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A Pragmatic and surprisingly comforting perspective about the Trump 2nd Presidency from the ACLU

***Apologies if this is how you found out the 2024 election results***

Blacked out part is my name.

I’m not going to let this make me give up. It’s disheartening, and today I will wallow, probably tomorrow too

AND

I will continue to do my part in my community to spread the activism and promote change for the world I want to live in. I want to change the world AND help with the dishes.

And I won’t let an orange pit stain be what stops me from trying to be better.

A link to donate to the ACLU if able and inclined. I know I am

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the lesson I'm taking away from this election is not that the Democrats need to become more left wing or more right wing but moreso that they need to find a way to cater their rhetoric towards people who genuinly have no idea what is going on. the target audience for every speech and political appearance should be someone who doesn't know what the three branches of government are because they were drawing a Cool S during high school civics

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"I don't want to see anyone blaming abstaining voters for this!"

Of course you don't. The entire idea of abstaining was that you could pretend this didn't involve you. Not getting blamed was more important to you than doing any kind of damage control, more important than protecting any of the people you said you wanted to protect. And in this moment, I don't really care what you want. Of course, this isn't entirely your fault. Of course other people made this worse. But if you're going to pretend you had nothing to do with this, forgive me if I ignore you.

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If it makes any of you feel better, Donald Trump will have an uphill battle to change the constitution. He will need:

-2/3 of Senators (60)

-2/3 of the House of Representatives (290)

-3/4 of the states (38)

In 2026, 33 senate seats will be up for grabs, and we’ll be able to vote for people who are against Trump and his ideals.

Breathe and remain hopeful because it’s not over. We can still fight and make Trump’s last four years hell.

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Grandmas were so right about puzzles and knitting and crocheting and solitaire and reading slow and slippers and baking and watching deer in the backyard send post

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Republicans will be like “censorship sucks why can’t I say every slur in the English language” and then say “let’s remove every book referencing racism and being gay from every public library”

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Remember: you cannot fix everything. If you try, you will spread yourself too thin and burn yourself out. Pick one or two things to devote yourself to. Someone else will pick the other things, and together we will carry it all.

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the lesson I'm taking away from this election is not that the Democrats need to become more left wing or more right wing but moreso that they need to find a way to cater their rhetoric towards people who genuinly have no idea what is going on. the target audience for every speech and political appearance should be someone who doesn't know what the three branches of government are because they were drawing a Cool S during high school civics

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I walked into work this morning after crying at a convivence store because the woman behind the counter said she liked my RBG sweatshirt and she hoped I was okay. I wasn't expecting it. I live in a very red part of Michigan and her kindness and gentleness made me cry.

I told myself when I woke up that I wasn't going to cry. I stared at my phone for twenty minutes, dread pooling in my chest because even though I let myself get hopeful yesterday, I knew what I was going to see.

I said I wasn't going to cry.

And when I got to work, one of the other preschool teachers walked into my classroom, and she didn't say anything, we just looked at each other and I started to cry. I had parents who I knew were happy with the results about to drop off their kids and I couldn't start crying, but I did.

I only have nine kids in my class, I only had to get through seven drop offs today. I only had three parents that were devastated. I cried about that too.

I had two little girls in my class today, and they got into an argument, as two years old's will do, and they both got upset and started crying. One of them laid on the floor next to me, and one of them collapsed onto my chest, and I cried with them too.

During group time today, I cried while reading a book about kindness. "What does it mean to be kind? Being kind means standing up for those who are less fortunate than you." I had to stop reading for a minute. My assistant teacher looked at me from across the room and I couldn't meet her eyes.

I stayed off social media all day, but when I caved and opened tik tok, the first video I saw was of women in other countries governments saying that they were standing with us through this hard thing and I cried again.

I think I'm gonna keep crying. At least for today and the next couple of days.

And tomorrow (which may not actually be tomorrow) I'll figure out what comes next.

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Trump won in 2016 by a super slim margin. Are you prepared to play a part in that happening again?

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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."

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With Kamala/Walz going up DAILY, I've seen more people talking about voting third party/Jill Stein (EW) and I believe the above screencaps from @three--rings can explain WHY Third Party votes NEVER work NOR is this the election to screw around in.

Everyone....like she says above.....PLEASE LEARN FROM HISTORY!!!

(Because if Trump gets in, he's NEVER LEAVING).

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Look them in the eye and tell them how Joe Biden wanted to codify reproductive rights, ensuring them forever, but he was old. So, you voted for the Party that has repeatedly said they would ban abortion, and some of whom want to repeal the right of women to vote! Or, (just as bad) you decided not to vote at all.

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hey my besties who live in red states: id like you to go out and vote anyway.

yeah, the electoral college means your vote doesn't count unless you win your state. it's a terrible undemocratic bullshit system. it's not going to change before this election,* so there isn't much point in complaining about it right now.

if you hold the belief that there's no point in voting because your voice will just be downed out by a chorus of bigotry- chances are other people in your state feel the same way. and because those people are not voting, it's impossible to know how many of you there are. the reason it's important to vote EVEN WHEN YOU KNOW YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE is to make this number public.

when the minority in a state still goes out to vote:

- other members of the minority party know they aren't alone in their state. this encourages MORE people to vote in the next election

- the majority candidates are forced to divert some of their campaign resources away from swing states to secure a state they were already going to win

- the minority candidates are encouraged to spend some time campaigning in your state instead of abandoning it as a lost cause

- assuming you also vote in local elections, the minority is more likely to win representatives in the house

- who knows there might be so many of you that you fucking flip it by mistake

there has been a 700% increase in new daily voter registrations in the few days since Biden dropped out of the race.

thousands of people are deciding, right now, that voting is worth it. some of them live in your state. there is going to be a spike in blue votes across the country. this election is going to have the youngest voter turnout in history. this is the best possible time to join them. join us.

what have you got to lose? one afternoon?

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So I hate facetime but have two small nephews who live very far away and wanted them to know who I was. So when second nephew was born, I started sending first nephew (4 years old) a postcard every week.

The content wasn't anything special. I made cookies, I saw this flower, my cats did this. He likes trucks and machinery so I scoured redbubble for anything related to machinery and got a giant batch of machine postcards. Whenever I traveled, I'd hunt down a postcard for him.

My second nephew turned four this year, and I started sending him postcards as well. Both of them like Pokemon now, so mostly it's been double Pokemon postcards every week. I don't hear much from them, or my sister, so I just generally hope they're enjoyed and try to remember to mail them before Sunday.

However. This week my mom informed me second nephew likes the postcards SO MUCH he brings them into daycare to show around. And when I shared that with my sister, she told me not only does he bring them into daycare, he sleeps with them at naptime.

The only higher honor would be for her to tell me he's eating them.

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Non-autistics living with autistics:

They keep eating the same freaking food and it frustrates me so much! We can't have the "big scary light" on just lamps everywhere! Even when I try to find peace by doing stuff with them they just ignore me and do whatever they want. They can't even do the simplest of things like go with me to the grocery store every week! How do people expect them to survive in society??

Autistics living together:

So as long as we get my 10 packets of this really specific food, and some snacks, I'll be okay. Also is it cool if you go to the grocery store? I can clean the bathroom since thats bad sensory for you and the store is bad sensory for me. Can you turn on the lamp instead of the big light? It gives me a headache. Thanks man. Yea I'll unplug the TV for you since you can hear the high pitched noise. Do you want to do two separate things in the same room as bonding again this evening? Thats my favorite part of the day too.