#I am not arguing that we should not vote for Biden

[sonofarathorn]

I find it quite interesting that people are just now starting to circulate Project 2025 as a reason to vote for Biden. Like incredibly recently. Saaaaay, after a botched debate where Biden professed his support for Israel and made a lot of people unsure about him. Project 2025 has been around since April 2023. It’s not new. But the coverage of it recently sure is. It’s crazy that elected Democratic officials will constantly point the finger at what Trump is planning instead of using that energy to fulfill the promises they’ve made the past 4 years. And more recently, talking so much about Project 2025, using fear mongering, as if it will make people forget about Gaza, inflation, climate change, reproductive rights. Yes Project 2025 is a very real and insidious thing. Yes, another Trump presidency would be bad. But what happens to the people of Gaza if we re-elect Biden? What happens to reproductive rights? What about trans rights that have been constantly under attack even while Biden and Democrats are in office? What’s the plan for that? Yes if Trump gets elected it gets worse. But if Biden gets elected will it get better???

[wilwheaton]

For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn't need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate they would have been laughed out of the room. After the debate when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. [...] Even had Joe Biden been at the top of his game, he would not have been able to parry all those lies and he shouldn't have been put in the role of being Donald Trump's fact checker. His choice was to either ignore the lies and let them stand so he could use his time to make his own case or spend the entire debate correcting the record. It was not a fair fight. It's obvious that Biden's terrible performance has caused panic among Democrats and liberal pundits and analysts. The calls for him to withdraw are loud and meaningful and it's going to be a very rough period in this campaign whatever happens. For me, this isn't really a question. As long as Donald Trump is on the ballot, I will vote for the Democratic nominee. If it's Biden or someone else, the calculation remains the same. Nothing is worse than another Trump administration and I suspect that at the end of the day Democratic voters will agree with that. So it's still a matter of those undecided voters in swing states, just like it was on Thursday morning.

CNN's debate was no fair fight

CNN, yet again, gave Trump a national stage to vomit an endless stream of unchecked lies, and today, CNN is telling itself and anyone who will listen that the network and its moderators did a great job. That’s just plainly false, and America is paying the price for their failure.

That doesn’t let Biden off the hook. Biden had a terrible night. He was so bad, it’s allowed the political press to completely ignore not just how much Trump lied, but what he lied about: January 6, all his indictments, his Covid response, and on and on. President Biden was a disaster, and his campaign should be at DefCon 1 to try and repair all the damage. I am terrified that his awful performance will obscure his surprisingly good record and leadership in the post-insurrection era, and give the political press an excuse to run with “Biden is old” in the face of Trump’s endless lies, his felony convictions, his pending trials, and all of his criminality. Someone at Salon said that Trump didn’t win, but Biden absolutely lost. I can’t argue with that, even if the facts are all on Biden’s side.

I’ve seen President Biden on TV today, and even last night after the debate, where he didn’t come across as an ancient dude who needs a walker on his way to some Matlock reruns. He looks and sounds like the SOTU Biden we all expected would show up last night. I have no idea why he was so awful for 99% of the debate (the campaign says he has a cold), and I have no idea why the guy who is showing up to speak to supporters today, and who delivered the SOTU didn’t show up last night to save America from Trump, again.

But we have to live with this reality now, and I hope like hell that the Biden campaign, the candidate, and the entire Democratic party apparatus scrambles like fucking crazy to get all hands on deck to fix this, and remind voters that

This isn’t about BIden vs. Trump. This is about America vs. Project 2025.

There will be no second debate where Biden can try to salvage something out of the wreckage of this one. Trump has everything to lose and nothing to gain. Trump will crow about how he won, and declare he has no reason to debate again, and he’s right. Biden had one shot and he absolutely blew it. The moderators did not help, but the campaign had to have known they wouldn’t, and it sure looks like they didn’t prepare Biden for what we all knew was coming. I don’t know how those same people stop the bleeding, and if they can’t, America and the world are in real, real trouble.

But we all have to remember that we have a choice to make in just a few months. Right now, and probably on election day, the choice is between Joe Biden and Democracy, or Donald Trump and Fascism. It’s stark, it’s clear, it’s binary, and I can not believe that it is even a question. I just hope that there are enough voters out there who will understand that we do have a choice. The options suck, but we do have a choice.

Please choose Democracy. Please choose America. Please choose the future world our children will inherit from us.

[anexperimentallife]

So you want leftist candidates? Here's how you get them:

First off, you have to understand that the far right didn't just wake up one day and say, "We should fuck up the country!" They have been OPENLY working for decades to fill literally every elected or appointed government position they could with Christian Dominionists and other right-wingers, and these folks show up to the polls EVERY SINGLE TIME.

When I was a kid in a far right church in the 1960s, they openly discussed how important is was to get their people into office who would help pass legislation to persecute/imprison/kill anyone who didn't follow their religion. If there's no one sufficiently right-wing running, they'll vote for whomever is closest, even if it gags them. And I cannot emphasize enough that they have long term goals that they are willing to take--and HAVE taken--generations to achieve.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade, for example, is a DIRECT RESULT of the decades-long effort by the far right to boost the most far-right-leaning candidates they could find. They've been talking for decades SPECIFICALLY about getting enough far right judges in SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade. And these SCOTUS appointments are for LIFE, so these judges get to set policy for your GRANDCHILDREN.

So yes, the overturning of Roe v. Wade was only made possible because Trump was able to appoint three SCOTUS judges, in addition to all the other federal judges he appointed. Amd they're talking about going after same-sex marriage, minority rights, etc.

(Hell, the judge in charge of his secret documents case is one that he appointed--she has indefinitely postponed that case,by the way.)

And you don't think local school board elections are important? Have you not seen the news about all the anti-queer policies, and all the book-bannings? This, also, has a generational effect.

Meanwhile the left refuses to turn up to the polls because none of the candidates are pure enough. So guess why things are getting worse?

If the Left turned out for the most left-leaning candidate at EVERY SINGLE ELECTION, whether local or state or whatever, including primaries, we'd start seeing more leftist candidates. Yes, that means that if there's a choice between two extreme right wing candidates, you vote for the least extreme one.

I know I keep emphasizing that this is not just about POTUS, but POTUS does figure in, of course (among other things, who do you think appoints judges for congress to approve?).

So swallow this pill: Anything shitty Biden is doing, the shitgibbon will do MORE of.

"Not gonna vote Biden because he supports genocide, so I'd rather the guy win who ALSO supports genocide, wants Russia to invade more countries, thinks it's fine if China retakes Taiwan, wants a nationwide abortion ban, removal of civil rights for minorities, wants to overturn same-sex marriage (which the right-leaning majority in SCOTUS are already talking about), to cut back the role of congress in checking executive actions (including workarounds to avoid the need for congressional confirmation for presidential appointees), to remove federal employee protections so federal personnel can be replaced with Trump loyalists, and so on! That'll teach those Dems a lesson! THEN they'll be sorry. And fuck everyone the bad guys hurt, because I'll still be PURE. So what if top GOP officials want to actually NUKE Gaza?"

That's fucking kindergartner thinking.

Yes, Biden is a piece of shit, but I am not waxing at all hyperbolic when I say that a second orange shitgibbon term, with a far-right-majority SCOTUS--especially if the GOP manages majorities in both houses of congress--may be the end of what little is left of Democracy in the US. Not gonna argue about it, because I don't waste my time with petulant children.

Look at the GOP's plans for a Republican administration, and tell me you think it sounds better than another term of Biden. Hell, they've even set up online trainings and loyalty tests to narrow down potential federal hires to those who will commit to follow Trump without question.

I repeat: If you want more leftist candidates, if you want more worker power, if you want billionaires taxed, if you want to protect minorities and the queer community, you have to adopt the strategy that the right has used, educate yourself about what candidates stand for, and show up EVERY SINGLE TIME. Again, that includes primaries.

So many of us on the left would rather sit in the basement dreaming of some magical revolution that's going to fix everything, giving ourselves and others purity tests, and proudly announcing that we're... boycotting democracy by not voting(?), "because none of the candidates are a good choice."

Yeah, the left refusing to vote--or only voting in presidential elections--while the right turns up every time is exactly how we got here.

And you have to support the most left-leaning candidate even if it makes you gag, and even if "most left-leaning" means "not as openly fascist." This is the ONLY way you can be assured of candidates getting further to the left in the future. (Note that this means learning about your local candidates.)

"But voting won't fix--" I never said it was going to fix everything. There's no rule that if you vote, you can't volunteer with Food Not Bombs, or run for school board, or demonstrate, or circulate petitions. It takes more than voting, but voting has to be PART of our strategy.

You also have to accept that it may take decades to change course, and that you're not going to like every candidate you have to vote for.

The right didn't just magically get the orange shitgibbon into office overnight. It took decades of work. And if we want decent human beings in charge, we have to be willing to do the same.

[qqueenofhades]

what gets me is whenever any of these people says not to vote, and you ask them what the alternative is, they usually throw some tantrum about how it shouldn't be their job to fix this country and they're not expected to know (or start calling you a neoliberal or a bootlicker lmao) and i just. i don't get that? not voting, especially in the current climate, is a big deal. i don't think it's unreasonable to ask anyone who advocates for that what the alternative is. i'm not expecting you, online leftist, to magically know how to fix everything. i am expecting something from you if you're gonna tell me not to vote, especially when we both know that helps the gop. like, how dare we ask them to defend this big choice they're telling us to make?

their position boils down to helping trump and the republicans but any time you remind them of that they get upset. what is the alternative? what plan do they have? it would be one thing if there was another option that they'd come up with, but they haven't and don't seem interested in doing so. mutual aid and organizing is only going to take us so far and it'll be a hell of a lot easier to do it with biden in office than trump

The whole "it doesn't matter who's president/in charge of the government because mutual aid and organizing is the only valid way to do community engagement" is the leftist version of the Brexit nutcases who, and I swear I am not making this up, argued that it was fine if the UK left the EU trading sphere/single market/customs union with nothing to replace it, because "Britain is a nation of farmers and can grow food in our back gardens!!!!" Yes, because you're so devoted to your stupid ideology that you think the large-scale collapse of society, a major world power, a western democracy, and everything else will have no effect, and you can just do your little Facebook mutual aid groups and happily shout on Twitter at anyone who disagrees with you. Never mind the fact that this would obviously and immediately harm vulnerable people the most and that nobody, not even the Online Leftists themselves, actually wants to live in the Violent Revolution Total Anarchy World they masturbate to. Maybe this makes me a neoliberal corporate shill, but I'd rather that the world got better, instead of worse. I would actually prefer that myself, my friends, my family, my whole life, the whole country, and the rest of the world wasn't sacrificed on the Great Revolution Altar, but I shouldn't worry. We have mutual aid. At least as long as a) you have never said anything the Online Leftists even slightly disagree with, since they're sure as hell not the kind of people I would trust to have my back in any large-scale societal collapse, and b) I guess they'll all be growing food in their back gardens too, rather than using any of those dirty "government" or "society" things to supply their basic needs. We're saved! No need to worry. Bring on the anarchy.

Aside from the fact that Online Leftists, as I have said before, think that moral action begins and ends with posting the Right Opinions on social media at the correct timeframe and any other action or engagement with a flawed system or basic reality is heresy, they don't like being challenged -- i.e. "if we don't vote, then what do we do?" -- because a) it questions their authority as supreme arbiters of morality, and b) it means that there should actually be an action in place of cutting out something so consequential as voting, which likewise clashes with their "everything will be fixed by Magical Thinking" viewpoint. They don't want to be asked what to do in place of voting, or in anything at all; they want to think their correct thoughts and judge anyone who doesn't, regardless of how logically incoherent these things are or the inevitable outcome of those decisions, because nothing bad is ever their fault, or even the Republicans' fault, or anyone else at all except for the Democrats and/or "the West." I mean, yeah, if they're going around to preach the Don't Vote Because It's Actually Evil gospel, it's the bare fucking minimum to expect that they have something to offer in return besides Ye Olde Bolshevik cosplay fantasies. Since they don't, they get tetchy when you point that out.

Also, while I know it's the social media fashion that everything has to be the worst thing ever and we have plenty of the "Biden is also a genocidal fascist but I guess vote for him or something" utterly-minimum-standard posts going around, I will point out why that rhetoric is a) wrong and b) unhelpful. (Not that I expect it will make a single difference to anyone who has to get their internet cred by yelling about how Biden is a fascist, but still.) No, Biden is not a fascist by any logical definition of the word, you would have to do a lot of work to convince me that he is personally genocidal beyond what is demanded of any post-1948 American president who exists in an extremely complicated international sphere with long-standing alliances (such as, yes, with Israel) and indeed not quite a bit more progressive than literally every one of his predecessors, and it makes those actual words useless. If you claim that "Biden and Trump are both genocidal fascists," you are utterly effacing those categories as any kind of critical or useful distinction. You can't argue for any difference, you can't point out policy essentials or nuances, you can't make the most basic of empirical observances or come to a judgment on whether any part of that statement is true, because language has been deliberately stripped of meaning and used to score Cool Internet Leftist points. How can we explain what fascism or genocide actually are and what to do about them, if it's just what you call everyone as a matter of course whenever they disagree with you? You can't. That's the point.

Once again: I strongly disagree with the idea of just giving Israel/Netanyahu a blank check to keep committing atrocities, but I also need to repeatedly point out that Biden isn't doing that. His initial unconditional support of Israel after October 7 (which at the time was the correct response) has shifted to a much more measured and conditional approach where he has muted the overtly pro-Israel statements and started talking about a two-state solution and the need to protect the lives of civilians and trying to keep a lid on what could become a REALLY bad situation with all kinds of war-hungry powers eager to jump into the Middle East and blow it completely to hell. As I have said in my other posts, Trump will not do this. Trump will do the exact opposite. Which is why Netanyahu, who doesn't like having his hands tied precisely in the way Biden is doing, is trying so hard to get Trump back in. This also extends to the people who think that the West/the U.S. is the source of all evil in the world, but they're somehow the only people that can make actual choices or have real agency. Everyone else is just an American puppet; everyone is being lied to or manipulated by America/the West; nobody ever chose anything of their own free will; America/the West could roll in and put a stop to everything bad if they "really wanted to," but choose not to because etc. etc., Evil. As such, this completely fact-free belief is basically the central starting point for Online Leftism, which as I have also said, is now beyond useless and verging on just as deranged and actively dangerous as the fascists, especially since they are 100% willing to enable far-right fascism however and whenever they can because something something, That Will Show Us.

Anyway. Yes. Whew.

[silverjirachi]

I think you “i’m voting with my conscience” and “I’m not voting because they’re the same” fucks keep forgetting that the US president will be allowed to stack the supreme court. Do you know what happens in the supreme court? They directly determine the interpretation of our constitution. You know. The only thing your rights are actually codified in and determines how our entire country is governed. The Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in this country. The Supreme Court overturned Roe V Wade. The Supreme Court both ratified Prohibition in this country and ended it. The Supreme Court officers serve for life and there are only nine of those fuckers. Nine. Nine people who have been appointed by past presidents are the ones making huge decisions on the direction this country goes in. Remember when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died? You know. One of the only staunchly left justices on the court? Roe v. Wade got overturned because trump was allowed to appoint a new anti abortion justice. That happened in BIDEN’S presidency because TRUMP was allowed to influence it. Biden had absolutely no say into what happened in that decision. Nine. Nine people who are getting increasingly right wing keep getting to determine whether or not our foundational rights that built this country should be followed or not.

You do not want Trump to be allowed to appoint another justice to the supreme court. MORE of your rights will go away, and abortion bans will get harsher. Trump and his goons are rather openly admitting that they want to degrade justice in this country and appoint trump into more of a dictator figure and you know how they’re gonna be able to actually degrade justice? The Supreme Court. And the Senate. That’s why it’s important to vote in every election because even if the Supreme Court goes off the shits, at least we will maybe have the Senate to hold down the fort.

We were all directly impacted by something Trump was allowed to do at the end of his term during Biden’s one. That WILL get worse.

They are not the same. I am not arguing with people about this. Not voting against Trump is the morally wrong thing to do and is a direct threat to you and this country. If you try to argue with me or anyone in the notes about how you should be an exception, you will be blocked, because you are directly threatening my safety and the safety of millions of others both here and abroad. This is not a debate.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Daniel Villareal at LGBTQ Nation:

Anyone with eyes in their head can see that the American government and media both have a clear pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias. Neither one officially recognizes Palestine as a state, and any criticisms against the Israeli government or in favor of Palestinian civilians are automatically labeled (at best) as ignorant, misinformed, and over-idealistic or as hateful, antisemitic, and pro-terrorist. The goal of these denunciations seems to have only one aim: to silence any criticism of Israel. I’m sick of it… and I’m not alone.

In numerous conversations, when I have argued that perhaps the Israeli government is becoming increasingly right-wing, I have been told that Israel is a queer oasis in the bigoted Middle East and that all of Israel’s neighboring countries are rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ and will gladly kill their own queer citizens. When I mention that Israel’s military-enforced policies of forced displacement and segregation against Palestinian citizens could violate their dignity and human rights, I’m reminded of the Holocaust — as if I somehow forgot — and am told that Hamas wants to exterminate Israel and all Jews and that all of Israel’s neighboring countries have threatened to wipe Israel off the map as well. If I mention any recent news report about Israeli forces killing Palestinian journalists or civilians, I’m informed that I do not know my history and that Palestine’s government has repeatedly allowed terrorists from its region to infiltrate Israel and commit atrocities against innocent Israelis. [...]

When any politician or activist publicly criticizes Israel in the media, they’re denounced, and we’re told that we must defend Israel at all costs to protect stability and U.S. interests in the Middle East and to offer a shining beacon of Western democracy to the people living in the otherwise barbaric region. These talking points are reinforced by American media, which commonly depict Israel as a bustling modern nation and depict all other Middle Eastern countries as war-torn deserts consisting of mostly huts, murderers, and goats. These things have all been pretty uniform throughout my entire life: Israel can do no wrong. To imply otherwise is to show your own stupidity or align with Nazis and terrorists. End of conversation. As if numerous progressive Jews and international human rights organizations, like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, haven’t asked the same questions or reached the conclusion that Israel is hardly above reproach. The other not-so-subtle implication is that anyone who wants to criticize Israel openly should either be Jewish themselves or at least have university degrees in Israeli history, Middle Eastern studies, and international political science.

[...] The October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians and recent reports that an estimated 35,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza since Israel’s military destroyed Palestinian homes, schools, hospitals, and vital infrastructure. I’ve been thinking about it as more and more voters vote “uncommitted” in the Democratic primaries, signaling to President Joe Biden that America’s mostly unconditional support of Israel could cost him the election. I’ve been thinking about it as bipartisan politicians urge mayors, police, and the National Guard to violently disband pro-Palestinian student encampments on university campuses rather than engage in good-faith discussions about the institutions’ investments in businesses that benefit from Israel’s conflict.

As a journalist, I would normally turn to trust U.S. news sources to learn more about what’s happening on the ground in Gaza. But journalists and aid workers are being killed there, media outlets that criticize Israel run the risk of driving advertisers away, and pro-Palestinian journalists sometimes get hate mail and death threats. As a result, I hear even less in the news about Palestine than I do about Africa. I want to be clear: I denounce all terrorist actions and the murder of civilians, regardless of nationality. I support Israel and Palestine’s right to exist and the right of all people to peacefully practice their religion without any threats of violent persecution. I acknowledge that antisemitism is real, that hateful attacks on Jewish people and neo-Nazi activity have increased over recent years, and that some of Israel’s critics are bigoted. I also know that some white Christian nationalists and Republicans who support Israel don’t actually approve of anyone who doesn’t embrace Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior. Rather, they support Israel because of Biblical prophecies that say its existence will bring about Jesus’s return and the end of the world.

Daniel Villarreal wrote in LGBTQ Nation on how America needs to speak up on the abuses the Israel Apartheid government have heaped on Palestinians and the effects of silencing criticism of Israel has had adverse effects on discourse.

[xxdrowninglessonsxx]

DNI IF ANGRY AT WHAT I HAVE TO SAY OR YOU WILL BE BLOCKED. SICK OF THE HARASSMENT.

Two months ago people would have been hyping me up for criticizing the two-party system, but now I just get comments telling me how I’m the reason trans people don’t have rights or why other minorities don’t have rights. I’m trans, 22 years old, and live in Appalachia. I can promise you I’m not the reason trans people don’t have rights. We don’t have rights because society is rigged against us. We don’t have rights because we never have. We don’t have rights because the candidates we vote for to give us rights, never do what is promised. They rarely fulfill their campaign promises, so why would I want to support someone who has no intention of actually helping me or the other people they claim to want to help? Just so we can be “comfortable” for another 4 years until we get to the 4th year and wonder why no change was made and why we have to pick between 2 evils again?

Just because I question the system we live in and actually stand up for what I believe in, doesn’t make me complicit in my own suffering. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. Get a life and stop harassing trans people and other minorities for not following blindly to whatever bullshit you spew while simultaneously using them to prop up your stance. It’s actually kind of fucked up. I vote in my local elections and the primaries. Never have I once said I wasn’t going to vote, and the people insinuating that don’t know me as a person in real life. You sit behind a computer screen arguing for the sake of arguing. Just because I don’t know who I’m voting for for sure, doesn’t make me the devil, and trying to force and harass other people into going along with “VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO” only makes you look worse. You’re allowed to vote for whoever you want for, just as much as I am. It’s almost like that’s the point of voting. You’re allowed to announce who you’re voting for or what your stances are; it’s almost like that’s in the 1st amendment. You’re fed up. I’m fed up. We have the same goals but different ways of going about it.

I’ve held the exact stance that the two-party system is shit for years, and never have I ever been more attacked than by Harris supporters. I haven’t ever had a republican come on my page to guilt trip me about my own identity and tell me I’m the reason that my community is in jeopardy, but you democrats sure love to attack minorities who want change just as bad as you when they don’t fully agree with you. Or you use trans rights to make a lame point, despite the fact you’re literally using someone’s identity against them in order to make them feel bad for not following your specific pick for president who literally supports genocide just as much as the other one does. Please spare me the bullshit on how Trump is worse and plans to take our rights away. We as a collective know. I voted for Biden in the previous election. What’s to stop Trump from running again in the next one if he loses this one? It’s clear his age won’t stop him.

Some people need time to grapple with what’s at stake in this election, and it’s not fair to bombarde them with hate in order to convince them to make a choice when both parties go against their morals and have gone against their morals. Hate and the “better than thou” attitude is the exact reason they don’t like your cause.

I’m sick of people acting like voting blue for President will prevent the end of the world or whatever the fuck you think. Other elections matter as well, not just presidential. Democrats love to sit comfortably while their President is in office, so comfortably that they forget that organizing for change matters. They forget that we should be lobbying for ranked choice voting. They forget that we should be lobbying against the electoral college.

Have you taken a look at your candidate’s benefactors recently? Do you know any response other than, “Well, what do you suppose we do about it?” when asked about Palestine’s plight? How should I know? I’m a lower-class person who makes about $10,000 a year with no voice but my vote. I’ve emailed and called my representatives. I’ve done all I can do. I’ve donated what little money I can to causes I believe in. It’s not my job to step up. I have been stepping up. It’s our politicians job to step up. It’s the billionaires who fund our politicians who need to step up.

It’s not anyone but your candidate’s fault if they lose in the election. Quit blaming the innocent people who do nothing but work their asses off just to scrape by into being complicit with you and your corporate-controlled parties who only want to pass whatever agenda will make them the most money. The parties who allow the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer. Y’all loved saying Palestine was your red line when Biden was running, but suddenly everything is different now? It doesn’t make sense to me, and it must be fun being privileged enough to jump from one cause to the next as trends cycle because you don’t live in Palestine, and it doesn’t effect you. You are not immune to propaganda just as much as I am not immune.

“A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.” - Malcom X

That being said, I understand the appeal of voting for Kamala and why you would. I understand the fear. I experience the fear every single day. So go out, vote, and use your voice. Stop making others feel bad. Going after the people who relatively agree with you is not helping your cause, it is hurting it, and it will be what causes you to lose the election.

[tumblingxelian]

Political Discourse - Retrospective

So, regarding some political discourse that happened on my blog earlier, I want to clarify some things.

1: Hyperbole doesn't translate well across text, this applies both to me and those I've spoken/argued with. Hyperbole doesn't translate well when one can't see the associated dramatic body language or tone that would serve to convey that.

2: Context is key, so if one does want to take issue with something its best to have all the pieces in place rather than expecting context clues to create a common frame of reference as it might in a verbal conversation.

3: Its much easier to just not bother and direct one's energy into more helpful and practical goals than arguing online.

On the more political front, I do have some thoughts however:

I am posting this in a good faith effort to not argue or antagonize:

Firstly, I feel that for all Americas horrifically out-sized influence on the world one cannot just dismiss domestic issues as unimportant. Even if we ignore the ripple effects of a right wing VS left wing president on a purely cultural level, the sheer number of queer people, women, and people of color who will be actively targeted if Trump gets back into power is staggering.

There is a marked difference between the parties on these fronts and people will live or die based on that. Let alone stuff like Trumps handling of Covid and how his intransigence basically fucked the rest of the world over, along with killing millions of Americans.

Basically, when the difference between the the parties of the most powerful nation on earth are so drastically different in terms of who even counts as human, being a one issue voter doesn’t really work as an ethical or even practical approach to politics —especially not addressing the kinds of issues making it hard to stomach voting for someone like Biden.

Secondly, I feel a lot of the discourse around the US & Israel's ties are not very helpful or accurate as they often seem to frame it as though they just became allies under Biden or otherwise that this is a new relationship. As it is, ties between the two countries are nearly a century old at this stage and disentangling from that is not easy.

What's more, a politically active American friend said that they feel a lot of Americans, themselves included, often oversimplify foreign policy and that it's never as simple as a good or bad decision.

In this case, America's main focus is trying to keep the war from going regional while not losing what influence they have over a nuclear equipped state in the Middle East.

(It was also notes how the messages of trying to "fight antisemitism" as opposed to just being blunt about the political realities was manipulative and poorly thought out at best.)

But the fact is, as horrific as what Israel is doing is, it's not something Biden just started supporting at random. America's ties are decades long and not easy to divest from without creating more instability and bloodshed in the long run.

So while I of course advocate for pushing for action on these fronts, its integral to both remember that foreign policy is a nightmare and that one will have far better luck using protest to force a Democratic president to change course than a GOP one who will just tell the police to shoot you.

Thirdly, I think its quite reasonable for none Americans to take an interest in these matters. Hell, I have been an activist for years, donating and campaigning on everything from America's forever war, to Palestinian rights, Queer rights both locally and internationally and beyond since childhood.

Add in that, even aside from morality, I've no shortage of friends in other nations who will be impacted by who is president and friends in America who are justly terrified of dying or having to flee the country should Trump get back in.

Put simply, I feel my and other none Americans persistent presence on the matter of who ends up in the White House can be regarded as selfish or coming from a place of privilege. We're asking you to vote because we can't and far more people will die and be hurt if Trump is in power, including yourselves.

We're trying to help.

Finally, I will not see eye to eye with other leftists, they will not see eye to eye with me. That's fine. Ultimately, though we disagree on how best energy should be directed for the common good, I don't think my counterparts, or I have ill intent or selfish motivations.

[six-spot]

United we stand, divided we fall…

I don’t care on which side of the political spectrum you identify. The threat to our democracy is a clear and present danger!

A 🧵 Buckle up it’s a long one.

This is not a fight about 2A, it’s not about abortion, it’s not about education, it’s not about sexual orientation, it’s not about taxes or immigration or about healthcare. This fight comes down to a religious minority, trying to push its narrow views upon our country.

The Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 threatens to dismantle nearly 250 years of progress toward equality for all. And I for one am not going to stand for it.

We must unite against the GOP with Joe Biden as the nominee. He cannot be replaced on ballots without being challenged. “Protest” voting for other parties will sign the death certificate of our nation. The same thing happened in 2016.

A very brief history. Zoroastrianism was founded around 3500 years ago. “Zoroastrianism…held that a messiah would come at some future date…to redeem humanity in an event known as the Frashokereti which was the end of time and brought reunion with Ahura Mazda…

These concepts would influence the later religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” https://www.worldhistory.org/religion/

This monotheistic view of religion has existed for less than half of recorded history and many religions still have pluralistic beliefs. #Christianity has done nothing but oppress people since its inception. And now a very narrow interpretation of it is being weaponized against us.

It’s a disease that spread throughout the world, literally killing millions of people as missionaries spread disease from one continent to another. It didn’t matter how many indigenous people died as long as they believed and converted.

Ancient rulers seized upon the opportunity to adopt the religion and thus take power and wealth* from the people. Sound familiar? Wars have been fought for control of territory around the world.

*This was the 2nd goal of missionaries.

And now a sect of ultra-conservative Christian Nationalists threatens to end our constitutional republic in favor of an authoritarian state.

They’re trying to divide us even further so they can win. We CANNOT let that happen. Moderate, Liberal, Progressive, Libertarian, Conservative, it doesn’t matter, we will all suffer equally if Project 2025 succeeds.

They have been chipping away at certain liberties for 8 years already. It’s clear that they only have self-serving goals to make the rich richer and to oppress citizens like in other authoritarian regimes.

It is truly terrifying to see dystopian novels coming to life before my very eyes. These conservatives fear change and clearly believe that liberalism is the root of all evil.

On the contrary, education leads to enlightenment and free thought, so “liberal” thinking is really just how they demonize those who are educated and have opposing opinions or beliefs.

One example from #Project2025 is that “conservative” republicans have been trying to strip funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting since its inception. @NPR & @PBS are run by CPB.

Why? Because they educate people & allows them to adopt beliefs that oppose theirs. They lament that no republican president has been able to do it. They argue that most viewers are liberals & that not enough conservative programming is offered so it should be shut down. Boo hoo😢

How about that educated viewers use their common sense and reasoning to conclude that stories from 2000+ years ago are not fully relevant to modern society? 👩🏼‍🎓👨🏽‍🎓

Science is not theological yet conservatives want to apply theology to everything. The world isn’t flat. Evolution & Climate change are real. Vaccines save lives. The USA was NOT founded as a Christian nation. If not for free thinkers, we’d probably still be living in the Iron Age.

Most people want to be part of a group & religion is the most common way to achieve that goal. We are conditioned from birth to believe what we’re taught and not question it. This is how racism & bigotry continue to thrive along with political ideology.

Morals are morals. They aren’t inherently conservative or liberal. You are either kind to others or not; you follow the rules or don’t; you tell the truth or you’re a narcissistic pathological liar. It’s that simple. That is all that’s required to define a good person.

The notion that sexuality has anything to do with morality is utterly absurd, but this is what conservatives argue. They LIE to justify taking rights from anyone they don’t like. They fear what they don’t understand.

They oppose abortion because it’s a numbers game to them. They think more babies = more followers. Well, we’re already seeing that no abortion = higher infant mortality. So that myth is busted.

Much of the Project 2025 platform directly attacks the Biden administration and seemingly relies on data that is short-sighted at best. I’m sure many of the arguments for or against the many chapter topics are false-flags to make it look balanced.

I hope someone is trying to fact-check the book, as many of the end notes are just commentary or references to current laws. Statistics are cherry picked to support their claims.

Even my 16-year-old understands the implications should departments like education and health & human services get shut down or changed from what they currently are. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

If you made it all the way through, thanks for reading. Please share because our lives depend on it. We all need to #VoteBlue2024 to put an end to the GOP madness once and for all.

Fin.

[catsinacottage]

It’s honestly astounding to me, the level of lying and manipulating. I am seeing in the aftermath of the atrocious debate last night.

For as terrible and awful as Donald Trump is, and I’m not really gonna argue with anybody on that point like Joe Paden is asleep at the wheel. He was barely able to articulate any of his points. Obviously, the Biden ministration has accomplished some positive things, but it’s a shame that he literally can’t speak well enough to communicate those points with us.

The issue of abortion should be a slam dunk for him. That is what the Democratic Party can rely on election after election after election. He was handed a softball question and turned it into an issue of immigrants raping and killing women. Funny, I remembered in the 2016 election liberals crying about Donald Trump calling immigrants rapists and murderers but when Joe Biden does it I’m told that I’m a fascist for not wanting to vote for him.

I actually watched the real debate with RFK Junior, answering similar questions in the same time restrictions as the other two candidates, and while I have plenty of criticisms of RFK Junior as a candidate, and as a person, if he were to change his stance on the Israel Gaza genocide he would probably have my vote.

It’s actually so funny to me how people are saying that this is the election that decides whether we get to continue having a democracy or not when the primaries were all that rigged and all candidates running or not even present on my state pallet right now, the only candidates that are guaranteed at the moment are Joe Biden, and Donald Trump and the libertarian candidate, Chase Oliver. so I just think it’s really funny that in their effort to “save democracy” they haven’t truly let the peoples voice be heard and it is unknown as to what candidates are going to even be represented on the ballot three months from now for some people in this country 

[readingsquotes]

We can diagnose this voter shift as being a result of the Democrats being a hollow corporate shell that doesn’t fight for leftist policies, and we can point out that Kamala Harris’s brother in law is Uber’s top lawyer, which is a job that surely destines you for hell. I am not going to get into this sort of diagnosis today, though. It’s important to recognize the difference between “The Democrats should do leftist policy because it is good for humanity” and “The Democrats should do leftist policy because that is a winning electoral strategy.” These two separate arguments get conflated on both ends, and mixed together, and it makes the discussion hard to parse because even the honest people start talking past each other, and the majority of people are just arguing for their own personal policy preferences rather than being honest anyhow. This is why these arguments generally break down into either “I am a centrist and the Democrats lost because voters hate their leftist policies” or “I am a leftist and the Democrats lost because voters hate their centrist policies.”

...

And indeed, guess which segment of the working class stuck with the Democrats in 2024? Union voters. NBC and CNN exit polls say that Harris won union voters by 8 points, even as Republicans won voters with incomes under $50k and under $100k. For all of the ink that got spilled in the past year about who the Teamsters would endorse and whether there really is such a thing as a “working class Republican,” the numbers show that actual members of unions remained a solid Democratic demographic even as the working class at large drifted to the right.

Here is the most important point I will make in this column: “Union members” and “the working class” are not synonyms. Ten percent of American workers today are union members, meaning that 90% of “the working class” are not union members. Joe Biden did a lot of good things for union members. So union members backed the Democrats. What does all of that mean to the other 90% of working people? Nothing. So the working class at large drifts away.

Do you want to make the working class vote Democratic? You need to make more of the working class union members.

This is pretty straightforward. Yet we are awash in hazy and misguided punditry because being “pro-union” so often gets conflated with being pro-working-class. (I hope that it goes without saying that Trump is neither pro-union nor pro-working class and his appeal is pure bullshit. Yet it is the fact that so many voters don’t understand the benefit of Democratic policies on their own lives that they become susceptible to Trump’s lies.) Biden spent a lot of political capital helping unions and their members. That did not accrue to the Democrats in the form of a bazillion votes and sky high approval ratings, and so some political analysts concluded that spending political capital to help unions is not worth it, electorally speaking. Well. That is not true. The conclusion to draw here is not that Democrats should abandon unions. It is that Democrats need more people to be union members.

[thepoliticalvulcan]

Trump didn't win, the Democrats lost.

As I write this on Friday November 8th at 10:29 AM, there are still votes yet uncounted but the overall shape of things is clear and they provoke interesting questions.

This was a low turnout election. Not 2016 low, but much lower than 2020. Even after all of Wednesday and Thursday to finish counting high population states, Harris is still trailing Biden's 2020 tally by about 10 million votes. Which is not as bad as the 15 million that internet arguments on Wednesday and into Thursday will be using, but its still quite bad.

Even Trump, while the winner, is still several million votes shy of his 2020 tally.

The temptation to blame Biden is real and I agree with it. I think he was a good President in the sense that he had some notable and worthy achievements despite intense opposition, but the failure to have the humility to honor the implicit promise to be a transitional figure and not seek reelection I personally feel is unforgivable. Its hyperbolic often to say unforgivable, but at least at this moment I do not foresee a Jimmy Carter style rehabilitation in Biden's future.

I think this is a shame, not just because Trump won, but also because I did like Kamala Harris at least as a person. I soured on her as the finish line approached but I recognize that she was presented a no win scenario and tried to make the best of it. She had to run a campaign in which she could not meaningfully go rogue without provoking questions about why she'd stayed in the administration if she held strong dissenting opinions or making Biden into even more a lame duck than he already was.

What does her heart truly hold? Would she have meaningfully distanced herself from Biden on any issue of consequence? I guess we'll have to wait for the inevitable post election rebuttal book.

Maybe the fact that I did find her charming is a reflection of myself. I've not liked every answer she's given to every question but as someone who is sometimes inarticulate and a bit of a wonky dweeb, I get it. This doesn't present as authentic outside the college educated liberal set, clearly. Which means I'm likely even more out of touch than I know but all I can do is explain my values and how they connect to my preferred policies and issues and hope for the best.

Its all any of us can do.

And we can do that better.

The moral cooties theory of communication and association needs to die. Now.

Harris should have gone on Rogan.

Walz should have gone on Rogan.

This would not have likely changed the outcome, because in reality liberals, progressives, and socialists should have been doing on Rogan for YEARS.

Rogan says transphobic, misogynistic, racist, and downright scientifically stupid things.

All true.

So fight him.

Don't outsource this to shitposters in the comment sections, go on his program, and make the case to his audience.

A host can be acting in bad faith but still be the gatekeeper to a large audience that is not reachable with a sit down on The View or the Ezra Klein Show and Harris didn't even go on the Ezra Klein Show! The most respected liberal intellectual pundit, one who burned a lot of credibility to say what everyone was already thinking: that Biden should drop out and he did it months before that stupid debate with Trump, someone Harris almost assuredly owes quite a bit to for creating the permission structure for people to advocate for dumping Biden and she didn't go on the show.

We cannot keep having candidates do this.

Enough "safe" interviews.

Enough "platforming" or "legitimizing" discourse.

Go argue with the transphobe on his own show. If you persuade even 0.1% of his audience, maybe that 0.1% will be in districts you need to win.

Having these millionaires go talk to unfriendly millionaires doesn't mean you're legitimizing them, you're using them to access their audience. Period.

And knock it off with the "platforming" discourse around media and allowing unfriendly people an opportunity to talk. If the electorate comes away with an interview with JD Vance or some other grifter weirdo liking them instead of seeing them as liars code switching for a more moderate audience, then we have bigger problems than the media doing a "both same."

And for the rest of us, tolerating misogny, transphobia etc. is not what's called for, but learning to talk to people outside our group chats is. We were wrong after 2016 to double down on "my labor isn't free" "its not my job to educate you" "Google is your friend" - you don't have to feed trolls, but its clear that after almost a decade, "cancel culture" and "platforming" discourse has failed. Completely and disastrously. The very people these ideas were supposed to protect are now going to get hurt the worst by the lazy virtue signaling of the rest of us who had the emotional and physical safety to make GOOD arguments on their behalf.

[darkmaga-returns]

Trump Should Win and Netanyahu Doubles Down on Stupid

5 November 2024 by Larry C. Johnson 133 Comments

It is 1900 hours eastern time zone and some polls are starting to close. I will say it up front — if Trump does not prevail tonight then there is skullduggery afoot. Let me explain why. Unlike 2020, Trump has garnered the endorsements and active support of people with significant social media influence — e.g., Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswamy and Bill Ackman (a Wall Street billionaire who normally votes Democrat). Trump has made more effective use of social media than Kamala Harris, who has relied on the legacy media to get her message across.

Then there is the behavior of DC merchants — they boarded up their store fronts yesterday and today anticipating rioting. If Kamala was expected to win, they would not be taking this step because Trump does not have a legion of supporters in DC and the surrounding suburbs who are going to engage in violence if their man does not win. Kamala has the Antifa crowd and they are expected to lash out.

We have had other indicators that the narrative was not going well for Kamala. Following her debate with Donald Trump, Saturday Night Live (SNL) did two straight weeks of opening skits that skewered Kamala. They never did that to Biden. It is going to be an interesting night in America.

The very future of this country is at stake. I don’t write that lightly nor am I a rabid Trump supporter. Trump has many flaws and shortcomings but, when it comes to taking the country to war, he is cautious. He learned the hard way during the final days of his administration that the military disobeyed orders to withdraw from Syria and to prepare for leaving Afghanistan in an orderly manner. He is going to make damn sure that the people he installs at the Pentagon will follow lawful orders. If Trump wins, we will see a raft of political appointees that are novel and not beholden to the Deep State. What happens if Tulsi Gabbard is nominated to be Secretary of Defense? Vivek Ramaswamy as Secretary of Transportation? Those possibilities are some of the reasons the media and Washington elite are freaking out.

Meanwhile, Bibi Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and replaced him with Israel Katz. Unlike Gallant, who commanded a division during his military career and has some understanding of strategic thinking, Katz only served as a frontline soldier. That is a far cry from commanding a division or an army. Over the last year, Gallant butted heads with Bibi and reportedly argued against going into southern Lebanon. With Gallant out of the way there is no one in Netanyahu’s war cabinet with the experience and backbone to challenge his crazy, dangerous combat operations.

Gallant was not an ardent Zionist. While he agreed with Netanyahu in getting rid of the Palestinians, he also understood that there were limits to Israel’s ability to fight a five-front war. Gallant wanted a more focused approach. With him out of the way, I expect that Netanyahu will embark on some dangerous, counterproductive military operations that will fail and will create pressure in Israel to go nuclear. I hope I am wrong.

[rjalker]

Hi! It's me from the post. I am sorry if i came off as genocide apologizing. I would like to explain my point that is that wether you vote or not, someone is going to take the office and as far as I know republicans have the annoying habit of going out voting. What I meant by that is that you can vote and push forward anti-genocide polices, because that's what you can do right now and I have a feeling that if Trump get elected there will be far fewer chances to get more anti-genocide polices to be passed. like my point is not "oversee the genocide" but "wether you like or not someone is going to be in the office and you need to be at least someone that is marginally more likely to listen to you when you say genocide is bad"

The post for context.

But if you're telling vote for Biden....he's proven every single day since October 7th that he does not care what the American people want. He doesn't care how many millions of people protest. He cannot be pushed left. He is not "marginally more likely to listen". He refuses to listen because he does not care. He would rather pour billions of dollars into funding genocide than lift a pinkie to protect abortion rights.

Joe Biden is not the lesser of two evils, and in no way is he someone who can be pushed to enact anti-genocide policies, because if he were going to do that, he would have done it before the end of October, he would have done it before October even happened, he would have done it the day he took office.

Israel's genocide of Palestinians didn't start on October 7th. But despite knowing that, Joe Biden has continued pouring money in to fuel the genocide even when millions of Americans are protesting.

You cannot push Biden left. You cannot trick yourself into believing that he's someone who can change and do better if we just give him four more years to fund genocide. He's not going to change. He never planned to do anything to help anyone but the people who are already rich and powerful.

No one who is refusing to vote for Genocide Joe Biden is voting for Trump. No one who has a problem with genocide is telling anyone else to vote for Trump. They're either withholding their votes entirely as a form of protest against a system that clearly doesn't want them to have any effect in the first place, or voting for any of the unaffiliated candidates.

There will never be any anti-genocide policies that even get five seconds of consideration, let alone pass, under Genocide Joe Biden. The last hundred and twelve days of this newest escalation in the genocide should have taught you that by now.

You can vote however you want. But if you are demanding and shaming people into voting for the man who's explicitly in support of genocide, that's just genocide apologism. Especially when all of the most vocal people speaking up about this are Palestinians themselves, and Black and Native Americans, not to mention everyone else who refuses to fall for this "vote blue no matter who" trick again.

Genocide Joe Biden is evil. Genocide should be a dealbreaker. You cannot hold up a hypothetical genocide that Trump might support in a future that doesn't exist and argue that this is why we should keep Biden in power and explicitly reward him for funding genocide.

No one is obligated to vote for anyone, especially not the man actively pouring billions of dollars into funding genocide when people have been begging for it to stop since day 1.

Genocide Joe Biden is not the "lesser" evil, because there's literally no way t o get worse than supporting genocide. The only difference under Trump is that white liberals might have to face a fraction of the shit everyone else has been going through since this shithole colony was founded.

Please listen to actual Palestinians and Black and Native Americans. They've been saying this for years. Plenty of them are here on tumblr talking about this all the time.

[nonpienary]

Voting discourse seems like it’s going nowhere.

Like, hey, I have voted in every election I was able to, and will continue to do so. I often vote blue, though for local elections I tend to vote with 3rd parties like the Green Party or the Working Families party.

Also, I am fully aware that voting is not enough. I think those who are upset at the constant barrage of “if you don’t vote for Biden you are a reprehensible traitor” are valid and mostly trying to make the point that electing Biden continues a status quo that includes multiple concurrent genocides, global destabilization, poor quality of life for Americans and worse quality of life most other places, as well as massive police brutality, a carceral system that is just a continuation of slavery, the rampant abuse of the undocumented, disabled, people of color, etc etc etc.

I think it’s totally valid to vote for a third-party presidential candidate, even in the hopes that people seeing how many votes they got this time will encourage others to vote 3rd party in the future.

I also think it’s totally valid to vote for Biden as a measure against another Trump presidency.

I think it’s super-valid to support local and state campaigns for ranked-choice voting that would help make 3rd party candidates more viable in future elections.

What I think most of all though, is that voting, and even registering/convincing others to vote, is a tiny fraction of the action necessary to make the world a better place. I think it’s really hard for many of us (myself included) to see and take the other kinds of steps that are necessary (relationship-building, organizing locally, direct action, building parallel systems to reduce reliance on corrupt governments, etc), and I think that is by design.

We need to be focused on coming together with folks in our local (and to an extent, online) communities to make changes happen outside of government, because as many people in this discourse have said, voting will not actually solve the overwhelming majority of these problems.

I also think folks should vote (though I’m not interested in telling them how).

Get over this petty bickering and recognize that the people you are arguing with largely agree with you on the problems facing the world, and this kind of infighting is only good for the oppressors. Stop arguing with them and start organizing with them.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Bernard Lane

Published: Jun 22, 2023

Today, Australia’s upper house of parliament, the senate, may get to vote on a proposal for an inquiry into youth gender medicine.

I don’t know if a parliamentary inquiry is the right vehicle. I am confident, however, that popular arguments against an inquiry—against any kind of inquiry—are shot through with holes.

Let’s take them one by one.

We must not politicise medicine. Youth gender medicine is already politicised. The “gender-affirming” medicalised approach is not like any other branch of medicine. It is a hybrid of identity politics and medical technology. When evidence is lacking, politics fills the gap by invoking transgender rights. This is part of a society-wide distortion of institutions and norms by emotive social justice causes. In any case, the role of the medico in the child-led gender-affirming model is limited because the distress of gender dysphoria is in effect self-diagnosed. The sacrosanct trust between health professional and patient is nonetheless invoked to argue that legislatures should not prohibit medicalised gender change for minors, nor even inquire into standards of medical safety. But that same trust is swept aside when politicians are cajoled into passing ill-defined laws against “conversion therapy”, meaning in practice that ethical alternatives to the gender-affirming treatment approach are shut down.

We should not import U.S. culture wars. Too late: the dogmatic gender-affirming way is an American export that already dominates the market in rich countries. Joe Biden’s administration is pushing this “progressive” form of medicalisation not only to unwilling Republican states, but also to diverse, not necessarily receptive cultures around the world, courtesy of U.S. diplomacy. Many Democrats are dismayed by gender ideology, just as there is fierce dissent in centre-left parties and feminist groups across the developed world. It’s European social welfare states such as Sweden, Finland and England which have started the shift away from hormonal and surgical treatments for gender distress to more mainstream mental health strategies.

In these countries, the game-changer has been systematic reviews of the evidence base for medical transition of minors. Using a method that controls for bias and allows checking by others, these reviews have shown the evidence to be very weak. Which means we cannot be confident about the outcomes, good or bad, of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. We are embarked upon an uncontrolled experiment.

Trans kids will kill themselves. It’s never put this bluntly, of course, because that would make too obvious the reckless, manipulative nature of this ploy. Instead, we’re told youth gender medicine is very sensitive, involving a very vulnerable population of young people. True, up to a point. But some in the senate predictably recycled the figure that one in two trans kids attempts suicide. That’s from a low-quality, anonymous online survey with an unrepresentative sample and no follow-up to check responses. In the same vein, parents hesitant about puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones are asked, “Do you want a live son or a dead daughter?” Gender dysphoria seems to be a free-for-all where activists can ignore standard mental health warnings about the danger of retailing a simplistic suicide narrative. How does it serve trans-identifying young people to be constantly told by clinicians and journalists that they are uniquely prone to self-harm?

Dr Ken Zucker, a leading international expert on youth gender dysphoria, believes the suicide risk of gender clinic youth is similar to that of young people seen by child and adolescent mental health teams for conditions such as depression. Which makes sense, because patients in gender clinics are often depressed as well as dysphoric. “If you are depressed,” Dr Zucker told me, “your suicidality risk is going to be elevated, but you see that in kids who are depressed but don’t have gender dysphoria. The idea that adolescents with gender dysphoria are at a higher risk of suicide per se is dogma—and I think it’s wrong.” And the gender-affirming model, with its gender fixation, does not seem well suited to the perfectly ethical exploratory therapy that might disentangle the range of mental health and neurodivergent issues affecting many of these young people.

It’s agreed that gender clinic youth need compassionate help. Mental health clinicians are used to working with suicide risk, and this doesn’t require a no-questions rule at the policy level. Quite the opposite. There is an emerging group of young people, known as detransitioners, who regret medicalised gender change—they are certainly vulnerable, often shunned by their former trans community and overlooked by health professionals. They need help. And they may be able to teach lessons about less invasive ways to deal with dysphoria and how to minimise harm to other young patients. We won’t find out unless as a society we can ask sensible questions. Is the gender-affirming approach so fragile that it cannot be scrutinised or debated?

Greg Hunt sorted this. So we were told repeatedly in the senate yesterday. In mid-2019, after my news reports in The Australian quoting clinicians and researchers seeking a national inquiry, federal health minister Greg Hunt asked the Royal Australasian College of Physicians to carry out a review of youth gender medicine. At the outset, the college sent some odd signals, releasing a statement that implied the gender-affirming treatment guideline from the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne (RCH) would serve as a benchmark for inquiry, rather than as a document to be critically assessed. I did some digging and discovered that the college had previously lobbied—on one occasion with the RCH gender clinic director—for faster and easier access to the hormonal treatments it was now supposed to examine. No answer when I asked the college about a conflict of interest.

In March 2020, the college served up a four-page letter to Hunt. It followed the “very vulnerable” script, warning of “extremely high rates of depression, self-harm, attempted suicide and suicide”. No data, no citations. No description of the hormonal and surgical treatments favoured by the gender-affirming model, no consideration of any risk attending those interventions, no discussion of less invasive alternatives. The college did, however, see a clear and present danger—a national inquiry “would further harm vulnerable patients and their families through increased media and public attention.” No evidence was offered to support this claim, which reflects an identity politics dogma. Hunt fed the story to The Age in Melbourne, the home town for the RCH gender clinic, which had spearheaded the gender-affirming model in Australia. “In recognition of the risks of further harm to young people, the government does not intend to establish a national inquiry on this matter”—so reported The Age, quoting the health minister’s spokesman. I asked Hunt why an inquiry would do harm, and he sought to disown the claim, suggesting it had been added by officials without his knowledge.

It’s a state responsibility. That’s certainly what Hunt’s office told me back in 2020. The head of the federal health department, Professor Brendan Murphy, was said to be disturbed about the lack of data kept by some gender clinics in state children’s hospitals. Hunt insisted that a state-federal body of senior health officials would deliver what was needed: a new, uniform model of clinical governance across Australia and a common system for proper data collection. As far as I can tell, nothing came of this.

The experts have spoken. There is another review worth revisiting, but I heard no mention of it in the senate yesterday. In mid-2019 a psychiatrist contact and I stumbled across a stealth edit in the LGBT mental health policy of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry. The March version of that policy had explicitly endorsed the RCH gender-affirming guidelines. In August I began reporting criticism of the rigour and safety of this document, which was badged as ��Australian Standards of Care”. The following month, the college’s endorsement of the RCH guideline had disappeared from the policy online, replaced with the bland advice to use “evidence-based treatment guidelines.” There was no announcement about this.

I asked the college what had happened, and they said the change had been made pending a review of the evidence supporting the guideline. Two years later, the college had fleshed out a much more nuanced policy on gender dysphoria. The endorsement of the RCH guideline was not restored (it was tactfully relegated to a footnote). The new policy highlights the “paucity” of quality evidence on the outcomes of gender-affirming hormonal drugs and surgery such as mastectomy. It says “evidence and professional opinion is divided” on whether the affirmative approach should be used with children. It ­reminds psychiatrists of the changes in identity and brain ­development that come with childhood and adolescence, and insists that judgments about the capacity of minors to consent to treatment should be clearly documented. And the policy hints at the risk of lawsuits, warning its members of the “ethical and medico-legal ­dilemmas” posed by these life-­altering medical interventions given within a legal framework that is “rapidly changing”. This review has stood the test of time. So, too, has the cautious guide to managing youth gender dysphoria issued by the National Association of Practising Psychiatrists under its president Dr Philip Morris.

Video: The medical interventions sought via the London-based Tavistock GIDS clinic, the world’s largest youth gender clinic, are the same as those offered at children’s hospital gender clinics in Australia

It’s an attack on the LGBTQ community. In fact, there is growing tension between mainstream LGBs, who cling to biological sex, and the extreme Queer Theory-driven trans agenda, which promotes an inner “gender identity” cut adrift from the body. For these LGBs, same-sex attraction is the real deal. But the TQs want everyone to accept that a male-bodied person who identifies as a woman can be a lesbian—a transbian with a lady penis. Another sharp divide is the medical transition of minors. Mature LGBs recall being young, gender non-conforming and uncertain of their identity. They witness the medicalisation of today’s gender non-conforming youth, and reflect on what they escaped. Some see gender medicine as a form of eugenics, because early puberty blocking followed by cross-sex hormones is a formula for sterile adults and impaired sexual pleasure in the case of males. There are well-known transsexuals who agree with the LGBs that there is an almighty backlash coming when mainstream society understands what it has not been told about youth gender clinics. Who, then, will be under attack?