Jonathan Woolley, on Trump as the big-daddy boss archetype.

“He met me somewhere on a dark beach and told me the secrets of the land of the dead before he was called away…”

“This poem is a variation on the story of True Thomas or Thomas the Rhymer, a Scottish poet who was said to have been given the gift of prophecy after a tryst with the Queen of Elphame. In this updated version of the story, Thomas is not a medieval Scottish poet but a modern man, lying in bed unable to sleep as he broods about the past.”

“In a war of empire vs empire, there are no “good guys.” Does that mean the people of Ukraine deserve to be invaded and occupied? No.”

“By focusing on the unwinnable debate between faith and reason, both Christians and atheists have agreed to ask the same questions – thus missing the potential for a type of religion that asks different questions in the first place.”

“A book about a trans man set in ancient pagan Ireland, and dedicated to transgender youth? There couldn’t be a book more perfect for my genderqueer and pagan child. That’s why Salem ended up reading this book before I did, and why this is really two reviews in one: first Salem’s and then mine.”

“The trouble with rights is that they don’t always apply to everyone equally. The idea that they do is a mere fiction, and a fiction that serves the interests of the dominant classes in society.”

If the people we fight against had their way, then none of us would be safe for another day. That’s all the reason I need to stand against them.

“From prophesying an apocalypse, I’ve come to live inside of one – and I’ve tried to make something beautiful of it.”

“The president may have changed, but the apocalypse continues. When you’re living through an apocalypse, the most fatal mistake you can make is to convince yourself it’s something else, that everything can somehow go back to normal. Normal is what got us here, and there’s no way out now except to go right on through it.”

In “The Fall of the Alt Right Came from Antifascism,” Burley gives antifascists the credit for destroying the Alt Right movement through effective organizing. To anyone who lived through the four years of the Trump regime as an antifascist, this is a welcome recognition of what we know to be true: when we confronted the Alt Right, we were able to defeat them.

“If apocalypse is coming either way – if it’s already here – then there is nothing to be gained by refusing the struggle. There is nothing to be gained by turning aside and refusing to confront the awful world we’ve inherited. That world is in the process of dying anyway… and what comes next is up to us.”

“I began to see a connection between my anarchist mentality – which, for most of my life, was more of an instinct than a philosophy – and my pagan religion. Specifically, I began to understand a pagan and animist worldview as the spiritual core of a future free society capable of living on this planet without destroying all life here.”

“My paganism has passed through several stages: an early attempt to create my own mythology followed by many years of devotion to Celtic deities, a fascination with mysticism, and my ongoing involvement in pagan radicalism. It seems like a good time to take stock of where I’ve been, and of how I ended up where I am today.”

“If we switch our mental focus and ground our conception of anarchism in the here and now, then what would our anarchism look like?”

“Because the heavy fist of terror was always there in your pocket even when you smiled. Because you went forth to battle beneath the shameful flag of compromise and played The Battle Hymn of the Republic but never John Brown’s Body.”

Whenever you are working with a practitioner who displays only confidence without curiosity, beware. When they only tell you what is true about you without asking you to check it out for yourself, without listening when you disagree, then they have dismissed your own self-authority and self-expertise. How can you trust a person to be accountable to their shadow when they do not accept feedback or accountability?

The purpose of the protest wasn’t only to stop Trump from claiming dictatorial power – it was also part of the ongoing rebellion touched off by the police murder of George Floyd, which happened in a city and state controlled by the Democratic party. As such, the crowd’s chants had as much to do with the George Floyd Rebellion as the 2020 election.

“I’ve lived this life between. Not one, but two. My feet have walked in dream and stepped in blood. I’ve flown so far I know the music of a distant star, and I have slept in mud.”

An autonomous zone in Minneapolis is probably the last place I expected to hear of an encounter with Icelandic elves, but that’s the world we live in now. The Uprising has brought people together from wildly different walks of life, and as we get to know each other we hear each other’s stories. This one just happened to involve the elves.