nothing is cool

Really. You should read this.

For Just $100 a Day, This Crisis Could’ve Been Prevented. Federal law requires that water systems which are sent through lead pipes must contain an additive that seals the lead into the pipe and prevents it from leaching into the water. Someone at the beginning suggested to the Governor that they add this anti-corrosive element to the water coming out of the Flint River. “How much would that cost?” came the question. “$100 a day for three months,” was the answer. I guess that was too much, so, in order to save $9,000, the state government said f*** it — and as a result the State may now end up having to pay upwards of $1.5 billion to fix the mess.

There’s More Than the Lead in Flint’s Water. In addition to exposing every child in the city of Flint to lead poisoning on a daily basis, there appears to be a number of other diseases we may be hearing about in the months ahead. The number of cases in Flint of Legionnaires Disease has increased tenfold since the switch to the river water. Eighty-seven people have come down with it, and at least ten have died. In the five years before the river water, not a single person in Flint had died of Legionnaires Disease. Doctors are now discovering that another half-dozen toxins are being found in the blood of Flint’s citizens, causing concern that there are other health catastrophes which may soon come to light.

People’s Homes in Flint Are Now Worth Nothing Because They Cant Be Sold. Would you buy a house in Flint right now? Who would? So every homeowner in Flint is stuck with a house that’s now worth nothing. That’s a total home value of $2.4 billion down the economic drain. People in Flint, one of the poorest cities in the U.S., don’t have much to their name, and for many their only asset is their home. So, in addition to being poisoned, they have now a net worth of zero. (And as for employment, who is going to move jobs or start a company in Flint under these conditions? No one.) Has Flint’s future just been flushed down that river?

While They Were Being Poisoned, They Were Also Being Bombed. Here’s a story which has received little or no coverage outside of Flint. During these two years of water contamination, residents in Flint have had to contend with a decision made by the Pentagon to use Flint for target practice. Literally. Actual unannounced military exercises – complete with live ammo and explosives – were conducted last year inside the city of Flint. The army decided to practice urban warfare on Flint, making use of the thousands of abandoned homes which they could drop bombs on. Streets with dilapidated homes had rocket-propelled grenades fired upon them. For weeks, an undisclosed number of army troops pretended Flint was Baghdad or Damascus and basically had at it. It sounded as if the city was under attack from an invading army or from terrorists. People were shocked this could be going on in their neighborhoods. Wait – did I say “people?” I meant, Flint people. As with the Governor, it was OK to abuse a community that held no political power or money to fight back. BOOM!

The Wife of the Governor’s Chief of Staff Is a Spokeswoman for Nestle, Michigan’s Largest Owner of Private Water Reserves. As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein: “Follow the money.” Snyder’s chief of staff throughout the two years of Flint’s poisoning, Dennis Muchmore, was intimately involved in all the decisions regarding Flint. His wife is Deb Muchmore, who just happens to be the spokesperson in Michigan for the Nestle Company – the largest owner of private water sources in the State of Michigan. Nestle has been repeatedly sued in northern Michigan for the 200 gallons of fresh water per minute it sucks from out of the ground and bottles for sale as their Ice Mountain brand of bottled spring water. The Muchmores have a personal interest in seeing to it that Nestles grabs as much of Michigan’s clean water was possible – especially when cities like Flint in the future are going to need that Ice Mountain.

In Michigan, from Flint water, to Crime and Murder, to GM Ignition Switches, It’s a Culture of Death. It’s not just the water that was recklessly used to put people’s lives in jeopardy. There are many things that happen in Flint that would give one the impression that there is a low value placed on human life. Flint has one of the worst murder and crime rates in the country. Just for context, if New York City had the same murder rate as Flint, Michigan, the number of people murdered last year in New York would have been almost 4,000 people – instead of the actual 340 who were killed in NYC in 2015. But it’s not just street crime that makes one wonder about what is going on in Michigan. Last year, it was revealed that, once again, one of Detroit’s automakers had put profit ahead of people’s lives. General Motors learned that it had installed faulty ignition switches in many of its cars. Instead of simply fixing the problem, mid-management staff covered it up from the public. The auto industry has a history of weighing the costs of whether it’s cheaper to spend the money to fix the defect in millions of cars or to simply pay off a bunch of lawsuits filed by the victims surviving family members. Does a cynical, arrogant culture like this make it easy for a former corporate CEO, now Governor, turn a blind eye to the lead that is discovered in a municipality’s drinking water?

Don’t Call It “Detroit Water” — It’s the Largest Source of Fresh Drinking Water in the World. The media keeps saying Flint was using “Detroit’s water.” It is only filtered and treated at the Detroit Water Plant. The water itself comes from Lake Huron, the third largest body of fresh water in the world. It is a glacial lake formed over 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age and it is still fed by pure underground springs. Flint is geographically the last place on Earth where one should be drinking poisoned water.

ALL the Children Have Been Exposed, As Have All the Adults, Including Me. That’s just a fact. If you have been in Flint anytime from April 2014 to today, and you’ve drank the water, eaten food cooked with it, washed your clothes in it, taken a shower, brushed your teeth or eaten vegetables from someone’s garden, you’ve been exposed to and ingested its toxins. When the media says “9,000 children under 6 have been exposed,” that means ALL the children have been exposed because the total number of people under the age of 6 in Flint is… 9,000! The media should just say, “all.” When they say “47 children have tested positive”, that’s just those who’ve drank the water in the last week or so. Lead enters the body and does it’s damage to the brain immediately. It doesn’t stay in the blood stream for longer than a few days and you can’t detect it after a month. So when you hear “47 children”, that’s just those with an exposure in the last 48 hours. It’s really everyone.

This Was Done, Like So Many Things These Days, So the Rich Could Get a Big Tax Break. When Governor Snyder took office in 2011, one of the first things he did was to get a multi-billion dollar tax break passed by the Republican legislature for the wealthy and for corporations. But with less tax revenues, that meant he had to start cutting costs. So, many things – schools, pensions, welfare, safe drinking water – were slashed. Then he invoked an executive privilege to take over cities (all of them majority black) by firing the mayors and city councils whom the local people had elected, and installing his cronies to act as “dictators” over these cities. Their mission? Cut services to save money so he could give the rich even more breaks. That’s where the idea of switching Flint to river water came from. To save $15 million! It was easy. Suspend democracy. Cut taxes for the rich. Make the poor drink toxic river water. And everybody’s happy.

But institutional racism is imaginary, right?

Look at this picture

Look at the weapon

Look at the hand reaching for it

Look at the cop

Look at how there’s only 1 cop in the shot

Look at the nonchalant atmosphere

Now think of the countless black women and black men who are dead for the very thought of them having a weapon

Think of Tamir Rice getting shot 2 seconds after police entered the scene when all he had was a BB gun

Think of the peaceful unarmed protests that ended in tear gas, military equipment, and riot gear.

Think of unarmed black men and women getting shot with over 100 rounds for being a threat.

Think of Fred Hampton dying while he slept, FBI fabricating a shootout.

Think of Dubose getting shot once in the head, a report already filed and backed up that he tried to run police over before his death was investigated.

And then take a look at this. A white man clearly reaching for his gun directly in front of an officer. A man who will get to go home to his family. A man who won’t become a hashtag. A man who won’t even face charges.

As Julia and I said in our Cersei Lannister podcast, this would have been a problem if this was the only female PoV he had. But situated in the pattern of who he writes, in my mind, he’s earned the benefit of the doubt. Especially given that Cersei’s internalized misogyny is the key to her character, and that has incredibly feminist implications (for the reader I mean). Plus the whole “self-delusions” thing is rather a hallmark of the Lannisters. Tywin included, peeps. 

We also go on for some time about this idea that she was scripted “differently” in the first three books. Just…no. 

But idk, the fact that people can read Dany’s chapters and her struggle with identity, and her series of moral concessions, that is so in direct parallel to Jon it’s almost silly to point it out, and come away with the impression that Dany is an impulsive, shitty leader? She’s trying to do the most good for the most people, she carefully weighs the council she receives, she makes the best decisions she can with the information she has at the time, and she has a moment of realization that she’s compromised too much to the point where she can’t even recognize herself. Which is conveniently when she solidifies her symbiotic relationship with her dragon. 

Of course it’s not perfect, how she navigates the situation, but honestly given the ridiculous complexity of it, she does pretty damn well.

With Arianne, I do 100% understand where those misconceptions come from, because I’m not going to lie, it takes a lot of digging and reflecting on his material to realize the whole “Arianne is Doran” thing, that this isn’t the tale of a daughter cowed into submission by her father, and that the QM plot was so not some random impulsive thing but something she basically felt backed into because of a shared Shakespearean flaw with her dad. There have quite literally been times where Julia and I have been annoyed with how difficult Martin made this for the reader to see.

Though this idea that Arianne “gave up her leadership” when her plotline is all about the exact opposite is kind of mind-boggling to me.

Just all in all, I think Martin does pretty damn well. Especially given how one of the major, major themes throughout his novels is the toxic effect of the Westerosi patriarchy on everyone, which again…there’s an incredibly strong feminist narrative running throughout this series as a result.