︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ Steph ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿

“Tiptoe past the dogs of the apocalypse
asleep in the shade of your future.
Pay at the window. You’ll be surprised: you
can pass off hope like a bad check.
You still have time, that’s the thing.
To make it good.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, How to Fly in Ten Thousand Easy Lessons

“What was it about the country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring alone there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“I use “anticapitalist” because conservative defenders of capitalism regularly say their liberal and socialist opponents are against capitalism. They say efforts to provide a safety net for all people are “anticapitalist.” They say attempts to prevent monopolies are “anticapitalist.” They say efforts that strengthen weak unions and weaken exploitative owners are “anticapitalist.” They say plans to normalize worker ownership and regulations protecting consumers, workers, and environments from big business are “anticapitalist.” They say laws taxing the richest more than the middle class, redistributing pilfered wealth, and guaranteeing basic incomes are “anticapitalist.” They say wars to end poverty are “anticapitalist.” They say campaigns to remove the profit motive from essential life sectors like education, healthcare, utilities, mass media, and incarceration are “anticapitalist.”

In doing so, these conservative defenders are defining capitalism. They define capitalism as the freedom to exploit people into economic ruin; the freedom to assassinate unions; the freedom to prey on unprotected consumers, workers, and environments; the freedom to value quarterly profits over climate change; the freedom to undermine small businesses and cushion corporations; the freedom from competition; the freedom not to pay taxes; the freedom to heave the tax burden onto the middle and lower classes; the freedom to commodify everything and everyone; the freedom to keep poor people poor and middle-income people struggling to stay middle income, and make rich people richer. The history of capitalism—of world warring, classing, slave trading, enslaving, colonizing, depressing wages, and dispossessing land and labor and resources and rights—bears out the conservative definition of capitalism.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“A lumpy mass of American stereotypes was metastasizing inside me. It made me cringe when I heard Mr. Miyagi say "Wax on, wax off, Daniel San." It made me pretend to laugh when I saw Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles. It made me sign up for tae kwon do that year because that was what Asians did. It would be decades before I diagnosed the lump of alienation, dual consciousness, and self-hatred, but it was already growing quickly, bilious and caustic. I only saw myself as the piece that did not fit in the puzzle.”
― Phuc Tran, Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In