🆗🆒

Since the movie Fight Club was released, numerous emotionally stunted men have tried to create their own Fight Clubs, all over the world

After the Matrix movies were released by the Wachowski sisters, there were multiple instances of people using the film as a justification for murder - to the point where “The Matrix Defence” has its own wikipedia page

Why am I telling you all these facts?

Because popular media affects reality, it can have measurable influence on public feelings and perception, and in some ways can affect you on a deeper and more visceral level than any straight-forward lesson can.

So if you don’t think that the movie Split can cause serious stigma and harm towards people with psychotic mental illnesses - though particularly Schizophrenia and DID - through turning public perception against them, and portraying them as dangerous monsters, then you haven’t been paying attention.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, this twitter account is posting the names and photos (when available) of refugees turned away from America who became victims of Naziism. #NoBanNoWall #RefugeesWelcome 

I support a person’s right to make their own reproductive decisions.

Any person.

Any decision.

At all times.

I will support you if you decide to continue the pregnancy, if you decide to terminate, if you want to parent your child or put it up for adoption.

the greatest authors that were and ever will be are white men

every great philosopher came out of europe

mathematics and science were at their highest point when used by white men

the most beautiful city in the world is paris

colonialism was a golden age

First selfies of 2017 ; I’m Stevonnie 🌺

New study: Voting barriers suppressed non-white and young voters in the 2016 election

In key states, including Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin, millennials had to fill out provisional ballots in outsized numbers.

That’s according to research funded by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark’s foundation.

The survey found that efforts to erect obstacles to voting had a “disproportionate impact on non-white and younger voters.”

Nearly one in four millennials polled had to vote with provisional ballots — usually as a result of a question about eligibility

That’s compared to just 6% of Baby Boomers and 2% of the older Greatest Generation.

“The poll suggests ways that the voices of people of color and younger voters have been effectively suppressed.”

Issues arose for millennial voters and people of color both in places with new voting restrictions — a result of the Supreme Court gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act — as well as those without. 

I’ve said all this elsewhere, but I’m making an entirely fresh post for it in the hope that more people see it.

When Meghan McCain said that Hollywood needs to wake up to it’s elitism to avoid future Trumps, she’s right.

Because Meghan McCain is making an anti-Trump point here, and it’s an important one. She’s afraid Trump will get re-elected if people don’t change the way they see each other.

The point isn’t that Meryl Streep was wrong to call out ableism – that’s important and necessary and what Trump did was deplorable.

But Streep called it out in amidst a speech that also included the line “Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick ’em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”

I’m gonna bold that.

“you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts”

Hell, I’m gonna gif that.

Many people have said before, and more eloquently than I can, that the divide in American involves the classist rhetoric of the progressive left, who clap themselves on the back for being more artistic and classy than the right. The progressive left who are classist as hell and deny it. The white moderates who think they’re better than others for liking avant garde cinema and look down on people who think a good football play is the height of entertainment? Classist.

In snubbing sports and mixed martial arts as less than art, Streep snubbed everyone who enjoys those things and feels distant and disconnected to Hollywood and the elitism inherent in so many of the arts in America. She snubbed sports, which can involve art and which can take a lifetime of dedication to get right, not to mention which offer scholarships to so many people who might not be able to otherwise afford post-secondary. Not to mention that this past year we learned just how much of a political scandal a single football player can make simply by abstaining from a ‘patriotic’ ritual. She snubbed that in implying that only the arts and the press have that kind of power. And she snubbed the art inherent in mixed martial arts and the fact that all of those martial arts originate from cultures that are non-white. And no, some of them, most of them, really are art.

Yes, Meryl Streep advocated for freedom of press and freedom of the arts and yes, she made a beautiful and fantastic point about what is so gross about Donald Trump and anyone who could laugh along with him in his cruel ableist bullying. But she then extended her point to uplift the arts at the expense of sports and martial arts. She cheapened her own point.

And that’s what McCain is saying in her tweet. That white liberals will clap themselves on the back for calling out one social ill while creating and upholding a society that is elitist, and that that is divisive. That the people being snubbed know they are being snubbed, they feel it, and then they lash back at what they know to be the elitism of the left. Of people who think they’re better than they are for liking art over sport.

It’s so subtle. It’s so minor. I know, it’s a tiny line amidst a truly amazing and important and beautiful speech. But it matters. Because that division isn’t going away unless people start building bridges. I’m not talking about offering your hand to Trump supporters. I’m really not. Keep yourself safe.

No, what I’m talking about is nothing more or less than trying to understand the perspective of the person sitting right next to you and how they feel when you look down on them and the things they love. Of taking time to consider your own biases and elitism and the way you judge others.

If you want a better understanding of this division than I can give, considering reading this article. And then start reading and watching other things. It’s everywhere, left elitism, and until it stops alienating people on the butt end of the joke, they’ll never trust or understand the left, and that’s a scary reality.

The greatest moral failure of capitalism is that it turned these necessities into commodities.