Seleni

Not comfortable, comfort. The comfort of routine, the predictable, the familiar… and fighting against a fascist government is very uncomfortable, especially from that perspective. Once they cease to feel comfort, then people act.

That’s why massive social revolutions tend to be preceded by famines. Food comfort (that is, the idea of always having food available, even if so expensive one needs a 5-finger discount to get any) is one of the major motivational comforts, so its loss tends to hit very hard socially.

They’ll be furious that Democrats and brown migrant workers sold them out

At least in my case, family. My family is really big and loves parties, his family is really big and loves parties. That quickly becomes a 250-300 person guest list.

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."

-Martin Luther King Jr

The truth is people are rarely good or bad. The vast majority of people are simply creatures of comfort, and will be adverse to losing that comfort over all other things.

All toads are frogs but not all frogs are toads.

I sent the club a wire stating, "PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER".

-Groucho Marx (Telegram to the Friar's Club of Beverly Hills to which he belonged)

Mites. You have mites.

It’s a species that snuck into the US recently. Bad infestations can kill plants, and even mild ones make them look bad. The purple is a stress response.

A lot of landscapers in my area are recommending people pivot away from rhododendrons and azaleas because of how annoying this mite is.

I recommend a hard-hitting systemic mitacide. They’re not native so they don’t have real predators here; the lacewings try but they’re too small and sneaky.

If you want to ditch the azaleas but grow something similar looking, try Kalmia latifolia. It’s a distant cousin of rhodies, but the mite doesn’t seem to like it.

You might actually be able to help him. There are trainings you can do to help a dog get used to sudden loud noises; hunting dogs for example get this training so they can work around gunfire. No reason it wouldn’t work for things like thunder and fireworks too.

As it so happens, it did nearly kill him. Some locals beat the shit out of him afterwards.

But hey, he said he could afford the fine, so I’m sure he could afford the medical bills too.

Unfortunately pared with this attitude is the magic thinking that ‘as long as everyone follows The Rules and keeps to Their Proper Place then nothing bad will happen ever’. They literally believe that The Hierarchy is the only thing keeping civilization from disintegrating into chaos.

It’s not that they don’t realize they’re buffoons, it’s that the buffoons are ‘following The Rules’ and so are they, so that buffoonery will never be turned on them.

Paired with this is the belief that everyone thinks exactly as they do, just some people are too stupid to realize it. So they need to exert The Rules and The Hierarchy to help those poor other people see sense.

Some people hate their own agency. They want to be told what to do by a ‘higher power’, whether that’s God, men, a cult leader… that way they can safely say nothing in life is their fault.

It’s the adult version of wrapping themselves in a blanket because they’re scared of something. That something being their own choices, or worse, random chance, leading them to fail.

But those who desire control often desire both to be subject to it and to exert it over others. So a hierarchy forms. Men tell those women what to do, and in turn they tell those lower on the ‘ladder’ (younger women, children, and in their ideal world ‘others’ like PoC) what to do. Thus everything in their life is controlled, and they feel safe. And they get to have a little power of their own, again without real responsibility, because they’re just underlings for someone ‘higher on the ladder’.

Men who are inferior to their fellow men, are always most anxious to establish their superiority over women.

-Mary Wollstonecraft