Linger by the Cranberries except it’s 1993, and you’re lying on your bedroom floor, listening to the song on repeat on an old tape deck. Your heart’s in your throat as you think about your crush, just vaguely cognizant of your family living their life downstairs.
I have this book about “what it means to be jewish” or whatever and a previous library patron has scribbled disagreements with the author in the margins
“If a person can’t get out of bed, something is making them exhausted. If a student isn’t writing papers, there’s some aspect of the assignment that they can’t do without help. If an employee misses deadlines constantly, something is making organization and deadline-meeting difficult. Even if a person is actively choosing to self-sabotage, there’s a reason for it — some fear they’re working through, some need not being met, a lack of self-esteem being expressed. People do not choose to fail or disappoint. No one wants to feel incapable, apathetic, or ineffective. If you look at a person’s action (or inaction) and see only laziness, you are missing key details. There is always an explanation. There are always barriers. Just because you can’t see them, or don’t view them as legitimate, doesn’t mean they’re not there. Look harder. Maybe you weren’t always able to look at human behavior this way. That’s okay. Now you are. Give it a try.”
(And a footnote I didn’t see explicitly covered in the article: laziness still doesn’t exist when it is you yourself making no progress and not knowing why. You deserve that respect and consideration, too, even from yourself.)
If i’m telling you, “this is a hot plate.” But I make no effort to put it down, i’m internally yelling at you to move your shit. Your phone. Your keys. Your bread. Whatever is directly in front of you is from that point on is now classified as your shit. The shit you are suddenly responsibly for and I am burning my hands for. Move your shit. I’m not going to move it for you.
Shoutout to the people who see me approaching with their food and immediately start clearing the way for me. You are the real MVPs. You know what’s up. You understand.
As for everybody else. Move. Your. Shit.
Me
We see that and we respect the fuck out of you. Thank you.
I’m at an Italian restaurant now. They’re a local chain and my dad did good work for the founder. I told them my name and I got a private booth with a bottle of Sicilian wine “complements of the family”.
I was met by the owner and I said I was graduating law school soon. He patted me on the back and said “we might have some work for you”
What is this
You’re about to become a consigliere for The Godfather.
These words are going to be typed out by a court reporter some day.
Hardly. This isn’t the 50s
Duhnuhnuh MOB LAWYER!
I agree with Rynn! You are being groomed to serve The Family.
They gave me a basket of cheesy bread without promoting and I don’t even have to breathe and the servers ask if I’m happy.
Let me reiterate. My dad is a doctor. He treated the wife of the founder and she responded very well. He’s a doctor. Nothing more.
A mob doctor. He fixes up gunshot wounds
He’s a Neurologist!
Gunshot wounds to the nerves
Looks like this post is gonna be evidence for a future legal case
The son of a North Carolina Court of Appeals judge was arrested after he allegedly threatened a synagogue.
William Warden, 20, also burned a cross in a local park, the Charlotte News & Observer reported.
On Saturday night, Warden rang the smart doorbell of Congregation of
Shaarei Shalom in Cary. When a synagogue official remotely answered the
bell, Warden made a “number of disparaging statements against the Jewish
religion and people of the Jewish faith,” police told the newspaper. He
also threatened to damage the synagogue, according to the report.
Warden was arrested Sunday and charged with misdemeanor ethnic
intimidation. For the cross burning, which occurred last month, he also
was charged with a misdemeanor.
Police also suspect Warden of being responsible for recent anti-Semitic
fliers that were distributed in a nearby subdivision, according to the
report.
It’s not your imagination: President Trump, who regularly makes a point of personally insulting public figures who challenge or displease him in any way, taps into an especially toxic well of vitriol when aiming his attacks at black Americans.
This week alone, Trump berated CNN correspondent Abby Phillip (“What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot. You ask a lot of stupid questions.”) He said of April Ryan, a reporter and CNN contributor who has covered the White House for 21 years: “You talk about somebody that’s a loser. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing.“And at a post-election press conference, when Yamiche Alcindor of “PBS NewsHour” began to ask about accusations that his rhetoric may have emboldened violent white nationalist groups, Trump interrupted with, “I don’t know why you say that. That is such a racist question.”
The three women – all of them gifted, accomplished professionals – will be covering politics long after Trump has left the White House. They join a long list of athletes, entertainers, journalists and politicians who Trump routinely attacks as “dumb,” “not qualified” or some such insult.
None of this is subtle or secret; that would defeat the purpose. For Trump, loudly and publicly denigrating black figures is the whole point.
He is a classic example of a backlash politician: a leader who exploits real or perceived white anxieties by exhibiting a flamboyant hostility to the political and economic demands of black Americans. We’ve had a string of such politicians since the civil rights movement, and that is neither surprising nor coincidental: Like many social revolutions, America’s expansion of civil rights in the 1960s and ‘70s gave rise to a potent counterrevolution.
As columnist Bob Herbert later noted: “Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew. He was tapping out the code.”
…Trump has never renounced, or even acknowledged, the obvious racism of his birther falsehoods, and he never will. Birtherism – like talking about state’s rights in Mississippi – was a quick, convenient way to attract people ready to push back against black advancement.
“There was a shocking amount of resentment that a black family had been in the White House for two terms. I think it would be naive to overlook it — the irony that one of the legacies of Obama’s presidency was an enormous amount of resentment,” Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates said after the 2016 election. “I don’t think a Donald Trump could have emerged without a black president. Donald Trump tapped into and fueled and stoked an enormous amount of racial resentment. And Obama symbolized it.”
With Obama no longer in the public spotlight, Trump has to play backlash politics with whatever black targets of opportunity happen to be around. That is why he never misses a chance to attack Rep. Maxine Waters, Don Lemon of CNN or the black reporters in the White House press corps.
It’s a disgusting and dangerous business: April Ryan has been subjected to death threats in the wake of Trump’s verbal attacks. One can only hope the fever breaks soon, with the public signaling to political leaders that dividing and denigrating people is no way to lead a great nation.
ForLoveFromFear 