#The Good In Us

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mary L. Trump at The Good In Us:

Donald Trump loves violence, especially when it’s committed on his behalf. It makes him feel powerful in a way only humiliating other people can. He knows that violence begets violence; fear begets fear; rage, rage, and so forth. He revels in his ability to set fires that spread—except, of course, when they jump the line. On Saturday, there was another alleged assassin attempt on Donald (the second in two months, which itself practically beggars the imagination) at his golf club in West Palm Beach. It was only a couple days before this that Donald refused to condemn the bomb threats, school evacuations, and general sense of terror in Springfield, Ohio that he and his running mate have unleashed by their vicious targeting of Haitian immigrants who live and work there. He claimed without conviction that he didn’t know anything about it. And then he doubled-down on his baseless attacks, as he always does. Two more Springfield elementary schools had to be evacuated on Monday morning. 

This kind of development is nothing new; it is, indeed what life in Donald Trump’s America has become over the last nine long years. Threats of violence and actual violence from the right are now a regular part of our political discourse and behavior—Donald makes sure of that on an almost daily basis. He is the primary proponent and promulgator of it—it was only a matter of time before he became its target, too. In the early days of his 2016 campaign, my uncle encouraged his rally-goers to assault protesters and claimed that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” as if that was either an accurate description of what was unfolding or a reasonable response to protests with which one disagreed.

Before and during the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Donald encouraged and stoked violence and people listened. Others listened to his anti-immigrant hatred, his racism, and his anti-Semitism as well, like the gunman who killed 23 in El Paso simply because they had brown skin, or the one who killed 11 Jews at the Tree of Life Synagogue. The man who broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home looking to murder her, attacked and assaulted her husband, Paul, with a hammer almost killing him. Donald has since made Paul Pelosi the butt of his jokes, much to the delight of his rally attendees.

This is the America Donald Trump is rooting for. Whether from violence inspired by his rhetoric or doctors’ failures to give pregnant women health care when they’re bleeding out, people are dying. And if we don’t change course, people will continue to die. Every day Americans pay the price while Donald sets the world on fire with his provocations and then spends the day playing golf, completely insulated from the chaos he sows—until this summer. We know he won’t change—there is no new tone, no evolution in his future or ours. He has no self-awareness, no insight to himself and he believes that the only way to maintain his grip on power is to keep us divided, angry, and afraid.

Mary L Trump’s latest Substack piece on Donald Trump claiming to be a “victim” when he is the perpetrator for division in America is on point.

[catmask]

i dont consider myself a 'fashion guru' by any means but one thing i will say is guys you dont need to know the specific brand an item you like is - you need to know what the item is called. very rarely does a brand matter, but knowing that pair of pants is called 'cargo' vs 'boot cut' or the names of dress styles is going to help you find clothes you like WAAAYYYY faster than brand shopping

[marvelsmostwanted]

There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)

[bizarrebazaar13]

what if your doppelgänger wasn’t evil it was just a person. what if your doppelgänger wasn’t trying to replace you it was just trying to learn to be a person and you were the best model it had. what if your doppelgänger looked at you with your eyes and said with your voice that it just wanted to be loved. what then.

[wishfulsketching]

Silco and his terror of a daughter

[politijohn]

Source

[existennialmemes]

Listen, if a Bad President can come in and take away our rights and we're dependent on a Good President replacing them in four years to give us back our rights, then we do not have any rights.

If politicians can take or distribute them, then they're not "inalienable" and they're not "rights."

We don't have inalienable rights we have conditional privileges, divvied out according to the whims of whoever currently holds the reins.

And if we want to have actual rights, then we must build a system in which no one has the power to take them away to begin with.

[blorboresidue]

one time I used the ben affleck smoking reaction image in the family group chat and my mom replied with the funniest possible response which was: "mommy doesn't know who the guy is???" and that phrase has not left my brain since. I'll see blorbos on my dash that I don't recognize and I'll be like well it seems mommy doesn't know who the guy is.

[destiel-news-channel]

[Image ID: The Destiel confession meme edited so that Dean answers 'At least two Capitol Rioters rejected Trump's pardon.' to Cas' 'I love you'. /End ID]

"Trump can shove his pardon up his ass,"

said Jason Riddle, who had been sentenced to 90 days in prison for two misdemeanor offences. Pamela Hemphill, a 71-year old woman, also refused her pardon with the words "The message is, if I took a pardon that what I did was OK. They were criminals. They broke the law. I broke the law. Pay the price." - source link

[great-and-small]

The majority of the Earth’s rodents: How do you survive environments with practically zero oxygen, feel no pain, and live for decades when none of the rest of us can???

Naked mole-rats:

[roseworth]

i think theres this idea in the general public that the "best" fanfic gets turned into real books like 50 shades of grey. but the truth is that the best fanfic can never be published as an actual book because its intricately woven into the canon material so its inseparable even if you change the names

[icewindandboringhorror]

(also feel free in the tags to clarify Why you made the choice you made!! :0c)

[bl00dline]

the whole tiktok situation is EXACTLY why media literacy and education on propaganda is so important. the notifications about tiktok going down and then coming back use VERY propagandistic language, and with a literal fascist coming into power in the us tomorrow we need to be even more critical of the information we’re consuming and stay on the lookout for political stunts like this

[froopa-coopa]

"I never asked for this"

[winderlylandchime]

I’m seeing a bunch of posts that make me think most USAmericans don’t know about The No Surprises Act.

It was passed in 2021 (thank you Biden) and essentially states that if you don’t have insurance or your insurance doesn’t cover a service you need (or want) you are entitled to a Good Faith Estimate of the cost of care. (If your insurance does cover the service, you should be able to estimate the cost of care based on your deductible and co-pay.)

As a healthcare provider who does not accept any insurance, I am very careful to not violate The No Surprises Act. Why? Because for every penny more than $400 that the Good Faith Estimate was “off” (or if it wasn’t provided), you are entitled to a refund for that amount.

Y’all. Ask for a Good Faith Estimate. Get it in writing. Compare it to what you are paying. If you are not provided an estimate or if it’s wrong by more than $400, demand a refund.