It’s from Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
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Thanks! 
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Barnaby’s statements are fucking monstrous, X-Men nonsense aside. I mean, outright stating, “You’re actual demons, you should be in Hell, how dare you pretend to be humans that are - and deserve to be - part of society” - it doesn’t get worse than that. Hitler would look at that kind of statement and think it was too much.
The X-Men thing is weird, though. It’s… interesting when people watch movies and take away the most perverse readings of them (“oh, those people are different, they’re obviously bad… I’ll just ignore everything that counters my biased interpretation”), but I wonder if he’s actually seen the movies, or is just familiar from ads and perhaps bits of scenes come across on cable TV. I recollect when the movies first came out, conservative Christian media outlets were denouncing them - because the movies mentioned “evolution” and thus were ideologically impure (never mind all the rest of it - magical powers, gay actors, metaphorical gayness, “rebelling against authority”… there was a lot they objected to).
Also I recollect that there was a weird marketing campaign for X-Men that included sending faxes and emails to various politicians (from congress all the way down to city council members, for some reason), from “Senator Kelly” or “citizen groups” that were “concerned” about mutants and the threats they posed. (I don’t think it worked very well, as I suspect all the offices the messages were sent to simply threw them out, thinking they came from crazy people.) I could see Republicans liking Kelly without any knowledge of the movies at all… if they assumed “mutants” was code for some minority groups.
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This from the same party that built a “Death Star” to get FTG re-elected.
Maybe if they watched movies to the end…
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And then the wanker backpedaled HARD by apologizing for his remarks.
“They’re demons and imps”…that’s not what I meant…riiiiiiight.
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I admire your patience and dedication in that case.
On the other hand, I’ve heard from people who had the sudden realization they were trans at a later age (two examples of people for whom the trigger was reflecting on their own creative work are the creators of Celeste and Dresden Codak). Maybe it’s possible to find a similar rhetorical trigger to have bigots understand the groups they hate/fear? Difficult to find I think, especially if someone isn’t really open to changing their mind.
Honestly the part of his speech that I find the most disturbing is this:
“… gender dysphoria. I don’t know what that means, and I don’t want to know”.
So he freely admits he is passing laws from a position of willful ignorance. Personally, I think that should disqualify someone from office just as much as any bigotry.
If you are going to write laws for something, you’d better damn well do your homework and understand that thing. This is your job.
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Yep… the evil part isn’t being ignorant of what gender dysphoria is - ignorance can be corrected… it’s the part where they refuse to be educated about the experiences of others.
If these assholes weren’t so dangerous, I’d feel sorry for how little and small their lives must be… But since they are using their ignorance to go after others, they can fuck right off.
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So this doesn’t apply to the topic exactly, but close enough, and if I don’t post it now it’s going to end up buried under hundreds of new files,
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I don’t think I have ever understood this scene more than I do now.
Magneto’s tactics are unpalatable, but he is mostly right here.
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Where is this from? I’d like to share it but want to credit the creator. Is it yours?
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Thanks for reminder, meant to read that.
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I didn’t take the screenshot, just a download of unknown provenance, sorry!
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