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1. Embed this notice
   RD (rd4anarchy@kolektiva.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 23:49:15 JST RD

   • HeavenlyPossum
   • Håkan Geijer
   • Tom Ritchford
   • @stevewfolds

   @hakan_geijer @stevewfolds @HeavenlyPossum @TomSwirly

   "Look at Africa, at Mexico, at Asia."

   Holy fuck. I don't know much about this guy but how in the hell does he get tagged as "anarchist" with such deep ignorance of what colonialism did?

   • Embed this notice
     HeavenlyPossum (heavenlypossum@kolektiva.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 22:08:41 JST HeavenlyPossum

     in reply to

     • Tom Ritchford

     @TomSwirly

     We are habituated to obedience, like circus animals fearful of the lash

   • Embed this notice
     @stevewfolds (stevewfolds@mastodon.world)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 22:08:41 JST @stevewfolds

     in reply to

     • HeavenlyPossum
     • Tom Ritchford

     @HeavenlyPossum @TomSwirly
     “Obey little, resist much.”
     - Edward Abbey

   • Embed this notice
     Tom Ritchford (tomswirly@toot.community)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 22:08:42 JST Tom Ritchford

     in reply to

     • HeavenlyPossum

     @HeavenlyPossum 9/11 is another story just like that. All the announcements told people to stay in the buildings...

   • Embed this notice
     HeavenlyPossum (heavenlypossum@kolektiva.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 22:08:43 JST HeavenlyPossum

     in reply to

     Once, when I was living in DC, there was a fire in the metro system. A train stopped in the tunnel and started filling with smoke. An announcement came on over the speakers: stay in the train, for safety.

     Eventually people were evacuated, but not before one woman died from smoke inhalation and others became sick from it.

     There was a discussion on a local blog: what went wrong? I suggested that being trapped in a box filling with smoke was bad, and that I would have exited the train and tried to make for safety.

     No no, I was told: that would have been dangerous. Anyway, someone in authority provided instructions. Stay in the train. Don’t leave. That might have gotten someone killed! We should listen to The Big Voice on the loudspeakers.

     But staying in that box filling with smoke, at the instructions of someone in authority, literally did kill someone. She died in that train. This fact didn’t seem to register for them: the uncertainty of taking action, vs the certainty of following orders.

     The fear of being embarrassed about overreaction is more powerful than the certainty of death for some people.

   • Embed this notice
     HeavenlyPossum (heavenlypossum@kolektiva.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 22:08:44 JST HeavenlyPossum

     The funniest thing about Donald Trump is that he is so routinely *honest* in public—“I will be a dictator,” “there will be violence if I lose”—and yet the majority of people are so concerned about decorum, so terrified of appearing to overreact, that the American political system just plods along as if he hadn’t said what he said.

   • Embed this notice
     HeavenlyPossum (heavenlypossum@kolektiva.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 22:08:44 JST HeavenlyPossum

     in reply to

     “I didn’t threaten violence if I lose, I merely anticipate that other people would be violent”

     This is a clever child’s logic for lawyering their way out of trouble for a threat they made. No one is under any obligation to take any of this seriously. But the prevailing preference is to pretend that the most generous interpretation of his words is the correct one, and that people really can just spend a few moments in November voting and then bear no subsequent cost.

   • Embed this notice
     HeavenlyPossum (heavenlypossum@kolektiva.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 22:08:44 JST HeavenlyPossum

     in reply to

     It’s a popular myth that in crises people will panic and devolve into chaos. The opposite is mostly true: in times of crisis, people tend to become more, not less, pro-social. This is to our credit as a species, but it is sometimes to our detriment. I remember a story of an office full of people in the World Trade Center on 9/11, sitting down on the carpet to debate their next moves. Should they evacuate or wait there for rescue?

     People want to stop, to discuss, to debate. No one wants to be seen as overreacting. It’s embarrassing. No one wants to feel embarrassed. What if you act with urgency and then discover afterwords that you didn’t need to? You will look like a fool.

     Of course, if you act without urgency and then discover afterwords that you did need to, you might be dead.

   • Embed this notice
     @stevewfolds (stevewfolds@mastodon.world)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 22:44:00 JST @stevewfolds

     • HeavenlyPossum
     • Håkan Geijer
     • Tom Ritchford

     @hakan_geijer @HeavenlyPossum @TomSwirly
     Sorry, somehow I missed Abbey’s racism.

   • Embed this notice
     Tom Ritchford (tomswirly@toot.community)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 23:27:49 JST Tom Ritchford

     • HeavenlyPossum
     • Håkan Geijer
     • @stevewfolds

     @hakan_geijer @stevewfolds @HeavenlyPossum Oof.

     "Negro" was mostly unacceptable already by the time he wrote this (clearly in 1983).

   • Embed this notice
     Tom Ritchford (tomswirly@toot.community)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 23:32:28 JST Tom Ritchford

     • HeavenlyPossum
     • Håkan Geijer
     • @stevewfolds

     @hakan_geijer @stevewfolds @HeavenlyPossum Oh, you bet. "Militarize the border" makes it abundantly clear.

     I was simply curious as to whether "negro" was even acceptable when he wrote it, and it wasn't.

     What a let-down.

   • Embed this notice
     violetmadder (violetmadder@kolektiva.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 23:36:20 JST violetmadder

     • HeavenlyPossum
     • Håkan Geijer
     • Tom Ritchford
     • @stevewfolds

     @hakan_geijer @stevewfolds @HeavenlyPossum @TomSwirly

     What the hell is it with these types and the damn lifeboat analogies?

     I don't even know how many times I've run into these guys and they say shit like, "If you're on a lifeboat at sea and somebody refuses to catch any fish, is everybody else on the boat supposed to feed him?"

   • Embed this notice
     sidereal (sidereal@kolektiva.social)'s status on Monday, 18-Mar-2024 05:16:05 JST sidereal

     in reply to

     • HeavenlyPossum
     • Håkan Geijer
     • Tom Ritchford
     • @stevewfolds

     @RD4Anarchy @hakan_geijer @stevewfolds @HeavenlyPossum @TomSwirly When I first found out about Edward Abbey I looked him up and found a bunch of ranting about stopping immigration from Mexico to protect the Sonoran Desert.

     As though people being on one side of the desert in Mexico is any different from being on the other side of the desert in the USA.

     I was like... this guy completely missed the point of both environmentalism and anarchism. IDK how this stuff isn't more well known.

   • Embed this notice
     RD (rd4anarchy@kolektiva.social)'s status on Monday, 18-Mar-2024 05:16:05 JST RD

     in reply to

     • HeavenlyPossum
     • sidereal
     • Håkan Geijer
     • Tom Ritchford
     • @stevewfolds

     @sidereal @hakan_geijer @stevewfolds @HeavenlyPossum @TomSwirly

     Fortunately I think some of the first references to him that I came across pointed out some of his problematic aspects. I never learned much more about him, and when his name comes up once in a great while I usually have to look it up to remember who he was and then it's like oh yeah, *that* guy, movin' along now...