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Bisexual author Nicole Kristal has been creating these awesome images highlighting the phenomena where bisexual characters on TV are not allowed to use the word ‘bisexual’ to describe themselves.  It ties into a phenomena we’ve discussed a lot here, The Missing B Word.  Over and over again bisexual-behaving characters are gay/straight-washed or only allowed to remain attracted to multiple genders if they renounce labels entirely.  The word bisexual is treated like a dirty word or as if it doesn’t exist entirely.  

This revision has new additions marked with a * - it should have gone live a few weeks ago, but here it is! I hope you get lots of good reading material - http://downthestaircase.tumblr.com/ is this update’s big winner in interestingness and solid stuff to read.

He hated capitalism and what it was doing.

I mean, not to defuse your point, but you’re actively connecting two things that do not connect, and it has been demonstrated that governments are very bad at curbing capitalist excess.

And it wasn’t just that communism didn’t work, it was a disaster.  For example, in the years prior to the Soviet Union’s collapse, you could drive along the streets, and, when it started to rain, watch a VERY interesting phenomenon.  Cars all along the roads would stop, almost as one, so drivers could re-attach their windshield wipers.  Why? Because, to leave them on their cars all the time would result in their being stolen. It was a society with very little courtesy and huge corruption. There was no justice, no choices, no hope.   If you want to see pure communism at work today, look to North Korea, where starvation is so widespread and intense that some have resorted to cannibalism in an attempt to survive. It’s a society that will either go to war to survive, experience its own revolution, or collapse like the Soviet Union. And you’re wrong about government’s ability to curb the excesses of capitalism.  We are freer, wealthier, and safer today than at any time in our history as a nation.  Government is not perfect and there are times when fraud is discovered and must be dealt with. That has always been true, it will always be so.  Just because we have police on the streets does not mean all crime ceases only that we see less of it.

And why you’re talking about two functional dictatorships as an indictment of communism I have no idea. Neither one of them actually employed socialist principles for any length of time; once the rulership was entrenched, they stopped.

This isn’t even difficult, and I’m not convinced you and I share a nation, but let’s take one quick example of governmental inability to curb capitalism; the recent worldwide financial crisis, driven by the chain collapse of CDSs.

Did you know that a CDS was illegal for most of the twentieth century?

Did you know only one major trading bank wasn’t badly hit by the CDS collapse itself but only by the knock-on economic ramifications?

Did you know that that trading bank invented and lobbied for the legalisation of the CDS?: They had a particular thing they needed it for. They got it legalised. And then they stopped doing it because in most cases it produces short-term paper gains followed by systemic collapse.

Members of the team that designed the CDS have reported total confusion prior to the collapse as they became a key plank of other investment strategies. Try as they might, they couldn’t see how other banks were safeguarding against the risks.

Turns out, of course, those banks weren’t safeguarding. They’d seen a loophole to make more money and gone for it. Those short-term gains got the people making the trades promoted, so they had no reason to look to the long term. And indeed, they’re still working in most cases. They got bonuses the year it all collapsed, just like every year.

They were replaced by more people who took this same promotional path.

Why were CDSes legalised? Because the banks brought money and lobbyists to bear. Why was the loophole not closed? There’s a long history of government not closing those loopholes due to the influence the banks wield. Why do the banks wield this influence?

Because in a capitalist society they can provide individuals with what they need. And so they have the power.

This was less than a decade ago. This is what happens when capitalism is not locked down.

Governments can lock it down. But they don’t. Corruption is not purely in other-countries-we-don’t-live-in and a rational government must factor that in.

But they don’t.

I hate that you can’t queue responses to asks.

Is it different for submissions? I’ve only had a couple of those, and I don’t understand the various options for them much at all, but there seem to be a lot more. Haven’t had enough to experiment with yet.