Ever since I got rejected to work for Wendy’s as a teenager, I’ve been kind of sour on the entire concept of capitalism. They could have just told me no. Those managers did not need to ship me back the entire psychological profile section of the application I filled out, with a crudely applied rubber stamp on every page, in crimson red ink, reading “morally flexible.”
I genuinely assumed that checking off the entire section for theft would make me seem like a better candidate: community-minded, entrepreneurial, and quick-witted. Of course, at the time, I didn’t realize what they wanted was not a philosopher king of yore. They wanted some guy who could cook burgers and watch a timer to see if those burgers were done.
I said it then, and I’ll say it now: stealing from the burger joint in order to give those burgers to people who are hungry but can’t afford those burgers is a noble act. The cops don’t see it my way, though. To them, it’s not “their job” to figure out if Bob Wendy’s, up there in his ivory CEO tower, will even notice the loss of one burger on the revenue charts. So really, it’s probably a good thing they never hired me.
Another reason is the drive-through. You see, drive-throughs are uncomfortably similar to drag racing tracks, especially now with the new modern restaurants that add two side-by-side drive-throughs. There was absolutely no checkbox or even question on the psychological assessment for “I would hand out free burgers for whoever does the best burnout.” In the light of such an obvious question being totally absent, I have to wonder if the test-makers really have the right to judge me.
So, if you see me out there on the unemployment-insurance line, make sure to wave. Unless I’m really dressed up, like wearing a shirt or something. In that case, I’m pretending to be a social worker so I can get behind the desk and change my own status in the database. If so, it’s probably best for both of us that you don’t give me your social insurance number.
Like, I’m not gonna say that the X-Men and their various imitators are anything like a perfect allegory, but “it’s a bad allegory because super powers really are dangerous” has never held water for me. Like, are we really just gonna uncritically accept the implicit assumption lurking in that argument that bigotry is only wrong to the extent that its targets lack the ability to threaten the status quo? Hand-wringing over whether certain minorities are inherently dangerous is – and, critically, always has been – a smoke-screen for the real conversation about who has the right to possess the capacity for violence, and you can’t engage with that conversation if your opening move is to concede that the only legitimate victim is a powerless one.
To underline what I mean about “the right to possess the capacity for violence”, let’s peel back the allegory and bring it back to the real-world issues that are allegedly being allegorised.
Every time the cops roll up and shoot some poor guy thirty-seven times in the back because the cell phone in his pocket looked kind of like it might be a gun, the public conversation always centres around questions like “are the police telling the truth about thinking it was a gun?” and “were the police reasonable to assume it was a gun?”
These are not the right questions to be asking.
The right question to be asking is “so what if it was a gun?”
Would the public execution of a guy who was literally just walking down the street have been justified then?
It’s not accidental that stories of this type are most popular in America, where the people who can be counted on to argue that cops are behaving correctly when they kill on sight every time they see a member of a visible minority who looks like they might be packing are the exact same people who argue that carrying concealed automatic weapons without a permit is the God-given right of every red-blooded American man, woman and child.
This is not hypocrisy. They know exactly what they’re doing. It’s not about who is and is not dangerous: it’s about who has the right to be dangerous.
idk if someone else has mentioned this but whatever: in the scene where Ballister and Ambrosius are at the bar and The Director is being live-streamed and claimed that the video was fake, she said something like “the monster can come after us, and could be anyone: your spouse, children, or even the person next to you’’ and that TOTALLY REMINDED ME of conservative “Christian” bigots trying to scare people into believing that queer people are “dangerous” and “grooming your children”
“Gloreth didn’t think Nimona was a monster until her mom said so”
No. No, it’s worse than that.
She decided Nimona was a monster when she tried to protect herself.
“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” “If you kill a Nazi, you’re just as bad as them.” “So much for the tolerant Left!” “We have to be accepted by the cishets in power, so let’s turn on trans people.” “My community won’t hurt ME, so YOU must be the problem.”
Nimona was attacked, and couldn’t escape, so she fought back. And Gloreth didn’t understand that her neighbors, who were always so nice and kind and rational to her, were dangerous and deadly to her friend who was Other.
She was a small child. But she is a stand in for everyone who sided with oppression and murder because they didn’t recognize their privilege. And, like many fascist governments do, she was used, her story warped, to persuade people to build the wall “to protect our children and future”.
Gloreth didn’t turn against Nimona because her mom said to. She turned against Nimona because she refused to accept that her community was cruel.
“uwu it’s ok if you don’t want to read classics uwu reading should be fun!!!!” WRONG go work in the mines
I made this post for my inner circle of girlbloggers, intellectuals and philosophers, I do not want to hear about how much you hated reading x y z book you had to read in English class
fixed a problem at work that i vaguely saw a manager fix once and i did it faster which means that i get to take his skin i get to take his skin i get to take his skin i get to take his skin i get to take his skin i get to take his skin
idk what traumatized or mentally ill person needs to hear this but dreams (especially the really disturbing ones you dont want to talk about to anybody) arent some deep peek into your psyche or a sign of your True Desires or whatever theyre quite literally your brain making fruit salad with whatever it can find on the shelf. just putting all that shit in a blender and hitting obliterate. its fine, youre fine, youre not a weirdo for it
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