#Conservative Party Defeat

[tmarshconnors]

Labour Party Triumphs 2024 General Election

The United Kingdom has witnessed a seismic shift in its political landscape as the Labour Party achieved a landslide victory in the 2024 general election. With an impressive 412 seats, Labour has secured a majority of 174, marking a significant transformation in British politics.

A Devastating Blow for the Conservatives

The results are nothing short of catastrophic for the Conservative Party, which has seen its worst performance in terms of seats in history. Reduced to just 121 seats, this dramatic fall from grace highlights a significant disconnect between the party and the electorate. The decline is stark when compared to their 2019 landslide victory under Boris Johnson. Many argue that under the leadership of Rishi Sunak, the party has lost its Conservative identity and, consequently, its voter base.

The Liberal Democrats' Resurgence

The Liberal Democrats have emerged as significant players, capturing 72 seats—their highest tally since 1923. This resurgence indicates a growing appetite among voters for a centrist alternative, possibly reflecting disenchantment with both Labour and Conservative policies.

Other Parties and Their Gains

SNP: Holding steady with nine seats, the Scottish National Party continues to be a force in Scotland.

Reform UK: As a supporter of Reform UK, I'm pleased to see them securing five seats. This marks a breakthrough and suggests potential for future growth.

Plaid Cymru and the Green Party: Both parties have made modest gains, with four seats each, indicating a continued presence in the political arena.

Reflecting on the Conservative Collapse

As someone who voted for Reform UK, it's frustrating to see the Conservatives squandering their opportunity. Under Rishi Sunak, the party seemed to drift away from traditional conservative values. Instead of capitalising on the momentum built in 2019, there was a sense of complacency and lack of clear direction. It's almost as if they were resigned to losing, a sentiment shared by many former Conservative voters.

The Road Ahead for Labour

With Sir Keir Starmer at the helm, Labour now faces the daunting task of governing with such a commanding majority. While many of their supporters celebrate, the true test lies ahead. Can Labour deliver on their promises and address the myriad challenges facing the UK? Only time will tell.

Reform UK's Promising Future

In my honest opinion, the results for Reform UK are just the beginning. With a foothold in Parliament, they have the potential to grow significantly over the next few years. I predict that within 12 months, Labour's honeymoon period will end, and the realities of governance will set in. Disillusionment is likely, and when it happens, Reform UK will be poised to capitalise on the shift.

A Time of Change

The 2024 general election has undeniably set the stage for a period of significant change in the UK. The political landscape has been reshaped, and the next few years will be crucial in determining the country's direction. Whether Labour can maintain their support, or if other parties, including Reform UK, rise to the occasion, remains to be seen. One thing is certain: change is coming. Mark my words!

[ngdrb]

[calliopechild]

“A Republican civil war is erupting at virtually every level of the party, triggered by an underwhelming midterm performance that threatens to destabilize the ranks of Senate, House and national GOP leadership.

This is only the beginning. Election disappointments always lead to recriminations, but the feuds now roiling the GOP run far deeper than conventional policy disagreements.”

The whole shitty party has basically descended into name-calling, finger-pointing, and a flood of rats abandoning Trump’s sinking ship (and pretending that now they’re concerned he’s “not right” for the moral future of the party, when he was exactly the same lying, lawbreaking, chronic adulterer for the last 8 years when they were fighting to be first in line to kiss his ass for endorsements). You love to see it.

[transpondster]

In France [July 7, 2024], a crowd reacts to election results showing a defeat for the hard-right political party that was expected to win big until the French people voted in greater numbers for leftists and centrists instead. This follows the complete rout suffered by the right-wing Conservative party in Great Britain just three days prior, on July 4th.

🇫🇷

[Via]

[trendynewsnow]

Kemi Badenoch Elected as First Black Female Leader of the Conservative Party

Kemi Badenoch Elected as New Leader of the Conservative Party Kemi Badenoch has made history by being elected as the new leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, marking a pivotal moment for a party striving to regain its footing after a devastating electoral setback. This election saw the Conservatives lose their grip on power after 14 years, a situation that has sent ripples through the…

[rhombology]

HEY remember when Trump held a rally in Tulsa in 2020 and tons of people on tiktok trolled him by requesting tickets and then not showing up? CAN WE DO THAT AGAIN PLEASE FOR THE RALLY IN MY TOWN ON SATURDAY? It would be super fun and awesome for him to expect a million people and have a fraction actually attend <3

[corvids-cryptids]

I love reading a book about abortion care in Australia and having my state being considered the standard for high-quality abortion care that other states need to meet, and remembering the sheer amount of shit we got and still get because a bunch of people from Melbourne and Sydney decided they knew more about how abortion worked in SA than the people here, and that the fight to decriminalise abortion was to make it accessible at all, rather than just removing a law that hadn't been enforced since the 1970s. Like we had a whole publicly funded abortion clinic and people still try to argue that you couldn't get an abortion.

Idk where I'm going with this beyond my usual "please remember Australia is more than Sydney and Melbourne and that the smaller more isolated cities are not inherently more conservative, there's often just nuance that people in Sydney and Melbourne miss"

[evelynnocto]

tonights debate will be absolutely cathartic

[chiarrara]

the best part is conservative losers in twitter replies are celebrating bc they structured so much of their politics these last four years around hating joe biden that they can't see how this strengthens the democratic position and reclaims a huge swath of voters who weren't going to show up for dems at the polls otherwise

[politijohn]

On Kamala Harris’s defeat

Democrats’ strategy of courting conservative suburban voters failed….as it has done over and over again.

Despite Trump’s platform, Latino voters have swung drastically right, continuing the trend we saw in 2020. It’s like the turkey voting for Thanksgiving.

There’s a dangerous theme among Gen Z men becoming radically right-wing. The Trump Campaign capitalized on this.

I’m not surprised the outdated Democratic Party failed…again. They play a game meant for two decades ago. Fantastic ground game doesn’t matter. Conservative pundits run the airways. Social media is a conservative hellscape. People like Joe Rogan hold significant sway and there is no progressive, or even liberal, counterbalance.

This country has moved right and it’s incredibly concerning. While we had some wins this election, we saw decent progressives ousted in their primaries and status quo politics fail in the general.

The problem is bigger than Kamala. The entire Democratic Party establishment must be dismantled. This has been the case since at least 2015. Liberalism at large is failing and the Democratic Party is incentivized to keep doing business as usual to appease donors (hint: this doesn’t mean you!). We need a true populist left movement if we are ever going to get out of this conservative hole.

[makethemmilky]

It's That Time Again

Hi there. I apologize for interrupting your regular schedule of smut and debauchery for a political message, but we're less than 40 days out from yet another monumentally important election.

On one side you have the Democrats, who aren't perfect, but they are the party who cares about abortion rights, gay rights, trans rights, fighting climate change, preventing gun violence, and reducing wealth inequality.

On the other side you have Republicans, a bunch of fascist weirdos who have no real policy ideas other than "own the libs" and "ban things that don't affect us but which we don't like others doing." And they are, of course, led by a 30x time convicted felon, rapist, fraudster, attempted overthrower of the last election, and advocate of injecting bleach into your veins.

If you care one iota about other people and have two or more brain cells to rub together, there's really no choice to be made here. If we all get off our collective derrieres and vote for the Dems on November 5th, we can send the assholes packing and get back to our regular perverted routines.

Here's what you--yes, you, the tumblr viewer with your hand currently down your pants--can do to help defeat fascism.

Make sure you're registered to vote, know where to go, etc. at https://iwillvote.com/ . Most states now have vote by mail, so you can do it in your taco-stained pajamas like I do.

Donate. If you're lucky enough to have a bit of superfluous cheddar, you can donate it to Democratic organizations. Don't get it to the VP because she has an insane amount of money she won't be able to spend it in time; give it to a Democratic Party for a particular state, or to a candidate running for the US House.

Volunteer. If you live in or near a swing state, you can visit mobilize.us and find a place to go knock on doors. Don't like talking to people? You can textbank too. Or checkout Postcards to Voters.

Final thoughts: this is a reminder once again that my blog is progressive as all get out and that dipshit conservative reactionaries should just fuck right off. Despite the smut I write, I am 100% in favor of women in real life being able to choose whether to carry or terminate a pregnancy.

Your pal in the fight for freedom,

Dirk F Condor

[wilwheaton]

Donald Trump is on the verge of becoming the GOP nominee for the presidency for the third straight election. What might have seemed like a historical blip in 2016 that was remedied by Trump’s general election defeat in 2020 is now an eternal black mark on the Republican Party. Hijacked by Trump, purged of its traditional middle-of-the-road corporate conservatives, and transformed into a cult of personality, the Republican Party is unrecognizable as the party of Lincoln. Gone are the Bushes, Cheneys, and Romneys. In are the worst group of scoundrels, hacks, hangers-on, and would-be authoritarians this nation has ever seen. Whatever quaint and out-dated notions remained that Iowa’s Midwestern conservatism and its rural and highly educated populace would serve as an important early filter in the nominating process can be put to rest. A majority of Iowa Republican caucus-goers went for Trump after the travesties of the Trump presidency: the failed response to the COVID pandemic, the indignity of losing to Joe Biden, and the insurrection at the Capitol, among so many others.

Iowa GOP Embraces Insurrectionist For POTUS

Racist losers choose racist loser to represent the party of racist losers.

Also, just to keep some perspective: Shitler “won” by getting about 44,000 people in one state, known for its high concentration of white supremacist christians.

Don’t be fooled by media that this is some kind of meaningful comeback for him. He’s still a criminal, he’s still a liar and a conman. He’s still going to prison for the rest of his life. This is not his political comeback. This is forty thousand pieces of shit in a nation of around 340 million people who overwhelmingly despise him.

Stay vigilant. Get out the vote. Don’t get complacent, but don’t be fooled by a “comeback” narrative that horserace-driven media needs to sell advertising.

[ngdrb]

[burr-ell]

Something I just noticed and really enjoy about Campaign 1 is how often their story involves becoming incredibly powerful and accomplishing so much and yet still not being able to do what's truly important to them. It's not only the gutpunch of the final episode, it's a thematic underpinning throughout the campaign.

Way back in their prestream adventures, the party was strong enough to defeat the Dread Emperor and save all the kidnapped children from Tal'Dorei—except one, a child Keyleth killed by accident, an act which haunts her through at least much of the early campaign. The party defeats the Briarwoods and reclaims Whitestone, but Ripley still escapes and 19 still misses, and the Chroma Conclave raze half the continent. Percy has great intellect and access to a powerful magical amplifier and forced out a demon through sheer force of will, but his carelessness still killed Vex and he only rolls a 6 to try to save her. The party has slain a dragon and is armed with four Vestiges of Divergence, but they couldn't save Tiberius and can't even give him the proper burial they want to. They brutally slaughter Ripley, but not before she gets the revenge she wants; she kills Percy, sending him to Orthax, and spreads guns throughout Exandria. The Conclave is slain, the whole party made it out alive, but Scanlan is forever scarred by the experience and leaves, tearing the party down as he goes. Even Vilya, prior to the campaign's beginning, was at the very end of her Aramente, likely a level 16-17 druid like Keyleth was, and still failed the trial of the Water Plane and was gone for almost 40 years.

And of course, Vox Machina became some of the most powerful people in the world, slayers of a god, legends to be immortalized for centuries...and none of their power could save their brother.

Percy points out to Bell's Hells, thirty years later, that fate isn't always kind and not everyone gets a second chance, and to me that's underscored by what we don't see. Elaina is still dead. Juniper is still dead. Percy's parents and five siblings are all still dead.

I mean, if any or all of their bodies are intact, it wouldn't even require True Resurrection to bring them back—not that Keyleth or Percy are averse to a little heresy, but hey, conserve your resources. If there are bodies, all they'd need is 7th-level Resurrection; none of those people have been dead for over a century, and if they need to find the bodies, well, Vex has Locate Object and Pike gets a Divine Intervention freebie once a week, right? Even if they did need True Resurrection, it's a heftier cost but probably not something too difficult to pay over time for one of the wealthiest families in the world.

But none of them have ever done that, nor do we get an indication that they've pursued it. Vox Machina is, probably more than any other CR party, defined by grief—how individual PCs respond to their own profound losses; how they succeed and fail to shoulder each others' burdens; and at the end of their story, how they deal with one of the most painful losses imaginable, and how they move forward and find peace in spite of it. Campaign 1 is just as much about how to deal with what you couldn't do as it is about what you now can do.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Scientific American endorses Harris

TONIGHT (October 23) at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

If Trump's norm-breaking is a threat to democracy (and it is), what should Democrats do? Will breaking norms to defeat norms only accelerate the collapse of norms, or do we fight fire with fire, breaking norms to resist the slide into tyranny?

Writing for The American Prospect, Rick Perlstein writes how "every time the forces of democracy broke a reactionary deadlock, they did it by breaking some norm that stood in the way":

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-10-23-science-is-political/

Take the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, and the Reconstruction period that followed it. As Jefferson Cowie discusses, the 13th only passed because the slave states were excluded from its ratification, and even then, it barely squeaked over the line. The Congress that passed reconstruction laws that "radically reconstructed [slave states] via military subjugation" first ejected all the representatives of those states:

https://newrepublic.com/article/182383/defend-liberalism-lets-fight-democracy-first

The New Deal only exists because FDR was on the verge of packing the Supreme Court, and, under this threat, SCOTUS stopped ruling against FDR's plans:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/20/judicial-equilibria/#pack-the-court

The passage of progressive laws – "the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, and Medicaid" – are all thanks to JFK's gambit of packing the House Rules Committee, ending the obstructionist GOP members' use of the committee to kill anything that would protect or expand America's already fragile social safety net.

As Perlstein writes, "A willingness to judiciously break norms in a civic emergency can be a sign of a healthy and valorous democratic resistance."

And yet…the Democratic establishment remains violently allergic to norm-breaking. Perlstein recalls the 2018 book How Democracies Die, much beloved of party elites and Obama himself, which argued that norms are the bedrock of democracy, and so the pro-democratic forces undermine their own causes when they fight reactionary norm-breaking with their own.

The tactic of bringing a norm to a gun-fight has been a disaster for democracy. Trump wasn't the first norm-shattering Republican – think of GWB and his pals stealing the 2000 election, or Mitch McConnell stealing a Supreme Court seat for Gorsuch – but Trump's assault on norms is constant, brazen and unapologetic. Progressives need to do more than weep on the sidelines and demand that Republicans play fair.

The Democratic establishment's response is to toe every line, seeking to attract "moderate conservatives" who love institutions more than they love tax giveaways to billionaires. This is a very small constituency, nowhere near big enough to deliver the legislative majorities, let alone the White House. As Perlstein says, Obama very publicly rejected calls to be "too liberal" and tiptoed around anti-racist policy, in a bid to prevent a "racist backlash" (Obama discussed race in public less than any other president since the 1950s). This was a hopeless, ridiculous own-goal: Perlstein points out that even before Obama was inaugurated, there were more than 100 Facebook groups calling for his impeachment. The racist backlash was inevitable had nothing to do with Obama's policies. The racist backlash was driven by Obama's race.

Luckily, some institutions are getting over their discomfort with norm-breaking and standing up for democracy. Scientific American the 179 year-old bedrock of American scientific publication, has endorsed Harris for President, only the second such endorsement in its long history:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vote-for-kamala-harris-to-support-science-health-and-the-environment/

Predictably, this has provoked howls of outrage from Republicans and a debate within the scientific community. Science is supposed to be apolitical, right?

Wrong. The conservative viewpoint, grounded in discomfort with ambiguity ("there are only two genders," etc) is antithetical to the scientific viewpoint. Remember the early stages of the covid pandemic, when science's understanding of the virus changed from moment to moment? Major, urgent recommendations (not masking, disinfecting groceries) were swiftly overturned. This is how science is supposed to work: a hypothesis can only be grounded in the evidence you have in hand, and as new evidence comes in that changes the picture, you should also change your mind.

Conservatives hated this. They claimed that scientists were "flip-flopping" and therefore "didn't know anything." Many concluded that the whole covid thing was a stitch-up, a bid to control us by keeping us off-balance with ever-changing advice and therefore afraid and vulnerable. This never ended: just look at all the weirdos in the comments of this video of my talk at last summer's Def Con who are absolutely freaking out about the fact that I wore a mask in an enclosed space with 5,000 people from all over the world in it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em8

This intolerance for following the evidence is a fixture in conservative science denialism. How many times have you heard your racist Facebook uncle grouse about how "scientists used to say the world was getting colder, now they say it's getting hotter, what the hell do they know?"

Perlstein points to other examples of this. For example, in the 1980s, conservatives insisted that the answer to the AIDS crisis was to "just stop having 'illicit sex,'" a prescription that was grounded in a denial of AIDS science, because scientists used to say that it was a gay disease, then they said you could get it from IV drug use, or tainted blood, or from straight sex. How could you trust scientists when they can't even make up their minds?

https://www.newspapers.com/image/379364219/?terms=babies&match=1

There certainly are conservative scientists. But the right has a "fundamentally therapeutic discourse…conservatism never fails, it is only failed." That puts science and conservativism in a very awkward dance with one another.

Sometimes, science wins. Continuing in his history of the AIDS crisis, Perlstein talks about the transformation of Reagan's Surgeon General, C Everett Koop. Koop was an arch-conservative's arch-conservative. He was a hard-right evangelical who had "once suggested homosexuals were sedulously recruiting boys into their cult to help them take over America once they came of voting age." He'd also called abortion "the slide to Auschwitz" – which was weird, because he'd also opined that the "Jews had it coming for refusing to accept Jesus Christ."

You'd expect Koop to have continued the Reagan administration's de facto AIDS policy ("queers deserve to die"), but that's not what happened. After considering the evidence, Koop mailed a leaflet to every home in the USA advocating for condom use.

Koop was already getting started. His harm-reduction advocacy made him a national hero, so Reagan couldn't fire him. A Reagan advisor named Gary Bauer teamed up with Dinesh D'Souza on a mission to get Koop back on track. They got him a new assignment: investigate the supposed psychological harms of abortion, which should be a slam-dunk for old Doc Auschwitz. Instead, Koop published official findings – from the Reagan White House – that there was no evidence for these harms, and which advised women with an AIDS diagnosis to consider abortion.

So sometimes, science can triumph over conservativism. But it's far more common for conservativism to trump science. The most common form of this is "eisegesis," where someone looks at a "pile of data in order to find confirmation in it of what they already 'know' to be true." Think of those anti-mask weirdos who cling to three studies that "prove" masks don't work. Or the climate deniers who have 350 studies "proving" climate change isn't real. Eisegesis proves ivermectin works, that vaccinations are linked to autism, and that water fluoridation is a Communist plot. So long as you confine yourself to considering evidence that confirms your beliefs, you can prove anything.

Respecting norms is a good rule of thumb, but it's a lousy rule. The politicization of science starts with the right's intolerance for ambiguity – not Scientific American's Harris endorsement.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/22/eisegesis/#norm-breaking

[vigilskeep]

now that you finished inquisition, what did you think of it? like favorite things, least favorite, etc?

oh man okay

things i love about dragon age inquisition:

capturing the specific feeling of bonding with a group of people you have absolutely nothing in common with because u all had to go through something long and specific together

the maps can be so pretty and in places really calming and lovely to spend time in. it does make me want to explore and i have no explorer’s instinct

i love the war table and judgements i think those are really fun features

i like that approval for many major decisions applies to everyone regardless of who you bring to specific events/quests. it feels a lot less like you have to manage that really hard, as you sometimes do in the other games and also really noticeably to me in something like baldur’s gate 3. it’s irritating when i have to plan ahead and can’t take who i want to hear from

i like how attached you can get to little npcs who wander around

i loveeeee fighting dragons and how beautiful they all are

little puzzles <3

the collectibles are also mostly fine by me i am a magpie by nature. as long as i can find them, obviously, bc if i can’t they suck and this whole game sucks

the templar specialisation is fun and i enjoyed that part of combat a lot. wrath of heaven/spell purge combo is a power trip

i thought my character was pretty :) i defeated u in the end dai character creator. may you be as merciful when we meet in battle once more

i’m not a huge crafter but being able to tint things is rlly nice

blackwall’s romance is good

vivienne is there

they let me briefly tame a dragon at the end there

things i don’t love about dragon age inquisition:

some genuine cruelty in writing the dalish in a way that feels shockingly callous to the real world cultures the writers took inspiration from

never giving the dalish or the rebel mages any kind of voice of their own and making the player do all that work if they care, which i also feel limits my roleplaying creativity

refusing to let you challenge any of the often overwhelmingly conservative views expressed by other characters without receiving only derision and disapproval. inquisition is a game that punishes you at every turn for having your own opinions, in a way that could be interesting if it was willing to truly let you develop complex or antagonistic relationships with those characters, but ends up mostly just feeling mocking when nobody ever even tries to see your side, while simply agreeing with these people always rewards you with content. origins was capable of letting you engage in discussion, and da2 let you form rivalries that mattered; inquisition, despite starring some of the most intentionally controversial characters, does neither

the game engineering conflicts against groups like the freemen of the dales or the avvar that mean nothing to the player and range from vaguely to seriously upsetting in their assumptions about who it’s normal to just start killing en masse. it’s both boring and distressing

odd, for lack of a better word “casting choices”, like having the fantasy impoverished racial minority all be white within the party while the wealthiest and most privileged are characters of colour, or for a more in-world example having the elves express the most distaste towards elves and the mages express the most caution about mages. i don’t know that i quite have the vocabulary to fully discuss why these weird me out, but it all feels... disingenuous? and chosen to forestall criticism based on real world comparisons in a game series that i wish had the nerve to openly confront what it’s talking about if it’s going to try to make any of its conflicts feel relevant

most of the companions, and indeed most of the quests and time spent playing the game, feel disconnected from the main plot. it’s hard to feel any pressure when the game tells you we need to deal with the main plot “right now!” and “get there before corypheus!” when the bulk of the game is doing other things while you’re supposed to be doing that. the majority of companions could be cut without changing anything. and when you finally want to deal with the main plot you just click to start it. it’s not engaging

the game fails to fully expand dialogue for the player character options it provided, particularly notable with its confusing chantry focus when you’ve said for the dozenth time you’re not andrastian

the 2-handed weapon whirlwind ability sound effect is an exercise in creating the worst and most grating sound effect for someone to constantly hear

they didn’t let me romance vivienne

they killed my dragon :(