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As the holidays approach, the typical jokes about family political fights will no doubt abound especially with a contentious presidential election marred by conspiracy theories, misinformation and threats of violence. While Bidens win signals a return to basic decency at the presidential level, the nation remains very much divided. Worse, misinformation on the legitimacy of the election is spreading rapidly, further driving conspiratorial thinking and other alt-right messages to the fore of current political discourse. Thus, behind the jokes and the family feuds which inspire them are very real consequences for millions of people in the United States something the recent election made incredibly clear. As such, this holiday season, white progressives need to remain consistent with their supposed commitment to social justice they need to stand up to their racist loved ones.

While the results of the election spurred celebration across the country, white progressives must not be complacent. Yes, a proto-facist leader has been defeated, but the hateful rhetoric, conspiratorial thinking and virulent racism, xenophobia and sexism he espoused during his tenure remain deeply entrenched in American political discourse. Thus, not only is the fight for the rights of marginalized communities ongoing, but our new president while better in a myriad of ways must also be held accountable and face demands to execute a progressive agenda. While there are many ways white progressives can help in this mission, a necessary component of this involves debunking misinformation and combatting hateful rhetoric within their own families.

Privileged progressives must make good on their moral commitment to social justice not only in our public actions, but in our personal ones. While white progressives may attend protests, hold phone banking sessions or donate to mutual aid funds, none of this serves as adequate allyship if they are unable to stand up to those closest to them. Thus, if white progressives truly care about the causes they so often and so publicly claim to support, it follows that they must stand up to their families, friends and anyone else in their social circles who espouse hateful views, conspiracy theories or other misrepresentations of facts.

This holiday season, white progressives should not continue to favor their own comfort and familial peace over the tangible suffering of vulnerable people. In failing to stand up to their families and friends whether their statements are meant well or not white liberals show a distinct complacency with white supremacy, sexism, xenophobia and the countless other ways in which bigotry rears its ugly head. Thus, when we sit silent over our uncles QAnon rants or our high school friends xenophobic comments, it shows that we value our own comfort over what we know to be our ethical duty. Further, if your allyship consists primarily of posting prettily curated Instagram slideshows, then it isn't an allyship its a performance. Conflict particularly when it is with people we love can be hard, but this does not mean we get an ethical opt-out.

To be clear, this article is not intended to argue that you are obligated to put yourself in a physically or financially dangerous situation in order to argue against your familys beliefs. If confronting your family and friends could cause violence or abuse, you should obviously protect your safety. Further, arguing against racist family members beliefs is not the beginning and end of good allyship. Rather, it is a necessary component in a long and complex process. Good allyship is an ongoing process that requires constant listening, learning and action. Ultimately, as a white woman, I dont think my job can or should be to tell you how to be an ally to marginalized people with experiences far different from my own. However, what I do know is that continuing to do nothing to the individual people we are most likely to persuade is unacceptable.

Ultimately, telling your family members that their bigotry is wrong is not activism. However, it is still an incredibly important way not only to show that your moral principles and the individuals and communities whose lives and livelihoods are in the crosshairs of these conversations are more important to you than your relationship with racists. Will having hard and likely contentious conversations with your family work to persuade them? Maybe, maybe not. The reason to stand up against your loved ones bigotry is not just to be persuasive clearly and decisively showing your family that their bigoted beliefs do not have a compliant audience is also a valuable action. No matter the outcome, standing up for your principles disrupts the presumption of agreement so often assumed by bigots. Hateful beliefs may continue but at the very least you can make it clear that they are not welcome to at least one person at the dinner table.

Emma Camp is an Opinion Columnist for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.

The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of The Cavalier Daily. Columns represent the views of the authors alone.

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CAMP: Stand up to your racist family - University of Virginia The Cavalier Daily

Candace Owens/Twitter and Dia Dipasupil/Getty

Harry Styles is human perfection. He is insanely handsome, incredibly talented, and an all around amazing human. The musician recently graced the cover of Vogue magazine (the first time a man has been on the cover) and people have feelings. On the cover, Styles dons a light blue Gucci confection of a dress. Reactions to him wearing the frock are largely ecstatic, but of course, there are haters. The loudest and most vocal being conservative pundit Candace Owens. After the Vogue features release, Owens took to Twitter to complain, claiming There is no society that can survive without strong men. As if Styles wearing a dress somehow undermines his masculinity. Its 2020, time for these narrow-minded views of what is masculine and feminine to end. Strong men can wear dresses too, obviously.

Candace Owens is one of those Black women who has become a shill for the alt-right. Its worth noting that until maybe three years ago, she was critical of Trump and the right. Then seemingly overnight, shes one of them. So now she touts her ignorance and idiocy for the whole world to hear. Clearly she likes to drum up controversy, especially when she knows it will rile up her rabid supporters.

The real question here is what the fuck is a strong man? Like, does she think that every hetero woman wants to be with the guy on the Brawny paper towels? Do women really want to only be with men who look like Dwayne Johnson? If youre going to make the claim about manly men, then you better have specific examples of what you mean, because clearly we are all working off of different definitions here.

A quick Google search shows that her own husband is a pretty generic looking white guy. So what authority does she have to say we need strong manly men? Shes literally married to the human embodiment of Wonder Bread. Harry Styles is a god among men, so maybe she needs to get her facts straight.

Its not even like Harry Styles is the first musician to experiment with clothing. From David Bowie to Prince to even Kurt Cobain, male musicians have worn more feminine or gender bending clothing for a very long time. The amount of lycra worn by Bowie as his alter ego Ziggy Stardust is plentiful. And Prince rocked the hell out of a purple jumpsuit and heels. Freddie Mercury oozed masculinity and still dressed like a harlequin jester. Harry wearing a Gucci dress is hardly revolutionary.

Toxic masculinity is a very real thing. The Good Men Project defines it this way:

Toxic masculinity is a narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, sex, status and aggression. Its the cultural ideal of manliness, where strength is everything while emotions are a weakness; where sex and brutality are yardsticks by which men are measured, while supposedly feminine traitswhich can range from emotional vulnerability to simply not being hypersexualare the means by which your status as man can be taken away.

Candace Owens and her followers are perfect examples of what happens when you subscribe to that line of thinking. Their view of what is masculine is archaic at best. A lumberjack with an axe and a mustache is no more masculine than Harry Styles in a dress, and thats facts.

When you take away Theres clothes for men and theres clothes for women, once you remove any barriers, obviously you open up the arena in which you can play. Ill go in shops sometimes, and I just find myself looking at the womens clothes thinking theyre amazing, Styles says in the Vogue interview.

Were, thankfully, living in a time where men are trying to redefine what masculinity looks like. Theyre rejecting the violence of toxic masculinity. And many are actively trying to be better people. Whether that means tapping into their emotions, or eschewing traditionally male styles of dress. Seeing them actively begin to unpack those archaic views of masculinity is important. Men wanting to be better humans, and embracing who they truly are, ultimately benefits everyone.

But of course Candance and her brethren (which includes Twitter troll Ben Shapiro) dont see it that way. Unsurprisingly, Ms. Owens manages to politicize Harry Styles and his dress. In a follow up tweet, she says, In the west, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. Join me in saying, what the actual fuck?

How does Harry Styles wearing a dress and some skirts relate to Marxism? What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to land at that conclusion? Someone get Candace an ice pack because I think she pulled a muscle with that reach.

Marxism talks about creating an anti-capitalist society and giving power to the workers. So how does that explain a millionaire celebrity wearing a designer dress? And what does it have to do with a dress anyway? Dresses are not political. And they certainly arent Marxist or communist. Theyre pieces of fucking fabric people wear so theyre not nude. Why are these people so fucking upset by a man in a dress that theyre comparing it to Communist theory?

But more importantly, why do they feel Harry Styles on the cover of Vogue is a threat to men everywhere? Its not as if he is going to start walking up to men demanding they join him in wearing skirts.

And whats the big deal even if they do become normalized for all gender identities? Dresses are hella comfortable. Theyre less restrictive than pants, even when they dont have pockets. Maybe more men should start wearing dresses. Let their junk breathe a little bit more. Theyd likely be less grumpy if their balls were free, just saying.

Let me make it clear for Candace Owens and everyone else who has a problem with Harry Styles looking gorgeous and angelic in a beautiful dress. There is no one way to be masculine. Gender is a spectrum and we need to stop telling men that theres only one way they can be. A piece of clothing isnt the sole indicator of a persons gender. And if people begin to understand that, we can start to chisel away at toxic masculinity and literally make the be world a better place for everyone.

Originally posted here:
Candace Owens Cant Handle Harry Styles In A DressHeres What I Have To Say About That - Scary Mommy

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Recently it has been reported that the PC player base for Marvels Avengers has dropped a whopping 96 percent since launch. Lets talk about this because since it was reported there have been a lot of ideas why and some of them dont make sense.

So were going to look at it logically by going into reasons why this dip occurred and what is just bizarre opinion.

If you look into the dip in players by looking into Google like I did, originally one of the first sites you might stumble on is a fairly new site called Cosmic Book News. Unfortunately, Cosmic Book News is an extremely alt-right news site ran by disgraced comic book scribe, Ethan Van Sciver, a person famous for helping to start the Comicsgate movement which rallied against comic books getting political. Unfortunately, their idea of a book getting political extends to a superhero not being a white male.

Clicking on this link will tell you that the reason for this drop focuses heavily on the storys focus on Ms. Marvel by claiming she is a failure and was forced into the game to his a racial status quo. The article then goes on to call her a sales failure.

Square Enix

Heres why thats bunk. First off, never trust a person who uses SJW as an attack, especially if theyre a comic book writer who suddenly thinks fighting for social justice is bad like they havent seen a single issue of Captain America.

But heres the other bit. Ms. Marvel was a godsend for Marvel Comics. As Vox pointed out recently, Ms. Marvel was one of Marvels highest-selling books. Near impossible to keep in stock as it opened up a massive new market of people who normally feel alienated by comic books. It was a huge success for Marvel, outselling many of their other books. And Ms. Marvel herself is going to be in her own movie in the MCU, making her the freshest character to star in her own MCU property. Miles Morales technically got a movie first but that was a one-off movie as opposed to something tied to the MCU.

So having the story focused on Ms. Marvel isnt really anything that would have affected player drop-off. Especially considering the fact that the end game focuses more heavily on Black Widow, Captain America, Thor and Hulk as opposed to Ms. Marvel. In fact, after you beat the main story, you dont really get a Ms. Marvel story beat until you get her to level 50 where youre treated to a special cut scene which I wont spoil but is adorable.

So its definitely not her fault. Honestly, I remember hearing a lot of customers from the job I had at the time saying they werent interested in the game until they heard about her being in it.

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Marvel Avengers: What caused the massive player drop (and what did not) - App Trigger

Reading the pages ofThe Atlanticthis morning, David Frum opines that the Republican Party has two choices before it.

Simply put, Republicans caneither retrench into Trumpism or they can become more like Democrats or as Frum puts it, become more secular, more diverse, more accepting of female leadership which seems like odd advice from a party that just finished eviscerating Justice Amy Coney Barrett for the better part of a month.

With the death of Virginias mainstream media, the opinion columns have by and large moved online. Most of them have chimed in with varying degrees of value, but a quick summary will run as follows:

Lowell Feldover at the Democratic flagshipBlue Virginiaprognosticates thatDemocrats enjoy the latitude for infightingmoving into 2021 while Republicans continue to be in a three-way civil war (one of whose factions actually uses Civil War imagery).

Meanwhile over atBacons Rebellion,writerJames Sherlockstates facts pretty plainly:

Until there is a Republican Party of Virginia, not the current Republican Party of me, the party candidates will remain eclectic to the point of statewide incoherence. Not sure who has the juice to pull that together.

The inestimableJames A. Baconwhoshepherds what has to be one of the more informative bastions of intellectual policy thought in Virginiaobserves that the polarization of power in Virginia is much larger than Trump. With Democrats holding every statewide office, the question at large is whether Republicans (and specifically conservatives) can still muster a challenge?

Once the mainstay of conservative thought and opinion in Virginia, the old flagship ofBearing Driftseems to enjoy more left-of-center commentators than conservatives ones. Former Republican DelegateChris Saxmanbemoans the current state of affairson Grace Street;Steve Brodie Tuckerwrites on howthe Republican Party is irreparably damagedand calls for a third party;D.J. McGuire formerly a hard nosed anti-Communist until recently and now a hard nosed progressive Democrat points towards what moves behind the curtain an effort to build a third party.

This does not make their erstwhile rivals atThe Bull Elephantany more friendly, as their flirtation as the mouthpiece of the the alt-right in Virginia dithers from embarrassing to absolutely outrageous at any given moment.

Cathy McNicklewrites on howthe strategy of terror oscillating between COVID and BLM/Antifa workedto grind down Republicans who otherwise might have re-elected Trump in a landslide.Mark Jaworowskiwonders aloud onhow the alt-right can be coalesced into a wider coalition of smart right leadershipwith alt-right energy.

Yes, these voicesactuallyexistin the Republican Party of Virginia.

NewcomerKerry Dougherty(formerly of theVirginan Pilot) andBrian Kirwinrespectively have not chimed in with their prognostications, thoughDougherty sure does wag a finger towards the Biden campaignfor being sore winners.

Ouch.

Last but not least,Robert Zullowith the left-leaning (and dark money funded)Virginia Mercuryhas some basic and well-intended truths to lay on the table, namely the nature and feature of that all encompassing term: GRIFT.

For example, the Republican Party of Virginia launched an election integrity fund in attempt to siphon more money out of its voters ostensibly on behalf of the guy who has helped lose the Virginia GOP every statewide election, control of the General Assembly and three House of Representative seats since he took office.

Needless to say, I think we can distill the wisdom of the blogerati as such:

Virginia Republicans simply arent tacking into this headwind well, if at all.

Typically in any sort of After Action Report, you have four considerations: objectives, results, pathways, and goals.

The objective and the result should be self-evident at this rate. The pathways our processes, causes, what-happened, what worked, what broke apart, and most importantlywhy are where we have been stuck since the Jeff Frederick era.

Everyone knows what is broken; no one wants to fix it.

As it stands now, the Republican Party of Virginia is about to engage in a five-way civil war of its own and the winner take what few spoils remain.

This is not to say that anyone who hails from one of these camps is 100% on board in each. Some candidates will be able to unite the various camps.

Rare candidates will be able to unite them all (one thinks of Jim Gilmores campaign for governor in 1997 as an example of such quality).

The great task of Rich Anderson as chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia is to get all these camps to work together against a wider opposition, one where all the voices get a seat at the table in any future majority/administrationandwhere all five camps (and various candidates) believe the nomination contest was adjudicated fairly, evenly, and without bias or pressure.

This will still require the discipline to weed out those who are poisonous to that essential unity. The alt-right cannot be part of this coalition; racial and ethnic sentiment cannot be part of this coalition; religious intolerance cannot be part of this equation.

The larger point is that unlike the emotional attachment Democrats gave to Obama and Clinton the left misses the fact that most Republicans viewed Trump as a vehicle for ideas, not as a cause unto himself.

That Republicans are not burning down our cities or behaving like BLM/Antifa shocks most observers on the left who were hoping for a similar temper tantrum.

Sorry. Not happening.

But we have to be considerate moving forward that we will require candidates and qualities that remain sensitive to the idea that we will only recapture majorities and statewide offices in Virginia by speaking the languages, hopes and fears of the broader Republican coalition in Virginia which means we go back into the suburbs, find our inner Jack Kemp, and start presenting an alternative to socialism that is uniquely American.

Above all else? Republicans need to start deeply considering whether our party infrastructure requires an update.If the RPV Advance actually comes off this year(and I think it will), the presentation of an After Action Report with recommendations to State Central on how it can effectively reform into a membership-driven party is critical.

We have great difficulties to surmount in 2021. The good news is that most difficulties are surmounted by leadership. The great news is that Virginia Republicans have never lacked for great leadership.

Originally posted here:
So Now What, Virginia? - The Republican Standard

Reading president Obama's new book took me back to that November night in 2008 when after eight years of Cheney's endless wars we heard that an anti-war African-American man had won in the world's most powerful democracy. It was a moment of hope and renewal. And for me a moment of vindication. I had just won a bet. One of my colleagues, a senior anchor, had refused to believe when I told him that white America could choose a black president. In my nave exuberance I had challenged him to a bet in front of a live audience. At the time he accepted the challenge. But when results arrived I dont think he showed any inclination towards even acknowledging that he had lost the bet. Ecstatic about what I deemed a triumph of fundamental human decency over ugly stereotypes, I did not push my luck. The world was a good place, I knew it, and my vulnerabilities and ego insignificant in comparison.

Life would take a few more years to disabuse me of any false hope. Obama was a force of hope and America was fundamentally good. But the world was broken and cosmetic changes could not change that. Now as Obama writes one remembers that on that night another force was born that would do great harm to the world. McCain was a decent man and he proved it to the very end. But his running mate, chosen for token female participation and devoid of any outstanding credentials that unnerved strongmen around her, would take electoral rejection to her heart and make it personal. In her anger she would mainstream nativist talking points and spew borderline racist nonsense. Her failed candidature later attracted the likes of Steve Bannon, who even made a documentary on her life calledThe Undefeated. Later Bannon would latch onto the Tea Party movement and bring his racism to the Republican mainstream. In the end, it all led to the hot mess the US finds itself in.

When youre the first black president with the middle name Hussein' and have won on a Democratic ticket you must prove every single day that youre every bit as competent and patriotic as a white man, not a Muslim and tough on national security. Whether he was able to do justice to all will only be decided by history. But if we thought his victory would fix a broken world we could not be more wrong. The forces of darkness can cause damage even in broad daylight. Those forces kept working, sponsoring hate around the world. And then dominoes began to fall. Hardliners were rising like rabbits raising their heads in a hutch. Netanyahu won in Israel. A Nazi-inspired Hindutva party triumphed in India. Race fanatics started rising in Europe. Religious and authoritarian extremists had a field day in the Muslim world. Then Brexit happened and eventually Trump won. The arc of the immoral universe was complete.

One example of this broken world is Trump's refusal to concede after an electoral drubbing at the hand of a man he publicly accused of being an invalid. I still like to believe there is a good, patriotic man hiding somewhere in there. But how deep that man might be a hostage by the alt-right propaganda, personal greed and opportunism, and gullibility is anybodys guess. I recall on the day of the first presidential debate Alex Jones continued to claim on his show that Biden was a demon possessed zombie who would fall apart at Trump's first sight. And when that didnt happen he went on claiming that many litres of blood had been artificially pumped into his veins to make him look alive. This practice he claims is called plumping. When you are inhaling propaganda emanating from such a broken mindset you are likely to believe that a supercomputer called hammer and a software called scorecard could help steal the election. Just some more alt-right trivia: Biden is a half-dead zombie because he accepted to be Obamas vice-president, something a conscientious white Christian man would never do.

The second proof of a world broken beyond repair is the set of evidences presented by the Pakistani Foreign Office and army regarding India's alleged terrorist sponsorship in Pakistan. I call it alleged just out of the sheer need to preserve journalistic integrity. Otherwise, when you have already read the leaked FinCEN reports on the involvement of Indian banks (especially Punjab National Bank) in terror sponsorship and then you see a PNB receipt, showing a money transfer to the anti-Pakistan terrorists hiding in Afghanistan, flashed on the screen you know this is a real terror money trail. Many have speculated that Pakistan unveiled this evidence because it wants to influence the incoming Biden administration. I believe it did so because it worries the Modi government uses international turmoil and leadership vacuum from a messy transition to further indulge in adventurism and exposing it now may pre-empt that. And on top I came across some fascinating arguments from Indian pundits. The world knew this was a comeuppance for decades-long separatist sponsorship by Islamabad, they claimed. Sure geniuses, but thats not how it is supposed to work. You punish someone when some excess is commitment, not when someone has already atoned for mistakes. Even if your blinkered worldview leads you to believe Pakistan is not moving in the right direction you will concede that it is not moving in the wrong direction. And under Modi India has covered light years of the wrong territory. Broken. See.

The third example is of the South Asian reaction to Kamala Harris victory. While for the saffron-clad Modi bhakts she is not Indian enough, to many Pakistanis she is just another Indian. I have no solution to Modi's benightedness but I am disappointed in the Pakistanis who think this way. One, every South Asian should be proud that one of us has reached that high office. Two, South Asian nations should stop asking the diaspora to do more for them and strive to ensure that basic decency returns to the international order so the diaspora can survive the rising tide of nativism. Three, if India is turning into a dystopia the least Pakistan and other South Asian nations can do is reach out to the expat South Asians and remind them they have other places to call home, which even if are not perfect are places where good people have not given up the fight. Try empathy sometime. Its a miracle drug.

And while the world is already so broken we face devastating blows like the Covid-19 pandemic and accompanying global economic meltdown. While the world should have been uniting to defeat new common enemies we are busy inventing new cold wars.

And now the real question: can all of this be fixed? The answer is, yes. But will it? Based on the long history of human instincts I would hazard a no. I refuse to believe in the fairytale of a light at the end of this long, long dark tunnel. The arc of this dark universe seems to bend towards more darkness. I will be happy to be proven wrong. But so far it looks like a universe meant for the Palins, Bannons, and Modis around us.

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Arc of the immoral universe - The Express Tribune