#long posts

When Noem testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, ranking member Senator Chris Murphy gave such powerful, informative, and important opening remarks I have to share:

transcript:

"I say this with seriousness and respect, but your department is out of control.

"You’re spending like you don’t have a budget. You are running out of money for this fiscal year. You are illegally refusing to spend funds that have been authorized by this Congress and appropriated by this committee. You are ignoring the immigration laws of this nation, implementing a brand new immigration system that you have invented that has little relation to the statutes that you are required to follow as spelled out in your oath of office. You are routinely violating the rights of immigrants who may not be citizens, but whether you like it or not, they have constitutional and statutory rights when they reside in the United States.

"Your agency acts as if laws don’t matter, as if the election gave you some mandate to violate the Constitution and the laws passed by this Congress. It did not give you that mandate. You act as if your disagreement with the law, or even the public’s disagreement with the law, is relevant and gives you the ability to create your own law. It does not give you that ability.

"Let’s start with your spending. You are on track to trigger the Anti-Deficiency act. That means you are on track to spend more money than you have been allocated by Congress. This is a rare occurrence and it is wildly illegal.

"Your agency will be broke by July, over two months before the end of the fiscal year. You may not think that Congress has allotted enough money to ICE, but the Constitution and the federal law does not allow you to spend more money than you have been given or to invent money.

"This obsession with spending at the border has left the country unprotected elsewhere. The security threats to national security are higher, not lower, since Trump came to office. To fund the border you have illegally gutted spending to cybersecurity.

"As we speak, Russian and Chinese hackers are having a field day attacking our nation. You have withdrawn funds for disaster prevention. Storms are going to kill more people because of your illegal withholding of these funds. Your myopia about the border fueled by President Trump’s prejudice against people who speak a different language have shattered most of this country’s most important defenses.

"Now let’s talk about the impoundments. When Congress appropriates funds for a specific purpose the administration has no discretion whether or not to spend that money unless you go through a specific process with this committee.

"Let me give you two of many instances of this illegal impoundment. The first is a shelter and services program. Senator Britt may want to zero that account out, but that account is funded in a bipartisan way. You may not like the program. Your policy is to treat migrants badly. I think that’s abhorrent, but it doesn’t matter that you don’t like the program. You cannot cancel spending in this program, and you cannot use the funds, as you have, to fund other things, like ICE.

"You have also cancelled citizenship and integration grants, which help lawful permanent residents become citizens, helping them take the citizenship test. I know your goal is to try to make life as hard as possible for immigrants, but that goal is not broadly shared by the American public. That’s why Congress, in a bipartisan way, for decades has funded this program to help immigrants become citizens.

"Now let’s talk about why encounters at the southern border are down so much. This is clearly going to be your primary talking point today. You will tell us that it represents as success. But the prime reason why encounters are down is because you are brazenly violating the law every hour of every day.

"You are refusing to allow people showing up at the southern border to apply for asylum. I acknowledge that you don’t believe that people should be allowed to apply for asylum, but the White House doesn’t get to choose that. The law requires you to process people who are showing up at the border to apply for asylum.

"Why? Because our asylum law is a bipartisan commitment, an effort to correct for our nation’s unconscionable decision to deny entry to Jews to this country who were being hunted and killed by the Nazis. Our nation, Republicans and Democrats, decided, wrote it into law, that we would not repeat that horror ever again, and thus we would allow for people who were fleeing terror and torture to come here, arrive at the border, and make a case for asylum.

"Finally let’s talk about these disappearances. In an autocratic society, people who the regime does not like or who are protesting the regime are often picked up off the street, and spirited away, often to open-ended detention. Sometimes they’re never seen again.

"What you are doing, both to individuals who have legal rights to stay here, like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, or students who are just protesting Trump’s policies, is immoral and, to follow the theme, it is illegal. You have no right to deport a student visa holder with no due process simply because they have spoken in a way that offends the President. You can’t remove migrants whom a court has given humanitarian protection from removal.

"Now, reports suggest that you are planning to remove immigrants with no due process and send them to prisons in Libya. Libya is in the middle of a civil war. It is subject to a level 4 travel advisory, meaning we tell American citizens never to travel to Libya. We don’t have an embassy there because it is not safe for our diplomats. Sending migrants with pending asylum claims into a war zone, just because it’s cruel, is so deeply disturbing.

"Listen, I understand that my Republican colleagues on this committee don’t view the policy as I do, don’t share my level of concern for the way the government treats immigrants, but what I don’t understand is why we don’t have consensus in the Senate and on this committee on the decision by this administration to impound the spending that we have decided together to allocate in defense of this nation.

"We as an appropriations committee worked interminable hours to write and pass this budget, and so we make ourselves irrelevant when we allow the administration to ignore what we have decided. And then when we look the other way when the administration rounds up immigrants who are here illegally and have committed no offenses worthy of detainment, we also do potential irreversible damage to the Constitution.

"These should not be partisan concerns—destroying the power of Congress, eroding individuals’ Constitutional rights. This should matter to both parties."

_

I never knew that our asylum laws arose from when we didn’t take Jews escaping from the Nazis. Both parties said never again. Yet here we are.

Everything this "administration" is doing is impeachable, and this Congress has a responsibility to get these criminals out of office and keep them out.

Continuation of this post, and loosely connected to this post.

I wasn't expecting such a positive response from the last post (or any response, really, this show is over two decades old), so I decided to try building on it.

i do not believe it's a matter of this cult suddenly being lesser stakes or harmless or silly compared to the cult portrayal in love bombing just because the cult leaders are people we know, i think however that's what we're supposed to think because that's what the characters think.

for example, see the talk of the justice system in s5, the themes of responsibility and privilege and the inherent cruelty in the power of deciding who does and doesn't deserve punishment - the talk of police brutality with daisy and basira, it's portrayed unflinchingly and unforgivingly. these characters with their new privileges in the post-change world are all culpable in watching people suffer and having to decide what to do about that - there's the prison domain where martin has to decide what to do with one of the workers there, there's the hunt leading basira to look at all of daisy's victims, there's the themes of vengeance through john killing 'monsters' and deciding to spare the people who do just as horrific things but he personally sympathizes with them more (oliver) or is content to leave them be because they never hurt him (arthur). john wanting to take elias' place so he can rework the world to instead punish the people who "really" deserve it is portrayed as an obscene act of privilege and to be an absolutely terrifying borderline unthinkable option.

all of this to say, i don't think there being a scene where basira cries over daisy and insists she's still in there, negates all tma has said on privilege and the police system. i don't think you're meant to feel basira's sympathy here. the clock is ticking and john's been mauled and basira is worried about still trying to get to daisy. after all we've been focusing on the evil she's done, the evils of the system she perpetuates, i don't think tma is suddenly trying to get you to sympathize with her, i think it's just showing you how deep basira's dedication to her actually goes. she's trapped following her. for better and of course for worse.

so: georgie and melanie's cult! the actual point of this post. i bring it up in tandem with the points about privilege (georgie and melanie obviously being in a place of privilege over the average person post-change) and the points about tma's portrayal of police (similarly to how you might see basira sympathizing with daisy as a stark turn away from how unflinchingly tma portrays police brutality, you might feel a bit weird about a cult portrayed as a wacky new setting in the same podcast with an episode about cult abuse)

because the thing about tma s5 is how everyone is culpable. everyone with the right to decide how to handle the fears, the people stuck in domains, the question of whether or not to pass it on, are by design the only people who are alive and aware enough to actually discuss these things. john, martin, and basira are all victims of daisy's, but they're the only ones left alive to actually talk about it. because john and martin hold power in the post-change world, and basira has privilege of being daisy's partner who she views as a companion.

john himself looks down on the victims of the domains, and on the people in georgie and melanie's cult. this isn't new for him - his earliest trait since s1 has been looking down on people with stories he deems too crazy or unrealistic, and then in 111 gerry talks about how hard it is to live among 'normal' people.

...and of course john's not the only one.

the thing about georgie and melanie's cult is that they hate it, they think it's embarrassing and an inconvenience, but it is "useful". melanie admits to making up visions to give these people hope. at worst, she complains about the treatment, but doesn't make many moves to actually stop it, and neither does georgie, while john and martin seem to just find it funny or intriguing. and the existence of the unnamed cultist in 191 confirms there are people who go to extremes with this belief system, believing "only the prophet names are safe", that they're special and chosen, and the fact the group is small enough that there's no way georgie and melanie are unaware of this, but haven't corrected it, is... telling.

i don't think georgie and melanie are malicious really - or at all. but i think, even their respective fearlessness and severance from the eye, they're in a place to not take this seriously. they're both creators, and popular ones at that - they know what fanbases are like. they have experience with being watched and being put up on a pedestal, to them, this is just a strange-but-harmless extension of that. much like how to john, the victims of domains are inconveniences compared to the importance of punishing the people who put them there.

we're lucky enough to only catch this cult in its beginning stages, and for it to be cut off by the eye taking them: but one of georgie's primary character traits is her tendency to put herself in caretaker roles, and melanie has been kicked, spit on, and disbelieved by the world at large for long before the podcast even starts. i have to imagine it feels really nice for her to be believed for once, even if subconsciously. the potential for growth here is honestly quite scary!

so what? georgie and melanie's cult is actually dangerous and unhealthy and we just never see it as such because the others don't care? isn't that a bit grim? yes! as grim as martin cracking jokes about the victims of the buried domain! as grim as john envying jonah's place in the panopticon!

i think tma's tone throughout s5 is very very intentional: you, like martin, are following around the most powerful man in the world, you have the context and knowledge of this setting that nobody else does. you hear the cultists and you think, "wow, melanie and georgie are prophets? that's crazy! that's not how this works! that's not the lore!" - just like john and martin do.

let's think about the opening paragraphs of love bombing - about how belief doesn't begin in your mind, but in your feelings. every single person in georgie+melanie's tunnels has survived something horrific and is just trying to find reason for it and cling to what feels like the only hope that still exists anymore. they're trapped in torture labyrinths, and suddenly they're saved by people who say they know what's going on. of course they're going to latch onto that, especially if left unchecked. they didn't know this was coming - they don't even know what the fears are.

but john, and georgie, and melanie and martin, they all approach this as if belief begins in the mind. they try and rationalize things for the cultists, john snaps at the unnamed girl for "talking complete rubbish", and there are several jokes at the expense of arun's writing, the hymns he writes about them - these people are wrong about the world, and that's an inconvenience to us. hell, it's funny. isn't it embarrassing? isn't it just so wacky?

tma s5 is about a lot of things, but one of them is about how power makes compassion an active muscle you need to train. basira turns a blind eye to daisy's victims. john thinks martin is joking when he talks about being afraid of being burned. john, alone with helen and away from martin, his 'reason', snaps at a domain victim trying to get his help. melanie looks down on her followers. john dooms jordan to avatarhood out of thinking he knows best for him. there's every single joke made in an otherwise very bleak season, about that bleakness. by the end of the show, our main cast is all people who are perpetrating something, whether it be domains or something else.

They could have been different though. They could have kept their own hair styles. Could have acted completely different. And yet… they didn’t.

When do you think Andrew had his hair cut like Aaron’s?

When do you think he started paying so much attention to the other boy, so that he could mimic his behavior to a T?

When do you think Andrew realized that being indistinguishable could protect them both?

Do you think he decided to do all that the first time he met Aaron? That he saw the bruises on his body, how he carried himself, how he spoke, and realized that no matter how different their abusers were, neither was really safe?

Do you think he suggested it to Aaron under the cover of night? That he phrased it like a bonding thing? That he pulled on Aaron’s desperation to be brothers so he could keep them both safe?

Do you think Aaron hated the similarities after Tilda died?

Do you think he realized what his brother had been doing and wanted to cut his hair and change how he dressed and acted, just so that he wouldn’t be anything like Andrew?

Do you think he tried? That he butchered his hair in the bathroom after her funeral? Do you think Andrew saw and was angry? Maybe at himself, maybe at Aaron, maybe at Tilda? Do you think he did the same? Just so they were still identical? Just so he could keep on protecting him.

Because when they were identical, people weren’t able to figure out which twin was the dangerous one. Because then they had to tread carefully around both. And if no one knew which twin was Andrew and which was Aaron, they wouldn’t try anything.

Do you think Andrew relied on his own reputation to keep them both safe?