Tag: politics

So I’m Going To Talk About Something Kind of Uncomfortable

I feel like social justice culture doesn’t really have a good solution for the fact that abusers often do claim victim status.  My abuser accused me of being the abusive one, to maintain control over me, used the fact that I sometimes fought back when he hurt me as evidence of my abuse.  I was battered, and isolated and he was sociable and popular.  

How do you think that would have gone had we been involved in political organization?  Even without that I was expelled from what remained of my social group, people believed I was what he said I was.

I’m not saying that believing survivors is not paramount, or that we as a society do not have a huge problem with brushing aside true accusations as malicious or false.  I’m saying that maybe the vigilante guilt on accusation model focuses more on punishing the guilty than protecting the victim sometimes.  That sometimes it is more interested in wielding its flaming sword and feeling righteous than assuring that its flaming sword is used in the cause of righteousness.

There have been cases of positionality protecting abusers in political organization.  There have been cases where mutual accusation lead to the political organization shrugging its shoulders and expelling both parties.  And I have seen first hand cases of survivors shouted down as rape apologists for criticizing the witch hunt way organizations went about handling things AND seen abusers and rapists unscathed by accusations because their victims were afraid to come forward because of how well they’d seen those vigilante systems work to their abusers advantage.  As well there are numerous people who would benefit from being able to go through an accountability process who are afraid to use them because they don’t want to see the person who harmed them unintentionally painted as a monster and marked as such for the rest of their life

American Electoral Politics:

Democrats:
Bernie Sanders: I promise to murder and devour at absolute max only two thousand babies, poke you each only in one eye, kick less than five hundred adorable puppies, and only pinch the american citizenry with a giant pinching machine on alternate tuesdays
Hillary Clinton: I will devour at maximum four thousand babies, poke you all in both eyes but kick you in the shins only once per quarter, kick less than one thousand adorable puppies, and pinch the American citizenry with a giant pinching machine only on tuesdays, but I’m actually electable and trust me you don’t want the other guy

Republicans:
Donald Trump: I’m not sure if I’m trying to get elected or auditioning for the part of Immortan Joe. Hillary is weak because she is unwilling to kill more babies.
Marco Rubio: I’m also not sure if I’m trying to get elected or auditioning for the part of Immortan Joe, but phrased more tactfully. I will minimize the baby killing, unless they deserve it and they all definitely deserve it.
Ben Carson: Immortan Joe and I are BFFs, here are some obviously photoshopped pictures of us hanging out.
Carly Fiorina: I will kill all the babies because that is the only way to remain competitive with China. I am also auditioning for the part of Immortan Joe, because I can trample the rights of women just as hard as any man.
Mike Huckabee: I am Immortan Joe’s father, and I’ll whip his liberal behind for teaching his wives to speak.
The Rest: We sound semi-reasonable next to the rest of the clowns in our party, and what do you want some liberal elite (which we are also, but we’re not bringing that up) ruling you?

My politics are like “Revolutionary anti-authoritarian (but not necessarily anarchist, some Marxists/Trots/leftcoms/etc and so on are also okay, and like a lot of post-left anarchists/individualist anarchists aren’t) anti-capitalists who are willing to adapt their theoretical positions when presented with evidence of how they work in practice and are basically good hearted and want the best for people

“ should all work together to create revolution and then cooperate to create a better society, because ultimately they should care more about how their policies work than theoretical purity.

IDK What My Politics Even Are Really Like… I’m a “capitalism provably doesn’t work”ist and like a “Stalinism was bad”ist… and like maybe I’m a Marxist, maybe I’m an Anarcho-commie, maybe I’m a syndicalist, maybe I’m some other thing.

I like unions a lot?

Um?  I’ve read theory and am still like “these things all sound pretty good compared to this current thing, but I am not sure which is the most practical way to achieve my goal of a post scarcity society”

Maybe I’m a mere-communist, the way that asshat who wrote the Narnia books was into “mere christianity”

I kinda am not that into vanguardism?  Um? 

Maybe I need my own tendency which is like “evidence based policy after we eliminate capitalism and radically alter legal codes about ownership”

Reading About Victorian Politics

You had your:
Liberals:
Freedom of action, suspicion of government intervention

Your Tory Radicals: often Christian Socialists and Marxists, anti-aristocratic, wrote about the problems of freedom of thought but also about social justice

and your Tory conservatives:
Proaristocratic, pro-medieval revival, pro state religion.

I feel like a lot of the problems of earlier leftist movements comes from having your leftists come out of the Tories with their big authoritarian streak.

Like being an offshoot of the tories is where you went wrong.

That said I’ve complex feelings about state, but I do believe in interventionism.

Also Sometimes One Can Be Sneaky About Social Justice

For example, in my husband’s home country of New Zealand, diabetes was a really common health problem for Maori and Pacific Islanders for many many years, but whenever the labor party would try to introduce bills to do health initiatives to deal with this National (New Zealand’s big conservative party) would smack them down as “racist.” (which is bullshit)

So eventually labor got clever, and passed a general diabetes health campaign, which wasn’t specifically for Maori and Pacific Islanders, made access to treatment and prevention a lot easier for everyone, and of course those groups for whom diabetes was a common problem benefitted most from the program, but National couldn’t say shit because “What, do you hate people with diabetes, or are you a racist, do you want a white’s only diabetes program?”

And rates of diabetes and complications from diabetes went down dramatically for Maori and Pacific Islanders and that’s how you sneak crap under the radar.  

Like it’s unquestionably shitty to have to do that, but I think the material good of people not dying of a treatable illness kind of makes it worthwhile to make an effort to do things like this, because it’s effective.

Like, you center an issue that’s primarily an issue for oppressed people, but don’t make it explicitly about oppressed people and you can sometimes manage to manipulate the shitty “equality means treating everyone the same” system (which needs to be changed, but that’s a bigger change than sneaking some crap under the radar which will minimize suffering while we’re working on the big change).

Like doing an anti-domestic violence campaign that was for “all genders” would probably do some useful stuff and get less flack than one just about ladies (but as a whole be more helpful to ladies, because ladies are more likely to be victims of domestic violence).

Many of the most successful affirmative action programs have been non-explicit in their aims, because they don’t create the same resentment and backlash, and while it still sucks that their is resentment and backlash and it’s important to try and change that, it means that the programs get to do the work they’re supposed to do without being at as much risk of being instantly dismantled.