Periodic Perspectives

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[saul-tortellini]

This is perhaps my new favorite video

[cryptotheism]

thoughts on american civic religion?

It's the "Male Gaze" of contemporary religious sociology. It's a genuinely useful and specific framework that too often gets taken wildly out of its intended context. It's a framework I'm critical of, but in a very "This was invented in the 60s and there's been half a century of good scholarship" type way.

Like, the idea of a governments authority ultimately stemming from god is not a uniquely American concept. Governments having public rituals, or propagandizing it's founding figures with religious imagery are also not uniquely American.

BUT many of the ways that Americans have attempted to spiritualize the state are uniquely American and interesting. You wanna see the real American civil religion? Look at how confederate veterans and church organizations worked together in the Jim Crow south. Postwar funerals and church services became common meeting places for confederates to opine about the war.

The Lost Cause mythology is literally the result of syncretism between southern American evangelism, and a seething white supremacist government.

[mercuryfountain-deactivated2024]

I thought "pretentious" was supposed to refer to attempts at depth that end up grating and sophomoric because they don't know what they're talking about (been there), not just any attempt at depth whatsoever

[reclaiming-god]

thinking about this today

[cryptotheism]

I wouldn't call Pratchett's writing unhorny. He's just a tease. He absolutely loves to imply that horny things are happening just offstage where you can't see. Discworld is soaked in love and sex, but the books are about one guy trying to solve a dwarf murder.

I think one of my favorite jokes he ever makes is the timeskip where it's implied that Carrot learns what sex is.

[cryptotheism]

Every time Vimes looks at Lady Sibyl: "I think I hauve covid"

[cryptotheism]

Angua watching Carrot accidentally deescalate an international conflict by organizing a football match: "I am going to fuck him until my pelvis fractures."

[cryptotheism]

Pratchett understands that Horny isn't just when there's two hot chiseled conventionally attractive people doing cool shit. Pratchett understands that the horniest state a human can be in is "Oh god I can't not fuck them" and sometimes that means two married middle-aged schlubs going at it like rabbits in heat. You look me in the eye and tell me that Vimes and Sibyl don't fuck nasty.

[saintmaudes]

The evil stepmother is a fixture in European fairy tales because the stepmother was very much a fixture in early European society–mortality in childbirth was very high, and it wasn’t unusual for a father to suddenly find himself alone with multiple mouths to feed. So he remarried and brought another woman into the house, and eventually they had yet more children, thus changing the power dynamics of inheritance in the household in a way that had very little to do with inherent, archetypal evil and everything to do with social expectation and pressure. What was a woman to do when she remarried into a family and had to act as mother to her husband’s children as well as her own, in a time when economic prosperity was a magical dream for most? Would she think of killing her husband’s children so that her own children might therefore inherit and thrive? [...] Perhaps. Perhaps not. But the fear that stepmothers (or stepfathers) might do this kind of thing was very real, and it was that fear–fed by the socioeconomic pressures felt by the growing urban class–that fed the stories.

We see this also with the stories passed around in France–fairies who swoop in to save the day when women themselves can’t do so; romantic tales of young girls who marry beasts as a balm to those young ladies facing arranged marriages to older, distant dukes. We see this with the removal of fairies and insertion of religion into the German tales. Fairy tales, in short, are not created in a vacuum. As with all stories, they change and bend both with and in response to culture.

— Amanda Leduc, Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space

[zegalba]

Anubis & Horus spotted having tea in Cairo (2006)

[cryptotheism]

Can you imagine if the American government publicly announced that they were retrieving sperm from dead soldiers. Vietnam protestors would've been hurling mayonnaise at government buildings.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The whole history of the Zionist project can be distilled down into a single exchange among the country’s leadership in those fateful days of 1967. At a meeting of the leftist Mapai party, Golda Meir asked what on earth Israel was going to do with “a million Arabs” after occupying the remaining Palestinian Territories. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol replied, “I get it. You want the dowry, but you don’t like the bride!” This has been the essential contradiction of the Zionist project from its inception: that even successful territorial ambitions in an already-inhabited land bring non-Jews under their political control. Apartheid is merely a holding pattern, a means of deferring this Palestinian question that results. This contradiction is only ultimately resolved within Zionism via expulsion or extermination of the native inhabitants.

Mason Herson-Hord, A Second Nakba: Paving the Way to Genocide

[might-be-a-potato]

[cryptotheism]

hey do you know where the antisemitic conspiracy theories about lizard people came from? i remember telling a friend the other week that jokes about people secretly being lizards (esp. rich/powerful people or jews) are antisemitic and that it comes from the protocols of the elders of zion, and while i know the first part's true i'm not so sure about the second (not that i feel bad blaming things on the protocols of the elders of zion, because fuck it, but still)

The lizard people thing is actually far more recent. That specifically goes back to David Icke, and his book The Biggest Secret. Which was published in 1998.

Reptilian aliens were a thing in UFO lore for a while, but they were more akin to Space Orcs than a dog whistle for Jews. They have their genesis in old Conan the Barbarian novels.

Basically what Icke did was he combined old antisemitic conspiracies like the Protocols and Blood Libel with contemporary UFO lore.

[cryptotheism]

Iirc Icke's whole deal relies on Serpent Seed, an antisemitic myth that Jews are descended from the serpent copulating with eve in the garden of Eden. But this was more considered a metaphor than anything else.

Icke was a bit of an innovator for taking it with such shocking literalism, claiming that all Jewish people are LITERALLY bloodthirsty shapeshifting reptilian aliens from the constellation Draco, and that not only is the devil real, but he's a 25 foot tall literal dragon from space.

[postillfastill]

did you guys know that the mother fucking UN's humanitarian and legal experts have been saying israel's occupation of palestine territories is and has always been illegal, as it violates the FUCKING GENEVA CONVENTION? did you know it was britain that 'gave' the land that wasn't theirs to give to found the state of israel as a tactic to get more jews to join the british army in their already-active war against the ottoman empire? did you know that just between 2008 and 2022 the idf killed almost SEVEN THOUSAND palestinians, as opposed to the 308 israelis by palestinians in the same time period? did you know that israel itself admits to 'forcefully evacuating' palestinians from their homes over the course of their annexation of the country? did you know the british army helped them? did you know that any palestinian who didn't want to have their house taken from them and given to american immigrants being shipped in to populate britain's pet project was killed on their spot? did you know that back in 2018 palestinians did nothing but MARCH in protest of their occupation and in response, the idf is CONFIRMED to have killed almost 400 of them, including FIFTY FIVE CHILDREN? did you know palestinians are not allowed to build anything on the land they have left? did you know they aren't ALLOWED TO LEAVE?? did you know over HALF of christian evangelicals support israel solely because the bible says israel has to exist in order to bring about the second coming? did you know that in 2021, over 88% of us congress were evangelical christians? did you know israel is confirmed to have knowingly bombed palestinian hospitals and the idf had been caught targeting journalists? did you know israel is committing another war crime at this very moment by dropping white phosphorus on gaza civilians? did you know the israeli press was just confirmed to have completely fabricated an account of palestinian war crime right after their own got caught on film? did you know the defense minister of israel openly called all palestinians 'animals' to justify the deaths of their civilians? did you know holocaust survivors are presently speaking out against the israeli state's ethnic cleansing of arabs?

why, in the united states, is criticizing a settler colony's active attempts at extermination labeled antisemitic because of the religion the settlers happen to practice, but rooting for the complete eradication of a muslim country that was already there and is barely still there not islamophobia?? why is religion being used as a shield to justify genocide?

when a sudden act of politically charged violence occurs, like the hamas attack a few days ago, i ask WHY? i ask WHY until i get as far back as i can. i read accounts written by all sides. i try to find out why this is happening in the first place. half of these facts have come from the israeli government itself. all of them are easily found and easily confirmed by reputable sources. a lot of them are caught on film. all of these facts lead me to know that the state of israel was created by britain in order to gain an advantage in an unrelated war. i know the state of israel has caused unimaginable harm to the country it's slowly eating, and has suffered just a fraction in return. i know religion justifies none of it.

palestinians deserve to live in their own country. palestinians deserve to not be forced to give their homes to americans. palestinians deserve to live, to leave, to stay, to wave their own fucking flag. they do not deserve to have another country plopped on top of them and then have their settlers ask 'don't WE have a right to exist?' as their own right to exist is being extinguished.

fuck the idf, fuck israel, fuck manifest destiny, fuck all settlers who think they deserve someone else's home enough to kick them out of it. literally, in israel's case. indigenous americans, indigenous canadians, chicanos, pacific islanders, filipinos, mestizos, we should all be standing with palestine, because we KNOW how colonial violence goes and what it looks like. solidarity between all colonised peoples. free palestine.

[sar-soor]

Some things to note when you're discussing Palestine and Israeli apartheid in the coming days/weeks/months (not a complete list but will update as I have the emotional energy):

Do not refer to what is happening in Palestine as a "conflict" or "war." These words imply a balance of power that does not exist. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have no military, no control of their borders, no control over their access to resources like electricity, water, and medical supplies, no freedom of movement, and, most importantly, they do not have the most powerful government in the world funding them.

Israel is an apartheid state. Refer to it as such. It is based in a settler colonialist system that actively recruits and funds people from the Jewish diaspora to move into homes on stolen Palestinian land. Since the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, 42% of the West Bank has been illegally settled while 86% of East Jerusalem has been stolen for settler use. Under international law, the expansion of these settlements is illegal. Israel has faced zero repercussions for their actions. Hold them accountable in your speech.

Do not refer to the Israeli army as the "IDF" (Israeli Defense Force). Palestinians refer to them as the "IOF" for a reason--Israel does not need to defend themselves from civilians who have no military. From 2008 to September 2023, over 3,800 Palestinian civilians were killed by the IOF. There is no need for oppressors to defend themselves--they are the ones on the offense at all times by the nature of their positions of power.

Remember that decolonization will not be a peaceful process. Do not condemn a group of people who have been brutally colonized, ethnically cleansed, and displaced from their homes for 75 years for fighting back against those oppressing them. This post concisely explains why the violence necessary for decolonization will never match that of the violence necessary for the sustained process of colonization. You cannot break free of a violent system with nonviolence. When Palestinians attempted peaceful protest in 2018 on the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, they along with clearly marked journalists, doctors, and medics were shot and killed for their actions. Oppressors will maintain their power status by any means necessary; the ongoing genocide of Palestinians is proof of that. Decolonization requires violence because colonization itself is an inherently violent system.

Zionism does not equate to Judaism. Do not let Zionist propaganda fool you into believing that condemning the Israeli government is in any way anti-Semitic. The Israeli government does not represent the views of all Jews, even those who are Israeli citizens. Governments should always, always be criticized and held to account for their actions. Israel is no exception to this rule. Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. Anyone who tells you otherwise is weaponizing true Jewish oppression and suffering as a means to gain support for a violent, racist, apartheid government.

[sar-soor]

Something I’d like to add to the 5th point: Zionism is not Judaism is something to keep in mind at all times. Do not fall into anti-Semitic traps yourself by blaming all Jews for what the Israeli government is doing to Palestinians. As I said above, the Israeli government does not represent the views of all Jews, even those who are Israeli citizens. Unfortunately there will be anti-Semitic rhetoric from some people who believe they’re defending Palestine; it’s our job to shut that shit down. Do not let anyone get away with anti-Semitism in any context. Remind them that, once again, Judaism does not equate to Zionism. There are many Zionists/Zionist sympathizers who are not Jewish themselves (e.g. some Evangelical and Baptist Christians). Jews are not oppressing Palestinians; the Israeli government and Zionists are. Let’s be mindful of the language we are using and the language others use in these conversations.

[bundibird]

Link

[berylian]

Image ID: twitter/X post by Naila (blue check) @BrownNaila.

"I'm personally a holocaust survivor as an infant, I barely survived. My grandparents were killed in Auschwitz and most of my extended family were killed. I became a Zionist; this dream of the Jewish people resurrected in their historical homeland and the barbed wire of Auschwitz being replaced by the boundaries of a Jewish state with a powerful army... and then I found out that it wasn't exactly like that, that in order to make this Jewish dream a reality we had to visit a nightmare on the local population.

There's no way you could have ever created a Jewish state without oppressing and expelling the local population. Jewish Israeli historians have shown without a doubt that the expulsion of Palestinians was persistent, pervasive, cruel, murderous, and with deliberate intent - that's what's called the 'Nakba' in Arabic; the 'disaster' or the 'catastrophe.' There's a law that you cannot deny the Holocaust, but in Israel you're not allowed to mention the Nakba, even though it's at the very basis of the foundation of Israel.

I visited the Occupied Territories (West Bank) during the first intifada. I cried every day for two weeks at what I saw; the brutality of the occupation, the petty harassment, the murderousness of it, the cutting down of Palestinian olive groves, the denial of water rights, the humiliations... and this went on, and now it's much worse than it was then.

It's the longest ethnic cleansing operation in the 20th and 21st century. I could land in Tel Aviv tomorrow and demand citizenship but my Palestinian friend in Vancouver, who was born in Jerusalem, can't even visit!

So then you have these miserable people packed into this, horrible... people call it an 'outdoor prison,' which is what it is. You don't have to support Hamas policies to stand up for Palestinian rights, that's a complete falsity. You think the worse thing you can say about Hamas, multiply it by a thousand times, and it still will not meet the Israeli repression and killing and dispossession of Palestinians.

And 'anybody who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite' is simply an egregious attempt to intimidate good non-Jews who are willing to stand up for what is true."

There is a photo attached of Dr. Gabor Maté, a 79-year-old Hungarian-Canadian, visible from the tips of the shoulders up. He is wearing a flannel scarf and a blazer. He has an open face, and it is hard to discern if he is smiling, or has a neutral expression with a smile-shaped mouthline.

End ID

[atombombtom]

As I grow older I feel my capacity to understand that Miss Piggy is not a real person reached a peak in my adolescence and is now on a steady decline. I watched a Wendy Williams interview and there's this part that's like "can we get a ring cam!" and Miss Piggy shows her bling and I'm just like fuck she's so iconic. Miss Piggy who are you wearing? Miss Piggy have you ever considered running for office??

[atombombtom]

Like literally every time I see Miss Piggy there's a period where I need to readjust to the fact that it's not a person, and I feel that period is getting longer and longer with every instance

[atombombtom]

now all my Youtube recommendations are filled with Miss Piggy interviews. I’m not complaining. Miss Piggy what’s your secret to ageing so graciously

[bigscaryd]

It's not just the audience; professional journalists, hosts, and actors report it is legitimately difficult to not see the Muppet as a person, and it is, in fact, incredibly easy to interview or act with them once the performer gets properly set up.

[redwaltz]

Like that one time they couldn't figure out why Kermit's audio was so garbage... then realized they'd put the mic on him instead of the performer.

[brunhiddensmusings]

this has been a very longstanding issue - before the muppet show was even a thing some muppets appeared in commercials, such as rolf the dog they had a continual problem where when people directing/shooting the dogfood commercial would give dirrection to rolf that they would be speaking to the muppet, to which rolf REPEATEDLY had to tell them ‘i cant hear you, you have to talk to him’ and point at the performer underneath him rolf is one of the most embarrassing muppets to need this direction as the performer is this, damn, obvious when not on camera

‘sir, i am a bathroom mat, the man you need to talk to is back there’

[petranaradulovic]

I did an interview with Gonzo one time, and when I got into the Zoom call, it was the actor on screen trying to figure out his audio. And then once he did, he went like “OKAY!” and then just like dove to the floor and it was Gonzo and there was never a moment when I doubted that the dude was just Gonzo’s tech guy 

[elamarth-calmagol]

You're just casually going to drop the fact that you interviewed Gonzo

[el-shab-hussein]

@allthegeopolitics

I'm sure you've all heard that Itamar Ben Gvir and the Israeli government are partaking in the distribution of over 10 000 weapons to go kill Palestinians in the West Bank and in the occupied 48' territories.

'Civilian security teams' they call them. So when Hamas does it they're terrorists. When Israeli 'civilians' do it it's security. 95 Palestinians have been murdered by these lynch mobs in 2 weeks.

[liberalsarecool]

Capitalism blows.