Taking Down Fatphobia / Kate Manne

Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.

Reading the journals of others, I’m always struck by the way their strengths in one area make up for weaknesses in another. “I wasn’t interested in the majestic mountain ranges, but the old volumes in the village’s small library held me in their thrall.” Or, “My brother’s studies of the classic works of Linnaeus held no interest for me. I lived for the rush of wind as I schussed down the berg.” Or, “I never could get the hang of archery. No, for me, all joy burst forth from the sea as I landed a fish for supper.”

I could never do that memoir schtick. For one thing, I’m too dishonest. And for another, for every weakness of mine, instead of a strength in another area making up for it, there’s an additional weakness. For example, “I never liked other kids much, and they didn’t like me, but at least I had some science fiction to read, which bored me a little less, but was small consolation for a lonely life as child pariah.”

“Oh, blah blah blah, Jeffrey, who wants to listen to you read your creative writing assignment?” I had a boss who used to complain about people’s creative writing assignments being read on NPR. That was the only good thing about my boss. See, I was born one morning when the sun didn’t shine. I picked up a shovel and I went to the mine. I hauled sixteen tons of number nine coal and the straw boss said, “Well bless my soul.”

That’s one thing I like to pretend. That I worked in the mines. That I had one fist of iron and the other of steel. The getting another day older and deeper in debt part, well, that I don’t have to imagine. That happened this morning, as it does every morning.

Yep, that’s why I voted for Trump. Because he said he was going to open the mines back up, bring coal back. Not cuz I’m racist. I mean, I am racist, but let’s be honest: Obama made it hard not to be racist, with his audacity to be black and president at the same time, presiding while black, defying the laws of white physics. And white people invented physics, and don’t you forget it. I mean, can you imagine a bunch of Black people achieving a fake moon landing? They’d never get that hoax off the ground. You know why? Because their Jesus doesn’t have German science on his side.

It’s... read more

Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.

Is that all there is? You march in a few marches, chant a few rhymes, grin and bear it while the usual rowdies torch and loot a few big box stores and police cars, and then the death squads come and disappear you? How come they get death squads and we don’t? How are we supposed to snatch their people off the streets, put them in unmarked vans, and take them away to oblivion, or to black sites for torture, maybe put them in little coffin-sized concrete cells in, say, Syria? We definitely have the manpower. And the womanpower, and the everything-in-between-and- beyond power. There should be a law, kind of like the fairness doctrine of olden times, where if one side gets to disappear people, the other side gets to do it, too. And if you can’t afford an unmarked van and various torture equipment, such will be provided to you by the fascist government’s equal rights department.

It doesn’t seem fair. How can fascism be so prima facie unfair? I mean, I get fascism being unfair in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, but this the USA. You’d think our fascism would have checks and balances. Some kind of built-in freedom and equality. At least an ombudsman. But no. It’s almost like they just don’t care.

And if anything makes people in the US angry, it’s the feeling that their feelings don’t matter. (Oh, and lots of white people hate when people who aren’t white get anything good, even if it’s equal to or worse than what those same white people have had forever. But that’s no excuse for fascism to be unfair.)

Fascism has become the national pastime. Fascism is the governing philosophy of the regime under which we live. Fascism should be a role model! What will the children think? Of course, the children killed at the border or in their schools don’t think anything. That’s part of fascism’s built-in efficiency.

If fascism is going to monopolize so much of the public’s time, energy, and material resources, I and others like me would suggest it ought to be made a public utility. Nationalize fascism! Who could argue against that? I’m sure no decent citizen would mind paying a small tax for free public fascism. They’ve paid for the military and police all this time, it’s more a name change than anything else. And those who want to be active fascists can pay... read more