Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst, “Flowing Against Fascism”
And, because I am who I am, I thought of Emile Durkheim and Martin Buber — Jews like my rabbi and me, who offer us clarity and solace in the face of seemingly-endless state violence. If I had thought about it in advance, I would have expected the Durkheim: he teaches us that community helps people feel things, make sense of ourselves and each other, and structure and reinforce connection. Singing together at a protest, feeling a sense of unity through community action, is what Durkheim called collective effervescence. So is the catharsis of shouting “get a new job, you Nazi pig” at law enforcement officers with your comrades. So is the decision not to move when, as a group, we noticed that the cops had corralled us, isolated the street, made it difficult if not impossible to leave safely.
But Durkheim isn’t sufficient if we want to understand the fullness of moments like the one I shared with my neighbor whose name I would only learn later. For that we need Buber, who teaches us that human relationships are where we find meaning — that in moments like these, the difference and space between us dissolves. That the face of the Other, our neighbor, is the face of God.
George Pappas (to Radley Balko), “An interview with a fired immigration judge”
It always starts with immigrants. And we saw it first at the immigration courts. So my job is to talk about what happened in the immigration courts. I can humanize it by talking about what specifically happened to me, but it really isn’t about me. It’s about the wider picture, here. It’s about the vision they have for our society. …
The Supreme Court and Justice Kavanaugh basically gave the okay to racial profiling in immigration enforcement. So now what? Well, you stop fighting in court. You fight in the public arena. People need to know what’s happening. They need to know that immigration officers can’t just tell by looking who is and isn’t a citizen. That means no one is safe. This is not an immigration issue anymore. Now it’s a civil liberties issue. We are now all vulnerable to having our due process rights and civil liberties abrogated at any time based on how we speak or look, or on where we live or work.
Virginia Heffernan, “The billionaires’ eugenics project: how Epstein infiltrated Harvard, muzzled the humanities and preached master-race science”
Billionaires really like thinkers who see their exploitation of the weak as a good and natural thing. Epstein funnelled as much as $20m a year to academic men who shared his ideology. In exchange, Epstein himself, who could barely read and write, was empowered to hold forth in formal sessions at Harvard, condemning feeding and caring for the poor as if he were making a scholarly argument.
The academics, in turn, liked the billionaire glitz. Middle-class rightwingers at Edge functions, including former New York Times columnist David Brooks and neuroscientist Sam Harris, now consorted with the likes of tech monopolists Jeff Bezos and Sergey Brin.
Marisa Kabas, “For ICE to build concentration camps quickly, they’re leaning on this ‘Dept. of War’ program”
There have been nine potential sales canceled since news of the planned camps broke. On February 6th, we learned a warehouse sale in Mississippi was canceledthanks in part to the opposition of Senator Roger Wicker, a hardcore MAGA Republican. As I was writing this piece, the fate of multiple prospective warehouses changed, like one in Kansas City, Missouri: The owner of the property slated to be sold to the federal government announced the sale wasn’t happening. This came after the city’s port authority voted unanimously to cut ties with the real estate company. While their announcement didn’t mention this aspect of the situation, the timing was notable. (The day after the deal fell through, someone set fire to the warehouse. If you know anything about the person who did this — no, you don’t.)
Finian O’Toole, “The Crime of Witness”
Meanwhile, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal declared that although he did not deserve to be shot dead, “Pretti made a tragic mistake by interfering with ICE agents.” His error was that he “attempted, foolishly, to assist a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by agents.” It is clear from the rest of the article that the Journal believes the Trump administration to be lying about its unjustified killing of an American citizen, but the import of this otherwise astounding truth is diluted by the suggestion that he was, after all, a fool. In an authoritarian state, who but a fool would try to help a woman who has been pepper-sprayed by the great leader’s shock troops?
The sin of civic “interference” is in fact the saving grace of democracy. Good and Pretti and thousands of other citizens have been getting in the way of the armed overthrow of democratic freedoms by doing what journalism is supposed to do: pay attention to the actual, on-the-ground reality. The phone that Pretti had in his hand was a connection to a communal determination to refuse the narcotic of normalization. The videos that expose the administration’s mendacity about its own use of extreme violence against peaceful dissent are themselves products of the courage to show up, to be there, to see for yourself — the impulses journalists are supposed to value above all others, aside from the use of accurate language to name what you see.
Jameela Jamil, “We let pedophiles decide our beauty standards“
When I was young, I thought it was just about controlling and distracting women by giving them the infinite task of fighting time and gravity… and I think I was right, but over time, and after enough time behind the curtain, I realize it is far more sinister.
The prescription for grown women to be hairless, smooth, curve-less, and ageless is a response to a pedophile-dominant media/entertainment industry, and they’ve found a smart way to exploit the image of the very young. They set a standard so difficult to achieve for most grown women, that it’s naturally, and most conveniently, “easier” to just put teenagers in the spotlight. Namely magazines and campaigns, wearing clothes and accessories that other teenagers can’t afford. It would be crazy to actually try to appeal to your market, the one that has disposable income. Much better to show them the clothes, make up, and sunglasses on bodies and faces that don’t resemble theirs at all, so that they have no idea what they would look like in these things, and then feel alienated and foolish for even considering such a thing. (I can’t imagine why these industries are all failing now?) What is the motivation to keep doing it though? I really think: pedophilia.
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