I'll never really understand how the idea that people have distinct lives and lived experiences that differentiate from other kinds of people, became such a heated melting down-foaming at the mouth kind of debate. Or that it is even considered a debate. How can people who aren't reactionaries or propagandists become so angry over it? Life is many different kinds of lives with many different kinds of people, all rubbing up against the other. And this is living life in the real world, people grappling with this complicated and nagging reality. Is this why so many are mad over it? Why is this considered intellectually lazy or elite college brainwashing? Maybe those people are more insecure in the world and their identities in it than they can bear to admit. Idk. Though they should figure that out before the fascists dismantle the capabilities of people to publicly speak about themselves and question their own lives. For one to be able to interrogate the place they occupy in the world, does it make pushing that boulder back and forth up the hill more bearable or is it more painful for them?

 My mind is bewildered sometimes observing the intensity of how conservatives and the far right talk about liberals and the left online, that I have been watching since back in the later Obama years. I low key believe Fox News and some YouTube channels are like  "They Live" news networks, but instead of obey and consume it's 'your liberal neighbor you should watch out for them, you never know and you don't want to be caught off guard right?' indoctrination. A few years back I came across some comment section on Facebook that has left a permanent disturbance in me. This person was talking about how their neighbor's adult kids were liberals and the neighbor is in bad health and they wouldn't put it past them if their liberal kids did something to hurry it along. Another person was agreeing and commiserating bonded together by this crazy idea! Like how so you get to that point? 

I've known many hardcore conservatives throughout my life. I grew up around wealthy conservatives and then working class ones. I know an unfortunate amount who went down some dedicated paths of paranoid conspiracies later on. Some who weren't even conservatives, but I would never think that because they have those beliefs they'd knock off their loved ones. I have no understanding of how someone comes to this logic, because a family member of theirs is in ill health and pain that due to their political beliefs they are planning to kill them. Is that what some of you Republicans want to do or planning yourself if you got the chance? I uses to have a bunch of images I would play around with on my blog that was dedicated to conservatism and conspiracies, and I remember finding a conservative shirt that listed 10 good things about liberals and every numerical line is empty except number 10 concluding so poetically 'They die.' In this Trump era I'm sick of the eulogizing of some nobility of past GOP presidents and a most recent one before the maniac we are stuck with, that Obama restored and white washed a destructive legacy. 

This recent October I went to an exhibition on the Blacklist and Red Scare that swept the country on and off for a couple decades at the New York Historical Society. An excellent exhibition though it was disturbing how easy it was to compare the similarities of the present day. I wonder if that kind of exhibition will be allowed in the future, or will it be decried as wokeness and DEI paranoia. Demands and threats to take it down. To bad so many Americans who aren't even hardcore conservatives or conservatives at all, don't take the GOP as the threat they are. Another thing that has baffled me for years is why so many Republicans don't believe the left are sincere in wanting a better world and human rights. That we must be pulling the wool over their eyes with nefarious intentions. I don't know. A shame.

 

The news of Rob Reiner's death has really shocked me like everyone else and I cried last night finding out. One of the worst nightmare tragic ways to pass through this world. He seemed to live a good and fulfilling life. Trying to do meaningful things and able to exist in a creative paradise and it was taken away violently and coldly. I guess the only consolation is he had many years that fulfilled all of these aims and dreams. I hope light and peace are on the other side of this cruel and callous plane. R.I.P. to him and his wife.

I'm rewatching all of Stranger Things with my mother to prepare for the finale and I couldn't help but think of how these fandoms are so awful to people, and the exposure these kids had to endure and the eventual turning and backlash, because people didn't like creative decisions made. They were angry. They wanted their time and money back, which you're not going to get, that's not how it works. So hordes of people not sure what to do with this uncomfortable feeling, they can't sit with and go off to their own spaces. They have to spill out and lash out they wasted an hour or 8 hours of their life for work they didn't like the end result of. I get that feeling, I've been upset by creative choice and such and vented. Yet there is this appetite in the culture for people to be demanding that they have been wronged. They have been burned. They have been betrayed of the end product that they wanted served for them on demand.

It floods in the formal media press pieces, to rapid over the top emotional complaints/rants on social media and that's how it goes but yet they can't even leave it at that, it's not good enough. Rapidly to the source, go onto these people's special social media pages and let them know. Who wouldn't fucking hate that? Why wouldn't people be resentful, check out or lose their minds and the grasp they once held onto with their creative work. Being an actor is like being spilt into a haunted ventriloquist doll the audience wants to never forget and continually interact and be entertained. 

I think of the actress who plays El on Stranger Things, Millie Bobbie's trajectory. The way she was turned on, dissected apart, and eventually despised far away from the clever fun kid rapping Nicki Minaj's Monster verse to eventually being sexually mocked and exploited, and told she's no good now, she's actually trash. She actually can't act we found out. 'I'm tired of her', etc. But outside of Millie it goes to all those kids, the older actors, the creators and other TV shows. Like the now despised Game of Thrones. 

'How dare this didn't work out the way I wanted this thing that I loved!? Well you know I actually hate it now. It's ruined! Toss it, discard it into nothing...What's next on the menu?'

Art isn't for you on demand. This has repulsed me over the past over a decade seeing this new kind of consumption for the audiences of these enterprises who become determined to bend art to their will from their favorite creators and creatives. 

'You need to rewrite this.'

'You need to re-shoot that.' 

'Re-record now!'

 'When that gets released again you need to remove this.' 

Chasing people over their social media platforms the fans demanding they want to the art they want from you, not what YOU yourself the artist wanted to put out.

'How could you disappoint us like this?!'

'The audience, you need to listen to your audience and fans! They are communicating their wants and desires outside of what you want to do, you the creator of ___. It doesn't matter they are in control now!' 

'You don't just need to listen, you have to directly cater or what good are you? You're not listening hard enough!'

'You didn't think of me in mind!'

All these giants and masters in the photography world who shaped it have been passing away rapidly the past few years. Martin Parr just passed away a couple days ago.There are no younger equivalents of these kinds of people and I find that scary for my medium. And the kinds of institutions, schools, donors, and media outlets that helped all of it exist has been collapsing with no equivalent either. Much art of the mediums photography, film, television, and music is in grave trouble. Photography is the most vulnerable because it has never been a large commercial enterprise on it's own in the way the other mediums are and the art world likes to keep photography at a friendly distance. More people photograph than ever and know less about the use and history of it more than ever. All the work that is being created to not even be properly archived. What a strange and sad time in this arena.

What are three things the average American loves? What are some characteristics that make up this nation and their inhabitants? Punishment, humiliation, and surveillance. Those are pretty top tier. Totally out of my hemisphere of what I desire to do and engage with, and the mark I wish to leave in the complex and ravaged timeline of the lifetime I am alive in.

I think I'm cursed to be haunted the rest of my life by artists, especially photographers, mostly photographers honestly, embrace of Generative AI. I'm blessed to have at least done my photography studies years prior. What a curse on us all. And I will always have some hate in my heart for those who smiled and nodded along saying they were contributing to art with it (before these things go bankrupt and use up all the water and become surveillance and mass detention centers).  'What fun! Possibilities! Freedom! The great equalizer!' Asserting they are making important creative work with it, whining you should respect it on par with...No. 

One of the worst things is that likely I am at some point going to be forced to hold this knife and contribute to cutting through the fabric of humanity if I want to eat. Why are humans their own worse enemy? How do people hate other humans so much to have invented such evil? Why do so little see it with such education and supposed enlightenment or sensitivity? These elite freaks and the people they have coerced and brainwashed are going to destroy all our fucking beautiful land and resources, peoples' psyches, societal stability, all for the opportunity for people to view and create the stupidest, mediocre and evil shit you can imagine. And you're fucking applauding it proudly.

I feel like one of a few out here unfortunately who rail against this, have actual fear and rage and yes even some grief over it in the photo world. The cultural gatekeepers and such, and teachers and such, they don't care. They don't at all. They can't see it for what it actually is ironically for being translators, teachers, philosophers of a visual medium. You can't make this stuff up, willing accepting the sci-fi dystopia because they want a gadget to decipher.

A lot to say but so much in the meantime of each time want to go and write, yet the Trump news timeline waits for no one to take a breath. However.... wow New Yorkers 😍

My four blisters from canvasing for Mamdani was well worth the win and the days fretting over if it was possible in believing something hopeful being fulfilled. 

Fuck your bitter zionist racist bloodlust Cuomo and the billionaire ghouls eager to have funded you. 

To contribute in crushing an entitled predator with his greedy dreams of continuing his family's dynasty into the political dirt is heart warming indeed. 

💖

Oh New Yorkers you have the chance to do the right thing tomorrow/today and I happen to be here to possibly witness it in real time, to grind your parasite ex-governor into the dirt politically or do the worst thing....

I've done canvasing shifts and while they have been mostly positive yet you do get some people who look at you as if you just asked them to be beamed up onto on a spaceship. 

Cuomo I was thinking about it a couple days ago after observing his Instagram, that like is this even a real campaign or a money laundering scheme? Mamdani is running a marathon of a campaign while Cuomo is in one of those rowing boats in the Central Park lake waving at spectators saying it's fine everything is great. 'Here's a poll that says I'm only losing by 7 points now!' Maybe us Mamdani supporters will get shattered and the groping sex pest is on to something we don't know. Yet who thinks this creep is actually running a campaign that he believes he can win and doing everything possible? What are Cuomo and Trump doing behind the scenes and what lobbying job is lined up for him after he has lined his pockets from this?

I almost wish that so much wasn't riding on this politically, bigger than Mamdani, and yet that this what the fates have decided, so New Yorkers are you listening?

If you could allow the political powers that be to go after children, one of the most vulnerable and oppressed groups in the world, whom are trans, one of the the most stigmatized identities, than what's stopping them from coming after you eventually? Or if that doesn't matter, your loved ones? Do you people ever think for more than a minute? Or is it all reactionary panicking constantly under the guise of smarmy intellect, hierarchical games, and paper tiger morality for you?

I'm not sure what is exactly going on with the UK leftist political party that was supposed to be emerging.... but get your fucking act together and get in line. We don't have much of a line nowadays to waste. I don't get it, who cares about your egos (people please stop using social media as a call out for problems that need to be settled privately), humble yourself, eat some crow and get in formation. You just had race riots for Christ's sake. Your government is charging people with terrorism protesting for Palestine, you also got some disturbing online regulation laws you need to scrap. There is no time left, you are out of it, as are all of us who care to not see the humanity's ordeal go into the dustbin.

 This is a little late but the Palestinian journalists bombed on camera because of the suspicion of a "Hamas camera" means that photo world writers are going to finally take what is happening in Gaza seriously and confront it right? What meaning can the writings of the medium be otherwise if this is shoved away? This wasn't hesitated with, with the Abu Ghraib images, why should this be different? 

 

If the Democrats think abortion rights can be settled in the manner similar to a hostage negotiation to get their voters to compromise on this human right, they can think again and eat shit. I will watch that party burn itself to ashes in their billionaire donors' hands.

What will you the Democratic party, and your smug pseudo intellects, technocrat columnists, corporate neo fascists backing the professional 'polling tells us...' groups, and Weekend at Biden's collaborators say when abortion is banned? Maybe that's what is going on...they are waiting for the hammer to come down and they don't have the backbone or the courts or backbone to do anything about the courts, so they are repositioning. 

Could they be this stupid, certainly they could be this immoral but to be this politically stupid? I don't trust you politically whatever side you position yourself to be on if protecting reproductive rights aren't important to your political plans and fight. Women and girls don't need more sacrificing since the fall of Roe by the party that pleaded only they could restore the rights lost. And you wonder why people don't trust your party and/or hate the DNC? 

Would you Erza Klein and Neera Tanden like to explain your position by going to host townhalls explaining why we must give up and give in to welcoming politicians who are forced birthers into the Democratic party? Will the NY Times pay for that Ezra or you just want to stay huddled inside your podcast? Will Butcher Blinken be assisting you Neera, since you assisted him into a cushy position at Center for American Progress as he helped assist your genocidal boss into annihilating Gaza? Would you care to help incinerate the Democratic party as well Neera?

I am really baffled by this idea that Kirk was assassinated by Israel coming from left wing online media type figures. Like can you slow your roll or just stop the stupidity altogether? Occam's razor anyone? Do you think Butcher Bibi doesn't have other things he's concerned with, with a literal holocaust he is caryying out, then Kirk souring on him? That maybe he is giving condolences to suck up to all the right wing figures and donors? Do you think "we" the United States (and broader West in general) are the puppet of Israel or the one pulling the actual strings? As Israel is a colonial outpost for eyes, ears, and Nuclear weapons in the Middle East, and training ground for police, war games, and surveillance. It's not some boogeyman hands of the Elders of Zion conspiracy. The West want to rule the world and pillage it through colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, supremacy, and surveillance. Israel is the vessel for all of this. Ironically same people who thought people speculating Trump having any suspicious connections with Russia was dumb libs pacifying themselves, are the ones like 'Omg Mormon kid who loved guns a patsy for Mossad? And Candance and Tucker actually on our side?' Bfr. 🙄

No one who capitulated and humiliated themselves to sign up for honoring Charlie Kirk day, will help lead you out of this. That's all the Senate Dems by the way. We are in the wilderness and when you don't feel the road ahead is anywhere nearby, nor that it will lead eventually to good and fruitful prospects, people stop walking, stop aspiring, quit long term planning, halt their hopes and kill off their dreams. They merely get enough rest to rise and survive. Going further is too much strain on the heart and it's broken so much hasn't it? Too much of America exists in an inertia they themselves don't have the willpower to get up and move on from. We as Americans and the world had ten years to work this out and instead we ended up hauled into an active volcano.

I think very often of a quote back in 2015, of a man re-accounting being at a pizza parlor with the guy behind the counter looking at the TV watching Trump and saying it's over. 

The customer asked "The election?" 

The man responded "America."

If neither the party, nor progressive groups and organizers on the ground, couldn't organize to do everything to stop a comeback, well maybe the playbooks needs to start over. Yet we might not be granted that leeway nor time. However...Maybe...We are just another sorry arc in history and a blip in the tragedy of the human experiment. Perhaps one day people can take our sorry hard learned lessons and fight for everything they believe in and desire, when dangers arise in their own particular times and troubles.

Somehow we survive

and tenderness, frustrated, does not wither.

Investigating searchlights rake

our naked unprotected contours;

over our heads the monolithic decalogue

of fascist prohibition glowers

and teeters for a catastrophic fall;

Boots club on the peeling door.

But somehow we survive

severance, deprivation, loss.

Patrols uncoil along the asphalt dark

hissing their menace to our lives.

most cruel, all our land is scarred with terror,

rendered unlovely and unlovable;

sundered are we and all our passionate surrender

but somehow tenderness survives.

Dennis Brutus

First they came for those Free Palestine people that were very loud and inconvenient, that were deemed expendable threats for state and higher institutions purposes almost 2 years ago. Then in the present day they came for one of the biggest comedians on television because he quipped in his monologue about MAGA online demanding their side had nothing to do with the shooting. Though not everyone knew the who and what fully, yet people in the frenzy make narratives and people react to them, even though Kimmel said he wished prayers for Kirk's family. If they can go after this guy you're not safe from getting a crack down. Wonderful! 

All the wealthy and bloated crybaby anti woke comedians/corporate comedy sports and LOL commentary mouthpieces, happen to be mysteriously silent on the firing and deflecting blame that what is occurring actually isn't! 

It seems like a lot of you are not principled in the slightest?  🤔

On another weird upside down note, some of the far right media figures are going with 'Charlie was maybe taken out by Mossad?', while their online supporters say it was the leftist trans agenda that did Kirk in. Strange and dangerous times. 

Very embarrassing people on the left flirting with the Israel angle, make it make sense. 🙄

"it's always two dumb bitches telling each other exactlyyyy…."

black-pilled by Charlie Kirk death seen as comedy, but not Gaza genocide as an ongoing tragedy

You were black-pilled by some people on social media happy/relieved/making fun of/not caring/not upset about what happened to Kirk but not the genocide going on in Gaza, that we ALL can see on our phones 24/7 for almost two years? And I'm suppose to take you seriously about this outrage radicalizing you when you don't take your own humanity seriously? 

"It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible"

 

As for both journalists and everyone else who were (and still are) acting like sociopaths the last couple days online....If you can't participate in talking about politics without endangering the lives of trans people maybe fix your hearts? Isn't Jesus about that? Wouldn't Jesus say 'I think David Lynch had a salient point there'? Why do you believe in Jesus anyway if you're so cruel? Are you waiting for him to save you? What makes your hateful self worth saving in his name? I'm not even religious like that and yet I think I'd at least be a better candidate for that kind of life. One of the best pieces of advice my father ever told me was to not trust people who say they know God and say they speak to him, those are things not accessible to us in this life. And yet I definitely know that man who left this mortal plane a couple days ago was not some vessel for God's love. The hagiography around him is shameless but I expected it though from his side, it's how it goes the myth making on that side, however some of you foolish liberals...

The treatment of trans people merely in retaliation to him is fucking sickening. For those of you who choose to remain this way, I hope the God you desire for acceptance and forgiveness and his love never finds you. That the God you crave looks down on you in disgust and mortification. That he recoils hearing your words and pleas to him, because he can't believe he crafted such vengeful abominations, that have the nerve to describe themselves as caring human beings all in the Lord's name. 

The Unforgivable Sin of Ms Rachel