rachelpowers.bsky.social
~writer, mom, teacher, ✡️, spouse to @grumpykelson~
There’s no one to blame but the voters.
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orphaned, maimed, traumatized, land blasted and poisoned, and then all of the damage done to a generation of our soldiers…
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Just discussed it with my husband. He’s arguing—quite persuasively—that by every measure, Iraq II reached levels of dumbness that Iraq I could only aspire to.
In terms of death, grift, fraud, open bloodlust on the part of small men who would *never* leave the boardroom, waste, civilians crushed,
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I AM SO OLD
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Both had me marching in the streets with thousands upon thousands of others. But the 2nd felt inevitable, like a whole lot of people wanted it to happen no matter how many supposed links turned to dust. It was grim.
Or perhaps I was more cynical by then?
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I can’t decide which was more stupid: Iraq War I or Iraq War II
Iraq War I was 100% extracurricular, totally a war of choice, as I remember it.
Iraq War II felt more urgent because of 9/11, but there was SO much more debate, for so much longer, that cooler heads should have prevailed.
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I was asking my mommy why the people in DC were saying we (California democrats) were bad people by 1978 or 1979.
I knew we were headed this way before I was 10.
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Can’t believe I’m this old, but I can verify that both Iraq wars were so stupid that we all cried tears of rage.
Rednecks jeered at us, but then they fixed their faces, turned to their brethren and wailed, “Look at how they hate our enlisted boys 😭!!!”
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Vance is here?!?
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The entire point of this is to humiliate lawmakers.
Essentially, lawmakers need to bring their own security.
Lawmakers standing impotent before an out of shape bouncer with a giant toucan embroidered on a knock-off Tommy Bahama’s shirt is precisely what the administration want the country to see.
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So there’s some question, in individual cases, as to whether the murderers were German or Russian. In my husband’s grandparent’s generation, *no one wanted to know*.
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even a contender. All anyone will say is, “Once they got out, no one wanted to talk about it ever again,” which seems so abrupt. My husband and I have done some looking on JewishGen and tried to recreate a family tree: No one survived past 1941, but no one died in a camp. Probably all firing squads.
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The only concrete information that we have on the family history is the ticket from one great grandfather’s trip on the White Star Line into NY. We don’t know for certain what shetl(s) the family is from. Someone once overheard Brest-Litovsk, another person remembers Breslov. Breslavia is probably
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became aware, eventually, that the sufferings of those who remained in Europe were of an entirely different order.
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There may also have been a lot of guilt and regret—I think two of the relatives who came over were fleeing forced conscription. They left on their own, probably because they figured only young men were in danger of being drafted. But not a single family member left behind survived. I think they
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My husband descends entirely from impoverished shtetl Jews who fled pogroms in Ukraine just before WWI. Things were bad enough that no one ever spoke about it, and no stories or names were passed down…but I think they all considered themselves deeply fortunate to have gotten out.
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I teach Jewish history at our synagogue and I have tried—and almost certainly failed—to convey the convergence of circumstances that led to the particular brutality of the Holocaust in Hungary.
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I’m sorry. Not trying to be difficult. I was just trying to make certain that I understood.
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So fuck these fuckers.
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I was born in LA in 1970, which means that the Hillside Strangler, Ted Bundy, the Zodiac Killer, the Golden State Killer, and the Nightstalker all saturated *the local news* during my formative years.
I see masked men with a van, and crime statistics tell me what I should expect. It’s not ICE.
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So the issue is that descendants of Eastern European diaspora Jews like to think that their relatives suffered as much as Jews who suffered through the Holocaust?
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Is this a big intracommunity issue?
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I don’t understand how it is we haven’t had a dozen hearings on the masked plainclothed officers abducting people.
I mean, of course I understand, but not really.
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This, to me, is so…awful. Not that you are having this discussion but that anyone would say it or make anyone feel defensive about it.
Having to flee the giant, murderous complex of pogroms and/or forced conscriptions and/or death squads—and managing to do it—isn’t “privilege.”
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You’re awesome
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I love that you write about the way that TV becomes—for some of us—flat-out ethnography.
I spent the *entirety* of the first half of my life (probably starting at age 3 and deep into my 20s) trying to figure out what kind of things worked between couples. Simply: How do people not fight?
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I truly loved the Dad on Good Times, precisely because he held it together in a house with a lot of stressors. When John Amos suddenly appeared on West Wing I became verklempt.
I also loved all funny dads who could roll with the punches. Danny Thomas (Make Room for Daddy) was a favorite.
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These elders are amazing.
(And damn if they don’t always dress up right for this shit)
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“I think people who like Hamilton are truly amoral classist fucks. But I once pretended I liked it because I wanted to get closer to an amoral classist fuck myself.”
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And I don’t even know what that person even means
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And he’s adorbs
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I don’t believe that
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I call him Bibi to save characters, and there are people who only learned about him in ‘23? I remember watching him on 60 Minutes in the early 90s, and he was already a fixture then!
But thanks for the heads up—had no idea that the nickname was a problem. Again, I always used it because it was short
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(Understand that I don’t like the idea of doing anything to help/legitimize/normalize the things that these assholes are doing. I’m just wondering what the best practices are for keeping people (most) safe. And out of El Salvador.
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Also Randy Newman’s “I Love LA”—but ONLY for the ironic affection (“big nasty redhead at my side,” “SIXTH STREET!”)
Also, his “Jolly Coppers on Parade” (making fun of the LAPD)
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There was no way they were going to be able to justify the episode to me in Sunday School, so I didn’t even bother asking Ms. Gunderson to explain (she had a beehive hairdo)
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Sometimes the waltz goes slow, sometimes it goes fast…