In 2025, over a thousand anti-transgender bills were introduced in 49 states across the country. Of those, over 100 have passed so far this year, continuing the trend of five consecutive record-breaking years of anti-trans legislation from 2020 to 2024. In recent years, I have watched these state-level attacks on transgender people spread across more than half the country, with many of these…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
I love science fiction movies. Whether they’re big-budget blockbusters or cheesy schlock, I can’t help but become enthralled by fantastic technology and alien worlds. The best thing about science fiction as a genre is its ability to blend with others. My favorite horror film—1984’s The Terminator—seamlessly fuses horror with sci-fi, resulting in an action-packed thriller that raises deep questions about humanity, our propensity for creating weapons, and fate.
Everything about The Terminator is cool. Arnold Schwarzenegger looks badass in leather and sunglasses. A dystopian future, killer robots, and time travel would elevate any movie, but The Terminator doesn’t rely on special effects as a crutch—it uses them to build suspense. That suspense turns to terror when the Terminator’s flesh burns away in a fire, revealing its metallic skeleton.
Artists take inspiration from wherever they can. Writer-director James Cameron conceived The Terminator after a nightmare featuring a metallic skeleton crawling from flames. The Terminator’s use of phones to locate its target reflected public fears about privacy and wiretapping at the time. The film’s post-apocalyptic future, triggered by nuclear war, was clearly influenced by Cold War anxieties.
The Terminator is sent back to 1984 from a dystopian future where Skynet, an evil artificial intelligence, seeks to exterminate humanity. Skynet turns humanity’s own nuclear missiles against them, manufactures Terminators, and even builds a time machine. Its power stems from control over production, mirroring real-world class power dynamics.
I doubt millionaire James Cameron consciously cared about class analysis, but artists often embed their biases unintentionally. Skynet represents the military-industrial complex, which prioritizes war machines over human needs. Instead of hospitals, we get drones; instead of doctors, soldiers. The system thrives on conflict, not care.
Artists can recognize and correct their biases. In the first Terminator, Sarah Connor is a clichéd damsel in distress, lacking agency while the male protagonists—the Terminator and resistance fighter Kyle Reese—battle around her. Her sole purpose is to survive long enough to birth John Connor, the future resistance leader. She was just supposed to stay out of the way so men could do everything.
By Terminator 2, Sarah transforms into a hardened warrior—muscular, armed, and proactive. She drives the plot by attempting to destroy Skynet preemptively, something the men don’t do. Linda Hamilton’s physical transformation was so extreme her sister played Sarah in flashbacks. Cameron’s shift not only improved the story but also challenged misogynistic tropes.
What people truly want is a Star Trek future: no more wars on Earth, technology focused on exploration, free food, and advanced medicine. This is the kind of future we can build for ourselves. We can leave our children a world where technology like that is within our grasp.
In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Skynet sends a new more advanced T-1000 Terminator to kill John Connor. The resistance reprogrammed an Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator and sent it to the past with Skynet’s own time travel technology. Just like a real guerilla movement the resistance isn’t as interested in research and development as it is in using what its enemy has already developed.
The future resistance sent Kyle Reese back to 1984 in the first movie. John Conner gave a picture of his mother to Kyle Reese well before he sent Reese back to protect his mother. The first Terminator movie ends with Sarah getting her picture taken. Its the same picture that Kyle Reese will have of her in the future. This time travel loop where an event is caused by another event that was caused by the first event is called a bootstrap paradox.
In Judgement Day we find out Skynet was built using the remains of the Terminator from the first movie. There’s a ton of bootstrap paradoxes in these films that makes it seem like judgement day is inevitable. But time travel paradoxes are fictional plot devices, judgement day is not inevitable. As the film repeats “no fate but what we make for ourselves.”
Larger than life adversaries like a time traveling killer robot or the military industrial complex can be beaten. The first Terminator shows how to defeat a seemingly unstoppable foe: weaken it step by step. A truck cripples the Terminator, fire strips its flesh, a bomb mangles its body, and a hydraulic press finishes it off. Similarly, the military-industrial complex can be dismantled—through persistence, solidarity, and class consciousness.
We can overcome Skynet. We can build a Star Trek future. Knowledge is power, and collective action is our weapon. Without class analysis, Skynet’s rise seems inevitable; with it, any future is possible.
So much of artistic expression ends up being grim or dystopian, this is because a lot of artists lack class consciousness. But for every nuclear apocalypse there’s a Star Trek where the future looks brighter. The inspiration we get from fiction stories is real inspiration, and it can really help to unite us.
Early humans told stories around campfires, they expressed themselves through cave paintings. We are social beings and we have always valued our ability to connect with each other over our artistic expression. As Kim Il-sung put it in On The Juche Idea “Man is a being with creativity, that is, a creative social being.” They truly value art in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, that’s why they added a paintbrush to their hammer and sickle flag.
We can start building a resistance to the forces of evil. For every Darth Vader there’s a Luke Skywalker, for every Sauron there’s a Frodo Baggins, for every Skynet there’s an entire resistance ready to challenge it. The resistance didn’t start out with the ability to challenge Skynet, they started small and built themselves up over time. Just like Sarah Connor we can go from being at the mercy of production into those who control production. That’s what a revolution is, it’s a process where a class goes from being subservient into a class that can rule over itself. We can make that revolution happen. Our destiny is not pre-determined; there is no fate but what we make for ourselves.
This post was originally published on Real Progressives.
Children at my son’s Spanish immersion preschool in Chicago bore witness to a teacher being violently assaulted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who entered their school, armed with weapons, earlier this month. One of the school’s infant teachers, Diana Santillana Galeano — known to the students as “Miss Diana” — was abducted by ICE on the morning of November 5 as she…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Children at my son’s Spanish immersion preschool in Chicago bore witness to a teacher being violently assaulted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who entered their school, armed with weapons, earlier this month. One of the school’s infant teachers, Diana Santillana Galeano — known to the students as “Miss Diana” — was abducted by ICE on the morning of November 5 as she…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On November 3, Condé Nast announced that it was folding Teen Vogue into Vogue, thus laying off most of Teen Vogue’s staff. Most devastatingly, the layoffs primarily affected their Black, brown, trans and queer workers and the publication’s entire political desk, which had provided readers with rigorous and accurate reporting on systems of oppression, the policies they took shape as…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This past week, Donald Trump went global with his wrecking ball to the concept of a free press. For years, he has used lawsuits to intimidate major newspapers and broadcasters, in the process getting major outlets such as CBS and ABC to repeatedly bend the knee. Under his watch, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has reportedly pushed broadcasters to fire personalities…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Kathryn Bigelow’s new nuclear thriller, A House of Dynamite, has been criticized by some experts for being unrealistic, most notably because it portrays an unlikely scenario in which an adversary chooses to attack the United States with just a single nuclear-armed missile. Such a move would, of course, leave the vast American nuclear arsenal largely intact and so invite a devastating response that…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Anti-abortion activists have been trying to convince the broader public that medication abortion is dangerous for years, but their latest argument is a decades-old asinine conspiracy theory. In a June 18 letter to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin, 25 House Republicans asked the agency to study the alleged “byproducts” of Mifepristone (the first medication administered…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
It’s devastatingly clear that there will be no seat at the table for the youth of Gaza to take part in the negotiations over “Gaza’s future” currently being held by U.S. and Israeli officials. As U.S. and Israeli officials discuss whether to move forward with the second phase of the ceasefire and draw Gaza’s fate and future on paper — or whether to announce the collapse of the talks and a…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
workers as a whole have endured a lot of losses in the class war. Globally-mobile companies have deserted communities with unionized workforces, successive administrations raised up oligarchs by slashing taxes on the rich, a major epidemic put the country on edge, and landlords are using technology to collude on raising rents more rapidly. But all this conventional class war is now…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Democratic Party’s rallying cry for years has been steady: Donald Trump is an existential threat to our democracy. And with the de facto occupation of U.S. cities by the National Guard, we hear a whole lot from the party about “defending democracy” against Trump. A proper defense of democracy, however, requires acknowledging how moderate and right-wing Democrats have undermined it themselves.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
When I finally fled from my home in Gaza City to Khan Younis in southern Gaza this September, I left behind everything that reminded me of myself. I dreamed of returning, yet I kept wondering whether there was anything left for me to stay for in this land. In the south, I felt like a stranger. If exile feels this hollow inside Gaza, what would life abroad be like? I spent a whole month in a…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Today, Donald Trump presides over his own Murder Incorporated, less a government than a death squad. Many brushed off his proclamation early in his second term that the Gulf of Mexico would henceforth be called the Gulf of America as a foolish, yet harmless, show of dominance. Now, however, he’s created an ongoing bloodbath in the adjacent Caribbean Sea. The Pentagon has so far destroyed 18…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Last week, a jury in Washington, D.C. refused to convict a man who became a folk hero when he threw a sandwich at a federal agent. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani won a brilliantly executed mayoral race against sexual harasser and primary loser Andrew Cuomo. In Chicago, a federal judge called out Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino for lying during a deposition, and again ordered ICE agents to…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) helicopters will undoubtedly be circling my neighborhood looking for roofers and landscapers this “Veterans Day,” just as they have been for weeks. In the U.S., you’re an easy mark when you have brown skin and your job demands that you labor out in the open. My town, located just outside of Chicago, has been crawling with ICE agents or soldiers (the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
If you had told me in September 2001, when I was a new teacher in Washington, D.C. — the smoke from the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon still visible from my classroom window — that one day a Muslim socialist would be elected mayor of New York City, I might have thought you cruel for raising my hopes. I remember the tanks rolling down the street by my house, the flags unfurled from every porch…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Zohran Mamdani’s historic mayoral victory on November 4 created a political earthquake both inside and outside New York City. With bold policies aimed at challenging the status quo in the U.S., a once obscure, long-shot democratic socialist candidate has become a celebrated new star of the Democratic Party — a party whose leaders continue to remain reluctant to endorse him. As the dust from…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On September 3, Illinois prison officials moved — by emergency rule — to replace most physical mail with scanned copies, though a key legislative panel has already pushed back. At the same time, New York is installing mail scanners in prisons, raising alarms about privacy and attorney-client privilege. Texas has already shifted to “digital mail,” where letters are scanned and delivered on tablets…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
There’s a popular and recurring chant that echoed throughout the recent No Kings protests several weeks ago: “This is what democracy looks like.” But on Capitol Hill over the past four weeks, during a protracted government shutdown, Republicans have been displaying the opposite. The quiet, moribund center of American government looks anything but like a democracy.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
“There’s nothing wrong with him. If there were, it would say so in his file.” I heard a licensed mental health counselor say those words to a correctional officer as they stood side by side, watching a man through a large plexiglass window that took up most of the wall of an observation cell, a cell used for people deemed a threat to themselves or others. Inside, the man was visibly…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
“There’s nothing wrong with him. If there were, it would say so in his file.” I heard a licensed mental health counselor say those words to a correctional officer as they stood side by side, watching a man through a large plexiglass window that took up most of the wall of an observation cell, a cell used for people deemed a threat to themselves or others. Inside, the man was visibly…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Earlier this month, Ohio State Rep. Melanie Miller (R-Ashland) introduced legislation that would require Ohio public schools to show a video about “Baby Olivia,” inaccurately detailing fetal development, to students as young as the third grade. Abortion rights group Reproaction notes that the “Baby Olivia” video claims that fetuses experience hiccups at seven weeks gestation…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Eight years ago, I attended a gathering on my family’s farm in South Carolina on the day of the total solar eclipse. That same week, my grandmother, Sarah Graydon McCrory, went into the hospital with an infection from which she never recovered. In October of that year, just past her 96th birthday, Sarah died — and I got to stand by her on her deathbed as she grappled with connection and liberation…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
From the Trump administration to Democrats in California, responses to the homeless crisis in the U.S. continue to ignore the main drivers of the problem and aim to make the unhoused magically disappear. Like so many of the faux social policies in the U.S., this one increasingly looks designed for big private players to profit off the disappearing. Let’s first look at the main tenets of the U.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Ceasefire is a relief. After two years of surviving war, we can finally breathe — but that doesn’t mean our suffering is over. For many of us, it’s only just begun. The tents, and the people still living in them, stand as a heavy reminder that our struggles are far from over. After two years of immense destruction by the Israeli military, most families in Gaza are now living in tents — nylons and…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Since September, Chicago has been an epicenter of the Trump administration’s nativist anti-immigration push as well as some of the fiercest resistance to it. On a daily basis, we’ve seen reports of ICE snatching people off the streets, as well as locals responding with neighborhood patrols, de-arrests, and communities taking on tear gas in standoffs against the government. For the last six…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Since September, Chicago has been an epicenter of the Trump administration’s nativist anti-immigration push as well as some of the fiercest resistance to it. On a daily basis, we’ve seen reports of ICE snatching people off the streets, as well as locals responding with neighborhood patrols, de-arrests, and communities taking on tear gas in standoffs against the government. For the last six…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Recently, heavily armed and masked SWAT-like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents rolled up at a Chicago-area elementary school as classes ended for the day. Their target? A mom picking up her child. The footage is heart-wrenching: A woman in a pink sweatshirt, struggling frantically, is pressed into the pavement by armed bodies as she screams, “There is no signed warrant…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy joined the ancestors last week. In these times of intensified fascism — marked by racist anti-trans violence and further abandonment by liberal politicians — it’s harder to know where to find anything other than despair without her here. A freedom fighter and glamour gurl until the end, Major is probably most famous for being a survivor of the 1969 anti-police uprising at…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
