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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 20th, 2023

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  • I agree with you that a large part of the problem is that destruction is easier than creation, but it wouldn’t be hard to get a lot of progressive things in if there were the political will for it. Appoint tons of progressive judges and start putting through huge increases in wealth taxes, climate and social programs, workers/union rights, scale back police power, etc etc.

    But even if there were hundreds of leftist judges waiting in the wings, the dems are too corporatist to support stuff like that, so the best they can offer is some social programs that won’t upset the status quo too much.
















  • I signed up for a gothic class my frosh year that was described as American gothic-- vampires, werewolves, all that good stuff. I dunno if the prof didn’t write the course description or if it got changed later but it was English gothic, which apart from the origins of the genre (Walpole, which ended up being hilarious because tons of modern tropes originated there, like the maiden in the castle using the subterranean staircase to flee from the mad king when a gust of wind blows her candle out) and some of the more satirical stuff (Austin), it was incredibly boring to read.

    There was one called The Mysteries of Udolpho that’s this meme times 10, where during a wagon trip there are literal 30 page descriptions of tress. I get if we’d been warned that this sort of thing was largely historical and we could pretty much skip the sweeping depictions of scenery that only existed because most people in the 19th century didn’t get to travel much so it was exciting to read about exotic landscapes, but the assignment merely amounted to “Here’s a 650 page novel, go read it for next week.”

    At least we got to do Frankenstein and I think there was one Poe story thrown in as well (despite being American).