acrystalbirdie

[acrystalbirdie]

Band called ship of Theseus who replaces one of their members with every album release

[acrystalbirdie]

Somehow it feels like tumblr is accidentally the perfect social media site, because none of the things that I love about it make sense as features the way we use them. Tags are for organization, but we also use them to have our little thoughts in without raising them to the status of main text. The queue makes sense for keeping a steady stream of Content going if you're trying to Build a Social Media Presence, but really we use it just to bank posts we want to reblog without flooding everyone else's dash. You can't see how many followers anyone else has, which I just have to assume was an oversight because it flies in the face of everything about social media, and it's great because you can never quantify anyone's Influence so everyone's essentially on the same level. There's no way they planned for giffing to become such a Thing, because before tumblr, gifs were practically relics of the early internet days, a novelty, usually kind of tacky, and now they've become a sort of folk art form. You can reblog an entire conversation, not just a single post, so there's a whole genre of humor that exists here that can't really propagate like that on any other social platform. Honestly this website is just a little freak of nature that cannot possibly have been intended, and that's why no media company has been able to figure out what to do with it, because it makes no sense within the larger social media ecosystem. I love it.

[acrystalbirdie]

[acrystalbirdie]

it does still make me insane specifically how many queer people lovingly embrace astrology. I went to a poetry workshop yesterday that was genuinely quite good but also included an option to disclose astrology designations during introductions and so many people broke out some variation of "I'm a [x] sum but I have a [y] placement and it SHOWS" girl no it doesn't. that's meaningless correlation you completely invented the causation

[acrystalbirdie]

Hello. I mean this really imploringly, and really genuinely. If you're a U.S. citizen still on the fence about what to do for the election, please vote Harris. There's this idea circulating that the person you vote for should be someone you like, love, idolize and that is so very not true. You're voting for the opponent you'll face for the next four years when you have issues to protest and matters to vocalize. You're voting for the person most likely to give an inch when you protest the things that matter. You're voting for the person most likely to not strip away your existing rights and scatter your focus across the things we already won, and which can be taken away. We lost Roe v Wade under the Trump-appointed judges. The current trans-panic is so disgustingly on fire, and it's absolutely the Republicans eager to rip away what little protection there is. Both candidates are also, disgustingly, pro-Israel. But Trump will never ever give a fuck to any protest on that matter.

You don't want to be complicit in genocide. I get it. But if you're a U.S. citizen, you're already benefiting from the U.S.'s foreign policy, and that's already complacency. Refusing to vote or voting third party isn't absolving you of that. It's just letting Trump walk in the door. And letting Trump in is complacency. And your ability to organize, and to make change, will go so less far against a Trump cabinet than a Harris one. The material harm under Trump is real.

Does voting for Harris make you feel guilty? I'm sorry, but you have to bear it. Your guilt isn't what's important. A white person's guilt isn't important. A citizen of a global terror's guilt isn't important. Actions that pacify your guilt aren't important. Focusing on absolving your guilt is in fact harmful, as opposed to actions that can actually materially reduce harm.

Please protest. Please donate to good causes. Please support Palestine. Please be vocal. Please fight for BIPOC and LGBTQA+ rights. Please view Harris as the opponent whose ears these things fall on. Your ability to organize safely, largely, loudly, and effectively will go so much further under a Harris presidency. Please.

[acrystalbirdie]

While U was voting for president I was at home jerking off face down on my bed

[acrystalbirdie]

for the redditors coming here, this is how we spread news of important events in the world, with a Destiel meme

[acrystalbirdie]

Free & Discounted Election Day Rides 2024

Election Day is nearly here, and if you haven’t already mailed in your ballot or gone in for early voting, you might need a ride come November 5.

Here’s a roundup of some of the freebies, discounts, and information on getting to the polls that organizations are offering.

Lyft

Lyft announced that riders can preload the code VOTE24 for a half-price discount of up to $10 on rideshare, bike-share, or scooter rides on or before Nov. 5. The code is only valid between 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. every time zone.

Uber

Uber also announced it will offer half-off rideshare costs of up to $10 on Election Day for users in most states.

Using a new "Go Vote" tile displayed on the app, users can book a ride to the nearest poll with the discount unless they are in California or Georgia. The offer works between 4 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. local time on Nov. 5. The company will also offer 25% off food orders up to $15 with a minimum order of $25.

Lime

Lime is offering free rides to and from your polling place to vote early or on Election Day. Riders can use the promo code VOTE2024 to get two free 30-minute rides in the U.S.

Bird & Spin

Bird and Spin are also offering two free rides as part of their Roll to the Polls initiative. Riders can use the code RockTheVote2024 in the app.

Rideshare2Vote

Rideshare2Vote helps voters in need of a ride get to their local polling facilities for free. Ridshare2Vote is available in seven swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), as well as Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. If you live in one of these states and have a car, you can also volunteer to drive others to the polls. Go to Rideshare2Vote.com or call 888-977-2250 for more information.

Rides to the Polls (Georgia Only)

The New Georgia Project's Rides to the Polls program will give free rides to voting sites for Georgia residents on Nov. 5 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Go to newgeorgiaproject.org/rides or call 800-874-1541 for more information.

Moovit

Moovit has integrated tens of thousands of polling locations from 130 counties across 11 states into its trip-planning app. The app also provides users with quick access to voter registration information and which transit agencies are offering free rides.

Transit Agencies / Public Transportation

There are countless transit agencies offering free rides on Election Day — everywhere from Detroit to Des Moines to Durham — so be sure to check with your local authority.

Please share any additional resources you’re aware of. Let’s make it easy for people to get to the polls!

[acrystalbirdie]

IMPORTANT INFORMATION TO HAVE IF YOU PLAN ON VOTING IN THE US ELECTION (November 5th, 2024):

IF you don’t have a way to get to your polling place both Uber and Lyft are offering 50% off of trips to your polling place! For Lyft you can use their code VOTE24 and on uber there will be a space on the app that says “Go Vote!” that will show you all the available promotions you can use to get to your polling place.

if you don’t know what your polling place is you can go to vote.org/polling-place-locator and check the voter registration logs in your state OR you can google “polling place locator” and there should be a widget that will show you where to go if you enter in your address (NOTE: ENTER YOUR PERMANENT ADDRESS, I.E the address on your drivers license or the address that you put down when you registered to vote)

If English is not your first language or primary language, you can ask for a translator to assist you or you can ask one of the workers at your polling place if they have non-English language ballots (this is only available in some states and counties but it is a good idea to ask regardless)

IF YOU LIVE IN ANY OF THE FOLLOWING STATES, YOU MUST HAVE A PHYSICAL GOVERNMENT ISSUED I.D TO VOTE:

Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, Wyoming

USE THIS SITE TO FIND OUT IF YOUR STATE HAS SAME DAY VOTER REGISTRATION -> https://www.rockthevote.org/how-to-vote/same-day-voter-registration/

USE THIS SITE TO FIND OUT IF YOUR STATE REQUIRES YOUR EMPLOYER TO GIVE YOU TIME OFF TO VOTES -> https://ballotpedia.org/Time_off_work_for_voting

UNDER THE READ MORE I HAVE LINKS TO VOTER GUIDES FOR EVERY STATE + WASHINGTON D.C. THAT HAVE INFORMATION ON THE POSITIONS OF EACH CANDIDATE AND SUMMARIES OF BALLOT MEASURES YOU WILL BE VOTING FOR/AGAINST - YOU ARE ALLOWED TO BRING YOUR PHONE INTO THE BOOTH SO USE THESE AS A GUIDE!

Alabama Voters Guide from Alabama Reflector -> https://alabamareflector.com/voter-guide/2024/

Alaska Beacon’s 2024 voter guide -> https://alaskabeacon.com/voter-guide/2024/

Arizona 2024 voter guide -> https://www.azvoterguide.com/

Arkansas Voter Guide from the Arkansas Advocate -> https://arkansasadvocate.com/voter-guide/2024/

California Voters Guide from the League of Women Voters of California (Available in Multiple Languages) -> https://cavotes.org/easy-voter-guide/

Colorado Voters Guide from Colorado Public Radio -> https://www.cpr.org/2024/10/14/vg-2024-colorado-voter-guide-to-the-2024-election/

Connecticut Voter Guide from Connecticut Insider -> https://www.ctinsider.com/projects/2024/elections/ct-election-2024-voter-guide/

Delaware Voters Guide from Delaware Journalism Coalition -> https://www.dejournalism.org/2024-voter-guide-for-delaware/

Florida Voter Guide from League of Women Voters Florida -> https://lwvfl.org/vote2024/

Georgia Voters Guide -> https://thegeorgiavoterguide.com/

Hawaii Voting Information from Vote411 -> https://www.vote411.org/hawaii

Idaho Voters Guide from Idaho Capital Sun -> https://idahocapitalsun.com/voter-guide/2024/

Illinois Voters Guide -> https://illinoisvoterguide.org/

Indiana Voters Guide from Vote411 -> https://www.vote411.org/indiana

Iowa Voters Guide from Iowa Public Radio -> https://www.iowapublicradio.org/political-news/2024-09-18/iowa-ballot-2024

Kansas Voters Guide from BallotReady -> https://www.ballotready.org/us/kansas

Kentucky Voters Guide from Kentucky Election Org -> https://www.kentuckyelection.org/

Louisiana Voters Guide from The Louisiana Illuminator -> https://lailluminator.com/voter-guide/2024-louisiana-voter-guide/

Maine Voters Guide from Maine Morningstar -> https://mainemorningstar.com/voter-guide/2024/

Maryland Voters Guide from Maryland Matters -> https://marylandmatters.org/voter-guide/2024/

Massachusetts Voters Guide from CBS News -> https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/whats-on-2024-election-ballot-massachusetts/

Michigan Voters Guide from the Michigan Voters Information Center -> https://mvic.sos.state.mi.us/publicballot/index

Minnesota Voters Guide from the Minnesota Star Tribune -> https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-2024-voters-guide-whos-running-where-they-stand-on-the-issues/601147912

Mississippi Voters Guide from the Mississippi Clarion Ledger -> https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/politics/2024/10/31/mississippi-voter-guide/75894837007/

Missouri Voters Guide from Missouri Channel 8 News -> https://www.komu.com/news/elections/november-2024-voters-guide/article_9ef3fa62-8cbf-11ef-903d-2bc40682f247.html

Montana Voters Guide from Montana Free Press -> https://apps.montanafreepress.org/election-guide-2024/

Nebraska Voters Guide from Flatwater Free Press -> https://voterguide.flatwaterfreepress.org/

Nevada Voters Guide from Vote411 -> https://www.vote411.org/nevada

New Hampshire Voters Guide from Seacoast Online -> https://www.seacoastonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/03/seacoast-nh-election-2024-voter-guide-candidates-where-to-vote/75988328007/

New Jersey Voters Guide from Ballot Ready -> https://www.ballotready.org/us/new-jersey

New Mexico Voters Guide from Source New Mexico -> https://sourcenm.com/voter-guide/2024/

New York Voters Guide from Times Union -> https://www.timesunion.com/projects/2024/new-york-voter-guide-general-election/

North Carolina Voters Guide from NCVoterGuide -> https://ncvoterguide.org/

North Dakota Voters Guide from The North Dakota Monitor -> https://northdakotamonitor.com/voter-guide/2024/

Ohio Voters Guide from The Ohio Capital Journal -> https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/voter-guide/2024/

Oklahoma Voters Guide from The Oklahoma Voice -> https://oklahomavoice.com/voter-guide/2024-oklahoma-elections/

Oregon Voters Guide from The Oregon Capital Chronicle -> https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/voter-guide/2024-general-election/

Pennsylvania Voters Guide from BallotReady -> https://www.ballotready.org/us/pennsylvania

Rhode Island Voters Guide for Rhode Island Current -> https://rhodeislandcurrent.com/voter-guide/2024/

South Carolina Voters Guide from Vote411 -> https://www.vote411.org/south-carolina

South Dakota Voters Guide from South Dakota Searchlight -> https://southdakotasearchlight.com/voter-guide/2024/

Tennessee Voters Guide from Tennessee Lookout -> https://tennesseelookout.com/voter-guide/2024-election/

Texas Voters Guide from Vote411 -> https://www.vote411.org/texas

Utah Voters Guidefrom The Utah News Dispatch -> https://utahnewsdispatch.com/voter-guide/2024/

Vermont Voters Guide from BallotReady -> https://utahnewsdispatch.com/voter-guide/2024/

Virginia Voters Guide from The Virginia Mercury -> https://virginiamercury.com/voter-guide/2024-virginia-voter-guide/

Washington Voters Guide from Cascade PBS -> https://www.cascadepbs.org/voter-guide/washington-statewide-voter-guide-2024

Washington D.C. Voters Guide from WTOP News -> https://wtop.com/dc-election/2024/10/dc-2024-general-election-voter-guide-everything-you-need-to-know/

West Virginia Voters Guide from Mountain State Spotlight -> https://mountainstatespotlight.org/west-virginia-2024-voter-guide/

Wisconsin Voters Guide from My Vote Wisconsin -> https://myvote.wi.gov/en-us/Whats-On-My-Ballot

Wyoming Voters Guide from WY VOTE -> https://wyvote.vote/

[acrystalbirdie]

i can’t say this simpler.

get out, vote for kamala, and then get out and protest for palestine like your life depends on it.

but if trump gets in, your life WILL depend on it. with kamala at least you are safe to continue trying to save others. with trump that isn’t an option.

alt version for the very silly people

[acrystalbirdie]

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you cared about third parties you’d be helping the one you like organize at a local level rather than complaining every four years, five months before a presidential election, that they don’t have the same power as established parties.

If you want third parties to make a difference, local is where to start.

Even if you got a third party president, a thing you can’t get right now, without allies in congress they cannot do anything.

[acrystalbirdie]

It would be extremely funny if Kamala won and got the be the first woman president as well as the first black woman president, and then by some year in the future we would have to announce the First White Woman President

[acrystalbirdie]

So, look, the genuinely upsetting truth is that it's unlikely that Kamala Harris is going to do much of anything to help Palestinians

But unlike her, if Donald Trump is elected president, he will make it way harder for you to help Palestinians.

You will have a much harder time helping Palestinians if/when Trump:

Declares martial law/invokes the Insurrection Act (which there is extremely real danger of Trump doing) x, x, x, x, x, x

Destroys the right to protest (which his hand-picked Supreme Court has already done in three states) x, x, x

Starts arresting, criminally charging, and assassinating his political enemies (which he has talked about doing and which the Supreme Court just made fucking legal) x, x, x, x, x

Legally protects people who drive cars into crowds of protestors (which two Republican states have already done, and more states have introduced bills to do so) x, x, x, x

Starts deploying the US military in US cities and against protestors (which he has said he is going to do) x, x, x

Makes it so that anti-Zionism is legally defined as antisemitism in order to prosecute people (which the US House of Representatives and several states have already passed a bill to do) x, x, x, x

Advocates for Netanyahu to "finish the problem" in Palestine (he has already done this) x, x

Bans Palestinians and Palestinian refugees from entering the United States (which he has said he is going to do) x, x, x, x

Deports and revokes visas of pro-Palestinian protestors, including student visas (which he has said he is going to do) x, x, x

Reinstitutes and expands the Muslim ban (which he has said he is going to do) x, x, x, x, x

Calls for or incites violence against refugee communities (he is already knowingly doing this) x, x, x, x

Wrecks the economy so that a hell of a lot more people can't afford to donate money to support Palestinians x, x, x, x

Wrecks the economy and turns this country into an even shittier, more violent place, where far more people are too exhausted and focused on trying to survive to have the time or energy to advocate for Palestine (source: see all of the above)

The status quo is fucking bad but that doesn't change the fact that Trump would be fucking worse.

[acrystalbirdie]

The discussions around whether or not to vote for Kamala keep being dominated by very loud voices shouting that anyone who advocates for her “just doesn't care about Palestine!” and “is willing to overlook genocide!” and “has no moral backbone at all!” And while some of these voices will be bots, trolls, psyops - we know that this happens; we know that trying to persuade progressives to split the vote or not vote at all is a strategy employed by hostile actors - of course many of them won't be. But what this rhetoric does is continually force the ���you should vote for her” crowd onto the back foot of having to go to great lengths writing entire essays justifying their choice, while the “don't vote/vote third party” crowd is basically never asked to justify their choice. It frames voting for Kamala as a deeply morally compromised position that requires extensive justification while framing not voting or voting third party as the neutral and morally clean stance.

So here's another way of looking at it. How much are you willing to accept in order to feel like you're not compromising your morals on one issue?

Are you willing to accept the 24% rise in maternal deaths - and 39% increase for Black women - that is expected under a federal abortion ban, according to the Centre for American Progress? Those percentages represent real people who are alive now who would die if the folks behind Project 2025 get their way with reproductive healthcare.

Are you willing to accept the massive acceleration of climate change that would result from the scrapping of all climate legislation? We don't have time to fuck around with the environment. A gutting of climate policy and a prioritisation of fossil fuel profits, which is explicitly promised by Trump, would set the entire world back years - years that we don't have.

Are you willing to accept the classification of transgender visibility as inherently “pornographic” and thus the removal of trans people from public life? Are you willing to accept the total elimination of legal routes for gender-affirming care? The people behind the Trump campaign want to drive queer and trans people back underground, back into the closet, back into “criminality”. This will kill people. And it's maddening that caring about this gets called “prioritising white gays over brown people abroad” as if it's not BIPOC queer and trans Americans who will suffer the most from legislative queer- and transphobia, as they always do.

Are you willing to accept the domestic deployment of the military to crack down on protests and enforce racist immigration policy? I'm sure it's going to be very easy to convince huge numbers of normal people to turn up to protests and get involved in political organising when doing so may well involve facing down an army deployed by a hardcore authoritarian operating under the precedent that nothing he does as president can ever be illegal.

Are you willing to accept a president who openly talks about wanting to be a dictator, plans on massively expanding presidential powers, dehumanises his political enemies and wants the DOJ to “go after them”, and assures his supporters they won't have to vote again? If you can't see the danger of this staring you right in the face, I don't know what to tell you. Allowing a wannabe dictator to take control of the most powerful country on earth would be absolutely disastrous for the entire world.

Are you willing to accept an enormous uptick in fascism and far-right authoritarianism worldwide? The far right in America has huge influence over an entire international network of “anti-globalists”, hardcore anti-immigrant xenophobes, transphobic extremists, and straight-up fascists. Success in America aids and emboldens these people everywhere.

Are you willing to accept an enormous number of preventable deaths if America faces a crisis in the next four years: a public health emergency, a natural disaster, an ecological catastrophe? We all saw how Trump handled Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. We all saw how Trump handled Covid-19. He fanned the flames of disaster with a constant flow of medical misinformation and an unspeakably dangerous undermining of public health experts. It's estimated that 40% of US pandemic deaths could have been avoided if the death rates had corresponded to those in other high-income countries. That amounts to nearly half a million people. One study from January 2021 estimated between around 4,200 and 12,200 preventable deaths attributable purely to Trump's statements about masks. We're highly unlikely to face another global pandemic in the next few years but who knows what crises are coming down the pipeline?

Are you willing to accept the attempted deportation of millions - millions - of undocumented people? This is “rounding people up and throwing them into camps where no one ever hears from them again” territory. That's a blueprint for genocide right there and it's a core tenet of both Trump's personal policy and Project 2025. And of course they wouldn't be going after white people. They most likely wouldn't even restrict their tyranny to people who are actually undocumented. Anyone racially othered as an “immigrant” would be at risk from this.

Are you willing to accept not just the continuation of the current situation in Palestine, but the absolute annihilation of Gaza and the obliteration of any hope for imminent peace? There is no way that Trump and the people behind him would not be catastrophically worse for Gaza than Kamala or even Biden. Only recently he was telling donors behind closed doors that he wanted to “set the [Palestinian] movement back 25 or 30 years” and that “any student that protests, I throw them out of the country”. This is not a man who can be pushed in a direction more conducive to peace and justice. This is a man who listens to his wealthy donors, his Christian nationalist Republican allies, and himself.

Are you willing to accept a much heightened risk of nuclear war? Obviously this is hardly a Trump policy promise. But I can't think of a single president since the Cold War who is more likely to deploy nuclear weapons, given how casually he talks about wanting to use them and how erratic and unstable he can be in his dealings with foreign leaders. To quote Foreign Policy only this year, “Trump told a crowd in January that one of the reasons he needed immunity was so that he couldn’t be indicted for using nuclear weapons on a city.” That's reassuring. I'm not even in the US and I remember four years of constant background low-level terror that Trump would take offence at something some foreign leader said or think that he needs to personally intervene in some military situation to “sort it out” and decide to launch the entire world into nuclear war. No one sane on earth wants the most powerful person on the planet to be as trigger-happy and careless with human life as he is, especially if he's running the White House like a dictator with no one ever telling him no. But depending on what Americans do in November, he may well be inflicted again on all of us, and I guess we'll all just have to hope that he doesn't do the worst thing imaginable.

“But I don't want those things! Stop accusing me of supporting things I don't support!” Yes, of course you don't want those things. None of us does. No one's saying that you actively support them. No one's accusing you of wanting Black women to die from ectopic pregnancies or of wanting to throw Hispanic people in immigrant detention centres or of wanting trans people to be outlawed (unlike, I must point out, the extremely emotive and personal accusations that get thrown around about “wanting Palestinian children to die” if you encourage people to vote for Kamala).

But if you're advocating against voting for Kamala, you are clearly willing to accept them as possible consequences of your actions. That is the deal you're making. If a terrible thing happening is the clear and easily foreseeable outcome of your action (or in the case of not voting, inaction), in a way that could have been prevented by taking a different and just as easy action, you are partly responsible for that consequence. (And no, it's not “a fear campaign” to warn people about things he's said, things he wants to do, and plans drawn up by his close allies. This is not “oooh the Democrats are trying to bully you into voting for them by making him out to be really bad so you'll feel scared and vote for Kamala!” He is really bad, in obvious and documented and irrefutable ways.)

And if you believe that “both parties are the same on Gaza” (which, you know, they really aren't, but let's just pretend that they are) then presumably you accept that the horrors being committed there will continue, in the immediate term anyway, regardless of who wins the presidency. Because there really isn't some third option that will appear and do everything we want. It's going to be one of those two. And we can talk all day about wanting a better system or how unfair it is that every presidential election only ever has two viable candidates and how small the Overton window is and all that but hell, we are less than eighty days out from the election; none of that is going to get fixed between now and November. Electoral reform is a long-term (but important!) goal, not something that can be effected in the span of a couple of months by telling people online to vote third party. There is no “instant ceasefire and peace negotiation” button that we're callously overlooking by encouraging people to vote for Kamala. (My god, if there was, we would all be pressing it.)

If we're suggesting people vote for her, it's not that we “are willing to overlook genocide” or “don't care about sacrificing brown people abroad” or whatever. Nothing is being “overlooked” here. It's that we're simply not willing to accept everything else in this post and more on top of continued atrocities in Gaza. We're not willing to take Trump and his godawful far-right authoritarian agenda as an acceptable consequence of feeling like we have the moral high ground on Palestine. I cannot stress enough that if Kamala doesn't win, we - we all, in the whole world - get Trump. Are you willing to accept that?

And one more point to address: I've seen too many people act frighteningly flippant and naïve about terrible things Trump or his campaign want to do, with the idea that people will simply be able to prevent all these bad things by “organising” and “protesting” and “collective action”. “I'm not willing to accept these things; that's why I'll fight them tooth and nail every day of their administration” - OK but if you're not even willing to cast a vote then I have doubts about your ability to form “the Resistance”, which by the way would have to involve cooperation with people of lots of progressive political stripes in order to have the manpower to be effective, and if you're so committed to political purity that you view temporarily lending your support to Kamala at the ballot box as an untenable betrayal of everything you stand for then forgive me for also doubting your ability to productively cooperate with allies on the ground with whom you don't 100% agree. Plus, if the Trump campaign gets its way, American progressives would be kept so busy trying to put out about twenty different fires at once that you'd be able to accomplish very little. Maybe you get them to soften their stance on trans healthcare but oh shit, the climate policies are still in place. But more importantly, how many people do you think will protest for abortion rights if doing so means staring down a gun? Or organise to protect their neighbours from deportation if doing so means being thrown in prison yourself? And OK, maybe you're sure that you will, but history has shown us time and time again that most people won't. Most people aren't willing to face that kind of personal risk. And a tiny number of lefties willing to risk incarceration or death to protect undocumented people or trans people or whatever other groups are targeted is sadly not enough to prevent the horrors from happening. That is small fry compared to the full might of a determined state. Of course if the worst happens and Trump wins then you should do what you can to mitigate the harm; I'm not saying you shouldn't. But really the time to act is now. You have an opportunity right here to mitigate the harm and it's called “not letting him get elected”. Act now to prevent that kind of horrific authoritarian situation from developing in the first place; don't sit this one out under the naïve belief that “we'll be able to stop it if it happens”. You won't.

[acrystalbirdie]

Addressing some anti-voter reasoning (and explaining why it's bad)

The reasoning most anti-voters are using is bad, and here's why.

"I plan to vote third party."

When it comes to presidential elections, third-party voting is dead in the water without massive election reforms, which Republicans will never allow if they have their way. By voting third party, you're effectively voting for Trump and Project 2025/Agenda 47. This might sound harsh, but it's just the truth right now.

"I would be complicit in genocide."

If genocide is what you're worried about, how would letting Donald J. "Finish The Problem" Trump become president help? Do you really think Donald J. Muslim Ban Trump isn't going to go after Palestinians already in the US? And what exactly do you plan to do for Palestinians in a Trump dictatorship when you've been imprisoned for "pornography" because you were trans in public, posted pictures of trans people or characters, or posted support for trans people? (Yeah, Trump and his buddies want to legislate so-called "trans ideology" as "pornography" and make it illegal.)

"It would be no worse than what POC are going through already."

However bad things are for POC in America right now, a Trump presidency would make them even worse. Using their suffering to justify letting Trump into the White House again is really, really messed up.

"White people have it coming."

White people won't be the ones who suffer the most. Again, POC will be disproportionately affected by Trump's policies. If you actually care about POC, why would you want to subject them to that? How does making things worse for them help anything?

"Bad things happened under Biden."

And a number of them happened because of Supreme Court members whom Donald Trump appointed, and because Republicans blocked his efforts to fix things. Furthermore, many good things happened under the Biden/Harris administration. Here's one post with examples. Here's another post. And here's another post. And here are some good things Kamala Harris has done.

One reason to vote for Harris is to balance the Supreme Court. If elected, she'll be able to appoint judges who aren't turbo-conservatives, which would help us immensely going forward. (It was a liberal Supreme Court that got us gay marriage, remember?) Meanwhile, if Trump is elected, he will appoint more turbo-conservative judges. We gotta think about the long game here.

"The Revolution would solve everything."

Leftists right now would never have tactical parity with, much less superiority over the US military, which Donald Trump would happily sic on all of you. At best, your "revolution" would actually be decades of insurgency. The genocide in Palestine would still happen, and the most vulnerable people in the US would suffer even more.

So basically, there's just no good reason not to vote at this point. Refusing to vote (or voting third party) is counterproductive to literally anything you want to accomplish, unless what you want to accomplish is "make things infinitely worse for everyone."

[acrystalbirdie]

no matter how many times I abandon this blog my spirit lives on and my Tumblr heritage guides me through life. it's November 5th, 2024, I've dropped off my ballot for Kamala Harris, and Destiel is trending. let's do this. welcome back tumblr user me

[acrystalbirdie]

also i graduated college this june with my bachelor’s so yay me

hello i am “back” from yet another “hiatus” (deleted tumblr app from my phone, forgot to use desktop version, life continues on)… or something like that

in true tumblr fashion i disappear and reappear every few months/years as the wind blows me around and i lose and regain various interests. never truly gone. never truly here? idk. i just see funny posts and click reblog. my presence on tumblr is impermanent, one foot in and one foot out at all times

speaking of which, happy ten year anniversary to my silly little blog. i joined this hellsite in 2011 or 2012, can’t remember which but i’m willing to shave off a few months and just call it here for ten years

happy blogging to mutuals and followers, handing you peeled orange slices through the screen right now as a sign of friendship