feezer06's Corner

Every single person on this planet thinks about dark and taboo things. It's literally the most normal thing in the world.

Happy Pride ya’ll!! 

The Taliban.

Russia signs military partnership with the Taliban.

Hi, that was me. You do realize not everyone is keyed into the exact same new outlets as you all the time, yes? You do also realize that misinformation on social media is rampant, yes? You can argue your point without demonizing people who demand evidence for extreme claims.

Rashida Tlaib?

‘‘There’s a kind of a calming feeling, I always tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust and the tragedy of the Holocaust. . .’’

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

"accusations and false accusations of antisemitism are wielded against people of color and women of color by bad-faith political actors, and weaponizing antisemitism is used to divide us.”

Cori Bush?

"Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) is under fire from Jewish groups and her opponent in the upcoming Missouri Democratic primary for fundraising and associating with an antisemitic activist who once said she wants to burn “every Israeli” alive."

Perhaps you mean commentators like Hasan Piker?

If you care about humanity you should care about Ukrainians too and russia has launched one of the bloodiest, cruelest and heaviest attacks on Ukraine’s capital today

In the middle of the night, when people are sleeping, they started bombing civilian districts with all types of missiles

Lots of buldings damaged, many injured and yet unknown about the exact number of casualties

One of the biggest cities in Europe is all on fire being bombed to ground all because the little goblin and his ppl don’t want Ukraine to exist anymore

They want us to sign a peace deal that’s essentially capitulation and give up everything we have, what we fought for

Please, just look up information and spread the word

I know the news barely talk about Ukraine anymore, especially in the US. I know because I live here and I got asked about what’s the situation back home for the first time in MONTHS recently, in months… and every time I don’t know what to say because it is bad, still really really bad and people need help

I have friends in Kyiv, I am constantly anxious about them. I have my family and friends in other cities and I am constantly worried and scared for them

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

—

One, holy shit Ryuko and Mako get a room. Could they get more gay? I’m not entirely sure. Just… the way Ryuko looks at her, she’s the only person who keeps her calm, god… Mako I think is obviously head over heels for Ryuko and has been since episode 1 but I think Mako might be like pansexual for everybody all the time in a romantic sense. But in a platonic sense Ryuko is very much her only bff. Anyway, that’s a pay off if I’ve ever seen one.

NASA I would say is the most infamous example. Like it or not, NASA got to where it is today through Operation: Paperclip, most notably through the recruitment of Werner von Braun, who during WWII developed the V1 and V2 rockets along with other devastasting technology and horrific exploitation and murder of Jews, Roma, and political prisoners. I vehemently condemn the clemency afforded to von Braun and all the other Nazi scientists recruited by Operation: Paperclip and similar operations conducted by other members of the Allied powers. However. Given a choice between these scientists continuing to make weapons of war or putting their skills towards the development of a space program, I heartedly choose the latter. Initially, von Braun did work to make weapons for the US, but eventually he was put to work on the fledgling space program. Technology initially conceptualized for war was used to put people in space, to put people on the moon.

On the other side of the Cold War, the Soviet space program also used technology initially developed for war. The rocket that launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1, was designed initially as the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. The Vostok rocket, which would launch the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space, was also a variant on a modified R-7. Both the Soviets and the Americans were using missile technology that could have been used for horrible things, but instead they used it for space travel. The space race was an extension of Cold War hostilities between the West and the Soviets, but it was an example of a competition that did not involve war. It was a competition of intelligence, of science, and I am absolutely not discounting all the animals and people that died in the process of developing such technology.......but it's nothing compared to what it could have been has these hostilities been expressed through combat.

Even today, people complain about space programs being expensive, about the money going to NASA and other countries' programs as being money that could be used to feed or house people....but that money could have also gone into war. The massive amounts of fuel that go into a space rocket launch is fuel that could have been used to fuel tanks and missiles and warplanes. The brilliant minds employed in every step of a space mission are minds that could have been used to develop weapons, but instead they are used to push the boundaries of human exploration and understanding of the cosmos.

Additionally, astronauts and cosmonauts and taikonauts and all other space travellers become national and international heroes who have made incredible achievements not through being champions of war, but through being explorers. They are figures that people can rally around and be proud of, but they are not soldiers. In the US, NASA has close associations with the military, and many astronauts are former military pilots, but NASA is not military. NASA and other space agencies actively demonstrate that there are ways other than war to achieve greatness.

Another great thing about space travel is that explorers and adventurers have been heroes in public consciousness for a long time- just look at the way cowboys and pioneers and Christopher Columbus have been glorified in American culture. But unlike the global navigators and explorers of the Columbian age, and unlike the pioneers of the age of American westward expansion, and unlike so many other explorers in history, there is no concern with displacing and exploiting the indigineous people and biomes and resources in the lands explored when it comes to outer space. Perhaps this would become an issue if we discovered alien life on other planets, but that has yet to happen. For now, it's just us Earthlings in the vastness of space. Humans landing on the moon didn't displace or exterminate any native Moon-dwellers. Space travel allows humans to express the natural human desire to explore and discover without the prevalent side-effect of such exploration that occurs on Earth.

Finally, space travel is unifying. These days, a lot of space travel is cooperative. The International Space Station is an excellent example of this, with five participating space agencies, and its predescessor, the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission, became known as the "handshake in space" in the midst of the Cold War. Putting cameras and people far enough in space to be able to look back at Earth as a single planet really puts things into perspective. We are one planet, as far as we know, alone in the universe. We really only have each other. Space travel has proven time and time again that it can unite us, and I believe it still can. Christina Koch, one of the four astronauts who last week went farther into space than any human had ever gone before, said that "we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.” And I think that's what we need to hear.

וְשָׁפַט֙ בֵּ֣ין הַגּוֹיִ֔ם וְהוֹכִ֖יחַ לְעַמִּ֣ים רַבִּ֑ים וְכִתְּת֨וּ חַרְבוֹתָ֜ם לְאִתִּ֗ים וַחֲנִיתֽוֹתֵיהֶם֙ לְמַזְמֵר֔וֹת לֹא־יִשָּׂ֨א ג֤וֹי אֶל־גּוֹי֙ חֶ֔רֶב וְלֹֽא־יִלְמְד֥וּ ע֖וֹד מִלְחָמָֽה׃

"And He (G-d) shall judge among the nations and arbritrate for the many people, and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation against nation shall not take up a sword, and they shall not learn war any longer." Isaiah 2:4

What is the transformation of war technology into space exploration techonology but a fulfilment of this prophecy? The missiles are beaten into space travel rockets, the fighter pilots into astronauts. Legions of scientists are learning space exploration instead of war. Nations who would otherwise be engaged in war cooperate in space.

Do you gender trans people correctly even when they're being absolutely terrible people? Do you refuse to use the r-slur against someone who suicide baited you but is neurodivergent? Do you refuse to snark at a mentally ill person who is being genuinely unpleasant, "go take your meds!"

Do you allow members of marginalized groups to be terrible people without judging their entire demographic for it? One of the most invisible yet vital forms of privilege is the right to be terrible people as an individual rather than as a group. Do you acknowledge that there are bad people in every group, that it doesn't make their group less worth fighting for? Or do you shake your head if you happen to get mistreated by some who belong to a group and insist the entire group is awful and not worth your allyship?

Do you have any idea how infuriating it is to have to stick up for someone you'd rather punch because some random jackass on social media just had to make it about Jews, Black folks, trans women, gay people, fat people, immigrants, etc.?

Anyway, I have been thanked more than once by Jews who are glad I, a goy, stand with their right to exist and be treated like human beings. No matter if I personally agree with any of their politics or not. But to get ahead of a certain type of antisemite: I support Israel's right to exist, and I 100% support the right of Jews to self-determine their lives. AKA Zionism.

And the thing is, I do remember the exact moment I decided I would stand up and help Jews if I ever saw them persecuted. I was 13. I had just read Anne Frank's diary.

And that's one of the reasons I deleted the post more than once. Because that's what all the now-antisemites said. "I would TOTALLY project Jews! I would protect Anne Frank! I would hide Anne Frank!!"

So, to use her name to say "Hey, I actually am protecting Jews because I read Anne's diary" feels weirdly wrong to me because the antisemites have used her name to justify their terrible actions.

But you know what? Fuck those people. Fuck their lies. Fuck their abuse of her name in their mouths.

Because I didn't stop reading at Anne Frank. And that, really, is the point of this post, I think. I didn't stop reading at Anne Frank. Anne Frank started me down a path to answer a question. And the question was: How the fuck did this happen?

And so I read other books. And I watched documentaries, and as I got older, I kept reading and watching, and while I could understand from a point of academic curiosity that I had answered my question of how the fuck it happened, from a personal standpoint, I couldn't understand at all not only how it could happen but how could anyone survive hiding or the camps and build a life? How do you not collapse into a ball and cry yourself to death after that?

You're the only survivor of a shetel of 1000. You knew stealing a man's bowl would kill him, but you needed a bowl to live. You let a Nazi think you loved him to get enough food to keep you and your bunkmate alive. You hid underground for two years, only coming out at night. You hid in a series of caves and went back as an old man and saw your old cave carvings still there in the darkness of a flashlight that shined brighter than any candle you had. These are all true stories of Jews who survived.

And all that's being asked of me as the person taking in this history is to not let it happen again. The only thing ever requested of those of us who weren't there was to not become Nazis. Not to harm our fellow citizens. Not to call for the blood of our neighbors.

That's all that's ever been asked. To refuse to let Jews be harmed for no fucking reason. To refuse to let Jews become scapegoats whose lives will be seen as expendable. To refuse to let Jews be rounded up in public raids and taken away never to be seen again as the Nazis auctioned off their homes and other possessions to neighbors who didn't do sweet fuck all to stop the rise of the Nazis who promised loudly and repeatedly to murder their neighbors.

Would I have hidden Anne Frank? No, probably not. To do so, I'd need the ability to ignore years of Nazi propaganda and cultural pressure. Very, very few people were able to do that, and my actual efforts to understand how the Holocaust happened showed me how hard it is to NOT fall for the propaganda.

So, no, I probably wouldn't have hidden Anne Frank or any other Jews. But that's not what's being asked of me. That's never what's been asked of me. The single request is "Speak up before we need to hide." Speak up before your neighbors are rounded up. Speak up before they're banned from the parks. If you don't speak up when the yellow benches go in, speak up when they do.