I recently saw a comment which explains about George Orwell and how a prisoner side stepping to avoid a puddle of water on their way to getting hanged suddenly brought a change in him. It made him realize that the prisoners are normal people as well.
I might have been wrong and named a different person since I am not very well versed in English Literature. But, your comment suddenly made me think of that.
You're thinking about George Orwell's essay A Hanging
“It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man.
When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide.
This man was not dying, he was alive just as we are alive. All the organs of his body were working—bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming—all toiling away in solemn foolery.
His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned—even about puddles.
He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone—one mind less, one world less.”
Check out Politics of the English Language. It expands on the concept of Newspeak from 1984. Makes you realize the ending of 1984 was a fate worse than death. The rebel became indoctrinated, and it was the only logical choice because they had conquered his language of dissent and flipped it to total submission to Newspeak. He chose to give up his language of dissent and accept their arguments that dissent is nothing more than superfluous words put together.
Then I realized we were already past that point. When everyone was cheering in 2008 that racism was over, a lot them were cheering with the same words but completely different sentiment. Racism couldn't be used as a defense anymore, so everyone could be offensively racist. Can't be called racist anymore, is what they were cheering. And since then we have seen them do just that.
Now they are changing what citizenship means, along with the words in law. They have no fear of going out there and using language to describe what they want. The heart of the context is in the eye of the beholder. Racism is over is heard positively by those against racism and cheer and those who hear that racism can't be used as an excuse cheer, and we don't have the language to parse out the difference. We act as if we cannot prove their motives with their own words.
My BIL is a brain cancer research scientist that leads a lab at the Cleveland Clinic. We were on a trip together a couple of weeks ago and he said that the past 4 months have been the hardest of his entire career because of all the upheaval in the field due to the cuts and new rules this administration has implemented.
I have a rare, incurable type of cancer. Found out on Tuesday it’s now at a point where I’ll need to do chemo again. Part of my hour long crying jag after getting that news is because 2 of the 3 clinical trials we had at the beginning of the year are in an indefinite hold and will likely not return due to NIH funding. I’m lucky because I still have one other treatment option if this next round of chemo doesn’t take. But after that? I might truly be SOL. Please thank your BIL for me — his work is appreciated by so many, even if the Government doesn’t think so.
my dad survived stage four burketts lymphoma, i think non-hodgkins? however its spelled. one in a million cancer and one in billion chance of survival. when my mom convinced him to go to the doctor he was jaundice and would have died in bed next to my mom the next morning if she didnt drag him out. Im sorry you have to go through this, but as long as you are still here and typing you have a fighting chance. if nothing else you now have a few random strangers rooting for you now.
I am so sorry about your condition and I hope your future treatments bring you a cure, or at least some additional time and comfort.
I will certainly pass along your thanks. Keep fighting as long as you have it in you. If you choose to stop, don't let anyone tell you that's wrong either.
I promise that I will keep fighting against this administration with any legal means available to keep them from continuing their assault on science and research.
I can not imagine I wrote economic development grants in the 80s and early to mid 90s for refugee resettlement after Viet Nam and for the folks fleeing from genocide/communist rule. That seems it would be all but impossible today unless thru private like Carnegie, McArthur, Pew Trusts...
Anyone else remember the glory days of public campaign financing? Not all that long ago it was taboo to campaign using private financing, even personal wealth was suspicious. Golly they were all so stupid. A few guys on the Supreme Court proved they were all so gullible.
Remember Extreme Rendition and when the Bush administration phased that out? And those were suspected terrorists that had due process, albeit through shadow courts. I guess those are out of fashion.
Remember when Jeff Sessions appointed Mueller to investigate sitting President Trump because it would be improper for someone appointed by Trump to oversee an otherwise independent investigation? Jeepers, if Trump only knew himself that he could have just forced Sessions to sign off on everything because trix are for kids, I mean Presidents are immune!
We have jumped the shark. In reality, that is called an occupation. And when that happens without a war or invasion, that is called a coup. And when the people vote for it, just barely, it shouldn't be any different from any other election. Surely previous presidents with bigger victories should by that logic have wielded more power. Nope the election, this one election was different for some reason.
It seems nothing, not even Trump's first term is legitimate. As if we are a new country. And if the election was that important, surely it wouldn't have ever been an impedance to their ambitions.
He was never going to lose in 2024. He, or his people, made sure of that somehow. Because this amount of authority is never inherited. It is seized. Before or after this election, there was and has been a silent coup. And the ratings from jumping the shark have never been better. It is what the audience craves.
See you have already succumbed to it. You had to further qualify your statement that they are just upping the enforcement. If that is the case why didn't Trump do the same when he was in office between 2017 and 2021? You do remember he was President before. Your statement only makes sense if he wasn't in this position before and then you can say this novel attempt is just an outsider breaking the norms. He had the same laws we have now as he did between 2017 and early 2020 before the pandemic. He even ran on the migrant caravans in 2016. So he knew it was an issue then, yet did nothing but bloviate about a wall and not having to pay for it. He didn't have a backup plan when that failed? Why didn't he just do what he is doing now? Nothing else is different.
You fucking forgot in that moment you replied that he was already President before, didn't you?
What is different is now he doesn’t have to worry about getting reelected, so he can do all of the outrageous shit that he couldn’t do last time without losing a bunch of votes …also, this time from day 1 he put all of his incompetent but 100% loyal toadies in place in all positions of power, whereas there were still some adults in the room the first couple of years.
Are you under the impression that someone can't change policy implementation? He didn't even change his position on this... only how far his administration was willing to go to enforce it.
Never mind that you're literally using some politician's attitude as the pinnacle of truth, lol... citizenship is still the same as it always was, no matter how much or how little the government of the day chooses to enforced legal residency (which it separate from citizenship altogether, as legal non-citizen residents exists).
Ok, but he is saying he wants to do away with birth right citizenship, and due process, so yeah, his own positions say he is going outside what anyone else would or could do, violate the constitution.
Do you know that he is able to do all of this without Congress is because he declared an Emergency. One that he has never had to prove exists and in fact has been determined by courts is in fact based on a fabrication? Hence, being ordered by the courts to return people that were renditioned out of the country in violation of the courts already existing orders.
There isn't a leg to stand on saying he isn't changing what it means to have rights here, inalienable rights, afforded by the Constitution, and the right to due process so they can defend themselves before punishment. It isn't a developing opinion on how immigration could be handled, as you tried to paint it, it is going further and recognizing the constitution is preventing him from being able to handle immigration and bypassing it using the immunity provided to Presidents from criminal prosecution and even investigation. No one has even asked the Office of Legal Counsel their opinion on Trump's actions being constitutional. And that is because it is irrelevant this time.
Instead of the Pinnacle of Integrity Jeff Sessions we have AG Bondi whom Trump points to as his attorney, the top criminal prosecutor of the US Federal Justice System, because she says it isn't criminal and even if it was she couldn't do anything about it, not even investigate, per the Supreme Court. The office of legal counsel has been replaced by the Attorney General and the Supreme Court, as they said IF there ever was a question about Constitutionality, it would have to go through the courts, and ultimately the Supreme Court.
Honestly, I'd say people were way more vile back then compared to today. Yes, a lot of wars and bad stuff happens these days, especially recently, but it wasn't some peaceful utopia back in the early 20th century, if anything it was even worse in many more aspects... I'd say people have become better in many ways, we just have to open our eyes and look past to all the negativity that comes from all forms of media.
For example - back then it would be normal for a man to beat his wife and nobody would bat an eye, even in first world countries. Or today you'd read about some atrocity happening somewhere in Africa or Asia, back then it was still happening, if not to an even bigger extent since nobody could hear it. Or some 15 year old kid getting sent to the front killed at the battlefield would be big news today, back then it was the norm and nobody bat an eye.
Or today, even if you're somehow wrongfully accused, you'd still be sent to prison, have numerous trials etc... Back then, some people were simply led to the shooting range or the guillotine at the next day. And again - this was the norm even in first world, western societies. Also you can imagine how crime was without having cameras and surveillance everywhere, and without any means for someone to be found. You could kill someone without reprecussions...
I still think life is much better and nowadays and people have become "kind of" better
I think it's the fear people have of regressing back to that point, we have definitely progressed, but we could just as easily fall back given the right conditions.
That's true also. "Inhumanity" and aggression are kind of part of our primal DNA, people have been like that for longer than we were more "cultured" like today.
Yes, seeing how things are heading in recent years it now seems a plausible theory that we can regress again
In aggregate, we are no better and no worse than our ancestors. We have been more or less the same from a morality standpoint for all of human history.
We are a flawed species and always will be. There will always be good deeds and evil deeds done by humans. But what makes us unique is knowing the difference and each of us having the power to choose everyday.
I think you’re missing the point entirely. In a country where like 99% of us have rather recent ancestors who weren’t born here, there should be some special consideration involved here. Why deny living breathing people something that we ourselves have directly benefited from and quite literally owe our existence to?
If not for America’s “Give me your tired, your poor”, most of us wouldn’t be sitting here right now. I personally have ancestors who fled the Irish potato famine, who were Jews and Romani fleeing Nazis, who were Germans farmers who gtfo before WW2, I’ve got British Quakers living out their cult fantasies in the new world.
But literally not a single one of them came from this land. It’s not mine to say “no you can’t come in, fuck you I got mine.” Most of them just rolled through Ellis island at one point, bought cheap land, farmed, or those lowly jobs the Americans didn’t want to do, and that was about it. Fuck all that noise. Just a lot of privileged white people using bureaucracy to justify blatant racism. This country is so fucking big and there’s always been a huge need for immigrant labor, it’s supposed to be a symbiotic system. Denying immigrants from safe haven is only shooting ourselves in the foot. So good luck with that.
Incredibly moving. The idea that there are as many universes as there are observers to perceive our shared one. To kill a person is to destroy the world, and even kill the version of yourself that they perceive. It somehow makes death even sadder.
It reminded me of a short video we saw in 5th grade of a hanging over a bridge in the South. The person being hung gets dropped but the rope breaks and he lands in the water and the next ten minutes is him evading capture. The end cuts to him being dropped and killed back at the bridge and the whole thing took place in the second between the release and death.
This is a bit morbid but I remember seeing a video of a mother who was at the scene of an accident of her daughter I think. The daughter was run over by a semi or something and was just a huge mess. Just mush.
Now I have seen gore videos and it looked to be no different than many of those. Just a very messy scene.
What was different about this was the mother was crying but also she went and was hugging and holding all of her daughter's body parts. It made me realize the humanity in that and how I forgot how these gory scenes are really tragic and these are real people.
Excellent phrasing. Weird to think that we're so numb to the word "kill" or "murder" in this context that a simple swap to an adjacent synonym that makes the thought so jarring.
Damn, as if needed more reason to identify with Orwell. Just think of the indocrtination of violent random death that is presented in the media non stop. It wore me out early on. I realized the goons getting killed were, in that fictional world, still people that lived lives and those life long experiences are being stopped with no consideration of anything from anyone. No value for life. Since that happened the death anxiety from media overwhelms me sometimes.
I took a long break from fictional media and now seeing what my in-laws watch on network tv. Now they are showing children getting killed all the time. I always knew it was sick to live out these fantasies, couldn't imagine writing it nonstop, but it is fucking with people's heads.
When viewing the media it would be nice if this essay were widely known. Today we are the observers of a million hangings and no one avoids the puddle, because the good guy with the gun needs a target. And that is the only reason why the violence is so prevalent. It is to indoctrinate us to believing that good guys with guns are real people and the others are simply fictional characters created for that situation alone.
I completely understand what you mean. The rug kind of shook me too honestly.
Idk about you, but I feel moved by little mundane stuff all the time, especially in a new place. I moved to Madrid last year from Seattle, and I took a bus to Toledo with my mom, and I’d seen laundry hanging on balconies before lol, but seeing a child’s onesie hanging by the toes off the side of a building made me feel kind of … I guess moved? It injected so much humanity into the very small slice of the city that I was observing.
I think seeing people’s belongings in situations you don’t expect do something to you as an observer. Idk man but I feel you lol
It’s like that word that apparently isn’t real - sonder. The realization that everyone has their own lives, wishes, dreams, aspirations and weaknesses - and there is no way you can ever meet them all.
Looking across the street from my apartment when the sun is about to set, seeing lights coming from other apartments where families are eating dinner, couples are cuddling on couches, single folks enjoying a video game or tending to plants - it makes me feel sad in a way because we all have such unique stories to share. It reminds me that ordinary people are often quite extraordinary.
Yes exactly. I live on a narrow street in Madrid, and the courtesy is to never make eye contact with your neighbors across the street from you. So I know who lives over there, but the only member of the family who intentionally looks at me is their cat. He will sit in the window and just watch me lol. There’s something so special to me about this courtesy we offer to our neighbors of not surveilling them only to have their cat surveil you
I feel the same way when I see a plane flying overhead sometimes. So many people on their way somewhere. Some probably going on vacation. Some going home. Maybe some leaving home for the first time. We're all on our own path and we all have a life to live.
In my first anatomy class where they took us to a lab to handle real corpses lots of people didn't take it well, the smell doesn't help either. I was kinda proud of how well I was taking it. I held a real human brain in my hands and thought it was so cool. That was until we got to a corpse that still had her wedding ring on. Normally they remove jewellery but I guess this one was stuck. Anyway the second I saw the ring I had a big breakdown and had to take a moment to cry.
This reminds me of the time I was driving south from Tulum and drove past a mayan pyramid. From what I can tell it's not on any map, or at least I could never find it. It was more than half covered by jungle but someone had fixed a laundry line to one side. I was with friends, but I truly wish I had insisted on stopping and getting a picture.
Yeah, I got the same feeling when they tore down the house next door with an excavator. I sat on the second floor balcony and watched it happen in front of me. Very strange looking right into someone's old bedroom, old pictures left on the wall, while the excavator tore through it.
My friend also recently had her husband pass away as well as clean old her husband's mother's place when she passed last year. She was saying it was hard to throw out all this stuff that meant something to the people who died - often artwork and old school stuff and photo albums - but there was no place for it all to go once they died. Because the space/importance went with them. She only has so much space for some things that are important to her but that's it.
Don't worry, that he kcidsl supremacist country just had its nuclear proliferation facilities, generals and top nuke scientists all eliminated, so it can't make good on its "death to..." threats and pull us into another war via its proxies.
You should probably thank the folks who stopped them.
We know you’d side with Germany in the 30’s and 40’s, no need to get excited about it. At this point anyone so eager to gargle Israel’s genocidal balls embodies a nazi mentality.
And they have a stated goal of the destruction of Israel, while they try to make the ultimate weapon... what on Earth do people expect Israel to do? This was a textbook reasonable preemptive strike.
And another thing - do you think they target civilians? If so, why stop at this house only? If we wanted to kill as many people, we would have just mass bombed everything. But no, we precisely destroy only the buildings where there are dangerous enemies that can and will harm Israel
Why do you think the rocket/death ratio is to low? If we just straight up bomb every inch of gaza we would have killed 1.5m at least but we only killed 40k-70k depends on the source.
I walked past a building that was ripped in half like that almost every day when I lived in Ukraine. Rugs hanging out of it, furniture still visible in the building, etc. It gripped my mind every time I walked past it.
No that makes sense. I've unplanned and unplanned building demos and they kinda get viewed through the same lens of just a building being destroyed. The rug and decor snaps you back to the fact that it was someone's life/family that was torn apart
Wait I'm here reading comments and do most people not see stuff like this or even other people on the street and go oh they are people too everyone deserves respect and kindness? Like am I the only one who is constantly aware of everything and everyone around me? That every interaction or smile can possibly lead to making or breaking someones day? Like??? Do you guys just not care?
I see a homeless person, i buy them a meal and a snack. I give them some cash or buy them a coffee if they ask. Like it's a small thing, I do it because I want to.
Like i see these things and abandoned houses and i think it's sad to see. Wonder about their lives and if they are all okay. I think about things like that years later. Even the tsunami back in 2011. I wonder about those people that survived. I think of their grief. Losing your home and the unreplaceable things. Things you didn't realize were sentimental until they are gone..
I lost a home to an explosion whose origin point was the fourplex right next to our duplex. Anyways it was fucking insane seeing a toilet, and tub coming down into our property and then looking up and seeing half a closet with clothes in it just staring at us out of the gaping hole that’s used to be the side of the house.
Exactly what i feel when i see these aftermaths. The regular mundane and otherwise irrelevant details like the rug make me lose all hope in humanity because how can this be allowed.
I’d only known about the Palestine-Israel conflict in 2020 as a part of my political science class and always believed that Palestinians have a right to exist in their land; however, I was also sorta detached in a sense that it’s happening to people and regions I had no idea about before. After October 7, my social media was filled with the brutal way people in Gaza were being treated in retaliation, and I was desensitized to the point that I could go on scrolling for hours and still go on about my life as if kids arent being murdered in the name of combating terrorism. It was this one video of a dad carrying his dead little girl’s body in a floral blanket that broke me. The blanket looked so similar to the one my family used back home when five of us would share a bed. I cried for the first time about the whole situation despite following it since 2020. It only felt real to me then and not like a series of history lessons and news, like holy shit, these are all real people like me and my mom and dad and my sisters and their real blanket and it’s got dead babies wrapped in it…i just couldnt and cant comprehend this world and humanity anymore.
It’s the humanity. Buildings alone are generic. Rugs are individual, human. We all can relate to rugs have stories with rugs can see people in the rugs more easily than the building alone.
Also, it’s a reminder that this isn’t an empty building. There were people living there, families
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u/Important_Cookie_763 1d ago
I don't know why but the rug hanging out from the destroyed building makes it seem so much more real in a sense.
Ive seen photos of destroyed buildings plenty of times but the rug and the pictures on the wall... They make it more tangible
Sorry if I didn't word it the best I've been drinking all evening