Strong I Stand

i wish i was joking but after we screamed a bit my brother attempted to get a picture as proof, failed, and ended up with this masterpiece that pretty much sums up the whole experience

He made explicit pleas to segregationists and klansmen when talking about states rights, endangering the lives of POC in the process

he KILLED unions, working class people lost bargaining power against the rich and lost livable wages, starting the end of the middle class, we never recovered

His trickle down economics killed any chance of real progressive tax on the rich & ensured that trillions would go to the rich for *generations*

He demonized the shit out of black people, he literally never saw them as human, especially those that were homeless and struggling with addictions (a problem he made much, much worse)

He *knew* about the AIDS crisis and for the longest time, did *nothing*, he sat by and intentionally let so many black and queer people die horrible deaths, with no remorse. The community is still grappling with the effect of that to this very day

he always said he wanted his ashes scattered on brokeback mountain, but i wasn’t sure where that was. i thought brokeback mountain might be around where he grew up. knowing jack, it was probably some pretend place, where bluebirds sing and there’s a whiskey spring.

and the original graphic novel is phenomenal:

I highly recommend them both

1) lewis prothero as a rush limbaugh/glenn beck/bill o’reilly type is both more applicable and way funnier than a 1940s radio propagandist 

2) it has stephen fry as gordon detriech, and makes him explicitly gay and pretending to be attracted to evey as part of being closeted than actually attracted to evey and having sex with her while she hides in his home.

3) the movie came out in 2005; that is, only four years after 9/11, while the Iraq war was still in full swing, and while xenophobia and Islamophobia were not just acceptable, but tacitly encouraged by the administration at the time. which makes the following exchange even more poignant and sweet:

Evey: [seeing a book in a glass display case] What is that? Gordon: It’s a copy of the Qur’an, 14th century. Evey: [shocked] Are you a Muslim? Gordon: No, I’m in television. Evey: But why would you keep it? Gordon: I don’t have to be a Muslim to find the images beautiful or its poetry moving.