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mightyflamethrower · 1 year

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“Name me a single objective we’ve ever set out to accomplish that we’ve failed on. Name me one, in all of our history. Not one!”

-President Joe Biden, August 16, 2023

Joe Biden in one of his now accustomed angry “get off my grass” moods dared the press to find just one of his policies/objectives that has not worked. Silence followed.

Perhaps it was polite to say nothing, given even the media knows almost every enacted Biden policy has failed.

Here is a summation of what he should instead apologize for.

Biden in late summer 2021 sought a 20th anniversary celebration of 9/11 and the 2001 subsequent invasion of Afghanistan. He wished to be the landmark president that yanked everyone out of Afghanistan after 20 years in country. But the result was the greatest military humiliation of the United States since the flight from Vietnam in 1975.

Consider the ripples of Biden’s disaster. U.S. deterrence was crippled worldwide. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea almost immediately began to bluster or return to their chronic harassment of U.S. and allied ships and planes. We left thousands of allied Afghans to face Taliban retribution, along with some Western contractors.

Biden abandoned a $1 billion embassy, and a $300 million remodeled Bagram airbase strategically located not far from China and Russia, and easily defensible. Perhaps $50 billion in U.S. weaponry and supplies were abandoned and now find their way into the international terrorist mart.

All our pride flags, our multimillion gender studies programs at Kabul University, and our George Floyd murals did not just come to naught, but were replaced by the Taliban’s anti-homosexual campaigns, burkas, and detestation of any trace of American popular culture.

Vladimir Putin sized up the skedaddle. He collated it with Biden’s unhinged quip that he would not get too excited if Putin just staged a “minor” invasion of Ukraine. He remembered Biden’s earlier request to Putin to modulate Russian hacking to exempt a few humanitarian American institutions. Then Russia concluded of our shaky Commander-in-Chief that he either did not care or could do nothing about another Russian invasion.

The result so far is more than 500,000 dead and wounded in the war, a Verdun-stand-off along with fortified lines, the steady depletion of our munitions and weapon stocks, and a new China/Russia/Iran/North Korean axis, with wink and nod assistance from NATO Turkey.

Biden blew up the Abraham accords, nudged Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States over to the dark side of Iran, China, and Russia. He humiliated the U.S. on the eve of the midterms by callously begging the likes of Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to pump more oil that he had damned as unclean at home and cut back its production. In Bidenomics, instead of producing oil, the president begs autocracies to export it to us at high prices while he drains the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve for short-term political advantage.

Biden deliberately alienated Israel by openly interfering in its domestic politics. He pursued the crackpot Iran Deal while his special Iranian envoy was removed for disclosing classified information.

No one can explain why Biden ignored the Chinese balloon espionage caper, kept mum about the engineered Covid virus that escaped the Wuhan lab, said not a word about a Chinese biolab discovered in rural California, and had his envoys either bow before Chinese leaders or take their insults in silence—other than he is either cognitively challenged or leveraged by his decade-long grifting partnership with his son Hunter.

Yet another Biden’s legacy will be erasing the southern border and with it, U.S. immigration law. Over seven million aliens simply crossed into the U.S. illegally with Biden’s tacit sanction—without audits, background checks, vaccinations, and COVID testing, much less English fluency, skills, or high-school diplomas.

Biden’s only immigration accomplishment was to render the entire illegal sanctuary city movement a cruel joke. Given the flood, mostly rich urban and vacation home dwellers made it very clear that while they fully support millions swarming into poor Latino communities of southern Texas and Arizona, they do not want any illegal aliens fouling their carefully cultivated nests.

Biden is mum about the 100,000 fentanyl deaths from cartel-imported and Chinese-supplied drugs across his open border. He seems to like the idea that Mexican President Obrador periodically mouths off, ordering his vast expatriate community to vote Democratic and against Trump.

Despite all the pseudo-blue collar dissimulation about Old Joe Biden from Scranton, he has little empathy for the working classes. Indeed, he derides them as chumps and dregs, urges miners to learn coding as the world covets their coal, and studiously avoids getting anywhere near the toxic mess in East Palestine, Ohio, or so far the moonscape on Maui.

Bidenomics is a synonym for printing up to $6 billion dollars at precisely the time post-Covid consumer demand was soaring, while previously dormant supply chains were months behind rebooting production and transportation. Biden is on track to increase the national debt more than any one-term president.

In Biden’s weird logic, if he raised the price of energy, gasoline, and key food staples 20-30 percent since his inauguration without a commensurate rise in wages, and then saw the worst inflation in 40 years occasionally decline from record highs one month to the next, then he “beat inflation.”

But the reason why more than 60 percent of the nation has no confidence in Bidenomics is because it destroyed their household budgets. Gas is nearly twice what it was in January 2021. Interest rates have about tripled. Key staple foods are often twice as costly—meat, vegetables, and fruits especially.

Biden has ended through his weaponized Attorney General Merrick Garland the age-old American commitment to equal justice under the law. The FBI, DOJ, CIA, and IRS are hopelessly politically compromised. Many of their bureaucrats serve as retrieval agents for lost Biden family incriminating laptops, diaries, and guns. In sum, Biden criminalized opposing political views.

Biden has unleashed the administrative state for the first time in history to destroy the Republican primary front runner and his likely opponent. His legacy will be the corruption of U.S. jurisprudence and the obliteration of the American reputation for transparent permanent government that should be always above politics, bribery, and corruption.

If in the future, an on-the-make conservative prosecutor in West Virginia, Utah, or Mississippi wishes to make a national name, then he has ample precedent to indict a Democrat President for receiving bad legal advice, questioning the integrity of an election, or using social media to express doubt that the new non-Election-Day balloting was on the up-and-up, or supposedly overvaluing his real estate.

The Biden family’s decade-long family grifting will likely expose Joe Biden as the first president in U.S. history who fitted precisely the Constitution’s definition of impeachment and removal—given his “high crimes and misdemeanors” appear “bribery”-related. If further evidence shows he altered U.S. foreign policy in accordance with the wishes from his benefactors in Ukraine, China, or Romania, then he committed constitutionally-defined “treason” as well.

Defunding the police, and pandemics of exempted looting, shoplifting, smashing, and grabbing, and carjacking merit no administrative attention. Nor does the ongoing systematic destruction of our blue bicoastal cities, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. All that, along with the disasters in East Palestine or Maui are out of sight, out of mind from a day at the beach at Biden’s mysteriously purchased nearly 6,000 square-foot beachfront mansion.

Biden ran on Barack Obama-like 2004 rhetoric (“Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America).”

And like Obama, he used that ecumenical sophistry to gain office only to divide further the U.S. No sooner than he was elected, we began hearing from the great unifier eerie screaming harangues about “semi-fascists” and “ultra-MAGA” dangerous zealots, replete with red-and black Phantom of the Opera backdrops.

What followed the unifying rhetoric was often amnesties and exemptions for violent offenders during the 120 days of rioting, looting, killing, and attacks on police officers in summer 2020. In contrast, his administration lied when it alleged that numerous officers had died at the hands of the January 6 rioters. In addition, the Biden administration mandated long-term incarceration of many who committed no illegal act other than acting like buffoons and “illegally parading.”

The message was exemptions for torching a federal courthouse, a police precinct, or historic church or attempting to break into the White House grounds to get a president and his family—but long prison terms for wearing cow horns, a fur vest, and trespassing peacefully like a lost fool in the Capitol.

Finally, Biden’s most glaring failure was simply being unpresidential. He snaps at reporters, and shouts at importune times. He can no longer read off a big-print teleprompter. Even before a global audience, he cannot kick his lifelong creepy habit of turkey-gobbling on children necks, blowing into their ears and hair of young girls, and squeezing women far too long and far too hard.

His frailty redefined American presidential campaigning as basement seclusion and outsourcing propaganda to the media. And his disabilities only intensified during his presidency. Biden begins his day late and quits early. He has recalibrated the presidency as a 5-hour, 3-day a week job.

If Trump was the great exaggerator, Biden is our foremost liar. Little in his biography can be fully believed. He lies about everything from his train rides to the death of his son to his relationship with Biden-family foreign collaborators, to vaccinations to the economy. Anytime Biden mentions places visited, miles flown, or rails ridden, he is likely lying.

Biden continues with impunity because the media feels that a mentally challenged fabulist is preferable to Donald Trump and so contextualizes or ignores his falsehoods. Never has a U.S. president fallen and stumbled or gotten lost on stage so frequently—or been a single small trip away from incapacity.

So, yes, Biden’s initiatives have succeeded only in the sense of becoming successfully enacted—and therefore nearly destroying the country.

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ginnyrules27 · 3 months

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Look, I know right now it's probably annoying to deal with all these posts about American politics if you're not an American, but I have to say this to any and all of my American followers.

Vote. VOTE. If you are 18 or older, unless you are in a motherfucking coma or worse, VOTE!

Following the recent SCOTUS decision, it's crucial to acknowledge that a Trump re-election could seriously jeopardize the return of our democracy. With the potential for a national abortion ban and a rollback of hard-fought rights and protections, the stakes are incredibly high. We cannot afford to overlook the possibility of Trump appointing replacements for justices Alito and Thomas, both in their late 70s.

'Oh but Biden didn't cancel my student loan debt despite canceling others-' and do you think a Trump White House will do anything for student loan relief?

'Under Biden, we lost Roe' -Do I even need to explain that it was the Trump justices who gave the conservatives the power to attack the established law of Roe with unparalleled audacity?

Listen, people need to remember this: Biden's international policies may be criticized, but let's not forget that Trump admitted on national television that Putin informed him about the invasion of Ukraine before it even happened. Ukraine took place in 2022, and remember, Trump was out of office in 2021!

'Oh but they started developing a vaccine for COVID under Trump and Biden's just taking the credit-' Biden wasn't the one who defunded the department of the CDC that Obama set up after the Ebola crisis to prevent a pandemic from happening in the US. And Biden wasn't the one who told the American people to drink bleach to prevent themselves from getting COVID.

Progressives, listen up! Some of you are thinking of voting for Stein, but I need you to hear me out. If fewer people had voted for Gore over Nader or for Hillary over Stein, we wouldn't be in this mess. Progress is not always straightforward, but do you really think we'll be closer to a progressive movement if we let Trump regain power?

Biden's age is a fact that can't be argued against. Born in '42, he belongs to the Silent Generation, not the boomer generation. Trump, born in '46, is a boomer. Despite his age, Biden still garnered a significant number of votes in 2020, with 81 million people seemingly unconcerned about his age. Until we address the need to raise millions of dollars to run for president, we shouldn't expect to see many younger faces in politics.

This isn't a 'pick the lesser of two evils' scenario. This is a 'if I want change to be possible, I need to elect the team who will make change possible' scenario.

To the millennials and Gen Zs on this site: We often complain about the ways in which boomers have negatively impacted future generations by neglecting pensions and allowing the cost of living to rise while wages remain stagnant. If we eventually have children, do we want them to believe that previous generations had the opportunity to prevent a worst-case scenario but didn't take action because of personal preferences?

Last thing because this post is getting far too long, in 2017, white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. After it happened, Trump made a speech where he stated there were 'very fine people' on both sides. I can't believe I have to say this but please let's not allow the man who said that and then tried to gaslight the country that he didn't say that even though there's video of it!

#american politics #us politics #please if you're american vote #vote blue #vote biden #vote blue down the ballot #cause the state elections matter too #and yeah I'm likely going to be annoying about this until the end of the election #but it's either this or I start looking for a country who'll take me #Unfortunately I'm one generation removed from being eligible for dual citizenship in Ireland

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minetteskvareninova · 1 year

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How Would I Put This For My Non-Slovak Mutuals

Slovakia is going to have elections (premature, I should note, because Matovič is an idiot, see bellow) and by God I am stressed. Our options are as follows:

Progresívne Slovensko (Progressive Slovakia) - They are the, well, progressive party of the Slovak political spectrum. Which means they are the only fucking party that supports the LGBT movement with any consistency. Most of their other proposals are also relatively reasonable; they are interested in protecting the environment, want to improve the sorry state of Slovak healthcare, fight the corruption and so on. Their only two issues are the fact that their leader, Martin Šimečka, is a fucking nerd with the charisma of a wet noodle, and the fact that everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, even people who theoretically should be on their side on account of not being bigoted Putin-loving dipshits, hates them for absolutely no reason. Well, except for their large preferences, probably. They are the most successful party, or second most successful (depends on how the elections pan out) after...

SMER - Sociálna demokracia (DIRECTION - Social Democracy; yes I know SMER is also short for something but I'm too lazy to look it up right now) - Hoo boy. These guys. How would I even start to explain the sheer amount of baggage these guys carry...? SMER has been in power in 2008-2012 and 2012-2020. And it was a fucking shitshow. Between massive corruption and widespread mismanagement of public resources, you can't help but wonder how the fuck did these people last one term, let alone three?! Don't let the Social Democracy thing in their name fool you, these people aren't really social democrats, they have no ideology beyond getting more votes and avoiding jail. Their leader is Róbert Fico, a literal antichrist whose corruption scandals would make for an exceptionally thick encyclopedia. This man is able to sell his soul to the devil for money and power, but since the devil seems kinda unavailable, he figured Putin is the next best (worst?) thing. His latest strategy for gaining more support is leaning into the fanatical Putin-loving, EU and human rights hating crowd, which in our country is depressingly large. Another memorable personality is Ľuboš Blaha, a tankie extraordinaire whose favourite meal is the sole of Volodya's boot and a steady diet of bathit conspiracies. Remember when Blaha engaged in casual atrocity denial around Bucha, because Pepperidge Farm and Minette's blog remember. https://www.tumblr.com/minetteskvareninova/680859499810177024/this-war-is-horrible-and-itself-would-be-enough

Hlas-SD (Voice-SD) - Most progressives in Slovakia have high hopes for these people. I don't. They are an offshoot of SMER, whose leader Peter Pellegrini has mostly held the line with Fico, but at least seems spineless enough to betray him if it happens to be advantageous enough. They don't really have any kind of concrete politics (most of their program is a vague "we'll make things better" kind of stuff), but at least they don't actively spread hate, so in that way they are able to climb over the low bar that is their mother party. Still, how are these people in the third place of every pre-election survey I will never know. I guess Pelle is just that sexy or whatever.

Obyčajní ľudia a nezávislé osobnosti (Ordinary People And Independent Personalities) - They have been the ruling party since 2020 and much like with SMER, it was kind of a shitshow, just in a different way. Their leader Igor Matovič is less corrupt (mind you, not NOT corrupt) than Fico, but more than makes up for it by being kinda stupid and also a horrendous drama queen whose antics prematurely ended two cabinets, his and Heger's. Tenderly nicknamed "Matelko", he became known for his "atom bombs" of ideas, such as giving out prizes in a lottery that people join by getting vaccinated. Y'know, to increase vaccination rates during the height of COVID-19 pandemic. That's why this whole thing had to be televised, complete with "call to collect your prize" type of deal. For what it's worth, he at least made attempts to fight the corruption of the previous regime; he did it badly, as is his way, but nonetheless. "Independent personalities" here means a bunch of small parties that joined them in this election, because they would have no chance otherwise. They are a pretty diverse bunch, meaning their ranks include, among others, an infamous bigot and fanatical anti-abortion activist Anna Záborská, but they also made my bae Jaroslav Naď a defence minister, so that kinda balances it out. I wouldn't hate it if they managed to get into parliament, I'll tell you that much.

Slododa a Solidarita (Freedom and Solidarity) - Considering Matelko profiles himself as an anti-corruption crusader, you'd think Róbert Fico is his nemesis. You'd be wrong. Fico unfortunately loses that prestigious title to one Richard Sulík, leader of SaS, who is... Eh? Like, he's competent in the questions of economy and in general not in the worst tier of Slovak politicians, but also, he's as much of a libertarian as is possible in our part of the world (which si to say, he's not as bad as an average American libertarian, but still engages in, for example, casual climate change denial) and constantly feuds with Matelko. Again, I don't hate him, but we could do a lot better.

Kresťanskodemokratické hnutie (Christian-Democratic Movement) - They are surprisingly not as bigoted as their name would suggest, but that's because here in Slovakia we are used to levels of homophobia and transphobia that would boggle the mind of an average non-fundie American. They come off as relatively reasonable, but only because one can't help but compare them to Putin kissasses like SMER, SNS and Republika. Which brings us to...

Slovenská národná strana (Slovak National Party) - You know, Stupidest Slovak Politician is a tough contest, so my respect to anyone who is able to win it as decisively as Andrej Danko. This man is like Róbert Fico, if his spirit animal was a sheep instead of a fox (and I say it as someone who has experience with sheep, those motherfuckers are ungodly stupid). He simped for Putin before it was cool, when that particular fanclub was just him and Blaha. He doesn't seem to be able to speak his mother tongue and his constant malaproper speech is the source of many a meme. Which, yes, means that him getting into parliament would be pretty funny. On the other hand, all that fun would probably be somewhat spoiled by the fact that he's ALSO super corrupt, not to mention, y'know, conspiracy-spreading Putin simp and bigot. He also cites Viktor Orbán as his actual, honest-to-God role model. So, an all-around cool dude that I am very happy might be in the next parliament (if Fico wins the election, because naturally these two get on like a house on fire). /s

Republika (The Republic) - I can't believe SMER legit isn't the worst mainstream Slovak party, but I mean, at least they aren't actual neonazis? I mean, Republika does its best to hide their affiliations, but because their leader, Milan Uhrík, is in competition for the second stupidest Slovak politician (the first place, as stated, firmly belonging to Danko), they don't do a particularly good job of that. I mean, Republika is the product of a schism within ĽSNS, who were already infamous for their idiocy (besides, you know, barely disguised fascism), so figures. Milan Uhrík in particular is the man whose most important contributions to Slovak culture were sitting in the European Parliament doing fuck all (did I mention that like most bigots, he also shits on EU constantly?) and the "I am not a historian" meme. Basically, because of the blatant fascist sympathies of his party, including worshipping Jozef Tiso, he was asked to condemn the crimes of the First Slovak Republic (which was basically a Nazi puppet - yeah, Ukrainians aren't the only nation in this region with a shady past, go figure; not that it prevents some people, including Uhrík himself, from spreading the "denazification" bullshit). Uhrík's answer? "I am not a historian". Since then, he has been given several options to revise this opinion. He never took any of them. His agenda is also truly something to behold, like I've never read something as profoundly dumb as the pamphlets where they present it. They don't seem to be as successful as ĽSNS, but that's unfortunately because their schtick was stolen by SMER with the good chunk of their electorate. Still, SMER might actually take them into their coalition, because like goes with the like even if the "like" is bigotry, and lest we forget, there is no God.

Sme rodina (We Are Family) - *sigh* Do I have to? Okay. Sme rodina is yet another conservative party, completely unlike EVERY OTHER PARTY THAT EVER GAINED ANY TRACTION IN THIS COUNTRY PLEASE GET ME OUT OF HERE. Ahem. Its leader Boris Kollár is a businessman who gained something of a memetic status in Slovak showbusiness by being a massive whore and having a fuckton of illegitimate children (the current count is I think 12?). Something of a Slovak Herschel Walker. And just like Herschel Walker, he, the avowed conservative that he is, has been accused of paying for abortions of one of his ex-girlfriends. Which is just a reflection of this guy's general moral consistency. To put it simply, Boris is the biggest Slovak whore. If Fico asked him to join his coalition, you bet your ass he would. He also has associated with people involved in organized crime (just like Fico) and sexted a fifteen year old drug addict. Because, as their billboards state, Sme rodina "protects children". Needless to say, I can't fucking stand this dude just as a person; since he seems to want to be an Isekai hero, I hope he gets hit by a truck.

Demokrati (The Democrats) - They're fine. Their leader is our former short-term prime minister Eduard Heger, whose only flaws were being hopelessly naive and letting Matelko get away with shit he should not have gotten away with. Any people that might be OK with them already vote for Progresívne Slovensko, but maybe they will get enough votes to be eligible for parliament? Maybe??? Their chances aren't high to be honest, but what do you know, miracles do happen.

#slovakia #politics #minette complains #complete and utter despair

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justinspoliticalcorner · 2 months

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Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

President Joe Biden is no longer a candidate for 2024. However, no one should be less than incredibly enthusiastic—and grateful—when it comes to his accomplishments during his term. Biden is simply the greatest progressive president of our lifetimes. Full stop. Biden pulled America from the death, despair, and economic hardships generated by Donald Trump's criminal mismanagement of the pandemic that was killing 20,000 Americans per week when he took office. He steered the nation around a recession that economists considered inevitable, generated a surge in manufacturing that is still just getting started, brought new business creation to record levels, broke records on creating jobs and reducing unemployment, and shored up the importance of unions as the heart of the middle class.

He restored faith in America around the world, healed the rift Trump created with our allies by strengthening and expanding NATO, and kept faith with Ukraine as it struggled against an illegal and unprovoked invasion by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. He put America back into the fight against the climate crisis, oversaw record levels of new renewable energy, took serious steps to address long-festering environmental issues, steered U.S. auto manufacturing toward the future, and did it all while reaching record levels of oil production and destroying OPEC’s hold over the United States. He demonstrated compassion and took action to protect society's most vulnerable members in the face of rising Republican hate. He ushered in an era of declining crime, declining gun sales, and rising opportunity.

[...] People are going to be driving on better roads, crossing safe bridges, and enjoying improved public facilities for years thanks to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The American Rescue Plan not only provided the vaccine that pulled the nation through the worst of the pandemic, but kept money in people’s pockets, kept families in their homes, and kept businesses in business at a time when other economies around the world were suffering. Technology jobs and factories that had been bleeding away from the United States for decades came racing back thanks to the CHIPS and Science Act, and that same bill is stimulating basic research whose benefit will be felt for decades. The Inflation Reduction Act not only helped address its namesake issue, but provided funds for electric vehicles, renewable energy, and the protection of both farmlands and wild spaces.

This is a far from exhaustive list. Biden accomplished more in the last three and a half years than any other president has done in two terms. He did it while never sinking into treating his political opponents as any less than his fellow Americans. He never surrendered his boundless faith in American institutions and our founding principles. And he did it while attending church each Sunday before visiting the graves of his first wife and two of his children, all lost to tragedy.

Joe Biden in his one term as President did a lot of good for America, as he helped get America out of the mess as a result of COVID and got several influential bills passed.

#Joe Biden #Biden Administration #2024 Presidential Election #2024 Elections #CHIPS Act #Inflation Reduction Act #American Rescue Plan #Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act #Coronavirus Vaccines #Coronavirus

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originalleftist · 2 months

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PSY-OP ALERT:

Sorry for how long this ended up being, but there's a lot to cover. My sincere gratitude to anyone who actually reads through it.

We have seen again and again how easily supposed progressives, even those considered long-time allies, can quickly fall into believing and acting on fascist psy-ops.

There's no sure way to know that someone is a trustworthy ally. One might say that there is no such thing, since everyone has faults and blind spots and prejudices and is hypocritical to one extent or another.

But here are a few common ways in which so-called Leftists, progressives, feminists, etc get duped into supporting fascist agendas. It's both a litmus test of sorts, red flags that someone may not be as reliable an ally as you think, and also a good shortlist of major narratives the Right uses to try to infiltrate and co-opt progressive communities and divide their opposition, which you should be on the lookout for.

1. Ukraine/Russia. If someone is defending Putin or vilifying Ukraine, they are likely being influenced by Kremlinist-fascist propaganda designed to sway Leftists under the guise of being "anti-imperialism" or "anti-war". This is a larger subset of how opposition to wars and imperialism has been used for decades to draw Left-wingers into supporting conspiracy theorism and hypocritically aligning with dictatorial, even fascist regimes that are seen as opposing "the West".

Note: a specific subset of this, which I've found even people who otherwise don't necessarily fall for it sometimes do, is Assange apologism. Julian Assange is not simply a journalist who was persecuted by the government for exposing its secrets. He is closely-aligned with the Kremlin and its propaganda, and leaked information selectively to hurt Clinton/Democrats help Trump during the 2016 election.

2. Covid. Anti-vax conspiracy theorism used to be a position more associated with the Left, though it has been largely coopted by the fascist Right, thanks to Trump. A lot of this was built on opposition to capitalism/big corporations/"Big Pharma" and probably also environmentalist concerns about toxins in our environment, which appeals to Left-wing sensibilities.

There's also a heavy dose of ableism, particularly fear-mongering about/misrepresenting autism, which is another prejudice that has appeal across the political spectrum. Even if one accepted the (widely-debunked) claims linking vaccines to autism, that means that the central premise of the anti-vax agenda, when you strip it down to its core, can be summarized as "Your child is better off dead of a deadly disease than alive and autistic."

We might also have a word here about support for DNRs*/"assisted dying"/euthanasia and making "assisted dying" more accessible to disabled people, typically framed as letting them "die with dignity" without actually providing them the support that would let them LIVE with dignity (see Canada's MAID controversies). Though I am pleased to see pushback from Left-leaning parties on this recently.

*I should note here that I do not oppose DNRs in principle, nor the right of any patient (assuming they have the ability to do so, and if not that's what living wills are for) to refuse medical care. I DO have a problem when people are mislead or pressured to choose them, or even have them issued without their knowledge/consent (as in the widely-reported case of people with disabilities being given DNR orders in the UK).

3. Trans Rights. Many a proclaimed feminist has shown their true colours once the subject of trans rights came up. Falsely attacking trans people as male predators or fake women does not protect women- trans people are actually one of the most likely groups to be subjected to sexual violence, and if one wants to prey on women, there are far easier and less-stigmatized ways to do so in our society. Transphobia also ultimately serves to oppress cis women, as women who do not perfectly fit white patriarchal standards are investigated and accused of being trans (as seen with anti-drag laws potentially criminalizing non-traditional dress choices, and the attacks on cis female athletes of colour, particularly at the 2024 Olympics).

4. Israel/Palestine. Many so-called Leftists have embraced conspiratorial and even outright genocidal Anti-semitism masquerading as opposing "colonialism" and genocide. This narrative seems to rest on two primary lies- the claim that Jews are not indigenous to the Levant, and therefore colonizers (this is contradicted by overwhelming historical, archaeological, cultural, and genetic evidence), and the usual group-think/collective guilt and "us vs them" mentality (the belief that all Israelis/Jews are collectively guilty for the crimes of the Netanyahu government, and the belief that the rights of Palestinians and Jews cannot coexist, but one must come at the expense of the other).

5. Johnny Depp. Many so-called "feminists" quickly embraced or at least turned a blind eye toward misogynist abuse and conspiracy theories from incels/"Mens' Rights Activists" against a queer activist and DV survivor, out of fandom for Johnny Depp (who also has close ties to both the Kremlin and Saudi governments). Presenting Depp as "the real victim", and Heard as a fake victim undermining "real victims", and as a privileged elite using "white woman tears" to gain sympathy, were other ways in which the Right played on Leftists' sympathies and rhetoric to co-opt them in this case. Amber Heard hate/Johnny Depp fandom is a clear indication that a "progressive" or "feminist" can be swayed to abandon their convictions by celebrity/fandom, and/or lacks understanding of Intersectionality (ie how someone could be relatively privileged in certain ways but still disadvantaged in others, particularly against someone like Depp).

6. Immigration. Many supposed Leftists have proven susceptible to narratives accusing immigrants/foreigners of "stealing" jobs from the working class, while the reality is that immigration also creates jobs (more people means more demand for goods and services), automation is a threat to jobs that has nothing to do with immigration, and immigrants often do jobs most Americans don't want to (which is actually exploitation-in typical DARVO fashion, immigrants are vilified for their own exploitation). Anti-immigrant rhetoric is a divide and conquer tactic used by oligarchs to keep the working class fighting each other, instead of focusing on who's really exploiting them.

7. Housing. Attacks on the Unhoused are one of the most acceptable forms of bigotry in our society on both Left and Right. Often this boils down to simple selfishness- whatever a person's abstract political views, they don't want to see "homeless" or "poor" people around, falsely equate them with criminality/drugs, and are worried about the effect of encampments or even the construction of low-income housing on their property values.

These are all ways in which the Right commonly infiltrates and co-opts Leftwing circles, and pits its opponents against each other (divide and conquer). Of course, there are other issues, other examples. This is not a definitive list. So its important to learn to recognize patterns, so you can spot psy-ops/divide and conquer tactics in other forms/on other issues.

One frequent pattern in these narratives is of course collective guilt/guilt by association: Ukraine is bad because it is aligned with the West, Russia is good because it's against the West. Heard is bad because she's a (relatively) rich famous white woman (somehow Depp isn't, as a rich white man). Israel/Jews are evil because of the crimes of the Israeli government, Hamas is good because they're against Israel. Related to this is the use of DARVO tactics to allow oppressors to falsely claim status as victims, further muddying the waters (and a hard argument to counter, because anyone guilty of it can immediately accuse anyone who points it out of doing the same thing). Assange, an oppressive of the Kremlin, is painted as just a heroic journalist persecuted for exposing the truth. Depp, an extremely wealthy, famous man with a long history of racism, misogyny, violent criminality, and ties to the Mob and dictatorial regimes, is the helpless victim of his ex-wife/a feminist conspiracy. Upper/upper-middle class home owners are the real victims because poor people exist in their communities. White workers are the real victims, not immigrants exploited as cheap labour who don't dare complain if their rights are violated because they might be deported.

A third common trick is to simultaneously paint the target group as a deadly, even existential threat, and as pathetic and weak. This seeming contradiction is a hallmark of fascist propaganda specifically (Umberto Eco listed it on his list of 14 traits of fascism). For example, unhoused people are all lazy pathetic drug users, but also criminals destroying our neighbourhoods. Amber Heard is both a talentless, obviously lying gold digger, but also powerful and competent enough to terrorize her husband (in his home, surrounded by private security on his payroll) for years and mastermind a vast international conspiracy spanning a decade to frame him. Ukraine is not even a real country, but also a huge threat to Russia's security justifying its invasion (propagandists often sidestep this absurdity by simply treating Ukraine as an extension of the US/NATO- this allows them to simultaneously portray Russia's genocidal war as the underdog defending itself against "Western imperialism", and to reinforce their genocidal narrative that Ukraine is not a real nation).

Learn the tricks. Call them out when you see them. And if someone else says you're falling for them, don't get defensive and immediately double-down- listen and consider whether you are, in fact, being misled.

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mariacallous · 1 month

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Today, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his withdrawal from the presidential race.

“I am not terminating my campaign, I am simply suspending it, not ending it,” said Kennedy. “My name will remain on the ballot in most states.”

But Kennedy said that after “deep prayer,” he had decided to throw his support behind former president Donald Trump and would be joining his campaign. He said his fervent concern about chronic disease, and Trump’s promises to address these issues if elected, ultimately shaped his decision.

“I only have maybe 10 more years to be effective,” Kennedy said. “If President Trump is elected and honors his word, the vast burden of chronic disease that burdens and bankrupts the country will disappear.”

Before endorsing Trump, Kennedy noted that he could still win in a contingent election, but that he would remove his name from the ballot in the 10 states where his candidacy could act as a spoiler. “If you live in a blue state you can vote for me,” he said. “I encourage you to vote for me."

Kennedy also used his speech to accuse the Democratic National Committee (DNC) of waging legal warfare against himself and former president Donald Trump, comparing Biden and the organization to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He took aim at Harris for not doing unscripted interviews with the press, while he and Trump have.

"Are we still a role model for democracy in this country, or have we made it kind of a joke?" he asked. Kennedy noted that he was compelled to leave the race when it became clear that he would “hand the election to the Democratic Party.”

Indications that Kennedy and Trump were inching toward a political alliance has been building for months. In July, Kennedy traveled to the Republican National Convention, where a video of Trump and Kennedy appearing to discuss a possible endorsement surfaced. Trump campaign donor Timothy Mellon also supported the Kennedy campaign with $25 million. Earlier this week, Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, suggested in a podcast appearance that he might drop out and endorse the former president.

In a Thursday post on X, Shanahan said that Democrats are “terrified of the idea of our movement joining forces with Donald Trump.”

“MAGA Republicans elevated RFK Jr.’s sham candidacy as a tool to mislead voters and hurt Democrats, and RFK Jr.’s exit is an admission their gambit failed,” DNC spokesperson Ramsey Reid said in a statement.

The Kennedy campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Kennedy launched his campaign as a Democrat in April 2023 and then as an independent in October 2023, and appeared to be a potential spoiler candidate who could meaningfully impact the results of the election. Throughout his campaign, Kennedy appeared to have mastered the art of taking up whatever digital space was offered to him. He appeared on podcasts and in TikTok Lives, and courted crypto donors. When he was not offered a place on the debate stage alongside Trump and President Joe Biden, Kennedy hosted a parallel debate, streamed online and on X, viewed by over 9 million people.

A scion of the famous Kennedy family, Kennedy rose to prominence as an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist. In 2014, he joined the board of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), a nonprofit that falsely asserts that conditions like ADHD, autism, and cancer are caused by exposure to radiation and harmful chemicals, and in particular focuses on disproved claims about the links between vaccination and conditions like autism.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Kennedy’s profile rose substantially as he became a noted anti-vaccine activist. In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate named Kennedy as one of the “disinformation dozen,” a group of 12 people that it found were responsible for 65 percent of the anti-vaccine content on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Meta banned Kennedy from Instagram in 2021 for spreading vaccine misinformation, but not before seeing his following on the platform jump from 121,000 to 750,000 in 2020. CHD was banned from Facebook and Instagram in 2022. Kennedy’s account was eventually reinstated in 2023, when he announced his presidential campaign.

“I started thinking, well, the one place that they couldn’t censor me was if I was running for president,” Kennedy told The New Yorker in an interview earlier this month.

Though Kennedy tried to distance himself from the anti-vax movement after declaring his presidential bid, he continued to surround himself with anti-vax advisers and styled himself as a “truth teller,” citing his ban from Instagram as evidence that he was willing to challenge big government and big corporations. On Thursday, the campaign released a video on YouTube where Kennedy “explains his stance” on vaccines. In the video, Kennedy reads out the many side effects of the hepatitis B vaccine, and cites a New York Times article about people who say they’ve experienced negative reactions to the Covid-19 vaccine. In the video, he alleges that Biden violated the Nuremberg Code by imposing consequences for those who did not get the Covid-19 vaccine (he didn’t).

He has also filed lawsuits against Meta, Google, and Yahoo, alleging censorship. Representatives for Meta did not respond to questions about whether the company would allow Kennedy’s Instagram account to remain active once he leaves the presidential race.

During his speech, Kennedy also accused traditional and social media companies of censoring him by denying him interviews and removing his content from platforms. “Even today, people who try to post my videos on social media are told they are violating community standards,” Kennedy said in the press conference.

Kennedy faced hurdles getting onto the ballot in several states, and earlier this month, reports began to surface that his campaign was running out of cash. Advertising data from X, on which the campaign consistently spent money, showed a drop-off in ad purchases at the end of July. Meta’s ad library shows that the campaign continued to buy ads until the day before the DNC.

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your-krazy-uncle-bob · 2 years

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Dear Liberals, How Many Of These MSM Hoaxes Did You Fall For?

BY TYLER DURDEN

FRIDAY, NOV 04, 2022 - 09:00 PM

How many recent mainstream media hoaxes did you fall for? ... and/or still believe?

Russian collusion

Trump called neo-nazis "fine people"

Jussie Smollett

Bubba Wallace garage pull

Covington kids

Governor Whitmer kidnapping plot

Kavanaugh rape

Trump pee tape

COVID lab leak was a conspiracy theory

Border agents whipped migrants

Trump saved nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago

Steele Dossier

Russian bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan

Trump said drinking bleach would fight COVID

Muslim travel ban

Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation

Andrew Cuomo best COVID leadership

Trump built cages for migrant kids

"Austere religious scholar"

Trump overfed Koi fish in Japan

Build Back Better will pay for itself

Trump tax cuts benefited only the rich

Cloth masks prevent COVID

If you get vaccinated you won't catch COVID

SUV killed parade marchers

Trump used teargas to clear a crowd for a bible photo

"Don't Say Gay" was in a bill

Putin price hike

Ivermectin is a horse dewormer and not for humans

"Mostly peaceful" protests

Trump overpowered secret service for wheel of "The Beast"

Officer Sicknick was murdered by protesters

January 6th was an insurrection

BYU students hurled racist insults at Duke volleyball player

And don't forget "democracy is under threat..."

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justinssportscorner · 4 months

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Sean Keeley at Awful Announcing:

“I think entitlement is a big part of our society that has been a cancer for us because people believe that their opinion is more important than somebody else’s opinion.” That’s a sentiment shared unironically by New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers in his recent sit-down interview with Tucker Carlson. The two bosom buddies (the interview is conducted at the table they ate dinner at the night before) got together for a wide-ranging discussion that included, what else, the COVID-19 vaccine, conspiracy theories, and RFK Jr’s offer to make Rodgers his vice-presidential running mate. As we are wont to do, we listened to the entire interview and culled some of the highlights below. And before we get started, we’ll just note that Rodgers used the word “canceled” or some derivation of it 18 times.

Compassion & Empathy

The interview begins with Rodgers offering up some circular and condescending thoughts about having “compassion” and empathy” for people on the other side of the COVID-19 vaccine discussion while also making it clear that they don’t really deserve it for the way the anti-vax crowd, the true victims, was treated. “I have a lot more compassion for them, actually, and empathy. I’ve been strong against the vax, against mandates, against lockdowns, against all of it,” said Rodgers. “I think the last few months, I’ve been looking at things a little bit differently, and I think it’s time for a lot us to maybe adjust some of the approach that we’re doing. I mean, it obviously hasn’t worked. We’ve been trying to wake people up, I think, with the studies that are out there now. All the time, with the articles, with the change in stances by everybody from Chris Cuomo on down who have either had vaccine injuries or side effects or just look at things differently.

“And it’s caused me to, I think, have a little bit more empathy and compassion for those people who had a ton of fear, thought they were doing the right thing for themselves, for their friends, for their families, and went through all the mass formation psychosis that we all did. It’s just full-court propaganda against us and are now going, ‘Oh, shit, maybe that wasn’t the best. Maybe they lied to us. Maybe they weren’t being truthful. Maybe this wasn’t safe.’ Even though they said from the beginning, 100% safe and effective. Everybody from Biden to the head of the FDA and on down, WHO. “I think it’s important for us to, if we want to make a difference, which I do, and I don’t necessarily want to be way a part of the conversation anymore, is, how do we call people forward with compassion and kindness that just come over to the side of being awake to what’s going on? Because I think we all need to come to the grips that this could happen again. “So how do we call these people forward in love and acceptance, not forgetting what happened, how we were treated, how we were canceled? Everybody from yourself to me, the Joe, the mutual friends that we have. But calling people forward to step into the truth, and that there isn’t shame and guilt on this side, which I think our side, justifiably at times, because the way we’re treated, feels It feels like we need to get some get back.

[...]

Domestic Enemies

Just like in his interview with conspiracy theorist Eddie Bravo, Rodgers shared a desire to see the United States military turn its focus on certain Americans. He also offered up a very specific definition of American patriotism. “I was at the Kentucky Derby this last weekend, and they were swearing in some new recruits to, I think, join the Army. And so they had them repeat after the sergeant or whatever who was swearing them in,” said Rodgers. “And I just was stuck with that one line that, ‘Protect against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’ I said domestic out loud because I was like, are we forgetting that one? Because there’s a lot of domestic people in this country who actually don’t love America, who actually don’t want to see us thrive.

“I’m super patriotic. I think it’s because my grandpa fought in the Second World War, was a prisoner of war, believed in freedom and fought for it, and lost many friends. He was in the Air Force who were at Pearl Harbor, and flew many bombing missions over to try and liberate the French and Polish people there over in Europe, and almost lost his life for it, and lost a lot of friends, and believed in this country and the freedoms that he was willing to fight and die for. And so that’s where I grew up in, and I love this country, and I want to see it thrive. And I think there’s a lot of people that don’t give a shit about it.” Rodgers then tried to make a point by lumping together the war in Ukraine, the situation in Gaza, and…college campuses? “We’re spending billions of dollars Ukraine and billions of dollars to Israel, billions of dollars to these college campuses. There’s just a lot of issues right now that seem really un-American. And I think there’s a lot of red-blooded Americans. People are like, ‘How can Trump have such support?’ Well, people are fed up with it, and he speaks the rhetoric of taking back, making America great again, and stuff.

[...]

Vladimir Putin: Seems Like a Cool Dude

“You did one of the most controversial, somehow, not to me, most controversial interviews in the last, I don’t know how long, when you went to Russia and did Putin. How did it feel coming back? Because anybody who watched the interview was like, number one, it was fucking awesome. Number two, Putin came off as an interesting, thoughtful, smart individual. And if you’ve read 1984, the base game plan of government control is you have to have an enemy, and you have to slander that enemy regardless if you know anything about them. I think a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, Putin apologists are like, whitewashing all the stuff that he’s done to the different people.’ I was just like, no, I’d love to I’d love to see Joe Biden give an interview where he can speak on the history of the United States in the same way that Putin talked about the history of his country.” For the record, Carlson’s interview with Putin was widely criticized, and many of the things Putin said about Russia were deemed false or outright propaganda.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Not a Cool Dude

Even though Aaron Rodgers extolled the virtues of patriotism through the lens of the military and participation in war, he seemed downright offended by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s appearance in green military fatigues before the U.S. Congress. “[You’re] being canceled by the people who have just bowed down and given interviews from their knees to the Zalinskys of the world,” Rodgers told Carlson. “Gargling as they interview, yes,” responded Carlson. “It’s wild. As this guy comes over in fucking an outfit you’d wear to the store on a Sunday morning to ask Congress for another 100 billion dollars, is fucking wild.”

RFK Jr. Would Beat Both Donald Trump & Joe Biden Head-to-Head, Apparently

In extolling the virtues of almost-running mate Robert Kennedy, Jr., Rodgers claims that internal polling shows that Bobby can beat Joe Biden or Donald Trump head-to-head. “Bobby recently came out and said, in the summer months, at some point, he wants to do a 50-state poll with like 20,000, I don’t know what the exact number is, votes in each of these states. And whoever polls lower between him and Joe Biden has to drop out of the race,” said Rodgers. “Because in his own analytics, he’s found out that if the three of them run, Trump is most likely to win. If he goes against Trump, he wins. If he goes against Biden, he wins. If Biden goes against Trump, Trump wins. “So in fact, he said, Hey, listen, I’ll drop out if you pull higher than me in these 50 states. But if I pull higher than you, you’re out.”

Appearing on the May 14th edition of Tucker Carlson Network’s The Tucker Carlson Show, Jets QB and conspiracy theorist tinfoil hatter Aaron Rodgers shared his admiration for scumbag Vladimir Putin and opposition to Volodymyr Zelensky, repeated more COVID quackery, and consideration to be RFK Jr.’s running mate.

From the 05.14.2024 edition of Tucker Carlson Network's The Tucker Carlson Show:

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#Aaron Rodgers #Tucker Carlson #New York Jets #NFL #Tucker Carlson Network #The Tucker Carlson Show #Vladimir Putin #Conspiracy Theories #Anti Vaxxer Extremism #Coronavirus #Coronavirus Conspiracies #Volodymyr Zelensky

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dasha-aibo · 1 year

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Any concerns about the covid vaccine and the way the pandemic was handled even if genuine kind of fall flat when there are people talking about microchips and dna altering superviruses being implanted and other stupid shit on their side that they don't try and shut up for being lunatics.

The vaccine is not going to fucking hurt you

The only reason I didn't get a shot is because I lived in Russia and Western vaccines are not available there and I don't trust whatever one of Putin's stooges mixed in his basement

But it, along with all the draconian protective measures was totally unnecessary

COVID is, at worst, a seasonal flu with comparable death rates

This was ridiculously overblown on both sides

China obviously tried to develop it as a bioweapon, but it was nowhere near potent enough, lmao

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lighthousekeepers-burner-blog · 7 months

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I’m uncomfortable with the level of stupid passing as common sense in the environment. It used to be provocative, and then quietly overnight, it became the status quo. People got really really confident in their unqualified opinions about matters of existential importance to our shared lives on this planet. No hesitation: masks don’t work, covid is a cold, vaccines are the problem, protesting is useless, voting doesn’t matter, gay is a disease, remote work is dangerous, Israel is just, Putin is our friend. All “opinions” that curiously bolster a particular political end for a minority elite, that inspire us to shut up, reproduce, work, obey, and keep businesses (temporarily) open. We have our selfish inclinations weaponized against us so that it becomes our ‘choice’ to repeat infection towards permanent disability, and opt out of the financial burden of course-correcting climate change, to suffer once in a lifetime weather phenomena on a yearly basis. Why me? Why me? What horrible misfortune! No. Stop abiding this manufactured delusion. We are being culled and used for parts and it will only get worse and worse. History is choked full of moments like these where the people need to rise and say enough, use their minds to deprogram and heal. Fascism is always ready and we must be always ready to resist. Sorry, I know now the very word ‘fascism’ is made taboo, lest we see the enemy clearly. What is happening in Gaza is, for many like me, a piercing of the veil.

#fascism

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bewires · 2 years

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sent myself on a very weird wikipedia spiral today.

so my husband put on a random playlist to clean the apartment to and one of right said fred's lesser known and very terrible songs came on.

and I was like "alright I know at least one of right said fred is not straight, why is all their music so aggressively bro-douche-y" and uh.

apparently richard fairbrass, the non-fred member of right said fred, is just the most chaotic person on the planet??

madonna said she wanted to sleep with him in public once in the 90s.

he came out as bi and started attending gay rights rallies in russia in the 2000s.

then in the last two years he spoke out against the covid-19 vaccine after being hospitalized with covid and for Putin in the war like ?????

anyway all this to say, major props to Fred of Right Said Fred, who unlike his brother does not have his own wikipedia entry.

#right said fred

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 2 years

Video

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New Rule: All Scolds Day | Real Time with Bill Maher

New rule: If Halloween is too much for your fragile sensibilities and you're worried about seeing someone wearing something that's on the Forbidden Costume List, just stay the fuck home.

Every year we go through this bullshit. Lists of costumes you better not wear, lest a night of irreverent dress-up spiral into something that resembles fun.

Here's an idea, click-bait websites: I won't tell you how to harvest and sell my personal data, and you don't tell me what I can wear on Halloween.

Because Halloween is supposed to be outrageous. It's a festival of the sacrilegious and a celebration of the grotesque. From zombies to ghouls to bobbing for apples in other people's saliva. Yet every year, there's a new list of offensive things we shouldn't do on the day that's all about being offensive.

You know what I want to cancel? November 1st, All Scolds Day when the good people announce which costumes the bad people wore.

BuzzFeed - I mean BuzzKill - has a list of 23 costumes they're literally begging you not to wear.

Of course this year the number one no-no is serial killer, cannibal and Netflix sensation Jeffrey Dahmer. eBay has already banned selling it, because otherwise it would be impossible to find a blonde wig and aviator glasses.

Simone Biles tweeted “put the Jeffrey Dahmer costumes back in the closet, we ain't having it.” Who's “we”? What's with the "we”? Who died and made you the Great Pumpkin?

I'm so tired of a handful of emotional hemophiliacs on social media telling us what we can't do on Halloween. And by the way please put drugs in my candy.

Listen to these other verboten costumes on stupid lists this year. Including Queen Elizabeth, because it's too soon. Yes, 96, practically an ingenue.

Of course, don't even think about characters outside of your race, and no Genies, because Genies were slaves, okay. No sexy school girls, no Playboy bunnies, no celebrities accused of pedophilia including Elvis. You can't dress up as Elvis? That's an entire industry.

No zombie versions of deceased celebrities. Well there goes my zombie Angela Lansbury idea. No unhoused person, what we used to call a hobo, the default costume of every kid in history. No one with an eating disorder, so goodbye skeletons, and no transphobic costumes because if kids want to see drag queens they can go to Story Hour.

Also listen to this: no Putin, no Trump, no anything related to the Will Smith Oscar slap, no Johnny Depp and of course Amber Heard is out, no shit. And nothing related to vaccines or COVID or monkey pox.

So have fun kids, and let your imagination soar!

Can I tell you something kids? These are all great costumes. Listen to me, I'm your last connection to fun. You should wear all of them. In fact, combine them if you want. Have the queen shit in Johnny's bed. Have Will Smith smacking a hobo. Kevin Spacey hitting on a mariachi band.

Jeffrey Dahmer is the perfect Halloween costume. What is scarier than a guy who fucks you, kills you and eats you, not necessarily in that order?

For fuck’s sake, it's Halloween, which is not just a fun holiday, it's a necessary psychic release. Yes, societies going back thousands of years knew that you had to have some release valve on the calendar to flirt with the macabre and let the demons out to role play so they wouldn't come out later for real.

Mexico has Day of the Dead, Japan has Oban, Haitians have Fête Gede. It's not a coincidence that Carnival comes right before Lent, and Halloween right before All Saints Day. Much the way getting blown at a bachelor party comes before the wedding.

You know, I find it so interesting. You would think that a “Handmaid's Tale” costume would be acceptable, since it derives from a completely woke-approved show that condemns the patriarchy. BuzzKill says no Handmaid's Tale costume either because it “hits a little too close to home right now.”

Okay, this is the life philosophy of Zillennials. Things that are interesting might also contain something which could cause a moment of discomfort, so ban it all.

It's not your fault kids. Your parents ruined you by over protecting you, and now you're these assholes. And that is the craziest part of all this. Being irreverent, unclenched and playful should be the province of the young. But it's not.

Boomers are supposed to be the “get off my lawn” crowd. But when someone in a problematic costume shows up at your door, it's literally Gen Z telling them to “get off my lawn.”

Except it's not even your lawn. Because you live at your parents house.

#Bill Maher #Real Time with Bill Maher #New Rule #Halloween #halloween costume #woke scold #woke scolding #cultural sensitivity #emotional fragility #emotional hemophiliacs #woke fragility #woke #wokeism #woke activism #cult of woke #wokeness as religion #religion is a mental illness

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kittyprincessofcats · 1 year

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On this week’s episode of “being a lesbian child of Russia-German late resettlers who hates Russia and supports Ukraine”:

- Fighting at work for the right to refuse to take care of translations into Russian (I’m a translation project manager)

- Throughout that process finding out by accident that a colleague I have to work with every day most likely supports the war

- Wondering if I’ll dare to ask my family members the “How do you stand on the war in Ukraine?” question when they call me on my birthday this year. (I avoided it last year by turning off my phone.)

Fun times.

Longer story under the cut because I need to write it down somewhere. If you’re curious about the very wide range of reactions you can get at your workplace in Germany when you say “Actually, I think helping companies continue to do business in Russia is morally wrong because of the war and I don’t want to do it”, feel free to read. Also, feel free to skip the really long part in the beginning (in italics) where I explain my background - it’s not really necessary for the story, I just wrote it down for context. (Also damn, this whole thing got insanely long, I’ll be surprised if even one person actually reads it lol.)

Okay, so first about my background, because even though I’m tired of explaining it every time, it helps make some parts of this story more understandable: My parents are late resettlers, or “Russia-Germans” as they’re often called here. Basically what that means is that their ancestors where ethnic Germans who emigrated to Russia/the Soviet Union and lived in German settlements there. They always tried to stay among themselves, didn’t let their kids marry Russians and stuff like what (which is awful, I know), spoke German at home instead of Russian, you get the idea. And they had to face a lot of harships for being German: During WW2, my grandparents were exiled to Siberia, and later my parents were also often disciminated against (for example my dad was never promoted at his job because he wasn’t considered “Russian enough”). After the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin wall, pretty much my entire family (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles) moved “back” to Germany, the country of their ancestors.

I was born in Germany, I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve always considered myself German. (Not even Russia-German, just German without any additions.) I’ve been correcting people who call me “Russian” since I was a child. (And to be clear - because unfortunately due to Germany’s history any sort of “insisting on being German” can be easily read as a Nazi thing - that’s not how I mean it. I don’t think that being German makes me better or worse than anyone else. I only insist on being called German in the context of “don’t call me Russian”.)

Unfortunately, many other late resettlers and their children don’t feel the way I do and actually do consider themselves Russian. They grow up with Russian culture here (I did too, but it never made me *identify* as Russian), some of them are actually half-Russian (my cousins, for example), and just like Russians living in Germany, many of them go on and on about how great Putin is, how great Russia is, how the west is corrupt and evil and how everything is better over there. (Look, I’m usually against telling anyone to “go back to where you came from”, but honest question here: If everything’s so much better in Russia, why did you move here and why are you staying here?)

And then there’s the whole “I’m gay” thing, which, suprise - made life in a Russia-German family not that easy. In general, my observations have been that Russians & Russia-Germans living here tend to be very homo- and transphobic, misogynist, conservative, sometimes overly religious, against Covid-vaccines and against wearing masks, and just generally quite toxic and self-centered. And now of course, many support Russia’s war on Ukraine.

For all of these reasons, I’ve always treated Russians and late resettlers with mistrust at first (despite literally having that background myself - or should I say because I have that background myself and therefore experienced Russia’s ugly side myself, both through what my ancestors faced there and especially through what I faced in my family here for being gay. I know homophobia exists in every country, but Russians and those that consider themselves to be Russian in some way are just are a special kind of evil there.) And I think that’s why I feel so much solidarity for Ukraine - because Russia doesn’t want people like me to exist either.

Oh yeah, one more important thing: I only found out as an adult that my mother was actually born in Kazakhstan and not Russia. Kazakhstan was of course part of the Soviet Union back then and my mom never made that differentiation. She always refered to where she’s from as “Russia”, so I literally had no idea until I was an adult. But now in light of Russia’s war against Ukraine, I realize just how messed up referring to other ex-Soviet-Union-countries as “Russia” is, so I usually (when I don’t forget) make an effort to correctly say where my mom is from.

Now, on to the actual story: So, I have this colleague - let’s call her Anna, I’ll just change everyone’s names - who is a child of late resettlers, too. It was actually one of the things we first bonded over when I started my new job. And of course I had the same mistrust that I usually do of people who share my background, but I told myself “Well, it’d be shitty of you to judge her without knowing her, you literally have the same background”. And at first, she helped me with a lot of stuff (she helped me find a new appartment when I wanted to move, for example).

Unfortunately, over time, I’ve gotten more and more subtly-homophobic vibes from Anna - but always in a way that was still plausibly deniable. But well, when subtle incidents like that (for example making fun of my attempts at gender-inclusive language) keep piling up, you start to get a picture of what her worldview is. When I came out at work, she didn’t say anything bad, but didn’t further comment on it either. She’s also said some stuff defending anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, which again made me raise an eyebrow in the “I’m getting some ‘shitty Russian mentality’ vibes” way.

When Russia started their full-scare invasion of Ukraine, everyone at my workplace was in shock, of course. And for a second I did wonder back then (“What if Anna supports the war?”) - but then I saw Anna comfort and reassure a Polish colleague who was scared for her family in Poland “in case they come for us next”, so I assumed “Okay, Anna’s at least against the war, then” and I never asked her after that.

Fast forward to two weeks ago: I’m supposed to take care of a new client and their translations soon. (Basically, I work for a big translation company and my job is taking care of the clients’ projects, finding good translators for them, making sure everything gets done on time, that sort of thing.) Initially, I had no problems with this client, until I saw that one of their target languages is Russian. I then researched their company and found out that they do indeed still sell their products in Russia.

Needless to say, I think it’s wrong when companies still sell in Russia. Yes, even if they’re just selling “harmless, everyday stuff” - it still supports the Russian economy. I later found out that some of my other clients do this, too, which sucks - but at least there I’m not directly helping them with it because Russian isn’t a language we do for them. That’s where the really hard line is for me: I don’t want to be the person who then has to take care of these translations into Russian, make sure they get done, and thereby directly help these companies with their still-existing Russia-business.

And then, while I was mentally going over how to tell my boss I don’t want to do this - that I’ll gladly do every other language for this client, but I don’t want to touch Russian, one of my other, existing, clients, suddently sent us a huge project to be translated into Russian, too.

Now this client doesn’t usually order Russian with us, but now they suddenly did, and there I sat, not knowing what to do in the moment. So I talked to Anna - who I share this client with - and told her about my concerns and that I think it’s wrong for companies to still sell products in Russia. And her reply rang quite a few alarm bells in my head:

Anna: No, I completely disagree with you there, but let’s not discuss politics right now.

Like... what part do you disagree with, Anna? Only the “still selling in Russia is wrong” part or the “the war is bad” part? Because the first I could still somewhat excuse, but if it’s the second then what the fuck?

I told myself that Anna most likely means the first version, but I wasn’t sure. And then I unfortunately let her talk me into taking care of that huge Russian project, mainly because in the moment, I didn’t know if I have a right to refuse. So I did it, I prepared all the files, but then gave the project over to Anna as quickly as possible. But damn, I felt so dirty and guilty afterwards, and I still do. If any Ukrainian is reading this: I’m sorry. From the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry. It’s itching in my fingers to go back onto that project’s page and destroy all the files before we can deliver them to the client... but then I’d definitely get in trouble. I thought about maybe donating exactly the amount of money I helped my company make here to Ukraine to make up for it - but we’re talking about a pretty big number here that I can’t afford to donate. (Still, if someone knows good, reliable places to donate where the money will actually arrive where it’s needed, do let me know! Even if I can’t donate *that* amount, I could at least donate *something* - or I could substract what we paid the translators (so only take my company’s actual winnings from this) and then half that amount given that Anna did about half the work... still a lot of money for one person with my salary, but at least that would be humanly possible... long story short: Tell me where to best donate, I’ll figure it out from there.)

Before I took care of that project though, I did try to talk it over with my team leader / direct boss - let’s call him Ben. I talked to him about both this big project and the new client I’m supposed to take care of. And that conversation went a little something like this:

Me: *explains that I don’t want to take care of projects into Russian and why*

Ben: Oh, but whether they still want to sell in Russia is a company’s own choice.

Me: Yes, but it’s our choice as a translation company whether we want to translate that stuff for them.

Ben: Well yes, but we’re not translating anything that’s directly pro-war for them. These companies are only selling everyday products, if it was anything that could be used for the war, we wouldn’t do it.

And unfortunately, I again gave in at that point instead of insisting that it’s still wrong - because, again, I didn’t know what the consequences would be if I told my boss “Forget it, I’m not doing it either way”. Could I get fired? Could I get reprimanded? Would it be worth it to lose my job over this? If I then couldn’t find a new job, would I have to move back in with my homophobic parents?

I also spoke to the colleague who’s teaching me how to take care of this client about it and what she said was:

Lisa: “I agree, I don’t like that either, but there’s nothing I can do about it; I’m not the person who decided any of this.”

What followed were a few days of me agonizing over all of this and wondering what to do. I don’t want to touch any further projects into Russian. As terrifying as the prospect of losing my job was, the prospect of my conscience never letting me live with this again was worse. And I kept wondering if I’m just losing my mind and if it’s just me who has a problem with this - since Anna and Ben both didn’t seem to get my problem.

I asked another colleague (and frankly - I’d call him a friend by now), let’s call him Daniel, if this is just me and to my great relief he said this:

Daniel: No, it’s not just you. I wouldn’t want to do that either and I also think it’s wrong. I just don’t know if we have a right to refuse. Thankfully my clients never send anything into Russian.

I still wasn’t sure what to do at this point. I researched German law to find out if I have a right to refuse - and to my delight, I found out that yes, I apparently do. But still... I wasn’t sure, and I’m still not, how Ben would react to me straight-up refusing. It was a scary concept.

Then I finally had the idea to ask another very good friend and colleague, who’s been working for this company way longer than I have, what she thinks I should do - let’s call her Amelie. We talked for a really long time and I won’t type out that whole conversation here, just the basic gist of it:

Amelie: Ah yes, I definitely understand your problem. If I were you, I’d talk to Steve [not his real name either, of course]. He’s on the works council and is usually the most understanding of them when it comes to political questions.

Me: *tells her about the big Russian project and what Anna’s response to me not wanting to do it was*

Amelie: Yes, Anna is unfortunately very much the wrong person to ask. I heard from [name of translator] that she supports the war.

And there it was. The bomshell that I’d been afraid of, but didn’t want to be true. Because despite everything, despite all the red flags I had around her, I still *hoped* that straight up supporting war and genocide would of course not be her position because how sick do you have to be? Sublte homophobia is one thing, but supporting the war? Supporting the invasion and genocide of a peaceful countrly and people? THE FUCK?

I think I freaked out about it more than Amelie expected, because she then backtracked and said that she might have misunderstood and that the translator she heard it from likely wouldn’t like it being spread around. So I decided I’m going to ask Anna herself next time we talk - without mentioning Amelie or that translator.

But if.. if it’s true... if she does support the war... What do I do? I work with her every day, we share a client, I can’t just avoid her! Heck... she has friends in this company who are very actively helping Ukrainians and they likely have no idea! If it’s true, would I be an asshole for telling others in the company? Would it be smart to make an enemy out of her that way? If that really is her view, could I change her mind? Like fuck... if I do ask her and she does bluntly tell me she supports the war, will I even be able to keep my anger in check in that moment? Or will I just reply “In that case, go fuck yourself with a cactus; Слава Україні!” and hang up?

Amelie also had some true but also sad advice in the end: “See where you can draw that line. Talking to your boss and the works council is a good step. But no Ukrainian is going to be helped by you losing your job. You can fight for your goals better with a stable income than without one.”

Thankfully, Amelie’s advice to talk to Steve was absolutely perfect. If you don’t know what a works council is, here’s a definition: “A German works council, or Betriebsrat, is a group of elected employees who collaborate with management on behalf of the company's workforce.” Basically, they’re the people who can stand up for your rights when you have a dispute with your boss. So I asked Steve if I can talk to him “as a member of the works council”.

Some highlights of the convesation with Steve include:

Me: *explains everything about the client* [...] And basically, one of their target languages is Russian and I have a problem with that.

Steve: Because... because of the current situation, because of Ukraine?

Me: Yes.

Steve: Okay, I see. Let me write this all down.

[...]

Me: I just wasn’t sure if I have a right to refuse.

Steve: Yes, you do. This is about your personal beliefs and an employer has to respect that.

[...]

Me: I’ve talked to someone else who said they don’t want to do stuff into Russian either, but can’t do anything about it.

Steve: Yeah, not everyone’s brave enough to actually speak up when something’s wrong instead of just silently doing it anyways - but I’m glad you are. I think you’re doing the right thing and I wish more people were like that.

[...]

Me: And then Ben said “But they’re only selling everyday-products.”

Steve: What the... IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT THEY’RE SELLING!!!!

[...]

Me: I just wasn’t sure what I’m risking if I straight-up refuse.

Steve: Nothing.

Me: What?

Steve: You’re risking nothing. Because if they tried to fire or reprimand you for this, we as the works council would raise hell. After all that talk about how much our company supposedly supports Ukraine, if they tried to punish you for this, that would be absolutely unacceptable.

So yeah, that was an amazing conversation! Steve then wrote to the other members of the works council and we’re still waiting for them to reply, but now I’m really hopeful that they’ll have my back on this and that as long as Russia’s waging war against another country, I won’t have to dirty my fingers with Russian projects again.

I also later talked to Nicole [again: not her real name], who is supposed to take care of this new client with me. (She’d been on holiday, so I couldn’t talk to her sooner.) When I told her everything, she not only agreed with me, but decided that not only does she not want to do it either, she’d go as far as wanting to do nothing for this client at all as long as they’re selling in Russia. She sent a message to her boss saying as much. (Seriously, she’s hardcore - I brought it up and within minutes, she had an even more extreme stance than me! And frankly, I’d love to also say that I won’t to anything at all for companies that sell in Russia - but I doubt going that far would be possible as that is, unfortunately, a lot of companies. If I went that far, I’d have to give up almost all of my current clients and ask my boss to completely redo our team structure - just realistically, I know that won’t be doable. But at the very least, not helping companies sell to Russia is a hard line I don’t want to ever cross again.)

Actually approaching Steve was scary, because I knew the moment I do that, if he backs me up, there’s not turning back on this - not for me. The thought of talking to the rest of the works council (who might be less understanding from what I know of them) is scary, too. If they do back me up, the thought of then breaking the news that “I refuse to do any more projects into Russian” to Ben (and Anna) is scary. The thought of point-blank asking Anna how she stands on the war - and then having to deal with whatever answer she gives me - is scary.

But, well... okay, not to sound super cheesy (it’s literally just true!), but in the end, Ukrainians inspired me with their bravery. If they’re brave enough to fight off an army, to defend their country and their freedom tooth and nail, to stay proud and defiant no matter what that aggressor-shithole country throws at them next, to, as Tvorchi sang at Eurovision, have “hearts of steel”... then really, what’s standing up to my boss and mean colleague in comparison?

Holy shit, this got long. I don’t think anyone’s actually going to read all of this lol.

#personal #worker's rights #Arbeitsrecht #Ukraine #Russia's war on Ukraine #if anyone does end up reading this (unlikely lol) - let me know what you think I should do about that colleague #because I'm at a loss there #ah who am I kidding - nobody comes to tumblr to read an entire novel #mostly wrote this for myself and might delete later #long post #(and then some)

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