#also why the fuck do the republicans have to be so *anti* abortion *anti* trans rights or whatever

[bubble-you]

what if you give people who live in rural areas money so they can homeschool their kids (as long as it’s, y’know, factual)

but wives aren’t teachers of everything. this is why the education system needs reform. but only local taxes go towards local education? why not give like federal taxes to rural areas. more teachers smaller classes. how do you improve rural education? how is trump going to help people keep jobs???

[qqueenofhades]

I keep thinking about the ask you answered a little while ago about people wanting a leftist version of Trump is so scarily true it's unsettling. People keep demanding he "do something" about abortion and gun violence but when anyone is like.... he can't, he doesn't have the votes to, they're like "he's the President he said he would do something why hasn't he done something" and it's like ???? what part of this are you not understanding if he doesn't have the votes he doesn't have the votes. Do they want like an EO or something? I'm just not sure what they expect him to do.

And it's also so fucking annoying to see them go after the Dems at every turn while letting the Republicans off the hook completely and not expecting shit from them. You may just want Biden to write them all off and govern like the GOP doesn't exist but he can't.....exactly do that. That's not how our system works. I wonder if they're just sorely misinformed from how rife Twitter is with complete bullshit or if they understand reality but are just saying this stuff for the outrage clicks.

Honestly, as I've said before, I'm not sure? I think it's a combination of willful ignorance and a desire not to learn anything, ever, that might challenge their deeply felt moral superiority. Just the other day, I had someone in my notes who, while otherwise agreeing with most of what I was saying, also insisted that Biden was "anti-trans." And like. The president who, while VP, famously came out for LGBTQ marriage before his boss, who specifically highlighted the violence suffered by trans women of color in his campaign platform, got the Violence Against Women Act reauthorized and passed with strong new protections especially for trans and gnc/queer victims, has issued statements on Transgender Day of Remembrance, made sure to repeatedly insist to trans Americans that they belong and their lives are valid, etc. etc., is definitely anti-trans, dontcha know?

However, I happen to know that recently, the Washington Post wrote a bad and misleading article about the Biden administration supposedly joining Republican state AGs to prevent trans girls from playing in women's sports. It was picked up by a big liberal account on Twitter and amplified as "a betrayal of everything the Biden administration has stood for since day 1" (which, you'll notice, implicitly agrees that the Biden administration HAS strongly supported trans rights). Then a few days later, the account holder actually read the policy, agreed that it wasn't what was being proposed and the WaPo had done a hatchet job on reporting it, and admitted that no, the Biden administration actually hadn't done a 180 on supporting trans rights. But if all you have is one Twitter account incorrectly reporting on a bad and misleading WaPo article, which is like... layers on layers of deliberately distorted and extremely out-of-context information, and you use that to decide that BIDEN IS ANTI-TRANS, it just. Doesn't make sense. And even if in the extremely likely event that Biden and/or his administration have missed some of the ideological benchmarks arbitrarily assigned to Demonstrate Absolute Purity On This Issue, like. HAVE YOU GUYS SEEN WHAT THE REPUBLICANS ARE DOING??! HAVE YOU?!?!??!?!?!

I don't know if that is where that particular person got the idea or not, but it demonstrates how the left-wing online misinformation ecosystem works, and which is in some ways is extremely similar to the right-wing online misinformation ecosystem. It doesn't matter if the only piece of "evidence" supporting your belief is a single Tweet written by someone who hasn't read the actual policy based on a bad piece of reporting, that evidence is now to be preferred against every single empirical example to the contrary because it's "the real truth" (translation: it confirms what you already want to believe). That is the example that you will whip out every time someone tries to argue with you to the contrary, and you will never accept anything that contradicts and/or disproves it, because that's what you want to believe and now you will. You technically know that there is information out there which doesn't agree with your position, but it is the "wrong information" and therefore cannot be incorporated into your belief system. You likewise refuse to acknowledge any complexities, any other branches of government (once again, I am begging people to acknowledge both SCOTUS and how catastrophically it was fucked by allowing Trump to fill three seats), or anything other than insisting on the impossible and getting mad when it doesn't get done. Which doesn't sound very productive and/or useful to me, but hey. OUTRAGE. OUTRAAAAAAGE.

[papirouge]

I just had a conversation with a self titled conservative who firmly believes that anyone liberal is a sheep and that electing any republican means their guns are protected. He was pro life too so I asked why he cares about guns over kids lives at schools if he’s also pro life but he just kept repeating that more guns in schools would stop violence and that kids don’t deserve anything once they’re born. They just had to be born because birth rates.

I asked him if he considered school shootings super late term abortions. It’s still killing a child after all. He got frustrated and said he didn’t care about school shootings because liberals are dictators who want to take away all guns and put us under communism. I mean… I wouldn’t mind if all guns were destroyed if that meant kids can safely go to schools.. but really, it felt like talking to a wall because he would never critically think k about what he’s saying. It was all the same thing. So I guess this scrote of a man doesn’t really care about babies or kids.

He also firmly believes in Israel should nuke Palestine because all of Palestine is hamas and anyone protesting for Palestinians should be arrested. I bought a black keffiyeh from a Palestinian store to show support and wore it in my hair but I guess he didn’t notice that either.

These people feel like empty husks honestly when talking to them. Repeating what they hear, get angry about nothing to feel anger then shut down when confronted. It’s like those people aren’t really connected to anything? Or maybe that was a demon in disguise? Idk. There are a lot of those spiritual awakening people online talking about how the spiritual veil is thinning fast

It's so funny to see conservative seethe against "Christian sheep" when then turn around and act like Trump or Musk were the Messiah and doing the most ridiculous hoops to defend their dumb stunts. If Musk was actually smart he would create a cult bc there's so much potential in all those blue checkmarks who complained about not being fairly paid yet still simping for him SMH

And TBH every pro gun conservative should shut the fuck up after what happened to Trump lmao None of them been able to stop that assassination with their guns, yet they're really trying to make us believe that more guns in school will make a change. They're so delusional...

I think pro gun nutcases and abortionists have in common that they'd rather address the symptoms rather than the cause.

"We need more abortion" > why don't we establish a system where women don't need to resort to abortions?

"we need more guns (in schools)" > Why don't you address the causes that pushteens to shoot up entire schools? By making guns access easier, it also means more instable/mentally ill people will access to them and do the worst use of them. That's the snake biting its own tail.

I can't be the only one to have noticed how uncomfortable anti woke conservative pro guns get whenever the shooter is "identified" as liberal (trans, etc.). They cope by literally admitting there's a need for gun control (only for liberals though) OR will blame mental illness. But like I just said, by easying the access to guns for everyone unchecked, more mentally ill people will access to them. They're so full of shit LOL

I genuinely believe all the people who worship Trump or Musk are spiritually blind. It's like they got struck by a curse vanishing their discernment. I get such weird vibes from Musk.... it's crazy how the same people who worship him were seething against Bill Gates... for the very same things!! (transhumanist agenda, population control because yes, campaigning somd push for more babies is ALSO a spectrum of population control, etc). Dude had the potential to be the ace rocket space billionaire guy but fumbled the sympathy bag when he started accusing divers (sent to save kids stuck in that cave in south Asia) of being pedophile - unprovoked.

No comment on Trump. I believe the woman who said God let him win because Hillary was worse, but that this time around, Harris will win because America didn't learn her lesson, is more sinful than ever, and because Trump is basically a POS. Harris will hurt America (Obama is pulling the string behind the curtains btw) but God basically said that's what this country deserved lol

I don't particularly like Harris, but NGL I can't wait to see the meltdown of Conservatives once Trump loses and start sperging coping conspiracies lol nah, God is done with yall. End of the story.

[docmothra]

Sometimes the generic republican racism is a lead-in to being Actually a Nazi

Like my school was full of people who started off with 'gay people are the devil actually' and then after they established that as a norm they started posting anti-Jew bs

And I think sometimes people are trying to shoot that down before it gets steam

But I think until someone explicitly says something against the Jews it's more effective and accurate to call them a little bitch than to call them a nazi

Cus if u call them a nazi they can say "um actually I didn't literally say hitler was right"

What they gonna do if u call them a little bitch

"um actually I'm not a little bitch"? Mhm sure dude. Sounds like what a little bitch would say

If u take one thing. Like terf shit or anti gay bullying or racism or whatever. And you say 'um technically this is wrong because um (checks notes) hitler would do it'

You are removing the reason the thing is wrong from the thing itself and using the reputation of a different evil to condemn it instead

Which is. In addition to fucking up the language to talk about that different evil. So not compelling at all

Because it's so much easier to argue to an onlooking audience that, say, calling a trans girl slurs is not the same as being hitler. Than to argue to that audience that calling a trans girl slurs is innately a good thing and not bad. So if you hinge the evil of slurs on it's connection to the evil of hitler u give a lever for ur opponent to convince the audience that slurs are not being literally hitler and so slurs must not be that bad.

Like,

This is also how evangelical republicans get caught in weird traps

Because they hinge a lot of arguments on 'well, technically abortion is murder, and technically porn is adultery, and technically forcing me to bake a wedding cake is the same as rounding Christians up and throwing them in the lions den', like

Stop it with the technically!

Is it true that hitler oppressed queer people? Fuck yeah it is use that as a hook or a red flag to question what a little bitch's true motives are all day. 'hey, this guy is a dick to these minorities. I wonder who else he would be a dick to if he had a chance.'

Will it help you in an argument? Fuck no it won't ur gonna look like an apologeticist rehearsing their darn argument on how the planet earth is like a pocketwatch and therefore u shouldn't believe in evolution.

A little bitch is happy to lose a fight if it means u cede implicit ground by fighting in the battlefield they set. The correct answer to "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" Isn't "yes" or "no". It's "fuck you, I never started in the first place". And in the same way, the right answer to "why would trans people deserve respect?" Is not "well, hitler disrespected trans women.......", it's "because all human beings deserve respect by default you absolute jackass".

End rant

Idk much about antisemitism but boy howdy can I get going about rhetoric at least

I know everything that can be said on this topic has been said to death and no one but Jews will ever acknowledge it but it is still absolutely infuriating how every brand of gentile from every part of the political spectrum has collaborated to turn the word "Nazi" into a generic word for "fascist" or "bad person" or "person I don't like." Nazism isn't just fucking fascism and it isn't a synonym for bad person. It's a specific ideology that is centered at its root around blaming Jews for every problem in the world and wanting to exterminate them.

No, generic racist Republicans are not "Nazis." No, TERFs are not "Nazis." No, your crappy corrupt European leader is not a "Nazi." No, cops are not "Nazis." You know why they aren't Nazis? Because their entire ideology and behavior, as harmful as it may be to certain groups, is not centered around hating JEWS.

Nazism is an ideology centered around hating JEWS. Other people and groups may be caught in the crossfire, but ultimately, a Nazi's goal is to exterminate Jews, and you cannot just ignore that! I read a 12 paragraph essay yesterday written by a gentile analyzing the reasons people in Nazi Germany flocked to Nazism, and antisemitism wasn't mentioned as a motivation even once! They thought it was all because of gender norms and sexual repression! Oh my god!

The comfort with which gentiles have near universally divorced Nazism from antisemitism in colloquial speech is a direct precursor to the separation of Nazism from antisemitism in academic discourse. It's a direct predecessor to the rise of institutionalized antisemitism that we are seeing happen in real time now, because you have all gotten so used to appropriating Jewish trauma and Jewish oppression to the extent that you have convinced yourselves it isn't even uniquely real. That antisemitism doesn't exist as a specific bigotry that stands on it's own, that antisemitism is always some kind of footnote tied to some other, more important form of oppression. Do you think that Jews don't see what is happening here, that we don't see the deliberate generalization of Jew hatred and appropriation of the language we can use to refer to it? Jewish trauma becomes everyone's trauma, Jewish oppression becomes everyone's oppression, and soon enough the world at large has stolen the language of Jewish oppression right out of our mouths, until huge swaths of people can say "Jews are the new Nazis" and not see anything absurd about that at all.

Because you won't. Fucking. Acknowledge. What Nazism actually is. You won't fucking acknowledge that any ideology is specifically targeted at JEWS, and not YOU. Stop it!! Stop it! Cut it the fuck out. Nazism cannot be divorced from antisemitism and the insistence that it not only can be but MUST be by gentiles just shows how deeply ignorant and biased against Jews most of you really are.

[evilelitest2]

What is the dirtbag left? People keep talking about it but I have no clue what it is

Oh this answer is gonna suck.  Good question as always though.  

Ok before we can get into the dirtbag left, I want to talk about the major factions of leftist in the United States, and I am discounting Moderates/Centrist/Blue Dog Democrat's, I am specifically focused on people who support actual left wing policies.  Roughly speaking they can be broken up into the following groups though each group is a lot more complicated than I am implying here

The first and most dynamic faction are the progressives, people who are focused on the rights of marginalized people.  Sometimes they are called “identity Politics”  They are further subdivided into a bunch of specific interest groups, but their main unifying argument is “society is specifically persecuting towards certain groups and we need to address that” 

Civil Rights, who focus on the rights of African Americans 

Feminists who focus on the rights of women

The Queer Community, who are focused on the rights of Gender and Sexual Minorities (Gay people, Trans people, Non Binary people, Bi people, intersex, asexual ect

This group is really divided within itself but lets not get sidetracked

Groups focusing on the rights of Latin Americans, both citizens and immigrants

Groups focusing on the rights of Muslims/Middle Easterners

Groups focusing on the rights of Jews/Combating antisemitism

Groups focusing on the rights of Asian Americans

And finally groups focusing on the rights of the disabled 

The next major group is the labor movement, who focus on the rights of workers, focusing on things like Unions, increasing the minimum wage, addressing the wealth gap and very New Deal FDR policies, and tend to be anticapitalistic or at least Social Democrat.   

Environmentalists, who want the world to not die

Anti War advocates

Pro Education/Pro Science anti Fundamentalists' people who just want good goverment.  

And some post modernists thrown in because why not?

The two main groups that make up the left are the first two, the issues of Identity Politics and Class, and there is a LONG history of these two groups having trouble le working together.  One of the major issue is that a lot of poor whites would happily welcome a lot of leftist social policies, but vote conservative if they believes those policies will help black people, even if it hurts their own best interest.  I mean take the New Deal, which was among the greatest economic period of US history and was popularly supported by most Americans.  However a lot of poor whites supported it because Latinos and Blacks were not allowed access to most of its benefits.  ANd once the Democratic Party started to pursue desegregation and women’s rights, these poor whites abandoned the party which gave them a future and voted for policies that hurt their own best interest because of their extreme bigotry.  Which is the most frustrating part of American History.   

And among a lot of Democrats (mostly centrist) there is this idea that the best way to win elections is to stab marginalized communities in the back in order to win Republican voters.  When Bill Clinton won in 1992, he did so in large part by abandoning a lot of leftist principles, he embraced Third Way style Liberalism and deregulation (which led to the 2008 crash thanks Clinton) but he also happily supported Right wing ideas about trying to keep crazy radicals minorities from advancing too far in politics.  Basically try to rebrand the Democrats as “we aren’t as crazy as the Republicans, but we ditched all of that lame uncool parts of politics that makes your family uncomfortable”.  

So the Dirtbag Left (there term not mine) was like “Hey could we do this...but for communism?”  And like most bad things, its origin is with Nazis.

The Dirtbag Leftist are Marxists who think the best way to win Trump voters over to the left is to combine Socialist style economic/welfare policies with conservative styles attacks on “Free Speech” and “Identity Politics.”  The “nicer” version of these guys basically say “ok we win them in with the economic policies and once we implement that, we can work on the other issues”.  The cruelr version of that basically want a socialist state...for white straight men and nobody else.  

This happened because some communists were looking at how the Alt-Right was radicalizing apolitical young men and were like “wait we can do that too”  

See if you have ever had the misfortune of being in Nazi/Red Pill/Gamergate style spaces you will notice that they actually share a lot of the left’s complains about the status que.  They dislike both parties, they don’t like capitalism, and they think our current consumerist way of life is souless drudgery.  So some communists were like “What if we found the exact same demographic as these guys but tried to turn them to communism instead of Fascism?”  Which sounds like a good idea but here is the problem

The type of people who become Nazis had to already be bigoted anti intellectuals in the first place.  All you have done is given some of them Marxist Rhetoric rather than Nazi Rhetoric, they are the exact same toxic people.  And in trying to cater to them, you have allowed them to infiltrate's your movement.  

The other quality of the Dirtbag Left is that they think that the Centrist Democrats (Clinton, Obama, Biden ect) are a greater threat than the conservatives, and that if the Far Right and the Far Left can team up to destroy the center, the radicals can work out their issues.  Which has never worked ever in human history but they keep trying.  

Initially the DIrtbag Left was basically vulgar leftists who wanted to down play the issues that trigger conservatives (Abortion, minority rights, feminism, being nice to people) in order to get them to support their social/economic policies, but it quickly became co-opted by the Alt Right themselves, and now they are basically just advocates of a Herrenvolk style social state.  Or really...they are what would happen if the Nazis actually tried to combine Nationalism with Socialism.  

And  while they aren’t a large group, like the Alt-Right they are really really prominent online and are constantly engaged in wide spread harassments campaigns that are basically find/replace Gamergate harassments campaigns.  They attached themselves pretty hard to Bernie's Sanders campaign and did a really good job in ruining his chances in both primaries, and then attached themselves to Tulsi Gabbard’s fucking toxic campaign after that.  At this point they are basically just Alt Rightists with a socialist brand reskin.   Sometimes called the Red Brown Alliance

[lord-rosenth0rne]

There are plenty of good conservatives. WHO who you donate money to DOES directly support shitty people who want certain groups pushed down (minorities, lgbtqia+, etc). The fucking audacity if you to get so heated and then say you don’t support chik fila. Im dead laugh. Do you not see how ridiculous you are??? Id hate to be your friend because you are literally being a bitter bitch actively harming any friend you might have you are minorities and lgbtq+. fuck off. (2/2)

(Sorry about this, guys. I just couldn't resist. I'll make this quick and politics will be off the blog asap. I'll get some funny stuff rolling when I'm done. Maybe some of Roomie's artwork as well.)

If you are so sure of yourself, come off of anon. There shouldn't be any reason for you not to if this is what you really believe. Unfortunately, resorting to name-calling disqualifies you in my book for meaningful debates but you really should be more proud about your stances instead of being anon.

And, I must stay it's bold of you to assume you'd even make the cut to be a friend of mine. So far, you've kinda shot yourself in the foot on that option. My friends and I don't talk to one another this way and we know where one another is coming from, even if it comes out wrong. We don't cancel each other and know when to agree to disagree. We barely even hold grudges. I'd rather not be your friend if that's the way you'd talk to yours in a disagreement. It's disgusting and abusive. My friends are well above all of that, thank you.

I'm not afraid to say my stance is the fact politics aren't black and white and no one should be treating it as such. A donation for a politician does not mean you support every little thing about them. Voting for a politician does not mean you support every little thing about them. It's naive to believe that. That's reality. You are choosing who you think is the best to run the country on their policies on various subjects. It's the same with Congress. What are their policies for protecting the country, what do they plan to do for the deficit, where do they stand on this, where do they stand on that? And you gather all of it up and figure out which is the best candidate for our country. It's very unwise to choose someone for a single policy alone and ignore the rest when it is a weighted decision. You are going to have to suck some things up when making a decision, especially when both politicians are the scum of the earth.

"Good Republicans (originally it was conservatives, the anon messaged to change it)"? According to what, exactly? Because they market themselves as LGBTQ+ friendly or minority friendly? What are their other policies like? Women's issues (including anatomy since some like to pretend a woman can't get pregnant during rape)? Abortion stance? Planned Parenting stance? Country issues? Security issues? Border issues? The deficit? The economy? Foreign affairs? Unemployment? Disaster response? What exactly ARE their stances on the LGBTQ+ and minorities and are they really allies or just trying to buy your vote only to not do anything once they get in? How do they feel about Trans people and transitioning? What do they think are basic human rights? Do they want troops overseas or to bring them home? How would they take care of our military and veterans? Police reform? What do they think of illegal immigrants? How would they help low-income families and neighborhoods? School funding? Medicaid? Social Security? Health insurance in general? How trustworthy are they? Are they sincere or is it empty promises to get where they want to be? What is their history like? Do you see why this isn't a black and white issue? There is no way you would ever have a candidate check all the boxes right. You could screw yourself over very easily if you do not pay attention. The same goes for Democrats. You thought they were off the hook? Nah, fam. Same damn thing. Rules for all, not for some.

If you're talking "Good Republicans" as in civilians, then you're kinda shooting yourself in the foot here as my original post pretty much defended the person in question. Scott IS a good person, as per his actions, but everyone wants to condemn him for doing what he thought was right.

Where do you draw the line? What is the most important out of all these issues and what issues would you allow to fall to the wayside, maybe hoping the candidate might not be so bad about it and have a change of mind? That's the issue you're facing every time you go up to the ballot box. At least, it is when you're well informed. When you're not, you're basically going the shallow route and picking a winner on what they've been most vocal about like a well-groomed dog at the annual dog show.

I don't support Chick-Fil-A for donating MILLIONS, not thousands, to anti-LGBTQ+ and discriminatory organizations, you know, places that SPECIALIZE IN THOSE ACTIVITIES. Same with the Salvation Army. Burger King knows what they did. Politicians don't specialize in that. They have much more going on than to be doing that. They have countries and states to run and nowadays, that's a career death sentence. I mean, you do support cancel culture. That's why you've messaged me, to confirm your stance on what happened to Scott, who also, mind you, sent donations to pro-LGBTQ+ charities, further proving my own point.

And yes, according to a lot of people as per your first message that I laughed at and deleted before realizing I wanted to respond, I'm supposed to be LGBTQ+ but there are a lot out there, including in the LGBTQ+, who don't believe ace/aro people belong there or exist in general. Oh, and I'm nonbinary. But that's okay. That doesn't mean I don't support them either way.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Why Is It So Hard for Democrats to Act Like They Actually Won?

By

Rebecca Solnit

November 19, 2020

When Trump won the 2016 election—while losing the popular vote—the New York Times seemed obsessed with running features about what Trump voters were feeling and thinking. These pieces treated them as both an exotic species and people it was our job to understand, understand being that word that means both to comprehend and to grant some sort of indulgence to. Now that Trump has lost the 2020 election, the Los Angeles Times has given their editorial page over to letters from Trump voters, who had exactly the sort of predictable things to say we have been hearing for far more than four years, thanks to the New York Times and what came to seem like about 11,000 other news outlets hanging on the every word of every white supremacist they could convince to go on the record.

The letters editor headed this section with, “In my decade editing this page, there has never been a period when quarreling readers have seemed so implacably at odds with each other, as if they get their facts and values from different universes. As one small attempt to bridge the divide, we are providing today a page full of letters from Trump supporters.” The implication is the usual one: we—urban multiethnic liberal-to-radical only-partly-Christian America—need to spend more time understanding MAGA America. The demands do not go the other way. Fox and Ted Cruz and the Federalist have not chastised their audiences, I feel pretty confident, with urgings to enter into discourse with, say, Black Lives Matter activists, rabbis, imams, abortion providers, undocumented valedictorians, or tenured lesbians. When only half the divide is being tasked with making the peace, there is no peace to be made, but there is a unilateral surrender on offer. We are told to consider this bipartisanship, but the very word means both sides abandon their partisanship, and Mitch McConnell and company have absolutely no interest in doing that.

Paul Waldman wrote a valuable column in the Washington Post a few years ago, in which he pointed out that this discord is valuable fuel to right-wing operatives: “The assumption is that if Democrats simply choose to deploy this powerful tool of respect, then minds will be changed and votes will follow. This belief, widespread though it may be, is stunningly naive.” He notes that the sense of being disrespected “doesn’t come from the policies advocated by the Democratic Party, and it doesn’t come from the things Democratic politicians say. Where does it come from? An entire industry that’s devoted to convincing white people that liberal elitists look down on them. The right has a gigantic media apparatus that is devoted to convincing people that liberals disrespect them, plus a political party whose leaders all understand that that idea is key to their political project and so join in the chorus at every opportunity.”

There’s also often a devil’s bargain buried in all this, that you flatter and, yeah, respect these white people who think this country is theirs by throwing other people under the bus—by disrespecting immigrants and queer people and feminists and their rights and views. And you reinforce that constituency’s sense that they matter more than other people when you pander like this, and pretty much all the problems we’ve faced over the past four years, to say nothing of the last five hundred, come from this sense of white people being more important than nonwhites, Christians than non-Christians, native-born than immigrant, male than female, straight than queer, cis-gender than trans.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito just complained that “you can’t say that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Now it’s considered bigotry.” This is a standard complaint of the right: the real victim is the racist who has been called a racist, not the victim of his racism, the real oppression is to be impeded in your freedom to oppress. And of course Alito is disingenuous; you can say that stuff against marriage equality (and he did). Then other people can call you a bigot, because they get to have opinions too, but in his scheme such dissent is intolerable, which is fun coming from a member of the party whose devotees wore “fuck your feelings” shirts at its rallies and popularized the term “snowflake.”

Nevertheless, we get this hopelessly naïve version of centrism, of the idea that if we’re nicer to the other side there will be no other side, just one big happy family. This inanity is also applied to the questions of belief and fact and principle, with some muddled cocktail of moral relativism and therapists’ “everyone’s feelings are valid” applied to everything. But the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?

I think our side, if you’ll forgive my ongoing shorthand and binary logic, has something to offer everyone and we can and must win in the long run by offering it, and offering it via better stories and better means to make those stories reach everyone. We actually want to see everyone have a living wage, access to healthcare, and lives unburdened by medical, student, and housing debt. We want this to be a thriving planet when the babies born this year turn 80 in 2100. But the recommended compromise means abandoning and diluting our stories, not fortifying and improving them (and finding ways for them to actually reach the rest of America, rather than having them warped or shut out altogether). I’ve spent much of my adult life watching politicians like Bill Clinton and, at times, Barack Obama sell out their own side to placate the other, with dismal results, and I pray that times have changed enough that Joe Biden will not do it all over again.

Among the other problems with the LA Times’s editor’s statement is that one side has a lot of things that do not deserve to be called facts, and their values are too often advocacy for harming many of us on the other side. Not to pick on one news outlet: Sunday, the Washington Post ran a front-page sub-head about the #millionMAGAmarch that read “On stark display in the nation’s capital were two irreconcilable versions of America, each refusing to accept what the other considered to be undeniable fact.” Except that one side did have actual facts, notably that Donald J. Trump lost the election, and the other had hot and steamy delusions.

I can comprehend, and do, that lots of people don’t believe climate change is real, but is there some great benefit in me listening, again, to those who refuse to listen to the global community of scientists and see the evidence before our eyes? A lot of why the right doesn’t “understand” climate change is that climate change tells us everything is connected, everything we do has far-reaching repercussions, and we’re responsible for the whole, a message at odds with their idealization of a version of freedom that smells a lot like disconnection and irresponsibility. But also climate denial is the result of fossil fuel companies and the politicians they bought spreading propaganda and lies for profit, and I understand that better than the people who believe it. If half of us believe the earth is flat, we do not make peace by settling on it being halfway between round and flat. Those of us who know it’s round will not recruit them through compromise. We all know that you do better bringing people out of delusion by being kind and inviting than by mocking them, but that’s inviting them to come over, which is not the same thing as heading in their direction.

The editor spoke of facts, and he spoke of values. In the past four years too many members of the right have been emboldened to carry out those values as violence. One of the t-shirts at the #millionMAGAmarch this weekend: “Pinochet did nothing wrong.” Except stage a coup, torture and disappear tens of thousands of Chileans, and violate laws and rights. A right-wing conspiracy to overthrow the Michigan government and kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer was recently uncovered, racists shot some Black Lives Matter protestors and plowed their cars into a lot of protests this summer. The El Paso anti-immigrant massacre was only a year ago; the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre two years ago, the Charlottesville white-supremacist rally in which Heather Heyer was killed three years ago (and of course there have been innumerable smaller incidents all along). Do we need to bridge the divide between Nazis and non-Nazis? Because part of the problem is that we have an appeasement economy, a system that is supposed to be greased by being nice to the other side.

Appeasement didn’t work in the 1930s and it won’t work now. That doesn’t mean that people have to be angry or hate back or hostile, but it does mean they have to stand on principle and defend what’s under attack. There are situations in which there is no common ground worth standing on, let alone hiking over to. If Nazis wanted to reach out and find common ground and understand us, they probably would not have had that tiki-torch parade full of white men bellowing “Jews will not replace us” and, also, they would not be Nazis. Being Nazis, white supremacists, misogynists, transphobes is all part of a project of refusing to understand as part of refusing to respect. It is a minority position but by granting it deference we give it, over and over, the power of a majority position.

In fact the whole Republican Party, since long before Trump, has committed itself to the antidemocratic project of trying to create a narrower electorate rather than win a wider vote. They have invested in voter suppression as a key tactic to win, and the votes they try to suppress are those of Black voters and other voters of color. That is a brutally corrupt refusal to allow those citizens the rights guaranteed to them by law. Having failed to prevent enough Black people from voting in the recent election, they are striving mightily to discard their votes after the fact. What do you do with people who think they matter more than other people? Catering to them reinforces that belief, that they are central to the nation’s life, they are more important, and their views must prevail. Deference to intolerance feeds intolerance.

Years ago the linguist George Lakoff wrote that Democrats operate as kindly nurturance-oriented mothers to the citizenry, Republicans as stern discipline-oriented fathers. But the relationship between the two parties is a marriage, between an overly deferential wife and an overbearing and often abusive husband (think of how we got our last two Supreme Court justices and failed to get Merrick Garland). The Hill just ran a headline that declared “GOP Senators say that a Warren nomination would divide Republicans.” I am pretty sure they didn’t run headlines that said, “Democratic Senators say a Pompeo (or Bolton or Perdue or Sessions) nomination would divide Democrats.” I grew up in an era where wives who were beaten were expected to do more to soothe their husbands and not challenge them, and this carries on as the degrading politics of our abusive national marriage.

Some of us don’t know how to win. Others can’t believe they ever lost or will lose or should, and their intransigence constitutes a kind of threat. That’s why the victors of the recent election are being told in countless ways to go grovel before the losers. This unilateral surrender is how misogyny and racism are baked into a lot of liberal and centrist as well as right-wing positions, this idea that some people need to be flattered and buffered even when they are harming the people who are supposed to do the flattering and buffering, even when they are the minority, even when they’re breaking the law or lost the election. Lakoff didn’t quite get to the point of saying that this nation lives in a household full of what domestic abuse advocates call coercive control, in which one partner’s threats, intimidations, devaluations, and general shouting down control the other.

This is what marriages were before feminism, with the abused wife urged to placate and soothe the furious husband. Feminism is good for everything, and it’s a good model for seeing that this is both outrageous and a recipe for failure. It didn’t work in marriages, and it never was the abused partner’s job to prevent the abuse by surrendering ground and rights and voice. It is not working as national policy either. Now is an excellent time to stand on principle and defend what we value, and I believe it’s a winning strategy too, or at least brings us closer to winning than surrender does. Also, it’s worth repeating, we won, and being gracious in victory is still being victorious.

[Rebecca Solnit’s first media job was in fact-checking and her last book is the memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence. She’s sent a lot of mail to her nieces and nephews during the pandemic.]

[benefitscrounger]

i can assure people i do not feel 'smug' about the abysmal state of the democratic party. i was even kind of excited when Kamala announced her candidacy, as were many others, because they saw the possibility for change. not just with Gaza, but immigration, policing, abortion, education, childcare etc etc. they hoped she would listen to the democratic base and the vast majority of not just dem voters, but the broader voting populace.

there's a reason the hype has completely dissipated, and while the genocide in Gaza is a large part of why, it's also her adopting right-wing framing on issues like immigration and foreign policy. she's now doing campaign tours with fucking Liz Cheney of all people, and saying she'll have republicans in her cabinet. so, republicans are a threat to democracy... but she'll have them in her government?? how does that make any sense? i think it's pretty obvious that the 'anti-Trump' republicans are trying to usurp the DNC and turn it into the Bush era GOP. because they don't oppose Trump politically, but because he's unpredictable. they want a competent leader who will make America 'look good' on the world stage again. even though at this juncture, that's an impossible task. Gaza has fully exposed the rot at the heart of American empire, and people aren't going to look away again.

let what happened to the labour party in the UK under Starmer be a lesson; they don't care, and are banking on democratic voters to sign off on their right-wing shift. if they can throw away the Arab and Muslim American vote this easily, which minority group will they abandon next? with some dem politicians coming out with anti-trans platforms, i think the answer is obvious.

[wolvesdevour]

I come from a family of Republicans. Well, for the most part. I also have family that worked in politics, so there’s a lot of Washingtonians, too (which isn’t so much of a party as eh... A deep understanding of the politics and how they work to the point were parties are viewed as useless to adhere to). But the thing is. Republicanism has changed so much over the last century. I grew up with Repubs who are pro-LGBT, pro-Feminism, pro-abortion, pro-choice, pro-protection of sex workers, pro-environmentalism, pro-immigration rights, anti-racism, etc. Also heavily anti-religion in politics.  The problem is that Republicanism has changed. Some Republicans are still that way--or you pick and choose (some may be less anti-racism, but for everything else, etc; tbh, they’re human but they’re also human and that means you can talk to them and make deals and shit). But there’s new Republicanism that is the Tea Party. They’re whatever Trump is. That’s not... That’s not Republicanism. I had an interesting talk the other day, but there’s 4 major political designations: 1) socially conservative, fiscally conservative 2) socially conservative, fiscally liberal 3) socially liberal, fiscally conservative 4) socially liberal, fiscally liberal How 1 looks or works, I’m not really sure. I guess its “I don’t want anyone to have rights and I’m not sharing my money.” So... Traditional libertarians, maybe? I’d say that sounds a lot like libertarianism. (RE: Everyone should sustain themselves by their own means. So if you’re trans and need medical help? Too bad. Earn your own damn money.) This system doesn’t work. Because society requires aiding each other to some degree as well as exchange. More on that below. Number 2 works by saying “Only THIS group deserves aid.” Number 3 is what most “sane” Republicans I know say they are. They support people, but are cautious of rampant spending. Newer republicanism is more akin to 2, not 3. “Only white, straight Christians deserve aid and rights.” [Disclaimer: 2 is not exclusive to one group, but because we’re talking American politics, this is why I say “white, straight Christians.”] I feel that 3 is highly debatable on how it functions. For example, I consider myself fiscally conservative, but on the scale of conservativeness [fiscally], I am more liberal than some of my family. I am what I consider more German or Scandinavian in fiscality, which means: higher taxes for greater liberal aid. [Disclaimer: Taxes scare people. This is a pretty complicated topic which I don’t feel like getting into right now because I’m trying to keep this short.] Number 4 is... I’m not sure of what political system to call this. I’m not a large fan of this because our society runs inherently on exchange. Money is an artificial form of trade. I’ve tried to search for a workaround to money. No matter what I found, trade is required. If you’re wondering, this is also why I dislike 1 for a similar reason: it shuts down all trade systems. 4 would state that society deserves aid and rights, but for free (or: workers who are providing aid aren’t receiving payment). If you’ve noticed, I mention trade, taxes, and money a lot. Bear with me, but I’m gonna get biological for a second: We’re human beings, right? But we’re also animals. Primates. Hominidae. Homininae. Homo sapiens.  So let’s break that down a bit. Prosimians--think: lemurs--are more primitive of the primates. This isn’t judgement; they’re more related to our overall ancestors than the simians (monkeys and apes). Prosimians generally have social grooming. All primates, for the most part, have social grooming. This is called allogrooming. In more advanced primates, we start seeing more complex exchanges. This means if one individual of a species is grooming the other, they will expect some sort of return. You may also see a primate with food--such as grapes--and in exchange for the grapes, may receive grooming or other favors from other individuals in its social group.  So what about us? We’re not different than other apes, really. This is why we may get angry at our coworkers, friends, family, or partners. If we’re doing all the work and we’re not getting what we view as adequate exchange, we will be unhappy.  This is why trade is important to politics. You cannot have an entirely free system because if you take away all forms of money, you then must rely on trade, such as “I have 10 oranges; you have a book. I will trade you my bag of oranges for your book!” That is a more chaotic form of trade because it will require constant dependence on how much your item is desired (and lasting of your item--oranges go bad, books can suffer damage). What if the person already has 50 oranges because it is peak orange picking season? 10 oranges is worth a piece of paper, not a book! They don’t want more oranges. Money is a little more complex, because you still get resource fluctuations, but you also now have an item that doesn’t change. A dollar is a representation, not in of itself of value. Of course, this still has changes, such as: A dollar will pay for 3 oranges one month, and when oranges are highly abundant, it will pay for 10 oranges. But the dollar itself remains “easier” structurally for individuals in society because if you have that dollar, you can always wait until next season to buy oranges. But if you only had a book, if you waited, maybe someone else already traded fewer oranges with their copy of the book and now your book is worthless to the vendor.  So um. Anyways. I have no idea how I got onto money and trade.  Essentially, my point being: There are no absolutes. I loathe the idea of someone is only conservative or liberal. It’s a bit of a lie, really. Because there is more than one type of conservative or liberal designation. Even among the 4 I listed, you have people like my Repub family members and myself. We both agree on taxes being important. Except we see it differently on how it should be applied. I personally prefer higher taxes for the rich. As someone who is in the higher classes I want higher taxes for the rich. It’s called being a fucking good person. I know of other people saying the same thing. But we may disagree on the level of higher taxes, etc. And that’s kind of my point, I think. Overall. Republicans aren’t evil. I’m not one. I’m a Washingtonian. But a lot of the concepts of Republicanism that people hate? It’s not a base of Republicanism. It’s people who are Republicans who are assholes. Because I know Republicans who are disgusted by what’s been happening to their own party, except they’ve become a minority. Or people who are hear a lot of “Republicans are shit; they should die.” and say “Fine, then you’re a threat or aggressive to me, so I will stop caring about you.” (There’s actually some credence to this phenomenon. It’s complicated and would require another post, I think to fully explain.) Then they become more radical--leaning more and more to 2 and 1 functions, rather than the more function 3 political function. This is also why when someone says “I’m very liberal,” I always ask how are you liberal? Because this could mean socially, fiscally, or both.  Labels can be useful, but they’re only useful when we understand how they’re being used.

[amillioninprizes]

Permalink to the following comment. I’m going to the NYC march later, but this articulates something I’ve been feeling angry about for the better part of the last year:

I won’t march because I’m wondering where the hell were these people before the election and mobilizing voters to stop Trump? Where were these hundreds of thousands of people to help GOTV in their states? Did all of these people vote? Where were they in the 2010 and 2014 elections to vote against Republicans who were eroding voting rights in their respective states? Where were they when Obama needed votes in the House and Senate? Senate votes aren’t gerrymandered, so where were they to help him at least get a Senate to confirm federal judgeships, such as the final SCOTUS seat Trump gets in addition to the hundred of federal judgeships Obama couldn’t get filled because of the GOP?

Now they care about LGBT people, women losing our rights, civil rights, free press, public schools, the ACA, Social Security, rights for the disabled, Medicare, expansion of healthcare, public schools, Planned Parenthood, the SCOTUS, climate change, police reform, and all the other causes I see represented today? They’ve had a chance since 2008 to stop this and they didn’t. They never countered the Teahadists with this enthusiasm. Progressive policies were stalled, hard won civil rights were rolled back, and Obama’s domestic agenda was stalled because we weren’t there for him in midterm elections or helping him win the PR battle (to be fair, he admits to failing to understand the usefulness of political theater and PR) for his policies. Now you all are weeping, rending garments, gnashing your teeth, and falling out because he’s gone. Well, he asked you to turn up and vote if you still supported him, but you were comfortable enough telling pollsters how much you approve of him. Now you care?

And, this November, when this energy was all that stood between this and Trump, most of you all bitched about Hillary’s email hygiene how she wasn’t perfect, how she was problematic, how she was a warmonger, how she was too close to Wall Street, how she was late to the show on same-sex marriage and LGBT rights (no one cared that she took the biggest step to help trans people get IDs as was within her power to do so as SoS), too close to Israel, hated people of color, and did nothing for the poor. She was fighting for universal healthcare before it was cool and got dragged for it because why should a FLOTUS, who had experience in expanding healthcare in one of the poorest states, get involved. No woman withstood the assaults of the GOP and Trump more than Hillary did. Has there ever been a presidential candidate who gave a feminist and strong defense of abortion rights on a presidential debate stage as she did this fall? Has there been a president with a more progressive platform? She stood between us, the Trump administration, and a Republican Congress but you couldn’t be bothered to summon this energy until now to support her and the new blood the Democrats were trying to bring into the Congress.. Indeed, you all couldn’t bother to stop hating her, lambasting her, spreading right-wing propaganda about her, spreading misogynistic left-wing propaganda about her, and generally hating her because she wasn’t one of the “problematic” men you loved and still love.

I also won’t march because Hillary is blamed for things she didn’t do, when the men who did them are still beloved. “Uncle” Joe Biden gets mad love around here and other quarters, but he wrote the 1994 Crime Bill for which Hillary, who didn’t vote for it, does. Bernie voted for that bill, and not because of the assault weapons ban as he claimed as he voted for it before that was added to it, and he never gets the blame. The “superpredator” remark, which was borrowed from a Princeton sociologist who now denounces it too, rightfully got a lot of attention. Bernie Sanders called the same group of people “sociopaths” on the floor of the House of Representatives, but no one gave a fuck.

Uncle Joe was also the main advocate for the banking and credit card industries. His nickname used to be Senator Joseph Biden (D-MBNA). Hillary voted in favor of every banking regulation bill save for one because it allowed people to discharge back child support in bankruptcy which would severely hurt single parents, the vast majority of them women, who already don’t get adequate child support. She missed one vote because Bill was coming out of heart surgery, but attempted to keep it from coming up for a vote on procedural grounds. But, you know, speaking fees at Goldman-Sachs were the real issue, not her voting record. As for her donors, I’d like to remind everyone that people who worked on Wall Street were her constituents insofar as people who work there live in the state of New York. People donate to Senate campaigns in the states where they live. Also, no one really had a problem with Bernie accepting money Hillary got from those people to run a much cheaper campaign in Vermont. I guess it miraculously became pure, clean, and holy when he touched it.

Hillary gets the blame for Libya, but Obama is the only one who could have authorized any US participation, yet he gets a pass for ordering it. That’s not even mentioning that France and the UK started the whole thing and came to us for help when they finally realized they were stupid enough to believe they had the military resources to carry it out.

Hillary and the foreign minister of Russia had signed a diplomatic solution for solving the crisis in Syria while other people were fucking around bickering, but Obama withdrew it when he was getting criticized in the 2012 election for being too soft on Russia. To be clear: Hillary got Russia to agree to a diplomatic solution to that would have pushed its client state to make a change that would have stopped the carnage and put in place a leader the Syrian people would accept (Bashar al-Asaad will never be accepted back and can only stay in power by killing people on a large scale).

Obama maintained a kill list, which he used regularly, but she’s called “Killary”. Obama ordered drone strikes that killed thousands of innocent people, have caused PTSD in Pakistan, and outraged the world. But, Obama, the man people still love to this very day, isn’t the murderer of Muslims, Hillary is. Bernie Sanders is the dove who wants to clamp down on military spending who never saw a war appropriations bill he didn’t like, especially for the trillion dollar DoD boondoggle F-35. That plane will never be built but he keeps voting for it because it is being “built” in Vermont and there is no end in sight for that project so the cost continues to rise.

I really won’t march because one of the women Bernie Bros who organized these marches uses Hillary’s quotes to galvanize support for the march. Not only did she spread hatred for Hillary, she uses these quotes without attribution. She claims Hillary is not on the honor roll of women because Hillary attended the inauguration. She, and others, STILL DON’T GET IT: Hillary had to be problematic and do shit she probably didn’t/doesn’t like doing because she is also the former First Lady of the United States. She, like Michelle Obama, are still very much at the mercy of the gender roles society set in place for them long ago. She wasn’t there as a former US Senator or Secretary of State, she had to be there as someone’s wife. All she’s done was wiped away and undermined as she had to sit there and smile as his supporters heckled her with chants to lock her up. She had to sit there and smile as she watched a man who is unqualified, done no public service, and got away with shit she never could have gotten away with, took the job she deserved. (How many of us can relate to the experience of watching a less qualified man taking a job or getting credit for something you deserved over him). Her highest duty yesterday wasn’t to maintain her dignity, it was to show deference to her status as a wife of a president. She had to do it and other things because women don’t get to act like men and we certainly can’t not act like them if we want to see power.

This march is cynical. It represents the craven interests of those who are trying to make up for their lack of activism over the years and at the most critical point in the history of our republic and maybe the world. Now the White House webpage has erased any references to LGBT rights, civil rights, and climate change. In their place are pages devoted to the denunciation of Muslims and sinister vows to end the “anti-police atmosphere in this country.” You handed a bigot and bigoted congressional majority, and SCOTUS seats. We’ll live with your indifference for generations. Your enthusiasm today won’t change shit. The charitable view of it is that it is a day late and a dollar short.

[theculturedmarxist]

First of all

You can't "restore" Roe v. Wade. You can try to restore some of the protection it offered. The president can't do that by himself. Congress has to do that. Joe Biden and the thin Democratic majority in the senate are the reason there isn't a national abortion ban.

The president could have prevented the dissolution of RvW in the first place by going after the justices behind it. If they're such a fucking problem then maybe steps could be taken to remove them. You have Clarence Thomas that is just skating by on behavior that should merit at the very least a serious corruption investigation, and then his wife that was involved with the January 6 riots and who knows what else. If the Democrats were serious about protecting abortion then the justice department should be leaning on them, and hard, not extending them and their families extra police protection to shield them from the consequences of fucking everyone over.

Also when was this metaphorical football pulled before? Joe Biden was elected the first time before Dobbs v. Jackson, it was just too late to do anything about it because the Supreme Court had already been stacked with right wing justices.

We went through all this before with Clinton and then Obama. Much like the Democrats are doing now, Obama also promised that “'the first thing I’d do as president' would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act." Then he just didn't. Oops.

I'm tired of the excuse about the SC being packed with right wing judges too. The need to codify abortion rights goes back pretty much to the minute the decision of Roe was announced because the anti-abortion faction of the Republicans made no secret how against it they were or their plans of seeing it overturned. Over and over again Democrats ran on protecting and codifying it, and over and over again when they had the power to do so, they just didn't.

Can we overturn Dobbs? Maybe, but we'd have to deal with the Supreme Court first. As it stands, that means waiting for a couple of justices to retire or shuffle off this mortal coil, while we have enough Democrats in office to fill the seats. If you want to reform the Supreme Court in any way, you need congress for that too.

It really doesn't matter how many Democrats there are in office, because there will never, ever be enough. There will always be some excuse, some technicality, some justification for why they just can't do whatever it is they promised to do. This is a big part of why they can't get anyone to vote for them without threatening the entire country with nightmare scenarios about Trump bringing on an eternal night of brutal fascism. I mean, it's a lot like what you're doing now, really. Instead of expecting the Democrats to use the power that they do have, you're casting them as impotent without some fantastic scenario where their main problem just dies and they've somehow achieved the supermajority necessary to just do whatever they want.

This is how the Republicans keep making you all look like a bunch of fucking fools. They tried overturning abortion legislatively, but that didn't work because it's a generally unpopular position to take, especially nowadays. So they went at it through the judiciary and executive branches, and here we are.

So, how about this: make these states decide whether or not they want to ban abortion, or get federal funding for their highways. The DoT is under the authority of the executive branch. Make it clear one way or another that if any jurisdiction at the local or state level makes a single fucking move to limit abortion or access to it, then they're on the hook themselves for their highways.

Or how about this: the president also has sole discretion on whether or not military bases stay open. If Texas or Florida want to play chicken with the federal government on abortion, or the border, or trans rights, tell them: fine. No more military bases in that case. See how much the life of the fetus means to them with the billions of dollars US military bases bring on the line.

You act like the poor widdle pwesident is powerless to do anything about this when the executive branch has tons of power that could be used right this very instant to make the people responsible for this mess hurt, make them hurt bad, and it's just not being done. Why? Because Biden and the rest of the Democrats aren't serious about helping regular people in general or ensuring abortion rights in particular.

Hillary Clinton said she would protect Roe v. Wade. You didn't elect her. Democrats at the state level have said they will protect abortion in their states. They have. They are doing that right now. Joe Biden said he would appoint pro-choices justices to the Supreme Court if he had the opportunity. He did: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

I love this constant refrain, as if Clinton isn't basically a Republican herself, and that it's somehow everyone else's fucking fault she couldn't win. Nevermind that she was a historically unpopular candidate. Nevermind that Clinton's own fucking strategy was to promote Trump so that she could run against him. Nevermind it was Clinton's own dogshit campaign that lost her the fucking election. No, we failed her, somehow.

And, what, are we supposed to praise the Democrats for cleaning up after the mess that they fucking made? If they'd followed through on their promises before this SC decision they wouldn't have to "protect abortion in their states"—even though this is happening in spite of the fucking Democrats.

President Joe Biden and other Democrats are championing efforts to restore abortion access in red and purple states.

But local organizers and national advocates fear Democratic candidates, in promoting abortion-rights referendums that may boost their electoral prospects, could inadvertently doom the initiatives.

It’s a particular concern in key presidential and Senate battlegrounds like Arizona, Montana and Nevada where ballot measure campaigns to codify abortion rights need more than just Democratic voters to succeed.

“We haven’t won or beat back a single one of these ballot measures without significant independent and Republican support,” said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All. “We spent a lot of last year talking to candidates directly saying, ‘Don’t put things on the ballot just to enhance voter turnout for Dems.’ That’s not how this works.”

Democratic candidates and ballot measure coalitions are united in wanting to expand abortion access, but they’re sometimes divided on how to achieve it. Some ballot campaigns, like Ohio’s in 2023 and Missouri this year, have largely avoided holding events with Democratic politicians or featuring them in ads — concerned doing so would further politicize the measures and turn off Republican and independent voters. Some, like Florida, have warned Democrats to remain at arm’s length.

But oh well. In the months or years it takes for Democrats to regain control of the House and Senate, I'm sure all the millions of people impacted by your colossal fucking failure will appreciate how hard you're working for them.

We told you we'd lose Roe if Trump won in 2016. We were right. I wish we were wrong, but we weren't.

Get fucked, you sanctimonious asshole. This is as much the Democrats' fucking fault as the Republicans. This disaster didn't happen under Trump, it happened on your watch. And now your party of fucked shitheads is about to capitulate to the Orange Badman again, not unlike it did when Gore just gave up in order to not piss off the Republicans. We're here exactly because of you feckless dipshits, not in spite of you, so thanks for nothing, cunt.

"Joe Biden is going to restore Roe v. Wade."

No, really. This time for sure! Honest!

[infiniteglitterfall]

Gosh, what a bad faith reading!!

That's honestly the most Republican-sounding interpretation I've seen on Tumblr in ages.

If you're just, you know, right-wing, then my bad, you meant to be a jerk, please go about your business.

But if you're trying to be a progressive here, may I humbly request that you think about whether this would be your reaction if literally any of the rest of us had turned to our communities in frigging 1883 and said, "don't stop fighting just because you personally feel safe where you are! We need to keep fighting for our rights everywhere! We need to stand together globally!"

We have the internet now. We forget how far away people in other cities and countries and continents seemed.

I live in the Bay Area, in California. We're a sanctuary state for trans people, abortion rights, and all immigrants. It's REALLY EASY for us, even now, to look down our noses at people living in, say, Florida, and go, "well, they should just move here!"

The more states pass draconian laws against our bodies, the more people scoff, "why do you keep living there?!"

And it's not that they SUPPORT those laws. Of course they don't. They hate and condemn those laws.

But I don't really think the people scoffing are simultaneously fighting. If they were standing with their community, they would know why that part of their community kept living there. They would have no need to scoff.

Calling for your community to stand together in the face of its own oppression is not calling for it to ignore or oppress others.

The reason this sounded so Republican was that outsiders who don't support Black Lives Mattering, or trans people existing, or fucking feminism, frequently criticize and shame those groups for not fighting the REAL oppressions.

Like when misogynists tell women that THEY'RE not oppressed, people in such-and-such country or culture are REALLY oppressed. Or that cis men are REALLY the ones who are oppressed. How Disappointing™️ it is that they're so self-centered and not focusing on the REALLY oppressed people in the world.

Right-wing arguments also frequently claim that one group's freedom only comes at the expense of another's. That feminism constricts men's rights. That anti-racism shames and emotionally abuses white people. That people are "transing children."

Jewish freedom doesn't come at the expense of other people's, any more than anybody else's does.

Creating a Jewish country did not come at the expense of other people's freedom. But the surrounding countries invading en masse, and then treating the refugees they created like garbage, certainly did.

Pushing Nazi propaganda to those countries for years to get them to agree to invade, so that life became unbearable for the hundreds of thousands of Jews there, certainly did.

Palestinian leaders refusing to listen to the will of their people, refusing to declare an independent Palestine if it meant being next door to a Jewish state, certainly did. They didn't declare independence until 1988, ffs.

A literal Nazi group like Hamas constantly disrupting negotiations, fighting against peace between the two countries, seizing power in Gaza by violently throwing out the Palestinian government, inciting war against its people's wishes, and running Gaza like a fascist dictatorship to keep people from fighting for peace certainly does.

"None of us are free until all of us are free." We know this phrase, whether we've used it or had it used against us. Many, too many, people used it to try justifying Oct 7th and the theoretical destruction of Israel.

Such usage of her words would have Emma Lazarus rolling in her grave. Lazarus was in fact a prominent Zionist, and her original words, "Until we are all free, we are none of us free" were meant to encourage international Jewish solidarity. If we were to add clarification to this quote it would be, "Until we (Jews) are all free (from persecution and antisemitism), we (Jews) are none of us free (from persecution and antisemitism)."

It was meant to encourage the creation of a Jewish state, the creation of Israel. It tells Jews who feel secure in their diaspora experiences that they cannot be free and safe from antisemitism until they can create a free and safe state for their less secure counterparts.

This quote has been taken out of its original context, has had its meaning mangled and manipulated, and has been appropriated to be used against the very purpose it was created for.

As such, it is time to reclaim these words. To use them as they were written to be used.

Until we are all free, we are none of us free

Until all of the hostages are free, no Jew is free.

Until all of Israel is free from constant threat, no Jew is free.

Until all Jews are free, no Jew is free.