@JuliusGoat@mastodon.social
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JuliusGoat

@JuliusGoat@mastodon.social

A.R. Moxon (he/him) is author of the novel THE REVISIONARIES and the upcoming essay book VERY FINE PEOPLE.

His newsletter is The Reframe: www.the-reframe.com
He can climb trees, but chooses not to, recognizing that trees do not attempt to climb him.

This is where he toots.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

JuliusGoat, to random
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Hey everyone, Very Fine People releases on June 25, and the paperback version is available for presale right now! (eBook preorders will be available later this month.)

More details right here:

https://www.the-reframe.com/a-very-fine-announcement/

JuliusGoat,
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You can preorder Very Fine People in any of the places where books are sold, and if you go and order it you'll be doing the thing that helps authors more than anything else you can do. Preorders make bookstores and other instruments of publishing take notice.

JuliusGoat,
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I've been working on this book for about 7 years—almost certainly longer than you've been reading anything I write. I have thoughts and feelings about that, but first: This link places a preorder for personalized signed editions.

https://www.schulerbooks.com/very-fine-people/9798989994908?ref=the-reframe.com

JuliusGoat,
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If you don't care about a personalized signed edition (or you're outside of the U.S. and would like to avoid big shipping costs), I recommend that you call your local bookseller and ask them to preorder a copy. Give them the ISBN (979-8-9899949-0-8) if they ask.

JuliusGoat,
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Very Fine People is a book of essays, in case you didn't know. Most of them have been published online in one place or another. Maybe you read them when they came out. Maybe you didn't. Maybe pickles make a sandwich taste good. There are so many possibilities in this universe.

JuliusGoat,
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These are very particular essays, which I've picked up and assembled in a different way than you may have read them back then, if you did so. They represent my attempt to put my worldview back together when the old one shattered.

JuliusGoat,
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I had been clinging to a false notion that when a lot of people and institutions in my life—people who had been accommodating white supremacy etc—were finally confronted with incontrovertible evidence of the ugliness they supported, they would at last turn from it in revulsion.

And, when the incontrovertible proof arrived, some did turn away in revulsion—a few. Only a few.

Mostly, though ... well.

YOU remember.

JuliusGoat,
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The Trump years showed a far different reality, one that I couldn't deny even as I turned in revulsion: the people and institutions in my life knew full well about the ugliness they were supporting, and all the most ugly things were thing things they wanted the most.

JuliusGoat,
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The bigotries were not things they were overlooking, but the things they were anticipating—hungry for—and when somebody finally came along with absolutely no redeeming qualities to offer it for them in the most ignorant and cruel way imaginable, they treated it like an awaited salvation.

JuliusGoat,
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And that sort of ruined me for a little while.

I no longer understood what I understood. The things I knew didn't fit together anymore; they were like puzzle pieces that had been thrown into a box with 7 other puzzles and turned cardboard-side-up.

JuliusGoat,
@JuliusGoat@mastodon.social avatar

Maybe some of you have a similar experience, in which case this book might read a bit like a horror story at times.

And, I know, some of you always knew this, and were just waiting for fools like me to catch up, and so to you this book may read like a grim comedy.

JuliusGoat,
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In any case, when my worldview shattered, I did what I do: I started writing. That's my way of turning puzzle pieces over and categorizing them and fitting them back together until a picture starts to form.

JuliusGoat,
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The questions I tried to answer were: how did we get here? So, in Very Fine People, you'll find my diagnosis of the dominant empowered cultural spirit in the United States; it's a spirit that is horribly sick.

And then, because I know that simply pointing to the problem is useful, but more useful is contemplating some way to fix it, I tried to answer the question: what do we do about it? So, in Very Fine People, you'll find some useful universally-accessible tools that I've discovered.

JuliusGoat,
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I think these tools might start to heal the sickness I see, which I think of as primarily a mutated spiritual virus called supremacism and an aggressive widespread spiritual cancer called capitalanoma; a sickness of our dominant empowered national spirit.

JuliusGoat,
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I started in late 2016 and published the first bit in January 2017, a few days before Donald Trump took office. It took me a very long time to write, because it took me a very long time to understand what I now understood. I'm still not there, honestly—not even close.

JuliusGoat,
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This is a journey, and I'm still a fool, and the darkness we're facing is very dark indeed.

But this book is a decent snapshot of the farthest point I've come, and I have to say, looking back, I've come a long way, and have good company, which is encouraging.

https://www.the-reframe.com/a-very-fine-announcement/

JuliusGoat, to random
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Order is a good thing. Justice is a good thing. But there must be priority, even among good things, and a thing improperly prioritized will become corrupted.

Many put justice above order.

But corrupt power always prefers order to justice.

The difference matters a lot.

JuliusGoat, to random
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Oh, nothing; just that thing where you put your second book on the shelf next to your first book.

JuliusGoat, to random
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Seems to me if the anti-student protest crowd had a good case to make they wouldn’t have to rely so heavily on a steady stream of threats, brutality, misrepresentations, and outright lies.

JuliusGoat, to random
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Sometimes it's hard to know what to do about this pervasive spiritual sickness of supremacy we have in this country, a hunger for killing, a love of punishment for the weak, a hated of consequences for the strong, but we can witness. We must look at it; we mustn't look away.

JuliusGoat, to random
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It isn’t the job of the New York Times to save democracy. The job of the New York Times is to tell us fascism and democracy both have problems, then vaguely intimate those problems are same in number and quality, because journalistic neutrality means manufacturing balance.

JuliusGoat, to random
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It isn’t the job of the New York Times to save democracy. The job of the New York Times is to tell us fascism and democracy both have problems, then vaguely intimate those problems are same in number and quality, because journalistic neutrality means manufacturing balance.

JuliusGoat, to random
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Seven lessons learned from a quarter century in a war-oriented society.

It's 2001—the year the movies promised we'd make contact with aliens—and the United States has rather recently been attacked by terrorists who flew passenger planes into buildings.

https://www.the-reframe.com/war-or-nothing/

JuliusGoat,
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Yet we all see the way the solutions presented by those who are not ignorant fools are ignored, while those of us who are the most ignorant and foolish receive the most attention from institutions of influence and power, framing the antiwar act of imagination as ignorant foolishness.

JuliusGoat,
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Yes, now it is 2024, and I have to ask: what lessons have we learned, and from what school have we learned it?

And have we learned our lessons well?

Are we seeking war, or something else, that is not war, but is not nothing, either?

Expanded essay: https://www.the-reframe.com/war-or-nothing/

JuliusGoat, to random
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Isn't it interesting that every killing by every cop is just a single bad apple that should never be thought to spoil the bunch, while every protest by and on behalf of marginalized people must be flawlessly perfect, or all participants deserve the brutality the police exist to deliver to them?

JuliusGoat,
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@starsandinfinity I think you’ll find that mostly they just want the killing to stop.

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