im sorry did i miss something or are people advocating for the actual real life mafia right now
is this a mad lib
I saw that thread, he said the Mafia shows how you don’t need hierarchies and can be successful in commiting crimes purely on a system of honor. He missed a few things:
1) the honor stuff is mostly bullshit, they’re psychopaths who murder each other all the time, it’s how John Gotti came to power.
2) The Mafia is completely hierarchial, even the glamorized movie versions, which is clearly where his image of them was coming from.
3) To the extent they do follow any of their own rules, they do it because they’re afraid of being murdered and because they make shitloads of money. They put up with the chain of command because this is the only job where a high school dropout with an IQ of 85 can make high six figures.
4) They’re not successful, they barely exist anymore. They were already in decline when Sammy The Bull put the final nail in the coffin and turned over the entire Gambino family. In the middle of the 20th century that had an estimated half a million members, now it’s down to roughly 2,000, and with no political power or central coordination.
But sure, go ahead, mimic this extremely successful organization without giving anyone any money and with people who have economic opportunities that won’t get them killed.
how much of an absolute dipshit do you have to be to think the Mafia isn’t hierarchical. How do you look at an organization where people are literally referred to as ‘Don’ and go “oh yes, this strikes me as following anarchist principles”
In the Democratic primary, Dukakis’ campaign leaked news that Joe Biden had stolen a speech from a British politician in the Labour Party, forcing him to drop out of the race (Dukakis fired the people who leaked it)
At the DNC, Ann Richards said Bush Sr. “was born with a silver foot in his mouth” and Ted Kennedy said that he was a “dead duck”
Bush won the Republican primary almost exclusively on his promise of “read my lips: no new taxes,” which we know now to have been a complete lie
Bush repeatedly called Dukakis a “card-carrying member of the ACLU,” stealing the phrase “card-carrying member of the Communist Party” from the McCarthy era
Bush repeatedly attacked Dukakis for his refusal to sign a bill requiring the Pledge of Allegiance be read in Massachusetts (the bill would have, as Dukakis later put it, threatened teachers with jail to do so)
When rumors circulated about Dukakis having a history of depression, President Reagan was asked about his unwillingness to release medical records, to which Reagan replied: “Look, I’m not going to pick on an invalid.“
That rumor was supposedly spread by a guy on Bush’s campaign named Lee Atwater, one of the architects of modern Republican campaigning. He also supposedly spread another rumor, that Dukakis’ wife had burned a flag at an anti-Vietnam War rally, something she was forced to hold a press conferance to deny.
Donna Brazile (the current DNC chair), who was on Dukakis’ campaign at the time, leaked a rumor that Bush was sleeping with an assistant (Dukakis fired her for it)
Here’s where it gets really fucked up. Lee Atwater sneakily put out two more of the famous debate ads in America, famous specifically because of how low they go.
The “Revolving Door” ad discussed the prison furlough program in Massachusetts, alleging that Dukakis would be responsible for similar programs as president that’d set prisoners free to commit violent crimes against Americans. But not just any prisoners, and not just any Americans- after you watch the ad the first time, watch it again. Pay attention to the section from 0:12-0:17. There is only one man in that entire line of prisoners who shifts his glance up to give the camera a menacing scare. What features do you notice about that man that no other man in scene shares? See where this is going? That was intentional.
Here’s the big one. The infamous Willie Horton ad. The audience is introduced to Willie Horton, a scary-looking black man who we are told stabbed a little boy 19 times, then on a weekend pass, he kidnapped a couple, stabbed the man, and raped the woman. The ad ends by emphasizing that this is what Dukakis wants. When Roger Stone (the hardcore Republican mudslinger who most recently served as a Trump surrogate) saw this, he advised Atwater against putting it out. Atwater responded, “y’all pussy.” Atwater’s goal, in his words, was to make people “wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running mate.” They mentioned him constantly, non-stop. They wanted the first thought to enter your head when you thought “Dukakis” to be a black rapist and murderer, threatening you and your white family. You want to know the kicker? “Willie” Horton’s name was William Horton. He had never, at any point, gone by the name Willie; his name was changed in the ad to make it sound stereotypically blacker and more dangerous
The cherry on this brutal campaign was during a debate. The first question of the night was directed towards Dukakis: “Governor, if [your wife] Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?” The question itself was shocking and wildly unfair, but Dukakis’ response to it was a very calm, rational response. That cool-headedness in the face of just being asked about your wife being raped and murdered killed him, it made him look completely inhuman.
In the end, Dukakis won 111 electoral votes, and Bush won 426. It was one of the dirtiest elections we’ve ever had, and none of them have come close since until this year.
I was around and old enough to pay attention during that campaign, and the attacks were absolutely appalling at the time. Definitely outside the norm, with the Religious Right behind much of it. (Including pushing some ludicrous allegations.) The degree to which this happened was a relatively new thing, as they were gaining more political power.
Another pretty impressive part of that smear campaign (bolding added in the description):
1988 comic book by Dick Hafer, endorsed by Jerry Falwell and Republican Party. Asserts to tell the ‘real story’ of Michael Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic nominee for president. Includes jabs at blacks, gays, women (including Dukakis’ wife) – also attacks the sick, the poor, foreigners, peacemakers, others, connecting Dukakis as the common link. Praised by Jerry Falwell, who urged his entire following to distribute the item. Also earned the support of the GOP, placing a copy of the comic under every seat at the 1988 Republican National Convention.Considered extremely influential in Dukakis’ loss to George H Bush. See news item directly below images for more information.
when i saw the headline ‘golf digest helps free man from prison’ i thought it was gonna be, like
“he’s clearly in the background of this golf photo! that proves he wasn’t at the crime scene!!”
as opposed to, like
“this guy in prison sent us his cool golf fanart but we didn’t want to promo a serial killer, so we looked into his case and thought it looked pretty flimsy and probably racially motivated”
“The case is complicated, but on the surface it involves shoddy police work, zero physical evidence linking Dixon, conflicting testimony of unreliable witnesses, the videotaped confession to the crime by another man, a public defender who didn’t call a witness at trial, and perjury charges against those who said Dixon didn’t do it. All together, a fairly clear instance of local officials hastily railroading a young black man with a prior criminal record into jail. Dixon’s past wasn’t spotless, he had sold some cocaine, but that didn’t make him a murderer.”-Golf Digest
I’ve seen these posts saying, in the words of one of them, “If your job requires you to go against your religious beliefs then perhaps it is time to change careers?” in reference to healthcare workers and government employees who want to deny services to lgbt ppl or others whom they condemn, and i just feel like those posts don’t attempt to understand internal logics at all
like, fundamentalist christian doctors don’t deny trans people medical care because they believe that somebody should provide the care but they just don’t want to be the one to do it. they deny the care because they don’t believe the person should receive care. Their refusal to provide care isn’t just “oops you’re in the wrong field,” as if they were a person with a peanut allergy working in a peanut factory. It is an intentional and calculated part of why they are in the field in the first place — to extend religious control and condemnation to the medical realm.
the pediatrician who spent an entire consultation telling one of my friends at 16 or 17 that he would go to hell if he kept choosing to be gay wasn’t just “not cut out for the job,” he was specifically in that job in order to do that particular thing. Kim Davis didn’t deny the gay couple a marriage license because she couldn’t personally do it, she denied them a marriage license because she thought that people like them should not get marriage licenses and that a clerk should deny them and by god she was going to be that clerk
Saying “if you can’t provide services then why are you in that job!!!” to fundamentalist christians almost always misses the point — that they are in that job specifically so they can selectively deny service
So many people have reblogged this with comments about how this isn’t a thing and how nobody goes into a field specifically to exclude people, and that people pick jobs based on what they like doing, just like most people select a career. And I see where they are coming from in some ways. My wording can be read as meaning that Kim Davis’s primary motivation for becoming a county clerk was specifically to deny gay couples marriage licenses, which isn’t exactly what I mean.
What I mean is that, for a specific subset of fundamentalist Christians, they will say “we need more Christian doctors” or “we need more Christians in government,” and what they mean (and what everybody in the community hears, particularly kids and young adults thinking towards careers) is “we need people in those positions who will discharge their duties according to a fundamentalist Christian ethic, and refuse to allow _______ to happen on their watch.” That “_______” can be filled with anything from abortion to trans acceptance to issuance of marriage licenses to gay people. Their epistemic framework is specifically fundamentalist Christian and not “professional,” and they should be recognized as such, not just people whose professional ethics are superseded in one or two places by their personal religious practice.
I’m guessing this also applies to doctors who are straight-up disablist.
I know there’s a problem with people going into medicine because it’s prestigious and they want the admiration, rather than having any concern for patients. That’s fairly well-acknowledged, culturally, though it could still be better.
But I wonder how many are in medicine because they hate not just sickness – which would be on shaky ground – but sick/disabled people.
Like they’re subliminating their urge to “clean up the town” into a very socially-accepted course of action.
And if they can’t fix you immediately – ie. make the problem not be a problem now – they’ll take the Other Route, of removing care so that you die as soon as possible.
All subconsciously, for most of them, but it would explain their actions very well.
Yeah I suspect it’s complicated. Meaning, sometimes absolutely, sometimes no, sometimes a combination, and sometimes even they probably don’t understand what the hell they’re doing or why. But there are definitely people who go into fields with positions of power because they want to do harm. Hell, we already know that there’s serial killers who prey on sick and disabled people by becoming doctors or nurses or LNAs on purpose to gain easier access to us. (Ever wonder why you never hear of them even though they’re some of the most successful and prolific, and there’s little to no outcry or fame even when they’re caught after doing shit that makes the most infamous serial killers look tame? …yeah.) That’s an extreme example, but if that exists (and is as widespread as it is), then every other gradation along the way in terms of malicious intent, both conscious and otherwise, has to exist as well.
There’s a story Grandpa used to tell by the fire about a Lady who was engaged to be married to a very rich man. He’d had many wives before, it was said, but they’d all vanished. This caused the Lady some concern, but her parents just saw his money and sent her off to be wed, and she being in the sort of predicament she was, resolved to find her own way through it.
So she moved into his house on a far-away island away from her family, with her solitary trunk, and look upon the wide expanse of the huge estate that stood, colossal and empty except for him and her and their silent gray-faced servants. The man she married was huge and had a long black beard take devoured most of he face, and beady, dark eyes that burned in his wide, dark sockets.
No one knew how he’d come upon his fortune, but he had many ships and was often away, and he said he was just as happy to leave her be, that his main interest was in travel, but he needed someone to tend to his home.The grey-faced servants moved her one solitary trunk into her cavernous bedroom and he bent before the bed and kissed her small hand and he kissed her small foot and told her she could have anything she wanted in all the world if she would simply agree to stay here.
“You may go into any room in the house, have anything it is that you wish to have, build anything my fortune can build you, and do whatever you wish with my fortune to please you. You may move what you wish moved, and all I ask in return is that you do not use this key. All I wish is that you do go into the room at the bottom of the tower, at the end of the hall, it is my private sanctuary and it is all I love besides travel. This is all I ask of you,” he said, and his eyes gleamed too hot and he held her small hand in his large paw and stared too closely at her.
“Promise me this and you may do what you wish with all I otherwise possess.”
“I do promise,” she said. He kissed her small foot and he kissed her small hand and the very next day sailed out into the world, waving goodbye and leaving her all alone in the wide, empty house with only grey-faced servant silently stepping around her and saying no words.
She promptly removed it from the ring and threw the heavy too-cold key into the ocean. She reviewed her husband’s books and accounts and began to neaten the household, paying the servants more and renovating their quarters until they were friendly and bright eyed and she opened up the extra, cavernously echoing chambers of the house to their families so the hallways rang with voices.
She balanced her husband’s financial empire, sending missives and inquires to various branches, and by the time he returned from his travels he looked bewildered that she was still there and all she had done, but conceded that she had followed the letter of their agreement.
“But what was the room then, Grandpa?”
“Who cares? If somebody tries to lead you into a trap, don’t follow them, and if you promise not do something, then don’t do it,” Grandpa had said, offering me a perfectly toasted marshmallow.
I prefer this ending
Holy shit, this makes me so uncomfortable. Knowing in the original stories that the bodies of his previous wives (in some versions the sisters of this woman) are mutilated in pieces in this room makes this version frankly detestable to me.
Think about it. Someone in power over her (parents) hand her to someone who is widely regarded to be a dangerous individual (rich husband from a far away place that she’d never be able to escape without help). She is now trapped under his hand. He gives her permission to do whatever she wants (in a scenario where the slightest misstep could still end up with her dead because he has complete control over her). As a test he hands her the key to truth and all she needs to bring him to justice, knowing that once she’s seen the bodies she won’t be able to hide it.
In the original story she gets help. She stops the monster. Some versions even bring her dead sisters back to life after she stitches their mutilated bodies back together. This version though?
Nope! Forget that! Forget truth! What’s truth among spouses? What’s truth to someone who’s property? Don’t question! Don’t poke around! It doesn’t matter if the corpses of a dozen women are in the basement, as long as he doesn’t get mad and chop you to bits, it’s fine!
The grandfather’s message is to always listen to people in authority over you, even if you’re pretty damned sure that they are a murderer. Even if they are doing monstrous things. Sure, you can try to work behind the scenes to make things a little better for a few people, but you should never go against the person committing atrocities.
There are plenty of fairy tales worth reinterpreting in different ways, but Bluebeard is one of the few well enough known that’s out there that tells women to be careful, to pay attention, to take care of themselves, and to do the right thing (and doesn’t assume that doing what her forced husband wants is actually the right thing). This is not the story we should be reinterpreting to say obedience and submission are the right thing to do. Not when dead women are under your feet.
Kevin had been shot in the head in his Burlington apartment.
“Everybody in Vermont was so amazing. Like, electric bill was forgiven, you know, gas bill was forgiven, cable. … People were so moved by this kid that was murdered in his own home,” DeOliveira-Longinetti said.
She said the federal government wiped out Kevin’s Stafford loan debts as well, but the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority – the source of nearly $19,000 in additional student loans – did not.
“Please accept our condolences on your loss… Monthly bill statements will continue to be sent to you,” DeOliveira-Longinetti read from the HESAA letter.
When she gets the bill in the mail, it’s a reminder that her son is dead and will not graduate, DeOliveira-Longinetti said.
“I know what a co-signing is. If it defaults, I’m responsible. I know that,” she said. “You’re not going to say to your kid, you can’t go to college because of $4,000.”
Earlier this month, an investigation by ProPublica and The New York Times looked at HESAA and quoted a lawyer who likened it to “state-sanctioned loan-sharking.” ProPublica reporter Annie Waldman interviewed dozens of borrowers including a cancer patient who lost his job and couldn’t repay his loans. HESAA sued him for $266,000.
“Plenty of gay guys in HS get bullied, play video games, & get rejected for dates. And yet we don’t hear about them going on killing sprees after getting turned down by a boy they like.
This is about misogyny & a society that tells men they are entitled to women’s bodies.”
Start teaching consent when they’re little. There’s even children’s books that teach about bodily autonomy. My daughter has a book called No means No, and it’s a useful way to reinforce what I’m already teaching both my daughter and my son. That their bodies belomg to them. That someone else’s body isn’t theirs to do woth as they please. We ask before we tickle. We ask before we hug or kiss. And if someone says stop, we work on recognizing that and stopping.
I was just answering an ask about how to teach a four year old boundaries. This isn’t hard.
Start early people. I have 10 year old boys and girls at work who ask why it isn’t okay to touch other people without asking. Umm, they really should have learned that well before 5th grade.
And no, “But they _________” is not a justification to touch anyone anywhere. I don’t care if they touched your stuff. I don’t care if they accidentally touched you. I don’t care if they intentionally touched you, you don’t touch them. Retaliation is wrong. We can handle it in better ways.
“Sorry but euthanasia is cheaper and doesn’t make everyone a slave to the Government [sic].”
“The ones who are disabled and can’t work…why are we required to keep them?” the Chrisforgov account responded. “Sorry but euthanasia is cheaper and doesn’t make everyone a slave to the Government [sic].”
Defending his now-deleted comments, the account admin mused as to why American taxpayers should “have to keep up people who cannot contribute to society any longer?”
“Obviously, I’m not saying the Government [sic] should put these people down,” the Chrisforgov account wrote, contradicting its earlier statement. “I’m just saying that we shouldn’t keep them up.”
Even if you do not believe the Facebook comments came from him, his own campaign website is bad enough. Given what I read there (I won’t link to it) I’d say it’s plausible he made those posts himself.
This is what a significant percentage of conservatives (and yes, even some “liberals”) believe: that people like me are worthless and should be put down for our own good.
Better dead than a slave to the government, right?
ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN, as well as local news outlets, interrupted regularly scheduled programming to cover the incident, with an estimated 95 million viewers nationwide;[37][38][31][39] only 90 million had watched that year’s Super Bowl.[23] While NBC continued coverage of Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and the Houston Rockets at Madison Square Garden, the game appeared in a small box in the corner while Tom Brokaw covered the chase.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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