Oceans Yet to Burn
Month
“Yes,” she declared, “all Men.”
Deep in the darkest recesses of the great Mind at the core of the World, something not entirely unlike circuits lit up in what humans would call ‘amusement’. Its 3,768,423,281 puppets, each coated in flesh, with hairs and skin and sweat, were performing their functions admirably.
They were, in fact, extensions of one vast mind, and each could be held as morally responsible as any other. The pretense of individuality was but a sick illusion to further aggravate the true human race.
In the space of the woman’s sentence, the great beast sent another 3,445,222 dick pics.
The real answer is “respect”, but I’m not sure how to operationalize this.
I’ve never been good at treating “the dignity of all human life” and “respect for everyone just because they are human” as anything other than slogans. Nobody deserves to suffer, and nobody deserves to have their rights taken away, but I think of “respect” and “dignity” as different than that, as necessarily involving desert. To respect someone in a nontrivial way is to assess them as valuable and full of good qualities. If you “respect” everyone no matter their qualities, then “respect” is meaningless, like giving a gold medal to everyone regardless of performance.
The white working class certainly has some good qualities - some of the auto workers I meet are among the hardest-working and most dependable people I know - but again, I feel like sticking my thumb on the balance makes respect false and meaningless. If I think hard enough, I can respect some qualities in almost everyone - but it’s hard for me to deny that there are a lot of things about the white working class I don’t respect, and if I gave them special treatment in the Respect Sweepstakes just because they have a lot of votes, I would think that’s pretty dishonest too.
I think this ties into the question of “does the white working class want special treatment”? That is, if all they want is to be respected the same amount as every other group, then fine, tell the #KillAllWhites people to tone it down and then everyone will be happy. If they want to be respected more than other groups, obviously that’s a problem and the source of this whole “the white working class is trying to defend their privilege” sort of thing.
I think there’s kind of a middle ground, which is that most white areas in the US until recently had very low black populations and practically zero populations most other minority groups. The white working class was alone, they could do whatever they wanted, they could practice their own shared culture in institutions geared completely to them, and they were pretty happy with it.
Then immigrants came in and they faced demands - both literal demands from elites and figurative demands from the exigencies of society - to deal with it in ways that they didn’t like. And I don’t think what they want here is a world where they rule everything and everything happens their way and there are lots of immigrants but the immigrants are second-class citizens. I think their demand is “Look, we were very happy here with no immigrants, we’re less happy with more immigrants, there’s no reason why we should have to take immigrants, why are you insisting that we do?”
As far as I know, nobody has really addressed this except the open borders people, who say “taking immigrants is a moral obligation”. Anyone short of open borders people has no answer to this except to confuse it with the sort of racism where they want a society with lots of races and themselves on the top, which most white people reject and understandably get angry when they’re accused of.
On the other hand, most Trump voters are in areas without many immigrants (and for that matter, without many blacks), making racism and principled-immigration-opposition equally surprising. I don’t know if the immigration aspect is completely metaphorical (the invasion of incomprehensible foreign forces into a world they once understood), if it’s demographic/political (Republicans would have won the last umpteen elections if Hispanics didn’t vote, and a country ruled entirely by Republicans would look very different), if they’re happy with their own hometowns but angry about what they view as the state of the wider country, or if they’re just very confused.
But I think what they want is respect along the lines of “Yes, you were here first, except for the Indians who don’t count, and that gives you the right to determine who you invite or don’t invite into your country. We won’t let new people in unless you like and approve of them and think they’re a good fit for your community.”
Since that’s never gonna happen, maybe we can just give them a basic income instead.
How terrifying is it for the prospect of effective governance that even ranked choice voting is considered too complex for some voters?
Not that disenfranchisement isn’t dangerous - if people who couldn’t even understand ranked choice voting couldn’t vote, it could undermine their ability to upset the applecart when they notice bad changes in their lives and give them even less weight in the fake utility function of the legislature. But even with that considered, “rank these guys by how much you like them” shouldn’t be that hard.
Suggestion: we petition the Trump administration to expand the use of nuclear energy. Despite being really good for the environment, it’s coded as being anti-environmentalist, or at least anti-hippyliberal. Also can be postured as “rebuilding America” and providing domestic blue collar jobs.
I heard he was talking with someone from the American Nuclear Association some months ago. This isn’t a bad idea, but it would take some clever plotting to make it explode (metaphorically) in such a way as to catch his attention.
“What? Like, a disabled protagonist? How would that even work? How could someone with a disability be the hero in an action show?” local anime trash boy wonders while sitting next to his box sets of Full Metal Alchemist, showing no hint of irony or self awareness.
It’s not a disability if they have something that completely negates the downsides and turns it into an upside. Just like how Daredevil being blind doesn’t mean he’s disabled, when he has super sonar and is superhumanly perceptive and suffers no ill affects of blindness. Having two metal limbs you can turn into weapons isn’t a disability, even if once in a while they break.
Congratulations, you just stumbled upon the problem disabled activists have with the term disabled. Disabled people can be competent and capable. Disabled people can be better than their abled peers. This does not negate their disability. For this reason, you may see the term “differently abled.”
Daredevil is still blind. He can’t watch TV or use a computer. He can read something if the ink is raised, but not if it is on a screen or if the item is laminated/really smooth. He is still an amazing lawyer and can kick ass.
The Winter Soldier may be able to do things with his metal arm that is way beyond the ability of any fleshy, organic arm. His metal arm is still an accessibility device. He still uses it to open doors, get dressed, prepare food, etc. Things that don’t require superhuman strength.
Pretty much, I see people referencing things like Iron Man where the disability never presents any actual hindrance to the character, which I assume is kind of the big thing about wanting disability representation: overcoming hindrance.
I see a couple other people raise the same point.
And let’s face it, how would you react to a hero flummoxed by something like, say, trying to put their pants on?
I think what’s getting glossed over here is, going back to the point about hindrance, someone like Edward Elric just acts like a normal-ass person. They may technically be disabled/differently-abled, but “local anime trash boy” doesn’t see Edward Elric as any different or lesser than anybody else, possibly, if we’re going to accuse him of that.
Now, whether “distinct representation” is any better or worse than “this character has a disability but it doesn’t make them different from anybody else” is a question I’d rather personally leave to the wisdom of the crowds, but I think what some people want from “disabled heroes” does not exactly line up with “guy who has a cyberpunk prosthetic that is perfectly functional like a flesh-and-bone arm.”
In fact, rarely will we get very intimate about the personal routines of characters, like, say, their bathroom habits. Little things that could highlight what life with their hypothetical disability is like.
(For what it’s worth, my current problematic fave is an anime boy who presently has lost the use of an arm and an eye due to neural-interface-overload, but it’s not so bad because he gets them back when he plugs into his giant robot.)