Though great political work and useful debate about ideas and ethics are happening over social media, much of the time we spend together (or in solitude) has been replaced by the time we spend online, in arenas not conducive to subtlety or complexity. (Rebecca Solnit, Call Them by Their True Names)
Men must begin to challenge notions of masculinity that equate manhood with ability to exert power over others, especially through the use of coercive force. (bell hooks, Feminist Theory)
… watched this video on how to apply eye shadow and discovered i need something called an eyeshadow base… that brings the total for my eyeshadow adventure to $100… it’s expensive to be feminine!…
… for a while, i thought it would be enough to get evermore women into leadership positions… then the likes of MTG and Lauren Boebert arrived in congress… i realized that women can execute the patriarchal playbook as well as men…
I am alarmed by the violence that women do to each other: professional violence, competitive violence, emotional violence. I am alarmed by the willingness of women to enslave other women. I am alarmed by a growing absence of decency on the killing floor of professional women’s worlds. (bell hooks, Feminist Theory)
Because Trump is suggesting he might get replace income tax with tariffs…
Separating Tariff Facts from Tariff Fictions | Cato Institute
Tariffs are costly taxes, and economists consider them to be poor tools for boosting the economy, reducing the trade deficit, or achieving strategic objectives.
Micro aggressions: Let’s Go Brandon and Trump pissing on CNN stickers on a huge pickup truck. Toxic patriarchy.
The scene, a restorative pilates class where self care is the goal. Two classmates having a vibrant conversation that suggests Anthony Fauci deserves to be assassinated. I completely tense up just overhearing it. Not my goal in taking the class. How do I compassionately deal with it?
June 18, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
“Christians” who want to rule the country…
That May, Russell Moore (no relation to Ms. Moore) left the church leadership and then, the following month, left the church itself over its handling of sexual abuse allegations and racism. A 2022 report on the church and sex abuse was so damning that Russell Moore wrote: “I was wrong to call sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention…a crisis. Crisis is too small a word. It is an apocalypse.” The investigation, he says, “uncovers a reality far more evil and systematic than I imagined it could be.”
To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility.
— All About Love: New Visions (Love Song to the Nation Book 1) by bell hooks a.co/itHHQlY
bell hooks quoting Erich Fromm’s definition of love…
“the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Explaining further, he continues: “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” Since the choice must be made to nurture growth, this definition counters the more widely accepted assumption that we love instinctually.”
— All About Love: New Visions (Love Song to the Nation Book 1) by bell hooks a.co/08X8dFK
Finished reading Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, bell hooks. Really good.
Our emphasis must be on cultural transformation: destroying dualism, eradicating systems of domination. Our struggle will be gradual and protracted.
It is disheartening that this gradual and protracted approach has been used by far right conservatives to move society deeper into white supremacist patriarchy and cement it. The feminist revolution never materialized in this way. It petered out in a series of rebellions which gained some ground, but never got to a revolution.
Window AC units installed… ready for the heat.
Rhetorical skill was useless, or even damaging, if it did not go with virtue and moral purpose: all must be done in the service of good. Cicero drew a distinction between virtuous eloquence and the mayhem created by demagogues. (Sarah Bakewell, Humanly Possible)
Pursuing logic will not in itself achieve understanding, which comes from living a thoughtful life. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)
What is also true is that we have a responsibility to make these changes regardless of any larger-scale impact. Moral philosopher Peter Singer notes that failing to cut our emissions as individuals is like taking a bulldozer and plowing under the crops of a subsistence farmer in Africa.26 It’s horrifying and it’s wrong and we need to stop, regardless of whether it contributes to larger political change. That is our personal responsibility. (Jeff Golden, Reclaiming the Sacred)
Just came out to my family. They embraced me with love and kindness. I need not have worried.
a work of art cannot be wrong: it is what it is. (Jennifer Higgie, The Other Side)
June 14, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
One CEO left the meeting with the takeaway that “Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” and several, Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC reported, said that he “was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought [and] was all over the map.” He could not explain how he planned to accomplish any of the policies he was proposing. When asked why he had chosen a policy of bringing the corporate tax rate down to 20%, he allegedly answered: “Well, it’s a round number.”
June 14, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
Reacting to the news of the Supreme Court’s decision in Garland v. Cargill, gun safety advocate David Hogg, who survived the Parkland shooting, wrote: “Ah yes because who doesn’t need the ability to freely turn a semiautomatic AR-15 into what in effect is a machine gun. This is f*cking insane.”
… this is about the civil war that is coming…