of the time, but useful as anything in certain rare, but occasional threat situations. I am proud of my survival. I am proud of the disciplined and occasionally ruthless way I have gone about protecting my core values, myself, and the people I care about. I am proud of having refused to forsake empathy, and of having kept my memories of just how grim shit can get for children and young teens and for having used that in my teaching to help the kids most in need of true kindness from an adult with authority over them. Every time some whiny sexist geek boy pretends that he gets a pass on being a bully himself as an adult on account of his past, I am furious, because that behavior is a choice and I think people who have been harmed have LESS of an excuse for a lack of empathy and decency than people who have no idea what it feels like to be systematically abused. At eight, I could distinguish between true malevolence, adults doing terrible harm because lying to themselves protected them from having to do better, adults who meant well but for one reason or another could not work out an effective course of action and instead were useless at best or extremely harmful for all their good intentions at worst, those who were powerless to intervene but would have liked to, and children who were doing terrible things to save themselves. I never forgave the first category, and have very little sympathy for the second. The others though? I understood and forgave. If I could manage that level of nuance at eight, how much more so at 48.
Like I said, like the hulk, some part of me is always angry, but I get to chose to use that anger for good or for ill. I can chose to direct it at people in power doing harm or on taking it out on innocent people around me. I invariably chose the former instead of the later. It's there when the anti-choice assholes are screaming at woman down at the Grocery Outlet and I go to stand with the women being screamed at. It's there when I right about the abuses the system inflicts. It is there to keep me fighting when the world is as horrible as it is in Trump's America. I do not have to forgive abusers; I just have to be decent where decency is called for.
The Wednesday forage line was a block long Wednesday, despite the snow that was falling, as people are always foraging at the end of the month. I had a lung full of cigarette smoke and couldn't stop talking because one dude towards the end of the line refused to step away far enough like the other smokers were doing. I was cold, I was in pain, I was standing on damaged joints and was going to be for a long time. I could not read or sit down because of the snow. The guy ahead of me started ranting about a women further up the line who was on her cell to a friend working out which of their group had the Costco card, transport, and where to meet up. I was not particularly eavesdropping as she was loud and I wasn't reading. The man was building up a rant about how if she was rich enough for a Costco card, why was she in the forage line and how that was like someone he once saw driving a BMW there. I said something like, "Someone could have bought the car before they lost their job. It could easily be several years old." I pointed out that last time I had the money for it, I bought a really good coat and getting rid of a warm sturdy coat wouldn't be worth the small amount of money I could get selling it. I pointed out that the lady, who was clearly sharing a car and a Costco card with at least two other adults from the bit of her conversation we'd heard, might have clubbed in with a bunch of friends to share a card. I can't afford to do that now, but I'd shared the membership fee with three or four other people at various times in the pat when I could afford to chip in for one and that ten or fifteen dollars is not that large an investment if you are in a position to make it. The man visibly calmed down. I could see him thinking about the woman and her shared Costco card from a different perspective. I could see him applying empathy where escalating anger and resentment had been. I'm glad I spoke up, because I feel like even though it is a drop of water against an ocean, anything we can do to make people see that it is possible to read the same set of facts from a kind perspective instead of a judgemental perspective is good. I used to do something similar when the native born students started getting paranoid about the Ukrainian kids.
The world is full of assholes, but I often come back to my noble lie, which was a Socratic truth. (In case you are curious, the Noble Lie in Plato's republic is "that all men are brothers.") My Noble Lie was that if you show people the Good they will chose it over the alternative and act accordingly. My experience in eight years of teaching was that approximately 1 out of ten people will do the right thing without prompting most of the time. If one goes around openly talking and acting as if the Noble Lie is the truth, another seven or eight out of ten depending on group composition will chose the Good for whatever reason (social pressure, wanting to impress a popular and well liked authority figure, not wanting to look like an asshole in front of their friends, etc.). I never forgot that the noble Lie was a Lie though, and that other 10-20%? I watched like a hawk.
So unless I have good reason to think otherwise (Paul Ryan is clearly intelligent enough to know how destructive and cruel his policies are and is choosing to do them any way for selfish reasons, justifying his cruelty and destructiveness through Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand bullshit, for example, so no excuses and no forgiveness. He chooses to do terrible things to people and the world, on purpose, having a reasonably good idea of the consequences. He is not mistaken or mislead. He chose these things on purpose), I generally look for multiple constructions one could put on a person's actions based on available data. I act as if the innocent ones are more likely as long as the person is doing no obvious or deliberate harm. If there is harm or potential harm, I proceed as if the noble lie is true, because if you do explain or demonstrate the good, gently, kindly, calmly, a majority will chose the good in the end or at least proceed more gently and with more empathy. Nothing can be done about the rest, but people who are not sociopaths/psychopaths generally can be reached with the right approach. I save the direct opposition for real threats; I speak up where I need to, but I try to direct my anger at the people who deserve it and not direct it at someone who likely is doing nothing wrong or someone who just made a mistake. I had a whole lot of success explaining to middle schoolers why a particular sexist, homophobic, ableist, etc. comment was not okay but making the assumption in my soundbite length response that the thing was said out of ignorance. Sometimes it was; sometimes it wasn't. Pretending it was for all first offenses drew the boundary, but gave them a way out. Very few needed a second warning and only one in eight years needed a third and his friends made it clear they were on my side. There was never a forth offense in my hearing.
I suspect all those years of not taking Middle Schooler unpleasantness personally, (because it hardly ever was about me even when it was directed at me), and all those years practicing empathy and liking kids even when they couldn't like themselves does mean that in a sense I am easy going even though it doesn't feel that way on the inside sometimes. A thing to think about anyway.
* I really wish Valkyrie and Diana Prince could meet.
* This misses some things that bothered me, but is close to my reaction. "Doctor Who, Season 11, Episode 0: Twice Upon a Time:" http://www.fangsforthefantasy.com/2017/12/doctor-who-season-11-episode-0-twice.html
* I'm not entirely in agreement, but this is very close to my reaction. "The Twelfth Doctor Bows Out With Grace:" https://www.thefandomentals.com/doctor-who-s10-e13/
*****
* Full list of Resistance and charity links has been migrated to my profile as it was getting out of hand.
* "Help us stop the humanitarian crisis on Manus:" https://www.asrc.org.au/donate-now/
* "RISE (Refugees, Survivors and Ex-Detainees):" https://www.givenow.com.au/riserefugee/donate
* How to help Rohingya refugees: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/world/asia/rohingya-aid-myanmar-bangladesh.html?emc=edit_nn_20171012&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=50784086&te=1&_r=0
* A list of organizations to help you run for office: http://lovingmyselfishard.tumblr.com/post/167330144634/psst-hey
* Trans Lifeline is one of those organizations you can call at (877) 565-8860 in the US and in Canada (877) 330- 6366.
* The Trevor Project has a 24 hour hotline geared toward helping our youth, and you can call it at 1-866-488-7386
* Resistance links for the tax cuts for the rich: http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/166977878817/fullhalalalchemist-the-gop-is-aiming-for-a-65vc
* Scripts for resisting the Tax Bill: https://laughingacademy.tumblr.com/post/168175070608/the-tax-bill-just-passed-the-senate-heres-what
* Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the representative of your choice.
* This App phones your rep for you: http://takeastance.us/
* Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resistbot.io/
* Help pay for cat food, litter, meds, medical copays: Paypal Lethran@gmail.com
* Birthday/Solstice master list: https://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/1925021.html
* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com