Worth Reading September 2022

Weekly Reader

Sacrilege also fully embraced the Discharge "d-beat" sound (although it wasn't referred to by that name yet), which no one in New York was playing, and only a handful of American bands (almost all in California) were playing at all at that time. Besides Discharge, influences included other English bands like Disorder and Chaos UK, Scandinavian bands like Anti-Cimex and Appendix, but very few American influences (such as Crucifix). Sacrilege also kept their lyrics serious, leaving behind the sometimes humorous and bad taste songs that Hellbent had occasionally played, as well as the more fun-oriented covers. Although other bands of the time in the New York area had extreme looks (Misfits, Genocide), or anarchist or left wing lyrics (Reagan Youth, False Prophets), no one had combined the extreme punk look, serious political lyrics, and d-beat European punk sound previously in New York. With Clay and Tim being NYC newcomers, the band were considered oddities by some, although Vic also being in Reagan Youth and Adam's past with Murphy's Law and Agnostic Front kept them from being complete outsiders.

It’s not fair to judge a writer by her juvenilia. But, as she developed into a keenly self-aware writer, the habit of bigotry persisted in her letters—in jokes, asides, and a steady use of the word “nigger.” For half a century, the particulars have been held close by executors, smoothed over by editors, and justified by exegetes, as if to save O’Connor from herself. Unlike, say, the struggle over Philip Larkin, whose coarse, chauvinistic letters are at odds with his lapidary poetry, it’s not about protecting the work from the author; it’s about protecting an author who is now as beloved as her stories.

What does that look like? For starters, more marginalized people need to be brought into promotions across the board. Not just as performers, but as bookers, producers, announcers, and so on. Promoters and fans need to come to terms on a real, actionable code of conduct and accept that whatever minor losses there are at the gate due to that code will be worth it for a safer, less hostile working environment for marginalized performers, and a better time for fans. Promoters and wrestlers need to listen and act of their own volition when someone in the industry is outed, and not just when it comes to future bookings. If an abuser’s work is in your video archive, remove them. When the commentary on women’s matches makes your performers uncomfortable, re-record and re-release them. When you’re booking someone new to your promotion, don’t just do it based on a GIF or a match, do some research, make sure their reputation is good, and move forward in good faith. This is difficult work, but it is necessary if wrestling is to survive as a form of entertainment and a kind of labor. A better professional wrestling is possible—I wouldn’t have dedicated so much of my life to it if that wasn’t the case. How bad do we want it? What are we willing to do to get there? Those are the questions. I hope we’re able to answer them together.

Since 2001 the terrorist has come to be imagined almost exclusively as Muslim or Arab. This confusingly ill-defined minority has been made the domestic subject of the War on Terror and is subject to its devices, including indefinite detention, the No Fly List, extraordinary rendition, and extrajudicial killing. For example, in 2011, President Barack Obama ordered a targeted drone strike to kill sixteen-year-old Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen from birth, while he was in Yemen. Leading up to this act of preemptive state violence, the teenager was not charged with—nor even suspected of—having committed or supported any acts of terrorism. But his father, Anwar Al-Awlaki, was charged with providing material support to terrorists and killed two weeks earlier in a targeted drone strike. The young Al-Awlaki was the second (his father the first) extrajudicial killing of a U.S. citizen via drone strike. Violence against children is common practice in the house that counterterrorism built: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was also a creation of the post-9/11 Department of Homeland Security, and so the migrant children being abused and dying in U.S. custody today are also victims of the furious rush of resources and energy into fighting terrorism.

These fellow enthusiasts would forever remain invisible; all I ever had was a near-complete save file assuring me that someone else out there cared about Secret of Mana, Breath of Fire 2, Final Fantasy 6, and other classic RPGs that my peers knew little about. Their names ranged from mundane "BEN's" and "JOE's" to whatever curse words were filthy enough to spell out with five or six letters. "FUCKER," wherever you are, I appreciated your Dragon Warrior 3 save file and I hope you're doing well.

Whatever my patron was named, my routine was to get as far into my rented RPG as possible before my time was up. When the deadline loomed, I'd latch onto the hero of the first save file and eliminate the Mana Beast, Dark Gaia, or whomever else I was up against. It was a good strategy that served me well. Yes, I could re-rent an RPG and try to power through it myself, but that wasn't always possible since my brothers and I took turns renting games from week to week. My older brother gravitated toward hockey and basketball games. He didn't care if I had the Mana Beast on the ropes and needed just a little more time to polish it off.

Weekly Reader

The way things are going, they will not be going far, so it’s time to bring back the weekly reader…

Trump is a morbid symptom of this chaos, rather than its cause. The forthcoming election, which pits two gerontocrats of dubious mental acuity against each other, resembles the late Soviet era, before the regime collapsed under its own absurdities. America indeed represents a strange inversion of the Soviet collapse: the economy dwarfs that of any other nation, save China; its empire is still intact, and its military spans the globe more powerfully than any single challenger.

And not just love but admiration. She definitely earned my admiration both as a young woman who invested herself in her friendships with every emotion and who, just by existing, represented something that we don’t always get to see on TV: an authentic biracial woman who wasn’t there for a laugh or set dressing. I think her legacy will continue to be built on by way of Tokyo Cyber Squad’s message of solidarity and acceptance: “Everyone is different, everyone is good.”

The language of abuse and trauma is creeping into political rhetoric, as if every interaction between a man and a woman these days can be understood as a potential violation. Virginia Heffernan wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Sanders had gaslighted Warren over whether he told her a female candidate couldn’t win the 2020 election.” Gaslighting is a term for one person lying to their romantic partner so effectively and consistently that they start to question their version of reality. Had Heffernan simply said Sanders lied, it would not have given the accusation the melodramatic pull of centuries of stories of women being tormented and abused by the men in their lives. Lying is something politicians do. Gaslighting is something misogynistic monsters do.