New Review up at Strange Horizons

My review of Virginia Bergin's Who Runs the World is up at Strange Horizons.


Go here to read it!

Moving to the Left

Camestros makes an interesting argument here.

I may just like it because I have thought for years that we should move further to the Left as a country, mind you. What we call 'Left' in the USA is laughably conservative.

Doing Without

So it's been almost two weeks now without gluten, and I'm feeling much better.

Sadly, this makes me conclude that gluten is probably the culprit.

Sadly, because that means I've gotta continue to give up gluten. I've been living on fruit, eggs, nuts, rice, and cheese, potatoes, coffee and cream for the past 13 days. I am here to tell you it is a diet that can get old.

On the other hand, doing with stomach cramps, nausea and exhaustion is quite nice.

I guess I'ma have to start reading some of those gluten-free cookbooks.

Bah.

Shared Mythos on the Right

For my sins, I read more RW blogs than are probably good for me, and I can attest that the common myths Camestros discusses here are right on.

One of them, the Islamic takeover of Europe, featured on Rod* Dreher's blog just today. And of course, there is the ever popular notion that at universities we do nothing but brainwash students and shriek about gender issues and racism sexism trans people. One blog I visit which makes these claims is run by someone who works at a university, so it's not that this person doesn't know better.

Of course I know why conservative bloggers push these lies and nonsense -- it gets eyes on their pages. Anything for money, I suppose, here in America, where the One True God is Capitalism.






*To be fair, I think Rod Dreher might actually believe these conservative myths. He really is that gullible, after all -- he's always running stories on his blog about how some ghost or the other spoke to someone's dying cousin, or a statue bled ichor that cured some orphan in some mountains somewhere. If he had lived in the Middle Ages, he'd have a house full of One True Crosses and finger bones from Saint Peter.

Whaaaat?

Yeah, here's a shock.

The White House has shared [doctored] footage posted by an editor of [the] conspiracy theory website [Infowars] showing Jim Acosta making contact with a Trump aide, in a bid to justify its suspension of the CNN reporter’s press pass.
Mr Acosta “placed his hands on” a female aide trying to retrieve a microphone as the journalist repeatedly questioned the president, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed in a statement posted to Twitter.

Apparently the whole "Acosta assaulted that poor girl" started on the White Nationalist Twitter feed, and -- of course -- the Trump White House picked it up and made it part of their narrative.

And the mainstream Conservatives seized on it, because White Nationalist narratives are their brand.

This is America.

Who You Gonna Believe?

This thing with Acosta is amazing.

We have it on video. We can all watch the video -- over and over if we want to. We can all see that Jim Acosta did not, in fact, "lay hands" on the White House aide.

BREAKING: The WH has suspended CNN’s Jim Acosta’s access to the White House falsey alleging an assault bc he wouldn’t hand back the mic.

Trump is trying to go full dictator. Will the press poll do the right thing and boycott the next press conference? pic.twitter.com/QBl7lRp2ek

— Greg Sarafan, Esq (@GSarafan) November 8, 2018

And yet, Trump supporters are coming out with escalating stories, ramping up their versions. I just saw one who claimed that Acosta "threw her aside like a rag doll."

I suppose that once you start down that road, leaving facts and evidence aside for lies and propaganda, once you start making up the world, reality soon becomes entirely irrelevant.

ETA: Yes, this:

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”—George Orwell pic.twitter.com/HnfJb3YY6v

— Ryan Knight 🌊 (@ProudResister) November 8, 2018

ETA #2:

NOW someone on Twitter is claiming that in the video Acosta "clearly" grabs her breast. And therefore it is sexual assault. OMG.

Rod Dreher claimed on his blog that if Democrats didn't take the House back liberals would "lose their minds." I guess as usual he was projecting, since we see what's happening to conservatives now that Democrats did take the House.

Also...

....this:

Yes, it sucks that Beto lost but let’s keep something in mind:

He lost by less than 200k votes in a state that has been red for DECADES

Young adult voter turnout went up by 500%

Your vote mattered. Keep educating yourself. Keep engaging yourself. Keep making your voice heard.

— Petty Betty (@BettyMekonnen01) November 7, 2018

Okay Then

This was not the victory of my dreams -- in that victory, we took both the House and the Senate, and also McCaskill won in Missouri, and Beto won in Texas, and this stupid, stupid voter ID law lost here in Arkansas.

But I'll take what we got. Winning the House, and defeating that smug fuck Walker in Wisconsin ain't nothing. Also, all the LGBT candidates who won, and the women, and the people of color -- that cuts some of the sting.

Also the passing of Amendment 4 in Florida. That really gives me hope for our country.

Did You Vote?

We drove up last weekend and got the kid, and then voted Saturday morning.

No line at all. But there never is. IDK if that's because of where we vote -- downtown at the courthouse -- or because no one is voting early here.

If you haven't voted, vote. And get your friends to vote. This one matters, y'all!

Exploring a Possibility

As readers of the blog know, I've been sick for about six months now. My PCP has no real idea what's wrong -- she thinks maybe a parasite, though two long courses of antibiotics have not really cleared up the issue. Her next move is to send me for (expensive) tests.

These tests will mean $$$, and that will be $$$ out of my pocket, obviously, since my health insurance has a huge deductible. (It's something like $5000, though I'll admit I haven't checked the exact number yet. I don't even want to know at this point.)

So before I agree to the expensive tests, I'm think I'll try other things. According to Doctor Google, one other thing that might be wrong is a gluten allergy. I know going gluten-free is very woo, but I'm trying it. It's better than putting a couple thousand dollars on the credit cards.

On the other hand, my current diet is very gluten-heavy.

So! Recommendations for gluten-free foods?

Cheap gluten free foods, if possible. (Currently I am living on oatmeal, oranges, and potatoes. I can see that this diet will get old fast, however.)

Poem

Once Upon a Time

...in 2016, before the election, some my students asked me what I thought of Donald Trump.

This was in the dream-like days when I still believed Americans could not be hateful and stupid enough to elect this conman president, so I laughed.

"'Make America Great Again,'" I said. "What a joke. Make America White Again, more like."

To my surprise, half the class nodded seriously. I saw they liked the idea of that. I saw, in fact, that this was why they were voting for him. The inside of my stomach went a little cold at that moment.

I will never forget the way my brown students and my Latino/a students look at me, the mix of pity and amusement in their eyes. What world have you been living in, tonto? they were thinking.

Not this one. Not this one.

Rough Days

Y'all, I am having rough days.

Partly it is because the country is having rough days. I don't have to outline these for you -- terrorists shooting Jews and black people, lunatics sending bombs, Trump drumming up hate against immigrants.

Partly it is because I've been non-stop ill, and can't seem to recover.

Partly it is because, despite what Trump claims, the economy is not recovering. Oh, it is recovering if you are in the top quintile of income levels. And especially for those at the very top -- for the top 10%, their income is booming. But for the rest of us, our income is flat, which means (since prices of many things, like healthcare, fuel, and college degrees are rising) that our wages are actually falling.

It's getting harder and harder these days, I guess is what I'm saying.

If I weren't so sick, it would be less hard. As it is, ai.

On the other hand, this happened:

https://twitter.com/AdiVerb/status/1056663223783579648

Trans People and Civil Rights

An actual argument I have seen persist among Evangelicals and Trump supporters is this one: Trans people are only .01% of the population (or .03% or whatever number they've been given by Fox News that morning), so why should the rest of us have to accommodate them?

It's an argument I can't believe anyone thinks is legitimate, but let's say you do.

What percentage of the population does a given group have to reach before you'll agree they should have civil rights? The deaf are only .38% of the population. Jews are less than 1%. Filipinos are less than 2%. Do we strip away their civil rights as well?

The USA doesn't base civil rights on how big a group is. Or at least we didn't used to do so.

Pockets!

The kid came home for fall break this past weekend, and we bought him new pants.

We bought them from the men's department (we've always bought girl pants before).

The kid just DM'd me: "The pockets in these new pants are SO BIG!"

Me: "Because they're men's pants. Men get pockets. It is misogyny."

The Kid: "I didn't know how good men's pockets were. I always thought I had an adequate amount of pockets!"

OPPRESSION IS INVISIBLE!!