#1250

Acetylene Eyes is ostensibly a sex blog. In other words, for better or worse, a massive degree of privilege allows me to pursue this project. With that in mind, I try to take a step back and focus on the broader sociopolitical context affecting the world in which we live, lose and sometimes even love.

I am going to do my damnedest to counter the raft of dire news with some bright spots. But there’s no way around it–this post is gonna be rough. (A point of procedure: I will not be using the name of the burning trash fire that can only be extinguished with urine as per George Lakoff sage advice about acknowledging the regime and resisting the insistence on subconsciously contributing to the cult of personality.)

This is a super long post so I’m going to lead with the two bits of indispensible reading: Sarah Kendzior’s exquisite guide to surviving in an autocracy and The Atlantic’s How To Build an Autocracy.

The 45th POTUS took office on January 20, 2017. Attendance was notable scarce. (A point that the new White House press secretary famously pointed out was manufactured by the lame stream media and then defended on the Sunday morning talk show circuit with the claim that by using ‘alternate facts’ proved that it was one of the largest crowds in inaugural history.) I am certain George Orwell is doing his impression of a rotisserie chicken in his grave…

Oh and let’s not overlook the fact that WhiteHouse.gov removed all references to LGBTQ and Climate Change. Turned the Civil Rights page into a Blue Lives Matter propaganda fest and eliminated the Spanish language option for the site.

Something notable happened that same day. A neo-Nazi got sucker punched by an ANTIFA protestor. Twice!. It was glorious. The Internet took it from there, quickly turning it into a fabulous meme. (My personal favorite employs Miley Cyrus to hilarious effect.)

And for the record, I’m very much in favor of punching Nazis and I am sick. unto. death. of liberals who think we need to hug it out. If you’ll recall it took an entire World Fucking War to rid of us the first Nazi scourge. If you object to violence so much, then I don’t know maybe take a an ounce of historical perspective and shut the fuck up? (I’ll circle back to this in a bit.)

The day after the inauguration there was the Women’s March. The biggest mass demonstration in US History. It was a mixed bag. Exactly the sort of show of solidarity that was needed; while also notably problematic for it’s marginalization of trans folk and sex workers. And well, this. (Either your feminism is intersectional or you/your convenient white feminism are both bullshit.)

The Republican controlled legislature immediate began to ram through it’s regressive platform planks. Reinstating a gag order the denies government funding to any NGO that provides abortions in spite of the fact that US Federal monies are already forbidden from paying for anything pertaining to abortion. They also re-introduced their fever dream bill that dictates human life begins at fertilization.

On Tuesday the shit show picked up speed: the EPA froze grants but also–in my mind unconstitutionally–ordered everyone to not talk to the press about it. Shortly their after the Badlands National Park went rogue, tweeting climate change data. (Who knew the initial leaders of the resistance would be Teen Vogue the National Park Service, eh?)

Then there were the cabinet confirmation hearings… and really, yeah… I just can’t. A racist demagogue confirmed for Attorney General. An incompetent fuckface for Secretary of Education. And a guy who opposes Net Neutrality–or more practically, someone who could make it so that the NYTimes homepage takes 10 minutes to load while Breitbart loads instantly…

Also, the House GOP quietly closed the investigation into gross malfeasance in Flint, MI.

In a bit of good news, villagers in Mathura, India banded together to knit sweaters for the elephants at a nearby sanctuary to protect them from freezing temperatures. (I love elephants more than people, for the record. You should too.)

The POTUS45 continues to claim that there was massive voter fraud in the election and were that addressed he would’ve won both the electoral college and the popular vote. Bear in mind that this has been repeated debunked. Further, the four instances of voter fraud in the 2016 involved GOP voters. And I can’t find the source currently, but I remember reading in enough source that it would be considered public knowledge that all cases of actual voter fraud in the last twenty years involved multiple votes cast in favor of Republicans. Hmmm. But you know, alternate facts! Also, it’s not as if members of the incoming White House staff weren’t registered in multiple states by the dozens.

Before the end of Week 1, the U.S. was downgraded from a ‘full democracy’ to a ‘flawed democracy’ by an independent watchdog organization.

In a bit of good news, folks in the scientific community are working with benevolent drugs again. Yay! In another bit of good news, Kodak is bringing back Ektachrome!

Then came the executive order banning folks–whether or not they hold valid immigration status from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The protests around the country were compelling. (I fly through JFK roughly every 5 weeks and I have to say that the live streams were compelling to watch.) I’m not going to rehash the entire proceedings because they’ve been very public but I do want to draw your attention to several things. First, apparently those detained were interrogated and among the questions was their opinion on POTUS45. That sort of thing is pretty normal when you enter Turkey, for example–not in the US. Second, the people in the judicial system standing up to the POTUS unconstitutional and discriminatory ban have been women. Third, this morning POTUS45 threw a temper tantrum saying that the system of checks and balances of power the judiciary is effecting on the executive branch are placing the country in peril. Those familiar with how authoritarians operate will realize how truly chilling this is. (Bear in mind that this same weekend that a Canadian white supremacist shot and killed 6 people worshiping in a mosque in Quebec City. Also, keep in mind that threats against Jews are experiencing a pronounced up tick. Counter with this item.)

It should also be noted that there’s a historical precedent against this sort of thing, actually. Also, one of the first people detained was apparently a Kurd who translated for the US army in Iraq. Real patriotic you fucking fuck witted fuckfaces.

At the same time as the ban came in, POTUS45 placed white supremacist Steve Bannon on the National Security Council.

As I’ve mentioned before I went to an extremely conservative Xtian school from elementary school through graduating high school. I’m still friends with a handful of my classmates–despite having fuck all in common with them now. One of them posted this article praising POTUS45 for going the arrival of the SEAL killed in his first so-colossally fucked as to only be interpreted as incompetent raid in Yemen–which notable resulted in the death of an 8 year old girl who was U.S. Citizen. I pointed out that the raid was a fustercluck of epic proprotions and that it was curious that they weren’t mentioning anything about the efforts to remove white supremacist hate groups from the official terrorist watch list. The response I received was that unlike Obama–who was always on vacation, he is doing what a president should do by attending funerals for those KIA. I pointed out that then they must certain take issue with Dubya more than Obama. After all, who can forget 43′s response immediately after the planes hit the towers and who took almost triple the # of vacation days in his two terms as Obama. There was interestingly no response.

Some good news now: Germany legalized medical marijuana!

Anyway, I’m writing this a full 10 days before it’ll go live. So this will almost certainly be outdated by the time you read it. But it’s important to keep perspective. To remember what actually happened is a radical undertaking.

I have two more points to make and then back to the nekkid people.

First, some sort of First Amendment Defense Act is coming. The text is already floating around. It’s terrifying. And entirely unnecessary. The 1st Amendment as it is now protects freedom of religion. What FADA bills are designed to do is enshrine the right to discriminate against folks based on their sexual preference and/or gender identity. This bill is decidedly un-Xtian. And if someone insists it is all you need to do is ask them to maybe review what Matt. 25:40 has to say on the topic. But it also strikes me as ironic that the people who are the most rabid about these bills are actually the same folks proposing anti-Sharia laws. It’s almost like they just don’t want any competition… (Also, bear in mind that a FADA bill in combination with a Muslim registry and the current anti-immigration posture are intended to cater to the racist sensibilities of the average Joe and Jane in middle American but they are also seeking out those most likely to resist–democratically–this regime. I have every reason to believe that this bill and the Muslim registry will serve as templates for disenfranchisement several years on. This should concern everyone.)

Second, I want to comment on the events at UC Berkeley last week. A hateful troll whose name I refuse to use on my blog was invited to speak at the campus by campus Republicans. There are two things I want to point out. First, accounts from the actual protestors vary drastically from the official media version. (I know people who were there but cannot include their accounts here as they do not want to potentially be linked to an NSFW blog.) If you don’t think violence is an appropriate tactic for protest. That’s fine. No one is insisting you do anything you don’t want to do. But to suggest that violence is not an appropriate tact is not your place either. Stay in your own damn lane. As Lana Wachowski–yes, the Lana Wachowski behind the phenomenal series Sense8–pointed out in the above Guardian article:

The rulebook has been thrown out, [i]t’s absolutely acceptable to use
violence. They are 100% certain to use it against us.

I’m not surprised regarding the variation between the media and the view from the ground. Liberals and progressives have a degree of privilege that allows them to enshrine their politics with a virtue by respectability. Those of us who are LGBTQ are under greater immediate threat. So our perspective is fundamentally different. But I think if people did a bit more researched they’d learn that black block and antifa factions and their diverse tactics do actually matter. Consider this clip from inauguration protests where black blockers protect a disabled woman from pigs with pepper spray.

And to the media, can this shit about how shutting the protest down was an infringement on freedom of speech. I don’t think you know what that means. It’s freedom of speech. The troll scheduled to speak and folks like asshat former NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly love to act like their right to speech was infringed upon. Shut the fuck up. There is a difference between freedom of speech and entitlement to an audience; you’re confusing the two. These people who are complaining about having their rights trampled are more than willing to trample the rights of others via their already extensive public platform. Their objection has less to do with freedom of speech and more to do with most institutions for higher learning slanting both liberal and progressive. They like to make themselves ‘disempowered’ in these situations so that they will have a safe place to speak their truth to a power that doesn’t actually exert any degree of control over them. (At least not yet.) It’s ironic given how against the notion of safe spaces that the right is, that they merely do not want safe spaces for anyone but themselves. By perpetuating this infringement upon the right to free speech, the media is actually doing their work for them more than the violence embraced by a scant minority ever would. The conversation around this topic must change.

Yours in RESISTANCE –AE