#Like the Biden admin was BAD for so many people

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The housing emergency and the second Trump term

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 surveill ance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/11/nimby-yimby-fimby/#home-team-advantage

Postmortems and blame for the 2024 elections are thick on the ground, but amidst all those theories and pointed fingers, one explanation looms large and credible: the American housing emergency. If the system can't put a roof over your head, that system needs to go.

American housing has been in crisis for decades, of course, but it keeps getting worse…and worse…and worse. Americans pay more for worse housing than at any time in their history. Homelessness is at a peak that is soul-crushing to witness and maddening to experience. We turned housing – a human necessity second only to air, food and water – into an asset governed almost entirely by market forces, and so created a crisis that has consumed the nation.

The Trump administration has no plan to deal with housing. Or rather, they do have plans, but strictly of the "bad ideas only" variety. Trump wants to deport 11m undocumented immigrants, and their families, including citizens and Green Card holders (otherwise, that would be "family separation" and that's cruel). Even if you are the kind of monster who can set aside the ghoulishness of solving your housing problems by throwing someone in a concentration camp at gunpoint and then deporting them to a country where they legitimately fear for their lives, this still doesn't solve the housing emergency, and will leave America several million homes short.

Their other solution? Deregulation and tax cuts. We've seen this movie before, and it's an R-rated horror flick. Financial deregulation created the speculative mortgage markets that led to the 2008 housing crisis, which created a seemingly permanent incapacity to build new homes in America, as skilled tradespeople retired or changed careers and housebuilding firms left the market. Handing giant tax cuts to the monopolists who gobbled up the remains of these bankrupt small companies minted a dozen new housing billionaires who preside over companies that make more money than ever by building fewer homes:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91198443/housing-market-wall-streets-big-housing-market-bet-has-created-12-new-billionaires

This isn't working. Homelessness is ballooning. The only answer Trump and his regime have for our homeless neighbors is to just make it a crime to be homeless, sweeping up homeless encampments and busting homeless people for "loitering" (that is, existing in space). There is no universe in which this reduces homelessness. People who lose their homes aren't going to dig holes, crawl inside, and pull the dirt down on top of themselves. If anything, sweeps and arrests will make homelessness worse, by destroying the possessions, medication and stability that homeless people need if they are to become housed.

Today, The American Prospect published an excellent package on the housing emergency, looking at its causes and the road-tested solutions that can work even when the federal government is doing everything it can to make the problem worse:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-tackling-the-housing-crisis/

The Harris campaign ran on Biden's economic record, insisting that he had tamed inflation. It's true that the Biden admin took action against monopolists and greedflation, including criminal price-fixing companies like Realpage, which helps landlords coordinate illegal conspiracies to rig rents. Realpage sets the rents for the majority of homes in major metros, like Phoenix:

https://www.azag.gov/press-release/attorney-general-mayes-sues-realpage-and-residential-landlords-illegal-price-fixing

Of course, reducing inflation isn't the same as bringing prices down – it just means prices are going up more slowly. And sure, inflation is way down in many categories, but not in housing. In housing, inflation is accelerating:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-03-08/inflation-housing-shortage-economy-cpi-fed-interest-rate

The housing emergency makes everything else worse. Blue states are in danger of losing Congressional seats because people are leaving big cities: not because they want to, but because they literally can't afford to keep a roof over their heads. LGBTQ people fleeing fascist red state legislatures and their policies on trans and gay rights can't afford to move to the states where they will be allowed to simply live:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/business/economy/lgbtq-moving-cost.html

So what are the roots of this problem, and what can we do about it? The housing emergency doesn't have a unitary cause, but among the most important factors is fuckery that led to the Great Financial Crisis and the fuckery that followed on from it, as Ryan Cooper writes:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-housing-industry-never-recovered-great-recession/

The Glass-Steagall Act was a 1933 banking regulation created to prevent Great Depression-style market crashes. It was killed in 1999 by Bill Clinton, who declared, "the Glass–Steagall law is no longer appropriate." Nine years later, the global economy melted down in a Great Depression-style market crash fueled by reckless speculation of the sort that Glass-Steagall had prohibited.

The crash of 2008 took down all kinds of industries, but none were so hard-hit as home-building (after all, mortgages were the raw material of the financial bubble that popped in 2008). After 2008, construction of new housing fell by 90% for the next two years. This protracted nuclear winter in the housing market killed many associated industries. Skilled tradespeople retrained, or "left the job market" (a euphemism for becoming disabled, homeless, or destroyed). Waves of bankruptcies swept through the construction industry. The construction workforce didn't recover to pre-crisis levels for 16 years (and of course, by then, there was a huge backlog of unbuilt homes, and a larger population seeking housing).

Meanwhile, the collapse of every part of the housing supply chain – from raw materials to producers – set the stage for monopoly rollups, with the biggest firms gobbling up all these distressed smaller firms. Thanks to this massive consolidation, homebuilders were able to build fewer houses and extract higher profits by gouging on price. They doubled down on this monopoly price-gouging during the pandemic supply shocks, raising prices well above the pandemic shortage costs.

The housing market is monopolized in ways that will be familiar to anyone angry about consolidation in other markets – from eyeglasses to pharma to tech. One builder, HR Horton, is the largest player in 3 of the country's largest markets, and it has tripled its profits since 2005 while building half as many houses. Modern homebuilders don't build: they use their scale to get land at knock-down rates, slow-walk the planning process, and then farm out the work to actual construction firms at rates that barely keep the lights on:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/its-the-land-stupid-how-the-homebuilder

Monopolists can increase profits by constraining supply. 60% of US markets are "highly concentrated" and the companies that dominate these markets are starving homebuilding in them to the tune of $106b/year:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3303984

There are some obvious fixes to this, but they are either unlikely under Trump (antitrust action to break up builders based on their share in each market) or impossible to imagine (closing tax loopholes that benefit large building firms). Likewise, we could create a "homes guarantee" that would act as an "automatic stabilizer." That would mean that any time the economy slips into recession, this would trigger automatic funding to pay firms to build public housing, thus stimulating the economy and alleviating the housing supply crisis:

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialHousing.pdf

The Homes Guarantee is further explained in a separate article in the package by Sulma Arias from People's Action, who describes how grassroots activists fighting redlining planted the seeds of a legal guarantee of a home:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-why-we-need-homes-guarantee/

Arias describes the path to a right to a home as running through the mass provision of public housing – and what makes that so exciting is that public housing can be funded, administered and built by local or state governments, meaning this is a thing that can happen even in the face of a hostile or indifferent federal regime.

In Paul E Williams's story on FIMBY (finance in my back yard), the executive director of Center for Public Enterprise offers an inspirational story of how local governments can provide thousands of homes:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-fimby-finance-in-my-backyard/

Williams recounts the events of 2021 in Montgomery County, Maryland, where a county agency stepped in to loan money to a property developer who had land, zoning approval and work crews to build a major new housing block, but couldn't find finance. Montgomery County's Housing Opportunities Commission made a short-term loan at market rates to the developer.

By 2023, the building was up and the loan had been repaid. All 268 units are occupied and a third are rented at rates tailored to low-income tenants. The HOC is the permanent owner of those homes. It worked so well that Montgomery's HOC is on track to build 3,000 more public homes this way:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/affordable-housing-montgomery-county.html

Other – in red states! – have followed suit, with lookalike funds and projects in Atlanta and Chattanooga, with "dozens" more plans underway at state and local levels. The Massachusetts Momentum Fund is set to fund 40,000 homes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/affordable-housing-montgomery-county.html

The Center for Public Enterprise has a whole report on these "Government Sponsored Enterprises" and the role they can play in creating a supply of homes priced at a rate that working people can afford:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-fimby-finance-in-my-backyard/

Of course, for a GSE to loan money to build a home, that home has to be possible. YIMBYs are right to point to restrictive zoning as a major impediment to building new homes, and Robert Cruickshank from California YIMBY has a piece breaking down the strategy for fixing zoning:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-make-it-legal-to-build/

Cruickshank lays out NIMBY success stories in cities like Austin and Minneapolis adopting YIMBY-style zoning rules and seeing significant improvements in rental prices. These success stories are representative of a broader recognition – at least among Democratic politicians – that restrictive zoning is a major contributor to the housing emergency.

Repeating these successes in the rest of the country will take a long time, and in the meantime, American tenants are sitting ducks for predatory landlords, With criminal enterprises like Realpage enabling collusive price-fixing for housing and monopoly developers deliberately restricting supplies to keep prices up (a recent Blackrock investor communique gloated over the undersupply of housing as a source of profits for its massive portfolio of rental properties), tenants pay more and more of their paychecks for worse and worse accommodations. They can't wait for the housing emergency to be solved through zoning changes and public housing. They need relief now.

That's where tenants' unions come in, as Ruthy Gourevitch and Tara Raghuveer of the Tenant Union Federation writes in their piece on the tenants across the country who are coordinating rent strikes to protest obscene rent-hikes and dangerous living conditions:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-look-for-the-tenant-union/

They describe a country where tenants work multiple jobs, send the majority of their take-home pay to their landlords – a quarter of tenants pay 70% of their wages in rent – and live in vermin-filled homes without heat or ventilation:

https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/terms-of-investment/

Public money from Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac flood into the speculative market for multifamily homes, a largely unregulated, subsidized speculative bonanza that lets the wealthy make bets and the poor pay their losses.

In response, tenants unions are popping up all across the country, especially in red state cities like Bozeman, MT and Louisville, KY. They organize for "just cause" evictions that ban landlords from taking their homes away. They seek fair housing voucher distribution practices. They seek to close eviction loopholes like the LA wheeze that lets landlords kick you out following "renovations."

The National Tenant Policy Agenda demands "national rent caps, anti-eviction protections, habitability standards, and antitrust action," measures that would immediately and profoundly improve the lives of millions of American workers:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JF1-fTalW1tOBO0FhYDcVvEd1kQ2HIzkYFNRo6zmSsg/edit

They caution that it's not enough to merely increase housing supply. Without a strong countervailing force from organized tenants, new housing can be just another source of extraction and speculation for the rich. They say that the Federal Housing Finance Agency – regulator for Fannie and Freddie – could play an active role in ensuring that new housing addresses the needs of people, not corporations.

In the meantime, a tenants' union in KC successfully used a rent strike – where every tenant in a building refuses to pay rent – to get millions in overdue repairs. More strikes are planned across the country.

The American system is in crisis. A country that cannot house its people is a failure. As Rachael Dziaba writes in the final piece for the package, the situation is so bad that water has started to flow uphill: the cities with the most inward migration have the least job growth:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-10-18-housing-blues/

It's not just housing, of course. Americans pay more for health care than anyone else in the rich world and get worse outcomes than anyone else in the rich world. Their monopoly grocers have spiked their food prices. The incoming administration has declared war on public education and seeks to relegate poor children to unsupervised schools where "education" can consist of filling in forms on a Chromebook and learning that the Earth is only 5,000 years old.

A system that can't shelter, feed, educate or care for its people is a failure. People in failed states will vote for anyone who promises to tear the system down. The decision to turn life's necessities over to unregulated, uncaring markets has produced a populace who are so desperate for change, they'll even vote for their own destruction.

[esperderek]

New RPG.net owner liked tweets from RFK Jr, Tucker Carlson, and more...

Just left RPG.net, that venerable old tabletop rpg forum, a forum that I've been a part of for 20+ years.

Recently (in March), it was bought by RPGMatch, a startup aiming to do matchmaking for TTRPGs. In the past couple of days, despite their many reassurances, I got it into my head to look up the new owner Joaquin Lippincott, and lucky for me he has a Twitter! (Or X, now, I guess.)

Yeah...the first warning bell is that his description calls him a 'Machine learning advocate', and his feed is full of generative AI shit. Oh, sure, he'll throw the fig leaf of 'AI shouldn't take creative jobs.' here and there, but all-in-all he is a full-throated supporter of genAI. Which means that RPGnet's multiple assurances that they will never scrape for AI...suspect at best.

Especially, when you check out his main company, https://www.metaltoad.com/, and find that his company, amongst other services, is all about advising corporations on how to make the best use of generative AI, LLMs, and machine learning. They're not the ones making them, but they sure are are helping corps decide what jobs to cut in favor of genAI. Sorry, they "Solve Business Problems."

This, alone, while leaving a massive bad taste in my mouth, wouldn't be enough, and apart from his clear love of genAI his feed is mostly business stuff and his love of RPGs. Barely talks politics or anything similar.

But then, I decided to check his Likes, the true bane of many a people who have tried to portray themselves as progressive, or at least neutral.

And wow. In lieu of links that can be taken down, I have made screenshots. If you want to check it yourself, just find his Twitter feed, this isn't hidden information. (Yet.)

Here's him liking a conspiracy theory that the War on Ukraine is actually NATO's fault, and it's all a plan by the US to grift and disable Russia!

Here's him liking Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praising Tucker Carlson interviewing Vladimir Putin!

Here's him liking a right wing influencer's tweet advancing a conspiracy theory about Hunter Biden!

Former Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy talking about how he wants to tear down the Department of Education and the FDA (plus some COVID vaccine conspiracy theory thrown in)

Sure did like this Tucker Carlson video on Robert Kennedy Jr... (Gee, I wonder who this guy is voting for in October.)

Agreeing about a right-wing grifter's conspiracy theories... (that guy's Twitter account is full of awful, awful transphobia, always fun.)

Him liking a tweet about someone using their own fathers death to advance an anti-vaxx agenda! What the fuck! (This guy was pushing anti-vax before his father's death, I checked, if you're wondering.)

So, yes, to sum it up, RPG.net, that prides itself as an inclusive place, protective it's users who are part of vulnerable groups, and extremely supportive of creators, sold out to a techbro (probably)libertarian whose day job is helping companies make use of generative AI and likes tweets that advance conspiracy theories about the Ukraine war, Hunter Biden, vaccines, and others. Big fan of RFKjr, Carlson, and Putin, on the other hand.

And, like, shame on RPG.net, Christopher Allen for selling to this guy, and the various admins and mods who spent ages reassuring everything will be okay (including downplaying Lippincott's involvement in genAI). Like, was no research into this guy done at all? Or did y'all not care?

So I'm gone, and I'm betting while maybe not today or tomorrow, things are going to change for that website, and not for the best for anyone.

[plaidos]

the only relevant part of the article also mentions the context i was referring to, bc her office was working to deny people care and she worked to change that. sometimes in government, the law is unjust, so you have to change it. other articles that speak on this also mention that her office was working against trans healthcare in prisons and she was fighting against that internally

"in 2015, when she was California’s attorney general, her office pushed to deny incarcerated trans woman Michelle Norsworthy’s plea for gender-affirming care while she was being held in a men’s prison. (As MSNBC columnist Katelyn Burns recalled, “Harris’ explanation was that she had fought internally within her department to support providing gender affirming care for prisoners, even as her office led the legal argument against providing such care.”) "

https://19thnews.org/2024/10/harris-gender-affirming-care-incarcerated-people-fact-check/

bonus list of stuff the biden admin has done related to LGBT stuff, not just focused on trans issues tho and a lot of them are small things but some important stuff like filing a federal lawsuit against Tennessee's gender affirming care ban for minors

https://www.hrc.org/resources/president-bidens-pro-lgbtq-timeline

u make it seem like biden/harris have not said anything about trans people or have actively worked against them and that is bad misinformation and you are able to look things up and not rely on the one (1) article that frames it as Not Enough for trans people and therefore just as bad as republicans wanting us all to die and be invisible. idk i did unfollow tho bc u were worried about that i guess, i appreciated ur other takes but this sucks.

there are Many Many articles that talk about how the Biden admin and Harris campaign were not doing enough for trans people. in fact, if you actually read that article, you’ll note how it explicitly outlines how Biden/Harris’ protections do nothing to protect the vast majority of trans people.

like sorry but some of us were actually out as trans during the Trump administration the first time. it wasn’t great, but he is not a supervillain darth vader. flipping a coin every four years and praying it lands tails every single time is not a political strategy. holding politicians accountable for their inadequacies is!

if you genuinely think that the Biden administration was doing as much as it could be for trans people, then you are a traitor to our community, and i sincerely hope you keep your privileged ass away from those of us who are actually likely to be harmed by the policies Harris & Biden supported and allowed. you are a spineless coward. i will block you if you keep sealioning about how really it’s a good thing that Harris denied trans women healthcare & how the best we can hope for is a palestinian genocide advocate. you sicken me.

[a-very-tired-jew]

Suffice to say this feels like 2016 again for me.

Many of us had said Hilary wouldn’t win against Trump then, and we said the same thing about Kamala.

Hilary was burdened by the fact that by 2015 the Clinton name was suffused in conspiracy. You couldn’t exist anywhere without some form of Clinton Conspiracy being present. Left, Right, Center, extremes… everyone had them. It didn’t matter how good Bill’s presidency was, the conspiracies were so prevalent and damaging that the writing was on the walls even before she was the official nominee. It was the “if she gets it, we’re fucked because of this”.

But the DNC chose Hilary because she was a safe candidate that they tried to sell as a good candidate. And arguably she was, if it wasn’t for all the baggage.

Kamala is Hilary 2.0. She doesn’t have the burden of Clinton dynasty level conspiracies, but she does come with the baggage of being the VP of the Biden administration. The current admin isn’t exactly the most liked and voter apathy and dislike can easily be exploited with a “weren’t things better under me?” by Trump (and they were because Presidential policies have an effect down the line, not immediately).

They tried to run what they thought was a safe candidate, and in the early days of her candidacy there was some talk that this was a bad idea. That just because she was younger didn’t mean she’d win. She didn’t have the benefit of being meme’d into the public consciousness like Biden did during the Obama years.

She didn’t have the benefit of being “not Trump” because she’s part of the current administration and Trump was a future possibility, not the now that voters dwell in. The now dictates that she and her policies were the issue if they were a continuance of the current administration.

She didn’t have the benefit of being “not Biden” because she’s just a safe continuation of Biden Presidency policies. None of these policies really made big splashes and many people are not aware of the benefits they have received from Biden’s term in office.

The gamble of a safe candidate of an honestly milquetoast presidency and a continuation of its policies did not pay off, and it’s exactly what many people were worried about.

To further elucidate this point, also think back to the 2016 election and the social aspects of the presidential campaigns and their candidates. As I said above, Hilary was burdened with the conspiracies about her and her family. Memes, jokes, and articles about her existed in a primarily negative stance, she had negative social capital. Conversely, Bernie had very positive social capital, very few negative memes and articles about him, and so many people wanted to vote for him across the political spectrum.

But he was not the “safe” candidate.

He was considered “risky” even though he polled better than Hilary routinely. Part of this is due to the differences in social capital.

Kamala’s campaign didn’t even have social capital until the debates.

Yes, there was some from previous years and we sort of knew what she did prior to being VP, but she wasn’t cemented in the public psyche. If there had been some effort to generate social capital over the course of the Biden administration then maybe there would have been a better chance. Biden’s campaign in 2020 benefited from his establishment in the public psyche through the memes about him during the Obama years. But we haven’t seen anything like that regarding Kamala at all. The only real meme to come out of the Biden admin is “Dark Brandon” and that’s it. As such, Kamala came into this race with negative social capital from her attachment to the current admin and its policies and no beneficial memes until it was too late.

Meanwhile, Trump has existed in the public psyche for over a decade and has a strong social media and meme presence. For as much negative social capital he has on one side, he has an abundance of positive on the other.

You can’t run a “safe” candidate against someone with Trump’s presence and social capital. You have to run someone on equal footing. If they had reran Biden and leaned into “Dark Brandon” there might have been a chance. If they had run Bernie there might have been a chance (yes, even with him being a Jew).

But Kamala? She was just a safe choice like Hilary was. All the warning signs were there and people pointed them out. But as it goes here in the States “If the Dems are so good, why do they lose so fucking much?” and it’s because they don’t listen. They only win when people are reminded how bad things are under right wing policies. They never listen to maintain their control or power because then they revert to outdated “safe” strategies that don’t work.

So idk if we’ll go full authoritarian government with no democratic future as Trump has wanted, but I do know we’ll repeat this in 8 years.

I’m tired as fuck as this pattern repeats so much that for once I’d like to not have a “I told you so” moment that didn’t come with a side of “we’re fucked”. But that’s the American experience for you.

[mariacallous]

Like look i appreciate all these folks' sudden interest in blocking apartheid states and the erasure of people whose only crime is existing in a hostile state but it DID catch me by surprise as a 1st gen immigrant (OF COLOR for ppl playing that game smh) like do we not remember the literal CAGES FULL OF CHILDREN???? that the biden admin spent 2 yrs trying to reunite w their parents?????? Trump's insane concentration camp promises??? I dont trust these ppl for a second I have skin on the line and my family's i do not appreciate hearing these embarrassing anons come in and reveal THEIR endless axis of privelege. If trump wins THEY will get to feel bad and righteous i and MY family will ALSO face insecurity and threats to our existence, and frankly I don't trust these leftists to have an attention span long enough to think about me bc they have never shown up for our own immigrants and dreamers as long as i've been active in the scene

What gets me is the righteousness and guilt that so many people seem to have and which they are attempting to exorcise through whatever the fuck has been happening.

[dhaaruni]

I disagree that progressives thought their opinions were popular. I think they knew that their social opinions weren't popular, but felt like as long as they advanced popular economic policies, people would hold their noses and vote for Democrats anyway even if they disagreed with them on social issues. What is jarring isn't the disagreement, it's that people are so married to being hateful they'll vote against their own interests just to stick it to someone even more vulnerable than them.

Uh that's not how it works.

First of all, do you really think that progressive economics are actually popular enough to win elections?

This article about summarizes the issue. The child tax credit for instance was not popular at all, even among people who benefited from it directly! Joe Manchin's position of "parents will use the money on drugs and not their kids" won out! The reality is that the only group that the general public supports government welfare for without work requirements is seniors, and that's because they're perceived to have earned it through their lives.

Also, going back to the point that "people vote against their interests", they don't actually do that. People don't always vote on their economic interests, but they sometimes prioritize their social interests over their material interests, as is their right. You can call them bad people for doing it but that's not going to make people vote for you.

And like, progressives definitely thought that their social policies were more popular than they are. They genuinely thought that the general public wanted criminal justice reform in 2020, would be okay with increased immigration during the Biden admin, and had no problems with trans rights etc. And well, every single major city has elected tough-on-crime leaders, almost 50% of Democrats support mass deportation, and "Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you" was the most successful Trump ad this cycle.

The issue isn't that Kamala lost to Trump by 2% nationwide, it's that she lost to Trump despite his many downsides because people hate Democrats that much, and any Republican without that many scandals would have won by even more. Trump was swaying deliriously next to the governor of South Dakota for 30 minutes and still won every swing state AND massively improved his margins in blue states, some of which swung 10% right! If you don't see that as a blaring alarm for Democrats, idk what to tell you.

[evergoesmyway]

the most egregious thing about liberals votescolding is the complete inability to deal with their own shame which i think they all feel in some capacity

many of them (especially tumblr liberals who have couched themselves in leftist lingo without doing any actual leftist work) don't like the optics of coming out and saying "you know what, i don't actually care about palestine and i only want to vote for biden because i think he'll keep ME and my american friends safe"

so they'll couch that in shit like "biden is better for palestinians than trump, and here are 30 imaginary scenarios to make you believe that" despite the actual proof of how detrimental biden's admin has uniquely been for palestinians, how biden is one of the most staunch zionists in cabinet history, how he's to the right of known demon ronald reagan when it comes to israel

but they don't really believe that because their vote for biden fundamentally isn't about palestine. they're voting for him because they're worried about their own skin in the game, and they know admitting that would make them look bad, so they use palestine as a talking point to actual leftists to manipulate them

i'd respect them more if they'd just admit their real fears and intentions. just admit palestine isn't at the top of your list, just admit you think american freedom has to come at the cost of total devastation for palestinians, just admit you only care about yourself, just admit you're too scared of actual material change in this fucked up country because you might lose some of the comforts of american life that we only have because we've brutalized millions of people

[comradecowplant]

the CANADIAN i reblogged this from should worry more about her own blue fascist imperial running dog PM instead of finger wagging the minority of usamericans who are trying to maintain the controversial position of "having principles".

lemme ignore the hysterical phrasings & ask a few simple grounded questions: which administration & party was in power during this unprecedented wave of anti-lgbtq legislation?

which admin & party maintained and rehired trump-era immigration policy and ICE officials?

which admin & party oversees the hoards of jackbooted thugs beating anti-racist protesters in 2020, gave cops more money, and again supports jackbooted thugs beating anti-genocide protesters in 2024?

which admin & party claims to be allies of women and had multiple opportunities throughout the DECADES of Roe to codify it and yet didn't?

which admin & party, claiming to be the "pro-science" party, approved one of the biggest oil projects in U.S. history and walked back already-lacking Covid policy that has, to this day, effectively barred disabled people from much of public life?

which admin & party refuses to use the weight of the federal government to fight back against states enacting barbaric legislation (akin to how it was used to enforce integration during the civil rights movement) because they're obsessed with the self-aggrandizing image of "flying high" & politeness instead of keeping their word and actually using the power of government to improve lives?

We all know the answer. The christofascism is already here. "project 2025" is the same fascist wetdream reactionaries have had for decades, and the sense of heightened urgency is just the same shit different day. Democrats could stop it in their tracks if they wanted, but the dangling threat is what they rely on for gathering their base rather than having effective progressive policies. There is a bigger world than Orange Man Bad and Republicans Demons/Democrats Angels delusion that blueanon liberals rev themselves into a tizzy over rather than accepting the uncomfortable truth that blue & red are two wings of the same U.S.American fascist bird. That actually building a just society will require harder work than blindly voting once every 4 years for Good party instead of Bad (and starts with unlearning years of imperial indoctrination which, among many myths, asserts that the only form of valid political action happens at the voting box.)

Final things to get straight: so we cannot do precious democracy (aka biden is a failure so i will not give him my vote. which is the basics of the neoliberal democratic process, correct?) in order to prevent a HYPOTHETICAL loss of precious precious democracy next presidency? will we be able to do real democracy next election if we pwomise to vote for biden again, or will there conveniently be another "election of a lifetime"? How many "elections of our lifetime" should be tolerated if we're to maintain the guise of democracy?

If trump can TRULY become a dictator, that seems much more a condemnation of the political system that would allow him access to power, no? Who is going to be enforcing the fascism? Will the military be purged of anyone not a Trump supporter? Who will enforce that? Because as much as I hate handing it to anything U.S. military related, the last trump administration made it quite clear that most military personnel are status quo followers, which means there is not the concerted manpower eager & willing to do coup for Trump like he pretends to believe. Pretty sure last time the civilian "masses" of Trump-supporting christofascist foot soldiers tried to do anything, it was the most pathetic failcoup in history (and they even had the cops on their side!)

I'll even play the game for a minute & consider what Biden could do to wiggle the win. But given that he keeps going on television & spreading racist atrocity porn lies about Palestinian resistance, equates anti-genocide protesters to 1930s nazi germany, has DNC cronies routinely insult gen z voters by calling them dumb self-centered sheeple, called immigrants "illegals", and just 2 days ago claimed that Palestinians have an ancient desires to murder jews (& that's just from the top of my head from the last few months!) I'd say his shot of winning has never looked worse. Did us "moral purists" cause him to say those things? How much overt racism should be tolerated if your candidate seeks to maintain the guise of a progressive?

Are you prepared to look someone in the eye who has lost family from U.S. foreign policy that Joe "If there wasn't an israel we'd have to create an israel to protect u.s. interests in the region" Biden actively defends & maintains, who isn't voting for Biden because of these REAL MATERIAL TRAGEDIES they've experienced (instead hypothetical tragedies tomorrow that conveniently matter more because they affect you personally), and doesn't see the point in voting due to the duel genocide support of both parties, and tell that person that actually THEY'RE the one supporting fascism? Are you for real??

TLDR: Biden barely won the first time, and he has only lost voters from his parade of failures & supporting of genocide. If someone personally wants to vote for him & buys the delusion that it will matter, so what, no one cares, just do it quietly if you care to maintain a scrap of dignity. But blaming those who care about people & struggles other than their own is not helping your cause. When trump wins-- and believe me, i am not looking forward to it, if for no other reason than if blueanon's dystopia fetish becomes real I too will be thrown into the fagtrannydyke camps with people like OP & will have to hear their incessant whining about being right about it, which is worse torture than anything a nazi could come up with-- there will be no one to blame but BIDEN.

Gonna need yall to stop putting Biden is Just As Bad propaganda on my dash. Had to unfollow someone because I don’t want to a start a fight with them over it, but I’m about to bite the next person who puts that shit in front of me.

If you don’t like Biden, vote in your god damn local and mid term elections for third party or further left candidates so that we get better democratic candidates for future elections. But this one is already fucking decided, and I’m NOT ending up under a Trump led dictatorship because yall value protecting your personal sense of moral purity over the collective good. Whether it offends your personal morals to vote for Biden is IRRELEVANT in the face of the alternative.

This isn’t a lesser of two evils situation. One guy sucks. The other guy is LITERALLY PLANNING TO OVERTHROW OUR DEMOCRACY AND INSTALL HIMSELF AS A PUTIN STYLE DICTATOR.

PLEASE look up Project 2025 and stop acting like abstaining is some kind of personal ethical decision!

[caribouv]

i mean this in the nicest way possible: if you're surprised then you have no media literacy and you have no idea what life is like for americans. you need to get your news from somewhere else and read manufacturing consent immediately.

i've been screaming, from the top of my fucking lungs, SINCE FUCKING JULY, that if she runs a Clinton 2016 campaign of celebrity endorsement + Trump bad with ZERO kitchen table issues being promised/planned then SHE WILL LOSE.

i see people blaming voters. blaming latinos, blaming muslims, etc. "If you didn't vote I hate you." "If you voted Trump I hate you" blah blah blah shut the fuck up.

why is it always some random group and not the Democratic party? it's the fucking party's job to motivate people to vote for them and fucking lol you mean "BRAT Summer" didn't work????

THESE ARE THE SAME FUCKERS THAT TRIED TO RUN BIDEN AGAIN EVEN THOUGH HE WAS WANDERING AROUND LOOKING FOR THE MASHED POTATOES AT THE BUFFET.

the fact that these fuckers still have their jobs and are anywhere near a Democrat candidate after the disaster of 2016 is beyond the pale. i have nothing to offer other than fuck the Democrats and fuck anyone blaming anyone other than the Democrats.

with regards to Trump, foreign policy will be the same but the rhetoric will be different. Trump will enthusiastically support the genocide whereas Biden/Kamala would be "awww that's bad no stoppp oh btw here's another 8 billion."

Ukraine the same. If you think differently I again say in the nicest way possible: you have no media literacy. So many people have their brains rotted by bullshit Democratic talking points forgetting during the Trump admin that he tried to remove Putin's client state in Venezuela, tried to to bully Angela Merkel out of buying Russian natural gas, the thing that’s most important to the Russian economy, sold lethal arms to the Ukrainians, something Obama refused to do on the grounds that it would be provocative to Russia, bombed Putin's client state in Syria, etc. etc.

Domestically... we're so cooked domestically. i don't have the words to explain how bad it's going to get for people in shithole red states with no social safety net. quite literally everything that's not bolted to the ground will be carried off and sold.

[hopeful-infj]

I'll stand on this soapbox once, and only once, since the election is soon.

If you love war, crime, chaos, and poverty -- vote Harris!

If you love your fellow Americans and want a more free, more peaceful, more prosperous world -- vote Trump!

Donald Trump will...

Lower prices

Lower taxes

Negotiate an end to bloody (and preventable) wars

Fight rising crime

Seal the border and deport violent rapists, murderers, and sex/drug traffickers

Provide pathways to citizenship for people who want to contribute positively to the country

Bring back American energy independence

Cut useless bureaucracy and regulations

Strengthen the economy by saving manufacturing jobs and funding innovation

Provide school choice for all students (so that they aren't trapped in horrible public schools)

Address unethical farming & food manufacturing practices making American's sick

Create opportunities to support American greatness on the world stage.

Like it or not, Trump's voter block IS the unity party this time around.

Kamala Harris will...

Lead the world into more violence and hyper-inflation

Will weaken the productivity and self-sufficiency of our nation to protect itself

Her ambitions will destroy any chance at hope for prosperous conditions in this country

She will degrade and violate free speech and the second amendment rights of Americans (who need to defend themselves in high-crime areas and isolated areas)

She will steal more money (much more) from every working person's wages and every small business's income, killing jobs and hurting middle class families

Her administration will weaken our safety and defenses even more than they have been.

Her stated policies display spite, condescension, and blatant disregard for our culture, our constitution, our history, our economy, our children, our law enforcement, our sovereignty as a nation, rule of law, American minorities (yes, in many ways), and much more.

Furthermore, SHE SAID SHE WOULD DO NOTHING DIFFERENTLY THAN BIDEN. TWICE.

Kamala hates half the country; she's not good at hiding it. Trump does not. She lacks confidence, and all formidable enemies of freedom would use her as a doormat, as they have Biden. For better or worse, the world listens when Trump talks, and he's good at deterring bad actors from making big moves.

For all his faults, Trump loves the USA deeply (all of it except perhaps the hacks and liars in fake news media, lol) and he is competent to protect us from impending wars and economic ruin. By extension, the entire planet is better off. That's just the way it works. The world wouldn't have lost millions of souls to violence if the United States had been awake at the negotiation table -- untold numbers of Palestinians, Israelis, Ukrainians, and Russians are dead or permanently wounded because of the dereliction of the Biden Admin and, I repeat, Kamala says she'd do nothing differently (including surrendering the people of Afghanistan back to Taliban rule in a sudden and humiliating act of cowardice and incompetence.)

If you're a single-issue voter on abortion, Trump is not going to interfere with it. He merely released the issue from federal control. It is now a state-by-state issue and you can vote accordingly where you live. Most red states today have more liberal abortion laws than any nation in Europe (sad, but true).

If you hate my guts for posting this--even if you wish death on me--I wish you nothing but peace and blessings. I too held radical left beliefs at one time.

Don't be tricked like I was! Consider why those on the radical left can't tolerate a simple difference of opinion, and reevaluate whether everything they've told you about Trump and the right is true. Look into it for yourself. The left is not the side of love and light and progress and inclusivity that it pretends to be. It's the opposite, in fact. Its radicals represent a cult that loves death, hatred, division, chaos, lies, segregation, and tyrannical authority. It discards you if you deviate in any way from the party line.

Needless to say, I am proudly casting my vote for TRUMP 2024!!! And for the protection of your future and my children's future, I am humbly inviting you to do the same, just this once, even if you're a democrat.

[mshexley]

You can tell how many people just aren't understanding the gravity of how bad the Bush administration was because you would not fix your lips to claim anyone connected to that is "a person of integrity".

Between the woobifying of Bush as some innocent quirky old man and ppl happy that Dick Cheney endorsed K*mala, it's so clear that so many people do not understand why people hate the Bush admin to begin with.

And its that lack of side-eying K*mala's campaign that shows leftists that liberals and other members of Blue MAGA will let fascism continue to fester so long as its a democrat doing it. "Oh and its a black woman? Great! We can just call people racist whenever they criticize her policies just like how we called them ageist for criticizing Biden." You're clapping cause she can apparently break bread with republicans while crying, screaming, and begging ppl to vote for her because republicans are trying to take your rights away.

We have ppl dead ass saying a republican politician has more integrity than people who're saying "genocide bad and war profiteering is bad" without a shred of self-awareness.

"We're not going back"

But we are...to the Bush admin where Arabs and other Middle Eastern folks are the boogeymen trying to "destroy western democracy" and ruin of western comforts. Where hurricane victims receive a pittance but war machines get billions.

Hell, it's even Obama all over again where a bunch of people thinking slapping a picture of a black person over western imperialism is gonna fix everything.

[ventela1]

I’ve been genuinely struggling with this as we get further into war and closer to the next presidency.

Biden is responsible for many of the Palestinian deaths and I do not forgive him for that. But I also cannot kid myself into believing that Trump won’t do the same. The same guy who supports Putin over Ukraine is not going to take the correct side here.

So, assuming that they’re both going to lead our country in participating in genocide, what do I do? I guess I have to look at their track record in other things.

(I have seen people say this is prioritizing American lives over Palestinian ones. I disagree. Both of these options are going to harm Palestinians and we need to oppose that as much as possible. In the meantime, I also need to consider what will happen in my own country if my vote has any sway in it.)

When Trump was president my queer friends’ cars were vandalized with pro-Trump bigoted messages. My city had a parade of Trump flags and honking trucks going through it for an entire day, and my neighbor turned and asked “isn’t it wonderful?”. I knew people who had to seriously consider moving states. A man yelled at the woman in line in front of me for wearing a mask. We had a coup.

I saw a post recently say that Biden admin is “quiet fascism” and Trump is “loud fascism” and I agree that there’s fascism in both scenarios. But I preferred it when racists and homophobes didn’t feel so outright comfortable harassing my friends in public. They’re both awful and they’re both okay with committing acts that make me want to puke but as least under Biden the people in my own country are less likely to be victims of a hate crime and yes that’s an extremely low bar but when both your options are bad, the less bad still counts for something.

Then, there’s the Green Party. The “third option”.

Man, I want to vote that third option so badly. But in the past I have voted “blue no matter who” because Green Party just doesn’t win. In the past I have watched third party voters split the vote away from Democrats and that’s part of how we got Trump in 2016. If I could get a better idea of how many people are serious about voting for a third option I would feel a lot more comfortable joining in and less like I’m throwing my vote away.

If anyone has some genuine advice on this I welcome it. I’m not posting this as a “do as I say”, I’m asking for opinions. Because I want to help. And I don’t believe not voting helps. But I have no idea who to vote for at this point except not Trump.

Who is helped in this scenario?

More to the point: how will your one issue improve under Trump?

[automatismoateo]

People are staying silent on the middle eastern conflict not because they are tired of it. It's because they don't want to be threatened and lose their career over it. via /r/atheism

People are staying silent on the middle eastern conflict not because they are tired of it. It's because they don't want to be threatened and lose their career over it. Many people I know, including myself, have given up talking about the current Israel-Hamas war especially on social media because for some reason, being for one side over the other is literally costing people their jobs. Or in some cases receiving death threats (Mainly from the pro-Palestinian side, let's be real here). It has nothing to do with exhaustion as another person said in another thread. As a comment on another reddit thread stated, the major problem with the Israel-Hamas war is that for many its seen as a religious war. Unlike the Russia-Ukraine war which has a clear good guy bad guy dynamic, you cannot seem to take a side on this one without some butthurt a-hole accusing you of being either an anti-semite or an islamaphobe. There are people that have taken a side on social media and three days later reported that their job fired them because an outsider got "offended" and successfully used the "let's get this person fired from their job" as a disagreement tactic. When others see that, they decide to stay silent on the topic all together. It's not just exhaustion. When people stay silent, it causes others to think they have the green light to do shitty things. Like the Biden admin being reported to make the US open to accepting Gaza-region Palestinians. I'm all for refugees being able to escape a bad situation. But is a a good idea to bring in people who have been radicalized to the point of no return by a terrorist group LARP'ing as a government body for close to 30 years? I don't think so. Submitted May 02, 2024 at 04:26PM by HEMIfan17 (From Reddit https://ift.tt/u8HUzX5)

[lindajenni]

week in review - headlines

"behold, I come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me." psa 40:7

‘Nonhuman’ remains recovered from UFO, whistleblower says WYFF News 4, David Grusch, who formerly served as a U.S. intelligence official, testified under oath concerning what he described as a “multi-decade” retrieval program for unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). Grusch’s testimony even included information about the retrieval of “biologics” from a UFO crash.

Top 7 Ways the Democrats in D.C. plan on REDUCING the POPULATION Yes, the Vice President of the United States of America just said the “quiet part” out loud live on television for the whole world to hear, and try to digest…the Democrats in Washington DC to end all use of fossil fuels by investing in “clean energy and electric vehicles,” and also, wait for it… to reduce the population. You cannot make this stuff up,

UFOs are an ‘open secret’ in the military: Whistleblowers to tell Congress TOMORROW that pilots are seeing unidentified craft all the time and share near-miss encounter with ‘dark gray cube inside of a clear sphere’ Unidentified flying objects are being seen so often they are an ‘open secret’ among US fighter pilots, whistleblowers will tell Congress tomorrow.

Pope Francis Says Alcoholics, Autistic and Disabled People Should Be Euthanized To ‘Fight Climate Change’ Pope Francis has thrown his weight behind the World Economics Forum’s campaign to euthanize people with autism, alcoholism and other minor illnesses and disabilities to help humanity fight so-called “climate change.”

Storm devastates Washington as Biden admin. plans for Israel to concede land One of the worst storms in decades ripped through Washington DC, over the weekend, leaving devastation in its path. The storm comes as the Biden administration announced negotiations with Saudi Arabia that would require Israel to make massive concessions in land to the Palestinians. While the two seem unconnected, students of history know that milestones in the “land for peace” process have always been accompanied by natural disasters.

Transhumanism: Globalists Promise To ‘Improve’ On God’s Design Of Man It sounds like bad science fiction, but it is rapidly becoming reality. Some of the most powerful people on the planet think they are going to “upgrade” human beings — or at least some human beings — through genetic engineering and technological schemes such as “brain implants.” Yes, really. In fact, they are publicly touting alleged benefits, supposedly including eternal life, and even evolving into “gods.” If that all sounds crazy or even diabolical — good, it should, because it is.

Dividing Israel into two? Author who fictionalized scenario years ago discusses movement to do exactly that Author Gila Green, whose 2013 novel was based on a fictional division of the State of Israel into two separate entities – one religous and one secular – discussed with World Israel News the uncanny situation now, in which some activists are promoting exactly that.

One in Three Human Trafficking Victims are Children in Italy: A report from Save the Children has found that one out of every three victims of human trafficking in Italy are children, with many being forced into the fields for gruelling farming work and others being sold into sexual slavery.

Contrary to the Natural Order: Scientists Successfully Genetically Engineer Invasive Female Fruit Flies to Reproduce Without Males Scientists have successfully genetically engineered invasive female fruit flies to reproduce without the need for males.

Japanese Man Who Identifies as a Dog, Takes First Public Stroll After $16,000 Transformation, Forms Bonds with Other Canines A Japanese man, who goes by his dog alter ego “Toco,” took his first public stroll since his $16,000 transformation into a rough collie.

Taxpayer Funded “Queer” Middle School Built On Shifting Sands Of Lies Have you ever watched a horror movie where the “bad people” prepared an innocent looking place that was meant to ensnare kids? Then as a group of kids were about to enter, you found yourself saying out loud, “don’t do it, don’t do it.” That scenario is about to take place in Arizona. Next month, using taxpayer funded vouchers, a “queer” middle school is about to open up for LGBTQ students.

Beattie: While Russia and China ban all transvestite activity, bloodthirsty US trans generals are leading us into war… As our country descends into a wasteland of twisted sexual perversion, mental illness, and child mutilation, countries like China and Russia are taking a completely different approach.

Twelve undeniable signs globalists are engineering the end of humanity It’s no longer taboo to publicly talk about depopulation. Even many who once dismissed the concept as a conspiracy theory are now publicly acknowledging the reality that global efforts are under way to drastically reduce the human population on planet Earth.

We Are Right On The Cusp Of Going Completely Cashless As Our Global Society Shifts Into Complete Dependence On Virtual Currency And Transactions We are the generation that will see a cashless society, the Pretribulation Rapture and the Mark of the Beast. It’s all coming, and Elon Musk is helping to bring it in.

Boy Scout Leaders Invited LGBTQ Advocates To Its National Jamboree Camp The Boy Scouts of America scouting organization invited “LGBTQ” advocacy to its national jamboree camp in West Virginia last month.

Euthanasia Clinics Are Being Inundated With Transgenders Who Regret Their Surgeries Euthanasia clinics are reporting a massive uptick in referrals for transgender patients who deeply regret undergoing their sex-change surgeries.

The Grotesque Experiments Scientists Are Conducting On Human Cells Are Absolutely Sickening …mad scientists all over the globe are running wild. In fact, some of them are now conducting extremely grotesque experiments on human cells that are absolutely sickening. For example, one team of scientists in Australia just received a giant pile of money so that they can continue to monkey around with ways of “merging human brain cells with artificial intelligence”…

Staggering Degree Of Biblical Illiteracy: Poll Finds Fewer and Fewer Americans Believe in Hell and the Devil It may not be surprising fewer and fewer people believe in God, angels, heaven, hell, and the devil. The recent poll finds they are down to new lows.

10 Signs That We Really Are Living In Apocalyptic Times Time is running out for humanity…On a very basic level, most people can feel that global events are starting to spiral out of control. Evil is growing all around us, and just about everything that our leaders do to solve our rapidly growing problems seems to make them even worse.

Police: Kentucky Mother Arrested After Toddler Dies of Sexual Abuse Authorities arrested a Kentucky mother after a 17-month-old toddler died of severe sexual abuse injuries.

Soon the USA will be under medical Marshal Law imposed by the WHO organization! ebola + small pox will run rampant through America In March of 2021, the new CDC Director stated that she had a feeling of impending doom. What did she mean? Everyone assumed that she was talking about CV-19.

[saintcheryl]

I HAVE BEEN SENT BY COMMUNISTMISHACOLLINS FOR YOUR INFO TO ASSIST OUR RAGING AGAINST RICH WHITE MEN. FEEL FREE TO VENT AND I WILL CHEER YOU ON FROM OVER HERE

OH BOY. OKAY. yes i listened to the whole podcast

let me preface this by saying.....i want to like this guy so bad. within reason like i usually tune out his lukewarm liberal takes like, thats 2 b expected, but some things in this podcast PISSSSSSSSED ME OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

the biggest thing was just......jerking joe biden the FUCK off. just, minutes of talking about how great joe biden is. described as "someone we can trust" and he said biden is "someone with integrity" multiple times, and he and alyssa talked about how they feel like things r better now bc trump is out of office and like. that is the number one way to piss me off!!!!!! biden is not really that much better he goes back on all the shit he says and so many terrible awful disgusting problems from trump admin are still problems because....guess what.........it wasnt just bc of trump hes just the guy who made a lot of shit worse or brought it to the forefront of the Political Discourse but like! kids r still in cages and now every lib who defended biden is justifying it. et cetera. not to mention biden is A RAPIST????????

and the FUCKING THING that got me too. the FUCKING thing. was alyssa was talking about the metoo movement and her experiences with assault and how awful and traumatic it felt when it wasn't handled well. and then they go RIGHT INTO RIDING BIDEN'S DICK!!!!!!!!!!!! they go SO hard on it its honestly fucking hilarious how deeply and intensely and reverently they praise this man in this podcast. yes, let's discuss how assault is bad and terrible, now let's go praise the rapist. woo!

honestly id get it if like. misha (and other liberal activist celebs etc) just like.....tolerated biden. were like, ok sure we got this guy, he's not great but it's something, we will do what we can. i get that! but to place so much emphasis on how we can trust him and how he has integrity and how everything feels better now? NO!!!!!!! we can NEVER trust politicians because if we do they do more fuck shit and get away with it!!!!!!!!!! and the "wow everything feels better now that we have biden in office, i don't have to think about the president and all the bad shit all the time now haha!" maybe YOU don't have to think about it. but most people you claim to want to help do still have to think about it. most people you claim to want to help are still living with the same conditions and the president is doing nothing to help in any substantial way. nothing has changed for a lot of people! and now others are even more complicit bc they fall back on "oh trump's not in office anymore so things r better" NO!!!!!!!!!!

like. misha is still doing political work i'm not saying he isn't, but the way he's going about it while praising the administration feels........gross and bad? i am not an expert by any means but like. it feels bad that he's got this reputation of being a Paragon Of Wokeness and being a Big Leftist Activist when he's like......very centrist nationalist liberal "the government can be fixed" which is. not left lmfao. it doesn't mean much. and excessively praising biden and saying things about him that are just......clearly and provably incorrect? dmitri i have some Words for you

i often see ppl saying "well at least hes doing more than other celebrities" like yes! he is, indeed! like i said he's done some cool stuff, he's making some impact and that's good. i do NOT want to write that off whatsoever. but idk like.....with say, jackles, i dont expect shit from him. jackles could say a lukewarm lib take and id be like ah, of course, i am not bothered by this. but from misha it's disappointing bc he tries to be a political activist and is actively involved in things and my god do i want to like him. it's BECAUSE i like him that this stuff upsets me!!!!!!!! and it's because i like him that i think ppl gotta be conscious and constructively critical of ppl and what they say. if someones defending everything he says just bc he's Misha Collins thats not at all a healthy way of engaging w ppl in the public eye. im not saying bully him please god dont do that, i wouldnt even say this stuff To him bc i know it wouldnt do shit, but i like havin it out there so other ppl and fans of him can think about it and be aware of it. pobody's nerfect, sometimes ur fav is a democrat

i don't wanna discount the things misha does do, he does a lot of good shit! but like.........some things i cannot forgive or ignore and like. tldr this podcast left an awful taste in my mouth and it feels like at best he's incredibly out of touch with what struggling people in #ThisCountry actually need, and the way he talks about biden and american politics in general just feels very irresponsible and counterproductive

they talked about some other stuff too but thats mostly what i retained lmfao

[implausiblyjosh]

Another aspect of the frustration is that the vibe seems to be that the campaign rests on the voters shoulders. Not that the election rests on the voters shoulders, but campaigning rests on the voters shoulders.

The reason we see posts that are like “Democrats want amnesty and ease to citizenship for just about anyone who crosses”, a thing that is categorically and fundamentally wrong about the Biden administration, is because the Biden admin isn't even putting out a coherent campaign. They're not running on accomplishments, they're running on "I am not Trump", a winning strategy that definitely won in 2016. They're not running on accomplishments, they're running on "Save democracy... again!", a sentiment that fall apart when you see Trump getting well wishes after getting an ear grazed. They're running on "at least I'm not the other guy", which provides no real incentive to vote when you are on the wrong side (and the same side as Trump!) on so many issues.

So when other voters and politically active individuals are like "damn, this dude has done a lot of bad things, and seemingly doesn't seem to be willing to do much about this Trump guy", and you think that Biden is the better option, you feel like you have to campaign for him. And, I'm sorry to say, I think this current strategy of overstating or outright lying about the administration such that anyone on your side who has been paying attention is like "hey, that's incorrect" is not a winning strategy.

Additionally, there's this unwillingness to see "I will not vote for you unless you get better on XYZ issue" as a solid strategy. It's clear what will win a lot of voters is to stop supporting the genocide of Palestinians. It's clear that if he was better on this issue that a lot of voters would be willing to hold their nose (again, mind you!) and vote for him. And they're saying this! People have been saying this! That's the whole point of pointing out that he's Genocide Joe. You know what would stop that from happening? If he stopped supporting a genocide!

It all congeals into this horrid energy. People are doing bad campaign work, because the campaign itself doesn't seem to want to do the work, and talking down to people who refuse to support a genocide all while outright lying about the accomplishments of the Biden administration. And then people who are largely on the same side will see these exaggerations and distortions and be like "okay, well I know that's wrong, so can I trust the rest of this?", and can you blame them?

I dunno. Still frustrating to see!

Sometimes I look at politics posts on here, even ones where I largely agree with the points, and I see something where I’m just so shocked that someone could live in such an unreality.

“Democrats will continue to stay home because the last president didn’t accomplish 100% of their goals” simply not true! Just looking at between 2000 and now, Democrats won the popular vote in 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2000. They turned up, they voted! The electoral college made that turnout meaningless in 2016, but besides the systemic issues of how disenfranchised voters are due to the nature of primaries (think on the concept of Super Tuesday for a moment!) and the electoral college, it’s safe to lay some of that blame at the feet of, say, the people who didn’t campaign very well in 2016. When you look at the reality of the situation in the past (an awful candidate who did bad campaigning who got the popular vote and still managed to lose) and the present situation (voters trying desperately for the Democrats to push for Biden not to run again so they don’t lose in November), it’s hard to blame the voters for issues that are very clearly issues of the administrations or campaigns.

“Democrats want amnesty and ease to citizenship for just about anyone who crosses” he reinstated denials to asylum seekers who cross illegally. While it’s a bit unfair to criticize a post from late 2023 for something done in June 2024, on the campaign trail in 2019 Biden told an immigration activist to vote for Trump because he was pushed on Obama era immigration policies. “Kids in cages” was happening in Feb 2021, as a “migrant facility for children” opened up during that time, notably a period of time during the Biden administration.

You don’t have to say these things that make no sense in order to push your argument that the Biden administration is better or has done good. It’s way more honest to either leave the made up points in the drafts or just acknowledge the bad with the good. It’s that simple, especially when you’ve already conceded that he “didn’t accomplish 100% of their goals”! Just make it clear what didn’t get accomplished and talk about what did. A simple “I know his stance on XYZ is bad, and I get it, but he has done ABC” is so much better than “his stance on XYZ is good and he’s also done ABC”, because anyone who knows about XYZ will now doubt the claims about ABC if you say the second thing.

It’s frustrating to see!!!