#PR system elections

[chaseprice]

getting increasingly annoyed at the Online i may need to log off

[lawofcollage]

From a Campaign Perspective: Why Endorsing Kamala Harris Makes the Most Sense

Yay, Biden stepped back! (if this is how you found out and not the supernatural alert system meme... oops)

Let's talk about why Kamala Harris makes the most sense even if she, like Biden, is not one of our first choices (though she's higher on my list, certainly)

(My credentials: Former campaign worker, poli sci degree, etc)

It'd be really fucked up for him to step back and cause a PR disaster for the Dems. Kamala Harris has been at his side this whole time. Stepping over her, a woman of color who has already been doing much of the work, would cause a public relations crisis.

Kamala Harris has name recognition. We know who she is, and we at least vaguely know what she stands for. Name recognition is hugely important in an election and we do not have enough time to build it right now. This is not the time to pick someone that we've never heard of before or even vaguely never heard of.

She's run a campaign before. She knows how to do this, she has a platform that she can modify a little as needed and be ready to go over night. She has the donors from last time and everything.

She's already got a campaign schedule for Biden, she can modify that easily to suit her own needs and has more freedom to campaign than the current president because she's *not* the current president, she doesn't have COVID right now, and she's not older than dirt.

She is perfectly capable of making Trump look like a fucking idiot on stage. The highlight reel is gonna look so much better next time, hopefully.

Personal speculation: I think people are far less likely to sit it out with her name at the top of the ticket.

So what should you be doing right now?

Let's start simple. Understand that Biden did what many of us wanted right here. He stepped away from the campaign he was running and handed it off to someone younger. Fuck yeah!

Also remember that anyone who encourages you not to vote likely has an alternative agenda that involves you having less power to use your voice.

Ok, what else?

Check your voter registration here.

Not registered? You’ve moved and it’s out of date? Update your voter registration/registration here.

Don’t forget to vote up and down the ballot! Local elections matter, and hopefully you’ll find someone you’re a lot more passionate about on a local level.

And make sure your friends do the same!!!!

This website also covers what you may need to bring with you the day of. Some states require you to bring your ID, for example, so go check.Your state may have early voting options, and you should definitely use those! They make life a lot easier. You can check those out here.

P.S. Make sure to check your voter registration closer to the election as well, just in case. Probably sometime in September would be best, but just keep an eye out.

[sophie-frm-mars]

The Cass Review, and what we can do about it

The UK government is making decisive moves toward banning trans healthcare outright. The NHS says it is adjusting its policies to be in line with the "cass report", a pseudoscientific report written by a transphobe that goes as far as to claim that little boys playing with trucks and little girls playing with dolls is biological, and which disregards dozens of scientifically sound previous studies into HRT and trans healthcare in order to reach its conclusions that trans healthcare for under 25s should be radically changed to discourage transition at every turn and make it as hard as possible for young people to transition.

These moves will kill countless young trans people. I would not have made it to 25 if healthcare wasn't available and I know so many other trans people wouldn't have either.

The mainstream reporting in the UK is keeping itself ideologically cohesive by claiming that trans people exist, nobody hates them, and they're very rare, and the big problem is the explosion of new cases of not-really-trans people who are clogging up the system (this is a lie, the system has been intentionally slowed by malicious neglect, it isn't even a resource issue, the clinics have far more capacity than the number of patients who are let through)

Once again, this is genocidal and is actually a commonplace methodology of genocide. The nazis asked GRT people to help them understand which Traveller families were "real" travellers and which were the fake ones, since they insisted it was only the fake ones who were the problem and who had to be exterminated (because a lot of nazi GRT policy was based on American indigenous reservation policy).

Labour, the main opposiiton party in the UK, has announced it will "follow the Cass Report", and implement these restrictions on trans healthcare once in government.

For the survival of young trans people, robust community structures must be developed immediately.

Efforts to change the electoral situation will proceed at a snail's pace and will be entirely at the whims of what is politically expedient. It will turn around, but it will take a long time. At the voting level, everyone in the UK who cares about trans people needs to make it clear that they won't vote for Labour unless they reverse position on this, and to be clear about this: Labour will not listen. They are PR Brained Psychopaths and they don't want to get into this "controversial" issue in a way that might cost them further popularity and the easy election win.

Wes Streeting, inhuman lab experiment and Labour Shadow Health Secretary has said that activists need to "stop protesting to ask us to be better opposition and start protesting to ask us to be better government", in other words their electoral promises are cynical reactionary bargains and deals to get them into power and the only point at which they will change anything is once they are in government, if at all. I know this sounds very "push Biden left" but I'm not saying give up now - to repeat, everyone who cares about trans people in the UK should tell Labour to get fucked right away, and then keep doing it as loudly as possible, but it's just not going to change until after the general election at least.

Another way to help could be through legal routes, like the work that The Good Law Project has been doing for trans people for several years now, but I don't know enough about the law to know if it can be used to challenge this at all.

We have to accept there is no electoral solution right now to this genocidal campaign against trans people in the UK, and while those efforts are ongoing trans people and cis allies need to fucking organise. Trans exclusive / separatist organising is riddled with issues, I don't want to cast hopelessness around but there are really very few of us and while it's absolutely necessary to privilege trans voices in trans organising and give us the deciding power and the autonomy, we need to utilise the support and time and labour of every cis person who is willing to help in whatever way they can.

Robust community structures means community structures that are helping young trans people get healthcare as an absolute basic starting point, but it means a lot more than that besides. We need community structures that are consciously organised by people who are taking responsibility for the community roles they are in and being completely explicit with each other about the nature and function of their organising. We need HRT community resources so young trans people can survive this medical segregation, we need drug user harm reduction spaces so that what people turn to in despair doesn't kill them, we need sober spaces so that people can get away from unhealthy coping responses, we need conflict resolution structures so that our problems are dealt with privately and nobody is left completely isolated, but more than any of those things, and in order to have all of those things, we desperately need trans assemblies

Assemblies are how we will get a community of robust radical organisers, because only by repeatedly practicing the ongoing process of democracy can people learn how to do it in a way that will facilitate their own organising. We have to empower the whole community to answer our own questions, come up with solutions, organise people into structures to enact those solutions and then do them. All this means is that an open door event convenes frequently (at least fortnightly) to discuss what is happening in the community. Trans people get the mic for allotted time, and discuss the issues, and then whatever voting structure the assembly uses facilitates further discussion, for example through working groups - the assembly breaks into smaller groups to discuss the topic and then representatives report the outcomes of those discussions back and consensus is reached from what the representatives report.

We have to get people engaging in this process because in order to effectively combat this situation trans people must agree on the solutions and then tell cis allies how to help and so far we haven't been doing that. We really really haven't been. But we could be with a little work. And as I'm saying, doing this will also empower everyone in the community to organise toward specific solutions for specific issues like HRT provision, sober spaces, housing, food, etc.

fuck

I'll have more to add to this post later I have to get to therapy I just got really mad when I saw the news this morning

[reasonsforhope]

Btw, if anyone cares to know, my position on Biden and the 2024 election is this:

Starting September* 1, 2024, I will be doing whatever I can to make sure that Trump does not get a second term as president

Until that day, I'm going to be doing whatever I can to push for an end to the genocide in Gaza and an immediate ceasefire, and that includes criticizing, protesting, and lambasting Biden for funding and providing weapons for Israel's genocide

ETA: I will still be posting about significant good things the Biden administration has done, though, because some of it is a really big deal that people deserve to know about

ETA: But I will not be defending Biden from any criticism around Palestine/Israel/war crimes

*This originally said October 1st but someone pointed out to me that there are a few states where early voting starts in late September, including a couple swing states, so I changed it because that's a very good point

I don't plan to tell anyone not to vote for Biden in the meantime, myself, because shitty two party system and I'm really serious about Trump not getting reelected

But I'm also not going to do anything to discourage people who are seriously rallying against Biden, because he is, you know, literally bypassing Congress to make sure he can fund crimes against humanity

I never want to diminish that reality.

And more than that: If we want genocide to actually be a dealbreaker for politicians and presidents... then we need to start acting like it could be.

--

Details/related thoughts:

I will still be posting about good things Biden and his administration are doing, because they are the ones running the US government and Congress is super deadlocked, so a lot of the national-level good news in the US has been done by his administration, and I'm not going to stop posting about that good news

Shout-out to the anon who accused me of being a US government propagandist with a whole PR team bc I posted about Biden a few days in a row. I promise you I'm blogging from my bed in my pjs and do not have a PR team lol

Also, for people who don't think we should be spreading serious criticism about Biden, for fear of Trump winning in 2024: I hear you--that's an incredibly valid fear. I've struggled with that myself, in the process of coming to this(/these) decision(s). But consider this: it's better that we really pile on the criticism and pressure now, because a) people are dying, and b) Biden's chances will be much worse if Israel is still bombing/decimating Gaza on election day

Relatedly, for anyone who's tempted to think Trump would be better when it comes to the Gaza genocide, again, it's really understandable to want to put your hope in any viable alternative. However, I promise you that is not going to happen. Joe Biden at least conditionally gives a couple shits about human life. Trump doesn't. Remember Trump's Muslim ban? In all likelihood, Trump would just tell Israel to bomb Gaza harder and ban Palestinian refugees from entering the US

Last thing on Trump: maybe this is naive of me, but for a lot of reasons, I'm not actually particularly worried about Trump winning in 2024. If I was, I might have made some different calls here. I have a few asks about this in my inbox and will probably make a post at some point about the reasons why, but yeah, Democrats have mostly been wanting to run against Trump instead of DeSantis or Haley or whoever for some very real reasons

You're welcome to disagree with me/this post in any direction, btw

Seriously, I'm just a random person who doesn't speak for anyone besides myself and my own blog. I'm not saying these are categorically the right answers, or that any of this is what everyone should be doing. This is simply the system I have settled on (right now) for how I personally want to handle all of this

You're welcome to disagree with me but please don't send me any angry asks about any of it. Not that I in any way get a lot of those, thankfully! But yeah, this isn't something I'm interested in debating, this is mostly for notification/explanation purposes

[apas-95]

I'm scared of my Syrian parents being deported if Trump wins, but I also care about Palestinian lives…................ What should I do?

I sympathise with your fear, but the democrats are not meaningfully more friendly to immigrants than the republicans. The democrats just have better PR - all the camps and cages at the border are still up, Harris herself on immigration says 'Do not come.', and ultimately both parties are beholden to the same economic interests, and are both vying to control a system dependent on the exploitation of immigrant labour. Moreso, whoever wins the upcoming election is going to be whoever spent the most money on their campaign, and no amount of grassroots voter-encouragement will change that. You live under a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which means the ruling class all have shared interests against you, and that you do not actually have meaningful political power even to decide *which* bourgeois will rule over you.

This response, of, in the face of genocide, still feeling you need to advocate for the government and even political party carrying out the genocide, to ensure they remain in power, and not fight them, is exactly what these systems are meant to engender in you.

Ultimately, if we want to defeat imperialism as a whole, then that does necessarily entail that our 'own' imperialists will suffer defeats in their competition with other imperialists. It is of paramount importance that we realise that one or the other imperialist are equally our enemy, and convert the competition between imperialists into a conflict of the people against imperialism.

[slyandthefamilybook]

they're not dismissed because they live in "the bad country" they're dismissed because any solution they might pose, for the vast majority of them at least, will fundamentally involve preserving the state apparatus of israel, which is an inherently oppressive force. the two state solution is not justice. don't twist this into a call for the murder of the israeli population. that is explicitly not the goal. it is a demand to dismantle the fucking government system of a settler state that has spent 75 years committing genocide. if your leftism was worth anything you would believe that israel should be abolished. if you don't, your allyship is shallow and will only lead to electing people who will still do genocide, but with better pr so you can go back to ignoring it. if you really give a shit, genuinely ask yourself if the solution you have in mind would actually stop the genocide of Palestinian people, or if it would just slow it down a little, and answer the question honestly. if you can't do that, fuck off

HA

I predicted this. I saved this to my drafts 3 days ago

here's that response

there are a lot of people who seem to think that peace would be bad because it would involve Palestinians cooperating with the Israeli government. They believe the government should be spurned at every moment. Any action taken by the Israeli government is inherently one-sided and therefore it's categorically impossible to reach an agreement that's mutually beneficial and respects the dignity and autonomy of Palestinians

I hear this a lot in discussion of the UN Partition Plans. "Oh, so you want victims of violence to just roll over for their oppressors? You can't just steal someone's land and then offer it back to them!" To which my response is always "this is better?". Can you honestly look me in the eye and say that whatever lopsided colonial apartheid agreement you're imagining would've been made in 1948 would've been worse than the situation we have now?

It displays a really limited understanding of how geopolitics works. Countries aren't just a government and a set of borders. A country is also a people and a mechanism through which that people can interact with other peoples. You can't just point at a country and say "they're doing bad things, we should get rid of them". That's how America has functioned for the past 150 years and I thought we all decided that was bad. Dismantling a country doesn't solve your problems, it just creates new ones. "Burn it all down and start over" won't bring back the dead. It won't honor their deaths or make them any more worthwhile

Every time Hamas attacks Israel, Israel gets stronger. The right thrives off of conflict. It's why they don't want to give people free healthcare. When people suffer, it strengthens their positions. Every time Israel is attacked it generates more support for the military, in the people and in the Knesset. The IDF gets more soldiers, more rifles, more tanks. It drives the Overton Window further to the right. The Israeli government starts borrowing more money from the US, starts getting sent more foreign aid, further entrenching their economic dependency. The only reason Netanyahu has stayed in power for so long is because Israel keeps getting attacked. Israel gets hundreds of millions in military aid from the US, a country that has made killing people a science. You're not going to defeat them in open battle. People have been trying for 75 years with no success

I dislike the Israeli state as much as I dislike every state (which is a not-insignificant amount). But I also understand that states are massive webs of economy, policy, international trade, and agreements and treaties. If every member of the Israeli government stepped down tomorrow with no plan, the country would be thrown into chaos and millions would die. You can't say you want to destroy the apparatus of a country that is currently at war, while also claiming you want its citizens to be safe. That's not how that works. You claim that the majority of Israeli leftists want a two-state solution (something I don't believe I've ever said I support), but if that the case you don't have to throw your weight behind those people! There are also leftists who want anarchism, and a no-state solution. There's a vast diversity of thought and pretending that there isn't doesn't help anyone

I notice that in your decrial of people who are actually trying to help, you don't offer an alternative solution. You say you want to dismantle the Israeli state, but how do you plan to do that? I assume from your tone that you're not yourself Israeli, so how do you plan to affect change? You can pressure whoever is the leader of your country to stop sending aid to Israel, but Israel has a domestic economy as well. The worst you'll do is send them into a depression. And if you are somehow successful in cutting of Israel at the windpipe, what will you do when people begin to starve? When people are kicked to the curb because they lost their job? Will you be proud of yourself for sending 9.5 million people into a humanitarian crisis? Does your plan to end suffering involve making other people suffer instead?

We live in a statist world. As much as you or I dislike it, that's the reality we have. You can aspire to a better system, you can set your sights on a world in which there are no states, no governments, no militaries, and no borders. But you can't work within that framework before it's applicable. You can't eat raw cookie dough because you want it to eventually become a cookie. Liberalism won't save us, but it might stop the bleeding

[sgiandubh]

Sunday sounds - there is something about Europe

Today, there's something about Europe, on this page. Since Thursday (with the Dutch) and until tonight, it's Vote Day for the EU Parliament, and also local elections in my country.

EU's official anthem is Beethoven's Ode to Joy since 1985, and how could it be otherwise, after the terrible Jahr Null/Year Zero great reset, in the wake of the Allied Victory in World War II? It was chosen to convey a strong message about transcontinental reconciliation and hope for a still captive Eastern Bloc. As such, it is played along our national anthems at each and every National Day reception organized by a Member State and at each and every big protocol function. Sometimes, sounds do tell more about a collective will and way, than politicians or newspapers.

The EU not yet federal, but supranational system is often criticized by the citizens. It is perceived as arcane and removed from their daily life and reality. As a decent connoisseur of the BTS side of things, for more than twenty years, I can honestly say it is half earned and half the result of consistently ineffective, even imbecile PR. But as we are further exposed to the war in Ukraine, the raise of Fascism and the global tensions of this very peculiar year, people went to vote since the early morning hours, on a very hot, early summer day. Nothing better than fear to raise awareness.

There is power in numbers, as the annual performance of Beethoven's Ninth, featuring 10.000 volunteer Japanese chorists, shows us:

[if you want to know more about this extraordinary, powerful and poetic project, here is a short Deutsche Welle documentary: https://youtu.be/VjQNV9u1hzI?si=I566Mrwm1QlCE6M2 ]

I am on my way to the polling station. How about you, fellow Europeans?

[eugenedebs1920]

When we look back at dictatorships, whether in fascist regimes, communist states, autocratic rule, and totalitarianism, ect. the philosophy’s don’t have all that much in common. One thing they do have in common is a “great leader” or an “emperor”, and more so nowadays a “strongman” who lords over the population with ”an iron fist”, a fancy way of saying they oppress thier people.

Let’s look at WWII. What did Germany’s leader (I heard we weren’t supposed to use the H word but you know who I’m referring to) and the emperor of Japan share in similarities? Not much, if anything at all. After Pearl Harbor America declared war with Japan and as a result of the treaty between Japan and Germany, Germany declared war with America (DUMB!!). What did germanys leader and the emperor of Japan have in common? Did they share any common ground other than the leader was almighty and the subjects were expendable? No. What they had in common is their oppressive rule and the fact that the free countries condemned their style of governance. So whether you have any similarities or not, as an oppressive regime, your only allies are other oppressive regimes. The idiom, your enemies, enemy, is your friend.

Fast forward to now and we don’t have the same style of fascism and dictatorships, in the more developed countries, as back then. Hence it’s not the same kind of harsh oppressive system. More of a soft autocracy. Orban in Hungary and Erdogan in Turkey are a prime example of the “soft autocracy”. Russia is an authoritarian state. Their sham government is a front for the pleasing of the world but, Putin rules Russia as a dictator.

The last thing these authoritarians want is their people to get any wild ideas of individual freedom and liberty. We did screw Russia over good after WWII, and I promise they didn’t forget, but beyond that, they want any democracy to fail. They don’t want their people to see that it is possible to have a thriving free nation. Who is the most power, wealthiest, freest nation on the planet? The United States of America.

China, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, North Korea, they would LOVE to see us destroy ourselves. All that they can do without invoking a military conflict, they will to undermine us, make us seem as if our system of government is feeble, flawed, corrupted, they will, and are. They want to rule over their citizens with fear and divisiveness. Making the population too scared to rise up against them.

This is why, in particular, Russia has been caught meddling in elections all throughout Europe and here in America. It is also why it’s so troubling that Republicans, and Trump in particular, are so keen on people such as Orban and not willing to help a democracy like Ukraine. Trump and Putin being “friends” is not a good thing. Trump is the easiest person to manipulate! All you have to do is complement him or offer him money and he’ll do whatever you want. Orban is an authoritarian! Why is he going and having private meetings with Trump directly after he met with Putin. This isn’t a Sherlock Holmes mystery here! It’s pretty damn easy to see!

Long story shorter than it could be. Russia will be putting out all kinds of misinformation and deepfakes, false stories and made up articles. Check the source! Despite what Trump says, because he only says it due to them being critical of him and covering him appropriately, the established sources, your NBC’s, CBS, ABC, CNN, Washington Post, NY Times, ect. these are credible sources. Are they corporate money making organizations? Yes. Does the press situation in this country need an overhaul? Yes. But these aren’t fake news (I had to laugh while typing that because that’s LITERALLY what Trump calls them) their flawed news but they aren’t social media deepfake, made up, complete fabrications to throw our democracy into turmoil. They will tell you the story as it is happening. The first step in autocratic rule is to limit information to what suits your narrative. Thats why Trump calls them fake. I can’t believe I’m sticking up for the media so much right now but , for reals!…

Check your sources. Know that their is forces that want to see us fail. Want us to be angry and rioting and questioning if democracy works. It does. Trump is a Russian asset, that’s why all this nonsense is amplified the way it is. In 248 years, 60 presidential elections, only the three involving Trump has this whole fraud, stolen election, noncitizen voting bullsh*t ever came up. Just Trump being a traitor. Don’t let the country’s most notorious conman con ya.

[sageandred]

Today, I saw someone say "I do not want that genocide on my conscience" in regards to voting Democrat or Republican, and opting for a third party in place. I ask you, do you want stripped rights of American minorities on your hands or innocent children's lives due to gun violence and no efforts to reform? Because that's what this is! For the love of god, I do not understand the take of fighting for a better outcome and aiming for world peace when the unlikelihood of a third party is evident as history has shown. We live in a democracy (supposedly), but we live under a system, regardless. It's Democrat or Republican; it's Democrat or Trump, now; it's Democrat or fascist. I'm not arguing that Kamala is perfect or parts of where she focusses her attention in policies won't disappoint; that's of the reality with anyone that gets in office; that's every politician. The goal has never been vote the "lesser of two evils;" do nothing else. (I hate the indication of "evils" when I don't think every politician is an awful human being (in a system guaranteed to codemn them with questionable ethics, but that's another post). The goal is make the logical and correct decision, so you have the chance to make it better again and for them to make it better in office. If you vote third party on the basis of moral terror, you will not have that chance to make the world better how you aim to. Trump has shown you what he'll do, and made it worse.

You are fighting the war for Palestinians and all who are being attacked by Israel, because they are targeted minorities and you cry for the innocent lives of children being taken, but that ethnic and communal cleansing is exactly what Trump is fighting for in dictatorship in America. If you vote third party, you will also have blood on your hands, because you are voting for Trump based on the historical unlikelihood of the 3rd candidate winning. If you choose not to vote, you are forfeiting your choice and indirectly voting for whoever comes into office. You will not feel like there is no blood on your hands if you see what comes of his presidency. The amount of people I've known & seen who felt stupid for abstaining in his election after the reality of his leadership is a large pool and proof of the regret and realized actuality. Do not put yourself in the position to feel like them!

Trump has said, he will have it "fixed" so you will never have to vote in another election again if he wins. You do not get to easily rectify your choices if your opted third party loses. You will not have that chance. (Let it be noted, that also the 4 years a president spends in the house are not so easily reversible (we have still been dealing with Trump's damage in Biden's term).

P.s. Here's what Kamala has said about Gaza:

x x

Here's what Trump has said:

x

Former President Donald Trump said that Israel needs to “finish what they started” and “get it over with fast,” as he continued arguing Israel was “losing the PR war” because of the visuals coming out of Gaza.

“You’ve got to get it over with, and you have to get back to normalcy. And I’m not sure that I’m loving the way they’re doing it, because you’ve got to have victory. You have to have a victory, and it’s taking a long time,” Trump said in an interview with The Hugh Hewitt Show that aired Thursday.

x

Harris also recognized antisemitism, showing support for the community that's faced it, and that's not what this is.

Be definitive; make the choice; and don't be passive when your options are historically laid out between two separate parties!

Vote for hope, not a never-ending apocalyptic genocide with Trump.

Also, relevant to note, it's just as important to vote down ballot. Get supporting figures who will back the better choice, so that it's not all for nothing.

[ancaporado]

Absolutely hilarious to me that the DNC is shutting down the primary and debates because they can't roll Biden on a stage anymore and expect him to hold it together enough to look like he's actually the one in charge.

Combine this with the fact that the pentagon and federal departments routinely ignored Trump, the elected president, direct orders we haven't had any facade of elected government/democracy in something like 7 years.

I would love to get a normie to sit back and process that our elections aren't shams because they mess with vote counts or the party system restricts choice, that's beyond the point, the government isn't elected. The people you vote for are just a PR rep for whoever is actually calling the shots.

I don't know exactly when it happened, but we don't even have a semblance of civilian control over the military at this point. Things are gonna get weird and worse. We're living under a fascist junta, conduct yourself accordingly.

[tanadrin]

Bold new take: FPTP would have saved the Weimar Republic

The Weimar Republic had a lot of problems besides its PR system. Not having a president who could effectively rule by decree would have helped more. The president also didn’t have to appoint the majority leader chancellor, and could fire the chancellor at any time. Also requiring constructive votes of no confidence. Collective cabinet responsibility (i e not being able to fire individual ministers by parliamentary vote).

Really the biggest problem was the fucked up semi-presidential system, since reactionary presidents unwilling to tolerate election results they disliked contributed strongly to a deadlocked political environment, well before Hitler came on the scene.

(Of course a lot of the problems of the Weimar era had nothing to do with its constitution—nobody thought the republic was really legitimate, they all hankered for a return of the monarchy or some flavor of socialism, and stuff like the war debt and the Depression fueled factionalism and extremism such that almost any political system would have struggled. But boy oh boy did the distribution of executive powers not help)

[jjmcquade-misc]

Robert Kennedy Jr.

The Democratic Party completely forgot its relationship with labor, used to be labor-oriented, they completely sold them out with these trade bills, and democratic party became completely corporate oriented. 2010 was also the year that the Obama/Biden DOJ forced the sale of Premier Election Systems (formerly Diebold) to foreign-owned Dominion.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-key-divestiture-election-systems-softwarepremier-election

[tranakin-skywalker]

kind of a weird thought but do you think Padme is up to date on the holonet. Like Earth memes and humor change out so quickly, would she even have time for the holonet at all as a politician?? (Your Padme humor post made me start thinking about this) Would Ahsoka or Anakin’s references fly over her head or would she be on top of that kinda stuff because Naboo PR needed her to be

Hmm, that's hard to say. Elections don't seem to work in the GFFA the same way they do here. Like, in AotC Padme says that the Queen asked her to serve as senator for Naboo. Not run for senator, serve. Which implies that it's a position appointed by the Queen, not elected by the people. (And based on what we see of Naboo, I'd hazard a guess that the Queen is elected by the ruling houses/ some other governing body rather than a general election by the whole population. Not to mention that whole thing where the Chancellor is elected by the senate, consisting of about 2,000 senators. Except there's about 1.3 million planets represented in the galactic senate. And about 3.2 BILLION inhabited systems in the galaxy. So, most of the galaxy isn't being represented in the senate, basically.)

All that's to say, I don't think the average citizen's opinion matters in Star Wars. Like, at all.

So yeah, I don't really think there'd be much investment in PR, Naboo or otherwise. The only people who's opinions matter are the ones sitting in senate pods.

That said, politics tends to be very, very boring. I do think there'd be points where Padme would be obligated to attend sessions that have no bearing on her whatsoever, so she spends it browsing space Pintrest.

I think it makes sense for her to be up to date on some aspects of the holonet, but I think a lot of what they have that would constitute as memes just wouldn't be on her radar.

That said, I am 110% certain that every single meme Anakin knows, he learned from Ahsoka. That man in not on the internet. He is a 54 year old grampa in the body of a 20 year old. His sense of humor is dad jokes and things so fucked up you just have to sit there a moment to process.

Ahsoka's the only one who knows anything about the holonet. A 14 year old girl is a 14 year old girl, even in space.

[lady-inkyrius]

It's interesting comparing electoral reform movements in the UK and the US.

Basically all the talk of reform here is for proportional representation (usually STV or semi-proportional systems like AMS/AV+), while IRV/AV is sort of seen as a lesser form – the 2011 AV referendum was a compromise between the Lib Dems who wanted PR and the Tories who didn't want reform.

Meanwhile what I hear from the US seems to all basically be about non-proportional systems (IRV, approval, and score/range mainly) with PR being described as more fringe, especially for major elections. Is this a constitution thing maybe? It's probably a constitution thing.

[ramenheim]

About prev reblogs: I have never seen TME used to complain about & demarcate cis men's behaviours.

Despite the term ostensibly lumping together *almost any gender configuration that isn't binarily trans woman*, the only times it's used recently is to complain about (trans) ppl that get lumped in with cis women (as intersex ppl trans or otherwise are *never* factored into this dichotomy anyways), including cis women themselves.

I have never once seen it used to delineate trans women from cis men, even as it gets used to delineate cis women's experiences from trans women's experiences. I have only seen /haphazard/ acknowledgement of non-binary experiences included in TMA, but only really as an afterthought or when it's framed as the precursor to 'fully realizing trans womanhood'. I've only seen intersex folks brought up if they elect to use the terms TME/TMA for themselves, with bizarro interrogations into 'how' they were raised/had their genitals 'corrected' only once they individually disagreed with the terminology or had a confounding opinion in a public discussion.

It is regularly used to delineate trans men from trans women; but its users almost uniformly deride any attempt by trans men to coin a term to describe their own unique combinatory transphobia that isn't TME; again despite TME literally just supposing to mean 'transmisogyny-exempt'.... so why would it be used to discuss trans men's *unique* experiences with hatred directed at the fact that they either "are/aren't (real) men" by anyone who wants them to suffer?

It's been *changed* into hastily recycled AGAB terminology bc of wider recognition of the flaws with /that/ but without the driving flaws of that **tool for analysis** ever being fully addressed; and therefore has gotten subsumed into the 'new euphemism' for the Innie vs Outie false dichotomy as its usage became more widespread.

I think it still is a useful discussion tool ONLY when it's viewed *as a tool* and not some inherent marker of identity. It is DEFINITELY just bigotry when used as a NOUN that has negative behaviours ascribed to it, esp in the context of complaining about trans men** as a whole homogenized group, instead of highlighting individual behaviours/belief systems for the harm they contribute to against TMA trans/nb ppl.

Young queers really need to stop swallowing the tradcath radfem juice of "Women Pure + Good & Men Bad + Evil" [**that tumblr feminism has always had a problem with] and acting like you aren't being a transphobic shitheel by adding the word Trans in front of it-- & This is ESPECIALLY a problem when non-trans "Allies" do this, as it sets up trans women for failure whenever they make a mistake/can be reframed as 'being a cause-traitor' since women are punished more harshly for any percieved failure of Righteousness, AND allows them further to enact their unbridled transphobia onto trans men (& enbys/genderqweirdos) and pass it off as 'being an ally to trans women'..... despite them just being extremely transphobic (+ misogynistic + homphobic + intersexist) & then hiding behind """"TMAs"""" as a negative PR meatshield.

TL;DR if you are using TME to mean (nc)AFAB in vent posts, just have the guts to fucking use that as the word & see how it reads then.

(**since transmasc & transfem do not imply either a 'starting' or 'finalized' gender state; they are personal adjectives in and of themselves. Please do not warp them into new innie vs outie binary divides).

[**see related: the raw ass treatment of 'AMAB enbys' on here and in similar online/irl "feminist" environments. (Which was one of the driving factors behind the original TMA/TME coinage & is where I still find useful inter-trans discussions utilizing it as a term; importantly I don't think the term should stop being used altogether!!)]

[problematic-polls]

Which of these english-speaking countries has the best voting system?

PR = proportional representation

English-speaking = country where English is either the majority spoken language or an official/administrative language

- USA (two party, first past the post, electoral college)

- UK & Canada (multi party, first past the post)

- Australia (multi party, preferential vote or single transferable vote PR, compulsory voting)

- New Zealand (multi party, mixed member PR)

- Ireland (multi party, single transferable vote PR or instant runoff)

- South Africa (multi party, party list PR)

- different english-speaking country that I know about the election system of that I'll elaborate about in the notes