Brexit, or when people vote to harm themselves

Frankly, I am just stunned that the voters of the United Kingdom decided to leave the EU.  Obviously I am not British, and I can’t pretend I understand all of the issues going on there that might motivate people to vote that way.  But I do know that many of the consequences predicted were not good. And I also know that many of the people who voted to leave are in the parts of the UK that depend on the EU the most, like Cornwall.  The government of Cornwall is now insisting that the UK government make up for the 60 million pounds a year of EU funding that will be lost by Brexit.  To quote from Cornwall directly:

Prior to the referendum we were reassured by the ‘leave’ campaign that a decision to leave the EU would not affect the EU funding which has already been allocated to Cornwall and that Cornwall would not be worse off in terms of the investment we receive. We are seeking urgent confirmation from Ministers that this is the case.

Suddenly Cornwall is like some teenage kid who seriously pisses off his parents, and then suddenly doesn’t understand why they aren’t going to pay his college tuition anymore. You guys really didn’t think this through, did you?  And you believed everything that the Leave Campaign told you?

Oh, dear.

You know, that would be comical if it wasn’t so damn tragic, because there are going to be real consequences now, which will affect a lot of people’s lives.

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A terrible anniversary today – the Freedom Summer Murders

Fifty two years ago tonight, three young men were murdered by a group of white Mississippians in the Ku Klux Klan.  Among the men complicit in this crime were members of the Neshoba County Sheriff’s office and the Philadelphia (Mississippi) Police Department.

This was a mere six years before I was born.  Many people of my generation are familiar with this event through the 1988 film Mississippi Burning, although the film doesn’t even cover everything that happened that awful summer.

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Enough

Despite living on the very cusp of the middle class and constantly worrying that one slip will send us spinning into a void from which we won’t be able to return, Geoff and I enjoy a lot of privilege.  We’re white, we’re straight, we’re cis gendered, and, though we live in an expensive area of the country, we live in a fairly safe area of the country.  Gun ownership isn’t very high and health care is good here.  It’s isn’t nearly as hard to get good mental health care here as it is elsewhere in the US.

And yet, after what happened in Orlando yesterday, I’m angry.  I am angry that we live in a country that has wholly abdicated the promise of freedom upon which it was founded.  We are no longer free from tyranny and fear, you and I.

Continue reading “Enough”

Wow – there are zika virus conspiracy theories now

This is a thing?  Snopes has to talk about it?  Wow.  OK, where do I start.

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Dear Benioff and Weiss… WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!?

OK guys, I get it.  George just hasn’t been able to crank out the books fast enough, and now the TV show has caught up to the books, more or less.  So now you no longer have all that juicy source material to work from, you just have whatever tidbits GRRM has given you about where the story is going.  That’s fine.

But guys?  I’m worried.  Frankly, you are starting to scare me a little bit.  Not having Book Six or Book Seven to work from does not mean that you should suddenly become nihilists.  It’s not a race to see who can kill more characters.  Moving the story forward does not mean taking a large metaphorical dump on the hopes and dreams of the fans, ok?

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An Open Letter to the Dallas TSA

Today I’m flying back to Boston from Dallas.  As a matter of fact, as I write this I’m on the plane and we’re heading from the gate to the runway.  I was surprised on my way down here how dramatic my process with the TSA wasn’t.  The TSA is pretty much my nightmare of a government agency.

Today, when I went to my screening to leave Dallas, I lived my nightmare.

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Donald Trump is more of a symptom than the cause of our political mess

I don’t like to talk about politics too much on our blog, because frankly I need more positivity in my life, and these days it is really difficult to find anything whatsoever in politics that gives me cause for optimism.  Still, I am a historian, and I can’t help but think that we are currently experiencing one of those watershed Presidential elections, like the election of 1860 or the election of 1932 or the election of 1968, in which those of us who experience it will talk about in terms of what things were like before, and what they were like after.

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Feminism, The Body Politic, and Picking a President

Anybody following this interminable election cycle has probably seen the mud slinging, the by turns insane, hilarious, and terrifying GOP debates, and the charges back and forth in the Democratic camp of “Feminists vote for Hillary” or “You’re not a feminist if you Feel the Bern” etc.

As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, neither of us is going to vote for anyone with an R after their name, especially in this current bunch of lunatics.  There is no lesser of two evils here, there’s just psychopathy, sociopathy, delusions of grandeur, pathological lies, hate, and stupidity.  And that’s just Trump.

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Flat Earthers and other science deniers

I have always thought of “Flat Earthers” as something of an insult, something you say about people who cling to long-disproved beliefs (hence the comment by President Obama a few years ago in reference to climate deniers).  Honestly, I had no idea that the whole Flat Earth Society thing was making some sort of comeback, but apparently it is.  I guess it shouldn’t surprise me, but it does.

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Cultural Appropriation & Antiques

Today Geoff and Amanda and I went to the Boston Antiques & Design Show in Wilmington, MA.  We’d never been to this show before and we actually heard about it in a book we found at a used book sale at MIT.  The book was awesome, it’s here if you want to check it out, but it may have mentioned that the show is held in a Shriners Auditorium.  Shriners, like the guys wearing little fuzzy red fezzes.

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