Corie Young

“Think of this respectable modern idea of fighting against polarization on both sides. You know, that great narrative formulation of our modern age: Both sides. The two sides. The only two sides you have to consider. Please, name the two sides. We might use the standard way of looking at “both sides,” which is to frame it around whether or not somebody agrees or disagrees with a proposition. Take gay marriage. You agree with gay marriage. I disagree with it. We are both sides, though neither of us is gay. We might point out that this framing allows two people who are unaffected by a topic to discuss the topic in a way that erases the person directly affected by the harmful proposition—actually takes them completely outside of it, by postulating two sides, and not including the person affected as either of those two sides. We might point out how this advantages a person who wants to keep the harmful proposition in circulation forever. We might therefore postulate that a better way of framing “both sides” would be to view the two sides along lines of “those who are affected” and “those who aren’t affected.” You agree with gay marriage, I disagree, but neither of us have our humanity up for debate. We are one side. And then there are gay people, for whom marriage is a case of being a part of society or being shunned from it. The other side. I think that’s a better framing, for sure. We should use that framing, if only to understand the ways our thinking has been warped by modern “both sides” narratives, and stop treating real toxic ideas that really harm real people as if they are bloodless abstractions that merit debate.”
― A.R. Moxon, Very Fine People

“Yes, and what do we mean when we say “we’ve rarely been so polarized,” anyway? What if instead we introduced new ideas? What if instead we said “It’s been a long time since awareness of the reality of injustice has been made so unavoidably present to otherwise comfortable people?” What if instead we said “It’s been a long time since so many people have become so violently resentful of the moral demands of justice?”
― A.R. Moxon, Very Fine People

“Gaza is not for sale,
Greenland is not for sale,
Ukraine is not for sale,
Canada is not for sale.

Planet Earth is not real estate,
to pander to your predatory psychopathy.
If you are so hard up for cash, we can all
chip in to buy you some good ol shock therapy.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience

“We are told that we are "born free": untrue. We are born squalling, attached to an umbilical cord, covered in a woman's blood. Whether we become free depends upon the actions of others, upon the structures that enable those actions, upon the values that enliven those structures—and only then upon a flicker of spontaneity and the courage of our own choices.”
― Timothy Snyder, On Freedom