'Cause you don't know my way

[sovay]

I know it is feeding the trolls, I know it is engaging with the rhetoric, but when the man in the White House claims that American Jews who vote Democratic are showing disloyalty—not to him, as one might suppose would bruise his nanometrically thin skin, but to the State of Israel, which in his mindset of eternal outsiders he imagines must command more of our allegiance than the country we actually, you know, live in—all I can think is and what would you know about being loyal to even one country? Nothing he has ever done has been in the interests of America as it is, only America in his image, the old, blood-hungry, land-hungry Moloch-ghost of prosperity gospel and racist fantasy. And I don't think he's loyal even to that; I just think he can exploit it and leave the rest of us with the ashes. Today is Lovecraft's birthday, speaking of American hauntings: I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you cannot put downe. Well, the man in the White House certainly isn't going to do it; we have to lay this ghost and we're running out of time.

I am having an exhausting and rather difficult day, so here are some very different links.

1. Justin Philip Reed, "In My Defense, Monsters: Notes on Black Poetic Grotesqueries, Composite Humanity, and Freedoms of the Horrific, Part 3": "Horror—which I'd qualify as that mode that best abrades superstructural façades, degrades the social fabric and the sanctity of the flesh, and standardizes the repulsive—is a terrain of Black consciousness."

2. The bloodless icefish: "Their name describes exactly what is unique about them: they technically do not have blood."

3. David Schraub on Israel's exclusion of Representatives Omar and Tlaib. I keep thinking that forcing Tlaib to relinquish her likely last chance to see her grandmother is just another form of family separation.

thisbluespirit linked me this gif of Dwight Frye's Renfield and I am finding it extremely relatable.

Comments

[yhlee]

*support support*

[sovay]

*support support*

*hugs*

[moon_custafer]

Adds to the hug pile.

[sovay]

Adds to the hug pile.

Appreciated.

[wpadmirer]

Trump knows jackshit about loyalty, so I ignore anything he says about it.

Ice fish are weird, but kinda cool looking.

[sovay]

Trump knows jackshit about loyalty, so I ignore anything he says about it.

I can't ignore it since it's the kind of rhetoric that increases the chances of people I know being shot at services, including very occasionally me, but I agree with you that it's not a subject of which he has any personal acquaintance.

Ice fish are weird, but kinda cool looking.

I really love them!

[wpadmirer]

I can understand why you feel you can't ignore it. Since I don't go to any kind of religious service, I just have to worry about random shooters.

Crazy, right?

[sovay]

Since I don't go to any kind of religious service, I just have to worry about random shooters.

Yes, I can see what a relief that must be.

[wpadmirer]

It's just stupid that synagogues, temples and other non-Christian houses of worship are targets. And we have the asshole in the White House and the evangelicals to thank for it.

(grinds teeth)

[gwynnega]

It would be good if Trump could refrain from any further pronouncements about Jewish people. (If only.)

But yay Dwight Frye.

[sovay]

It would be good if Trump could refrain from any further pronouncements about Jewish people. (If only.)

I would certainly appreciate it!

But yay Dwight Frye.

He makes everything better.

[asakiyume]

I am having an exhausting and rather difficult day

I know you have some very concrete, very particular difficulties oppressing you, but our current nightmare is a wellspring of such unrelieved [and by unrelieved, I do mean unrelieved] anxiety and stress that it makes everything much, much worse (as well as being the proximate cause of a lot of difficultites--but even when it's not).

I remember back before I knew as much about structural racism as I do now, learning that people of color have higher rates of high blood pressure, heart attacks, and so on, due to the stress of just trying to exist in a society built against them. Living in the United States as it has been for the past three years has given me a little bit of a visceral inkling of what that must be like. To live each day with a baseline state of anxiety and fear.

[sovay]

Living in the United States as it has been for the past three years has given me a little bit of a visceral inkling of what that must be like. To live each day with a baseline state of anxiety and fear.

It's not fun and I would like to take the weight off a lot of people I know and a lot of people I don't know, but also me. There is no respite.

[coraline]

hooo boy. yes, this.

[cmcmck]

And we know who else separated families, don't we? :o(

I was born here and live here, but I don't begin to understand what being 'loyal' to it means.

[sovay]

I was born here and live here, but I don't begin to understand what being 'loyal' to it means.

For most people in power, conflating themselves with their countries as they so often do, I think it means lets me do what I want. Re 45, American Jews, and Israel, I think it simply means not one of us.

[selkie]

Can't talk now. Bein' professionally disloyal. Can you get back to me on that blood-of-Christian-orphans project, or did you outsource that to the Baal folks? I guess that's fine if you can understand what they're saying.

[sovay]

Can you get back to me on that blood-of-Christian-orphans project, or did you outsource that to the Baal folks? I guess that's fine if you can understand what they're saying.

I brokered a deal with the Carthaginians. We're going the fire route this year.

[rosefox]

Something about item 3 makes me think of sharing this video with you. If you aren't familiar with The Band's Visit, all you need to know about this scene is that she's Israeli, he's Egyptian, and he's astonished to learn that she's a fan of Egyptian film stars from watching them on TV during her childhood.

(The show is no longer on Broadway, but it's touring to Boston in the spring and you should really, really go see it. When I need hope about Israel, its songs play in my head.)

[sovay]

If you aren't familiar with The Band's Visit, all you need to know about this scene is that she's Israeli, he's Egyptian, and he's astonished to learn that she's a fan of Egyptian film stars from watching them on TV during her childhood.

I have seen the film, but not the musical! I will look for it when it comes. Thank you.

[rosefox]

The musical is phenomenal. I was so lucky to get to see it before it closed up here.

I just realized that video doesn't have the whole song, so here you go.

[sovay]

The musical is phenomenal. I was so lucky to get to see it before it closed up here.

I have passed on the suggestion to my mother who loved what she heard at the Tonys.

I just realized that video doesn't have the whole song, so here you go.

Thank you!

[rosefox]

Also, good God, that Justin Philip Reed piece took my breath away.

[sovay]

Also, good God, that Justin Philip Reed piece took my breath away.

I didn't want in some sense to blow it by quoting the entire thing, but the passage that begins "I'm sitting inside a coffin in Portland's Lovecraft Bar" is an incantation, and yes.