“What If We Could Let Go Of The Binaries Of Good Or Bad, Beautiful Or Ugly When Talking About Feelings?

@keuhkopussirotta / fleabag / jamie anderson / holly warburton / richard siken / mitski / aracelis girmay by @heavensghost / philip pullman

*does everything possible other than deleting herself from existence to feel safer and better*

*it doesn’t work because she is caught in a seemingly unending fight or flight response*

my mom’s suffering so much from her arm and there’s nothing i can do to make it better, and she started having a reaction to the antibiotics, so she had to cut back to only taking one each day, and i am very worried that she’s been taking them for a week and is still in this much pain. we have to take the car back in tomorrow and leave it there, so we’ll have to figure out how’s safest to get home. meanwhile i just can’t sleep and am getting really close to the edge of not being able to handle it

I want you all to see this to understand even a sliver of why I'm not using this evil, godforsaken website, not that it's limited to tumblr because it is now the incessant, constant reality everywhere. I'm an "all of the above" statistic on this. you cannot possibly comprehend the despair and the depths of what this is like unless you are entrenched in it and seeing people futilely trying to combat it every day. too many people unaffected can't even recognize what they are seeing, or don't care, or are participating in it. my dash is COVERED in it daily, from mutuals. I got tired of blocking people and prayed maybe some of what I said would get through instead, but it didn't. people literally participating in this were liking my posts? it's almost laughable if it weren't so deeply wounding and concerning. this has been the daily reality for Jewish people trying to exist online (or anywhere) since that horrible day. there is no respite from it. we are battered and broken and angry and devastated. there is no space for our grief except from each other. there is no recognition of our collective humanity. I said this already over there, but I'll say it again - this killed something in my soul. every single person who has perpetuated this or was utterly silent about it (and continues to be. do you think we don't hear the silence too?) has destroyed something irreparably. idealism, trust, hope, safety. it is inescapable, it is violent, it is relentless. everyone else will eventually move on and we'll be trapped in the aftermath of knowing how prevalent this hatred is. that people we considered friends would stab us in the back and supposed allies would cheer harm done to us for the crime of being Jewish. because that's what this is about. none of this rhetoric is about anything but that anymore, not when conspiracy theories are being woven, lies are being perpetuated, victims and atrocities are being denied, and any Jew, no matter their beliefs or political spectrum, is being attacked for existing. we are not the same. we will never be the same. I will never forget or forgive the response from this, from "friends," from strangers, or from the whole world.

hi followers <3 curious after the reblogged discussions yesterday:

if you'd like to reblog this to elaborate what happened or in which fandom(s), you are more than welcome to.

RC: Everything I do and teach has to do with education about the irrational nature of prejudice and how destructive it is and how all of the causes are very clear. Prejudice is an evil in this world and is also part of human nature, but it is something that we can diminish — to a certain extent — through education.

HVS: You have written before about deeply frightening times in our nation’s history; the publication of this book, in today’s deeply divided America, feels particularly timely. Could you have anticipated this when you first began researching your topic?

RC: It’s unsettling beyond words. I can’t even describe my rage and my anger about human nature, really. So number one, I’m not surprised. Anyone who has studied the Holocaust, and the causes of the Holocaust, understands it is part of human nature; we used to teach about the different philosophies of human nature, and Thomas Hobbes was my favorite philosopher: He basically identified the fact that humans have a very negative side to them — a very aggressive, selfish side — and when they are frustrated and when they feel weak, as if they failed, they lash out; they use that aggression. Gordon Allport, a Harvard psychologist, came up with a very beautiful, simple explanation of prejudice: F (failure) yields to A (aggression, anger) yields to D (displacement); in other words, scapegoating: laying the blame on innocent people. That was his explanation of prejudice, and that’s my explanation of what human nature can be characterized by. It is very, very frightening. So the fact that what’s happening right now is not, to me, surprising, because I know that, throughout history, this is how humans have behaved. What is frightening to me is that it is never going to change. But, as I’ve said to my students, any change always comes incrementally. If we can, through education or whatever other means, educate people about why they are acting that way, then maybe we can change. In my doctoral dissertation, among other things, I asked a question: “Can we change attitudes through education?” The outcome of [the complicated process] revealed that while those who were somewhat prejudiced before learning about the Holocaust no longer held those prejudices after, those students who were very prejudiced at the beginning, you couldn’t get them over the line through education. I think we are dealing with this population right now…so I am not surprised. I am angry, but I’m not surprised.

The Berkshire Edge

‘The Jewish World of Elvis Presley’ (November 2020) by Roselle Kline Chartock

"As I discovered, Elvis is the least prejudiced of people; considering his background — coming from the deep South, from a deeply religious

Motherfuckers will say "Autumn is my COMFORT TIME it's the best season" and then proceed to have the worst month of October of their whole entire lives

im into some fucked up shit. raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. brown paper packages tied of with strings. i could go on but you couldnt even handle it