Inspired by this post, I wanted to a separate post about the destruction of the Jedi Order.
Their destruction wasn’t an event, it was a process. A long process that
started generations before Anakin was even born. Yes, Anakin made his terrible
life choices (no one is denying that) but he’s not the one thing that went wrong with Order
or why they fell apart. So I made a list of terrible things the Jedi
Order did that are not Anakin Skywalker’s fault:
The Order’s decision to take little kids from their parents.
The Order’s indoctrination of said kids;
The Order’s decision to keep Yoda in charge for 900 years;
The Order’s lack of action to end slavery;
Their turning a blind to the corruption in the Senate.
Their decision to follow the Senate even when they knew they shouldn’t.
The Order’s growing arrogance;
The Council’s nepotism;
The Council’s decision to not send extra help along with Qui-Gon and Obi-wan right after they were told the Sith was back.
Their decision to hide the truth about Qui-Gon’s death.
Their decision to personally aid the leaders of a planet but not its citizens.
Their decision to help slaver Jabba the Hutt but not his slaves.
The order’s diminishing popularity.
The Council’s decision to fight in the Clone Wars.
Turning children and teenagers into soldiers
Hiding prisoners in secret prisons (without trial).
Their plan to overthrown the Chancellor before they even knew he was a Sith.
Using a slave army.
Hiding the truth about the slave army’s creation.
The Council lying to their own members.
Turning their back on a teenager they raised (and used) to avoid “political complications”
Allowing an older man to have unrestrained access to a little boy.
Sending a little boy to an adult prison.
* Acting like they had All The Answers To Everything when they couldn’t even handle a scared kid who missed his mommy.
* Making the scared kid feel like he was a bad, dangerous person for being scared, despite the fact that he’d just helped their asses out bigtime.
* Wait, so Anakin’s Dangerous, but a fucknut like Pong Krell flies below the radar? Yeah, no.
* Giving Anakin shit about his arm when he lost it in battle against a Sith Lord…who used to be a Jedi himself and left the Order because he finally got fed up with the Jedi and their shit.
* Having a fucked up system that involved sending aspiring Jedi kids off to be farmers if they didn’t get chosen by a master. Wow, glad you guys took them away from their families and fucked up their lives so they could go grow beans for you or some shit, good job.
* Being hypocritical assholes. There is no ignorance…but only Masters can access certain parts of the archives and we’re gonna lie out our asses on a regular basis about pretty much everything we can think of. There is no fear…but we’re afraid of literally everything, including being unpopular, so let’s throw Ahsoka to the wolves so we can keep sitting at the cool kids’ table at lunch.
* Failure to have a basic fucking freshman level psychology textbook in the goddamn archives because then so much of this royal goddamn clusterfuck could have been prevented in the first place!
if you believe in transformative/restorative justice, you need to make room for rehabilitation. 100% of the time.
i’m not saying people need to be friends with, or like, or even forgive the people who’ve wronged them, but they have to get okay with those people’s reintegration into the community, they have to get okay with people having a second chance once they’ve accepted their wrongdoing and taken steps toward reparation.
like, one of the most insidious aspects of carceral logics is that they claim to value rehabilitation without ever seeking it and, if anything, they make it utterly impossible. if you really want a postcarceral concept of justice, you have to work to undo that, and it is work.
it’s not a demand for ‘accountability’ that has no specific meaning, it’s not virally isolating someone from community–in practice, almost always someone from one specific multimarginality–it’s not retribution. it’s good faith. it’s sitting down, face to face, and working through shit. if someone who’s done you wrong refuses to do that, that’s one thing, but they have to be given that chance. if you can’t be the one to give them that chance, if it’s too retraumatizing or too painful even if you’re surrounded by support, that’s okay. it’s still something that needs to happen within your community and it’s your right to have some kind of voice in that.
like, if you’re going to call yourself an anarchist, say you hate cops, say you hate prisons, say you want to commit to community self-sustainability and autonomy–this is part of how you do it. it’s hard. it sucks. it requires way more communication than we’re used to and are comfortable with, let alone proficient at. but if we’re ever going to get past carceral justice, that’s got to be how we do it.
Replies from the OP on another reblog:
do…do people realize there are things someone can do to harm the
community other than abuse? like, uh, thievery, belligerent public
intoxication, drunk driving, negligence, etc etc etc. like how much bad
faith do you have to come in with to read a post about prison abolition
and community justice and react with ‘why is the OP not using the word
abusers…this is sketchy… :/’
that, and that certain folks can’t imagine a community issue beyond interpersonal abuse probably speaks to a degree of shelteredness with respect to class. and then there’s the misreading of macroscopic community, ability to sustain a living, and access community resources as ‘you’ve got to let people who’ve wronged you into your personal life’
Also… I don’t know how I feel about prison abolition, mostly because I don’t feel like I’ve seen enough clear plans laid out for replacing it with something better.
But even for abusers or rapists or murderers… how exactly is throwing them into a tiny box, which is pretty much guaranteed to create stress, with other people who are more likely than the general public to be violent, which is also likely to create stress, supposed to make anything better?
My understanding of rehabilitative justice is EXTREMELY 101 but I understood it to be that prisons were supposed to be used as rehabilitative spaces. Like, instead of going to prison and being systematically made miserable and exploited, we understand that being in prison, even a very nice prison, is punishment enough, and we take advantage of the fact that the criminal in question is safely isolated no only from victims or toxic systems but also the sort of grind of adult responsibilities that make it really hard to break out of them and make sure they can use all that free time they suddenly have to get therapy, and make reparations, and develop good interpersonal/cogntive/educational/vocational/etc skills, so by the time they come out of prison they’re MORE able to interact with society than when they went in, not traumatized by the experience and the experience of reintegration.
There are countries which handle this kind of thing much better, with much better results. Hell, we’ve seen individual programs here that were AMAZING at preventing recidivism. My husband is a defense attorney, and he spends a hell of a lot of his time working to advocate for his clients who will not be able to avoid prison to get a sentence that maximizes their chance of succeeding in the long run, but the system makes it VERY hard.
There are a lot of things that are completely incompatible with rehabilitation models:
1. There cannot be an incentive to the system to keep people in jail. That means no prison slave labor, no forced donation of organs for capital cases (there’s a huge amount of discussion available elsewhere about this.) No for-profit privately run prisons.
2. There MUST be attention to the root problems for why people end up in prison. That means doing the hard work of making sure people have housing, food, education, health care, a sense of security and opportunities to do meaningful work. (I am not making any judgments about what constitutes meaningful work.)
3. Drug treatment and sensible, evidence-based drug policies are a MUST. Legalizing drugs but making sure that they’re being provided safely can go a long way toward stopping both addiction and the criminal activities that surround drugs when they are outlawed.
4. The justice system has to become focused on actual justice, and not the current “grind enough points to move up a level in the DA’s office” mentality. Hubby has some hair-raising tales to tell about people who were charged with serious crimes in order to persuade them to testify against people they were understandably terrified of. Of people charged for many felonies for a series of things that involved less than $1000 total worth of economic damages because it looked better on the DA’s record to have prosecuted more felonies… and because they could technically pass off 13 low grade bad checks as identity theft felonies, they did.
Anyway. There’s more but those are some of the big ones. You have to knock down all the problems at once or they just keep reinventing themselves.
WARNING – PLEASE READ IF YOU HAVE A PEANUT ALLERGY AND LIKE TO SHMEAR MAKEUP ON YOUR SKIN TO MAKE YOU LOOK AS FLAWLESS AS YOUR PERSONALITY
I am one such an individual, and last night I was super pumped to try this concealer. Out of curiosity I read the ingredients and saw something called arachidyl behenate.
Anything with the root “arachi” such as “arachis oil” is probably peanut related. And, sure enough, I did some research and arachidyl behenate is peanut-derived. Which is the story of how I nearly smushed a deadly food allergen into my skin.
There’s a report here from last year that seems to indicate that some food allergens are neutralized when processed for cosmetics, but I’m not sure that applies for peanuts. And at any rate, they did indicate there was still a risk of a reaction if such proteins weren’t processed properly.
Now, I’m gonna say it outright – I’m not one hundred percent sure that a heavily processed peanut-derived chemical such as arachidyl behenate will cause a reaction. I’ve worn a lot of makeup over the years without checking the ingredients, so I could have easily used a product containing it without knowing. Still, better safe than sorry.
Alternate names for peanut products (anything with the prefix “arachi-” should be considered suspect):
A press conference. An actual press conference. Peter would have been surprised if he didn’t know Tony Stark’ s penchant for showmanship.
He knew that, yet this was still immediately worse than every speech he had ever had to give in front of any class since Kindergarden. This was like *every* speech he had ever had to give in front of *every* class he had ever been in times a million, abd he didn’t even have Ned to help him bullshit his way through it. Peter took a tentative step back once he was through the door as the camera lenses began to flash like hundreds of tinkling stars suddenly brought startingly close. One of his heels landed on a shoe, and a hand pressed onto his shoulder to steady him, a welcoming weight.
“Don’t tell me you get stage fright, kid.”
Mr. Stark ’ s voice was light and slightly teasing, but there was also a layer of concern underneath it that made Peter force himself to straighten up a little.
“It’s all the lights,” Peter answered, gesturing vaguely at his squinting eyes. While this was true, Mr. Stark didn’t need to know he was also scared out of his mind in front of all these people. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Mr. Stark, I know I’m something without the suit now, but I wouldn’t mind the sensory deprivation goggles right now.”
Mr. Stark made a small ‘ah’ noise as his hand left Peter’s shoulder. A moment later, Peter’s vision suddenly darkened as a pair of sunglasses was placed on his head.
Peter blinked at the sudden dark umber tones around him. It didn’t dull his senses completely like the suit would have, but it certainly helped. He looked over his shoulder and smiled. “Thanks.”
Mr. Stark ’ s face brightened up back at him, before slipping into the smug public face he kept when his name was announced by Ms. Potts.
“Don’t break those,” Mr. Stark said as he swept past Peter and grinned for the cameras. “ They’re Dolce and Gabbana.”
Okay, I’m gonna share one more bit and from there I’ll decide if I actually want to share this entire fic or not.
Peter leaned forward and grabbed another chip from the bowl between the three of them. Ned and Michelle were sitting on the same couch across from him, and while Ned had a wide-eyed, startled look on his face, as if he still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that he was sitting in the Avengers compound and had been for the last hour, Michelle seemed completely unfazed by any of it. She smirked at Peter when he glanced her way, and Peter did his best to smirk back without looking like he was trying too hard to look cool. Michelle didn’t care about cool, right?
He still hoped he looked at least a little cool, though.
Ned eyed a security drone warily as it whizzed past the ceiling-to-floor window on their left.
“You’re sure we’re allowed to be here?” he asked, fidgeting in his seat.
“Yeah, sure I’m sure,” Peter said, and then added, hesitantly. “Pretty sure.”
Ned’s lips pressed together into a thin line, and Michelle grinned. It was actually kind of surprisingly how much she smiled now that they were friends.
“What’s it like living with the Avengers, Peter?”
Boring. That was the first thing that came to Peter’s mind. The only real difference from Queens was that his room was bigger. He still had to study for tests (although instead of actual teachers anymore, it was a handful of narrow AI that Tony had programmed and nicknamed after famous teachers from old movies), he still had Aunt May around (although she was becoming terrifyingly good friends with Nick Fury and Maria Hill, and Peter was expecting that sooner or later she’d proudly announce over dinner that she’d been asked to join S.H.I.E.L.D. 2.0 with them), and he was still saving the world (though he missed just saving New York more often than he ever thought he would).
“It’s, well– I really only live with one of them,” Peter finally said. “Vision’s the only one that’s ever around.” Always around. Living in a room next door to a being that didn’t understand boundaries and could walk through walls had taught Peter that from the start.
“Is it true that a bunch of them are on the run?” Ned asked, his nervousness starting to disappear the longer they went without getting blown to bits by security drones. “Or is that just propaganda to make us think they aren’t all around?”
“Of course it’s propaganda, Ned,” Michelle answered instantly. “You really think Captain America is a war criminal?”
“I mean–” Ned looked at Peter for confirmation. “Not that I was looking through secret government files on my computer last week, but I was looking through secret government files on my computer last week and I read that he tried to kill Tony Stark.”
A cold shiver ran down Peter’s spine. He hadn’t known that, but it made too much sense to think it was just another conspiracy theory. It would explain why Tony went rigid and quiet whenever anyone so much as mentioned Steve Rogers, and it would explain that reaction he’d when he’d found out that Rogers had contacted Peter. It was all a mess, that was for sure. Peter didn’t want to think about it when he was supposed to be relaxing with his friends.
“Are these the same secret government files that came from an organization that was secretly run by a Nazi death cult and lying to the world for decades?” asked Michelle.
“Maybe.”
Michelle hmmed at Ned, and turned back to Peter. “So, which parts are true, anyway?” she asked him.
“I dunno,” he answered vaguely, rubbing the back of his neck. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Sure, man. Do you have a favorite Avenger?” Ned asked, looking curiously from Michelle to Peter.
Not exactly what I meant, Peter thought, but it’s better than nothing.
“Bruce Banner, duh,” Michelle responded first, taking the chance to pick up the bowl of chips off the table between them and cradle it against her stomach. “He’s the kind of guy I’d love to just sit and chat with.”
Ned reached over and took a handful of chips from her. “Even the Hulk half?”
Michelle smiled around a chip. “Especially the Hulk half.”
discourse: DID YOU KNOW that Kingsman is a racist, sexist, gratuitously violent, and not very diverse film??
me: …Yes.
discourse: SO ARE YOU GOING TO STOP LIKING IT??
me: No…
discourse: WHY, YOU IRREDEEMABLE PIECE OF SHIT??
me: Because I can critique something I like and also enjoy the elements that make this film entertaining. I also love how both meta and fic discuss or simply correct the problematic things in canon, though they do also explore said problematic aspects in interesting, complex ways. For the most part, we tend to have a firm grip of what needs to be better represented in not only the movie, but in the general scope of fiction and real life social attitudes and political/economical implications as well.
discourse: …are you going to stop liking it, though
I believe in rehabilitative justice first and foremost because I was in a cult.
Yeah, I talk a lot about my liberal pacifist upbringing and my community’s condemnation of Middle East invasion shaping my relationship to the Evil Other. All of that is true and salient. But the most formative element by far was the experience of being seduced by incorrect beliefs and finding my way out the other side.
using them interchangeably is right-wing rhetoric left over from the cold war. they’re not the same. i know, when you’re angry at the grotesque excesses of unchecked capitalism, it’s easy to think the farther away you go from it the better. but communism – as in, abolition of private property, communism – is an extreme that has not yet been put into play without being fatal to its citizens on a massive scale. think of it like this:
what you want is democratic socialism – that’s what bernie sanders was offering to bring to the table last election. that’s what we see in really happy and stable countries like norway and denmark. it’s a system where freedom and safety are balanced, where the government has the power to keep people from being exploited but doesn’t mess with their lives other than that.
socialism without the democratic aspect is a mixed bag, just like capitalism. the government decides what’s best for you on a lot of topics. there’s a lot of collective ownership going on, and while it can lead to a flourishing of the arts and/or sciences if the government wants to fund that, in general stuff kinda breaks down over time. have you waited in line at the DMV lately? imagine that atmosphere applied to every big industry and institution. you would not like it.
communism is the extreme. you own nothing. the state claims you own everything. the state owns you. the glorious workers’ paradise lasts for a decade or so, maybe, and then enough people don’t remember starving under the tsars and start asking why Enough Cabbage is the best they’re allowed to aspire to. and that’s when the crackdowns start. you would not survive it.
i would like us to reclaim democratic socialism as a valid option in american politics. part of that is not letting people confuse it with the “i don’t care if you were a dentist before the revolution, you’re a turnip farmer now” types of government that are, honestly, pretty awful.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 